Bother Voting doesn't care who you are going to support this election, as long as you get out and vote. Now all you have to do is use their creative e-cards and banners to convince your friends to hit the polls.
posted on Sep 30, 2008 - View this thread

“I’m an old computer nerd,” Diener said. “I can do anything with computers. Nothing’s wrong with computers. But this is the worst way to run an election.” NYTMag piece on electronic voting, voter confidence, and the impact of old-fashioned problems like printer jams, befuddled voters and volunteers, and interface design flaws. By Clive Thompson.
posted on Jan 5, 2008 - View this thread

Glassbooth connects you to the presidential candidate that represents your beliefs the best. Too busy/lazy/etc. to research the candidates on your own? Let web 2.0 tell you who to vote for.
posted on Nov 2, 2007 - View this thread

Death Grip: How Political Psychology Explains Bush's Ghastly Success. Interesting article on the work of psychologists Jeff Greenberg, Sheldon Solomon, and Tom Pyszczynski. [Via Disinformation.]
posted on Aug 29, 2007 - View this thread

Today the DNC voted "to strip Florida of all its presidential convention delegates, threatening to leave the state without a vote for the party's 2008 nominee unless it delays the date of its presidential primary election." [More Inside]
posted on Aug 25, 2007 - View this thread

Diebold Election Systems is no more (at least in name). Taking a page from the cigarette companies, Diebold is changing their name and hoping to reverse the downward spiral after their recent news.
posted on Aug 17, 2007 - View this thread

In honor of tomorrow's Freedom Day (April 27), please enjoy these tales from elections past...
posted on Apr 26, 2007 - View this thread

Fixavote.com Election Consultants "provides unparalleled results by focusing on the outcome rather than the process. Using state-of the-art technology, we overcome the challenges of competition and ensure election results for our clients." (To make it even more evil, it's Flash-based) A food-for-thought satire or something more? When A reporter called the site's 800 number, the person who answered "said that he had been contacted by representatives of about 30 political campaigns to date." (I'm thinking sting operation to catch dishonest idiot politicians. Whad'ya think?)
posted on Oct 29, 2006 - View this thread

A manual for electoral apocalypse in America. Quite a bit's been written both on MeFi and other places about how bad Diebold machines are. Rolling Stone wrote an article about election fraud in 2004 that was discussed here on MeFi. Tonight, Ars posted a very thorough, very clear article about how we are completely screwed if we do not enact expensive, fundamental changes in how we handle elections in America. It's too late to do anything about the elections in a couple weeks, but perhaps steps can be taken to fix things before 2008...
posted on Oct 25, 2006 - View this thread

MySpace has started a voter registration drive. MySpace has a ton of users, so this could be huge. Could this get young Americans to vote? I'm going to guess no, but you never know.
posted on Sep 27, 2006 - View this thread

[O]ne muggy day in mid-August [2002], [Diebold consultant Chris] Hood was surprised to see the president of Diebold's election unit, Bob Urosevich, arrive in Georgia from his headquarters in Texas. With the primaries looming, Urosevich was personally distributing a "patch," a little piece of software designed to correct glitches in the computer program. "We were told that it was intended to fix the clock in the system, which it didn't do," Hood says. "The curious thing is the very swift, covert way this was done. . . . It was an unauthorized patch, and they were trying to keep it secret from the state," Hood told me. "We were told not to talk to county personnel about it. I received instructions directly from Urosevich. It was very unusual that a president of the company would give an order like that and be involved at that level."
- Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Will the Next Election be Hacked?
posted on Sep 22, 2006 - View this thread

Diebold boss resigns pending fraud investigation
posted on Dec 13, 2005 - View this thread

Georgia wants to charge people to vote, having chosen to implement "a new voter ID law that requires many people without driver's licenses...to pay $20 or more for a state ID card." Adding insult to injury, the number of ID centers in Atlanta is currently ZERO.
(disclaimer: I don't know how to get a subscription-free link to NYT articles- sorry!)
posted on Sep 12, 2005 - View this thread

