As You See It: April 27, 2008

I agree with Beverly Menehan in that the moderators were definitely focused on creating confrontation between the two candidates.(makes for high ratings) There were more pertinent issues to be visited here and instead the two just sort of beat up on each other.
To refer to Hillary's out and out lying (total fabrication) as an exaggeration is just a way to sort of patch up the huge gap in her overall credibility. I mean this is who she is! She, like most politicians, will say or do anything to get votes. Bill was no different. After election the promises went right out the window and Monica came in the side door.

To John Beisner, Boulder Creek:
Hey, John....all the votes eventually got counted, and Bush still won. The truth hurts, but it does help one move on from a painful situation.
I'm no Bush-lover, but I am not alone in my exhaustion at the rehashing of the '00 and '04 elections.
For Pete's sake, MOVE ON!

The votes in the state of Florida were FRAUDULENTLY obtained and filtered by Bush's crooked brother in 00. Then they were counted. DUHHHHHHHH!

It has been eight years since the electoral debacle in Florida, which in turn inspired the Help America Vote Act that has now been the law of the land for several years. The idea was to increase the convenience, accuracy, and integrity of our elections. We have spent countless hours of effort and millions of tax dollars -- for what? By the looks of things: Another election, in which the voting process itself confuses and discourages, casting doubt upon the outcome, and inspiring heated argument for years afterward.

By now, we have had enough time, and certainly have expended enough resources, to create a convenient, accurate, verifiable and secure electronic voting system. If having such a system had truly been important to anyone, we might already be using it. But it seems to have been more important merely to pay lip service to improving our electoral processes and mechanisms, as an excuse to funnel tax revenues to vendors of proprietary systems which, as has been demonstrated on several occasions in recent years, are open to tampering that in many cases may be undetectable.

We conduct all kinds of crucial business -- involving confidential information, money, and other valuable items -- via the internet from our home computers. From many years of participation in the personal computer industry, I am confident that the same kind of volunteer teams that now develop and maintain open-source operating systems such as Linux and open source application suites can produce an open source voting system that would accurately, securely, and confidentially accept our votes via our own personal computers, then tally and publish the results, which could in turn be individually verified or even completely recounted by any citizen.

Why hasn't it been done? All it would take, I think, is to offer a bounty to the first person, group, or company that produces a set of specifications and tests for an open source voting system, and another bounty to the first person, group, or company that implements the specified system and verifies its operation against the tests.

How big should the bounty be? Well, how much is the integrity of our elections worth? How about splitting a billion dollars between the successful teams? The total amount would be less than what we spend to make war in Iraq for just three days, and the benefits to our republic would last for years, perhaps decades or longer.

The bounty approach worked to produce and validate the first private-sector space craft, for a lot less money than NASA would have spent to do the same thing. I have no doubt that it will work to clean up our elections, too.

Right on Time wrote:

To John Beisner, Boulder Creek:
Hey, John....all the votes eventually got counted, and Bush still won. The truth hurts, but it does help one move on from a painful situation.
I'm no Bush-lover, but I am not alone in my exhaustion at the rehashing of the '00 and '04 elections.
For Pete's sake, MOVE ON!

Please take a look at this:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/cta/progs/newsn...