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New Closed Source Voting Systems Malfunction
LowellPorter writes "Miami-Dade and Broward counties are having voting problems. After the 2000 election problems, new voting methods were installed including touch screen technology. Some times the problems were with workers not showing up, poor training, or mechanical problems. It doesn't look like they cleaned up the system there." Not all of the problems mentioned in the article are due to the new proprietary voting machines, but many of them are.
How hard is it to make a voting machine that works? All it does is count votes, it's not like it does rocket science!
Would any of these problems be solved with an open source solution? Do these problems have anything at all to do with the fact that the solution is closed source? Is the fact that these systems are closed source ironic, or telling in any way?
Your headline is about as biased as "Microsoft User Commits Murder"
1. The article doesn't tell us that the software is proprietary. Nor does it tell us that most of the problems are due to the use of closed software. Anyone wondering if Slashdot is an example of journalism or just a bunch of poseurs-for-hire tossing words around need look no further.
2. So anyway, why would we expect open source to work any better?
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Have you *ever* seen v1 of a system work flawlessly? It's so immature to toss the word "proprietary" in here, as if to insinuate that being open-source would fix anything. There's tons of open-source programs in v1 status with bugs. Anybody see any news headlines when Mozilla 1.0 came out and there were bugs in it? No? End of story.
What's your damage, Heather?
Ahem: This whole thing is wildly inaccurate. Rounding errors, ballot stuffers, dynamic IPs, firewalls. If you're using these numbers to do anything important, you're insane.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
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This isn't a "linux would have saved the day" story.. This same quote is reiterated and paraphrased throughout the article:
"She said many poll workers did not wait for the full six-minute activation procedure to occur and then became nervous and uncertain."
The workers just don't know how to use the machines. Either that or Jan the Man wants to play the "I didnt really lose! it was the hanging chads!" game.
Perhaps Florida is hopelessly stupid. Something to do with a close proximity to DisneyWorld. (that explains the lesser but omni-present stupidity in California too. DisneyLand isn't as big.)
How about a "blink once for yes, blink twice for no" system?
Or set up a "Honk if you love Reno!" sign and count the horns.
Or something involving hot grits or business plans or a beowulf cluster "of these"
I can't hear the word 'gubernatorial' without giggling.
Next story please.. I used up too much karma on this one.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Some may say this is a bold statement, so I will provide examples to back it up:
- Windows NT 4.0 contained several well-known backdoors that
allowed non-admin users to pop their code straight into kernel space. This
was done with "ease of use" for developers in mind, and since the OS was
closed-source, nobody questioned the poor design. The Microsoftie who
wrote it obviously conferred with several other Microsofties, who, lacking
security training, had no idea it was not the Right Way(tm) to do things.
- In contrast - Andrew Morgan's continuing work on the Linux privileges
project is the antithesis of Microsoft's uneducated, misguided attempt to
build a secure OS. Andy started out as we all do - with a naive view of
computer security and interprocess authorization. However, he learned from
the masters, and quickly designed and implemented a rock-solid privilege
foundation that is used, in its original form, to this day in the
Linux kernel. Granted, few distributions other than OpenWall Linux take
advantage of it (which is sad) - but if they did, we would all be much
safer from the threat of root compromises.
- The Windows 2000 FTP daemon has been notoriously insecure, in
contrast with open source products like MuddleFTPd and ProFTPd. Why?
Because the coders who wrote this security-critical part of the system
just didn't care.
And that is my point with these voting systems: they are produced with the bottom line and a fat contract on the line, not produced by people who actually care about developing a product that encapsulates accountability, security, and accuracy. In other words, these products are developed by your stereotypical non-geeks who buy a CS degree "so they can make more money." And those, my dear friends, are the enemy of everybody in our profession.I suggest a new voting system for those counties/states where a significant percentage of the voting population seems unable to grasp the mechanics of voting: randomize the layout of politicians so that misvoting doesn't bias the final count. Then maybe we can at least focus on the education/UI issue, rather than getting bogged down in partisan bickering over and interpretation of election results.
45,128 votes for Bush
45,132 votes for Gore
2,000,000 write in votes for Bill Gates.
Wha?
JET Program: see Japan, meet intere
..Bill Gates elected president.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
We need to give up on these fancy high-tech solutions that are so buggy and difficult for old people to use. Go with what they know, and what works...
