Diebold's Election Data Off-limits 497
tommcb writes "The State of Alaska Division of Elections has denied a request by the Alaska Democratic Party for the raw file format used to tabulate voting results by citing that the data is in a proprietary format that is owned by Diebold. The ADP says 'The official vote results from the last general election are riddled with discrepancies and impossible for the public to make sense of'. The article contains some good quotes from Jim March of Black Box Voting: 'Copies of these kinds of files have been sitting on the Internet for over two years, with Diebold's knowledge.'"
What is so proprietary (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What is so proprietary (Score:3, Funny)
Diebold's arguments are as good as SCO's.
Re:What is so proprietary (Score:4, Funny)
It's ALASKA for god's sake. They would deny anything put forth by the alaska democratic party simply because it was put forth by democrats. They would probobly deny tax cuts and an increase in oil payments just so that they could push through a version with their name on it.
Re:What is so proprietary (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What is so proprietary (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is why (Score:4, Interesting)
There were repeated requests for basic information, but the King Co. elections department (run by D's) either didn't provide the information or covered it up or even openly lied about it, all this while an important trial is being held to uncover who was really elected. Based on admissions by the elections department, they manufactured votes and counted votes that should not have been counted.
What's even sadder is the Sec. of State (an R) promised to clean up the rolls with a statewide database, and promised that database to be online Jan 1. Except even now, nobody seems able to obtain a copy of that database, and the Sec. of State says it won't come out until February. We'll see if it really does.
For more information, go read the research Stefan Sharkansky has been doing at http://soundpolitics.com./ [soundpolitics.com.] It'll give you great insight into how elections departments should act versus how they do act.
I'm an R, but I don't tolerate this kind of crap, not in Alaska, not here in Washington, and not anywhere. We must have a publically accountable voting system, or we'll have people who say the only way to affect change in government is through violence. I don't want another civil war, particularly if it could've been prevented by people running elections openly and honestly.
Re:What a huge amount of BS (Score:3, Insightful)
Its an outgrowth of the "War on Crime" and the Punishment/Vengence mentality currently in vogue (even though we know the harsher you make the prisons, the more dangerous the prisoners are to society once released).
We Americans love our wars apparently, War on Crime, War on Drugs, War on Terror, War on Poverty. You and I know that these "wars" can never be "won", but it sounds good in 7 second sound bites, and a lot of naive people here go for it
Re:What is so proprietary (Score:4, Insightful)
What country on this planet has privatised it's electoral process ?
Are you guys completely out of your minds ?
Electoral systems are often facilitated by private companies e.g the printing ballot sheets, the making of booths etc... but the actual process of counting votes, that should never be the responsibility of anything other than a independent public body, the privatisation of such a thing to me is horrifying, especially in a country that dominates the world.
There is no possible way an electoral process under these circumstances could be described as OPEN, free and fair. To quote Thomas Jefferson "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance"... well I'd say the whole vigilance thing went out the window round about the time MTV first went to air.
Re:What is so proprietary (Score:3, Interesting)
This begs the question, what methods were used to access the data provided? Diebold is claiming the reports on the data stored in the system are all anyone is entitled to. I am assuming, since views are part of an Access database, they are claiming these are protected
Re:big numbers? (Score:5, Insightful)
But we're not, and we don't- both of those systems have manual overrides and people in the loop in case the computers fail. Your electronic voting machine fails and you have nothing to prove it, and no backup of the data even if you know it did. The appropriate question is: We don't trust our air-traffic control or nuclear ballistic missile command-and-control computers enough to leave no room for failure, why should we trust our voting machines any more?
Re:big numbers? (Score:3, Insightful)
If they fail utterly, maybe. If the radar screen goes completely blank, then, sure, there are emergency procedures that might allow the ATC operators to guide planes in under VFR, God and weather willing.
But what if the technology just goes a little wiggy? What if the distances the radar screen reports are all 10% too small? There's nothing in the system that can catch that until Something Bad happens.
