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Electronic Voting: Your Worst Nightmares are True
jfreon writes "On Democracy Now Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting fame, disclosed (near the end of the transcript) that in the compromised 1.8Gigs off Diebold's FTP site they uncovered "an actual election file containing actual votes on election day from San Luis Obispo County, California". Problem is, the date stamp was 3:31pm - during voting hours! The Diebold system uses a wireless network card. Worse: "So that means if they can pull the information in, they can also send information back into those machines. ""
This needs to make mainstream press, and DAMN QUICK.
I know this will get modded troll, but the stupidity of the general public is the biggest problem. I mean, people in FL couldn't figure out the chad ballot system... How in the world do we expect them to figure out an electronic system? Security IMHO is really a close number two problem compared to this.
The people who care are people who like to live in a democracy as opposed to a country where the leaders are chosen by the people counting the votes (similar to Stalin, Saddam)
"The head of a company vying to sell voting machines in Ohio told Republicans in a recent fund-raising letter that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."
Yes. Your votes are being scammed to keep the neocon scum in power.
BOO! TERRO
How about some protections for democracy back home first? This is utterly unacceptable.
Everything seemed to be going so nice
'till the end of all beings punched right through the ice
Does those voting data also tie person with vote? In other words can you "just" rig the election, or can you also keep a full database of people's voting habits?
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Next time when they decide to use WS FTP someone should tell them to disable the WS_FTP.LOG files. *shakes head*
Go ahead, throw your vote away!
In typical slashdot fashion, we must protest this gross error in security the only way we know how - BOYCOTT!! If millions of geeks suddenly stop voting, the elected officials are going to HAVE to listen to us ... right?!
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
I think the safest thing we can do now is to wholly invest in this new technology and pretend the problems aren't there. If we change things around at all or abandon this technology, hackers and terrorists win. Think about that.
save all that mis/dis/couNTing. we know when we're kneaded?
vote with your wallet.
Is it too much to hope that our public officials will realize the potential for corruption, fix it (though any of the possible ideas which have been suggested on /.) and move on?
True, paper and pen ballots are vulnerable to tampering and etc, but at least you can recount the ORIGINAL ballots as the voters filled them out. Electronic ballots lack such a safeguard. Unless of course we print out a paper-copy of the ballots to keep in a lock-box just in case the voting procedures are called into question. But then why not just use paper ballots in the first place??
before we worry about the voters figuring out the ballot system, let's worry about how the voters are educated about the candidates in the first place. at least someone with the knowledge to hack the voting system in the first place is educated. their choice for our nations leaders would better suit the technology savvy of us anyway. what are we worried about? the ball is in our court.
peace,
-Grokent
The Commonweal Institute has compiled quite a bit of information (scroll down to the links) about the problems with electronic voting machines.
"So that means if they can pull the information in, they can also send information back into those machines. ""
Mod me down, because I am obviously too dumb to realize that just because the data from a machine makes it onto a server, does NOT mean that you can push data back.
You think, maybe, the voting machine pushes its data to a repository and defined intervals? Maybe? kinda?
teknopurge
I wonder why they don't just write each vote to a harddisk locked safely away at the base of the booth. It would be simple enough to have secured panel access from the outside of the booth that contained the drive and an interface (take your pick) which could be used to extract the data once the polls had closed. Upload all the results at once and wipe the drives when complete.
What about the twinkie? - Dr. Peter Venkman, PHD
We're supposed to have elections that are free and fair. Without a paper trail or other permanent and immutable (practically, at least) record of individual votes cast, how can any election be verified as either free or fair?
--- Submission is feudal.
As the next President of the USA, I promise to make fixing this problem one of my top priorities.
Republicans are too dumb to figure out this stuff and Democrats are too honest to monkey with it. Leave the system as it is. :P
Trolling is a art,
Are you kidding? If the vote is this easy to rig? Congratulations, CmdrTaco, you've been elected!
Practice Kind Randomness and Beautiful Acts of Nonsense.
What is the big deal?
Big brother is your friend, and just wants to look out for you. You must learn to trust big brother!
Dire consequences await those who do not trust...
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
Great, now we'll have people cruising by with cantennas and VoteStumbler trying to get extra votes in for that black guy from Hackers
Not necessarily. Just because a resource can be read from doesn't mean it can be written to. With proper design...
Oh -- we're talking about Diebold? Nevermind...
Roving Web-Teleoperated Robot
The mainstream press has been silenced after the Communist party won a landslide victory in the latest presidential election recount.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
The general public and opponents of electronic voting will use this as "proof" that e-voting can never be stable and reliable. I fear that any blunders we have now may severely cripple public perception to the point that the masses won't WANT to e-vote, despite the ease and efficiancy such a system could provide. I also fear that we won't be able to EVER make an unhackable e-voting system - humans are falable creatures, and with something so obvious a target, there will always be attacks launched against it to expose the inevitable weaknesses, with resulting bad press.
...then again, maybe the public will get used to crackable e-votes. I mean, what, 95% of them run Windows unpatched, right?
Every technological setback may end up as another knife in e-voting's back.
The longer I'm a member of the Human Race, the more I believe Apocalypse is a valid solution.
...next thing you'll know, we'll get an actor elected as president.
Thank god the DMCA prohibits the disclosure of this type of info, because if anyone finds out... we'd be screwed.
help me i've cloned myself and can't remember which one I am
The following names were found in the data...
Edgar Neubauer
Prudence Goodwyfe
Mr. and Mrs. Bananas
Humphrey Boa-Gart
Snowball I
As expected they all voted for Sideshow Bob
But can I pour hot grits down my pants?
Does it keep track of who votes and how? No, fortunately, but the damn thing won't even give you a reciept. No proof, no tracking, no accountability. Not what I wanted in a voting machine. "Leader, only 16 people voted against you! What more could you want?" "Their names"
Boycott everything - they're all trying to fuck you one way or another
I've read elsewhere that is it illegal to count votes before the polls close. Would this constitute such a breach?
Go directly to jail. Do not pass Go, do not collect $20,000,000.
Screwing up voting systems is beyond the pale. No joking. No faux gasps of shock. If this isn't resolved, openly and utterly and rapidly, then the game is over for democracy in the USA.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Maybe fewer people will be able to form their opinions on freely available information that way. That's what you neocon/conservatives would like, after all. Just like Britney Spears says:
Don't question the authority. That's the way to go.
BOO! TERRO
Can we say DieboldGate?
--Azaroth
whatever turns you on.
Here is another episode where they talk about Electronic Voting. Dan Wallach a professor of computer science at Rice University is the guest. He is the one who wrote a report about Electronic voting
What is wrong with this picture? And if nothing is wrong why can't I edit the Slashdot home page?
Think about this and answer honestly: If the same guy were a vocal supporter of a politician who you support, would you be convinced he was going to cheat? Or would you see it rationally- the man has opinions, just like every other person in the world?
Username taken, please choose another one.
Unless an electronic voting method can be proven (in the mathematical sense) to be accurate and secure, we probably are much safer from fraud using pencil and paper in a highly distributed voting scheme.
Perhaps a few precincts can be corrupted with paper voting, but the whole nation can be corrupted with electronic voting. What moron puts a wireless adapter on a voting machine, anyway?
Voting is a fundamental exercise in any democratic system. I think being very cautious and conservative is justified, here. Chasing electronic voting for its own sake is simply foolish. It almost seems the push for electronic voting is due only to hungry contractors trying to make a dime for themselves. The 2000 Florida vote is merely a red herring in all this.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
I work with a guy who used to work for Diebold for several years. He is aware of this "electronic voting machine" issue, and can confirm that Diebold truly has some abysmal "security" built into their products, not to mention pointy-haired bosses from hell. He told this story about Diebold ATM machines that was so hilarious and utterly pathetic that I would be afraid to share it on /. Why? Because the feds would find out that I shared such info with one of you stupid script kiddies when you ratted me and my /. post describing how to circumvent Diebold ATM machines, and then I'd really be in some deep doo-doo according to the DMCA!
Now Bush will not need $100 million to buy the election. Just hiring Kevin Mitnick for a mere $1 million will suffice.
Therefore, he will not need to get bribed by the military industrial complex and the tobacco lobby.
Therefore he won't have to act as their bitch once he is (has) elected. This is good news !
1.Break into voting machine
2.Change votes
3.??
4.Profit!
Does sound familiar?
It sure does. Sounds like a lot of stupid slashdot posts trying to compare things to SCO to get mod points even though they are totally idiotic. Matter of fact, after reading some of your other posts I realized you have NO clue what you are talking about and just spew out random crap to get Karma.
It seems to work for you though so congrats.
Even more interesting is that Diebold would MAKE MORE MONEY if they sold voting machines with add-on printers so you could deposit a paper record of your vote in a separate ballot box! However, Diebold - and the other voting machines companies that happen to be owned by Republicans - OPPOSE this!
Additional revenue from add-on sales like this - and the service contracts that would go with it - are immensely profitable.
So what is going on here?
Also, they insult and ridicule anyone who tries to point out that electronic voting machines that cannot be audited are a problem! Even the hundreds of computer scientists who have spoken out are told they don't know what they are talking about. What IS going on here?
What would be so difficult about adding a printer, and having the voter look over the printout and then deposit it into a separate ballot box? Why are they so dead-set against doing this, even when it would make them tons more money? Are these Republican-owned "businesses" after something besides money?
Don't just complain, act: There is a bill in Congress introduced by Rush Holt, D-NJ. It is called "The Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2003". It is H.R. 2239. It currently has 29 cosponsors and needs more support. The Summary page is here. The press page is here. Congress is in session again now. Contact your Congressperson and demand they support this bill. It would require a voter-verifiable paper trail.
skkkoooonnnggggkkk ptui
Remember Minority Report? Those wooden balls? We should use a system like that. A voter would enter the polling place and be handed a brown ball as a ballot. The ball would be etched with the his or her votes, then sealed and dropped into the box.
Anyone voting absentee will be given a red ball and a kit for etching and sealing the ball, as well as a mailer and call slip.
Yes it would be possible to tamper with the vote, but the number possible would be very low. Someone trying to stuff the ballot would have to obtain a large number of balls from the same stock of wood the real election officials are using. They'd also have to use the same chemicals to seal the ball, and the same type of etching equipment. They'd have to manage to get truckloads of fraudulent ballots into the official count, just to make a difference.
Silly, I know. But it's about as far off in the other direction as the electronic method as I could make it.
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
Not from voting but from doing such sensitive business.
BOO! TERRO
My god, if Bush wins 2004, we may well be witnessing the first rumblings of a new civil war! FUCKING AWESOME! Legalized killing, rape, pillaging! Finally all those hours of playing Vice City will pay off.
This does not surprise me.
The only way people are going to get a wakeup call is if a group of people got a database of eligible voters from local precincts complete with whatever data is necessary to fake a ballot, go into said precincts, and make it look like some unknown Non-Democrat/Non-Republican party candidates (who wouldn't have won anyways) won the election.
Alternately, it would humor me if some "terrorist" organization used this hole to severely screw up the vote by mass-wiping voting terminals/databases.
BTW: How would someone catch this before it's too late? Most precinct staff are volunteers, and they definitely can't see who voted what...
the general public won't notice.
If someone were to tamper with the things, they wouldn't make it a Saddam-ish, 100% of the vote.
Then again they might get Micheal Bolton to mess up the decimal point.
It's worse than you think. Election Systems and Software, the company that builds, owns and largely runs many of the voting machines used in the US (and 80% of those used in Nebraska) was at one time headed and is still partially owned by Chuck Hagel, Republican Senator from Nebraska - who, surprisingly, won unprecedented victories in his state against an incumbent Democrat governor, winning by the largest landslide ever and taking the majority among demographics that had never voted Republican in the past.Hagel had avoided reporting his ownership, and then the whole trail started to come out into the open. It also turns out that Election Systems and Software was heavily funded by the conservative Christian fundamentalist Ahmanson family.
But real mathematically sound proof isn't required.
The general public will accept a solution that is good enough.
Even a mathematically sound solution will fail if it is implemented incorrectly.
Nobody credible has proposed a reasonably anonymous and secure method yet (except the printed paper ballot)
Geez. Flamebait? You folks suck.
Jeffool.
No.
BOO! TERRO
In a stunning change over past elections, apparently 300X the population of America participated in the last Presidential election!
;)
Fox News is heralding the new technology as "a success."
Diplomacy is the art of saying, "Nice doggie!" until you can find a rock.
us geeks will rule the world!
Muahahaha....
Will code a sig generator for food
Yes - if you also subscribe to the idea that: "Any person who criticizes Israel in any way is an anti-semite".
Do you think that a) the electorate is capable of electing anyone based on intelligent principles, b) that there is actually a choice between any major (even Green) candidate, and c) that we even achieve a simple plurality in elections anyway?
The end result is that we have a minority group of undereducated voters picking between Candidate Number 1 and Candidate Number 1. Where's the practical democracy there? The Libertarians will argue that its all good because at least we willingly choose to be run by an elected, and in some cases, hereditary elite. But if you're using the US as a yardstick for the implementation of democracy (or even capitalism, but thats a whole other story), then you're living under a rock.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Electronic voting systems were flaunted as a way to avoid these problems.
Unfortunately, electronic systems cannot fix these problems because they all stem from the stupidity of some Americans. If they are so stupid as to be unable to follow simple instructions on completing a paper ballot, then their opinion on the "best candidate" is likely to be irrelevant. They are unlikely to be able to pick the "best candidate".
Further, these ignorant Americans will be unlikely to follow the simple instructions for completing an electronic ballot as well. The electronic system might prevent them from selecting multiple political candidates, but they will still, somehow, end up in being unable to select the candidate that they want.
// Voter Validity Checks if voterID is an int
// If it is, then dude, it must be valid!
voterIsValid = KindaVerifyVoterValidity(voterID);
// A switch would be better but the way I
// see it, there are only two candidates:
// the one I want to win and "who cares"
if(vote > 1 && voterIsValid == True){
vote_for_my_candidate++;
vote_for_whoever = GenerateRandomNoise();
}
I call shenanigans!!!
(go home and get your brooms!)
I hate to spoil a conspiracy theory, but maybe they don't like the implication that their machine might be flawed. It's like Oracle telling their customers to also keep a dead-tree cardbox system in parallel *just to be sure*
Be wary of any facts that confirm your opinion.
Sounds too simplistic too me. So, because I have a "modem", I can always edit the information on sites like perhaps Microsoft.com? Not really true.
