Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by janrinok on Tuesday August 14 2018, @02:47PM   Printer-friendly
from the starting-to-get-attention-now dept.

Another item from Def Con 26, which ended the other day, an 11-year-old was easily able to change tallies on real electronic voting equipment within minutes. These machines are designed not to leave any evidence when tampering happens so it was useful that there were many witnesses present for her demo.

Election hackers [sic] have spent years trying to bring attention to flaws in election equipment. But with the world finally watching at DEFCON, the world's largest hacker conference, they have a new struggle: pointing out flaws without causing the public to doubt that their vote will count.

This weekend saw the 26th annual DEFCON gathering. It was the second time the convention had featured a Voting Village, where organizers set up decommissioned election equipment and watch hackers [sic] find creative and alarming ways to break in. Last year, conference attendees found new vulnerabilities for all five voting machines and a single e-poll book of registered voters over the course of the weekend, catching the attention of both senators introducing legislation and the general public. This year's Voting Village was bigger in every way, with equipment ranging from voting machines to tabulators to smart card readers, all currently in use in the US.

In a room set aside for kid hackers [sic], an 11-year-old girl hacked a replica of the Florida secretary of state's website within 10 minutes — and changed the results.

Earlier on SN:
Georgia Defends Voting System Despite 243-Percent Turnout in One Precinct
South Carolina's 13k Electronic Voting Machines Vulnerable, Unreliable
Top Voting Machine Vendor Admits It Installed Remote-Access Software on Systems Sold to States


Original Submission

Related Stories

Top Voting Machine Vendor Admits It Installed Remote-Access Software on Systems Sold to States 47 comments

Submitted via IRC for Sulla

The nation's top voting machine maker has admitted in a letter to a federal lawmaker that the company installed remote-access software on election-management systems it sold over a period of six years, raising questions about the security of those systems and the integrity of elections that were conducted with them.

In a letter sent to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) in April and obtained recently by Motherboard, Election Systems and Software acknowledged that it had "provided pcAnywhere remote connection software ... to a small number of customers between 2000 and 2006," which was installed on the election-management system ES&S sold them.

The statement contradicts what the company told me and fact checkers for a story I wrote for the[sic] New York Times in February. At that time, a spokesperson said ES&S had never installed pcAnywhere on any election system it sold. "None of the employees, ... including long-tenured employees, has any knowledge that our voting systems have ever been sold with remote-access software," the spokesperson said.

South Carolina's 13k Electronic Voting Machines Vulnerable, Unreliable 24 comments

The project Protect Democracy is suing the state of South Carolina because its insecure, unreliable voting systems are effectively denying people the right to vote. The project has filed a 45-page lawsuit pointing out the inherent lack of security and inauditability of these systems and concludes that "by failing to provide S.C. voters with a system that can record their votes reliably," South Carolinians have been deprived of their constitutional right to vote. Late last year, Def Con 25's Voting Village reported on the ongoing, egregious, and fraudulent state of electronic voting in the US, a situation which has been getting steadily worse since at least 2000. The elephant in the room is that these machines are built from the ground up on Microsoft products, which is protected with a cult-like vigor standing in the way of rolling back to the only known secure method, hand counted paper ballots.

Bruce Schneier is an advisor to Protect Democracy

Earlier on SN:
Top Voting Machine Vendor Admits It Installed Remote-Access Software on Systems Sold to States (2018)
Want to Hack a Voting Machine? Hack the Voting Machine Vendor First (2018)
Georgia Election Server Wiped after Lawsuit Filed (2017)
It Took DEF CON Hackers Minutes to Pwn These US Voting Machines (2017)
Russian Hackers [sic] Penetrated US Electoral Systems and Tried to Delete Voter Registration Data (2017)
5 Ways to Improve Voting Security in the U.S. (2016)
FBI Says Foreign Hackers Penetrated State Election Systems (2016)
and so on ...


Original Submission

Georgia Defends Voting System Despite 243-Percent Turnout in One Precinct 63 comments

With worn-out clichés about the dead voting, Chicago used to be the poster child for voter fraud. But if any state is a poster child for terrible election practices, it is surely Georgia. Bold claims demand bold evidence, and unfortunately there's plenty; on Monday, McClatchy reported a string of irregularities from the state's primary election in May, including one precinct with a 243-percent turnout.

McClatchy's data comes from a federal lawsuit filed against the state. In addition to the problem in Habersham County's Mud Creek precinct, where it appeared that 276 registered voters managed to cast 670 ballots, the piece describes numerous other issues with both voter registration and electronic voting machines. (In fact it was later corrected to show 3,704 registered voters in the precinct.)

