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Voting Machines Vs. Slot Machines
dmh20002 writes "Being a Nevada resident and knowing people who write code for slot machines, I was aware of the stringent measures the state of Nevada uses to vet the security of slot machines. The Nevada Gaming Control Board audits everything about them, both physical and soft, for unintentional and intentional security holes. Hearing the hoopla on voting machines, the contrast was obvious. Slot machines are about money, which is more important than votes, apparently. Now the state of Nevada is looking at electronic voting machines and plan to apply some of the same safeguards. Just applying the Nevada technical standards for gaming machines and vendors to voting machines would be a start, since there don't seem to be any standards for voting machines. A funny/sad sideline is that in Nevada, every year or two a programmer or engineer goes to jail for exploiting slot machines."
We can just put slot machines in voting booths and rather than running on a "Republican" or "Democrat" ticket, candidates can run as "Cherry," "Gold Bar," etc.
Hey, you might even get to vote for three different candidates, or WIN a triple vote.
lysergically yours
Now that was a fun contract. However, yeah, the security restrictions were remarkable.
Ever heard of 'the magic wand'? Or the 'coin whip'? The minute a slot machine with 'new security measures' is released, there are people that break it the very next minute. The way they keep things going? Good surveilence and good guards.
Good luck putting cameras in every voting booth. People won't mind, right??
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
When I go to vote, will the voting machine make cheesy bloops and bleeps, and when I pull the lever down will three lemons with George Bush's face slide down, causing alarms go off?
And will I have to pay three quarters to vote?
This is, what I call, a "DUH!" moment.
We should have thought of this a LONG time ago.
What is possibly even more disturbing is the fact that our paid officials, you know, the ones that are supposed to be looking out for our best interests, didn't think of this either. Or, and this is something that must be considered, they did and didn't do anything about it.
Book quote that I think applies here: "If god had wanted me to vote, he would have given me candidates"
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Isn't it one of the Nevada rules that convicted criminals can't have anything to do with the gambling industry?
:)
Which would remove nearly half the politicians & lobbyists
Similarly, I should know that some standards and enforcement is in place when I vote. Otherwise, I'm putting my trust in someone I don't know and who has interests that are probably different than mine.
Voting should not be about trust, it should be about results. Any third party should be able to verify results, regardless of their interest.
Only you put the money in in April and are screwed no matter which button you press.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
no matter how valuable your point, and believe me, the parallel you have drawn is striking and insightful, i just can't help myself:
you've permanently fixed in my mind an image of going into the voting booth, pulling the big lever, and seeing three bars with the faces of gw bush, howard dean, al sharpton, etc. spinning before my eyes
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You know, this is a really neat example of the kind of thing folks who develop new products should look for -- useful precedents and knowledge from a seemingly tangential field.
Of course, the item about slot machine fraud shows that -- no matter how stringent your precautions are -- if the stakes are high enough, people will try to defraud your system. Some will succeed.
The important thing to keep in mind is that this is just as true for our current voting technologies as it will be for electronic voting.
Honestly, I felt pretty bad after reading about that computer programmer who had two daughters and stole $50,000 dollars. Yes, it seems crazy, but the guy admitted to everything and he had never been convicted of anything, and then all of a sudden he's in jail for at least 28 months. Poor guy, and his daughters -- I'm sure they were quite shocked.
Sometimes, I think justice in the US may be too harsh. It's a bit out of place when you repent, and obviously don't have a record to show you'll continue with crime, but are still left to rot in a prison where raw grunts rape people. Oh well.
Well, at least he made the casino industry quite rich. They must've been happy.
Gambling... The voting system in the US...
They have a lot in common.
A funny/sad sideline is that in Nevada, every year or two a programmer or engineer goes to jail for exploiting slot machines
Engineers tend not to be highly political, but they certainly are greedy. I think the likelyhood of engineers trying to exploit voting machines is a lot lower than engineers trying to exploit what are essentially money-dispensing machines.
It is true that engineers can be used as tools by those who are more interested in rigging elections, but that's also true with slot-machines. The engineer greed factor is still missing.
You are letting the mafia fiddle with your voting machines, now?
Oh, well... can it get any worse...
How about state lottery systems and machines? Almost nationwide, these outfits are audited & controlled to a degree which shows where our real priorities are.
