Maryland Votes To Ban Diebold Voting Machines 240
vandon writes "Computerworld.com reports: 'The state Maryland House of Delegates this week voted 137-0 to approve a bill prohibiting election officials from using AccuVote-TSx touch-screen systems in 2006 primary and general elections. The legislation calls for the state to lease paper-based optical-scan systems for this year's votes. State Delegate Anne Healey estimated the leasing cost at $12.5 million to $16 million for the two elections.'"
Hope it doesn't rain.... (Score:3, Interesting)
What about the SAT being all screwed up?
http://www.cnn.com/2006/EDUCATION/03/10/sat.scori
Rain blamed for SAT scoring error
(AP) -- Blame it on the rain. The company that scans the answer sheets for the SAT college entrance exam said Thursday that wet weather may have damaged 4,000 tests that were given the wrong scores.
Maybe it is because I live in Ohio, and am tired of Diebold being a whipping boy- but seriously- Is there a bigger potential for fraud with an electronic machine? There has always been bvote fraud, since long before the advent of electronic voting.... With a punch card I get no reciept, I just hope that after I put it in the box, it ends up being counted....
Re:Hope it doesn't rain.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The electronic scanning simply speeds up the process.
Re:Hope it doesn't rain.... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not that we need the ballots to be impossible to tamper with. It is that we need to know when they have been tampered with.
It's a matter of the 'document of record' (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hope it doesn't rain.... (Score:2)
Re:Hope it doesn't rain.... (Score:4, Interesting)
There's plenty of statistical data about failure rates of paper voting systems. In Australia, errors in manual vote counting ran at about 100 errors per 80,000 votes counted.
An open source electronic voting system was developed and tested at state elections, and independant audits showed it was accurate. http://www.wired.com/news/ebiz/0,1272,61045,00.htm l [wired.com] Being open source, it is available to the US, if you could get around the NIH syndrome.
Re:Hope it doesn't rain.... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Hope it doesn't rain.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Hope it doesn't rain.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Hope it doesn't rain.... (Score:4, Interesting)
This is a good countermeasure against massive fraud - as long as there is a paper trail to recount. Hopefully other states have a similar provision in the election laws - be wary if your state is trying to get rid of this provision.
Re:Hope it doesn't rain.... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Hope it doesn't rain.... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Hope it doesn't rain.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Since you cannot audit the process, the answer seems to be "yes".
True. That does not excuse rectifiable problems with successor systems.
From my reading the vendors of these systems there is no effort to
close the holes, only "trust us".
Re:Hope it doesn't rain.... (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Paper
2. Pencil
Mark X on Paper.....
No major screwups though......
Re:Hope it doesn't rain.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Hope it doesn't rain.... (Score:2)
I Hope You Don't Work For the Board of Elections (Score:3, Insightful)
Paper ballots, even if "spoiled" by abuse after votes are cast on them, still offer lots of evidence. Evidence of the choice of the voter. And evidence of the crime of whoever abused them.
Digital ballots leave no evidence. Hence the much higher risk that they will be abused, and votes rigged by (ab)using them. They're also much cheaper and easier to rig on a large scale, with fewer accomplices. Without physical records, like cheap, familiar, reliable paper, they're worse than useless.
"TIRED OF DIEB
Re:Hope it doesn't rain.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hope it doesn't rain.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Tragically even this isn't enough. Diebold runs on Windows, a closed source operating system. Diebold could well release its part of the vote counting source code, but code auditors still cannot be sure that the OS itself isn't mucking around underneath
Re:Hope it doesn't rain.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Open Source code is not sufficient because there is no realistic way to ensure that the code published is the actual code run on each machine.
A paper trail can be validated ex post facto. This is best done just as QA is done on a production line -- always validate a portion of the product even when there is no reason to expect that there is a problem.
That way, no matter what code they are running, if it tries to steal votes to any signifigant degree it will show up in the validation sample. And then a full recount can originate all the funny tabulations.
There is also the very real potential for influencing the outcome of an election using purely electronic voting by simply causing a power outage in the areas where the population is not likely to vote the way that you want.
Re:Hope it doesn't rain.... (Score:5, Insightful)
It does make a difference. With a punch card, or a paper ballot, or even a mechanical voting both anyone can trace when fraud has occured. And in those cases we implement some security, track where the fraud came from (if we can) and redo the election.
