The State of Electronic Voting In the 2008 US Elections 223
Geek Satire writes "Voting works only if you believe your vote gets counted accurately. The 2008 US elections have avoided many well-known problems of the 2004 and 2000 elections, but many problems remain. O'Reilly News interviewed Dr. Barbara Simons, advisor to the Federal Election Assistance Commission, to review electronic voting in the 2008 US elections, discussing the physical security of storing and maintaining election machines, the move from electronic back to paper ballots, and why open source voting machines don't necessarily solve problems of bugs, backdoors, and audits."
Help America Vote? (Score:2, Insightful)
I am hoping with an all Democrat government we will get a "Help America Vote" act that actually helps America vote.
It's a shame we have to wait until a party comes to power that benefits from better voting for the government to fix the problem.
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It benefits *every* party to have more accurate voting.
Not necessarily. It benefits the Republicans to keep turnout low by a number of means, which they regularly use, or have used. This isn't universally true of Republicans, though almost so of Republican politicians.
This election Charlie Crist, Republican governor of Florida, extended the hours of early voting and caught hell from members of his party because of it. They as much as admitted that high turnout would ruin any chances they might have.
There are plenty of cases of Republican Secretaries of State
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Again, no. Democrats even did it this election. How many states have they sued Nader in because they were afraid of there being an alternative to vote for? The only difference was the strategy employed. Republicans tend to do voter suppression in the form of intentionally making lines longer by removing machines from certain areas that lean to the Democrats, and giving the machines to areas that tend to lean Republican. Democrats outright prevent people from running for office so they can present themselves
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I'm certainly not going to defend the Democrats election tactics against the Greens. I've been in plenty of campaigns that were targeted by them. I don't know how many states they sued Nader in, I can't seem to find it for this election, it was 20 in the last one.
Democrats outright prevent people from running for office so they can present themselves as the "lesser of two evils" to unconvinced moderates for the purpose of getting votes. Both are forms of voter suppression and both very actively deploy the tactics in every election.
No they aren't both forms of voter suppression. One is voter suppression, the other is legal wrangling. The whole idea of getting Nader off the ballot is to get those people to vote Dem, not to get them not to vote. Again, I'm not saying that
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It's to get them not to vote.
If you were a staunch Nader / Green supporter, you would not vote for the party that prevented freedom of choice at the polls.
And chances are, you would be ideologically different enough not to vote republican.
It's about keeping 3rd parties down. The democrats have done this for decades against the Greens and the Republicans did it to whatever the party Perot started.
Re:Help America Vote? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because clearly, no one likes Republicans, and they only stayed in power due to vote manipulation. Just like how the faked the moon landing. And they were responsible for the JFK assassination.
Seriously, I would like them to abolish the two-party system entirely, and by proxy the electoral college. I really think most people are generally moderate in their views, but are forced to pick sides they may not wholly agree with and make assumptions about members of the other party, who may sometimes fall closer in line with their views.
Re:Help America Vote? (Score:5, Insightful)
You could... you know... not vote for either of them. My ballot had two third-party candidates listed in the presidential race, plus a write-in spot. I've seen pictures of other ballots that had at least half a dozen third-party candidates listed, plus the same write-in spot.
The problem isn't the lack of options, but all of the media telling us that there ARE only two choices. I'd bet just about anything that if, for example, Bob Barr (libertarian candidate) would have taken a fairly significant chunk of the votes had he been given equal airtime and if there wasn't the general perception that only two parties exist. Probably double-digits in the popular vote in one election cycle, and then becoming a legitimate contender in the second when people are aware that other options exist.
The two-party system is caused by the same sources perpetuating the stagnant economy - the plethora of 24-hour news organizations. Most people believe what they hear on TV*, so as long as they continue to be told that we're entering the second great depression or that there are two and only two candidates exist, people will spend or vote accordingly.
*which is the real problem, of course. But good luck solving laziness.
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The two-party system is caused by the same sources perpetuating the stagnant economy - the plethora of 24-hour news organizations.
Question: When did the two party system spring up? Was it with the advent of 24 hour news organizations, or was it with the advent of our political system? Because I'm pretty sure TV did not invent the two party system, the constitution did (albeit unintentionally.)