Multiple sworn statements from voters describe how they turned up at their polling stations only to be turned away or directed to other precincts. Even more statements allege incorrect ballots, frozen voting machines, and other issues.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/08/georgia-defends-voting-system-despite-243-percent-turnout-in-one-precinct/


Original Submission

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
(1)
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14 2018, @02:55PM (14 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14 2018, @02:55PM (#721388)

    is if you stick a gun in my face and say "Pay your fair share, comrade."

    • (Score: 3, Touché) by Snow on Tuesday August 14 2018, @03:08PM

      by Snow (1601) on Tuesday August 14 2018, @03:08PM (#721393) Journal

      Well, that or being a Floridan taxpayer...

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14 2018, @03:13PM (9 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14 2018, @03:13PM (#721395)

      Hey there, tax protester. Here's what you should do for real. Go to the liquor store and buy something and refuse to pay sales tax. Then explain to the cops how you're not robbing the store. Have fun!

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14 2018, @03:50PM (8 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14 2018, @03:50PM (#721404)

        I pay what the proprietor and I agree on.

        If the proprietor sets aside some of his payment as "tax", then that's his issue.

        Voluntary interaction. How does it work?

        • (Score: 2) by Snow on Tuesday August 14 2018, @04:54PM (7 children)

          by Snow (1601) on Tuesday August 14 2018, @04:54PM (#721418) Journal

          So when you rent a hotel room, you refuse to pay the tax portion, right?

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14 2018, @04:59PM (6 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14 2018, @04:59PM (#721420)

            Government is that guy who starts washing your windshield unsolicited (with dirty water no less).

            The only way I'm paying that guy is if he sticks a gun in my face and says "Pay your fair share, comrade."

            • (Score: 4, Insightful) by bob_super on Tuesday August 14 2018, @05:13PM (5 children)

              by bob_super (1357) on Tuesday August 14 2018, @05:13PM (#721428)

              WTF are you doing on my government-funded Internet ?

              • (Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14 2018, @05:22PM (4 children)

                by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14 2018, @05:22PM (#721436)

                Besides, the Internet is being captured by governments; it was not created by governments.

                • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14 2018, @05:46PM (3 children)

                  by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14 2018, @05:46PM (#721445)

                  Huh, coulda fooled me.

                  The first workable prototype of the Internet came in the late 1960s with the creation of ARPANET, or the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network. Originally funded by the U.S. Department of Defense, ARPANET used packet switching to allow multiple computers to communicate on a single network. The technology continued to grow in the 1970s after scientists Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf developed Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol, or TCP/IP, a communications model that set standards for how data could be transmitted between multiple networks. ARPANET adopted TCP/IP on January 1, 1983, and from there researchers began to assemble the “network of networks” that became the modern Internet. The online world then took on a more recognizable form in 1990, when computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. While it’s often confused with the Internet itself, the web is actually just the most common means of accessing data online in the form of websites and hyperlinks. The web helped popularize the Internet among the public, and served as a crucial step in developing the vast trove of information that most of us now access on a daily basis.

                  Pretty heavy development that used taxpayer dollars. These days the data lines / towers are mostly privately owned but they use easements to use public space to run their wires and government granted licenses to operate wireless. Keep sucking on that corporate teat, we will all pray that one day you get a clue about how society works.

                  • (Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14 2018, @06:05PM (2 children)

                    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14 2018, @06:05PM (#721455)

                    Networking was the big thing in computing at the time; everyone and his dog, including corporations, were coming up with stuff. The government threw some money at one small team of your folks, and then the military mandated their protocols when it became clear that a standard would be useful.

                    What about GOPHER? What about AOL? All sorts of shit built the Internet, and the government played very little part other than granting monopolies to telephone companies earlier in the century. In contrast, France's government did try to build a comprehensive full-stack network, and it failed miserably; the Internet of today is fully and completely the product of git-er-done free-wheeling market-based Capitalism.

                    • (Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Tuesday August 14 2018, @08:28PM (1 child)

                      by Thexalon (636) on Tuesday August 14 2018, @08:28PM (#721520)

                      The government role in creating the Internet back when it was ARPANet was largely in funding the research on all the pieces and parts that made it work, and of course being connected to it early enough that they thought ".gov" and ".mil" would be useful TLDs back in 1985, 7 years before the Internet became a thing. Al Gore in particular was very interested in making sure the Internet happened throughout his entire political career, from funding the research in the 1980's to turning it from ARPANet into the Internet in 1992 to championing it as vice-president. Folks like Vint Cerf and Robert Kahn [umich.edu] who were heavily involved in that research are all very clear on that point. There was certainly also heavy involvement from corporations and universities, because WANs sure seemed like a very useful thing to have, but to claim the government wasn't involved flies in the face of demonstrable facts.