Let's just hope that gambling addicts don't sit at the booths pulling the lever for 24 hours straight...Bush could win again!
While it's worth noting because it shows the potential to cheat even in a closely watched industry (which the voting machine racket clearly isn't), one should note that programmer or engineer (who) goes to jail for exploiting slot machines is trying to cheat the casino. When the casino uses the software to cheat the player ist's a completely different issue.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
From the article:
That study also found the system had a "high risk of compromise."
The state [Maryland] decided to buy the system anyway and Diebold is working on fixes for the security problems identified in that report.
Yea! Way to go Maryland! You know, if I went to buy a new car, and the windshield was broken, the locks didn't work, the engine was hanging by two mounts, and it stalled every 100 miles, I don't think I'd say "oh what the heck" and buy it just because it looked real snazzy and drive it around while the company worked on the problems after the fact.
How idiotically negligent do you have to be to look at a MACHINE THAT WILL HELP IN THE PROCESS OF DECIDING OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT POSITIONS and say "well, it's broken, but we'll buy it anyway"!? People like this need to be jailed immediately. That's absolutely innexcusable.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
Then, we'd only be paying off one set of crooks.
Consider this:Silicon Crackers Tackle Casinos or Revenge On the One-Armed Bandit The fact is, in nevada there is a cottage criminal industry which revolves around ripping off slot machines. These are just individuals. Imagine if they were an organization with the resources of a modern political party trying to game the system. Now imagine if the people making the slot machines were contributing to and had a vested interest in that organization.
"Slot machines are about money, which is more important than votes, apparently"
Votes are money. They cost lots of money to get, and they generate lots of money for the winner; therefore, they are just as important of the slot machine.
The real difference is, people put more hope in getting something from a slot machine than they do a vote.
Well I too will exploit this with the introduction of the Ronald Reagan Super Simon now taking orders at the price of... I forgot.
MoFscker
C:\>tracert life.liberty.pursuit-of-happiness
Unable to resolve life.liberty.pursuit-of-happiness
No wonder with Larry, Moe, and Currly running for office next year...
Why worry? Each of us is wearing an unlicensed "nucular" accelerator on his back.
Sig changed for readability by G.W.
The difference between voting machines and slot machines is that with voting machines you are almost always gaurenteed to get a row of lemons!
How about bribes? That certainly involves the greed factor!
I work as a programmer in the gaming industry, and there is a lot of security in place, but it all makes since. Before I can work, I need to get a state "gaming card" which says that I've had my background check, and I'm generally not a menice to society. The machines have security in place to know if something is wrong (eprom signatures, various locks). Everything we develop also goes through two or three other independent verification agencies make sure it's all legit.
We're proud of making a secure device (at least as secure as we can make it), and it's in ours and our customer's interest to do so. Most of the security built in isn't necessarily hard to do, but it does take planning, foresight, and desire to integrate it all with the final product.
I hope that a voting machine company can say the same.
While Nevada sends coders to prison for cheating, in the election Business you get "Get out of jail Free" Cards, and you are alright. Just ask Ken Lay. I am sure that the CEO of Diebold has some of these hanging around.
The poster notes:
The Nevada Gaming Control Board audits everything about them, both physical and soft, for unintentional and intentional security holes.
And further:
A funny/sad sideline is that in Nevada, every year or two a programmer or engineer goes to jail for exploiting slot machines."
The sideline article notes that convicted slot-hacker Ron Harris was a gaming board official for several years, and that he provided "more than nine hours of videotaped statements concerning questionable activities in the control board and the gaming industry."
Maybe Harris is covering his tracks by spreading dirt. Then again, maybe the Gaming Control Board is dirty. In any case, comparing voting with gambling makes me fear for my country.
-kgj
-kgj
Slot machines are about money, which is more important than votes, apparently.
What's more important? The money that buys the votes or the votes that facilitate making money.
That said, there are some slot machines programmed to pay out more than they take in. It might be nice if politicians were programmed to do more good than harm.
sig
This is a solution from Bartcop.com, and it's both clever and simple. Absentee ballots ARE a paper trail. So if you're worried that voting machines aren't going to count your vote, and won't leave a paper trail which would let election officials catch them at it, vote via absentee ballot and leave your OWN paper trail.