Re:Help America Vote? (Score:5, Informative)
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_past_the_post#Effect_on_political_parties [wikipedia.org]
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Right, like I was saying, NOT the 24 hour media but the system itself.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting/ [wikipedia.org]
I think that the two-party system is a natural outgrowth of only being able to vote for one candidate. Instant-runoff voting (a system where you can rank the candidates you want to vote for) would work out far better, if only because lots of people would choose their favorite third-party candidate as Number 1, and have an established party that they don't hate somewhere further down as a safeguard. In our current system, we waste our vote if we don't pick
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IRV is used in Australia. Australia has a two-party* system. So clearly that isn't a ailver bullet.
*OK, one party is a fixed coalition of two parties - but that coalition is defined before the elections, and never changes, so really it's two wings of a party.
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Are you referring to these Democrats [heritage.org], or these ones [economist.com]?
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Go get yourself a new T-shirt [spreadshirt.com].
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What we need to do. (Score:4, Funny)
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WORST... IDEA... EVER. I do not want to live in a country ruled by porn sites. It would be more interesting at first, but would quickly become disgusting.
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Living in Texas, I cannot be sure (Score:5, Interesting)
My vote was paperless. I have no idea if my vote was recorded properly or if it wasn't manipulated in some way after the fact. The only indication I have that it wasn't was the fact that the race was really close and several republicans lost seats largely due to "straight ticket" voting. (many people are hating republicans you know)
One thing will help stop some election fraud -- aggressive criminal prosecution.
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The voting machines are fine. The person who raised the most money won!
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Funny, my vote was on paper and I have no idea if my vote was recorded properly or if it wasn't manipulated in some way either. I had to trust that someone droped it in the right bucket and not the trash. Then that it got counted at all. Which actually it didn't. The election was called before the results from my state were even in. Ohh well.
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If you have x votes for candidate one and y votes for candidate two, and candidate one is winning by x-y votes, the last (x-y)-1 votes you count will
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Nice long description of the non-problem. Whether or not it mattered in the outcome of the vote due to one side already having enough votes doesn't mean that my vote would have been counted even if I was in the first voter in the first district of the first state. It also doesn't mean that it wouldn't have been counted 5 times. It also doesn't mean the the box it was dropped into wasn't stuffed with 500k votes for another candidate.
Is it that hard? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Is it that hard? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why should you be confused? When you have a problem domain that encompasses strict accuracy, strict accountability, a strict audit trail, strict legal requirements, etc... etc... How could you possibly believe it could be anything other than hard?
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Apples and oranges as voting machines have considerably higher requirements.
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"Apples and oranges as voting machines have considerably higher requirements."
Yeah but they're so far below those requirements that Casino's are doing better than them. When was the last time you heard about a slot machine malfunctioning and spitting out jackpots to everyone on it?
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You sure about that? I'd bet good money that some voting machines are stored in church basements between elections.
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The only way you could get an "anonymous" pa
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Am I the only one that is completely confused by how difficult it seems to be to make an electronic voting machine and have it actually work?
First, I'd like to point out that it is nearly impossible to make an electronic voting machine of any kind and prove to everyone that it works given the standard limitations on voting in the US. This limitation is that there is no way to prove to anyone how you voted. Given that limitation, and all the possibilities for sabotage (hardware and software), proving that your system works is nearly impossible. (I am aware that there exists cryptographic methods of doing this, but I sure wouldn't trust Diebold to
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For example, a voting system that requires "calibration" by unskilled workers in the field is automatically suspect on security grounds, the machines ought to be certified, tested and then sealed tight until they are used on election day.
Good point. They can't even set the clock [startribune.com], given several weeks to do so.
Stable computer timesources isn't an unsolved problem, nor is it a relatively expensive one to implement.
Counting votes only small part of the problem (Score:4, Insightful)
When the only electable candidates are those chosen by the mainstream media, and controlled by special interests, I would say most emphatically that voting or democracy doesn't "work". Voting machines should be the least of our worries when it comes to the integrity of our political system.