                      I'm guessing you're someone who believes the government inherently can't do anything useful. Well, this is one of those cases where relatively modest levels of government effort really managed to hit one out of the park. Now, I get that your instinct is to throw out that information because it doesn't conform to your belief system, but that doesn't make you right.

                      --
                      The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
                      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14 2018, @08:51PM

                        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14 2018, @08:51PM (#721530)
                        From your link:
                        • Here is the definitive statement on Gore's involvement in "inventing" the Internet, from the guys who really did

                          ORLY?

                        • No one person or even small group of persons exclusively "invented" the Internet. It is the result of many years of ongoing collaboration among people in government and the university community.

                        • Our work on the Internet started in 1973 and was based on even earlier work that took place in the mid-late 1960s.

                        • As a Senator in the 1980s Gore urged government agencies to consolidate what at the time were several dozen different and unconnected networks into an "Interagency Network."

                        • Gore provided much-needed political support for the speedy privatization of the Internet when the time arrived for it to become a commercially-driven operation.

                          It should be noted that there were already other commercial networking solutions to large-scale networking; government did what it does worst: Chooses winners and losers. Most of the modern Internet actually came from private enterprise shoehorning protocols together to make things work, and to expand capabilities. Look at the protocol stack of networking equipment—it's bonkers.

                        • There are many factors that have contributed to the Internet's rapid growth since the later 1980s, not the least of which has been political support for its privatization

                        So, a multi-decade, multi-organization effort was spotted as being interesting by one particular government official decades after the major work of networking began. Oh, and these 2 guys got some money from taxpayers. Wow.

    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14 2018, @05:39PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14 2018, @05:39PM (#721444)

      The way you will buy them is because the state, in cooperation with the feds, is going to offer a program of free money for your county elections board to buy these machines. No one is going to refuse free money.

      I heard on NPR today about how voting machine X "hasn't received updates since 2009". The mechanical machines my county replaced were from the 1960s and were kept until 2010. And some piece of shit electronic solution has planned obsolescence in 5 years.

      • (Score: 5, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday August 14 2018, @06:19PM (1 child)

        by DeathMonkey (1380) on Tuesday August 14 2018, @06:19PM (#721462) Journal

        The way you will buy them is because the state, in cooperation with the feds, is going to offer a program of free money for your county elections board to buy these machines. No one is going to refuse free money.

        Democrats wanted to give them money to buy machines with paper trails. Republicans, of course, rejected it. [cnet.com]

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14 2018, @06:24PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14 2018, @06:24PM (#721467)

          No driver's license, birth certificate, or other proof of citizenship? No vote.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14 2018, @03:16PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14 2018, @03:16PM (#721396)

    She is not allowed to vote, but has the right to hack the machines?

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14 2018, @03:17PM (8 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14 2018, @03:17PM (#721397)

    Emphasis by me:

    These machines are designed not to leave any evidence when tampering happens

    So it was an explicit design goal that you should not be able to detect if the results have been tampered with? In other words, those machines were designed to enable voting fraud?

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by ikanreed on Tuesday August 14 2018, @03:33PM (5 children)

      by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday August 14 2018, @03:33PM (#721401) Journal

      That's certainly the narrative that has been given by the very proximate anti-electronic-voting "side" in this debate.

      Which is basically the only side, because the debate seems to be one group saying "there's big problems with this and it could destroy democracy" and the other going "we'll budget for 10 machines per district right now" not noticing the former group at all.

      • (Score: 3, Touché) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday August 14 2018, @06:21PM (4 children)

        by DeathMonkey (1380) on Tuesday August 14 2018, @06:21PM (#721466) Journal

        Also, one side knows they can only win by cheating...

        • (Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday August 14 2018, @06:45PM (3 children)

          by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday August 14 2018, @06:45PM (#721477) Journal

          If only it were only one side. The problem that power begats the tools to retain power with just a teensy bit of corruption.

          It's not a solved problem, even with great* social tools we've invented like "democracy" and "transparency" and "checks and balances" and "free press". It's just too easy to take what control you have and put it towards keeping control.

          *my own faith in these tools is not what it once was

          • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14 2018, @07:47PM (2 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14 2018, @07:47PM (#721498)

            If only it were only one side.

