This Just In

[brynndragon]

From the you-can-never-have-too-much-good-news department:

Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out, Rummy

Comments

[greyhame.livejournal.com]

He's running from the investigations and hearings he knows will come from a Democratic congress, I think. It looks like his replacement will be former CIA head Robert Gates, so we might actually get a Defense Department that goddamn listens to the intelligence services.

re:a Defense Department that goddamn listens to the intelligence services

[etherial.livejournal.com]

But if the Defense Department doesn't tell the Intelligence Services what to report, how can they support the President?

[randysmith]

Yes, this is good.

One other thing that is in some ways better than any other result of this election, is that I think the democrat win indicates that there wasn't any widescale vote tampering. I suppose it's possible either that there was, but in the democrats favor, or that there was in the republicans favor but it didn't manage to overcome the popular groundswell, but I had started to be fairly worried about Diebold/electronic voting. Now we have two more years to hand those suckers their ass (whoops, sorry, did I say that in my out loud voice?).

[ellyfialy.livejournal.com]

I was so happy to see that my polling place wasn't using the electronic voting machines. Paper and a pen for me. I love a paper-trail.

[benndragon.livejournal.com]

+1 on the goodness of paper-trails. This was my strongest single objection to the Diebold systems currently in place, the utter lack of a paper-trail. I want it to be like credit-card purchases: after tallying up your ballot (and asking you to double-check it) it asks for a signature with one of those electronic pen thingies[1] and prints out two copies with the signature: one goes to the election judges, the other you take home as your receipt. Simple as that.

[1] I like the idea of requiring a signature much better than requiring ID, although there'd have to be some mechanism to allow people who can't write their name to vote.

[greyhame.livejournal.com]

Requiring ID is just a disguised poll tax. Requiring a signature when you check in and out at the polling place might not be a bad idea, but signing the vote itself is -- it's pretty important that one be confident in the secrecy (as well as the integrity) of one's vote.

[benndragon.livejournal.com]

Right, I somehow managed to fail to link "signature" with "identifies whose vote it is". So we seperate signing off on voting and the actual vote (both in the machine and on the receipts) we'd be good. Perhaps a pre-voting machine that gives you a "voting pass" when you log-in and sign electronically, which you put in the voting machine to activate it (and don't get it back)? (I'm trying to seperate the "signing in to the vote" process from the voting itself, to maintain privacy.)

[evan712.livejournal.com]

Not requiring ID is an invitation for fraud. I can come up with a handful of ways to abuse the system just off the top of my head.

If you think it's a poll tax just let there be a hardship waiver so you can get a state ID for free. Not that it is expensive in the first place. It's only $3 in Florida and $15 up here.

[greyhame.livejournal.com]

I have yet to see any evidence that that kind of fraud is at all common. Even if everything possible is done to streamline the process, requiring IDs is at best a sideshow, because the real danger of vote fraud comes not from individuals voting under false names or whatever, but from ballot-box-stuffing, fudging vote counts, and unreliable, unauditable, trivially hackable electronic voting machines.

[etherial.livejournal.com]

I know someone who was forced to commit that kind of fraud because the state election commission screwed up hir voter registration.

[greyhame.livejournal.com]

Isn't one entitled to a provisional ballot in cases like that?

[etherial.livejournal.com]

Zir voter registration is misspelled. I'm not sure that a provisional ballot will do zir much good. It's easier to fix it in post anyway.

[mr-teem.livejournal.com]

Huh? A provisional ballot is exactly what that situation is for. What "fraud" was this person forced to commit?

[etherial.livejournal.com]

Voting under their registered name.

[mr-teem.livejournal.com]

That's not fraud.

If my name is misspelled on the precinct lists and I notice it but am not challenged to produce ID, or I can manage to convince the precinct official that it is a misspelling, then I can fix it at City Hall at my convenience.

If I am challenged and they will not let me vote, I should be given a provisional ballot and then go to City Hall to get it fixed and get my ballot counted. (Depending on the procedure--I may have to go to City Hall to get the provisional ballot and get my registration fixed.)

If I have changed my name to Mxyzptlk(click)t'gluk-MoombaMoomba(click)terWOW!(squiggle) and the registration still has my old name, but I have valid ID under my old name, I can go to City Hall and fix it at my convenience.

If I have changed my name to Mxyzptlk(click)t'gluk-MoombaMoomba(click)terWOW!(squiggle) and the registration still has my old name, and I am challenged but cannot produce ID with my old name, then I am an idiot for not notifying the city of my name change. I might be given a provisional ballot and then go to City Hall to get it fixed and get my ballot counted or I might have missed my chance because name changes need to be recorded n days before the election.

In none of these cases am I attempting to be fraudulent. I may be guilty of other regulations or terminal stupidity, however.

Now, If I fly out to my brother's precinct and try to claim that my name is really his and manage to convince the precinct official or produce a piece of his identification that I boosted from his house or identification that I have docotred and then vote using his name, then I have committed fraud.

