On the same day as NYTimes front paged a story on the coming electoral meltdown. Chicago Trib follows suit in a front pager today that focuses on massive problems in Chicago and Cook County.
Like the Times, who modified their original headline yesterday shortly after publishing to refer to “Voting Woes” instead of “Voting Chaos” as it was originally described, the Trib turns backflips to downplay the concerns, blame as much as possible the poll workers and “human error,” along with “glitches” and “hiccups,” instead of placing blame where it squarely deserves to be placed: on the Voting Machine Companies and the Elections Officials who approved this garbage for use in our elections.
The headline is “Voting Glitches Feared on Nov. 7,” but as a close reading of the article reveals, these are not “voting glitches.” They are not even “glitches.” They are FAILURES of the voting machine companies and elections officials. Period. End of story. Got that?
The story rightly refers to “a virtual meltdown” in last spring’s primary in Chicago and Cook County, and goes on to add that vote totals can be completely fried…
“We don’t want you to erase any of the memory,” warned Gail Weisberg, Cook County’s equipment manager/coordinator, during a training class last week in Hoffman Estates.
So vote totals can be entirely “fried” and yet we’re actually using this system on November 7th?! Moreover, note the language above that says it’s “possible for workers” to fry the vote totals. Instead of the more appropriate, “it’s possible that the poorly designed systems could have their entire vote totals fried.”
As I’ve gotta hit the road to head up North for speaking engagements and meetings over the next several days, and as things are now melting down all around us, as predicted — with some 20 days left until Nov. 7th — my patience is just about worn thin with the apologists, liars, and those journalists, “advocates,” and public officials who have no excuse to claim ignorance anymore.
So I hope you’ll pardon the more graphic language I feel compelled to use below…
The article goes on to read:
“Poorly trained elections judges failed.” Blame the poll workers: the mantra of the Voting Machine companies and Elections Officials who refuse to take accountability for their own failure. Shame on the Chicago Trib for playing along.
The system “buckled under the pressure in its debut,” not when poll workers failed, but when the machines fucking failed to work!
Is that too difficult to comprehend and report on? Stop blaming the poll workers simply because — to everyone’s surprise — most of them are 75-year old ladies performing a civic duty for which we should be eternally grateful, instead of fucking Cal-Tech Computer Scientists!
The article then goes on to talk about various “snags” and “snafus.”
Once again: These are not “glitches,” “hiccups,” “snags,” or “snafus,” as they are frequently referred to in media reports (and you ain’t seen nothing yet).
These are deadly dangerous and derelict failures by the Voting Machine Vendors and the Officials who have been granted MILLIONS of free federal government tax dollars to replace our democracy with secret vote counting machines that simply do not work. Period.
Billions of dollars, and the course of history in the free and not-so-free world hangs in the balance. Can we please hold the appropriate individuals accountable here?!
As we were informed recently by the Illinois Ballot Integrity Project, some of the systems being used in Illinois today were not even certified before people began voting on them. Hello?! Whose fault is that?! (CLARIFICATION: IBIP has informed us that Chicago/Cook County certified the machines in an unannounced, private phone conference late Friday, prior to the beginning of early voting on Monday. The system, however, had not been federally certified.)
“Most of the inability of the [Hybrid, Activator, Accumulator & Transmitter (HAAT)] devices to successfully transmit data on election night was due to operator error,” the article says, in quoting from a report on the Illinois Primary Election Meltdown.
Wrong. Wrong. And wrong again.
Let me be clear here: Our elections are not a fucking Beta Test for unpatriotic Voting Machine Companies. Our Elections are the core of our democracy and should be handled with the care and accuracy and security and transparency that the citizens of the United States deserve.
There are no excuses for the blatant FAILURES (not “glitches,” not “snafus,” “snags,” or “hiccups”) of these voting machines, Voting Machine Companies, and the Elections Officials who FAILED to ensure that the systems they have purchased to do the job (that WE hired them for) actually work and do the job they are supposed to do.
They don’t.
Apparently, the public officials have forgotten who it is they actually are supposed to be working for. Please remind them. In any way possible. Your democracy hangs in the balance.
Please print out this article or save the URL to keep it handy for reference. It will apply to almost everything you read on this topic between here and the “end” of whatever fresh hell is about to unfold on Nov. 7th. I promise it’ll be more than simply “glitches.”
Without courage, nobody stands up. When at last someone does, he may inspire another to stand. And with those two, more may see that strength and courage is the answer, thus choose to stay and fight. And as each successive member joins the fight for integrity, the wall will mount against those who aim to dismantle democracy… the very democracy that began our country. The wall has formed and is growing, and with luck its sheer size will overshadow the evil intentions of the electronic voting manufacturers. Let’s keep the pressure on!
I hope everybody is watching “Broken Government” on CNN with Jack Cafferty now
That was amazing, music to my ears
Link
Thank you Brad for exposing another typical corporate conglomerant owned media paper controlled by the government in an effort to confuse and redirect from the truth in this case about electronic voting machines. While i understand your anger, i see why the founding fathers and my owns errors perhaps to using the F bomb except in emergency.
You have done so well to bring about an awareness to one of the 3 major crisis currently facing our nation.
1. Global Warming Climate Change Crisis
The Anti-Envionmentalist stance by the Republican Bush administration that has taken a do nothing atttude about the Global Warming Climate Change Crisis in which we have about 2 years to correct.
