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More E-Voting SNAFUs
tassii writes "Looks like Diebold is in yet more trouble. In this article from Wired.com, an audit of the Diebold E-Voting machines revealed that the company installed uncertified software in all 17 counties that use its electronic voting equipment. While 14 counties used software that had been qualified by federal authorities but not certified by state authorities, three counties, including Los Angeles, used software that had never been certified by the state or qualified by federal authorities for use in any election. And in this article, Wired.com is reporting that at least five convicted felons secured management positions at a Diebold, including one who served time in a Washington state correctional facility for stealing money and tampering with computer files in a scheme that 'involved a high degree of sophistication and planning.'"
from the article: "The core of our American democracy is the right to vote," Shelley said. "Implicit in that right is the notion that that vote be private, that vote be secure, and that vote be counted as it was intended when it was cast by the voter."
In my thinking this should mean the source code should be opened to the public to ensure continued trust in the system. "Trust us, we're the government" doesn't carry any weight these days.
Trolling is a art,
Sometimes the most advanced and easiest way of doing something isn't the best. I'll take pen+paper sign-in and handle-pull voting machines, thank you very much.
I got a +5, Troll
After all, anytime people don't like the outcome in an election they just claim the whole thing was 'tipped' or 'stolen' anyway. Does anybody honestly believe that introducing Internet into the equation will change things?
That we hear about this from Wired, as opposed to CNN? MSNBC? New York Times? Washington Post? Fox News? (well, the last is a rheotical question).
My point is, what does it take for the mainstream press to pick up on this?!?!?!?
Think about it, it is just a bunch of Yahoos that want to secure their status in power, and to that they need to subvert checks and balances, subvert the will of the people, etc, etc.
There is no reason to trust Diebold, for that matter. It is a corporation that has been contracted to change the way we vote, and the way we are counted.
Four more years of Bush...
I'm not an American so pardon my ignorance: are these voting machines in states/counties with political leanings which normally wouldn't support Bush? Fuel my conspiracy theories.
Trolling is a art,
The problem with our current voting system is that most people are too lazy to even vote. If electronic systems were used instead, they wouldn't take as much space, nor would they need to assign voters to a specific polling place. Therefore they could plant voting machines all over the place to increase turnout. Plus the computers could offer info on the candidates so that voters have something to decide on besides political party.
Planting cash machine weaknesses (or more likely: profiting from accidental weakness which they get to know about) allows them to obtain quicker and more anonymous rewards than tampering with elections would.
An obviously fake high-stakes election might lead to a thorough investigation, which might not only land the politician that profitted from it in hot water, but also his minions at Thiefold.
However, nobody would make as much fuss about cash machines that occasionnally spit out too much if the right cheat-code is punched.
It's good that this is being reported on Wired, but now that the situation has escalated to a company actually clearly violating federal election laws (uncertified software), employing former felons in information sensitive positions, and meeting each and every one of the tests to show method, motive and opportunity to commit election fraud, why isn't this making the front page of the NY Times and Post the same day? Why isn't CNN already reporting on this? Where's USA today? Where's Peter Jennings?
Who is John Cabal?
exactly. A car may have power-assisted brakes and steering, but the power systems are not required to be operational. they are nice to have and make life easier, but if they cut out you can rely on your own muscle to continue functioning in an emergency.
So sure, go to electronic voting for fast initial tallies, clearer voter instructions etc, but definitely have your human-readable paper ballots as backups and for spot-checks.
the stakes are so high in certain elections that fraud attempts are already commonplace and guaranteed.
No, THAT'S not even a problem. Voter apathy isn't necessarily a bad thing: it can be a sign that people are content, and don't feel the need to change the status quo. Compelling people to vote, either by law or by fine, takes a little bit away from your freedom of choice. Making it easier for people to vote is fine, but not for the sake of shaking the tree to get more voters out of it.
I see polititians getting on TV/radio and talking day-of election registration (hello kneee-jerk elections), or making Election Day a national holiday, etc... I think these people, like the folks behind e-voting, are trying to fix something that's not a problem to begin with.
Auto-reply to ACs: "Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."
Maybe we should bring the computer to people's houses. We could have mobile voting sites--vans with voting machines on them.
It's interesting and disappointing to note how these stories are not picked up by the mainstream media.
Or at least, not yet.
All it's going to take is enough public sentiment against Diebold to change this situation... and this can only happen if msnbc, cbsnews, washpost, foxnews, latimes, et al pick this up.
