New Jersey Residents Displaced By Storm Can Vote By Email 189
First time accepted submitter danbuter writes "In probably the most poorly thought-out reaction to allowing people displaced by Hurricane Sandy in New Jersey [to take part in the 2012 presidential election], residents will be allowed to vote by email. Of course, this will be completely secure and work perfectly!" Writes user Beryllium Sphere: "There's no mention of any protocol that might possibly make this acceptable. Perhaps the worst thing that could happen would be if it appears to work OK and gains acceptance." I know someone they should consult first.
I didn't know (Score:5, Insightful)
I didn't know New Jersey had over 5 billion residents.
Or atleast that's my estimate of the amount of votes they'll be recieving.
Re:I didn't know (Score:4, Informative)
I think the Swiss have been using online voting for a while now: http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-202_162-645615.html [cbsnews.com]
Re:I didn't know (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I didn't know (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, but they are Swiss. They make perfect watches, have an insane amount of automatic rifles in homes while not thinking twice about not committing crimes with those rifles while eating their famed chocolate, and are otherwise generally badass. Take that, New Jersey! Still think it could work there?
Of course they don't commit crimes with the rifles. They already have all the criminals' money.
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Where do the swiss grow their cocoa beans?
Re:I didn't know (Score:4, Insightful)
And that has nothing to do with email voting.
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Seems to me that extra votes are the same as erasing or not counting legitimate votes.
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Every "extra vote" cancels a large portion of someone's legitimate vote. So, it's important to worry about both.
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Re:I didn't know (Score:5, Informative)
There was a project sponsored by GNU to develop software that would permit online voting securely. Obviously this would be hugely useful if it were secure and freely available. http://www.gnu.org/software/free/ [gnu.org]
Production stopped in 2002.
Here's what they had to say, "From my experience of designing and developing GNU.FREE over the past three years it has become clear that creating an Internet Voting system sufficiently secure, reliable and anonymous is extremely difficult, if not impossible. As Bruce Schneier points out "a secure Internet voting system is theoretically possible, but it would be the first secure networked application ever created in the history of computers.""
Of course, it's possible the Swiss know something about secure software development that Schneier doesn't. Or perhaps they're just happy to accept the risks.
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http://www.vvk.ee/public/dok/Internet_Voting_in_Estonia.pdf [www.vvk.ee]
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I think we can learn a lesson from operating systems here. The danger of attack tends to be somewhat proportional to the size and value of the target. In the past, the vast majority of attacks were limited to Windows, because it ran on the vast majority of computers and the potential gains were greatest. Today that is no longer the case, with Linux, OSX and phone operating systems all being attacked, together with attacks of niche system
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It works in Switzerland because they have put a trutable government in place and learned to trust it instead of wondering if it should not just be gone at each election.
Re:I didn't know (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if an online voting system could be implemented in perfect security, I'm still bothered by the fact that the voting booth is supposed to be influence free.
If you go vote, people pressuring you have to stay like 50 metres away from the polling place.
There is no such protection in online voting. A church could put the computer, oh, right in front of the altar and have the congregation line up. Heck. There's a lot of concern about buying votes (personally I'm thinking if you think someone will stay bought for $100 against their conscience, eh, welcome to try). But that whole situation changes with online voting. Again, can have people vote right at their workstation for a bonus in the next paycheck.
I'm sure there'd be proposals of laws against it, but, enforcement is still an issue. Esp since pressure can be as simple as peer pressure.
BTW, on the buying votes front, supposedly each campaign is spending over $1000 per undecided voter in swing states, w/ actual impact of the ads being very hard to measure. Amusing.
Reminds me of all the concern about rich people being able to self-fund campaigns. Should ask Meg Whitman how that worked out for her.
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I live in New York. President Obama is going to get our electoral votes no matter which lever I pull in the booth, so if someone wants to pay me $100 to flip a particular switch, I'll gladly accept their money and pull whichever lever they ask of me - it boils down to literally whether I want $100 or not.
As for pressure on a poll in a church, I'd assume that any non-personal venue that is stated to be a place where votes can be submitted fall under the 100-foot rule, enforcement could be incentive-based - y
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There is no such protection in online voting.
This problem is not unique to online voting; it's also an argument against allowing voting by mail.
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Agreed. Not a fan of that either.
I just feel that online voting expands the problem and simplifies the abuse.
