Pentagon Cancels Internet Voting System

Ben B writes "The Pentagon won't use an Internet voting system for overseas U.S. citizens this fall because of concerns about its security, an official said Thursday. The official, who requested anonymity, said Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz made the decision to scrap the system because Pentagon officials were not certain they could 'assure the legitimacy of votes that would be cast.' Computer security experts who last month reviewed the Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment, or SERVE, had urged the Pentagon to scrap the system, saying it was too vulnerable."

Comments

I really have to question

[barenaked]

I question the whole premise of using the internet in the voting process. The flaws are unsolvable because they are fundamental to the architecture of the internet. Using a voting system based upon the internet poses a serious and unacceptable risk for election fraud. It is simply not secure enough for something as serious as the election of a government official. The report recommends that the Serve project be shut down and nothing like it be tried until "both the internet and the world's home computer infrastructure have been fundamentally redesigned, or some other unforeseen security breakthroughs appear." With which I wholeheartedly agree

Re:I really have to question

[Rotten168]

Well, the Pentagon considered the implication that worldwide "hackers" could alter the outcome of the election. And seeing as how popular GWB is worldwide, their decision was wise.

Re:I really have to question

[Billy the Mountain]

I disagree. You can solve all manner of these types of problems using certificates with high encryption strength.

BTM

Re:I really have to question

[El]

Unless you assume that the machine doing the encryption has already been compromised.

Re:I really have to question

[osewa77]

High security can always be layered on top of the 'unreliable' internet as it is; the problem is that the stock software has so many easily exploited loopholes (trojans? keyword capture? windows exploits?) that it would introduce messy, situations, which would not help the current government's bid for the next elections (better safe than sorry?)

Re:I really have to question

[goodrob]

I think they should just do away with anonymous ballots.

as if there is any real need for this anymore. i've never understood why people want to still keep this secret.

maybe you don't want to make it public but if everyone has a serial number and one number is one vote how do you fake out that system?

it's only anonymous ballots that make it possible to scam.

Re:I really have to question

[Anonymous Coward]

And with that, the human race was forever limited to paper ballots and shoeboxes.

Three cheers for technology!

Re:I really have to question

[gewalker]

In Florida they had a big fiasco. They tried to fix it by recounting the PAPER ballots repeatedly. This did not make anyone too happy either. George W. won all of the recounts, including ones done by the independent press, but lots of people still argue a fix was on, Bush stole the election, etc. -- Note:, I'm not arguing that Bush did or did not steal the election, or if he would be the first that had if he did -- I'm focusing on the controversy surrounding it to the day.

How in the world would the U.S. react if you could reasonably argue that the system could have been hacked, etc. -- Strikes me that this would be a very chaotic result.

The Internet based system does not and probably cannot have a useful audit trail that is equivalent to the paper ballots.
Foreign nationals are certainly limited in their voting flexibility and I think the Pentagon was trying to incorporate them betting in the voting process. Is there not a reasonable compromise that would meets the needs of voters and voting integrity?

Re:I really have to question

[Carnildo]

I think they should just do away with anonymous ballots.

as if there is any real need for this anymore. i've never understood why people want to still keep this secret.

In Soviet Russia, they shot people who voted against the wishes of the Party.

Re:I really have to question

[Anonymous Coward]

Corporations have been using internet voting for people to vote their shares for years. Why not use their system?

Re:I really have to question

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey guess what!

You're a fucking god damn idiot.

Re:I really have to question

[sholden]

People vote differently in secret ballots than they do in public ballots. That's a pretty significant reason to keep them.

Secret ballots prevent many problems associated with elections (breaking the legs of those who don't vote how you told them, for example). Of course with non-compulsary voting you can perform similar attacks anyway - prevent a bunch of people who will cast more votes for your opposition than for you from voting at all.

The UK has a system in which votes are tagged with unique identifiers that match a voter to a ballot - but the link is locked away somewhere "safe" and legally can't be accessed except on a court order and are destroyed after a year. That provides most of the benefits of a secret ballot, but still allows the votes to be checked if the election is suspect. See here for a short blurb on the system.

Now whether than system is good or bad is another matter, but it shows you can have some of the benefits of a secret ballot and also the main benefit of a non-secret ballot.

Re:I really have to question

[TyrranzzX]

Use a p2p system, there's no centralized point under control by anyone. Just one secure, open source model that gets implemented and is hard to hack. Plus, with paper ballots, and that kind of a system where the votes are tallied by thousands of voting machines, anyone can check the votes in their area without a problem. Use good encryption, trustable maintainers and goverment certification, and you've got a strong basis for something most techies would trust.

Re:I really have to question

[MuParadigm]

"...George W. won all of the recounts, including ones done by the independent press..."

Actually, not to get into the argument of whether there was a fix or not, but the independent press tally came up with different winners, depending on how the vote was counted.

Ironically, using the counting method that the Democrats recommended would have resulted in a Bush victory, and using the counting method advocated by the Republicans would have resulted in a Gore victory.

But then the Supreme Court stepped in at the Republicans request, called off the recounts, and gave the victory to Bush. So the proper counting method for the recounts became a moot issue.

Re:I really have to question

[spitzak]

Actually several recounts showed Gore winning. The really foolish thing the Dems did was insist on certain precients being recounted and that count ended up showing Bush winning anyway, if they had selected a different set of precients or *all* precients they could have shown Gore winning. That pretty much made them look really stupid and lost their argument for anybody (like me) who didn't really care (personally I think something is wrong with our system that the two candidates can so exactly center themselves that the vote is divided so perfectly).

Re:I really have to question

[unusualsuspect]

There are ways around the issue that aren't even very high-tech. Requesting a ballot and recieving a uniquely coded version through e-mail...supplemented with telephone voting...ha ha...don't tell me it can't be done, and cheaply with all that foriegn labor...the government doesn't want everyone to vote...if they did, election day would be a National holiday with going to the booth the central theme. It's a joke. Like a few of the mods here at slashtard.

Re:I really have to question

[Anonymous Coward]

personally I think something is wrong with our system that the two candidates can so exactly center themselves that the vote is divided so perfectly

Don't forget the 4% or so that went to Nader. Exit polling had the Nader voters going about 35% Gore, 30% wouldn't vote, 25% Bush.

Re:I really have to question

[Dark Lord Seth]

Worst. Soviet Russia. Joke. Ever.

Re:I really have to question

[LnxAddct]

As El so elegantly stated, Unless you assume that the machine doing the encryption has already been compromised.

The problem is if I root your computer and thn you register to vote, I simply block your vote from leaving your computer, fabricate my own packets and send them along. you'll never know because voting methods require that they can't be traced back to you. If someone can prove that you voted for a certain candidate then people will start being paid to vote for certain candidates As long as you can't attatch a vote to a person then paying someone to vote for you is fundamentally flawed in that you can't prove anything they did.In an age where hackers store their movies and mp3s on government computers and an age where people will open up any email that says it was specially encoded in a binary format as an attatchment, I don't think its a wise idea for anyone to trust anyone that their vote was legitimate if it was sent through the internet.It doesn't matter if the network is decentralized (the internet is decentralized by the way), if I own your computer then I control what you do with it, simple as that.
Regards,
Steve

Re:I really have to question

[Anonymous Cowtard]

But then the Supreme Court stepped in at the Republicans request

Yeah... after the Democrats took it to the courts to begin with.

Neither party's hands are clean in the whole fiasco.

Re:I really have to question

[mr_death]

IMHO, what made things look really stupid was the voters who can't handle a simple punch ballet. In the past, we used them in Washington State, and it wasn't rocket science -- punch the ballot completely, pull out of machine, make sure all the punches are clean, put ballot in box. If you can't handle that, I argue that you're too clueless to vote.

If you're going to allow the "divining the voter's intent" game (that is, try to detect hanging/dimpled chads) as Florida did, and the number of ballot that need divining exceed the margin of victory, then either candidate can win, depending on how the divining is done. You might as well toss a coin.

As for the effectively even vote distribution -- speaking in a wildly oversimplified manner, in this election the number of motiviated right wing whacko/pro-business/anti-union/anti-environmental people was about the same as the left wing whacko/union boss/trial lawyer/pro-choice count. That is a possible outcome, and not a flaw in the system.

Re:I really have to question

[spitzak]

I think there is a flaw in the system. In effect if you plot the platforms of Gore and Bush on the entire political opinion spectrum, you would get something like this:

LEFT------GB------RIGHT

Most people when they think about politics expect it to maybe be more like this (showing a case where Bush would win):

LEFT---G----B-----RIGHT

The actual result is the same as very simple economic theories such as "where to put your resturant along the road to compete with other resturants". They all end up clustered in the exact center of the population on the road, which is not the idea distribution for the users of the resturants.

If Gore moved slightly more liberal, Bush would win. If Bush went slightly more conservative Gore would win. They end up in the exact middle and modern candidates have millions of dollars in analysists to find the real exact middle. In fact the main parties have changes which one is left/right a couple times during the history of the United States due to them trying so hard to be exactly in the middle that they went past each other.

Not that I have any idea what the solution is. Possibly approval voting would fix this (where you can vote for more than one candidate).

Re:I really have to question

[MikeXpop]

Ever watch the old Dilbert cartoons that used to be on UPN? There was an episode called "Ethics" where Dilbert was assigned the task of building the internet voting system, and how he dealt with the thought of creating a back door for himself or not. In the end, he decided not to, but some h4x0rs got in anyway and added the candidate "Harry McButtcrack" (or some similar name, I forget) as a joke. The american public voted for him.

But hey, it could have been worse. They could have voted for Bush.

Re:I really have to question

[CrazyDuke]

Herm...i thought it was because the head of the Bush campaign in Florida also happened to be the person in charge of Florida elections and worked with a Republican headed company and George Bush's brother Jeb to have ~51,000 people wrongfully taken off the voter rolls who where later found to 90% Democrat. (I don't know how the conclusion was reached that they would vote Democrat since they wheren't allowed to vote at all. Maybe previous voting habits?)

Greg Palast has a good write up on it. ...Then there's that whole thing where Bush Jr. got appointed President by the people his daddy appointed into office. Was that even legal? Or did the court just give itself the right to do that?

Re:I really have to question

[MillionthMonkey]

You can solve all manner of these types of problems using certificates with high encryption strength.

No you can't. People concentrate on encryption strength as if that's everything. It's like the height of a wall. Doubling it doesn't help if people can walk around the wall. The key length is only one of many vulnerabilities in a system. Think of all the computer security breaches you've heard about. How many happened because an attacker succeeded in brute forcing a key? As opposed to, say, using an easily guessed default password? Unless you're using DES, or crappy exportable encryption, brute forced keyspaces are probably not how you will go down.

What you have here is something that is pretending to be a solution to a problem that is pretending to be a solution in search of a problem. There are really two problems here- the one you are addressing (short key length), and a more fundamental one, which is that there is no reason for we the voting public to be hearing the words "Internet" and "voting" in the same sentence at all, nor is there any reason why we should have to assume a collective responsibility for safeguarding our own votes in this election process when we weren't even the ones who had anything to gain from endangering the democratic process in the first place.

Re:I really have to question

[Free_Meson]

But then the Supreme Court stepped in at the Republicans request

Yeah... after the Democrats took it to the courts to begin with.

Neither party's hands are clean in the whole fiasco.

I hope you aren't saying that it was somehow wrong to take that election to court. That's the reason we have courts -- when everything else breaks down, they are the final arbiters of right and wrong. They are the referees that determine which rules are just and how they should be interpreted and enforced. You can't have a truly democratic system without a powerful court because those abused by the tyranny of the majority have no recourse. As for the case of Gore v. Bush, it looks like the court failed. It didn't fail because Bush won (though I would have prefered Gore), it failed because in a situation that needed a conclusive end it rendered the worst possible verdict for the sanctity of democracy in the United States. They said that a recount should happen, but becuase of an artificial deadline ~50 days before the winner would take office and less than a day after the decision, a full recount requiring less than a week would just be too inconvenient to endure. The case should have been about how to count the votes, with the democrats arguing one way and the republicans arguing another. Instead, the republican council argued that there should be no recount at all... As a litigation tactic, this was good -- if you won the first count, argue against any subsequent recounts. As it concerns the country, though, this was a horrible argument, and a less radical court would have seen the importance of deciding the election with a universal standard of fairness rather than doing what it did. The Gore v. Bush decision may have been the single worst supreme court decision since the Dred Scott v. Sanford decision, but at least in Scott the court had a sound legal principle to support its decision.

Anyway, I can't believe you're claiming the democrats should somehow be blamed or tarnished for seeking a recount in an election where equal protection had obviously been violated. The fact that such a request even made it into a court should tell you that the republican party, at least at the time, cared more about being in power than it cared about the democratic nature of the united states or its constitution.

Re:I really have to question

[KarmaOverDogma]

It's not only the issue of proper encryption, but securing the host machines the server(s) and the data from any manner of problems:

1) software issues, as in: Is the software reliable AND secure from this perspective
2) hardware issues, as in: Is the hardware relaible AND secure (insert your choice of weakest link issue here)
3) stability of power issues (closely related to #2)
4) connectivity/reliability of connectivity issues
5) audit trail of the data (preferably at both ends of the 'net)
6) the integrity of those managing the system (this one coule be considered fairly closely related to #5)
7) the unknown (insert your choice fear and/or uncertainty here)

I don't know about the rest of you, but that looks like a plenty of room for Murphy's Law to me...

The Pentagon most certainly did the right thing (this time).

.

Re:I really have to question

[Prof.Phreak]

Well, I say if amazon can pull it off charging millions of folks securely over this magic internet, there should be no `technical' reason not to have voting online.

The system just has to be designed `right'. With possibly 10 different open source implementations (implemented by different teams/companies) working as one... (have the client machine talk to 10 different gov servers at the same time - each running it's own implementation), and their results compared. If any one of them is not `correct', then the whole system is taken offline and fixed.

