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.
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.
It would've passed, but a lot of the supporters forgot to vote.
. . . 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
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%).
I wouldn't consider someone who decided to vote because he was "reminded" by a tech journal on the same day as an election an "informed voter."
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.
Nevermind Fritz Hollings (D-Disney), I'm worried about the kind of Stone Age judiciary GWB can appoint without opposition review. Remember what happened for those few months when he could? Maybe John Ashcroft would be more comfortable as a member Supreme Court than as AG.
No, thanks.
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.
My deviantArt site
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
~~~
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."