Slashdot Mirror
Indecision 2002
The most common story submission about the U.S. elections held today seems to be that the consortium which typically conducts and reports exit polls has encountered technical difficulties. If only they'd had an open beta program... There have also been a number of stories highlighting problems with new electronic voting machines, a topic Slashdot has hit several times in the past. CNN, the NY Times, and essentially every other U.S. news outfit are following the election results as best they can.
--well, first time for me today. I live in georgia, got to "enjoy" our closed source no way to verify it anymore computerised voting machine. We had paper ballots before, relatively easy to count with any old random pairs of eyeballs and really never a problem before.
After I finished voting I asked ror A - a paper receipt with my recoded vote, and B a copy of the source code used on the computer for outside audit to see that it wasn't trojaned or set up to manipulate the votes in anyway. No receipt available. Poor poll official in this small county was flabbergasted. Called folks, eventually got shuffled to some guy at the computer company. He wouldn't give me a copy of the code because it was propietary, well, that's the point sez I no way to verify it. If there's a dispute how do the people at the polls recount it-run the flash card through the same maybe compromised machine? And if the flash card itself is changed already? All they need to pull off the scam is get the total number of votes cast to match the numbers hand entered at the head of the line, the RESULTS are un-verifiable. This is a duh really, it's just totaly bogus.
The poll official really didn't get it, I honestly don't think they understood what the whole point was, see it's the magic infalliable computer that no government or other party would ever manipulate, no, that's just not possible, and the corporate dude I talked to on the phone was kinda sorta smarmy and was indignant, so no source code. He KNEW what I was saying but was play acting dumb. ButI made sure at least I protested for the record.
Earlier on drudge before I went and voted he had a headline of big problems in georgia with the machines already, casting and changing votes from one party to the other, etc-what I think a lot of hipper people expected to happen- but now I can't find it cruising some other news sites, it poofed from drudge as near as I can see.