The major issue is correctly determining who is actually at the terminal, but that's not technology (more like faith in that the system works - anyone hear that dead folks can't vote?)

Re:I really have to question

[YrWrstNtmr]

depending on how the vote was counted.

One person, one vote. Nothing more, nothing less.

Re:I really have to question

[Anonymous Coward]

and a less radical court would have seen the importance of deciding the election with a universal standard of fairness rather than doing what it did

I wouldn't exactly call our current Supreme Court "radical". Wasn't the recount issue decided by a 5-4 vote?

There are a couple hard-right conservatives on the court, a couple liberals, and the swing votes (usually O'Connor). Now personally, I would rather have moderates across the board, but I can live with the current balance in the court.

What pisses me off is the way every president tries to leverage court nominees to further his personal agenda. I mean yes - Congress does the same thing, but they are usually reacting to the president nominating someone who is too radical in one direction or the other. Can't our politicians select judges based on their merits and decide on who is the best person for the job? And maybe realize that most of the voters in America are moderates? Nah I guess that would contradict the job description of a politician.

Re:I really have to question

[MuParadigm]

"I hope you aren't saying that it was somehow wrong to take that election to court. That's the reason we have courts -- when everything else breaks down, they are the final arbiters of right and wrong."

Well, there is a Constitutional process documented, yes, right there in the Constitution, that throws the election into the House and Senate in the event of a contested slate of electoral votes from any particular state.

If your going by the Constitution, the recount should have proceeded and, since whichever side lost probably would have taken it to Congress, Congress should have decided.

That, of course, would have ended up a huge political mess, since, as VP, Gore would have had the tie-breaking vote in the Senate, and the Senate was split 50-50 at the time.

There is an argument that letting the Supreme Court decide prevented a greater crisis in Congress, and nationally. But there really was no Constitutional support for it.

So, yes, I am saying it was somehow wrong for that election to end in the Supreme Court. However, I'm not sure that the prescibed Constitutional procedure would have been any better. Taking it to the Supremes *may* have been the least wrong of all possible wrongs.

Re:I really have to question

[Zeinfeld]

I disagree. You can solve all manner of these types of problems using certificates with high encryption strength.

But not the confidence problem.

The problem with SERVE is that it got caught in the crossfire from the Diebold issue. It is an easier target in some ways because people are used to ATMs, they are less used to the Internet.

There is a big difference in the two problems, with Internet voting it is much easier to perform one off frauds that afftect single votes. You can trojan a machine if you know a voter is going to use it. It is actually very hard to preform a fraud on a wide enough scale to affect the outcome to any significant extent. It is also relatively easy to create log files etc since there can be redundant machines auditing the IP stream.

The Diebold issue is the reverse. It is quite hard to compromise a system, but if you can compromise the system you can control the vote absolutely.

The other factor that comes into the Diebold story is the incompetent coding, the lack of security knowledge and the refusal to seek any.

Re:I really have to question

[Free_Meson]

If your going by the Constitution, the recount should have proceeded and, since whichever side lost probably would have taken it to Congress, Congress should have decided.

Could you show me where in the constitution it says that a contested slate of electoral votes would allow the issue to devolve to the senate (linked below). Once the Court made its ruling on how and when the votes were to be counted, there would be no grounds or avenue for subsequent appeal. It's the supreme court, and the name means just that. In the event that no decision was reached on the votes then, yes, the vote would have gone to congress, but not in the way that you describe. Each state has 1 vote and Bush won more total states, so he would have won that election (unless you want to make the case that senators and representatives from a state that voted for bush would have cast their vote for Gore and lost any chance of being reelected)... We only have a democracy when we follow the proscribed rules, and while it may be convenient to avoid the rules at times, doing so makes the united states a dictatorship.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constituti on.overview.html

Re:I really have to question

[spare.dave]

In Soviet Russia, people who voted against the wishes of the Party shoot you!

Re:I really have to question

[Bob Uhl]

That's the reason we have courts--when everything else breaks down, they are the final arbiters of right and wrong.

No, that's why we have the military--they're the final arbiter when everything else breaks down. Fortunately, it has only once gotten to that point, and hopefully it never will again. The courts are the last peaceful recourse, but there are others available.

Re:I really have to question

[Bob Uhl]

...personally I think something is wrong with our system that the two candidates can so exactly center themselves that the vote is divided so perfectly

Why? To me, that means that both candidates pretty well approximated the desires of the people. Now, my own opinion is that 'the people' are for the most part morons who think that McDonald's is tasty, tobacco is nasty and whatever feels right is--but, if one has any sort of fealty to democratic principles then the creation of candidates who are nearly identical is a triumph of the process.

Meanwhile, aristocrats and monarchists roll their eyes:-)

Re:I really have to question

[ocie]

Even after Gore conceeded(look for THE FINAL BATTLE) the election? What a bunch of liberal whining. A presidential election isn't the grade school playground. There are no "take backs" and there damn sure aren't any "take backs" when you are actually president.

Re:I really have to question

[cheezedawg]

Greg Palast has a good write up on it.

That is not a "good" write up. It is a partisan attack that isn't even factual.

the head of the Bush campaign in Florida also happened to be the person in charge of Florida elections

And every action she took has held up against 3 years of intense international scrutiny.

and worked with a Republican headed company

That was hired by a democrat before either Harris or Bush were in office

and George Bush's brother Jeb

Jeb recused himself from anything related to the election

have ~51,000 people wrongfully taken off the voter rolls who where later found to 90% Democrat.

That is just 100% false. 51,000 people were not removed from the voter rolls. The (Democrat majority) USCCR commission struggled to find 5 people that were actually removed from the voter rolls, and 4 of them were allowed to vote anyway. And by law, the responsibility to remove somebody from the voter registration falls on the county election supervisor- Harris and Jeb Bush don't even have the legal authority to remove a name from voter registration.

Re:I really have to question

[workindev]

You are wrong on so many counts that it is hard to know where to start.

the head of the Bush campaign in Florida also happened to be the person in charge of Florida elections

I assume you are talking about Secretary of State Katherine Harris. I guess you don't realize that the Department of State is not "in charge of Florida elections". Elections are the responsibility of the ... Department of Elections! Funny how that works.

worked with a Republican headed company and George Bush's brother Jeb

Bzzzt. Wrong again. ChoicePoint was hired by Ethel Baxtor (D - Florida Director of Elections), before Harris or Bush were elected to Florida office.

to have ~51,000 people wrongfully taken off the voter rolls who where later found to 90% Democrat

Strike Three! 51,000 people were not "wrongfully taken off the voter rolls". 51,000 (actually it was 56,000) people were included in a list of voters who would possibly not be allowed to vote because their name produced a match in the ChoicePoint database as a convicted felon without their voting rights restored. According to Florida Law (section 98.0977 - Page 15), the only people with authority to remove a voter from the registration rolls are the county election supervisors from one of the 67 counties in Florida (not Katherine Harris or Jeb Bush).

Then there's that whole thing where Bush Jr. got appointed President by the people his daddy appointed into office

The USSC ruling agreed with all three of the completed vote counts and recounts in the state (including the count that was certified by the Secretary of State on the 7th day after the election, as required by Florida Law), and simply stated that the standards of vote counting and recounting could not be changed after the election was over (which was exactly what Al Gore was trying to do).

Re:I really have to question

[Anonymous Coward]

Could you show me where in the constitution it says that a contested slate of electoral votes would allow the issue to devolve to the senate...

It's in the Twelfth Amendment.

The electors shall meet in their respective states and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves; they shall name in their ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice-President...The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted...
The person having the greatest number of votes as Vice-President, shall be the Vice-President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of electors appointed, and if no person have a majority, then from the two highest numbers on the list, the Senate shall choose the Vice-President...[my emphasis]

If Florida had failed to choose electors by the time the President of the Senate opened the certificates to count votes, then neither Bush nor Gore would have held a majority of possible electoral college votes. Under that interpretation, the House of Representatives would choose the President (in the manner the parent described) and the Senate would have chosen the Vice President. In a 50-50 split Senate, Gore (as the outgoing President of the Senate) would have been in a position to choose Joe Lieberman to be the Vice President under George W. Bush.

On the other hand, if Florida appointed no electors (eliminating 25 electors), it could be said that Gore won votes from the majority of appointed electors (266 votes to Bush's 247)...in which case we'd be looking at a Gore/Lieberman Presidency.

One could arrive at either theory if the Florida legislature appointed electors but the Supreme Court found that the appointment was in contravention of state law--see Article II, Section 1 "Each state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors..." In principle, the Court could determine that the selection of electors had been unconstitutional and void.

Per the usual disclaimer, IANAL, but even an amateur can see that this is very much all untested legal ground. Further, virtually any action taken could be seen to have some degree of unconstitutionality. The election of 2000 was the sort of exercise to be dreamed up by a law professor--nobody ever expected something like it in real life, I'm quite sure.

Re:I really have to question

[arivanov]

Close, but no quite. More likely they suddenly realised that they would not be able to tripple count votes by overseas personnel in Florida this time. They also realiased that they will not be able to add new votes after the deadline.

Re:I really have to question

[slash.dt]

You can solve the security problem - your online bank does it. The problem is that you have to sacrifice anonyminity to do so - and that is unacceptable for a voting system.

Simple, Secure, Anonymous. Which two do you want?

Re:I really have to question

[ppanon]

I agree both candidates presented themselves as being centrist candidates. GB's performance/record over his term does not seem all that centrist in retrospect.

Re:I really have to question

[TarpaKungs]

It was "Hairy-Assed Magee".

Re:I really have to question

[Anonymous Coward]

and what about those people who were denied the right to vote due to a *mistake* in the voters list (3 guesses who that company was hoping would get in).

Re:I really have to question

[endoboy]

"something most techies would trust" is not really a sufficient standard for judging the security of an encryption system

Re:I really have to question

[DeadScreenSky]

It isn't like the people who voted for Gore decided that he should concede. Of course they are going to still complain about it.

Re:I really have to question

[MikeXpop]

Thanks, I've been wondering about that ever since I posted.

Re:I really have to question

[MuParadigm]

"Could you show me where in the constitution it says that a contested slate of electoral votes would allow the issue to devolve to the senate...?"

Doofus. Of course I can. Wouldn't have said it otherwise.

Article II. Section 1. Clause 3. US Constitution.

The Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by Ballot for two Persons, of whom one at least shall not be an Inhabitant of the same State with themselves. And they shall make a List of all the Persons voted for, and of the Number of Votes for each; which List they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the Seat of the Government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate. The President of the Senate shall, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted. The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President, if such Number be a Majority of the whole Number of Electors appointed; and if there be more than one who have such Majority, and have an equal Number of Votes, then the House of Representatives shall immediately chuse by Ballot one of them for President; and if no Person have a Majority, then from the five highest on the List the said House shall in like Manner chuse the President. But in chusing the President, the Votes shall be taken by States, the Representation from each State having one Vote; A quorum for this Purpose shall consist of a Member or Members from two thirds of the States, and a Majority of all the States shall be necessary to a Choice. In every Case, after the Choice of the President, the Person having the greatest Number of Votes of the Electors shall be the Vice President. But if there should remain two or more who have equal Votes, the Senate shall chuse from them by Ballot the Vice President. (See Note 8)

And you know something? Here's a link to the US Constitution, just so you can check for yourself:

http://www.house.gov/Constitution/Constitution.htm l

Of course, you're so brilliant, I'm sure you could have Googled it yourself.

Remember, Google is your friend. It prevents you from looking like an idiot by asking about easily researched questions.

Re:I really have to question

[Anonymous Coward]

sorry but all this "they should have counted 72 million times" crap is stupid. If they had kept counting and missed the deadline floridas results wouldn't have counted at all, and an entire state would have been disenfranchised, the courts did the right thing.

Re:I really have to question

[MuParadigm]

Umm, yeah, if that were the case, then Gore would have won hands down. There's no doubt that he won the popular vote in 2K.

But, you know, here in the US, we use an electoral system that grants presidential votes depending on how the majority voted in each given state.

Interestingly enough, the electoral system was developed as a compromise to allow slave states a greater say in choosing the president.

No doubt, you've heard of the 3/5 compromise. The one that declared slaves, in particular black men, as 3/5 of a person for the purposes of calculating census populations for electoral votes?

Yeah, I know it's offensive, and I'm likely to get modded as flamebait for even bringing it up. But the problem is that the whole electoral college system is a holdover from that kind of thinking.

That is to say, that at the time of the writing of the Constitution, Southern states were unlikely to ratify the Constitution because they had far fewer actual voters than the Northern states. The 3/5 compromise was a method used to grant more leverage to the implicity white Southern voters in elections, and the electoral college was a further compromise to maximize that leverage.

So, yes, the historical antecedents that created the current system for choosing a president are completely *fucked*. And, consequently, the electoral college system should have been killed off during reconstruction after the Civil War. Which would have left us with the "One person, one vote" system you have so glibly advocate.

Problem is, that would have been, "One *man*, one vote" at the time, since women weren't granted the right to vote until the 20th Century.

Second problem is, the most populous states clearly outweigh the least in terms of potential voters, simply because they have more people. The Constitution is clearly concerned with balancing the desires of the majority with the needs of the minority. Perhaps "clearly" is a bit of a misnomer there. It's not particular evident in the Constitution itself, unless you read between the lines and add in the Bill of Rights.

But, it *is* evident in the Federalist Papers, which were written to explain the intent of the Constitution, and as propaganda to get state Congresses to ratify it.

Taking into account the motives and ideals expressed within the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Federalist Papers, we're left with the clear idea that the founders did not want a *strict* majority rule. They *preferred* it, but they wanted some leeway for the minority to be heard and respected. This minority includes: small states.

