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Roy Schestowitz at TechRights reports:
Microsoft wages war on politics in all sorts of ways, sometimes through lobbyists, sometimes through 'former' staff, pseudo 'charities' like the Gates Foundation, and pressure groups like the Business Software Alliance.
Today we present information given to us courtesy of the California Association of Voting Officials. They complain about Microsoft lobbyists and they have expressed an interest in aligning for global issues, for they too realise that Microsoft cannot be ignored if society wants fair elections and ultimately pursues voting machinery that can be trusted.
Microsoft lobbying in this area is a scarcely explored topic. There is very little information about it out there, hence we hardly ever covered the topic. It is widely known, however, that voting machines in the US use Windows, which has back doors and therefore can never be trusted, with or without tampering by a human operator.
[...]Somehow, despite public will to induce transparency, accountability, audits, etc. on the process, decades later we are still [...] heavily dependent on a proprietary, secretive system (or set thereof).
[...]"We put open source language into voting system legislation", told us [sic] someone from the California Association of Voting Officials, "and the Microsoft lobbyists have it removed.
"This must be stopped as OS voting systems are a preferred security environment for vote tabulation... the alternative being Diebold / Dominion / Microsoft, etc."[...]
The head attorneys for President Obama's election report (which omitted open source voting system solutions even though the information was gifted to them) work for firms that lobby and/or represent Microsoft (Bob Bauer of Perkins Coie and Ben Ginsburg of Pattons Boggs/Jones Day)
Nate Persily was tasked with presenting the President with all information...but inexplicably failed to include any reference to open source in the report. When asked about this omission--and possible steps to remedy (addendum etc)--Persily went silent.
No members of the Presidential Committee were responsive...
In California--which is the frontline of the battle for open source voting systems in the USA--the lobbyist for the California Association of Clerks and Elected Officials Barry Brokaw is also the lobbyist for Microsoft
Original Submission
(Score: 2, Interesting) by VLM on Monday June 15 2015, @02:29PM
Wringing your hands and saying aint it bad is pointless. Mumbling about armed insurrection is farcical.
Opt out and don't vote. It works for me. I feel no need to participate in a system that pragmatically leads to awful results. There's a libertarian quote out there along the lines of if I want an apple, don't make me vote for vanilla ice cream or chocolate ice cream then lie to me that I got my choice so I have to be happy about it and describe it as the best political system evar.
Eventually voting will end up like major league baseball. Vaguely generally about 80% of the population are baseball fans by some trivial definition of fan, but only 5% of the population actually watches the world series and even less truly care. Eventually they round down to nothing and no longer matter. See also newspaper editorials and fox news style agitprop infotainment.
Think how much better politicians would behave if only 10% of the population voted. Every time they pick their nose, they'd have to worry that if just a little more than 1 in 20 of the non-voters got pissed off, a non-D or non-R could numerically get elected to replace them...
(Score: 2) by jdccdevel on Monday June 15 2015, @05:09PM
Many people here in Alberta used to think the exact same thing as you just did. Baby Boomer demographics seemed to dictate that we would have the same party in power as had always been in power. Why bother voting, it's never going to make a difference, etc. Voter apathy was rampant.
A single party had ruled for 44 years. Majority rule by the same party for that long is effectively a dictatorship. The media was even talking about the election of their party leader as a "Coronation"!
Then came the election of 2015. We Kicked out a 44 year political dynasty [globalnews.ca] in the biggest electoral shakeup in North American history. Many voters didn't believe it would happen, Many people woke up the next morning wondering if it was actually a dream.
Apparently democracy can actually work! Granted, things are a little more sane here in Canada, with several political parties to choose from, not just two like our choice-challenged neighbours to the south seem to have.
Defeatist attitudes like yours are what allows the system you are so frustrated with to continue. You say "Opt out and don't vote", then extoll the virtues of high voter turnout... the irony is palpable. The current system might "pragmatically lead to awful results", but (at least to you) not voting demonstrably does.
Nothing could make fans of the status quo happier than you not voting and not expressing your opinion at the ballot box. Since you are obviously frustrated with the current state of things, I don't understand why you want to make them happy by not voting.
Even a so-called "Useless" vote for a never-to-be-elected third party can drive policy as the mainstream candidates woo those votes for themselves.
YOUR VOTE MATTERS. It is the easiest, simplest means to express yourself politically there is in a democracy. You don't honestly think that politicians would spend all that corporate money trying to buy something worthless do you?
