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Comments: 433 +- News: Computerized Election Results With No Election on Sunday July 19, @01:28PM
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kdawson
on Sunday July 19, @01:28PM
from the why-bother-with-mere-tampering dept.
from the why-bother-with-mere-tampering dept.
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_Sharp'r_ writes "In Honduras, according to breaking Catalan newspaper reports (translations available, USA Today mention), authorities have seized 45 computers containing certified election results for a constitutional election that never happened. The election had been scheduled for June 28, but on that day the president, Manuel Zelaya, was ousted. The 'certified' and detailed electronic records of the non-existent election show Zelaya's side having won overwhelmingly."
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Electronic Efficiency (Score:5, Funny)
I can see why the powers that be like the efficiency of a modern electronic voting system.
Clearly we humans don't have to do anything at all. The machines can read our minds and we get 100% voter turnout with guaranteed accurate results ;-)
again, for the morons (Score:5, Insightful)
and the industry shills who have sold their conscience:
you can screw with paper ballots. but a lot less easily and a lot less slower and with a lot more effort and a lot easier to trace than the effort required to mess with electronic voting
simply for the sake of the integrity of democracy, electronic voting should NEVER happen, in ANY country
do you really need any convincing about what can happen to a country if a vote is put in doubt considering recent events?
not that iran used electronic voting, but imagine how much LESS forensic evidence there would be if iran ever lets anyone independently monitor the results
Re:again, for the morons (Score:4, Insightful)
But.... why?
Paper ballots work better.
Not everyone has access to a computer or internet connection.
Paper ballots are cheaper.
Paper ballots are harder to forge.
Paper ballots /work now/, and work well.
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Re:again, for the morons (Score:5, Insightful)
The US has a crazy system where they have "embraced" democracy beyond that which is practical. They vote for far to much. They vote for the local sheriff and the local dog catcher. There are pages and pages of things to vote on the US voting system. It is beyond ridiculous to expect any significant percentage of voters to become aware of all the positions that are voted on.
The US has embraced the idea of democracy but failed at the application due to an over application of the idea.
Not quite as bad as the USSR and communism.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
> Eventually we would see the people voting on a daily basis on the projects they want.
That is the most stupid way to run anything ever known. Even worse than a dictatorship.
The Sheeple are not to be trusted.
As people are finding out as they look closer at Economics. Economics breaks down because it is based on ideal knowledge conditions. Even half baked knowledge conditions do not exist in most cases. Economics fails because purchase decisions are subject to information gaps and information war.
The same
No to eVoting and Digital Democracy (Score:4, Insightful)
> eVoting CAN and WILL happen.
It may come, but it will come over my cold dead body.
> ..every voter must have its own private key... [lots of useless tech details clipped]
The problem is with the tech. You, me and at least 10% of the nerds here on Slashdot could design an evoting system that would be technically perfect. And still spell the final death of our Republic because of the non-technical flaws that can't be fixed with tech.
Problem one. Take away the secret ballot (i.e. the voting booth) and it is 100% certain that vote buying, voter intimidation and many other evils will follow. No ballot cast over the Internet can be proven to be secret. Note that this defect exists with absentee and general mail in balloting as well. Mailed in absentee ballots generally don't decide elections and can be accepted as a compromise. General mail in elections are inherently corrupt.
Problem two. You will never design an electronic system that is 100% proof against fraud. It is doubtful one can be designed as resistant to fraud as paper ballot counted in the open with observers from all camps present.
> Voting could then be extended to government actions that currently skip the peoples' opinion.
You are describing Democracy. And the Founders were aware of this system of government and rightly rejected it as proven by history to be madness. We were instead given a Constitutional Republic. I have seen nothing to indicate the current government educated masses possess such an advanced level of civic virtue as to justify a reevaluation of their verdict on the subject.
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Re:again, for the morons (Score:5, Informative)
I have actually counted ballots and tampering with them is not at all hard. The fact is that I live in a country that wouldn't stand for this. If there was a government behind it though, fraud is quite easy.
No.
First of all: how many ballots could you have tampered with anyway? What if you had 20 friends helping in other polling stations? Enough to sway the outcome? I find that very hard to believe.
And if there is large-scale tampering going on by government agents, how likely is it that they are caught out by representatives from other political parties manning the polling stations? Especially if someone suspects tampering and demands a recount.
