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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.
I'm curious, has someone audited the code for these devices? How do I know that some employee ,who's a hard democrat, republican, or independent, hasn't added his or her little hacks. Like every fifth vote that doesn't agree with his or her view gets changed.
I guess with something as valuable as my vote, I want the source to be public.
You guys could have posted a reminder to vote today. The election results are all fine and dandy, but a well-written summary of "Remember to vote," voting locations, etc. posted this morning would have been appreciated.
I'd appreciate it if you could keep this in mind for next year. The more informed voters we have out there, the better. Slashdot could really help get the word out (especially on the issues that matter most to geeks!)
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It would've passed, but a lot of the supporters forgot to vote.
Wasn't Indecision 2000 the name of the campaign news on the Daily Show?
. . . Dewey really didn't defeat Truman.
Exit polls are oftened cited as a problem in our elections. How many times have you seen an exit poll while the election was still going on? All the time and often it simply discourages voters from casting their votes... Why bother is Candidate X is leading in the exit polls. I actually am interested to see if the mid term turn out is greater than normal as a result. Mid term elections are always crappy.
Thalasar
I think that the "if-voting-could-change-anything-it-would-be-illeg al dept." shows how irresponsible and juvenile /. really is. If everyone thought like you, anyone who felt like it could decide what happens to us. Your voice individually doesn't matter, but don't you realize that it matters when its a part of a group, no matter how large or small that group is. For shame.
__________________________________________
Take comfort in your ignorance.
Grandmaster Plague
There is a series of very interesting papers on voting theory, both on paper and electronically, written by a computer science professor and election commissioner. I recommend them highly:
http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/voting/
In particular, I recommend the essay on Paper Ballots, that's the theoretical basis for the current electronic systems.
The most interesting thing I've heard on the news today is that one of the international organizations that monitors elections in the Third World is monitoring the election in Florida this time.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
As for voting glitches, I only have this to say. If you have a complaint about an election process, better to voice it before the election, not during or after when your party's candidate is losing or has lost. The reports that lawyers are on standby for each major party infuriates me. Either the process is goofed to begin with or it isn't. Maybe I'm just an idealist, but I believe any discrepencies with the voting processes are going to affect all candidates, not just losing ones.
That's the one thing I simply don't understand about modern voting rhetoric. How could we possibly place more trust in voting systems simply because they are electronic? All this would require is a single person with a single clue somewhere along the data chain to manipulate the results.
It seems that fraud would become even simpler with computerized voting to me. It's like everyone is jumping on a train without thinking about its destination, or, more to the point, the path it will take to its destination.
Where do the results go? Do they go to separate databases, preferably several separate databases, as soon as a vote is cast? This would seemingly allow for "diffing," for lack of a better term, between multiple sources of final vote counts.
I'm in no shape at the moment to define how the electronic/computerized voting results should be quanitified, but PLEASE, at least let us consider these things, rather than saying to ourselves "Well, it's computerized now, so at least there will be no more fraud."
If we're going to redesign how the votes in this nation are counted, and I believe that we are all in agreement that this system of voting desperately needs to be revamped in this modern age (please feel free to tell me I'm wrong), that we can sit down and discuss how it should be done, rather than allowing our morbidly ignorant "representative government" to tell us how it should, and will be done for us.
Oh, wait, this is the US. I forgot, we have no say. Ah, well, cross your fingers and hope for the best.
1) Ballotscape creates the most innovative and foolproof voting software.
2) Ballotscape's software becomes installed on voting machines nationwide.
3) Microsoft releases "innovative" MS-Vote for free.
4) Microsoft embeds MS-Vote into Windows.
5) Microsoft gives away Dell voting machines to the States as a condition for overcharging for licenses.
6) Gates/Dell presidential ticket mysteriously captures 90% of the popular vote (Jobs/Feiss ticket only receives 5%).
Now, if VNS were as good at predicting the outcome of software development projects, as they are at predicting election results... Hmmm, maybe the problem is, they are.