So: How to preserve that voice for small states? Rather than addressing the question at the end of the Civil War, as should have been done, most Congressmem decided that sticking with the electoral college provided the safest way of doing so. It didn't require any changes, and no one was coming up with a better solution. Nor was it evident at the time that a better solution was required.

This is why, even though I live in New York City, the vote of someone living in Wyoming state counts literally *ten* times as much as my vote in a presidential election.

Am I pissed about it? Damn straight I am.

You see, I really do believe that smaller states should have a forum in which their voices can be heard equally with the larger states, and that their votes will count as much. But I think the Senate takes care of that imbalance: 2 votes, 2 Senators for each state, no matter the population.

The electoral college *should* be abandoned. Not because of the "one person, one vote" principal, but because the electoral college has its roots in justifying and accomadating *slavery*, and because the other problem it was designed to address, imbalance in the representation of small states against populous states, is already adequately addressed by equal representation for each state in the Senate.

Re:I really have to question

[MuParadigm]

Woot! Dude, very good. Much better than what I posted below. I hope you get both Informative and Insightful mod points for that.

Thanks for reinforcing my point better than I did.

Should have read your post before I replied.

Re:I really have to question

[MuParadigm]

Whoops, just noticed one point I disagree with:

In principle, the Court could determine that the selection of electors had been unconstitutional and void.

Perhaps it's a legalistic point that we could argue either way till kingdom come, but my reading of the Constitution on that particular point is that, in the event of a federal election, in particular, given the modifications to election processes over the past two centuries, in the event of a presidential election, it's up to *Congress* to determine whether the selection of electors is Constitutional or not. Not the Supremes.

IANAL, either. Could be wrong. But that's the way I read it, and why I said there was no *Constitutional* support for the Supremes to step into the election.

Re:I really have to question

[Anonymous Coward]

But how do you know the person is who they say they are?
I could vote for 100's of people even if the system is secure, knowing some basic information that was mishandled for instance...

Re:I really have to question

[MuParadigm]

Especially since the number of people who voted for Gore exceeded the number who voted for Bush. Something the grandparent seems determined to ignore.

But then, my own grandparents were not dissimiliar.

Re:I really have to question

[deanj]

The number of electoral college votes are used in the US, not the overall vote count.

Re:I really have to question

[stevelinton]

Read the full report, it's on-line. Four senior Computer Security Professors concluded that NO
Internet and PC based voting scheme could be made as secure as current
absentee ballot arrangements. Crypto strength is not the issue at all.

Re:I really have to question

[MarkedMan]

The reason the recount was so confused in Florida was the lack of rules for the recount. The Florida legislature never took the time or effort required to lay out what counted and what didn't. Specifically, they did not include the common mandate "The intent of the voter should take precedence over all other issues."

This mandate is spelled out clearly in most states (ironically, including Texas) and makes perfect sense. For a real world example, a ballot is issued with the holes misaligned. Just looking at the ballot, it would be difficult to tell which candidate someone voted for. But since votes should count (what a concept!) the effort would be made to see what the effect of the misalingnment was and to give credit to those candidates the voter actually pulled the lever for. Obvious, right? Makes perfect sense?

What happened in Florida was that the Republicans argued that since this mandate wasn't included in Florida law, it didn't have to be honored. In the infamous hanging chad firestorm they said that a paper punch which didn't quite fall off should not be counted. So although the voter had obviously punched out the hole, their vote was invalid and shouldn't counted because they hadn't noticed the punch was still hanging by a thread.

The most crucial areas for this strategy were those that contained a large population of the elderly. They tended to vote for Gore, and they tended to suffer from arthritis, making it hard to manipulate the small stylus. The Republicans saw their chance to stop those votes from counting and took it. They then ran a smear campaign about how these old, infirm, probably senile, fogies couldn't even understand how the voting system worked, so how the heck would we even know who they intended to vote for?

And that's the modern Republican party in a nutshell.

Re:I really have to question

[MuParadigm]

Please see my post earlier in this thread for my take on that:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=95710&cid=8199 978

Re:I really have to question

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's see . . . misspelled words, profanity, namecalling . . . yep, they're all there. This, boys and girls, is a textbook knee-jerk reactionary response.

Re:I really have to question

[YrWrstNtmr]

You miss my point. "One person, one vote" means just that. There should be no dispute about 'how the votes were counted'. Ever.

If we count it this way, A wins, if we count it that way, B wins. Nonsense.

Dismissing military absentee ballots is flat out wrong. Multiple registrations is flat out wrong. Discounting an entire county, because they can't verify something is flat out wrong. Registering deceased persons is flat out wrong. Along with all the other discrepancies.

Fix all those things, and then we can begin to talk about refoming the entire process.

Umm, yeah, if that were the case, then Gore would have won hands down. There's no doubt that he won the popular vote in 2K.

By a slight, but measurable margin, yes he did. But...we cannot say with certainty that Gore would have won had the election process been structured around 'popular vote'. Go back two steps in the process. Campaining would have been totally different. Different areas would have been targeted, depending on influence. And so people might have voted differently.

The electoral college *should* be abandoned.

I'm not so sure about that. We might end up with a situation whereby voters in NY, CA, FL, and TX alone determine the election results. Should New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago combined have as much influence over who is elected as Wyoming, Wash DC, Vermont, Alaska, N & S Dakota, Deleware, Montana, Rhode Island, Hawaii, New Hampshire, Maine, Idaho, Nebraska, and W Virginia combined? In terms of straight population count, they would. Why bother with all those states, when the candidate could go to 3 cities and talk to the same number of people?

The 15 million NYC, LA, and Chicago residents alone would determine the outcome of the entire election. Along with their urban demographics.

I'm not sure the electoral college is the right answer in this century. But neither am I convinced that straight popular vote is the way to go either.

Re:I really have to question

[Anonymous Coward]

Concession has no legal bearing on an election. A candidate doesn't have the power to 'give' the election to his opponent by concession.

If Gore conceeded and then had been found to have won florida, he still would have been elected. If he refused, then Liberman would take office. But not Bush.

Re:I really have to question

[Catbeller]

You do realize that, while governor of Texas, Bush signed a law mandating recounts in close elections?

And you do realize that the Republicans were planning on suing for recount after recount if the original count had gone against Bush, even if it meant keeping it in the courts for months? Were they getting ready to whine?

What happened was a neocon takeover of the election process, no more no less. If the election had gone against Bush, recounts would have been sacred. Since it went to Bush, they demanded all recounts stopped.

And you do realize that Bush had demanded at least one, maybe two, recounts in other states at the time the Florida recount was being hijacked? Recounts were fine in OTHER states. Just not Florida.

And there was no problem in counting the votes. A major privately funded recount was conducted during the late part of '01; the results were misreported and supressed by the very news organizations that sponsored it. Because of 9-11, they thought it unwise to baldly state that Gore won, if all votes, including "overcounts" (people who both punched and wrote in Gore's name) were counted.

By all standards but one, Gore won.

Bush issued the ultimate takeback when Scalia and the other neocons stopped the recount. He had lost.

Re:I really have to question

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, not to get into the argument of whether there was a fix or not, but the independent press tally came up with different winners, depending on how the vote was counted.

That's right. If you count it correctly Bush wins. But the result was close enough that you could fiddle with the voting rules and find scenarios which would have let Gore win. Not legal scenarios, but scenarios.

Re:I really have to question

[Kalak]

It's stil on comedy central. I've got to get my MythTV bix working again, because I'd have never foudn it if it wern't for that great software.

Re:I really have to question

[Anonymous Coward]

Fortunately, it has only once gotten to that point, and hopefully it never will again.

Twice, but who's counting?

(Sometimes it seems that all they teach about US History before the Washington administration is, "pilgrims came, Boston Tea Party, Shot heard 'round the world, redcoats lose 4-3 in overtime, Washington becomes president. The end.")

Re:I really have to question

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean the absentee ballots that were thrown out for "no postmark" because military mail doesn't use postmarks?

Re:I really have to question

[Golias]

Umm, yeah, if that were the case, then Gore would have won hands down. There's no doubt that he won the popular vote in 2K.

Actually, by percentage, the margin by which Gore won the popular vote is smaller than the margin by which he lost in Florida. If the Florida result deserved a recount (or two), then you could certainly make the case than the entire national vote would have been recounted, possibly with a different result, if it mattered. Since it doesn't matter, other than for the purposes of Democratic Party rhetoric, there was no reason to do so.

Re:I really have to question

[Anonymous Coward]

talk is cheap. give the links

Re:I really have to question

[geoffspear]

No, they realized that even with the 100 million votes for Bush by military absentee ballots (and accusing anyone who questioned those votes of being unpatriotic because they don't want to let people vote when they're off risking their lives to defend our country, and how dare you question their valor by pointing out that there aren't nearly that many people in the military), he could still lose when 150 military absentee ballots are cast for Howard Dean, who wasn't actually on the ballot.

Better to leave the military out of the plans to steal the election this time, and let Diebold handle it in a way no one else will be able to hack.

Re:I really have to question

[Anonymous Coward]

"That is not a "good" write up. It is a partisan attack that isn't even factual."

Wow, ever notice that some people think anything directed at anyone that, oh say, happen to have a certain political party affiliation is automatically a partisan attack? Well, instead of defend a guy I don't even know, I'll let him defend himself. Quote:

"Am I a bit too rough on the Republicans? I recognize that the selling of America is a bipartisan business. If I spill more ink here on the Bushes than the Clintons, it's primarily because a journalist's first job should be to discomfit those in power. Regarding the Democrats, my policy is to let sleeping dogs lie and lying dogs sleep."

Oh and:

"The question remains, why were these stories (and their author)exiled to Europe? Where are you, America? Don't you want to know how your president was elected? How the IMF spends your money?

Mike Isikoff, a Newsweek reporter, suggested an answer. A couple of years ago, he passed me some truly disturbing information on President Clinton, not the usual intern-under-the-desk stuff. I said, "Mike, why don't you print this?" And he said, "Because no one gives a shit.""

Yep, sounds like yer average 'crats good repubs evil hippycrat. Yes, sirie.

Oh, then there are reviews. Such as:

"Palast, who now reports for the Guardian and Observer in London, as well as the BBC, distinguishes himself from many other advocacy journalists both left and right with his near obsession with documentary evidence--memos, correspondence, e-mail, briefing reports and raw data, much of it stamped confidential--and his painstaking research methods."

"And every action she took has held up against 3 years of intense international scrutiny."

I seem to remember international elections investigations being denied. But, since I can't find any proof atm... well... Funny, Palast reports internationally. And I seem to remeber other media that discussed the antics involved. But no specific sources, sorry.

"That was hired by a democrat before either Harris or Bush were in office."

So was Halliburton. What's your point? Nice try trying to accuse someone else of being a partisan prick and then doing it yourself, though.

"Jeb recused himself from anything related to the election."

And Mr. Insan...err...Hussien said 99% of Iraq voted for him. Again, what's your point?

"That is just 100% false. 51,000 people were not removed from the voter rolls. The (Democrat majority) USCCR commission struggled to find 5 people that were actually removed from the voter rolls, and 4 of them were allowed to vote anyway. And by law, the responsibility to remove somebody from the voter registration falls on the county election supervisor- Harris and Jeb Bush don't even have the legal authority to remove a name from voter registration."

For the first part, please sight your sources. Second, by Florida state law those districts are _required_ to remove those names from the rolls. Some have failed to do so due to the high amounts of errors. Harris and Jeb can't personally remove names from the rolls; but, they can require that the districts do. I don't remember the different sources off the top of my head but Palast's book discusses it if I remember correctly. I'd imagine it would be on the law books as well.

Re:I really have to question

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, Mr. Ditto. I've got to go back to work so I don't have the luxery to make a customized counter-rave & rant for you. You'll have to sink your fangs into the one above for now.

Re:I really have to question

[hesiod]

> If any one of them is not `correct', then the whole system is taken offline and fixed.

Umm, they have decided that they cannot ensure it is "correct," so "the whole system [was] taken offline and fixed." Where is the problem?

They take it down & people say it's because it can't be rigged.
If they left it up, people would say it's because it's easy to rig.

Internet voting decisions are a no-win situation.

Re:I really have to question

[hesiod]

> And with that, the human race was forever limited to paper ballots and shoeboxes.

since it is the most reliable & easiest to implement to date.

Three cheers for common sense!

Re:I really have to question

[hesiod]

> if one has any sort of fealty to democratic principles then the creation of candidates who are nearly identical is a triumph of the process

What??? No way, it is an insult to the system. If all candidates are the same, then we really have no choice.

Re:I really have to question

[hesiod]

> I don't have the luxery to make a customized counter-rave & rant for you.

Good, because that's exactly what it would be, instead of a well-thought out response, as workindev took the time to create.

Re:I really have to question

[hesiod]

> And that's the modern Republican party in a nutshell.

While the Democratic party whines to get their way, uses scare tactics to drum up votes, and has party officials bus people to polling stations, telling them how to vote for their guy.

Face it, both sides are equally immoral.

Re:I really have to question

[Zeinfeld]

Read the full report, it's on-line. Four senior Computer Security Professors concluded that NO Internet and PC based voting scheme could be made as secure as current absentee ballot arrangements. Crypto strength is not the issue at all.

I know who they are, they are a bunch of academics who have never built anything who have established their reputation by playing Casandra. Just because four out of the ten members of the review panel publish a minority report does not mean that their claims are credible. The other six members of the panel disagree with them.

Bruce Schneier does something of the same thing, but there is a major difference. I have never seen Bruce criticise something without offering a fix or making a really serious effort to find one or give as good a description of the problem as he can.

The other difference with Bruce is that whenever he comes after something I did he has always raised the issue in private before going public. He does not always agree but he does not say things like 'there is no technology in existence that can fix it'. The authors of the report just did a hatchet job, they reported to the press first.

The problem here is that the only thing that the Pentagon has learned from this is who not to choose to put on a review panel. The project will continue, they have only cancelled the 2004 trials. Meanwhile Mitchigan is holding the democrat primary via the Web and that will be used to 'prove' the report was bunk.

