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E-Voting Companies Answer Critics With ... Spin
Whammy666 writes "Wired has a follow-up article which tells of how Diebold and other E-Voting machine manufacturers have enlisted the Information Technology Association of America (a trade public relations and lobbying group) to 'generate positive public perception' of the companies and to 'reduce substantially the level and amount of criticism from computer scientists and other security experts about the fallibility of electronic voting systems.' It seems the concerns about the lack of an audit trail are finally being heard as the industry is reconsidering its opposition to giving the voter a paper receipt of his vote. Of course, a paper receipt given to the voter still doesn't allow for a manual recount should an election dispute arise unless the receipts are collected and secured by election officials." Reassuring PR is Stage Two; remember that Stage One is silence your critics.
I vote YEA on the this story sucks issue
Film at 11
"If you don't like the fact they're using our voting machines, then try to elect someone that will use something else. That's right, we said try, because it's not going to happen!"
Yet another group owned by the experts!
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
With michael taking heat lately for posting articles that may be seen as having a liberal bias, I'm glad to see someone else take a position too. Let's face it- people are biased. Isn't it better when that bias is clear and obvious, than when they try and hide it?
#define DRM chmod 000
instead of "SPIN"....they would have a decent product. Of course, I'm not taking into account the Access backend and the undying Republican support given by the Board of Diebold. Nevermind.........
Don't be a zoa (zealous overbearing ass), be happy!
Where there is smoke there is FIRE. The really sad part is that the majority of voters are actually unaware of the issue to begin with. It speaks volumes that Diebold et al are actually taking action to try and give the "warm fuzzies"
Paranoia was conceived to make you feel that your reasonable suspicions are unreasonable and unwarranted.
Sounds like a cruel joke from the RIAA.
Dill said, however, that the design of a voter-verified paper system is not a trivial undertaking and that the usability and security aspects of such a feature need to be thought through carefully so companies design systems under standards that meet both these criteria.
Yes, trivial. Done. Completed. In use nationwide in Brazil.
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
If the public had a clue maybe more than 1 out of 5 americans that can (not counting some felons, age restrictions, not moving to a new place soon enough, etc) vote would. this would greatly reduce the risk of fraud based on shear data. But most of my fellow americans are sheep and if they do vote vote on ONE subject not the overall person(views). But what i just said is a terrorist i mean who would think a gov. for the peps, means for the peps.
Bitter i guess
#include <stdio.h>
// No need for args
// BUGBUG: Need a bunch of BigInts for each candidate
// throw away any votes for write-in candidates (just like the voter)
// Put selections in here later
// BUGBUG: need to handle error conditions
// BUGBUG: need to increment selected candidate's tally.
int main()
{
char vote[2] = "\0";
printf("BUGBUG");
fgets(STDIN, 1, &vote);
printf("Thanks for participating in the American electoral process!");
return 0;
}
just like a certain administration did
aint truth a bitch, feels good when the gov think we are f**kin idiots
No!
It's not that _we_ want paper receipts!
It's that we want the voting infrastructure to maintain an audit trail.
Voters getting receipts directly allows for vote selling, which as another poster pointed out, is not limited to monetary compensation but includes anything people are willing to sell a vote for (health, job security, etc.)
The purpose of an election is not to determine a winner but to make everyone agree on who lost. If the losing side can say, "Sure, people voted for Bob, but it was under duress and thus didn't count", people fail to agree and fealty does not transfer.
Since we have elections precisely to avoid the violence that normally accompanies a transfer of power, this is not a small matter.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
> remember that Stage One is silence your critics.
Look at the guy who made fools of the DoHS by waltzing through airport security and hiding box cutters on several airplanes... where they remained for five months, despite "daily" inspections, and were only finally found because someone finally read his e-mail a month after he sent it.
Now he's being described as a dangerous criminal...
Then there's the "free speech zones" where people carrying protest signs are marched away to when the presidential motorcade comes to town...
"The Silence of the Critics" seems to be the vision of the politicians/companies running the USA these days. See the emperor's new clothes, or go to jail. Orwell would be proud.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
exec1: haha we actually convinced those stupid citizens that they think are voting for a candidate by pressing a button
exec2: yah those Nigerians gave us some great pointers to democracy
Are we missing something here? We all know the solution: print each and every vote on a paper ballot, check the ballot and deposit on a ballot box.
The votes are counted electronically but some machines at random should get audited and results compared to the paper votes.
A simple way to insure ourselves of no foul play or no computational errors.
What worries me is that the E-Vote machine vendors are pushing for PR so they do not have to change the system BEFORE the next election...
Me paranoid? hmmmmmm
~~~Please pass the salt, I hate unsalted MD5s
We seem to have forgotten something here. The paper ballot system isn't broken. What failed wad the punchcard system, and more specific efforts to explain proper operation of it.
The ideal ballot is one that results in a piece of paper that is both human-readable and machine readable. There hasn't been many problems with the "fill in the bubble" system of balloting, even though that system is open to a risk of users who don't understand that an X or checkmark in the bubble doesn't work.
The place for touchscreens is to help the user create a perfect ballot that is machine readable for speed counting, with the votes also in human readable terms for manual spot checks and recounting, and the most important spot check: The one the voter does before walking over to the ballot box. If the printout doesn't say what they thought it did, they hand the spoiled ballot to the officials and go try again.
The idea of having any form of electronic memory conduct counting within the in-booth devices is crazy. It opens the system into too much risk of data loss or data manipulation. There needs to be an audit trail, and that trail belongs in the ballot box.
While the merits of OSS for many purposes are debatable, when it comes to voting machines, I think it's pretty clear that no system should be adopted that hasn't had its design and implementation thoroughly peer-reviewed. That means hardware schematics as well as source code.
Note that merely "providing the source" isn't particularly helpful. The elections standards arm of the government is going to have to contract out the review and assure that it is done by a diverse group of peers other than the implementor -- and most likely including their competitors -- and not just rely on interested citizens to happen to take a peek (welcome as that might be).
In this case, you can make your money by selling the hardware. There need be no trade secrets involved in building an voting machine.
But then again, unless the system uses Linux it wouldn't be deemed satisfactory by this bunch of zealots.
