Reply #94: I was a computer programmer for over 25 years

[Jack Rabbit]

And I have repeatedly posted my own ideas on these forums, including a pseudocode design for such a program, as to how easy it would be to rig an election with these machines. I have stated many times here that in an environment where the voting software is regarded as the private property of the manufacturer and beyond public inspection and where machines with no ballot-level paper trail are used, I would expect that anybody who has ever received a passing grade in a programming course would have the necessary skills to rig an election. I believe another video you might dig up shows Clint Curtis, also a computer programmer, making a similar statement under oath.

Watching the video (which contained little that was new for me) does not alter my hypothesis.

I'll leave out simple security measures like check the serial number on the memory card, padlock the machine with a combination lock and don't allow any one to take headphones into the voting both (better yet, don't manufacture these machines with headphones). Let's assume something like the election rigging software is installed by the manufacturer.

Mr. O'Dell may not have meant anything more by his infamous remarks about delivering Ohio to Bush than that he was going to contribute a huge sum of money to the Bush-Cheney "re-"election campaign, but he should have been more sensitive to what it sounded like for a manufacturer of voting machines to say that after the steer manure Jeb and Cruella pulled off in Florida in 2000. His remark wouldn't have put him under suspicion of wrongdoing by itself, but he has resisted all attempts to scrutinize his machines. That makes me suspicious.

If instead of 5 votes being counted, there are 500 or 5000 or 500,000 votes being counted, it would make a difference, especially if a virus plays into the picture. I live in California and we cast millions of votes in an election. Five votes here or there aren't going to make much of a difference.

Let's go back to the video's example. Suppose that polls before the election show that approximately 4 out of 5 voters plan to vote for George Washington over Benedict Arnold; then the results show that 3 out of 5 cast their vote for Arnold. If we are talking about a statistically significant number of votes, rather than less that half a dozen, few people are going to believe that. Even people who voted for Arnold would be scratching their heads. This is to say nothing of exit polling that will be wildly at variance with the official result.

This kind of election rigging will only work if the vote is expected to be close enough that most polls show the lead by one candidate over another to be within the margin of error. That would make any result (as long as it's close) credible.

I risk being flamed, but I really don't know that Bush stole the election in 2004, in the sense that more people actually voted for Kerry than Bush but the result showed otherwise. The Bushies relied on many vote rigging techniques, and I don't even know if vote rigging software in the machines was one of them (although I suspect it was). Prospective voters in predominately Democratic precincts in Ohio who gave up after standing hours in the rain was one of the more obvious methods. How many were there? I don't know; do you? There's no paper trail left behind if somebody didn't vote because his polling place was undersupplied. There is evidence of outright intimidation in both Florida and Ohio. How many people didn't go to the polls because they were afraid of being charged with a felony if they did. There is certainly no paper trail left behind if somebody didn't go to the polls.

Having said that I am uncertain that Bush actually stole the election in 2004, I don't think there is any doubt that there was a systematic voter suppression effort aimed at people more likely to vote for Kerry. Bush might have won a free and fair election in 2004, but not by 4 million votes. Of course, that raises the possibility that he would not have won it at all.

We need to be vigilant of not just e-voting, but all forms of election rigging and voter suppression.

Meanwhile, I will say for my part that as long as most polls show that Democrats hold a significant lead and that so many normally Republican districts are competitive, then I will not accept as genuine any election-day result to the contrary.