Comments on The Burd Report: I can't believe I missed this!

Northumberland Today is reporting that Councillor ...

2009-11-03T12:34:02.337-05:00

Northumberland Today is reporting that Councillor Stan Frost has pointed out nearly half of the voters in the last election opted for the old fashioned paper ballot.

I wonder how they feel about paperless voting? Guess we'll never know since they were not given the opportunity to contribute to the discussion.

As for me, this old dog can learn new tricks, but doesn't want to in this case. I just don't trust internet or telephone voting very much. Can't help but envision that it's the current town council counting them and merrily deleting votes not sent their own way.

So anticipating the criticisms that will doubtless be flung at me from certain quarters, I readily admit to being (1) a Luddite who won't move with the times, and
(2) perhaps a tad bit paranoid.

But remember, just because you're paranoid does not mean someone isn't out to get you!

"Full many a gem or purest ray serene,/The da...

2009-11-03T12:31:35.927-05:00

"Full many a gem or purest ray serene,/The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear./Full many a flower was born to blush unseen,/and waste it's sweetness on the desert air."

And you, Anon: "to Fortune and to Fame unknown." Why so?

boyoboy, I read that whole book and did not find a...

2009-11-03T10:47:57.979-05:00

boyoboy, I read that whole book and did not find anywhere in it the part where Adams talks about paperless voting, which is what this post was about, in case anybody has forgotten.

William, these are interesting issues: don't let them get hidden, obscured and lost at the bottom of long and long-past comment-threads.

Put them in a Guest entry instead.

Let them shine and garner their own thread of comments instead of piggy-backing.

William said to Wally: "See, if you will, th...

2009-10-31T23:17:02.078-04:00

William said to Wally:

"See, if you will, this summary of a 2006 Environics study: Unlikely Utopia: The Surprising Triumph of Canadian Pluralism by Michael Adams."

What Dan didn't know -and certainly never would have suspected until a stunning dark-haired femme fatale drifted into earshot and languidly positioned herself not three feet away at The Winchester, was that the mere mention of the electrifying phrase '....the surprising triumph of Canadian pluralism...., cunningly dropped at exactly the right moment, brought forth in this previously unknown but undeniably sexual creature feelings of passion she had perhaps never before experienced. No one was more surprised than myself. I thank you William for unlocking a secret to the female persona I had so woefully overlooked. And to you Wally I say, from experience -Why hate women, why resort to doggerel, when you can bring them to their knees with '...the surprising triumph of Canadian pluralism..'?

William has handed you the key, Wally. It worked for me, it can work for you. Put the key in the lock and turn it.

Smiles await you when you rise....

How would anyone kn ow whether "anonymous&quo...

2009-10-31T12:33:03.435-04:00

How would anyone kn ow whether "anonymous" made a pledge or not. One anonymous is like any anonymous. If "anonymous" makes a pledge of any sort, it is worthless, because the anonymous is characterless. If anonymous hasn't the spine to take ownership of their pledge, then why should anyone respect anonymous's faux pledge?

Address that, anonymous.

Many of us made a pledge. The idea was to keep peo...

2009-10-30T08:46:40.991-04:00

Many of us made a pledge. The idea was to keep people from being alienated from this blog.

The direction this thread is taking runs completely counter to that pledge.

I haven't tarnished my reputation. It was a co...

2009-10-29T15:24:42.804-04:00

I haven't tarnished my reputation. It was a commentator on this blog that tarnished my reputation by publicly announcing to the world that I am a woman-hater. I believe it was a deeply and sincerely held belief by the comentator that I hate women; the announcement has never been rescinded, I assume for good reason, it serves justice.
If you have a concern, then I'd advise you to contact those who exercise their thoughtful intelligence in matters concerning who is or is not a woman-hater. Until it is retracted I will wear the accusation shamefacedly. I did attempt once to post a defence of my reputation, but the blog owner declined to publish it, although the owner had no problem posting the character assassination attempt against me. That's the way some socialist-inclined people behave.

I did receive three responses in emails that the accuser was way out of line with such a tarnishing of an individual's reputation, but then again, the accuser deeply believes I hate women, otherwise they would not have made such a public assertion.

Wally: Give up harping on this woman hating stuff...

2009-10-28T20:06:32.786-04:00

Wally:

Give up harping on this woman hating stuff. You are tarnishing an otherwise good reputation.

Hi, Wally. Your energetic participation in this t...

2009-10-28T16:31:26.032-04:00

Hi, Wally.

Your energetic participation in this thread allows me to squeeze in this additional response to your earlier question about how we might determine the nature of the Canadian political centre.

See, if you will, this summary of a 2006 Environics study: Unlikely Utopia: The Surprising Triumph of Canadian Pluralism by Michael Adams.

Incidentally, none of the three books I have suggested arose as the result of a research effort to answer your question. Some months/years ago I myself read all of them. Now I hope that you will, too!

It takes two steps to be the first one to declare ...

2009-10-28T12:34:18.877-04:00

It takes two steps to be the first one to declare that voter consultation be recommended: (1) bravery to step up to the plate and announce it, (2) the wise insight to recognize the need in the first place.

I certainly didn't think about it until Deb brought it up, but then again, I'm a right-wing neo-fascist woman-hating politically-incorrect atheist racist, aka white trash, the kind that blessed socialists point out attend local hockey games.

You are not alone.

2009-10-28T11:41:16.176-04:00

You are not alone.

Seems to me this is an initiative that requires in...

