Sequoia accidentally releases source code for its voting machines!

I absolutely hate, hate, HATE the very idea of electronic voting. Cannot say nearly enough rotten about it. I've no doubt that a lot of our more recent elections have been compromised and rigged - one way or another - by paperless tabulation. In a saner age, enough Americans would have gotten honked-off enough to have marched on the corporate headquarters of Diebold and Sequoia, burned the buildings down and sown the sites with salt.

Well friends and neighbors, tonight I get to grin a big 'un: Sequoia has inadvertently released the source code of its voting machines and... wonder upon wonders... already the code is shown to be breaking election law!

"Sequoia blew it on a public records response. ... They appear... to have just vandalized the data as valid databases by stripping the MS-SQL header data off, assuming that would stop us cold. They were wrong. The Linux 'strings' command was able to peel it apart. Nedit was able to digest 800-MB text files. What was revealed was thousands of lines of MS-SQL source code that appears to control or at least influence the logical flow of the election, in violation of a bunch of clauses in the FEC voting system rulebook banning interpreted code, machine modified code and mandating hash checks of voting system code."

Want to examine the code for yourself? studysequoia.wikispaces.com has whatcha need!

And truth be told, right now I'm kicking myself for having nearly flunked-out of that C computer programming class I took during my first semester at Elon. But I harbor no doubt: better minds than mine in such matters are going to be picking out a bunch of interesting - and quite possibly very illegal - stuff from this code.

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Iranian irony

I find it a sad commentary that many Americans are watching the people of Iran rejecting the farce of that country's elections a few days ago...

...when we ourselves for the most part are all too accepting of how managed and controlled our own nation's elections are.

Could we ever take to the streets and demand real freedom to choose a destiny apart from that which the two-party kleptocracy and its willing associates have determined for us?

Few things would make me happier than to see the American people wake up and demand that.

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Fred Reed sez: American democracy is a sham

Democracy in America is not about government derived by the will of the people. Rather, democracy in America is about how deeply-entrenched political elites and the corporate press control the people. Such is the case articulated by Fred Reed in his latest essay, and it's hard to disagree with him...

To disguise all of this, elections provide the excitement and intellectual content of a football game, without the importance. They allow a sense of Participation. In bars across the land, in high-school gymns become forums, people become heated about what they imagine to be decisions of great import: This candidate or that? It keeps them from feeling left out while denying them power.

It is fraud. In a sense, the candidates do not even exist. A presidential candidate consists of two speechwriters, a makeup man, a gestures coach, ad agency, two pollsters and an interpreter of focus groups. Depending on his numbers, the handlers may suggest a more fixed stare to crank up his decisiveness quotient for male or Republican voters, or dial in a bit of compassion for a Democratic or female audience. The newspapers will report this calculated transformation. Yet it works. You can fool enough of the people enough of the time.

When people sense this and decline to vote, we cluck like disturbed hens and speak of apathy. Nope. Just common sense.

Much more at the above link.

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