Judge Voids Un-Auditable California Election 177
For only the second time in California history, a judge in Alameda County voided an election result and called for the election to be re-run, because the e-voting tallies from Diebold machines couldn't be audited. The vote was on a controversial ballot measure addressing the operation of medical marijuana dispensaries, and the result was a close margin. Activists went to court to demand a recount, but after the lawsuit was filed, elections officials sent voting machines back to Diebold. The court found that 96% of the necessary audit information had been erased. The judge ordered the ballot measure to be re-run in the next election.
Corporations (Score:5, Insightful)
Dragging out a measure with a revote tilts things well in favor of corporations, who have the cash to sustain such an operation. Now the reformers are going to have to fundraise all over again so they can try to put forth an effort in the next election.
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At least the medical marijuana group got reimbursed for their attorney fees but... You are right, they now have to campaign to get people out to vote for this again and that equals $$$. It's hard enough to get around all the government disinformation about marijuana,
It's a question of degree (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It's a question of degree (Score:5, Informative)
But with booze (in the United States alone): The annual average number of deaths for which alcohol poisoning was listed as an underlying cause was 317, with an age-adjusted death rate of 0.11 per 100,000 population. An average of 1,076 additional deaths included alcohol poisoning as a contributing cause, bringing the total number of deaths with any mention of alcohol poisoning to 1,393 per year [findarticles.com] (0.49 per 100,000 population).
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You'd be better off with a freedom argument.
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Reasonable intelligent supporters of marijuana legalization don't think it's harmless, they just think it's less harmful than alcohol
Or less harmful than any other prescription drug. I've never smoked marijuana, and I don't really personally approve of people doing it just for recreation (not saying I would stop people from doing it in their homes, I would just wag my finger a bit), but if doctors say it will help their patients, I'd tend to believe them more than I would politicians. Remember, it's still illegal to use a prescription drug if you don't have a prescription for it.
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-A corporation has a voting machine to sell that runs on Windows software.
-Same corporation is selling to government these windows voting machines for a high margin of profit.
-Same corporation could easily plug printers into the window software and direct auditable output to printers.
-These printers could also be sold to the government for additional thousands of dollars of profit.
-Corporation refuses to sell printers.
Huh. A corporation turning down an easy opportunity for more
Re:Corporations (Score:5, Funny)
You'd think that Frito-Lay would be all over this initiative. And Dominos. While it may be hard to re-muster the Stoner Caucus to do this all over again, perhaps the Munchie Cartel can pick up the slack.
California. *sigh*
There's plenty of reasons to re-invent electronically-assisted voting (I like the also-spits-out-paper variation, myself), but it really doesn't help the cause when - to a casual newsreader - an important test case seems to be about weed.
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Seems to me a lot of "important test cases" are about social taboos, the woman in the bus, Larry Flynt, Roe vs Wade,....umm I forget but you know fair's fair an all..."casual newsreader" = bubble, bubble, toil and trouble...zzzzzzz.
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No, I'm pretty sure there's no fraud involved. It actually IS illegal. You have not been defrauded, the laws actually are as written. Or is that not what you actually meant?
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The illegality of Cannabis is one of the greatest fraud of our time.
No, I'm pretty sure there's no fraud involved. It actually IS illegal. You have not been defrauded, the laws actually are as written. Or is that not what you actually meant?
So you do think that smoking one marijuhana cigarette will render the smoker hopelessly addicted, and violently insane, and that a rise in its use would lead to a wave of axe murders?
Because those are the fraudulent reasons for which it was first made illegal, provisionally, pending a revue. When revues were done, and said that it shouldn't be classified in the same category as heroin, new fraudulent reasons to keep it illegal were invented. When these were scientifically proven false, new fraudulent reaso
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The fraud that is the illegality of Cannabis (Score:3, Insightful)
It is now illegal to eat pot in the USA because (I kid you not) smoking tobacco causes cancer.
Documentation please...