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There is no such protection in online voting. A church could put the computer, oh, right in front of the altar and have the congregation line up.
There is no need to conjure a theoretical example when the real example of unions and "card check" exists, and is being repeatedly litigated [washingtonexaminer.com].
The National Labor Relations Board’s attack on the secret ballot [dailycaller.com]
. . . The National Labor Relations Act established the secret ballot election as the preferred method for determining employee free choice. Although the act has been interpreted to permit voluntary recognition by card check . . .
. . . An employer does not have to acquiesce to a union’s demand (or its employees’ request) for recognition based on a card check; the employer can demand a secret ballot election. Similarly, if an employer voluntarily recognizes a union based on a showing of majority support by cards, its employees are given 45 days to demand a secret ballot election challenging the union’s majority claim.
Unions prefer card check, however, for two main reasons. First, card check is less costly. Second, unions are more successful at securing an employee’s signature on a card than they are in earning the employee’s vote when it is cast in secret. The reasons are not hard to find. A card check subjects an employee’s vote to the scrutiny of third parties, peer pressure from fellow employees, and even coercion. Unions collect cards over time, often in secret and without the knowledge of the employer, and open workplace debate on the issue of unionization. A secret ballot election takes place after a campaign participated in by the union, the employees and the employer; it reflects employee sentiment, educated by the campaign’s debate, at one point in time.
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FYI, even the inside of the booth is not safe. At least in MD if you are "unable" to vote alone you can bring almost ANYONE into the booth with you by both signing an affidavit that they aren't your boss nor a candidate for office. And poll workers can't question it
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I agree the same problem exists with absentee ballots, which are also excessively used and encourged, I think.
Getting an absentee ballot though is still a multistep process over a period of time. Not something you can just buttonhole someone in front of a computer to do. It seems to me online voting simplifies and expands something that is already a problem.
Especially if it became the defacto way to vote, so you couldn't even excuse yourself with "I just prefer to vote on election day in the polling booth
Estonia (Score:2)
Apparently Estonians vote online too:
http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/24/report-america-ranks-behind-estonia-in-internet-freedom-heres-why/ [techcrunch.com]
http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/08/tech/web/online-voting/index.html [cnn.com]
[Canada], Sweden, Latvia and Switzerland are among the countries that have tested Internet voting.
But when it comes to national elections, Estonia is the clear leader.
The tiny Baltic nation (its population of 1.3 million is roughly the size of San Diego) has allowed online voting for all of its citizens since 2007. In this year's election, nearly one in four votes was cast online, according to its elections commission.
Note that they have a national ID card, reasoning that it's better to have *one* government controlled database that they can control and monitor, rather than to have a zillion databases that are unconnected and contain various levels of information.
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PS: A link to their National ID card management website: http://www.id.ee/ [www.id.ee]
Re:Estonia (Score:5, Insightful)
The reporter is obviously confused about the meaning of 'freedom'. The real problems with online voting have less to do with the technology and more to do with the integrity of the process.
Even if an online system worked perfectly, how do you know that when Joe cast his vote that Frank wasn't standing behind him with a gun in one hand and $100 in the other? You don't.
Now, that's a problem with absentee ballots as well, you might say, and you would be right. But the effective difference is the difficulty of scaling fraud up in the physical world as opposed to scaling up fraud in an online world. I might be a rich gangster and hire 10 thugs to influence 10 votes. But as a crooked employer, I could monitor the voting of thousands of employees, and I'd know exactly who is on the short list to be promoted.
Preventing coercion requires the act of moving a voter into a secluded voting booth, with a truly secret ballot.
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But as a crooked employer, I could monitor the voting of thousands of employees, and I'd know exactly who is on the short list to be promoted.
I am confused, if they are doing it from home, how will your employer abuse your right?
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The presumed first step is that employers require their employees vote while at work. Easy enough to do even with indirect threats right now, when so many people are un- and under-employed. Didn't vote at work? Not gonna look good on your next performance report...
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The presumed first step is that employers require their employees vote while at work.
Agreed, the ideal is a secret ballot, but circumstances are currently less than ideal. If voting by email were the norm I'm sure some employers would try to bluntly coerce their employees, however I don't think they would succeed on a significant scale without getting caught. Also not all coercive employers are going to bend the vote in the same direction.
The obvious risks in this temporary measure is back-end fraud and man in the middle, again the lack of notice gives Dr. Evil very little time to organi
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Half the people will vote from their web browsers at work, more if the boss makes an announcement: "Hey, take a few minutes after lunch and be sure to log on and vote today."
