Slashdot Mirror
Debian GNU/Linux Used in Electronic Voting Trials
RoweM writes "The Australian Capital Terrority will use a Debian-based, GPL'd electronic voting system in elections this October. See this article, and the vendor's press release. Note, this is not Internet voting, but an electronic vote registration and counting system--you still have to go to the polling booth :)."
GNU/Debian is by far one of the most stable of the Linux distribution. By using software that is often over a year out of date, they'll ensure that no cutting edge software will get in the way of their slow but menial tasks using the 2.2 Linux kernel.
And what if you can't go to vote on a Saturday, for example because you are an Observant Jew and its the Sabbath? (I assume there is a work around for this) or if you work on a Saturday?
Erlang Developer and podcaster
Hopefully, it implements post office voting. That means, you can vote two weeks ahead of the real voting day just by stepping into a post office.
War is one of the most horrible things a human can be exposed to. And one of the worlds largest industries.
Actually, both examples you gave can be attributed to the Democrats. It was Gore's campaign that was distributing the cigarettes. (story from the station who caught them). With Motor Voter, it's not any harder to register to vote than it is to get a drivers license. Even before that, it wasn't that difficult. Heck, depending on your ethnic background, there are groups that will seek you out and help you become a registered voter. Given the little time that it requires, I am surprised that anyone finds it to be a hard process.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
It appears that your definition of art is whatever the "artist" thinks it is. By that reasoning, the guy who crapped his pants while waiting in line at the DMV, could claim it was an artistic performance. IMHO, this "art" is just a way to get attention by doing something as disgusting as possible and the people doing it probably belong in a mental institution.
I'm also sure there are many people that would like to use your individual/municipality logic applied to zoning, regulations, taxes, etc.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
only 44%? Huh? I thought it was much much much higher! Anyway, guess you are correct then ...
Indeed, the resolution and refresh rate was bad, but that was mostly because they used some stupid dos program to do it. The userinterface was not bad: didn't have anything that shouldn't be there, and everybody could practise for weeks on it.
I don't quite get it: al you .AU and .US people are so wrapped up about the NEW idea of electronic voting? Here in Belgium, 90% of the people voted electronicly the last elections, and some villages (eg where I live) started with electronic voting some 8 years ago or so.
...
Here, the system is as follows: you get your voting card by mail a few weeks before the election-day (as usual), you go with your voting-card and ID to the guy that sits there, you give him your voting-card and ID, and he gives you a card with a magnetic strip (in stead of the paper with all the candidates on). You go to the computer - running DOS, slide the card in, take the laserpen and click on your candidate. The magnetic cards comes out, you go back to the guy, put your card in a cardreader, take your ID and go home...
The only problem we've had so far is with the laserpens: they aren't always accurate
booth:~# apt-get install harrybrowne ... 539 politicians currently installed.)
...
...
.../harrybrowne_3.04-6.1_i386.deb) ...
.../artolivier_2.53-5.2_i386.deb) ...
... 538 politicians currently installed.)
...
...
Reading Politician Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
The following politicians will be REMOVED:
georgewbush dickcheney
The following NEW politiciams will be installed:
harrybrowne artolivier
0 politicians upgraded, 2 newly installed, 2 to remove and 538 not upgraded.
Need to get 2/2 politicians. After unpacking 0 will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]y
Get:1 http://http.us.debian.org stable/libertarian harrybrowne 3.04-6.1 [520kB]
Fetched 520kB in 4m26s (1953B/s)
Get:2 http://http.us.debian.org stable/libertarian artolivier 2.43-5.2 [450kB]
Fetched 450 kB in 3m52s (1985B/s)
(Reading database
Impeaching georgewbush
Impeaching dickcheney
Selecting previously deselected package harrybrowne.
Unpacking harrybrowne (from
Selecting previously deselected package artolivier.
Unpacking artolivier (from
(Reading database
Inaugurating harrybrowne (3.04-6.1)
Inaugurating artolivier (2.53-5.2)
booth:~#
There are lots of warm and fuzzy words about open source, but the only thing the article says explicitly will be GPL'ed is the OS ("platform"):
The press release refers to "ACT's Hare-Clark electoral system" and says only:
Thanks as usual to Slashdot's editors for their insightful commentary.
If a thing is not diminished by being shared, it is not rightly owned if it is only owned & not shared. S. Augustine
--
I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations
And I'd be a Libertarian, if they weren't all a bunch of tax-dodging professional whiners.
