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Edited on Sun Oct-10-04 03:21 PM by Junkdrawer
or so ways of designing a system to hack the election with little or chance of having my hack revealed. But I would need one thing I don't have: insider access. And, strangely enough, insider access is the one thing that is omitted from the debate as "a baseless conspiracy theory".
It need not be that way. If we allow that a motivated insider can steal an election, we could put safeguards on the system to prevent and/or detect their presence. Several of us right here at DU came up with such a system after the 2002 election. I took the suggestions and put it in a petition back in December 2002:
Introduce legislation that, as a minimum,
1.) Requires that ALL voting machines produce a voter reviewed paper ballot that is then put into an appropriate locked ballot box.
2.) Allows that each major party should have the opportunity to spot check, for a few precincts, the difference between the machine reported results and a hand recount of the above paper ballots.
3.) Provides for exit polls on the day of the election and, should there be a statistically significant difference between the reported results of the election and this exit poll, automatically orders a hand recount.
Well, we were heard. Rush Holt of New Jersey put it in a bill and introduced it well over a year ago. It was. of course, tied up in committee. The voting machine companies have fought the suggestion tooth-and-nail and have enlisted various groups (including the cynical use of handicapped advocates) to aid in their campaign.
Citizens have been routinely shut out of the process of approving these machines. Here in Pennsylvania, my best friend managed to get on the special citizen's advisory committee that was charged with providing input to the Secretary of State. He was chosen, we suspect, because he is one of the state's leading advocates for handicapped persons. Well, having educated him on the issue, he went on to educate most of the other citizens on the committee. Then guess what: The Secretary of State decided to send the assistant to the assistant of the undersecretary to attend one meeting and take notes. And that was the last meeting of said committee.
And Bev and Andy can provide many, many more examples of experiences just like mine. So excuse me if I suspect "the Fix is In" this November 2nd. I guess I'm just another conspiracy theorist.
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