Our country wouldn't stand for tampering with ballots. But it certainly shouldn't stand for any ballot count done by one institution, without any oversight. And that is effectively what you have with computerised voting. Any half-wit can visually observe paper voting and certify that nothing untoward is going on. But with computer voting, even experts might be hard-pressed that no nefarious bit of code slipped past the overseers.
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Computers should be used to count votes (Score:4, Funny)
Nice biased link in the summary. (Score:5, Interesting)
It doesn't matter what Zelaya's politics were, if this is true then he clearly had no problem with electoral fraud. People on both sides of the political spectrum, from the extremists to the moderates, have shown time & time again that they will do whatever they can to stay in power. It is not limited to only the left or only the right, and making silly jabs at the "other" side like that is not only distasteful but juvenile as well.
Conventional Wisdom picked the WRONG side, AGAIN (Score:4, Interesting)
What is needed is Congressional term limits in the USA, not their abolition in Honduras.
Now that Chavez has got his way in Venezuela he will be a pain for generations just as Castro was. Every time
This must be the makings of a world record for wrongheadedness and stupidity by both parties in the US, Iraq, Afganistan, Pakistan
There must be a very strong case for retiring entirely all staff at Foggy Bottom and Langly and starting again, Wild Bill anyone?, since they always pick the wrong side. Now we risk forcing the population of yet another mid-american country the delights of a corrupt socialist government paradise run by an idiot.
Re:Really (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Really (Score:5, Insightful)
Its far easier for a 3rd party overwatching election committee to verify that the box is empty before the election, than to verify that the electronic election is actually reset, and the machines aren't tampered, and have no back doors, and so forth.
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Elections should be seen as fair (Score:5, Insightful)
Electronic voting systems are still opaque to the average person even if they happen to be fair.
In contrast when paper voting is done properly, the various parties can have their representatives observe the whole process of the voting, storage and counting. This is in fact done in many countries. It is not some "theory".
In "notorious" countries typically the "counting" is done behind closed doors, or observers aren't allowed to keep an eye over the ballot boxes. The more a country/gov hides the whole process, the more suspicious it will seem.
With electronic voting systems the counting is effectively done behind closed doors. And if you set things up so that independent and party representatives can observe the counting, the system ends up about as slow as paper voting, just more complex and expensive.
Electronic voting systems are only useful for the wrong reasons.
I have to admit that paper based voting fails if too many of the citizens in your country can't count properly. But by that time you probably have an idiocracy anyway.
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Re:Really (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it? Why?
If I'm capable of rigging an election electronically, I could be capable of covering my tracks.
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Re:Really (Score:5, Insightful)
Go see how paper voting is done in various countries and you can see it's really hard to rig in some countries, and easier in other countries (ballot boxes are moved, counting is done in secret by one organization).
Sure you can bribe people. But if so many are bribable, the country is screwed up so badly it hardly matters what system you use.
In contrast an electronic election is mostly _hidden_ to observers. So it should be suspicious by default.
If you set it up so that people can observe the storage and counting of the electronic votes, it's going to be as slow as paper voting, but more expensive and complicated.
The easiest way you can rig paper elections that are done openly and properly is with postal votes. However electronic voting systems are just as vulnerable to this problem - if not more so.
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Re:Really (Score:5, Insightful)
You may not have noticed this, but paper ballots are ... made of paper. And lots of ballots take up lots of space. They're heavy. They have to be disposed of. This takes time. People notice. There are witnesses. The amount of effort involved in altering or covering up the results of a fully computerized election is so much less than the amount of effort involved in altering or covering up the results of an election that uses paper ballots that the two aren't really comparable.
Of course paper ballots are no guarantee of an honest election. Nor is there any guarantee that locking your door will keep your house from being broken into. But an all-electronic election is like leaving your front door hanging wide open and putting a sign in your yard that says, "Come take stuff."
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Re:Really (Score:5, Insightful)
The main benefit of paper ballots are the many eyes and hands that the ballots and ballot boxes go through.
Think of it this way: the trademark images of the Iraqi elections a few years back were the inked thumb and the translucent ballot box. Neither are inherently secure, but the inked thumb made it more difficult for people to vote early and vote often without the risk of someone noticing it. Likewise, the translucent ballot boxes made it more difficult for the bins to be stuffed before hand without the risk of someone noticing it. Computers are so incredibly opaque that it is nearly impossible for someone to notice discreprancies without direct and intensive observations as well as a great deal of technical knowledge.