Berke Breathed
So now this article called it "GNU Debian Linux". I suppose RMS would consider that a improvement over just Debian Linux, but it has a certains Cats feel to it. All your vote belong to Debian.
...
--
I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations
And I'd be a Libertarian, if they weren't all a bunch of tax-dodging professional whiners.
Berke Breathed
The only issue I have with electronic voting is that it seems like it would be just as susceptable to being rigged as lets say.. chads... While it could be more accurate, it depends on how the austrailians are about implementation.
Implementation->If they do it right then they will be in good shape. If they do it like Bart (Bay Area Rapid Transit) then I think it would work. Bart uses linux in its system and I think Bart is pretty reliable, except for the occasionaly train failure. Bart is a metro transit system. Most of there issues are bad equipment or old equipment. (good implementation) (search google on bart) If they do it like Caltrans (California Transportation) and their implementation of the FastTrak then they are really screwed. FastTrak is a toll booth system that allows you to be auto billed instead of paying at the gate by an electronic reader. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. They only implemented it in a few lanes instead of all. (poor implementation).
In any case I am not familiar with how the austrailians are in their impementation of ideas, but if it is anything like the olympics I think they will be in good shape.
I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
Flame away, I have a hose!
Only 'flamers' flame!
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Yep. Look for the "raise_dead-0.91.4.deb" package. Make sure to use the "--political-affiliation=" option.
--
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
If you are poor, you can go to a library. If you are poor, you are MUCH less likely to have access to ANY form of local gov't, including information on the process for absentee ballots, most of which are never counted to begin with.
And BTW, check out the census information on the percentage of low-income homes with computers.
Ignorance is the root of all evil.
That's right, I couldn't agree more. If you're handicapped and homebound, sick, or just can't afford time away from your hourly minimum wage job that supplements your foodstamps, you'll just have to trust those of us with the time/money/ability to take care of things for you.
/sarcasm tag around here somewhere!)
Serves you right for being poor/handicapped in the first place.
(Damn, I could have sworn I left a
Ignorance is the root of all evil.
The suggestion of that is just a form of only elites could make the decision.
Not everybody is resourceful enough to go voting. Say if Joe is so poor and he works in a 24-hours shop, with long shift that overlap the voting time, he doesn't have the chance at all. On the other hand, this is not much a problem for middle class workers.
To put those people that can't afford to vote into the class that can't make informed decision is irresponsible. I think, if we can, we should reduce this voting cost as much as possible. And how uninformed decisions could affect the results, if it's really random? It affects the results when it's not random.
The only concern that I have, for voting online, is the difficulty of cheating prevention. Voting in person and registration at the booth is an efficient way to detect where you're the person you are. But how do you check a vote's validity online as easy as checking your driver's license against their records by the officials?
A sig is redundant.
And Bush can filter by race! If he can figure out regexp, that is...
As Micro$oft has told us, since Debian is GPL, Aussies will only be able to vote COMMUNIST!!!!
Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati
--
Vote Socialist or quit whining!
Help us build a better map!
I'd have to disagree with that, in the same way I'd have to disagree if you said 'closed source products rip all their ideas from other closed source products'.
Every products gets new ideas from competing products, Open Source is no different. Open Source software can (and does) have some features that proprietary software does not yet have. Notice the word 'yet'. Proprietary software will copy features that work as well.
Although I believe in Open Source, I don't think they make a valid point about its use.
Both a proprietary and an Open Source system can be code audited by outside people, if the proprietary company allows it. I think that any government should make that a stipulation before using anybodies code.
I prefer the Open Source solution, but if a proprietary solution comes along that performs the job better (and can be code audited) then use it. Better yet, wait two weeks and the Open Source product will have all of the same features!
Since voting in ACT elections is compulsory for residents anyway, this isn't terribly relevant.
Well, sort of compulsory, anyway - the fine for failing to vote is not large.
I've looked at this. It's not really suitalbe for this application though.
First, FREE is heavily geared towards internet voting - the only interesting parts of the implementation are involved in this. Here the voting is happening in ordinary polling places so the problems are quite different.
Secondly, FREE pretty much assumes first-past-the-post non-preferential voting. That makes it useless for the ACT both in terms of the front end used interface (it has no facility for listing preferences) and in terms of the tally system (it doesn't implement the Hare-Clark counting algorithm).
