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States Throw Out Electronic Voting Machines
Posted by
kdawson
on Wed Aug 20, 2008 07:16 AM
from the returning-to-paper dept.
from the returning-to-paper dept.
Davide Marney passes along an AP story about the thousands of voting machines gathering dust in warehouses across the country after states such as California, Ohio, and Florida have banned their use. Many of these machines cost $3.5K to $5K each. Local election boards are struggling to find ways to recover any of the cost of the machines, or even to recycle them. The picture in Ohio is the most confusing, as multiple court cases limit the state's options and result in a situation in which the discredited machines will nevertheless be used in the presidential election coming up in November. The state's new (Democratic) attorney general has just issued a rule banning the practice of election workers taking the machines home with them the night before elections.
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Slashdot (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Slashdot (Score:5, Funny)
Nice one, uh, . . ., user 992278.
Parent
Re:BREAKING NEWS (Score:4, Funny)
Cluestick, meet Geoffrey. Geoffrey, meet cluestick.
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Refund (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I would absolutely be willing to use my own taxpayer dollars to see the Diebold ("Premier") building covered in voting machines. It'd be a hell of an artwork!
Re:Refund (Score:5, Funny)
Vote results:
Votes cast: 927
- In favour of launching voting machines at the Diebold building: 926
- Against launching voting machines at the Diebold building: 4096
Well, I figured we might as well use the things before returning them.
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Catapult? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Catapult? (Score:4, Informative)
A trebuchet is a form of catapult.
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2 ideas (Score:3, Funny)
1) Novelty themed restaurant, where you place your order by "voting".
2) Have a vote on what to do wuith them ... er, wait
Gotta say, the idea above about using them as trebuchet ammo is pretty appealing.
Re:2 ideas (Score:5, Interesting)
1) Novelty themed restaurant, where you place your order by "voting".
Slightly offtopic:
In Amsterdam we used to have a bar called the "stock"-bar where the price of items was (inversely) determined in real time by the number of people ordering it.
Pretty nice idea, but people ended up drinking a lot filthy "exotic" drinks. I guess that doesn't invite people to come back...
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Re:2 ideas (Score:5, Funny)
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How fast... (Score:3, Funny)
would a Beowulf cluster of thousands of voting machines be?
Re:How fast... (Score:5, Funny)
t*9.81 m/s
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Election workers taking machines home? (Score:4, Insightful)
Election workers taking machines home and keeping them in their garage? WTF?
How about locking them in somewhere and stationing licensed, bonded security guards instead? While you're at it make sure there are multiple guards from different agencies to reduce the chance of conspiracy.
Sure it'd cost some money to do this but then "freedom isn't free", and I'm sure election costs are kind of part and parcel of that.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, that was the bit that got me too.
These things are going to be used in an actual election, and they're being allowed offsite in the hands of pretty much anyone.
I'm sure they're still guarantee'd to be impartial though right?
'kin morons...
Let me see ... (Score:5, Funny)
Even more are used in the 2004 election: Winner=George Bush
Now they throw them out just in time for the 2008 election because George Bush might win again if they didn't.
Re:Let me see ... (Score:4, Informative)
Wide use of these machines was adopted in the 2000 election: Winner=George Bush
Even more are used in the 2004 election: Winner=George Bush
Now they throw them out just in time for the 2008 election because George Bush might win again if they didn't.
No, wide use of these machines was implemented after the 2000 election.
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Re:Are you sure you want to plant that seed? (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, in the future please don't use the term "3-way" and "George Bush" together. Thanks.
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Obligatory (Score:4, Funny)
Give them to the schools (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know about the machines in other states but the ones we used here in florida would with a few simple mods make pretty good digital text books for for the schools, there touch screen with a good clear easy to read display just load up some math, language, history books or whatever.
Take A Deep Breath, Everybody... (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't like these machines either, and am glad they're gone.
But before you all go out into the street to dance, let me remind everyone that those paper ballots aren't exactly hand counted... those too are counted by... say it with me: ELECTRONIC machines. They have software. They are connected to a network. They have to store their results on media at some point.
It doesn't make one "bit" of difference whether a vote is tallied as a bit, or a missing (or hanging) chad... the integrity of an election, ANY ELECTION, is dependent SOLELY UPON the integrity of the people who carry it out.
