All Fifty States May Face Voting Machine Lawsuit 436
according to an announcement made by activist Bernie Ellis at the premier of David Earnhardt's film "Uncounted [The Movie]" all fifty states could be receiving subpoenas in the National Clean Election lawsuit. The documentary film, like the lawsuit, takes a look at the issue of voting machine failure and the need for a solid paper trail. "The lawsuit is aimed at prohibiting the use of all types of vote counting machines, and requiring hand-counting of all primary and general election ballots in full view of the public. The lawsuit has raised significant constitutional questions challenging the generally accepted practices of state election officials of relying on "black box" voting machines to record and count the votes at each polling station, and allow tallying of votes by election officials outside the view of the general public."
Why not have voting machines that print ballots? (Score:5, Insightful)
Or would that be too sensible?
Right idea, wrong request (Score:5, Insightful)
It just has to have a paper trail, not reveal to outsiders who you voted for, and, y'know, not be backed with Microsoft Access.
Re:Why not have voting machines that print ballots (Score:2, Insightful)
Suddenoutbreakofcommonsense applies... (Score:3, Insightful)
Open Source & Paper Trail (Score:4, Insightful)
No EVoting can be "trusted" (Score:5, Insightful)
Joe Average can look at a vote, see the cross and verify that yes, whoever casted this vote voted for the person or party where the X is. That's the difference.
Yes, of course we trust us. But can we be trusted? Hey, of course we can, I know that, you know that but essentially, it's the same situation we have with closed source voting machines: An outsider does not know whether we, computer people, are to be trusted. Like we, as outsiders, stand in front of the makers of voting machines and question their trustworthyness, so will non-tech people stand in front of us and question ours.
The only way to have elections that cannot be questioned by anyone is to create a system that everyone can verify if they want to. And the only system is simply one that everyone can "read". So it's paper or nothing.
Hand counting is a fraud too (Score:4, Insightful)
Computers count better than people do, otherwise, you would see calls for people to manually tally your bank balance...
Re:Why not have voting machines that print ballots (Score:5, Insightful)
Another idea (Score:4, Insightful)
There's no rush (Score:5, Insightful)
E-Voting that matters (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Right idea, wrong request (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Great Idea! (Score:3, Insightful)
Taking in my experiences in voting in the midwest, which have universally been 'scanotron' sheets, there are at least some states with a verifiable paper record that can be recounted by hand if determined necessary.
One problem with all this 'hand count' stuff is that even hand counting has an error rate - often a higher one than the scanotrons. At least as long as you make the voting rules for a valid ballot be one scannable by the machine*. Sure, a few will probably be kicked out - but it's much easier to deal with a couple hundred ballots to count by hand than a million or more.
On another tack, I'd much prefer the wacko extremists be filing lawsuits rather than the alternatives many wacko extremists select - such as building bombs.
*IE you place in the rules 'An X through the bubble doesn't count. A partially filled bubble doesn't count(showing a sample with maybe 1/3 the bubble filled in), a circled bubble doesn't count. A completely filled bubble counts.' Same rules as for ACT, SATS, and other such college tests.
Right, Because people are so trustworthy too...... (Score:2, Insightful)
After all, it shouldn't take a rocket scientist (or even a dim witted 3rd grader) to remember all of the "vote wrangling" that went on when various "human" counting systems were employed in Florida, Ohio, Iowa, etc over the last few general elections.
Because of course, a HUMAN would NEVER have any agenda at all when it comes to vote counting......
Oh wait........
Hanging Chad's anyone?
And note, this applies to BOTH sides equally, so if you desire to blame the "mean ole conservatives" or the "damn looney liberals",.....Don't.
Re:Hand counting is a fraud too (Score:2, Insightful)
Blaming the computer for an error, in whatever fashion/manipulatable method, is a bit different, and all accountability is now gone: "It isn't me its an inanimate object(computer)" goes to "it wasn't the object its the owner of said object's fault" goes to "it's not the owner, of said object, he just bought it from XYZ company" seeing as that would be a corporation, means that there is 0 accountability whatsoever. Any corporation that pays a penalty in terms of a monetary fine doesn't have any accountability, thats just a business expense. That's the problem with the power of corporations nowadays. Even if you fined IBM 10% of the total company's assets they'd take a huge hit sure, but where would be the accountability for example? Same with microsoft. So they lay off some people, business would go on as usual.
Go the other way (Score:3, Insightful)
Seems to me to work rather well.
