Tech Report: Voting Machines

Ben does it again- informative and very funny!

HOLY DUCKING $HIT!!!!!!! so this can go one way or another, either McCain does this or Obama but no matter who it is this will set the tone for future elections. We need these machine to be replaced so that this cannot happen.

where can i get my hands on that Shoes remake?
hilarious

awesome. thanks much.

AHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

............AHHHHHH!!!!!!!

A seven?! But these go to eleven.

Most voting machines only go to ten.

But when the government needs that extra juice.

Eleven...right. Eh? Eh?

it would take some elephantine balls to attempt to steal the election at this point. in 2000 and 2004, it almost seemed like a fringe conspiracy theory. people that spoke up were marginalized and dubbed 'sore losers'. but these issues are all over the corporate media this time around, and obama's lead seems indomitable at this point.

but i guess that's what the preparations for martial law are anticipating.

SPOILER ALERT: this pod includes a parody of Liam Sullivan's viral video "Shoes" (re-worked as "These votes are good, these votes suck"). Portions of the original "Shoes" video can be seen at http://current.com/items/89294473_cewebrity_profile_liam_sullivan, while the complete redux entitled "Votes" can be viewed at a link that has already been posted above.

Memorable quote from the pod: "Bush is a metaphor for the farting baby."

NEWER SAY NEVER: MCAIN CAN WIN

Greg Palast explains why:

1. The number of voters challenged or missing from the voter rolls on Tuesday will exceed six million - double the number from 2004. In that election, 1.1 million provisional ballots were rejected: this time, rejected ballots will easily double to 2 million - overwhelmingly Obama supporters. This is the result of a mass purge of voter rolls orchestrated by Republican Secretaries of State. The purge has been staggering - over ten million names disappeared since the last election.

And not just any voters. Analysis shows that purged voters who cast provisional ballots are overwhelmingly Black, Hispanic and Native American - that is, Obama voters.

2. Absentee ballots disqualified and not counted will double from 2004 to 1.5 million minimum. This is the result of a massive increase in mail-in ballots - but mostly from the hundreds of thousands of new voters who don't know that, in many states, they will have to include a photocopy of their ID with the absentee ballot. They won't, or they'll do it wrong, and lose their vote.

3. Spoiled ballots (unreadable, blank, mis-marked) will stay well over one million (there were 1.4 million of these in 2004). The chance a Black voter will find their vote lost to technical error, according to a US Civil Rights Commission study, has been 900% higher than for a white voter.

4. New voters: ID and 'verification' losses. For the first time in US history, new voters must pass through a "verification" of their identity by states. Up to 42% of new registrations have been rejected, the vast majority due to errors in government records and matching systems. New voters are Obama voters - 69% to 20% - according to a Wall Street Journal survey. 'FTF' (First-Time Federal) voters now will also have special ID and absentee voting restrictions that will disqualify voters and votes by the millions.

The total number of votes cast but not counted was, officially, 3 million in 2004. Double that this time, to at least six million. That will be concentrated in swing states where Republican Secretaries of State have conducted mass purge-and-block operations, such as Colorado, where GOP officials quietly purged 19.4% of the all the names on the state's voter rolls.

Obama can still win, but he'll have a beat a margin of voting law manipulation that will cost him nearly six million votes.

Vote for him - because he's Black
http://www.gregpalast.com/vote-for-him-because-hes-black/

wow, i am really freaked out now!

holy crap that votes video was hilarious.

Being a UCSB student, having seen Professor Vigna's lecture on electronic voting machines, and being a former Current intern, I just have to say that I was pretty embarrassed by this pod. It does a terrible job of convincing people of the seriousness of the issue. How can you expect people to take you seriously by making sexist comments like, "If this doesn't make your balls shrivel in fear, you're probably a woman"?

I also thought the way you treated Professor Vigna in the interview was very disrespectful.

Satire has its place, but this pod goes too far. You guys didn't even educate people with any practical information like what states the voting machines would be used in, how many of them there are, etc. Instead, all you gave us were fart jokes.

On behalf of the Tech Report team, I apologize for this pod's implication that women don't have testicles. It was a misguided joke based solely on biological fact and it wont happen again. In an age when women continue to struggle for parity with their male counterparts, it is thoughtless comments like Ben's that obstruct the movement toward scrotal equality.