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What voting does is:
1. Ensure that a candidate pays some attention to the rest of the country.
2. Convince the majority of the armed forces of the country that their is an EASIER, CHEAPER, less DANGEROUS way to remove the current political leader than starting a revolution. (No, it won't work if the country is spit geograp
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This isn't a purpose of voting at all - because the US Armed Forces are sworn to support the Constitution.
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When the only electable candidates are those chosen by the mainstream media, and controlled by special interests, I would say most emphatically that voting or democracy doesn't "work".
I'm reminded of that Churchill quote "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." It's all good and well to cynically talk about the problems of voting, dominated by special interests, mainstream media chooses for us... but really it would be wierd if it worked perfectly, wouldn't it? Finding a system where special interests could NOT exert disproportionate influence, and where canidates were ONLY chosen by quality, not any funnels o
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Churchill, as usual, was wrong. The best alternative to democracy, imho, is no government. Please take a look at the following and let me know what you think:
Democracy: The God That Failed [lewrockwell.com]
The Ethics of Liberty [mises.org] by Murray Rothbard
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Before I read them I have to ask: are they advocating anarchy in theory? Because if they are, I've got better things to be doing. If they are convincing that it would work in practice, I might read it out of curiosity.
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They are pretty convincing to me that it would work in practice. Especially the Ethics of Liberty.
Obviously, most people would have to change their mindset before it could happen. Drastic change in political systems happened in the past, and I see no reason why it couldn't happen again.
Follow the Money (Score:2)
Voting machines should be the least of our worries when it comes to the integrity of our political system.
Oh, quit your whining - you have a choice between Democratic OR Republican!
This is actually quite simple - wherever you have several trillion dollars to hand out to the 'best' taker, there will be corruption. If you want to get the corruption out of Washington, you have to get the money out of Washington. It'll never happen any other way; no matter how many regulations they throw up, people will find
Or, we could use reliable Lever machines (Score:2)
NY had a real easy process this time, remarkably like last time and the time before, etcetera, etcetera. Thanks to much effort on the part of Voting System vendors, we now have these Big Honkin' (tm) Sequoia Machines (thankfully not in use in my county). They were sitting in the corner, while the Good Old (tm) Mechanical, no-power-required just kept chugging along, processing votes without a hitch. As usual.
How did it end? (Score:3, Funny)
Paper??? (Score:5, Insightful)
Each candidate is allowed to have an observer at each polling place, and at the counting of the ballots. This system is fairly simple, fairly transparent, and all the votes get counted. It also scales well (more voters = more polling places). Why do you need electronic voting or voting machines or anything else besides a paper ballot and a pencil. I'm honestly curious why this wouldn't work in the US.
Re:Paper??? (Score:4, Insightful)
Hello fellow Canadian Citizen.
I wondered this myself, here is the short answer:
The Americans don't just vote for a president, they vote for a billion and one other things at the same time. Sheriffs, Propositions, Senate, House, Governors, Who gets a puppy this year, etc, etc.
Combine the multitude of voting decisions with the need for accessibility for the impaired, and it's easy to see why they are looking for faster, easier, more accessible ways for people to cast their votes.
Oh, and they have over 10x the population we do, electronic voting certainly tallies properly.
All that said, I agree with you, and I think the US should just suck it up and go back to paper. Having votes count properly is worth the time, cost, and effort. The new guy doesn't come into power for 100 days, they have all the time they need.
Re:Paper??? (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, and they have over 10x the population we do, electronic voting certainly tallies properly.
I've heard that argument before, and I don't think it holds. As the grandparent said, paper voting should scale, cause you have more ballot places for a larger population.
Case in point: Take Germany. They use paper ballots with a circle and an X, just the GP describes. It works fine and you have the results with the same speed as you get them in the US. Faster, if you compare it to 2000. A recount would be much faster, cause they are easy to read.
If they can do it for 50 million voters, then I don't see why it won't also work for 100 million voters in the US.
Population... (Score:2)
I agree with your argument that casting votes for multiple offices and legislative initiatives lends itself to electronic tabulation. Your argument that population is prohibitive to paper based voting is not, however, considering that the vote tallies from the major population centers of Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, etc. are available around the same time as the tallies from lesser populated areas in the same time zone.