Re:I really have to question

[cheezedawg]

Yep, sounds like yer average 'crats good repubs evil hippycrat. Yes, sirie.

This is not rocket science. Take 2 seconds at his website. His blatent hatred of President Bush is obvious.

Palast... distinguishes himself from many other advocacy journalists both left and right with his near obsession with documentary evidence

This obsession wasn't enough to keep him from screwing up his article.

I seem to remember international elections investigations being denied. But, since I can't find any proof atm... well... Funny, Palast reports internationally. And I seem to remeber other media that discussed the antics involved. But no specific sources, sorry.

There were thousands of journalists in Florida to cover the election fallout. Any one of them would have loved to blow open a story that proved misconduct by Harris or Gov. Bush. Instead we only have Palast tooting his horn to promote his own books because he somehow thinks that Katherine Harris complying with a law that was passed before she even took office is scandalous.

So was Halliburton. What's your point?

No- whats your point? The parent was suggesting that Choicepoint/DBT was a "Republican headed company" that was in on a huge conspiracy with Katherine Harris and Jeb Bush to disenfranchise voters. That whole theory kind of goes out the window when you realize that neither Bush nor Harris were even in office when the company was hired, and that the company was hired by a Democrat. Was Ethel Baxtor (the Democrat that hired Choicepoint) in on this conspiracy to steal votes for Bush?

And I will save my rant on Haliburton for another day. Somebody somewhere decided that Haliburton was a big liability for the Bush administration, so we have seen a steady stream of allegations against them for the past three years. Never mind that none of the allegations have stuck.

And Mr. Insan...err...Hussien said 99% of Iraq voted for him. Again, what's your point?

If you have evidence that Jeb Bush acted improperly during the election, then why don't you share that with us (or maybe Palast- I'm sure he would love it). And no, the fact that he is related to the winning candidate is not evidence. It is not illegal, afterall, to be the President's brother.

For the first part, please sight your sources.

Ok- fair enough.

Here is the USCCR report on the elections. Allow me to quote the executive summary:

The report does not find that the highest officials of the state conspired to disenfranchise voters. Moreover, even if it was foreseeable that certain actions by officials led to voter disenfranchisement, this alone does not mean that intentional discrimination occurred.

Here are the election laws that were in effect during the 2000 elections (see 98.0977).

(e) Upon hearing evidence at the hearing, the supervisor of elections must determine whether there is sufficient evidence to strike the persons name from the registration books. If the supervisor determines that there is sufficient evidence, he or she must strike the name.

The county election supervisors were required by law to verify the names before any action was taken. So if a mistake was made, it was made by the county election supervisor.

Re:I really have to question

[Bob Uhl]

If the candidates are equivalent to the beliefs of the average Joe, then that is a success of democracy. If the candidates are not, then another candidate will arise who more closely approximates the beliefs of the average Joe, and will get the most votes. As politics becomes a finer and finer science, I expect that all elections will become cases of winning by a few votes in a thousand.

Re:I really have to question

[TyrranzzX]

You are a steriotypical case of an extremly paranoid techie.

Re:I really have to question

[CrazyDuke]

Okay, this a really long one; but it gets good at the end. So, bare with me.

"This is not rocket science. Take 2 seconds at his website. His blatent hatred of President Bush is obvious."

Disliking Bush means you hate the entire Republican party. Wow, is that from the if-you-aren't-with-us-you're-with-the-terrorists department or what? ...but the "I Hate Republicans" book on his website sure doesn't help the matter any. (Why the GOP is wrong about everything? Who the Fsck is this jackass author? Someone seriously needs to remove his head from his ass.) I don't see where he loves the crats though. Is it still partisan if you don't like either part?

"This obsession wasn't enough to keep him from screwing up his article."

"In the Salon Politics article "Florida's flawed 'voter-cleansing' program," it was incorrectly stated that Florida's Secretary of State Katherine Harris hired a company, ChoicePoint, to create a voter "purge" list. The company was hired in 1998 before Harris was elected to her post. Also, Rick Rozar was incorrectly identified as a founder of ChoicePoint. Rozar was the president of a company, CDB Infotek, of which Choicepoint owned 70 percent, and which ChoicePoint eventually bought. Salon regrets the errors.

[Corrections made 12/19/00]"

If your point was to show he makes mistakes, no argument. I'll explain my view when I get to your challenge over "my point."

"There were thousands of journalists in Florida to cover the election fallout. Any one of them would have loved to blow open a story that proved misconduct by Harris or Gov. Bush. Instead we only have Palast tooting his horn to promote his own books because he somehow thinks that Katherine Harris complying with a law that was passed before she even took office is scandalous."

This is a subjective view, granted, but when the press is scared they're going to get lynched for being "Un-patriotic" or the "liberal media" etc, this kind of acts as a deterent. There are of cource numerous other possibilities. One of the Palast quotes points out how despite having a juicy bit on Clinton (I kinda wish he would elaborate), no one wanted to hear it. They where too busy scrutinizing slick willie's little sexual escapades to care about it. At least that's the jist I got. Just because it is news doesn't mean it gets reported. The rest, again I will try to explain at "the point."

"No- whats your point?"

THE POINT:
The point is that while being hired under some supposedly opposing force, in a system where this can change to a supposedly friendly group, this can allow for collusion where it was difficult before.

Simplified example: It can be alot easier to extort from the corporation you work for if your father replaces your alienated ex-wife as CEO.

Again this does not necessarily happen by any means nor is it necessarily the situation, so by this point it is necessary look for facts if you wish to figure out if this is happening. Unfortunetly, I am unlikely to find such facts directly, so I rely from third parties. So far we both seem to be in a struggle over "my facts are bigger/better than yours!"

You know, kinda like all the special interests get all giddy when someone the bri...err donate to gets elected or selected as it where?

Oh, and about Ms. Harris. Despite not hiring the company responcible for the list, wasn't she responcible for working with the company? Despite saying he wasn't involved, wasn't Jeb's office responcible for overseeing this was done and approved? Damn, I wish I had some sources handy...

"It is not illegal, afterall, to be the President's brother."

No, it is not. It does, however, lead to a situation of conflit of interest.

"Ok- fair enough.

Alright, lets have a looksee.

"Here is the USCCR report..."

Re:I really have to question

[CrazyDuke]

Wow, you're a smart one chuckes. Kick'em while they're down, eh?

Re:I really have to question

[CrazyDuke]

"I assume you are talking about Secretary of State Katherine Harris. I guess you don't realize that the Department of State is not "in charge of Florida elections". Elections are the responsibility of the ... Department of Elections! Funny how that works."

And I take it the Department of Elections is overseen by Joe the toothless guy. I guess, he, not Harris should have certified the results? Or, am I wrong here to? (Like I have to ask in order to get someone to tell me.)

"Bzzzt. Wrong again. ChoicePoint was hired by Ethel Baxtor (D - Florida Director of Elections), before Harris or Bush were elected to Florida office."

I explain this one in the other posts, but to summerize: Just cause I didn't hire you doesn't mean we can't be friends. Did I say she hired them? No, I said they worked together. Funny little mistake, but I guess you and the other guys where too busy trying to make me look like a moron to notice.

"Strike Three! 51,000 people were not "wrongfully taken off the voter rolls". 51,000 (actually it was 56,000) people were included in a list of voters who would possibly not be allowed to vote because their name produced a match in the ChoicePoint database as a convicted felon without their voting rights restored. According to Florida Law (section 98.0977 - Page 15), the only people with authority to remove a voter from the registration rolls are the county election supervisors from one of the 67 counties in Florida (not Katherine Harris or Jeb Bush)."

No shit on the ~56,000, not everyone on the list was on their wrongly. I was using a stat that about 90% where up there wrongly or about 51,000 voters. It wasn't just the fellons on the list, but people who shared the same name as the fellons, the same last name as the fellons, and had the same birthday as the fellons. Then there where was that guy who was convicted of a felony in 2010 and his companions. But, no, no mistakes. Just white out those dates and every thing's ok. Oh, and that same Florida Law (section 98.093) says those local election boards are required to automatically purge people on the list provided to them.

But, hey, look at it this way. I have no complaint about your last argument. Well, other than the possibility of election fraud was ignored. But, hey.

Re:I really have to question

[hesiod]

> Kick'em while they're down

Nope, just when they're trolling.

Re:I really have to question

[workindev]

And I take it the Department of Elections is overseen by Joe the toothless guy. I guess, he, not Harris should have certified the results? Or, am I wrong here to? (Like I have to ask in order to get someone to tell me.

In Florida, just like other states, elections are supervised by the local county elections division. Each county has the responsibility of maintaining the voter registration, administering the vote, and of counting the vote results. You are correct, though, that the Department of State certifies the results reported by each county.

I was using a stat that about 90% where up there wrongly or about 51,000 voters.

I'm curious how you get such a huge percentage of false positives. Even the US Comission on Civil Rights (which was very critical of the Florida 2000 election) estimated that only 14% of the names on the list were inaccurate.

It wasn't just the fellons on the list, but people who shared the same name as the fellons, the same last name as the fellons, and had the same birthday as the fellons. Then there where was that guy who was convicted of a felony in 2010 and his companions. But, no, no mistakes. Just white out those dates and every thing's ok.

Nobody is disputing that there were false-positives on this list. When DBT/ChoicePoint was comissioned, they were instructed to cast as wide a net as possible to make sure no names would slip through the cracks. Why? Because the Democrats pushed for it after irregularities in the 1997 Miami Mayoral runoff election. Some people even argued that the new election law didn't go far enough to stop widespread voter fraud (like dead people voting).

Oh, and that same Florida Law (section 98.093) says those local election boards are required to automatically purge people on the list provided to them.

No, no. You are looking at the wrong law dealing with a different list. Section 98.093 deals with the monthly updating of the voter registration by the county health department (to remove people that deceased in the last month), and the court clerks (to remove people who were convicted of a felony int he last month). It makes sense that those people should be automatically purged as they become ineligible.

The law in question is 98.0977, which deals with the statewide voter registration maintenance. This has no such requirement, in fact section 3d - 3f clearly indicate that each name must be manually verified before it is removed from the voter registration rolls, and those affected have a clearly defined process of appeal.

That's nice. Does it finally kill the idea?

[ObviousGuy]

It's bad enough that the internet was going to be used to count votes outside the country. How much worse would it be with all those illegals voting online here inside the U.S. borders?

Why trust internet banking then?

[MrRTFM]

If this 'internet' is so insecure , why are the big corps. trusting it to transfer billions of dollars around.

I must be missing something - this is technically feasible, they are just doing it the wrong way.

Re:Why trust internet banking then?

[Rufus88]

Because they have a way of verifying after the fact that their transactions occurred as they should, in case they suspect fraud. With internet voting, you can't. In fact, regardless of the voting mechanism, it's important that you not be able to verify that your individual vote was recorded properly, because that would imply being able to prove who you voted for, which would permit vote-selling and make people susceptable to vote-extortion.

Re:Why trust internet banking then?

[CyberHippyRedux]

Because, just like the Electronic Voting Machine Fiasco, there's no paper trail.

And who's going to stop your 14 year old haX0r from voting for the whole family?

Internet banking took years of development before it was trusted by most users, let's try to do the same with voting...

Re:Why trust internet banking then?

[Pidder]

Secure internet banking is based on having a small security box at home where you dial in the numbers and have them randomized in one way or another.

I really don't know why a similiar system can't be used for internet voting. Perhaps the cost of implementation is too big.

Even if the know-how may exist to build an almost fail safe system, the keyword is almost, and that almost will always exist. Everything digital can, and will be cracked eventually if enough people try and have the right knowledge.

However, what I think is the biggest problem with implementing any kind of digital voting system, in a digital world hit by new viri all the time, is that it would be impossible to gain the public's trust. I sure as hell wouldn't trust it.

Re:Why trust internet banking then?

[TykeClone]

Internet Banking is still a low penetration product. Not everyone is comfortable with it yet.

Re:Why trust internet banking then?

[MrRTFM]

However, what I think is the biggest problem with implementing any kind of digital voting system, in a digital world hit by new viri all the time, is that it would be impossible to gain the public's trust. I sure as hell wouldn't trust it.

Yep, that's probably the real reason. Which is a pity - I'd love for the results to be declared...

"Cowboy Neal - WFT?"

Re:Why trust internet banking then?

[stratjakt]

Banks are insured. Elections aren't.

Re:Why trust internet banking then?

[zeugma-amp]

Yes. You are missing something. The fundamental problem with internet voting is that it needs to be able to assure three things:

First, that the person voting is eligible to vote. This is not too hard to do. We know how to verify identity, though there are a few issues with this that are not present in a financial relationship.

Second, that the person's vote is anonymous. Anonymous voting is trivially implmented. There is a problem when you combine the above verification requirement with the need to keep a given person's vote secret.

Third, that the election be auditable. THere was yeling and finger-pointing in the last American presidential election. Could you imagine what it would be like if votes just suddenly marterialized out of the ether with no way to audit them?

Combine all three of the above requirements and you have a very tough problem at hand. We don't want to be able to have some political hack analyze the raw vote data and b able to say "Joe Blow voted for candidate X, as this could, for various reasons result in repercussions of one kind or another on Joe, thus allowing others to intimidate his vote.

This is one reason why I really dislike mail-in ballots. Mail ballots allow an agent of Party y to hand an absentee ballot to Joe, make sure he marks for the 'correct' candidate, and then mail it in, assured of the vote rendered. It is a also a sitation custom made for fraud on a massive scale. With in-person voting, party X can pay Joe $5 dollars to vote, but when Joe deposits the ballot in the box, there is no way to guarantee that Joe voted "correctly".

Now, there some bright fellows have proposed cryptographic protocols that solve the problems mentioned above. Unfortunately, you are dealing with an electorate too stupid to figure out how to punch holes in a ballot reliably. The Protocols for secure, anonymous internet voting are far too complex to ever be used in the real world.