With the current generation of electronic voting machines, we can't do that. I don't care who makes a good machine, but Diebold hasn't made one. And they've defended that design as if they think it is a good machine. Geeks don't like people who pretend a bad design is a good design. We'll tear into them. If they routinely defend bad design by saying it is good design and overlooking what we think are obvious flaws we'll notice, and start to expect that. Until they change, a group that decides who they like on the technical ability of a company won't like them. They are lying about their technical quality; at least in our eyes.
This group respects and admires good thought processes. Neither you nor Diebold are showing them at the moment.
Re:Hope it doesn't rain.... (Score:2)
A lot of this group respects and admires good thought processes. There is a very sizable - and often very vocal - minority who wouldn't know a good thought process if it smashed them in the face, and instead admires and respects anything that confirms their own prejudices, and belittles and derides anything that does not.
Witness the countless tired old arguments that haven't been valid for years, accusations of being a shill or a troll, etc - on both s
Re:Hope it doesn't rain.... (Score:2)
Re:Hope it doesn't rain.... (Score:2)
Yes, but not in this case (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe.
But in this case, it doesn't pass muster.
I do computer stuff for a living and if analyst came forward with a business process to handle credit card authorizations that simply authorized it with no audit trail and no means to verify anything about that authorization, you'd reject the design out of hand. You wouldn't even need to see the program specs, or source code or anything to know it's a bad design. You don't even have to ask a lot of questions. It's just a bad design.
So when Diebold has a system that raises questions *with everyone who sees it* and won't answer those questions, then it raises concerns about not only their veracity, but their motive.
And given the results of the 2000 presidential election and Diebold's refusal to address legitimate concerns leads to some very uncomfortable questions about their motives. The best case scenario is that Diebold's software engineers are incompetent. That's the best case.
SO I appreciate that there is a vocal minority who would trash anything, however, this isn't a minority of people questioning Diebold. Virtually everyone with a technical and business background is questioning these systems. And Diebold is noticably silent.
Couldn't hack it (Score:5, Funny)
Oops... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Oops... (Score:2, Interesting)
I toured the House of Representatives, about 10 years ago, and noticed they had buttons to press for voting. I wonder who audits where the wires really go.
Re:Oops... (Score:5, Informative)
If its anything like the one in the Ga House, they go up to a giant light board with the Rep's name, where it turns on either a Red or Green light next to the name, and tallys all the lights of the same color to give a play-by-play of the votes. If the tally is incorrect, its plainly visible. Im sure a rep would complain if their vote shows up incorrectly on the big board with their name next to it...
tm
Re:Oops... (Score:3, Informative)
It is a fairly similar system, with a blue backlit board [wikipedia.org] above the speaker's chair, and members using ID cards to vote. After the 15 minutes of a normal vote expire however, members have to use the old system of handing in a green (yea), red (nay), or orange (present) card.
Re:Oops... (Score:3, Informative)
The old fashioned ways are still the best (Score:5, Insightful)
There are places where technology does not belong and the old fashioned paper trail is still the best. I do not trust any voting system that the voter does not mark the paper. Anything else can be hacked or riged too easily.
Re:The old fashioned ways are still the best (Score:4, Informative)
Ken
Because... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Because... (Score:2)
The idea is to increase the number of voters per booth/machine while only increasing the marginal cost per vote by a small amount. If you can pull that off, you've succeeded.
Sometimes you have to spend a little money to gain a lot of efficiency.
Re:The old fashioned ways are still the best (Score:2)
How about both and we let the voters decide what they want to use? Marking a couple of circles is easy enough for me (native English reader/writer) but maybe not for some
Do both. (Score:5, Insightful)
The voter checks the ballot printout and drops it in the box. Those are counted electronically and retained, same as now.
Meanwhile, the touchscreen data has been batched and sent electronically to render the unofficial results the instant the polls close.
The paper, the thing the voter dropped in the box, is the official ballot.
If there's a notable discrepancy, bring in the accountants, alert the media, and wait for the lawyers.
Doing both, counting and sending in the results by orthogonal mechanisms, allows much better security. Someone would have to tamper with both processes, and get them exactly the same, or an investigation would ensue.
Re:The old fashioned ways are still the best (Score:2, Insightful)
Diebold is whatever it is... as will be any other attempt as similar technology. What is broken in this context is the _process_ first, and trust second. If they had been willing to address the process, in the open, then perhaps trust could have been achieved.