Our company machines give us a warning every time we sign in: "This machine may be monitored at any time, and all activity may be logged. Don't assume anything you do on company equipment is private." I know that not only do they have such monitoring and logging capability, but it extends to https: surfing as well. It would be a sma
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Official Directive (Score:5, Informative)
So it's much worse... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So it's much worse... (Score:4, Informative)
..as they ask for a "waiver of secrecy": they actually *realize* that the e-mail voting will need the removal of one of they key things in a democratic election: the secrecy of voting.
Since when is secrecy of voting key to a democracy? This democracy, for one example, was founded without it...
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It's not the key, it's a key. Defense in depth, etcetera.
Also, if by "this democracy" you are referring to the United States: the names of many of the signers of the American Declaration of Independence were initially kept secret, for fear of British reprisals.
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It's not the key, it's a key. Defense in depth, etcetera.
I agree that providing people with the option for secret voting is good; but I disagree that it is bad to allow a potentially non-secret method to those who prefer it.
Also, if by "this democracy" you are referring to the United States: the names of many of the signers of the American Declaration of Independence were initially kept secret, for fear of British reprisals.
I am indeed referring to the US, where *after* the establishment of the republic, most votes were town-hall style public votes. (The initial anonymity of the signers of the declaration is not at all relevant.)
Re:So it's much worse... (Score:5, Interesting)
Allowing non-secret voting creates the conditions under which coercion can take place.
How do we know Tony Soprano hasn't threatened everyone in the neighborhood to vote for his candidate? Let's say one of Tony's associates is at the polling place, "observing" the election as his right. If he is watching you vote, he can be sure you voted his way. If you have the "choice" of a secret ballot or a non-secret ballot, he could tell you up front "don't be choosing the secret ballot, I need to see your vote. Or else."
If the voter is not given the choice of non-secrecy, that vote can't be subverted. In a secret ballot, the voter can always make their own free-will choice. And only through enforcing ballot secrecy can the election judges be certain that the vote was impartial.
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Since when is secrecy of voting key to a democracy? This democracy, for one example, was founded without it...
Others have explained why secrecy is important, but I thought I'd touch on the second part of your statement.
1. It is hard, if not impossible, to secretly declare independence.
2. The founding fathers were all prepared to be hung for treason against the crown.
In the theme of my second point, you can dig up numerous stories of businesses and public figures that have received backlash for publicly supporting a candidate, a political party, or a politically charged policy idea.
Which is why secrecy is crucial to
No worse than paper mail ballots (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me play devil's advocate here. While we all know that email is insecure, as a practical matter the security holes in this are roughly equal to vote-by-mail. Not that that's a good thing, but this doesn't introduce many new problems. The NJ elections directive recognizes this, and treats displaced voters as "overseas" for the purpose of election rules.
Summary of the procedure:
* Your voter registration is already on fiile.
* You email a request for your ballot
* The elections agency marks your ballot number in the registry, sends you a ballot with a unique ID, along with a waiver of secrecy.
* You fill out the ballot and the waiver, and send them back.
Can we spam the election with billions of votes? No. Well, you can send the emails, but they won't have the right ID numbers so they won't be counted.
Can we hijack individuals' votes by voting for them, or by changing their vote via a man-in-the-middle attack? Yes, but you can do this by paper mail too, and it's a one-vote-at-a-time thing.
Do we lose the secrecy of the ballot booth? Yes, but that's lost in vote-by-mail too, and voters choose whether they'd rather submit a non-secret ballot, or trudge through miles of floodwaters to cast their vote in person.
The practical question you've got to ask yourself is not "could someone be disenfranchised by this?" but "will more people be disenfranchised by doing this than by *not* doing it?"
In short, adding "e-" to a technology doesn't miraculously make it evil or cool. And in this case, the security holes are roughly equal to a system already in common use. As a mandatory universal voting system, email voting would be an abhorrent violation of civil rights. As a short-term, *optional* response to a major emergency, it's worth considering.
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I'm surprised that postal votes are not secret. There's no reason for that.
In Australia if you do a postal vote, you're given 2 envelopes. you put your vote inside the first unmarked envelope. Then you fill out all your voting details on the other envelope, and put the first envelope inside.
