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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) by VLM on Tuesday June 16 2015, @11:23AM
Put polling stations in the right spots so it is easier for your supporters to vote and harder for the oppositions supporters to vote
My personal experience, which is likely pretty normal, is you vote while in college and they have like two 90 year olds who are deaf in the basement of a 1000 person dorm complex only reachable by a locked door that is occasionally propped open and the oldest least reliable scanning machine in the fleet looks like someone tossed it down the stairs, and they tend to vote for the "D" PR team of the one-party. Vs in my 2nd/3rd richest subburb in the region and the polling place is 2 blocks away at the elementary school and they have 4 volunteers per roughly 300 person aldermanic district and a brand new vote scanning machine and they tend to vote "R". But we're all "equal" right?
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday June 16 2015, @04:51PM
In my home state in 2004, I took strong notice of the fact that it took me approximately 20 minutes to vote in the mostly white genteel suburb, while a coworker of mine from a not-at-all-genteel urban precinct spent 2.5 hours waiting in line. And apparently it got worse in the not-at-all-genteel district as time went on. By complete coincidence, the secretary of state who controlled little details like how many voting machines were in which precincts just happened to be the state campaign manager for the Republican candidate for president. And the not-at-all-genteel urban precinct was chock full of die-hard Democrats.
Another technique seen more recently: The secretary of state has the tie-breaking vote on all of the county-wide elections councils (which are evenly split between Democrats and Republicans) that determine when early voting is open. Ours was voting for extended hours in areas which tended to support his party, and really short hours in areas which tended to oppose his party, until a federal court ruled he couldn't do that.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by dry on Wednesday June 17 2015, @03:03AM
Elections Canada has always been pretty good with running the elections here, non-partisan and honestly trying their hardest to have fair elections, its a shame that in the name of small government their budget was cut extremely and the "Fair Elections Act" really crippled them. But the Conservatives figure that if they're cheating, everyone must be cheating and Elections Canada is part of a liberal conspiracy that only picks on Conservatives.
I've been voting for over 30 years and don't remember any cheating to speak off besides Gracies finger when the people got really upset about gerrymandering and a few honest mistakes (navy guys who accidentally voted twice type of thing).
Generally the government does fear the voters here as parties can actually be wiped out when they screw up. Unluckily they just regroup under a different party as often as not.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday June 17 2015, @11:45AM
Generally the government does fear the voters here as parties can actually be wiped out when they screw up. Unluckily they just regroup under a different party as often as not.
Could you guys please just invade? Bring along maple syrup and your working health care system, we need both.
(Score: 2) by dry on Friday June 19 2015, @04:05AM
You really wouldn't like Stephen Harper's new Canada.