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That sounds like how I voted. In North Carolina, we use paper ballots, a pen, and an optical scanner (for speed; the paper trail is what's used for a recount). Remember that in the US, most of the details of how the election is run are decided at the state level (and sometimes at the local level). Why some states feel a need to change, I don't know, but NC at least seems to get this right. Many other states do it similarly.
Here [state.nc.us] is the (sample) ballot I voted on (pdf).
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Where I live, in California, they use electronic voting (rotary wheel and buttons, no touch screen) with a backup in the form of a paper strip that the voter can see being printed behind a plastic window. So it's pretty similar to yours in NC, except that there's no optical scanning required. And let me tell you as a teacher who's run scantrons, opt
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They provide pens; you're not supposed to erase things. If you make a mistake, you go get a new ballot and they destroy the incorrectly marked one. You feed the ballot into the scanner (no one else touches it between marking and scanning), so you know that it didn't jam or cause an error. There's a poll worker watching you do it, of course. This doesn't help with marks not registering or registering for the wrong candidate, of course, but errors due to damaged ballots or (I assume) double marking are no
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>>On this ballot are printed in no particular order the name and party affiliation of the candidates. Next to each name is a circle. You place an x in the circle for the candidate of your choice. Then you go back to the poll clerk who places your ballot in the ballot box.
Here too.
Crap.
I should have realized there was something fishy this year when I voted for "Alan Keyes, Democrat Party".
Re:Paper??? (Score:2)
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The point is that *all* persons (I'd say parties, but I don't want to sound like I'm talking about political parties) can observe the votes being counted.
That's what the movies they showed us in civics class back in the dark ages of the '70s said, anyways.
Electronic voting has bigger problems... (Score:2)
YOUR vote is not the point! (Score:2, Insightful)
"Voting works only if you believe your vote gets counted accurately."
God, not this fallacy again! Why do so many otherwise intelligent people think that as long as their own personal ballot got counted then all is well? Don't they realize that 1000 fake voters in swing state X can mean that their own vote, whether counted or not, is moot?
Personally (Score:2)
Political Bias (Score:2)
Voting only works if... (Score:2)
"Voting works only if you believe your vote gets counted accurately."
How stupid can the summary possibly be? Your belief has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not something is true.
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Obviously you've never heard of truthiness.
My story about voting... (Score:3, Interesting)
That being said, we have lots of republicans mainly because that's what their parents are, or church has told them to be.
My polling place was a church
On the side outside it says "Make sure you pray before your cast your vote." You can take that however you like. I walk in, on my lunch break, to cast a vote towards the popular vote as I know where I live it counts for nothing, and fill out the form. It is one of those "connect the line" charts.
Let me set a mood first... There is a woman around 90 years old who is reading the paper to validate people are who they say they are. This woman cannot see my face on my drivers license - she didn't even look, even though, for some reason it said "Check identification" on the line where I signed.
I over looked that
I take my form over to my cardboard booth and connect the dots
I take my form over to the machine to put it in... it looks like it is from the 60's and could probably survive a nuclear blast.
There is a red light on the machine. There are two statements on the machine.
"If the light is red, the machine is busy, please wait for it to turn green."
"If the light is green, please insert your ballot.
After waiting about 2 minutes with an impatient look on my face, a woman in her 70's comes over and in a very decrepit and very "talked down to" tone of voice she says... For the sake of my fingers, she will be Decrepit Old Lady - or DOL
DOL - "go ahead and put your ballot in, they looked at it this morning and said the light is just stuck on and will work just fine"
Me - "Ok, but is there some sort of way that I can tell who I voted for - I see some receipt looking things there coming out of the machine, will that give me my results?"
DOL - "If the machine makes a beep your vote has been counted." Me - "For some reason I highly doubt that, but given the record of this state, my vote doesn't count for much anyways. I can assure you my cantor would be very aburpt if I had to wait one second to vote"
DOL - "If the machine makes the noise, your vote is counted"
Me - "Again, I doubt that"
And I put my ballot in. Nothing got printed, the machine just made a noise. I think the moral here is:
If you leave the ignorant in charge, then whoever "fixes" the polling machine has complete control over your vote.
Ok, i'm done... Sorry for making it that long.