When they receive, your vote. The details on the outer envelope are checked. Once they are happy that it's a valid vote, the unmarked envelope is thrown into the pile of other postal votes.
Simple, low tech solution...
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Not really a big distinction. Fax lines can be tapped just as easily as email. What's important is that somewhere in the voting process, an official will see the person's name (or phone number) and could see how they voted, too. For election purposes, that means the ballot isn't secret, so the waiver is necessary.
Similarly, in posting your comment, you agreed to waive the exclusivity of your right to copy your comment, so Slashdot (and its parent company) can function. Don't like giving up your rights? Go s
It's just absentee voting (Score:5, Informative)
Re:It's just absentee voting (Score:4, Insightful)
they'll check the names against the voter rolls just like they do when you vote in person.
Unfortunately, the list of names on the voter roles is public.
Will they be smart enough to check that for every ballot received by mail, there was actually an application for a ballot by that person?
Re:It's just absentee voting (Score:5, Insightful)
All voters in Oregon vote by mail. Each ballot is submitted with a signature on the outside envelope. That signature is matched against the voting rolls before the ballot is counted. The ballot is in a secrecy envelope so the person opening it during the counting process doesn't know whose vote it is.
There are several problems with the process described here that make it different. The first is that an electronic signature can be a scanned copy obtained from a different document. The second, raised elsewhere, is that the ballot is not secret. The third is that someone could electronically modify the ballot during and stage of the process. This seems to be relying on a form of "security by obscurity". For a small number of ballots that is probably sufficient. But if you get a large number of ballots it will be an inviting target for someone trying to alter the outcome of the election.
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Will they be smart enough to check that for every ballot received by mail, there was actually an application for a ballot by that person?
People all over the planet have been voting by snail mail throughout the 20th century, do you (and the mods) really think that your the first person "smart" enough to ask that question? Could it be that others have put more thought into running the election than you have put into your post?
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A rotten borough with no poll tax and five million voters? It's hardly New Romney or Old Sarum.
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So that'd require those displaced people to have an absentee ballot already - how does that work? Even if they happened to have applied for it, not likely that this is with the stuff they took with them when fleeing their homes.
Also I wonder in general if there is any emergency plan thought out for just this situation. Elections happen often enough and the US is big enough to sooner or later have one seriously disturbed by some major natural disaster somewhere in the country - could be a hurricane, could al
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If you clicked on the link, it says exactly how it will work. You email them an absentee application, they email back a ballot, you return the ballot. The only difference is that this is not snail mail (and some states already do this for overseas and/or military voters, so it obviously works well enough without the massive fraud people like to predict).
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New Jersey's email voters can be confident of as secret a vote as voters already get in Colorado, because only election officials will know who they are. (Look it up, folks, and cry: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/09/22/1419211/federal-judge-says-no-right-to-secret-ballot-oks-barcoded-ballots)
And, of course, they'll have as much reason to be confident their votes were counted as residents of any state that uses slot machine (er, electronic) voting.
It doesn't really matter, anyway. When you want to buy an
Lol! don't expect a victory on (Score:3)
Election Night.
*starts making popcorn.
The next day.... (Score:4, Insightful)
It is amazing! New Jersey had 100% voter turnout and that ALL voted for Romney! It is awesome to see that this state in the face of disaster can turn out a voting percentage that no other state has EVER turned out!
Pundits point at this as an effect of how the TV show Jersey Shore has given NJ residents that the new president will pass a law to get it taken off the air and the cast exiled.
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Surely they are referring to the calibration of the touch surface relative to the display screen. I've seen this being done on video slot machines for example. When in calibration mode, the machine asks the tech to touch a few specific spots on the screen, notes where the tech appeared to actually touch at, and adjusts a few variables in the math it uses so that future users' inputs will register correctly. I've done the same myself on a touch pad for an old computer once or twice.
In other words, any sur
the voteing systems have cheap touch screens (Score:2)
the voteing systems have cheap and old touch screens.
Also in voteing it not as easy as "choose A or B". in some races.
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The discrepencies so far have been in favor of Obama. I've seen two distinct stories about voting machines registering Obama when people tried to vote for Romney. Poll workers blame it on "bad calibration". How the hell does that happen? I can write program in about 10 minutes for something as simple as "choose A or B".
I don't trust electronic voting of any kind. As long as a loosly-knit crew like Anonymous can hack the DOD, I prefer paper ballots whether it be in person or by US Mail.