Um, no.
Voting is compulsory in Australia, but failing to vote won't land you in prison any more than a parking ticket would. There is a fairly nominal fine for failing to vote.
The original statement was misleading. With half an hour's work or so anyone can understand how to count votes using Hare-Clark. The paper counting process has always been observed by scrutineers from all parties who know how to apply the system. The idea of an open source electronic system is that party scrutineers can now check the code to ensure that it correctly applies the system. Understanding why it gives sensible results is a bit harder (for some of the edge cases) but still well within the reach of most people with a bit of thought and some worked examples.
And God Save us if Nader had won.
He had -no- stance on any of the issues debated, etc, and was only on the Green ticket because he was high profile, and agreed with their anti-corporate mindset. He had 0 chance of winning, and will -always- have 0 chance of winning.
Exactly the same reason that Buchanan went and destroyed the RP, BTW: neither of these men can stand not having their names in lights.
Incidentally, I'd rather the uneducated masses stay home and not vote, since odds are, they are going to vote for the people who are willing to ignore the Constitution.
Voter registration isn't all that tough... I showed up at the poll, told them I had moved into the state a year prior, showed my new Driver's license, signed a book... and voted. My new voter reg card came in the mail a few weeks later. Not too tough.
Voting isn't just a right, it is a duty (well-informed voting, that is - abstaining from voting due to ignorance is also a duty).
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
It's probably just as good, or maybe even better than what we have now.
----------------------
Opportunities multiply as they are seized. --Sun-Tzu
The problem with that method of voting is that you ALWAYS get the compromise candidate.
So, for example, if half the people [loved Bush & hated Gore] and half the people [loved Gore & hated Bush], but everone kinda liked McCain - we'd always have the McCains.
How is this a bad thing? You think it's better to have a president that half the country hates than one whom everyone kinda likes?
--
Imagine how much easier it would be for third parties to actually have a chance in elections! There would be no allegations of "throwing your vote away" or picking the lesser of two evils, and a candidate couldn't win by dividing the opposition, because everyone in the opposition would prefer BOTH of their candidates to the guy on the other side. (ie. Nader wouldn't have "stolen" the election from Al Gore, because anyone voting for Nader would prefer Al Gore to dubya.)
--
Two things:
i) Voting in Australia is compulsory. If you don't vote you can go to prison.
ii) Voting is always on a Saturday, not a weekday.
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
Well given that Buchannen's preferences would probably have gone to Bush it works out. What's more interesting is that with this method, a party could field two candidtates against each other and STILL have a chance of one of them winning. Think about this situation:
Candidate A gets 40% of the vote but doesn't prefer B or C.
Candidate B gets 35% of the vote and directs all preferences to C
Candidate C gets 25% of the vote and directs all preferences to B
In a US system, A would win even though 60% of the people would have preferred B or C. In a preferential system, B would win as he is the one most people prefer in power over all the others even though A got more of the primary vote. B was the least disliked of all the candidates.
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
Well, that's stupid. People who don't have an opinion shouldn't have to vote.
.01 of 1% of the people can count the ballots and assure the quality, they can easily create a conspiracy(like Bush's luck that his brother was gov. of Florida.)
I should have said - nothing stops you voting for no one (ie don't write on the card at all, or write crap on it). The point is you have to vote, even if it is not for anyone. As for people that don't have an opinion shouldn't be voting, it is interesting that the percentage of people who don't vote for anyone is less than 1% for most electorates in Australia. I'd say there is significant evidence that almost everyone has an opinion.
This is also stupid. I hated Al Gore and Bush(the Environmentalist vs. the Asshole) but I really didn't want Nader in Power. Who am I going to choose. Probably the one who would do the least damage and I wouldn't even touch the one who would do the most damage or had an ideal against mine.
So that's what you do. You give preferences in the order that you like the person. If you don't like any of them at all, just leave the card blank.
If normal people can't count it, it's too complex and too easily corrupted. If only
Unlike the rest of Australia, the ACT system is strange because of the extremely low population. The system is designed to give fair preferential voting with multiple candidates in each electorate. Just about everyone in the ACT understands it because of the media blitz - corrupting it is impossible given the media has access to the raw numbers.