Re:Take A Deep Breath, Everybody... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Take A Deep Breath, Everybody... (Score:5, Insightful)
But before you all go out into the street to dance, let me remind everyone that those paper ballots aren't exactly hand counted... those too are counted by... say it with me: ELECTRONIC machines. They have software. They are connected to a network. They have to store their results on media at some point.
Ahh yes, but the key point here is that I filled out a physical piece of paper that is *also* stored and can be counted later. Yes, cheating can and does happen but it's a lot fucking harder to fill out millions of bubble sheets and methodically insert them into various districts while removing the good ones than it is to have a piece of software print the physical sheets for the manual recount for you -- oh wait, there are no physical recounts because that doesn't exist w/the new e-voting machines.
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Where was the complexity? (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing about voting machines that always confused me, beyond running Anti-virus software on them, was what made it so complicated.
You have a voter, whose admission to the booth is controlled by the same people who have controlled access to ballot papers.
The voter is allowed to vote once.
You have a list of candidates/selections - this is a ballot. A voter can only vote for a candidate/selection from the list.
You have a list of ballots for a given election that a voter can vote on.
ADD UP THE NUMBERS TO FIND THE WINNER.
Adding in a "double check" of a paper validation (which could be done via OCR as the forms will be standard) also sounds pretty trivial.
When I first heard about voting machines I thought that it was about the most trivial problem that anyone had ever had to solve... and yet they've completely screwed up.
So seriously, can anyone tell me what is so hard about automating a paper process that has ticks in boxes?
Re:Where was the complexity? (Score:4, Insightful)
If the machine is done properly then
Select which candidate you wish to vote for
Print out the result (Punch/Print/whatever)
Check it is what you voted for
Put the machine readable printout in the ballot box
Machine cannot be tampered with, and it does not matter if it is
The Votes are real physical things that have been confirmed to be correct by the voter and can if required be counted manually
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Re:Where was the complexity? (Score:4, Insightful)
> So seriously, can anyone tell me what is so hard about automating a paper process that has ticks in boxes?
First of all, there is a huge payoff for any group that can subvert an election, so any voting system is going to have to be able to thwart very well funded efforts.
What is so simple about paper ballots is not how easy it is to vote, but how easy it is to scrutinize the whole process from end to end.
As soon as you try to use an electronic voting machine, you make it hard to scrutinize the voting process end-to-end and easy for well funded efforts to subvert.
I think if we are going to go the electronic route, we need to give voters a receipt that they can use to prove to themselves that their vote was counted correctly, but that can't be used to prove to others how they voted (http://www.punchscan.org/).
Then, we don't have to worry about making the machines secure against well funded efforts to subvert them, since we can tell whether the vote was counted incorrectly or not, and any subversion would be detected and void the election.
That sort of voting machine is very easy to design. You can use any old PC and the software has already been written.
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Let the government create the machines. (Score:5, Insightful)
I know it's a pretty alien thing to say on a primarily American forum, but I would suggest that the government make the voting machines. They pay for them now anyway, and the process could be open then. Just spec it to be open, let Diebold or some other company make the machines through public bidding. Some things do not need to be free-marketised, especially the ones that are crucial to your democracy.
If the government would design them (or pay designers to do it for them, more likely) then there would be no reason to keep the design a secret because the government does not need to compete.
It would be interesting to know who thought it was a good idea to have voting machines created by a company who has shareholder value as its bottom line instead of upholding democracy.
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I'ts sad but a good thing. (Score:3, Insightful)
Give them to the schools (Score:5, Interesting)
I can dream damn it!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Electronic ballot machines were brought to eliminate these problems. But in an attempt to make them more fancy they took on more inherent security risks. My two cents is - electronic voting systems ARE better. You only
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Is there any problem with the actual voting machine _hardware_? I thought it was generally the software that was troublesome, in large part because it wasn't simple and public domain.
How hard would it be for one of these counties to write new software on their own? Is there really anything more to it than a window with a list of names, a radiobox by each, and a button saying "Yes, this is my final choice" which increments a counter by 1? It seems like it would take all of 5 minutes to write that up in yo
Re:2004 US Presidential Election Stolen in Ohio (Score:4, Interesting)
The voting machine hardware has problems, too. For example, you can change the software on them without anyone noticing.