I think the big difference is timing. If the state finds a problem with a type of slot machine then it doesn't go into service. The only person hurt is the machine's developer. If, on the other hand, there's a problem with a type of voting machine then what do you do? You can't just put off an election. The timing of those is usually mandated by law.
Sign the online petition to support HR 2239.
A voter-verified paper trail is the only way to verify that the system is working. Under this system, the machine would produce a paper ballot, which the voter checks then deposits into a locked box. The paper receipts are counted in the event of a recount (unlike our current requirements, where totals from an end-of-night printout can be used, assuming the machines total the votes accurately). The bill also requires a recount in 0.5% of districts chosen at random to verify that the machines are totalling accurately.
Keep the freedom to vote.
Slot machine integrity is not verified solely by government oversight. Individual members of the community also make an invaluable contribution. People like William Bennett, who selflessly use their own funds to check, recheck and check yet again the accuracy of these machines' odds. Here is someone who has a real passion for testing these machines, who has the guts to trust his own resources to the integrity of the system, who is willing to invest the time it takes to make huge random samples, and who has the clout to make sure that any irregularities would be duly addressed.
Without people like this who provide major resources to help the gaming industry and the Nevada economy in general, we would all be worse off. The next time you walk down the Las Vegas strip enjoying the stunning display of neon lights, take a moment to think about the dedicated people that provide the funds to pay for them, and be thankful.
If you look at things statistically, a little money is much more valuable to an individual than his one vote.
Consider first the probability that one vote will actually change the outcome of an election: it's nearly impossible. Odds of 1/10e7 are typical. Mathmatically, a vote is just as bad an investment as a lottery ticket. (Which are, as they say, a "Tax on people who can't do math")
Then consider the real difference choosing a different president or governor will make to your life: not much, really. The two dominant political parties have grown very similar to each other. They'll rarely try to make a significant change (and most changes they attempt will be cancelled out by the other party in the next election). So not only is a vote unlikely to pay off, but that payoff isn't likely to change very much.
Thus, looking at all the possibilities, a rationally self-interested person will not waste his time voting. The hour+ it takes out of your day is actually much more valuable than the tiny chance that the vote you cast actually has a benefit to your life.
This is why explicit selling of votes was criminalized: because if it were legal, the free-market would reveal how cheap each vote really is!
PS. Having computed that voting is a waste of time, why do people still vote? Altruism. They vote not only for themselves, but also to share their wisdom with the rest of the country. And for more selfish reasons- like the feeling of success when your guy wins.
PPS. Several mathmaticians have created alternative voting schemes (different from simple majority) which boost the chance that any single vote will change the outcome of an election. But the public, so far, has rarely been interested.
So government oversight of casino machines is a good thing. Obviously, the solution to our diebold problems is casino oversight of our voting system. You know, ilke some 80-year-old lady can't read the text, so she's escorted to the back room to get some "assistance" by a guy named Tiny... and George Clooney will organize a team of eleven or twelve guys to steal 150,000,000 votes for his father's congress run.
We've already got good voting machines here - they're called Lotto machines. Any wino can walk in with a lotto ticket that he's scribbled on with a piece of road tar, and the machines do a great job of reading the ticket - plus, you get a paper printout for verification - plus, the system knows which ticket went to which store. Audit trails, hardcopy - Hmmm,
But we don't need (or want) all that silly accountability stuff to re-elect Bush do we
Please help, I am sigless - will code for sigs.
I have the perfect solution. To be allowed to vote, enter a quarter and pull the lever, if you get three pictures of George Bushes face in a row then you loose your quarter, if you get any other presidential candidates face in a row you win $10,000 and cast a vote for that candidate at the same time. This is a perfect way to vote and pay of the giant deficit that lunar Bush has created. If your desired candidate's face does not appear 3 times in a row then keep playing. Odds of not getting George Bushes face in a row are 1 in 8,000,000. Good luck and be sure to bring lots of quarters to the next election!
Slot machines make lots of money so the manufacturer has an incentive to make them secure.
and experience the problem/controversy. You can do a google on this controversy for more info.
My experience went as follows. I stepped in the voting booth. It was a very nice touch screen layout.