On the whole, computer voting is the way that things almost certainly must develop. However with large countries (ie USA or Australia) you have problems with time zones. It would make more sense to stagger the voting so that the polls close at the same time GMT across the whole nation - thus avoiding the problem of Californians (or West Australians) knowing the results before they vote.
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
Sorry, but we don't have prisons to "accommodate" 50% of the population.
Sure, but you've got a government that will happily take the fines from 50% of the population.
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
For those in the US who are used to the idea of voting for just one person, and not even having to vote - this is a very different situation:
First, all Australians MUST vote in an election. If you do not vote then you will be fined, or put in prison. This means the voter turnout and load on the system tends to be much higher.
Second, ACT elections allow you to vote preferentially. This means you not only select the first person you want, but order all the candidates in the order you'd prefer them in power. This prevents the problem in the US of Nader stealing votes from Gore (all Nader's preferences would go to Gore) and so instead of the most popular person winning, the LEAST UNPOPULAR one wins. This is a significant improvement.
Third, the system used to actually count the votes in the ACT is hellishly complex and only really understood by statisticians. I find it quite bizzare, but it seems to work.
Fourth, the ACT tends to have dozens of candidates for the positions. Partys with names like "Surprise Party" and "Party Party Party" are running and even get quite a few votes.
Fifth, less than half a million people live in the ACT so the system can really be quite inexpensive and small. The ACT itself is only a few dozen miles across so the whole logistics are incredibly differnt to the USA.
So, to summarize, the ACT elections are very different from US elections. Consider all the facts before you make a generalization about whether this would be good for all of Australia, or even the USA.
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
A quick eye scan spotted 4 or 5 people from internet voting startups, one venture capitalist, and couple of reps from big software companies.
Yep, nice and unbiased.
You are also making the assumption that all the liberals who have not voted in the last election would if they were forced to vote, take the time to familiarize themselves with the candidates and their agendas. I doubt that this will be the case. I cannot say that everybody will just go and punch a random hole in the ballot on the election day, but can you really expect a lot of these people who have made a choice to not vote, to suddenly go and educate themselves as to the candidates beliefs and proposals? I consider that unlikely.
Ñ'
But as a person who was the only one of all my friends to vote in the last presidential elections, because noone else could be bothered to go and pull a bunch of levers, I think that restricting voting to offline only is a good idea. It serves to give the control of the government to those people who care enough to get their ass out of a chair and walk to the voting center. I honestly don't think that I would like all the people who didn't vote out of lazyness to be able to do so online with a few mouse clicks, because they are probably just not interested enough to make an informed decision, and might just randomly click on the boxes that they're not sure what they mean.
Something so serious as selecting your government should require the small barrier of entry that getting to the physical voting booth represents.
Ñ'
It doesn't matter how good the system is, I can still see people claiming that they cannot figure it out. Look at what happened in Florida.
Maybe they should put up a screen at the end of all the questions showing the their votes and asking the voter if they are correct. Maybe then people will be able to vote the way they want, or at least not be able to claim they made a mistake.
You see? It's like I've always said. You can get more with a kind word and a 2x4 than you can with just a kind word.
How convenient. Now failed candidates will have the scary linux hackers to blame for failing to win the elections...
apt-get new_candidates
Can't wait for some Microsoftian to claim the GPL requires the voting district to open source the ballots... and suggest CE as an alternative?
"Invalid Page Fault: Microsoft certified candidate not found on ballot, please reboot the booth and vote again"
well, it's about time there was an open source alternative to the previously announced systems by at&t, dell and compaq.
the best part about an open source system is that by definition, it'll have an open architecture that lets it interoperate with other systems...not to toe the slashdot line, but the last thing we need is a proprietary voting protocol run by a big company.
last i heard as well, california and arizona were implementing this the way it sounds, i.e. voters can actually vote over the internet...i think it was using some sort of shared public-key security to encrypt the ballots, and the key for decrypting the ballots is shared among election officials, so that no one party can view the actual ballot.
That is funny. Dude, don't watch so much TV.
More than 50% of people in the ACT have a computer.
The ACT at some stage in the last few (5)years, had more ISPs per capita than anywhere else in the world.
Australians familes are more likely to have a computer than American families. (Smaller population, more spread out.)
====================
Paul "TBBle" Hampson
Paul "TBBle" Hampson
Paul.Hampson@Pobox.Com
Firstly.... Australian Capital _Territory_. :-)
Secondly, and this one's good: The actual project site. GPL requirements mean code's open source. And it is!