... ? Seriously, from what I've been reading about Diebold's system a two-year-old could crack it. As I've pointed out before, this is all basically about teaching a computer to count, which is not inordinately difficult. Diebold cobbled together something that sorta counts votes and left security out because it was too "inconvenient" and then shipped it and now that the cat's out of the bag they want us to forget about it.
And your point would be
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I do not want to get answers like this when the nature of my future government is on the line here. These guys have to be held accountable for any and ALL mistakes that will occur.
I almost wish for the old greek system, drop a stone into a bucket. Count the white ones and black ones.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
Remember that a reciept is JUST A PRINTOUT. And unless something is funny enought to force a recount of receipts that were collected, no one will ever know if the printer matched what was recorded by the machine's tally.
Always value the individual over the system. --Bruce Lee "I don't need a Sig - I have a custom 191" - me
This was (in parody - don't want to get sued!) taken from a Diebold computer system with weak network security.
+_BEGIN_PRESS_RELEASE
As with all things so important to the basis of democracy, we must make sure that the decisions we make are wise and in the interests of the people.
Therefore, we call upon you, the people, to go to your local voting places* next tuesday. There, a voting location will be set up with Genuine Diebold Vote-tech (TM) booths, for you to vote if Diebold units should be used in national and local elections. We Sincerely hope you take advantage of your precious right to speak your mind this tuesday - and are honored that we have this chance to prove ourselves to you, The People!
+_INSERT_OFFICIAL_NAME_
* Your local voting places will be listed in your phonebook as "Diebold Warehouse", and are only available in select cities. If your "Official" voting location does not help you for the sake of this vote, consider moving to Texas - some states are not as interested in voting rights as others.
+_BEGIN_INTERNAL_MEMO_
Boss - this still needs to go through legal, and we need to work on in some shame for anyone questioning the vote itself, without actually mentioning that people are against this.
Bill, from Marketing.
+_END_
Company Cowardice Anonymity increased public trust in their product lines by ensuring that their products DON'T THREATEN DEMOCRACY!
It is obvious that the problem is not simply one of implementation. It has become clear at this point that Diebold is simply incompetent. Moreover, and most importantly, however, they refuse to respond to critisism or problems, refusing to admit anything could be wrong with their systems ever and instead claiming infallability. They respond to people who point out problems by growing defensive and treating any complaints as an attack on them.
Diebold itself needs to go. For the moment, at least, this needs to be the main focus of whatever attempts we make in the media: Attacking diebold itself, with the backdrop being to explain what a correctly-done system would look like.
We need an open source system. And I don't mean a community developed system. I mean the state needs to go to a company, say, "you are going to develop a system for us, you will pay us, and then you will give us the source code and go away, and SOMEONE ELSE is going to maintain it", and then hire contractors to make changes to the code as the state needs. As the current system is, the changes occur based on diebolds needs, with diebold ardently resisting all changes the electorate may want.
I think that most people are unaware of the voting holes/issues simply because they don't even care anymore. They've given up on the system and having the words "generate positive public perception" and PR and voting... in the same vein as politics is not helping them or their cause.
Let's keep in mind that patents are in place to keep lawyers employed and keep them litigating. -CatGrep
For all of the support for open source software at various state and national governments nowadays, I'm surprised I haven't heard about that many OSS voting systems. I realize some of the requirements are a bit tricky (anonymity vs. auditability), but has no one been able to come up with a strong, secure reference system built from standard OSS components?
I'd even say to go one step beyond and provide a continuously polling system that would enable a more direct "digital democracy". You wouldn't need to vote at a certain blockpoint. You could just log in your preference on the government server, and it would compute your influence on, say, budgeting for education vs. defense vs. infrastructure, or whether to declare war on someone or not. Having an "official" government polling system for these kinds of issues would do away with a lot of the biased media polls that we resort to for some silly reason today.
I am not one to say that we should get in the way of progress. But Diebold should be trying to fix it, recall their product, and fix all security holes. Obviously it is hard to fix them all, but we need to try and advance rather then say that we need to go back to the drawing board. It is wrong to try and change the attitude through press, but it doesn't mean we should give up. There are security holes in old systems, like using dead on the voting roles.
This is not to say I think we should just forget security. I do not know how big these holes are. If they are large. We should try and fix them with outh cover up. Over all though, I think electronic voting is a good thing.
-Seriv
Electronic voting is the way forward for any true socialist democracy i.e. where the people have a direct say over the governing of a nation or ( any organisation for that manner )... e-voting will not be popular with people who hold seats of power and they will resist it very strongly and through up all sorts of FUD as to why it can't be done ... this is because the electorate for the first time in history will have direct access to the decision making process ... for example what would the outcome have been if the US citizenry had e-voting available to it when George W decided to invade a nation for its regions oil?
...
For all the technical problems that surround e-voting they are definately not insummountable
Paper Receipts are a bad, bad idea for electronic voting, or voting in general for that matter, since it opens the door to commercializing votes ("show me that you voted as I told you, and I will pay you"), vote under pressure ("prove to me that you voted right, or else"), etc.
I am actually even opposed to massive vote by mail. What I don't understand is why the issue of electronic voting even exists. Most countries' elections just with little papers with names in a box. And none of them has recently had anything ressembling to the 2000 presidential fiasco.
But I would certainly rather take an obscure electronic vote with no paper receipt than one that has even optional paper receipts.
We all know lying is easy. In fact, lying is much easier than dealing with a problem, and as companies like SCO have shown, it's often more profitable to tell a lie than to tell the truth.
What needs to be done is to make lying less desirable from a corporate point of view. This should not be done by punishing the companies, but rather the individuals that make these ridiculous claims and often loot their own organizations.
Bill Clinton was impeached for lying about a fat chick, why shouldn't these people get in trouble for lying about the foundations of democracy?
I know, deep in my heart that John Ashcroft will do the right thing, and speak out against these companies, just as he will about the drug users ruining this great country.
After the Bush v Gore infamous recount during the 2000 presidential elections, the Democratic party has been rushing full force to discredit the "traditional" voting methods, through a constant political & media barage against punchcard & butterfly ballots. The general public now has a perception that paper is "bad" and the "better" alternative is via technology ... the electronic booth.
In reality it is statistically no more or no less accurate than traditional means, still has no audit trail, and still has no security between the time when the poll closes and the machines delivered to the final counting place (which is when I believe the real funny business takes place...) You read these reports where they "find" sealed ballot boxes that were never delivered, days after the election is finalized. What was that about Stalin counting the votes?