Make the ballots like bingo cards. Give each voter a card and a daubber. I've seen grandmothers that can't work a toaster, but they can turn around and fill in 10 different bingo cards at a high rate. Not to mention that you almost never see them make a mistake filling out one of those cards.
This would solve the whole boot problem and software bugs. The logistics of it would be no different than the old punch cards, but with a lower chad pregnancy rate.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
They should have used the new system they're testing for the 2004 presidential elections in Florida.
The biggest problem with these machines is that unlike most software it appeals to an extremely small market AND one where there are very low margins. It is hard to attract top software talent to write good code for these machines. Given the scenerio above, open source actually does make sense because it is the only way you'll be able to get solid talent for nothing!
If anything, its just an indication that we're running out of things to replace with computers ... ;) Lets just hope IT investors didn't read your post or they might start thinking that there are some areas in which Computers Dont Solve Your Problems (tm).
"Old man yells at systemd"
One of the main problems with voting is that each individual voter doesn't know if their vote was properly counted, and has no recourse if the their vote was miscounted. One reason for this limitation is that the vote is anonymous, so you can't keep track of what happened to your vote.
My idea is to give each voter a secret unique identifier randomly generated at the poll. An online database would keep track of which identifier went with what vote. Then, anybody who had doubts about thier vote could look up to see if they were counted properly. If not, they could use thier receipt to petition for a revote. In the event that enough people complained within the deadline, the entire vote would be redone.
Not only were they told not to fix it, they were told to make it impossible to fix.
D-oh!
"I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them." -- George H. W. Bush
Come to Belgium in june 2003 and watch us vote electronically. As we have been doing for the last few elections.
:)
It isn't that difficult.
You go to the voting-office.
You prove your ID (national ID-card)
Instead of a piece of paper you get a kind of bankcard (of visa/master-type) or a card with chip. (I am not sure)
You plug your card into the computer.
You vote (once, although it can be for more then 1 election. We have about 9 governments, I think. Hell, even we can't keep count)
You take your card back.
You put it in a box with the others.
The card doesn't have information about you.
The card-info can't be changed after voting.
At the latest one, you could put it back in, and check if it contained the right vote.
The government knows that you have voted (it is required) once. (see above: ID-reg)
The cards get collected from around the votingdistrict, shoved into a coutingcomputer.
And you know what?
It works.
Perhaps the older people, might ask some help.
Why don't you just buy the tech from us, hey.
If your are interested, we even have electronical wallets, called 'proton'.
PS. my english isn't what it used to be, I know
Why is it a big deal that the source code is closed to the public? I don't think we really need vote_for_me_many_times.mod going up on sourceforge, do we?
I certainly wouldn't want a L33T H4X0R messing with my vote.
I prefer to let the Supreme Court and the press do it for me.
The Dopester
"Yes, I'm a Karma Whore, but I'm doing it to pay my way through school."
This is a disaster. A disaster like this can only come from one source: upper management.
I'm a government IT worker. While I'm mostly uninvolved with the election stuff, I do enough with it to understand all the stuff that goes on to make sure the votes are as close as possible.
This has nothing to do with software or even computers. This has to do with human stupidity, laziness, and lack of training. Prior to the election, the precincts receive training from an offical (usually from the county courthouse). The poll workers are trained to do their jobs, they don't just show up at 6:45. They've obviously never been introduced to the new hardware, let alone taught basic troubleshooting. And what's with poll workers not showing up? late? Take them out back and give em a good ass kicking. No excuse for that. They have a job to do, and when it's as important as electing the next officials, you just don't do that.
Whoever is managing/training these folks needs to be shot. At the very least, fired. Obviously those who were supposed to do their jobs didn't.
Now, a word about these ATM/kiosk thingies. Sounds to me liked they were working ok. If the case was that they blue screened and incorrectly tallied votes, that again falls back on someone who didn't test the system. Sounds like everything performed as designed, the blame lies on the idiot poll workers and the trainer who didn't do their job.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
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it was more than that. There was a thick black line between each entry. The line was very similar to the arrow line except that it didn't have the small arrowhead and it was much longer. I tried squinting to see how an old person would see the ballat (I could read the names, but that big line sure looked more tempting than the little short line).
I read the internet for the articles.