Same th
Re:big numbers? (Score:3, Informative)
The flight surface control system on a 767 isn't the same one which runs the in-flight entertainment. It is a specifically designed mathematical logic system which does what it's told, when it's told, and nothing more. Should part of it fail, a seperate system detects that part of it failed and routes the control through another system. If all else fails, there's another system
Re:big numbers? (Score:3, Informative)
Could be. But what's your point? That the Diebold electronic voting system in particular is crappy software and should not trusted? Or that electronic voting itself is a disaster waiting to happen, something we are just not smart enough as a species to implement securely?
I could have missed something, but I don't think anyone is claiming that it can't be implemented. And it's not just Diebold, Sequoia Systems has had some major problems as well. When a voting machine turns in negative numbers, that's
Re:big numbers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Gears, handbrake, ignition switch.
Re:big numbers? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think we need a system where ballots are printed securely like money, with unique numbers printed on the ballots. Each polling location would be issued a range of ballots and would have to account for each one. At the poll, you insert your ballot into a computer, which serves as an easy interface, in whatever language you want, and prints your selection on the ballot in a form that is both human and machine readable. Separate computers can then count the ballots, some of which should also be randomly hand-counted to make sure the counting machines have not been tampered with.
Re:big numbers? (Score:3, Interesting)
The flight control and FAA systems have a rigorus backup system, and
Re:big numbers? (Score:4, Insightful)
What's the difference? Well, people have seen hairy photos of airplanes crashing. We've all seen films of Hiroshima. So, people worry about the security of ATC software or nuclear weaponry. But aside from the goofball antics in Florida in 2000, which, except to the usual sprinkling of Oliver Stone disciples tends to be nowadays rather a yawn of an issue, not much has gone badly wrong with voting, electronic or not. If a county supervisor has been slightly fraudulently elected, well it matters a lot to he and his local supporters, but not so much to citizens four states over, for whom life will go on pretty much as it has.
Which brings us to the larger point: I suggest there are in the end two possibilities here: (A) Any fraud through electronic voting is so minor as to be unimportant, or (B) it will not succeed.
Case A: Someone tampers subtly enough with the vote tallies that a very close election (e.g. Bush v. Gore) gets decided one way versus another. Disaster? Hardly. What people overlook about close elections, and Bush v. Gore in particular, is that the fact that the vote is so close is just another way of saying that both candidates are essentially equally preferred by the people. So for the purposes of representing the will of the people either will do, to within very small error margins. That's not to say the results of electing one versus the other might not be very different. Al Gore would have made a very different president than George Bush (albeit less different, I think, than Gore voters hope or Bush voters fear). But the legitimacy of electing either one is essentially identical. You can't, unless you're a Jesuit, say that someone for whom 60,000,001 people voted is significantly more "the people's choice" than someone for whom 59,999,999 people voted.
In effect, slight fiddling in very close elections doesn't matter much. You're not changing the basic principle of elections -- that the winner represent the will of the people -- very much, if at all. You are doing not much more than is done by a million small random factors anyway, e.g. whether it is raining or not on election day, whether candidate A wore a nicer tie than candidate B in their last televised debate, and so on ad infinitum. If an election is so close as to be determined by tiny, trivial factors, there are a billion of them, and fraud is not obviously the most important.
Case B: Now if you change vote tallies enormously, in elections that are nowhere close, then, er, I think someone's going to notice. If for example you change Orange County vote tallies so that it goes 80% Democratic, or Santa Barbara tallies so it goes 80% Republican -- well, people are going to notice. They're going to say: WTF? This has never happened before. No one I know voted this way; it's not consistent with pre-election polls, it makes no sense with demographics, it's not consistent with other parts of the State, et cetera and so forth. Really, in the end we judge the legitimacy of an election not just because the Secretary of State announces the results using his serious grown-up voice, but also because in many large and small ways, the result "fits" with other facts we know.