See this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_rescheduling_in_the_United_States#Schedule_I [wikipedia.org] for background on the classification of Cannabis, and I can't find the exact quote from the late 90's reclassification denial, but basically they said it should remain in schedule I because: Marijuana contains more than 400 chemicals, including most of the harmful substances found in tobacco smoke [usdoj.gov]. Smoking one marijuana cigarette deposits about four times more tar into the lungs than a filtered tobacco cigarette. (n
Re:Corporations (Score:5, Insightful)
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Why not? The reason the election result was contest in court to begin with was because of how close a vote it was, suggesting that "to a casual news reader" it's something contentious and debatable, rather than simply the refuge of scoundrels.
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You'd be surprised at the number of the worlds brightest minds (surely brighter than yours) who smoke pot and / or support reform.
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Gee, it's almost like I didn't say that, isn't it! Because I wasn't talking about YOU. I'm talking about exactly what you KNOW I'm talking about. It's not, in general, a motivating thing to consume. It impacts different people in different ways, much like alchohol. There's ample evidence that, among (especially) kids who smoke it regularly, it can dramatically impa
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Please actually read what I had to say in that thread.
Re:Corporations (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Corporations (Score:5, Funny)
Yay! Now ban the machines (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yay! Now ban the machines (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Yay! Now ban the machines (Score:5, Informative)
The city did perform a dump of the data before they returned the machines to Diebold; that was the responsibility of the people in california. Diebold was clearing the machines and when told to stop they did, however only 20 of the 400+ machines had not been cleared.
Re:Yay! Now ban the machines (Score:5, Insightful)
But the problem really was the machines. Diebold's machines don't create paper trails. If there'd been a paper trail, that paper wouldn't have gone back to Diebold HQ and would not have been erased.
Why hasn't this been fixed? (Score:2)
Obviously many people think that would be a good idea.
Do others suggest it would be a bad one? Why? What is the reasoning behind that? Or was it just that nobody thought of that when designing the machines?
Why hasn't this been fixed already?
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Actually the issue is more one of "why use a machine for something better done by humans".
Redoing this election as pen/pencil on (hemp) paper. Would be far more reliable than messing about with any of these machines. Even if they need to employ Canadians to do the job.
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Obviously someone who has never watched or read about the Diebold systems. They already have printers attached! Which proves it's not a tec
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Because the people responsible for it have a vested interest in not fixing it.
Re:Why hasn't this been fixed? (Score:4, Insightful)
It really makes one think, doesn't it? I'll quote a slashdot entry from an earlier related discussion [slashdot.org]:
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I'm going to burn some karma here, but did you mean "better than"? I usually ignore grammatical mistakes, but you made this one four times in a row in capital letters.
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This will be enormously expensive for the state government. You can bet that they'll be seeing what steps they can take to prevent something like this happening again, and switching to a voting machine with an auditable paper trail will probably be one of the possibilities they consider.
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Last election they used the Sequoia Optec voting system - which uses a mark-sense ballot - for most voters and AVC Edge with VeriVote Printer for vision-impaired voters. Prior to that, they used the old-fashioned mark-sense forms that they use for absentee voters for everybody. Vision-impaired voters could have their ballots read to them or use one of the few remaining Diebold systems in local city halls.
I haven't
Re:Yay! Now ban the machines (Score:5, Funny)
Agreed but it's highly illegal to take all politicians and corperate executives and kill them on pikes in public.
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Would a Jury convict? As a practical issue you might need to ensure you had enough pikes.
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Its all a matter of perspective.
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hawk
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Info on the ACTUAL measure being voted on (Score:2, Informative)
The plaintiffs were backers of Measure R, which would have allowed medical marijuana clubs to move into retail areas in Berkeley without public hearings and would have erased limits on the amount of cannabis that patients could have.
According to the county's certified results, the measure lost, 25,167 to 24,976. The initiative lost again in a recount.
Re:Info on the ACTUAL measure being voted on (Score:5, Insightful)
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As is the FA, and whether it comes from a reliable source, and . . .
hawk
Re:Info on the ACTUAL measure being voted on (Score:4, Informative)
The judge ruled that it did not lose on a recount and that the measure is to go back on the ballot in the next election. It was found that it was impossible to do a recount because the data had been erased.
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They tallied up the totals twice; that isn't a recount.
Shame on... (Score:2)
Do they have any clue whatsoever about what they are doing? Has the nation not bitched enough about paper trails and how precarious votes are already? It doesn't take much sense to see that you can't take chances like this on a product that isn't proven and is under -heavy- scrutiny.