Its easy to make a voting proces that works: print pieces of paper with the candidates names on them. The voter goes into a private area or "booth" and makes a mark by the candidate of their choice. These peices of paper or "ballots" are kept in a secure location until the voting period ends. They are then counted with representitives of the candidates and members of the public present.
This radical system is already in use in such exotic places as The UK, Canada and Australia. This system tends to be more accurate than mechanical devices and less open to fraud. The proces can also be completed in a matter of hours.
They are tried and true, and accuracy is very high, in most places 98% or higher.
Bush's final "winning" margin in the 2000 election was about 500 out of 6 million votes cast. That's a margin of error of 0.008% (unless I'm messing a decimal point up somewhere).
A 2% margin of error on choosing our next President is unacceptable.
I think the ultimate solution is this:
1) Increase the size of the ballot sheet to 8.5" x 11".
2) Insert that sheet into something that looks like a oversized Votematic machine.
3) It will work like a Votematic punch card machine, but instead of punching holes in the ballot sheet there is enough area exposed on the ballot where you mark off your choice with a small ink stamp.
4) Once the voting is finished, you give the completed ballot to the people at the voting station and they will do a preliminary optical read (without revealing what was voted on) to make sure the voter has marked off all the right spots; this will prevent double-voting, not marking in the right area, etc.
5) Once that is verified and the voter says they are satisfied with what they voted for, the voter gets a receipt proving they have voted.
The advantage of using a marker to make the selection is that the ballot can be both machine read AND hand-counted easily. That way, the accuracy will be very high indeed.
Why don't we use computers for all voting now? --Well in many cases we do, but you just don't know it.
Where I live, and in many places througout the US we have these ballots where you use your little marker and complete the arrow pointing to the candidate of your choise. Once you complete your voting you take your ballot and feed it into a machine I got news for you.. IT'S A COMPUTER.
One of the main reasons no one has trouble with this is that the average person is removed (even if ever so slightly) from the "computer". The system seems to work fine with no major issues and has for several years.
The we have the Technophobe Factor. As soon as you let people know they are actually dealing with a computer, all of a sudden it gets too complicated. Why? there is no real reason. It could be that the software in that voting thing is designed poorly, but even if it is really aweful, it probably isn't all that bad.
There is a segment of our soceity that will never want to work with computers, avoiding them at all costs, loosing all common sense when dealing with them believing they are too complicated to understand. What's worse is there is NOTHING we can do about it. Many of these people are older, but surprisingly they all aren't. It isn't just older people, it isn't just artsy people, it's more of a mind-set then any particular demographic. These people aren't dumb either... although the fringe of them who do try to use the internet usually end up starting their tech support call as: "I am the dumbest person". - You know the kind who have had the Internet for six years and still haven't learned anything - Not cuz they can't but because they won't.
It's hard for us techies to understand their motive. I don't, but I do know it exists and have learned there is nothing I can do about it.
At this moment, the best we can hope for is to make it so these people don't know they are using a computer. Using paper that you draw a line to complete an arrow, modding an old voting machine so those comfortable levers hit the right contacts for a computer to do it. Just don't let people know they are using a computer!
Hopefully in a few years we can slowly, incrementally get them to use computers -just not yet apparently
See the Pictures of the Flood of '08
Still people miss the point that the failure in Florida in 2000 was not the technology but the process.
Problem 1: No user feedback. You punch the chads, you hand in the card. No-one tells you what your card says, so you can agree that that is what you meant. There is no consistency checking. Everything is deferred until the stack of ballots go to the counting machine, by which time it is too late.
Problem 2: No defined recount procedures. There was a recount in a Michigan congressional race in 2000. The Michigan voters used the same machines as those in Miami-Dade. The Michigan recounters had clear, written, legal guidelines: if the chad is connected to the ballot by two or less connectors, it's a vote. Three connectors, it's not a vote. Miami-Dade and Broward had ambiguous language that was being interpreted on the fly by partisan election officials and reinterpreted in Tallahassee a day later.
Now, whoever bought these systems and bought the line of bull that said anyone could get them up and running with no training needs to be fired. Termination with extra prejudice if the machines are in fact unauditable.
The pen and paper system of balloting works. It scales linearly. Everyone understands it. But people live in Florida mainly because it's cheap. So they thought they could save on election costs by choosing a solution that was more expensive but requires a smaller fraction of the electorate to operate. Now, as in 2000, they're seeing that it doesn't pay not to value your vote.
