MrSpikey
Well-Known Member
I had a little time to waste earlier, and as it touches on a couple of my favourite subjects, I gave this a watch.
Is this rogue program totally subverting democracy as we know it?
That's an easy one - no.
The program wasn't written to deal with any US elections specifically - it's generic voting software, and can be set up to do all kinds of things such as weighting votes by identity, recording who cast which vote, etc. which wouldn't be allowed in your elections.
The video spent a lot of time showing that is was possible to do these things, but didn't provide any evidence that these things have happened. Indeed, the blackboxvoting site outright lies on this subject:
"Instead of “1” the vote is allowed to be 1/2, or 1+7/8, or any other value that is not a whole number."
The value is stored as a decimal, but whole numbers can be represented accurately as decimals, so this is false.
In the demonstrations shown in the video, the system parameters have been set up to allow weighted voting and show the fractional results. The implication is that this setup could be used. That doesn't mean that this setup has been or will be used in an election.
To summarize the above for the technically confused - the software could be setup to allow voter fraud. No evidence is provided that this has been done. Equally, with paper ballots, someone could stuff the ballot box with votes for a favoured candidate before the polls open. To ensure a fair election in either case, physical restrictions on the setup and operation of the polls are required to ensure such situations don't occur.
The other main point they made is that election results can be changed. They went around the houses a fair bit with this one, but the point is - if one has access to the databases that contain the results, the results can be changed. Again, no evidence was presented that this has been done. Similarly, if someone who wishes to alter results to their favour in a paper ballot, all they would need is physical access to the ballot boxes to do so. Once more, physical restrictions on the setup and operation of the polls are required to ensure such situations don't occur.
The TL;DR summary - whatever format is used to record the votes, sufficient procedures must be in place to ensure that individuals with an agenda aren't offered the opportunity to adjust them by physically interfering them, before, during or after the polls.
I'm happy to address any specific issues with anything raised in the video, if anyone has questions.
(although if it's along the lines of "[large group of people] have been planning to subvert the process, so of course it is happening", I probably won't. I can't prove they haven't, but more importantly, you can't prove they have)
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