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Microsoft, Unisys & Dell To Make New Voting System
About twenty million - alright, slight exaggeration, but a whole bunch of people sent the story about Microsoft, Dell and Unisys to build a new voting system. Microsoft will do the software, Dell the hardware, and Unisys will assemble the systems.
What better way way for Bill to become President? First he gets the government to pay billions for a new voting system, then every time they use it, he comes out the winner. "Geez, I dunno, we could recount again, but I'll bet the results will be the same."
Wrong bigger. When an election is held in canada, (federally) we only vote on one thing: the local member of parliment. When an election is held in the US all sorts of other measures are on the ballot. Some of these are for the county, some for the state, and some are federal (some of you americans help me out here if I've missed something). Thats why county by they do thier own ballot.... which makes quite a bit of a mess. The shear number of things to vote on and number of ballots (president, congressman, senator, measures etc) mean that it takes a lot longer to count the vote in the US than in Canada.
--locust
MIT and Caltech have already announced plans
m l
to develop a voting machine:
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/nr/2000/voting.ht
Personally, I trust MIT and Caltech much more
than I trust Microsoft and Unisys.
--- even the safest course is fraught with peril
They're not unconstitutional, they're just not nice. They happen all the time though, so there's no reason that has to change now.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
I guess you've never voted by absentee ballot. Here in King County (Seattle, WA), more people voted absentee in the last election than actually marched down to polls.
As for research, well, ain't the Web wonderful? I sat in front of my computer for an afternoon with the sample ballot and read pretty much every opinion piece I could find, pro and con, on every ballot initiative. I was better informed in this election than in any election I've ever voted in previously. And when I was done with my ballot, I dropped it in the mail and off it went.
"Biped! Good cranial development. Evidently considerable human ancestry."
Remember Netscape Engineers are weinees and 'leasing the operating system' and '.NET' and recently, the backdoor account in Interbase (granted, not MS but just an example of the type of things one could not put past Microsoft)? -- Is this really the kind of risk we need to put our voting system in?
The whole idea of a Windows-based system is frightening. Why not go for something that at least will allow an uptime long enough to complete the full voting day? Maybe Solaris or Linux or a reduced size, limited function distrobution of their own?
Further, these are obviously going to be networked throughout the country, to a central city computer, then to a central state computer and then to a central national computer (sure, you could go directly to a national machine, but I think there may be some federal/state issues that would make regionalizing each function of the process preferrable). As we all know, anything that is on a network is potentially crackable.
If anyone needs proof of that, look at the NSA, CIA, FBI, IRS and other government websites which have been cracked in the past.
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seumas.com
Erm, why exactly? How does blaming a company help? Just a buck-passing issue?
A lot of the site is Win2000, but for example:
u p? _lang=EN
(an image from my Hotmail Inbox page)
http://216.32.182.251/lgo_msn_140x60.gif
The site 216.32.182.251 runs Boa/0.93.17.3 on FreeBSD
(a signup page)
http://216.32.182.250/cgi-bin/linkdirector/sign
Analysis of 216.32.182.250
The site 216.32.182.250 runs Apache/1.2.6 on FreeBSD
do I have to even try to poke fun at that?
Bill Gates!
(How'd that happen...)
heh thats all we need, ms to screw it up, dell to charge a fortune for the screwup and unisys to patent the screwup after everyone has been using it for many years
I think we have to insist that any voting system implemented be Open Source, and specifically GPL, so no one can go and put backdoors in it without someone being able to find them. Furthermore, I think we can make it stick, to-wit: Proprietary software must be paid for, right? Which would make it an unfunded mandate, and thus unconstitutional.
Folks, get on the phone to your congresscritter, write letters, whatever, but we can, and have to, stop this right now before it spreads. I'm not going to stand for spending several million dollars of MY MONEY to develop something that has already been developed and is out there for the asking... something I will never trust unless it is open source, and neither should anyone else.
Once more into the breach, dear friends, and we can stop Gates' final attempt to take over the world, and have it for ourselves, and set it (ahem) FREE.
--
If you want to end war and stuff, you've gotta sing LOUD.
-Arlo Guthrie, "Alice's Restaurant"
Our next candidate for president will be Bill Gates. He will win by a landslide; Gore - 1 vote, Gates, 279,999,999 votes.
Soon, Gates will outlaw all free software (that is, software that's not made by Microsoft), all non-approved game systems (All systems but XBox), all non-approved hardware (non MS hardware), and all non MS lawyers.
Soon afterwards, it will be illegal to think of thinking of linking to a page which contains instructions on how to make a manual on how to make a piece of software which might possibly be able to decrypt an encrypted work.
Oops... how did that get in there... this is Microsoft for president, not the RIAA.
A sad time indeed.
It's been said in almost every one of the voting stories thus far - why not go with a system like Canada's? Simple X in a box, hand counted, done in a few hours, no ambiguities, no problems. Ugh.
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I hope that when they try the online voting thing, they actually do it _right_. (a worthy goal for Microsoft)
The most obvious problems with online voting are identification and security. Voting in the United States is done via secret ballot, yet voters must first be identified. On the Web, once a visitor is identified, it is possible to track their movements and choices throughout the entire session.
Rather than pretending to not track this data, we should allow Web servers to behave as they already do and mask the identity of the user. PIN codes or site passwords, a la Amazon, are not a viable option as they are often written down and thus easily stolen, forgotten, or shared.
The best identification option may be the already present state driver's license or ID card. Many state cards currently have a magnetic strip that could be used to hold a voter registration ID. A better storage solution would be for states to use smart cards, like the new Visa and Amex Blue, as the basis of driver's licenses and IDs. The embedded chip could hold a variety of information, including e-commerce information, and would be read/writable. Along with helping the smart card industry gain about 250 million customers, the government will also need an equal number of smart card readers. These devices should be able to attach to computers, PDAs, cellphones, and Internet appliances.