Why would they keep score of the voting on an internet server anyway? Keep it offline and let officials phone in the results, I'd say.
Will code a sig generator for food
If these systems do not get fixed and soon, I think it would our patriotic duty to proceed with hacking EVERY voting machine to render them useless. If the election cannot be guaranteed to be fair, it simply shouldn't happen. Who's with me?
That's one of the first things done when an electoral system is set up in a country new to democracy: we force them to use voter ID cards to prevent vote fraud.
Hmm, and Democrats oppose voter ID cards. Maybe it has to do with keeping these 98.6% voting percentages. How many of that 98.6% voted for Al Gore?
I suspect that there must be a legal document that outlines the minimum requirements for an election system. I suspect that many of these systems being proposed simply to not qualify if a proper analysis is done. Why are the states going down this path without first doing a thorough analysis ?
I suspect that there is a way to create an electronic voting system that will comply, I certainly don't think it can be proprietary. If anywhere it was mandated that a system be open to public scrutiny, this is it !
And democracynow.org's accusations are only slightly more believable than, say, the Onion or the Weekly World News.
Don't get me wrong, I hate the very thought of electronic vote-counting machines as much as everyone. With the power-hungry loonies out there, the temptation to fuck us all over is going to grow far to strong to resist, regardless of their political leanings.
But, there's a few good reasons why the timestamps might have been off. Maybe the server's clock was off. Maybe the data was transmitted to a server several timezones away at some point. Who knows. Trying to point out discrepencies due to the date on a file on a FTP site is weak, at best.
And to state that since you can pull the data out, you can push data back in is just idiotic.
Typical trash posted by a typical idiot left-wing journalist, on a blatently biased web page.
The idea of EVM2003 is to create Free Software voting machine, and to implement machines that also produce voter-verifiable paper trails (i.e. visually readable printed ballots). We will do a number of security things right, where the commercial companies have done them wrong... they have aimed for "security through obscurity" or "just trust us." As well, part of our requirement is to have fully blind-accessible voting that maintains complete anonymity.
Anyway, I (David Mertz) have taken over as Developer Lead recently, and am trying to get the development of the demo rolling. Part of that effort is recruiting some more developers, and splitting the project into several only loosely connected parts. Feel free to contact me--the standard ballot system (in the demo version at least) is being done in wxPython; but conceivably we would choose other languages/technologies for bar-code reading, printing, blind-voting, etc. (my preference is to use Python though, for consistency and rapid development).
Buy Text Processing in Python
So can anyone point me towards the file that was (is???) on Diebold's website? I live in that county and I'd damn well like to know what information was made public.
As for the time stamp, I'd have to know the context of the information and how the timestamp is generated before I'll get too excited about that.
And the "if you can pull, you can push" argument is pretty silly...BUT, there is certainly two-way communication going on. Even if it's just handshaking, authentication, and acks, there is data flowing both ways. Any time this happens, there is a chance someone will find an exploit.
Again, can anyone point to the file itself. I want to see what information was made public.
If I had my choice, I would much rather be debating our role in Iraq, the national economy, and patent law instead of whether the presidents cock should have been stuffed down an interns throat.
Excessive forking causes un-wanted children.
Can any of us be surprised about this? Diebold's chronic lack of security in general has been discussed at length here on Slashdot and other places for a while now.
The only accountability this company has been held up to so far is the public disclosure of their lack of procedure or policy governing these very important aspects of their product. However, in a totally predictable fashion, their customers are still purchasing their product in a headlong rush into this 'new' form of voting.
So to sum up, Diebold has been embarrassed on this issue publicly, but behind closed doors (where the deals are made) it appears to be business as usual.
How do you know that what is recorded on the hard drive is what the voter chose?
Who gets to decide if the software is acceptable?
For some noob hacker to rig a national election...
Kevin Mitnick coming to a white house near you!
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
If the system is hackable, the best way to demonstrate it's vulnerability is by hacking it! I suspect that if somebody like, say, Weird Al Yankovich carried several states in the next presidential election, that would probably send a strong wakeup call! How do we set this up?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
So that's why Gore beat Bush in California. Those damn Democrats tried to steal the election there too!
"Lord, grant that I may always be right, for Thou knowest that I am hard to turn" -- A Scots-Irish prayer
is someone who's not afraid of a $250,000 max. fine and a 5 year max. federal prison sentence to electronically write in Kermit the Frog for president. Seems like it would be impossible change the outcome of even a local election without getting caught if the election wasn't tight, but not that hard if it was.
If you're diabolical enough to want to change the outcome of an election for whatever reason, you could probably find a way to circumvent any elections system, be they paper ballots or mind reading machines from the 24 and a half century. Either by direct bribes to registered voters, or dissuading blocks of voters through disinformation, etc.
As others have said, support the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2003 by writing or calling your representative. At least we can try to make it harder for fraud to occur.
Don't you mean Representative or Senator?
why make up a gender neutral term when one already exists?
My other sig is extremely clever...
...PRESIDENT Cowboy Neal.
Make it happen Slashdotters....
I know of a case where numerous wintel-based ATM's got compromised by Nachi because they were years behind in patches. The vendor responsible for the ATM's? Diebold. Sounds like the confidentiality & integrity of any data within this corporation should be called into question. [For confidentiality purposes I can't name my source. It didn't make the news that I know of so I can't provide a link. Sorry.]
akad0nric0
This sentence no verb.
Point is paper is a PITA. However, it is substantially more difficult to compromise a physical ballet than electronic data.
A paper trail is comparatively expensive, but worth its enduring characteristics in recording a vote.
Suspicious; but, not necessarily true. It could be a data stream that's output only.
"Neocon?" Isn't that the politically-correct codeword for "Jew-Supporting?"
Yes... why, yes I believe it is!
Why, no it isn't! In fact, it's a term created by Irving Kristol, father of Bill Kristol (the founder and editor of "The Weekly Standard"). Irving Kristol founded the New York Intellectual tradition of "Neo Conservatism" as a transition from Democratic liberal Trotskyism (a group of Democrats who were former Trotskyites) to Conservative Republicanism (meaning the joined the GOP) in defiance of Democratic support for anti-war protestors during the Vietnam era. You have your history completely wrong, Sir. How does it feel to be ruled by a group of former Trotskyite "Neo-Marxist: intellectuals? Because that's who's running the GOP at the moment.
Here is a notable quote taken from the link above:
" Ever since I can remember, I've been a neo-something: a neo-Marxist, a neo-Trotskyist, a neo-liberal, a neo-conservative; in religion a neo-orthodox even while I was a neo-Trotskyist and a neo-Marxist. I'm going to end up a neo- that's all, neo dash nothing."
Maynard
Except that most polls show Bush being pretty popular now and he is the odds on favorite to win in 2004. It may not make everybody happy but I doubt that even a few million teenagers like you are going to start a Civil War.
I would also point out that the last Civil War was because of a bunch of crybaby Democrats not liking the Republican (Abe Lincoln) who was elected to office. The funny thing is they thought he was going to abolish slavery which he had no intention to do but was forced to do to keep England joining the war on the Confederates side.
The regime change is here. The rule of the self-righteous, rabidly religious, human right eroding and nominally conservative but fundamentally a big government that caused so much political damage to the US that it almost negated the goodwill gained during WWII, will finally be over in 2004.
Stop supporting a dead regime. Embrace political and intellectual freedom over dead-end religion and nationalistic dogma!
Okay, so you want a conspiracy theory. Fine.
So you want that conspiracy theory to involve tampering with elections. Also okay.
Now you want that to be electronic tampering by the company who makes the voting machines. Cool.
But now you're blaming it all on the Republicans? Come on.. That's just ridiculous.
A solution to the problem with music today
Maybe it's just me, but I've noticed lately that a large number of comments are anti-semetic.
Could we just for once have a place in the world where people's prejudges against one another could be put aside and we could just talk about facts?
Then again, this person was so pathetic coward, they had to post AC.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
Harris told Democracy Now!: "We now know that the machines that they're making that count the votes are not secure from tampering. And add to that, we've got a situation where everything inside the machines is secret, we're not allowed the see how they count the votes. So this is not an acceptable situation."
I know! I checked out the souce code from the h4x0r3d FTP site. In fact, I even recognize the hardware it was written for! (Atari 800) It was written in atari basic. The offending code looks like this.
35 if gwb algore then goto 40
37 goto 45
40 gwb=gwb+(algore-gwb)
45 goto 10
You can tell by the line numbering that this was put in as an afterthought. Ya I bet those bastards didn't think anyone could still decipher archaic line numbers and goto statements of atari basic, BUT IM STILL HERE HAHAHA!
I, for one, welcome our new Presidential overlord.
getting too many ideas that are gonna get me in trouble... Must stop self...
I found that interview very interesting, but was a little surprised right at the end when Harris said that all modems are 2-way, so that if they could download this data, they could just as easily upload their own altered data. She implied they could alter the voting data this way.
Even non-geek listeners should be aware that the ability to read some data does not imply the ability to write over that data. Most people's experience of the web is a read-only affair. I felt it was misleading FUD to tell the audience that read implies write. Even if the voting machines allow fetches by good-old-fashioned FTP, there is no reason it assume it would take any less than a full-scale hack to upload altered voting data.
Bruce Schneir's Crypto-Gram featured the reports about rigging elections using the Diebold system. Let's put this in perspective: Elections in the US have always been rigged one way or another. What electronic voting brings that is new is a means of rigging an election with subtletly so that malfeasance is easier to deny. Ballot box stuffing is a crude way to steal an election compared to this new system whereby a candidate can be made to win by only a few votes in certain precincts. No more dead people voting, no more reliance on illegal aliens. If this stuff goes mainstream, American democracy is finished. Not that it isn't already, in most respects. I'm not a fan of democracy anyways, in my lifetime all I have seen is government grow and grow at the expense of everything else.
Get Tech friendly people into office! Get rid of the RIAA crones!! Clone friendly people in office so I too can have my own Ashley Judd!!! Sing: Dream, the impossible dream. =)
... maybe, just maybe...
The offending counts were generated locally on one of the machines, basically making differential counts along the way. And maybe a snapshot of that machine was placed on the FTP site, after the fact. Maybe.
Although, the transcript indicates that the tallies consisted of more than just one voting machine. That'd mean that the machines did talk to each other, and that's A Bad Thing(tm).
help me i've cloned myself and can't remember which one I am
If I had my choice, I would much rather be debating our role in Iraq, the national economy, and patent law instead of whether the presidents cock should have been stuffed down an interns throat.
Would you rather be debating on whether the President should be held to the same legal standard as anyone else in the country? Like, for instance, if they got on a witness stand in court, and swore, under oath, and blatantly lied? If it was me, I would have been charged with perjury and put in jail...
"It's better to have a gun and not need it than need a gun and not have it." ~ Christian Slater, True Romance
Well, it's not a matter of blaming it on Republicans, but on a group of very far-right types who not only are trying to hijack the Republican party, but are trying to silence people (like Bev Harris) who report on this.
Reason Magazine, by no means a liberal nor hysterical magazine, seems to have no compunctions about identifying this as a problem with roots in the right.
when Linus gets elected President?
-- Fratz, human
But Oracle DOES say to make backups....
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Why? It's perfectly reasonable for him to prefer one party over the other, and to vote and spend his money accordingly. He has opinions like everyone else, why does it bother you that he expresses them?
Si vis pacem, para bellum
The only thing more annoying than a Libertarian is an (un|mis)informed Libertarian
So you rather that he didn't tell you he supported Republicans? Does that make any sense? I think it is better to know so that we can take that into consideration.
Just like Britney Spears says...
I read that quote earlier and was amazed at how immature and naive Ms. Spears really is. Has being a multi-millionaire pop-queen taught her nothing, or is she living in some sheltered fantasy just parroting what "daddy" says? She really isn't a good role model for any child in this country.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
And as to keeping it offline, that is what they promised to do. Only it turns out that it had both modem and wireless...
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
People seem to see a black and white issue here: either you leave machines out of voting and deal with people that are unable to vote correctly or count correctly, or you bring in a black-box voting machine that is unauditable and a target for vote rigging.
I believe that a machine would be very useful as an intermediary: people input their vote to this machine via a touchscreen, it shows them who they have voted for and allows mistakes to be fixed, then prints out a vote card with their vote. The bonus...the card is machine printed, so electronic readers would be able to count votes insanely fast (much like a multiple choice test at a university).
Another huge problem this fixes is voting order on a ballot. I believe there's evidence to suggest that often being the first name on a ballot automatically gives you more votes. A machine would be able to randomize the ballot each time to avoid this completely.
Please, pick this idea apart if there's obvious holes in it!
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
Now we should believe that democracy is way too good to be true. From every other way looking at it, the U S of A is getting more like anything than democracy. While it's still keep pumping the words, it's not even close on it's acts.
What power does people have? Well, people can say things, while do nothing. That's people.
She's openly said that muslims should be forcibly converted to christianity and that the press is a bunch of liberal traitors who should be shut up and sorted out by force.
What the fuck has happened to this country?!
Let me see now
Clinton Impeachment
Florida 2000
Texas Boundary re-drawing
California recall 2003
Diebold voting systems
Ever get the feeling you're being taken for a ride?
-- Free software on every PC on every desk
If the guy ran a voting machine company, and the voting machine company made machines that can't be audited, and then we found on that company's website that they were illegally obtaining data DURING an election...
And if the company - even though it would MAKE MORE MONEY - refused to make an add-on printer so a ballot could be printed, examined by the voter, and put in a separate ballot box for counting to verify that the machine correctly reported the totals...
Well, I might not be convinced he was going to cheat, but I sure wouldn't want to trust an election to his machines.
Remember, with these machines there is NO WAY to know if the machine correctly reported the vote.
SOME of us here work with computers, so we know that sometimes the computers make mistakes. So wouldn't it be a good thing if we had a way to verify what a machine reported?
What if a machine just broke down? Do we hold the election over again, or do we throw out all the votes from that precinct?
This is just a feature that allows anyone who wanted to run for govenor make the process even worse by illegally cheating. This feature will probably get removed because illegal cheating is cheap, while legal cheating is expensive.
Democracy Now does its own fine job of silencing itself. I have never met anybody who doesn't listen to it strictly to laugh at the idiocy that comes of their mouths. If they ever said something that wasn't horribly biased I would drop dead. They are far worse than Fox News. I think if maybe you watch Fox News and listen to Democracy Now and average the two you would get much close to the truth.
good, i'm too lazy to go out and vote!