1/2 way through making my selections.. Up popped a message that my laptop battery was about to die, and that I'd better plug the machine in, etc. Well, I looked, and it was plugged in.
It turned out that these were not very secure systems at all. The basic platform was Windows on a laptop running non-networked. Storing the data on each machine, to later be combined / counted.
We're a long way from having anything better than punching a card, and eating chads. A hacker could easily do way more damage.
In the above case.... I was at the voting place early. I was #14 in my precinct to vote.
The voting machine scandal should be raised to the level of a public outrage. It's clear that nefarious corporate interests are foisting inadequately engineered products on the state election commisssions, in their usual, cynical, "good enough for government work" way.
In the weeks after the 2000 Presidential election, I wrote a letter to my congresspeople recommending that the system be rendered electronically by individuals who know about safety-critical, high-availability software. Airplane code, gambling-device code, medical-device code, etc.
This is not by any means new technology or new processes. But because the states see a great need, it has become a new scam for brainless, heartless business jerks to exploit.
Write your state and national legislators. Get the laws changed to ensure that the design and implementation of e-democracy includes the same care that is used when re-counting paper ballots.
...they use a security enhancement and validation program which is remarkably unknown to a large part of the computer security community.
It's called "The Soprano Security Management Program", and can be summed up in the following simple decision-diagram:
1) Build a system
2) Make money
3) In case of a situation arises in step 2 which is proving to be detrimental to the main objective of Making Money, two things can be done :
*) Fix bug in system. This is by experience detrimental to the Making Money objective since there will always be bugs, and so this is the wrong decision to make.
*) Find offending individual(s). Apply excessive and lethal violence. Loop to 2.
He got half (7 years) the recommended sentence (14 years, out of a mx of 20) , and will most likely be out on parole in 1/3 the time (approx 2 years).
So lesse, abusing gov't position, and 1/10 the total jail time (2 years out of 20). Sounds about right.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
called Oasis Technologies.
The strictest of reviews are applied at both the hardware and software levels.
We dealt with finite based slot machines (like an electronic scratch-n-win ticket; all of the winners/losers are precomputed instead of relying on normal distribution). All of these winners/losers were stored in a database for later retrieval. The w/l lists are entirely randomly generated based on the number of w/l (essentially the payout) that the client desires.
One of our win/loss lists was rejected because it wasn't "random enough".
So like... 999 of 1000 votes wouldn't get anything, but then one person (or say a lobbyist/special interest group) would be a lucky winner and win 700 votes (the house would keep like 300)?
Ehh, well sounds about like what we have now... I wonder if the democrats would get any negative votes with this one.... and at least this is probably more accurate than the Diebold machines.
Question everything that you've accepted without thinking.
A funny/sad sideline is that in Nevada, every year or two a programmer or engineer goes to jail for exploiting slot machines.
;)
OTOH, every four years a president gets elected for exploiting voting machines.
I will be your Overlord!
This
Ooooh, a threat. That'll work wonders over the internet. It was probably just someone trying to get rid of the karma whore...
Jack Gansel actually did an article on this in the Embedded Systems Programing magazine. It talks a little about the measures used to test slot machines, and the people involved in desiging and selecting them.
5 201145
l eI D=15800231
See http://embedded.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=1
and the follow up article
http://www.embedded.com/showArticle.jhtml?artic
Thomas
s/engineers/people/g
...and it makes as much, if not more, sense.
The USA is a country where either one can easily be converted into the other. So I guess they're equally important.
Think about electronic breathalizers, for example.
At least for the State of North Carolina, all the elements of an exploit are present:
It would be trivial for an insider to rig the machine such that if the name of the person to be tested matched some internal structure, the readout would always be two tenths below whatever the calibration sample read.
And with that kind of exculpatory evidence on your side, one could drink and drive to one's heart's content and never have to worry about a drunk-driving conviction: just demand a breathalizer test to "prove" your innocence and the case would never make it to court for a closer examination.
The thing about things we don't know is we often don't know we don't know them.
What's to stop the State from taking your received paper ballot, and paying some data entry grunt $5/hour to re-enter your paper ballot as an electronic vote? If the rest of the system is electronic, election officials won't want to have a dual system in place. Perhaps absentee ballots in these new electronic systems will switch to some sort of secure website, telephone voting, etc to even cut out the data entry.
