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United States Government Politics

US Paperless Voting Bill Advances 153

Posted by kdawson from the will-of-the-people dept.
A couple of weeks back we discussed the effort to require voting paper trails in US federal elections. Now WhiteBoxVoter writes: "Democrats and Republicans in the US House of Representatives agreed today on a compromise that will push through a bill banning paperless voting machines and requiring a voter-verified paper record for every vote in the country, after government sanctioned hackers showed how they could break into all three of the top voting systems used in California." The NYTimes reported on Thursday that even if it passes the House, voting-machine reform that would take effect before the 2008 elections may die in the Senate.
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US Paperless Voting Bill Advances More

US Paperless Voting Bill Advances

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  • One more chance... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Tuoqui ( 1091447 )
    ...to rig an election

  • Why? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RAMMS+EIN ( 578166 ) on Saturday July 28, 2007 @06:29PM (#20027241) Homepage Journal
    ``voting-machine reform that would take effect before the 2008 elections may die in the Senate.''

    Because, for some reason, politicians (not only in the USA) seem to be opposed to verifiable, reliable voting methods.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Ngarrang ( 1023425 )

      ``voting-machine reform that would take effect before the 2008 elections may die in the Senate.''

      Because, for some reason, politicians (not only in the USA) seem to be opposed to verifiable, reliable voting methods.

      Well, yeah, because if they allow the technology to mature, then no longer will one candidate be able to waste tax payer money by suing for another vote count. One click of the mouse and voila, there is your recount. Want another? *click*

      • Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by amRadioHed ( 463061 ) on Saturday July 28, 2007 @10:14PM (#20028799)
        Yes, and what a reliable recount that is to. What an amazing technological advance it will be to be able to instantly recount the same corrupted vote totals whenever you want.

        • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

          by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday July 29, 2007 @03:32AM (#20030303)
          Comment removed based on user account deletion
          • I've worked in a recount. I'd much rather have the corrupt count be at least efficiently generated, instead of through the sweat of misinformed, underinstructed, and ultimately ignored temp workers.

            What you'd rather have as a recount worker is completely irrelevant to me as a voter. This is not being done for your benefit. And it's not like you have to do this all the time. I couldn't care less how much time or sweat it takes you to get it right. I'd much rather see individual batches of votes corrupted in

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by mpe ( 36238 )
              What you'd rather have as a recount worker is completely irrelevant to me as a voter. This is not being done for your benefit. And it's not like you have to do this all the time. I couldn't care less how much time or sweat it takes you to get it right. I'd much rather see individual batches of votes corrupted in different random ways by numerous temp workers, than see all the votes be corrupted at once in the same way "efficiently" by a single source of error.

              The problems in the US run rather deeper than

      • Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by MillionthMonkey ( 240664 ) on Saturday July 28, 2007 @11:45PM (#20029319)
        Well, yeah, because if they allow the technology to mature,

        Voting technology is centuries old and is already constrained by game theory to be as mature as it can get- if all players play optimally in a struggle for power within a democracy, they will necessarily have to assume that all other players share the wish to gain an unfair advantage by perverting the election process. Absent any compelling reason for a change voting technology cannot be "improved" upon without eroding confidence in the integrity of elections and shrouding them in suspicion. And no electronic system will ever be able to dispel mutual suspicion as effectively as paper.

        When we run out of trees and can't print ballots anymore, perhaps the appearance of a conflict of interest will go away. Until then, the appearance means it is a conflict of interest- without a very good reason for screwing with them, it is simply not safe to assume that the true motive behind any effort to "improve" elections isn't theft. This makes the way we vote now unimprovable unless it becomes well understood by everyone involved that we need to improve it for a good reason. No such reason currently exists.

        Bubbleheads on cable TV have sold many of us on the idea that democracy is in crisis somehow if they can't announce a winner within hours of election night- which is totally absurd. Recounts are quite cheap, we have months to get it right, and if we rush, the losing side has a legitimate, reasonable complaint that the election might have been unfairly decided. To put it delicately.

        then no longer will one candidate be able to waste tax payer money by suing for another vote count.