I'm in favor of electronic voting machines in general, but
Re:Shame on... (Score:4, Informative)
Diebold was responible for clearing the machine once it was returned, which they did.
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It won't do jack shit for their reputation, and that of their machines. All anyone will know is that this election had to be redone, Diebold could have prevented that, and if they'd used paper ballots, it wouldn't have had to be redone.
When creating a new system that -has- to be reliable, it also has to be as fool-proof as possible. Writing blame into the contract is not an acceptable solution. Proper training, supervision, and backup systems w
Re:Shame on... (Score:4, Insightful)
So, you're in favor of the equipment vendor actually having a hand in the policies and practices of running the elections themselves? This is exactly the sort of thing that people have been screaming about - too MUCH influence by the hardware vendor.
Again, shame on Diebold for not having a fscking clue how to make and sell their product.
Except, they made it just fine (it did just what it was asked to do), and they sold it just fine, too. You seem to be suggesting that they should have their own people sitting in election board offices, monitoring the ups and downs of a political process at the local level, and consulting on how the local election board should carry on with the daily activities that they are paid to conduct. Is it your perception that part of Diebold's sales cycle and contract with the entities that use their gear is that they should be on call to direct those districts/states/municipalities/counties in making election process decisions - relative to local statutes and election rules and particular events - about when and how in-machine data should be handled after the election is over? Was that part of the sale - such relatively open-ended consulting services? How many election board meetings should thousands of Diebold employees attend in order to save people from themselves? How many tinfoil-hat conspiracy nuts would then see their involvment in such proceedings to be just another case of elections being 'stolen' by whoever it is they hate that week? Can't have it both ways.
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It seems pretty obvious that having a hard-copy of critical data makes sense for the use cases of voting. It doesn't cost hundred
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And they can build voting machines that way too, if their customers ask for them. Again, that's a policy and procurement issue at the election board level. If the election board can't imagine that they want a particular feature, despite years, now, of experience on the part of voters and media coverage galore, then who exactly are you saying should be making those decisions? The equipment vendor? And when the equipment vendor is the one telling election boards what
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I agree 100% with that statement. Your original post, however, seemed to imply that the only possible way Diebold could achieve such a request was through a rediculous amount of manhours and attending every single council meeting, which is false.
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No, my original post spoke to the issue at hand, here. The people USING THE MACHINES decided it was time to send them back to Diebold, where - as always - they are wiped. The decision about when the local election board, in the context of how well-settled a given election/issue is or is not, cons
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Whether people like it or not they already are. Personally I think the state should not give up the means of choosing it's representatives to an outside body that is motivated by profit and is governed by little in the way of checks, balances and preventing criminal involvement. The criminal history (including fraud convictions) of some of the people in the Diebold election
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Which in my opinion simply becomes an argument against paperless machines... so that this very brand of finger-pointing can't be used to cover up the stealing -- or even just the screwing up -- of elections.
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Because once the machines were back they could be sent somewhere else and make more money
Why did they ERASE the machines before things were taken care of?
Because the last thing they want is definitive proof that their equipment is in error, that would cut their profits. Better an election be voided then that.
Has the nation not bitched enough about paper trails and how precarious votes are already?
No
Do they have any clue whatsoe
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And I assume that you, of course, never wipe any machine you ever touch. Even if it's a production machine that needs to be updated, you keep everything on it forever even when your client - the machine's owner - tells you they have everything they need and that you can wipe and reinstall...
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Look, I'm not absolving Diebold of any of their other screwups, but this one gets laid squarely at the feet of the elections officials. It was their responsibility to govern, control, and retain the voting records. It was their responsibility to make sure any and all records were
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Wow, a whole new level (Score:2)
Just look at the paper ballots! (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a prime example of why a purely electronic record of the vote is a Bad Idea. If paper ballots had been printed, reviewed by the voter before being deposited in a secure ballot box, and retained for a recount, there would be no issue.
Against the cost of re-running a vote, those printers are starting to look pretty chap, I'd wager.
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Why bother with all that when you can just look at the paper ballots that where printed when...oh wait...there AREN'T ANY!
This is a prime example of why a purely electronic record of the vote is a Bad Idea. If paper ballots had been printed, reviewed by the voter before being deposited in a secure ballot box, and retained for a recount, there would be no issue.