Over 200 environmental laws have been reversed under their rule.
2. Constitutional Crisis
On 9/11 no arabs armed with boxcutter could ever be attributed to World Trade Tower Building #7 falling controlled demolition style like WT2 and WT1 10 hours later although located a block away not hit by an aircraft. The fact that everytime Bush leadership talks about Iraq they bring up 9/11 which had about as much to do with 9/11 as Canada or Mexico. The fact that the Homeland Security Act, the Patriot Act, Illegal wiretapping of Americans, the Suspected Terrorist Act have all reduced the rights of Americans in the name of fighting terrorism while giving more power to these criminal in Federal government. Lastly Bush has signed an Executive Order to every law he signed so far interpreting how he will use the law and or not be held accountable to it. This is called FASCISM.
Impeach and jail the warmongering destructors with plans to sell off the Western Public Wildlands to their greedy big oil developer cronies.
To all who still want to vote Republican, i ask you to look in the mirror and ask yourself what this party has done to represent you in the last 6 years.
I have never seen former President Jimmy Carter as mad as i saw him yesterday blasting Bush. He said when a angry nation no less with nukes is mad you don’t break off diplomatic ties and let them stew. You establish a diolog with them. But again the Biggest Loser Party to ever run the U.S. is doing the wrong move.
Stay cool Brad!
Something someone told me a few months ago..Have faith in the universe.
Quite obviously, the greater problems lay with the manufacturers of poorly designed equipment — graciously skipping over the apparent financial collusion that intentionally motivates the propagation of these vote-bending machines.
However… as you condemn convenient stereotypes of “user error” to excuse faulty equipment in press reports, you employ the same stereotype in your own comments:
“Stop blaming the poll workers simply because — to everyone’s surprise — most of them are 75-year old ladies performing a civic duty for which we should be eternally grateful, instead of fucking Cal-Tech Computer Scientists!”
Having donated my time to working polls the last few elections, and having spent those tedious hours in class and minding the booths, I can assure you that the days of 75 year-old matrons manning the polls are long gone. Poll workers now are as likely to be students, middle-aged professional folks, etc. — driven to the task from a concern that the system must be monitored from the inside.
Your 75 year-old ladies comment is a cheap shot, uninformed… and most importantly, as tilted towards the idea of “user error” as any newspaper report you mentioned.
Yeah… poll workers are elderly women… and only Asians run convenience stores… and bloggers are petulant nerds without a “life”. (Okay, two outta three ain’t bad.)
Oh… and thanks for letting us respond on your site, Brad!
Seems that the HuffPo still has quirky software that randomly selects what responses ever see the light of day. Or perhaps that site suffers from some kind of “operator error” as well? And like voting machines, there’s no way to contact the manufacturer and make things right!
Pretty soon, our democracy is going to look like Iraq. It’s about time we realized that. It’s not going to be the fault of the pollworkers or Clinton. It’s going to be the fault of corporations that refuse to give us confidence in the voting system.
Even if these machines worked perfectly, all they do is manage to put a thirty pound layer of complexity on top of the voting process. The poor people who will be manning the polling stations are going to get yelled at, while the idiot corporate criminals who manufactured these abominations will be getting lap dances.
The governors of these United States will be facing a lot of flack too, because they had the ability to take a stand against this hideous rodeo ride. The corporate fat-asses will be laughing at you too! I’ll be busy mourning the death of a once great country that now has a flourishing stock market which serves assholes who don’t work for their money!
Yes, absolutely; NOT “glitches” or “hiccups” (how marginalizing), but ERRORS and MALFUNCTIONS, as the computer scientists who work on this know so very well.
The phrasing really “poo poohs” the seriousness of the situation; imagine a “hiccup” with your ATM transaction-the media would NOT frame it so frivolously.
I suppose money is so more important than one’s vote…
Sadly!
And where are the FAILSAFE mechanisms in these electronic voting systems?! Failure is not an option. Contracts and funding should be cancelled automatically when a high-priced, propietary, corporate-guaranteed public election system fails for any reason (including power failures) – and the do-over election on paper, hand-counted, should be fully funded by the corporate vendor whose system failed. THAT’S what the consent of the governed is worth, useless Members of Congress, and contract-writing government officials.
Let me see if I can help out the vocabulary-challenged Chicago Tribune (oh, how the mighty have fallen):
corrupted data, secretly compiled
shoddy engineering
careless, cut-rate manufacturing
easily broken hardware
untested and uncertified software
fragile, breakable controls
non-intuitive operating instructions
un-user-friendly interfaces
software bugs and crashes
publicly-financed corporate boondoggle
CATASTROPHIC SYSTEM FAILURE.
God speed Brad…!!
Hang in there….go get ’em tiger…!!! You’re awesome….a real shit disturber…. 😉
Wish there were more like you out there willing to uncover the dirt, filth and corruption and do something about it.
Would somebody please pin a big medal on this guys chest..!!
Floridiot # 2 … great program, hope there were millions watching…..don’t you just love Jack, he sure doesn’t mince his words…..have to laugh when he refers to the government as weasels…. 🙂
OT,.. right-wing media watchdog group,.. “Accuracy in Media” is just worrying themselves sick that Fox News is leaning much too much to the left. OMG are they going to start telling their viewing audience the truth,.. God help us ! It will ruin the country.
Link to article.
oldturk #10
So “Accuracy in Media” is twisting.
I like it!