So in this case, there would be a huge hue and cry, and the results wouldn't stand. People would demand a recount, and if one were not available, a new election. And they'd get it. And then they'd lynch the designers who made the fraud possible.
Re:big numbers? (Score:5, Insightful)
The people who program and operate the air-traffic control computers and the missile command computers have a vested interest in avoiding collisions/missile launches. Besides the fact that most people would feel horrible about the innocent lives lost through an error, if a nuke or an airplane suddenly landed in someone's backyard, it would be pretty hard to cover up. People may ask awkward questions.
Electoral votes however... well, if you own the data collection process and the database itself, who would ever know if you skew the results? And, after all, it's not as if anyone actually gets hurt or anything.
Re:big numbers? (Score:3, Interesting)
Love Them Machine (Score:3, Insightful)
In other words, the difficulty of counting votes doesn't grow linearly. It may take 10 times the people, but it's only slightly more complicated.
Canada had its results fairly well finalized within 40 minutes of most polls closing (B.C. closed 1/2 hour later). There's no reas
Re:big numbers? (Score:3, Insightful)
A piece of paper has two sides. On one side of the ballot, you have the options. On the other side, you have the spot where the stamp should go. After marking your choice on the ballot, you fold the ballot so that the person stamping the ballots cannot see where you marked. You can watch that person while they stamp the ballot and if they open it up to take a peek, you can call out "Shen
Re:big numbers? (Score:3, Insightful)
I have reasonable trust in the computers that control air traffic and nuclear missles, and I can even trust the computers in voting machines. I do not trust voting machines that are black boxes whose output files can only be read by the computer manufacturer. How can I trust a voting machine whose manufacturer promised tha
Re:big numbers? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:big numbers? (Score:5, Insightful)
End of story. Code that is that/this important to our government should NEVER be held by a private individual.
Re:big numbers? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:big numbers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Last I knew, the very foundations of our country did not rest on full transparency of our airport traffic control systems or missile command and control structure. Our country, and most others DO depend on fair, open, and transparent elections. That's why this is so damn important.
Re:big numbers? (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact that they won't release the original files because they claim that the already well known Access schema is a trade secret just adds more fuel to the fire. The most rational explanation right now is that they are hiding a known accidental or deliberate miscount, for which they believe there might be forensic evidence in the binary file.
Ever heard of the maxim that justice must be done, and must be seen to be done? Well transparency is even more important for democracy. Right now, America isn't a democracy anymore.
Re:What is so proprietary (Score:2)
Re:What is so proprietary (Score:3, Funny)
Re:What is so proprietary (Score:3, Funny)
No need to add a separate table, it's just a little application logic.
Re:What is so proprietary (Score:2)
Re:What is so proprietary (Score:5, Funny)
It was found to be in violation of various patents, not to mention an infringement of the DMCA.
Re:What is so proprietary (Score:5, Funny)
Vote
Adjusted Vote.
Re:What is so proprietary (Score:4, Informative)
Diebold's bad, but officials also to blame (Score:5, Insightful)
Aside from that, blame is also richly deserved on the part of the State and Local morons who wrote their contracts with Diebold and other computer voting firms in such a way that they let them restrict access to this sort of vital information, as if verifying the results of an open election somehow isn't really all that important.
Gimme the connect-the-line ballots any day. At the very least, they'd be harder for the morons who deal with this sort of thing to fuck up.
Re:Diebold's bad, but officials also to blame (Score:2)
Re:Diebold's bad, but officials also to blame (Score:5, Insightful)
I do not buy the story that the Government is powerless here. The local and state governments can easily obtain these records if they want to. The contracts do not matter much. First of all contracts that obscure voting results can be easily invalidated as against public policy. Secondly even if the contracts were valid, the government can easily break the contracts if they want to. They will be liable for damamges, but since Diebold would not sustain any losses from breaking of the contracts the damages would be only nominal.
So that is all bullshit. The Alaska officials who refuse to reveal the results do so out of their own motives and not because of some silly contracts.