Speaking of elections--Today was the election, but slashdot didn't even run a story asking geeks to vote. You'd think that a site that cares so much about "Your Rights Online" would at least point out a couple of candidates who have either very bad records on such things or very good records. You know, if all we do is whine about the DMCA, congress-critters will continue to screw us over. Voting, and getting other people to vote will make them sit up and take notice. Well, maybe 2004.
Even if it passes, it won't fly because a state can't legalize something that is federally outlawed.
Personally, I think the whole thing is silly anyways, there's more important things to worry about than one's ability to get high. Besides, people will do it regardless of the law anyway.
sometimes I really think that the South was right about State's rights.
We don't get the chance to vote on Federal law(only a few people to vote for us that only a majority of us chose), and when we DO get the chance to vote (State laws) they don't count worth a shit.
Something to think about.
Your belief that people will do it anyway is right on the money. So why punish them? It is an actual victimless crime.
If Slashdot did a good job of publishing information on who to vote into/out-of office (based on geek issues), then they wouldn't be able to post stories bitching about how much proposed bill yadda-yadda-yadda sucks for geeks. And then we wouldn't be able to read the dozens of responses posted bitching about slashdot not doing anything to harness their readership in politically.
I mean what fun would that be?
"And like that
Sounds like what Montana did with their speed limits during the 55 era. If you never drove through back in the day, it worked like this. If you get pulled over, coverage is pretty limited here, they only time I still see a highway patrol is near a city, or highway patrol HQ, you paid the cop a $5 ticket that didn't get written up to your insurance. Most people in the state, drove with a stack of of 5s in the glove compartment. Technically the speed limit was 55 so they got their highway money, but enforcement was very limited.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
But that's precisely the point -- people ARE smoking dope, and buying it and selling it and being put into jail for absurdly long times on account of it. I don't have statistics handy but surely you know the score -- our prisons are bursting at the seams, and the racial socioeconomic divide is still prevalent, thanks mostly to the drug war. It doesn't matter if you think people should smoke pot or not, or if you think that most pro-legalization advocates only want to get high themselves. What matters is that the drug war is a terribly expensive, destructive mistake and it needs to stop, now. Think about it.
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The 93,000 people that were not allowed to vote during the 2000 election in Florida were still on the list this time around. The company who created that list of supposed felons and dead people for Katherine Harris says that if Harris had not crossed off most of their checking processes off of the contract and they were allowed to process that list that the end result would be a list of approximately 3000 names. Ninety-one thousand people (mostly African American Democrats, curiously enough) would be allowed to vote today (and two years ago) if they were allowed to do their job.
The State of Florida, when confronted with this information, admitted that the list was flawed and that they would get it fixed...some time in 2003. After the current election.
For more information check out Greg Palast's book "The Best Democracy Money Could Buy". It's a heck of a read. There was also an article over at Salon late last week but it is in their premium contect section.
a state can't legalize something that is federally outlawed.
The federal government can't outlaw commerce within a state, can it? According to the U.S. Constitution, article 1, "The Congress shall have power ... To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes ... To declare war ... To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers" (my emphasis). The 10th Amendment gives the states the right to regulate anything not in Congress's exclusive domain. (The 14th Amendment limits that slightly by applying most of the Bill of Rights to the states.)
If banning beverages containing ethanol required an amendment to the Constitution, then how can Congress get away with banning pot? That should be the State of Nevada's right to put on the ballot.
Case law citations welcome.
Will I retire or break 10K?
nearly all laws congress makes that seem to have no authority to to do so, are based on this precedent. The intra-state activity could effect inter-state commerce. But this has been streteched to the breaking point. For example, why is it a federal crime to use a hand gun near a school, or to commit a "hate" crime. there is nothing in the constitution that seems to permit this.
scooby snacks all around!
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
It certainly helps if it isn't locally enforced. If local officials don't press charges or a local judge throws cases out the feds may never catch wind of it or bother to deal with it.
Obviously is isn't just about "one's ability to get high." It is about our civil rights and about people being able to get proper medical treatment. What the hell is the point of making a plant illegal?
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I've got two words that should fully capture how encouraged I would be by that prospect:
John Ashcroft
The Republicans had the Senate for a few months and it brought us the P.A.T.R.I.O.T. act, some of the most frightening abrogrations of basic constitutional protections, gutted antitrust enforcement, and who knows how many other goodies.