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"Make sure you pray before your cast your vote."
That just can't be legal... Not that it matters. Still, that's even more disturbing than the rest of your story.
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Welcome to Oklahoma, friend.
It is just as he said.
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At the very least, they had a paper copy for you. My precinct uses HART electronic voting machines - Once you're authenticated, you're given your ballot stub with a PIN number. Go to the machine, make your selections, and press CAST BALLOT.
The machine says "Thank you. Your ballot has been cast."
That's it. Nothing else. Either way, my state went where I voted, so I guess "I picked the winner!"
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America is not a DEMOCRACY (Score:2)
Sure, Open Source "still has problems" (Score:2)
So, open source is not perfect, but it comes a hell of a lot closer to perfect than closed source will ever be.
Scantegrity (Score:4, Informative)
Scantegrity.org [scantegrity.org]
Barb Simons is good. (Score:2)
It is worth noting, for those interested in electronic voting and vote security that Barb Simons is credited in the effort to get the ACM to set their policy [acm.org] on electronic voting. Just as importantly the helped to move the League of Women Voters from their pro-DRE stance on electronic voting to the new SARA stance which calls for auditability and recountability.
I found her comments on Open Source in the article quite insightful too. Not that I am against it but t isn't a security panacea.
Re:Voting is a joke now (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Voting is a joke now (Score:4, Insightful)
Was there ever a time when you could guarantee that every vote counted?
Sure.
It's easy as pie when the number of votes per polling place is small.
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Re:Voting is a joke now (Score:5, Insightful)
a) As someone who's counted votes at a small location before, no. Easier, maybe, but you can't be sure that things are counted properly unless you have no more than about 100 total ballots. You'll certainly be able to get close enough that there's a clear winner though. But mistakes get very easy to make very quickly, especially with an activity as repetitive as sorting paper.
b) Small polling locations rule out malice how? Not only would it be trivially easy to swap sides of a few ballots, but it would be just as easy to attribute it to carelessness in the event that it was discovered. Especially when there are a bunch of senior citizens counting alongside you
I'd trust the reliability of the Scantron-style ballots long before something hand-counted. Touchscreens - only if there's a paper trail (preferably one that's easily read by both machines and humans, which is easy enough).
Writing safe-to-use software for electronic machines isn't overly complicated, given sufficient oversight both in terms of accountability and physical security around the machines that will run it.
how about science? (Score:3, Interesting)
Not that anybody likes CS theory; Computer Science is actually well suited for dealing with voting issues!
This including recommending the BAN of computers on security grounds.
Human vote counting systems can be developed (and even simulated and tested.) CS work on distributed systems could be useful (or at least prove impossibility of finding ideal solutions.)
Math nuts have been working on voting systems that beat the silly 2 party mess. Voters understand reality show/web ratings as well as Olympic ratings t
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Touchscreens - only if there's a paper trail (preferably one that's easily read by both machines and humans, which is easy enough).
Maybe not as easy as you think. [slashdot.org] Watch the videos; they've come up with some very clever ways that the voting machines can tamper with the paper trail.
I'd much rather use scantron cards, so that my paper trail can't be messed with. But there's a couple extra precautions I'd still like to see implemented:
1) Counting the ballots by hand should be mandatory. In fact, the people counting the ballots should have no access to the voting machine tally, lest they feel lazy and simply agree with the voting machin
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so then just increase the volunteer-to-voter ratio. but i still don't think that provides a guarantee against election fraud.
between the voting location and each county's ballot-tabulating location ballots can be "lost"/"misplaced." and even if a ballot arrives at the tabulation building, there's no guarantee that the machine will correctly count the ballot, or that it'll even be fed into the machine. even if they're hand counted, human error or deliberate fraud could still cause votes to be miscounted. and
Re:Voting is a joke now (Score:4, Insightful)
Correct. It's important not only that voters have faith in the system, but also that the system actually has a good record of counting votes. And that is a difficult task.
I think that having individuals check on their vote might work, but I don't see how you could do that and retain anonymous voting. I mean, you could retain anonymous voting and just let them check, but it would be nigh impossible for them to prove that their vote was counted incorrectly.