One can easily figure out what these motives are.
Re:Diebold's bad, but officials also to blame (Score:3, Interesting)
If Diebold copyrighted the database structure and registered the copyright with the LOC, actual damages will be of littl
Computerized voting is a great idea (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not obvious at all. Greater accessibility for the handicapped, more legible interfaces for long complicated ballots, the early detection and correction of "misvotes" and unintentional "undervotes", and the elimination of "hanging chads", stray marks and half-filled scan bubbles, etc. all make computerized voting a great idea.
What's a bad idea is storing the votes in computer memory. Computers have only one good mechanism for storing ballots in a failure-resistant, tamper-resistant fashion, and that's printer ink on paper. Touchscreen voting machines need to finish up your vote by printing it out on a paper ballot, prompting you to confirm or (with the help of a poll worker) destroy that paper, and finally directing you to the ballot box where the paper should be inserted to become part of the official count. If that was how electronic voting worked, I think even the computer-literate population would be thrilled.
Re:Computerized voting is a great idea (Score:3, Insightful)
For instance, a system could be designed whereby every individual vote was published (names removed) in a simple format (*.txt?) as to allow each user to count the vote for
Re:Computerized voting is a great idea (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think this is correct. There's nothing inherently tamper-resistant about paper. That's why check-forging is a problem, and even counterfeiting. That's why ballot fraud was widespread in the 19th century and still is in less-developed countries that use paper ballots.
I don't think the exact medium of storage is at all the issue. I don't think it matters whether you store the votes on paper, in NVRAM, on a disk drive, or as stacks of pebbles in labeled buckets. What is important, I suggest, is being able to guarantee the chain of custody from the original voter. It's like preserving evidence in a trial: you've got to be able to prove to anyone that the vote you cite as part of a winning candidate's tally can be rigorously traced back to the hand of someone who meant to cast that vote, even if you can't (or won't) name the voter. In other words, you need a completely reliable audit trail.
I agree this is something that commodity and consumer computing hasn't thought twice about, and using commodity and consumer computing technology would be a little alarming. But I would suspect that perhaps in certain niche computing markets there has been good attention paid to forging ironclad audit trails. Maybe in the military? Keeping track of nuclear weapon activation codes?
Re:Computerized voting is a great idea (Score:3, Interesting)
Data stored on paper is visible to the naked eye and is write-only. Those two features aren't sufficient to make ballot fraud impossible (you also need trustworthy volunteers watching every ballot box!), but they are necessary, and no other form of computer-written storage really qualifies. If you put 5 paper ballots in a box, you can be very sure that you'll later pull those same 5 paper ballots out of the box and the
Re:Computerized voting is a great idea (Score:3, Insightful)
Why do you act as if I'm ignoring that? I said you also need trustworthy volunteers watching the ballot boxes. Can you substitute one piece of paper for another in a locked box in front of my eyes without me noticing?
My point is quite simple: you can substitute one electronic ballot for another, in plain sight, in front of as many witnesses, volunteers, and auditors as you lik
Re:Computerized voting is a great idea (Score:3, Informative)
What exactly is the point of computerizing any step in the process, if you end up counting physical ballots?
Here [elections.ca] is a link to what a Canadian ballot looks like. You mark an X in the circle. We used these yesterday. They work.
You have ten times our population in the US, so that's a lot more ballots, but that means you also have ten times the willing volunteers to tabulate these things, no?
Re:Computerized voting is a great idea (Score:3, Informative)
Simple. You let the computers count the ballots as well. You spot-count a small percentage of them, and if there's a discrepency you hand-count them all. You can also hand count them if there's a contested vote somewhere, or just for grins.
Here is a link to what a Canadian ballot looks like. You mark an X in the circle. We used these yesterday. They work.