Paper and pencil (Score:4, Insightful)
I just don't get why there's such foot-dragging... (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Demand that Diebold and all of the other voting machine folks print a receipt for every voter. This wouldn't be any more difficult than printing a receipt at the supermarket. You get to look at it, you put it into the basket on the way out. The paper becomes the "official" ballot always, the machine is just there to give quick results.
2) All the vote counting is redone at a central location, and EVERYONE can watch on the cable access channel or over streamed video. Want to watch 96 hours of vote counting from front to back? Sure, knock yourself out. The video feeds are provided the the cable franchise holders in every city to present on their networks on the usually blank city council channel. For those without a cable franchise for the city, you can simply lookup the video feeds on the internet.
The foot dragging on this issue is really starting to make me believe that the elections ARE being manipulated. All the horse-pucky form Diebold and the like about "too hard to make a printed tally".... Yeah, sure... And it's also too hard for cash machines and cash registers to print a receipt and verify that I've got funds before you give me cash...
As far as ballot counting, the infrastructure to let everyone watch is already there.
We just need to keep pushing until this gets done. I'm getting really tired of the 50.01% vs. 49.99% vote manipulation that's passing for "legal and fair" elections in this country. Making things look "close" is really the smoothest form of manipulation, I don't think anyone would believe the old Soviet style manipulation where the votes are always 98% for the party, but shaving just enough to make it 51-49 would be almost believable.
This really does need to get done NOW. No more fooling around, OSS voting machine code, printed receipt, video feeds of the counting and no more voter supression!
Bits vs. Atoms (Score:3, Insightful)
Atoms, however, are hard to dispose of - yes a paper trail gets counted too, but it's much harder to deny the physical reality.
A voter can verify his correct paper ballot went into a locked box, and observers can make sure the locked boxes are transported and the contents counted. If there is a question, it can be repeated with closer inspection.
When I touch the "vote!" box on a screen, I have no idea what happened next, and verification is difficult.
Re:Why not have voting machines that print ballots (Score:3, Insightful)
Paper trails are inaccurate (Score:2, Insightful)
greater than the percentage of votes by which George W Bush "won" his first presidency.
If you're going to have close elections like that, then with a human paper counting system you may
as well just call it, heads or tails, because that will be just as valid as the alleged "result."
Some kind of open-source hardware and software stack, top to bottom, using public key encryption and
digital signature techniques to allow verification that a ballot was counted in the result without revealing
how the ballot was actually voted, should be fine. Why is this so difficult to comprehend?
The idea that all competent mathematicians and computer geeks, who could vouch for the system and the
process and the result, are somehow all in favor of one side in an election and so would engage in a vast,
unanimous conspiracy to defraud the populace is so far fetched that anyone who believes it should
have their right to vote revoked anyway, because if the quality of decisions made by those they support
is anything like their own decision making prowess, we are all completely f**ked.
Oh yeah, we already are, I forgot.
Both Machine and Hand Counts (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no reason the official count can't take a few days to complete, even doublechecked by multiple counts. That kind of human responsibility for the counting is entirely consistent with the democracy we're populating with the votes.
Re:Why not have voting machines that print ballots (Score:3, Insightful)
With the Oval Office up for grabs, why not be sure we've elected the jerk correctly? A few days' wait isn't going to kill anyone.
Re:Why not have voting machines that print ballots (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think candidates should be allowed to concede an election. An election isn't over until all the votes are counted and certified. period. If the candidate concedes before then, that should nullify the election as the voters were not choosing from the actual candidates. They were instead choosing between one person who wanted the job and another person who wanted to distract voters in some fashion.
I don't know...
Re:Why not have voting machines that print ballots (Score:2, Insightful)
Should a non-citizen have the right to vote? I vote no. As you have to speak English to pass the test to become a US citizen, I see no need for other languages on the ballot in the US.
As to large print, before I had my operation (click the sig) I had trouble reading the ballot as I forgot my reading glasses. NOT having large print as the standard is stupid; unless you've had a CrystaLens implant, by the time you're 50 you need reading glasses, as everyone's focusing lens gets hard and won't focus.
You only need one ballot, in one language (French if you are in France, I guess you'ld need two languages in Canada) but one typeface - LARGE. The braile could be on all the ballots as well.
-mcgrew
Re:I just don't get why there's such foot-dragging (Score:5, Insightful)
I personally see nothing wrong with counting machines. Yet some of you act like Herman Hollerith was the instigator of a massive shadow conspiracy. The requirements for valid voting are few: 1) recountability; 2) certification; and 3) transparency. The off-the-shelf Diebold machines won't pass muster, but most of the tried and true optical and punch systems will.