Re:Why trust internet banking then?

[ignu]

You can have the best bike lock in the world, but if you lock it in the ghetto it will still get stolen.

Re:Why trust internet banking then?

[demachina]

Because you dont have to maintain anonymity in those transfers, in fact, exactly the opposite you identify both parties with rigor. In voting you have to verify the identity of the voter with some certainty, but then switch to a mode where the actual vote they cast can not be associated with the specific voter. Very hard to do on the Internet. You also still have to make sure the integrity of this anonymous vote is retained and can be recounted. It is an ideal application for pieces of paper and a box.

In money transfers the books have to balance after the transfer is done and both parties will know what the result should be. In voting you don't know what the result is supposed to be, and the people controlling the system usually have a strong incentive to alter the outcome in there favor, and they will if its possible to do so. If you try to alter the results with a money transfers someone would instantly spot an attempt at theft unless their accounting is crap or someone goes to great lengths to obfuscate the theft.

Pure electronic voting is just a fundementally bad idea for anything where the outcome matters. You always want a voter to use paper, put in a box under the eyes of representatives of the interested parties, and maintain the security of those boxes at all times. We are blessed with all this electronic B.S. only because of the kneejerk reaction to the disaster in Florida and Congress throwing billions of dollars at the problem like they usually do. The end results was a swarm of sharks who wanted to either:

A. Get rich quickl
B. Find new and creative ways to rig elections

Proven machines where you fill in the bubbles on a sheet of paper and run it through an optical scanner would do this job ten times better than any of these all electronic touch screens or online voting or punch cards. Its no accident lots of affluent communities were using this kind of voting machine in 2000 to make sure their votes counted, and places with lots of poor people the establishment wants to disenfrancise tend to have unreliable voting systems like punch cards.

Re:Why trust internet banking then?

[mod_parent_down]

That's funny, I just sent in my absentee ballot for some state legislation and I'm pretty sure anyone who cared could have verified what I voted for.

Re:Why trust internet banking then?

[Kris_J]

Second, that the person's vote is anonymous. Anonymous voting is trivially implmented. There is a problem when you combine the above verification requirement with the need to keep a given person's vote secret.

Let's lose this then. Personally, I believe that I should be able to ask the system afterwards what it believed my vote was. Obviously this is impossible if it's been anonymized.

Mind you, I also believe Internet voting should be used to allow people to vote on the issues throughout the year, assign proxy votes and basically allow democracy to be dynamic -- rather than this thing we have currently where you're stuck with some arsehole for four years and have no way to affect decisions on issues you actually care about.

Re:Why trust internet banking then?

[MrRTFM]

Current paper voting could easily be tracked - you go up and get your name ticked off a role, and if they wanted, I'm sure they could hand me a marked ballot paper, or something. It is simply a matter of trust.

With the internet voting system there is that same critical step - after it verifies you and it assigns you that highly encrypted 'pass for one vote', you then trust the system to keep your details private (maybe with a 2nd key that only you know).

It's the same thing - you have to trust the system for *any* type of voting to work.

Re:Why trust internet banking then?

[EverDense]

Banks are insured. Elections aren't.

I think the Bush team did a pretty good job of insuring the last presidential election.

Re:Why trust internet banking then?

[kruczkowski]

I don't see this that hard. Every American has a SSN (social security number) I'm sure there is a DB that you could cross check a SSN with a name. You would goto this site, enter your SSN and you name, Bday and sex, then you would have a list of candadets that you select. ( you could write the thing in a more secure java or other language)

Then when another user comes along and enteres the same data it would say that you have voted already, please contact your local voting office that would be manned with people at the phone. Of course reseting votes would have to be a little more complicated that a simple check box.

Also, don't forget, In America people don't vote for the presedent.

Re:Why trust internet banking then?

[dave420-2]

All it has to do is give you a unique, random number, and store that along side your vote. Enter your number, and it says how you voted. It doesn't matter if anyone guesses anyone else's number, as there isn't anything tying the vote to any specific person. If the cops start shooting people who voted for Mr. Nader, just eat your number! :-P

Anonymous, and voter-auditable.

Re:Why trust internet banking then?

[peterwilm]

Additionally to the arguments concerning the paper trail and the anonymity there is another factor: Internet Banking requires a much less security level than Internet Voting. If a banking system is manipulated than either the bank or the customer loses money. The bank maybe has an insurance. The customer can choose whether to use internet voting or not.
With Internet Voting the voters cannot choose: even if they can choose whether they want to cast their ballot via the internet or conventionally, they cannot decide whether other voters cast their ballot via the internet.So it might be possible that with an internet vote 85% of the overea military personel is voting for bush, although only 60% intended to do, because the system was manipulated. For a person who does not trust the system and is not in the military it doesn't matter whether he casts his ballot in a box or via the internet: there might be hundreds of thousand or even millions of manipulated ballots (or a manipulated result), which he cannot prevent be casting his ballot in a conventional box.
So if a bank screws an internet system up it, or its clients only loses money. Both parties have agreed on accepting the risc.
If an internet voting system is screwed there might be an unelected president sitting in the white house. And if it seems to be obvious that the result was manipulated it might not end up as peacefully as the 2000 election. E.g. many voters could try to "impeach" the non-elected president by force.
So with internet voting the stability of a democracy and society is at stake. This is why you would need a 100% error free software. Not an easy task.

Re:Why trust internet banking then?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with you, I had also the same idea about proxy votes.
Are currently any systems out which support proxy votes?

Re:Why trust internet banking then?

[Tackhead]

> I'm sure there is a DB that you could cross check a SSN with a name. You would goto this site, enter your SSN and you name, Bday and sex, then you would have a list of candadets that you select. ( you could write the thing in a more secure java or other language)
>
>Then when another user comes along and enteres the same data it would say that you have voted already, please contact your local voting office that would be manned with people at the phone.

"We're sorry. Your credit bureau has already voted for the Experian Party as of 08:01:01 local time."

...followed by fits of curses from Trans Union and Equifax boardrooms at 08:01:02 and 08:01:03 respectively, and puzzled "WTF?" bubbles over the heads of 100,000,000 voters for the next twelve hours.

Re:Why trust internet banking then?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then when another user comes along and enteres the same data it would say that you have voted already, please contact your local voting office that would be manned with people at the phone. Of course reseting votes would have to be a little more complicated that a simple check box.

You can't RESET VOTES. If someone voted with my social security number, once that vote has entered that system you CAN'T GET IT BACK.

All identifying information must be stripped from the specific votes! This is the core of anonymous voting! If they can say "Well, take away one Kucinich vote, because SSN 469-92-3761 was an imposter" then your system is BROKEN. If you can tie a SSN to a specific vote, you have BROKEN OUR DEMOCRACY.

Can't this be fixed?

[El]

Couldn't they just require every voter to encrypt and sign their vote with a unique PGP key? Or are they assuming voters are too stupid to do this?

Re:Can't this be fixed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Couldn't they just require every voter to encrypt and sign their vote with a unique PGP key?

OMG! You solved the problem! And in one sentence too! Could you tackle spam next? Thanks.

Re:Can't this be fixed?

[Futaba-chan]

Couldn't they just require every voter to encrypt and sign their vote with a unique PGP key? Or are they assuming voters are too stupid to do this?

I think they're assuming that voters -- particularly military voters vulnerable to pressure from the chain of command -- are interested in having a genuinely secret ballot. Signing a ballot in any way prevents that.

(Yes, they could be given anonymous keys. But would you trust them to actually be anonymous?)

Re:Can't this be fixed?

[grasshoppa]

Or are they assuming voters are too stupid to do this?

Christ, wouldn't you? Your average user has problems when they get those nasty letters from MAILER-DAEMON, and some ( my mother ) even get offended that they use such a vile name ( deamon ).

So no, we are not ready, technically or socially, for internet voting.

Re:Can't this be fixed?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think its more likley that the powers that be realized there would be more fraud from people wanting to vote against Bush than for him...I think its an excellent decision but on the other hand its almost a shame.

Re:Can't this be fixed?

[El]

Actually, I do have a partial solution to spam, but in involves changing the email protocol to require the SENDER to store the email, rather than the receiver. The current protocol was devised in uucp days, when it was common to store-and-forward email over several dial-up hops to it's destination. These days, everybody that has an email server also has a web server. If you sent only a URL and (optional) encryption/access key via the old protcol, then retrieved the rest of the message from the URL, this would elimate spoofing and put more of the burden on the sender and less on the receiver. It would also be more efficient -- currently, if I send the exact same message to 100 people, it uses up 100 times the size of the message in disk space on the receiver's servers. But if was stored on the sender's server, it could use the same copy for everybody! Yes, there is some additional overhead to track whether specific addressees have downloaded the message and determine when to delete it, but I think with some work it could be turned into a useful system -- certainly an improvement over the current system.

Re:Can't this be fixed?

[Shut the fuck up!]

Hmm, I have a partial solution for spam too. However, it relies heavily on the invention of teleportation and time travel. I am sort of waiting on that before putting much more work into it.

Re:Can't this be fixed?

[cpeterso]

If the spammer BCC's the one email to millions of people, his server only needs to host that one spam, not millions.

Re:Can't this be fixed?

[El]

Yes, but then you know which ISP to complain to (or which server to DoS), don't you? Also, that identical copy is going to get added to Spam filters pretty quickly; spammers now try to send DIFFERENT emails to every recipient to get around spam filters. And, if the URL in invalid (e.g. because the server has been shut down due to complaints) then your email reader can discard the header for you, and you never have to even know it was there.

Re:Can't this be fixed?

[The Blue Meanie]

Actually, I do have a partial solution to spam, but in involves changing the email protocol to require the SENDER to store the email, rather than the receiver.

Congratulations. Maybe you and Mr. Bernstein could get together and discuss it?

Re:Can't this be fixed?

[El]

Thank you for the link. Yes, although I had never heard of D. J. Bernstein before, it is obvious he had the same or a very simular idea, had it long before I did, and has put more thought into it. So my record is still intact -- I have never had a truly original idea. I still think this is a good idea, however, it is probably harder to get everybody to switch email protocols than it is to get everybody to switch to IPV6...

Re:Can't this be fixed?

[dave420-2]

The floridians somehow couldn't cope with making a small hole in a bit of paper. I think creating a PGP key could be problematic ;)

Re:Can't this be fixed?

[mosschops]

If you sent only a URL and (optional) encryption/access key via the old protcol, then retrieved the rest of the message from the URL, this would elimate spoofing and put more of the burden on the sender and less on the receiver.

Don't they do that already though? Think: "XXX HOT PICS HERE: http://blah.com/xxx/pics.html" messages, which have little else in the way of content. The content gives a viable way to determine whether messages are junk - if you have to fetch them you can't distinguish between them. If you then automate it by examining the content as/before it's downloaded, you're back at square one.

Or am I missing something?

Re:Can't this be fixed?

[alexpage]

Yes, but then you know which ISP to complain to (or which server to DoS), don't you?

Yeah! I'll go DoS some poor jerk who had his machine infected with a virus which installs a spam-relay backdoor, or a machine in a country with different spam laws. Because of course we can't do that now by tracking Received: headers in mail, and it's a totally effective solution!

Aww

[goon america]

But my "Internet Vote Accelerator" spyware would've made me trillions richer!

From a non-expert perspective

[The I Shing]

I'm not a security expert, but voting on the internet strikes me as being about as secure as locking up your bicycle with twist-ties.

I'm glad they've dropped this idea.

Re:From a non-expert perspective

[t0qer]

I'm not a security expert, but voting on the internet strikes me as being about as secure as locking up your bicycle with twist-ties.

I've been in twist ties handcuffs before and I can assure you they are VERY SECURE.

Re:From a non-expert perspective

[osewa77]

I'm not a security expert, but voting on the internet strikes me as being about as secure as locking up your bicycle with twist-ties.

My paraphrase: I did not think this through, but lemme just say something. Let me just say what "strikes" me :-)

Re:From a non-expert perspective

[ChaoticLimbs]

From your post, I surmise that you have taken part in a less than peaceful protest of some sort, or have been at ground zero of a riot or bar brawl?

Re:From a non-expert perspective

[indianajones428]

I've been in twist ties handcuffs before and I can assure you they are VERY SECURE.


I hope you're confusing twist ties with zip ties.

Re:From a non-expert perspective

[Cyno01]

Twist ties are the paper wrapped wires twisted around breadbags and such. Those would probably slice you up pretty good if you were bound with them, your probably thinking of zip ties, those one time plastic clicky things that come in all sortsa fun sizes including handy cheap handcuff size.

Re:From a non-expert perspective

[The I Shing]

Well, the moderators liked it, so nyah.

Re:From a non-expert perspective

[t0qer]

From your post, I surmise that you have taken part in a less than peaceful protest of some sort, or have been at ground zero of a riot or bar brawl?

No just a really kinky wife ;D

Glad to hear it.

[Zordas]

I for one am really glad to hear they scrapped the whole project. If you think Florida (2000) was bad, just wait untill someone hacks into the system and votes Al Sharpton the new president. Let's face it, Internet security is still in it's infancy. Although I do hope someday* we will be able to vote from our homes.

Re:Glad to hear it.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think Florida (2000) was bad,

THE LAW SAID SEVEN DAYS. SEVEN. MORE THAN SIX. LESS THAN EIGHT. GOT IT??

This never ends. The Florida Supreme Court ignores their own law, runs off into some bizarre ad lib re-legislation of the election laws WHILE THE VOTES ARE BEING COUNTED, ignores the Florida Legislature, ignores the Secretary of State (who had absolute irrefutable legal authority to certify the election), ignores their own Chief Justice and finally the U.S. Supreme Court has to convene to read the law to them.

Later, three dozen recounts, nearly all of which were supervised by newspapers or something similar, showed the original certified result was correct. It wasn't that complicated.