Most large USA elections have many, many is
Re:Diebold's bad, but officials also to blame (Score:5, Insightful)
Granted, our electoral system is a simplier than the US style, but our works like this:
1. A post-card like thing is mailed to my address, informing me where & when to vote (usually a nearby school, church or library).
2. On the appointed date, I go to the local polling office, with my card, and photo ID.
3. Once they check my name off, they give me a piece of paper. I walk to a table with a card-board shroud (for privacy). I use a pencil to mark the name of the person that I am voting for.
4. I show them the outside (unmarked) of the paper, and they verify that it is the same one they gave me.
5. I jam the paper into a cardboard box on the table.
6. I go home, and watch TV while eating beer and Popcorn.
7. At 10:00PM we knew who our new Prime Minister is.
8. I wake up the next morning, and go to work, ready to be screwed by a whole new govt party.
l8f57
Re:Diebold's bad, but officials also to blame (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Diebold's bad, but officials also to blame (Score:2)
You can't allow people to check back on their vote -- it would allow people to sell their vote in a way that could be verified later.
As for the paper trail idea: Why make someone vote on a computer screen to produce a paper ball
Re:Diebold's bad, but officials also to blame (Score:2)
Right. That's why the voter shouldn't be able to verify it, but the voting officials should be able to.
As for the paper trail idea: Why make someone vote on a computer screen to produce a paper ballot? Keep It Simple, Stupid applies to methodologies and processes beyond programming and interfaces.
Wrong. Keep It Simple, Stupid applies to design, not requirements. The requ
Who wanted a copy? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Who wanted a copy? (Score:3)
... did they get you?
Who owns the data? (Score:5, Insightful)
And since this is about elections, I would say the public owns the data. So hand it over.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So much for copyrights (Score:3, Interesting)
That's a more advanced point of view than
It certainly adds credence... (Score:4, Insightful)
am i missing something here? (Score:3, Interesting)
It seems to me that election software is pretty simple. It's basically a list of candidates and the number of votes each one got. Or you could have a log file of the candidate that people voted for. How on earth can you make a proprietary format out of this? It's just a simple list! I don't get it.
Diebold nonsense (Score:5, Interesting)
The format isn't patented, I don't think, and isn't copyrightable, so the only legal protection it might have is trade secret. However, since the format is already out in the open, due both to revelation in other states and from the Diebold files posted on the net, it is no longer a trade secret and there is nothing that Diebold can complain about.
Furthermore, I don't see that anything actually prevents the State of Alaska from revealing the file format even if it is a trade secret. What can Diebold do about it? The State probably has sovereign immunity, and in any case, the secret is probably worth nothing so even if Diebold sued successfully they wouldn't get any damages to speak of.
Meanwhile here in Canada yet another election has been conducted without any problem using simple paper ballots. Just five lines with the names and parties of the candidates and a circle in which to draw an X. No need for voting machines, no possibility of confusion, minimal opportunity for fraud.
Re:Diebold nonsense (Score:5, Funny)
Well, assuming you can consider a win by the Conservatives as being "without any problem."
Re:Diebold nonsense (Score:4, Informative)
North Carolina (Score:4, Interesting)
voting rights? (Score:5, Insightful)
But if the data had porno website searches in it (Score:5, Funny)
Re:But if the data had porno website searches in i (Score:5, Insightful)
So someone's searching Google for pictures of boobs is the government's business after all?
And what data Diebold-made, state-purchased machines collected during a public election - that's nobody's business but Diebold's? Wow!
(I know the parent expressed the very same thought more elegantly, tersely and humorously, but I just had to vent a little. Sorry.)
Cryptographically secure voting (Score:4, Interesting)
If I understood correctly, we could have a nationwide vote, everyone leaves with a piece of paper with a number printed on it, and can take that number home and verify that their vote was correctly counted on the internet (where public lists of votes are posted), while the whole system remained anonymous. It looked like election fraud could be completely eliminated.
There were more complex schemes with paired barcodes and filtered light or something, but that was the basic idea.