20 Amazing Facts About Read this and cry. Or move to another country.
posted on Dec 31, 2004 - View this thread

Nader Challenges Black Box Voting in NH
posted on Nov 5, 2004 - View this thread

Over 125 voter guides, sorted by city and written collaboratively by Indyvoter's network of members are now on-line. This is social software with a purpose - members of the network form voting blocs to swing close elections, from city council members up to the national level.
posted on Nov 1, 2004 - View this thread

Racially-Based Suppression of the African-American Vote: The Role It May Play in the Upcoming Presidential Election What exactly is racially-based vote suppression? Simply defined, it is the targeting of potential voters, based on their race, in an attempt to suppress the exercise of their right to vote for the candidate of their choice.
posted on Oct 30, 2004 - View this thread

Becoming what you hate : Nathan Sproul, case study in moral relativism on the Religious Right "former head of the Arizona Republican Party and of the Arizona Christian Coalition....Sproul is connected with the Republican National Committee-funded voter registration organization, Voters' Outreach of America Inc." - Sproul's firm is accused of fraud and the destruction of voter registration forms. He also failed to pay his workers and his office rent. Rick Perlstein, in the Village Voice, comments on the Sproul scandal : "Both sides are not equally bad, and any reporters who don't recognize that conservatism's very core has become shot through with a culture of mendacity should turn in their press badge..... It used to be that we could count on the conscience of conservatives to protect our democratic institutions."
posted on Oct 22, 2004 - View this thread

Blackbox Voting, take 6. While lawsuits elsewhere seek to require paper trails or block e-voting altogether, early voting in some states is already using the controversial machines. Take New Mexico, for example: "I voted for Kerry and a check mark for Bush appeared." It's not that funny anymore — especially when most of the fears aren't about what you do see, but what you don't.
posted on Oct 22, 2004 - View this thread

An Election Lottery?
We've had decades of handwringing and civics lectures while voting continues to plunge. This is America, dammit. If everything else pays, why shouldn't voting?
posted on Oct 19, 2004 - View this thread

Illegal RNC trashing Democratic registrations in Vegas -- Employees of a private voter registration company allege that hundreds, perhaps thousands of voters who may think they are registered will be rudely surprised on election day. The company claims hundreds of registration forms were thrown in the trash. ... The out-of-state firm has been in Las Vegas for the past few months, registering voters. It employed up to 300 part-time workers and collected hundreds of registrations per day, but former employees of the company say that Voters Outreach of America only wanted Republican registrations. Two former workers say they personally witnessed company supervisors rip up and trash registration forms signed by Democrats. ... The company has been largely, if not entirely funded, by the Republican National Committee. Similar complaints have been received in Reno where the registrar has asked the FBI to investigate.
posted on Oct 12, 2004 - View this thread

Was your voter registration form thick enough? Ohio's republican secretary of state has issued an order (three days before the registration deadline) to throw out all voter registration forms printed on paper less then 80lb. Coincidence that dem-leaning areas have seen a 250% rise in voter registration, with tens of thousands of new voters in a race expected to be closer then FL 2000?

Oh yeah, the state sent out 40lb forms to those requesting them. Cute, huh.
posted on Sep 27, 2004 - View this thread

Monkey hacks Diebold voting machine. Really.
posted on Sep 23, 2004 - View this thread

Why You Should Ignore The Gallup Poll This Morning - And Maybe All Of Theirs If you support the Dems, you might want to pass this on!
"This morning we awoke to the startling news that despite a flurry of different polls this week all showing a tied race, the venerable Gallup Poll, as reported widely in the media (USA Today and CNN) today, showed George W. Bush with a huge 55%-42% lead over John Kerry amongst likely voters. The same Gallup Poll showed an 8-point lead for Bush amongst registered voters (52%-44%). Before you get discouraged by these results, you should be more upset that Gallup gets major media outlets to tout these polls and present a false, disappointing account of the actual state of the race. Why?"...
posted on Sep 17, 2004 - View this thread

