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Los Alamos Reconsiders Touch Screen Voting
goombah99 writes "Los Alamos county, which boasts the highest geek PhD per capita in the world and considerable clout in secure computing, has voted to rescind its previous plans to purchase Touch Screen voting systems and will ask the New Mexico's secretary of state to address its concerns regarding an imminent state-wide purchase. They may get forced by the Clerk's office to use them anyway if the state makes its bulk purchase of Sequoia AvcEdge touch screen systems with a Windows-based WinEDS database. The Los Alamos position is welcome news since it casts the rejection of these systems in a more sober light; widespread right-wing conspiracy theories have done great harm by galvanizing election officials to be dismissive of re-opening their consideration of the issue. What won the day was convincing the county they had until 2006 to comply with HAVA, and that better machines with voter verifiable audit trails and even open source, were on the way. There is also more in the local newspapers."
With friends and co-workers (the yound and old) I've noticed a minorly disturbing trend. My cell phone has a touch screen, a kiosk at the cafe, and the copier at work also has a touch screen. When using either I've found that they actually PRESS on the surface of the screen as though they were trying to physically maniuplate a mechanical assembly, instead of placing their finger on the screen and letting the sensors do their job and notice the motion/lacation.
I can't imagine a touchscreen tough enough to allow thousands of voters beat the hell out of it and it withstanding an election.
I don't CARE if the code is open source. That's just asking the voter to trust different people. AND there is no easy way to guarantee that this is the code in the machine. Also, it doesn't protect against breakdowns of equipment.
What is needed is a voter-verified paper ballot printout that goes into a separate locked ballot box. This way, after voting on the machine the voter can check the ballot to be sure that the voter's choice is correctly recorded.
Using the electronic voting machine reduces the error rate to near-zero. Printing the ballot reduces the counting problems (hanging chads...) because they are standardized, uniform and can be run through counting machines quickly.
With a system like this in place the security of the electronic machines doesn't MATTER.
First step in concealing your conspiracy is to make it sound stupid. The moment a few TFHs (Tin Foil Hatters) appear and start raving about every voting machine in the country being rigged or the banking system being controlled by the Elders of Zion, then more moderate critics and theorists coming afterwards get lumped into the same category.
Essentially, the loonies lay claim to an issue and then you can no longer support the issue without being seen to support the loonies.
Not saying that this is the case here - just a general principle.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
I don't know that it was the conspiracy theories that made the election officials so dismissive of concerns about electronic voting. It seems to me they were dismissive of the concerns about e-voting before any of these conspiracy theories began to propogate. I think the main reasons why election officials like electronic voting so much is that it makes their job easier, and it seems all high-tech and modern. The concerns about it seem like the typical luddite worries about change to them.
If anything, I think that the conspiracy theories will do more to get their attention - after all, it's their job to make sure that people have confidence in the election results. Having a bunch of backwoods farmers saying "I don't trust the results from your damn computers" is one thing. Having Los Alamos computer scientists saying "I don't trust the results from your damn proprietary software" is quite another, and I think they are waking up to that.
We need your help!
HR 2239 is a bill which requires all touch-screen voting machines to produce a paper receipt which the voter can read and verify, then drop in a lock box. The receipts in that lock box are used in a recount. This bill also mandates a recount in 0.5% of districts chosen at random to verify that the touch-screen voting machines are reporting the results accurately.
Sign the online petition to support the bill. Contact your representatives, educate them and demand they support the bill.
We also need legal help with injunctions against the machines, starting with the 37 Diebold states. The organizers of BlackBoxVoting.org have 65,000 documents to make the case.
Keep the freedom to vote.
Touchscreen station sends vote to database. writes one record to a 'has voted' table, indicating voter registration number. writes a different record in a 'vote' table indicating the actual vote. (no common index, no datestamp).
touchscreen prints out scantron styled paper ballot.
you record 'has voted' in the database simply to indicate if anyone is gaming or circumventing the software. not only can you detect the problem, you can id the perp.
and if you think that's too much, then hell - just drop the 'has voted' table. it'd only be an 'early warning' widget anyway.
the paper forms would be collected in traditional ballot boxes for manual recounts should problems be seen. simply run the forms through a scantron reader for a machine recount, or count by hand. easy peasy japanesey.
no pregnant, dimpled, hanging chads - no worrying about ruined elections via computer hax0r1ng... simplified interface for the voters, hardcopy backup.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
What is needed is a voter-verified paper ballot printout that goes into a separate locked ballot box. This way, after voting on the machine the voter can check the ballot to be sure that the voter's choice is correctly recorded.
If the paper ballot is used only as an audit trail then it is completely worthless. The voter has no way of knowing that what is on the paper acurately reflects what is tabulated. The obvious solution to this is that you actually count the paper ballots, but then the machines are just really expensive punch card punchers.
Anyone who thinks that voters are actually going to check their ballots is deluding themselves anyway. The ballots in Florida were NOT confusing, and if people had checked them their would not have been a problem. When you have a reporter ask someone if they are sure who they voted for and the answer is, "No." The problem is with the voters, not the counting.
