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Virginia Begins to Worry About Voting Machines
nonsecurity writes "Remember the unheeded stories about possible fraud with new electronic voting machines? Well it seems that someone is finally now taking notice. The Commonwealth of Virginia has been ready to take the leap with electronic voting machines, which many experts say are wide open to potential voting fraud.
Like other jurisdictions, Virginia had been shrugging off the concerns. But the Washington Post is is now reporting that Johns Hopkins Computer Scientists have been studying the issue and have found that the machines might be easily hacked and election result tampering is a very real concern. And apparently Virginia is listening. With next year's elections promising to be full of fireworks, it's good to see that people are finally taking notice of the issue."
Why not simply anonimize the data but leave the potential for anyone and everyone to verify the results?
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
The big advantage is that electronic voting will make election fraud, much easier to hide and so, less embarrassing for the free world's leading democracy.
Karma: Bad due to google bombing - Robert Watkins woz 'ere.
From the fraud in 2000, to the Republican Voting Manipulation in 2004 - they will win at any cost.
The highest cost being the integrity of the United States.
I don't understand the worries about electronic voting machines; they are just so convenient. I'm building one myself that uses the "poll" section of SlashCode, so that my fellow neighbors can vote (and comment) with out leaving their webTV's.
As they say in Hudson County, NJ... "Vote early, vote often".
In an amazing upset, the winner was not even running. It appears that Linus, maker of the well known Linux operating system has won the Presidential election. Of special note is how he received four hundred billion votes...
Why are these machines connected to the outside world? Why can't all the polling locations be on a LAN?
--I'm not talking about dance lessons. I'm talking about putting a brick through the other guy's windshield.-
If these machines really are insecure, then the John Hopkins researchers should just hack themselves into the Governor's office. Then it would be a simple matter to introduce better voting machines.
All machines had the same password hard-wired into the code. And in some instances, it was set at 1111, a number laughably easy to hack, Rubin said.
Go figure.
$ strings FTP.EXE | grep Copyright
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
Virigina is somewhat advanced in the way of politics. For example, in virginia beach, they have "no bad language" signs that have "#*$!" with an X through them. To have this, they must be proactive in politics. Now, with voting machines, just use embedded Linux or BSD and they'll be fine.
All voting software and results should be subject to scrutany by the OSS community. All fraud is shallow when subjected to so many eyeballs.
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
whaddya mean, "next year?"
Arent there elections this coming November? and isnt california having some emergency ballot this October - something about their governer?
But, it does make for a good story.
In a place where everyone and their dogs don't vote, what difference will it make if the results are screwed with???
Sounds alot like every other voting system.
My experience with poll workers is that they are serious and committed folks. But they are not the most savvy with computers and that may be the biggest security challenge.
Why not just install cheapo receipt printers into the voting machines and keep a paper tally that would be easily verifiable if need be. This would be good for an audit, and a statistically proper number of voting machines could be audited to insure valid electronic reporting. Although crude, a paper record is nice in it's resistance to tampering (at least electronically). At work we've got a dot matrix printer hooked to the door's ID card reader. There ain't no hacking that without physical access.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
India's been using electronic voting since
1 32 01701
years and the next general election will
be all-electronic with 800,000 electronic
voting machines.
http://sify.com/news/politics/fullstory.php?id=
If we truly believe that open-source tends to provide better security, we should be developing open-source voting software. I'm sure it would take a while to get much notice from the government, much less "certification", but we could start a grass-roots campaign for adopting it through, say, universities in student body elections (a target screaming for being hacked) or maybe even local elections.
I'm pretty sure the parent of your post meant something similar to this method: you go vote very much the way you do now (by presenting your id and signing a sheet of paper)...then you assign your vote to a number (that is not associated with your name in any record) and you make those numbers public, so that you can check against them. I think this system is also good because you can check certain numbers (for example 10,354 voters showed up at this voting location, so there should have been exactly 10,354 vote numbers assigned)
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
Jolted Over Electronic Voting
Report's Security Warning Shakes Some States' Trust
By Brigid Schulte
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, August 11, 2003; Page A01
The Virginia State Board of Elections had a seemingly simple task before it: Certify an upgrade to the state's electronic voting machines. But with a recent report by Johns Hopkins University computer scientists warning that the system's software could easily be hacked into and election results tampered with, the once perfunctory vote now seemed to carry the weight of democracy and the people's trust along with it.
An outside consultant assured the three-member panel recently that the report was nonsense.
"I hope you're right," Chairman Michael G. Brown said, taking a leap of faith and approving Diebold Election System's upgrades. "Because when they get ready to hang the three of us in effigy, you won't be here."
Since being released two weeks ago, the Hopkins report has sent shock waves across the country. Some states have backed away from purchasing any kind of electronic voting machine, despite a new federal law that has created a gold rush by allocating billions to buy the machines and requiring all states, as well as the District of Columbia, to replace antiquated voting equipment by 2006.
"The rush to buy equipment this year or next year just doesn't make sense to us anymore," said Cory Fong, North Dakota's deputy secretary of state.
Maryland officials, who signed a $55.6 million agreement with Diebold for 11,000 touch-screen voting machines just days before the Hopkins report came out, have asked an international computer security firm to review the system's security. If they don't like what they find, officials have said, the sale will be off.
The report has brought square into the mainstream an obscure but increasingly nasty debate between about 900 computer scientists, who warn that these machines are untrustworthy, and state and local election officials and machine manufacturers, who insist that they are reliable.
"The computer scientists are saying, 'The machinery you vote on is inaccurate and could be threatened; therefore, don't go. Your vote doesn't mean anything,' " said Penelope Bonsall, director of the Office of Election Administration at the Federal Election Commission. "That negative perception takes years to turn around."
Still, even some advocates of the new system are thinking twice. The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, which pushed for electronic machines to help visually impaired and disabled voters, says the Hopkins report has given them pause. They're calling on President Bush and members of Congress to convene a forum of experts to hash it out. "We have become concerned about these questions of ballot security," said Deputy Director Nancy Zirkin.
Her group and others supported passage of the $3.9 billion Help America Vote Act in November. Of the $1.5 billion appropriated so far to replace old machines, rewrite outdated equipment standards, encourage research to improve technology, train poll workers and update registration lists, about half has been released. And that has all gone toward buying electronic machines, which cost as much as $4,000 a piece.
"These vendors are everywhere," said David Blount, spokesman for Mississippi Secretary of State Eric Clark. "They're besieging everyone."