Those Diebold motherfuckers make ATM's. ATM's have paper trails. To say that they're incapable of creating paper records for audits or that it's too complicated of a task to solve with their technology is a lie worthy of Republican sympathizers. You think banks would put up with this kind of failure rate, with these inaccuracies? Do you think they'd put up with hackable ATM's?
The people responsible for promoting these failed electronic voting machines are committing treason by attacking the heart and soul
The solution (Score:4, Funny)
We need to get rid of these electronic polling machines.
They should raise a proposition on this so that we can vote on the issue.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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the business could be held liable for damages (sometimes criminally) if certain controls and audit functions are not in place.
Standard IANAL (which may be obvious enough after I post my question) but couldn't a case against the State of Cali be made for using machines that created this whole mess in the first place? Not sure how Cali. election laws are written. But there has to be a state liability somewhere for making sure elections can be certified.
Seems fairly ridiculous that my company could be charged in court for destruction of evidence if we don't retain e-mails, but a state government can simply let the results of a publi
Why is the data held in the machine? (Score:2)
Of course, some sort of paper ballot would be better, but election boards seem to be following the "Oooh shiny!" train of thought.
Missing the big picture (Score:2, Flamebait)
Change this to a presidential election (circa 2000) and try to recount an unaud
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No.
Data from the NORC recount shows that under the legal standard in force at the time, the "intent of the voter", more ballots were cast for Gore than for Bush. [bushwatch.com]
As the Washington Post [washingtonpost.com] admitted (though only deep into an article whose headline and lead tells how recounts would have favored Bush):
For some things, analog is best. (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem with e-voting (in my opinion) is not so much the audit trail, but the fact that e-voting adds unnecessary levels of complexity (and obfuscation and unaccountability) to the voting process. This is the result of government leaders attempting to perform vital civic services on the cheap: why pay poll workers and vote counters, when we can just use machines that do this fast and automagically?
What the use of e-voting machines invites is the ability/potential not only to count votes FASTER, but to do so behind a hardware/software interface, where much malfeasance can be conjured in code and executed on-the-fly, beyond the observational capacity of effectively the entire voting population.
Some things are better dealt with in the analog world. A true and accurate accounting of the will of the people is too important to a democracy for us to cut corners. I think it is worth the cost of paper ballots and carbon-based vote counters to effect the will of the people (however much one may or may not agree with the peoples' will).
That's my two cents on a Thursday before 11am (the time of the morning at which my brain always chugs to life).
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Is using these machines actually that cheap. You still need plenty of people and you have to pay for the
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A fully analog system has problems such as:
The good things about Diebold e-voting machines (Score:2)
1) They save paper. No umpty-ump thousands of paper ballots to print out and truck around.
2) They save time with the vote counting. Computers can tally in an instant while manual vote tallying by an army of poll workers takes hours, and sometimes days.
3) They restrict access to the balloting to just a few people. Instead of all of those vote counters putting their hands all over a mass of paper ballots, there are just a
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Hooray! Thousands of renewable trees have been spared to make way for thousands of expensive, fragile, electricity-sucking devices made from toxic materials!
2) They save time with the vote counting.
Woot! We can get the wrong answer instantly! No longer will I have to sit paralyzed for days while my town tabulates the winner of School Board Seat 6!
3) They restrict access to the balloting to just a few people. Instead of all of those vote counters putting their hands all over a mass of pap
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If Joe Random makes off with a ballot box, there is physical evidence of the theft--namely, the missing ballot box sitting in the trunk of his car. He had to physically do something to grab the ballots, which can be witnessed.
If vote-tampering is done electronically, there is no physical evidence to prove it. When you
Contempt of court? (Score:2)
I'm used to government inaction or incompetence affecting elections - it happens all the time - but when government officials purposely act contrary to a judge's order, that brings corruption to an entirely new level.
Do Over is OK (Score:2)
A 2% victory on one Tuesday in November that governs 2, 4 or 6 years, especially with the power of incumbency multiplying all those terms, is a recipe for an ungovernable populace. A do-over (eliminating minor candidates proven not to be viable to win) wou
It's true (Score:2)
Sometimes the headlines write themselves...
