Did Anonymous Save Our Democracy?

Zappit · Nov 19, 2012

http://samuel-warde.com/2012/11/did-anonymous-block-carl-roves-attempt-to-steal-election/

Chilling, and searching the net sees quite a few articles on Anonymous warning Karl Rove not to rig the election. Rove's computer system, ORCA, appears to have the capacity to reroute votes, and was to be used to deliver Florida, Ohio, and Virginia to Romney. Anonymous reportedly hacked it and shut it down, locking Rove's cronies out. The warning was legit, but if the rest is true, then they just prevented what would have been the most massive case of voter fraud to ever hit this country.

I suppose the proof would come if they just release the records. If it's real, and if they do show it to the world, I don't think I could even imagine the fallout.

More...

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/...ms-it-stopped-Karl-Rove-from-hacking-the-vote

Tress · Nov 19, 2012

I call bullshit until I see real proof. Anonymous has exaggerated and lied before about their accomplishments.

sixpackshaker · Nov 19, 2012

Thank God that voter ID laws ended all fraud in this nation.

LordRendar · Nov 19, 2012

Wasnt Karl Rove the dude who said on Fox News that Romney would win by a landslide just as it was announced that Obama has won the election?

Zappit · Nov 19, 2012

LordRendar said:
Wasnt Karl Rove the dude who said on Fox News that Romney would win by a landslide just as it was announced that Obama has won the election?

And then completely lost his shit as Obama kept taking swing states.

I know it's far-fetched, and he likely lost his mind that night because he saw his career go down in flames, but this is a guy who has harassed an opponent so viciously that it drove him to suicide - he's truly ruthless, so I don't think vote rigging would be left out of his play book.

sixpackshaker · Nov 19, 2012

And he lost it, like he knew it was in the bag.

Tress · Nov 19, 2012

I don't doubt that Rove would do it, I just strongly doubt Rove ever had the capability to actually fix the election.

strawman · Nov 19, 2012

Zappit said:
Did Anonymous Save Our Democracy?

At best they might have prevented vote rigging. Due to the way machines work any discrepancies would have been fixed through hand counting long before swearing in since there is paper, verified by the voter when the vote is cast, for each vote. Any change to the elecctronic tally wouldn't have succeeded in the long run, and thus democracy would be fine.

Corruption will always exist, though, and while it's fun to think of conspiracy theories and pretend they are real, application Occam's razor in a situation where we have little information suggests that anaonymous BS'ing the liberal sites is a significantly more likely scenario than Rove gaining "hundreds of millions" of dollars and hacking enough to swing a whole state's election tally.

Azurephoenix · Nov 19, 2012

I read the article... and if what the Anonymous guys are saying is accurate... we're just lucky they didn't hijack the whole ORCA system and go to town meddling with votes of their own volition.

Eriol · Nov 19, 2012

Azurephoenix said:
I read the article... and if what the Anonymous guys are saying is accurate... we're just lucky they didn't hijack the whole ORCA system and go to town meddling with votes of their own volition.

That'd be one way for a 3rd party to win an election!

That's actually a lot less funny than I intended it to be. Sorry.

GasBandit · Nov 19, 2012

Did anybody check Cartman's bedroom?

Or the local hummer dealer?

bhamv3 · Nov 19, 2012

Eriol said:
That'd be one way for a 3rd party to win an election!

"This just in, the latest results show that Florida, Ohio, Texas, and Michigan have all been called for Pedobear."

strawman · Nov 19, 2012

Let's think about this. If Anon had this information, then they had enough information to rig election results nationwide and cause a bigger problem than the one they claimed to have saved us from.

They would not pass up an opportunity to flex their muscle.

Krisken · Nov 19, 2012

What really happened with Orca-

The Romney campaign mishandled it. A lot.

1. They centralized the servers in Boston.
2. They failed to get Poll Watcher credentials for most of the people who were part of their get-out-the-vote program, which means Orca information was useless and they were unable to even know who hadn't voted yet.
3. They failed to tell Comcast they would have a spike in traffic on election day, which means Comcast thought there was a DNS attack happening and shut down the connection in Boston.

Anonymous is blowing smoke. Nobody is at fault except the Romney campaign.

strawman · Nov 19, 2012

More info on orca:

http://www.businessinsider.com/romney-project-orca-disaster-2012-11

So, the end result was that 30,000+ of the most active and fired-up volunteers were wandering around confused and frustrated when they could have been doing anything else to help. Like driving people to the polls, phone-banking, walking door-to-door, etc. We lost by fairly small margins in Florida, Virginia, Ohio and Colorado. If this had worked could it have closed the gap? I sure hope not for my sanity's sake.

The bitter irony of this entire endeavor was that a supposedly small government candidate gutted the local structure of GOTV efforts in favor of a centralized, faceless organization in a far off place (in this case, their Boston headquarters). Wrap your head around that.