By entering a 2-digit code in a hidden location in the Diebold voting machine, a second set of votes is created. "This set of votes can be changed, so that it no longer matches the correct votes. The voting system will then read the totals from the bogus vote set. It takes only seconds to change the votes, and to date not a single location in the U.S. has implemented security measures to fully mitigate the risks."
posted on Aug 31, 2004 - View this thread

indian electronic voting vs. diebold
"Reading this article, some of you might remember that Cold war era joke, about NASA and its multi million dollar experiment with a pen that can write in micro gravity to solve the writing problems of astronauts, and the Russian solution of using a Pencil to solve the same problem."
posted on May 14, 2004 - View this thread

2000 Election results ranked by avg statewide IQ. Shame on me for even posting this here in this slavering den of liberal fervor, but if it's true, it certainly is kinda fascinating.
posted on May 6, 2004 - View this thread

Anthony Argyriou uncovers what seems to be a serious problem either with California voting machines or the vote tallying system: The Secretary of State's summary of votes on the Davis recall shows three counties--Alameda, Kern, and Plumas--that apparently had zero voters who didn't vote on the recall. Not one. All three counties used Diebold machines. Other counties ranged from 0.5% to 10.3% of voters not voting on the recall. More from Rick Hasen, a top election law scholar. [Via Volokh.]
posted on Nov 16, 2003 - View this thread

Important expose and interview runs on Salon today. "This evening the site the aritcle features is shut down. As soon as we get that new server up we'll host the materials (yes, we have a copy) that Diebold doesn't want the public to see. Diebold cannot silence everyone. " The links (2) for this piece can be found at URL given here. "If you're not outraged you are not paying attention. " The Agonist, as usual, is both outraged and paying attention.
posted on Sep 24, 2003 - View this thread

9th Circuit Court blocks California Recall Election because six counties would be using outdated punch-card ballots. Perhaps the court should have paid a visit to the Black Box Voting web site to look at all the problems surfacing with the Electronic Voting machines.
posted on Sep 15, 2003 - View this thread

No winner in MoveOn primary... but Dean places first, with 4387%. No candidate getting over 50% means no endorsement for now. But more people voted in this virtual Democratic primary than voted in the New Hampshire, Iowa, and North Carolina Democratic primaries/caucuses in 2000.
posted on Jun 27, 2003 - View this thread

Who would you rather vote for - Frankenstein, Hitler, or Tony Curtis? That's the decision facing some voters in India ... Have you ever run across other 'repurposed' names?
posted on Feb 27, 2003 - View this thread

Who Counts your Votes? This book published back in 1992 is a good launching pad to begin the quest regarding elections and election fraud in America. Joseph Stalin had a saying: ``Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything.'' When I voted on November 5, I was handed a little card stuck it in to a Diebold voting machine and presto all the votes I submitted were counted correctly right? Well I'm not sure after I read the article Diebold: The face of modern balloting at http://www.bartcop.com/110702otter.htm and some of the articles at http://www.votefraud.org/. Perhaps we Americans have handed a bit to much over to computers and the people who own the companies that make the computers and that write the code. Perhaps to restore faith in our Democracy its time to to go back a simple hand counted system, with observers from multiple parties stationed in the local precincts counting the paper ballots.
posted on Nov 9, 2002 - View this thread

When in doubt, blame the software. Who is the governor of Alabama? Both incumbent candidate Don Siegelmand and Republican opponent Bob Riley have claimed victories. The answer lies in the hands of Baldwin County officials, who claim a software glitch "miscounted" almost 7,000 votes. [more inside]
posted on Nov 6, 2002 - View this thread