+5 insightful, clearly.
How about sticking with the machine-punched ballots, which are scanned into a computer so the results are displayed on a screen while the voter is still in the booth. Then if the voter disagrees, the ballot can be disregarded. The official tally would count only the paper ballots, with the computer tally available as a check.
Multi-state lotteries like Powerball maintain perfect security, audits, and whatnot...but this is impossible to achieve with voting? The Powerball odds are 1 in 120,526,770. Considering multiple winners occasionally win the large jackpots, it's safe to assume there are more tickets being played than people in the US. Perphaps electronic voting should look for answers in the lottery systems for their problems...
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"Reassuring PR is Stage Two; remember that Stage One is silence your critics."
No, stage one is "collect underpants!" Everybody knows that! Sheesh!
If you haven't heard much about this lately, Salon.com recently ran an article detailing some of the injustices done by police at the instruction of the Secret Service. Saturday they posted some letters sent in by readers.
Note: you'll have to watch the brief commercial to get access to Salon, but once you do, you'll have full access to the premium content.
Additionally, the ACLU has filed motions (I believe that's the right term) on behalf of several protestors affected in this way, but I can't find a reference to the press release.
-- "Complacency is a far more dangerous attitude than outrage." -Naomi Littlebear
Not unlike the kind that you see on the register tapes however these could be more secure. These could be printed by the voting machines (for the voter) and/or duplicated on an paper journal. Low Tech yes but providing the "paper trail."
The way I prefer to look at it is that since we understand Technology, we understand what it can do. And more importantly, we understand its limitations.
It isn't enough just to use technology. You also have to understand it. And you also have to understand when it is and is not appropriate. If you understand the technology here you also understand that there are a number of things that have to be done to make this technology something you can trust. And you can see Diebold is not doing these things. Anyone who knows enough about software that, seeing the Diebold system, we can design in our heads five to ten ways on the spur of the moment that, if we worked for Diebold, we could cause the system to cheat and never get caught... well, it's unlikely we're going to trust that system very much.
Instead of designing a workable solution
If you look, there HAVE been constructive threads on the subject of what a well-done, trustable electronic voting system would look like. THis was actually the Ask Slashdot one week if I remember right. However, that is not the subject of this article. So you are not getting that sort of response.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
You allow people to take their receipt with them, then you get into the possibility of vote buying.
Say person A approaches person B and offers person B a sum of money if person B will vote a certain way. Person B goes to the polls, votes, obtains the receipt, and then, later, presents person A with the receipt as proof that person B voted as person A instructed. Person A then pays person B for a job well done.
Without the receipt, person B has no way to prove that they voted as person A had instructed.
This is the same reason why Internet voting is going to be a problem. Sure, I can place my vote from my PC at work, and my co-workers can look over my shoulder to see how I vote, to make sure I cast my vote the way they want it to be cast. If I vote the way they tell me to, I'll get a reward. It isn't a matter of secure communications between the client PC and the server. Its an issue of being able to provide proof of who you voted for to other people.
Concept: Touch-screen/braile voting booth with card-stock printer, and scanner.
Steps:
Features:
let's start this project and get it off the ground! Volunteers contact me.
Randy
--==-- I've found Karma to be a relative thing... Ya know, the kind you invite to Christmas...
...it's an optical scan machine. We use them in my town. You mark a paper ballot, just like in school (make your marks heavy and black...). Then slide it into the "Accu-Vote" machine [love that name...like something out of The Simpsons]
Anyway. What's wrong with this? Paper ballots, machine & humanly readable, electronically counted. And very similar to those used throughout history, where the voter made a mark next to the name of the candidate of his or her choice. Disabled voters are allowed poll workers to assist them in the booth. The paper ballots can be removed and hand counted if necessary.
Folks, this isn't rocket science. Touch screens, color and WinCE do *not* always improve things! Boy, I sure wish people would calm down and remember the KISS principle...
Oh, and by the way...the printers will *never* last. Touch screens are a bad idea from beginning to end.
At least they aren't wielding the DMCA, the Patriot Act, claiming that pointing out that the emperor has no clothes is terrorism...
yet...
if the answer isn't violence, neither is your silence / freedom of expression doesn't make it alright
The only way to make sure that your vote counts is a voter-verified paper trail for use in recounts and mandatory recount in a small percentage of districts chosen at random (to verify that the equipment is working). This is the only way to have meaningful recounts.
HR 2239 does just this (and was written by a physicist, no less)!
Sign the petition supporting HR 2239, there's a link to it at the bottom of VerifiedVoting.org!
Keep the freedom to vote.
Stop listening to Alex Jones and Michael Ruppert. They're kooks and don't know fucking SHIT about voting machines. Only kooks worry about voting machines. Grow the FUCK UP
Solid engineering, is difficult, and expensive because it requires talented people. Lying on the other hand, is not only cheap, but easy to boot.
In other news, people lied for money. People outraged, but unsurprised.
They should just change their name to "Diebold Machines and election results"... seeing as both are for sale
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
A conspiracy about the voting machines? Give me a break! There's nothing wrong with these machines. Give it a rest. Just because you hate Bush you thin k you have to start up vicious rumors about voting machines and whatever else you people yak about.
Folks, let me point out some facts to you:
Voting machine conspiracy... no such thing.
The "New World Order"... no such thing
The government knew about 9/11... nope, no way.
The latest Iraq war wasn't justified... bullshit.
Really, I think you people need to stop with the conspiracy stuff and start supporting your government. After all, you are here to serve your country, not the other way around. Let's get back to reality here folks.
Paper ballots are cheaper, auditable. and better. Screw these "new" systems. The one we had wasn't broken. Congress just wanted to take heat off it's self because of the Florida fiascio where about 1% population thinks the election was stolen even after it's been proven it was not. The truth is about 10% of the voting population is to stupid to correctly mark their ballot and check it for errors and "hanging chads" when they are done. Perhaps if we had had some people running for office other than the total crap we had and have running more people would participate.
When I was taking Political Science I think that the number one factor in determining an election was the amount of campaign dollars a canidate used for advertising. It is also pretty consistent with ballot measures. There are of course exceptions but it is scary how often it is true.