The remaining money is to be released once an Election Assistance Commission is appointed. By law, the board was to have begun work in February. But the names of the four commissioners, two from each major party, have yet to go to the Senate for confirmation.
The stakes are high. The 2000 Florida presidential election showed the shortcomings of the current system.
A subsequent Cal Tech/MIT report found that of more than 100 million votes cast nationwide, as many as 6 million weren't counted because of registration errors or problems with punch-card and lever machines. One study found that of 800 lever machines tested,
"The 2000 Florida presidential election showed the shortcomings of the current system."
The main shortcoming of the system is that it allowed Florida State Supreme Court justices to try and change the election rules after the election occured, and it allowed lawyers to lie in court in a wasteful attempt to overturn the election.
It works. The only thing we have to accomplish is prevent the sore losers from trying to mess things up.
"Couldn't the money the commonwealth is putting into this be better put to use in the failing school systems?"
That's the problem: subsidizing failure. If the system is shot, more money won't fix it. Spend the money better on vouchers and charter, magnet schools, and bypass the moneyed special interests entrenched in the Virginia public schools that enrich themselves and short-circuit any reform attempts.
I dont know why they'd implement a vote DB using Microsoft Abcess. Still, if they REALLY wanted to, they could implement this system.
1: DB exists with basic vote rules.
2: User walks up to votebox.
3: Person hired to do polls check idetity (so that they can legitly vote)- enables 1 session for user
4: The votes are tallied by unsigned long int incrementation counter for each "Politican". Be aware, the machine knows exactly what this user votes for.
5: An MD5sum is made for the whole vote session, along with printing the md5 and votes cast on 1 small piece of paper.
6: The MD5 checksum is stored in concurrent use of the data.
Some people may think there's a security hazard in step 3-5 as the poll worker can probably see what the MD5sum might be. That could be solved by saying to the user 'press any key at random. this is NOT part of the vote"
Just an idea.
... paper and pen? Put an X or a check by the candidates name. Real paper trails are easier to debug for tampering than the digital equivalent.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0308/S00014 .htm
Computer Voting Expert Ousted From Elections Conference
Lynn Landes
freelance journalist
www.EcoTalk.org
Denver CO Aug 1 - Dr. Rebecca Mercuri, a leading expert in voting machine security, had her conference credentials revoked by the president of the International Association of Clerks, Records, Election Officials, and Treasurers (IACREOT), Marianne Rickenbach. The annual IACREOT Conference and Trade Show, which showcases election systems to elections officials, is being held at the Adam's Mark Hotel in Denver all this week.
Mercuri believes that her credentials were revoked because of her position in favor of voter-verified paper ballots for computerized election systems. "I guess in a very troubling way it makes sense that an organization like IACREOT, that supports paperless computerized voting systems, which are secret by their very design, would not want computer experts who disagree with that position at their meetings."
Dr. Mercuri said that her credentials were approved for the first three days of the conference. She attended meetings of other groups and visited the exhibitors hall. But it was only on Thursday as she sat down to attend her first meeting at the IACREOT that President Marianne Rickenbach took Mercuri out of the room and told her that her credentials were being revoked. Rickenbach said that Mercuri had not filled out the forms correctly. Mercuri protested, but was refused reinstatement.
David Chaum, the inventor of eCash and a member of Mercuri's 'voter-verified paper ballot' group, had his credentials revoked on the first day of the conference. On the second day his credentials were partially restored. Chaum was allowed to visit the exhibitors hall, but not attend the IACREOT meetings.
Rickenbach was unavailable for comment as of this report. Mercuri can be reached at the Adam's Mark Hotel through Saturday.
Let's give the voting machine contracts out to the makers of the slot machines. If anyone knows how to make an electro-mechanical device that is fraud resistant, it's those companies. Plus, just for fun, they could leave the little wheels with pictures of fruit on it. :)
Democracy could run under the Slashdot system. Let each of the candidates post a response to the news item "Presidential Election 2004".
Then, moderate away on each candidate's post. The +5 Interesting ends up in the White House, the -1 Troll can hit the lecture circuit.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
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.
Print out receipts.
That way, you vote electronically, you have your receipt, and you throw it in a box before you leave. Random audits of polling stations with those results compared to the receipts.
Just another failover idea..
Some people may think there's a security hazard in step 3-5 as the poll worker can probably see what the MD5sum might be. That could be solved by saying to the user 'press any key at random. this is NOT part of the vote"
And then you'd be amazed how many typical voters will get confused looking for the ANY key.
Somebody (cue 200 replies) help me out here: why wouldn't you go open source for something like this? Other than some company with hands in the governer's pockets (and vice versa), I don't know a single good reason to give a private corporation control over the methods used to conduct democratic elections. Hacking and fraud by voters aside, what about fraud by programmers? Debugging tons of code is hard work - stealing an election is just a matter of a couple of "errors" in the right procedure; that 6% difference in a close race (or .2%, as in the last Presidential election) could be made to disappear, with nobody the wiser.
As for paper audits: if the perpetrators are smart, nobody would ever even suspect that we needed to audit an election...
My $.02
Web Design & Software Development
Some enterprising White Hat has to hack one of these machines before election day so that all votes are registered to Alfred E. Newman. Then all we have to do is watch the fireworks.
All your base are belong to us!
IMHO, anyone intending to fraud the elections would be aiming his ammo not at the voring machines, but rather at the counting machines. I can imagine that those are far easier to secure, but it's easier to bribe/bypass/eliminate 5 or 10 security guards at the center of the system rather than a few hundred guards at the leaves of the system... Why doesn't anyone ever question the security of the center of the system ? Especially with the most corrupt people being exactly there...
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
In a stunning upset, Apu Nahasapeemapetilon of Springfield, USA has been unanimously elected President of The United States of America. In an interview this morning , President-Elect Nahasapeemapetilon stated that replacing the ATM machine in his Kwik-E-Mart was the best idea he had since deciding to serve green Squishee's.
Springfield citizen Homer Simpson was asked what he thought of the new voting system, but apparently he entered the Kwik-E-Mart to vote, and then saw the hot-dogs and forgot why he was there in the first place. "Mmmmm. 3 day old frankfurters [drool]" was his only comment.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
" How do you know that slashdot management won't rig the pool of moderators on that day, or any other?"
shhhh. trust the cowboy.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
You're also hackable at step 3. Insert a corrupt poll worker and that voter can get multiple sessions...