Even the most cynical people out there, who feel like "a revolution is coming" or "dictatorship/corporatocracy is inevitable" should vote. If for no other reason than (as the quote so accurately says):
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Voting is not nothing.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Monday June 15 2015, @05:41PM
No, it doesn't. Not in America. The federal government has completely changed hands twice since 2000. Nothing has changed in the policy trajectory. There has been not even a small inflection in the downward slide of the middle class, and the stratospheric accretion of the fortunes of the ultra-wealthy. The CIA has tortured people to death. The NSA has unilaterally blown the 4th Amendment away (as written, it's supposed to be hard to change the Constitution, isn't it?). The biggest banks on Wall Street were all caught red-handed in the LIBOR scandal and all of them are still in business, and their CEOs did not go to prison. Classes of citizens have not yet been rounded up en masse and sent to camps (Note: I said 'citizens' and not 'people,' because getting rounded up does happen to illegal immigrants), but things could hardly be worse for a country that once called itself, "Land of the Free, Home of the Brave."
Now, not voting does not mean doing nothing. Doing nothing is bad, and we can all agree with that as a more general statement. But voting is a complete waste of time, money, and effort when the system is this broken. Doing something that is not voting to change the status quo is vital. There are many people in America who have the skills to do something. I submit that what is now required in America is a revolution, as defined [merriam-webster.com]:
Men and women of honor must act to effect that "sudden, radical, or complete change." It can mean writing software (Linus Torvalds is an example). It can mean starting a social enterprise or business that radically disintermediates the guardians of the status quo (by this definition, Elon Musk has done that to the auto, oil, and power industries). It can mean exposing the criminals at the very heart of the system (Snowden). It can take a lot of forms, but it must be done and we all must do it.
God willing, that will be enough to close down the First American Republic and bring about the much improved American Republic 2.0.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by jdccdevel on Monday June 15 2015, @07:18PM
It's obvious from you're comments that you feel completely disenfranchised, and I can't say I disagree with your reasons. The trends that you speak of are definitely real, and your political process is in definite need of some reform.
That said, you are wrong about your vote. Actually getting out and voting can be a revolutionary act. If the 40% to 45% of Americans like yourself who decide not to vote actually exercised that right, you would have your revolution.
All it requires of you is a little of your time. You don't even have to sacrifice anything, and the system is already in place to effect the change you're looking for.
No violence, risk to life and freedom, or even extraordinary effort, required. Just excercise your rights! Imagine how different the political landscape in the USA would be if people got as excited about their right to vote as they do about their right to bear arms!
I would like to introduce the mechanism of your revolution to you. It is called "Vote Splitting" [wikipedia.org]. You may not have heard of it before, but it's a common thing in countries with more than Two political parties.
Lets do some math. According to some sources [wikipedia.org], you have a voter turnout of about 55%, so we'll work with that. Let's call the two major parties A (51% of the vote) and B (49% of the vote). That means that 28% of the eligible population voted for A, and about 27% of the voting population voted for B. Now, assume that a Independent candidate C runs, and really appeals to all those who didn't vote before. With a 100% voter turnout, Candidate C could get 45% of the vote, and win easily!
Now, obviously a 100% voter turnout is unrealistic, and the other parties would probably benefit some too. The point is that it is possible. As part of the established political process, the roadmap is even there for how it works, and a smooth transition of power would be probable. (Either that, or the people who really run the show would be forced into the open... probably precipitating the armed revolution you seem to expect.)
All it requires is an abolition of apathy, and overthrowing the defeatist attitude of the disenfranchised like yourself.
Effecting real policy change doesn't even require voter turnout that extreme. As I said in my other post, when third-party or independent candidates start to get popular, the mainstream candidates shift their policies to attract those votes.
Seriously, get out and vote. Vote for a third-party, and encourage everyone else to do the same. Voter apathy is one of the root causes of the mess you're in, and your participation can help fix it.
If you and the other ~45% of the population can't take a couple of hours every couple years to engage with your political process now, your "American Republic 2.0" will probably end up as much a "Republic" (and just as "Democratic") as the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday June 16 2015, @11:17AM
That would be awesome. Then Goldman Sachs would have to donate to three candidates instead of two. Oooh imagine the hope and change we'd get.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 16 2015, @01:05PM
So many words, so much ignorance of Duverger's law.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday June 16 2015, @04:04PM
We often have over a dozen choices on the ballot down here. You've got the green party, the libertarians, the socialists, the justice party...lots of choices. But nobody will vote for them because they "can't win" because nobody votes for them. Instead we swallow the media lie that the Republicrats are the only party that exists and that a vote for Lucifer is better than a vote for Satan.
(Score: 2) by dry on Tuesday June 16 2015, @06:12AM
You're playing into their hands by not voting. Even showing up and spoiling your ballot is better as the entrenched interests only want supporters showing up and voting.
Seems in America you can have more influence on who the 2 parties nominate, which is an improvement to here.