The question is, can MS and co provide anywhere near this ideal?
... Bill Gates will be your next president?
I still don't see how it could work, free or not. Even if you could get "the source", how would you know that that was exactly the same source code that was used to compile the system that will actually be used? It would be exceptionally easy for some corrupt person involved in generating the binaries to slip in a trojan before the software system is installed all over the country.
This problem would exist whether the software is (GPL-style) free or not, and I can't see how this type of problem can be avoided. Making it opensource would probably make it harder to find exploits (and you can be pretty sure that somebody somewhere *will* find an exploit) but you can't get around the basic problem of corruption.
Hand-counted votes are also open to corruption, of course, but on a much smaller scale - most people would only be able to affect the vote count in, say, their own voting station. But with a full-blown electronic system, somebody somewhere would have the potential to rig the vote on a massive scale.
Now I know why Bill Gates stepped down, he is going for president!
Bill (on sharing votes): One vote for Gore, Two votes for me. One vote for Bush, three votes for me
Bolke.
- In Memoriam: Jeroen de Bruin (1972-2004), bye bro
Ballots aren't (generally) counted by hand now.
In many parts of the world ballots are counted by hand
They're counted by machines. Have you ever seen the source code of the machines that are counting those ballots.
Assuming there is much in the way of "software" involved. Tabulating punched cards is 19th century technology. Some of the machines involved appear to be pure tabulators, not even having the ability to sort the input into "valid" and "invalid".
Anyway the cause of the recent US Federal election farce was not technical. Rather it was political.
Yeah, right. Maybe it's just me, but I'd much rather wither under the rule of a despotic moron for four years than be destroyed in a nuclear holocaust.
b) The government has the source to anything it wants, i.e. Windows, AIX, etc.
Uh, yeah. The government controls everything. You're right. I forgot.
c) If it feals the need then the government can require that the company employ people with a security clearence to monitor things.
The government cannot do any such thing. They could make security clearances a requirement for government contracts, but Microsoft is rather different from Lockheed Martin. If the government told Microsoft, "All the programmers in your OS division have to be security cleared or we'll stop running Windows," Microsoft would reply, "Go ahead, quit running Windows, what the hell do we care? We have millions of other customers." And then the government would most likely keep running Windows anyway, as a result of having many of the applications they run dependent on it.
Darn! Who is that blue party, and why can't I vote for anything else???
This message is provided under the terms outlined at http://www.bero.org/terms.html
This past election was the second election I voted in and the first presidential election. I voted in Ocean County, NJ.
They use computers there.
They don't run windows. They don't run Linux. They don't run BSD, or any other general computer OS. They are dedicated voting machines with dedicated hardware and software built in to the microcontroler. Much like your VCR is a computer, but it only does one thing. Your Microwave oven has a computer in it, but it doesn't run Linux or a MS OS either.
The layout they used on this machine was simple. A bunch of buttons (similar to the kind under the plastic panel on your microwave, not the kind of buttons on your keyboard) under a paper overlay under a protective clear plastic sheet. There were probably hundreds of buttons, but only a few are ever used at a time, depending on the requirements of the individual election. Oh yes and there are LED lights next to each button, which holes in the paper so the proper LEDs could shine through.. There was also a keyboard (laid out alphabeticly) to enter write-in votes. This whole setup was perhaps 3'x3' or 4'x4' and took up the front "wall" of the voting booth.
I don't know how the machine OUTPUTS votes, (hard drive, print out, network, etc.) but everything I saw looked fairly straight forward, simple and easy to me. I didn't hear about anyone getting confused in my community. there were PLENTY of elderly voters and I was standing in line at the polling station for a while. The only confusion was over what lines to stand in (there were seperate lines to check your voter ID card and lines for the voting machine, in addition to splitting up lines by first letters of last names for check-in.)
Now, here's my take on how something like this should be designed:
The modularity of the paper overlay is a good idea and can be retained. Either that, or use expensive touch screens. Either is fine, and if cost is not an issue, I believe that touch screens would PROBABLY be a better plan since paper can (concievably) shift or slide. The important part here is that the layout (since either can be dynamic from election to election) needs to be CARFULY considered for each election.
The OS:
- Should NOT be Linux.
- Should NOT be BSD.
- Should NOT be Solaris
- Should not be Windows.
It should NOT HAVE an "OS" in the traditional sence of the term at all! It should have a simple "dumb interface" like a VCR, digital watch, phone, microwave, etc. When is the last time your Microwave "crashed"? If it's EVER happened, I'm sure it's happened less to you than any general computing OS you've ever used. Linux has crashed on me, Windows has crashed on me, Macs have crashed on me. My VCR? Hardware has failed (motors) but the software end of it has to my knowlege never failed.
Also, as to open source... this is a more touchy subject. I do agree that the code (probably C. the Elevator Principal applies perfectly to this situation.) does need to be audited make the source redily available. But I don't see any particular reason that it can't be developed by a private party / company/ whatever.
Several other people brought up concerns about "What if" people obtained the source code, edited it to their liking and installed it on the voting machines. Well, this isn't a problem with dedicated hardware/software on a microcontroler. When is the last time you heard of someone changine the software on their VCR? And without opening the thing up and breaking out the solder gun? And with people (Election officials) that don't want them to do this standing around watching to make sure they don't do this? In any concievable situation where this would be insecure, ANY method (pencil and paper for example) would be insecure due to the amount of corruption it would require. If anything, this might make coruption a little more dificult to pull off since it would require someone with in depth technical know-how AND would almost certainly take a conspiricy rather than a lone nut to rig votes.