        As a taxpayer I am quite willing to pay for a vote count. An undisturbed recount in 2000 for example could have saved me a lot of money.

        One click of the mouse and voila, there is your recount. Want another? *click*

        That makes a lot of sense- optimize for speed when the demand is for accuracy. I weed guys like you out in interviews.

        • Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Sunburnt ( 890890 ) * on Sunday July 29, 2007 @09:14AM (#20031767)

          Bubbleheads on cable TV have sold many of us on the idea that democracy is in crisis somehow if they can't announce a winner within hours of election night- which is totally absurd.

          Thank you! This need on the news providers' part, to "call" the election before that night's Late Show, has somehow infiltrated our mass culture to the point that plenty of folks accepted the dominant Republican talking point for the 200 recount: "But it'll take tiiiiiime! And mooooney!"

          For chrissakes, people, the election is held over two months before the inauguration. We've got time. Perhaps the news providers are just concerned that our country's population of historical amnesiacs will forget there was an election by the time a fair hand count could be completed, but that's hardly a reason to fuck up peoples' expectations of their democracy.

          • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

            by Sunburnt ( 890890 ) *

            plenty of folks accepted the dominant Republican talking point for the 200 recount

            Wow, didn't even catch that typo with two previews.

            I would like to point out that, yes, I am aware that emperor Caracalla was unelected, had already served a couple years by 200, and certainly garnered no support from any factions that might refer to themselves as "republican."

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mpe ( 36238 )
          Bubbleheads on cable TV have sold many of us on the idea that democracy is in crisis somehow if they can't announce a winner within hours of election night- which is totally absurd.

          Especially considering that plenty of countries, outside of the US, do manage to return results within hours using completly manual systems for counting ballot papers.
          This appears to be a way to draw attention away from real problems such as well funded lobby groups, points of view unrepresented by politicans/candidates, politi

  • Very wierd that the richest country in (Score:4, Interesting)

    by figleaf ( 672550 ) on Saturday July 28, 2007 @06:29PM (#20027243) Homepage
    the world cannot come up with a good fail-proof electronic voting system.
    We need to learn from the successful all-electronic voting system from the world's largest democracy India [slashdot.org].

    I hate to see some many trees being cut down in the name of democracy to create those paper ballots.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by SoapBox17 ( 1020345 )
      If India jumped off a bridge, would you?

      Just because they did it doesn't mean everyone else should. And just because you haven't heard about major problems caused by it, doesn't mean there weren't any.
      • ``just because you haven't heard about major problems caused by it, doesn't mean there weren't any.''

        And even if there hadn't been any, that doesn't mean there couldn't have been any. If we're making an effort to improve the voting system, we might as well do our best to make sure it is as good as we know how to make it, instead of implementing a few improvements for show and waving away any remaining problems.
    • No doubt they'd use recycled paper. "I hate to see some many trees being cut down in the name of democracy to create those paper ballots."

    • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

      by RAMMS+EIN ( 578166 )
      Countries don't come up with voting systems, people do. And people in the US have come up with some very good systems indeed.

      Unfortunately, support for better voting systems has been lackluster at best in the circles where the decisions about them actually get made.

      Once again, it's not a matter of technical know-how, but of political will.
    • "Paper" could mean as little as a few names and base-64 numbers printed on recycled thermal paper. It just has to identify who voted what. And India's voting systems have never exactly been known to get the job done perfectly.

      • Re:Very wierd that the richest country in (Score:5, Informative)

        by AuMatar ( 183847 ) on Saturday July 28, 2007 @06:56PM (#20027437)
        Actually no, it does *NOT* identify who voted what. That would destroy the secret ballot, a cornerstone of democracy. Or do you want bosses threatening your job if you don't vote the right way? The job of a paper ballot is to allow the voter to see that the ballot is correct, and to allow for recounts.
        • ... It identifies what was voted where (polling place).