Oh, and next time don't wait until two months before the primaries start. Sheesh.
Re:E-Voting that matters (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm amazed that anyone here would trust their vote about ANYTHING on the internet.
But the referendum Idea is one I'd go along with. There's no reason any law has to be passed RIGHT NOW; we could vote every year. I'd have the same way we do it now; a bill passes the house and Senate, then is vetoed by the President. Only I'd add another step, and give we, the people a chance to veto it as well if he let it become law. You'd need a Constitutional Amendment to do this, though.
I'd also have all laws automatically repealed after a set amount of time, say 5 years. Good laws would have little trouble being passed again, while crap like the telephone tax [irs.gov] would easily die.
Would prohibition have passed if the people could have vetoed it? How about marijuana prohibition? I'd be willing to bet that one would have died in th '70s if there were term limits to laws.
Additional steps and features (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course you will have these machine printed ballots print all the vote selections in clearly readable text. But in addition to that, also include a copy of all the votes in bar code, along with a secure checksum. Before putting the ballot into the box, scan it on a verification machine. This machine performs optical character reading (OCR) of the text. It compares that to the bar code, and generates a checksum to compare as well. If anything is inconsistent, it reports an error so that vote can be done over. It should also put a red stamp on it. If the ballot is OK, it records an UN-official tally, sending that to a central site over a secure channel, for a master UN-official tally. The UN-official tally can be given to the media for public release right after all the polls close. They would be able to report 100% within seconds of closing (and get back to regular TV programming). In the mean time, the process to count the ballots officially begins. The ballots are shipped in their locked boxes to the central facility under armed guard, where they are counted again by machine scan. The ballots must be kept for the duration of the longest term of office voted in that election. They can be hand counted if ever needed.
Voters will also receive a receipt that prints the time and location of their vote, which ballot printing machine they used, and which vote scanning machine they used. That information plus the vote itself is then securely checksumed and that is printed numerically and in bar code. Every receipt is totally unique. The same info is on each ballot and is to be recorded during the official vote. The list of counted votes (using the same checksum as the receipt) shall be copied to a central computer that can be queried by receipt number to confirm that a vote was counted. The receipt shall NOT contain the actual votes.
Re:Both Machine and Hand Counts (Score:3, Insightful)
There is no urgent need to know who won instantly. In fact, knowing early results before voting is closed will affect the results, and is not desirable. I'm prepared to wait as long as I need to to know the results are valid.
Re:No EVoting can be "trusted" (Score:3, Insightful)
Cryptography is neat, but it's not magic dust that you can sprinkle on things and make them secure. There are specific algorithms and protocols that have specific properties, and not a single one of those properties is "you can know what a given electronic device does by looking at it". Unfortunately, that property is absolutely essential for any of the electronic-ballot systems I've seen to be trustworthy at all.
And just because you know of ways to exert massive engineering effort solve small pieces of a problem doesn't mean that it will be possible to solve the entire problem at once in the real world. Voting systems require a set of security properties, and no complete electronic voting system that I've looked at can satisfy them.
There are cryptographic voting protocols that would allow a group of mathematicians to sit down with pencils and paper and have an election with no mutual trust. The minute you try to implement those protocols in hardware or software, you get into an utter mess of trusted parties which utterly wreck all of the interesting security properties of the protocols for a voting system.
I've actually taken the time to sit down and understand the cryptographic protocols that apply to this problem, what properties they have, and why the cryptographic algorithms involved ensure those properties. Have you?
Re:E-Voting that matters (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course the reality may be somewhat different, but I don't like your idea any better.
Re:I wonder... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:All 50? (Score:2, Insightful)
And as an added bonus, you can instead sign everything but not seal it, then hand it off to the person who's buying your vote and get paid (or threatening your employment if you vote "wrong").
Re:I wonder... (Score:3, Insightful)
Not to mention that the actual problems with the election couldn't possibly have been addressed by simply counting again: Some people were alleged to have been denied the ability to vote through last-minute changes to less convenient polling places and others claimed to have been confused by the ballot and having voted for a candidate they did not intend to. I believe there were also claims that sheriffs departments were actively preventing people from reaching polling places. I don't remember if they followed up with lawsuits or charges of their own.
None of those issues would have resulted in a single ballot which could turn up in the recount.
In the matter of recount requests, though, at no point did Bush look at Florida and say, "well it was close so let's count it out." For the simple reason that he won Florida. And then he won the first recount.