| Author |
Message |
    
Michelle Smith
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Galfromcal
Post Number: 149
Registered: 11-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Thursday, November 2, 2006 - 11:44 pm: | 
|
I am so glad to see all these people come to the site and pledge that the will stand up and fight. I suggest that everyone give to this great nonprofit. I will be the first to pledge $100.00 for the month of November. I am donating this because I owe BBV. Everyone here has helped me so much and never asked for a dime, and I have never donated. Even though it is not that much it is time I did give to this great effort/cause!
Remember how much time these wonderful people have donated to save our Democracy.
Sincerely,
Michelle
The people who cast the votes decide nothing.The people who count the votes decide everything-Stalin
|
Ron Dotson
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Wethepeople
Post Number: 1
Registered: 11-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, November 3, 2006 - 2:34 am: |
|
It's been a long while since a video made me feel sick in the pit of my stomach. "Hacking Democracy" did that, but it is nonetheless a video that everyone should watch. In fact I would like to purchase legal copies of this video, either on DVD or as an electronic download to distribute to some of my friends. Where can I purchase copies of the HBO documentary "Hacking Democracy" please? I expect it will be on Bittorrent soon, but would prefer to support the producers if possible.
Thank you,
Ron |
Colin Bogart
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Colin
Post Number: 2
Registered: 11-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, November 3, 2006 - 11:29 am: |
|
While I'm happy that HBO has aired "Hacking Democracy", I'm disappointed that they have not posted information for people who want to do something. The link to Black Box Voting was buried in an interview with Beverly and I think that's a shame. HBO should prominently post links to Black Box Voting and other voting related organizations around the country. I've submitted a complaint to HBO via their website and encourage other HBO subscribers to do the same. HBO has scheduled more screenings so it's not too late to update their website and provide relevant links. |
Michelle Smith
Frequent Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Galfromcal
Post Number: 154
Registered: 11-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, November 3, 2006 - 12:46 pm: |
|
As part of its Election Day monitoring efforts, the ACLU Voting Rights Project and various ACLU state affiliates will monitor polling sites and respond to incidents of voter intimidation, vote suppression or election irregularities. Voters with complaints are encouraged to call the organization's toll-free voter hotline, 1-877-523-2792. The hotline will operate from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. EST on Election Day, Tuesday, November 7.
The people who cast the votes decide nothing.The people who count the votes decide everything-Stalin
|
Len Rideout
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Rideout
Post Number: 2
Registered: 06-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Friday, November 3, 2006 - 7:56 pm: |
|
Bev,
I don't have HBO, but a fellow federal employee friend of mine recorded it for me. I just finished watching it.
The demonstration at the end with 7 YES and 1 NO votes was the most effective. Folks have to see it with their own eyes. When they do, they will be with us.
Being in IT, I would love to quit my federal job and develop the right software, whose source code would be open to all election officials and their designated IT professionals.
Folks will google Black Box Voting and find this site so I wouldn't worry about the lack of a prominent web page address in the special.
Sound quality is the only thing that can make a documentary seem amateurish. But, I know good sound is hard to do on a small budget. Sorry. I'm from Boston. We're all pretty critical up here, you know. We always think we know best. :-)
Len Rideout
Concord, MA
Home of the 1st and 2nd American Revolutions |
Bob Fleischer
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Rjf7r
Post Number: 84
Registered: 09-2005
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, November 6, 2006 - 7:29 am: |
|
Len, I don't know if you were suggesting open software for the election machines, but a number of knowledgeable analysts have written to explain why open source isn't enough to insure integrity of election machines.
Bob
Groton, MA
(legend says we sent minutemen to Concord, but legend doesn't say if they ever got there!) |
Bill Bowen
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Bbowen8
Post Number: 2
Registered: 11-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, November 6, 2006 - 11:16 am: |
|
I just finished watching "Hacking Democracy" myself. And while I thought the Leon County demonstration was the most riveting footage they could have shown, I was disappointed in a lot of information that wasn't shown. For example...
1) They talk a lot about the -17000 votes for Al Gore in Volusia County, Fl., but they never say that Gore lost the state that year by fewer than 600 votes. Is that a fact they just assume the public remembers? Along those same lines, they never mention the 2000 voters in Palm Beach County that year who pushed Al Gore's name and voted for Pat Buchanan instead. But mainly I'm surprised they didn't mention the differential in conjunction with the -17000 votes.