[tober.livejournal.com]

Please justify the claim that requiring ID in order to vote is a disguised poll tax. Do you feel the same if ID is required to register to vote and reasonable evidence of having registered to vote is required to vote?

I agree with you about signing a ballot (or any procedure that is too potentially similar to signing a ballot, such as having to submit a signature to an electronic voting machine). Also - not that you said so - but a copy of your completed ballot as a voting receipt is also a bad thing. A receipt that proves you voted is fine (although I'm not sure it's that worthwhile). A receipt that can be used to prove how you voted is not[1].

[1] Because it enables badness such as "Prove to me that you voted for x and I'll give you a cookie."

[greyhame.livejournal.com]

It was more an opinion than an assertion, so I don't think I really have to "justify" it, but here's why I think that. Additional hurdles to voting discourage people from voting, and they disproportionately discourage Black, Latino and other minority and/or non-English-speaking people from voting, because such measures have often been used (and in fact were often implemented for no other reason) to discourage minorities from voting, and because those communities know that they have. I said "poll tax" because that's a convenient shorthand for regulatory vote suppression, but the fact that state ID isn't very expensive, or could even be made free, isn't actually relevant -- "literacy tests" didn't cost voters anything but they were still a barrier.

To argue a broader point, we have voter check-in and check-out at polling places partly to confirm that people are registered (and to confirm that they're in the right precinct), and partly to compile turnout statistics. There is no epidemic of people who haven't registered trying to cast fraudulent votes, or of illegal immigrants trying to vote, or anything like that, and in cases where it's suspected that people have votes fraudulently, there are adequate procedures in place for challenging votes after the fact. In the absence of any such crisis which would demand it, a requirement to show ID essentially constitutes a "guilty until proven innocent" attitude toward voters.

[evan712.livejournal.com]

There is no epidemic of people who haven't registered trying to cast fraudulent votes, or of illegal immigrants trying to vote, or anything like that

How can you prove that if you don't have decent records to prove who votes?

[greyhame.livejournal.com]

Because there are adequate procedures in place for challenging votes after the fact. If there's a suspicion of that kind of fraud, challenges can be made. That not very many challenges are made of course isn't proof that that kind of fraud isn't happening, but it's strong evidence.

[evan712.livejournal.com]

The problem with that theory is that someone would have to be suspicious. Where are the suspicions going to start? With the overworked essentially volunteer poll workers or with the voters themselves? They are the only ones that have direct contact during the election. Or are we going to rely on analysts that tell us that too many people voted in a handful of precincts?

Things like this have happened before. The most obvious example was the 1960 presidential election. That one came to light because it was so obvious.

How many races could be affected by 3000 false votes done this way? The 2000 presidential election? The Montana Senate Race? The point is it is an obvious and easy way to commit vote fraud that can be made far more difficult with just a small effort. Fixing this issue lowers the margin of error on our elections.

re: [1]

[etherial.livejournal.com]

[1] is not so bad. "Prove to me that you voted for Y or you're fired" is.

[mr-teem.livejournal.com]

Certain types of identification requirements are effectively poll taxes.

Last year, Georgia was blocked in U.S. District Court from attempting to enforce it's voter identification program. Among other provisions, it would have required people that did not have a government issued identification (such as a driver's license or a passport) to spend $20 for a five-year special identity card, only available at Department of Motor Vehicles offices. (Georgians can use one of several other methods of identification when challenged at a polling station.) There were a limited number of DMV offices (not even one for every county and none in Atlanta) and the special identification cards required a birth certificate, which many poor and minority citizens don't have. (Hurm. I just realized that I don't know where mine is. That will probably require a few phone calls since the hospital where I was born is currently rubble.) At the time it was being argued, officials in charge of Georgia elections admitted that there hadn't been a proven case of voter fraud in over a decade.

[ellyfialy.livejournal.com]

1. Vote on machine
2. Machine prints out vote receipt
3. It is assumed the responsible voter double checks his/her receipt to see that it is correct.
4. Put receipt in receipt box for double-checking purposes.

I don't so much need to take my proof home or anything. In fact, I probably don't want to do that. But I do want to have someone be able to double-check the votes by hand, and not just trust the machine to tally them.

(Also, I guess my place was using a machine to tally the votes, in that scan-tron sort of way, but there was still a paper trail.)

ya, that is exactly the idea

[null4096.livejournal.com]

You look at your printed-out result and then stick it in the box for safekeeping. That way you know who you voted for but noobdy else does (and your boss can't, as mentioned above, fire you if you can'
t provide proof you voted for his or her fave candidate)

Re: ya, that is exactly the idea

[etherial.livejournal.com]

Or someone cruises through the poor neighborhoods offering $100 for proof of voting. He then destroys them and calls for a recount.

hey, hey, goodbye

[cos]

In this video, listen for the people in the background singing during the Rumsfeld announcement.

late-breaking news

[null4096.livejournal.com]

Looks like the Dems took Virginia, giving them both houses.