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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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
You're off-topic and off-base at the same time...
The student who made a fool out of the airport security system was conducting an act of civil disobedience, but the part of civil disobedience everyone seems to keep forgetting is it involves a public crime done to get attention, of course he's gonna get arrested and charged for it. He should be, he didn't just say "Somebody could.." he went out and did it.
Let's just hope the Feds are smart enough to sentance him to a community service project... telling them how they should have stopped him!
- Open Source Code
- Open Source OS
- Open Source Compiler
- Standard PC Hardware
- Independantly Verified by both Electoral Authorities and Independant Labs
- In 12 languages
- Audio help for vision-impaired voters
- And actually used in 2001 government elections
It cost less than $200,000 to develop too. But not "made in the USA".Zoe Brain - Rocket Scientist
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
Welcome to Microsoft OvalOffice[TM]. Please deposit $300, enter a 32-digit authorization code, and permit us to scan your hard drive to disable non-Microsoft products if you wish to begin voting.
...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.
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.
Now he's being described as a dangerous criminal...
... the punishment no longer has any need to fit the crime. Personally, I don't feel threatened by this guy ... he obviously had no intention of using those box-cutters in any "terrorist" manner and the "explosive" was just clay. He also didn't use these items in the usual bomb-scare scenario (you know, call it in and watch terrified people run screaming from the airport.) He planted the stuff, emailed law enforcement and explained why he did it, and waited. And waited a ridiculously long time. Nobody got hurt, or was even aware of it until the news media spread it all over the place after the fact. On the other hand, I do feel threatened by a security bureaucracy that is completely out-of-control and largely ineffective anyway.
Amazing, isn't it? So far as I'm concerned (the illegality of his actions aside) he performed a public service. This whole idea that Amercans need to be made to feel safer regardless of whether they actually are safer I find to be patronizing and offensive.
But more to the point, the government won't allow him to be punished in accordance with his crimes. They will put him away for as long as they can, which is a long time in post-9/11 America. That, in itself, shows just how far astray the Law has gone
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
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.
The student who made a fool out of the airport security system was conducting an act of civil disobedience, but the part of civil disobedience everyone seems to keep forgetting is it involves a public crime done to get attention, of course he's gonna get arrested and charged for it. He should be, he didn't just say "Somebody could.." he went out and did it.
The thing is, before September 11th you could bring a box-cutter on an airplane. Hell, I accidently brought a 5" butterfly knife through airport security in 99 or so.
The kid who did that was proving a point, and to prove that point he had to act. Merely telling them wouldn't do anything, and the facts are supportive of this.
Now, to bring this on-topic and on-base, because I believe it was a valid point.
Civil disobedience is the best way of proving a point when the masses won't listen to you. What will it take for people to realize these voting systems are flawed and dangerous? Bruce Campbell being elected President of the United States of America?
That is civil disobedience I can appreciate, just like the student, because it shows that things aren't as good as they should be and that jeopardizes my safety.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
"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
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.
I see you are voting for George Bush, do you need help to change that?
Oh well, what the hell...
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 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.
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/