For crying out loud, I almost expected you to chalk it up to a "vast, right-wing conspiracy" there. Tone it down a bit.
Your votes are being scammed to keep the neocon scum in power.
Just remember that it was the liberal Democrats who were in power at the time of the election, both nationally and in the Florida legislature. It was the liberal Democrats who demanded that pregnant and hanging chads, double punches, and votes for Buchanan, all be counted as votes for Gore. It was the liberal Democrats who argued that absentee ballots from oversea military personnel shouldn't be counted.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
If the voting hardware/software were open, I'd buy your argument. However, here we have a clearly partisan manufacturer and a closed system. That doesn't ring any alarm bells?
BOO! TERRO
MMMmmm how about not deserting your military post?? If you deserted you post for over a year and a half you would be tried in a military court and probably executed if the offense took place during a time of War. I guess if your name is Bush you can get out of serving in Vietnam and even disregard military law.
Yeah, right. Lying about a blow-job would never get you that. John Doe would get a lot of understanding from the judge and the jury.
Got a link for more information?
Why spend $ when you can push packets to get the govt you want?
Wish we could have kept this quiet. Imagine how much moolah we could have got for geek toys if we had sold this important election "enhancement" tool.
OK, so it's a "conspiracy theory" to notice that companies usually like to have add-on sales, but this one doesn't.
Can you name one (other) company that doesn't want to make a big, fat, lucrative add-on sale, and because "they don't like the implication that their machine might be flawed?"
Actually, this is one of the times I'd be LEAST likely to suspect election fraud. You seem to forget that any election more attention-getting than local school board is going to be continuously monitored by opinion polling.
If, as you suggest, the landslide was fraudulent, then the election results would have no relation to either the pre-election polls or the exit polling. This would attract an awful lot of attention in the media, and I believe that any fraud on the scale that you suggest would at least be openly accused.
The only place, in my mind, that election fraud would be useful beyond the threat of detection would be in extremely close races -- those that no one has any idea who will win. In those cases, than altering the votes by 1% would still be within the margin of error on even the exit polling, and so wouldn't be immediately suspicious.
"Evil company X is threatening to restrict our rights! Let's all get together to stop--OOOH! SHINEY!!!" -- AC
No matter the merits of the story, I am shocked and appalled at the lack of journalistic judgement used by these people. Do they not remember the counties that had "troubles" in the 2000 election? Palm Beach county, the seminal example, had a Democrat for a Supervisor of Elections and a ballot that was designed and approved by Democrats. Whiny crybabies, that's what these people are. Bush received a majority of the Electoral College votes; get over it. Presidents have never been elected by popular vote.
For what it's worth, I'm for a repeal of the Seventeenth Amendment and give the States a voice in the Federal Government again! The original Constitution of the United States was a finely balanced work of art; the Seventeenth Amendment destroyed that balance by stopping the voice of the States and giving that voice to the People, already represented by the House of Representatives. Senators were originally, and rightly, to be elected by State Legislatures.
Bart: So finally, we're all in agreement about what's going on with the adults. Milhouse?
Milhouse: [steps up to blackboard] Ahem. OK, here's what we've got: the Rand Corporation, in conjunction with the saucer people --
Bart: Thank you.
Milhouse: -- under the supervision of the reverse vampires --
Lisa: [sighs]
Milhouse: -- are forcing our parents to go to bed early in a fiendish plot to eliminate the meal of dinner.
[sotto voce] We're through the looking glass, here, people...
Let's see, Republicans are in the majority in both Houses and also control the White House.
Surely the Democrats have not reaped any benefits from this. Offhand speculation would obviously scrutinize the Republicans harder during such a period of political power, wouldn't you think?
Hammer of Truth
And you suppose the notoriously inaccurate opinion polling could get you a recount. No way.
Now let's see... what about having run a company for 15 years, and thereby learning that companies LIKE to make add-on sales, makes me "a whiny progressive?"
And what about knowing enough about computers to want a back-up system in place makes me "a whiny progressive?"
And, finally, what kind of debate points do you think you made with that stupid-assed comment?
Wow you are off. Jeb Bush is govenor of Florida. Why did ole Jeb put riot police in Black voter precincts on election day? Also, the over seas votes that you are probably talking about were the ones that did not arrive in the specified date range. Do you really think that there are no rules pertaining to absentee ballots?
Election fraud should be severely punished. Those in charge need to guarantee that the election has been conducted without any "irregularities". This means that we should hold those in charge and those supplying the equipment to be legally accountable for any problems. Redundancy with paper output would allow for a recount to check to see if there were problems. Any company supplying faulty equipment should be severely punished. The company should be motivated to provide secure and redundant counting. And the elections officials should likewise be motivated to make certain that there is no way fraud can occur.
Speed in counting? Who needs it? It's not like the offcials take office the day after the election anyway -- hell, the President has to wait two and a half frickin' months. Why the rush to have an instantly-countable system?
Furthermore, in many other large-ish countries (such as France, the UK and Germany), voting is still done by making a big honkin' X on a circle next to the name of the guy you want. And no, it's not a bubble form that has to be filled in just right -- just make your damn X as sloppy as you please. No hanging chads, no network to hack, no problems reading it. And they still have the results in by the morning in time for the early papers.
So why have electronic voting again?
Cheers,
Ethelred
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
Looking for a job?
Want your resume written professionally?
DON'T USE TUNAREZ!!!
In Communist Russ... *beep* ...upload complete.
In Communist America, the computer votes you!
The only way to end war is for everyone to get a piece!
At least we know now how Bush got elected.
Obviously the dead have risen, and they're voting Republican.
As of the election, the Republicans controlled:
The US Supreme Court
The US Senate
The US House
The FL governorship
The FL secretary of state
Both branches of FL legilsature
The Democrats decided to allow Republicans to count votes that were illegal under Florida law existing on election day. Those alone tipped the election.
Get your facts straight.
- Could we just for once have a place in the world where people's prejudges against one another could be put aside and we could just talk about facts?
- Then again, this person was so pathetic coward, they had to post AC.
FOOKIN' LOGGED IN USER! Hell, you're UID isn't e'en below SIX digits, why the hell should anyone lissen to th' likes o you?!!How dare you cast aspersions against the annonymous coward! He's the most profligate poster on slashdot, and a nooklear rocket-surgeon to boot!
A corrupt presidential candidate who is poised to lose an election suddenly wins when his corrupt brother, who happens to be a governor of a very populous state, "loses" thousands of votes, tipping the election in favor of his brother. the entire world knows about it, yet the corrupt presidential candidate is allowed to take office.
Oh wait...
Maybe because they figure the additional cost is enough to discourage purchase of the system.
Now that the initial 'rush to press' has died down, how about some ideas.
Someone wrote that this should hit the mainstream press ASAP: I agree. Morever, it should be brought to the attention of the opposition party as quickly as possible. Spam Democratic senators and congressmen with it to call it to their attention as a very important issue.
Someone else wrote that just because the results can be downloaded from the database, doesn't mean that a dishonest person or group could upload results to the system. Since none of us are engineers employed on the project with direct access to the systems involved, none of us are qualified to have a deep, meaningful discussion about the ramifications, however, some measure of alarm seems in order.
We don't know whether the machines are each provided with a a unique and irreproduceable set of secret encryption routines, burned into a chip locked to each board with a seal from the board of elections. By the same token, for all we know, the security of some upcoming elections could be based on Hamster Feces.
In the real world, public ignorance about technical matters is a free good--a useful and inexpensive form of security. Gold bricks require thick walls, locked doors and armed guards to keep them in one place while a an obscured PERL file would be comparatively safe left running in the middle of Times Square. Unfortunately, This fact makes the bent and savvy twice as dangerous.
A side note With regard to our third-party candidates:
Until such time as we change our political system to embrace and accomodate ideologically aligned coalitions as one party, so that you can, for example, have a vote for a 'green party' candidate going to the Democrats (hint: not in your lifetime), third-party candidates will only weaken the chances of the party whose platform theirs most resembles.
Think about it this way: if Ralph Nader had popped a coronary on the eve of the last election, it is very possible that we might have had an administration that could read a map and knew the difference between Iraq and Afghanistan: scores of U.S. servicemen, now dead in Iraq, might well be alive today.
By this reasoning, all things being equal, one could say that in terms of health care, labor, the environment, fiscal policy...etc., H. Ross Perot, was one of the greatest Presidents America never had.
Should he run again, I will certainly contribute money to his campaign and vote for someone else.
Think of the matter at hand as good reasons for controlled--and thus effective--panic.
To mail me, remove the 'mailno' from my email addy.
"Yeah. It smells, too..."
No kidding?
All things in moderation; including moderation
about your bank funds? Diebold makes ATM machines, for companies like mine and Reynolds and Reynolds, and is a major player in banking institutions. Their secrecy is the same there.
How do you trust them with your money but not your votes?
There was a wonderful Philip K. Dick short story about voting.
...
I don't recall the name, but it involved the future, where polling technology had become so advanced that the entire results of an election could be extrapolated from a single voter voting!
Or, of course, so the public believed
When Gary Coleman wins the upcoming recall election!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
That's what you neocon/conservatives would like, after all. Just like Britney Spears says
One man's -1 Flamebait is another man's +5 Funny.
Search for Mercuri at http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/search.html and you will see lots of problems with computerized voting.
This page on Diebold's website mentions that "Election results are securely stored utilizing world-class encryption techniques." As far as I can see, that's all they tell you about their encryption. Does that mean it has the same 128-bit encryption as, say, Mozilla? (Which, I suppose, is still pretty darn secure, but probably not "world class.") Is the "world class" bit is just marketing hype? Diebold doesn't say anything, which makes me a little nervous.
And what about their wireless security? You can store votes in a steel box protected by voracious bears, but if they (the votes, not the bears) aren't protected on the way to wherever it is that they count them up, it doesn't make much of a difference. (I'm assuming here that that is what the wireless networking is used for). Is Diebold using WEP, which can be broken in a couple of hours? Unless Diebold has adopted WPA early (which, given their track record on security, I kinda doubt), some schmuck could sit in his car outside the polling place and run a wireless packet sniffer on whatever traffic is being sent.
The way that Diebold seems to be hiding information on its machines' security is disturbing - you'd think that if they had solid software they'd talk a little about it to impress potential customers, rather than just making vague blanket statements. Given everything that's happened, though, that's apparently is not the case.
I produce electronic music and write little games. Have a look.
s/Eisenhower/Roosevelt/g
Democrats will be left out in the cold grousing that another election was blatantly stolen.
Maybe the powers that be fear people will demand true participatory democracy when they see the power of electronic voting. If it were made easy and secure, people could vote directly on the issues that effect them, rather than employing politicians look after their interests. I live in California, and yes, ballot initiatives have lead to some wacky laws, but not nearly as many as politicians themselves have made. I don't buy the argument against direct democracy: that voters can't be trusted to lead the country. If people can't be trusted to lead themselves, how can leaders be trusted to do it? Kang and Kodos notwithstanding, aren't politicians people too? By scaring everyone into believing that electronic voting is inherantly insecure, people will never embrace a technology that could give them more direct control over their government. /me removes tinfoil hat.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
OTOH (I haven't read the comment you're responding to, threshold 1, remember), it seems like a disconcerting number of people think that peaceful opposition of Israel somehow makes you "anti-semitic". Not that I'm accusing you, but that was just something I've been wanting to get off my chest for a while. :-)
But now you're blaming it all on the Republicans? Come on.. That's just ridiculous.
Which companies that manufacture electronic voting machines have mostly democrats on their executive body and board?
Diebold's SEC filings show their Chairman / President / CEO to be Mr. Walden W. O'Dell, who has donated $2000 this summer to Senator George V. Voinovich, Republican from Ohio (Diebold's home state). Diebold Inc.'s soft money donations also go to Republicans.
This does not demonstrate to me much evidence that Diebold is "after something other than money", it looks like routine political activity to me. But, while my quick research has neither managed to refute nor confirm your conspiracy theory, I'll pass it along anyway for whoever might be curious.
this is really frightening, and must be stopped PRONTO. The computer may be useful for helping people to fill-out/print the ballot, and for rapid counting. But, as has been said a thousand times already, there must be a paper trail.
Better yet, I think the bureau of printing and engraving should make some fancy counterfeit-resistant ballots, each printed/embedded with a unique serial number in a place where everyone can keep an eye on the process.
After the election, any unused/mismarked ballots must be accounted for. The ballots should have a matching stub with the unique number and what they voted for that the they can take home with them and may at any time go to the county clerk's office to verify that their ballot is still recorded as having said what they thought they said.
If they have electronic voting, demand a ballot and don't go away until you get one. Make sure to make a scene and talk loudly about how you heard the machines were insecure on slashdot and how the situation in Nebraska is fishy and how you won't use the machines becuase they are rigged. If you can get a mob together to go and screw up the machines beforehand, that'd be better.
Seriously, I'v had my fill between corperations and the goverment. When I goto vote next election, if they have electronic machines made by any of these fishy companies with no paper trail, I'm getting a chainsaw and spraypainging "democracy" on the sides, throwing on a nasty nasty chain, hiding it in a trombone case, getting in a buisness suit so I look like a hurried musician, and when I get in the building, I'll start the puppy up in the bathroom or some consealed area, run out screaming "You want democracy, I'll give you democracy!!! Lets do this by paper!" and rip the machines to hell.
Do I care about the prison time? The better question is, what jury on earth is going to convict me? >:) Especially if I proove that my motives were justifyable, there's something fishy going on and the goverment is bieng fishy, denied me a printout of my vote and ballot, and make it a point to tell the jury they don't have to convict me. Plus, I'll make national news for sure, a psycho running into a voting area with a chainsaw and ripping all of the boxes to shreds? You'd bet that it'd get all over the god box.
Sure, I'll take it up the ass a few years in jail and have a felony conviction to ensure that the voting system isn't rigged. Besides, I'm sure it'll look GREAT on a resume!
Candy-Coated Knowledge
Similarly, car salesman never try to push rust-coating, interior protection, or any sort of warranty, because the consumer will then believe that the car is flawed.
I'm a lawyer, but not yours. I wouldn't represent someone who thinks taking legal advice from Slashdot is a good idea.
...I'm sure the Republican's know fuck about computers-crisis averted :D
If you're happy and you know it read my blog
Are these Republican-owned "businesses" after something besides money?
Yes, and it's worse than you think. Starting in 1994, the Republican Party unleashed a vast conspiracy to secretly take control of all tinfoil hat manufacturing facilities in the continental United States. They now use alien technology to produce tinfoil hats that *look* like they block the orbital mind control lasers, but they have a subtle manufacturing defect that actually increases the lasers' mind controlling ability.
