7. HOW we wished to favor them: MYRIADS OF WAYS, with even more if you're an official or have access.
Thus, despite the "widespread conspiracy needed" allegation, in fact with elections NONE of us need "marching orders" from the DNC/RNC to know how to act simultaneously, YET it still looks like acting "in concert" from the outside.
Again, the real sea change started in the late 90s with electronic voting, because it makes the vote counting both invisible and secret through trade secret software. It's a revolution in slow motion because it takes years to retrofit all voting machines into computers.
Strengths become liabilities in e-voting: (1) computers do what they are told without question, and (2) there's no such thing as total security, just raising the cost-to-penetrate much higher.
Gee, with more "election security" regarding computer voting, the price of beat or rig the system will really high to rig an election, so then only governments, huge corporations and KGB types could do it! Wunderbar! On top of that, the security passwords are placed, in the usual corporate fashion, in the hands of the top election official -- the very person who is a #1 suspect to have stolen an election to get that office in the first place. Instead of paying out millions to vendors for computerized voting, let's at least force elections officials to auction off the right to count votes in secret to maximize the public treasury for a time. Many would indeed pay for this honor, it being very cool indeed to have politicians treat you incredibly politely even if you NEVER ever do any creative accounting with the vote. But who's gonna know, eh? ;-)
Government can't possibly give us a real SOLUTION with elections, Elections must instead be immune from any substantial or unsupervised government tinkering, because government can't check and balance itself, when elections determine the government's own power and money.
This "widespread conspiracy" canard would be especially amusing if it weren't for the fact democracy was at stake. The Goebbelian final solution is the (misleading) charge that there's "no evidence" of election fraud on electronic machines. Because computer scientists have warned democracy for almost ten years of the problem of "no {direct} evidence" with these new machines, there's a special hair-pulling hell on earth for election activists who've been silenced with "There IS no evidence, you fool!"
Just Google "Harri Hursti" for links to computer scientist demonstrations of how a hacked machine can disobey certified software, pass all tests, and evade detection for years before kicking in and there's nothing anyone can really do about it in terms of a good "Fix."
The Real Issue with E-voting:
The fundamental problem: People of good faith must necessarily disagree about the quality of the stolen election "evidence", because the main evidence is secret or never created, the available evidence is all indirect, and also in short supply from butt-covering officials. E-voting is thus like having a body that can't experience the warning of pain: Extremely likely that mutilation and death from untreated infection will occur in time.
We will see the death of democracy as we bicker about the quality of conflicting "evidence" and miss the real issue:
We Want to feel the Pain of election controversy because it tells us something. But articles like Manjoo's want to dull the pain on account that it's probably nuthin'
It's only a matter of time before someone succeeds with e-election fraud if they haven't already, and then once installed, pulls up the "ladder" of elections from behind them and insures that elections are thereafter fakes, but still superficially identical to real ones.
Government "protections" don't matter, they boil down to trust of the government when our system's based on checks and balances. With invisible secret vote counting, there's no basis for confidence in the results of such counting, Elections are political Rohrschack tests. Our Founders settled that Rohrschack question, favoring distrust, and placing checks and balances in lieu of "trust" and the "plausible explanations" that are actually the favored habitat of election cheaters for the cover they provide.
It's wise in times of good administration to be prepared for bad administration. So distrust is no offense if you think the present administration loves liberty and serves the public's will.
Whether we break down along "partisan" lines or along "strict proof" "rational suspicion" or "faith-based-elections-OK" lines, the dreams of both Right and Left are all at risk by quibbling over the winnner and loser of one election, when democracy is in peril.
Thus, despite the "widespread conspiracy needed" allegation, in fact with elections NONE of us need "marching orders" from the DNC/RNC to know how to act simultaneously, YET it still looks like acting "in concert" from the outside.
Again, the real sea change started in the late 90s with electronic voting, because it makes the vote counting both invisible and secret through trade secret software. It's a revolution in slow motion because it takes years to retrofit all voting machines into computers.
Strengths become liabilities in e-voting: (1) computers do what they are told without question, and (2) there's no such thing as total security, just raising the cost-to-penetrate much higher.
Government can't possibly give us a real SOLUTION with elections, Elections must instead be immune from any substantial or unsupervised government tinkering, because government can't check and balance itself, when elections determine the government's own power and money.
This "widespread conspiracy" canard would be especially amusing if it weren't for the fact democracy was at stake. The Goebbelian final solution is the (misleading) charge that there's "no evidence" of election fraud on electronic machines. Because computer scientists have warned democracy for almost ten years of the problem of "no {direct} evidence" with these new machines, there's a special hair-pulling hell on earth for election activists who've been silenced with "There IS no evidence, you fool!"
Just Google "Harri Hursti" for links to computer scientist demonstrations of how a hacked machine can disobey certified software, pass all tests, and evade detection for years before kicking in and there's nothing anyone can really do about it in terms of a good "Fix."
The Real Issue with E-voting:
The fundamental problem: People of good faith must necessarily disagree about the quality of the stolen election "evidence", because the main evidence is secret or never created, the available evidence is all indirect, and also in short supply from butt-covering officials. E-voting is thus like having a body that can't experience the warning of pain: Extremely likely that mutilation and death from untreated infection will occur in time.
We will see the death of democracy as we bicker about the quality of conflicting "evidence" and miss the real issue:
We Want to feel the Pain of election controversy because it tells us something. But articles like Manjoo's want to dull the pain on account that it's probably nuthin'
It's only a matter of time before someone succeeds with e-election fraud if they haven't already, and then once installed, pulls up the "ladder" of elections from behind them and insures that elections are thereafter fakes, but still superficially identical to real ones.
Government "protections" don't matter, they boil down to trust of the government when our system's based on checks and balances. With invisible secret vote counting, there's no basis for confidence in the results of such counting, Elections are political Rohrschack tests. Our Founders settled that Rohrschack question, favoring distrust, and placing checks and balances in lieu of "trust" and the "plausible explanations" that are actually the favored habitat of election cheaters for the cover they provide.
It's wise in times of good administration to be prepared for bad administration. So distrust is no offense if you think the present administration loves liberty and serves the public's will.
Whether we break down along "partisan" lines or along "strict proof" "rational suspicion" or "faith-based-elections-OK" lines, the dreams of both Right and Left are all at risk by quibbling over the winnner and loser of one election, when democracy is in peril.
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