News item: Hoping your vote counts

[DrSmellThis]

A couple

things in the preceeding articles bothered me and I am going to play devil's advocate. The were talking about the

GEM program and demonstrating that the database could be opened with Excel. First, Excel is not a database prgram,

it is a spreadsheet and is such is two dimensional where a database is three. In the case of having no security,

some database tables might be opened in excel but you will only see one aspect of it not the true 3D file. Changes

in a single table of a database could potentially corrupt the entire database making the changes obvious. Even the

most rudimentory security would inhibit even that. I have to ask then, which was hacked, the database or the GEM

program used on the televised demonstration?

A database can be pretty bulky but it seems strange that so few

votes could be tallied on a single machine. That implies a lot of stored data per vote. If it was a flat file as

implied regarding the GEM machine, you could store all the votes in a couple megabytes. A more complex database,

even something as simple as MySQL which is commonly used for Internet transactions, would take up more space but

would not be as easily tampered with.

It is mentioned that the computers upload their data to a central machine.

Any computer is subject to hacking but I'd hope that some basic precautions were taken. For instance, who had

physical access to the tabulation computer? Was the OS secured through use of passwords? How was the data

transferred: direct dial up, VPN? What type of encryption was used, if any?

If there is a real concern that

data was modified on the tabulation computer, why haven't they gone back to the voting machines and re-tabulated

the results? There is no reason to assume that data has been lost. Fraud would be easy to detect through a

relatively simple process.

I am sceptical of both sides of this debate and would like to see some real answers.

But I doubt a final version will ever come out. Rather I expect there will be several conflicting versions argued

over for years and the only people who will be sure are the ones who decided what the 'Truth' was before the

election.

* You're right to be skeptical, and examine this data. I appreciate that. Were you reading the Bev

Harris article? The person I heard talk about "Excel" said it was "Excel-type", but not necessarily not literally

Excel. It probably is a database program. I'm not a computer expert (I thought you could open databases with Excel)

and neither are many of the people talking about this. Experts are being brought in, however, and some are able to

talk professionally about that part of it. I have just heard consistently that security was woefully inadequate, but

we are correct to ask exactly what it was. I know that Bev Harris hacked into GEMS quite easily on Diebold's

website.

* Your idea that the fraud would be easy to detect is interesting. What makes you think it would be so

easy, with all the ways people have of covering their tracks, and my other post about it?

* Within the next week

I think we will indeed see some successful movement toward recounting, though I don't have enough training to tell

whether it will be meaningful. Several states have been approached, and I have heard some optimism from

blackboxvoting people. Maybe you need a subpoena to get the boxes. I don't know the legal aspects. But I wouldn't

count on Republican election leadership (e.g., in Ohio, Florida) or Republican e-voting corporations to cooperate

without being required to.

* I don't know any answers myself yet, obviously. I am refraining from "scientific

or judicial conclusions" on this data, and am identifying my intuitions as such so far. I'm suspicious about the

election results. Other than the pile of accumulating data about this election in the foreground, I am biased by the

historical background of administration deceit and their consistent pattern of corruption involving elections. The

last presidential election was that way, as were Bush's victories over McCain and Anne Richards. Biases can be

reasonable or unreasonable, and that is a reasonable bias. Go see Bush's Brain, the documentary on Karl

Rove, for more information on this, or pick up the book with the same name. Dirty elections are boring old hat, and

are just presumed with Rove.

You too have presuppositions -- correct me if I'm wrong, but one is

apparently something like -- "both sides of any political conflict or position are equally and predominantly

wrong; and always will be able to be reduced to mere, mutually conflicting, unreasonable opinions" (from your

history). And your "devil's advocate character" is apparently imposing this "cynical" presupposition on this

data, as well as the "years later" future of it, based on a very few things that "bother him" or don't make sense

yet. Not that it's a big deal. Devil's advocates are usually valuable. But it's early. Things aren't expected

to make sense or be clear yet, and needn't be bothersome in that way. This is the question forming and

info-gathering stage, and I urge everyone to avoid making premature conclusions that match their own

presuppositions. I will humbly try to do the same. My goal is to get the preliminary information out right now, and

to advocate for investigation. Later it will be to draw conclusions. It's unnecessary to do so now anyway.

I do

know that scandals of this grand of stature are hard to pin on anybody. A realistic goal is election reform that

would benefit the American people regardless of their leanings. That is reason enough to pursue this tenaciously. It

remains to be seen for now whether throwing out the election results and having another go at it will be a

reasonable goal.