Jones Beene wrote:
>Do you think the Republicans are not out to steal the election if
they could?
Why them and not the Dems?
Well, in recent history going back to Nixon and the plumbers,
Republicans have been more inclined to cheat than Democrats. Or at
least, they have gotten caught more often. Of course there have been
many corrupt Democrats and Democratic machine politics.
This is very broad sociological generalization -- and such
generalizations always have many, many exceptions -- but modern
Republicans tend to be authoritarian, and authoritarian personalities
tend to be more open to making their own rules, which the rest of us
call "cheating." They do not see it that way. See:
"The Authoritarians"
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
This may not be true elsewhere, but an election official who allowed
the memory card in a machine to be switched, even if it was supposed
to benefit his choice - could never really know who it might favor in the end .
It should not be difficult to arrange a test. You put the card in a
regular computer to program the bias. You command it: "shift 3% of
Obama votes to McCain." Then you run it in a dummy election to be
sure the bias you programmed in takes effect. Of course you can fake
the program and verification too, but the person writing this program
would presumably be a co-conspirator. Or a well-paid Russian hacker
who doesn't care who wins a U.S. election, but who does want the last
installment to be paid in full after the election. Plus he doesn't
want the Russian Mafia contractors coming after him. You can probably
detect computer voter machine fraud accurately with exit polls. If
the programmer played games or did not implement the program as
agreed to, the person paying for the 3% bias would see that it did
not happen. Or he would see it go the other way toward the rival
candidate, and he would get upset.
Even though most intellectuals and programmers probably support Obama
in this election, there are plenty who do not.
- Jed