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Zappit said:
Rove's computer system, ORCA... Anonymous reportedly hacked it and shut it down

So, perhaps what they're really claiming is that they interfered with GOP get-out-the-vote efforts to swing the election Obama's way?

Certainly seems undemocratic of them.

JCM · Nov 19, 2012

Why can't you guys use Brazil's voting system, considered tamper-proof and a model system (heck, its pretty much the only thing we can take pride in).

All voting boxes are connected to the network, you type in your candidate's number, get a visual confirmation, press ok, and in real-time, anyone on the voting site, news, etc, can see the candidates' votes? No punch cards, no recounts, no touchscreens, just press and voila! its added to the total votes.

SpecialKO · Nov 19, 2012

JCM said:
Why can't you guys use Brazil's voting system, considered tamper-proof and a model system (heck, its pretty much the only thing we can take pride in).

All voting boxes are connected to the network, you type in your candidate's number, get a visual confirmation, press ok, and in real-time, anyone on the voting site, news, etc, can see the candidates' votes? No punch cards, no recounts, no touchscreens, just press and voila! its added to the total votes.

Because each state works out its own system, and its dependent on budget.

That, plus the fact that the last time someone tried to implement a modernized system, it was so shitty and sketchy that every state in the US is gun-shy about modernizing.

Not saying that this system is in any way preferable, just that states tend to be backwards about that kind of thing, and because it's up to the states in the first place that's unlikely to change.

JCM · Nov 19, 2012

Well, on one hand it seems so backward to have some people, in this age, still write-in votes or use a hole,punch, but then that's the beauty of the US.
If you do not agree with the way something is done in your State, there will be a State with laws and procedures more to your taste.

Yoshimickster · Nov 19, 2012

Anonymous didn't save our democracy! Because we don't HAVE a democracy! DEATH TO THE TWO PARTY SYSTEM MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN! GOTTA STOP SLEEPING WHILE THEY LIVE! CONSPIRACY!

Seriously though, I doubt they did anything but if they did than good for them.

Zappit · Nov 19, 2012

A slightly older article from kos on how the GOP was rigging the system.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/...-NSA-Analyst-Proves-GOP-Is-Stealing-Elections

This was...scary. Once again we come back to Rove.

In Ohio, GOP consultant Michael Connell claimed that the vote count computer program he had created for the state had a trap door that shifted Democratic votes to the GOP.
He was subpoenaed as a witness in a lawsuit against then-Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, and lawyers for the plaintiff asked the Dept. of Justice to provide him with security because there were two threats made against Connell’s life by people associated with Karl Rove. But in Dec. 2008, before the trial began, Connell was killed in a plane crash outside Akron Ohio.

Necronic · Nov 20, 2012

I have a very hard time believign this. ORCA (as it is commonly understood as a vote tracking metric) was a complete technological failure. Their front end apps didn't work correctly, or completely failed in many cases. It has been considered one of the bigger failures of a system like this, and is a test case of the problems with security vs beta testing (they did not beta test to maintain higher security).

So on the one hand you have ORCA which looks like a college kid's draft project, and on the other hand you have "Karl Rove ORCA " which is one of the most high end pieces of tech out there which was stopped by a bunch of hacktivists.

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

Krisken · Nov 20, 2012

Oh, did I not mention it wasn't even an app, it was a website they kept calling an app?

sixpackshaker · Nov 20, 2012

I was listening to NPR live coverage, and they mentioned how the GOP volunteers were wandering around trying to get some organizational APP to work.

So it is good to know why it failed on election day.

SpecialKO · Nov 20, 2012

Krisken said:
Oh, did I not mention it wasn't even an app, it was a website they kept calling an app?

Now, now, it could have been a web-based mobile app similar to GMAIL and Google Voice. It might even have been an HTML5-based website wrapped in a downloadable app form.

Krisken · Nov 20, 2012

SpecialKO said:
Now, now, it could have been a web-based mobile app similar to GMAIL and Google Voice. It might even have been an HTML5-based website wrapped in a downloadable app form.

The person interviewed on PBS stressed multiple times that it wasn't an app.

Hailey Knight · Nov 20, 2012

Krisken said:
Oh, did I not mention it wasn't even an app, it was a website they kept calling an app?

The party whose candidates want us to turn back the clock should probably not try using modern tech and practices in their plans.

Krisken · Nov 20, 2012

Quotemander Prime said:
The party whose candidates want us to turn back the clock should probably not try using modern tech and practices in their plans.

If it had worked and they had allowed the techies to do their job, it would have been a huge gain for the Romney campaign, perhaps even winning the Presidency.

Covar · Nov 21, 2012

Quotemander Prime said:
The party whose candidates want us to turn back the clock should probably not try using modern tech and practices in their plans.

I'm pretty sure the hell that is Daylight Savings Time is a bi-partisan issue.

and it clearly wasn't an app, it was a super-computer capable of hacking the countries election results :aaah: