States Throw Out Electronic Voting Machines 238
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.
Slashdot (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Slashdot (Score:5, Funny)
Nice one, uh, . . ., user 992278.
Re:BREAKING NEWS (Score:4, Funny)
Cluestick, meet Geoffrey. Geoffrey, meet cluestick.
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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"I have a correspondent whose letters are always a refreshment to me, there is such a breezy unfettered originality about his orthography. He always spells Kow with a large K. Now that is just as good as to spell it with a small one. It is better. It gives the imagination a broader field, a wider scope. It suggests to the mind a grand, vague, impressive new kind of a cow."
-- Mark Twain
Re:Catapult? (Score:4, Informative)
A trebuchet is a form of catapult.
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.
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Re:2 ideas (Score:5, Funny)
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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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1) Novelty themed restaurant, where you place your order by "voting".
I don't think this will work very well...
"Customer said he ordered the duck, not George Bush"
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.
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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...
The sooner (Score:2)
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.
Are you sure you want to plant that seed? (Score:2)
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.
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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During the 2000 the problem went down do Florida where they used a paper method and you had the hanging chad and bump issues where when people punched their choice on card stock the paper didn't compleatly punch threw causing the optical readers to reject the votes. And even visual inspection did the same thing, it was just to hard to tell.
Durring 2004 they used them a bit more however they may or may not have worked but the public was worried as they were insecure and didn't have a paper backup trail, to p
So, let me get this straight (Score:2)
The voting machines that were discredited will still be used here in Ohio? Even though we know they're bad?
I'm glad I decided to never vote. It seems like it would have had literally no effect to do so anyways.
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Of course.
See, the democrats got more positions in Ohio recently. They know 'how to use' the machines now, and they just want a little 'just revenge' against the republicans!
\/
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Don't worry, you'll be voting regularly after you've died...
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)
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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Which is exactly why I favor the fill-in-the-oval type of ballots. They are easy to understand (no butterfly-ballot, "I pushed the wrong button" sort of problems), they are easy to read (Is the oval black or is it white?), they are machine-readable (so machine counting is quick and easy), and, most importantly, they leave behind a directly human-filled-in paper trail (so physical, manual, by-hand, honest-to-goodness recounts and cross-checks are actually possible, when needed).
Touch-screen voting machines,
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That's not entirely true. You can make it work like this:
Not always true. (Score:2)
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First, the paper-ballot-counters aren't connected to networks, generally.
Second, a system where a paper ballot is counted by an electronic machine has a critical feature that an all-electronic system lacks: it's auditable, with an independent backup of the vote (the paper ballot).
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When states have the scanners to count votes, random samples are taken and hand counted, to verify that the numbers are the same as what the machine counted. This ensures accuracy. Also, if the ballot can't be scanned (ie, they didn't fill in the circle dark enough for the scanner) they are usually spit out to a different tray, and hand counted.
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?
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You need the extra complexity to obfuscate the bias introduced by the machines.
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Amen to that. :)
Bias or whatever.
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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The same things that screw up every system.
Feature creep.
Constant scope changes.
Unrealistic timelines.
Unrealistic budget.
Mandatory meaningless milestones.
Clueless management.
Corrupt management.
Incompetent people.
Marketing.
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From a technical point of view, there is no complexity, unless you're stupid enough to try to network all the voting machines in state and then secure that network. Physically transporting the machines output media (both electronic and paper) is much easier and more reliable.
From a political point of view, the complexity is that most state/local officials were so blindingly foolish as to spend thousands or millions of dollars on machines that don't have a paper validation back-up. Then instead of writing
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Simple solution is when a vote is recorded, print a receipt that the voter examines to confirm it is correct, and the voter has to deposit this receipt to finalize the vote (or the receipt cannot be touched but it can be examined). The receipt could even have information in the form or filled in circles so that the voter can visually confirm that, should the receipt require alternate electronic form of counting, the proper spot is
well, it's like this... (Score:3, Insightful)
So seriously, can anyone tell me what is so hard about automating a paper process that has ticks in boxes?
The problem is not that making an automatic voting machine is difficult. It is not. Making one that is accurate, reliable, and secure is a problem. Even that, however, is not the biggest problem. Getting the voting public to accept the machines as accurate, reliable and secure is the real issue. Take the /. crowd as an example (please). How many posters here think that the existing Diebold machines are
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'm pretty sure a simple Google search would supply you with man papers on the potential failure modes of a voting system and how electronic voting systems fail to address them.
Let's just say they'd love your voting "system" in Chicago.
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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That is what makes OCR hard, not what makes automating the process hard. Have you ever bothered coding a computer to put "nearly a whole bit" into memory?
I'ts sad but a good thing. (Score:3, Insightful)
Whuh? (Score:2)
There had to be a rule issued to stop this? Could we not have a simple "don't be a moron" rule? In what way does it not look bad if people are taking the easily [techdirt.com]-hackable [slashdot.org] machines home with them?
Challenge : find new uses for voting machines (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm thinking that these things could be rebuilt into information kiosks, or something else useful, rather than just crushing & recycling.
I mean, touch screens aren't cheap, and I'd personally love to get my hands on a few. (eg, one for the kitchen to flip through recipies w/out needing a keyboard w/ all of its germ-hiding crevices ... a small PC or embedded system to drive a digital picture frame that's also a home automation control center ... I'm guessing others could come up with plenty of uses that'd actually benefit the states / counties / municipalities..)
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touchscreens ARE cheap. Hell I buy LCD's with touchscreens on them for $25.00 on ebay all the time.
It's not like these voting machines have laptop ready, 1024X768 16 million color TFT displays with high end touchscreens in them.
They have the cheezy LCD's and Cheezy resistance based touchscreens. you can get them everywhere for dirt.
My hope is some scrapper buys them all parts them out to pieces and sells the parts on places like sparkfun and allelectronics for almost nothing.
Give them to the schools (Score:5, Interesting)
I can dream damn it!
Sell them on eBay with the self-cleaning toilets (Score:2)
Where? (Score:2)
I'm guessing Iraq is going to be picking up some wonderful "best democracy in the world" voting machines at low, low prices.
The optical readers are ALSO broken! (Score:3, Interesting)
The optical readers can be easily hacked as has been definitively demonstrated to anybody with eyes. Go to the big Free Documentary Website, [freedocumentaries.org] and watch "Hacking Democracy" again if you missed it the first time on HBO.
There is simply a situation of rampant criminal negligence being perpetrated all across the states. The Right Wing way of doing things is to chin-jut at and ignore the law when it doesn't suit them and then lie about it afterwards. They do it again and again and again, and being caught once or made to feel shame for being a shit doesn't work; they're like the little bully/problem kid in kindergarten. You have to MAKE them follow the rules because they're petulant kids with no sense of responsibility. And I'm not talking about Republicans. (Though, I would imagine these days that there are few real people left in the Republican party.) I'm talking about the brain-damage victims; you know the type I mean.
There is broad proof of discarded paper records of votes which the documentarians dug out of trash bins and manually counted to discover that, 'Yes' election fraud is entirely real. But so what? With responsible people, being caught is enough to fix the problem. With problem kids, they shrug at you and say, "Yeah, SO?" And since these twerps are in offices both high and low, nothing has been done.
The skinny: The data cards which plug into the optical readers are brought to and from the voting site by corporate monkeys for the voting machine companies, and it was demonstrated that the cards can be easily made to fudge election results just by doing a prior hack to them. Simple as pie. That, along with a few other big cons can indeed destroy an election.
Oh, and please don't point out that in a couple of highlighted cases of, "But Billy did it too and he didn't get in trouble", like in Canada where the voting slant was delivered to the Left. . . That stuff is totally irrelevant. Even a Right Wing ADD turd can think up the idea to rig an inconsequential election the other way to have something to point to in an effort to confuse the issue surrounding his own treason.
The only way to put an Obama in office, (because the illegal voting slant certainly isn't going to favor him), is to turn out in unanticipated numbers so that the hack is overwhelmed. This is what happened when the Democrats took Congress; there was demonstrable voting fraud, but just not enough. What a world!
-FL
Gee, if only there were a way... (Score:3, Interesting)
Local election boards are struggling to find ways to recover any of the cost of the machines,
Gee - if only there were some way for a customer who is sold a product which is unfit for its intended purpose to recover the money that was swindled from them.
Oh - wait! That would mean holding some corporations that give lots of money to campaigns accountable for their bad practices. I mean - how could they have known (other than listening to the thousands of information scientists, including some of the most prominent security analysts in academia and private practice, who said this would happen) that this would happen?
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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
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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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Incidentally, the mechanical lever systems bear the same major problem as electronic voting systems: they can be undetectably modified.
Except that you can detect their modification by testing them.
Electronic voting machines could have their modification triggered in dozens of undetectable ways. They do run the clock forward, and do a bunch of votes on it, so it's not going to switch on a specific time, but it could easily be triggered by specific ballot, or pushing the screen in a weird spot, or anythin
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That's not correct. You can undetectably modify a mechanical voting machine.
Suppose Eve, the attacker and a registered voter, dislikes candidate A. She shows up to the polls early with a piece of pencil lead in her pocket. She inserts the lead into an appropriate gap under candidate A's lever. While this doesn't interfere with the apparent operation of the lever, it actually prevents the mechanical operation that counts the vote. Future voters will think they're voting for A, but in fact are voting for nobo
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This isn't some theoretical attack, it's a known weakness in the mechanical voting systems. You're just not familiar with the voting machine, so my description doesn't make sense.
The mechanical voting machine has a single large lever, a board full of toggles, and a curtain. On entering, you pull the lever, which closes the curtain. We'll call that lever state "voting". You then flip the toggles for the items you want to vote for. For example, you might flip "John" under the "President" column and "Yes" unde
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How hard would it be for one of these counties to write new software on their own?
Really hard considering that the hardware is not open sourced, the final system (which includes software) needs validated an approved, and if they don't have a budget for new systems that actually work half ways decent, then they definately don't have a budget to hire a contractor to write and document software in a short period of time that will comply with HAVA. "10 lines of code" is an extreme understatement of the problem. You couldn't even implement the voice system for the blind with 10 lines of cod
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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.
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.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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or to achieve an even smaller risk of conspiracy: Two or more people of different, publicly known affiliations.
If you want to avoid a conspiracy then just let one person do it by themselves.
Fraud doesn't scale well with paper (Score:3, Insightful)
Since you have to double your efforts to get double the effect. And that increases your risk of being caught by MORE than double.
Whereas with electronic voting, doubling your efforts require a smidgin more effort and almost no extra chance of being caught out. Unless you're greedy. Even then, PROVING you were deliberately defrauding voters is much harder with electronic voting than paper voting.
Paper problems over-rated (Score:3, Insightful)
That may be true, but all of those problems with paper ballots occur between the election and final counting results, a limited length of time which can be closely monitored. Electronic voting machines can be tampered w
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No, electronic voting machines were adopted as a result of the Help America Vote act, the primary goal of which was to prevent easily-misinterpreted ballots, particularly for the elderly or disabled.
While there are problems with paper ballots, for sure, their failure modes are a lot more graceful. In general, when electronic voting machines are maliciously altered, the fact that they've been altered is undetectable and there's no backup data that can be used to fix the problem. Further, their operations wh
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This is, in fact, the current solution used in California, which has moved to optical-scan ballots.
Note that you can save a lot of time and money if everyone who doesn't need assistance just fills out the optical-scan ballot by hand. People who need the assistance can use a machine to produce a properly-filled-out optical-scan paper ballot.
The counting is then done by an entirely different machine. A random set of districts are required to perform a hand count of the ballots to verify the results. The impor
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But open sourcing them and putting in checks to eliminate corruption goes against everything politicians stand for.
You will never get government officials, those who uphold the tenants of corruption, to allow a voting system that is fair and honest.
That way lies MADNESS!
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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Isn't this solved by putting the ballots in envelopes, having two (independent, separate of each other) persons count the envelopes. Then having two (also independent separated persons) count the votes. If there is a dis
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.
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.
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.
SHOW/QUEUE/ALL (Score:2)
Just by having wait time to vote wouldn't that introduce a skewed result?
If there is a 5 hour queue at the time when the voting shall end - will these be disqualified from voting? Who is to blame?
Better bring a potty and tissue if you are going to queue for voting.
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.
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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And now the Democrat Secretary of State is redefining election law to say that registration and then absentee voting up to 5 days before the election is legal because by the time the paper ballots are recorded the voter would have been registered for the legislated 30 days.
Why stop there, why not let 17 yr olds that would turn 18 by the time the ballots are counted vote too?
What if in 30 days you plan to be a resident of the state?
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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Some would say that goes both ways. Mind the foam, please.
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.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course you're confused. You only remember the last thing you heard. But I can't blame you for having the same problem that most people in the US seem to have.
There were a LOT of problems with the 2004 election and not just in Florida and Ohio. There were problems identified in many states. In Texas alone, in areas where paper ballots were still being used, after the election, many [uncounted] ballots were found in trash dumpsters across the state. Ostensibly, they all came from democratic areas.
But
Re:Does it run on lennix? (Score:5, Informative)
Of course not. With Linux it would not need antivirus software. [xkcd.com]
Re:Does it run on lennix? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I couldn't disagree more...
There is no reason a machine counted vote can't be just as verifiable as a human counted vote.
Just because diebold built a "black box"
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Get a fucking clue fags and watch as the next demofaggot candidtate gets trounced this election cycle.
It's because we make space for these (very) young souls to live that the country is as it is. The only way for people to truly learn is to let them make mistakes. 60 million hard-core bible people determined to not question and who believe their dogmatic sound-bite political realities without spending any real time to actually explore ANY issues which might create discomfort in their pretend belief system