Viking
03-03-2004, 01:22 AM
OK, KIDS, gather yo' naive, uninformed little honkey asses around Uncle Viking whilst he exorcises a few of yo' demons of ignorance about the new voting systems.
I just got home from a seventeen hour tour as the computer network technician for Diebold in a county in the state of Georgia which shall remain nameless for the moment. For you conspiracy theorists out thereFORD, the so-called 'suspicious activity' you cited was not - I repeat for the hard of reading, WAS NOT - caused by glitches in the system. It stems from two simple issues:
1) The 'unfamiliar screen' that many poll workers faced was caused by one of two things: either the system was not reset after L&A (logic and accuracy) testing, which is unlikely due to the machine requiring a reset to a zero vote count at the end of the session (and undergoing several subsequent resets); or the fucking poll worker had the wrong goddamned card in the reader at startup. These units run on a pure Windows CE 3.0 platform; they are, essentially, nothing but a big fucking Palm Pilot. If you have the wrong card in the reader (i.e. voting card vs. supervisor's card), of course it's going to present you with different options, the same way you're not going to whip out your food stamp card and try to buy a bottle of Night Train with it. :D Which brings me to my second point, and it's also a problem inherent to rolling out ANY new technology, in any endeavor: THE FUCKING POLL WORKERS ARE 150 YEARS OLD TO BEGIN WITH. Whaddaya gonna do, say, "Sorry, Gertie, you're too 19th century to work a 21st century polling booth?" Let's see how far THAT gets in a Kalifornia kourt. Part of our training touched upon the fact that, (and I paraphrase) by and large, historically, and across the country, poll workers are one of our country's most plentiful natural resources: wizened citizens. Half of 'em can't even get their VCR's to stop blinking '12:00'. :D
2) As far as popping in a voter's card and getting a ballot completely different than what you requested, it again goes back to the poll worker of the artery-hardened persuasion. Poll workers use what are called 'encoders' (those of you that voted know what I'm talking about here). They look like palm-sized pocket calculators, but they have a grooved slot on the underside for inserting the voting card. Now, voting regs vary from state to state, so I'll use Georgia, becuse the principle is the same: there are either two, or three, voting cards. One is marked 'Dem', one is marked 'Rep', and one is marked 'NP' (non-partisan, or some other independent designation). These cards look like credit cards, but instead of a mag stripe on the back, they have a microchip (an 'EEPROM', for you techno-geeks) embedded on the front. Once the card is inserted into the encoder, the poll worker must first erase the EEPROM - contrary to the ignorant assumption by the Fourth Estate's 'experts' that these cards can be used four or five times by a voter of questionable intent (usually a Democrat, as a point of historical fact), they're a one-shot deal. It's been tagged, and the machine will not accept it without being reset. So, Grampa Hatfield follows the display's prompts, and gives it amnesia. Now - and this is where it gets interesting - he has a choice of two (or three) codes to hit when it (the encoder) asks him to reset the card: Democrat, Republican, or I Can't Make Up My Fucking Mind. If a Democrat asks for his party's ballot, etc, and Grandpa punches up the Pubbie code, guess what our Marxist friend is going to see on the touch display: why, yes, boys and girls, George W. Motherfuckin' Bush! The same way you sat in front of your living room lobotomy box, tried to bring up The History Channel, and accidentally tuned into Lifetime, Television For Fat Dumpy Housewives! Ain't technology grand?
Two further points that I'm sure you will hear: 1) the Urban American COMMUNity jabbering about 'disenfranchisement' (and please, dear friends, don't cringe when you hear them say it - just rip their tongue out by the roots ). Casting an electronic ballot is like erasing files from your hard drive - the AccuVote machine will essentially ask you, "ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO DO THIS?!?" before you commit yourself. The cards can be programmed to accomodate virtually ANYBODY that wishes to cast a ballot. Are you as blind as a bat? No problem - those fuckers can display a font so large, it can be seen from orbit. The one thing that it can't accomodate is abject stupidity. For anybody to think that states as far left as Kalifornia, as far right as Georgia, as well as the FEC, would sanction a system that would cause voters chronic problems - well, just stay out of my neighborhood. You're dangerous.
And, finally - for the moment - for those of you that think these machines can be hacked, you're theoretically right. Theoretically, in the same way that I could theoretically use this computer to hack into Cheyenne Mountain's tactical database, and find a way to toss a few nukes at Toronto. Snowballs will be voting Hell as their Number One vacation spot before it happens. Face it, X-Files fans, these machines - right down to my server - are STANDALONE, until I dial up the Secretary of State's office. And at NO TIME are they cabled together to talk to each other. It's a magic trick, and good magicians never give away their secrets.