--
E_NOSIG
"Lusers" angle notwithstanding, it was a *terrible* layout for the ballot. There are zillions of ways that the design of the ballot could have alleviated the concerns expressed by some voters.
Just because *you* can do something doesn't mean everybody else should be able to. There is tons of literature in usability, design, etc that show that there are tons of ways of influencing a reader or user into acting a certain way, one way or the other. I'm not saying anything was done intentionally in the case of Florida's ballots. What I will say is that I have a lower opinion of your type of self-affirming drivel than somebody who mistakeningly voted for the wrong candidate. Your view is just as closed minded as somebody asserting that the design of the ballot was *solely* responsible for miscast votes.
"Old man yells at systemd"
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Would any of these problems be solved with an open source solution? Do these problems have anything at all to do with the fact that the solution is closed source? Is the fact that these systems are closed source ironic, or telling in any way?
Yes, yes, and yes, it is telling.
Openness is absolutely critical to fair and free elections, and that applies to the technology as much as it does the people. Who knows what is being done with the data being collected, or how it is being massaged. Is every electronic vote counted? Do we know that the results being reported are accurate, or whether or not a systemic flaw (or deliberate alteration) in the software is causing every Nth republican or democratic vote to be dropped? No, we don't know this, because the software's source code is unavailable for public review, much less peer review.
There are all kinds of Microsoft apologists (not saying you are one, but the vast majority of posts taking a tone similiar to yours are, as evidenced by their posting histories) quick to point out that having untrained election officials has nothing to do with the closed source nature of the software, yet eagerly glossing over the profoundly obvious fact that if the election software is closed source, no amount of training can insure that the software is unbiased and the election results fair.
So the point is relevant, even if it does rub the closed source advocates and Microsoft zealots the wrong way.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
It seems to me that open source would be the way to go, if only so any 'backdoors' or bugs can be found. 10 million stupid people or 5 million bored, smart people could really put our voting 'system' at risk.
This would also have the added benefit of removing the 'special interest' kickback that I'm sure the manufacturer/local politico is getting on some level.
Besides, what could be more patriotic (real patriotism, not bandwagon flags on your mailbox. ) than helping to create/debug a secure, fair, easy to use and accessible voting system? (Besides actually getting off your fat ass and voting. ;)
Welcome to the Corporate Plutocracy. Just watch the TV and do what the nice newsman says.
She said many poll workers did not wait for the full six-minute activation procedure to occur and then became nervous and uncertain.
What, are they trying to boot WinXP on 75Mhz Pentinum I's ??
`They say they are having technical problems, but no one is taking responsibility for them. And they are treating us like we are morons.''
Sounds suspiciously like Msft to me. Let's all chant the EULA together now: "The VENDOR of SOFTWARE PRODUCT makes no warranty for it's fitness for use, and is not to be held liable for ANY damages due to defects in PRODUCT, either directly or consequential, so nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah. But we're DARNED SURE going to make sure you pay for each and every copy in use. PERIOD. You have no choice in the matter. You have already agreed to these conditions when you were born."
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
The biggest problems is lazy or braindead voting officials that never showed up for training or caused the bulk of the problems as far as the article alludes to. Although 6 minute boot up for a voting machine is plain stupid.. If these are laptop PC's with touchscreens then the company that made them needs to be hanged. There is no excuse for having something as simple as a voting machine taking more than 1 minute for boot, and download it's configuration from a CF card or some other configuration card or flash memory inside the unit.
and yes, and embedded system is the way to go.. you dont need Full color, you odnt even need touchscreen. all you need is a line of buttons.
Aside from the silly design of the voting machines... it looks like forcing your voting officials to attend training and make them accountable would be the most important step in fixing the trouble down there.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I understand why we need anonymous voting. But sometimes I think we need a system that has everyones votes associated with them in some way. I always worry about the old addage that you don't have to own the people casting the votes, you just have to own the people that count the votes.
In any system, paper, black balls, or electronic, the problem always exists. If everyone drops a black ball into a box, who is to say some slight of hand wasn't used change the contents. Just cause I hit the button for 1, and maybe even see the count for who I voted for go up by 1, who is to say that it won't go back down as soon as I walk away from the screen.
A division of the house/roll call vote is the only time when everyone knows the count was fair.