It doesn't help when the Diebold CEO pretty much stated publicly [to paraphrase], "We _will_ deliver Ohio to the R
Re:The old fashioned ways are still the best (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The old fashioned ways are still the best (Score:2)
Why would we deprive ourselves of one of the easiest things for a computer to do, and replace it with... what? Who counts your paper ballots?
There are many ways to help safeguard the integrity of the machines, and you can see some of them up and down the responses to this article, more if you're willing to peruse things like the Risks Digest. To toss
Re:We must stop the chads! (Score:2)
Re:The old fashioned ways are still the best (Score:5, Informative)
First, is the accessability issue. You have voters that can't understand instructions and can't follow them when they are explained. A paper ballot that isn't verified for correctness immediately results in the "undervote" and "overvote" situation where they have either not enough marks or too many marks to figure out what the voter intended. Unless someone or something checks the ballots immediately, this will be a problem.
The next problem is also related to accessability. We are faced with a situation where volunteering to work in a polling place is almost unheard of. So, they go to the Senior Citizens Center and recruit people from there. You would think that people would do anything to get out and do something different - not in the US. They struggle to get the minimum number of people that are legally required for the county and have to live with that.
This means there are no "extra" helpers for people that can't read the paper or can't see the writing there. Or need some other kind of assistance. So any mechanical aid that can work with Braille or whatever else is required (writing 3x the size, etc.) is a requirement. If the machine can talk to them, even better.
The last requirement is that if the legal and accurate results of voting are not available five minutes after the polls close, the news programs will just make stuff up. They will rely on exit polls or talking with party spokespersons to find out what the results might be.
The idea that the voting results could wait for three days (or even a couple of weeks) after voting has completed is utterly unacceptable to the news media. They need results in minutes and they will do whatever it takes to get results to people. Accurate or not, it doesn't matter. Speed is the only thing that counts.
This obsession with feeding results to people has seriously hurt us in the past and most recently in 2000. Announcing the winner of an election or even that a candidate is ahead or behind while the polls are still open should be a crime. It isn't today.
Therefore, we are left with "imaginary results" if the real vote count doesn't come along fast enough. Can you imaging the chaos if the TV news programs announced a winner and three days later when the official count was done - not just the exit polls - it was some other candidate?
Face it, immediate tabulation of vote results is a requirement. We are going to have results at 7:01 PM if the polls close at 7:00 PM, one way or another. And we are going to have "accessible" voting that does not require helpers, because there are no "helpers" - nobody wants to volunteer. We are going to have immediately verified ballots, because to do otherwise results in Florida in 2000 all over again.
The one thing we are not going to have, at any point in the foreseeable future, is nationwide consistency in voting. It will be state-by-state and county-by-county until the end of "State's Rights". Not likely to happen any time soon, because it would require people to give up power they have in public offices. Ever heard of a politician doing that?
Re:The old fashioned ways are still the best (Score:2)
Exit polling has been refined to the point that it is quite reliable.
Part of the suspicion over the 2004 presidential election results was that the exit polls were so far off the mark that the number crunchers said "it isn't really possibl
Re:The old fashioned ways are still the best (Score:3, Interesting)
Sucks to be you, now, don't it?
Personally, I think all the zealots on both sides of the aisle just need to fucking shut up about the 2000 and 2004 election RESULTS and try to fix the problems that exist.
You're not going to get Al Gore in office, nor Kerry. Shut the fuck up about it and support whoever the Dems put up. If the GoP is stupid enough to run Cheney, they deserve the ass kicking
Re:The old fashioned ways are still the best (Score:3, Informative)
When I voted in a Toronto municipal election (2000?), the ballot was a letter-size s
Paper is also easy to rig. (Score:3, Interesting)
My preferred system would be to have:
FYI (Score:2)
Democrats traditionally have lots of dead people vote for them
http://www.google.com/search?q=vote+democrat+decea sed [google.com]
Republicans traditionally try to suppress voter turnout.
http://www.google.com/search?q=vote+republican+sup press+turnout [google.com]
Third Party Candidates...
Vote early and vote often?