What's wrong with good old pencil and paper? No issues with 'chads', with electronic tampering, with software backdoors etc. Works fine here in the UK. Yes, I know there are more voters in the US, but surely the relationship or voters to overseers is linear?
It would be embarrassing to have to get the SC to select him AGAIN. It's so much easier just program in the results.
Why do americans have this obsession about making everything more complicated. If you want a reliable solution to a problem use Occams razor. The simplest solution is usualy the best.
Voting on paper is cheap, reliable and it's very difficult to commit fraud, (a large number of people has to be involved), if you set it up right.
... we have just to develop a better overall system of government selection. Based on credentials and the ability to serve? Based on ethics?
Perhaps just dump voting for people for voting on policy. With today's tech, there is no reason we couldn't have a system of government that let's everyone have direct say in policy and lawmaking.
Basically trade a system that doen't work for one that could... for a distributed government system, where voters make policy, instead of corrupt individuals influenced only by money and power.
" It would be embarrassing to have to get the SC to select him AGAIN. It's so much easier just program in the results."
No, the Florida voters elected him (and put him over the top in the national electoral totals). The SC did not select him. In fact, the SC changed nothing except the timing:
SC vote Bush's way: Bush wins do to earlier vote counts.
SC vote Gore's way: Bush still wins because he comes out ahead in the vote that Gore asked the SC for in the first place.
Since the SC was irrelevant to the results, it would be just as true to say that the SC "selected" Clinton and Carter and Nixon too (aht is, not true at all)
1) Encrypt everything and place everything on a WAN that is not connected to the outside world.
2) Generate a unique/random PIN for each voter at the moment they walk into the polling station. Lock out that name/SSN from any further votes once a vote has been cast.
3) Utilize a small in-station camera that can be matched against a vote in case of alledged fraud.
While I know that item #3 will cause some privacy concerns, all image data could would be removed once the polling station closes.
Tux
Check out the great Linux PC I'm selling!
Anthony Papillion
Advanced Data Concepts, Inc.
"Quality Custom Software and IT Services"
The Johns Hopkins study isn't the worst of it. There is apparently a second report by some people who took a more detailed look at how the software stores data. It turns out that the format is MS Access, security is based on obscurity and that audit log entries aren't numbered.
http://www.equalccw.com/voteprar.html has links that go into more detail on this subject.
Cheers,
Coward 132-213
I think that the US should use that excuse for having Bush in the White House.
"I didn't do it! The computer must have had a virus!"
Curb CO2 emissions: Kill yourself today!
That's why there's usually 2 or 3 parties at EACH poll place.
And also, that's NOT a technological step. That's a human problem.
Of course, it's easily solved by capturing retinal (eyes, guys) images of EVERYBODY and then linking the retinas to MD5's (which the md5 is lonked to votes).
If that happpened, everybody would scream bloody murder, and rightly so.
Since the day after the fiasco in Florida I started to worry that this horror might end up to Canada. :p They should have started to worry the day after this thing happened. There's little chance that it happends tough, we get our national election results 2 hours after the election ends, so having computers crunch the votes for us is not really interresting. Plus I'm sure that designing a system like this would cost more in the short AND long run, since you'd have to hire a lot of people you'll have to pay a fews ten-thousand dollars for two years to make the thing, then test the hell out of it (let's add another 6 months). Then you'd have to buy a lot of highly secure hardware (argumenting that our'll be saving money using Linux instead of Windows on a 30000$ machine is pretty pointless, as Windows only costs 299$ of the total price) to keep the votes, plus add lot of terminals to vote.
I'm as much of a technophile as the next guy, but there are still things in this world that require the paper trail.
One has to ask, what is the problem that we are trying to solve with electronic voting? Is it cost? I don't think so. Elections only happen once a year and the results are far too important to cut costs while lowering quality.
What we want to do is increase the quality of the elections by assisting the voters in filling out the ballot correctly. With the automated UI the voting results can be checked against business rules... that is, if you're only allowed to vote for two judges then you can only check off two on the ballot, etc. It provides instant instructions and instant feedback.
But regardless, you need a paper backup to do audits on the election. And most importantly, as we learned in Florida, that ballot must be in a human readable form which can not be easily damaged through normal handling.
The best solution I've seen suggested is to have an automated UI which queries the voter for responses, but the end result is then printed on a laser printer to a ballot sheet. The ballot sheet lists the names, with markers that are filled in(or line drawn between two arrows) to clearly identify the selections.
The voter may then review their ballot to insure it is marked as they wished it to be, and if so take it to a secure optical scan machine just like we use today.
One benefit of this system is that it provides a backup mechanism in the event of failure. That is, if the machines are not working the voter can still cast their ballot with the good old fashioned pencil. The automated UI system is there only as a convenience item.
Any system which only records results in an electronic manner is subject to corruption. The results have to be on paper for auditing and verification purposes.
Cost shouldn't be an issue, this is far to important to the stability of our democracy.
""There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew.""
Awright, then I'm the captain. Swab the deck, matey (er, swab Australia). Arrrr!
Georgia Secreatary of States Position on H.R. 2239
Cathy asked that I pass on her message to you. Please do not hesitate to call if I or Cathy can be of any service.
Ann Rosenthal
Campaign Director
404-728-NNNN
Mx. Xxxxx,
Thank you for your e-mail regarding proposed H.R. 2239.
The passage of this legislation would be extremely damaging,
both to Georgia?s new electronic voting system and to those
which other states around the country are putting into
place. The legislation is based on a lack of understanding
of the operation of our machines and the software which
supports them. In fact, in discussing this legislation with
Congresswoman Denise Majette, I suggested that it should
more accurately be called the Voter Delay and Loss of
Integrity act.
After you touch the names of all candidates you wish to vote
for, the computer itself gives you a summary of your choices
and enables you to change those choices before you leave the
voting booth. That summary screen is the opportunity for
voters to verify their votes, and adding a paper receipt,
which presumably would be printed out while the voter waits,
would add delay (as printers are very susceptible to
breakdowns, paper and ink shortages, and other problems).
Additionally, after a paper receipt is printed, the voter
would have no ability to make further changes to their vote
without a very complicated adjustment to the voting machine,
which most poll workers would not be well-equipped to
accomplish. Additionally, placing a paper receipt into a
voting box or other instrument would add tremendous
potential for fraud, as pieces of paper have been known to
disappear from voting boxes in overnight and can otherwise
be very easily manipulated. Such ease of manipulation does
not exist with the new voting machines.