Where I vote there are clear instructions, and people who will show you how to vote (on a sample ballot) if you can't figure it out yourself. Maybe what we need is to spend some money educating voters instead of building more expensive, more easily corruptable voting apparatus.
Si vis pacem, para bellum
The only thing more annoying than a Libertarian is an (un|mis)informed Libertarian
The whole points of execs, i.e. directors, partners etc., is that they ARE responsible for the actions of their company. They make policy, they make the decisions and unltimately they have to take the fall if their company is involved in illegal actions. That IS corporate law.
The real travesty in this case is that Andersons was brought down to stop the investigation going any further up the food chain, alegedly to members of the current administration. Bizarely in the case of Andersons the responsible partner was able to get off scott free by turning state's evidence and the normal employees paid for it instead. I have worked at Andersons and I know how much power and control over information an individual partner has over his team/division. It was very easy for that partner to keep his behaviour secret from the rest of the company...
When the CEO of one of the largest voting machine manufacturers (Diebold) sends out a fund raising letter saying he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President next year." you have to be at least a little skeptical. http://www.portclintonnewsherald.com/news/stories/ 20030827/localnews/140871.html
Actually if you know some actual liberals, you'd realize CBS News is right wing. Dan Rather probably leans to the left; however, he MUST lean to the RIGHT to keep his job, he even said so in an interview with the BBC. (I'm surprised he is still employed after that one...)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Bull. All this "evidence" is mearly circumstantial.
Fact: The Diebold Machines have horrible design and implementation.
Fact: Diebold has done some shaddy things to cover their buts when they make a mistake.
Fact: The CEO of the company has donated money to the republicans.
How does this imply that there is a great conspiricy? Lots of people give money to the republicans. Lots of people write crappy software. Lots of businesses try to get away with things that they shouldn't. Where is the proof that the reason for their actions is that they want the hand the election over to the republicans? It is just as likely that they are just incompetent and greedy, not conspiratal. Repeat after me: Correlation does not imply Causality.
Now is it possible that Diebold really is doing this to hand the election over to Bush? Sure. Is there any proof? No. But there is proof that some people framing this issue as a conspiricy theory has made the rest of us loose alot of credibility. And doing so is completely uneccisary because there are so many (factual) reasons why we shouldn't use these machines. So do everyone a favor and stick to the facts.
As much as many of us would like to see open source prevail in the electronic voting system market (as the Aussies have decreed it must), it is not, by itself, a cure-all for the kinds of abuses it tries to address. Who's to say, for example, the the code that's published matches the firmware in the machine. I know my county auditor wouldn't know the difference. No, what's needed beyond open-source is a verifiable chain of trust from the published code to each individual machine. I don't know how to make that happen, but I'll bet there are some crypto gurus out there who can figure it out.
Thank you for disecting the heart of the "conspiracy theory" issue. How can normally skeptical people call this a "conspiracy theory"?
Fact: A company is producing voting machines which are easily tamperable and which allow such tampering to go completely undetected except through observing anomalous results.
Fact: There are people who would benefit greatly from utilizing this ability.
Fact: The company in question has given a good deal of money to one of the groups of people who would benefit from exploiting the flaws in the company's system. Even stated that they want to help said group win.
How could a rational, skeptical person look at this and not think "something isn't right here"?
Perhaps you are right, and alleged skeptics have suddenly become convinced that everyone in politics (or just their favorite politicians?) have become saints.
The enemies of Democracy are
One to add to the mix. How about the new "SERV" system being setup by the Pentagon to allow voting from overseas?
I have absolutely no evidence of any foul doings here, but I am extremely suspicious of a system that once compromised in just one place, allows those that compromise it to direct a few 'extra', relatively undetectable, votes to any crucial/balance districts in the republic. And is the Pentagon more secretive, and liable to cover up its 'blunders' than Diebold - you bet !
Also, please remember this stuff - election rigging - happens all the time, this is not *theoretical* this is real. Just the other week there was accusations of Election rigging for Shevardnadze in Georgia.
And the US is far from immune to election rigging scandals.
The same thing that happens if I accidentally mark the wrong name on my paper ballot. I walk up to my election official and say, "Excuse me, I've made a mistake on this ballot." My ballot is destroyed and I am given a new one. In the case of this system, each paper recipet could have a unique identification number. The election official takes your reciept, types in the number into his terminal, and the vote is discarded. The paper reciept is then destroyed and you are allowed to go back into the voting booth. What makes that so difficult?
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
wouldn't it also be fair to say that the "rich" 50% have at least 96% of the wealth, so therefore should pay 96% of the taxes?
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
Your rantings resemble a crazed lunatic in a padded cell. Monster?
Yes, monster. As in somebody who violates the law and kills tens of thousands of people with no cause, and who risks the lives of us all in the process.
And if you can't recognize this very simple fact, there is no use in conversing further with you.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?