Re:FYI (Score:2, Interesting)
Exactly. As I said, a lot of Republicans WOULD commit outright voter fraud if they could, but they a) can't get away with it nearly as easily as Democrats can and b) Democrats dominate in running most of the voting operations, especially in the target rich urban areas. But they do try to throw up legal obstacles to stop likely Democratic voters from voting, because they can get away with that. Most of what they do is technically legal, but only
Re:FYI (Score:3, Funny)
Soon To Be Followed By... (Score:3, Funny)
Taking it on the chin (Score:5, Insightful)
137 to 0 -- ouch!!
Diebold has gotten itself into a quagmire and they don't seem to be able to pull themselves out. How hard was it to add a paper trail to the machines to start with?
And yes, there's plenty of fraud with paper ballots and mechanical voting machines. But the idea is that electronic voting machines are supposed to be superior to those systems, and without a paper trail to verify that votes have been recorded properly, they're reduced to being no better and actualy, given their hackability, worse.
Re:Taking it on the chin (Score:3, Informative)
My guess is that they assumed or were told that the electronic machines would allow them to go "paperless" as in "paperless office" and they failed to consider the ramifications wrt. voting
Re:Taking it on the chin (Score:2)
In related news... (Score:5, Funny)
In more related news, stock of the Harland Company, parent company of Scantron [scantron.com], got a small bump [google.com] today.
Re:In related news... (Score:2, Redundant)
The first makes me think how much easier it would have been for Stalin if he had had Diebold machines.
The second said "We deliver the vote" reminding me of how some official in Ohio in charge of the voting machines said 'we will deliver Ohio to Bush' or something to that effect.
The third: "Life's a crapshoot, elections don't have to be" reads like "why take
Re:In related news... (Score:2)
*http://homepage.mac.com/rcareaga/diebold/big_die/ diebold_2.jpg [mac.com]
And that wasn't an Ohio official, that was the Walden O'Dell, Diebold CEO & Bush fundraiser.
O'Dell wrote that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President next year."
Personally, I liked the third 'ad' best [mac.com]. It's just vague enough to
Re:In related news... (Score:2)
This just yells "UNPROFESSIONALISM".
Re:In related news... (Score:2)
That, and hosting their ads on .mac. I mean, why not use their own servers? Very amaeteur, I'd say.
Thank God (Score:2, Insightful)
So open source the voting software, and record electronic votes in two or more remote, neutral party logs. Then you could easily compare the logs to make sure that votes haven't been tampered with. No black box, less chance of human error.
Re:Thank God (Score:5, Insightful)
FURTHERMORE, I'm a strong believer that touch screen systems should only exist to produce a filled out, printed ballot that is then processed by conventional means. The goal here should be to increase the accuracy of the vote, not the speed. Government can wait - I'd rather have it done right than done fast.
Re:Thank God (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Thank God (Score:2)
Re:Thank God (Score:2)
The new Chicago touchscreen voting machines in 2006 [chicagoelections.com] log your votes to a paper tape that rolls through a glass/plastic window that you can see and verify your votes before you submit them. When you approve your selections, the paper winds your votes up on a spool to hide your selections from the next voter. You can choose to "spoil" your ballot and start over if it doesn't look right.
Donate to the Steven Heller Defence Fund [hellerlega...sefund.com].
Oh fer Gawd's sake (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously, Paper ballots that are marked on - not punched through. Use a machine and human countable (scantron) format. It is not bright, it is not shiny, it is not new. Howevere it works, and the methods of corrupting it are well understood by all involved - the same is not true of voting machines which will never be perceived as anything other than an opaque black box.
Now if you are just suffering from a common desire to complicate things, why not complicate the democratic process, not the actual act of voting?
For example, elections cost money, lets bring back a poll tax to pay for it. Say two bucks - and allow charities or political party reps to hand out two dollar bills to anyone who asks for one (but at least 100 feet from the polling place)
Runoff elections are expensive too - eliminate them and use an IRV system.
Straight Party Line voting is a pain to count - lets not allow it. If the voter won't explicitly vote for a specific candidate, then that candidate is undeserving of a vote.
Ballots are getting unwieldly, have separate ballots for each jurisdiction (federal, state, county, city, precint, etc). There are never more than 3 races on the federal ballot. Why confuse those races with the JP and Sheriff's races?
