Holler Back

Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Don't Look at the Man Behind the Curtain

If you watched TV coverage you heard the commentators, trying to grapple with how the polls could have been so wrong in the Clinton/Obama race. It certainly does seem improbable that 8 well-known polls would be accurate in all races, but miss the mark on that one race by double digits in some cases. Hmmmmmmmmmmn.

About 81% of New Hampshire votes are counted by Diebold Optical Scan machines. These are the same machines that have been de-certified by California.

The Red Team is the team of expert computer scientists that was hired to hack the voting machines in California. You can read the Red Team report here to see all the ways they were able to compromise the machines. Here are a few:

(p. 10 & 11) They were able to hack the Windows platform that it runs on and access the system as an administrator. Once they had administrator access they used it to corrupt and manipulate the database, which could lead to manipulated vote totals. They were able to take these actions without being traced.

(p. 12) They were able to gain "sufficient access for an attacker to manipulate every setting on the networking devices and on the server." And then establish remote access through a wireless device.

(p. 12) "The Red Team was able ...to alter vote totals in order to change the vote results on [the] machine."

(p.17) They summarize by saying that they were able to, "...alter vote totals, violate the privacy of individual voters, make systems unavailable, and delete audit trails.

You will find concerns about the New Hampshire vote totals at Bradblog.com, and at Blackboxvoting.org, which also has an older post about how the same Diebold Optical Scan machines were hacked in 2000 in Volusia County Florida. That hack was well-documented in the media.

Hillary Lets Her Guard Down

Monday, December 17, 2007

Debate links

This is a pretty fascinating CNN/YouTube debate question on abortion becoming illegal at the Republican Debate Nov. 28th 2007.

This is useful information about the dems positions on healthcare from a September 20th 2007 debate. For some reason Obama didn't come to this one.

And here are the final debates before the Iowa Caucuses. Dec. 12th (Republican) & 13th (Democratic) 2007 held by Iowa Public Television.

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Reform

A clip courtesy of Bradblog.

John Edwards in the Why Tuesday? candidate challenge discusses almost every reform I mention in the film, including problems with electronic voting equipment, lobbyists, voting on a work day, the need for public financing of elections and same day registration.

Friday, October 26, 2007

Lies, Gospel and Money - the Joys of the Campaign

Catch up with the Republican debate on fox news if you missed it. Sam Brownback has dropped out of the race and is being courted by the front runners for an endorsement. Mitt Romney won the poll after the debate - but Ron Paul came in second. OHH! If only the actual election could be decided by Anarchist text messaging! It would be so much more fun.

According to factcheck.org Romney and Giuliani are both stretching the truth, but Fred Thompson seems to be sticking to the facts so far.

Logo online has some interesting angles that you don't always get from the mainstream coverage. The LGBT site reports that the Human Rights Campaign is upset with Obama for including a homophobic preacher in his South Carolina gospel tour.

And Brian Lehrer at WNYC is doing an interesting crowdsourcing exercise - getting listeners to rummage through the Federal Election Commission report. You can also go to opensecrets.org if you want someone else to do the digging for you.