What we need is to figure out a way where I can check to see if my vote was counted, and counted correctly. If we are using electronic voting, maybe an electronic reciept of some kind. I could check what I voted at any time, and I could check to make sure "their" copy of my ballot looks like my copy.
For this to work, maybe even allow for the database of all ballots be able to be downloaded. I could then get a bunch of my friends together with the copy I have. Do my count, see if that count equals the main count, then spot check my friends reciepts. You could then concievably check an entire town/state/country.
But haven't you bloody Americans learnt the KISS system - Keep It Simple Stupid.
This means no bloody machines, period !!! If Australia (& most of the OECD) 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 fucked 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 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.
It's extremely rare for results to not be known before the weekend is out (actually results mostly come out on the Saturday night, meaning people can go to election result parties & still be ok for work on Monday)
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).
Now I bet someone will think 'oh but the US is much bigger than Australia', well my answer is no problem, the US having a nationwide hand paper ballot election would be no different than if Australia the UK, Germany the Netherlands & the Scandinavian countries all voted the same day, IE there's no reason to think it won't scale up fine.
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.
Palm Beach County suffers from massive corruption. From this report (using the Google .html cache because house.gov's .pdf crashes IE6 for some reason):
By a dramatic margin, the group most victimized in the Florida voting was African American Republicans. The new findings are stunning: African American Republicans who voted in Florida were in excess of 50 times more likely than the average African American to have had a ballot declared invalid because it was spoiled. Spoiled ballot rates also much higher for white Republicans than either white Democrats or African-American Democrats.
Remember kids, Democrats run Palm Beach County, they designed the "butterfly ballot", and yet somehow everything that went wrong in the 2000 election is all the Republicans fault. Yeah, right.
Machine voting might fix things, but if we can't see the source code I wouldn't trust it, not from these folks. Open Source is our best shot at addressing the trust issue.
Wouldn't it be easier to create a system that allows people to vote using a touch screen system, then instead of trying to save the data (which could easily be corrupted or lost,) simply print the ballot. It could print two copies, one for the person to take home as a personal voting record and one that they put in the polling box. The ballot that is given to the state could even be encoded so that it cannot be read without a computer in order to maintain privacy, while the copy the person keeps could be in plain english, spanish, or whatever language, so that they can confirm who they voted for. I think this would be a reasonable option that would be easier to setup (maybe.) If anything goes wrong with the machine, send them to another machine and start fresh.
Voters in North Florida also had new voting machines to use, but they didn't have any trouble. It's not the technology, it's the system.
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
Gramps could have examined the source code and corrected the problems immediately.
Most of the folks running the polling places in FL are retired people with a well developed sense of civic duty but poorly developed technology skills. If anything, I suspect that these new voting machines will only exacerbate the problems. The new machines will most likely discourage many of them from volunteering as they are intimidated by computers. If you go to a bank here, you will see a lot of older people who will not use the ATM's out front.
Let's face it. The problems that were experienced in the last election had nothing to do with technology. Next time instead of disputing hanging chads and confusing butterfly ballots we will be hearing about confusing software, glitches, and misc system problems. We just blew a wad of money on nothing IMHO.
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By mid-morning, countless people voted without difficulty....
Countless, eh? You mean you can't count the number of people voting? Not encouraging in my mind.
A hack is just an idiom waiting for wider use.
Sorry, but it's unconstitional in many states (Colorado is one) to use any polling method that can be used to prove how an individual has voted.
This is a basic technique to prevent vote selling (or vote coercing, e.g., "vote for my candidate or you're fired/will lose the account/will never marry my daughter/whatever.") If you can prove how you voted, others may be tempted to "encourage" you to vote a particular way. If you can never prove it, you can lie.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Maybe they need to make the voting machine's interface look like video poker - help the older folks over their confusion...
All my money went to Nigeria and all I got was this lousy sig. . .
"if the election software is closed source, no amount of training can insure that the software is unbiased and the election results fair."
Well, you've got to trust someone somewhere.
If it's a closed-source system, we can have a review board set up to verify that the code in the election software is fair and unbiased.
If it's an open-source system, you still have to trust the compiler, or the person who installs the software onto the voting terminals, or the person who installs the vote-tallying software at the central server. Or trust the people who oversee those people. Or watch the installer yourself. But by your logic, why should I trust you unless I'm watching too? And why should anyone trust the both of us?