You ever use a kiosk? Touchscreens can and DO go out of calibration which means that the virtual pointer does no match the position your finger touches on the screen. In my line of work, fixing touchscreen calibrations on Wal-Mart, Sams Club and Rite Aid photo kiosks are a common call.
Re:The next day.... (Score:4, Interesting)
I would trust them IF the politicians out there had any balls at all and DEMAND that the source code be 100% open. That way they can hire a 3rd party to compile the source code and test, then seal the units. But Diebold refuses to release the source code because they are hiding something.
If the company that makes the machine will not release the source code, you must assume they are crooked and hiding something.
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The NAACP story looks manufactured. It's only about twelve hours old. It will be interesting to see what, if anything, is reported about it once it's been properly investigated. I suspect that there will be no followups on the several dozen right-wing blogs that are currently the _only_ source for this story.
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perhaps you meant "smaller than epsilon". Or are you suggesting that the system has a " negative fault capacity"?
This has been in place... (Score:5, Informative)
... already. They are merely letting people be treated like overseas military.
FTFA
"Officials say electronic voting is also an option for emergency workers. The option is already open to New Jersey voters overseas and in the military."
It's not like someone just came up with an idea yesterday.
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BMO
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So how do they reconcile if someone emails a ballot twice from two email addresses? I can see how it's a bit less likely to be fudged if the email was sent from a .mil address because those would be verified email addresses. I'm not so much against it as I'm interested in seeing that it's accurate, and people don't feel disenfranchised by fake votes.
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>So how do they reconcile if someone emails a ballot twice from two email addresses?
I would think there would be some sort of cryptographic signature embedded in the emailed ballot, so they only get that one ballot back and not a hundred copies.
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BMO
Re:This has been in place... (Score:4, Insightful)
How would that work? Suppose I get a ballot, and scan it, and that scan gets out. The "cryptographic signature" will be on every copy of the scan. How will they know which one is mine? I think in this case, if what you suggest were true, my vote would either not be counted, or would be swamped by all the hacked copies. Either way, I lose.
Cryptography isn't a magic want that you can wave over a security problem to make it go away. It's a useful tool, but this is a _really_ hard problem, and what's been proposed here is not in any way secure.
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>what's been proposed here is not in any way secure.
The article doesn't even get into any security at all. It's just an announcement and I'll bet the reporter didn't even bother to ask.
Come on, man.
You wanna find out? How about you go call up the NJ Board of Elections.
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BMO
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Why on earth would I do that? I already know that there is no crypto technology that could be associated with a scanned ballot that would actually be secure against the attack I just described. That was my point.
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The "From" field of an SMTP transaction isn't authenticated, it's just something that the sender supplies. It works the same way, and has the same reliability as the return address area of a snail mail envelope. Yes, the mail carrier (or SMTP server) could check it against the mailbox it is collected from, but practically that doesn't happen (and in fact for email, as it may have been relayed through intermediate servers, there's situations where the @ clause of the from field wouldn't match the RDNS of t
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Getting all the ballots out and back (ok, they have until the 19th for that part) in such a short time could be an issue. Phone lines and the tubes could get clogged with all the traffic.
Not so shocking as it seems (Score:4, Informative)
Absentee voting already works this way pretty much everywhere in the United States:
First, you have to already be registered, so the notion that nonexistent people are suddenly able to vote is nonsense.
Second, you must file a request to get the absentee ballot. In most states you do not have to show any form of ID to do so, but your name is checked against the registration records before any ballot is provided.
Third, you fill out the ballot form, sign it, and mail it in. Note that the signature means your ballot is not really "secret."
Fourth, the forms are checked against the registration rolls again when they are counted, and signatures also may be checked (usually a sampling are spot-checked). In many places, absentee votes are counted AFTER the live votes and they may even be skipped if the number of absentee votes would not change the outcome of the election. If a voter has voted at his or her precinct, and an absentee ballot from the "same" voter shows up, that's an obvious case of fraud and the ballot is set aside.
There is no reason to imagine that email makes this any less secure than the snail mail system.
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No it is not if the process for handling postal voting is well established for the majority of voters in a district. (Or in my case the whole county) But during a FEMA disaster and an increased need.... there's plenty of room for grubby paws... and I think that is the concern.
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There are a number of good reasons to believe that email voting is less secure than snail mail. Among them: it is easier to change, forge or destroy electronic records than physical ones; there fewer legal protections for email than postal mail; and there is much less experience with email voting, so mistakes are easier to make and fraud is easier to commit.