If such a scheme can be mathematically proven to be secure, why aren't we using it?
Re:Cryptographically secure voting (Score:2, Interesting)
Because the only people who understand it are too busy posting about in on
Re:Cryptographically secure voting (Score:4, Insightful)
If your vote is linked to a piece of paper that is given to you, how is the vote anonymous? Maybe its not completely open, but it would still be bad because superiors can still demand to get your number to verify the vote - therefore undermining the anonymity of the vote. Or how about pay for vote scams?
Re:Cryptographically secure voting (Score:3, Insightful)
Bruce Schneier described such a system in his book Applied Cryptography.
ISBN 0-471-59756-2 (1993 first ed. there're newer ones)
Re:Cryptographically secure voting (Score:4, Insightful)
Solution: Make an X (Score:5, Insightful)
We just voted yesterday in Canada - made an X in the appropriate box. Kind of hard to mess that up I've always thought. And even if it was an OSS voting machine, the general public and in fact most people would get nothing from that, not having the first clue of what the code meant.
I know the US is 10x the size, but you also presumably have 10x the people counting. And in any case, for one event every 4 years it seems reasonable. Heck we do it every 1.5 years it seems
This would help both Dem's and the Republicans - it'd be much easier to see who won so if the Dems should've won obviously this information would be useful. If the results were correct it would help the Republicans as this whole "illegimate president" thing could finally be done away with.
I know it's popular to bitch about the US elections and mock the US, but personally I'm impressed. The courts decided where appropriate, jurisdictions seemed to be respected, and rules followed etc. There was an orderly hand over of power. Do you think things would've gone as well in every country where the election was balanced on the finest of margins?
Plain old paper ballots would have made the whole affair as open as possible.
Re:Solution: Make an X (Score:5, Insightful)
Vote counting is massively parallelizable. It doesn't take very long for somebody to tally the votes from a couple hundred ballots. The federal election in here in Canada was yesterday, with the polls closing at 19:00. Turnout was about 65%. The results were in before midnight.
With a little effort I bet Americans could manage this too.
Open Government (Score:5, Insightful)
From proprietary building codes to election mechanisms, we must demand that our system of government belongs to all of us, without restriction.
Re:Open Government (Score:3, Insightful)
You mean without copyright, trademarks and patents?
I think we need to be more specific.
It would be nice if everyone could think for a moment and come to a complete and final decision about what they actually mean and want.
But its a lot harder to get independant thought out of our free society than an angry unorganized mob foaming at the mouth for "justice" and "freedom" and other concepts they barely understand.
If what they say is true... (Score:3, Interesting)
For instance, district-by-district vote totals add up to 292,267 votes for President Bush, but his official total was only 190,889.
Election officials have an explanation. Early votes for statewide candidates were not recorded by House district but rather were tallied for each of the state's four election regions.
My observation:
If this is true, shouldn't 292267 minus 190889 be divisible by 3 (considering these votes were counted three extra times)?
The answer (101378) isn't...
Load shotgun, aim, amputate foot (Score:5, Interesting)
I couldn't be more pleased with this.
Diebold, by refusing to release the data, shows what a boondoggle it is to allow public information to be locked up in proprietary format.
The State plays right into the Bush-Gore-2000 paranoia over ballot counting. They're not allowed to release the raw data, because of the mistake they made allowing a proprietary format to be used.
A transformation of the data (be it a printout, ASCII dump, spreadsheet, or whatever) is not sufficient. Any transformation process is likely to use the same (proprietary) algorithm that was used to generate the official results, which could have hidden errors. It also makes me wonder what else is in the format, perhaps data that shouldn't be there.
Yup, this is a positive development.
Boondoggle (Score:3, Funny)
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH (Score:2, Funny)
These aren't the chads you were looking for.
You can go about your business.
Move along...move along.