            It is predominantly one side and one side only. Sure, you'll find crooked politicians in both parties, and in some local races you'll find cheating on either side, but when taken as a whole, there is one party that has made cheating a part of its core strategy, and another that has not. And in case it isn't clear, it's the party that lies an order of magnitude more often than the other (easily checked on numerous fact-checking sites which one, but in case you're at all confused, it's the party that used these techniques to install two presidents this century, neither of them African American).

            • (Score: 4, Interesting) by ikanreed on Tuesday August 14 2018, @08:20PM

              by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday August 14 2018, @08:20PM (#721515) Journal

              I appreciate what you're saying since the republicans have reduced my state to "broken democracy" by international standards. But there's piles corruption of so many kinds it's very difficult to see the forest for the trees.

              Because before these scumfuckers took over, redistricted to hell, denied hundreds of thousands the right to vote, shut down early voting, purged rolls, seized control of the election board, packed the state supreme court(pending), and did other seriously fucky things, the democrats took quid pro quo campaign donations pretty openly.

              The republicans are vile anti-democracy scum who need to be extirpated, but the dems were pretty bad.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 15 2018, @11:32AM

              by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 15 2018, @11:32AM (#721739)

              > It is predominantly one side and one side only. Sure, you'll find crooked politicians in both parties, and in some local races you'll find cheating on either side, but when taken as a whole, there is one party that has made cheating a part of its core strategy, and another that has not. And in case it isn't clear, it's the party that lies an order of magnitude more often than the other (easily checked on numerous fact-checking sites which one, but in case you're at all confused, it's the party that used these techniques to install two presidents this century, neither of them African American).

              What I found really interesting, is reading through your post, I could not tell which party you were on about until you brought race into it. If you remove your last line about race, from my vantage point both your parties fit the bill, because quite frankly, both of them are as bent as corkscrews.

              This "my party is better than your party" bullshit is the reason you lot are in this political mess right now. That and the fact you generally never vote for third parties, calling them "throwaway votes" and the like, which is the wrong attitude to have.

              Just my 0.02c

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday August 14 2018, @03:54PM

      by Thexalon (636) on Tuesday August 14 2018, @03:54PM (#721405)

      those machines were designed to enable voting fraud?

      Think of the situation from the point of view with someone with real power. For that person, the ideal election:
      1. Appears to be completely legitimate and reflect the will of the people.
      2. Guarantees that you (your party, your favorite pet politician, yourself if you are a politician, etc) win.
      That both gives you all the appearances needed to say "Yes, I speak for We The People", while at the same time ensuring that you don't have to govern based on what those pesky voters actually want.

      A voting system that can easily have the results changed is perfect for this, so long as it doesn't appear to most people like the results actually were changed. There have been hints that such things have happened before, e.g. suspiciously large differences between exit polls and election results in 2004 in a number of states. So far, though, these issues haven't entered the popular zeitgeist to the point where everyone assumes the election is a complete sham like they do in many poorer countries.

      --
      The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
    • (Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday August 15 2018, @12:09AM

      by sjames (2882) on Wednesday August 15 2018, @12:09AM (#721614) Journal

      It's hard not to see it that way. You get money from the ATM, you get a receipt. You buy gas, you get a receipt. You buy a single glazed donut, you get a receipt. Vote on the leader of the free world for the next 4 years? You get a sticker that says you voted.

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14 2018, @03:27PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14 2018, @03:27PM (#721398)

    While I find electronic voting to be a ludicrous idea and have known the current vendors are security sieves from the start, the headline here is garbage. The 11-year-old hacked a website, not a voting machine (and it wasn't even the real website). Basic mistakes like this are what lost the mainstream media any trust, it'd be a good idea to try to do better than the horribly low bar they set.

    • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 15 2018, @05:27AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 15 2018, @05:27AM (#721688)

      WE MADE IT, WE'RE MAINSTREAM MEDIA NOW! \o/

    • (Score: 2) by canopic jug on Thursday August 16 2018, @09:57AM

      by canopic jug (3949) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 16 2018, @09:57AM (#722106) Journal

      Appologies for that. I was reviewing quite a few background articles when writing the summary and then subsequently got the content jumbled. It's not good and is one of the reasons I try to avoid summaries, or at least let them rest a while before giving them a final review and sending them in.

      --
      Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by requerdanos on Tuesday August 14 2018, @03:31PM (5 children)

    by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday August 14 2018, @03:31PM (#721400) Journal

    an 11-year-old girl hacked a replica of the Florida secretary of state's website...and changed the results.

    Okay. Let's review what we know.

    A. INTERESTING: $random_person has cracked a voting machine and changed voting results.

    B. MORE INTERESTING: $random_child has cracked a voting machine and changed voting results.

    C. NOT INTERESTING: $anyone has cracked a replica of a website for pretty much any reason.

    I guess that is why the title shows B, TFS leads off trumpeting "B", and in the "boring details" section, admits it's only C.