Now for the other end of the equation. I believe (due to the companies mentioned) that they want to use a PC type of archetecture. I don't see why. It's insecure, unstable, and too generalized for the task at hand. Life support machines don't run Windows. Missle Guidance Systems don't run BSD. Power Plants don't Run MacOS. Why should this?
Now, I understand that this being /. and all, that one is expected to bash Microsoft.
I think this is lame.
Do I like Microsoft? Not particularly. Do I think they are evil? Only their business practices. But their software is the best thing out there for the home user. For the software I want to run, they and Apple are the only game in town. My web sites, however all run under Red Hat. I wouldn't DREAM of running any kind of site that recieved decent amounts of traffic under NT. However, why is Linux a good choice for VOTING MACHINES? Pick the right tool for the job people. PCs in general simply aren't cut out to going something like this. There's a reason it's called "general computing" because these machines have to be Jacks of all trades. The trade off is that they don't realy master any of those trades. They crash, they're often slower than a dedicated machine for the same task, etc.
Computers are not nessisarily bad for voting. In fact I encourage the use of computers. However, don't use general computers. Don't do this half assed. Don't try to shoe horn in the wrong tool for the job. Use a dedicated hardware/software solution.
Touch everywhere, even when inappropriate.
Whaddya mean the Brits (of all people). Who do you think invented the computer? The British have a proud history of inventing things, which is why so many of them are employed by large US corporations. Transatlantic flamewar ahoy ;)
I think you missed the point of my post. I wasn't talking about trust or the competence of coders. I was talking about the fact that lots of software running critical systems is closed source. And you have to deal with it.
However, maybe you recall the NT powered battleship? What did it do on its maiden voyage? Uhuh....
Probably a misuse of the word "however" if your counterexample proves my point exactly. No matter how good of programmers there were writing the quadruple-checked Ada application code for your ship, it was still dependent on closed source, unverified software. And you and I just have to deal.
I already discussed it several times:
It is an heresy to let people vote remotely.
You can't vote like you'd order a pizza.
You have to carefully read the candidates programs, their bios and then to stand up (yu know, this mean just leaving your machine and pointing your face outside).
This has to be an effort.
Because your live depends on it.
And BTW, we all know about the "friendship" between "GB" and "BG"...
Wouldn't you actually prefer to use a non GPL'd voting system to express your opinion ?
--
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Or are you seriously claiming that elderly people and minorities are not really entitled to vote, because they base their votes on different criteria to your own?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
It isn't my democracy, but I can understand American citizens being worried about a company with a history of poor quality products being asked to write a system that determines who will run their country.
In other systems, one person may miscount on purpose, but it is (usually) likely not to have any outcome on who is chosen as the winner.
It's difficult to do this whilst other people are watching.
And there isn't necessarily any greater shame in a multi-national effort to create software for elections that any country can modify and use than there is in using software from Microsoft.
I just don't see the need for the bloat of a Windows-type operating system. All you need the system to do is check a database and see if the person in front of it is a registered voter and if they have voted yet. Then provide a text-based list of choices, accept an input from the voter, prompt the voter to confirm their choice, encrypt the results for that individual and send them back to the database. Once the database confirms receipt, start over again.
You don't need Microsoft's bloated code. You don't need some snazzy system by Dell. All you need is a network connection, a form of encryption, a cheap display unit and input device, a tiny single-purpose operating system and an old box with about enough processing power as an 286.
Instead, I'm sure we'll end up with a closed-source, buggy Microsoft operating system with a horribly expensive license, and a $2500 machine by Dell that I'm sure that in addition to whatever original funding the government has to pay for development, they'll end up paying $25,000 per voting device, just like they overpay for wrenches and toilet seats.
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seumas.com
While there were technical problems with the Florida ballot, to an outsider it seemed like the real problems were created by politics rather than lack of technology.
If there had been purely technical problems then the thing would not have dragged on for so long.
Even if there was a need to another ballot where poorly designed forms caused confusion.
Working out why a punched card won't read is hardly rocket science anyway/
God knows I don't. Microsoft has proven time and again that their only driving force is their own survival.
Interesting, how we have the right to vote, but no control over the voting system.
2. OTHER LIMITATIONS: COPYRIGHT AND OTHER INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS. Title to all copyright and other intellectual property rights in and to the CONTENT, and any copies of the CONTENT, are owned by Microsoft Corporation and/or its suppliers.
The CONTENT is what you are voting for, it's owned by the MS.
You can't handle the truth.
You know what? (wait for it) I agree. 100%. Those who've been here a while may know I'm not a Linux/OpenSource guy. I use (and program on) Microsoft products and, for the most part, don't care about OpenSource.
But a voting system should be open. No question. This is a no-brainer.
---
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
If voting should be the result of logic, what we need is not electronic counting machines, but electronic decision machines. After all, once we all agree on the right logic, we don't need voting at all since that just reflects people's emotional deviation from the norm.
Of course, we need an ace programmer with great logical skills to do the job. Are you up to it?
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
I can't think of anything better than something made by Unisys, Dell and Microsoft, especially if it is part of the American political process. Heck, the only way this could get better is if we got DoubleClick involved! New for 2004: Microsoft DirectBallot.
But seriously, this is lunacy. I don't think that computerized voting is the way to go. Paper ballots have their place. It's a lot harder to make votes magically appear when they are represented on paper rather than bits. And one standard for voting makes some kind of security compromise easier... as screwy as it looks, having a variety of different machines making marks on paper makes an election harder to rig.
And please -- no comments about the last Presidential election, we've been there and done that.
