Kucinich Asks for New Hampshire Recount in the Interest of Election Integrity. A little earlier in the election cycle this time around, many people are worried about serious discrepancies between pre-election opinion polling and exit polls, which both had Obama winning by a substantial percentage, and the official results. Obama also appears to have won in hand-counted precincts while Clinton seems to have dominated in precincts which counted the votes with the Diebold Accuvote TSx optical-scan machines, which have been shown to be susceptible to a memory card hack.
posted on Jan 11, 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

In Violation of Federal Law, Ohio's 2004 Presidential Election Records Are Destroyed or Missing. "The extent of the destruction of records is consistent with the covering up of the fraud that we believe occurred in the presidential election."
posted on Jul 31, 2007 - View this thread

Hacking Democracy. A frightening and well-made full-length HBO documentary.
posted on Nov 5, 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

[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

Mexico City post-election protests, which began on July 30th at the instigation of López Obrador, former mayor and alleged "loser" of the July 2 federal election, now cover a 12-kilometer (7.5 - mile) stretch of Paseo de la Reforma, one of the main arteries of one of the world's largest cities. Some see it as a party, others see it as ridiculous. In any case, a crisis of legitimacy is at hand, as all eyes await the announcement, due by Sept. 6 from "Trife", the Electoral Tribunal of the Federal Judiciary, which will either decide the winner, or annul the result and call for new elections. With partisans of Obrador already claiming that the results of the recent partial recount suggest systematic fraud, it's unlikely that a smooth resolution is going to come any time soon.
posted on Aug 23, 2006 - View this thread

Whooops! While making a required filing to the state ethics commission, Ohio Secretary of State and gubernatorial candidate Kenneth Blackwell finds Diebold shares in his stock portfolio that he now claims to have bought "accidentally." Yes, that Diebold -- the e-voting company whose chairman promised to "deliver the vote" to George Bush. And yes, that Blackwell, whose state helped deliver the White House to the GOP. Blackwell insists that the humble amount of Diebold stock was in one of those "blind trust" type of arrangements that worked out so rewardingly for Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. [newsfilter via RawStory.]
posted on Apr 4, 2006 - View this thread

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

Project Censored places "Distorted Election Coverage" at number 3 on their list of ignored news stories of the last year. In more recent ignored news a Diebold insider speaks out (which security guru Bruce Schneier considers "sensationalist" but "good information") - just as Diebold shares plunge and top executives flee. In July Diebold's voting machines were rejected by the state of California after "possibly the most extensive testing ever on a voting system" revealed a high incidence of crashes and paper jams. Not to mention the undocumented backdoor in Diebold's GEMS vote tabulator. Meanwhile, in Ohio, two officials of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections have been indicted by a grand jury on charges that they "did not permit a random selection of precincts for the recount and it did not let witnesses oversee the opening of the sealed ballot cases and the first recount of the votes." And John Conyers is urging Americans to oppose a proposed national ID voting requirement, which he calls a "21st Century poll tax". Is this what democracy looks like?
posted on Sep 24, 2005 - View this thread

In 21 days the UK will be holding a general election, and people around the country will be voting for the next government. Can't choose between the different parties? Who should you vote for?
posted on Apr 14, 2005 - View this thread

Ohio Poll Challengers Blocked Okayed. Keep track of all the other last-minute fraud here.
posted on Nov 2, 2004 - View this thread

Going for broke. With four days to go before the election, Bush-Cheney '04 finally pulled the last stop and started sending out anti-Kerry mailings using images of the burning World Trade Center. The ads are paid for and officially endorsed by Bush's campaign.
posted on Oct 29, 2004 - View this thread

What would you do if your opponent's elderly constituents needed a ride to vote? Jam their phone lines of course.
posted on Jul 1, 2004 - View this thread

News about Florida from England Information from BBC that the US media never picked up.
posted on Mar 8, 2001 - View this thread

'Industry pumped in a record 696 million dollars to elect George W. Bush and a GOP Congress. The Mother Jones 400 reveals the nation's top contributors -- and what they expect in return.'

The donors complain in this article about how much they have to shell out. Are their complaints legitimate? Is this simply the cost of doing business? Is this the way campaigns should be funded?
posted on Mar 6, 2001 - 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

Are you really in favor of who you should be? Not having seen this in a quick scan, I'll point you to SpeakOut's VoteMatch quiz. It correctly pegged me as a Browne voter, but I was surprised that Bush came in second, Gore fourth, and Nader 7th. Hmmm...
posted on Oct 26, 2000 - View this thread