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well, each voter can be given a receipt with a ballot ID printed on it. that way voters can just input their ballot ID into the web form to check if their vote was correctly counted. of course, if your vote wasn't correctly counted, then you'd still have to identify yourself and lose voter anonymity somewhat. but it's better than not having a vote. and your corrected ballot will still be anonymous.
this would all be a lot easier/simpler if we had online electronic voting. you log-in, you place your vote(s),
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That won't work. If I can find out how I voted, then somebody else can also. It's important that can't happen. [nbcbayarea.com]
And it s
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What about "losing" boxes of ballots from precincts known to vote predominantly for the opposing party? How does low votes per polling place help with that?
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Number the ballots sequentially, and have them printed by a central authority that puts anti-counterfeiting measures on the ballots.
When a voter arrives, grab a ballot at random (shuffled deck) and issue it for punch card voting.
At the end of the day, you know how many people voted due to the log book. You know how many ballots you should have. You know which number ballots were issued (but not to which voters to preserve anonymity).
This makes it harder to lose ballots because each step of the way up knows
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Oh, and one more thing; lets take computers out of the process, and go back to electric vote counting. No logic, no smarts, just a system that counts how many times a hole goes by. Easily verified, difficult to tamper with in a way that is not discovered, and reliable.
Hollerith did it right, and that was 100 years ago. :)
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"Ankh-Morpork had dallied with many forms of government and had ended up with that form of democracy known as One Man, One Vote. The Patrician was the Man; he had the Vote."
-Terrry Pratchett
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Yup, things are much worse now.
It to be that you could guarantee that your vote would count--so long as you were a rich, white, male landowner.
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E-voting is flawed but let's not get sucked up into all the conspiracy theories.
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But if you look at the Popular vote it was 53% Obama vs 46% McCain. While that is a large gap, it's certainly not large enough to say McCain could never have won.
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/president/
Yep, an absolute joke (Score:4, Interesting)
I would disagree with the thread's premise that we've avoided the issues of 2000 and 2004. These issues are still going on, this time in Minnesota. Senator Norm Coleman was ahead of Al Franken by over 700 votes when all the votes were counted on the 4th, and EVERY DAY his lead is getting eroded, and the recount hasn't even started yet. Somehow Minnesota precincts keep finding "missed ballots" for Franken, and the current lead has now shrunk to 288 votes. Every single "lost vote" found so far has gone to Franken, and not one to Coleman. That is exceedingly suspicious, especially given the fact that they use optical scanners in that state, and bad ballots are instantly rejected when the voter tries to cast them, giving the voter a chance to do a new one correctly. This isn't hanging chad Florida, but it is very likely fraud.
Additionally, you have widespread reports of people getting to vote without being asked to show any identification, you have black panthers with nightsticks patrolling Philedelphia polling places... voting really is an absolute joke these days.
I do believe Obama actually won the presidential election based on the huge margins, but most races are much closer than that, and it's really impossible to have any confidence in any close races anymore. And with black panthers in the polling places, I worry that eventually we won't even be able to trust the big wins either.
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can someone explain the problem with electronic voting to me? i only know some basic LISP but i am pretty sure i could write something that allows me to enter custom candidate names and then tally's votes and prints a receipt... ...and what is the deal with misaligned touch screens, etc. why not just us a mouse and cursor?
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Surprisingly his constituents appear to be following in his footsteps and not calling for endless recounts or crying about being marginalized as citizens.
Well, I think that's only suprising if you're somehow sure that any whining about voting errors stems from being a poor loser, not legitimate voting concerns. Also if you ignore the margin that Obama won by. I'm sure there were voting inconsistencies out there that may have potentially decreased the number of votes McCain got, but you could not make the case that swung the election. Conversely, the 2000 election you could although we won't get into that again here.
I think they would have had some issue i
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um, what?
bugs are the result of human error, which occurs whether you're depending on programmers or 50-year-old polling station volunteers. open source e-voting machines facilitate public oversight to catch bugs/flaws in the voting machine software. closed source e-voting machines prevent people from analyzing the code that's counting their votes. that means bugs are much less likely to be caught/fixed.
backdoors, like deliberate voter suppression/election fraud, will always be a potential risk. that's why