Software Improvements is a key player in a very good spot here. One of the principals of SI, Clive Boughton, is an associate Lecturer (or visiting lecturer) at the ANU, where he currently convenes the Software Engineering course. Last year, as well as teaching Software Analysis and Design and Project Management to the 3rd year cohort, he was strongly connected with the 3rd year Software Engineering Group Project.
The group project was to produce an online, web-based voting system. The project was targeted at Federal elections, but apart from the preference counting system, the principle holds.
Out of the project (after 1 academic year) came 12 seperate online voting systems. One of these systems was apparently pitched to the ACT government in response to the Request For Tender they released near the end of the year, which looked an awful lot like the Request For Proposal the teams were given at the beginning of the year.
Amongst the requirements for the project, was that the system be utterly open source (except for the RDBMS) and be delivered as a set of RPMs and SRPMS against Redhat 6.1.
Another important requirement of both projects (and the Australian electoral system) is that a person be able to vote just once, and that once a vote is recorded, it must not be able to be linked to a specific person.
The group project had tougher requirements than the ACT's project, in that the group project was for use in Internet voting, not just computerising polling booths.
Software Improvements can (and in fact has, I am given to understand) draw upon this unique pool of experience to produce what I confidently expect will be a successful product which I look forward to using come the election.
Some trivia:
How do I know all this?
I was one of the group leaders for the 3rd year group project. I hold the distinction of having the only RedHat 6.1 computer in the project room which the system testers could not break into without getting a screwdriver from upstairs to clear the bios.
Mind you, that wasn't part of the testing. They just wanted to see our developement machine and figured it would be easier than calling me. Fooled 'em good!
====================
Paul "TBBle" Hampson
Paul "TBBle" Hampson
Paul.Hampson@Pobox.Com
It's a Teritory election....
The ACT is not technically a State...I'm not sure what the difference is though.....
Advanced users are users too!
You mean those masses of Floridans who emigrated to Australia out of shame?
http://www.elections.act.gov.au/hare.htmll arke.htm
http://abc.net.au/public/elections/2001act/hare_c
http://polisci.nelson.com/electsys.html
and, of course,
http://www.google.com/search?q=Hare-Clark+electora l+system
--
--
"Small minds discuss people, average minds discuss events, great minds discuss ideas"
I know California did electronic (i.e., touchscreen) voting in several voting districts last year, but I'm fairly sure it was a closed-source project.
The only problem is... I do support. User support. Luser support, in fact. I have users who can't double-click because their reflexes, numbed by years of sitting in front of the television eating Sara Lee cheesecake, have slowed down to the point where inertia takes all their strength to overcome. These users are NOT computer literate. Yet they're supposed to be able to figure it out? Florida elections will become the low bar for new heights of stupidity.
Wait, let me be original! I'll make a joke about using apt-get during the vote!
Zaphod B
Zaphod B
When duplication is outlawed, only outlaws will have
stable/libertarian
Am I the only one that found that extra funny?
Q:How many libertarians does it take to stop a Panzer division? A:None. Obviously market forces will take care of it.
If Floridans can't figure out paper ballots, how are they supposed to figure out how to vote with GNU/Linux??
Got Rhinos?
fraudian slip by the poster?
-=[the machine masters the grim and the dumb]=-
Internet voting has *much* more serious flaws than that.
Main Flaw #1: DOS attacks.
Rigging an election is as simple as DOSing servers in counties that tend to vote for your opponent.
Main Flaw #2: Virii.
While encryption can ensure a secure channel, there is nothing to prevent something at an up-front level like key filtering. A virus could easily propogate that would ensure only a certain candidate gets voted for (or another candidate doesn't get voted for).
For remote digital voting to be feasible, a) it can't run over the net, and b)it can't involve a modifyable system. You'd need a fixed-hardware platform with hardware-level encryption, which establishes a secure PPP link straight to the voting server. Sure, phone lines could be cut or whatnot, but that's on the level of complexity of blocking roads to polling places, and isn't self-propagating.
Everything else is a social nightmare that would make the last US election look like it ran smoothly.
-= rei =-
"Well, then fire it up and show me what this..." (sigh)
It's this type of situation that code should unarguably be forevermore open and available for study.