Will they show us the freaking source? I think the point was exemplified by the battleship dead in the water, but I fear it may not have been taken to heart. Voting should be a completely transparent process with the sole exception of what goes on in the booth. I don't trust MicroSoft to even count right at this point. I want to make damn sure that nobody is going to work out a buffer overrun and move a few votes here and a few votes there and rig a close one. This needs to audited rigorously, and the source sounds like something that ought to be available at the least under the FOIA, and if the government can't get that right from MicroSoft, we shouldn't be using the software.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
OK, a co-worker of mine were talking on the way back from lunch about a month ago on how to make an "electronic voting system" work. Let me first say that I'm Canadian and as FFFish's post states, our hand counted, hand marked ballots scale very well for 30 million, and I see no reason why it wouldn't scale well for 300 million. Whatever. Here's our idea.
:)
The problems with a pure electronic system come with recounting, either due to a close vote, or to questions of tampering, is that there's no true way to do a physical recount. But regular ballots take "too long" to count.
Why not create a hybrid system. Each person comes to their polling station, is checked off a list and is given a "voting card", perhaps like a punchcard, but with no holes. They go back to the voting machine, close the door (or whatever), and insert their blank card into the machine. they vote via touch screen, and the result is printed on the card, which they (perhaps only as a symbolic gesture), insert their card into a box. When the elections end, you use the computers to tally the votes, but have the paper votes available if you need a true recount.
Now of course, all of this is meaningless unless the Americans can standardize their voting procedure. If one county has electronic voting and another punch card or another X'ed by hand, you're back in the same boat.
One thing FFFish may be wrong on is that it "Can't happen in Canada". Sure it can. Effectively, Bush and Gore tied within counting error. The same could happen in our system. Fortunately minority "tied" governments could exist in Canada without causing constitutional gridlock... (Just parlimentary gridlock, after a few weeks of which the government would collapse and we'd get to hold another election!
At any rate, I hope you guys can sort this all out by 2004.
Machine voting systems just fuck things up. What is it with America's love of voting machines? They don't use them virtually anywhere else. It's precisely because Americans useing voting machines that their voting system is such a mess. There are reasons why virtually rest of the world uses simple hand ballots - they work & they work perfectly
Haven't you bloody Americans learnt the KISS system - Keep It Simple Stupid.
This means no bloody machines, period !!! If Australia (& also virtually the rest of the democratic world) can do hand counted paper ballots, then so can the US.
The only reason they use machine systems in the US is to cut costs, but the simple fact is they arn't as good (they invalidate more votes then hand counts do, they intimidate & confuse a good percentage of voters & they increase the odds of something fuking up (murphy's law)
Look at the mess, as well as the fuked up punch card machines you have counties with lever machines, other with optical machines, toggle switch machines, push button machines & also touch screen systems too. Then there are places like Oregon where all votes are of the mail in variety (which obviously discriminates against the homeless & disorginised ). The simple fact is that huge numbers of people are intimidated with this complicated mess that's one of the reasons why most Americans don't vote & why the US has about the lowest voter turnout in the OECD.
Look at all the people that are intimidated by machines & even now still refuse to use Automatic Teller Machines, & there are plenty more people like that then just the illiterate, the elderly & immigrants that have poor 2nd language skills.
Its as if the bureaucracy in the US are on purposefully trying to discourage the masses from voting.
The only way to go is to Keep It Simple Stupid. Which means aiming at the lowest common denominator & designing a system that the stupidist simpleton can understand.
Which means 'X marks the spot' hand ballots.
That means a peice of paper with the candidates listed in a columne & another columne of boxes on the side with just one box next to each candidate.
Here are a couple of examples of 'KISS' paper ballots, the 1st one is an example of an Australian preferential ballot (any Americans who support 3rd parties should be demanding that the US system be made either preferential or proportional, otherwise no 3rd parties will ever make any long term headway), the 2nd ballot is an example of an ''X' marks the spot' ballot.
As far as counting goes the US should be doing what Australia does (& most of the rest of the developed world does similar) & hold the vote on a Saturday (I wonder how many blue collar workers in the US chose not to vote because of the incoveniance of voting on a Tuesday), using local schools as voting centres. Then leasing indoor stadiums & convention centres nationwide which are to be used as counting centres for the thousands of temp workers employed to count the votes. Each counter also has a Labour & conservative scrutineer looking over his/her shoulders.
Sure its labour intensive, but as any UN election observer will tell you this is the best system if you want high turnouts with low rates of invalid votes & a result that's as accurate as can be, by Monday morning at the latest (actually in the vast majority of elections we know who's won by about 8pm the same night).
Also all politicians must be removed from any decision making processes as far as the running of elections are concerned, etc.
Look at the way democratic afiliated local officials OKed the hand count iin Palm Beach & then the Republican Florida SoS blocked the hand count (& she was Bush's co-campaign manager, which makes it an even worse conflict of interest). That sort of thing is unheard of in Australia. Where an Independent Australian Electoral Commision administers federal elections & the various state electoral commisions administers state & local elections.
No politians are involved anywhere in the decision making process (except for calling the date of the election). As far as recounts, re-votes, referendums (in Australia politions can't amend the constitution, only the people can through referendums. Where a majority of the total votes & a majority in a majority of states, responds 'yes' to the amendment) & by-elections, etc are concerned only the electoral commision can make decisions regarding them. Although anyone can appeal to the commision's court, for a recount or re vote or something. Whether such appeals are successful is another matter.
Basically, he says they are a dangerous thing ...
The comforts you demanded are now mandatory -- Jello Biafra
--
The comfort you demanded is now mandatory - Jello Biafra
New slogan: Who do you want to rule today?
In the immortal words of Homer Simpson
``Oh God Oh God Oh God Oh God''
--
It would cost tens of billions of dollars to
change over the country to one of these new
"improved" systems. Whare does that money come?
