In just four days

In just four days we will know the outcome of the past two years of campaigning and assessing the candidates that hope to be presidient.

The biggest looming question is will the outcome be clear. Will we know on November 4th who has won or will there be a struggle, will there be claims of fraud, will the election be clear or will it appear to be stolen?

HBO is currently playing "Hacking Democracy" and "Recount" two very sombering films about what happened in 2000 and 2004 with the presidential elections. You can find them on the programming schedule or view On Demand.

The scariest colors of this season may not be orange and black but red and blue.

2008 voting machine glitches begin.

"We believe the problem will be solved when voting is no longer done on electronic voting machines."

"We favor paper ballots, counted by an optical scan reader. And when the paper ballots are counted, if the total is different from what the optical scan reader reports, the paper ballots’ total should be the official election result."


Voting Machine Glitches could plague 2008 Presidential election.

Touch-screen voting and the decline in Democracy.

Latest Results about Voting Machine Glitches

View Hacking Democracy here:
Part One


Part Two - No transparency in how electronic voting machines work. Companies hide their technology.
Part Three - Independent company, tests and tests and tests until results please the manufacturer. They don't report on any negative results.
Part Four - Diebold claims glitches in favor of Bush were not intentional
Part Five - How acurate is the vote? Only as acurate as the coding allows. If that is kept secret, how can we trust our electoral process? We must demand transparency.
Part Six - Current, official, and signed polled tapes found in bin destined to be shredded.
Part Seven - in recount, precincts that didn't add-up properly were set aside and left uncounted
Part Eight - Diebold influences purchasing decisions through campaign contributions to Republican party
Part Nine - And the proof is in. Program code can switch the vote so convincingly that it is certified by election officials who believe it to be accurate.

A Spoof that is too close to true:


I confirm that I am a private citizen and in no way officially connected to the Barack Obama campaign other than personally being in support of the Obama candidacy.


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Touch-Screen Voting and the decline of democracy

You hear stories of how electronic voting is causing issues and it makes you wonder if we can get a fair vote. There are issues with manual counts and with machine counts of paper ballots which is why there has to be a certain % between voting counts in race before a recount is called. If the vote is close, a recount will undoubtedly change the numbers. In fact if multiple recounts were done, the vote would be different every time. That is the appeal of electronic voting. It should be more accurate and reliable.

I recently voted in a primary election in my district in Johnson County, Kansas. We use the Diebold touch screen voting machines. What is also interesting is that there are no more private voting booths. So much for the sanctity of the vote. It used to be like going to confessional as you were sequestered behind the scared voting curtains all alone to cast your vote in total secrecy. No more. Now no one can be left alone with an electronic machine because they might tamper with it. So down come all the curtains and so much for the secret ballot.

I was very cautious about my voting since I have watched "Hacking Democracy" and "Recount." I was fully aware that these voting machines are less than stellar.

Wouldn't you know it? I selected a candidate and touched the box for his name...but it registered for the opponent. The screen flurried a brief second and my vote was in the opponents box! I grabbed an election official and was shown how to change the vote back. Lesson learned: watch very carefully when you vote. If your vote is not recorded correctly, do not complete the vote. Get help to make the proper changes. That takes care of what you see in the user interface.

You still have to wonder about what goes on behind the scenes in the backend code of the database. Johns Hopkins University computer scientist Avi Rubin and grad students Adam Stubblefield and Yoshi Kohno examined the Diebold source code and released a report indicating that the company's touch-screen voting system was badly programmed and vulnerable to hacking by outsiders or manipulation by insiders. Diebold and election officials attacked the team's research, but two subsequent reports have confirmed the academics' findings. Read more...

Additional information:
OpenVotingConsortium - worst flaw ever in Diebold voting machines revealed
Wired - now even Diebold cannot refute there are problems
Princeton - Security Audit of the Diebold voting machine show serious security flaws

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