All it takes is a few imcompetent volunteers to send the paranoids running around in circles with their asses in their hands. :D
Any more silly questions? Tinfoil hat theories? Good. Now get your asses outta my yard.
I just got home from a seventeen hour tour as the computer network technician for Diebold in a county in the state of Georgia which shall remain nameless for the moment. For you conspiracy theorists out thereFORD, the so-called 'suspicious activity' you cited was not - I repeat for the hard of reading, WAS NOT - caused by glitches in the system. It stems from two simple issues:
1) The 'unfamiliar screen' that many poll workers faced was caused by one of two things: either the system was not reset after L&A (logic and accuracy) testing, which is unlikely due to the machine requiring a reset to a zero vote count at the end of the session (and undergoing several subsequent resets); or the fucking poll worker had the wrong goddamned card in the reader at startup. These units run on a pure Windows CE 3.0 platform; they are, essentially, nothing but a big fucking Palm Pilot. If you have the wrong card in the reader (i.e. voting card vs. supervisor's card), of course it's going to present you with different options, the same way you're not going to whip out your food stamp card and try to buy a bottle of Night Train with it. :D Which brings me to my second point, and it's also a problem inherent to rolling out ANY new technology, in any endeavor: THE FUCKING POLL WORKERS ARE 150 YEARS OLD TO BEGIN WITH. Whaddaya gonna do, say, "Sorry, Gertie, you're too 19th century to work a 21st century polling booth?" Let's see how far THAT gets in a Kalifornia kourt. Part of our training touched upon the fact that, (and I paraphrase) by and large, historically, and across the country, poll workers are one of our country's most plentiful natural resources: wizened citizens. Half of 'em can't even get their VCR's to stop blinking '12:00'. :D
2) As far as popping in a voter's card and getting a ballot completely different than what you requested, it again goes back to the poll worker of the artery-hardened persuasion. Poll workers use what are called 'encoders' (those of you that voted know what I'm talking about here). They look like palm-sized pocket calculators, but they have a grooved slot on the underside for inserting the voting card. Now, voting regs vary from state to state, so I'll use Georgia, becuse the principle is the same: there are either two, or three, voting cards. One is marked 'Dem', one is marked 'Rep', and one is marked 'NP' (non-partisan, or some other independent designation). These cards look like credit cards, but instead of a mag stripe on the back, they have a microchip (an 'EEPROM', for you techno-geeks) embedded on the front. Once the card is inserted into the encoder, the poll worker must first erase the EEPROM - contrary to the ignorant assumption by the Fourth Estate's 'experts' that these cards can be used four or five times by a voter of questionable intent (usually a Democrat, as a point of historical fact), they're a one-shot deal. It's been tagged, and the machine will not accept it without being reset. So, Grampa Hatfield follows the display's prompts, and gives it amnesia. Now - and this is where it gets interesting - he has a choice of two (or three) codes to hit when it (the encoder) asks him to reset the card: Democrat, Republican, or I Can't Make Up My Fucking Mind. If a Democrat asks for his party's ballot, etc, and Grandpa punches up the Pubbie code, guess what our Marxist friend is going to see on the touch display: why, yes, boys and girls, George W. Motherfuckin' Bush! The same way you sat in front of your living room lobotomy box, tried to bring up The History Channel, and accidentally tuned into Lifetime, Television For Fat Dumpy Housewives! Ain't technology grand?
Two further points that I'm sure you will hear: 1) the Urban American COMMUNity jabbering about 'disenfranchisement' (and please, dear friends, don't cringe when you hear them say it - just rip their tongue out by the roots ). Casting an electronic ballot is like erasing files from your hard drive - the AccuVote machine will essentially ask you, "ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO DO THIS?!?" before you commit yourself. The cards can be programmed to accomodate virtually ANYBODY that wishes to cast a ballot. Are you as blind as a bat? No problem - those fuckers can display a font so large, it can be seen from orbit. The one thing that it can't accomodate is abject stupidity. For anybody to think that states as far left as Kalifornia, as far right as Georgia, as well as the FEC, would sanction a system that would cause voters chronic problems - well, just stay out of my neighborhood. You're dangerous.
And, finally - for the moment - for those of you that think these machines can be hacked, you're theoretically right. Theoretically, in the same way that I could theoretically use this computer to hack into Cheyenne Mountain's tactical database, and find a way to toss a few nukes at Toronto. Snowballs will be voting Hell as their Number One vacation spot before it happens. Face it, X-Files fans, these machines - right down to my server - are STANDALONE, until I dial up the Secretary of State's office. And at NO TIME are they cabled together to talk to each other. It's a magic trick, and good magicians never give away their secrets.
All it takes is a few imcompetent volunteers to send the paranoids running around in circles with their asses in their hands. :D
Any more silly questions? Tinfoil hat theories? Good. Now get your asses outta my yard.