Monthly Archives: October 2006

The Evidence Mounts Against Electronic Voting

In getting back to some of my favorite Amsterdam habits, last night around 2am I decided to turn on the television and see if anything interesting was on. Dutch public television tends to re-run the days programs, so I always check there first for news or investigative reports of any kind. While usually they involve a police officer writing a ticket for a parking violation or some other lame infraction, I was very excited to see a report on voting machines.

You may recall a few months ago, when my podcast was focused on the Dutch movement Wij vertrouwen Stemcomputers Niet (we don’t trust voting computers). I went over to Rop Gonggrijp’s interesting house and he explained the trouble with voting machines, especially the very prominant Dutch machine maker Nedap.

Sure enough, last night one of the star witnesses of the program was none other then Rop! During the segment, they got their hands on one of the machines, and in a matter of minutes, had managed to open it without a key and using very un-sophisticated methods, change the configuration so that all votes no matter what button your press, go to one party.

The camera crew also went to one of the storage places where these machines are kept, and found little to no security watching over the machines. When they tried to speak to the minister in charge of these things, he was away on vacation. When they showed the program to a pair of parliamentarians, they were both shocked and had new questions for the practice of using electronic voting in the Netherlands.


All in all, it was exciting to see this investigation, and I very much felt a part of it. Such a shocking example in such a supposedly model democracy, should send shockwaves around the world, and further bury these voting machine companies that are trying to make big money in exchange for throwing away fair and secure elections.

I will not be jetlagged, or silent.

Landed in the wee hours of the morning, here in Amsterdam. And since it’s October, it stays nice and dark until at least 7am, so I just pretended it was night time and I had a meal, read some blogs, and unpacked. – Which explains why I woke up in the middle of the afternoon.

On the flight over I had a chance to catch up with podcasts, mainstream and alternative. One of the podcasts that made me gag and foam at the mouth was, as usual, Meet the Press. They had a senate candidate debate between two Ohio politicians. Now I know I’m a broken record on this subject, but I cannot and will not remain silent when I see and hear fraud, hypocracy, and distraction disguised as an election.

These two candidates are the same. That is clear from the basic fact that they spend alot of time and energy trying to prove that they are not the same. Hard work when you’re both warmongering, wealthy, and puppets of two parties that share a common goal: having power and pleasing the powerful.

To some extent I blame Meet the Press for giving this a stage and pretending there is a debate to be had. Tim Russert should have spent his time exposing both men for being poorly informed on international affairs and completely vague about their domestic agenda.

I turned off the interview after 20 minutes and somewhat appropriately, selected the film “American Dreamz”.

Torture Museum USA

During a conversation with an old friend at William PAterson U today, I was telling her about Amsterdam’s torture museum. Suddenly it just came to me, I said to her: “I guess soon the US will have lots of torture museums as well.” And I laughed. She looked unpleased, and said — I know.

On that note, my flight leaves in 12 hours. So Ill sleep, pack, take one more spin around this one horse town, stopping off to give a big hug to the owner of my favorite cafe. then its back to Amsterdam and back to real pod-journalism and world news commentary.

bmtv21 Citizen Journalists in Asbury Park


Being the citizen journalists that we are, two associates and I headed to Asbury Park, New JErsey this week. A very unique city, with a very sad story. This vlog is an attempt to capture some of what it looks like today and what is happening that will effect the future.