The second primary objection to the proposed legislation in
H.R. 2239 is that all software used in the voting machines
would be disclosed and available on the internet, which
would open up the integrity of our voting systems to every
interested hacker around the world. Once it is disclosed,
any hacker, any person interested in manipulating the
machines, would have access to all of the security built
into the software code and could then with ease manipulate a
state or county?s system if they could gain access to the
equipment. We have the source code available in a secure
escrow account, and our office can access it any time we
need to check the integrity of our systems. And each and
every unit used for voting in Georgia -- more than 22,000
individual units -- is individually submitted to logic and
accuracy testing before every election.
Please do not hesitate to contact me if I can answer any
additional questions on HR 2239
Cathy
You've chosen to post your terroristic musing as an "Anonymous Coward". Fortunately, we solved that problem months ago, so prepare for Enemy Combatant status. Hello Guanatanamo.
"Simple" is typically a subjective evaluation that has little to do with the appropriateness of a solution.
Lets apply Occams Razor to public policy. We can start with crime. Here are some simple solutions to stop crime:
Kill all the criminals
"Get rid of all laws. Without laws no crime
Both are simple. Is either solution anywhere near appropriate?
Occam's razor is not a safety blade.
"After all, the President was fairly selected by a clear majority of the SC. And the election results we've pre-programmed for 2004 are a landslide."
Get over it. Bush won the same way all the other ones did: he won enough states to get enough electorai votes. The SC did not matter; their decision on the matter (which was to let the actual vote stand) just made sure things happened as usual.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
The article talks about one problem that was their 5 years ago and was still there when reviewed. This was claimed to be fixed years and in fact was never fixed. Without open source voting machines, there is no way to gain the absolute confidence of the public, and a hacker somewhere is going to prove my point. You may think the newest version of an operating system is a big target, but it's nothing compared to the vote that decides who runs the worlds lone superpower. The only question is who will get the most votes in 2004, mickey mouse or daffy duck?
" The SC didn't "select" him. They "annointed" him."
If there was anything like annointing, it was inauguration day.
"The florida election was rigged."
Sore loser. Get over it. Move on. Your guy loses, so you make up stuff. Hint: all of the counts of actual votes showed Bush winning in Florida.
"Katherine "Eye Liner" Harris is sitting pretty in congress now (Well, not literally pretty..)"
We've really come so far to the point where what really matters about a woman is how she looks.
" This implies SAMPLING rather than a hard, vote-by-vote count when a recount is called for. Not acceptable to the Republicans, as has been made obvious by their opposition to sampling to provide accurate census data."
No, the Republicans are holding out to keep the census more accurate. It is more accurate if you only count real people. "Sampling" allows lazy census counters to not even bother to count people; just sit in the office and use trendy subjective "statistical techniques" to pad census numbers with imaginary individuals.
W lost the popular vote and a real recount would have indicated that he lost the EC also.
" Scalia and company decided that Bush won"
No, the Florida voters decided this
"declared that allowing recounts would cast doubt on the legitimacy of their selection"
huh? There already were recounts.
"W lost the popular vote and a real recount would have indicated that he lost the EC also."
1) The popular vote never has mattered. Check the Constitution. It might suck, but it is the law.
2) There were several real recounts. W won each one (hence EC victory). He even won the count that Gore asked for and was denied. The only way to have Gore win is to count ballots without Gore votes on them as being Gore votes.
1) How fast does it really need to be? Most paper counting can be done by that night, or at least the early hours of the next morning. It allows people to get worked up with anticipation for a while ;)
2) I agree with your comment about getting people involved with the counting. I've thought of this myself: the more volunteers involved in the counting, the more people who are actually involved with the election. I see involvement like this as a means to help fight increasing voter apathy. In the long run, I think electronic voting will increase voter apathy, and thus decrease democracy.
What, you were afraid that The Washington Post was going to get /.'d? C'mon, people - show some common sense.
there's some notion that there'll be no genuine elections, as the Godless georgewellian felons know that they may step from being the driving farce behind the unprecedented evile, into one of our finest fudderoll prisms, should they allow themselves to be unseated.
as to the free unlimited energy plan, as the lights come up, more&more folks will stop being misled into sucking up more&more of the infant killing barrolls of crudeness, & learn that it's more than ok to use newclear power generated by natural (hydro, solar, etc...). of course more information about not wasting anything/behaving less frivolously is bound to show up, here&there.
no matter back on task again.
cyphering how many babies it costs for a barroll of crudeness, we've decided to cut back, a lot, on wasteful things like giving monIE to felons, to help them destroy the planet/population.
no matter. the #1 task is planet/population rescue. the lights are coming up. we're in crisis mode. you can help.
the unlimited power (such as has never been seen before) is freely available to all, with the possible exception of the aforementioned walking dead.
consult with/trust in yOUR creator. more breathing. vote with yOUR wallet. seek others of non-aggressive intentions/behaviours. that's the spirit, moving you.
pay no heed to the greed/fear based walking dead.
each harmed innocent carries with it a bad toll. it will be repaid by you/us. the Godless felons will not be available to make reparations.
pay attention. that's definitely affordable, plus you might develop skills which could prevent you from being misled any further by phonIE ?pr? ?firm? generated misinformation.
good work so far. there's still much to be done. see you there. tell 'em robbIE.
" What, you were afraid that The Washington Post was going to get /.'d? C'mon, people - show some common sense."
The Washington Post content is locked out by one of those idiotic newspaper registraction systems. Rather than make everyone go through the hassle as registering as Elmer Fudd from zip code 90210 born in 01/01/1799, this person kindly posted the text in Slashdot.
"The CEO's probably heard from Microsoft that Open Source will make all your hair fall out and your company to go bust."
The first has happened to Ballmer. Is it only a matter of time for the company?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
That could be solved by saying to the user 'press any key at random. this is NOT part of the vote" What are you talking about? That IS how I vote!
"... This system itself woudl then require to send the Eyeball"
Do you recommend priority mail, packed with a good long-lasting freezer pack? Sure better insure the lil' orbs too.
I can't imagine what things would look like once the Datacenter was caught between a staffing shortage and a huge influx of last-minute mail. They'd be finding eyeballs under the edges of desks for weeks.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
The good old mechanical lever-type machines we had (:-( )in Marion County since time immemorial still look like better security design *and* better user interface design than anything else I've seen, be it paper or electronic. Definite visual and tactile feedback, Braille- and multilingual-capable, no electricity required, no system crashes, no possibility of erroneous multi-marking, and the counters locked inside a steel case -- what more is needed? (Okay the counters could be electronically readable via authenticated secure channel from a central tally office, but what *else* would you have?)
