User talk:142.177.97.47

It's foolish to debate this here. All of these are reasonably linked from U.S. presidential election, 2004, vote count controversy so we should put all of what follows in Talk:U.S. presidential election, 2004, vote count controversy. This is the talk page of an anonymous troll for chrissake.


 * and this is still not the right place to discuss this - refactor to the pages that are current and their talk pages.


 * It is simple sabotage to leave not even redirects in place so that others who might read this can actually follow where it ends up.

Hi - i relocated content from your new page on Diebold and the vote count to a new page U.S. Presidential election 2004/Controversy over vote count. The name change was to be more neutral and less accusatory. I also condensed some of material and removed some that was unnecessarily provocative.


 * That's not a good name. U.S. presidential election, 2004, vote count or U.S. presidential election, 2004, vote count controversy


 * Good suggestion I'll do it now

would be better, or just put everything in results of the U.S. presidential election, 2004 and alleged Diebold Election Systems electoral fraud, 2004.
 * the latter name is not an appropriate one I'm afraid as I have indicated earlier.
 * No, you did NOT say that. You said the name WITHOUT "alleged" in it was not appropriate.  With "alleged" it is certainly "appropriate".  A specific electoral fraud has been alleged by Bev Harris and blackboxvoting.org.  This is exactly the phrase that the police would use in describing the allegations to the media:  "an alleged fraud by Diebold Election Systems relating to the 2004 election".  If you want a name that long, OK, use it.  But "vote count controversy" is actually wrong because the controversies go MUCH BROADER AND DEEPER than BBV's accusation against Diebold or whoever hacked its systems.
 * (this is responded to below)

as it is These names match the conventions used at Wikipedia which is very desirable as there are very often articles with a different focus on the same issues there and here.


 * Wikipedia also abhors subpages and so should we, they really create a mess.

While I created the new page the other day and added a note on the talk page indicating that more sources were required I forgot to delete the original page. I'll do that now and merge the subsequent changes you have made into the renamed article. --Bob Burton 02:15, 13 Nov 2004 (EST)


 * There are LOTS of sources now. And there are several different pages on Diebold to keep this stuff straight.  This is a VERY complex issue and to put ALL the "vote count controversy" on ONE page will simply mean no one reads it:


 * Diebold margin can be a simple neutral comment on the vote counts that are disputed by Democrats
 * Diebold and Diebold Election Systems is obviously about that company and its subsidiary
 * blackboxvoting.org is about its main critic and their exact allegations
 * U.S. presidential election, 2004, exit polls is about only that soft evidence of electoral fraud
 * results of the U.S. presidential election, 2004 should contain only the official results
 * county by county comments are to go into depth about issues, anomalies, complaints and officials of that county, e.g. Cuyahoga County, OH, US
 * state pages are the same, OH, US for instance. ISO codes are mostly for the benefit of people outside the US, e.g. "CA" means "Canada" and Ontario is a province in Canada, so "Ontario, CA, US" is not "ON, CA" and so on.


 * Sorry I think you misunderstood what I was proposing -- I'm happy to leave all the other subpages with their existing names. I was proposing only relocate content from the original page I assumed that was going to be the framework page Diebold & electoral fraud (don't have the exact name at my fingertips) --Bob Burton 02:42, 13 Nov 2004 (EST)


 * I certainly appreciate the issue with the name, and believe alleged Diebold Election Systems electoral fraud, 2004, and the related alleged Diebold Election Systems electoral fraud, 2002 and alleged Diebold Election Systems electoral fraud, 2000 would stand scrutiny with PRwatch.org's own lawyers. If not, ask them what they believe is the correct description of blackboxvoting.org's allegations?  alleged Diebold Election Systems enabled electoral fraud, 2004 perhaps?  It is possible that someone totally unrelated to Diebold figured out the vulnerabilities and hacked their system.

I suggest two things here, 142.
 * 1. Have ONE page which aggregates all these others; and is separate from the primary articles.
 * 2. Rename/Move your articles to reflect their association with the aggregator. For instance, the county articles are not about the county; they're about the election controversy, and should be clearly named in that vein.

I can't think now of a good idea for implementing this. Since the full description is too long, and at risk of being too limiting of scope, perhaps even a nonsensical code would suffice. "toov04" as aggregator. "toov04/Cuyahoga Cty.OH" for instance. But please do something before I sweep through and delete them all  and don't link these things from other articles; only from the aggregator. --Maynard 08:15, 13 Nov 2004 (EST)


 * In each of those articles it actually does say to move the election controversy to some longer named page when there's something else to say about it. Long names are just not a problem - use redirects to make references simpler.  And casual abbreviations like "Cty" that only save a couple of letters and add confusion for anyone outside the US are a mistake probably.  So a name like Cuyahoga County, OH, US, 2004 vote count controversy would be the correct name, and something like CuyahogaOHUS2004vcc as a redirect is pretty human-readable.