They just want to make sure...

[Toxygen]

...that no one but them can tamper with results.

YAAAAAAAYYYY

[Anonymous Coward]

The people overseas still get to vote though right?
It's just done with paper and shipped over here? eh?

Re:YAAAAAAAYYYY

[rock_climbing_guy]

Unless of course, the Democrats are afraid you'll elect the candidate and have your vote thrown out because the military mail didn't postmark it the same way the civil mail does.

Re:YAAAAAAAYYYY

[hesiod]

> the Democrats are afraid you'll elect the candidate

Man, you must be REALLY new here. Everyone wants more Karma, but to get karma you have to talk about the big, bad, republicans. If it's a joke about how the Reps "stole our election," it's funny, if it's a joke about the Dems, you are just trying to stir shit up & start a flame war, regardless of the humor or truth of the joke -- and your post was good on both counts.

(FYI, I am neither Rep or Dem)

This issue doesn't apper to be closed after all

[Flexagon]

This more complete article has a quote that suggests this issue really isn't closed after all:

Wolfowitz's memo, written to David Chu, under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness, allows the Pentagon to continue work already in progress to look into "other technical applications for voting on the Internet or electronically," the defense official said.

"The door is still open to other methods. It's just that the SERVE we have decided not to use," he said.

Re:This issue doesn't apper to be closed after all

[kcbrown]

"The door is still open to other methods. It's just that the SERVE we have decided not to use," he said.

[/me dons tinfoil hat]

Other methods? Like, say, Diebold voting machines hooked up to a network?

Admit it

[ObviousGuy]

Aren't you just the tiniest bit curious to see how cool a Sharpton presidency would be?

Just imagine all the quotes he'll leave for posterior.

Big problem

[Mieckowski]

The projects home page states that it "will let eligible U.S. citizens vote from any Windows-based computer with Internet access" WHAT? Making it harder for linux users to vote? (and as a result having less of them represented) Supporting Microsoft?

I don't see how this got so far already.

Re:Big problem

[HBI]

umm, dude, Microsoft 0wnz the Army and Navy, at least (don't know about USMC and the Air Force).

Weren't you around for the big enterprise agreement that got announced oh, about 8 months back? Hell, right now, they are forcing the Army to do an Active Directory conversion based upon their previously announced sunsetting of support for NT 4.

Note the use of the word 'force'.

Re:Big problem

[Anonymous Coward]

The pentagon is pressing congress to pass a law stripping all dirty hippies and fags of their citizenship. The way they see it, they don't need to support linux (or Mac) because they are sure it will pass.

But if hippies and fags have no rights, only the linux users will be left!

Re:Big problem

[TR0GD0RtheBURNiNAT0R]

Supporting Microsoft?

Are you joking? The government has been supporting Microsoft for quite a while now, by not admitting that good old Billy-G has a monopoly on his hands. That's a large part of what the government (all parties involved in it) does, has done, and will continue to do: support those who give cash to campaigns, or who could sink re-election bids.

...okay, done ranting

Re:Big problem

[dave420-2]

Do you realise that linux desktop users are about 0.4% of all desktop users? Why should the Pentagon have to make their systems support every single browser out for Linux, just to hopefully satisfy the one or two from that 0.4% who will want to vote over the internet?

If you use an obscure OS/browser, you have to be prepared to come across people who don't support you. Let's face it - linux is an obscure desktop OS. Most people use it for servers, and that's it. It's only Linux-oriented IT professionals who don't like Windows or Macs who use it.

Re:Big problem

[Noren]

Having a method of voting require buying a specific product from a particular company would be intolerable, whatever the company was.

It wouldn't be just to make voting selectively easier for those people who own a John Deere(TM) lawn mower, and it's not just to make voting easier for those people who own a Microsoft Windows(TM) operating system.

Selectively making voting easier for only a subset of the population is a bad idea in the first place, but doing it for a corporate sponsor is even worse.

Re:Big problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Awesome nick :)

Re:Big problem

[hesiod]

> Selectively making voting easier for only a subset of the population is a bad idea in the first place,

Sort of, except Windows users are not exactly a "subset," they are the majority. And it's not like they are telling you that you can't vote at all.

Please be a bit more realistic, there really isn't anything to compare this to. Are you suggesting that IBrowse 1.0 for the Amiga should be supported as well? What about Netscape 2.3? Well, ideally, yeah, but then you take a big hit on potential security, which is the most important factor at the moment.

Re:Big problem

[Noren]

Sort of, except Windows users are not exactly a "subset," they are the majority. And it's not like they are telling you that you can't vote at all.

Windows users are exactly and unequivocally a subset of the population. To disprove this you would need to prove that either there exist no Windows users in the population or that all members of the population are windows users. That this subset is a majority is irrelevant to the question of whether or not it's a subset.

Majority or minority, what the proportions are is not the point. Making voting easier for a portion of the population will generate more votes from that portion, making voting more difficult for another portion will result in fewer votes from that portion. It's unfortunate, but the amount of hassle involved in casting a vote will change some people's minds as to whether or not to vote. Allowing politicians to make things easier for some would inspire active manipulation of votes- Candidate A would act to make it easier for a demographic who likes to vote for A to vote, (For example, if the segment of the population who have and would prefer to use a computer to vote would tend to prefer A) therefore indirectly garnering more votes for A.

Please be a bit more realistic, there really isn't anything to compare this to. Are you suggesting that IBrowse 1.0 for the Amiga should be supported as well? What about Netscape 2.3? Well, ideally, yeah, but then you take a big hit on potential security, which is the most important factor at the moment.

No, actually I think that a voting system that makes it much easier for voters who have a computer with any operating system and internet access to vote than individuals without is unfairly manipulating the voting pool and should be rejected. The fact that this would also require individuals to pay ~$100 to a specific corporation to make their voting easier is an additional problem, but not as bad as is the institutionalized encouragement of a certain subset of the voters to vote.

I object to any voting method which makes the difficulty involved in the casting of a vote asymmetric in any way among the entire voting population. Such 'reforms' are far too open to abuse and manipulation.

E-voting sucks. What we have today sucks more

[fnord123]

I look forward to the day that electronic voting comes in as long as it provides a some means of of doing verification, because I do not trust my goverment (that includes both the Demopublicans and the Republicrats) enough to trust their vote counting today even without electronic voting coming into it.

Today I drop my ballot in the mailbox (I live in a mail-in ballot state) and just have to trust everything is on the up and up from there.

What I would like instead is to have every voter to get a receipt when they vote, that uniquely identifies their precinct and vote, and shows a unique number for that vote/voter combo. Something like:

Vote #: 54353654354 Precinct: 58 Voted for: Mickey Mouse (or whoever)

Then I'd like those all those numbers published somewhere after every election so that anybody can download it. Note that my vote is still anonymous, nobody knows who vote 54353654354 is because of the nature of one way functions.

Any voter could go look at the published list to see that their vote was counted correctly. If it was counted incorrectly (I.e. the count showed my vote to be for Dopey instead of Mickey Mouse), then I could step forward with my biometric data to prove it. If enough people step forward, the election was clearly bogus and needs to be redone.

Any voter could download the entire list and count the votes for themselves, at least minimizing the chances of large #s of votes appearing out of thin air in any particular precinct, and making counting of votes very clear and open to all to verify.

Is it foolproof? Nope, but it is a lot more transparent process than we have today, where I have no visibility whatsoever into my vote being counted, what the real totals where, etc.

Re:E-voting sucks. What we have today sucks more

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're proposing:

1) The government make votes traceable
and
2) that you will be required to submit biometric data to facilitate the tracking
and
3) all of the above to be eligible to vote.

Uh...no.

Re:E-voting sucks. What we have today sucks more

[fnord123]

Actually it isn't traceable - unless you see that your vote was miscounted.

Or at least, no more traceable than it is today. Today I have to sign my ballot (in a mail-in vote state) or physically show up in the voting center (hello concealed camera identifying me).

Do you really think your vote is secure or anonymous today?

Re:E-voting sucks. What we have today sucks more

[Shut the fuck up!]

Today I have to sign my ballot

You sign the actual ballot? Or a security envelope? In Washington, you sign a security envelope that contains your ballot. Once the signature is verified and the ballot is removed, there is no way to tie the ballot to the person unless the person opening it made some sort of record of it and/or your votes. That of course would require a conspiricy of epic proportions, no?

Re:E-voting sucks. What we have today sucks more

[fnord123]

A locally generated nonce based on biometric ID is traceable only if the vote-gathering apparatus is compromised.

A signed security envelope is traceable only if the vote-gather apparatus is compromised.

Both require some level of trust. Neither is foolproof. But at least with the proposed system it has the advantage of beng able to verify that your vote was properly counted. Today we don't have that at all. Precinct guys are all demos and repubs? Too bad libertarians (or greens, or whatever), your ballots just went into the circular file, and nobody will ever know it.

If it was coopted, and gubmint comes after you for your vote, then things are so far gone that things like "security envelopes" are irrelevant.

Re:E-voting sucks. What we have today sucks more

[demachina]

This is NOT a viable approach nor is it anonymous. If you give each person a receipt and a number associating them with their vote, then someone who is either buying votes or intimidating voters can demand to see your receipt and verify how you voted.

Nice try but its not acceptable.

Re:E-voting sucks. What we have today sucks more

[xenocytekron]

Whats to stop people who voted for, say, a third party candidate like the green party to say their vote was "mistaken" if a republican candidate wins, so said perso could change their vote to the democratic party? Besides that, a very interesting idea.

Re:E-voting sucks. What we have today sucks more

[foidulus]

It's not anonymous though, while it's true that one-way functions are "irreversible", that is given a result from a one-way function, you should not be able to get the input to the function, even if you had access to the function. However you have to realize that the number has to come from somewhere. If for example, it's an MD5 of your SSN, then anyone with your SSN(ie the entire population of India now adays) can run it through the function, then take the result and match it against the published voter list. The only way to prevent this is to either a) hide the way the input to the function is created or b) hide the function itself, but both are based on security through obscurity, they will never work.

Re:E-voting sucks. What we have today sucks more

[fnord123]

Hmm - you have a point there :)

Would probably need to factor in what the person voted as part of the nonce they got. I.e.:

Nonce = hash (person's biomentric data + precinct + how they voted), perhaps signed with the private key of the voting machine.

Probably not a good idea to network that voting machine, because that opens it up to cracking to get that private key - and it isn't really needed. Just have it spit out all the voting info (nonces + how they voted) after the election is done.

Internet voting itself is fraught with all the dangers mentioned by others - but electronic voting (not networked) imo has a lot of plusses.

Re:E-voting sucks. What we have today sucks more

[Anonymous Coward]

what about adding a long random number into the mix?

Re:E-voting sucks. What we have today sucks more

[Anonymous Coward]

Except it requires far more people to compromise the paper system.

It would require at a significant number of polling places collusion between Democrats and Republicans when clearly only one of them would ultimately benefit from the collusion.

For example Democrats would benefit from suppressing the Green vote and Republicans from the Democrats. How would they decide who gets the votes that are going for the third party canidates? If they divide them equally then suppressing the vote is completely irrelevant. We use a plurality voting system, you don't have to get 50% of the vote, you only have to get more than the next highest guy, so 5% of the vote disappearing is irrelevant if it wasn't going to a canidate who had a chance at winning. If they split them unequally, then clearly one party is getting the advantage, so why would the other party is cooperate?

Even if there was in some possible way that it would be advantageous for the parties to cooperate, they would have to trust each other completely, because whoever ratted out the other one would clearly benefit from the other party's disgrace. You would also have to trust that among the large number of people you would need to carry out the scheme no one would go to the press.

Finally, there's the fact that any party can contribute poll workers. So if there's a chance for the 3rd party canidate to win, they should have enough people to have volunteers at the polling places.

If you're going to paranoid, be paranoid about something that has a chance of actually happening. Like martians invading.

Re:E-voting sucks. What we have today sucks more

[TheUnknown]

Or just using a sequential number?

Re:E-voting sucks. What we have today sucks more

[ScottForbes]

What I would like instead is to have every voter to get a receipt when they vote, that uniquely identifies their precinct and vote, and shows a unique number for that vote/voter combo. Something like:

Vote #: 54353654354 Precinct: 58 Voted for: Mickey Mouse (or whoever)

Any verifiable paper receipt would allow your employer, landlord, or union steward to collect receipts, and then punish workers or tenants accordingly. You can't escape by encrypting the content, either, because the landlord will compel you to reveal the key.

You could require the voter to memorize her receipt number before leaving the polling booth, but if the number can be traced back to an individual voter by any means (including, e.g., by bribing a polling official), then the secrecy of your ballot can and will be compromised. It wouldn't have taken much for Katherine Harris to have learned who was naughty and nice, for example, and then to decide who to purge from the voter rolls.

This is a case where the only system that works is also the one that happens to be simplest: That the polling machine produces an anonymous, unambiguous paper ballot, which can be easily read by the voter, the vote-counting machine (which, ideally, should come from a different supplier than the polling machine), and by the election official doing a hand count. Anything else is vulnerable to abuse, as we've seen.

Re:E-voting sucks. What we have today sucks more

[foidulus]

Yeah, but guess what, at some point you gotta be authenticated, which means a list of valid sequential numbers + some method of authentification. Plus, what happens when someone dies etc and they need to remove them from the voter rolls. Voter registration info(though not votes) is a lot easier to obtain than you might think it is.

Re:E-voting sucks. What we have today sucks more

[dave420-2]

No, if that's the case you just steal a number off the website to match the candidate you were told to vote for. You cast your real, true vote and show Mr. Mobster the number associated with his croney.

Or, you could just go to the police. That's what they're there for.

Re:E-voting sucks. What we have today sucks more

[demachina]

The original poster explicitly said you would get a receipt with the ID number on it which is the only way anyone is going to remember a long string of digits. The intimidator will know what the receipt looks like and will want to see so you better be good at photoshop forgery if your workaround is going to work.