My point is, an MD5 hash ballot is no more secure than a paper ballet when it comes to voter fraud, it still depends on the honesty and fairness of the poll operators.
Ballots as bytes are a bad idea. I have no problem with a computer helping people fill out their ballots, but the end result should be a human-readable piece of paper that ends up in the ballot box for counting and recounting.
As much as I love computers, I think they are fraught with problems. I would feel very uncomfortable if my state's voting were done online.
"The elimination of thousands of African americans' names from the voter rolls, for having names that soundexed just like names of felons, was racist and morally reprehensible. The press here in the US suppressed it because of their conservative bias and cowardice to face what really went on."
- The vote cleaning system was put in place by a Democrat.
- The felon names were cleansed regardless of race
- The allegations of problems with it have been reported all over the press.
- The press has a slightly more left-wing (not conservative) bias, considering the LA Times, NY Times, USA Today.
In January, 2002 the State Elections Board approved two closed source touch screen voting systems, the ES&S Votronic DRE and the GBS Accu-Touch EBS 100 DRE.
This spring I raised the system integrity issues with the Board, and persuaded them to revoke the certifications.
Ben Masel: 51,282 votes for US Senate in the Wisconsin Democratic Primary
That's nice, but all it takes is for one state to ignore problems in its voting system for the election to swing one way or the other.
Heh. Go ahead and believe that Bush was not elected to be President, and in fact Gore is in the White House.
Maybe that will mean you will stay home next November, complacent that your man is President, and the Bush re-election landslide will be even bigger.
This also means that if Gore comes out of retirement and wins the Presidential election in 2008, we can't reelect him in 2012 since he has already been elected once and has served one term.
you go vote very much the way you do now (by presenting your id and signing a sheet of paper)...
I don't know where you live, but everywhere I've voted in the US, it's gone something like: Show up, tell one of the people overseeing the voting what my name and address are (no ID check). Watch to make sure they cross off the right name on the list (no signing anything). Vote (by whatever method the district uses. I've lived in districts with lever machines, paper ballots, and electronic ballot readers). Tell the person on the other side of the room what my name and address are on the way out (no ID check and no signing anything).
I've been registered and voted in 5 different districts in two states and I've never had my ID checked. In fact when I tried to present it last year they looked at me like I was nuts and told me they don't need to see it...
This just goes to show you what you get when you let hysteria drive your decisions.
Punch card voting machines are very reliable and secure, but because of some whipped up hysteria and misinformation, we're scrapping a perfectly good system for a nightmare boondoggle.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
This is how it works in Belgium.
The government announces new elections.
Everyone gets by mail a voter-card. Voting is obligatorily.
Everyday people are selected to chair a voting-house/place. (sorry, don't know all the english words). They summon others, or ask friends to assist them in their task.
The city/town where you live provides the place and necessary equipment.
Voting-day
You go with your voting-card to the voting-house.
You give your voting-card and your national ID card (yep, scream hell. /. we have national ID cards. wooheoo, scary...) to the person sitting there.
Two persons check their list with names (every person is assigned a voting-house, you don't get to choose where you vote) and tag your name.
Another person gives you the actual voting-card (different from the one you got at home. That one was a piece of paper. This new is some kind of smart-card)
You go to the vote-booth.
you insert the card into the voting-machine
you vote (it's impossibly to make mistakes. You can vote white space/blank)
You take your voting-card.
you go out of your vote-booth
you insert the card in a big recipientbox, which also counts the votes for faster and easier processing
Now remember tinfoil head wearing /.ers The smart-card was given to you randomly. It doesn't hold information relation to you. They are no camera's mounted that watch into the voting-booth. They are several people voting at the same time.
You go to the next person, who gives back your national id card and your voting-card. There is now a stamp on it, and it's your proof that you have voted.
Now the voting-house is closed.
The box containing the smart-cards is sealed and send to the countinghouse.
The countinghouse also is staffed by people from the people. Belgium is the only place in the world - so I was told - where the elections are completely held by the people. Yes, most people try to dodge serving, but every time enough people are found.
The machines give their numbers - if necessary you recount the smart-cards.
all votes are counted, the parliament is elected.
Now in the voting-house and countinghouse, there are always representatives from the parties present.
Foreigners are also present, to watch/control the elections. They, or the party reps can always raise hell, if something goes wrong. This has happened. Some districts even had to go vote again. Yes, you see. We don't fight it out in court, we revote.
Now you go home, and visit the site of the government and go over the code used. (try: www.belgium.be)
Now with all systems, digital, paper or otherwise. Trust and confidence in the system is needed. I, for one, have more confidence in the belgium system then in the american one.
After you voted, you can re-enter the card in the machine and see if it has registered you vote correctly. Changing it is impossible. If a smart-card is malfunctioning, you are entitled to a new one.
In the last election there was a trial-system. After voting, the machine would print you vote on a piece of paper.
this piece of paper, not containing any personal information, would also be collected and counted. To verify the electronic votes. Don't know what happened with that. The elections where right before the exams.
Now, this can't seem al that difficult to your technological high american society. Hey, you can build precision bombs, and find WMD with a sat.
Yeah, I know. the last few lines is trolling, but I just can't resist.
The article mentions $3.9 billion that was appropriated by the Help America Vote bill, and that Virginia is spending $55 million on 11,000 voting machines, which works out to $5000 per machine. That seems a bit pricey for a computer with a touch screen, doesn't it?
I assume that the Help America Vote law leaves it up to the states to procure their machines how they see fit.
How much could it possibly cost for university researchers (like the ones at John's Hopkins) to write an open source system for voting that could run on commodity hardware?
Perhaps the government should take $10 million of that $3.9 billion, fund the research, and GPL the result. Let the code be vetted in public.
Am I missing something?
Canada does this. And it works. Perhaps takes a bit longer to report the results, because they all have to be counted by hand, but the system works well. It's also not confusing. No punch outs, no complicated UIs to learn. Simply put a checkmark in the circle next to the candidate's name. Just to make sure, they put an example of what the checked box should look like, right on the top of the ballot.
All ballots are put in a securely-sealed box, which is opened up in front of officials representing the parties and counted.
