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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.
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
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.
- 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
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.
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/