Either way, once part of the system is electronic, the whole process can be questioned.
That guy wasn't just some programmer, he's the same guy who rigged the Keno game out in Atlantic city and got caught.
Keno, as a refresher (and correct me if I'm wrong) is similar to the lottery, except that you have to choose eleven numbers, and in order to be a big winner, your numbers must match the ordering of the pulled numbers.
In fact, it is so unlikely that anyone would match all 11 numbers in order that no one has done it in the history of the game. (Except this guy, who rigged the game).
*ANY* other person who has the same amount of greed and exploits his position to gain his means deserves the same punishment.
I currently have no clever signature witicism to add here.
..plays for you.
1) Install gambling machines to record votes.
2) ???
3) Profit!!!!
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
In my experiences with all things electronic, there is a certain amount of error that you just come to expect. Being forced to use a Windows system, I have encountered, on many occasions, all my data simply giving up and failing to exist any longer. In the last election where Florida had to recount their votes, they at least HAD something to recount. What are you going to tell the people of Nevada if the system crashes and their votes are lost? "Sorry, if you voted, we need you to come back?" Personally, I would be more than a little annoyed. Furthermore, no system is fool-proof entirely. Since the computer programmers who set up the system will more than likely know how to manipulate the system, any corrupt government official will try to buy his (or her) votes. The programmers will have all the power, and what was that saying... oh, yes... "Absolute power corrupts absolutely."
...they're pretty much both designed so that you lose no matter what.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
Hey, I'm all for Voting/Slot machines. This is a great idea!!! A super cool and useful hybrid machine. This way I am confident that everytime I pull a lever my local politician gets his bribe automatically. Damn this has to be the best idea since sliced bread!.
The comparing disturbs me less than the fact that gambling comes out looking better.
Exactly. From this follows some such principle as: voting should be more like gambling; or voting should be overseen by a casino control board; or we should all vote for the friends of Jimmy Hoffa.
-kgj
-kgj
The head of the Nevada Gaming Commission is named Bill Bible?
Somehow, that makes a good deal of sense.
"Every year or two a programmer or engineer goes to jail for exploiting slot machines."
It says a lot about wages for programmers.
I mean, this has got to be the ultimate game mod, right?
...and put some "mistakes" in it if you don't vote for the "correct" candidate(s).
And it will be interesting to see which choices causes which political groups to spam you for donations.
Here's an idea-instead of using slot machines as models for the voting machines that will eventually be bought from Diebold, why not just hire the slot manufacturers to design and manufacturer secure, audited voting machines?
Oh, thats right-the slot machine makers aren't out there buying off politicians like Diebold. Oh well...
Too bad you can't pick which mod you meta-mod.
To all of the people writing comments about how open source and publically-verifiable code just amount to "having to trust someone else", keep in mind that the headlined scam here worked only because there was no public code review.
The "sad story" above is about a programmer who
ended up making a total of 15 grand for his efforts. When the Republican party offers several hundred thousand dollars in nice, laundered 20 dollar bills, greed becomes a factor. Also, when the CEO of your company, a major republican contributor, orders you to mess with the machines and threatens to fire you, greed is a factor.
I am not familiar with the gambling business, but I know it wouldn't be that hard to alter the slot machine payout ratio from a programming perspective. ~1 line of code, in fact.
I worked in a casino management company in South Dakota, so this experience applies there:
It would be very hard to cheat like that for very long. The programs for the slot machines are on a single PROM, and that PROM is registered with the Gaming Commission after exhaustive testing.
The PROM is installed in the gaming device, and the device cannot be powered up during business hours unless the gaming commission has checked the PROM, watched you put it into the machine, and then sealed it into place with tamper-proof tape that only the Gaming Commission has access to. (They have a little box that they plug the PROM into which tells them if the chip is acceptable or not.)
Furthermore, the Gaming Commission can come by your casino, any time they want, with no prior notice, and have you open the machines to ensure that the tape is still in place, or to pull the chips for testing.
