Rage Against the Machine

by **sunny** » Tue May 02, 2006 3:52 pm

What if we all did this? Think we could get some paper ballots then? <a href="http://www.newsnet5.com/politics/9146477/detail.html?taf=nn5">www.newsnet5.com/politics...ml?taf=nn5</a> <img src="http://images.ibsys.com/2006/0502/9146706_240X180.jpg" style="border:0;"/> Poll Rage? Man Breaks Machine At Polling Location Man Faces Several Charges POSTED: 11:56 am EDT May 2, 2006 CLEVELAND -- A 61-year-old man was arrested after an alleged poll rage incident, NewsChannel5 reported. Officials said the man was arrested after breaking a voting machine. He faces disorderly conduct, obstructing official business and resisting arrest charges. It took several people to restrain the man who was trying to vote at a 4330 Jennings Road. It's unclear what caused the man to become upset.

by **Ted the dog** » Tue May 02, 2006 4:47 pm

I love how now anytime anyone in America acts "out of line", the word "rage" is attached to whatever it is that they were doing. "Poll Rage"? please. I'm sure all the nutjob neocons that love to champion anything that's shat out of a corporate machine like diebold will use this phrase all the time. Don't like the electronic voting? You have Poll Rage and therefore you're a crazy bush-hating liberal terrorist pussy wimp treasonous traitor.

by **Sepka** » Tue May 02, 2006 7:31 pm

I just got done voting with one of those machines (Ohio standardized them for all counties) and I've got a certain amount of empathy for him, even if I can't excuse his actions. They're touchscreen machines, with a paper audit tape. So far so good. The machine stores results both as memory for quick tabulation, and also an impact printer prints your choices on a paper tape which scrolls by in a little window so you can see that your vote is correctly recorded. The tape appears to be both human and machine readable, so now we've got an audit trail, unlike with the machines we used last time. All that's good. What's bad is that they've gone absolutely overboard to get you to verify that you've chosen the candidate you want before it will record your vote. You have to vote, review your choices, verify your choices, then record your choices. I suspect the next time that I use it, when I know in advance what will be involved, it will prove less frustrating. They meant well, but the verification process is just overkill. And I have to agree, the whole "rage" meme is overused. The guy was a selfish asshole. He got frustrated with having to use a new voting machine, and so he smashed up public property. The fact that the thing could be better designed is not an excuse for destroying it. -Sepka the Space Weasel

by **Pissed Off Cabbie** » Tue May 02, 2006 11:08 pm

<a href="http://pissedoffcabbie.blogspot.com/2006/05/oh-no-its-another-election_114650742888764350.html">pissedoffcabbie.blogspot....64350.html</a> "I wish people didn't have to wait to be told to go and storm City Hall, or take an axe to those goddamn voting machines. It's getting to the point where that's all that's left to us. I just don't see any civilised way of dismantling the machine. But, hey, who are you going to vote for?" That sure was fast. But, hey, I was just kidding. Honest.

by **Mentalgongfu** » Tue May 02, 2006 11:49 pm

I was really hoping this was going to be a thread on the now-defunct band RATM and frontman Zach de la Rocha. I heard he used to disappear to Mexico for weeks at a time, during which Zapatista activity tended to increase. But since we're on the subject of electronic voting machines, I'll throw this out there - Say you live in a county which has recently been forced to purchase new voting machines under the Help America Vote Act, in a state where the system was rigged so that machines from only two companies were certified for use, those companies being Diebold and ES&S. Say the county board of supervisors was very unhappy about having to spend more than $100,000 (the rest was paid by a federal grant passed thru the state to the county, so we all paid for it) on new voting machines from ES&S, especially given the fact the county had purchased all new machines in 1999, out of its own pocket. And say the supervisors expressed particular frustation in the media, because the existing Microvote voting machines had never had any known (or publicized) problems. Say you've been following national news about ES&S not delivering on their contracts, having massive battery failures, facing lawsuits, etc. And say you've forwarded 7-10 of these stories to the county auditor, who is in charge of elections, as well as his bosses, the board of supervisors. And let's just say, not one of those emails has received a response, and not one word has been uttered in public by the elected officials to acknowledge they are aware of this information. What does one do next? I have my own thoughts. What do you think?

by **StarmanSkye** » Wed May 03, 2006 2:55 am

"Say you've been following national news about ES&S not delivering on their contracts, having massive battery failures, facing lawsuits, etc. And say you've forwarded 7-10 of these stories to the county auditor, who is in charge of elections, as well as his bosses, the board of supervisors. "And let's just say, not one of those emails has received a response, and not one word has been uttered in public by the elected officials to acknowledge they are aware of this information." ***** Damn -- That IS a question everyone who is utterly appalled at the subversion and betrayal of the US's election systems wants the answer to. I'm of the opinion that electoral fraud, including corruption, is without doubt treason and ought to be a capital offense -- or at least subject to prison time with hard-labor. Even the APPEARANCE of fraud and misfeasance should be dealt with harshly, with -zero- tolerance. But goddamn, yet another instance where the public-disedumacation PR-psyops dumbed-down sheeple have been 'helped-along' and made to not understand how electoral fraud devastates everything about democracy and leads to unconscionable excesses and abuses and corruption, directly translating to cheating the public out of viable, vital policy alternatives and enabling all members of society a much greater opportunity to thrive. The Help America Vote act, like almost every goddamn DC-led initiative, is really a monstrous scam that benefits the ruling-elite kleptocracy in the guise of 'serving' the public. The deal kinda makes me a bit nostalgic for the sentiment of resistance behind 'If I had a rocket launcher'. EVERYTHING about proprietary vote-counting, hackable, tamper-and-failure-prone software STINKS -- In the absence of upstanding, principled and courageous Attorney Generals, Class Action Suit, anyone? Starman

by **sunny** » Wed May 03, 2006 8:23 am

...the absence of upstanding, principled and courageous Attorney Generals, Class Action Suit, anyone? Starman ____________________________________________________ Starman, right after the '04 elections, I suggested the same thing to the attorney who was responsible for getting "Roy's Rock" out of the supreme court building here in Alabama. But after having her practice destroyed, her life and the life of her family and dog threatened (once by people who apparently didn't know about *67 and called from the local church "fellowship hall"), being cursed on the street, and various and sundry other hateful actions, she was demoralized and didn't feel up to the task. I was feeling that way myself at the time, so I gave up the idea. Now I feel much better, and am heartened by lawsuits by citizens in places like New Mexico. I'm up for it. Any other takers? I think we have standing. After all, this is our so called democracy, is it not?

Rage Against the Machine

Rage Against the Machine

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