Check your tinfoil hat carefully, with a magnifying glass. If you find a little micro-elephant stamped in the brim, you've got a hat that's been tampered with by the Republicans.
The software and files in question may be found at http://www.equalccw.com/dieboldtestnotes.html
Britney is a personal role model of mine (and many other geeks too, I'm sure). Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go spelunking for publicity in some old hags mouth.
"The number of Unix installations has grown to ten, with more expected." (Unix Programmer's Manual, 2nd ed.; june 1972)
Agreed that the rants are often knee-jerk (especially the ones that only blame Republicans), but there is a fair amount of evidence to be wary of corporations.
I think the reason most people in those circumstances choose to pick on the Republican party is because, as Bill Maher said, "The Democrats are bought out by less scary special interest groups." If I had to choose between teacher's unions and Big Oil, I think I'll choose the teachers any day.
I'm a lawyer, but not yours. I wouldn't represent someone who thinks taking legal advice from Slashdot is a good idea.
Someone hack in and make Gary Coleman win the California governor's race! That'll teach them.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
I, for one, welcome our new Republican overlords.
Ah yes, you've hit the nail right on the head with this one. It is all a part of the vast right wing conspiricy that Hilary Clinton warned us about.
It was started by Ronald Reagan and fellow conspiritors a few months after he won the White House. Reagan and his parterns knew there was a long road ahead to world domination but that it was possible. He know that in order to take over the world, he would need to defeat the USSR and stack the Supreme Court. His vice president, George Bush, was also involved. When Bush became president he continued to stack the Supreme Court with other conspiritors and oversaw the final break up of the Soviet Union. Bush engineered the Golf War so we could build a military presence in Saudi Arabia and be one step closer to the oil in the Middle East.
Alas, Bush was defeated in the 1992 election and the evil Republican plan was put on hold. Bush recruited Newt Gingrich and several others to continue on with the dastardly plan. Newt and fellow conspiritors decided that Clinton must go, the only question was how. They engineered and Republic revolution and take over the House and Senate in the 94 elections. Once they had control of bouth the houses of Congress it was time to make a move on Clinton.
They tried Travelgate, Filegate, Whitewater and finally found something with the potential to stick in Monica. But alas, Monica-gate failed. Alough Clinton was impeached, the impeachment was not successfull and Clinton remained president.
Enraged, the Republicans decided that they would not lose again. The approached George W. Bush several years before the 2000 presidential primary and asked him, along with several prominant neo-cons, to join the conspiricy. Everyone agreed.
The Republicans then commanded as many CEO's as possible to begin moving their companies overseas, where they could afford cheaper labor and evade taxes. Part of the money that they saved could be funnelled illegally back to the RNC and to state Republican parties where they were able to buy votes for George W. Bush and run attack ads against his primary challengers.
Bush emerged victorious in the primaries and then the campaign began to defeat Al Gore. The evil Republicans continued to raise millions of dollars to purchase attack ads and buy votes. When it appeared there was a tie in Florida, George W. Bush didn't break a sweat. It seemed the Reagan and Bush Sr. were correct when they determined it would be necessary to stack the Supreme Court. With evil Republican operatives lead by Scalia and Thomas on the court, the result of the Florida supreme court case went in Bush's favor. Everything was begining to fall back into place.
George W. Bush was ready to begin the process of world domination. To ensure that Bush would win the next election, his cronies began purchasing companies that produced electronic voting equipment. He would fool the US into going electonic after the Florida 2000 fiasco. He would turn the Democrats anger against them to ensure reelection in 2004. The campaign for world domination could commence.
Bush beefed up the Military and sent secret evil Republican operatives to Afganistan to recruit the help of several unwhitting Al Queda operatives who reluctantly agreed to hijack aircraft and fly them into the World Trade Center Towers, the Pentagon and the Capitol Building. The hijackings were to occur on September 11, 2001.
After the hijackings Bush invaded Afganistan. Altough Afganistan was not strategically important to Bush, it would provide the staging ground to test the effectiveness of our military against the defenseless masses.
Afganistan went off nicely, altough there would need to be some improvements made before the second wave of the plan could be implemented.
Two years passed by as Bush rebuilt the military. In that time Bush was also able to engineer a tax cut for the wealthiest Americans so they could in turn line the pockets his cohorts and ensure victory in the next election.
When the military was back u
Electronic Voting: Your Worst Nightmares are True
I don't see how electronic voting makes that nightmare about my grandmother cutting off my penis come true.
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=72311&cid= 6528082
From Ensuring the Integrity of Electronic Voting:
The integrity of electronic voting in public general elections with secret ballots can be ensured only if the following precautions are taken:
* generate and use paper ballots
* use open computer architecture and open-source software
* prohibit online voting in general elections (except in rare cases)
I watch Brit Hume on Fox News
I just had to point out this:
Followed soon by:
--
All I know is that this ignorant American figured out how to post a sig only once!
One man's -1 Flamebait is another man's +5 Funny.
FTP Timestamps are added by the FTP server. the FTP protocol only transfers the contents of the file, and then recreates that file in the native file system. since file modification dates are /not/ part of a file, but part of the file system, this information is NOT PART OF A FILE DURING FTP TRANSFER
this means that whoever put the file there, put it there during the daytime. it doesn't mean the file was transferred off a voting system during the daytime.
that said, i still have concerns about voting machines with a wireless interface.
Also, they insult and ridicule anyone who tries to point out that electronic voting machines that cannot be audited are a problem!
Um, dude, I hate to break this to you, but the fact that you're getting ridiculed may have nothing to do with a vast right-wing conspiracy...
It was the liberal Democrats who argued that absentee ballots from oversea military personnel shouldn't be counted.
Wrong. Some of those ballots were postmarked AFTER the final election date, and that was the only point of dispute. The Bush team wanted those late ballots in, and guess who was not following the law?
"Only the small secrets need to be protected. The big ones are kept secret by public incredulity." - Marshall McLuhan
State Representative and State Senator
At least that's what they call them in Texas
My other sig is extremely clever...
now let's talk conspiracy theories
I fully expect the osama/hussain team to win the next presidential election, while bush/cheny are taken out by marine snipers.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Yes,
We also must not forget about "unfunded government" in the same realm of unfunded mandates. This is when regulation (or lack thereof) allows private entities to gouge the public, slash their pay, steal their pensions and then escape without a scratch. The payola goes back it terms of:
* political contributions
* stock options (after leaving government)
* board appointments
* cushy jobs for relatives
* $6 million severance packages (Halliburton, KBR and Dick Cheney)
* nice cushy jobs after leaving office
* giant contributions to "think tanks" whose job is thinking of ways to pursuade middle America to disenfranchise itself (successfully)
* entry into the new aristocracy
Democrats have no been corrupted by the mostly and thoroughly corrupt Republicans. Time for something new. The Greens are nice, but we need an analog party with sensible economics but also more traditional values that will appeal more readily to midwesterners.
Our democracy is slipping into a facist dictatorship. Time to fight back!!!!
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
Big frickin' suprise. Do you really think that the people implementing these voting machines are security saavy top-notch developers? No, they're 16 year old inbred ass-clowns from Fargo. Of course, there'll be a big investigation, etc etc, and they'll come up with absolutely nothing original. "Back to the drawing board. Technology isn't sophisticated enough" or some crap like that. GRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
Looks like Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf has won again!
Those guys in the IT room. Naked.
Further proof that GEEKS RULE!!!!!
HAH,
QueenB
HDGary secures my bank
According to this piece (which seems to be all over the placethe logging, auditing and general security of the software is incredibly suspicious.
Skiing? Check out The Independant Skiers Portal
Move along, nothing to see, nothing that Sen. Chuck Hagel hasn't been doing for years.
Yeah, its SOP.
At the risk of sounding like a luddite, you guys should get rid of the voting machines entirely.
In Canada we hand-count our ballots and the last time there was a major election in our country (2000), we voted after your election day and knew our results before you knew yours.
I have a lot of opinions about Cyborgs and Architects
Everybody knows the proper way to hack an election is legally through the Supreme Court, not with computers, duh.
what about having run a company for 15 years
Big Bob's House of Tin Foil Hats?
Well, if they sold the "ballots", then they could say
"The paper ballots gauruntees that the system can't be hacked wholesale. Therefore, our electronic voting system is superior to others that leave no assurances to the voting public that their elections our somewhat superior to those held in Cuba."
But they're really not interested in that. The whole point of centralized voting roles and black-box voting is to put the ballot box under the thumbs of the neo-cons who really don't give a shit about democracy. They just want to own EVERYTHING including your body.
The neo-con think-tanks our very good at thinking up ways of getting middle America to disenfranchise themselves. They've long since given up telling the truth about their elitist aristocratic viewpoint. They assign all their own true virtues to their opponents over the media that THEY OWN!!!! Then they call their own media outlets LIBERAL so that any negative story about neo-cons will be distrusted and any unfounded rumour about their opponents will be embraced.
Our country is quitely slipping into a facist dictatorship. Time to fight back!!!!!!
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
Knowing results ahead of time could be very usefull, however. Heck, maybe this is just some employee slipping in a backdoor in an attempt to make some money gambling.
"So that means if they can pull the information in, they can also send information back into those machines. "
Really.
Just because the network share or whatever had read permission, we must assume that write permissions existed as well?
Do these people actually use this malformed logic when working with clients?
----- LoboSoft specializes in Digital Language Lab
She's cute, but certainly not "hot"... She's only seems hot if you're in 10th grade, like star wars "a little too much", and have never dated women.
It's like Oracle telling their customers to also keep a dead-tree cardbox system in parallel *just to be sure*
All analogies are invalid. If you have a good argument, then you should be able to support it with reason and evidence and not have to rely on necessarily-flawed analogies.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
the right wing. What a shock!
I think open source code for voting would be the most trustworthy, and also that a paper trail is necessary - Brazilians do the paper trail pretty well. In Brazil, over half of all votes are cast electronically. Big differences between US electronic voting and Brazilian voting: Brazilians have a paper trail, and ALSO a random 3% of electronic votes are checked against the paper trail to see if percentages are reasonable. http://www.vote.caltech.edu/mail-archives/votingte ch/Dec-2002/0032.html
Sure; it's easiest to attack those on top.
A solution to the problem with music today
SOME of us here work with computers, so we know that sometimes the computers make mistakes.
Nah. We know that the people who programmed them make mistakes, and the computer is only as trustable as its programmer. The computer itself just does whatever it's told, even if its a bug that alters the totals in a vote counting machine.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
- Don't complain about lack of options. You've got to pick a few when you do multiple choice. Those are the breaks.
- 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.
------
"And may your days be long upon the earth."
What if a several different websites are thrown up, and on election day the people working the polls can tell the voters to go online at home and verify their vote. What website you go to can be determined by what region you live in. Now I know that online polls are not reliable, but if a several different websites where created all with a different polling system, that would make it extremely difficult to hack every system so that the results would be consistent. If any of the online poll results are significantly different it would be time to start asking question.
Win a signed Stephen Carpenter ESP Guitar from the Deftones: http://def-tag.com/?r=0008781
If it was me, I would have been charged with perjury and put in jail...
If it was you, you wouldn't have been on trial for having consentual sexual relations with people, since that's not a crime (it can be grounds for divorce, but that's not a crime). Did Clinton lie under oath? Yes, absolutely. Was the trial he was being put under at the time a legitimate one? No, absolutely not. Both parties were full of idiocy in the rhetoric surrounding that incident.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
In Brazil, 100% of the votes were electronic in 2002, for the national election! http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/news/world/ 4423781.htm
Republicans have committed election fraud... but election fraud also has a long and proud tradition in the democratic party, so let's smear a democrat or two, just to keep it even.
n -babies crap. I personally think that election fraudsters are the worst sort of scum, but they're in BOTH parties, not just the GOP.
Why don't we talk about old Dan Rostenkowski? Yes, that one... one of the most corrupt members of congress in recent memory. He was a master at all kinds of shenanigans, including dead people voting... he netted a 17-count indictment.
What party was Rostenkowski? That's right... Democrat.
He was even pardoned by a Democrat (Clinton).
Save the republicans-are-evil-killers-and-eaters-of-newbor
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
The quote was not sufficiently distinct to be recognized as a Simpson's quote. Lots of people say that, and with that exact phrasing. It is not reasonable to assume that people would recognize it as a Simpson's quote, even if they HAD seen that episode. It's like saying "the" and calling it a Simpsons quote becasue there was that one episode where Marge said "the" in a sentence.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
I have a wonderful LNE 100 TX, version 2 I think, that has this wondeful feature...
The damn thing only works one way... just one day *Poof*, thing will send, but not receive!!!
I kept it because I am a packrack from hell, but now I know the real reason!!!
This is just what they need!!!
And I will be glad to sell it to them real cheap... alot cheaper
than a single song on E-bay... that's for damn sure!!!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
She should be more like the Dixie Chicks, who have alienated their whole fan base. Now the only people they can get to come to their concerts are Northern Carpetbaggers who would have considered them 'southern white trash' before they took their unfortunate uninformed 'political' stance.
To be precise, she didn't really spill the coffee on herself either - the spill occurred during the transfer of the cup from the employee's hand to hers.
Do you have a reference for this? Every summary of the case I've seen has claimed that she spilled the coffee after she "placed the cup between her knees and attempted to remove the plastic lid from the cup."
Oracle says to make a dead-tree paper backup of your records as entered in their database? Do you have a cite?
A Good Intro to NetBS
The massive neo-con conspiracy was born in the 50s and has plodded along silently ever since. Players have come and gone, but the goal has been the same.
Destroy the power of the people against those who want to own EVERYTHING. Destory those who oppose the super-rich and the super-elite.
Break down the Eisenhower rules against monopolization (both Eisenhowers). Destroy laws designed to protect consumers against big business gouging and abuse (the FDA, tort law, product safety laws). Return the utilities to a condition where they can once again mercilessly gouge the public for basic living services (successfuly accomplished in California, Britain, India and other US states).
Destroy the power of organized labor. Destroy the 40-hour work week (successfully accomplished just recently). Create permanently high unemployment and a subservient labor force (they getting damn close). Destroy the public welfare services that compete with industry gouging.
Destroy environmental laws that are benificial to both the public health AND the goal of high unemployment. Environmental responsiblity requires more employees, therefore it's bad. Strip mining, clear cutting, toxic waste dumping and other practices require very little labor, therefore it's good to those seeking to steal EVERYTHING!!!