Without going into details, there are many very difficult problems in making a working electronic voting system. Presenting radio buttons and using the result to increment counters is the tiniest fraction of what needs to be done.
Incidentally, the mechanical lever systems bear the same major problem as electronic voting systems: they can be undetectably modified.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
But there are inherent problems with paper too - ballot theft, miscounting etc.
Thank you so much for reminding me of the 'pregnant chad' debacle. I hate you. I hate Florida too.
Re:2004 US Presidential Election Stolen in Ohio (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't ignore problems like an overzealous volunteer counting a few hundred more votes for his favorite candidate.
Which is why standard counting practices include having multiple unaffiliated people count the same ballot stacks independently to confirm any recorded result.
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Re:2004 US Presidential Election Stolen in Ohio (Score:4, Insightful)
I has became much safer, although there are still some problems (the biggest one being the design of the voting machines not being open). Many problems like vote interpretation (yes, that can be problematic once you can write anything on the ballot), illiterate voting (allowed and obligatory here) becomes much easier, person-vote matching.
One doesn't know beforehand which voting machine goes where and some of them have paper trail.
Electronic voting is also prone to failure, but but it is harder and more expensive to compromise. The methods change.
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Re:2004 US Presidential Election Stolen in Ohio (Score:5, Insightful)
In Belgium I once was a wittness in social elections. These elect the uniun representatives and some other people.
The process was that one person took the paper that said they could vote, another person wrote down who visited. Another gave the person a voting ballot and one person said the persons name aloud. That is 4 people for just giving out the ballot. A person was only allowed to touch one sort of paper and the person calling out the name was not allowed to touch anything.
There were also representatives of each union who were not allowed to touch anything, but could intervene if they saw something that was not according to procedure. They would then tell this to the president of that sitting and to the other unions who then had to all agree with the measures taken by the president.
Counting was done in different stages.
1) Counting the people who got a ballot
2) Counting how many ballots were there. This can not be higher but can be lower then the amount of people
3) Counting the actual votes.
Much more counting before and after. Was it foolproof? Absolutely not, but it was foolproof enough. And this was done in almost each and every company in Belgium.
A similar procedure is used for national elections where there are no voting computers. It works and it is auditable by anybody. There are traces all over the place so if something goes wrong and things DO go wrong. And it is cheaper in the end, even if you have to pay "volunteers".
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Re:2004 US Presidential Election Stolen in Ohio (Score:5, Insightful)
You believe you can trust in paper just because it is widespread and been in use for a while. But there are inherent problems with paper too - ballot theft, miscounting etc. You can't ignore problems like an overzealous volunteer counting a few hundred more votes for his favorite candidate.
Paper can be misused as well... But at least people generally know how paper works. It's a physical medium. You can count actual objects. You can find actual objects that have been stuffed in a waste-basket, or see actual object being stuffed into the ballot-box. We've had a couple hundred years of trying to accurately count paper ballots and have generally worked out the bugs.
The big problem with electronic ballots is not that any given machine was insecure or poorly designed, it's a fundamental lack of understanding when it comes to electronics and computers. Large chunks of the population still don't know what a hard disk drive is, or how software works, or how easy it can be to tamper with an electronic device like a voting machine. People don't understand why it is ok to bring one of the old paper-ballot machines home before an election, but it isn't ok to bring an electronic one home.
Folks here on Slashdot are generally fairly familiar with technology. Folks here typically at least know what source code is and why you might need to be able to read it in order to certify that a machine is or isn't secure. Many, many people out there have absolutely no idea what source code is.
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Re:2004 US Presidential Election Stolen in Ohio (Score:5, Insightful)
But there are inherent problems with paper too - ballot theft, miscounting etc.
Yeah, but those problems can not be applied on a global scale, are trivially to be understood by any voter and are trivially to detect, just stay at the voting place and look at the box. Also counting is done by multiple people, so deliberate miscounting is easy to detect as well. To sum it up, paper voting (the one with a pen, not the one with obscure lever machine) is *by far* the most secure voting mechanism we have and most importantly it is the *only* voting mechanism we have that can be verified by the common voter.
Electronic ballot machines were brought to eliminate these problems.
Electronic ballot machines don't solve any problems, they introduce a shitload of new ones and most importantly they introduce a system that is trivially be manipulated by third parties and impossible to understood by the common voter and thats where the crux is. A voting system has to be understood by the voter, if it can't, then you can throw you democracy right out of the window, since your whole democracy will depend on the trust of a tiny few people who control those machines.