    Not interesting.

    Voting machines with gaping security holes--especially those running proprietary, unauditable software--are very bad news. But preteens cracking websites aren't why. This type of press can undermine the anti-crappy-voting-machine cause by providing a ready-made strawman for the pro-incompetent-voting-machine folks (and their name is legion) to knock down.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14 2018, @03:54PM (4 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14 2018, @03:54PM (#721406)

      Remember that Fox News hacked the 2000 election by just claiming the result for Bush (and all the other copycats just followed on the wrong info). Al Gore won that election by any measure (delegates / popular votes).
      I wouldn't be surprised if that happened again.

      • (Score: 4, Funny) by requerdanos on Tuesday August 14 2018, @04:44PM (2 children)

        by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday August 14 2018, @04:44PM (#721417) Journal

        Fox News hacked the 2000 election

        You spelled SCOTUS wrong.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14 2018, @07:55PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 14 2018, @07:55PM (#721506)

          No, that *is* the new spelling.

          • (Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday August 14 2018, @10:12PM

            by LoRdTAW (3755) on Tuesday August 14 2018, @10:12PM (#721562) Journal

            I changed it to SCROTUM but who's keeping track?

      • (Score: 4, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday August 14 2018, @10:20PM

        by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Tuesday August 14 2018, @10:20PM (#721568) Journal

        Remember that Fox News hacked the 2000 election by just claiming the result for Bush

        Actually, I *don't* remember that, because it's NOT TRUE. Even before the polls closed in Florida, AP and then CNN claimed Gore won Florida (based on exit polls). All major networks followed. A couple hours later, Bush makes an announcement that he hasn't given up on Florida yet, because his campaign has conflicting numbers. ALL major networks place Florida in the "too close to call" category within minutes. Discussion then follows on all the networks about Florida demographics and the reliability of data. Several hours later (a little after 2am Eastern), after Bush had been showing a lead in counted votes for a while, ALL major networks called Florida for Bush. Soon after, Gore conceded. (You can find the timeline various places online, but this page [historyonthenet.com] has most of the relevant details.)

        Al Gore won that election by any measure (delegates / popular votes).

        I'm no Bush fan, and I never was. But this is just BS. First off, while there's a lot of nonsense about "winning the popular vote," that's IRRELEVANT in aggregate to national Presidential elections in the United States. It's not the way the rules are set up, and it's not how the candidates "play the game." The candidates know that they win mostly state-by-state, and that's how they divert resources in their campaigns. If they were trying to win a national popular vote, they'd undoubtedly campaign very differently.

        Saying anyone "won the popular vote" as if that's meaningful is like a group of people running an obstacle course, and someone skipped half of the obstacles and just ran through faster than everyone and declared himself the winner. If the rules are set up to require you to achieve one goal, but you achieve a different one, that doesn't mean you won.

        And yes, we can argue about whether the state-by-state model is a good way of electing a President. Personally, I think the current system has a lot of flaws. But both Gore and Bush were campaigning to try to win the Electoral College, NOT the popular vote.

        Second, the real takeaway is that the winner of Florida is indeterminate by any reasonable standard, because it was below the margin of error for the way the election and recounts were conducted. Various studies have shown both candidates could have potentially won under some scenarios. (A detailed historical review can be found here [cnn.com] for example.)

        However, Bush would have won under any standards that (1) any actual recounts that went on met, (2) any recount standards that were ordered by the Florida Supreme Court, (3) any standards for incomplete recounts ordered by the Florida Supreme Court (some of which weren't completed due to SCOTUS intervention, but had they been completed under the standards in place, Bush still would have won), and (4) any standards the Gore campaign actually argued for in recounts. So, under any real-world scenario involving actual recounts that took place or were argued for, Bush won.

        IF recounts of votes had been conducted that hadn't been requested by either side (particularly not by Gore's side) NOR had been requested by ANY court or legal team, depending on the standards adopted, Gore could have won. (Again, depending on standards adopted.) But that's not a real-world scenario.

        So, the question is why anyone is still whining about this crap 18 years later? Because of Democratic propaganda that refused to actually do anything productive and instead wished to undermine the legitimacy of Bush.

        As I said, I was never a Bush fan. But I moved on once I realized this was all Democratic whining. You want to change the way elections are run? Sure, go ahead. Lobby to do that. You want to change standards for future elections? Sure, go ahead. Lobby for that. It's desperately needed.

        I'm just disturbed at the number of people who just mod up BS based on party propaganda that's decades old.

(1)