I tend to believe that any big scandal will out fairly fast; people talk.[1] So pending some confirmation, I'm filing as 'tinfoil' this allegation that there were massive systemic failures across Maryland involving Diebold AccuVote-TS machines last November — problems with “lost votes, multiple machine failures and even unreadable data cartridges”. But if true it would be very troubling indeed.
[1.] I used to also believe that big scandals cause pressure for reform, but that belief has been badly dented by the multiple scandals of the current administration which have failed to excite popular interest (or even media interest). It's enough to make Marcuse start looking good.
Well, didn’t Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame) say something like: “A reporter can conduct painstaking research of a story, or can simply report what he or she is told; both pay about the same.”
May I take the liberty of rephrasing your post slightly? I would have written “multiple scandals of the current administration which have failed to excite media interest (or even popular interest),” because it seems to me that the media are much more likely to be interested in Michael Jackson or shark attacks or the medical history of the gentleman with the trach scar who is competing on American Idol (Idle?), than in Republican political scandals.
The public is probably more interested than the media, and would probably welcome stories that the media don’t consider interesting at all.
Yes, that’s better.
I tend to believe that any big scandal will out fairly fast; people talk.
But, you see, in this as in many other big scandals, “people” have talked. Unfortuneately, trail stops there unless the media wants to run with it, which they don’t.
As a Maryland Voter in the last general election I can only say that something strange happened here this year. Although I have been a registered voter in the state of Maryland for 16 years, and have voted in every presidential election, my name could not be found on any voter roll in my hometown (where I’ve lived all my life) and I had to cast a provisional ballot.
While, I too am somewhat skeptical of the idea of Diebold chicanery on a massive scale that has somehow managed to go undetected there are supporters of the theory with quite distinguished reputations including Avi Rubin of Johns Hopkins. If everything were completely on the level I wonder why it would be so difficult to incorporate the high tech piece of equipment advanced concept known as a receipt into the voting system
The true scandal of these machines is not that perhaps they have been used for fraud, more that they are so vulnerable to such misuse in the future. The design of these machines is careless at best, and unlike most products, there way to calculate the damages if we bring a product liability suit for harm caused by a defective election result.