Other factor that are a big influence on who people vote for (which often correlate with campaign funds) are incumbancy and name recognition. Also note that the TV stations will usually ignore a canidate if they don't have a significant "war chest." Thus most people have never even heard of the Libertarian and Green canidates.
However, all of it might become a moot point if our elections process is taken over by a completely incompetent computer system with no ability to audit.
This signature used to contain a cute kitty virus with ansii art. Please set the slashdot editors on fire. Thank you
Hook up a dot-matrix printer and log every vote on paper at the time of the vote. This can't be that hard to do or figure out. Unless you want to maintain the ability to change the vote after the election.
I think it would be useful to have a transition period of 10 years or so, that would be used for the software to become more stable, and to help instill the trust in the system. People would cast their e-vote, get the receipt, verify it is correct and put the receipt in an old fashion ballot box. After the polls close, the e-votes are shown and the receipts are tallied. Then the discrepancies are examined and if there are any problems, the receipts are used for the final count instead.
--
Luck is just skill you didn't know you had.
"reduce substantially the level and amount of criticism from computer scientists and other security experts about the fallibility of electronic voting systems."
They aren't saying, "We want to make our software more secure." They're just saying, "We don't want to hear about how it isn't secure."
I don't think there is anything wrong with electronic voting. I just think there is something wrong with the current companies that do it.
Funny though, I don't know anything about any company except Diebold. Does this mean that the others aren't as bad or just they haven't been caught?
If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor - Albert Einstein
You then either drop them off at the county clerk's or mail them in. The ones that arrive by the voting day get counted. No waiting in line, plenty of time to fill them out, etc.
'reduce substantially the level and amount of criticism from computer scientists and other security experts about the fallibility of electronic voting systems'
:P
Couldn't Diebold et al do this themselves better - by simply making better products?
Reminds me of the Monty Python sketch where the guy has inherited a mess of string...
"People" using "unnecessary" quotes should be "shot".
Perhaps they should print out two receipts...a "customer copy" and a "merchant copy"...heck, the U.S. is corporatized enough, why not? That way, a manual recount is still possible...
And if people are so into their "secret" ballot, what's wrong with simply printing out a receipt with a bar code, then having to scan the barcode (by feeding the receipt into a reader) in order to accept your vote? Once it's in the reader and your vote record was updated (to indicate that it was cast), then you can't get the receipt back.
I.e. You go to vote. You enter whatever info you need to enter (voter ID # / ss # whatever), and of course your votes, and then the system updates your record in its database saying who you voted for...but doesn't actually tally your vote. Only when you manually feed in the receipt will it scan your ID again and know that you've committed your vote.
Make sense to anyone else, or just me?
01100111 01100101 01110100 00100000 01101111 01110101 01110100 00100000 01101101 01101111 01110010 01100101 00101110
Diebold seems to have manufactured the craptastic swipe-card machines that allow us to pay electronically to use the washing machines in our dormitory. I can barely get 75 cents to turn into an activated dryer; there's no fucking way I'm voting with something those clowns made.
Wait, fuck, I live in Maryland.
Karma: T-rexcellent.
Computers are great. Computers are wonderful. Computers are the solution to many problems, but computers are not the solution to every problem - like this one!
The voting machines in use in New Jersey at least through the 1970's (the last time I voted there), and still in use in Dutchess County NY are MECHANICAL. You pull the red handle over, then you push down the little levers to vote, then you push the red handle back and it records the votes and resets the little levers. MECHANICAL. The only thing electrical is a light to make it easier to see when the curtains are closed, and there is nothing electronic at all! There is even a hand crank on some of the models that makes it print out a piece of paper with the votes (some models you have to read the numbers off dials.) Recounts are easy and safe, once you lock the machine the little dials stay right where they were until someone takes positive action to reset the machine for the next election.
The only problem is that they are old, and getting hard to service, hard to get parts for. So everyone is trying to find great wonderous new technology to replace these aging machines.
See where I'm going? What we need is a government initiative to put these extremely safe and uncheatable (but antique) machines back into production. If companies can't make a profit on these machines, a government subsidy on them would be very much in the public interest. Forward to the Past! Let's not be so blinded by computers that we can't see that they had a better solution in 1955, and adopt it!
Teen Angel - a Ghost Story
An audit trail can be something as simple as a printout in a back room, with each vote signed digitally with the voting precinct's private key. All the voting precincts' public keys could be posted on the web along with the data dump from the whole election so anyone could audit the results. If each voter chose a secret 128 bit random number and could record that along with their vote, then they could find the vote that contains their number and verify their vote is correct in the data dump, while maintaining the secrecy of their ballot.
The flaw in this system is that it enables vote selling, but fuck it, money already dominates politics so what difference does it make?
Has anyone else noticed this profound lack of morality and integrity in our society of late?
1) generate a PGP hash of 2048 bits or some other unhackable / unique bytes
2) print it out as a unique identifier on the vote receipt
3) [ someone help me out here ] - obfuscate the difference between the two so that the receipt can't be used to determine how you voted
4) "WE THE PEOPLE" PROFIT! From a clear, clean, auditable, [virtually] indisputable election process.
Ok, so it may be a pipe dream right now; but something HAS to make sure that accountability is accounted for (hah!) in higher politics [in the USA and other similar democratic-republics].
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
It is not our job to design workable e-voting ( which is a waste of time imho ) systems. It is Diebolds job. I get paid to do something different.
All we'd like is for Diebold to actually do their job properly. I don't see that as an unreasonable request.
YLFIOne god, one market, one truth, one consumer.
Ok here how a voting machine sould work.
First all code is sign and is checked.
All voting machine have a build in private key.
All voting machine build a new key when turn on for voting.
Three time sources:
An internal Clock build in.
Read only from WWV and Cell Phones and GPS
also Local time server.
Now you vote will receipt need to have:
timestamp
You vote
Vote Number -- Just a counter
Fully PGP signed with all keys
3D bar code that you can take home to your computer and have software to decode it to see if it is vaild.
Or upload it to a website with a scanner to check it.
If you think there was funny bussiness at a voting center then all you do in get a random same to let you scan you vote in and check to see if it is in there log. If no then there was funny bussiness going on.
Wouldn't it be easier just to make your stuff not suck?
this is where the commie trolls call you a "neocon"
Any halfdecent Point of Sale system can be used as a voting machine. It will cost nothing to develop and can be bought off the shelf and frankly, I'll trust a network of standard cash registers better than a specially designed voting system.