        • The job of a paper ballot is to allow the voter to see that the ballot is correct, and to allow for recounts.
          While that sounds cool and all, the question is, how difficult would it be to for them to program it print out the votes the way the voter put them in and then to count votes differently? It would only have to happen in a few different places to affect the outcome of an election.
          • If the result varies signifcantly from the exit poll then one party is very likely to demand a paper recount. When the two don't line up the vendor will come under pretty intense scrutiny.

            • If the result varies signifcantly from the exit poll then one party is very likely to demand a paper recount. When the two don't line up the vendor will come under pretty intense scrutiny.
              Scruitized, most likely, by the incumbents (sp?) who only benefited from the skew.
          • Which is exactly the reason for printing the votes.

            If somebody suspects the counting was rigged, they take the paper votes and count that, by hand.

            To avoid something slipping by you could do a sanity check, by counting X% of the paper votes, and verifying that the percentages are close enough to what the machine said.
          • "While that sounds cool and all, the question is, how difficult would it be to for them to program it print out the votes the way the voter put them in and then to count votes differently?"

            Yes, the main issue is not the kind of ballot used, the issue is how do you "keep the bastards honest"?

            It's not about a "perfect system" (there is no such thing), it's about minimizing the opportunity and scope for cheats. Provided the voter understands the ballot paper in the first place, a machine that prints the

        • Or do you want bosses threatening your job if you don't vote the right way?

          This is an absurd argument, which I've heard even from people who oppose no-excuse absentee ballots. It is extremely illegal for your boss or anyone else to make such a threat. If said boss tries to do that to a few people, it is extremely likely that one or two will be smart enough to contact law enforcement, and boss goes to prison for a very long time for tampering with a federal election.

          There are plenty of ways to influence

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by HUADPE ( 903765 )
            Illegal as that may be, secret ballots have other implications too. If I call my congressman's office advocating against, say HR 42, which would regulate the sales of science fiction novels, I don't want to have my opinion discarded cause I voted for the other guy in the last election. The above bill is fictional and is a lame reference to Hitchhikers' Guide To the Galaxy.

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by AuMatar ( 183847 )
            Except that there's a long and storied history of exactly this happening in the past. Study US elections in the late 1800s and early 1900s, especially in New York and other major cities.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by NuGeo ( 824600 )
            Right you are. Also, the risk of getting caught for something so illegal simply could never be worth the intended payoff. How many votes can you extort out of people without getting caught? Probably not very many. In fact, the more people extorted, the better the legal case you'll have against the boss. One person saying their boss forced them to vote a certain way might look crazy and not have much credibility, but 100 people saying they all were forced to vote the same way can be pretty damning.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The system in India is not voter verifiable. Nuff said.
    • Now we are very much a debtor country and getting poorer quickly. The very wealthy have been moving their money (and companies) out of America, because the Dollar is dropping against everything except the chinese yuan where it is fixed against our dollar.
    • I can't find exactly what I'm looking for, but I'm fairly certain that India's electronic system is meant solely for parliamentary elections. In the American system, such a thing is almost completely useless, as most elections involve an enormous number of smaller offices. In my next election, I will vote for a city council member; a county sheriff, tax assessor, clerk, judge, DA, and supervisor; and a state representative, senator, commissioner of insurance, public utilities commissioner, auditor, secret

    • Not weird at all, especially considering that the consensus opinion of many of the brightest minds in computer security, worldwide, is that the state of the art in computer security isn't capable of producing a secure electronic voting system.

      The only oddity here is that Indians trust their system to produce accurate results.

  • Like A Paper Trail Means Anything (Score:4, Interesting)

    by NeverVotedBush ( 1041088 ) on Saturday July 28, 2007 @06:51PM (#20027401)
    Print one thing and record another.

    Why should you having a piece of paper saying you voted some way mean anything? Last election the exit polls indicated a result significantly different than what was declared official.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by pb ( 1020 )
      ...and that is why you'd have a voter-verified paper trail instead. And recounts, don't forget the recounts.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sdnoob ( 917382 )
        >>> voter-verified paper trail

        one more thing to confuse the old people down in florida...

        what do we need this for anyway? the hackers could do a better job at "voting" than the clueless idiots we have casting the ballots now.