 * As for your proposal to "sweep through and delete them all", you do this from time to time at random based on your own emotions no matter how important the subject matter or valid the assertions made in the article. So there is nothing to say other than that you simply should not have the power to do this.  There should be a SourceWatch:Proposed_deletions page to argue these things out rather than relying on one sysop vandal's emotions.  These are important complex matters and will take time to work out but also there is limited time for them to be relevant.

142, your article Electoral fraud via voting machine doesn't contain a single reference to backup its assertions. I have therefore moved its content to the associated talk page Talk:Electoral fraud via voting machine. Feel free to restore it once you have researched some suitable references from credible sources.


 * You are obviously not in the systems integration or computer security profession. The vulnerabilities listed are the standard vulnerabilities of all modem-based communication systems and really common knowledge in the profession.  Extending what is known about banks for instance and applying that to voting machines requires really no brainpower and no speculation whatsoever.

Please can you adhere to the strict referencing policy of SourceWatch in future? Thanks, --Neoconned 09:04, 13 Nov 2004 (EST)
 * And I've done the same for No paper trail, for the same reasons. Please provide a reference trail! --Neoconned 09:10, 13 Nov 2004 (EST)


 * Likewise, the relation between hiding a paper trail and gaining such benefits as plausible deniability are well known and occur so often it's difficult to imagine that this is a major problem. The issue with electronic voting machines having no paper trail is only an example of a larger problem of accountability avoidance in U.S. business and politics, and of course elsewhere.

-- On reviewing the revised page re Diebold and election count it preserved many of the same wild claims made in the original article that I edited out into the renamed article on the election vote controversy. And yes it was intended to replace the original article. What I left there I had hoped would be reviewed and sources added to support key points as it is not an area I am particularly familiar with. While some references were added important unsubstantiated claims remained. I have gone for the drastic option of deleting it -- I'll add any useful material back in to the reduced and toned down version where there are supporting references. The rest of the potentially useful material will go to the talk page.


 * Whatever. I'm done with this.  You are wasting my time with your "drastic" options.  Every point raised has been responded to reasonably by me and quite irrationally by you folks.  You are proposing bad names and raising standard of evidence on such foolish things as whether modem-based computer systems can be hacked - of course they can.  I'm not going to teach you people basic computer science when there are important political questions to be researched.

Key points:
 * adding alleged does not reduce legal exposure and simply raises the doubt in the readers mind - 'why say alleged if there is solid evidence?';


 * BECAUSE SOMEONE *HAS* _ALLEGED_ THIS. They HAVE _ALLEGED_ that there has been an electoral fraud exploiting vulnerabilities in Diebold Election Systems.  THE ALLEGED FRAUD EXISTS - it is a public declaration at blackboxvoting.org which is clearly being sanctioned by Bev Harris and her allies.  The question is whether a real fraud exists, not whether there is an alleged one.


 * the onus is on contributors to support material they add to the site with references and not expect other users to have to go through the time consuming task of trying to find supportive material on topics they are not particularly familiar with;
 * as other users have noted unreferenced articles are of little use here.


 * There are lots of references though not on every single fact. Certainly if you are going to question the snapshots of CNN or the timing of vote counts and all that, forget it.  There is every reason to believe this information true.  If you think it is false, mark it as questionable or disputed at the top of the article.  But unless something almost right is there, nothing right will ever get written.

While other users routinely contribute to and tidy articles, it is not fair or appropriate to expect them to spend a lot of time doing major rewrites to ensure a quality article. --Bob Burton 17:13, 13 Nov 2004 (EST)


 * True, and there *ARE* issues of fact here - some issues have been mixed up in the secondary reports from which some of this is drawn. For instance according to Dennis Kucinich it was Diebold AccuVote machines (and ?) some ES&S touchscreen voting machines used in Ohio, not the ones that have been the focus of Bev Harris's investigation.  If that is correct, and why would Kucinich not know, then, any reference to Ohio in the blackboxvoting.org questions about Diebold GEMS central tabulator must be removed, as they are two entirely separate issues.  Likewise exit polls from Ohio aren't evidence for the fraud using Diebold Election Systems touchscreen voting machines if another brand, or only optical scna machines from Diebold, were in use there.


 * primary source: Dennis Kucinich has issued a release saying the following:


 * "The unofficial count gave Ohio to George Bush by approximately 136,000

votes. The official count by county Boards of Election will begin on Saturday, November 13, 2004. It is due at the Secretary of State's office by December 1. The Secretary of State must certify the election by December 3.


 * "During this interim period, attorneys from both political parties, and those representing me, will be watching the procedures by county Boards of Elections carefully. Among the most important issues to note is the counting of the overvotes. Overvotes occur when more than one candidate is indicated

on the punch card. Another issue relates to whether all properly cast provisional ballots will be counted."


 * "Glitches in electronic voting in the Columbus area should move all

legislatures to demand paper receipts for voting machines. Without such a paper trail, no true recount can ever be done. Note that no Diebold electronic voting machines were employed in Ohio."