Now we all know that elections are fixed, even with pen and paper ballots. It is possible to pay off the right people so that they conveniently don't notice anything. Almost everyone else can be intimidated into not noticing anything. But, either way, more people will notice the discreprancies and people tend to have long memories about such things. So there is still a potential for them to remedy it.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
As it has been said from the beginning, anyone with physical access to the machine and sufficient knowledge of how the machine works can alter the results, and it is clear that the ousted President (who had called for an illegal referendum to have term limits removed so he could basically be president for life) had people with both those things.
For electronic voting, you have to assume that the manufacturer and everyone involved in the storage, transport and operation of such voting machines to be acting in
And This Is the Government of a Country (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody's saying electronic records can't be faked through physical access to the machines. You're the only one who seems surprised at that, in order to deny it should be surprising. Which is a straw man argument.
This story is important because it crossed the line from possible, to (evidently) actual. Which has consequences. Not the expected consequences of helping keep a president in power, but (even more notably) in helping to keep one ousted by a coup this past week out of power, boosting arguments of his corruption.
Next you'll be sarcastically moaning "oh, noes, presidents are corrupt". FYI: Yes, and when they are, the people need to be outraged about it, and get rid of them.
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Re:And This Is the Government of a Country (Score:5, Informative)
This was different from what one normally thinks of as a junta. I don't know if the Honduran constitution has a mechanism to remove a sitting president from office, but it was pretty clear that he was absolutely on his own. His own party told him to back off, and that they didn't support the referendum. As was reported by the media, the legislature had passed a law banning referenda within the 180 days prior to an election. The Supreme Court ruled the pending referendum illegal, and issued an injunction preventing the military from making preparations for it. The military was clearly ready to comply with the Supreme Court, but Zelaya was pushing ahead with the referendum anyway, and fired the head of the military. This action was reversed by the Supreme Court the next day. The attorney general issued an arrest warrant for Zelaya, and the day after, the Supreme Court ordered Zelaya's arrest; whether or not that is constitutional, I don't know. Wikipedia's article on the matter suggests that by even trying to hold the referendum, the constitution required that he was to be removed from office.
Presumably, much of this could have been handled better, particularly the removal of Zelaya from the country. But Zelaya seemed to be intent on doing things in a way that is at best gray; that the original ballots were taken possession of by Zelaya and his backers, and would be issued and counted by the same, shows that he had no intentions of having a fair election. If these election computers can be absolutely tied to him, it will at least complicate negotiations for his return.
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Re:And This Is the Government of a Country (Score:5, Insightful)
They don't. See "hondurascrisis.org" for details from a Honduran.
Wikipedia's article on the matter suggests that by even trying to hold the referendum, the constitution required that he was to be removed from office.
Again, according to the link above, the constitution does say that trying to change the length of the President's term (currently 4 years) is treason. Zelaya was trying to change the rules to allow for his re-election. So, technically, he was committing treason.
Now, for all those who call this a "coup", ask yourself what the Honduran authorities were supposed to do? You had a President committing treason, repeatedly ignoring the orders of the Supreme Court, and attempting to use the military to hold an illegal referendum. You don't have an impeachment process. Do you:
1: Put him in jail in Honduras? Possible, but then he's in a place where his supporters know where he is, which could lead to a mass assault in an attempt to free him. If that happens, hundreds of people could die, and incite a civil war.
2: Execute him. Obviously, a non-starter. It creates a martyr, and again the chance of civil war.
3: Exile him. Clearly the wisest choice. Get him out of the country, and away from his supporters, try to let the situation cool down, and get the facts out. The fact that CNN, the BBC, etc. are staunchly suppressing these facts, and dressing this up as a military coup says more about their agenda than it does their believability as objective news organizations.
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Re:And This Is the Government of a Country (Score:5, Insightful)
Far better, I agree, that Honduras amend their constitution to include an impeachment process. But seriously, isn't "high crimes and misdemeanours" pretty wide in itself?
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Re:And This Is the Government of a Country (Score:5, Interesting)
A recent article in Slate [slate.com] claimed that Honduras lacked a means of removing the President peacefully.