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
Not only is his spelling atrocious but his entire message is just one huge piece of flamebait.
In that I live in Virginia, it's nice to know there's an option that I can simply hack the records, vote 117 times, and totally skew the results.
Wouldn't it be interesting to have a person elected by a majority of more than the entire population of the state? Just consider the implications! I could have my cat vote as well. I know there are a few thousand felons in the state (we DO border Washington DC ya know) who currently can't vote who might pay big money to be able to have 20 or 30 votes.
I think I've found the next economic boom!!!
Plant a tree in a developing country.
If they're going to take my vote down on electrons, I want to get something I can take away which records that vote, so that it can be compared to the official records in case of an investigation. (For that matter, I could authorize an unofficial tally organization to recount my vote -- if enough people did that, irregularities might become apparent.)
There's lots of technicalities about signatures and timestamps and encryption and such, but the point is that if they're going to take away the property that my vote has a *visible* path through the system and can be *visually* verified and audited at each step in the process, then that's not OK and I want a way to make them prove that the vote tallied for me is the one I cast.
I have worked as an Chief Election Officer for the past several years and have a few thoughts on our transistion to the new machines.
:)
For those who don't vote in Fairfax county, the machines we have been using in most precincts is the Shouptronic 1242, which was phased out last recently due to new voting regulations that stipulated minimum accessibility requirements (for the visually impaired) that the Shouptronic couldn't meet as well as maintenance issues for the aging machines.
I am certainly wary of the new machines we have coming down for the next election in November, which use the WinVote software and appear physically as large laptops.
The initial checking in of voters won't change the next time around. They will still have to state their name and current address, be assigned a number (for counting purposes, not associative purposes) and be issued a colored state sealed "machine enterance index card" which is relinquished to the officer supervising the machines themselves before they are allowed access to the machine.
The new machines use a phone line (modem) to remit results to the registrar and are portable enough to allow us to physically move the machine to the curb to assist physically-challenged voters (curbside voting law).
The number of conditional paper ballots we'll have to use will be lessened -- a good thing and I see that for the most part it will help in accuracy.
I see problems in a couple of areas however. Most people vote maybe once every one or two years, so their familiarity with the machines wanes over time. Completely change the machine and there will be a lot of people with a bunch of questions and uncertainty, which will initially present an appearance of confusion (and may be enough to get some lawyers on the case if they see an opportinuity). Secondly, with untested technology, it will be difficult to gauge the number of problems with the machine -- misaligned touch screens, software crashes, static discharge, space aliens, seasoned citizens, ingenious fools, etc.
In a month or two I'm going to be going back for training on the new equipment. I also believe for those citizens voting in Fairfax county, the Government Center has a sample machine available for those who want to become familiar with it.
A system for securly transmitting certified results to the county should work well, but I am really concerned with any kind of Internet voting. That's where I believe the greatest potential for fraud exists.
-Crolis
P.S. I got a heck of a lot of comments after 2000, since my first name is "Chad".
Or anyone for that matter ? If things go awry, the courts will appoint the next President, like our last presidential election. Problem solved.
Tired of being "punished" by the Slashdot $rtbl since 2002. I'm now over at http://soylentnews.org/ .
As subject: typo
This is where I have to type something to get round some kind of lameness filter in the slashdot code
You don't need to hack one of these to abuse it.
Just be a politician who backs the company that sells them like here
"Last one in is a rotten goblin!" - Kepp
hehehe somebody wasted mod points on an offtopic meta-comment. w00t.
What part of "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state" is so hard to understand?
I postulate that Democratics _want_ widespread election fraud, or at least the perception of it. They don't believe in voting, especially since the vast majority of voting (and even greater percentage of non-voting) public has turned against them.
If anyone remembers, three years ago the Union was almost dissolved because the Democratic Party and The Media estate thought that their exit polls were more accurate than the official vote, and that ignorance of time zones was a valid way to disenfranchize voters, and everyone else was too stupid to know how to fill out a multiple choice quiz.
What's wrong with using scantron voting ballots?
The voter fills in the little bubble for the person of their choice. They insert it into a reader and its checks to make sure the voter didn't do anything stupid (voted for multiple individuals, etc...). If there was a mistake it spits the ballot out while making a loud buzzing sound and informs the user about the error. If the user corrects the error or if there was no error to begin with the voting machine accepts the ballot and issues a receipt. This way we get the convenience of a machine count but with a paper trail that can be scored by hand if needed.
You can read the paper I believe they are making reference to in the article at http://www.avirubin.com/vote/
So why is voting anonymous?
I already run websites explaining how I plan to vote and how I already voted. I have campaign issue signs on my lawn. I talk to people in the halls at work and on the street - people largely know my voting intentions - so what are we protecting voters from?
Frankly, I think America lives in far too much fear and we should all vote openly and have our votes reviewed. I would no longer have any doubts that despite my pressing the button for Harry Browne in the last Presidential election - my vote was counted as one for Shrub the lessor. I do not know that my vote was mis-counted, but then, I don't know that it was counted correctly either. Hell I know nothing - because the damned system is so private.
http://action.eff.org/action/index.asp?step=2&item =2718
http://www.talion.com/election-machines.html
Who does own the voting machine companies?
A work in progress -- I started with the biggest company, ES&S, which handles at least 56 percent of the vote counting in the U.S. For the other companies, I've got sketchy information, most of which comes from swapping research with reporter Lynn Landes. See her web site for more: http:www.ecotalk.org.
Election Systems & Software (ES&S)
* = potential conflict of interest, see conflict section
Election Systems & Software operated under the name American Information Systems from its inception in the early 1980s until around 1998.
* = It was founded by Todd and Bob Urosevich, originally under the name Data Mark.
* = The Urosevich brothers obtained financing from the Ahmanson family, who took a 68 percent controlling interest.
The investment group related to the Ahmansons sold their shares in 1987 to the McCarthy Group (35%) and the World-Herald Company, Inc. (45%)
* = Involved with the McCarthy Group: Michael R. McCarthy, Chairman [See McCarthy Conflicts -- FEC document photocopy: McCarthy is designated Principle Campaign Committee of a Candidate]
* = Senator Chuck Hagel: According to the Congressional Quarterly, Republican senator Chuck Hagel was Chairman of American Information Systems. [See Hagel Conflicts -- Document photocopies for Senator Hagel; He lists the McCarthy Group as an asset, valuing his investment in McCarthy at up to $5 million, and omits mentioning that he was CEO and Chairman of the Board for the voting machine company, American Information Systems / ES&S.]