2009-10-28T11:36:47.667-04:00

Seems to me this is an initiative that requires input from the voters before implementation. I've been waiting for someone else to point that out, but nobody has.

Am I the only one who thinks we should have been consulted first?

Ever since the town has used electronic voting all...

2009-10-27T17:45:42.485-04:00

Ever since the town has used electronic voting all the incumbents have got back in. Is this a coincidence? Probably, but there is no way to tell.

At least with regular voting (polling stations with ballot boxes) the candidates can have a scrutineer to watch for irregularities, and also to verify the count.

With all-electronic voting there are no scrutineers to see who is voting and how often. There is also no way of validating the vote. I am sure that electronic machines would never make a mistake, but who has read all the coding in the machine to check whether there are any irregular instructions?

This last point is very important. Old Folks Homes...

2009-10-27T14:00:28.989-04:00

This last point is very important. Old Folks Homes are usually a separate polling station. Normally the turnout is very low, if the turnout now becomes high because a person has "diverted" the mailouts how will a high count from this place ever be detected?

Elections Canada has an established practice of se...

2009-10-27T13:48:02.889-04:00

Elections Canada has an established practice of setting up special --and small-- polling stations to guarantee certain subsets of the population are enfranchised.

An example would be the temporary but in-need-of-protection residents of a women's shelter, adults living with a handicap in a group home setting, etc.

Now will all these people be sent a PIN in the mail.

Couldn't an unscrupulous person with access to such a place (resident, staff, volunteer, etc.) scoop all the pieces of mail and then have 8 to 20 votes to cast from their own home computer?

On another angle, will voter registration be done online, too? Is door to door enumeration a thing of the past?

With software that acts as a web-crawler bot, searching for email addresses to build spam lists and auto-registering at various web-pages, chat rooms, etc, it would be an easy tweak to do multiple online voter registrations.

It's not my intention to blow things out of pr...

2009-10-27T13:08:20.607-04:00

It's not my intention to blow things out of proportion. I am just frustrated that the software is a black box. We can't independently verify that it doesn't have other stupid bugs like that.

Not so paranoid when you look at the voting abuses...

2009-10-27T12:42:48.073-04:00

Not so paranoid when you look at the voting abuses that go on in the US in registration campaigns unsecured apartment mail boxes and identifiable mailout notices very easy to pilfer and then vote. Personally i would be far more interested in the angle of candidates or their workers using smart phones on the doorstep

So Chris L. points out some individual had fun wit...

2009-10-27T12:35:19.126-04:00

So Chris L. points out some individual had fun with Intellivote. Big deal. Did the hacker successfully place a vote? No. Did the hacker facilitate skewed results? No. So what if he can continue to input giggerish and get the same result? And why fall for this hacker scam as if had any significance?

What is in Michael Moron's "Stupid White ...

2009-10-27T12:20:01.459-04:00

What is in Michael Moron's "Stupid White Men" that is worth reading for anyone other than for stupid black women and all-colour cranks?

DJC makes a prediction: what a whopper. Anyone can predict future store openings, but it takes enormous psychic power to predict Florida II, the sequal.

What absurd reasoning!

And the suggestion that someone will go through the mail for PINs is ludicrous. As one who did experience their mail being intercepted and withheld by The State, I can attest that the paranoia of having voting pins stolen is so off the reality scale that it shouldn't merit mentioning -- even on a blog.

Here's a fellow having some fun with the Intel...

2009-10-27T10:14:53.788-04:00

Here's a fellow having some fun with the Intelivote software a couple years ago:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X-ZZcIRVeQ

At the end he is creating a link that injects his own code into the Intelivote administrator login page.

How did I find this? The first page of results for a Google search for "Intelivote".

Going after someone else's mail to steal their...

2009-10-27T09:48:17.282-04:00

Going after someone else's mail to steal their PIN would be a definite worry. I suppose it is possible that some candidate's campaign could make an organized effort to do this on a wide-scale basis. That would be criminal, of course. I am not sure if I think it is likely to happen. Much more likely, in my mind, is 2, 3 or 4 elector PINs arrive by mail at a home for a wife, husband and 2 adult children where 3 is disinterested in politics but one is an avid politico: how tempting would it be to cast the same ballot 4 times knowing those other people in the home never vote in elections anyway? It's hard to show up at a polling station for the second time that day trying to claim that this time you are not a 45 year old man but a 21 year old woman (his disinterested daughter).

"For those who wouldn't want to use the t...

2009-10-27T09:31:09.668-04:00

"For those who wouldn't want to use the telephone or home computer, there would be "one central polling location with trained staff to assist the voters by providing the opportunity for the elector to vote by Internet," stated a report provided to councillors at Monday night's committee of the whole meeting." quote from Valerie MacDonald, Northumberland Today

I am not certain that this answers Ben's concerns but those who refuse to have a computer at home or internet access through any other device (e.g. cell phone) can get access at a central polling station on election day. The question that remains would be: will a luddite late-adopter refuse to even use new-fangled technology made available by someone else who is willing to shepherd them through using it?

In 'Stupid White Men', Michael Moore talks...

2009-10-27T09:15:07.571-04:00

In 'Stupid White Men', Michael Moore talks about the whole hi-jacking of the Florida electoral process, the hanging chads, the conniving rodents who brought it all about to their own benefit.

Trouble is, Cobourg's stupid white men never read Michael Moore's Stupid White Men -so, well, here we go again.

DJC