There are some inherant difficulties in maintaining security, transparency and accoutability when moving to electronic voting and the problems in this case are compounded by the fact that the whole thing has been done in a rush. There are only about 11 months between the introduction of enabling legislation and the vote. The successful tenderer was only officially announced in April and polling day is in October. This does not leave much time for comprehensive external software testing.
Er, no it doesn't. The reason it's so easy to vote in Australia is that governments and electoral commissions have decided to make it so. Of course it would be a little unfair given compulsory voting to make it hard to vote, but the constitution doesn't have anything to say on it. (Voting is not made compulsory by the constitution, it became compusory sometime in the 1920s when they changed the electoral act because very few people were voting in federal elections).
But it doesn't have to be Linux. The BSDs would have done well. Any other Linux distribution for that matter would have worked too.
Because we all know what would happen with Internet Voting - as outlined by a classic comedy central book called "Byte Me" - "Voter turnout will approach 90%, and Alicia Silverstone will be elected President".
States get 12 Senators under the Constitution where territories get 2.
A crucial but rarely significant difference is that where States are empowered to make laws under the constitution, Territories power is delegated from the Federal Government.
The upshot of this is that if a territory law really pisses off the Federal government they can overturn it by an Act of Parliament. Whereas State 's that make laws that upset the Federal Parliament must be beaten into submission with threats to their funding.
'There is a Light that never goes out.'
Now in parliamentary democracies (since a ruckus 400 years ago in O. Cromwell v. Charles Rex) the legislature is supreme and the executive is derived from the command of the Legislature.
It's not perfect and it's very different from the US approach, both have strengths and weaknesses.
But the point is that the people elect the parliament, and the parlaiment appioints the executive.
So the plurality of the ACT legislative Assembly (which at the last election was made up of 6 Liberal Party (loosely analogous to the Republicans), five Labor Party (ditto for the democrats), One Green, Two Catholic conservative former policemen (one of which scored the winning points for the Canberra Raiders Rugby League team Premiership win in the mid 90's) and one social liberal independent.
I might have missed someone there but it's a reasonably representative group of the wider society.
The elected members then determine Executive power.
As it happens right wingers were more pragmatic in their dealings with the independents and have had a stable government, but only by advancing the issues of greens and social liberals to ensure their support.
Compare that to the winner-takes-all results in single member electorates and i think u'd be pleasantly suprised.
'There is a Light that never goes out.'
In short, the Territory is divided into 3 districts, each with around six seats in the assembly available.
As 100/6 is 16.666% thats how much of the vote you need to win a seat in the Assembly. It means strong voices like the greens aren't excluded and tends to produce minority government's that have to gather broad support for their policies.
The preferential stuff cascades votes for candidates that already have their "quota". The math is a little complex but the system gives solid results and responsible governments.
The downside in the past has been it takes a couple of weeks to figure out the bottom of the piles where preferences are all over the shop (I for instance start by numbering those i hate most last and work my way up the ballot to gove a "1" to my least hated candidate, or a fruitloop want to encourage, safe in the knowledge that my real vote will end up going to someone else.)
'There is a Light that never goes out.'
When I was young and working crummy, low-wage jobs, EVERY single one of my bosses let it be known that going to vote would get you fired.
Now, if you have a low-end job, your day begins before most of the polls open. If you work a 12-hour day, like most minimum-wage people do to have a chance at survival, you have no chance to get to the polls.
Pretty soon, your low-barrier-to-entry begins to work an awful lot like Jim Crow laws. Haven't you ever noticed that voter turnout is lowest among the low-wage groups? Are you perhaps beginning to get a clue why?
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Bah! I'm waiting for the day when I can actually vote online. Bruce Schneier outlines a good protocol for this in Applied Cryptography. Is it just me or is this not going to happen because the average person doesn't realize how secure it is?
Couldn't this technology be used to manipulate votes?
From their homepage:
Welcome to the FREE e-democracy project's website. We are a project dedicated to creating the GNU.FREE Internet Voting system and also advocating Free Software in e-democracy. To understand why we think it's important for e-democracy software to be Free Software which is non-partisan and non-commercial in origin see our Writings Section. GNU.FREE software is written in Java and is available from the Download Section. There is more information in the Users' Section and considerable technical detail in the Developers' Section. The GNU.FREE software suite is an official package of the Free Software Foundation's GNU project and is supported by FreeDevelopers.net and OpenElection.org. More affiliates, related sites and people are available from the Connections Section.