And if it turns out to have serious defects?
That is why many places keep systems for decades.
I have heard the following defense of the electoral college.
In the early days of the republic, it was felt that there would be a plurality of qualified, semi popular candidates for president, many being local ones. Obviously, if plurality of the popular vote elected the person who got 4 perscent of the vote, rather than one of the other 50 candidates, such a system would inevitibly be attacked as unfair.
So, the solution, would be to allow the people to appoint agents, who might rationally turn a convuluted "local popular feeling" into some sort of solid choice.
Obviously, though, to give such a power to regular legislators-- as in a parlimentary system, would destabilize the "balance of powers" and further elevate the legislature in this contest. So the solution was the electoral college-- a quasi legislature with one role-- to elect a president and vice.
However, a simple prefernce sytem, whereby a voter could give a "first class" vote to Ralph Nader-- indicating a strong preference, and a 'second-class" vote to, say, Al Gore, indicating "If I can't have Nader, Gore is better than Buchanan, Bush or McReynolds." This is called a Borda Count system, and if properly implemented, could achieve the same theoretical purposes as the Electoral College as originally concieved.
Yeah, yeah, whatever.
Look, if you didn't want to look at the MS-bashing jokes, what are you doing reading the comments on this comments on this story? Heck, what are you doing reading Slashdot at all. It's like going to a Lynyrd Skynyrd concert and complaining about the rednecks.
And as far as this power-user is concerned, any OS that doesn't come with a C compiler and Perl is sorely lacking. And virtual desktops! Damn I hate it when I have to use a GUI that doesn't have virtual desktops! Even the loathsome CDE has virtual desktops. Why haven't Microsoft and Apple given their customers virtual desktops?
(Okay, IE 5 is pretty nice. I'll admit that.)
[Grumble, grumble]
--
Be the first city council in your state to buy the all new Microsoft George voting machine! Features include:
- Microsoft's famous quality control and Dell's famous low prices.
- Rigorously tested by Mindcraft, Inc.
- Tasteful blue screen provides privacy between voters.
- Uses a special release of Borland's InterBase db server to keep track of the votes.
- Auxiliary USB port with no documented function.
- Coin operated version available by special order.
- Framed Certificate of Authentication, signed by Katherine Harris.
- Recommended by Jeb Bush and the RNC!
Testimonials:--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Unisys also said it has already developed an electronic voting system for Brazil and Costa Rica, and has partnered with the state of Minnesota to develop a voting system that posts results directly onto the World Wide Web.
:)
Wow. A system that posts the results of the elections directly to the world wide web... guess we won't have as much of a problem with the web-site calling the state early
On a slightly more serious note, this is yet another example of why Jessie Ventura should be President (heck, Ronald Reagan was an actor who became goevernor and then president... the difference is?). He speaks his mind, listens to issues, and even makes informed choices. Heck, he's what politicians are SUPPOSED to be, not the drivvel we've ended up with.
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
so what. companies develop things all the time, it doesn't mean anyone will buy or use it.
the paper machines are awfully cheap...and a lot of rural counties are poor and have elderly or non-technical people manning the voting stations.
personally, i think the study currently under progress at MIT and cernegie mellon (as i recall) will be more fruitful.
my opinion? just standardize the voting machines and ballot layout to the most accurate system in use. once that is done, come up with a validation system that the voter slides their ballot through.
such a validator should also print a slip. that way, the voter knows the ballot is punched properly, and they have a "grocery style" receipt showing what they voted for -- for instant review.
computers for voting is asinine, at least at this point in time.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
Voting electronically is a great idea. In theory. In practice, the only system that I would be comfortable with is a touch-screen or equivalent version of what we already have. Same polling places, same booth design. In my design, these stations are connected to a small server, which IS CONNECTED TO NOTHING ELSE. When polls close, you print the tally, seal it, hand it off, and go home. You could send it through email, but that would defeat the purpose of not going all online anyway. If you make a system closed to the outside world (read: offline), then we don't run any of the risks associated with online systems.
In that case, it wouldn't matter how ugly the MS software was, or how crappy the server was. And you wouldn't need unisys at all. Heck, you could probably just use palms or handsprings in a docking station to record your vote. This would be easier to impliment, far less expensive, and probably more reliable.
But we are talking government here. oh well...
help me jeebus!!
Peter G Neumann, the moderator of the RISKS forum, has collected information and recommendations on electronic and Internet elections.
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Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
OK, everyone knows that the only things that Microsoft makes well are joysticks and mice. So they should be doing the hardware. Dell ships computers with Linux preinstalled, so maybe they should be doing the software instead. As for Unisys, people who say "Democracy" and "Unisys" in the same sentence should be shot. Wait, did I just...damn....
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Stephen C. VanDahm
I would be grateful if someone would tell me where to place bets on how long it will take to develop a hack for the system that allows vote manipulation. This seems almost inevitable if Microsoft is involved. I can imagine the headlines "Romanian Hacker Breaks into US Electronic Voting System" or "World Workers Party Wins Suspect Presidential Election." Imagine, fourteen year old IRC addicts and foreign citizens could also add their votes. This sounds great!!!
Don't make me use my other sig!!
The following is a sample from the special issues section of the 2004 election ballow:
Should the breakup order dividing Microsoft, Inc., a corporation in the state of Washington, be set aside and made null and void. Click yes if you believe the breakup should not be ordered. Click no if you believe the breakup of this fine American corporation should be so ordered.
[YES] ________ [NO]
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Do I have to point out Microsoft's track record for being the most reliable system ever? I might as well. :)
Hmmm... let's see:
It's a VXD which has crashed - which means it's a driver error, and probably not Microsoft's fault.