Retun the media to centralized domination by an elite few. Buy up all the papers, radio stations and other media outlets. Force "alternative" papers out of distribution outlets through city ordinances (licensing paper boxes), corporate connections (refusing to sell papers), and other financial shenanigans. Repeal laws against complete media ownership within municipalities (mission accomplished by Michael Powell). Then convince everyone that the media that they own has a "liberal bias". Then present "fair and balanced" alternatives (Rush Limbaugh, Laura Schlesinger, Fox News) that present the
"fair, balanced and objective" story.
Neo-cons cast their opponents as communists tree-huggers, nazis, fags, and any other ad-hominen attack they can think of. The irony is they intentionally give them labels that they know most appropriately describe themselves. I believe the lady dost protest too much!!!!
Too suggest that they are super-highly organized is a mistake. They would dagger their own partners to their own advantage just as sure as they would poison our water-supply and drive us out of our jobs.
Their ultimate coups-de-gras is convincing middle America that they are included in the club. That is the master-stroke of convining a majority of America to disenfrachise itself. YOU are special, YOU are exceptional, YOU are better than everyone else. Join us, take power over your neighbors and those you you consider under yourself. In turn compete to opress your peers and become even greater amongst our clique. We know you can do it. We'll even stake you a little money. The one who steals the most gets bonus money.
America is quietly slipping into a facist dictatorship. The "quality" black-box voting machines beyond paper-trails and auditing is the next master-step to destroying democracy. We become more like Rome every day. Time to fight back!!!!!
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
Same old shit different day.
Paper ballot are the best way to go.
Why did ole Jeb put riot police in Black voter precincts on election day?
He didn't.
But if enough anonymous cowards make that claim, you'll get a little traction in the loony faction, I guess.
1,3,5,7,9, Osama Bin Laden thinks ass-poking little boys is fine.
Don't you think you're possibly jumping to conclusions here? I am far from a supporter of electronic voting. I think its the worst concept since Divx (sans ;). That being said, I highly doubt that that mans intent was to corrupt the voting system but rather to improve the ease of voting through electronic means.
On top of this, Neo Conservative is a somewhat biggoted term. It suggests not only that the Republican party truely is a sensational war machine but that those who join the party in time of war are themselves war mongers. This is incredibly insulting to me AND I didn't vote for Bush (I voted for Gore). It sickens me that you can blanket 45% of the country with such terms while at the same time despising the act of using racial slurs or merely referencing the concept of social inequalities.
But you didn't listen!
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
But don't worry! George Bush is not relying on a bunch of voting machines to get him into office next year. He has an entire Korean War lined up for that.
Instead of worrying about voter fraud, better start worrying about who on the West Coast will have a nuke popped off near them (delivered by sub from North Korea, courtesy of Georgie Bush).
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Your bullshit class warfare rant is really tired. Shouldn't you be out selling your newspaper on the corner?
A Good Intro to NetBS
You need to study your Constitutional law a bit more closely.
For about 80 years after the adoption of the Constitution you're correct in your claim that state governments were not bound by the restrictions imposed by the federal Constitution in the Bill of Rights. Indeed, many states had state Constitutions that openly defied the federal BOR, e.g., I believe that the Georgia constitution required all office holders to be "Christians in good standing" (whatever that means).
But then there was a minor spat over exactly what the Constitution actually meant and who it actually applied to... and ever since the end of the Civil War there's been unanimous concensus that the federal BOR applies to ALL levels of government. It doesn't matter if the Alabama state constitution allows a judge to erect a 20' statute of a burning Buddha in his courtroom, the federal constitution prohibits such displays under the 'establishment' clause.
More generally, I find this argument and the judge's argument VERY disturbing because they seem to be rolling back the clock to the days where whites were kings and blacks were out in the fields picking cotton. Nowhere in the Ten Commandments is there any prohibition on slavery. Nowhere in the Bible is there any prohibition on slavery - in fact the Bible often mentions God's chosen people having slaves. If God's laws supercedes the US Constitution, does that mean that the constitutional ban on slavery is unenforceable?
I hasten to add that I have no reason to believe that the OP believes this. I find it very possible that he came across a site that seemed to make a persuasive argument and didn't realize how much was omitted. But I am beginning to wonder if there's an organized group behind this that wants to roll back civil rights.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Felon has a very specific legal definition (and also refers, in a medical context, to an infection of the fingertip).
Being convicted of a Felony in the United States (this varies somewhat by state law... some crimes are felonies in some states, misdemeanors in others) causes a loss of some civil rights, like the right to vote, and the right to own a gun.
These rights can be restored by a court order after you have served your sentence. Speaking only for myself, however, I want that process to stay in place. If you are a felon, and too damned lazy to petition the court to get your civil rights back after you get out of jail, I don't want you voting.
If you cater to a socioeconomic group with a high number of felons in it, then I'm sorry... get a higher-quality constituency. People who consistently violate the law, particularly in a violent fashion, SHOULDN'T vote... they don't respect society's mores and laws, so why should society feel an obligation to cut them any slack in regards to their vote, especially if they haven't yet payed their debt to society? After they rehabilitate themselves, pay their debt to society, and the court has decided to restore their civil rights, fine... before then, no way.
I may have fallen for a troll here... "code for minorities and democrats" indeed.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Unless that is the fraud, making the election so close that a recount needs to be done. Then canceling the recount when the appropriate party is ahead. HEY!!! doesnt that sound familiar?
You mean like half the elections last time around?
http://scoop.co.nz/mason/features/?s=usacoup
People who want more and more power aren't in general Democrats (though times are changing). Democracy is about the dispersion of power and influence.
The $300 million dollar campaign of George Bush was about SOMETHING. They didn't make that cash by having $10 per plate barbecues. They got that money from coporate fat cats.
By the way, you don't get to be a super-corporate fat cat by being fair to your fellow employee and fellow citizen. You get to those positions by well placed daggers (proverbial) in the backs of your peers and the occasional supervisor (when you can manage it). You get to that place by selling as much as you can for as much as you can for the smallest cost (which means it's often shit). You get to that position by laying of workers, slashing benefits, importing foreign identured servants, busting unions and all around just being plain evil.
After a full day of wholesale theft, who do you turn to protect your bounty. Do you turn to Democrats who (used to) believe in a fair society by which you pay for public services according to your means. Those same democrats often provide low-cost or no-charge services that compete with your schemes to fleece every dime possible. Those damn democrats and progressives try very hard to keep large corporations from selling $1,000 toilet seats to the Pentagon.
Or do I give money to Republicans. Not honest ones (though there are few remaining). Rather, do they give money to the neo-cons who have now publicly stated their goal to merge large corporate America and government. Corporate governance (formerly called Facism). If I give them lots of money, they will slash those pesky environmental laws that stop us from dumping toxic waste in rivers. They will allow us to rape the landspace AND WORKERS. They will turn aside when we fleece Americans. They will overturn liability and tort laws by which consumers sue us for selling them faulty dangerous products.
Hmmm... if I'm a greedy evil rat bastard with a contempt for humanity, who do I choose to donate to. Well at $300 million to $30 million, I dare-say that the evil rat bastards have chosen the neo-cons.
Now the rat-bastards are finding ways to dispense with the even more troublesome DEMOCRACY. Voters will get pissed off. After all, once upon a time their was a robber barons paradise that but dangerous chemicals into the milk itself. Then their was a great depression and many of those who counted themselves among the elite few were cannabalized by their superiors. Sent out to the bread lines by the common rabble. But the common rabble could still vote. And they voted for an Roosevelt.
My gosh, didn't that Roosevelt's cousin also pass the first anti-trust legislation. Isn't that they war hero who led a rebellion against the elitist Republican party and subsequently crushed as a progressive. Didn't those victorious Republicans lead us to our paradise of an enslaved population. Damn what will this Roosevelt do????
Of course, Roosevelt brought about the new Deal. Eventually embraced by most (including the Grand Old Party) up and until Eisenhower. The last great Republican warned us upon departure of the Miliatary-Industrial complex and other such corporate mischief. Against he pursuit of war and strife for the benefit of a few fat cats. The same Business-Government environment that brought Adolf Hitler to power and the world to the brink of utter disaster.
Now we sit with a government being literally run by the corporat thiefs. They are governed by a president unelected by the people (like Adolf Hitler). He is determined to de-regulate EVERYTHING. To diminish the people great institution DEMOCRACY to a sham game. Adolf Hitler never stopped elections. And he never stopped winning.
Here and now the Neo-Cons (Facists) are trying to permanently rob America of democracy without robbing us of elections. They fix them through culling voting rolls of so-called "felons" and fix the voting machines to vote a Neo-Con every
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
Is that really a good thing? Think about it -- pretty soon you'd have mob rule.
Remember that the Founding Fathers quite deliberately put in mechanisms to prevent too much power getting into the people's hands (cf. the Electoral College, the Senate, etc.). They didn't want a despot, but they didn't want a "dictatorship of the proletariat" (to use a later term) either.
California is also doing a bang-up job of showing what can go wrong in a "direct" democracy...
And I still ask -- what's the rush? We have long waiting periods until people take office anyway (much longer than in, say, Germany or the UK, where power transfers take place almost overnight), and even with paper ballots it should be quite possible to have the results in a matter of hours. Where's the need for electronic voting?
Cheers,
Ethelred
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
The electoral college will save us :). A trillion trillion votes in ohio still only gets a few electoral votes.
:)
Oh and you do realize that Dean is a democrat right?
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
...Arnold will miraculously be elected as California's next governor.
144l. ph34r my 133t l3g4l 5k1lz!
Tell me something I don't know.
Yet one more reason why we should stick to paper ballots. I would support a full electronic vote if it could be secure, and given the current state of computer security in general, I don't believe this is possible.
SO...to mitigate the possibility of a non-human readable record being the only record of vote, why not do what Toyota and Honda are starting to do with cars--build hybrids.
Upon entering the voting line, instead of a ballot, the voter is issued a voting "ticket" which is fed into an electronic voting machine. The voter casts the vote, which is printed in a machine-readable form on paper, such as large-print, high contrast characters for OCR or magnetic ink (a la check scanners). This way, a uniform method of marking the ballot is achieved (no ambiguity in which circle is filled in/name circled/hole punched) and a consistently accurate (one hopes) means of machine counting them, not much different than the current optical readers. Plus, for a hand recount, the ballots are easy to read by manual means.
In the event of a misprint, the voter turns in the spoiled ballot to a voting official to get the machine reset for voting again. One could even go further and have the machine OCR and magnetically read as a sort of cross-check; if the cross-check fails, the ballot has VOID printed across it in big black letters and the voter is instructed to obtain a new voting ticket and vote again, citing the cross-check error.
That's my idea for the day.
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
The only statement that has a whiff of truth is
Almost true - in a huge front-page story a few months after the election, the New York Times published Republican Party Memos that instructing the GOP election monitors to challenge the authenticity of all military votes for Gore, but to fight vigorously for the ones for Bush.[poof]What's that sound? Ohhh - it's your Fox News style "truth" evaporating in the face of actual facts.
> Sure; it's easiest to attack those on top.
It's also easiest to corrupt the system when you're on top.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Just as any other mechanism that man creates, it is only as good as it's design. Wireless is probably a really poor design for a voting machine. A better choice would be to have each polling station as its own network with the polling machines connect to only to a controller for that polling place. The controller could then be taken to the courthouse where its records could be downloaded and counted at the end of the voting sessions. There is a way to balance acceptable risk with ease of use in voting electronically. It would appear that Diebold hasn't found that balance yet.
To know is to have knowledge....to understand is to be enlightened.
Seems you know something about the next election.
;)
I smell a Diebold employee.
InThane
Electronic voting carries serious risks that need to be explored, but your paranoid ramblings about who is behind the vast conspiracy to control the world is generating a side show that prevents exploring and solving the problem. If the postings here on slashdot are any evidence, any rational evaluation of the risks of electronic voting is in danger of being swept away by a tidal wave of friggin paranoid ramblings. Any problems with electronic voting are going to get ignored and swept under the rug because you're creating the impression that eveyone who objects to electronic voting is a bloody fucking lunatic!
Need help knowing if you're a fucking looney? It's simple- If you're trying to pin the blame on someone, at the present stage where plain simple incompetence hasn't yet been ruled out, then you are a fucking nutcase and you'll do yourself and everyone around you a lot more good if you just SHUT THE FUCK UP!
If not you can pretty much assume it is a lie.
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
> She should be more like the Dixie Chicks, who have alienated their whole fan base.
Apparently the press exaggerated that notion greatly by giving so much air time to the complainers. IIRC someone posted a link here several months ago, revealing that the Chicks' concert attendance and album sales actually went up after those comments.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
An oxymoron if there ever was one! Does anyone really believe that any guest on this show is impartial? At best, they're leftists. The show's host (Amy Goodman) is an avowed communist who's heros are Castro and Che Guevara. Her one mission is to establish a socialist system of government in the United States. She very rarely has any guests with dissenting opinions. Like any spokesman for communism, she can't argue on merits so she preaches to the choir. Hey, if you're a communist be proud of it! Let us all know! Don't hide behind a title like "Democracy Now". Otherwise shut up and be happy we live in a country with the worst system of government...except for every other system! How long would Amy's program last in Castro's Cuba? If this story had any merit whatsoever and you don't think the mainstream (read Liberal) media would jump all over it you're living in a dream world and should probably join Amy and her pink cohorts.
> > It was the liberal Democrats who argued that absentee ballots from oversea military personnel shouldn't be counted.
> Wrong. Some of those ballots were postmarked AFTER the final election date, and that was the only point of dispute. The Bush team wanted those late ballots in, and guess who was not following the law?
And the Democrats didn't have the guts to speak out against it, either.
One of the things that disturbed me most about the whole Florida election fiasco is that the "support our troops" meme has become so strong in the USA that a political party would prefer to lose a presidential election rather than risk the political fallout of insisting that illegal military votes not be counted.
Arguably our democracy has already been subverted, without the black-box voting machines.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I do not believe it's possible to have a secure electronic ballot system and still keep the ballots secret. Financial institutions use audits to prevent their computer systems from defrauding them. An audit requires knowing the details of every transaction. With voting, this would require knowing who voted for which candidate.
Open source would be better but there are still attacks that can be done (compiler code insertion, voting officials secretly tampering with code). Paper systems have a record that can be examined later which is the best defense against fraud.