 * "Clear efforts at voter suppression and intimidation were well handled by

the courts and election officials. Dirty tricks occurred across the state, including phony letters from Boards of Elections telling people that their registration through some Democratic activist groups were invalid and that Kerry voters were to report on Wednesday because of massive voter turnout. Phone calls to voters giving them erroneous polling information were also common. Attempts to subvert our right to fair elections must be investigated and prosecuted when possible."
 * "With passion running so high in this country and specter of Florida 2000

still hanging over the presidential voting process, it is important to gather hard evidence prior to disputing the legitimacy of the election."


 * So, Kucinich's list of issues is orthogonal to Harris' list of issues. If we have to choose one credible source on the problems in Ohio, pick Kucinich as he is specific and local.


 * Some of his allegations are quite serious but they are not the same as those made by Bev Harris apparently.

--- I just went and had a look to see what was happening on this topic at Wikipedia -- there is an extensive set of articles there at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_U.S._Election_controversies_and_irregularities addressing the issue in more detail than is currently in D and with a significant number of contributors.

I don't think that the topic is so central to SourceWatch's purpose that there is a need to have two wikis working on exactly the same topic but with different contributors. Given that Wikipedia has more people up to speed on the issue and participating in the edits I suggest that it is more sensible to direct people there. That way quality of the article is likely to be better and SourceWatchns won't spend a lot of energy editing articles covering the same ground.--Bob Burton 20:51, 13 Nov 2004 (EST)

to 142, I think the matters of this botched election process are very important. I just don't like the way you name and organize articles; so you'll see that my earlier remarks were specific to that concern, without any qualifying comments about the material itself. I just want you to organize it differently.


 * It doesn't matter what you WANT or what you LIKE - there is a STANDARD naming convention that is imposed de facto, like it or not, on the whole GFDL corpus by Wikipedia - follow their conventions exactly or achieve chaos. You don't want for instance six ways of writing names, five ways of naming places, and some dates of recurring events with commas in them, and some not.  A one-to-one correspondence with names at Wikipedia is desirable as far as it goes, though of course on many topics SourceWatch must be more detailed and so there is editorial judgement involved.

I have no dispute with BBurton's view about letting this topic proceed on Wikipedia; but I don't consider it very far off SourceWatch topic, and certainly not off topic of Democracy (SourceWatch "umbrella"?). SourceWatch does have content here which does not pass Wikipedia's official policy line (something about non-contentious, or conformity, or whatever), and so it is frequently good, in my view, to have 2 or 3 different repositories of these topics.


 * Right, exactly, that's why it is necessary.

142 and I have a history here which was not pleasant for anybody; and I think that we've both moved toward a little less adversity; but I'm still ready to take any article named "some county, state, usa" with content about it's particular election or fishing situation, and flatly delete rather than attempt to repair it. This time I'm offering 142 a chance to fix it first. Mighty magnanimous, eh?


 * Well, it's your "delete first" policy that puts the material out of reach for anyone else to correct that is objectionable. Moving stuff to talk pages is fine, making pages like Cuyahoga County, OH, US into disambiguation pages is fine, if there is in fact ANY NEED EVER to discuss their fishing situation.


 * But if you are creating unnecessary work loaded only on the few people who bother to save backups of what they write, instead of loaded on everyone who cares, you are destroying the wiki. Accordingly I think you must be fired, Maynard.  You are detrimental to the whole process here.

Note that my sensibilities prefer the order of "election controversy 2004 US Ohio County" than the reverse; but I'm not going to insist upon it. However, if it were that sensible to me, I might not even bother reading it for editing purposes. --Maynard 00:38, 14 Nov 2004 (EST)


 * Again, it doesn't matter what you "prefer", that is not a name that would be used in Wikipedia, because it uses commas for recurring events of all kinds - and believe it or not, a vote count controversy in a US election is such a recurring event, and so is alleged electoral fraud by Diebold and its friends. There was one in 2000, again in 2002, again in 2004, and will be also in 2006, due to the nature of no paper trail voting machines if nothing else.

Perhaps just to clarify -- its not that I consider the core issue of what has gone on with the U.S. election off topic for SourceWatch (given that it is not that different from other aspects of the election already covered). More that if we are going to cover similar territory to Wikipedia there needs to be a compelling point of difference. Better to complement each others work than duplicate it. In this case the articles in D were traversing identical ground. I should have checked what was happening in Wikipedia earlier. --Bob Burton 01:47, 14 Nov 2004 (EST)

"yes" to complement rather than duplicate. -Maynard


 * If Maynard wants to move things to Wikipedia, fine, but there will always be facts appearing there and not here, and here and not there, and the GFDL exists to make them easy to move around.


 * Finally (and I do mean finally as I'm done with this page which is the wrong place to discuss things) the standard of evidence at SourceWatch must be on this issue much different than the Wikipedia standard. SourceWatch must more or less be at the level of the electoral fraud audit and not grant the "benefit of the doubt" to questionable tactics or multi-purpose behaviour, while Wikipedia is bound to give equal time to "it was an honest mistake" type of excuses.


 * In other words, on issues where the necessity is to speak truth to power, the SourceWatch must NOT start by granting power the benefit of the doubt or an equal-time forum, because of the unequal power relationships SourceWatch is intended to expose.


 * If you don't agree with that, you're part of the problem not the solution.