In virtually every other country in the world, Zelaya would have been removed from office. But, peculiarly, the Honduran Constitution does not include an impeachment procedureâ"Congress is entitled to name a new president only in the absence of the current one. So, rather than bringing Zelaya before a judge to be tried for his criminal misbehavior, the army rousted him out of bed and flew him off to Costa Rica in his pajamas. The legislature then voted to replace him with Roberto Micheletti, the head of Congress, who was next in the line of succession.
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Not really true. (Score:4, Insightful)
... peculiarly, the Honduran Constitution does not include an impeachment procedure
But it does specify that anyone who advocates or takes steps to modify the portion of the constitution immediately loses any government office he holds and is banned from holding a government office for ten years.
This is what Zelaya did. The head of his party called for his ouster and the Supreme Court ruled that he was in violation of this section and no longer the President.
Even if the steps weren't explicitly laid out in advance this sounds like a constitutional impeachment procedure to me.
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Re:And This Is the Government of a Country (Score:4, Informative)
Chapter 1 article 2: The sovereignty belongs to the people, from whom emanates all the powers of the state, which are exercised by representation.
Supplanting the popular sovereignty and usurping the constituted powers are considered betrayal of the homeland. The responsibility in that case is imprescriptible [ed. love that prose] and can be alleged by an officer or a petition of any citizen.
Chapter 1 article 3: No one has a duty of obedience to an usurperous government nor to those who take office or public employment by armed force o using means or proceedings that break or ignore what the constitution and laws set forth. The actions performed by such authorities are void. The people has the right to resort to insurrection in defense of the constitutional order.
Chapter 1 article 4: The alternation* in the exercise of the president of the republic is mandatory. Infracting this rule constitutes the crime of betraying the homeland.
Chapter 6 article 239: Any citizen who has served in the office of the Executive Power shall not be President or Vice President.
Whosoever breaks this law or proposes its reform, along with those who support him directly or indirectly, shall immediately cease the service of their respective offices, and for ten years shall remain unable to hold any public office.
Chapter 6 article 240: The following cannot be elected president of the republic: Vice presidents, Secretaries and subsecretaries of state, Members of the national election tribunal, judges and magistrates of the judicial power,
So the supreme court seems to have acted correctly in removing him from the country. In fact, they gave Zelaya a second chance by initially prohibiting him from trying to hold the election. It seems they would have been in good legal standing already at that point to remove him.
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Re:And This Is the Government of a Country (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know if the Honduran constitution has a mechanism to remove a sitting president from office, but it was pretty clear that he was absolutely on his own.
"On his own" except for a large backing from the populace.
I don't know if their constitution has an impeachment mechanism either, but I do know that any body of law that puts itself beyond even a supermajority vote is an anti-democratic tyranny.
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Re:And This Is the Government of a Country (Score:4, Insightful)
You take three words with highly ambiguous (and very different) meanings, and you attempt to link them together using an extremely loaded word that only has relative meaning. This is where "complexity" comes into play. How would anyone even know if they agreed with you or not? Do you mean the actions of German Nazis in the Holocaust, Nazism as a political system, or people who label themselves Nazis? What is your understanding of Fascism? How can an economic structure (Communism) be "Evil"? Do you mean something else by it? What is Evil, not being defined relative to Good?
This one sentence you uttered makes you sound like a parrot for the hegemony. You need to define your terms, otherwise your entire chain of arguments, which is built on this extremely vague first premise, comes apart under scrutiny. I won't even approach your other "rules."
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Re:And This Is the Government of a Country (Score:4, Insightful)
When the government can take anything away from you at any time, for any or no reason, that isn't liberty. It isn't freedom. There are no choices. That IS evil.
By that definition everything short of Anarchy is evil.
Parents as a form of governance over their children is evil and children should have free reign to do completely as they please.
What is "yours" is only what is "yours" by government protection and social contract. There is nothing which says my TV is mine. It has no intrinsic ownership beyond what I can defend. As a member of society I get society's protection of what I can reasonably defend as mine. Without government what is mine is only what I can defend personally, pay someone to defend or threaten into defending.
It's a strong government when can enforce contracts. It's a strong government which can keep the people from deciding that you've received an unfair portion of resources. It's a strong government which enables wealth.