Oh well, what the hell...
I see you are voting for George Bush, do you need help to change that?
Oh well, what the hell...
*BARF*
Dude, ever see a cash register? Each transaction is recorded on one reel, with reciepts given to the customer AND also on another reel that just spools and stays in the register. The whole day is on one continuous reel. It would be TRIVIAL to print out machine-readable and human-readable results on that second reel for quick, verifiable recounts.
Your local gas station cares more about getting the right results than your local election officials.
I have worked in the IT industry for 6 years, and I have never even known that there was an ITAA. I certainly don't pay them any dues.... What gives them the right to speak for us?
A voting receipt is the same as abolishing the right to a confidential vote. I can already see the first case of a redneck husband beating his wife because her receipt shows she voted for the wrong guy, or cases where corrupt politicians pay the voters if they show a receipt voting for them.
If it only shows that you voted, and not who you voted for, then what's the added safeguard, again?
And how does that work for voters who exercise their rights to show up and not vote or vote blank? Do they still get a receipt for being counted but not submitting a valid ballot?
Regards,
--
*Art
I'd have to get that a big "BINGO, BOZO."
Dill said, however, that the design of a voter-verified paper system is not a trivial undertaking and that the usability and security aspects of such a feature need to be thought through carefully so companies design systems under standards that meet both these criteria.
Huh? What's hard about printing the selected choice, and a ballot box slot to shove it in to when done? Gee guys, we already have ballot boxes? Do we really, really have to buy your 2,000 dollar "verified paper system?" I mean, it's not like we haven't been dealing with ballot boxes for,,,, uh, how many years?
Come on, a paper trail is the only way to conduct a verified count not dependent on the technology that records the vote. The voter can look at the paper and say, "Gee, I didn't vote for Dubbya. What's wrong with this crazy thing?"
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
...profit
Putting your vote in a chronological list opens the possibility that someone could find out my vote based on when I went to the booth. Our ballots are SECRET so that we can vote without fear of reprisal.
Come to think about it, I really hope the database entries in these e-vote schemes aren't time stamped!
I never understood why Americans can't just hand count their paper ballots like everyone else in the world. You just need to appoint counters from each party to review the process. There are times when I just don't trust underpaid, caffeine-high code-grinders.
then walk through that gate and your vote will be automatically recorded according to your psycological profile kept by the CIA. Thank you and have a nice day.
Oh well, what the hell...
>Say person A approaches person B and offers
>person B a sum of money if person B will vote a
>certain way.
That's not actually as bad as the things that have really happened in the past to reinforce the need for a secret ballot. At least in your scenario, the person casting the vote benefits.
What's scary is when you get into something like a powerful labor party whose members have no compunction against making your life miserable or even killing you for your dissent. No, this isn't common in America, but it IS a demonstrated risk, one that the American system has a safeguard to prevent: The secret ballot.
I sure as hell woulndn't want to think that large numbers of working class people voted a certain way in an election, especially a LOCAL election, because they feared reprisals from their union or police or whatever.
Think of something like the logger, who really would like to vote for an environmental measure, but who knows that everybody in the town is going to know how he voted.... You think he's going to vote his conscience or do you think he's going to vote the way his peers expect him to?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I do not understand the prevailing viewpoint that we can't hand count all ballots and not have safe elections.
Machines can be rigged. I don't trust a optical scanner, nor a lever voting booth, nor a punch card reader, nor an ATM machine to count my votes.
Our biggest problem is that we don't count the votes at the voting place in most areas. Most areas lock up the ballot box and haul them to the court house. The first chance to rig the vote is at the poll, the second when the ballots are in transit, and the third when they are counted out of public view in some upstairs court house room.
Most polls will have only several hundred votes in the box max. It doesn't take that long to count ballots by hand and so what if it takes all damn night. How is that a problem.
Voting machines or counting machines are just devices designed to hide the vote counting process from the public and thus rig the vote.
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
I've already received my paper sample ballot for next month's election. No voting machines until they're fixed.
to 'reduce substantially the level and amount of criticism from computer scientists and other security experts about the fallibility of electronic voting systems.'
Here's a novel idea. How about do it right, and do it open-source? (Oh, yeah, did they forget to mention that these were security experts doing the criticism? Do you trust a black box voting system with no accountability and no reassurance that they're isn't a back door that will allow me to hack the election?
Then again, I guess you could also 'reduce . . . criticism from computer scientists and security experts' by just killing them all with pinpoint accuracy.
Here's one for ya: paper ballots.
I really don't understand the gripe with a paper audit... why not model them after POS credit card machines... you vote on a touch screen, the printer prints out a ballot. You keep the yellow copy for verification, and the white copy is submitted as your official ballot. Seems *really* easy to me...
The world won't end in darkness, it'll end in family fun, with Coca-cola clouds behind a Big Mac sun.
Could it be Salon wants those to be read? Hope so, because it was enlightening.
BTW, wonder if these actions are there for the presidents benefit. Maybe if he could really see the protests, he might think better of some of his actions? Hmmm..
I know that sounds shallow, but I never really thought about that angle. My perception has been basically: "Bush knows these things will anger people, but business needs to get done and freedom reduced for the good of the nation" or some other such thing.
These letters make me think about perception on both sides. Sure, keeping the protesters in seperate zones makes for easy warm fuzzy media coverage while disenfranchising the protesters at the same time. But, the perception of the president could (and likely) is as distorted as well.
If the first family gets the same news we do, maybe they are not asking any of the tough questions because they see no reason to. Add in all the folks that just see the media and are not active and that becomes a real problem.
Since when does "free speech" = dissent? Isn't political discussion and expression something this country prides itself on?
I was raised differently than this, and I am not that old. Chilling indeed...
Blogging because I can...
Ok, heres my proposal...
Why not make the voting software opensource so that any country can use it and the government as well as political parties would be able to screen the code for possible bugs and security holes. A consortium of the current companies could come together and agree on a common hardware/software interface spec and then could compete on building the best hardware while the software would be maintained by open source contributors and ultimately regulated (like elections) by a special electronic elections committee comprised of member s of both parties.
This seems like a perfect application for open source and if this was done, it would make electronic voting that much more feasable for countries with less money.
