Minnesota Will Show Any Voting Tricks
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| Wed, 11-05-2008 - 10:07am |
A recount is coming in the Franken Coleman Senate race in Minnesota. This may be the window that Florida never was in 2000 because there was never a statewide recount and Ohio never was in 2004 because Kerry did not pursue a statewide recount.
Let's dig into this America. Let's see what's really going on with our voting system. Republicans say the Democrats are manipulating the system and the Democrats say the reverse is true. Let's see what is really going on here with the vote. Unfortunately this will not touch voter registration as much, but at least it will touch the voting process.
As for registration, it's time we allow all Americans to vote without needless paperwork. If a citizen can get a drivers license or a passport that should be enough to allow her or him to vote. There should be a statewide database to verify of course. I'm thinking something is rotten in Denmark, but I could be wrong.

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"Minnesota has a great system and it offends me that someone would think there would be fraud."
Why does it offend you? Do you think Minnesota is superior to other states where there are close votes? Do you think that Minnesota is better than Ohio?
There was a ton of evidence of voter fraud in Ohio in 2004. Here it is: http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/10432334/was_the_2004_election_stolen
And there was evidence of widespread voter fraud by Republicans in this election:
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/10/9/greg_palast_on_vote_rigging_and
Do you think your state is better than all the other close states involved in these scams?
I love and respect the good people of Minnesota as fellow Americans. But if you are trying to tell me that Minnesota is better than the rest of America and is somehow perfect and immune from well-documented widespread problems with the vote, you haven't even come close to making that case. I don't buy it based on your statement alone. And you are biased because you are a right-winger defending Coleman and his narrow Republican Senate victory.
And the capper is that there are strong indications that Minnesota is not superior to other states when it comes to voting and that lo and behold voting shenanigans have occurred there too:
Your state was smack in the middle of the outrageous voter fraud US Attorney purge!
In fact, your former excellent US prosecutor got fired for not bringing bogus voter fraud cases - he was replaced by an inexperienced right-wing drone whacko who drove her reports nuts.
"At a time when GOP activists wanted U.S. attorneys to concentrate on pursuing voter fraud cases, Heffelfinger’s office was expressing deep concern about the effect of a state directive that could have the effect of discouraging Indians in Minnesota from casting ballots."
http://articles.latimes.com/2007/may/31/nation/na-usatty31
"One of the interesting stories out of today might be how Somali voters are treated.
Minnesota Independent's Molly Priesmeyer says GOP vote-challengers arrived at Cedar-Riverside's Brian Coyle Center claiming they'd been told a translator was telling people who to vote for. Witnesses tell Priesmeyer the only translator doing that was pitching for Norm Coleman. Later, Coleman staffer Mahamoud Wardere, who refused to reveal his identity originally., came in and also "translated for Coleman.""
http://www.minnpost.com/braublog/2008/11/04/4334/polling_place_roundup_330_pm_glean
"Example of Inserting Security Problems with Voting Rule Manipulation
One example was reported July 23, 2004 when Republican Mary Kiffmeyer, the secretary of state of Minnesota, wrote election rules to supposedly implement HAVA without public hearings. Some of the election rules were overturned by a State Administrative Law Judge. But then they were rewritten without any hearings, again, to do essentially the same thing and became official election rules a month before primary elections. Check Google for "Kiffmeyer election rules."
One set of rules in particular creates very easy challenges of voters who could be barred from voting if the voting information was not exactly matched by "official" databases. So, if the voter data had "Joe X. Blow" but some Department of Public Safety database says "Joe Xavier Blow", a voter could be barred from voting. What is more, if the Secretary of State challenges voters the County auditor must verify the voter in ten days or the voter is barred from voting and must re-register.
A method of distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack on the voting process I will call the "Kiffmeyer Finesse" would be to drop voter participation in targeted precincts by challenging thousands of voters in a county for not matching exact data from the non-specified Public Safety or Social Security databases or other non-specific problems close to the time that the lists must be created for an election. The precincts and the voters are easily targeted because all the election results are also centrally located in the central database. An outside contractor could compare political party donation databases, interest group lists, credit card, finance data (home owner vs renter), health data, etc., to refine the challenge lists to specific political characteristics. The Department of Public Safety databases have other characteristics such as criminal records, general police incident records, court records, physical attributes (brown vs blue eyes), id photos, race data. A finely tuned challenge list is created, shades of Florida, and sent to the counties a day or two before the election roster deadline.
The counties have limited staff, yet are responsible to verify the challenged voters in only ten days, however this is only a day or two before the election lists must be created and the county staff gets overwhelmed and only verifies several hundred of the thousands of voters challenged. The "finesse" is that unlike Florida, the Minnesota county cannot just reject the changes to the list, the master list is now controlled by the Secretary of State of Minnesota with power to add and drop voters and the challenged voters not verified by the county are dropped. The voters then show up at the poll, but surprise, they are not on the list as registered voters and get questioned by judges, slowing the voting process at the targeted precincts and dropping voter participation because as lines grow long people will leave as well as voters that are turned away or marked "provisional" if they cannot convince the election judges that they are proper voters. Meanwhile, in the non-targeted precincts very few such problems occur.
To defend from this attack is difficult, no audit process is in place to prevent the Secretary of State from using any criteria they wish to check a specific set of voters for minor data differences in "official" data sources. Also, the timing is up to the Secretary of State. Masking attack targets by sprinkling challenges across counties and precincts can confuse an audit scheme. Unlike Florida, the county officials cannot just reject the voter challenges by the Secretary of State, but must accept them until proven otherwise by the county.
Many other rules also had the effect of moving the decision power from the county level to the secretary of state, weakening the distributed nature of the election process and making the process vulnerable to central attack points."
http://www.tc.umn.edu/~hause011/article/Vote2.html
And I'm not claiming that Democrats are immune from the problem of voter fraud (though I think they are a heck of a lot better than Republicans today), and plenty of folks from your party have made wild charges about voter fraud in Minnesota. I am glad to hear you don't believe any of those LOL!
Tootired-
I apologize I didn't mean all republicans in Minnesota were trying to suppress the vote I was really referring to the poster that was critisizing the voucher system in Minnesota. I was making a point of someone I knew that voted that way and she said if the person couldn't get it together in time they shouldn't be able to vote. All I was saying is that I beleive in letting everyone vote and the suppressing comment was more directed at that poster and those that think there should be extra barriers in the voting process. I support everyone to vote regardless of party and do think a vst majority of Minnesotans feel the same way. I am very proud of our voting in our state.
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