Fritz Hollings will be perfectly capable of doing damage whether the Democrats stay on top or not. As I recall, Republican Congresses didn't stop the DMCA or the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension act from sailing through.
This push to legalize marijuana is being secretly funded by Frito-Lay and Hostess.
A proper voting system administered via computing with adequate security measures would be fine. This means primarily NO INTERNET CONNECTIONS. If the voting machines were hooked up to any network, then the results could be tampered with by crackers or others.
... ... ...
A proper voting system also means using Linux or OpenBSD as the OS, not Windows 2k/XP, both of which aren't nearly as secure (or as stable) as a well-configured Linux or OpenBSD system. Also, they aren't controlled by proprietary interests like MS which would find nothing wrong with tampering with an election.
Also, of course, a proper program is needed, with an easy to use interface, with clear instructions.
Something like this would do for electing the Congressman:
1. Choose a Candidate for the Congressman by touching his name with your finger: X, Y, Z
Click preview to preview your voting selections.
2. You have selected:
For Congressman: X
3. If these are the candidates you want to vote for, touch YES! with your finger. If not, touch NO! with your finger.
If person touches NO!, back to #1, with previous selections highlighted, and allowing user to change it.
Very simple. Very effective. Even someone in Florida could figure it out. At the very least, you won't be counting divits and chads.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
I voted earlier this afternoon in Colorado (city of Lakewood). The system was very easy to understand, much as you alluded to.
There was no internet/network connection to each voting booth box. The people running the voting would take a hardware cartridge (like a Nintendo cartrigde of old) and plug in into the voting booth tablet to activate it, and then they remove it. Apparently they first "activated" it in some main computer. It was a touch-screen tablet PC with a straightforward interface... click the candidate you want with your finger. It then showed a big X next to who you voted for. If you wanted to change it, you could click a different candidate, and the X would move to their name.
Several pages of votes later, you get to review a list of all of your votes. If they look satisfactory, you push a "VOTE" button at the top of the tablet, which flashes red when you are ready to finish voting. Press it and you are done. I didn't see what happens after that. I imagine the computers keep a tally of votes on each, and they are plugged into the main server at some point, or the "cartridges" can be used to download the vote data and they plug into the main server.
But the main point is, there was no internet connection, no keyboard, a proprietary "cartridge" system for passing some kind of voter data or to activate the terminal for voting. Obviously I don't know the OS it was running, but it did seem fairly straightforward with no obvious ways to mess with it. Not to mention that there were 4 election representatives there overseeing everything and it would be way obvious if anyone tried to mess with the machines in any way.
I don't know if they had any kind of built in UPS, because someone could pull the plug out of the wall easily... but overall they looked like good voting machines with proprietary hardware, which is a good thing IMO...
Mark
>You must be new around here. The problem is that many with the worst records (Hollings) are democrats.
You must be newer. The "Worst coders in Washington" story lists the lawmakers behind the bills slashdot tends to complain about and its something like 90% Republican.
Source: http://www.aotc.info/archives/000152.html
>They would rather ignore one or 2 issues for the "greater good" of keeping the democrats in power.
Remember to turn down your radio before you call Rush Limbaugh.
hmm, I just read the actual article. It says:
Democrats asked for the initial order because some precincts in Pulaski County ran out of ballots.
In other words, people are showing up on time and not being able to vote because the equipment isn't working/available. The Democrats are trying to fix the problem, and the Republicans are trying (successfully, it seems) to stop them.
Florida, anyone?
Twenties Retirement
Well, it's hard to tell how well it's working. At the very least, I think they've improved their prediction system. It seems to be a combination of exit polls, a calculation of how close the race is, and how the vote goes historically. There's a page on CNN about it, but I have to admit I only skimmed it. =)
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2002/pages/how.html
~ Leilah
owned his own land, consumed his own food, raised his own seed and even made his own farming implements. Yet when he grew a federally banned crop they cracked down.
Wickard v. Filburn was not about a banned crop but rather about private growth and consumption competing with a rationed crop. Marijuana, on the other hand, is banned; therefore, the precedent may not strictly apply.