2) There's not one mention of exit poll data in the film. To me, the exit poll data IS THE EVIDENCE ELECTION FRAUD WAS COMMITTED in both 2000 and 2004. When the exit polls show all 10 swing states being won by Kerry, and the election results show all 10 actually going to Bush, why doesn't this get more attention from the filmmakers?
3) Again, along with the exit polls on the election results in Florida in 2004 using Sequoia Voting systems. http://ideamouth.com/voterfraud.htm
Not to sound like a conspiracy theorist (as the film so eloquently demonstrates that we are not) but I think Diebold and it's competitors are just half the equation to the elections in this country. Certainly auditing is one way to expose fraud, but since we can't (yet), why isn't more being made about these exit poll discrepencies in the last 2 elections, and why aren't we attacking the poll collectors (the Zogby's, the AP's) with the same determination and scrutiny that we're attacking the voting machine vendors? The exit polls are the only check we currently DO have. Why aren't we scrutinizing this data more? I'd feel a lot better knowing that we're going after the polling companies to make them public-owned and put them up to the same transparency tests that we are putting our voting systems up to.
I just think it was a missed opportunity and I'm not sure why HBO chose (and it had to be a conscious decision) to not mention the exit poll results and the history of exit polling in general, in this documentary. The film was only an hour and 20 minutes long. They could have easily touched on the exit poll data in another 10-15 minutes.
Overall though, I was thrilled to see this released.
Bill Bowen |
Katherine Petty
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Kathyp
Post Number: 1
Registered: 11-2006
Best of Black Box? 
Votes: 1 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, November 6, 2006 - 1:11 pm: |
|
I, too, felt sick to my stomach after watching this last night (TIVO). I had set to record after seeing the promotions, and then heard Joy Beahar (?) on "The View" discussing her reaction on Fridays show. I hope that other viewers of their program will take heed and tune in to this documentary. I agree with a previous poster about possibly showing "HD" on a network channel. More people need to see this. |
David Xu
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: David88
Post Number: 2
Registered: 11-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Monday, November 6, 2006 - 8:45 pm: |
|
Bill Bowen-
Addressing your questions, I believe the producers left out much of the material that is partisan because they didn't want it to be a one-party problem causing the other parties to discredit it (think Fahrenheit 9/11 and how practically all non-Dems blew it off), but something we as citizens of america should be concerned about. |
Bill Bowen
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Bbowen8
Post Number: 4
Registered: 11-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, November 7, 2006 - 9:11 am: |
|
David,
I do understand that nearly all of the exit poll discrepencies in the last two elections skewed toward the Republicans. I'm not saying they had to drive this point home. They didn't even have to mention which party the exit polls ran counter to. But to not mention the exit poll process in our elections, or at least give a history of exit poll data, seems like a striking omission to me. I do realize it would seem to make the film more partisan, but the exit poll situation in this country is identical to the hidden, secretive black box voting machines. I'd like to see an expose on the exit polls somewhere, sometime too. They are just as much to blame for why we are where we are in my opinion. Why aren't these companies standing behind their data? Why are they secretly changing their data to match the election outcome the morning and weeks afterward? This is not another whole documentary in itself. It's directly related to the secrecy of election process, including electronic voting machines. |
Chuck N
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Datars
Post Number: 9
Registered: 11-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Tuesday, November 7, 2006 - 1:17 pm: |
|
This morning I went to my local Polling station with my Portable DVD player, and played two parts of the video. The one with the touch-screen in 1996 and Optical scanner at the end of the video. These people were amazed at what they witness. One woman started shaking after viewing this. I told them that they can watch it on Google if they don't have HBO.
I myself watch this Saturday morning, and I knew then that I needed to get this up on Google fast, so I did. Sunday I had just under 4000 hits, yesterday I had almost 13,000 hits
(Message edited by datars on November 07, 2006)
(Message edited by datars on November 07, 2006)
(Message edited by datars on November 07, 2006) |
Caryl Brt
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Brtova
Post Number: 4
Registered: 10-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Saturday, November 11, 2006 - 3:21 pm: |
|
Hi, I have looked for a "Hacking Democracy" video on the web with no luck. Does anyone know a website that is showing it? With the election over, I figured I could watch it on the web since I don't have HBO.
brtova |
Caryl Brt
Voting Rights Forum Participant
Username: Brtova
Post Number: 5
Registered: 10-2006
Best of Black Box? N/A
Votes: 0 (A keeper?) | | Posted on Saturday, November 11, 2006 - 3:23 pm: |
|
Hi again.
I finally found "Hacking Democracy":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtPiGIqSljE
brtova |