    • Re:Like A Paper Trail Means Anything (Score:4, Informative)

      by AuMatar ( 183847 ) on Saturday July 28, 2007 @06:58PM (#20027455)
      You spot check. Count the vote in N% of the precincts. If the count doesn't match, automatic full recount on the paper ballots.

      • I've been thinking about this subject a lot since the 2000 election. I am against electronic ballots with no paper trail, but I now wonder whether a paper ballot can guarantee more than a warm fuzzy.

        Spot checking N% of precincts as you suggest sounds good to me. How will these checks be implemented across the country? Could a Federal election rule be made to force all states to perform a check? If so, would states have the freedom to decide the process for performing a check? Were it left to the individua

        • Spot checking N% of precincts as you suggest sounds good to me. How will these checks be implemented across the country? Could a Federal election rule be made to force all states to perform a check? If so, would states have the freedom to decide the process for performing a check? Were it left to the individual states, would state governments vote to make spot checks mandatory in every election, or would the checks be required only when a losing candidate challenges the results?

          Geez, you don't have very

    • Someone already said to spot check, and that's important. But you also have the ability to have a far more accurate recount in the case of a close election.

      If every voter has verified that the paper version of his/her ballot is correct, then a hand recount is a nearly foolproof way to discern the will of the voters. Of course, the physical security of the ballots remains a concern, but that problem's always been around.

    • Print one thing and record another.

      Having the voting machine record the votes is part of the problem. The reason electronic voting became such a national issue was because of the error-prone ballots in Florida. The solution was to simply come up with a ballot that you couldn't fill out improperly. A simple electronic voting machine the produces a paper ballout which is simultaneously readable by human and machine is the ideal solution. It allows for quickly counting the ballots by machines and is easily v

      • The solution was to simply come up with a ballot that you couldn't fill out improperly


        Heh, there's no such thing as idiot-proof, and since all that is required to be able to vote is age and lack of major felonies, there are a whole lot of idiots who do so

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jd ( 1658 )
      In an anonymous system, it is (by definition) impossible to match up a single paper vote with a single electronic vote - always assuming the electronic votes are kept separate at all.

      The ONLY workable system is to keep all individual votes separate in both forms and re-tally them independently. It makes no difference then whether the paper copy is identical to the corresponding electronic copy, if the grand totals for each add up to the same value. In which case, why would it matter if the sequences were

  • Patent this (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Forget the electronic gizmos.

    Use dice. It don't tax us voters too much, and probably end up picking the better (whatever that means) candidate more often. And save us a mint while at it.

    Magic eight balls is also good, but I've seen pornographic versions of that, and now sure the conservatives from the bible belt will warm up to that.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by JavaBear ( 9872 )
      Whatever happened to just using a good old #2 pencil or if you are really adventurous, a ballpoint pen?

  • Why must we go with e-voting? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by PianoComp81 ( 589011 ) on Saturday July 28, 2007 @07:12PM (#20027547)
    I don't see why we must go completely electronic. In the county I live in, we fill in very large circles on paper using a marker. That paper is then fed into a machine that electronically counts the votes. It's just as efficient (time-wise) as completely electronic voting, but it doesn't require the complexity that the e-voting machines require. It also allows for an easy-to-read paper-trail system (unlike the "hanging chad" problem back in the 2000 election) for when a recount is required.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jellie ( 949898 )
      I've always wondered about the security of optical scan voting machines. Wouldn't they be susceptible to many of the same problems as the DREs? I mean, they're still just a computer, and must decipher the various marks on the ballot to determine which are votes. But at least they do require a physical ballot to be saved.
      • The whole point behind paper ballots is that, in case you don't trust the computer, a human can tabulate the votes by looking at the ballots. And the ballots are accurate because the voter looked over his ballot before putting it in the ballot box.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jellie ( 949898 )
          I'm a proponent of paper ballots and of a voter verified paper audit trail (VVPAT), and I find optical scan ballots to make a lot of sense. But I can see where electronic voting machines (not necessarily DRE), if designed properly, would be superior to an optical scan machine. What I meant was that a poorly designed optical scan machine would have similar problems to these current crop of DREs, wouldn't they? The manufacturers of the optical scan machines are the same ones who design the DREs, and we alread

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by 0x0000 ( 140863 )

            The manufacturers [...] we already know how incompetent they are.