Besides, the Lopez case seems to represent a turnaround in the Supreme Court's view of the loose interpretation of Congress's enumerated powers. A win for the "good guys" in Eldred v. Ashcroft would also show that there still exist some things outside Congress's enumerated powers.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Most countries in Europe (and, I assume, the World), have been successfully experimenting with a revolutionary voting method:
1. Voters are given a piece of "paper". On this "paper" are the names of the candidates or parties, followed the respective picture or symbol, followed by an empty square.
2. Using a device known as "pen", the voters proceed to make a "cross" (a highly optimised mark, consisting of two straight lines) inside the "square" that corresponds to the person or party they wish to vote for.
3. The voters then fold this paper two or three times and insert it in a large "box" (a device for storing pieces of paper).
4. Once voting is over, advanced counting machines known as "people" (usually groups of volunteers, with one or two official representatives) take the pieces of paper out of the box and look at the marks made with the pens. They write down how many "votes" there were for each candidate. This process typically takes less than six hours, including one recount.
5. (This part will sound obvious to most people familiar with democracy, but americans may find it surprising) The candidate with the most votes wins.
It's a relatively inexpensive and ecological process, since the paper can be recycled. But, most of all, it works.
RMN
~~~
> a touch screen interface [...] the X magically appears [...]
> a card with a magnetic strip is activated [...] you go and
> stick that in the machine [...]
This was probably invented by Wallace & Gromit, right? It sort of reminds me of the NASA program to create a pen that could write in space. NASA (and american taxpayers) "invested" close to one million dollars on that. The russians used pencils.
> it eliminates multiple votes for the same office,
Huh?
> it allows you to *change* your vote if you've pressed the wrong box,
If you make a mistake, ask for a new piece of "paper". They're free.
> and it allows you to *verify* that you have voted for the right canidate!
I assume you mean "right" in a practical sense, not in a philosophical sense. In which case, using the "paper" method, you can use your "eyes" to look at the "paper", and you'll know if you've voted for the right candidate.
Also, computers are known to sometimes misplace some bytes. It's extremely rare for a cross made with a pen to jump from one part of the paper to another.
Sometimes low tech is good tech.
RMN
~~~
89% of voters polled said they supported legalizing Marijuana.
34% of supporters forgot to vote
13% supported legalization, but picked the wrong option
22% of supporters were unable to make it from the couch to the voting booth, collapsing at differing points between.
18% of supporters were too unmotivated to leave the house
7% were unable to complete the ballot due to incredibly poor depth perception
6% entered the voting booth, but forgot why they were there and thought they were in the shower
13% of those who thought they were in the shower began masturbating
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
I have no idea why this is modded down to zero, unless zogger usually posts a lot of penis birds or something...
You raise the biggest objection that I (and all of us should) have to "paperless voting." Where is the accountability? Where is the audit trail? How do we even know how the dang software works?
With paper ballots, you can always go back and do a hand count; and that frequently happens in elections. What do you do with electronic-only votes? And let's say you do re-tally the electronic votes, and you get a different answer... then what?
Sure, paper ballots can be lost, burned, counted improperly, etc. But at least they're tangible things. We don't even know what's in the guts of electronic-only voting machines. What happens when the power goes out? Mabye they have some weird Pentium math error that the coders didn't take into account?
I'm sure many on Slashdot will think I'm some sort of neo-Luddite for not trusting the technology, but DO YOU want to trust code you haven't seen?
I like the voting machines here in Seattle. It's a fill-in-the-bubble ballot, which then gets read by a computer. If they need to do a recount, they can always go back to the paper ballots. What are you going to fall back on in Georgia if, I don't know, lightning hits the voting machine, or evil terrorist somehow hack the central election computer?
Just because there's a new high-tech way to do something doesn't mean it should be done that way. The bread that gramma bakes in the oven is ten times better than the stuff coming from my computerized Zojirushi bread machine.
Some points:
The President submits a budget to congress (what exactly did you think Reagan was talking about when explaining his "trickle down economics" program? An Econ 101 paper he was writing?)
