Monday, February 18, 2008

March of the Voting Anomalies

Revision: It is now my perspective that the main problem in the below situation is that the news folks were counting eggs before they were hatched. I have no doubt elections and primaries will have problems with voter fraud and at the very least "voter anomalies" due to shoddy technology and practices -- but the jury's still out on this specific instance.

Obama, apparently, didn't receive one single vote in Harlem's 94's congressional district. Not one.

"In fact, a review by The New York Times of the unofficial results reported on primary night found about 80 election districts among the city’s 6,106 where Mr. Obama supposedly did not receive even one vote, including cases where he ran a respectable race in a nearby district."


[Note: the machines and not-machines involved in these NY voting anomalies aren't Diebold machines -- however... this article reminded me to mention what you see below]

(have I mentioned lately how STINKING EASY it is to hack Diebold voting machines? How you, hypothetically of course, could do it with a philips head screwdriver and a flash drive -- putting you mother, or Ted Nugent or Patton Oswald as the winner?)

[via Piglipstick]

Bp

5 comments:

msherm said...

Just a note, we don't vote with electronic voting machines in NYC so that issue isn't relevant. Also, the article speaks about unofficial results that are delivered to the media on election night not anything that will have a real impact on how delegates are handed out. Plus there were instances where Clinton got zero votes as well.

So while of course it's important to be aware of these sorts of things it's also important to know when they are valid mistakes and when they are malicious deceptions, I think the evidence here points to the former.

Bpaul said...

I'm severely suspicious, electronic machines or no. I don't buy mistakes easily in voting circumstances -- how many interactions does a bank do every single day without this many mistakes.

And I don't claim to know what's going on, but I do want to report whenever I find there are discrepancies.

I also think Patton Oswald would be a fantastic candidate for our next president, through flashdrive-induced write-in popular vote.

msherm said...

I don't disagree that it should be talked about, but be honest about what it is, if you read the article it doesn't indicate foul play.

I just want to be careful not to demonize people for an honest mistake. I have seen firsthand how the polls here work and I can easily see how this (or something like it) could happen.

These are not professionals who are trained to do this work, they are just volunteers who spend their free time every few years doing a service for the rest of us. The two 70+ year old ladies that helped me with my ballot are prime examples of how mistakes like this could be made. Let's just say they were less than perfect in their system.

Obviously this is an extreme case of a mistake like this but the level of the error makes it even less likely to be malicious.

Intellectual honesty is important, the way we frame things is important, I just felt that the way this particular article was presented wasn't honest to the story that was being told in it. A little (hopefully) constructive criticism.

Keep up the fight though it's always appreciated.

Bpaul said...

I went back and looked at the post and realized that the hacking diebold machines prompt was juxtaposed with the rest of the article like it was the same situation, which of course it isn't.

I should put a caveat in there... and will.

The image of the 70-year-old ladies helping with votes is awesome btw.

Shocho said...

I hate cheating.