The airport in question is running Windows 95 or 98, which means (more than anything else you might read into it) that they're stupid for not running Windows NT.
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
The United States would not be the first or by any means the only country that uses machines of this nature to count votes. Brazil, for example, uses devices not too much different from those proposed by this inititative. In fact Unisys has experience supplying this technology to several other countries.
Computers offer some real advantages compared to doing this by hand, as long election experience has shown. Hand marked ballots are subject to various interpitations by the all too human counters, and in the case of very close elections can be subject to great dispute. A correctly designed computer system offers the ability to make a positive re-affirmation as part of the vote process - push the button, and on the screen it might say "Did your REALLY want to vote for George W. Bush"?
This would make a terrific reduction in both voter error and remove pretty much all ambiguity from the process of placing a vote.
If microsofts involved, they will have to change the slogan "Rock the vote!" to "Hack the vote!". Microsoft wouldn't know a secure operating system if it jumped up and bit them in the arse. I see an election full of BSOD (blue screen of death) and stack overflows. I certainly wouldn't trust any election where they were involved.
In the end, there was nothing wrong with the current voting machines. The problem was with the voters. Rather than spend millions on this, why not spend a small percentage of that on a public awareness campain to educate voters to not be so stupid in the future.
Here are some items to be presented in this campain...
- Voting is an awesome responsibility. Don't take it lightly.
- When you get a sample ballot in the mail, read it, don't ignore it. If you don't understand something on it, you should ask the local elections department. You have plenty of time to do this BEFORE the election. Don't wait until you're in the booth.
- Don't complain about the percentage of "undervotes" in your county after the election when the percentage was really no different than is has been in other past elections. You have the right to raise these issues with the local election department BEFORE the election.
- Know where the polling place is. Go there BEFORE the election so you know where it is. If you're unable or unwilling to drive or otherwise transport yourself, just ask for help. There are MANY volunteers willing to help get people to the polling place.
- DO NOT make decisions on whether or not to vote, or who to vote for, based on exit polls and news reports. Those reports can be flawed.
There. Drive these points into the minds of voters and save millions on updating equipment.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
...President: Bill Gates
...Vice President: Michael Dell
What a coincidence. And, they weren't even on the ballot!
-b
If I wanted a sig I would have filled in that stupid box.
It's a good chance for Russians to hack into the voting system with the same loophole hacked M$ before and elect a dumb president. - No recount!
Solution? Use framerelay, or any other switched ATM system.
Heck - use a modem to call a home system, instead of an internet connection, and use caller ID to make sure that only authorized systems even get the modem to pick up on the receiving end.
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
After Microsoft has been directly responsible for disabled battleships, countless security holes (need I remind you why the Army's servers went Mac?), and general screwups because of depressingly low-quality software, the government would go back to them for something this important?
I'm not going to say who should be the builders of something like this, because I'm not certain who should, but clearly Microsoft should be among the last people the government should want to do this.
Great; so now we'll have machine counts that are so unreliable we'll have to go through this crap of endless recounting every four years, because hand-counting actually will be more reliable and less error/tamper-prone than Microsoft's stuff.
Of course, given that this is a government thing, perhaps it would be possible to demand the source code under FOIA? It'd be sad if this were the only way to get at it, but this is one of those things where the source absolutely must be made public.
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This is so cool!
I need to go refresh my collection of rootkits.
I'll show George W. Bush that he's not the only one who can rig an election.
--Shoeboy
There is a flaw with many proposed electronic voting systems. It is not a techical problem per se, it is a problem inherent in the design.
There are many voting systems. For example, punching a card of some sort that is later tallied by a group of people. I personally, for all of the problems with this system, trust it more than most electronic systems.
Why is that? The answer is that electronic systems are centralized. One could say that the other systems are too, but with an electronic voting system one person can serepitiously alter the results in a way that will be guarenteed to change the final count. In other systems, one person may miscount on purpose, but it is (usually) likely not to have any outcome on who is chosen as the winner.
On the other hand, one crafty person on the inside of an electronic tallying system could simply press a few buttons and automatically have every fifth vote for person X go to person Y.
Could it happen?
Conspiracy theory time!
Well, here's my letter...before I fire it off, anything obviously wrong or stupid?
Dear sir,
I am a software engineer employed in New York state. This morning, I
read on Reuters a report that Unisys Corp., Dell Computer Corp., and
Microsoft Corp., are teaming up to develop an electronic voting system.
Dell Computer Corp. is the number two PC manufacturer in the United States,
and Microsoft produces the de facto standard computer operating system
software, "Windows", used worldwide, and is currently in hot water with the
DOJ. I suggest that proprietary computer and software companies which
have large shares, if not monopolies, in their sector, may not be the
best entities to entrust with inventing a secure, fair, open, and
accountable electronic voting system.
In my opinion, both professional and personal, such a system is best
developed under a Free Software/Open Source model. I refer you to
descriptions of Free Software,
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html, and Open Source,
http://www.opensource.org/osd.html.
Loosely, Free/Open-Source software is distributed under a license
which guarantees the freedom of people to obtain and inspect the source
code of such software. I believe only with this freedom of inspection
can we ever trust that software does what its originators claims it does.
Obviously this would be of utmost importance in an electronic voting
system. Furthermore, Free/Open-Source software has the additional
benefit of allowing many people to verify that the software is free of
bugs and performs as expected. This has the side effect of producing
software which is frequently more reliable and robust than software which
is developed behind proprietary curtains. Much of the infrastructure of
the internet is based on such Free/Open-Source software. Recently the
operating system Linux, also developed under this model, has been
receiving a good amount of attention and accolades.