Omaha World-Herald Company:
Employees own approximately 80%. Of the 280 employees, only 28 currently own more than one-half of one percent. World-Herald employee stockholder maximum is 15%, so under the ownership rules, it is possible for just a few shareholders to hold significant sway in voting.
* = ? - Two of the 28 main shareholders (John Gottschalk and A. William Kernen) are on the Board of Directors for the Omaha World-Herald and ES&S. In 1995, both went public with an effort to reoganize the company so that they could concentrate less on the newspaper and more on other World Company investments. The reorganization was blocked in a lawsuit, which later settled.
* = ? - The Omaha World-Herald also owns: World Investments Inc., World Marketing Inc., World Events Inc., World Diversified Inc., World Newspapers Inc., MBS (a New York database marketing company), ACE Mailing Services (Atlanta, Georgia), Art & Technology (Omaha), Lee Marketing Services (Dallas, TX), World Technologies Inc. (Omaha), World Marketing Integrated Solutions, Total Fulfillment (Tempe AZ), The Rylander Company (Chicago IL), Redstone Communications (Omaha).
Other ES&S owners: In 1997-98 American Information Systems acquired Business Records Corp., a Texas-based election company originally called Cronus Industries. Twenty percent of the stock of the merged company was given to BRC owners. Among the owners of BRC/Cronus:
Caroline Hunt, of the Hunt Oil family, through her investment group (Rosewood Financial Partners)
Alex Sheshunoff, a financial data publisher
The late P.E. Esping, formerly of Omaha, founded First Data Merchant Services
Charter Oak Partners, an affiliate of Rothschild Realty Inc., which is an affiliate of Rothschild, Inc.
C.A. Rundell, CEO of Integrated Securities Systems, Inc., associated with Dallas-based Renaissance Capital Group Inc.: Renaissance U.S. Growth & Income Trust P.L.C., known as Rusgit, and Renaissance Three.
Ed Belanger president and CEO of CDS Technologies
Buttonwood Capital Corp -- Bass brother billionaires, I think.
L.D. Brinkman Corp. Its Vice-President and General Counsel Thad R. Finley also worked for Hunt International Resources Corporation.
William D. Oates of InterPro
All this, but we still don't know the names of the owners of ES
"Sure. Objective, hard data, and empirical statistical experience proves that sampling is superior to person-to-person enumeration. This is simple fact."
It is superior if you want fudged data. However, if you want more accurate data and want to make sure every person you count is a real person, then person-to-person enumeration is the way to go. No guesswork: just facts.
"Statisticians KNOW how to do accurate counting more than any politician. Leave it to adult experts rather than the wild-eyed, fanatical right-wing zealots."
As long as they are left-wing zealots (the ones damanding fudged counts), it is OK with you?
"The reason the Republicans were against it was that it would lead to a more accurate count of minorities and underpriviledged individuals, "
No, it would lead to a less accurate count, since it would pollute the numbers with made-up individuals. Minorities? This has nothing to do with it; I think you are being racist.
Let's leave the guesswork of statisticians out of it: just count the people.
"Statistical sampling is the underpinning to virtually ALL valid, empirical science by the way"
All statistics is guesswork. Come on, this is basic Statistics 101 !!!. All statistical guesses at numbers are inferior to actual counts.
The Constitution explicitly asks for exact accurate counts, not fudging. Too bad for you zealots, that dratted document is in your way again. You will have to write the "Replace Counts with Politically-Motivated Guesswork" amendment to change things.
"There are lies, damn lies, and statistics"
Some very smart people that setup the US government were very aware of the dark side of a democracy which is often referred to as the tyranny of the majority. This is a well known dark side of a "true" democracy is often no better than a dictator to those in the minority. This is one (of many) reasons why the US is a Republic, not a Democracy.
Jefferson (and many of the US founders), instead favored the concept "consent of the governed" where you were allowed to throw the bastards out if you don't like them (through non-violent revolution or elections). The main reason is that people as a collective group can often be misinformed, stupid, have short memories, and often later regret their decisions. The founders thought it would be better to have a system where representatives made the decisions, but let the people indirectly judge how they were doing with many checks and balances, elections.
Even the election of the representatives weren't necessarily trusted to the people in the original US constitution, the state legislatures were the original people who chose senators (until constitutional amendments changed that) and are still the ones who choose the president (through the electoral college).
Let's see how this recall in california ends up working out. Perhaps leaving a democratic free-for-all is something that will remind people to watch over their elected officials more carefully...
" You have any links to back that up?"
He won't have a single valid link. Instead, he'll post sites by anti-Bush activists that are nothing but rants, with no news. There will be no information or anything to back it up from an objective, non-partisan site. Nothing from any actual journalists.
Instead, you will get wild accusations sandwiched between "Chimp", "Dubya", "Commander in Theif", etc. If the sites represent a group rather than an individual, they will be connected to the Democratic Party, left-wing special interest groups, or the CPUSA (as in ANSWER).
Again, nothing but people with an interest in getting rid of Bush by any means necessary, even if it includes making up cute stuff about Florida.
"To claim that the law said that there was a certain deadline, but omit that the law also said that recounts must be allowed, is deceptive"
The recount deadline needed to be extended to allow the Democratic Party officials in the counting rooms to punch out enough new chads so there would be no doubt that Gore won. They were already well under way, removing large numbers of chads (showing up on the floor in photos and news footage of the counting rooms).
Is why does the US use this punch-card system anyway? Its needlessly complex and too prone to error.
Up here in Canada, we have a very simple system. You get a black card with the 4 or 5 candidates on it in white boxes. Each box is connected to a white 1.5cm circle. You scribble an X in the circle you want to vote for.
There are also instructions to tell you to get a new card if you accidentily X'ed the wrong circle (don't erase, destroy and redo)
Then its very easy to check the votes, no mark, 2 or more marks, or a non-X all get thrown out. The ballots with a single X then get counted.
Simple, no?
This is not a sig.
"connected to a white 1.5cm circle....Simple, no?
How many inches is that?
Most people would agree that the militia cannot be considered to be well regulated if it is not fully aware of the number and/or sort of arms that the component members have. And it also could not be considered to be well regulated if it did not have a full accounting of the training and capabilities of those constituent members. If it didn't know their names, locations, et. al. And since "well regulated" was the first major thing that the founding fathers threw into this Amendment, it's irksome that people gloss over it or abandon it wholesale because it doesn't fit in with their ultimate goal: no regulation.
