Rigged?

Computer security expert Avi Rubin suggested dangers in touchscreen voting before the election.

Dr Rubin had previously testified that the Diebold systems were bad.

He makes it clear that given the complexity of the systems, malicious programming would be reasonably easy and very difficult to spot.

Wally O'Dell, boss of Diebold, promised to deliver Ohio's votes to Bush in a fundraising letter, shortly after visiting the preznit.

Exit polls put the Democrats several points ahead in Ohio. They lost by three points. Exit polls are not perfect but they are equally as predictive as regular polls. The Republicans complained that the polls underrepresented them.

The problem is, you can be underrepresented for one of three reasons: either the pollsters just happen to ask your opponent's voters who they plumped for, or your voters simply lied about who they had voted for (which is possible -- although there doesn't seem to have been any concerted plan to lie about voting intentions to pollsters) or your vote doesn't represent the voters' intentions.

It is no use whining about it. The Democrats simply did not believe that the Repugnicunts would rig the election. They cannot investigate it now without simply being dismissed as suffering from sour grapes.

But it remains true that there cannot be any confidence that the election was fair, nor that Bush actually does have a mandate (even the rather slim one he was afforded), nor that the Democrats can ever win an election whose votes, thrown into a black box, are counted on machines programmed by Republicans for Republicans.

I do think they stole it. I think they would have done anything to win. It was a huge, huge surprise. Now bloggers and commentators are saying "but of course it was obvious they would win". But it was not. Everyone, including the Repugnicunts, expected a Democrat win.

You know, elections are rigged all the time in other countries. We have convinced ourselves so well that we are beacons of rectitude that we simply cannot bring ourselves to believe it could happen in our "democratic" nations.

posted by Dr Zen @ 3:27 pm