Lastly I would like to point out that such a Free/Open-Source software
system for electronic voting already exists: FREE, "Free Referenda and
Elections Electronically": http://www.thecouch.org/free/. I am sure
there are other such Free/Open-Source projects.
As a professional, the practical benefits of Free/Open-Source software
are apparent to me. But as a citizen, I believe the social and ethical
benefits to state operated systems are paramount, and I could never
entirely trust with my vote, software whose source code I, or a trusted
party, cannot inspect. I kindly suggest that research into electronic
voting systems explore Free/Open-Source software possibilities.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
--
If you want to end the war and stuff, you've gotta sing LOUD.
--Arlo Guthrie, "Alice's Restaurant"
The two need to be one and the same -- otherwise, a suborned device could print the voter's actual choice in human-readable form while printing the (political) machine's selection in (electronic) machine-readable form. This would be caught if the counting devices checked both -- but if they can read the human-readable printout, why bother having the other?
With that caveat, I like this arrangement (I'm biased, as it's a more thought-out version of my own concept of a properly-designed voting system).
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
He came over and I said jokingly, "Ah, it's probably running Windows and just needs a reboot." I was totally joking but he kind of gave me the evil eye.
He popped the cover off of the screen and reached in back to push a button or something, when LO AND BEHOLD, what should appear on the screen but a blue background with something at the top which read, "Windows NT 4.0 SP3....."
I couldn't believe it! I was TOTALLY joking about the Windows/reboot commment, and it turns out I HIT THE FREAKING NAIL RIGHT SQUARE ON THE HEAD!!
I fail to see how that could have possibly been more rich! :)
And yet I find it hard to trust any of these systems. I wonder why the ballot has a black background? I'd say it's to hide ambiguous votes - marks made between two of the circles. So the vote counters can say with a clear conscience, 'there was no mark.'
Assuming that their are Canadians as stupid as the ambiguous voters in Florida, there are probably many Canadian ballots with an X half way between the white circles.
If electronic systems become widespread, this kind of thing could decide an election.
- A.P.
--
* CmdrTaco is an idiot.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Really having a hand ballot hand counting system in the US, would be no different than if Australia, the UK, Germany, Canada, Spain & France all voted on the same day.
& the simple fact if all those countries could all finish their hand counts on the same night, so could the US.
Its just a matter of hiring enough Temp staff. Look at Dade county, they reckoned it would have taken 14 days to do a hand county. Which meant if they had just trebled their temp staff they could have done it in 5 days, & if they had hired 15 times as many temp staff & turned all the convention centres & indoor stadiums into counting centres, the hand counting would have been done overnight.
That's the way its done virtually everywhere else in the world
Plus you don't have to worry about "threats, dirty tricks and other shenanigans" because everyone of those thousands of counters have both a Labour & conservative scrutineer looking over their shoulders.
It may seem labour intensive, but its only for a day or 2 at the most - it is afterall the standard way its done arround the world (Australia, the UK, New Zealand, Germany, Canada, Denmark, etc, etc).
You ask "How would an X marks the spot system be immune to being altered? Or having extra ballots entered?"
Well its simple really, the whole election is monitored by the independent election commission & they are the only ones who have the ballot papers (they can be numbered & holigramed). When you get your name crossed off you are given a ballot form, then after you fill it out in your booth you put it in the locked ballot box. From them on to the end of the counting procedure that ballot is only touched by the independent voting staff who are at all times scrutineered by scrutinneers from both the labour & conservative parties.
This is the standard method its done virtually everywhere, except the US & Brazil & one or 2 other places.
"In the 60's it was not uncommon for ballots to be altered (indeed, today there are dead people still voting in some areas of the country...). This is why machine's were brought in, to try and reduce the amount of ballot corruption."
Actually no (It seems I know more about US voting history than you), the US introduced voting machines as far back as a hundred years ago, & by the 60's the vast majority of the US already had voting machines. The reason was simply cost. Counties did not want to hire thousands of temp staff to do the counting. Even though it was just for a day or 2. Plus the political parties were unable or unwilling to provide the thousands of scrutineers that are needed . Mainly because the US has alway stupidly voted on Tuesday, which means people couldn't or wouldn't take time off their regular job.
However this problem is instantly solved if the US did what the rest of the world does & votes on Saturday. Considering how keen American workers are, they wouldn't have any trouble employing thousands of counters to count away all day & night on Saturday & maybe Sunday too. Particully if they are getting double time for working the weekend.
Actually the pair of people working at the voting table are not volunteers. They are hired help and paid not too bad for a day's work. (I know since I worked at the polls for the last election.) They are not from opposing parties -- they have no party affiliation at all, or if they do, they are required to keep mum about it. Political discussion of any kind is verboten in the polling place.
There may also be one or several observers on hand on behalf of the candidates, but they don't actually do any of the work involved in conducting the voting.
During the ballot counting, the party observers may also be on hand, but even if they are not, the ballots must be counted in the presence of 2 witnesses.
All in all though, you have described the Canadian voting process pretty thoroughly.
Some trivia from the Canadian election day: of the 181 people who cast a vote at my polling station, 27 of them made a joke about the US elections; of those, 18 of the jokes were about chads.
Trickster Coyote
Howl at the moon!
Ideology is for ideots.
- G.W. Bush successfully shuts down the antitrust action against Microsoft.
- A couple of month from now, private recounts (which are possible under Florida's sunshine laws) prove beyond doubt that Gore was the actual winner.
- International outcry is big enough that Bush has to step down, and Gore immediately resurrects the antitrust actions.
This series of events will have shown unambiguously what far greater mess will happen if you allow an entity which has a vested interest in the outcome of an election, to design a voting system. And remember, with Microsoft's machine, there will be no manual recounts, all is electronic. So we wouldn't even know if any cheating went on.Say no to software patents.