Just my 2 cents
Lets see who they are?
I did a search on google and found some scary stuff.
All 3 vendors only contribute to the republican party! Did you know one of Dick Cheney's friends from Halliburton is actually in charge of the voting machine division!
Link here and here.
What if lets say theoritically speaking of course the CEO of Diebold wanted a nice big pay check. He could go to Bush and give him 4 more years for a nice big paycheck from the RNC.
We need audits.
http://saveie6.com/
You're saying as a free-enterprise Republican that this is a good thing and shows how the marketplace decides things?
The power to rewrite the decision of the votors at the will or whim of an individual, company, or conspiracy is something that nobody ought to have.
Tech Public Policy stuff
I agree with the poster that said there was nothing wrong with a paper ballot. As problematic as it may be, it still has the least potential for abuse.
Tormenting electrons may serve us well in the service of gaming and word processors but the threat of corruption (and it will occur... it is the reason there is this calculated push to electronic voting) in our balloting removes it, in my opinion, from any consideration at all.
Nixon tried to game the '72 election. He failed. The goons behind that abomination (Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al) learned there lesson and corrupted the '80 election by creating (with the complicity of the titans of industry and the second Arab oil embargo) stagflation, an inexplicable economic anomoly never seen before or since. Toss in the US Embassy hostages (moderated by vp candidate George H.W. Bush) and a two-bit actor everyone could easily like that could read the lines he was given became the snoozing front man for a cabal of neocon operatives (Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al). I've said all along that we had 12 years of the George H.W. Bush administration from '80 to '92.
I still haven't figured out the Clinton coup except to say that this so pissed off the neocons who had set everything up to do their dirty deeds (what we are witnessing today was scheduled for the second Bush 1 administration) that they savaged his 2 terms at every opportunity with every insane accusation possible. AND, Monica was a neocon plant... I mean, really, who keeps a dress with a wad on it except for evidence.
Never to suffer the ignominy of losing another election, Jeb! was installed as Florida Governor to guarantee Dubya's election. Tens of thousands of qualified, legitimate, registered Democrats were purged from the Florida polls. Republican operatives intimidated re-count employees and Daddy Bush's Supreme Court wasn't about to let Dubya lose.
Now we've got an appointed president who was going nowhere who suddenly has a "defining moment" in the 9/11 tragedy. Strange the Bush family ties to Saudi Arabia and the bin Laden family. Strange the political ties of the neocons to Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan as well as the nationless, fundamentalist lunatics in the Middle East. And slowly, inexoriably, the evidence is mounting that these bastards are waging an undeclared war to enrich their buddies and solidify their (Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al) hold on power.
And the blood of our brave soldiers is sanctifying the treacherous land of faroff places because WE chose to be entertained by Caesar's Circus, grow fat on cheap food and become addlepated on cheaper drugs and alcohol rather than attend to our duties as loyal citizens. And now the usurpation of this once-great nation will be complete when they have complete control of the ballot box.
This attempt to turn the ballot box into an electronic stuffing machine will be the final nail in the coffin for our right to vote. Oh, we'll hear all of the pious platitudes about how we're fulfilling our obligations as citizens and everything will be contrived to look legit but you've heard the old saw that simplicity is the handmaiden of legitimacy and complexity the cover of scoundrels.
Love your computers and all that comes from them EXCEPT where schemers and scammers would use them to game the system. And this egregious attempt at further corrupting the system should be a wake up call!
May I suggest a subversion of the inevitable implementation of this foolishness by advocating everyone get an absentee ballot. Make them physically count your vote. And make a lot of noise to get as many people as possible to join you in doing the same.
And don't be happy and complacent. Too many lives have been sacrificed in too many conflicts to let these dirtbags steal this precious gift of self-government. It is time to stand as a matter of sacred honor. It is time to speak out as a matter of honorable duty.
YIKES!!!
It is ESSENTIAL to any fair voting system that the voter be given no means to prove how he/she voted...eg by a reciept.
If you can take away proof of how you voted - then unscrupulous people with piles of cash can subvert elections by bribing voters to vote they way they want. They simply do a deal where the voter brings along their paper reciept in order to claim their bribe money. (eg A supermarket might offer: "20% off groceries if you show us your vote for candidate X!" - the local Mob Boss might offer to break the kneecaps of anyone who can't prove that they voted for candidate Y.)
The whole point of secret voting is to ensure that no matter how much money the voter is paid (or by whom), they can still secretly cast their vote any way they want.
www.sjbaker.org
This system should be kept for all time - to prevent any fiddles in future.
It was always obvious that receipts would be the best way to verify vote.
People would cast their e-vote, get the receipt, verify it is correct and put the receipt in a new type ballot box.
Vote is not cast or recorded until receipt is put into ballot box (incorporating reader).
There are very reliable readers already on market for cheque validation.
Recount is always possible when close.
At all votes though, use spot checks to see no fiddles of candidate mismatch on ticket.
Perhaps they should follow my "spin for dummies" course first. Point being: 'reduce substantially the level and amount of criticism from computer scientists and other security experts about the fallibility of electronic voting systems.'
Ofcourse after my first class they would not only know what not to wear when having dinner with a politician discusing campaign contributions, or just plain contributions to the wellbeing of said politician, they would also know that should this should read : 'reduce substantially the level and amount of criticism from computer scientists and other security experts about the alledged fallibility of electronic voting systems.'
Dont wory, wheither it is shouting at the target politician while waving big batches of cash and wearing a clowns costume with hundreds of camera`s watching, or making this mistake in the wording of your mission statement, we have all been there!
With my course you can not only learn how to do your lobbying more effective, we migh even touch on why this is the wrong way to go about lobbying, but no promisses you have a lot to learn before you can succesfully lobby for your interest. Ofcourse with the succesfull completion of my course you can get a certificate that will get you a job at all mjor coorporations, only few organisation have higher standards for their lobyingst, but who would wanna work for those greenpeace and aclu weenies anyway ;-)
I can think of only one reason the government is not frantically trying to improve the voting system:
The government messed with the results of the previous voting to become a government... and plan to do it next time.
I want my karma, and I want it now!
