Gas Bandit's Political Thread V: The Vampire Likes Bats

So, do we want to do a pool when the first news channel calls the election?

EDIT (12:24 AM CST): I'll take 9:34 PM EST/8:34 CST.
 
Interestingly, school is cancelled throughout my district today because of "security concerns", though my mother and I suspect it's because of how fucking crazy the turnout is expected to be today and they don't want the kids around the strangers. They have NEVER done this in my lifetime.

Anyone know if this is just our district (South Western City Schools), or if it's a statewide thing for Ohio? Or even a national one?
 
Gil wants to see whichever returns show him to be a no good scoundrel.
Actually I would have been impressed to see if he paid a relatively fair tax for the last 5-10yrs. It would have helped me to at least re-evaluate him as a possibility instead of looking like a criminal hypocrit.
 
Obama didn't release 20 years of his tax returns.

He must be a criminal.

Bush didn't release 20 years of his tax returns.

He must be a criminal.

Clinton... etc.
The main request, which again was instituted by his own father, was about 5-10yrs. I would have been fine with 5.
 
So you concede the point that the previous presidents are criminals due to their failure to release their 5-10 years of tax returns?

I still don't see it, but as long as you're consistent I can understand you might simply hold that belief.




Uh, I'm thinking there's an issue with your math there. Obama, Kerry, Bush II, Gore, Clinton, Dole, Bush I, and Dukkakis (which is to say, every candidate but Reagan from 1988-2004) released at least five years worth. Only Reagan and Carter released fewer than Romney and McCain.

On the other hand, get off Romney's nuts about it Gilgamesh. The fact of the matter is that the whole practice is nothing more than a courtesy. While I doubt that his tax returns would have made him look particularly good, there are a lot of more relevant criticisms one can make of Romney.
 
Norris - Normally you'd be right about it being a courtesy, the problem here is, the backbone of his campaign was on taxes. If you can't see the connection I can't help you anymore than the 99% of America who like Honey Boo Boo.

stienman - I never called Romney a criminal, where are you getting that assertion from? I simply said that if he were a bit more transparent on the subject which he pushed his campaign on, I'd have respected him a bit more as a viable candidate. I don't doubt for a second that if he did avoid paying his fair share of taxes, he did it in a legal way.
 
Norris - Normally you'd be right about it being a courtesy, the problem here is, the backbone of his campaign was on taxes. If you can't see the connection I can't help you anymore than the 99% of America who like Honey Boo Boo.
99% -ish of Americans 18-49 don't watch Honey Boo Boo (though admittedly that number drops when you just look at women...to 97%-ish not watching). I've shown you the numbers several times now, damn it. But that aside, I do see the connection and the lack of transparency is annoying. However, I still find it to be a less than substantive criticism because its not commenting on anything he actually intends to do in office. His tax plan, at least as he laid it out in the first debate, is stupid enough without attacking his personal finances.
 
That looks like a calibration problem. I have the same experience with touch screens at the grocery store.

Or maybe Paul Ryan snuck in, hacked the software with his elite skills then flew away in his jetpack.

Or it's just a calibration problem.[DOUBLEPOST=1352218302][/DOUBLEPOST]Edit: Ninja'd by STIENMAN!
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Yeah, I read about a touchscreen doing the same thing in the other direction yesterday as well. Didn't bring it up because it's clearly a calibration problem, not attempted voter fraud.
 
To all those saying it's a calibration issue. It is. However it's pretty sizable and the people working the voting area did nothing about it. Quote from the poster:

I'm the guy who shot the video, hopefully this doesn't get burried. You guys have questions, I have answers.
My wife and I went to the voting booths this morning before work. There were 4 older ladies running the show and 3 voting booths that are similar to a science fair project in how they fold up. They had an oval VOTE logo on top center and a cartridge slot on the left that the volunteers used to start your ballot.
I initially selected Obama but Romney was highlighted. I assumed it was being picky so I deselected Romney and tried Obama again, this time more carefully, and still got Romney. Being a software developer, I immediately went into troubleshoot mode. I first thought the calibration was off and tried selecting Jill Stein to actually highlight Obama. Nope. Jill Stein was selected just fine. Next I deselected her and started at the top of Romney's name and started tapping very closely together to find the 'active areas'. From the top of Romney's button down to the bottom of the black checkbox beside Obama's name was all active for Romney. From the bottom of that same checkbox to the bottom of the Obama button (basically a small white sliver) is what let me choose Obama. Stein's button was fine. All other buttons worked fine.
I asked the voters on either side of me if they had any problems and they reported they did not. I then called over a volunteer to have a look at it. She him hawed for a bit then calmly said "It's nothing to worry about, everything will be OK." and went back to what she was doing. I then recorded this video.
EDIT: There is a lot of speculation that the footage is edited. I'm not a video guy, but if it's possible to prove whether a video has been altered or not, I will GLADLY provide the raw footage to anyone who is willing to do so. The jumping frames are a result of the shitty camera app on my Android phone, nothing more.
EDIT2: I have been contacted by NBC Universal and BBC News.
EDIT3: A lot of news agencies are now messaging me here. Please email centralpavote@gmail.com instead.
CNN has already contacted him and are investigating it.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
You really think that a machine intent on voter fraud would show the checkmark where you didn't put it?

Oh and he's a software developer. Isn't that convenient. Too bad he plainly has no idea how touchscreen calibration works. As all our stations use touchscreens on their automation, however, I do.

The screens are calibrated by a "touch this corner then touch this opposite corner" method, usually. If you touch the top corner too low, it calibrates it so that it will think you are pressing higher than you really are. The discrepancy will be worse the farther up the screen you go, and less noticeable the lower you go. It will pretty much never be constantly "off" by the same amount across the whole screen. So, Jill Stein being lower on the screen might work fine, and in order to select obama on a badly calibrated screen as I have described, you would probably have to touch between the buttons... exactly like he says he did.

TLDR version - the guy's a tool, that screen is badly calibrated, and this is all bullshit.
 
I just finished saying it wasn't necessarily the problem with the calibration but the attitude of the people working there.
Attitude maybe not, but Ignorance maybe. Not to be ageist, but little old ladies + electronic voting does not inspire confidence.
 
Attitude maybe not, but Ignorance maybe. Not to be ageist, but little old ladies + electronic voting does not inspire confidence.
That's where a lot of the problems with these machines come from. A lot of the election workers are retired people who don't have a whole lot of technical experience.
 
Here we have a paper ballot which you fill in circles (no punching crap out) and it gets scanned into the machine. Easy peasy.
 
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