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day.
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day.
Teach him to eat and he will fish forever.
How does our society determine who to trust?
I think the answer is, as some peoplee said, that it is able to make sure, you can control them. Lenin said: 'Trust is good. Control is better.' He was mostly wrong but concerning society he was right.
Open Source Software is the only kind of software, which can be proofed, by everyone, so that nobody would have to fear manipulation. It might sound paranoid, since manipulation is hardly a danger to rich countries, but the point is, that it has to be paranoid to ensure the stability of a state and it's society.
... can you do an apt-get to upgrade the results ?
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
.... we see a Micro$oft solution for this voting problem?
The real question is what they'll call it....
Vote XP?
Office Vote?
Election XP?
It's only a matter of time, I'm sure.
The most important part of the article is that voters will be able to choose one or the other...in some senses voters will also be voting for paper vs. electronic votes.
I've never had a huge aversion to paper ballots, and in fact prefer something that has a tactile presence that can be recounted later.
Beware typoes.
Just to clear up a couple of points. It is the ACT not federal elections so it is a state/territory government not a national one. And down here we don't save a dime, we save a couple of bob :)
"She's a West Texas girl, just like me" - G.W Bush Iraqis
Instead of usind paper they use magnetic cards.
The systems goes as follows:
If a tiny country like Belgium can.
Why couldn't the allmighty stars protected States?
-------------------------------------
Where is my mind?
if they just use open source as a decoy while actually building a very similar (but biased) closed source system which is actually implemented, the public will see the source and be happy. There is no way to make sure you're using the right code when you actually vote, unless of course you compiled it yourself, which would be much worse.
I don't honestly think this will happen, but something to think about...
----------
www.shockthemonkey.org
Photos.
Of course, the printed ballot should be easily machine readable so that it will be easy to tally, but there will be that permanent paper record in case a recount is needed.
If you were a voter and the ballot you filled out and then printed looked like this
(scancode) President: Pat Robertson
And you meant to vote for Gore, your error would be pretty damn obvious. In addition, it woul dbe easy to let the computer tell you what races you didn't vote on, and ask if that was deliberate. It might be interesting to see how many city councilmen would "lose" if "deliberate abstentions" could be accurately counted.
You either believe in rational thought or you don't
# Quoted
Voting in Australia is compulsory. If you don't vote you can go to prison.
# End Quote
This is interesting, and would make a lot of sense in a country (India) where most middle and upper class blokes do not go out and vote because 'We're educated, and we're in no position to choose (we don't have the percentages), so why waste time?'. Ofcourse, with a population of 60% of a billion eligible to vote (might be even more), putting people in jails becomes a real problem.
-Shaunak.
If you can't vote on voting day then you vote beforehand and post it. If you are in another region then you can do an absentee vote.
If you are dead then other people may vote for you - although those days are supposed to be over.
Of course it does, and that is what our Australian friends have understood. They were thinking to themselves one day "Hmmm. I need a computer tool to count votes, and I need to make sure that no vendor biases the code to favor a given party. So I need to see the code. What vendor will let me see the code to insure the voting is fair, and how can I insure the public that there isn't a RNG in the code affecting their vote?" Why, use the GPL, of course! You can publish the code to the public to insure accuracy. Maybe someone will see a small flaw and fix it for you too. People can be assured their vote is being counter fairly.
Perhaps the States of the US will go this route too to help count our ballots. I never got a look at the machine code that counted those Florida ballots after all. I know there are plenty in the GPL community that would love to have a shot at the code, and to submit suggestions to the state equivalent of the NIST for enchantments of the code. Its nice to see a national government recognize the GPL can be a great asset to their problems, and they get all that code for free to boot! Save a dime and get better software! Perhaps Australia will donate a little cash to a GPL project to give back to the community as well? I am happy Australia has picked up on the GPL solution.
Lawrence Lessig is my personal hero.
THX in advance
D - M - C - A
If god had intended you to be naked, you would have been born that way.
Seems to me the American system could do with being easier to vote in. I'm used to it being easy to vote; elections on saturdays, every primary school a polling place, pre-polling centres in all city centres for if you're going to be busy on the day, and postal voting for when even pre-polling isn't practical. When it's compulsory to vote, the constitution makes sure it is easy to vote; no four hour queues for me!