            I don't think they're incompetent at all; they designed a system to allow them to sell the elections to the highest bidder, they sell elections to the highest bidder, they get mad paid. They do, quickly and efficiently, the [illegal] job they are hired to do, AND they get away with it. Remember, this is privatization at work - these are highly paid, influential lobbyist and contractors, not bumbling bureaucratic government functionaries.

    • They don't require a fingerprint on an absentee ballot, so vote stealers would rather use this method. Notice how skewed absentee ballots are to the regular population. Thus even with a paper trail, unless they go thru absentee ballots and uncover who voted for what, you will never be sure the election wasn't stolen....
    • where I live we mark our choice on a piece of paper ... when the polls close actual people open the boxes and count who voted for whom ... scrutineers from both parties watch the counting to make sure all is well .... results are still in by 10pm .... our system even has a paper trail ....
      • Same in mine (or is mine the same?), see here for details. Both counts (!) are open to the public, too. What more could you want?

        -Lars

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Rich0 ( 548339 )
      What do you do with half-filled circles and stray marks? What if they fill in Bush but write in Gore?

      That is the big problem with paper ballots - they can be incorrectly filled out.

      I'm for a hybrid approach - GUI for ballot validation, secure voter-verified paper audit trail for counting...

      • What do you do with half-filled circles and stray marks? What if they fill in Bush but write in Gore? That is the big problem with paper ballots - they can be incorrectly filled out.

        Which is why court mandates for recounters to accurately "determine the intent of the voter" are such nonsense. Throw out the incorrectly marked ballots.

        • Throw out the incorrectly marked ballots.
          You mean the ones marked with the candidate the counter doesn't like?

          • You mean the ones marked with the candidate the counter doesn't like?

            That would imply that each ballot passes through only one set of hands, which would be a terribly silly, accountability-free way to count votes.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Rich0 ( 548339 )
          Good luck with that in a close election!

          And define incorrect - 99%-101% filled in? Stray marks up to 10 microns in size? No paper ballot is perfect, so my stray mark might be your printing defect.

          With a machine-generated paper ballot you can define specs and apply specs and six-sigma the final product to near-perfection. If you can make a skyscraper with 10,000 I-beams that doesn't collapse you can make a voting system that doesn't miscount votes. But not when everything is hand-made...

          And whose votes a
  • FTFA:

    The testers were able to penetrate the GEMS server system by exploiting vulnerabilities in the Windows operating system as delivered and installed by Diebold. Once this access was obtained, they were able to bypass the GEMS server to access the data directly.

    Personally, I think that the level people are flipping out about these is ridiculous. From a software point of view, it should be relatively to do. You see applications where the userspace has no interaction with the OS all the time (i.e, publi

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by dana340 ( 914286 )
      The problem with it is the security, you're right. with something like the election, someone is going to be wiling to put their resources into rigging the election, look what's spent campaigning. Bribe the guy that sits there to watch the machines and make sure no one gets in, and boom, you have all the access you need if you're a black hat. Or better yet, get a job working in polling place, and just be that guy. now those locks are not there, then sell you services to the highest bidder.

      because we can

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by frdmfghtr ( 603968 )

        Use an electronic voting machine with a paper receipt. one goes to the voter, the other one is displayed through a glass window to the voter to make sure that the system "tallies" it correctly.
        No, no NO!

        NO RECEIPT goes with the voter. This would create a market for buying/selling/coercing votes. "Bring me a vote for X and I'll pay $5!" or "Bring me a vote for X or else your house may spontaneously catch fire."