I was paid to watch the per centages paid ouit by the slots and the tables to make sure they were within acceptable range. At one Tribal Gaming establishment that we ran, the machines had a lot of play (1,000+ games per day) and tehy _always_ paid out what they were supposed to. If they deviated, we checked them for mechanical malfunction, and then we looked at staff and guests to see if someone had a new scam going. (The easiest is to request a fill on the coin bucket, and then hand the money to your friend instead of putting it into the machine. But that was very easy to catch, too. And look out at the Tribal Gaming establishments: >$100 is a federal offense, so we called the FBI to take care of any shmucks stealing from the tribe.)
So, if your gaming establishment is having a bad month, tweaking the payout won't help much: Every game was random, and just as likely to pay the jackpot as the previous game.
Chances are that you won't.
Aaaaaaaaw! Bitch!
If, on the other hand, there's a problem with a type of voting machine then what do you do? You can't just put off an election. The timing of those is usually mandated by law.
This is to me the scary side of the recent voting shennanigans.
First, implement flawed voting scheme, but do it slowly so as to keep it under the radar. Once enough people accept it, use it for the next BIG election. A short while later (ie: while still in office), notify the public that the vote didn't work, and the system is broken. Of course, it will take months at the very least to figure out what went wrong, some more months to implement a new voting scheme, etc, etc. Sorry, the election can't be counted, and we'll have to keep the current administration around until things get sorted out.
Does the US constitution or law have anything that deals with a situation like this? Sounds like a good way to stay in power a lot longer than you normally would otherwise.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
I program bingo, and I'm happy for that!
Too late, I already meta-modded it.
On the TV, candidate Jack Johnson is debating candidate John Jackson.
Johnson: It's time someone had the courage to stand up and say: I'm against those things that everybody hates!
Jackson: Now, I respect my opponent. I think he's a good man. But, quite frankly, I agree with everything he just said!
Fry: These are the candidates? They sound like clones.
[Squints] Wait a minute. They are clones!
Leela: Don't let their identical DNA fool you. They differ on some key issues.
Johnson: I say your three cent titanium tax goes too far!
Jackson: And I say your three cent titanium tax doesn't go too far enough!
Fry: If I were registered to vote I'd send these clowns a message by staying home on election day and dressing up like a clown!
Leela: You're not registered?
Fry: Nope. Not vaccinated, either. Besides, it's not like one vote ever made a difference.
Leela: That's not true. The first robot president won by exactly one vote.
Bender: Ah, yes! John Quincy Adding Machine. He struck a chord with the voters when he pledged not to go on a killing spree.
Prof.: But, like most politicians he promised more than he could deliver.
Leela: The point is, one vote can make a difference. And even though it won't, I'm still taking you to get registered.
Prof.: Yes, that's a capital idea. Let's all go register.
Fry: Professor, when did you become so obsessed with voting?
Prof.: The very instant I became old.
At the registration booths, the Professor looks over the "Tasticrats" and "Fingerlicans."
Prof.: The problem with both parties is that they always want to give your tax dollars to the less fortunate.
Fry: The less fortunate get all the breaks. Zoidberg: You know, Fry, you could join a third party, maybe.
Amy: Only weirdos and mutants join third parties.
Zoidberg: Really? I better keep an eye out at the next meeting.
Fry: What party do you belong to, Bender?
Bender: Eh, I'm not allowed to vote.
Fry: 'Cause you're a robot?
Bender: No. Convicted felon.
Is this a sigs-optional kind of place? 'Cause I am totally down with that if you know what I mean.
Here's something I was just wondering when I took cash out: Why can Diebold manufacture reliable cash machines that create a verifiable paper trails, but can't make voting machines to do the same? The machine gives me a receipt, and even when I ask it not to give me one, I can hear it printing something inside, related to the transaction.
I'm quite serious. Why vote at all, when the popular vote matters nothing to the outcome?
You should see this one from a mile away.
Life's a beach and then you die.
So, where are the open source voting projects?
:[ ). Rather than spend $6 million tax dollars on voting machines, the state could use free software on machines donated or on-loan from local white-box PC makers or big-name vendors who get to advertize: e.g., "Welcome to the 2004 State-wide elections. Powered by ViewSonic, the clear choice."
Voting is not that hard. A few developers could probably build software that would be useful for 80% of the voting use cases world-wide. And, it would likely be more secure and run on a range of inexpensive hardware.