MS-Access table layout (Score:4, Informative)
Diebold systems use Microsoft Access as the underlying file format for everything, including the audit logs. So it's not even that they're claiming the file format is theirs -- it obviously "belongs" to Microsoft -- they're claiming that the table layout they came up with for Access is theirs. Which could be interesting, given that if the state programmed the ballot layout themselves, it's possible that some of that table layout was generated by the Diebold program. So you've got one Diebold program generating a table layout for the MS-Access file format, and Diebold is claiming that generated table layout is theirs.
Brilliant!
-jdm
(Relative) No Brainer (Score:4, Insightful)
Besides, it gives good press to the Democratic Party and bad press to Diebold. As for the government, well, everybody hates the government already, right?
-h-
Past Canadian Results: RAW Format + other musings (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't understand how this cannot be public knowledge in the States. I just checked Elections Canada [elections.ca] and the raw database information is available right on their site [elections.ca] to anyone that wants it.
In Canada we only have to make one choice; the minister we would like to be elected to parlament in our riding. As I understand it, in the States you make a bunch of decisions on the same ballot. Many Canadians have posted that "Oh... The paper works just fine here.. Silly Americans". Obviously! we only have one x to mark and count... I can see where electronic ballots can be useful in the States although I don't see how they can be as transparent as paper ballots...However, in Canada the WHOLE election system is completely transparent and any citizen can access any information they wish through the public organization 'Elections Canada'. A similar public system should be in place in any democracy.
On another topic I'll throw this out there.. Why not have paper ballots that can be read into computers. Wouldn't you have the best of both worlds? Both a paper record and electronic counting/
This is the reason that we need Open File Formats (Score:4, Insightful)
Beautiful! (Score:5, Insightful)
Openness has proven very useful for software development.
History has also shown it to be very important for government.
Combine those two together, and the importance is even more drastic. Openness and transparency in voting is essential.
Alaska could learn from Massachusetts (Score:3, Insightful)
I used a pencil (Score:3, Insightful)
I am so disappointed with this country... (Score:5, Informative)
Thirty years ago I would have assumed that if there was the slightest hint of election fixing that ALL election officials would tear into it with abandon, and that the people would similarly tear into any official that even suggestion that it was a bad idea to look into election results.
These days I have the same confidence in our system that I have in any south-American, African or Russian system, essentially none. That said, all you ever hear from the populous is the occasional reference to "wingnuts" and liberal media trying to jack the existing government.
Perhaps I'm mostly disturbed with my own inaction. Anyone have suggestions on things I can do that really work? Voting does NOT (No matter what you have been trained to believe), talking to representatives does NOT (unless you can outbid the lobbyists whispering in their other ear--I can't). I've just given up...
Any suggestions at all?
(PS. How did Diabold get away having a name that spell-checks to Diabolism? It's like they are throwing it in our faces!!!)
Diebold owns the *format*, not the data. (Score:3, Insightful)
That having been said: To the extent to which the government contracted to have critical electoral data effectively encrypted and held hostage by a private company, there must be some way to have that declared illegal and/or unconstitutional.
India has been using Electronic Voting since 1990 (Score:3, Interesting)
I live in Alaska (Score:4, Informative)
While I agree our state Division of Elections (and their vendor) needs to do a better job of breaking down individual district results, there is not a problem of "no paper trail" here in Alaska. The Diebold machines used for many years here (including 2004) are not the touch screen "pure electronic" machines, but rather fill-in-the-blank bubble cards that are then scanned into an optical reader. The paper cards are then randomly spot-checked to the results the optical scanners provide. I have complete faith in the machines and I've voted on them since ~2000.
Re:Cananda (Score:2, Informative)
Why is that? In 2003 Diebold bought a Canadian company called Global Election Systems, the #1 supplier in Canada of electronic voting machines.
-Charles
Re:Cananda (Score:2)
Why is that? In 2003 Diebold bought a Canadian company called Global Election Systems, the #1 supplier in Canada of electronic voting machines.
hmmmm....
Diebold: We don't just rig U.S. elections anymore!