As for the going to the police part that works great unless the people doing the intimidation are the local sheriff, police or party in power in which case you will most probably just get in more trouble filing a complaint.

Rigging elections is an art as ancient as voting. You have to work really hard to prevent it. Because you apparently don't live in a totalitarian country where voter intimidation is the norm you seem to lack an appreciation of its effectiveness and its danger.

Some other posts argue anonymity is no longer needed because there are millions of votes and you cant buy or intimidate that many. Those posts miss the point that there are local elections routinely swung by a few votes. It is still pretty common for an ethnic majority, usually blacks or hispanics, to be intimidated by a local minority, usually white, as the only means a dominant minority can maintain power. Even in our Presidential elections, thanks to the anti-democratic nature of the electoral college, it is possible to swing a close election by swinging a few thousand votes in a few states, reference Florida 2000.

Re:E-voting sucks. What we have today sucks more

[Taliesin]

The biggest problem with your proposal is that it allows others to know who you voted for. This could encourage vote selling, since you can provide a verifiable receipt. Or it could make you subject to intimidation, with threats to your well-being unless you produce a receipt for the desired candidate.

IMO, you should get a receipt, but the receipt should be securely deposited at the voting precinct. That receipt is clear (no chad or optional scanning nonsense), and you can verify that the receipt is correct. If computer fraud is ever suspected, the secured receipts can be used to verify the computer results.

about time

[dkode]

well i never thought I would see this happen.

Considering all the snafu surrounding the Diebold screwups, I think it's a good thing that the pentagon is finally listening to common sense instead of possibly covering up another voting screwup.

I'm from florida and the whole previous presidential election never sat well with me because of the morons we have down in south florida and the fact that we never really knew the truth about the actual voting results.

Re:about time

[Anonymous Coward]

• ...of the morons we have down in south florida...

You're not one of them, though, are you? ;)

• ...and the fact that we never really knew the truth about the actual voting results.

Yeah. It sure would be nice to know exactly how many military absentee ballots were discarded because Democrat operatives lied to poll workers about postmark qualifications.

But at least the smart folks like you are aware that it happened, right?

A good start, but...

[Futaba-chan]

...what about insecure electronic voting here at home? (i.e. Diebold)

Eternal eVigilence?

[ScottZ]

Can we secure the voting location (apply physical security guidelines)? How about we make the rest of the planet a protectorate of the USA, just like Iraq? All we have to do is redefine the terms like 'staunch supporter' to "dictator" and 'object not found' to "WMD" and next thing you know, bang! Pax Americana! ;-)

Feel like being a real bitch after watching CNN & Fox this week. Prestidigitators know all about misdirection.

Someone want to help me finish the quote - "The price of e-freedom is eternal e-vigilance"

security is not the problem

[KGBear]

I think the system would have to be insecure but not because of the underlying infrastructure. Probably what they want is for the system not only to be secure, but to be also easy to use. For good measure, they'd probably want some eye candy too. These objectives are mutually incompatible. We don't need better technology, we need better users. People willing to give enough of a damn to learn about the machines they use instead of relying on "one click", "My this-and-that" and pretty pictures.

S.E.R.V.E

[skzbass]

SERVE another acronym brount to us by the people who concocted such obcenities as: US VISIT and US PATRIOT ACT. Who is this wonderful group you ask? why the Federal Acronym Reasearch Team (who mysteriously doesn't go by their acronym)

Re:S.E.R.V.E

[BaronM]

OK, now THAT is funny. Bravo!

Re:S.E.R.V.E

[kruczkowski]

They are called polititions, yup, they don't have anything better to do that make up acronyms.

Re:S.E.R.V.E

[dave420-2]

Don't forget the politically-correct RICO (racketeering-influenced/corrupt organisation), used extensively to bust drug dealers of south-american origin.

Who said the US wasn't racist? :-P

Good call

[savagedome]

Internet voting presents far too many opportunities for hackers or even terrorists to interfere with fair and accurate voting, potentially in ways impossible to detect

Not just hackers/terrorists but I am sure some tech savvy candidate might even go the length and 'hire' someone to do it for him/her. That would give a whole new meaning to the term *booth capturing*.

I am glad Pentagon got it right before getting the system in place. Voting is not like the weather forecast. There is an 80% chance that we counted the votes right. No. We want to know the right tally. I can wait for the paper trail to be counted instead of electronic voting giving me the result instantly without 100% reliability.

Re:Good call

[windside]

I can wait for the paper trail to be counted instead of electronic voting giving me the result instantly without 100% reliability.

This is a compelling argument in favour of the electronic system; however, hand-counting introduces a whole different problem because it requires hands, which are generally attached to people. And people are assholes.

Since the Bush Vs. Gore in Florida issue has already come up many times, I'm going to use a different example: the Quebec sovereignity referendum in Canada during the 90s. To this day, accusations fly between the Bloq Quebecois (seperatists) and the Liberals (federalists) over the fact that several instances of ballot mishandling by BQ supporters went completely un-investigated.

Regardless of how elections are run, there are going to be problems ensuring that results are 100% accurate.

Re:Good call

[ChaoticLimbs]

If the democrats held all three branches of government they would logically be receiving the lion's share of lobbyists' money.

Re:Good call

[NoseSocks]

Regardless of how elections are run, there are going to be problems ensuring that results are 100% accurate.

Which makes me wonder how much this is truly about security. Do you know how terrified current politicians would be if people who are tech-savy enough to use the internet (Read this as the whole 18 to 27 age group) decided to vote? Young people scare most of these politicians. During this Democratic Primary, one of the candidates was quoted that he watches movies on his VCR during his spare time. Now, one could argue that it's because he tapes them then watches them; but the likelihood is that he, as well as many other politicians, are a good 10-20 years behind the tech curve. They don't want technology coming into voting because it brings in an audience to whom they have no idea how to cater.

Re:Good call

[Anonymous Coward]

Not everyone in the US government is a nimrod or a thief

Of course not. That would imply consistency, which is the one thing that has never plagued American goverment.

Re:Good call

[Polo]

But how do you know?

What if there was a planned, calculated conspiracy by another country or very powerful corporation?

Here's an example of a slightly different project. Imagine if the goals were a little different.

It's not worth taking a chance over.

Re:Unbelievable

[markov_chain]

I vote the former. However, since the technology to count our votes is too insecure, our votes are in vain.

Secret ballots?

[Mieckowski]

If any computer can be used to vote, how are the ballots kept secret? If someone's vote is observed (and they might be pressured into this by husband/wife/friend etc...) I can easily see people avoiding voting for controversial canidates, or somebody who their friends oppose.

Re:Secret ballots?

[Kenja]

" If someone's vote is observed (and they might be pressured into this by husband/wife/friend etc...) I can easily see people avoiding voting for controversial canidates, or somebody who their friends oppose."

See, thats why the porn star didn't win the California election.

Re:Secret ballots?

[dave420-2]

If your friend doesn't respect your right to vote anonymously, they're not very nice! Couldn't you just turn around and say "Please look away for 2 secs"? Or do your friends regularly hold you at gunpoint? :-P

Next Diebold (please?)

[Nick haflinger]

Comon pentagon diebold's vote security is garbage too. Get rid of this stupid idea and replaceit it with another one.

Thank G

[shubert1966]

What the heck is with all Internet-this and internet-that. Why don't they just deploy closed LANs pre-configured with nothing more to configure that attaching cables and plugging them in.

There is little to be gained by it anyway. Apathetic and lethargic Americans will still come up with some excuse not to vote.

The money could better be spent berating these pinheads, or funding voter vans, or introducing legislation to take away privelliges from non-voters.

I think most of us feel that online CC transactions are usually safe, but we take the chance because most of the time we don't get burned (save eBay). Our CCs usually have a loss-limit protection of $50.00. My vote is more precious than $50.00.

Besides, if it was Internet-wired some politician would enact some crap legislation for last-minute pop-up adds that looked like OS dialog-boxes, thereby tricking hasty and myopic people into voting for the wrong candidate.

Re:Thank G

[txsable]

I find it interesting that I only hear about Diebold's problematic voting machines, and not a single mention of Hart InterCivic's eSlate system. That is what is being used in parts of Texas (at least in Harris and Brazos Counties, and I'm sure others). I have been impressed with the simplicity, and apparent security, of this system. I would think the best solution for overseas voting would be a set (or two, or three) of portable 'booths' for each base overseas, with the (encrypted) flashcard transported back to the vote-counters within a few hours or days, instead of having to wait weeks for the final tallies.

Re:Thank G

[TR0GD0RtheBURNiNAT0R]

introducing legislation to take away privelliges from non-voters.

Interesting you should say (errr, post) that. I was just talking that over with some of my friends, and we all agreed on a solution: If you don't vote, you can't draw social security. Think about it. We penalize non-voters, and help ease the strain on social security. Its win-win.

Good call

[spun]

Not everyone in the US government is a nimrod or a thief. There are plenty of shady goings on, but no over-arching nefarious conspiracies. Certainly, it looks bad when most electronic voting companies donate to Republicans, get contracts from same, and then leave holes in their software, but I think the conspiracy ends at graft and cronyism, not deliberate vote fraud. The companies donate to the Republicans knowing they will get lucrative contracts. The security issues are a seperate problem.

Electronic voting at polling places could be implemented securely, but it would be VERY difficult to make a secure voting system that meets all of our (US) requirements and runs over the Internet.

But all they can do...

[Anonymous Coward]

is vote for old white men anyway.. So what would be the point of it ?

The pentagon counts votes??? You must be kiding.

[Ulbrekt]

I'm from Sweden and the idea to let the armed forces have anything to do with overseeing voting seems both ridiculous and dangerous. Thats how it used to work in Spain, Portugal and Greece (not to mention eastern Europe) not so long ago.

You troll!

[Anonymous Coward]

You troll.

How dare you mention actual Democratic corruption and election fraud!

(Pointless anyway, because the lefties will never bother to check the facts, it's easier just to mod you down to oblivion.)

Re:Was Al Gore involved?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah, anything pointing out the fact that Al Gore was responsible for voting schenanegans in Florida gets modded troll; while all the Bush Bashing gets +5 funny. Typical.

Re:Unbelievable

[Anonymous Coward]

Whether it could or could not be made secure, it was made *insecure*, probably by design.

Many of those who are pushing this technology have intentions of committing or assisting massive vote fraud.

Today's US government is overwhelmingly corrupt. If it can miscount votes in favor of itself without it being seen, it will do so. The payoff is just too great, and the risk is minimal to nonexistant.

The probable reason for having the military use an internet-based voting system in a general election would be to ignore any ballots cast, and simply report the predetermined vote tally as if it were the result of actual votes.

The military usually can be expected to vote for an incumbent president, but in this election, there may not be an overwhelming majority for Bush and his crime gang. In order to create the extra votes needed to tip the election in favor of GWB, the system needs to be subverted.

I am surprised

[lake2112]

I'm surprised Bush threw out his chance to remain President forever. I can imagine the code that would be put into place with Bush in charge. BushVotes = 3787498 While (Deficit = increasing) { BushVotes = BushVotes + 1 }

Re:I am surprised

[adam arndt]

Should be (Deficit == increasing) or are you trying to introduce some sort of Linux kernel root exploit?

Internet voting suffers by trying to be like paper voting : single submission, weak authentication and centralised vote collection.

For once...

[blueZhift]

...military intelligence is not an oxymoron!

Mod me up, d00d.

[Anonymous Coward]

If I stick my fingers in my ears, and yell "Bush STOLE the election!" over and over, will it make you and your pesky facts go away?

PS: Gore would have won if Dems were allowed to count only the ballots they wanted from only the counties they wanted, instead of that stupid "recount the whole state" law-thingy. So there. :p

good riddance

[vijayiyer]

Now if only we can get rid of the idea of spending taxpayer money domestically for fancy touch screens and computers, and return to good old foolproof (well, except maybe for the most foolish) making holes in paper or pulling a lever, we'll be all set, and maybe we can trust the voting system. Oh wait - you don't need to prove who you are when you register to vote. Never mind.

What do you have to hide

[nuggz]

Really why do you need a secret ballot, what are you hiding?

When people design a new system without specifiying the requirements clearly, they always forget something important like this.

Pentagon??!

[k98sven]

Can anyone explain to me why the friggin' Pentagon is involved in this?

How is this a defense issue and not something which should be handled by the Federal Election Commision?

Hackers and terrorists? Come on! Fixing the poor-quality voting machines in certain US states would have more significance than those of us foreign residents who actually bother to vote.

(And yes, I'm one.. and absentee-voting is a real bureaucratic hassle.. this sucks.)

Re:Pentagon??!

[demachina]

There are probably several potential answers, take your pick based on your political leanings and naivete:

- A lot of absentee military ballots were at the center of the controversy in Florida in 2000 so someone in the DOD probably decided we needed to make sure the military could reliably vote.

- The U.S. military has its troops scattered farther afield than they've probably been since World War II at least. The administration probably wants to make sure all the troops vote, perhaps assuming they will go Republican though I wouldn't count on that with the apparently dismal morale in Iraq and Afghanistan.

- My personal opinion is the Republican's who control the DOD looked ahead at 2004 and anticipated another very close Presidential election. Their heads have become very bent for several reasons and they decided they might want a little insurance to insure their relection, and a pool of a 100,000 electronic votes fit the bill perfectly. The reasons the Repiblican heads are bent:

A. The shock of 9/11
B. They are drunk on the power they've gained in controlling the White House and both houses in Congress for the first time in nearly forever and they don't want to give it up. A lot of rich establishment types getting rich thanks to their largesse also want them to stay in power.
C. They've convinced themselves they are the only ones capable of running America and effectively the world. To put it another way they've convinced themselves the Democrats are incompetent and dangerous and must be kept out of power by any means necessary. Democrats are pretty incompetent but I would lean towards Democrats as slightly less dengerous at the moment at least.
D. Generals started dropping truly scary lines suggesting its God's will Bush is President in these trying times. You KNOW you have to be very afraid of people who claim divine right to power.