It's hard to get on a ballot especially with laws set to favor the major parties. Let anyone get on the ballot if they can pony up a "ballot placement fee". Let's say 1 penny per registered voter in the jurisdiction, but triple that to have party affiliation listed. (It would cost about a million bucks to get on the Presidential ballot, but triple that to run as a Republican, Green, Democrat, Libertarian) It would cost a lot less to get on the ballot where there are fewer potential voters - 5 bucks to run for Mayor of Cut-n-shoot TX for example.
Just a thought or two on how to complicate things.
Diebold is an enemy of the republic (Score:5, Insightful)
Flamebait, troll, yadda-yadda.
It's true.
Black-box voting systems have continually been championed by those who would criminally game the system for their own advantage, democracy be damned. They tend to defend their actions with nothing more righteous than cynicism: we do this because hey, everybody does it.
No, everyone DOESN'T do it, and that is no justification in any event. The ends to not justify undermining democracy. Democracy is a large part of what makes societies strong, not weak, and undermining it only serves to strengthen the enemies of it, whether those enemies are foreign or domestic.
So bravo to Maryland. I hope all states follow their example, and that those citizens who are forced to use unverifiable voting machines take a sledgehammer to them instead.
Re:Diebold is an enemy of the republic (Score:5, Insightful)
I didn't see any reason for the upgrade anyway... (Score:5, Informative)
Too bad Accupoll went bankrupt (Score:5, Informative)
Too bad "On January 30, 2006, AccuPoll filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Pursuant to this filing, AccuPoll will cease operations and liquidate its assets. Therefore, AccuPoll voting systems are no longer available for purchase."
In related news... (Score:5, Funny)
As a MD voter... (Score:3)
Re:As a MD voter... (Score:2, Insightful)
I prefer that we don't introduce paper ballots, as discussed in the legislation, because they don't solve any problems. There's a good discussion at http://euro.ecom.cmu.edu/people/faculty/mshamos/pa per.htm [cmu.edu].
I've got a master's degree in Computer Science, and I've been an election judge for several years, working with the Diebold machines. In my opinion, the procedures established by the election board are sufficient to prevent the general public from accessing and/
password in source code (Score:5, Interesting)
He gave a talk about it last year and advocated a paper ballets and optical scanners as others have.
Halle-frickin-lujah (Score:4, Informative)
The dumb thing is that the system that we had before wasn't even confusing at all. Each candidate's name had a arrow with a gap in it. You simply used a pencil to complete the arrow for the candidate you wanted to vote for.
You just turn this:
- ->
into this
--->
No one was even complaining about it.
I assume that they just wanted to jump on the electronic voting bandwagon, no matter how much the entire IT community railed against the machines.
Re:Halle-frickin-lujah (Score:2)
the diebold system is simple not secure (Score:3, Insightful)
inability to recheck the vote is prima facie quite enough reason to outlaw those machines.
Interesting Note on Main Diebold Lobbyist ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, it's the same guy that crushed Cesar Chavez's union movement in California and lobbied successfully for multiple increases in the guest worker H-1B program as chief lobbyist for the Microsoft sponsored ITAA (itaa.org).
What cracks me up is
from cio.com
The vendor community doesn't like it. "We oppose the idea of a voter-verified paper trail," says Harris Miller, president of the trade group Information Technology Association of America. Introducing paper into the mix, he says, defeats the improved efficiency and reliability e-voting promises.
from zazona.com
Harris Miller, the president of ITAA, worked as a lobbyist/consultant for California agribusiness in the late 1980s. Miller's first big client was the National Council of Agricultural Employers, a group of large growers who use migrant and illegal alien workers. [20]
His firm helped farmers to bring in "temporary" agricultural workers from Mexico. These farmers wanted to undercut gains that Cesar Chavez and UFW had made. This boosted the profits of Miller's agribusiness clients. Harris painted such pictures as "fields full of crops, just lying there, rotting in the sun because of the 'crisis' of a 'shortage' of farm workers." This was a prelude to using the same strategies for an organization that Harris founded in the late 1980s, the ITAA, which is a lobbying organization that represents "high tech" firms. He merely substituted the category of scientist and engineer that was in highest demand for the agricultural worker. He has become very wealthy from the new "high-tech bracero" program.
A spokesman for the Farmworker Justice Fund, Inc. said "he [Harris Miller] was a lobbyist/consultant to the growers and was very active for years on the agricultural guest worker legislation. "
Miller said that critics who deny there's a high tech labor shortage probably also think that the world is flat.[26] We can be thankful that this scofflaw didn't accuse us of believing in the Tooth Fairy.