Are we using the worst voting procedure? "Voting theorists argue that plurality voting is one of the worst of all possible choices." Plurality voting, in which each voter selects one canidate, is vulnerable to a third party spoiler (Nader) or with many canidates can lead to the (near) election of a candidate most voters despise (le Pen). Some alternative voting systems include instant runoff where canidates are ranked by voters, a Borda count where voters assigns points to each canidate, or approval system where voters vote for as many canidates as they like. (via argmax.com)
posted on Nov 5, 2002 - View this thread

We don't need more voters, we need better voters "Far from urging everyone to vote, perhaps the media might better urge those who are going to vote to first make sure that they have heard both sides of the issues at stake, instead of just voting by habit, whim, or according to the image or rhetoric of the candidates. A case could be made that those who have not informed themselves on the issues have a patriotic duty to stay away from the polls on Election Day, rather than mess with something that is too important to be decided by ignorance or prejudice. " Is Tom's suggestion an attack on a civic institution/central tenet of democracy, or a needed improvement? I share the opinion that uninformed voter turnout is a greater problem than low voter turnout, and I know I'm not alone, but I prefer the approach of those who promote use of emerging information resources, especially the incredible Project Vote Smart, rather than simply complaining. Why don't Sowell -- or for that matter, the rest of traditional media -- push these organizations? What can we do about it -- other than posting on Metafilter?
posted on Nov 4, 2002 - View this thread

Another election debacle in Florida. One year and $30m in technology later, the Reno/McBride primary is marred by late openings and other assorted and sundry glitches. I know, it's a CNN link, but I can't resist anything that includes someone delivering the grade "F-minus-minus-minus" (later determined to be merely an "F-minus-minus" and some Drambuie). Any personal voting horror stories from our Florida contingent? Will the state become a case study in how "throwing money at the problem" never works?
posted on Sep 12, 2002 - View this thread

Florida to settle 2000 election lawsuit. Major provisions include a promise for massive reforms in voter registration, voter-roll maintenance and polling practices, as part of the lawsuit pushed by the NAACP. Granted, it's good that a large angered group is "getting over it" as many (even on this board) have still been explaining, but should skeptics (read: Democrats) such as myself read the Florida legislature's desire to settle as a sign that they may not have thought they would have won against charges of rigging the election?
posted on Aug 31, 2002 - View this thread

Experiences of voting in Zimbabwe - BBC News Online has a forum where it is displaying emails from Zimbabwe about voter's experiences in the current presidential poll. I think the BBC are using their status responsibly in providing direct information about the conditions there.
posted on Mar 10, 2002 - View this thread

The Web site Registered to Vote or Not? lets you search New York's voter registration database using a last name and birthday to see the address and party you are registered under. It also doesn't do anything to stop you from looking up Sarah Jessica Parker, Matthew Broderick, Woody Allen, Spike Lee, Monica Lewinsky and countless others.
posted on Aug 24, 2001 - View this thread

Should Election Day be a holiday? Vote, then do some barbecue and watch fireworks... Will this be the development that could increase voter turnout, or will people just waste the day away? How else could voter turnout be improved?
posted on Jul 30, 2001 - View this thread

And I thought Florida only had this problem. The Chicago Tribune reports that nearly 8% of votes in Illinois' 1st Congressional District went uncounted in the 2000 presidential election. It also adds: voters in low-income, high-minority districts nationwide were more likely to have undercounted ballots than were those in affluent, predominantly white districts, the study showed. Is there a nation-wide epidemic of undercounting? Or is it a problem limited to few localized areas? Or is it an underhanded way to deny the underprivileged of their vote? From the looks of it, at least additional investigation needs to be done.
posted on Jul 9, 2001 - View this thread

Vote early, vote often. (With apologies for sticking this on the front page.) Using your skill and judgement, predict the winning party in the UK general election, size of the majority, and the number of seats won by the Lib Dems. Closest to the actual result gets a gift subscription to Private Eye, the fortnightly antidote to British politics and media, or the equivalent value in that international currency: Amazon vouchers. (And if you've emailed me already, there's no need to post a prediction.)
posted on Jun 7, 2001 - View this thread