The ultimate stumper (Score:2)
Considering how simple it would be to include a printer that would produce a record, and how much money they could charge state and local governments for those printers, it is indeed a very curious thing that these companies REFUSE to make that money.
Re:Conspiracy hat ON! (Score:4, Insightful)
I have a much easier time believing there was a lot of stupidity on the part of a lot of people than I do believing they were able to successfully orchestrate something that would only end up forcing a re-vote anyway.
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Do you really think it was just stupidity that caused them to design voting machines without a paper trail? You think the people who make our ATMs and slot machines are too incompetent to design an auditable system?
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The ATMs I use print receipts. I wonder why Diebold doesn't do the same with voting machines. I mean, stick with what works.
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Why (Score:4, Insightful)
If the medical establishment say that something has a clinical benefit, what business is it of the public?
Should we have a referendum for every new drug?
Re:Why (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Why (Score:5, Insightful)
# The drug has a high potential for abuse.
# The drug has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.
# There is a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug.
(from Wikipedia)
Schedule I drugs are illegal, period, because the government feels that there's no legitimate reason you should be using them. They consider any use of a Schedule I substance a "recreational" use, because in their opinion, you couldn't possibly be using that substance to treat any illness or condition.
Of course, pure THC (aka Marinol) is Schedule II, so you could get a prescription for it if you wanted to. But Marinol is manufactured by the drug companies, whereas you could theoretically grow your own marijuana and cut out the middle-man. Hmmmmm, I'm beginning to see a pattern here...
Re:Why (Score:4, Interesting)
Which brings up the questions:
- What is illegitimate about recreation?
and more importantly:
- Where does the government claim to find constitutional authorization to ban particular recreations?
Of course since the RICO laws reestablished the financial incentive structure that drove the Spanish Inquisition you'll have a hard time getting support to strike down the drug laws from those who benefit in government and law enforcement.
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illegal for recreational use... I could be wrong
At the federal level, it is considered illegal for all uses. It's classified in the same bracket as heroin.
:(
a Schedule I drug according to the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, which classified marijuana as having high potential for abuse, no medical use, and not safe to use under medical supervision. [wikipedia.org] Which any scientific study will tell is a load of steaming bullshit
Schedule I Status (Score:3, Informative)
illegal for recreational use... I could be wrong
At the federal level, it is considered illegal for all uses. It's classified in the same bracket as heroin.
:(
a Schedule I drug according to the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, which classified marijuana as having high potential for abuse, no medical use, and not safe to use under medical supervision. [wikipedia.org] Which any scientific study will tell is a load of steaming bullshit
True. Regardless of any feelings on the morality of marijuana use or whether it should be legalized, its Schedule I status, putting it on the same level as crack and amphetamines, is simple stupidity. It has well documented uses, is quite safe, and is no where near as addictive as any number of illegal drugs, and may be less so than alcohol. It does have potential for abuse and that is a different question.
The concern is, presumably, that admitting it has uses, given that it is relatively safe (particul
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The debate over whether marijuana should be recreationally legal, whether its use commonly endangers others (say, driving under the influence), and what any penalties should be is heavily clouded by this problem. It also makes the whole drug problem harder because it makes the entire drug classification system look partisan and useless, which, to some extent, it is exactly that. It results in a loss of respect for the system.
A lot of loss of respect for this obviously corrupt and dishonest system. Indeed.
Regarding the latest red herring (driving), the studies done on that have hilarious results: Instead of proving that drug-taking while driving increased the risk of accidents, researchers found that the mellowing effects of cannabis made drivers more cautious and so less likely to drive dangerously.
Although the cannabis affected reaction time in regular users, its effects appear to be substantially less dangerous than fatigue [mapinc.org]
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Come on, in classifying marijuana as a schedule I substance, they took the effect of the drug on society as a whole into account. It is the government's duty to do whatever it can to prevent another Cheech & Chong movie being made.
I don't know what part of the world you're in, but people don't kill each other over or from pot here. When I was growing up, the impact of pot as a "drug problem" versus, say, heroin, was not even on the radar. At college, where many drugs were accessible, pot was the absolute least of worries: still illegal, still a problem, but the difference in "effect on society as a whole" between marijuana and amphetamines is near incalculable. Besides that, there are clear criteria for what merits Schedule I statu
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