Re:Interesting Note on Main Diebold Lobbyist ... (Score:2, Interesting)
Oh, if he's a Democrat, then I'm the tooth fairy. The K-Street Project purged Democrat lobbiests out of DC. And this is the guy hired to promote the company who's (now former) CEO promised to deliver the votes of Ohio to George W. Bush. The chances of him being a Democrat supporter, much less activist enough to run for
Optical scan is almost as bad.... (Score:5, Insightful)
By far, the most secure method of counting votes is by hand. Several hundred people counting the votes (and witnessing the count) is far more secure than one guy in a backroom counting votes with a computer. The more people witness the count, the better.
We need to have total transparency in the process. Hand counts ensure that.
I'm always amazed at this stupidity (Score:4, Insightful)
many states only allow for recounts if an election is extremely close
Every time I'm reminded of this fact, I just shake my head in wonder. It has got to be one of the dumbest things I've ever heard of. The argument seems to be that, if an election isn't close, fraud couldn't have effected the outcome--which is exactly the opposite of the truth.
Don't believe me? Consider two case, both using touch screen voting machines: in one, one randomly selected million people vote on the ballot issue "Coke vs. Pepsi," and the outcome is a 49% / 49% split. In the second case, all but sixty eight of them vote "Pepsi", with sixty eight abstentions.
Now ask yourself: in which case would you suspect that the voting machines or tabulators or something had been rigged?
--MarkusQ
P.S. A much better test would be mandatory recount if the results differ from the exit polls by more than a small amount.
Why voting *machines*? (Score:5, Insightful)
But then I remember - this is America we're talking about. The company that *makes* the machines has doubtless bribed... uh, 'lobbied' the relevant politicians to ensure that such machinery is the only possible choice for such an important task...
Re:Why voting *machines*? (Score:2)
Re:Why voting *machines*? (Score:5, Interesting)
Agreed, although I'd point out that it's usually done before the civil servants get into work the next day!
For the foreign-types here, the UK system goes something like this (for a General Election, which decides the Prime Minister, all the MPs, etc.):
(more details) [wikipedia.org]
Fast enough? It's a slick, quick, accurate, well-practised procedure compared to the total chaos, corruption and confusion that is Election Day in the US.
Okay, there are far fewer boxes on the UK form, as the posts of assistant dog catcher, etc. aren't directly elected. Even so, there's nothing fundamentally wrong with a paper system. Oh, and no incomplete arrows, butterfly ballots, instructions, etc. A bunch of names with boxes. Put an "X" in the box next to the guy you want.
I personally wouldn't have a problem with an optical scanner being used with hand recounts done only if the result is within the margin of error. Follow up with a leisurely hand count for statistical purposes at a later date. A hand count isn't going to take *that* long if it's resourced correctly, and accuracy is worth the wait. In the case of the UK it would just mean we'd have to wait until after the weekend to find out who's taking us to war.
I also voted in Riverside County, CA last time around, and the ballot I was posted was pretty straightforward: well laid out, well described, simple to follow. Fill the little box next to the one you want. Saying that, I've got no proof it was ever counted, not that my vote would have made any difference in Riverside.
Re:Why voting *machines*? (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually that's one of my problems with the voting system right now: it's too fast. Hawaii and Alaska already know who won the presidential election by the time they vote. They shouldn't release any of the information until it's tablulated by EVERYONE. Did people in the 1800s run around in panic because they didn't know for _weeks_ who won? No. A pencil and paper is just fine and doesn't require any special setup... aside from a booth I guess. Maybe everyone is trying to save the enviornmen
Re:Why voting *machines*? (Score:2)
Of course, this is much easier to do with only one time zone, as all the polls open and then close at the same time.
Re:Why voting *machines*? (Score:2)
Although your question was most likely rhetorical, I'll respond nonetheless. We Americans feel that most if not all problems can be solved by throwing computers at them. You see, kids suddenly become smarter when a computer is in the classroom. Similarly, crappy teachers become excellent teachers when a computer is in the room. It's also important to understand that effects are compounded by adding more computers.
Applying what we've learned thus far...
Vote counting going to slow? Turbo charge it by adding
Re:Why voting *machines*? (Score:2)
Re:Why voting *machines*? (Score:2)
Whoring... (Score:2)
"Well, it looks like the Republicans aren't going to win Maryland this year!"