When you're an aiga member they send you e-mail, I usualy don't read them, because they're accouncements of conferences and such, but this one was about Chicago enlisting the help of AIGA to design new election ballots. 'Some possibilities for making Chicago ballots more user-friendly include enlarging candidates' names, changing the font size, altering the color of pages, making wider ballot booklets.' Since I couldn't find the article on-line, I'll just cut-n-paste the e-mail inside. :)
posted on Dec 2, 2000 - View this thread

Chicago to enlist graphic designers for friendlier ballots. [free reg may be req'd] There's been a bunch of discussion about the usability problems with various voting systems, notably punch-card ballots. Chicago didn't have anything as dramatic as a "butterfly" prexy ballot or two pages' worth of candidates, but we still had close to 120,000 discards from 2.1 million votes -- and when compared with jurisdictions using other systems, there's little evidence to suggest that voters are skipping the presidential ballot. That's just how bad manual punch card technology is. Even if we can't get rid of them just yet, at least we can make sure they aren't confusing. Did I just post the twenty-sixth link on Metafilter today? GO AWAY. METAFILTER IS FULL. :)
posted on Nov 29, 2000 - View this thread

DISQUALIFY MILITARY VOTES : A how-to.
posted on Nov 20, 2000 - View this thread

ELECTION: A note of sanity on voting systems from Lauren Weinstein's well-worth reading Privacy Digest; it notes the inherent weak spots in all voting tally systems, and compares manual to machine and electronic ones.
posted on Nov 11, 2000 - View this thread

Did the INS import votes?
posted on Nov 11, 2000 - View this thread

Wherefore art thou, NM? "Amid the intense legal and public relations battle for Florida and its 25 electoral votes, Al Gore may have lost a state: New Mexico."
posted on Nov 10, 2000 - View this thread

Electoral Defection. Let's say Bush wins Florida after the recount and other machinations. What if the electors meeting December 18 decide that they should forgo their state loyalty and abide by the nationwide popular vote? Also: Alabama's curious process in which, until 1976, voters actually voted for electors, not candidates, resulting in defections in 1960.
posted on Nov 10, 2000 - View this thread

Poor user interface elects George W. The second hole on the right does not correspond to the second candidate on the left (Gore), but rather to the first candidate on the right (Buchanan). While many people will notice this, many others, especially those with poor vision, will not. About 20% of Buchanan's votes in FL came from the county that used this ballot.
posted on Nov 9, 2000 - View this thread

What a shock: your votes does count.
posted on Nov 8, 2000 - View this thread

Here is the best reason I've seen yet not to vote.
posted on Nov 6, 2000 - View this thread

Homeless given Cigarettes to vote for Gore - Would they have wanted that kind of help if it wasn't caught on video tape? Maybe they should just steal the social security numbers of the dead and have THEM vote via mail-in. (See also: Zombies for Gore) [Links via Fark]
posted on Nov 6, 2000 - View this thread

"I think the secretary of state is clamping down on pure political speech," says the ACLU, as they gear up to try to reopen Voteswap2000 and other vote-swapping sites.
posted on Nov 2, 2000 - View this thread

The lead that Al Gore once enjoyed in most presidential polls in wake of the Democratic convention has all but disappeared, according to the latest Voter.com Battleground 2000 poll released Thursday. The survey reports that the vice president’s numbers are slipping and George W. Bush is back on top for the first time in weeks.
posted on Sep 14, 2000 - View this thread

Turn ballot stubs into lottery tickets and watch voter apathy disappear. What a great idea. Maybe financed by campaign contributions?
via Camworld via rc3.org.
posted on Sep 1, 2000 - View this thread

Pledge to be a part of the 2000 GLBT voter turnout. Straight, gay, bi...all signatures are welcome. Remember that for evil to triumph all that is necessary is for good men to do nothing.

And take to heart the words of Martin Niemoeller: "In Germany they came first for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up."
posted on Apr 25, 2000 - View this thread