Rachel
You mean to tell me that the northerners of that time period weren't virtuous, pure, godly people? Oh goodness, my whole world is up-side-down now...
(sarcasm)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~ now you know
Will this system be "crocodile hunter friendly"? I mean Australia seems to be pretty old-school (nothing wrong with that) so I'm not sure the blokes will like this.
On the serious side, I think it's really cool how the code for the system is public knowledge. Gives you a sense of security, you know.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~ now you know
Yeah, I know, I was kidding. It was my attempt at a high-tech Steve Irwin, something like "I'll just stick my finger in this electric socket and we'll see how awesome and exciting these animals called computers can be. Watch out now, she looks a bit naughty...."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~ now you know
>our next president might be a teenage h@x0r If so, there might actually be one person in Washington against the DMCA.
My IP is 192.168.1.100 Hack it if you want.
I think the Democrats are trying (a little) to get higher representation, higher voting rates and lower barriers to entry.
They would if they know what's good for them. I heard that only 10% of the african-american population voted, and 90% of them voted for the democrats. Similar numbers for hispanic-americans. If the proportions of minorities (very, very BIG minorities) such as these actually voted, the republicans would be destroyed as a political party.
Of course, there might be problems with all those new voters deciding that they want a decent social security system, or decent laws covering party campaign contributions.
We have compulsory voting in Australia (as others have pointed out), and our most rabid right-wingers don't get close to some of the policies even the democrats suggest in the US. Part of that is that our country is naturally socialist, but part of it is that everyone has to vote - no excuses.
Heck, if the government has the right to send you to war, or to take money out of your wallet, surely asking me to get to a polling booth once a year and write a few numbers on a piece of paper isn't really that onerous a duty. And it stops people bitching about how the pigs' ear the govt. is making of the country isn't their responsibility.
--This post is about truth, beauty, freedom, and above all things, Karma
-- This post is about truth, beauty, freedom, and above all things, Karma
Voting is simple: you just need to type in the candate's code; he's (or she's) photo appears on screen and you just need to confirm.
This idea is pretty cool as the results appears very fast to the public. However, the system used here isn't GPL'd, so we can't know if it's computing votes to another candidate than the one you voted.
take place is interesting for GNU/Linux news, an election is something of a serious issue... I'm an Australian and I sure wouldn't want to see this go pear shaped any more than the Open Source community (think of the bad press... "Linux Fault Voids National Election"... No-one wins) I don't really like the idea of using my election as a guinea pig for this, but then again I don't have any doubts about the abilities of the software to perform.
It's just a pity that the limits of this development won't exactly be tested by the upcoming election (the political climate does not look good for the incumbent) do to the fact it's almost certainly gonna be a landslide.
Sham on
They have my vote!
... Um I mean Debian ;-)
this isnt really too surprising
debian's good for it's stability (and of course i have to say how much i like their philosophies). but think about it, people often complain that the newest things arent packaged in the 'stable' release and that their video card isnt supported because potato only includes xfree3.3.6...
it's only a voting system... doesn't need much.
it doesnt risk any money of any cooperation, it's free. you dont want it to crash.
it's really not a big deal
my blog
I'm all for computer-assisted vote counting, but taking out the physical audit trail is reckless. There's no way to know whether the voting machine you're using will actually record your vote correctly. The whole Florida episode led to plenty of allegations of voting fraud; adding computer-mediated voting would make those allegations impossible to disprove and impossible to prove. Public confidence in the integrity of the vote would suffer, and democratic stability would suffer with it.
Bruce Schneier wrote an article on electronic voting, which election administrators should be urged to read before they consider adopting any such system (whether GNU/Linux or otherwise).
Ireland (my home) has started trying to get in electronic voting as well. I'm trying to stop it, but the reaction I've got from the legislators I've talked to is that since it isn't on the network, and the machines are locked away somewhere except during election times, what could be the risk? I am not convinced that no-one would dare tamper with them. Eventually, someone will, if they can get away with it. And they can.
You are so fucking funny ....
I mean real fucking funny.
I wounder which backdoors are included...
Look it up. Voting in a three (or more) person race makes it impossible to choose completely "fair" rules. Not to say that it would necessarily be a bad idea, but not obviously good either.
Wait, they want to make the voting system easier to use and less error prone. How come they're using Debian? Next thing you know they'll try Slackware. At this rate why try and get Emacs involved as well.
Go home script kiddies!