I wonder what they're doing in the cash machine world that hasn't yet come to light?
How arrogant, to think that just because people don't vote, they must lazy. How you concidered that many thinks that none of the candidate will have their best interests at heart? Or that the election is fixed in such a way that the "right" candidate is elected by use of gerrymandering, thus makeing my vote count less?
There are many sick things with the election system, but lazy voters is not one of them.
Actually, if you look at who wants more registration and who wants to make Election Day a national holiday (or, hell, moving it to a weekend day), it's pretty clear that the left wants more participation and easier voting, and the right wants more restrictions on registration and harder voting.
The reasons are pretty straightforward -- people who are well off and have high-end salaried jobs are more likely to be able to get past registration barriers and to take time off from their weekday jobs (which are salaried, not hourly) to vote. By comparison, the less well-off are typically less educated and less likely to be able to take time to vote without a financial hit.
Now, the interesting thing about all of this analysis is that it's kind of backwards, because, IIRC, the more education and (to a point) income someone has, the less likely they are to vote conservative, and vice versa. There's a distinct lack of class consciousness in America, probably because the right has been really good at playing to the emotions and non-economic beliefs of the lower economic classes, while really pursuing agendas destructive of their actual economic interests.
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Point and Counterpoint: The Tick - "Spoon!" Neo - "There is no spoon."
I can't fault them for folks already in place at Global Election Systems (GES) when they acquired the company at the beginning of 2002. Nor do I believe that folks with a criminal history should be barred from IT careers. Someone with expertise in large scale fraud could be very helpful, if not invaluable, in finding exploits in systems you're trying to secure.
However, a development and management staff comprised of numerous folks with experience in stock fraud, money laundering, smuggling, cracking and grand larceny certainly calls into question the legitimacy of the projects they've worked on. The Diebold spokesdrone said that a few of them left at the time of acquisition, but did not say if any remained working at Diebold.
My own opinion is that Diebold itself is a criminal enterprise whose thin facade of trustworthiness has been torn down to expose the company's true character.
This calls into question not only Diebold's election systems, but all of their products including their ubiquitous ATM machines. Who knows how many of those have been cracked or if there's an ongoing fraudulent scheme (beyond ATM withdrawl fees) by Diebold to defraud Joe and Jane Citizen of their hard-earned cash.
Based on Diebold's behaviour, I don't think that that sounds terribly crazy.
He didn't publicly announce it. It was part in conjunction with fund-raising.
The issue is whether he has a conflict of interest. Can you be professional at the same time as doing "everything possible" to make sure that Bush is the winner? Could Katherine Harris do this in Florida?????
To quote deep throat "These people really aren't that bright". They are simply rich and influential. They are willing to trade their values for personal power and influence. There is nothing about this that requires high intelligence or Machievellien sensibilities.
Of course, when you effectively control the press, your tongue can be a lot looser. Your allies will squash the stories that aren't conducive to your agenda. They will also lie virulentally about your opponents (Al Gore NEVER said that he invented the internet. Never said that he was an inspiration for Love Story (even though he WAS)).
The Gerbil's method of propaganda is the one of the day. Repeat your lies, squash your opponents, invent an enemy, then take the people's freedoms with their enthusiastic consent.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
For probably about the same cost, minus the bluster and scandal, the feds could have done what we do in western Canada -- paper ballots that you mark an "X" on.
Not electronic gadgets. Not punch cards. Plain old no-nonsense paper voting. Seriously, why complicate something more than you need to?
I can see the convenience factor, but when it's a matter of using unproven equipment, there's a bit of a problem there. And as we saw here, it's got a great tendency to come up behind you and bite you on the arse after the fact.
Because I have seen a great deal of studies that "prove" he won, that "prove" he lost, and that say it is impossible to determine without the courts releasing the information needed to know the exact count.
There are too many ways to estimate this, and none are 100% accurate. But what *is* 100% certain is that Bush prevented the count from being made more accurate than the original. Now, why would he do that? Because he *already* won the first count! It doesn't matter whether the recount would have gone in his favor--he chose *not* to count more accurately specifically because doing so would have reduced his chance of winning.
It's not really that suprising that he wanted to win. But it is disgusting that he cared less about the votes than he did about winning.
-Dan
I think electronics should just be used to make things easier and clearer. Here is how I would envision a voting system:
You come in and a touch screen given you a choice of language options. You then enter your information to confirm you are elegable to vote. The system then has you vote on everything that is of issue at the particular vote. When you're done, it shows you your choices and asks if you'd like to revise them. Once you are happy, it does two things:
1) Submits your results electronically to the central system.