If you don't like guns, don't own one. Butt out of the affairs of those that choose to exercise their rights.
" So, did either one of you einsteinian genuises check out the one and only link in my article?"
Of course. It was a personal site be a left-wing columnist. Again, not a real journalist.
He's just another extreme ranter. He has many links to rant sites and books, one of which is accompanied by "Courageous reporting - read this book!" -Michael Moore.
Another perfect example of one of those links sites that claims to back stuff up with editorializing and bile-filled rant. It is as bad as posting links to George Will or Rush Limbaugh. They are NOT news.
The only conclusion to come to from links like this is "Oh. This web-guy has the same ideology as the guy who suggested the link, and shares his opinions".
Step 3.5: Corrupt poll worker gives 200 votes.
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Common mistake, occam's razor can be paraphrased as the simplist **explanation** that fits the evidence is often the correct one.
e.g., crime... someone who is running from a crime scene is probably the criminal (even if that person has a convoluted explanation why that's not the case). It may not actually be the case, but more actual evidence would be needed to contradict the simple explanation, not evidence that just so happens to support the convoluted explanation and doesn't contradict the simple explanation.
Occam's razor applied to voting. Perhaps the simplist explanation to the fact that voting tabulation isn't reliable is that voters (especially in florida) are stupid and bad people want to manipulate the counting verification system. Adding a convoluted electronic counting system doesn't make people any smarter and doesn't make bad people not want to manipulate the counting verification system, but if we were to do an experiment that showed (or proved, but that's hard to do), that electronic voting was more reliable, then occam's razor might suggest that it was the counting that was wrong, but if electronic voting wasn't more reliable, then I think the original premise would still probably be true and more evidence would have to be gathered.
Hard to say if electronic voting would help make vote counting more reliable or how one might go about measuring that, but that's why we do science. Usually humans aren't smart enough to devine the "why" or the "how", but at least we can (sometimes) agree on "what" happened (although political spin doctors often try to take that level of understanding away as well)...
Sadly, even so-called scientists today aren't very interested in science, but they more often than not have their own agenda in mind and this usually clouds their judgement and often skews their results as well...
I am not even kidding. How hard would it be to program an open source voting system? There could even be an voting booth distro.
What drove me crazy was the artical did not say what the problems with security where! Shure they covered the bugs not really the security problems.
An open source version could help the states insure that there are no back doors or hacks. It would make the auditing of the source much easier.
Heck it could be usful everywhere.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Bush got 90% of the tax cuts he has sought so far?
In 2001, he got 75% of what he asked for in tax cuts.
In 2003, he got 48% of what he asked for.
That's not 90%
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Occam's razor is still fallacious and leads to error, as it places arbitrary preference to explanations which have the supposed attribute of "simplicity".
"someone who is running from a crime scene is probably the criminal (even if that person has a convoluted explanation why that's not the case)."
I'm glad the courts tend not to use such fallacious reasoning. Especially if a) the Boston Marathon was going on and lots of people were running from the crime scene or b) a gun was fired, who would not run away from this sound?
"It may not actually be the case, but more actual evidence would be needed to contradict the simple explanation, not evidence that just so happens to support the convoluted explanation and doesn't contradict the simple explanation."
No, the explanations should be evaluated based on more valid criteria than one explanation meeting a person's arbitrary decision of "simplicity".
"Adding a convoluted electronic counting system doesn't make people any smarter and doesn't make bad people not want to manipulate the counting verification"
If the convoluted system produces better results, by all means use it regardless of violating Occam requirements.
why we need voting machines at ALL! Be it open or close source.
Please explain how a voting machine which most of the public would be unable to understand is somehow harder to rig then a paper a pencil and a box. As long as you can hide anything there will be fraud. They cart off the ballot boxes in most states so you have no clue if the ballot box that arrives at the court house is the same one that left the polling place. "Open Source" might make the published code bug and tamper free but what stops someone from tampering with the voting machine and replacing the code? Are they going to let me debug the code or run somekind of checksum on it before I cast my vote?
There is no way I will ever trust a voting machine of any kind. Hell I don't trust the paper ballots we have now as I can't watch them be counted. They leave my sight and who knows what happends to them.
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
"That over 80,000 names are known to have been removed that should not have, and the majority of these were democrats?"
Show a source, please. Objective news only, not a fringe-wing bleater.
I also posted this in the Maryland article, but I figured I may as well post it here too:
I live in North Dakota, and I recently saw an article about how the move toward the Diebold voting machines in the state has been put on hold because of the recent publication regarding the lack of security, etc. I think it's good that states are taking it slow and making sure it's done right, rather than just rolling out the first thing that comes along.
The most secure way to prevent fraud is to have one touchscreen machine that *punches* the votes that the voter chooses onto a preprinted paper ballot, and a separate machine that then reads the votes, displays them on the screen, and stores them on voter acceptance.
This way the operation of the machines can be easily checked right before voting. If the votes are also cross-referenced on the electronic and paper records (by having the vote-reader (machine 2) punch the card with a time stamp and the machine number)) then any tampering would be easily traceable by comparing the paper and electronic records.
The voter is also part of the checking system, since they would be able to visually inspect the ballot and see what the reader displays. Any anomalies would be easily caught either before or after votes and would eliminate either electronic records disappearing or printer ink/jamming problems.
An even greater level of security would be to have the second machine create a hash value using all previous votes and insert that into the paper and electronic records as well , so that any tampering of the votes would clearly show up as being out-of-order.
I think this system of separating the elements of voting would solve most code/version/security problems by being so redundantly checkable. Any hacking should be pretty obvious.
Can anyone find any flaws in this system?
I have to wonder as well. Here's why. I've lived in three different voting districts in my area in the past 8 years. Every person who was working the polls was 60+ years of age (common hair color was white or blue)and seemed very comfortable going through their printed out lists, I'm not so sure they would be very comfortable with a computer based voting system.
I have to wonder how knowledgeable they would be about the setup, and how they would handle the problems that would invaribly arise during the voting. Power failures is the first to come to mind. Can my 78 year old mother read the screen? For that matter if it looks like a computer she'll probably leave without voting ("I don't know how to use the damn thing can you vote for me?" would be something like she would probably say.
Me I would like to be able to vote from my pc at home, if they could just work out a way to get me my "I voted" sticker in realtime...