Hypothetically…. If you were a programmer with access to the voting machine

[moez]

And you could change the system to sway a key state a percentage or two in the right direction to insure a Democratic victory - would you? Imagine that the only thing standing between four more years of Bushco and a Democratic victory was you, your programming skills and a couple of keystrokes…

I found myself pondering this at about 3:30 this morning…. I know – I’m looking for a life right now… Anyway, I’ve been a programmer for 15 years, and I can tell you first hand that it would be EASY to make a small, inconspicuous change that would go unnoticed.

Well, that cost me another 45 minutes of sleeplessness while I wrestled with the ethical sides of it.

What would you do?

[reachout]

1. Not a chance

I value the democratic process much more highly than I value the victory or defeat of any particular candidate or party. Politicians will come and go, different groups will gain power and lose it, but the integrity of the process is what creates a stable political entity.

[bowens43]

2. No ethical wrestling necessary.

Absolutely not.

[Benhurst]

6. Absolutely not. On the other hand,

if the voting machines are easily manipulated, it might wake America up if a write-in candidate, say Porky Pig, were to win. They would have to hold the election over again and do it the old fashioned way, one vote at a time, hand counted.

[bowens43]

8. If the machines can be easily tampered with (and I believe they can)

I would want that to be proven BEFORE any election. I would never condone tampering with an election.

[_NorCal_D_]

3. No

I would rather beat Bush the ethical way.

[Coventina]

4. Yikes! Not a chance!

I expect everyone to treat all votes as sacred, just as I feel that my vote is sacred.

[wryter2000]

5. Nope, nope, nope

However, if I had the expertise and free time I'd become a crusader to make sure no one tampered with the machines to help Whistle Ass.

[TacticalPeek]

7. In this scenario, you do not beat Bush.

[phillybri]

9. ...You become him...

:eyes:

[hippiegranny]

10. if any tampering were to be done

it should only be done in a way to expose that it was possible to do. there is an overwhelming prevalence of "the end justifies the means" thinking in freeperland, but that doesn't make it right.

[loudsue]

11. Frankly...no....but I wish the others in this world who WOULD

would stop doing so....and I have no doubt there are many people who have done just that....tinkered with the programs and made the votes swing their direction.

In fact, looking at the past 2 elections, I know there are those who probably didn't lie awake all night trying to figure out if it was "ok" or not....they were just figuring out how NOT to get caught!

And then there's Bev Harris and all the BBV patriots out there to kick their collective butts around the field a few times. Hopefully, when the BBV Patriots are done with 'em, they'll lie awake in PRISON thinking about whether it was "ethical" or not.

I understand your question, Moez....often one criminal act encourages vengeful (criminal) thoughts in the heart of the victim(s). It's just that the crime has to be stopped, brought to the full light of day, and the perp has to be punished under societal rules, and public supervision. Otherwise, things just continue to escalate, and you end up with thousands of years of tribal-type wars. Rule of law establishes peace in a society. Cycles of crimes and revenge by individuals creates a world of bush-family-evil-empire (BFEE) chaos.

Let's don't go there.

:kick:

[LifeDuringWartime]

12. i'm assuming that that would amount to a felony

legal experts know?

[Benhurst]

13. Maybe we could get a ruling on this from

the Supreme Court's Felonius Five. After all, they are experts at stealing elections.

[TacticalPeek]

14. LOL!

Got that right.

[RedEagle]

16. Nope

What we do in trying to insure honest elections we do for everybody.

Take the vote back- fair and square.

[cthrumatrix]

15. be serious.... let the dark side be the bad guys...we want the truth

[Skittles]

17. ABSOLUTELY NOT

that's what makes me a Democrat

[moez]

18. Wow! Slam dunk...

It was more of a quandary to me on a number of levels. I mean sure, looking at it as legal = good / illegal = bad, it is quite black and white. When you attach lives to the action, though – that’s when I got turned around.

Look at an extreme situation. If someone had the ability to stop a Stalin or a Hitler (no, I’m NOT equating them to Bush) before their respective genocides occurred, through an illegal act (you name it), would it have been justified? If so, where is the threshold that separates the time that the illegal is unethical and the time that the illegal is morally justified?

[ElementaryPenguin]

19. Would you do it to stop Hitler, WWII, and the Holocaust? I would.

I'm no programmer, but if I could rig the election to stop the evil Bushiviks, I would. I don't put ANYTHING past Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfman, Chimp and this whole BFEE/PNAC Mob - including nuking an American city! Stopping their war on the environment and lack of concern for global warming (which is ultimately going to destroy all life on this planet) would be enough justification for me - not to mention the risk that these insane zealots might get WWIII started! Call me a cheater, call me dishonest - but we/I just saved the human race from extinction (and perhaps 9/10ths of the mammals on earth). Survival on this planet dictates that you do what you gotta do - and sometimes it ain't pretty.

[maxrandb]

21. Exactly. Great qoute from Woody Below

"When the one great scorer writes against you, he will not record whether you won or lost, but how you played the game"

- Rice

"Rubbish"

- Woody Hayes

These wingnuts would do it in a heartbeat to destroy the Democratic Party. This ain't 2-square we'er playing.