Considering the risk of fraud and error, it seems crazy to me use an electronic voting system. Optical scan ballots have most of the advantages of electronic systems and none of the problems. They are checked for over votes by the ballot box machine. Because they are counted at the machine, tallys are very fast. If there's a dispute, the paper ballots are human readable.
I didn't mean to say that the Republican party was the Communist party, but rather that the latter party could win by exploiting this.
Both leading parties in this country suck in very similar ways. The Libertarian Party doesn't suck.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
> On top of this, Neo Conservative is a somewhat biggoted term. It suggests not only that the Republican party truely is a sensational war machine but that those who join the party in time of war are themselves war mongers.
Yes, neocons tend to be Republicans, but Republicans do not tend to be neocons.
The neocon movement is itself quite diverse, including not only the Wolfowitz style advocates of "benevolent hegemony" but also others such as the Center for Renewal of Science and Culture, which wants to use religion to sheep the masses - right out of Plato's play book. (On Usenet I see a
Hopefully the blooming clusterfuck in Iraq will discredit at least the "benevolent hegemony" branch of neoconism, though it's a damn shame so many people had to suffer or die to get that result.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
You forgot about the gerrymandering.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Your political and social life isn't shot yet! That doesn't mean you're a liberal, it means you're a slashdotter.
Oh wait...
Banaaaana!
Nobody seems to have mentioned this. If you go to the 'Democracy Now' website, the title of the article I saw was: "Will Bush Backers Manipulate Votes to Deliver GW Another Election?"
Democracy Now is a media outlet that's associated with Pacifica. They are about as left wing as any media organization in the United States. They'd be happiest if Fidel Castro won the election as a write-in candidate.
Please, can't we focus on more mainstream news sources? Pacifica makes Indynews look moderate.
A Good Intro to NetBS
> Would you rather be debating on whether the President should be held to the same legal standard as anyone else in the country? Like, for instance, if they got on a witness stand in court, and swore, under oath, and blatantly lied? If it was me, I would have been charged with perjury and put in jail...
Not likely. That kind of lying happens day in and day out in US divorce cases, and virtually no one ever gets slapped with a perjury charge for it.
And you do want the President to be held to the same legal stander as anyone else in the country, right?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
In a voting system, the obvious "backup" is on paper. For a database, it's on tape or other removable media.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
So conservativism (limited government) is equated with communism(totalitarian government). I guess the gubment education is paying off eh?
Do you see this administration engaging in limited government, or espousing freedom in any way, shape or form? I certainly don't. How much larger has the budget grown under under these GOP controlled executive and congressional branches of government? How many more laws and repressions of basic constitutional freedom and civil liberties has this GOP instituted? How limited has their role been in "Nation Building", that term so Bush disdainfully spouted to tar Clinton's policies in the Balkans and Africa, and yet exactly the same has he done (poorly) in Afghanistan and Iraq.
You call that "conservative"??? I call them "authoritarian", but certainly not "conservative".
Better check your political compass, buddy.
Cheers,
Maynard
This is one of those articles that makes no sense to me. As the events of 2000 demonstrated, the will of the people (of the US, anyway) means nothing. The rules will continue be bent or broken by the elite to achive the outcome they wanted in the first place. Rigged evoting machines, rigged voter lists, or biased Supreme Court rulings, same outcome. The elite want evoting so their rigging is harder to detect. The whining of the non-elite means nothing and won't stop it.
> Please include Ann Coulter with the people who are trying to silence people. She's openly said that muslims should be forcibly converted to christianity and that the press is a bunch of liberal traitors who should be shut up and sorted out by force.
Let me start by getting an exasperated "That's just fucking stupid!" out of the way. Surely anyone with an IQ > 50 can figure out that such an attempt would lead to a shitstorm of terrorism that would make people long for the bad old days of 2001-2003.
> What the fuck has happened to this country?!
The phenomenon isn't really new; recall the McCarthy Era and Lincoln's high-handed dealings with a wavering Maryland.
But yeah, we've got a real problem with people who mistake their parochial notions of ethical right-and-wrong with a universial metaphysical Rightness that justifies any means to the desired ends. (Witness the final remarks of the executed abortion-doctor murderer this week.)
And as for the "liberal traitors"... well, surely everyone has seen Hermann Goring's notorious words on that topic by now. Some or the people you deplore are probably pursuing a misguided notion of Righteousness, whereas others are surely pursuing raw power and merely find it convenient to dress it up in the same garb.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Most of the websites and statistics regarding felon "disenfrachnisement" come from drug and prisoner advocacy groups, like the sentencing project... this makes their statistics suspect from the start. Many of these groups use these statistics to make voting for felons a "racist" issue. Also, some of them consider it "disenfranchisement" if a state does not automatically restore your civil rights after your sentence is served. Personally, I see no problem with making a felon fill out a form to get his voting rights back.
Further, some of the states they cite as "permanently" disenfranchising felons DO have procedures in place to restore civil rights... Florida (where I live) is a good example. Florida is often cited as one of the 10 (some sources cite 14 states) that permanently keep felons from voting... NOT TRUE. Check out this press release from the ACLU
Some states give voting rights back automatically... some have a few hoops you must jump through. Either way, committing a felony costs you. Now, I'm not aware of a single state that does not have procedures in place for restoration of civil rights. If someone wants to correct me, please do so.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
I for one welcome our new vote machine hacking overlords.
Actually, for what is being referred to here, the backup should be a 'second source' for data retention. Perhaps MySQL, or are we talking about a logging of raw data? Definitely NOT just a backup of the data as Oracle renders it.
A Good Intro to NetBS
Previous poster wrote:
Please include Ann Coulter with the people who are trying to silence people...
Black Parrot wrote:
The phenomenon isn't really new; recall the McCarthy Era and Lincoln's high-handed dealings with a wavering Maryland...
The irony here is that the content of "Treason" is a meandering screed in support of the much maligned McCarthy. Coulter sure does know how to pick her heros. *cough* --M
(current count: 1 on bad side, 1 on good side)
when working - 1-2 hours /day during first term only
also, the gipper couldn't find his zipper.
I wish the current CIC would quit giving blowjobs to the oil industry in the oval office. Couldn't they at least find a motel?
Oh, like the 2002 election: VNS cites problems with exit polls
For more on Hagel refer to If You Want To Win An Election, Just Control The Voting Machines
being poor does not make you a felon... committing the appropriate crime makes you a felon.
Apart from a few high-profile cases (eg. OJ Simpson), I would hardly say that buying justice is the norm. Even the poor are afforded legal representation in the form of a public defender... he/she may not be Johnny Cochran, but he/she IS an attorney.
All legal represenation is not created equal, just as all medical care is not the same. All poor people may not get their broken leg fixed at the Mayo clinic, but they DO get medical care... all they have to do is show up at the hospital's ER.
All poor people may not be defended by Mark Geragos, but they do get a lawyer. To imply that anyone who gets convicted of a felony just didn't have a big enough lawyer is nonsense... Charges come with specifications that increase or decrease the penalty... plea bargains only work if the prosecution is willing to deal, and state law is what makes a criminal act a felony, not the lawyer.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
In several races with electronic voting machines, there were noticeable differences between pre-election polls and the actual election results. In Georgia, both Roy Barnes and Max Cleland led their opponents until the actual election.
Other Dieboldalical results (from a source found via Google) are here.
Chuck Hagel's opponent wanted a hand-recount, but by the terms of the signed contract, it was illegal for government election workers to review the votes.
Short form: what you describe happened, and you didn't even notice. (Final tinfoil hat moment - did we mention that there was a file named "rob-georgia" containing patches not tested by the state on the Diebold FTP site?)
Reminds me of when she was turning 18 and told an interviewer she thought it was important that people vote. The interviewer asked who she was going to vote for and she answered something to the effect of "I'll just vote for whoever my parents do."
Consider linking to the bill in a way that will work once the entry expires from their cache. From their FAQ on this issue:
HR 2239 (from the 108th Congress) should get you what you want.
Digital Citizen
Everyone is crying conspiracy theory but I don't think we need to look at it from that angle to be disturbed by this. Is it too much to ask that a company making vote-counting machines aim for some kind of neutrality in elections? Shouldn't they be bending over backwards to make sure people think their system is foolproof, including having a system for auditing results and for paper backups? Maybe they want to elect republicans and maybe they don't (although the article cited in this discussion has a pretty direct quote indicating they do). Either way, we shouldn't be handing them the power to do that without oversight.
Speaking as a Voter of San Luis Obispo County who voted in this election, I woul like to clarify that there IS a paper balit which is scaned and recorded. While having the electronic comprimised is a Big problem, there is paper to go back to (for the moment)
As a side note, you can bet I'll be calling the county clerks office tomorrow.
JFMILLER
Strive to make your client happy, not necessarly give them what they ask for
It's no crime to be poor... it is a crime to steal. If some guy only makes 20K per year, maybe he'd better think twice about having a big family to support, or getting a car (public transportation will get you to work).
I'd rather people work hard and better themselves... if immigrants can come to the US, unable to speak the language, and better themselves through hard work, anyone can do it.
Are you really making the argument that people deserve "X" standard of living, simply because they exist? And that they can commit crimes to get there if their McDonalds job isn't making it?
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Flamebaiting in the defense of liberty is no vice.
Don't drop the soap, Tommy!
The people who cast the votes don't decide an election, the people who count the votes do.
It never ceases to amaze me how so many otherwise technically savvy people buy into the notion that hardware is infallible and software is always to blame for "glitches" or "crashes." I would concede that software causes more problems, but the notion that "computers don't make mistakes" is remarkably wrong.
:)
No chip ever made is tested 100%. Test coverage of 99.0% is considered excellent in the ASIC and custom IC design worlds. Many go to fab with less than 95%, sometimes 90% test coverage. So you have 10 million gates on a hunk of stuff you grew and screenprinted with toxic chemicals, with a decent plan to make sure that 99.0% of them can be tested to work as they should. You do the math -- lots will fail, and worse, some will fail occasionally and then resume working. Moreover, we can't really test all posible sets of stimulus -- that would take an incredibly long time in an industry where tester time on billion-dollar testers is doled out in 5s increments (30s is considered unworkable by most fabs, and would still allow us to test less than 1% of all possible combinations of inputs and transitions).
The interconnect between chips is another problem that's hard to measure, but non-zero. Same with passive components (capacitors, resistors) -- they have non-zero non-fatal failure rates. Which is an obfuscatory way of saying they can "glitch" or "crash". Thank Ohm a resistor's reboot time is much faster than Windows or you'd really notice the hardware failures
I don't have time to go into system-wide signal integrity (intractable), fault-tolerance that isn't, metastability, radiative interference such as cosmic rays and alpha particles emitted from local metals, etc. There's a lot that can and does go wrong in hardware.
I'm really kind of reluctant to post this, since as a hardware designer it's cool that I never hear the "you're why my computer crashes" comments that my software engineers suffer. It's also fun to se MS take the brunt of most PC users reliability complaints. In truth, they probably deserve a lot of it, but not the 100% most believe -- hardware does sometimes fail for a microsecond and then recover nonchalantly, as if nothing happened, sort of like when a cat trips or runs into a wall.
everything in moderation
Actually, Bush got his money either $1000 or $2000 at a time. From individuals, not corporations. It is (and has been since the 70's) illegal for corporations to give directly to political canidates. The democrats because they don't have the grassroots networks the republicans do, relied a lot more on the ultra rich and corporations. Look it up.
But hey, good rant. Very short on facts but lots of emotion.
who watches the watchmen.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
Give everybody a MS Passport account and let them log in.
qed
I for one welcome our new electronically voted masters.
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
You mean both Roosevelts, not Eisenhowers.
And on the other hand, most lawyers are Democrats. But, the real question is, what is the political leanings of the embedded systems engineer who wrote that backdoor they still haven't found, eh?
Computers NEVER make mistakes. They always do exactly what they are told to do (barring hardware failure).
The problem is: they are quite freqently and consistently told to do the wrong thing, either by poor programming, or through malicious intent.
So a "voting computer" will always do exactly what it is told to do. Do we trust the people in charge of telling it what to do? (i.e. To program it correctly and honestly?)
OK, so we devise a great, secure, verifiable and auditable, accessible, open source system for voting.
Election day roles around, and candidate X wins over candidate Y by 17% of the vote.
Who's counting and reporting on the votes? Do you trust them? Do you trust the auditors?
Unless the system provides open access for counting and auditing the vote, it's still not going to provide the level of trust needed. Everyone needs to be able to see and validate the result at the same time.
Trusting the code is only half the problem. From the article:
"Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything." --Russian Dictator Joseph Stalin
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
If you are going to rig an election with complete control over the votes then it should be made out to be a very narrow victory.
Great, I'll have the executor of my estate sell you my vote when I'm dead.
The Dixie Chicks have more balls then you.
If the Dixie Chicks lost fans when they made the statement, then the fans were worth losing.
Question authority. idiot.
Make sure to access the /v gateway early and often on Election Day.
Please Mod this up! People need to know how important it is that Exit Polling is becoming unreliable and altogether nonexistent.
http://www.jython.org/
The problem with wireless is the easy DoS so basicly by placing small device at poll station you can disable all communication.
But, the most realiable voting method is to use paper ballots counted by hand. It may sound expensive but it is used in those corners of where people want fair elections with verifiable results.
This is true and the paper trail must be inspected by the voter before it's stored away. If it's not good enough to trust a computer to make electronic records that can't be seen and therfore verified by the voter, it's not good enough to have a printer out of sight either.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Where do you think there donors get their money from? Where do you think that the $300 million came from.
If Democrats rely so much on the ultra-rich, why did Republicans get so much more cash? Follow the money.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
What are the symbols for "warvoting" and "warvoting during training"?
...and take the corruption from the hands of the geeks, and put it back in the hands of dirty politicians where it belongs.
___________
"Build a man a fire warm him for a day, set a man on fire and warm him for the rest of his life."
Why is it so much easier to read a barcode than some text of known size, font, orientation, etc? Seems like an easy task to me, a non-programmer.
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
Also, the file contains an audit long of some 1,000 automated voting program events dating back to spring 2000. This file was March 5, 2002 and had dozens of identifiers to prove it, including audit log items. Also, the votes matched the final tally, proportionately, since they weren't all in yet.
Of course, the elections supervisor swears it wasn't her staff that put it on the FTP site, and Diebold swears none of theirs did it.
However, the password on the file was "Sophia" and Diebold has an employee who is a voting machine tech named "Sophia" and the S.L.O. County elections officials told me that Diebold's Sophia was on site on the election day this file was used.