Shut up with your open source championing. It's tangential to this article, not relevant.
In response to the many responses criticising the headline for sugesting these problems are due to the system being propietary, you should read the link to the previous slashdot article. These machines have been used before and there were many problems. The manufacturer basically said "we guarantee they work, but we won't tell you how they work and if you try to figure it out you're gonna regret it." the system was broken and people wanted an open review of the system. That review was denied and now it is obvious that it is still broken. Therefore, the fact that the system is proprietary is very relevant to the discussion.
Could you mean, perhaps, five times?
... Take any old story from AP News Wire, twist the meaning of it so that it works in favor of something the /. community likes, then watch the comments roll in.
/. loves), then make sure to reemphasize the point that it is proprietary so that you can pretend that Open Source should have been the way to go.
/. All you need to do is pander to the people with extremist views. Everybody loves the chance to say 'I told you so!'
For example, take a story about a company that built a machine that had a defective component. Since the machine was built by the one company, you're free to call it proprietary. Since proprietary is the opposite of Open Source (which
As you can see, it can take very little spin-doctoring to get your story posted on
(Why do I have the feeling that my social satire will be read as trolling?)
You're only counting the Florida votes in your math.
If memory serves, Gore won the popular election-- meaning he had far more votes than Bush.
The deciding factor was those 500 votes you mention in Florida, because of the screwed-up way our system uses an electoral college (and also the screwed-up way the Supreme Court basically decided who would win the election). In a "one man, one vote" system, Gore would be our president now. You can call Bush the winner, but he certainly won no election.
(For the sake of full disclosure, I'm against Bush, but I'm not exactly for Gore. But any way you cut it, I'm pretty sure the numbers don't lie.)
But you're right. To permit a 2% margin of error is absurd. Nothing quite so disillusioning as knowing you've got a 1 in 50 chance of simply losing your vote, is there?
Sorry, should have noted that I was only talking about Florida.
:-)
For the sake of full disclosure, I'm also against Bush but not exactly for Gore... I'd actually have voted for McCain over anyone else.
... our electronic voting machines seemed to work just fine. It was actually cool to see my older neighbors figure out and make friends with the new technology. I overheard one older gent tell his wife how much easier the big screen was to read and the big (touchscreen) buttons were to push.
I spoke to one of the pollworkers, and he told me that one positive change was that the county gave each location a CD with ALL voter information, updated from the registration cutoff date. If someone came to the wrong place, they could be looked up immediatly without having to call the central office. In the 2000 presidential election, this was one of the big problems - the phone lines were jammed and many voters never found out where to go. Amazing how a simple database and a CD burner can fix things.
Have you *ever* seen v1 of a system work flawlessly?
There's lots of code out there in the world that has to work right the first time it's fielded. Code for things you launch into space. Banking software better be pretty damn close. Nuclear power plant and other machinery control code. All of these things have to be a cut above normal code, and they are.
Code for voting needs to be held to the same standards. Instead we have a bunch of nny-come-lately goofballs who think that thier buggy ecommerce product can, with a few tweaks and a few political connections, be voting software.
Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
Machine are better than people... ...because people are stupid dirty stinking liars.
Machines are just stupid.
Much like the bullshit Democrat Vs. Republican race the US is stuck in, the choice between hand counted or machine counted is a choice between the lesser of two evils.
The US will only wake up and create a better voting system when they overcome their idiotic obsession with choosing between two horrible candidates. (What? Are we Americans afraid what we might get done with a GOOD president?)
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
At some point maybe you just have to assume that Floridians are incapable of running an election.
why anyone would *believe* the results tabulated
by software that was immune to public audit gathered
from complex and bug-prone devices operated by a
secret mechanism is beyond my comprehension.
given the history of democratic elections around the
world and in the united states itself, it seems
more than apparent that such devices, if they
continue in use, will inevitably result in massive
electoral fraud.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
This is exactly what I did to vote today.
With the only difference from you don't show a "national id", but a voter registration card and a photo-id (which should be somehow combined in the future).
- sigs are for wimps.
This would never work. When another close race came, there would be people screaming that their vote was wrong. Some people vote one way when they think it is not close and would vote another way if they knew it were going to be close. This would just be just like the old people in Florida who claimed the butterfly ballot was too confusing.