If you want complete freedom from government intervention then you also have to learn to live with the fact that there are is no definition of ownership.
Evil is allowing those around you to suffer and die while others live in excess. Evil is manipulating a system in order to economically subjugate those without as much money through your influence.
Communism is Evil. Capitalism is Evil. Socialism is Evil. Anarchy is Evil. Everything is evil. Some things are just more obviously evil. Nobody gets to take the high road.
The United States supported Stalin. He killed more Jews than Hitler. Is the US evil? Nobody is blameless. To admit that isn't weakness it's reality.
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The significance of this for the rest of the world (Score:5, Insightful)
One should of course take such breaking news reports with a grain of salt till confirmed, one could imagine this being some sort of misinterpretation of the observations (e.g. maybe those were early voting ballots??), Moreover this is hondouras.....as I'm sure other posters will talk about.
IN any case assuming the report is correct, it's critical contextual significance is thus:
One of the big strawmen often raised by folks in favor of electronic voting is that there is this supposed panacea called "parallel testing" that is touted as being an invincible process of detecting rigged machines. The idea is that at random a machine will be chosen before the elections begin and pulled out of service, then the election workers will cast pretend votes on it all day long. then it's output checked for accuracy. This is called "parallel" testing because it's done in a time period parallel to a real election, supposedly to "fool" any date dependent software. It's not an awful idea and would indeed detect some kinds of naive electronic fraud. But the idea that this is remotely a solution is even more naive.
Moreover, said proponents don't actually ever do this--- it's just a thought experiment. The real reason for that strawman argument is not that people would actually would do it, it's that since you could in principle do it, this keeps that bad guys at bay. Ha Ha Ha.
So it's such a terrible irony then that the very first time in history that, effectively a different kind of parallel test did occur, that yep massive machine rigging is found!
the parallel test in this case is: call an election. cancel it unexpectedly at the last possible second and impound the machines, test them for rigging.
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Propaganda Yourself (Score:5, Insightful)
a military coup unofficially supported by the US,
US manufactured, voting machines
Interesting how you state two things here with no proof. Nor are either of these in any of the articles and the only one who has said it was "unofficially supported by the US" has been Hugo Chavez. Further, US President Obama has condemned the coup. Oh, and it didn't say that they were voting machines, either.
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Re:Opposition Faked it to ciminalize him (Score:5, Insightful)
The election was rigged per se.
Merely *holding* the election was illegal and in violation of the law. This was settled by law, and in courts.
This was not a "coup" by the lawful government, but rather the lawful government thwarting a coup by the president . . .
hawk
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Re:So Impeach Him (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:No, that's bullshit, ever heard of De Gaulle? (Score:5, Informative)
Yes he did. If you read their constitution, you'll see that there's a section that cannot be changed or amended about the president serving only one term (too many dictator presidents clinging to power) and that it's even illegal for a government official to talk about changing it. According to the constitution, that person would lose his position and be barred from the government altogether for a period of 10 years.
Therefore, he did break the constitution and the moment he did so, wasn't president anymore.
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Re:No, that's bullshit, ever heard of De Gaulle? (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:No, that's bullshit, ever heard of De Gaulle? (Score:4, Informative)
AIUI, their constitution not only forbids removing the term limits, it specifies that any elected official who submits a bill to chage the constitution in that way be removed from office. If so, Zelaya had, in fact, violated their constitution and was properly removed from office.
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Re:No, that's bullshit, ever heard of De Gaulle? (Score:4, Informative)
The ~referendum that Zelaya was planning might well have been unconstitutionnal, but he didn't get to do it. Hence he did not break the constitution.
The Honduran Constitution prohibits the consideration of any amendments aimed at changing terms or eliminating term limits. In effect, by advocating and campaigning on that topic, Zelaya was violating the constitution in his capacity as president.
Not to mention that Zelaya sacked the head of the military for refusing to carry out his illegal referendum, and then tried to have his supporters carry it out on their own contrary to the declarations of Hondura's congress and supreme court, leading a mob to break in and steal the necessary ballots which he had had sent by none other than Hugo Chavez.
And now we see why he was eager to carry it out despite its illegality and his having become rather unpopular--it was always going to be cooked in his favor.
