If you ask Patrick Byrne, the founder of the company "Overstock" and one of the most famous conspiracy theorists in the USA, Serbia could play a key role in fixing the elections in America this year. While guesting on the podcast "America, Can We Talk", hosted by Debbie Georgetos, Byrne mentioned the American company "Dominion", which manages a large number of voting machines in the USA, and their branch in Serbia, which maintains them. He added the Chinese "Huawei" to that story, through whose machines, allegedly, the entire work is done. The story simply slides, "Dominion" from Serbia over backdoor he hacks into the machines during voting and changes the results to suit the Democrats. The Chinese are there to make the soup thicker, and because Trump's voters see them as the greatest danger.
Of all this, it is true that there really is a branch of "Dominion" in Serbia, that it operates legally and prides itself on the maintenance of voting machines, that is, the software that runs them, which can be found out even by a cursory internet search. But, if there are really any problems with the counting of votes in the elections, be sure that Serbia will be in the background, as was said eight years ago about North Macedonia and its bot farms that worked in favor of Trump.
The logistics of voting in the US are very interesting because of their diversity. Since each country organizes voting in its own way, then it goes down to the district level, where voting is done from touching the screen to punching cards to rounding the ballot, with the move towards complete automation. The reason is the speed of counting, which is practically instantaneous after the closing of the polls. Setup is not possible because the machines are not connected to the network, everything is recorded on a disk, which is then physically transferred to another place, where it is read. And there is also a paper trail, similar to a fiscal receipt, where the voter can check if his will is correctly registered before putting the ballot in the box.
This year, it will not speed up the results because of the large number of ballots sent by mail, which will have to be counted manually or with the assistance of a machine, but again with manual insertion.
The problem with the electronic voting system is that it is used relatively infrequently, in the US once every two years, and it is not cheap. While technology is changing very quickly, just try to think back to your phone or computer from 2016 or 2012.
Automated voting has been on the rise in recent decades, but it doesn't have to be a guarantee of democracy. For example, it is used in Estonia, Bulgaria, India, the USA and Venezuela, to name just a few of the countries, and it is clear that there are significant differences between them. Most of the world still votes with pen and paper, which has its pros and cons, but is still the least bad. After all, wherever voting takes place, there are automatically ballots ready to be used if the machine "gets stuck", and this happens at some polling station in every election.
Perhaps it would be best to create a hybrid system. To vote on paper, and then count using a mobile phone camera and artificial intelligence. The slips could be arranged on a table, ten at a time, and scanned by phone. Artificial intelligence would sort and count them, and they would remain in the system for any type of verification. All that is required is an application that members of the electoral commission enter into their own phones and which sends the read data to the competent electoral commission. Since the voting has already been done, all manipulations would be at the level of the use of force, which renders the democratic process meaningless. And the paper slips certainly remain as evidence. Unless someone destroys them, but that's still a force.
The technology exists, the system could be easily set up, requires little willpower and minimal training, and control would be extremely simple. The same application could also perform biometric verification of voters, more secure than spray paint and an ID card, but maybe we are a little carried away now.
At the consultations before the constitutive session, the Student List announced that the leadership of the Assembly will be decided by the majority, without prior agreement on the distribution of functions. Brnabić assesses this as an interruption of the practice of respecting the opposition
Justice must never again depend on who is in power, because it applies to both "ours" and "theirs". The winners fought for it. Other affairs can wait, even if it is foreign policy - Europe is here, it will not run away
All this is the logical cause of Vučić's hysterical reaction to the mention of regulating the local media space. A mild attack on Prva and Informer televisions led to protests by "loyalists"
When "Because I say so" or "Because Freud says it differently" becomes a sufficient argument, it destroys in one fell swoop everything that has been worked on for several centuries: the importance of verification based on objective and rational parameters, respect for different points of view, a culture of dialogue, basic equality between people, replacing dogma with doubt and free research
At the moment when the institutions of the Republic are destroyed, when Vučić's octopus is still alive, when people are disgusted by the injustice and the stench left behind by the Essenes regime, we have, as Machiavelli said, only civic virtue as the fuel with which we can return to the beginning
The four independent members of REM are an example of perseverance and civic responsibility. Rodoljub Šabić even, upon leaving the premises of REM, after the sentencing of the Informer, experienced that the Essenes insulted him, hit him with their hands and feet. But that too will soon be over
Vučić pardoned the batterers and Dijana Hrkalović. The election winners should abolish the sultan's power that allows one man to run afoul of the entire judicial system
Interview: Branko Stamenković, public prosecutor of the Supreme Public Prosecutor's Office
A black picture and the breakdown of the rule of law subscribeThe archive of the weekly Vreme includes all our digital editions, since the very beginning of our work. All issues can be downloaded in PDF format, by purchasing the digital edition, or you can read all available texts from the selected issue.
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What the presidential transition will look like after November 5 remains a big unknown. Trump's transition team has not yet signed all key documents required by the Presidential Transition Act, although expectations are that they will eventually do so. The main reason is that, as the "Washington Post" reports, the former president does not trust the government and does not want to enter the process until he wins the elections. According to the announcements, in case of victory, he would start with the changes that would go in depth, dismissing a large number of civil servants whose position in the previous changes of the administration did not depend on who was in power