  • Probably offtopic, but (Score:5, Interesting)

    by wamerocity ( 1106155 ) on Saturday July 28, 2007 @07:36PM (#20027681) Journal
    I think we should keep voting as a solid paper trail until we fix something far more important that just HOW we vote: who votes.

    I find it odd that our country spends the GDP of some small countries in campaign spending, and yet there is one small change that I think would revolutionize the way people vote: make Voting Day a holiday. Yes, just like the 4th of July, all companies close, school is out at all levels (elementary, middle/high school, and college.) Make kids realize that this is something important. I think anybody would be hard pressed to argue that celebrating the 4th of July is more important historically or iconically than voting.

    • Re:Probably offtopic, but (Score:5, Insightful)

      by imemyself ( 757318 ) on Saturday July 28, 2007 @08:04PM (#20027843)
      Maybe, but I think a lot of people would just go party or something instead of using the time off to vote. And companies are required by law to let their employees have time off to go vote. With all of the news coverage on election day, I think that just about everyone is aware of what is going on, even if they don't care enough to vote. It also wouldn't be possible for all companies to close. What about news stations, telecommunications providers, restaurants, security and custodial staff in many companies, etc.

      I'm not saying that making it a holiday would hurt, I just don't think it would actually get too many more people to vote.
      • As I understand it, in Australia its a civic obligation to vote, not a right, punishable with fines if one does not participate?, am not sure of the fines thing, but it seems to me that its an obligation to be part of the democratic process, maybe we should take the same measures here in the U.S.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Agripa ( 139780 )
          While we are at it, let's make the Republicans and Democrats the only legal parties so as to reduce ambiguity, save money, and remove the third party spoiler effect.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by bigpat ( 158134 )
            [quote]While we are at it, let's make the Republicans and Democrats the only legal parties so as to reduce ambiguity, save money, and remove the third party spoiler effect.[/quote]

            People use tactical voting to mitigate the spoiler effect... which is the problem. With a rigged two-party system, people like me don't get a candidate that they can vote for, because you get parties which end up with alliances which de facto disallow candidates of particular combinations of positions. So, for instance you won't

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by mpe ( 36238 )
              With a rigged two-party system, people like me don't get a candidate that they can vote for, because you get parties which end up with alliances which de facto disallow candidates of particular combinations of positions. So, for instance you won't see a pro-choice and pro-gun rights candidate get nominated for the general election, even though that might be just fine with the general electorate. And you won't see an anti big government candidate from either party because you get the most allies in political
        • If someone doesn't care, why should they be forced to provide input? Especially considering their input won't be very valuable, owing to their apathy.
      • As someone who like many other reads of Slashdot has a professional job instead of a 9-5 type job I can say that while I am permitted time off to go vote on any given day the time alloted to the project I'm working on doesn't get extended by that amount of time nor does it make any of my work disapear. I like the way they do it in France, vote on Saturday. All elections are held on Saturday, while this may not make voting any more accessable to people working manufacturing jobs where work schedules can be

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ignavus ( 213578 )
        In Australia, all elections are held on a Saturday, from 9.00 AM to 6.00 PM. Well over 90% of the population that is eligible to vote turns up (voting is compulsory in Australia).

        Anyone who cannot vote that day (religious scruples, health, travel, etc) can lodge a postal vote before hand.

        Works fine.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by JavaBear ( 9872 )
      Not a bad idea. I know they do that in for instance South Africa.

      But it seems to me that what really need changing is the whole 'registered voter' thing, it needs to be abolished. Simply allow anyone with a social security number to go in anywhere in their precinct, and vote.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by profzoom ( 177901 )
      What about the service industry? A good-sized chunk of our nation's population (myself included for several years between undergrad and grad school) works in retail, food service, etc. These places will certainly still be open even if Election Day were declared a national holiday - the first Tuesday in November seems like the perfect time for a big sale to get the Christmas shopping season started!

