William Chirolas -- World News Trust
Oct. 17, 2006 -- To steal an election we'd need only one programmer to write and debug this simple a code.
With only one person writing the code we would be unlikely to have a whistle-blower. But we might get whistle-blower reports because of weird update procedures or tests of machines just before the election, or unusual precinct choices for pre-election tests.
As I recall, the State of Georgia had such a comment about "weirdness" regarding last-minute "fixes" to the software (which is illegal for obvious reasons), and Ohio had comments about election machine technicians wandering among the machines in storage and at precinct locations, without being invited, or being announced or anticipated.
Nothing in the theft of election code would be documented as it would be inserted as was done in the Princeton video as a self-destructing worm that restores everything back to the original, apparently virgin, state after "fixing" the database so as to report the wrong -- biased toward the GOP -- totals. The software would recognize the difference between a real election and a functional test because of the way it is set-up -- based either on code used by the person turning the machine on (election official or technician), or based on a code entered to tell it this is a test.
The technician simply slips in a test memory card as per instructions, notes proper response, removes the card and replaces it with the correct blank card and moves on. The game is now fixed -- and the technician does not know what he did. The Texas fellow that was a technician described the last minute delivery of test cards and test instructions in 2004.
Programing in the pre-history (the 1970s) of personal computers, I recall a public domain program written in the language "C" that was used to detect a given word within a given number of spaces of another word or field. Granted it was not set up to work with a user interface (UI) -- it treated the screen crudely -- but today's tools make the application to a screen a rather simple rewrite of that old code.
But why worry -- our media surely will expose any wrongdoing, and our courts will accept the statistical evidence that proves that wrongdoing, and will then make things right. Won't they?
That the GOP just happens to control all three companies that provide electronic voting machines... that doesn't matter. The guarantee in 2004 by a Bush backer (and controller of a voting machine company) that Bush would carry Ohio... why that was just a positive outlook -- like Bush smiling now in the face of very bad polls.
One should not assume that there are folks in the GOP party who put winning above all else and would cheat.
Heck, next folks will be telling me some GOPer would hide the fact that a GOP Congressman was a child molester because they put the election above all other things.
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William Chirolas brings 40 years of real-world business experience in local, state, national, and international tax, pensions, and finance to the world of blogging. A graduate of MIT, he calls the Boston area home, except when visiting kids and grandkids. He can be reached at: \n