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I voted absentee this year, and unless my state (New Hampshire) is the odd one out (always possible), you have the process wrong.
I filled out a ballot, which had no identifying marks on it at all. No signature, name, or anything like that.
Then, that was sealed inside an envelope with a statement I had to sign saying that I myself completed the ballot, and it was the only ballot I filled out.
That envelope was then put inside another envelope that could be dropped in the mail or handed in at the town office.
O
Plan old absentee mail in voting. (Score:2)
How is this any different from postal votes? Who cares if it's sent via email or via the post.
I guess email is more easily intercepted and the contents changed, but standard post isn't immune form that either.
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Also, in order to sign a ballot you have to physically handle it, which means your fingerprints will be all over it. And you have to sign it with a physical pen. A suspect ballot should yield a lot of information to a forensic analysis.
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Why even bother (Score:2)
obama has a health care plan Romney filp flops on (Score:2)
obama has a health care plan Romney flip flops on it.
The gop was 1st with the mandatory health care idea. To get rid of pre existing conditions. But now that obama has is name on that plan based off the romneycare plan. It has to go along with all the sick kids that will get kicked out if it is Repealed and the ER will not cover all there needs.
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Bush didn't count the war effort in the budget deficit, so when Obama updated the numbers to reflect reality, the hit showed up on his balance sheet. Similarly, Bush presided over the economy that created the need for deficit spending, but that shows up on Obama's balance sheet. You don't blame the CEO you hire to fix a failing company for the failures of his or her predecessor, even if it takes a while to turn the beast around.
Re:Who'd have thought Obama could be twice as bad (Score:4, Insightful)
For example, Obama more than doubled the budget deficit.
It's too bad more people don't have a basic grasp of reality. The day Obama took office, the deficit was projected at over a trillion dollars for that year... a deficit on a budget put forward by: Bush.
...and the worthless republican fucks want to blame Obama for everything. Take a quarter, and go buy a fucking clue... you need one, desperately.
Lets get to the heart of the matter though. Bush kept his budget deficits low (if you consider half a trillion low) by keeping both wars and homeland security entirely off budget. There's a minimum 300 billion a year that wasn't applied to the deficit as it should have been. I know, fucking idiot republicans believe all the bullshit their told, but reality is reality.
In addition to that, Obama's budget last year added in the interest on the national debt, something that hadn't been done. There's another 250 billion that was going directly to the national debt that wasn't in Bush's budgets (to be fair, it wasn't in anyone's budgets until Obama put it in there... which is why Clinton had budget surpluses, yet the national debt still went up).
Obama's deficit now contains Bush's wars, homeland security spending, and the interest on the national debt. If those numbers were added to Bush's "budgets," his deficits would have run 650 billion to over a trillion EVERY SINGLE YEAR.
Now lets talk about where else our debt came from. The day Bush Jr entered office, the 10 year projected SURPLUS was ~5.3 trillion. The national debt at that time was ~5.7 trillion. So, did republicans step up and make the "hard" choice of leaving in place policy that was projected to pay off almost the entire national debt in 10 years? Fuck no, they're too big of fucking hypocrites, and completely incapable of governing EVERY time they get into power. Those fucks voted in a tax cut that sent massive mounts of your grand children's money to the wealthiest people in this country.
Add in two wars put directly onto the credit card, the drug medicare/medicaid give away of taxpayer money to pharmaceutical companies, and you have MASSIVE DEBT SPENDING that anyone other than a totally fucked in the head conservative ideologue could spot from another galaxy.
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There are non-Presidential elections on the ballot, even in New Jersey.
There are also ballot initiatives in particular, Proposition 1 which is something that sorely needs to pass for the future of higher education in the state.
Beh, it's only Noo Joizy (Score:2)
Who gives a fuck, they always vote for the other lot anyway.
Re:If the USA was a true democracy (Score:5, Insightful)
If the USA was a true democracy, it would defer the vote until after the clean-up,
"For the duration of the crisis?" Who gets to decide when it's over, the Senate or Caesar?
Democracy cannot be considered a luxury that one can "put off" when times are bad. Rather, the government needs to double down and make sure polling places and post offices are secure and accessible, no less so than food, water and shelter.
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Ah, but we're not a Democracy. Democracy is MOB RULE.