2) Prints you a ticket that you then give to the poll worker, that is handled as current paper ballots are.
Now, the central electronic voting information is used to get immediate results, similar to exit polls. It will be possible ot see in realtime the election is going, and also know who won immediatly after. However, that will not be definitive. The election will not be officially declared until the paper tickets are tabulated. In the event of a discrepancy, the paper rules.
In this way we could get the ease of use and instant response of an electronic system, but not ahve to worry if it is being tampered with. If someone hacks the central system, it confuses eairly results, but doesn't change the final outcome.
You miss one important point: voters need to verify their receipt, but cannot keep it. Remember the purpose of the seceret ballot is to make sure nobody can win elections by threatening harm against those who vote "wrong". With the seceret baallot if you are threatened you vote however you want and then claim you were one of the two people who voted for the guy doing the threat and everyone else is lieing.
I think there should be a law (though it should never come into play) that if in court someone is asked how they voted, they must be released from their oath and the judge must encourage the witness to give a wrong answer. If the question of how the witness votes comes up a second time, they are released again, and informed how they answered the last time and encouraged to answer different. Sure it is mostly a non-issue, but it is important that we treat ballots as seceret.
Here in Oregon we have the mail in ballot. Counting happens quickly enough and the costs appear to be in line with voter expectations.
Turnout is somewhat of a problem on some issues, but the tax related elections are seeing good results. (hmmm)
Another interesting side-effect is related to the political messaging. Voters can commit to a vote anytime after they get their ballots. Maybe it's me, but I hear more political discource over a longer period of time because of this. You can't just blast your message and time it to get votes, you have to keep up the efforts.
Anyway, I am not so sure the paper really is that costly. The counting can be as distributed as is needed to get the job done and we have plenty of people. Isn't a fair system worth a bit of work? The cost issue is really a non-starter. There are always going to be plenty of retired people willing to do their part to contribute to society in a positive way. Let 'em do it! (Lots of them if we need that.) I just am not sure complexity is an issue given the ready supply of workers for the task.
Seems to me these electronic systems (obvious flaws aside) are a way to get out of the work necessary to run a democratic society. It is almost as if the spin is marginalizing voting in a bad way.
None of this is hard and it all matters more than we know. A bit of work a few times a year properly distributed is not too costly and keeps some important civics lessons in mind at the same time. Speeding the process in order to get onto bigger and better things strikes me as hasty and unwise...
One other thought along these lines. I am not sure we want elections that are too fast and easy. The current effort required to hold an election is a nice check against rapid change. Now you could argue that rapid change is what we need today, and I would agree with you. But, we must also consider the effect of too many elections. It takes time to see how the results affect society. We could end up with a political race condition of sorts with the American people suffering as a result while groups take advantage of that...
Even though I am a technical person, I reject electronic voting altogether at this point. There are too many issues with the process and its connotations for me to endorse it. I like the mail in system, but that is clearly not the way things are going to go, so...
Use the machines to assist in making a paper ballot, even grab quick stats from them to make polls easier or more timely, but that must be it. The will of the people must be recorded on media in human readable format.
Go for the simple solution, sell the civic duty to enough folks to get the work done in a timely manner and then move on to bigger and better things.
Just had another thought. We could do a lot better job of collating and publishing the relevant information for folks to read and understand via electronic means. I find it frustrating to read the voters pamplet only to learn enough to then go seek the actual language in question. The paid arguments are lame these days when anyone can comment. We should have discussion boards and public awareness of them, so people can engage the issues with greater fidelity than we do today. (I know there are problems with this, but the idea is sound.)
Re: outsourcing! That's funny as hell. We Americans have realized we don't have time to count our votes, we are too busy shopping and writing laws for the rest of you! So why not just be the good little bitches you are and count 'em up for us. In fact, you can just consider these votes yours because we are going to force the results via treaty anyway. --Right!
Blogging because I can...
There is a way for both to lose: approval voting. This system allows each voter to choose as many candidates as they like, therefore they don't feel pressure to throw their vote to a 'lesser of two evils' (because they can do so while also voting for the candidates they like). This system eliminates the need for primaries (taking the decision away from the political parties; remember John McCain) because several candidates can run on similar platforms without reducing each others' support. Such a system would give third party candidates the support they deserve, and start to break the two-party stranglehold of incompetance and greed that has brought us to this awful point.