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Re:2004 US Presidential Election Stolen in Ohio (Score:4, Insightful)
With paper you need to get an army of individuals to skew the results of a vote enough to matter with things like ballot dumping and intimidation, etc. There's a reason instances of intimidation goes down in areas where these machines are used. Why intimidate voters if their votes don't count?
With electronic voting machines you just need one guy to reprogram the machines - and no one can know that it happened.
The incentives are never going to be in the right places to allow these types of opaque processes to be used for voting (unlike banking, where someone's going to jail if the money isn't properly accounted for). You can't look in these machines and confirm anything - you can only assume that the source code posted on some website last week, is actually the source code compiled and running on the computer (a fool's assumption frankly).
These machines can never be as tamper resistant as hand counted paper ballots. All they do is make it easier to smaller numbers of people to affect many.
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Re:2004 US Presidential Election Stolen in Ohio (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, it's not Ohio Governor Ted Strickland you need to really thank for this, it's Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner who came in with Strickland (who had previously specialized in election law).
By comparison, her predecessor Ken Blackwell was one of those involved in guaranteeing the electoral votes of Ohio would go to Bush. Which of course had nothing at all to do with the fact that white suburban precincts had plenty of voting machines and about a 10 minute wait while poor black urban precincts had 5 hour waits and college campuses closer to 6 hour waits.
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Re:SHOW/QUEUE/ALL (Score:5, Insightful)
Long waits definitely skew the results if people waiting in line are at risk of losing their jobs due to showing up late for work or taking too long of a break to vote. Last time I checked, Ohio has no law requiring employers to give time off to vote, and I know (second hand) that if there is such a law it gets ignored frequently.
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Re:SHOW/QUEUE/ALL (Score:4, Informative)
If there is a 5 hour queue at the time when the voting shall end - will these be disqualified from voting?
No. If you're in line when the polls officially close, you must still be allowed to cast your vote.
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Re:2004 US Presidential Election Stolen in Ohio (Score:5, Interesting)
Another question is, why does a company who make ATM machines which don't lose a cent in millions of transactions and have a paper trail fail to do the same for voting machines?
Don't forget this wonderful youtube clip:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UvEuqYyDoE
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Re:2004 US Presidential Election Stolen in Ohio (Score:4, Insightful)
"Get over it", my ass.
The "now" is that another election is approaching. It's apparently obvious even to you that if our elected officials are trusted to handle these elections responsibly, they are quite happy to do whatever the hell they want and "irregularities" sprout up like mushrooms after a rain.
So... for this time around, do you want to shout and bitch and moan and demand a fair election? Or do you want to just turn on the TV, drown out any possible responsibility you might have as a citizen and let it all happen again?
The American electoral process has become a disgrace thanks to our indifference.
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Re:Does it run on lennix? (Score:5, Informative)
Of course not. With Linux it would not need antivirus software. [xkcd.com]
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Re:Does it run on lennix? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Does it run on lennix? (Score:5, Insightful)
They have already done that and it is called pen and paper.
I understand that you see every problem as a nail, because all you have is a hammer. The problem is not how to get the best electronic voting system. The problem is how to get the best voting system.
And the 'best' should mean the best for the people and the voting process, not the best for the news media and Fox News.
The most important thing is accuracy, not convenience, not speed and to a certain level not even price.
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Nothing wrong with using electronic voting (Score:5, Insightful)
"They have already done that and it is called pen and paper."
Nothing wrong with using a machine, either, and like everything else, it should be an improvement. The problem isn't that they were using machines, the problem is that the software apparently sucked, and there weren't enough auditing procedures in place to satisfy watchdog groups (though lets face it, like you, short of pen and paper, some watchdog groups won't be satisfied with anything, no matter how well made). Machine does not equal bad here. Poorly designed machine equals bad. You're essentially taking a luddite position.
"And the 'best' should mean the best for the people and the voting process, not the best for the news media and Fox News."
What the hell does Fox News have to do with it? What did they have to do with states buying voting machines that suck?
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Re:Does it run on lennix? (Score:4, Insightful)
The mere fact that someone was able to install the antivirus software means that there is a serious flaw in the design of the machine.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Don't worry, you'll be voting regularly after you've died...