Such an open source project would be a real social good, a work-around for a part of the software industry that is pretty clearly failing to represent the public interest, and a good demonstration that development of critical systems should happen more in the open.
It would also save money for debt-ridden state and local governments (thanks again, Bush
I got a job there shortly after the approval of hiring more engineers. The people that work for the Nevada Gaming Control Board are all honest, hard-working people.
Your post is the kind of info that makes Slashdot worth reading. Thanks.
-kgj
-kgj
Morality aside, he was kind of an idiot. It would have been far smarter to not tell anyone what you have done, and only sought small payouts on an irregular basis.
That way, you don't arouse suspicion. Sure, you don't make any "big" money, but if you used your cheatings as basic cash out of pocket spending (gas, meals, etc), and invested your legit income that you would have normally spent, you could easily retire early and probably never, ever get caught.
It's when you bring in co-conspirators and go for big money that you get nailed every time. That, and leaving his exploit on the office PC...
A funny/sad sideline is that in Nevada, every year or two a programmer or engineer goes to jail for exploiting slot machines.
Almost certainly, those programmers or engineers were working alone. How far would they get if they had a political party's organization behind them, especially the incumbent politician's party? My bet, a lot farther for a lot longer. The leadership of both political parties are very much aware of the opportunities to control elections that are available using electronic voting machines.
This is not really surprising.
A state borrowing security ideas off of gambling machines is rather akin to corporations fishing for secure payment ideas from porn sites. Makes sense. Ironic... but makes sense.
The only thing that we learn from history is that nobody learns anything from history.
You know what? I'd bet money you are not a Democrat. Maybe you're an "independent", but more likely you are a Republican.
The idea that voting doesn't matter, or that the parties are the same is utter hogwash. The republicans are *still* majorly angry about Roosevelt's "New Deal", essentially an infusion of socialism at the cost of the elite, and poor people still seem to have some sort of ancestral memory that the Democrats help the poor and the working class and make the economy boom.
But the Republicans know that the fewer people vote, the more likely they are to win, so they spread this lie that "they're all the same, and voting doesn't matter anyway".
The "clean water act" (which makes it easy on polluters), the "clear skies initiative" (makes it easier for factories to pollute the air), the "healthy forest act" (forget the actual name, but it's something like that. enables clearcutters to destroy old-growth forests), the "patriot act" (basically abolishes the constitution), NONE of those things would have passed a democratic congress or have been signed by a democratic president. They're basically a giveback to huge megacorporations, and a dangerous encroachment on the seperation of powers and our civil liberties.
Voting doesn't matter? What about the fact that the Repub's are packing the courts with conservative judges, who not only are against abortion but are against contraception as well? I suppose that doesn't matter.
Voting doesn't matter? Why is it the 'pubbies always vote against minimum wage increases and the right to organize?
Voting doesn't matter? Why do the republicans scream "CLASS WARFARE" whenever you point out that the OVERWHELMING majority of the "tax cut" money they propose goes to the top 1% of the population?
I could go on, but just don't listen to this guy's crap people. Vote.
It sounds like slot machines and voting machines do have some stuff in common. But, whenever you are thinking about security, I think it's essential to look at who is motivated to cheat or cause problems and who is in control of what.
In the case of casinos, the state is in control of security (through inspections, standards, permits, etc.). And the state is motivated to prevent cheating. If they don't, slot machines will get a reputation for being dishonest, and gambling will become less popular, thus screwing up the state's economy. So here we have a good situation. The state is in charge of stopping cheating and it benefits by doing so.
But voting machines are a whole different situation. The state could try to regulate it, but the state is not an impartial entity, and it's not necessarily in the interest of any given state official to prevent cheating. In fact, if they are an elected official, they may have an incentive to cause cheating, because they probably have ties to one of the political parties. So, the same sort of monolithic "we are the state and we will stamp out cheating" model is not as viable for voting machines as it is for slot machines. Instead, you need some way to make it really transparent whether cheating is going on, and you need a way to let everyone monitor it. Then, all you have to count on is the idea that the majority of the people would prefer not to see corrupt voting, which is a fairly good assumption.
The republicans have moved way out to the far right and the democrats have followed them. This is not due to hotelling, but to swing state issues and massive gerrymandering (formerly pro-incumbent, now partisan, very slimy either way).