Re:Whoring... (Score:2)
-- Hacking the optical tabulators.
-- Hacking punch card tablulators
-- Removing "felons" (i.e. valid voters) from the voting rolls.
-- Cancelling voter registrations of democrats.
-- Counting votes in secret due to "national security" issues
-- Allocating too few voting machines to Democratic districts, causing long lines.
-- Voter intimidation
-- Calling voters and t
Still need paper (Score:3, Interesting)
There are two reasons to use mechanical/electronic/automatic voting machines:
1. Accessibility. Voting machines allow people with poor eyesight, who can't read, or speak a different language to vote properly. The machine will check for over- or under-votes before the vote is submitted, it can increase text size, and it could even read the directions out loud into a pair of headphones, in a variety of languages.
2. Counting speed. The vote counts can be completed the moment the polls close, keeping the media happy.
Neither of these two reasons necessitate eliminating paper entirely.
Here's how I envision an electronic voting system:
The voter walks up to a touch screen which takes them through the voting process. They get assistance if they need it (see point #1 above).
When the voter is finished, the machine prints out a page from an attached printer, perhaps onto specially watermarked paper. The printout includes a brief listing of who was voted for in each election in plain text so the voter can verify, and there is a bar code on the back of the page which encodes all that information. The voter signs by the plain text vote, folds the paper to hide the plain text votes and signature, and seals the vote with an official sticker. Then a polling place volunteer scans the bar code into the computer and drops the sealed ballot into the locked ballot box.
In the event of a recount, the pages are all bar code scanned again in an official process. If further recounts are needed after that, the seals can be broken and the votes tabulated using the plain text. Obviously, calling for the breaking of vote seals ends the anonymity of the vote, and as such should be treated with great care by the election officials and only used in the most extraordinary circumstances. If the race is so close that votes need to be verified by hand, the need to break the seals should outweigh voter anonymity.
All the code should be open source, of course, to be sure that the barcodes are actually encoding the proper information, and to maintain transparency in the entire process. Any company that refuses to submit to code review or open the code to the public should not be trusted with such an important task. Would you trust a contractor who builds your house but refuses to show you the blueprints or have a structural engineer review them?
But my point is that paper is crucial to the process. It is currently the only way to ensure recountability and anonymity at the same time. Sure, there's opportunity for fraud, as there is in any process, but this limits the opportunity for *automated* fraud.
California Uber Alles (Score:4, Informative)
That's why EXIT POLLS are so accurate except when. (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm not saying there is a conspiracy here, but in a situation like that where the exit polls were very di
bad company, but the idea has potential... (Score:2, Interesting)
As anyone who reads the news knows, this company is a total fraud.
However, I still think the idea of an electronic voting machine has potential. Why not simply design some sort of open-source based system (easy to audit) that was made to work accross a plethora of manufacturer equipment (thy name is Linux). This would open the market to more competition, more scrutiny.
Furthermore, I think generating a paper copy or "receipt" for both VOTER and ELECTORATE just makes sense. With all the money spent redesign
Re:Voted? (Score:4, Insightful)
Ironing 101
Re:Voted? (Score:2)
Re:Voted? (Score:3, Funny)
(later) "...well, what do you know, due to a horrible software misconfiguration everyone's voted against the machines!"
Re:Voted? (Score:5, Funny)
Well, if they did I'd call it a new world record in incompetence when it comes to vote tampering...
Re:Electronic Voting, (Score:2)
> throw away those paper ballots.
Damn straight.... pigs will fly before most Americans would even consider voting for a third party candidate. They'll just keep right on voting for Kang and Kodos.
Mod this parent up. (Score:5, Informative)
Optical scanner machines are a huge part of the problem, as is the central tabulator these scanners feed. They both are wide open for hacking and vote fixing.
Here's an article on how the optical scan machines can be hacked:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0505/S00381.htm [scoop.co.nz]
Re:Paper media more reliable than magnetic/optical (Score:2)
Which is why voting receipts cannot be given in general. votes would be sold whether legal or not.
I don't think anyone is seriously asking for vote reciepts. that is more of the view of the mis-informed public of how paper would fit into voting.
Ignoring the we-need-paper-trail histeria, What exactly is the purpose of the paper in this system?
Paper is not a relieable backup mec