As of my drive home, they were saying on the radio that the race was a "statistical dead heat." They also said that (at least some claim) that the incidence of problems is not uniform and that the worst problems are occurring in urban areas...
What they didn't say is exactly how a recount is performed with these systems. Does anyone know? Do you pull down "recount" on the menu and have it display the same answer it displayed before and say, "Look, a recount?"
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
It also has to be capable of verifying tha tthe voter is valid, that the ballot is valid, and that it itself is valid
You honestly think whatever company got the contract actually did this, and did it properly?
I'm guessing this is a Visual Basic app plopped on a Windows kiosk.
May we never see th
If and when open source programs reach 1.0, they're generally pretty solid.
I'm using finger-0.17-9, pam-0.75-32, pan-0.12.1-1, yafc-0.7.10-1, and passwd-0.67-1, for instance. All of these are quite high-quality, production-level software packages.
May we never see th
Last I heard, OC was still using a Votematic type punchcard system (PollStar is the variant I think you are describing). Funny how you missed the concept that this is the exact same system used in Florida 2000. So I guess you also missed exactly how so called hanging chad happens.
Hanging Chad: The stylus punched through but didn't tear the last little bit off. This is usually counted as a vote.
Dimpled Chad: For some reason, the chads from previous voters did not fall through, clogging up the space with previous chads. The result is a clear indentation in the chad from the stylus but because the space for the stylus to pass through is full, all it can do is dimple the paper. This is also caused by glue or other stuff in the hole either accidentally or intentionally damaging the guide to change the results in a precinct. If you will recall the bilingual education initiatives of 1994, you will also recall the widespread use of glue in the holes in OC.
Pregnant Chad: The chad is bowed in but not imprinted with the force of the stylus. This is usually caused by the voter placing the stylus in the wrong hole and then pulling it out. The chad is a little bowed but is not otherwise disturbed.
A Dimpled Chad is probably a vote but a Pregnant Chad is probably not. However, determining if a particular chad is one or the other is a problem that would make Solomon nuts. Then of course, simply moving the ballots around is sufficient to dislodge some chads.
As for OC being a pargon of virtue when it comes to elections, look at what happened in the 46th Congressional District in 1996. Nativo Lopez has never gone to jail for rigging the election of a US Congressman. The disaster of 2000 can be directly traced to the decision by congress to ignore a clearly rigged election. That decision lead directly to the free for all that happened in Florida.
Orange County would be my personal favorite example of how not to run an election except that there are so many states and counties that are so much worse.
Australia's electoral system is not perfect (we have a ludicrously unrepresentative senate where a Tasmanian Senate vote is worth about ten times that of one from New South Wales, and we are not immune to electoral fraud) but it has survived extremely close elections without the convulsions of the US system.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
It seems that people have not noticed the word "secret" in my post. The vote is still anonymous, since the identifier only matches the vote, not the person who made the vote.
Nevermoind that the voting machines didn't work. Lets remember that Florida is the land of rigged elections, thanks to our little friend Katherine Harris (a bigwig Republican).
Personally, I think her ass should be in fucking federal prison for criminal tampering with the election process. Please follow me on this one. I have been picking this one up on the way all through the AP wires (I get access at work) and a good book by Michael Moore called Stupid White Men that I have been reading.
Shortly before the election even began, Katherine Harris decided to expunge the system of any felons that might be in the system. Those felons were (by vast majority in America on average) usually of African-American descent. Finding and removing all of these felons would have been a herculean task, so Katherine Harris and all of her election board members decided to go with a close match criteria to expedite the removal of felons in the system. The Election Commission also sent out memos to other states to give them lists of other possible felons that may have moved to Florida. Take a big stab on the only state that gave them a possible list.
TEXAS. That's right. Texas.
SO WHAT WAS THE OUTCOME OF THIS? Thousands, and I mean thousands, of African-American voters that were NOT FELONS got turned away at the polls for matching up all of their kangaroo court requirements. THOUSANDS OF AFRICAN AMRERICANS, CITIZENS WHO EARNED THEIR RIGHT TO VOTE THE HARDEST WAY IN AMERICA COULD NOT VOTE. Imagine getting to the polls and getting turned away. Now imagine being black in America and getting turned away.