Personally, I don't see how the removal of the president by the congress and the supreme court for his illegal actions and temporary replacement by an elected official from the same party, with no alteration to plans to hold the upcoming election, can be considered a "coup." It didn't change the political landscape at all. It just kept one power hungry president from fraudulently creating a permanent throne for himself.
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Re:So Impeach Him (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:No he HAD NOT (Score:5, Informative)
Whoever violates this law or proposes its reform, as well as those that support such violation directly or indirectly, will immediately cease in their functions and will be unable to hold any public office for a period of 10 years.
He proposed its reform, which means there WAS a basis for removing him.
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Re:So Impeach Him (Score:4, Insightful)
You're right about the pajamas thing. They should have shot him and saved themselves the trouble.
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If true (Score:5, Insightful)
They avoided more serious bloodshed the way they did it. If this is a true fact, and he had remained "in power", he would have beern still able to order around a lot of the military forces who were loyal to him, plus cause mass demonstrations, etc and be able to coordinate it better. Because there is no way he would have gone along with getting impeached.
Even on the surface it was a blatant power grab by him, the entire issue was designed to turn him into el presidente for life. The congress there and the judges ALREADY had told him this wasn't proper nor legal, but he was going aherad with this "vote" scam regardless. So what makes you think he would have gone along with an impeachment? They were under the gun of making a time critical decision, and didn't off the guy or anything, just got him out before the situation got worse. If they hadn't already warned him about it that would be different, but they did warn him before the fact.
Ya, two sucky choices, but I think they chose the lesser of two suckages there.
But all of this is based on "if" and we just don't know the veracity of this latest revelation, but we do know about the power grab he was attempting, sort of like chavez making himself the president (basically and practically)for life "legally".
Term limits are a dang spiffy idea when it comes to politicians, no matter how popular they are, and changing the rules, like he wanted to do with this plebiscite, at the last second, is a serious mistake and transparently was just an effort to accrue more power under some umbrella of it legally happening. The people there had a right wing dictatorship like forever, and a lot of them could plainly see a left wing version now happening, and they just went "no you don't!".
That's how I have read these ongoing events anyway.
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Addendum/ found some backup (Score:4, Informative)
I have found an article where a constitutional lawyer, who hails from Honduras, explains what happened and why it happened. My best guess analysis mirrors just about exactly what he is saying. There is fault on both sides, but their constitution clearly states not only is it illegal to try and change the one term limit, but it is a crime to even propose it! I didn't know that part.
His own political party, who control the legislature there, voted overwhelmingly for his ouster. Their attorney general ordered the referendum halted, but he was trying to go ahead with it anyway, just by calling it "an opinion poll", just some weasel words. By their law, he shouldn't have been deported (that's the only thing they did technically illegal), but immediately should have been jailed, but they decided it was better to break that one law to avoid mass bloodshed. They estimated if he was still in-country, there just would have been a big bloody mess, and they didn't want that, the rock and the hard place scenario, or what I called picking the lesser of two suckages.
Here is the article Miguel Estrada: 'Honduran Ouster of Zelaya was Constitutional' [humanevents.com]
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, the supreme court down there DID rule that he was in violation of the constitution and ordered and arrest warrant. The army then kicked him to the curb, rather than imprison him. Any way you look at it, legally, he should no longer be in power. Exile instead of imprisonment? He SHOULD be happy for that, but somehow the rest of the world is taking this opportunity to say something against military coups. Uh, rather than, maybe taking the chance when it's a coup against a leader that wasn't abo
Re:So Impeach Him (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:So Impeach Him (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Practicalities asside, that is the rational behind the 2nd ammendment.
And it was a good rationale... (Score:4, Insightful)
...when the populace was armed with muskets, and the government was armed with muskets.
Now the populace is armed with, at best, assault rifles, and the government is armed with tanks.
What really keeps the government in check is the right to join the military.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So, If we'd only thought to use stealth bombers in Iraq, we wouldn't have needed six years of using pretty much all of our military to occupy a country the size of California with a smaller population?
Re:So Impeach Him (Score:4, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
THERE WAS NO COUP! (Score:5, Insightful)
The congress and the supreme court tossed him from office when he violated the constitution. The Army just fulfilled their constitutional duty.
It would be no different than the US Senate convicting a President at trial, and the President refusing to leave office. At that point what the rest of the government is supposed to do is toss him, forcefully, if need be, although in the US it would probably be the Secret Service that did it.
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