We're a Democratically Elected Republic- and you should learn the distinction and learn it well.
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A plutocracy is neither.
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A Plutocracy? That's a government run by Disney, right? A lot of recent events suddenly make more sense if that's what we have in the US.
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Ah, but we're not a Democracy. Democracy is MOB RULE.
We're a Democratically Elected Republic- and you should learn the distinction and learn it well.
You're implying that a distinction between the two is "MOB RULE" while the electoral college process is "MOB RULE". Ask a democrat in Texas if it ain't so! That's also a state where electors have no legal requirements to vote as pledged, they just do.
One distinction is a state _could_ ignore the popular will of its constituents. "NOT MOB RULE" to paraphrase you. They don't, do they? Could you give practical examples of a need to do so?
You can write it in scary caps all you want, it doesn't change the f
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How about: When those displaced have had an opportunity to find semi-permanent shelter and the number of people without power has dropped significantly below 100,000? Last I heard, there are still 2,500,000 of those around.
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Who gets to define "displaced," "semi-permanent," and "significantly?" Who does the counting? And who enforces this rule if it isn't observed?
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"For the duration of the crisis?" Who gets to decide when it's over, the Senate or Caesar?
And just as importantly, which "crisis?" I remember reading various people urging President Clinton to not step down, as if that was a possibility, at the end of his term following the 2000 elections and the disputes following it.
"President for life" is not a title that goes well with democracy.
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get electricity back up and running
The system for national elections in the United States was established before there were any railroads, let alone electricity. New Jerseyites have been voting in regular elections over two centuries before anybody gave a damn about cell phone reception.
Use your head. January 20th is over 2 months away.
Use yours and ask yourself why there are weeks-long gaps between the day of the election and the sitting of the electors, between the sitting of the electors and the beginning of the new Congress, and the beginning of the new Congress and the beginning of th
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In 1940 Winston Churchill became Prime Minister and united the parliament behind a single non-partisan position prosecuting the war against Germany. There was no support for any other position
Then they're a bunch of monarchical pussies. The people of the State of New Jersey participated in the national election of 1862, when Lee's army was just across the river in Pennsylvania.
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The distance between 1940 and 1945 is five years (and 1940 was wartime, undermining the GP's point, though it was earlier wartime). The UK has a maximum term of 5 years before an election (it does not fix the election date like the US does), which I think is the GP's point -- they delayed it because they don't require exact election dates. That said, the war continuing was easier to predict than hurricane Sandy.
There's nothing magical about 4 years vs. 5 years, so "monarchical pussies" doesn't really fit.
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Not to mention you have quite a bit of time between the scheduled election day and the actual handover of power.
The schedule was designed for 18th century standards of transportation and communication, which is exactly why the loss of 20th and 21st century utilities and services should not be viewed as an obstacle.
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While the impact of the storm seems large, it is a fairly small proportion of the country (the most densely populated part, granted) which is affected. And I would ask, is there any part that is more impaired than the normal state of the late 18th-century citizens who voted the first time?
The vote was held on time in the Civil War (Score:2)
I don't think a hurricane counts, in comparison.
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So was the Democratic Republic of Germany ... also known as Eastern Germany.
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The US has turned the law into a scholastic exercise. The US Supreme Court ruled some years back that the Florida vote recount was not allowed because Florida couldn't finish the full recount by the Constitutionally determined date.
Florida did not try for a full recount. Had they done so, they would have finished in time--in fact they would have finished before that matter went to the Supreme Court. Instead they tried a bald cheat, only recounting counties that heavily supported the candidate favored by the Florida state Supreme Court. In fact, they tried it twice, despite being slapped down by the US Supreme Court--so they had two chances to do a full recount, and passed up the second one knowing that the plan for a targeted recount
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No, it's like letting people control the throttle in their car by reaching down into the footwell and tugging on the cable, rather than using a gas pedal.
Re:And a delay of voting... (Score:4, Informative)
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One vote, one person. That's why they have lists of registered voters and they check you off after you have voted. Whether you email your scanned ballot or fax it in seems to be a trivial part of the process.
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Just remember, penile extension ads are votes for Romney, and free credit ads are also votes for Romney.
LOL!
So I guess that defaults the "Nigerian prince" and "please confirm your bank login details" ads to votes for BHO?
At least we can be sure the Classmates.com emails aren't a vote for Obama, LOL.
Strat
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No way, those are all also votes for Romney!