In politics the more propaganda the more you are believed. If one party says something extreme and the other tells the truth most people believe something in the middle. If one party goes way off into fantasyland they pull the center with them.
I doubt voting machine problems can skew results more than dishonesty and media incompetence (no one checks facts anymore, or almost no one) already have.
You got me into this! You were the ideologue! I'm only a poor assassin! - Twenty evocations, Bruce Sterling
Butlerian Jihad of Slot Machines:
"Thou shalt not pay a machine in the likeness of Hugh Hefner's morgage." From the Orange Catholic Swimsuit Edition.
Butlerian Jihad of Voting Machines:
"Thou shalt not make a machine which ever allows 'The Kindergarden Cop' to take office." From the Orange County, CA Bible.
I regard my ballot as my right-to-bitch.
Chip H.
No he didn't. He got 15,000 himself, out of a total of $47,000. RT whole FA, not just the first paragraph.
If the Nevada Gaming Commission certifies certain machines, other governments could demand this certification and piggyback on Nevada's expertise.
"There are redundancies to ensure the accuracy and the security of the vote," said David Bear, a spokesman for Diebold who criticized Rubin's study as not being conducted in a real-world setting. "We meet the needs of our customers."
Excuse me, but I, as a member of the voting public am one of your customers. And you're not meeting my needs, which include the assurance that my vote has been recorded to match my intentions.
The voting machine companies are either being stupid, lazy, or are part of a grand conspiracy. (I favor the first two). If there was a system that met our security concerns, we'd sing its praises to anyone who would listen.
What scares me is that the whole Diebold thing is generating much less press and outrage than Milli Vanilli did back in the 80's by lipsynching their songs....
you missed his point retard, he obviously hasn't made a habit of racketeering and he has a family to care for. the length of his jail time is arbitrary.
retard.
At that stage, when we started seeing Internet postings, something had to be done," said Lesniak. "It's just not legal to try and destroy somebody's share value."
*rant* Thats a bit rich. Run for cover everyone, the mega corps are taking over *end rant*
Am I the only one who thinks that this is a bit rich?
I am sure that it is colmpletey legal to destroy a companies share value - after all many executives do that all the time and get away with it - provided you do it legally - the problem in the article is that the person is treading the fine line between extortion and publication.
from the top of my head I can think of the following ways to destroy share value legally:
* Compete effectively with them (ie drive them out of bussines by running your own business and winning their customers
* Air their dirty laundry (much like the article) - provided its the truth.
* Start protest movements (eg anti-nike etc)
* Subvert their product - such as with que cat.
Sorry for the rant but the attitude implied from the quite is just shocking - I could understand if the person was talking about it being illegal to steal trade secrets or to extort money - but to "Destroy share value" - as though share value is a right (and we've all seen RIAA and MPAA try to keep their share value haven't wee...) instead of the way it is meant to be - a reflection of its "value" (market rates, supply demand etc) - is just plain wrong.
* sigh *
oh well, back to reality
Lottery machines can keep a paper trail for hundreds of millions of "voters" during powerball crazes, and "all" that is at stake is hundreds of millions of dollars. Why can't election machines accomplish a similar task?
Interesting comparison between gambling machiens and voting machines.
In the latest (dead wood) issue of The Economist they have a full page ad. It's quite funny for those who read slashdot - their punchline is "They'll never catch us".
Oh yes, we will, Diebold.
But this whole ad makes me wonder if they are trying to buy themselves protection from prying eyes. The Economist can be really good at putting a critical eye on things (ask Berlusconi!), but then again, they are as amoral as the worst capitalist parody you can imagine. I don't think we can count on them to not make economic considerations when deciding whether to pursue a story or not.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Here
Whatever safeguards you build in, the fact is that once you use machines, you have no way of knowing who won an election, you have to take someone else's word for it. Only a traditional pencil-and-paper system can be understood in principle, and verified directly, by any voter or even any voter's child. See my The Dangers of Electronic Democracy for a fuller argument.
What I don't understand is why you need electronic/mechanical voting at all. I know the US is a poor country, but surely it can afford a few man-hours of bank tellers to count the paper votes? Or is it that the news media - who run politics as if it were a branch of entertainment - will boycott elections if the results take longer than 10 minutes to arrive?