[DrBB]

28. Shoot me if you must, but I DON'T see the holocaust analogy

Hitler analogies are all very well in their place, but this is one of those holocaust-cheapening arguments and I don't accept it. Bush and company are bad, but we are still a LONG way from what it's like to live in a GENUINE totalitarian dictatorship. I know. I have a close friend, Valery, who was an academician in the Soviet Union, and another, Aiping, who was sentenced to a labor camp in Mao's China during the cultural revolution (for owning an uncensored copy of Steinbeck, if you can belive that), both of whom I have discussions with about the current political climate here. They both despise Bush, but they are very clear about what he is and what he is NOT. We have discussed this question--scary signs out there, yes. But they both agree that our current experience is not even a pale shadow of what real totalitarianism feels like.

As I said below: either you have democracy or you don't. You voice exactly the same impulse the election riggers on the other side would use to rationalize their efforts: it's to save the country, the world, whatever; the other side must not be allowed to destroy the country, the world, etc. There's no way to arbitrate that kind of debate. Either you want to have democracy or you don't. The only cure for anti-democracy is democracy.

[Afraid of My Shadow]

20. No way.

I would not change a system so the vote went my way.

[ElementaryPenguin]

22. So you wouldn't have participated in the Boston Tea Party...

Nor the signing of the Declaration of Independence?? (both illegal acts)

[Coventina]

27. Not a fair comparison

The question was "would you tamper with voting machines" not "would you ever do anything illegal to preserve democrocy"?

[ElementaryPenguin]

32. So I'll ask you - would you tamper with a machine to stop...

Adolph Hitler from being elected - had you known what he had in store for the world - or would sacrificing some of your personel integrity (by forcing yourself to resort to being a cheater), would that be MORE important to you than saving millions of lives? Don't just give me a cliched, self righteous, knee jerk reaction - give it some real thought and tell me what you really think the "right" thing to do would be.

[Coventina]

34. Difficult to say...

I am not sure what the parameters are for your scenario.
So I'll tell you what I am assuming: That I am somehow thrown "back in time" to 1930s Germany from present day 2004 and I bring with me everything that we now know about Hitler and the Third Reich.

I would have to say yes, I would do anything that I was capable of doing, cheating, sabotage, anything short of murder probably, to derail Hitler.

But Bush is NOT Hitler, and does not stand accused of the crimes Hitler committed. We cannot assume that Bush will go on to do any of those sorts of things. To cheat in the name of preventing possible future crimes is to play the same game Bush did by the "pre-emptive strike" on Iraq.

Do I think Bush & Co. are bad guys? Yes! Or I wouldn't be a member of DU. Do I think the stealing of elections is justified because he stole 2000? No!

[spindoctor]

23. If that possibility exists, it needs to be exposed

Which is what BBV is all about.

If I had the opportunity, I would give Bush 99.9% of the vote nationwide and have 300 million votes cast.

I would leave the explaining up to him.

[creativelcro]

24. I would this time, just to make it even

But not routinely.

[DrBB]

25. What do you think the logic ALWAYS is in these cases?

"I'm just ensuring that the wrong thing doesn't happen! The consequences of my opponent winning are too terrible to be allowed!"

That's ALWAYS the logic (when it's not just sheer corrupt fuckery).

It goes right to the root of democracy (obviously): people never want the other guy to win, and the impulse is always to cheat the system "for it's own good."

Either you have democracy or you don't, it's that simple. Doesn't matter what side you're on or how high-minded you think your motivation is.

[ComerPerro]

26. No, but here is what I would do

I would get the attention of the press and demonstrate for them how easy it would be to skew votes either way.

[ComerPerro]

36. Or I had another Idea

If I was a programmer for one of the companies such as Diebold, then I would just rig it for the Republicans to win as I was being paid and ordered to do. But I would document everything, and then testify against the company and the Republicans with tons of evidence.

[brainshrub]

29. No. Here's why:

If there is a hell, I would go straight there if I did such a heinous deed.

I would rather see the next 100 elections go to NeoCon presidents, than fix a single election for a Democrat.

[ElementaryPenguin]

33. Not me. I'd rather stop war, than preserve a democracy with

Fascist, blood thirsty, ignorant, bullying people voting for it! If that's where our democracy is taking us - (and I am becoming more concerned everyday that it is) than I see nothing here worth preserving! Would Hitler and Nazi Germany's atrocities be acceptable if Hitler happened to win legitimate, democratic elections each time? Of course not! Democracy is a wonderful thing - no question - but life - peace - civility - these things are even more important!

[TrogL]

30. I would make a huge change

that would make the touchscreen allow to choose one of the Three Stooges or the Marx Brothers. It would have to be something really OBVIOUS otherwise people might actually vote for them. Hell they voted for Arnie, didn't they?

In the ensuing uproar, presumably somebody would suggest paper ballots and a manual counting process.

[DrBB]

31. You get my vote

...for best response so far. The only flaw in your plan: are you sure the Three Stooges would be obvious enough?

[FAndy9]

35. Just want to clarify something...

I consider the Hitler argument to be invalid, for this one reason:

Whether or not Bush will be the next Hitler is not something that you can know.

You risk doing far more damage by doing something unethical to justify an end. By doing that you have just drained the ethics behind the system of its very life, and you have justified you political opponent's actions.

There's a comparable Hitler analogy which i consider is much better, I think it comes from the movie "The Last Supper":

- If you could go back in time and see the young Hitler, would you kill him, thus preventing the death of millions?

- No, I would talk to him and convince him that what he's thinking is wrong.

The funny thing was that that last line was pronounced by a conservative. At any rate, great, movie.

But just remember that above the mundanity of partisan thought and ideologies lies ethical limits which simply must be respected by all, and no matter how much one side screws up by going against it, it is no reason to go against it yourself. It's a matter of principle above all.

[DrBB]

37. I totally agree--as in my other posts above n/t