Here's another one: Entire districts were lost or counted as null or erroneous in Florida elections... or the locations were moved entirely. TAKE A STAB ON THE MAKEUP OF THESE DISTRICTS. If you guessed African-American, you'd be dead on the money. This is a PROVEN FACT. The election commission only messed with black districts.
DID KATHERINE HARRIS AND ALL OF HER ASSOCIATES GO TO JAIL? No. Actually she ran for US Senate. What a payback to get all of that campaign funds. I wonder where she got them.
In an interview Katherine Harris said that if Gore had been nice to her, he might have been president. After the fact, that ego alone tells me that all of the allegations are pretty much true. That statement alone wants me to see her go to prison even more.
So here is the question... with all of this crap going on in the system. Why is it that we don't vote? BECAUSE IT DOESN'T MATTER. THATS WHY. But many of us are out there for the reason to get our votes back. And we will. We will be watching the election commissions. You all should. Especially in America, where election commissions are appointed by the local bigwigs.
Each counter also has a Labour & conservative scrutineer looking over his/her shoulders.
In Brazil (were I live) we have near 15% of illiterates in the population. They can vote (but they aren't obliged, as people older than 65yrs) We are using voting machines during 5 years or so... they are fast... the results of a presidential election are known about 6 hours after the election ends (don't forget that Brazil is almost the size of USA!) with 98% (or more) of the votes counted... and we have regions like Amazon, with very difficult access... the system is based in numbers... each candidate gets a number... when you type it in the machine appears a picture of the candidate... if it's really your candidate choice you confirm your vote, or else you can correct it... the system permits blank and null votes (it happens since voting is mandatory here, so some people null or blank they votes if they think that no candidate deserves his/hers vote)
So... no rocket science here... and already done... I remember that after the Bush election some represenatives of the company that make the voting machines here went to the USA to offer these machines...
By the way, before anybody ask... the votes are encrypted, the data is dumped in front of testimonies (from government and parties), the data line used are encripted too (they use VPN-like networks)... pretty secure...
But there has been no review board. The companies who write this software have kept it a proprietary trade secret, just like every other proprietary software company. They have refused to allow any kind of review.
Good point, but that's really the Florida voters and legislator's problems. They didn't have to purchase a license for this software. The could have gone with any other number of voting methods (including more traditional voting methods....not every ballot is as confusing or difficult as the infamous butterfly ballot). If they didn't like the terms of the license they could have negotiated and/or pressured for better terms, or gone with a different voting method.
Dude, I wish I could mod you up +1 as Funny.You're hilarious!
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
Perhaps it is not bug-free (it usually isn't), but it is functionally correct. In my opinion, the companies concerned should be taken to the cleaners. If they won the contract by underbidding (or corruption - but that is another matter), they are still responsible for ensuring that the s/w is tested.
The point of OS is at least other people have a chance to audit the things (I guess the political parties would be interested).
Two words: Easter egg.
A programmer from the voting machine company walks into the booth. She types a nonobvious sequence of buttons. A week later the company lands another ludicrously overbudgeted contract from the surprise winner of the election.
Couldn't happen? Why not? If the code isn't available for public review, and worse, there's no paper ballot for a backup audit (recount), how would you ever know?
Their lousy voting systems don't affect the welfare of the rest of the nation at all.
Just to note... in Florida the election was within 99.98%. It better be a LOT higher than 98%.
Look, all you need is a paper ballot. The type where you take a pencil and complete the arrow to point to the name of the candidate you wish to vote for.
Part of the problem in the US is that they appear to go in for multiple elections at the same time and want to minimise the number of ballot papers.
Its extremely easy to print them. It is extremely easy to fill them out. It is extremely simple to hand count them or two design an optical scanner to read them.
So long as you have one election per ballot paper. You can even use a different machine to collate and count.
That's the way it used to be in most of the US. That system was largely abandoned because it was more susceptible to human error in vote counting and (in particular) a lot more susceptible to fraud. I'll admit that some of the machine voting systems are too confusing, but machine voting is still more accurate and harder to influence than good old handwritten paper ballots.
There are two obvious ways to make fraud more diffcult with a paper and pencil ballot.
a) The count is watched by candidates' representatives and any other interested party. (Which isn't possible with a mechanised system.)
b) each ballot paper carries a serial number and comes attached to a counterfoil. Reconciling ballot papers with counterfoils is a task which lends itself well to mechanisation.
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