Re:Cananda (Score:3, Informative)
Well, not really. To begin with, the Conservatives only got a little over a third of the seats in Parliament, meaning that they will form a minority government. Furthermore, the Senate (which is not elected) is dominated by Liberals. So, yes, the Conservatives will form the government, but they will not be able to do whatever they like.
Moreover, the issues in the election were largely not aligned with left-right divisions. In fact, there wasn't an awful lot of disagreement on policy at all. What this e
Re:Cananda (Score:3, Informative)
Voting machines are not used in Canadian elections. If a Canadian company makes voting machines, it is benefitting from the foolishness of people elsewhere.
Re:Cananda (Score:3, Informative)
Wikipedia - Electronic voting in Canada [wikipedia.org]
I have a blog with more info at blog.papervotecanada.ca [papervotecanada.ca]
Re:Cananda (Score:3, Insightful)
...and we can still manage to figure out who won that same night. *snicker*
Canadian elections (Score:5, Informative)
Well, because Canada is smart enough to not actually use Diebold's crappy Windows-based technology. We just completed a federal election yesterday that went pretty much without a hitch. All federal electoral districts in Canada use one, identical system: A paper ballot. The format of all ballots across the nation is identical--the only difference being the names. The names are always in alphabetical order of the candidate's last name, with the full party name printed underneath, in slightly smaller print. Beside each name is a large circle, clearly associated with one of the candidates.
The process of voting in Canada is simple, and identical across the country for federal elections, and pretty much the same for provincial elections as well. You receive a voter registration card in the mail telling you where to vote, and if you are not registered you phone a well advertised 1-800 number to find the location of your poll (you can register any time up to and including voting day). You go to your poliing station and a scrutineer finds and crosses off your name on the official printed copy of the registration (or collects and signs your registration form if you just registered). You are then handed a folded ballot (all ballots in the entire country are even folded the same) and are directed to the voting booth. You then select the candidate by drawing an X in the correct circle using an HB pencil, fold your ballot back up and return it to the scrutineer. The scrutineer removes the perforated section, hands it back and you put it in the ballot box.
It's been like that for decades, and it has always worked perfectly fine. There are no "pregnant chads", no confusing ballot formats, no clunky Windows-PCs-as-voting-machines and no political controversy around the process. We have to improve maintenance of our permanent electors registry, but that is already nearly up to snuff by now, and has never been as bad as the US.
As for electronic voting machines, the company you mentioned only supplies those to MUNICIPAL elections. Furthermore, they are specialised elctronic tabulators, not glorified PCs. You still record your vote on a paper ballot--it is just machine readable now (you connect the broken line next to a candidate). The tabulators count up the official results, however if a judicial recount is ordered in a very close race, it is conducted manually.
If I encounter a Diebold PC in a municipal election I'll be quite disappointed. Since what most cities do ain't broken, I doubt they'll "fix" things in future elections with Diebold's flashy goods.
Re:STOP TAKING BLACK BOX VOTING STORIES (Score:3, Informative)
Sorry, but the information in this case comes from the Alaska Daily News, not from Black Box Voting or Bev Harris.
Re:STOP TAKING BLACK BOX VOTING STORIES (Score:3, Informative)
Re:STOP TAKING BLACK BOX VOTING STORIES (Score:4, Insightful)
I read your link and most of the links on that page, and I'm not impressed. Apparently some people find Bev Harris abrasive and a little paranoid, and are up in arms and throwing all kinds of nebulous and unsubstantiated allegations around. Maybe she is as bad as some people say, but it looks to me like an internecine squabble, nothing to do with the real issues.
Re:Jim March and Gun Owners (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Weird elections... (Score:4, Interesting)
I saw things the same way here. The exit polls were the real smoking gun.
Bad bad bad idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Anything that gives away anything more than evidence that you voted can be used against you or used for corrupt purposes. People liked to joke that the USA had the "best government money can buy" but the reality of a bought election would be far worse than most people would imagine.