IBM declined to get involved in voting mechanisms in the 50's under Thomas J Watson, and declined again this past year, when Lou V Gerstner was approached about the matter.
/. will say, "yes, we knew it would happen, " the rest of the world will say "How could this happen?" and because MS is ubiquitous, it won't really hurt their bottom line, proving that they are a monopoly, regardless of what Judge Jackson's pursuit of them results in.
Voting is too important, and IBM has always chosen to keep their hands clean of ethical quandries, where possible. Besides, it's bad for business if fraud is committed on your machines.
What are the ramifications here? That if fraud is committed on a MS box, all
A host is a host from coast to coast, but no one uses a host that's close
If there is one single thing that I have learned about security is this... There is none.
If you want it safe, you dont want an electronic method like that. The more people involved, the more it (at least appears to) lessens the chance of seriously tainted results.
They shouldnt object to an open audit of the code, seeing how there isnt this huge demand for US Election Wizard 2.0, and they wouldnt have to worry about competitors.
I can honestly say that if I was involved in the project, and had access to the data in anyway, I would at the very least consider the idea of fixing the results.
Did you just grab my ass?
I agree whole heartedly. That would be one step toward sanity, although I think the software companies might cry and scream "needless regulation!".
I don't know how many EEs get licenced though, there is a Professional Engineer certification for it. It's not like licencing electricians.
I believe the mission critical software is done by licenced EEs. None of this "Software Engineer" crap where there is no certification or IIRC even a available degree in.
Great thinking, guys.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Ineed it is a VXD, and as you can see it has a name too, VMM, or Virtual Memory Manager, which means it must have been written by Microsoft.
Thanks for the link. It's very interesting that it is the IEEE doing this and not the ACM or other computer science related professional organization.
This sounds like a perfect opportunity to show the government the benefits of viewing the source of a program they buy. We start up a oss voting system running on the same hardware as the setup in the article, perform a full openBSD security audit on it, and it'll be a hellofa lot more secure and stable than any closed source system (at least i would feel more comfortable about it). It would cut down on the costs on implementing the new system and stop the gov't from being dependant on ms for any security updates.
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All things in life are subjective. At least that's what I think.
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"white bread, redneck, chicken-shit, motherfucker" -- Dr. Dre on "Straight Outta Compton"
I love it when you Windoze phreaks spew this crap when trying to defend Microsloth. You trying to tell me that there are no buggy drivers for Linux? If anything, the drivers are much buggier overall, since the moronic hardware companies refuse to release specs so people writing the drivers for Linux have to hack them the best they can.
And if you try to tell me that Linux isn't more stable, than I'd like to have some of what you're smoking, please. I use Winblows2000 at work on an Athlon 800 with 256mb and, while it's definitely way more stable than anything I've ever used from MS, I still have to reboot it every couple of weeks due to some weirdness with Explorer or whatever. Sure, that's no big deal really, but I almost never have to reboot my Linux boxes. In 4+ years of using Linux on several different computers, I've maybe had to reboot a total of 10 times or less due to an OS issue. I've almost reached that total already in just a few months using W2K on one machine.
It is Microsloth's fault for making an OS that is horribly unstable and insecure and trying to tell their hundreds of millions of users that it isn't. And even when they use NT, it still crashes. See my post in this thread with the subject "More airport fun...".
... is still the best voting technology available. It provides reliability, traceability, flexibility and usability. And nations can hand-count the millions of ballots produced in one night, with a few more days being taken for close elections, postal votes, &c.
Name a recent President who was truly qualified for the position. Bulletprood security is neigh impossible. It's hard enough to secure a fortified position, any time you transit anything you increase the security concerns ten fold. Demoncracy isn't about getting what you want, it's about getting what the majority wants. We however live in a Democratic republic which means the majority gets to choose from a small list of options decided by a not necessarily concerted means. Read up on this country's governmental system before you start going on about getting what "we" and "you" want.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
1 aM t43 N3W Pr351d3N7 oF 7h3 Un173D 57a73S!
Y00 4aV3 B33N 0wn3d!
Y00 mU57 b0w b3f0r3 m3 b3cAu53 1 aM 50 31337!
;)
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
This stuff is way better than Rand's novels! You are one screwed up fellow, and have my deepest respect.
It would be very possible for a group to modify the public source, and change the way it works, but not change the interface behavior at all. Those allowing millions of people to vote for someone they did not intened to.
-Jon
Streamripper
this is my sig.
I mean, the US government designed, built, and delivered the electronic system Brazil uses. It works like a dream, so I hear from the Brazilians I work with. Why the heck don't we just use something that we know already works?
It seems Americans as a group believe throwing money at technology can solve any problem. Sometimes it works spectacularly well. I doubt this is one of those times.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Take a look at
http://snopes2.com/business/genius/spacepen.htm
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
Electronic voting is no more "insecure" as paper ballot voting. It does however give people the chance of adding better scrutiny to vote counting. After the votes are tabulated by the county they ought to be sent to several independent counting firms under firm disclosure regulations. The hardware and software ought to be up for public audit and the machines built to higher security standards (C3 or higher) than the typical desktop workstation. Partisan politics really fucked up this recent election and distribution of the tallying functions ought to provide adequate redundancy. If a firm comes up with a different number than all the rest that county's ballots are then sent out to the rest of the firms so they can verify the descrepency. I'd rather have Wang GS doing the hardware and software than Dell, Unisys and Microsoft though.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Please see ElectionMethods.org for critical information on alternative election methods.
I watch Brit Hume on Fox News
These three companies were chosen to do this? I want a recount!
Answer: An election.
Question: What if we had a Beowulf cluster of these...
... and, would they call it the Blue Screen of Manual Recount now?