The President appoints the leaders of the departments of the executive branch (such as that Dept. of Defense, which accounts for 43% of federal spending)
The President gets to veto any law passed by Congress (like the ridiculous defense pork that the Republican congress kept trying to pass during the Clinton years -- despite the fact that our military is grossly over-prepared for any realistically plausible enemies)
Its interesting that the Republicans are the ones that spend money hand over fist (that little 43% number again) and then when caught with their hands in the cookie jar, grin and point at the Dems.
To get back to software issues, some of the stations had a fixed display format that could only handle two candidates (whether the numbers were correct or not), while others were more flexible (which they also needed for things like city council races, which here in California are usually Vote-for-N-of-M non-partisan.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Actually, that is an urban legend.
My Webcomic: Asylum on 5th Street
For example, why is it a federal crime to use a hand gun near a school,
because it's NOT! This law was overturned on exactly the 10th Amendment argument you are making. Sadly there are still lots of laws that completely ignore the concept of federalism but at least the Supremes are *starting* apply it here and there.
From that point of view last night's election is good news. With control of the senate GWB will likely get to appoint much more conservative judges than he would otherwise - judges who are strict constructionists and much more likely to uphold the 10th ammendment in all it's chaotic decentralized glory. States will be much more free to follow their own course - more libertarian in AZ, more theocratic in GA, maybe even more progressive in VT.
There's an easy solution, and I don't know why nobody's thought of it.
Make the voting machines print out a summary page.
Confirm your votes on the screen. The machine prints out a list of your votes, with a stamp on it to confirm which machine it came from and when it was made. You visually inspect the list and compare it to your choices on the screen, and then confirm a second time. Then you're done.
If something doesn't work right, then one of those 10,000+ lawyers that were at the polls yesterday could raise a Big Stink(TM) about it.
Sure, it could be hijacked. I mean, if it's got rogue code which is designed to only register votes for John Q. Incumbent, then maybe it'll print your results accurately, but actually log a vote for the other guy. SO...you do a secondary confirmation count by machine processing the paper votes, just like your fill-in-the-bubble ballots. Check the paper results against the electronic results. There you go. And in the event of extreme paranoia/lawsuits, you've got the *voter confirmed* paper printouts which can be visually inspected for a recount.
"Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
Congress's ability to make laws the regulate personal behaviour and practices entirely within a state ALL stem from the constitution's allowance for the feds to regulate inter-state commerce. And this was originally put in the constitution as a sweetener to join the union (i.e joint a free trade zone! much like reason everyone joined the EU or why nafta happened. scary).
Excerpted from www.fff.org: Enter Roscoe Filburn, an Ohio dairy and poultry farmer, who raised a small quantity of winter wheat -- some to sell, some to feed his livestock, and some to consume. In 1940, under authority of the Agricultural Adjustment Act, the central government told Mr. Filburn that for the next year he would be limited to planting 11 acres of wheat and harvesting 20 bushels per acre. He harvested 12 acres over his allotment for consumption on his own property. When the government fined him, Mr. Filburn refused to pay. Wickard v. Filburn got to the Supreme Court, and in 1942, the justices unanimously ruled against the farmer. The government claimed that if Mr. Filburn grew wheat for his own use, he would not be buying it -- and that affected interstate commerce. It also argued that if the price of wheat rose, which is what the government wanted, Mr. Filburn might be tempted to sell his surplus wheat in the interstate market, thwarting the government's objective. The Supreme Court bought it. The Court's opinion must be quoted to be believed: [The wheat] supplies a need of the man who grew it which would otherwise be reflected by purchases in the open market. Home-grown wheat in this sense competes with wheat in commerce. As Epstein commented, "Could anyone say with a straight face that the consumption of home-grown wheat is 'commerce among the several states?'" For good measure, the Court justified the obvious sacrifice of Mr. Filburn's freedom and interests to the unnamed farmers being protected: It is of the essence of regulation that it lays a restraining hand on the self-interest of the regulated and that advantages from the regulation commonly fall to others. After Wickard , everything is mere detail. The entire edifice of civil rights legislation stands on the commerce power. Under this maximum commerce power, the government has been free to regulate nearly everything, including a restaurant owner's bigotry. The Court has held that if Congress sees a connection to interstate commerce, it is not its role to second guess.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.