The "black box" nature of electronic voting is not the real problem. Current paper ballots are not verifiable by the public, either. The real issue is that paper ballot counting is distributed. Each precinct counts its own ballots. That means that any serious voting fraud has to involve large numbers of people, which runs serious risk of detection. By contrast, electronic counting is (likely to be) statewide for sake of convenience. Under those conditions, it would only take one bad actor to throw the entire electoral count for that state. In that case, thank goodness for the electoral college! Any serious voting system must retain the distributed nature of vote counting.
Human being (n.): A genetically human, genetically distinct, functioning organism.
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If you go to a store and buy something using a card, you get a copy and they get a copy of the receipt.
In the voting machine example, it can just keep a printed receipt in its own box. The receipt to the voter is optional.
This is simple, and allows recounts.
Seems to me that the Americans should get other aspects of their voting in place before worrying about the technical aspects of these machines. Small example: How about ensuring that one presidential candidate's brother isn't able to wipe 173,000 voters off the roll in a key state, which included 31 percent of black men, 90% of whom typically vote Democrat. And you call it a democracy? Gees!
I don't get it. They're going through all these hoops when all they have to do is install a freaking cash register printer in the box. What is the big deal?
While many eyes sometimes fail to see a few holes, the track record is better.
Exit polling is easy enough to do that it is routinely used as a cheap check on the validity of election results. Results that are off by a small amount from the election polling is OK. Results that are off by more than that are automatically suspect. Any democracy that is unable to pass this basic test is considered very dubiously.
The US has not passed this basic test in 6 years. It has failed particularly badly in places (like Georgia) where touchscreens have been used.
The effects of "spinning" can be reduced or totally neutralized without a Phd in Counterspinning. Intuition, common sense
logic and the question "who's gaining anything from this change" will help us a lot. Regardless of your political preferences
I argue that you don't want any completely electronic voting process , if you believe in democracy or enjoy the rights coming
with democracy.
Among the arguments used by makers of e-voting machines and systems we see
1) removing paper from voting process reduce costs
2) removing counters from voting process reduces costs
3) results can be collected in real-time, there are no useless delays
4) interactive multimedia voting is sometimes easier than making a cross on a piece of paper
Point 3 (fast results) is "pointless" given that there is -no void of power- between elections.
That is to say that ANY elected Official (President,Governet,whatever) remains in power until the new one is
elected ; so there is no void of power and decision making process isn't interrupted.Also, if you waited for
a few years for a new election you may as well wait a few days more or expose the election process to a very
high risk of corruption , I'll explain in a moment.
Point 1 and 2 (removing paper,people) is true because (on the long run) the cost of using computer to collect
votes is likely to decrease, while the cost of paper and people is likely to remain more or less constant or
to rise. While this is not as far as I know strictly proved it surely is likely. We'll probably see voting
machine makers pressing this argument more and more in the future.
But by removing paper , we let anybody with enough computer experience (black hat hackers, political zealots
corrupted officials etc) do anything he likes with OUR vote. Because, as even kids know these days, you
can have computer do whatever you want them to do if you just are good enough at programming them. And if
a kid can outsmart you in programming your recorder, imagine what a skilled malevolent indivual could do
with your vote.
If electronic voting machines are to replace the trusted paper-and-pen system, there will be NO PAPER TRAIL
of what really happened. There will be NO RECOUNT because there will be NO PAPER VOTE, only lies, damn lies
and statistics ! A list of voters or voting results is not the same thing as 100000 single pieces of papers
with a cross or an hole on them ; try manipulating 100000 pieces of paper, try corrupting all the recounters
and officials you need to manipulate enough votes.
Now try doing the same with a computer: it takes more or less a couple of seconds (remember Enron ? Deleting
emails takes seconds, destroying paperworks takes a lot more time and may leave many traces).
Now, let's assume Point 4 is true (multimedia voting is easier). I've seen many elder people having a bad time
operating ATMs or anything electronical (but also some young people). Making a cross doesn't even require you
to have attended all K-12. You only need to know how to read and make a cross ! You don't even need to talk
or compute ! Even blind people can vote with a braille enhanced piece of paper.
But let's say you want electronic voting because "it's cool". Ok, but NOT without a single piece of paper with
an hole that represents your personal vote. That paper vote will be collected and will be used for recounts if
any problem arises.
Do you really want to give up democracy for a computer?
William Rivers Pitt gets some questions answered.
SDMI: Finally! Music that won't rip or burn! Brought to you by the fine folks at RIAA.
...and we use op scan systems. The voter connects the head of the arrow to the tail of the arrow with a pen on a paper ballot. The ballot is then entered into the tabulator and scanned for voting data. At the end of the day, results are transmitted electronically and the op scan ballots are warehoused in case they are needed for a recount.
To implement this electronically, the voter uses a voting terminal. When they are finished, a reciept listing their choices is printed. This paper slip is then put in the tabluator by the voter. If you don't put it in the tabulator, the vote doesn't count.
In this case, the terminal is primarily used to make sure the voter is not permitted to create an improper ballot (like voting for 2 people instead of one).
If an safe/secure alternative to the paper reciept is developed, remove the printers from the voting booth and go totally electronic.
I'm serious.
Cross a name in a ballot and place it in an urn. Count the ballots at the end of the day. Keep all the ballots in a package, in case there is need of a recount.
In my country (Pop: 100 million), we do it like this. We have preliminary results the same night, and definitive ones in 2-3 days. Clean, effective and nice (makes for a lot of citizen participation, what with the ballot counting and all).
"The plan calls for a media campaign to...'reduce substantially the level and amount of criticism from computer scientists and other security experts about the fallibility of electronic voting systems.'"
IS Managers already experience extreme trouble with herding us programmer cats. And you have the audacity to think that your little PR campaign can do that with any ease? Geez, Louise.
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
BUT...what would make some sense, is a digital system the produces a paper ballot verified by the voter which is then deposited as a ballot. Some polls are then selected for auditing; the paper is counted and checked against the digital total.
Of course the trick is that selection of polls; tt must be random. In particular, independent of anyone even remotely positioned to bejigger the machines. That selection should be done *after* the polls are closed (so it can't affect which machines get jiggered), and the selection and the count should be open to public inspection (to ensure randomisation of the former and legitimacy of the latter).
And, naturally, any disputed polls are recounted from paper.
Oh yeah; if the random audit is "sufficiently off" then *all* polls are considered disputed. Then ya gotta watch the person that gets to decide "sufficiently off." There should be some entrenched statistical formula so there is at least objectivity, although it could still have biases.