Seems to me highly likely that Sophia put that file on the Diebold web site, and that she did so on election day, since that's the day she was there.
See ya. Bev Harris Black Box Voting
The very FIRST change in the file, made by Diebold, was to switch it to read-write.
There are also changes in Windows to remove authentication, and they apparently stripped out some of the security features designed for the interface between CE and NT, in order to make it backwards compatible for Windows 98 and 95.
They then represented the Windows software to certifiers as "COTS" (Commercial Off The Shelf) even though it was CE, and therefore customized from the get-go.
My favorite code comment, found in one of the nk.bin files: "We stole this part from some dead guy."
Cheers.
Bev Harris Black Box Voting
All things being equal (they aren't), Bush has done enough damage and the press is bold enough with him that he cannot win relection without: it being handed to him by a blunder of an idiot opponent, or if he steals it through fraud.
We are going into the economic winter of an inevitable Kondratieff Cycledelayed by massive deficit spending. Whatever party wins the next election will take the blame for this.
Based on the momentem of electronic voter machine replacment and the detailed widespread press coverage of the hanging/dimpled chad recount process, if the presidential election is in within 0-5% there will be great hubbub and sevral recounts.
Bush will become president again after recounts play out. The media will be forced to cover the advantages of open source vs proprietary software. It's to short a logical leap for the press not to take.
Durring the mayhem and finger pointing US companies that make software will become the biggest boogie men in the questionable election. Rigged or not, the mistrust of the govt will be enourmous. The stigma will linger and people will understand the software/IP alternitive en-masse for the first time.
When the market/housing/bonds/currency all crash, because the chinese unpeg the yuan from the dollar as late as possible (2007 3/4 as per the WTO) and the yuan springs back hard destablizing everything. (they will do this as sabotage or an economic nuke.) Republicans will take all the blame for the following depresion and the corruption that caused it. (Nothing sucks like a Hoover)
The Republican party will be dispanded, and perhaps a world war (over intelectual property) will occour. Laws on software will radically change for the better in 2012-2015 bringing the US inline with less recent but still new international IP law.
As crazy as it seems, the scarriest thing to me right now is a Democrat winning. Most of these things will still happen but the Democrats will take the blame. Democrats are way to weak to survive a disasterous presidency and will dispand.
Obviously whatever party is dispanded will be replaced, but the populist replacment will take time to accumulate power and the country will swing hard to the left or the right.
Somebody please laugh at me.
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
Same company is now doing electronic voter registration and now, electronic sign-in at the polling place.
I say, if I'm a crook: Find addresses of all those nursing homes (and old method, but much enhanced with the new electronic voter registration concept). Register all the bedridden geezers, electronically sign 'em in, and electronically stuff the ballot box.
Voting in America is going to trigger the next Boston Tea Party. Check this guy out: He just put a stash of new Diebold files on the web, and is daring Diebold to come and get him:
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/JimMarch2.htm
He says, "Diebold: I cordially invite you to bite me. Bring it on. Make my day."
In Brazil, all the elections (for city council, state, federal and presidential) are made electronically. And there are no frauds, noone complained of the system.
Americans should be a little more humble and learn from other countries. Their electoral system is so fucked off that George W.C. Bush is the president, even if he hasn't the majority of the popular vote.
And you treat us as an underdeveloped country...
FUCK YOU.
It seems to me that the system people want is not electronic voting -- it's electronic vote *counting*. Computers are extremely good at counting large numbers so let's exploit that strength. But keeping data secure has so far proved difficult at best so let's not entrust that task to the computers.
The system I envision has paper ballots that are designed to be machine readable. Whether that means punching holes or filling in little bubbles or just printing neatly in the space provided makes no difference. The essential thing is that a computer needs to be able to scan the ballot quickly and accurately in order to count the vote.
At each polling booth is one or more electronic scanners that voters can feed their ballots into. The machine reads the ballot and displays what it's read to the voter. If it matches how they intended to vote then they can deposit the ballot into the ballot box, otherwise they go back and fix their ballot.
Now here's the essential point: the machines at the polling booths do absolutely no counting! The actual counting of the votes is handled after the ballots are collected and the polls are closed, by machines that have never been accessible to anyone but the proper voting officials. The polling booth machines serve only to validate that the ballot is correctly filled out and readable.
The system I've outlined is no different from a traditional election, except for the addition of a verification step so that voters can be reasonably assured that their ballots will be read correctly. (I'm not sure how often machines are used to count the ballots but surely that's been done before?)
The risks in such a system should be no greater than those in a traditional election. The machines that are at the most risk of being hacked (those at the polling stations) have absolutely no responsibility in the system. The machines that have real responsibility (the actual vote counters) can be locked away in a vault and isolated from the rest of the world. If you suspect fraud, the paper ballots will still exist and can be recounted. Use your own counting machine if you doubt the integrity of the "official" ballot counter, or if you're really paranoid, count them by hand.
The thing I like most about a system like this is that the paper ballot is always the official record. That seems important to me given the generally insecure nature of software these days.
Add to that the ubiquitous "computer glitch" which seems to the the plausible deniability excuse of choice. Do a Lexis-Nexis search with the words "glitch" and "election" and you'll see that many elections have been miscounted by these machines, including many that flip the race to the wrong candidate, even when the contest is not particularly close.
Bev Harris
Black Box Voting
Gun activist posts the Diebold files on new download site: "Make My Day," he challenges the lawyers -- "You are cordially invited to bite me"
These Diebold morons put *ZERO* effort into security.
I'm ashamed of my government, or anyone's government, allowing this sort of selfish bullshittery to become the technical basis for democracy.
More education, less marketing. It's the Democratic Way.
David Allen got the password for a secret teleconference of voting company insiders, plus the head of "The Election Center" which is supposed to represent We, the People, and a lobbyist telling the voting machine vendors to pony up $200,000 in a week for a PR blitz, due to the fact that the industry is in trouble.
Much talk was made about making sure no one in the media found out about it; imagine their chagrin when Scoop Media (that pesky New Zealand web site) had a transcript and the proposal document on the web within half an hour.
In this meeting, the vendors asked if Lockheed-Martin and Northrop Grumman and others could help them with this PR fiasco "like they helped with the HAVA bill." A subtle but rather stunning exchange followed where they all discussed how the defense contractors and procurers (and they named them: Lockheed-Martin, Northrop-Grumman, EDS and Accenture) were the driving force behind the bill for new voting machines, and that it was done specifically for profit motives.
And these were the insiders, folks. I will not be surprised if soon, that pesky New Zealand site posts an MP3 sound track of that meeting.
Bev Harris
Black Box Voting
Does Microsoft sell virus software? Do they charge extra for their "firewall"?
Be wary of any facts that confirm your opinion.
Not more than a couple of years after the "spilled coffee suit" made headlines, I went to McDonald's and got some coffee. I sat the cup on the driver's side armrest of my car and popped open the little spout so I could put the cream in. Just then my gf (now wife) opened the passenger door and got in, shaking the car. I spilled a small amount of this coffee on my side, no more than an ounce or two. It burned me quite badly. Serious 2nd degree burn, and it blistered and then festered. I had bandages and bacitracin over it for a couple of weeks. No lie. Finally I started putting raw aloe on it straight out of an aloe plant, and then it started to heal.
If I had had the coffee between my legs I might have been truly in a world of outlandish hurt.
Note that back then McDonalds had a poor cup of coffee with an extreme over-extracted taste. It's much better these days. I think they must have re-thought their whole coffee-brewing method somewhere along the way.
that should be anti-virus obviously
Be wary of any facts that confirm your opinion.
"Go ahead, throw your vote away!"
A whopping 126 results. I looked at a few pages of that search. Came up with maybe one that didn't meant it as a direct Simpsons reference. Gee, I guess you got me.
Jeffool.
"Tastes like burning!"
Actually, they say they use 32 bit encryption, which, when I spoke with Hopkins/Rice Report research Dan Wallach, he indicated could be broken within a minute with a commercial encryption-cracking device -- and even that weenie process, they use incorrectly.
It gets worse and worse. You should see what they did to Windows.
Bev Harris
The touch screen machines come with a fairly robust printer inside them already, and it costs only $15 to put paper in it for a large metro precinct. Print the ballot, keep it in a ballot box, do a decent audit.
That's the whole issue, and the understory is this: Why are they trying so hard to avoid this simple solution?
Bev Harris
When you look back at the constitution in its original form, only white, landing owning males could vote. In today's PC world, we attribute this to mere sexism and racism, and give it little thought. However, this does not explain the land owning part. Further study shoes that the framers of the constitution felt that only educated people who have time and knowledge to discuss issues should vote. Hence, the white male (now you can yell about isms!) part since it was thought at the time women were irrational and others, well, I won't go there. The land owning was used to separate out whites. If you owned land, you had money. If you had money, you could afford books/education.
This was all in an age before IQ tests. In a more modern setting, they have chosen those criteria. The honest debate could begin about whether this should be brought back. Afterall, many people in Florida could not read and figure out a ballot, so, they may have been on to something. Yet, IQ tests may not measure int. well enough, so I guess this is slashdot, it should be girlfriendless unix using males.... (Kidding, it's a joke people)
-Iowa
"He who laughs last, didn't get the joke."-Cap
The biggest problem of all, for Diebold: They claim the Hopkins/Rice report which identified "stunning, stunning security flaws" was flawed because they have such bulletproof physical security around these machines.
Supposedly, only the county supervisor can access the carefully protected GEMS machine. Okay, if that's the case, and I spoke with the county supervisor today, and she says that neither she nor any of her staff put that GEMS file on the computer, and she admits that it has real votes in it --
Then who put it on the server? I'll tell you who it appears to be: The file had a password. The password was "sophia" and a Diebold employee named Sophia was at the San Luis Obispo elections office that day.
Wait a minute, though -- what happened to Diebold's bulletproof physical security argument? How did Sophia grab a gigantic file (you can download this file, here's a page with the link -- how did that file get from the safe and secure GEMS computer to the Diebold web site?
Oh yes, and the county supervisor told me her machine was not connected to the web.
Bev Harris
Have the tech manuals, user manuals, setup guidelines. No evidence that anything they did was one-way, plenty of evidence that it hung the welcome sign out for hackers.
Bev Harris
The file inside a zip directory, and the date stamp was intact, but more important is the audit log it contains, which has about a thousand events logged going back to spring 2000. The file was clearly saved on election day, and the SLO County election supervisor admitted that to me today.
There are ways to prevent pushing data in, but remember we are talking to people whose eyes glaze over if you get technical, and since I've seen the source code, run the programs, and have seen the tech manuals, installation guides, user manuals and parts list, I feel that I represented the situation fairly.
Bev Harris
Shawn Southworth
He has bounced from one certifier to another because they all keep dropping it. Whoever picks it up, the same guy ends up doing the testing.
Despite two formal public records requests, we have not been able to get hold of any copy of any certification document for the Diebold touch screen machines, and when we have called the only contact person you are allowed to call, R. Doug Lewis, he has hung up on four people in a row.
Bev Harris
But they are paying $200,000 for a massive PR campaign to dissuade people from thinking we need a paper trail.
Here's a concept: Use the fairly robust printer that is already built into the Diebold touch screens. Use the paper that's already in there because it prints a report when the polls close. Print ballots and use the ballot boxes you already have because you've had them for a hundred years, put the paper ballot in there after We, the People, verify our vote, and then audit the machines in a halfway sensible way.
Bev Harris
He should have gone on to add: "whether or not anybody in the state of Ohio votes for Bush or not".
Tech Public Policy stuff
If any state's votes have to be thrown out over mangled electronic voting machine votes, that'll get the question of electronic voting to the WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING level.
That's what needs to be done.
A little Googling should disclose every county/state where Diebold has deployed.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Select candidates at the primary level so even if the other side wins, they lose
Use your new electronic voter registration capabilities (run by Diebold also) to dump every geezer in a nursing home bed into the system, and
Use your new electronic sign-in method (Diebold smart cards) to turn the polling place check-in into bits and bytes and
Stuff the electronic ballot box using the geezer votes
Wow. Are we having fun yet?
It could be either party, or some bearded guy sitting in a cave in the Middle East, for all we know, as long as he has a modem and some hacker buddies.
Bev Harris
They started doing that as of when the Religious Right took it over quite a few years ago. However, the foriegn policy agenda of the Religious Right was never really there, so it's hardly surprising that the GOP would be in need of some snake oil to fill the hole.
The GOP has come a long way since Lincoln and Goldwater. Some call it "progress"
Tech Public Policy stuff
http://www.equalccw.com/dieboldtestnotes.html
Download it and look for yourself.
They admit it was real votes in the middle of the day. But if you want to see the specifics of why we knew it was real votes and the time stamp was accurate (it was not the FTP stamp, it was the file save date on a file inside a zip directory, backed up by dozens of automatic audit log items) -- and we knew it was not just that the clock was wrong because more votes appeared in the final tally.
Anyway, the details are here: Oooof! Proof?
The two-way modem info was simplistic, but all broadcast media that goes to general interest audiences is. They had that music on, going-going-going to commercial...but more importantly,
I knew that the two-way communications are possible because 1) I have seen the source code and it specifically enables read-write capabilities 2) I have installed the GEMS program and played with it 3) I have seen the user manuals, technical manuals, hardware manuals, installation instructions
Therefore, the information was accurate
As for left-wing journalist: Jim March, the person who found the files and posted the new Diebold stash for download, is a Republican/Libertarian gun activist. More on his point of view here: http://www.blackboxvoting.org/JimMarch2.htm
Cheers.
Bev
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Voting systems solve the lack of technology.
This is the decade of the balm of technology. Technology will be the salve that cures all wounds. When any problem arises which could be solved by any means, technology must be at the core of the solution. Lack of technology indicates a weakness in any planned defense.
Help us all, I shudder at popularized magazines running aricles (thinly disguised ads?) touting how technological navigation systems which lie about the topology could have kept 9/11 from happening. My instant insight: what about a plane without this system installed or working?
Where technology fails us, we think law will fill in the holes. ie. Make it a legal requirement for all planes to be equipped with a system like this one.
As anyone with any inkling of how legal systems work knows, by the time you involve a court, the thing you're suing/fighing about has already happened.
IIRC, that's exactly what happened, and when the loser demanded a recount, the GOP Secretary of State said that the demand for a recount was "without merit".
Tech Public Policy stuff
What legitimate reason is there for a voting machine to push data to a private repository during an election?
You can't think of any, either, can you?
Tech Public Policy stuff
and maybe bring the Lewinsky back....
