Did Anonymous really Save-the-Vote in Ohio? .... REALLY???

[OnyxCollie]

129. No E-Voting In Germany

http://www.edri.org/edri-gram/number7.5/no-evoting-germany

The German Federal Constitutional Court decided on 3 March 2009 that electronic voting used for the last 10 years, including for the 2005 general elections, was unconstitutional and therefore not to be used for the next elections in September 2009.

The court ruled that the use of the electronic machines contradicts the public nature of elections and the equipment used in 2005 had some shortcomings. However, as there has been no evidence of errors in the past, the results of the previous elections remain valid.

A petition signed by over 45 000 people in 2005, trying to ban e-voting, had been rejected by the German Government. Now, the court ruled that the Federal Voting Machines Ordinance having introduced e-voting was unconstitutional because it did not "ensure that only such voting machines are permitted and used which meet the constitutional requirements of the principle of the public nature of elections."

Also the court considered that, differently from the traditional voting system where manipulations and frauds are much more difficult involving a high degree of effort and a high risk of detection, "programming errors in the software or deliberate electoral fraud committed by manipulating the software of electronic voting machines can be recognised only with difficulty." Also, in the court's opinion, the electors should be able to verify how their vote is recorded without having to possess detailed computer knowledge. "If the election result is determined through computer-controlled processing of the votes stored in an electronic memory, it is not sufficient if merely the result of the calculation process carried out in the voting machine can be taken note of by means of a summarising printout or an electronic display."

Conspiracy Theories
Cass R. Sunstein
Adrian Vermeule
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1084585

A broader point is that conspiracy theories overestimate the competence and
discretion of officials and bureaucracies, who are assumed to be able to make and carry
out sophisticated secret plans, despite abundant evidence that in open societies
government action does not usually remain secret for very long.20 Recall that a distinctive
feature of conspiracy theories is that they attribute immense power to the agents of the
conspiracy; the attribution is usually implausible but also makes the theories especially
vulnerable to challenge. Consider all the work that must be done to hide and to cover up
the government’s role in producing a terrorist attack on its own territory, or in arranging
to kill political opponents. In a closed society, secrets are not difficult to keep, and
distrust of official accounts makes a great deal of sense. In such societies, conspiracy
theories are both more likely to be true and harder to show to be false in light of available
information.21 But when the press is free, and when checks and balances are in force,
government cannot easily keep its conspiracies hidden for long. These points do not mean
that it is logically impossible, even in free societies, that conspiracy theories are true. But
it does mean that institutional checks make it unlikely, in such societies, that powerful
groups can keep dark secrets for extended periods, at least if those secrets involve
important events with major social salience.

~snip~

Whenever a bad event has occurred, rumors and speculation are inevitable. Most
people are not able to know, on the basis of personal or direct knowledge, why an
airplane crashed, or why a leader was assassinated, or why a terrorist attack succeeded. In
the aftermath of such an event, numerous speculations will be offered, and some of them
will likely point to some kind of conspiracy. To some people, those speculations will
seem plausible, perhaps because they provide a suitable outlet for outrage and blame,
perhaps because the speculation fits well with other deeply rooted beliefs that they hold.
Terrible events produce outrage, and when people are outraged, they are all the more
likely to attribute those events to intentional action. In addition, antecedent beliefs are a
key to the success or failure of conspiracy theories. Some people would find it impossibly
jarring to think that the CIA was responsible for the assassination of a civil rights leader;
that thought would unsettle too many of their other judgments. Others would find those
other judgments strongly supported, even confirmed, by the suggestion that the CIA was
responsible for such an assassination. Compare the case of terrorist attacks. For most
Americans, a claim that the United States government attacked its own citizens, for some
ancillary purpose, would make it impossible to hold onto a wide range of other
judgments. Clearly this point does not hold for many people in Islamic nations, for whom
it is far from jarring to believe that responsibility lies with the United States (or Israel).

Here, as elsewhere, people attempt to find some kind of equilibrium among their
assortment of beliefs,34 and acceptance or rejection of a conspiracy theory will often
depend on which of the two leads to equilibrium. Some beliefs are also motivated, in the
sense that people are pleased to hold them or displeased to reject them.35 Acceptance (or
for that matter rejection) of a conspiracy theory is frequently motivated in that sense.
Reactions to a claim of conspiracy to assassinate a political leader, or to commit or to
allow some atrocity either domestically or abroad, are often determined by the
motivations of those who hear the claim.


For those keeping score, the authors of HAVA have:

Been convicted of bribery and corruption for deals with Jack Abramoff and sentenced to 30 months in prison- Rep. Bob Ney

Been convicted of money laundering and conspiracy to commit money laundering to get repub candidates elected, and have received a sentence of three years in prison (and has yet to serve a day)- Rep. Tom DeLay (See also DeLay's ties to Abramoff.)

Run for President (poorly)- Sen. Chris Dodd. Dodd was also a "Friend of Angelo" Mozillo of Countrywide.

Business and financial ties through the McCarthy Group with ES&S, the company that had a monopoly on vote counting in the US- Sen. Chuck Hagel

"When it can be established that when a number of political acts work in concert to produce a certain result, the presumption is strong that the actors were aiming at the result in question. When it can be shown that the actors have an interest in producing these results, the presumptions become a fair certainty- no conspiracy theory is needed." -Walter Karp, Indispensable Enemies