It has come down to this: "Trade secret" statues say we the people may not inspect their code, and even if we did there's no way we could monitor the private network this system will be running on.
..And I'm talking vacuum tubes and
transistors.
A full blown computer is overkill in this case.
We need to think in reverse here --
The potential for easter eggs, security holes and dirty tricks is ripe. Inevitably there will be a breach of security and someone WILL manipulate/hack/cheat the system.
The exploit potential exists throughout the touchscreen application, the operating system, network infrastructure, all the way down to the firmware in those boxes.
Perhaps No. 2 pencils and bubble sheets are not quite out-of-date yet.
one.
I believe any system where the voter keeps a record of their vote as a part of the process will be corrupted and use against said voters in ways the designers of the process did not intend.
We just cannot be required to keep out votes as a matter of record, which means the votes themselves must be the matter of record; thus, keeping the information on the paper ballot is the right way to go. Encode machine friendly things on the ballots to help speed the process along, but in the end make sure that all the votes can be
Inspected with a pair of hands and eyes.
Sorry, its the best way. Electrons are not going to change that anytime soon.
Blogging because I can...
The most important issue in the history of our democracy!
The Candidates can win the voters, but lose the elections! How? See the amazing facts below!
Diebold and all the other major national voting machine companies are owned or controlled by people with close ties to President Bush! WHAT IS LESS WELL KNOWN is that the National Independent testing laboratories (ITAs) that the states are depending on to test these systems are ALSO OWNED AND CONTROLLED BY REPUBLICANS!!!
REASONS WHY THIS IS SO URGENT:
*** More states are poised to acquire these voting machines now because they need almost a year to get ready for the 2004 elections! ***
If action is not taken NOW it will be too late!
Both the voting machine software and the ITA testing is KEPT SECRET. All that anyone gets to see is that it was certified or not by those Republican companies.
(NOTE: The following does not apply to INDIVIDUAL Republicans who are likewise concerned about this voting problem!)
Please, please, grasp the significance of this: THE REPUBLICANS CONTROL BOTH THE VOTING MACHINE COMPANIES AND THE "INDEPENDENT" TESTING LABORATORIES!
It does not matter if you could somehow think that the Republicans would not rig those voting machines or not, what matters is that they could, and no one would know it!
Serious evidence indicates that the Republicans may be back at it, planning to make every vote NOT count! Certainly, they have an enormous temptation to do this, even if they are honest. Certainly, we should save them by removing this unnecessary temptation!
Surely, Democrats and others can believe that the Republicans probably will rig some of those machines in 2004, since there are no REAL safeguards in place, only phony ones, which will be proven to you below, dear reader, if you will continue.
A Strategy for Regaining Voting Rights:
Among the large number of problems that need to be addressed about computerized voting machines, the FIRST ONE, really, should be to get standards and government over-site of the National Independent testing laboratories (ITAs) that certify these machines. THE ELECTION OFFICIALS HIDE BEHIND THAT CERTIFICATION saying we are just silly people making much ado about perfect and certified machines. OBVIOUSLY, IF THE VOTING MACHINES ARE DECERTIFIED THEN THEY WILL BE THE FOOLISH LOOKING ONES! Below I will present PROOF that an ITA certified voting machine system had software that was full of security breaches and bugs.
PROOF that the current ITA certifications are truly inadequate:
Maryland had its Diebold voting machines certified and tested by both the manufacturer and the usual ITA. However, when a bunch of computer scientists at the University of Maryland created a big flap in the State's media, the Governor had another company (SAIC) examine the Diebold secret source code. The SAIC report was only partially made available with the rest "redacted". Translation, "redacted" in this case means "information that is embarrassing to Diebold or the State or both".
There were about 128 major security flaws and more than a hundred software bugs identified by SAIC. THIS IS AFTER FULL CERTIFICATION BY AN ITA! This proves, FOR SURE, that the ITA's certification was truly inadequate!
The "redacted" report currently can be seen in pdf format at this web address:
http://www.dbm.maryland.gov/dbm_search/technolog y/ toc_voting_system_report/votingsystemreportfinal.p df
Quoting Dr. Rebecca Mercuri,
" But vendors say their voting machines are certified:
Voting systems ARE CURRENTLY certified under a system established by the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and the National Association of State Election Directors (NASED). This certification is based on the 2002 FEC guidelines that were only adopted by 37 of the states and have been criticized by technologists as flawed. (See my detailed comment The FEC Proposed Voting Systems Standard Update.) Accordi
The stored program concept was invented by the ENIAC team at Penn.
I hate to be pedantic, but I also hate when you americans claim to have invented everything...........
The first stored program computer was not your ENIAC. It was called Colossus, and was invented at Bletchley Park in the UK during second world war by a Mr Turing (you may have heard the name before!). It was used to help crack Enigma codes.
Now it is a common misconception that ENIAC was the first, this is because the British decided it was best to keep colossus a secret for about 50 years (a rather poor commercial decision it may be said, but we have this little thing called "the official secrets act"). Alan Turing however still went down in history for contributions to computer science.
no paper = no proof of vote.
It'd be funny to secretly install a paperbased couting into the mechanism, so when the evil hackers alter the vote, you could compare the votes and laugh at the results.
Just becase an invention exists, doesn't mean you have to use it.
Welcome to the End
Salon.com's discussion area, TableTalk, has a long running thread with a lot of the same comments I'm seeing here.
3
http://tabletalk.salon.com/webx?50@@.596c5668/188
They're trying to figure out the best way to get the word out about this very scary issue.
The technical expertise running around here is a nice complement to their political savvy...
Fundamentalism is a crime against humanity
Seems to me that this is one more step towards the new order where corporations and politicians will wield all the power and "regular" people will take the place of livestock.
The program highlights:
* No private ownership - everything (including ideas) will be owned by "entities". People will be given the "privilege" to lease things instead.
* No effective individual rights and freedoms - sure they may still be in the books and, nominally, you'll still be living in "the land of the free" but this freedom will be directly proportional to your resources (see previous point).
* No power to individuals - you will not be able to influence the decision making process, even "voting" will become meaningless.
During the cold war, Americans were told that the "enemy" would like to take away their freedom. Well, friend, seems to me that you have lost that war.
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