- "They misunderestimated me."
Next election should be done through Slashdot Poll!
Most reliable results!
Vote Cowboyneal for president!
- "They misunderestimated me."
But, ha ha, you're a little too Fair-and-Balanced for your own good. Even if the mainstream media were alert enough to be covering this issue, we'd still be discussing the very same issue. As it happens, we're discussing a report from a news source that cared enough to cover the issue critically. This is a proof that the failure of mainstream media to inform the public makes alternative news sources all the more necessary, indeed vital.
You need to take a long hard look at why the mainstream media don't ask difficult questions about these matters. Your "moderate" and "mainstream" media corporations have quite a lot vested in the election process and a lot at stake in sustaining the appearance of electoral fairness: every four years election advertising makes them very, very rich. In that context the adjective "mainstream" is hardly synonymous in any way with "objective" or "neutral"--the mainstream media are better seen as fulfilling a commercial contractual bargain, not inquiring or informing the general public.
It sure as hell looked like Flamebait to me:
Your votes are being scammed to keep the neocon scum in power.
Face it. You were busted fair and square.
Slashdot quality declines as the number of hot grits posts decreases. - Provolt's Law, Apr-09-2005
You can tell everyone what you want but the point is you can't prove it!
And if you can't prove who you voted for no one can force you to give your vote to a specific candidate.
while (!asleep()) sheep++
And you do want the President to be held to the same legal stander as anyone else in the country, right?
As a matter of fact, no, I don't. I think the President should be held to a HIGHER standard that anyone else in the country. If his own wife can't trust him to be faithful to her, how can the rest of the country trust him to do what's best for the country, and not his own self interests?
"It's better to have a gun and not need it than need a gun and not have it." ~ Christian Slater, True Romance
I for one am calling major media outlets right now. If even 10 of us did it, it would have a great effect on their programming (or so I've heard). Imagine if we had the entire Slashdot readership voicing opinions at them! FoxNews - 888-369-4762 ABCNews - 818-460-7477 CBS News - 212-975-4321 I'll continue this list later... currently it's incomplete. Sorry. Duty Calls
We have never had a true democracy; we have a 'representational' democracy. Enough Civics 101.
Regardless of the format, our rights are being eroded. By BOTH parties. If you think the dems hands are clean check out any major city, Chicago and NYC are stellar examples. By extension, live in NY state or Illinois, check out what happens to your state as a result of the metropolis' politicians (and yes I have and I do).
TR was NOT a Democrat, he also stopped being a Republican. FDR did some good things, but those led to an 'entitlement state'; " oooh, I'm a victim, gimmee some of what you've got I DESERVE IT." I don't buy it, I had to sell (pawn) possessions to keep from getting evicted, wheedle my landlord, work two crappy minimum wage jobs, and eat only PBJ sandwiches on bread from the day-old store; but NOONE OWED ME A DAMN THING! I am where I am because I got me here, not a social program, not a preference system, my religious institution of choice did give me moral and morale support, but that's a choice for you to make.
I register Independant and vote for the candidate's position on the issues that are important to me. Both established parties are as crooked as a dog's hind leg at the national level, usually at the regional level too. Politicians from BOTH parties are trying to amass as much power as they possibly can, your welfare is not their priority, just your vote.
The mainline Democrats are trying to incite a 'class warfare' mentality by constantly crowing 'big corporations are buying Republicans'; open your eyes, they're buying the Democrats too. Don't even consider the millions from labor unions, at least in my union, our officials are usually preoccupied with getting more power for themselves (you won't hear much about it, anyone who talks about those sort of things must be a scab or a management spy, quick lets burn his car and break his legs!)
WAH! A DEMOCRAT LOST! WAH! IT MUST BE FRAUD! WAH!
Get real, more and more people are coming to their senses and are voting for candidates and not political affiliations.
It's true. Some of those dancers have decades of experience. It'd take some doing to put one over on them.
Mind the Gap
Three replys into this obvious flamebait topic from an obviously unbiased (toungue in cheek) source and we already are into major, unadulterated trolling.
... can you believe this... the POWER GRID!!!
;-)
Gimme a fricking break people. An unabashedly far left liberal website trolls something like this and 30 seconds later the blog has fallen in hook line and sinker to vast right wing conspiracy theories, and defense of the bastions of righteousness in the current republicrat administration.
Like there is something newsworthy to the idea that technology is misunderstood and improperly implemented in something as important as a voting system??? Try this on for size... the same stuff is used in hospitals, nuclear reactors, and
Get the heck over it! Other than the facts that politicians are stupid insipid drones, their underlings are deceitful personally agrandizing egotists, and the vendors are bumbling idiots after an ever diminishing margin... there are no communists or fascists lurking here.
Just another case of idiots paying a huge margin to a systems integrator (read: beltway bandit) with poorly defined (if at all) requirements. Worse yet a procurement process which could at best be described as a byzantine approach executed by civil servants who could not get a "real" job getting the most from the lowest bidder.
Whats evil or conspiratorial is that we let this stuff continue because we hire the same idiots to congress and the WH rather than throw them all out.
mdw
A related problem is the advocation of voting on the internet or any other computerized version of voting that requires some identification.
The problem is that there are two mutually exclusive actions required for voting on the interent.
The first is a valid identification of the voter. Assuming that the voter can be identified, that means the computer would know who is voting.
The second is the annomity of the vote. Assuming a vote was made and the computer knows who voted, because of identification for validating the voter is a registered voter, it is now impossible to not know who voted in what way. A vote that is not annonymous is not a vote but a death warrent.
If you somehow separate the identification of the voter from the vote, then you have no way of knowing if the vote is by a valid voter or not.
The voters are screwed no matter what action they take.
Internet voting could be how we will lose democracy if the average person cannot understand what is at stake.
What stops commie libs from jacking the elections?
Holy shit! I've never met a Republican anarchist, but you think Bush and Company are the threat with these machines?
I'm infinately more concerned about the little Abby Hoffman's and their PeeCee's than I am Bush.
Ask Liddy... Republicans get caught. Libs get "Martyred".
Unless I'm mistaken, leaders are people, too. If people can't be trusted to respect the rights of the minority, how can leaders, who are people, elected by people, be trusted? It's the constitution that protects the rights of the minority, not the boys in Washington. You could have a direct democracy with constitutional protections for the minority.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
A deep, unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Your sig is funny given that your position is based on the "deep, unwavering belief" that everyone who doesn't know who the candidates are for an election 13 months ahead of time must be people who will never learn later either and thus cannot be informed voters.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
I know hardware glitches occur. But they are not very frequent. And if they occur they are typically of the form, "this program doesn't work at all", not of the form "This program works but under some circumstances, with just the right conditions, it finishes successfully but with the wrong result." If a hardware glitch flips a bit from 1 to 0, for example, the chances that the program will still run anyway but with just the wrong total is very small. Alter a random bit in the program and it's highly likely to cause it to die altogether. The kind of bugs we are worried about here (where the voter doesn't know anything went wrong, but the program counted the vote badly) are orders of magnitude more likely to be software problems. Hardware problems are likely to just make the whole thing die, in a manner that people can easily tell it's not working.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
100,000 kb in Microsoft Access form.
I was joking with you bro! I thought that would've been obvious by my link to "Taste like burning!", which we all know as Ralph Wiggum, but doesn't turn up as Simpsons until a good way down the search page. I guess it just looked like me being an asshole, which I wasn't meant to be. My bad. Hope I didn't pile too much inane poo on your day.
Jeffool.
Well, that's very simple actually. The group of potential leaders you have to chose from in an election are NOT just a random sampling from the population. The choices are almost exclusively, well-educated, reasonably intelligent individuals.
If you look into US history, you will find many many times that a political leader has made a very unpopular decision, that, in retrospect, was the right decision to make. And those aren't rare exceptions, they are regular occurances.
Well, the constitution, through the courts, provide only a bare minium of protection.
No longer would you ever see anything like "Equal Rights" laws being enacted. You would probably also see lots of programs like Welfare end, simply because it has a bad reputation among the majority of the people.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
You are probably right that hardware "glitches" (defined here as a temporary, non-fatal, non-locking error, just for clarity's sake) happen less often than software failures. My guess is that it's about one order of magnitude (10x). Your guess is more. I know people who adamantly argue that it's much less. Unfortunately for all of us, since there is rarely any way to recognize that an hardware glitch has occured, we can't really know for sure. How can you ever know for sure if the hardware retains no evidence of its "glitch"?
:)
[Hardware errors] are typically of the form, "this program doesn't work at all", not of the form "This program works but under some circumstances, with just the right conditions, it finishes successfully but with the wrong result." If a hardware glitch flips a bit from 1 to 0, for example, the chances that the program will still run anyway but with just the wrong total is very small. Alter a random bit in the program and it's highly likely to cause it to die altogether.
I think you missed my attempt at distinguishing harware failure (which is what you seem to be describing) and a hardware "glitch" (as defined above). I assert that something on the order of 10% of all "crashes" are due to non-fatal (in that the chip doesn't fry), temporary, self-recovering chip failures, and the remaining 90% are software. More than most people acknowledge. Unfortunately, as explained above, there's no way to know how right or wrong either of us are (unless all software flawlessly trapped all errors with appropriate logging and reporting, which would make the question moot were it true).
Also, the failures aren't all 0->1 or 1->0 bitflips -- that really only applies to storage elements like RAM and flip flops. We have ways of making that redundant and really robust (starting way back when with parity, up to modern 3-bit ECC and RAM layouts designed to defend against cosmic radiation). It's the other stuff (interconnect resistive shorts, race conditions, excessive leakage, non-fatal punch-thorough, unexpected EMI, system-wide signal integrity, local hot-spots, On-Chip Variation, etc.) that we can't try to correct when they fail which cause the most problems these days.
Also, I think you usually have more data than executable code in memory, so it seems that a random bitflip in your RAM (assuming no ECC) would affect data, not program, and therefore (probably) not be fatal. Moreover, lots of opcodes with similar arguments have 1-bit difference, so you'd not necessarily get a coredump on changing "branch if greater than" to "branch if less than", would you?
Regarding knowing when a piece of hardware (chips, mostly) cause a "glitch": AFAIK, there is exactly one company trying to remedy this. Sun Microsystems. "RAS" (Reliability, Acessibility, Scalability, in that order) is the mantra at Sun, and the next generation stuff is insanely self-testable, to the point that the testability sometimes costs more dollars and time than the normal functionality.
Even with this expense, Sun is not even aiming at 100% -- it's impossible with the current knowledge base. Someone has to come up with some amazing new way of thinking as significant as Newtonian physics or relativity theory in order to change that. Until then, you just keep thinking it's all a software problem (except for obvious, permanent hardware failures), and I'll keep laughing when the programmers get flak for my bug
everything in moderation
Think about this and answer honestly: If the same guy were a vocal supporter of a politician who you support, would you be convinced he was going to cheat? Or would you see it rationally- the man has opinions, just like every other person in the world?
Indeed; just look at Michael Moore. He's made a lot of noise about the man he calls "Governor Bush", but the problem is, it's very obvious that it's not the democratic process that he's worried about, but rather that his own side lost. Can you even imagine Michael Moore ranting about "Former Vice President Gore"? No, it simply wouldn't happen.
"In truth, they probably deserve a lot of it, but not the 100% most believe -- hardware does sometimes fail for a microsecond and then recover nonchalantly, as if nothing happened, sort of like when a cat trips or runs into a wall."
Okay, I've only had one beer so far (I just got off work), but now I just sprayed it all over my monitor. I still remember almost dying with a couple of my old roommates on seeing one of their cats do this. Was insane, the thing just kept on going, cool as can be, and then looked sooooo embarrassed as we all just fell over laughing.
Just a funny dumb story, move along folks...
Oh, so I'm not completely off topic...
Yeah, chips can flip over and recover, cause software to freeze, crash, or flip out for a moment. The problem is that most software that pushes chips to the point of depending on each and every cycle to deliver correct info in a timely manner doesn't always have the kind of fail safes that chips sometimes do built into them. Ah well...
No system is ever perfect, almost. (I hate absolutes, they so freakin' rarely exist, if ever, but that'd be an absolute.)
Arg, this is annoying as hell. Given that quantum computers aren't as ubiquitous as usb keychain drives...
How tough would it be to whip up an existing open source OS, say, NSA's version of SELinux, rig it to run a fingerprint of the system hardware and all code running on it to a sufficiently secure encryption system, and then make the entire damn works public and open source, including the public keys? You'd have to work out an open system in which you could publically verify the system hardware keys of course, but that should be pretty trivial... MS has been doing it forever...
This way, every goddamn citizen can verifiy for themselves what's running on the computer, that it checks against what they could possibly have a copy of codewise and examine themselves, and make damn sure that the entire damn voting process is transparent as possible - assuming no shenanigans in transport or physical access...
You wouldn't even have to access the machine to record the signatures for comparison, as long as everyone knew that it was running to spec and produced identical cryto signatures on the software that was distributed. I've been thinking of something along these lines ever since I heard about all this BS, and won't trust any electronic system until it does something along these lines...
Just look at some of this troll's past work.
Just look at some of this troll's past work.
But Oracle DOES say to make backups....
Not on paper it doesn't!
I think you missed my attempt at distinguishing harware failure (which is what you seem to be describing)
Wrong. I *am* describing glitches. Try this thought experiment: Take any program's binary executable file. Write a program that will randomly pick one of the bytes in that file and re-write it with a different value (say, with one or two bits flipped). The, try to run that program file. This simulates one kind of memory glitch. Now, which is more likely to be the kind of bug that occurs:
1 - The program runs to completion without crashing, but something "weird" happens, like a wrong answer in a math formula.
2 - The program crashes entirely at some point.
I say #2 will happen more often than #1, and that was what I was talking about. When I talked about software crashing you mistook that for hardware crashing. I was talking about "minor" glitches in hardware causing major crashes in the software that runs on it. Software is very intolerant of the computer it runs on suddenly doing something out-of-spec.
Also, I think you usually have more data than executable code in memory, so it seems that a random bitflip in your RAM (assuming no ECC) would affect data, not program, and therefore (probably) not be fatal.
Flipping data bits *does* cause crashes just as much as flipping code bits does. (Lots of those
bytes of data are pointers that the program trusts and plans to use. Lots of those bytes of data are keeping track of the heap of allocated data. Lots of those bytes are keeping track of complex data structures like graphs, trees, and so on. Lots of those bytes represent indeces into arrays. Alter any of those and *boom* - crash.)
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.