  • Open Source Voting System ? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by JavaBear ( 9872 ) on Saturday July 28, 2007 @07:40PM (#20027717)
    Why don't the Open Source communities in America try to join forces and develop an open voting systems specification (software, hardware and communications protocols), one that is completely open and free to use and implement, and which the individual states can produce themselves (or at least have local companies do it) if they so choose?

    Basic demands for any electronic voting system is that it is open, safe and that the results are verifiable. That means that the voting set-up/definitions as well as the machine output and logs must be in plain text (signed to prevent/detect tampering of course) and be made publicly available for all to verify. Not to forget the paper trail.
    Ultimately, any voter should be able to plug in a USB drive, and get a complete dump/snapshot of the voting machines software - source and binaries, logs and it's latest hardware certificates.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by evanbd ( 210358 )

      Ultimately, any voter should be able to plug in a USB drive, and get a complete dump/snapshot of the voting machines software - source and binaries, logs and it's latest hardware certificates.

      No, you shouldn't be able to do that. Why? It provides a false sense of security. If the machine is compromised, it would be all too easy for the machine to lie in the dump. If you want to check the software, you should have to shut the machine down, and pull and dump its program storage -- which would make it

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by aspjut ( 653084 )
      Something like this [openvotingconsortium.org]?
  • There's not going to be a next election.

    There. I said it.

    Please let me be wrong.


    -FL

  • Anyone really interested in this should read about this bill (the "Holt bill") at both http://blackboxvoting.org/ [blackboxvoting.org] and also http://blackboxvoting.com/ [blackboxvoting.com]. Note that these two sites have very different takes on this bill!!! IMHO, they both have valid points. BBV (.org) has done a great job pushing forward the problems with the current systems and raising the visibility of the issue (and ferreting out some real doosies by Diebold, etc). However, since we're not likely to get anything better for this cycle, pe
  • It might not protect our privacy down the road. But how do they plan to protect the public from corrupted voting booths, and politicians? No paper trial means no proof. So in some ways the Bill would be a blessing. I just hope it doesn't turn into a curse years down the road. Paper trails can be abused too.
  • The whole point of keeping a paper trail is to prevent some hacker from messing with the vote, correct? Well I doubt it is much harder to mess with a paper vote either. Shredding machine, fireplace, there are plenty of ways to get rid of paper votes. And then there are people who go down the street getting votes from people who normally wouldn't go vote only to throw all the votes in the trash can except for the ones that they want. There wouldn't have been recounts in the elections before electronic voti
  • I read this idea often on slashdot: There's no real difference between Democrats and Republicans.

    So I ask those who say this: Would this legislation have come to be in the House under the Republicans? (Answer: it didn't) Yes, it was a bipartisan compromise, but we all know that the compromise wouldn't be possible with the Republicans in charge.
    • But there *isn't* any difference between D and R: they're both human.
      By which I mean, it depends on how you define 'differences' - and when.
      Americans, by and large, seem to understand that power corrupts, and reflect that by looking at who is in charge and regarding them as corrupt -- which, by and large, is pretty accurate. As such, right now, most of us are looking at the Republicans and saying that things are just appalling. When Democrats have a firm grip on all three branches of the government and ar
  • It's registration that's the problem. You want clean elections? Start by cleaning the registration lists, and implementing sane laws to keep them clean. Motor Voter is a farce; registration drives are rife with corruption (ACORN just got busted in Pierce County of Washington for 1748 fake registrations).

    Start with cleaning up who can vote first, then worry about the vote itself. The vast majority of elections fraud so far has been cases of fraudulent registrations, not vote tampering. People voting w

  • I will start posting (as anonymously as possible for someone like me) mugshot photos with a politicians, corporatist, televangelist ... last name.png in as many internet public places as possible and including the simple caption "USA TRAITOR". I will leave it up to US Citizens to know/investigate why.

    Any USA Congressperson or Senator voting or corporatist, lobbyist, general ... against or President/VP vetoing "the bill banning paperless voting machines and requiring a voter-verified paper record for every v

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