Its truly wonderful if this project is really scrapped but you have to be very afraid that, like Total Information Awareness, they are just scrapping it because it became so visible and it will be replaced with something just as dangerous but below the radar.

As a footnote, today on CNN I heard something verified I've suspected since I heard Kerry was a Yale grad. It appears Kerry, like George Bush the first and George Bush the second, is a member of Skull and Bones. The somewhat secretive fraternity at Yale who recruits a small number of Yale undergrads each year and grooms them for positions of power and wealth in the establishment. It is, I believe, the first time in history we will have two member of Skull and Bones running against each other for President. The establishment has assured themselves they will retain their strangle hold on power and wealth, no matter what happens. I'm not sure Skull and Bones rates its sometimes scary reputation as a secret society but it is most definitely very effective at using the power and wealth of its older members to elevate its younger members to lofty heights they don't deserve due to merit. It is a major reason the Bush family has acheived something resembling an aristocratic dynasty. It sure isn't because they are smart.

Re:Pentagon??!

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh come now, I always thought G Bush Sr. was a reasonably intelligent (if not particularly charismatic or empathetic) man.

Re:Pentagon??!

[dave420-2]

Flamebait?? This guy's just posted some great points. None of it is absurd - go read some media (not fox or cnn), and you'll see a lot of it makes sense. Jumping to the conclusion it's flamebait is a bit childish, especially as the topic is rather important to the whole world.

People like power and money. When their power and money is threatened, they do what they can to preserve it. That's what we're witnessing now. These rich and powerful people are doing whatever they can to ensure they stay rich and powerful as long as possible. They're professional politicians, not humanitarian altruists.

Re:Pentagon??!

[deanj]

These rich and powerful people are doing whatever they can to ensure they stay rich and powerful as long as possible. They're professional politicians, not humanitarian altruists.

This is exactly why John Kerry scares the hell out of most people who bother to look into what he's been up to. He's been taking money, in exchange for nominations for a long, long time now.

Interested in putting together a panel in NYC

[Sam Nitzberg]

There are going to be more stories and issues related to Internet voting - here, in the US, and abroad, ranging from small club functions being voted on, through governmental matters from local - to - larger levels...

My concern is that any system be appropriately thought out, formally and precisely defined, using rigidly designed systems (not necessarily off-the-shelf), made to precisely and verifiably conduct voting tansactions, without being able to disclose, leak, or bleed any information that is not supposed to escape the system.

The Johns Hopkins study is an excellent reference and resource on the issues that have to be addressed.

I am personally interested in setting up a panel in New York in Mid-July (not much - just about an hour), but at an interesting venue. I am not offering funding, but there could be some visibility.

I would welcome hearing from anyone who is doing interesting work in this area - in the US or overseas, that would be interested in participating on such a panel, to include related topics on technology-and-democracy.

Sam Nitzberg
sam@iamsam.com
http://www.iamsam.com

Electronic Voting? Easy

[max born]

How do banks manage with ATM cards and pin numbers?

Not secure?

Ever tried to hack into a bank?

Re:Electronic Voting? Easy

[stratjakt]

bank of americas entire ATM network was comprimized by SQL slammer.

Ever notice those stickers on banks saying "Insured by FDIC"? Ever see on on your ballot?

Banks can plan for a potential hack, elections are more of a one shot deal.

Re:Internet Voting System

[Yellow_Piss_Hat]

Ooops! Didn't you mean to mark that as FUNNY?

Because... you know, when OTHER people post it as responses in articles, it get a "5, Funny" rating!! Seeing as how I was equally as clever with the "[subject]. What's it all about? Is it good, or is it whack?" formula, I should be modded the same!

Yet more proof that slashdot mods are morons.

ROFFLEY YUO R TEH FUNNAY!!11ONE

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, can you do the Microsoft thingy where you cleverly replace the 'S' with a '$'?

Re:Internet Voting System

[Anonymous Coward]

Yellow_Piss_Hat's rant. What's it all about? Is it good or is it whack?

Internet does have a limited use

[PineHall]

I believe that the internet could be used to send the results from overseas military voting places. It would have to be encrypted and verifiable that no tapering took place, and there would be paper audit trail at the voting site that could be sent later. This would get the results in quicker.

Re:Internet does have a limited use

[Pecisk]

I guess it's what most election systems in modern countries already do. So called unofficial data are transferred trough the Internet, official results are announced by board of elections later, when all paper trails are counted.

Old ways

[t0ny]

I guess they will just have to go back to the old method of giving your absentee ballot to your local alderman.

Re:Old ways

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but if it had been an internet voting program, they would have given their ballots to their Aldeman (RSA!).

(Yes, I know it is Adleman)

RTFA

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

How is this a defense issue and not something which should be handled by the Federal Election Commision?

Because we are talking about the voting process being designed for overseas military members. Clear now?

What!?!

[DotQuantum]

I guess I won't be winning the us election then -_-

IN SOVIET RUSSIA

[Anonymous Coward]

Internet voting system cancels YOU!

hashes?

[SHEENmaster]

It could be done with cryptographic hashes, whereby the hash of a phrase you give the voting machine is placed in a list. You can check to make sure "Skinner Sucks" is on the list, while those not knowing your phrase can't trace anything back to you for vote-extortion.

I'd rather risk extortion than have my vote stolen. Are you listening, DIEBOLD?

Re:hashes?

[Anonymous Coward]

how many cliton bush lines would be dups?

Re:hashes?

[Rufus88]

You can check to make sure "Skinner Sucks" is on the list,

Making sure your phrase is on the list doesn't imply that your vote was recorded in favor of the candidate you intended to vote for.

Re:hashes?

[Frizzle Fry]

Nor does it verify that lots of bogus votes with random phrases aren't there as well as the legitimate ones, even assuming that everyone who voted went through the trouble of verifying that their phrase is there.

If this worked...

[Entry-Level Loser]

...without anyone thinking they balots were used illegally or voter identy compramised, then when it gets over here, we might at well bring back colored balots along with the computer monitors displaying votes.

I'm confused..

[Adam9]

I thought YOU would shoot the party

Gee, Thanks. Not.

[Detritus]

Instead of a modern electronic system, overseas voters are going to be stuck with the haphazard and flawed, manual system based upon absentee ballots. That's like saying the motor-car is just too dangerous, here's a nice horse instead.

The perfect is the enemy of the good.

Re:Gee, Thanks. Not.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I remember when they canned the Sgt. York. Instead of a whiz-bang modern electronic system, our military was stuck with old, flawed, antiquated tanks. That worked.

Problems solved by current electronic voting systems: tabulation

Problems introduced by current electronic voting systems: more possibilities for vote tampering, verification that any recorded vote actually happened the way it was recorded, verification that the voter is actually qualified to vote, privacy problems

Electronic voting is currenty in the "Sgt. York" phase--a marvel of technology that just doesn't do the job it's supposed to do. However, eventually, the military DID get better, more modern tanks. Ones that even worked. We can only hope that this happens for voting too.

"Good enough" beats the hell out of "shiny new gadget that sucks"

Military voters

[Goonie]

They're not involved in vote collection for civilians. What are are involved in is collecting the votes of members of the armed services. Given that they may be deployed overseas in hard to get at and possibly secret places, the Pentagon has to be involved in collecting votes somehow.

Online isn't necessary. It's already happening.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

It's bad enough that the internet was going to be used to count votes outside the country. How much worse would it be with all those illegals voting online here inside the U.S. borders?

They do that already.

With motor-voter you can crank out as many registrations as you want. (There's an illegal immigrant on my street who brags about how he goes from precinct to precinct on election day and shows off his >20 registrations. His reaction to questions about whether this is right: "They don't care. If they cared they'd do something to check.")

Don't expect any respect for law from people who grew up in a country where the government is totally corrupt (let alone the subset that then broke OUR laws to even BE here, rather than going through proper channels.) It's not their fault they grew up in that environment. But now that their opinions are formed you'll need to do more than set an example, if you want to get their attention and change their behavior. And you're not going to do that while it's ILLEGAL to review their elegibility, or even check their ID.

(Now think about how the "drug war" and the 55 MPH speed limit have similarly affected the Boomer generation's respect for law and established institutions.)

Think it's hard? Think they do any checking? Heck. *I*ve been double-registered twice in the last few years. (Changed my party affiliation - which is done on the same form - and had my name typoed and the form misprocessed as a new registration. I STILL get double jury-duty notices from the last instance.)

To motor-voter add no-excuse absentee ballots. Now anyone can:
- pick up a stack of forms in any government office,
- crank out fake voters as fast as he can fill them out and drop them in a mailbox,
- file for absentee voting as fast as he can check a box on the registration notice postcards and drop THOSE in a mailbox, and
- never have to show his face at a polling place.

There was one address in Berkeley that had over 4,000 absentee ballots in a recent election. (Tried to claim that they were a mail drop for some street people. 4,000 of em? Yeah, right!)

Then there are the ballot boxes that are found floating in the San Francisco Bay when there's an election in San Francisco.

And cheating on mechanical and electronic vote-counting, without audit trails, is nothing new. You've all heard about Diebold's touchscreens. But the vote counting a few decades back was done on minicomputers, by proprietary software, where you could pause the program and tweak a register from the front panel switches (and election officials were sometimes seen to do that).

Even mechanical voting machines had opportunities for cheating: It was common to find little stickers in the bottom with "0000" on them - the trace of a voting scam. The wheels would be set to a non-zero value and covered with a sticker. Lock the machine, let the official certify it's zeroed, put it into service. One vote for the stickered candidates knocks the stickers off.

Internet voting isn't necessary for election corruption. It just simplifies automating it.

MOD PARENT DOWN -6 Factual

[Anonymous Coward]

Truth hurts me.

'ol wolfy

[buddha42]

Mark this down as a chilly day in hell, I agree with Wolfowitz.

Get someone to read this post to you.

[Anonymous Coward]

You spell like a Democrat. I hope you don't vote like one. Or at all, for that matter.

But...

[Anonymous Coward]

I already voted 96,000 times...for NOTHING?!?

Re:The pentagon counts votes??? You must be kiding

[caudron]

the idea to let the armed forces have anything to do with overseeing voting seems both ridiculous and dangerous.

The Pentagon has an interest in this because these votes are the overseas ballots for the men and women of the U.S. Armed Forces. The Pentagon's job is to make sure there is a reasonable way for their people to get a say in the government back home. They are not involved in the vote tally itself. This is just the Pentagon saying that this method is not acceptable to them. A legitimate and sane response, given the known security risks.

Trusted Computing can help

[Anonymous Coward]

There is an analysis on the Unlimited Freedom blog of how Trusted Computing (aka TCPA/Palladium) could solve the problems with Internet voting. The idea is that the voting application could be protected from tampering from other software or the user himself. The secure I/O and sealed storage help as well. Once Trusted Computing technology is widespread then it may be time to take another look at voting on the net.

Re:Trusted Computing can help

[demachina]

...and it would also make it extremely easy for Big Brother to know exactly how you vote and to schedule you for your appointment at the Ministry of Love... all with utmost in security and efficiency.

Re:Trusted Computing can help

[adam arndt]

Firstly, Trusted Computing could not be proprietary. Voting software has to be auditable. This means the software code has to be open, and it has to be very small and simple.

Secondly, voter disenfranchisement is a real issue; we might be able to protect the vote with crypto and sandbox execution etc, but it has to be hard for a hack to break the voting session for the voter. Voters have to be able to vote no matter what.

Thirdly, remote attestation needs to prove not only what's running, but what version, what changes to that version, what parameters to that software, what supporting software is running. It's a lot to prove. Remote attestation needs to prove the entire system snapshot, remotely. A totally compromised system becomes the host and can make itself look like anything remotely. Also, we need to be sure what we are talking to; I believe everything that identifies a remote box can be spoofed; ARP address, MAC address, IP etc. Even continuous monitoring can be interfered with as another box can theoretically drop in as a monkey-in-middle.

Fourth, DDoS source addresses may be legitimate. IPv6 won't even prevent DDoS from legitimate IP attackers. What is needed is a distributed voting architecture that can't be nuked. This is what the Internet was for, not client-server.

A better solution is an anonymous p2p architecture. Hide the voters, hide the servers.

Re:Trusted Computing can help

[dave420-2]

How DARE you post a sensible solution using Palladium! this is slashdot! :-P

Re:The pentagon counts votes??? You must be kiding

[Anonymous Coward]

From the article (emphasis mine):

"About 6 million U.S. voters live overseas, most of them members of the military or their relatives."

Yes, the armed forces having anything to do with providing a means of voting for members of the armed forces is very ridiculous.

And they say Americans are dumb. (Just kidding, you goofy Swedes.)

I'm with Cringely on this one

[vonPoonBurGer]

I'm sure many of you have seen this before, but in case you haven't, I like Cringely's take on how to fix the voting system. Then again, since I'm a Canadian, my opinion is not without bias. But it certainly is nice to know who your new Prime Minister is the same day the ballots were cast! And hardly a computer involved, imagine that...

State of the Union

[Anonymous Coward]

At last, a US President that will lower our mortgage rates, enlarge our penii, and send us white house documents to have our advice!

Is that the real reason...

[Genghis9]

...or is it because an overseas American is much more likely than the average Joe in Oklahoma to realize the extent to which Bush's policies have alienated even traditional allies.

My guess is that they're just trying to eliminate a firm anti-Bush bloc.

Re:Is that the real reason...

[rickbender1940]

Interesting to see how much effort they make in getting overseas soldiers vote, who are much more likely to vote for Bush

Huzzah!

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod Parent Insightful!

Run the numbers on why it needs to be anonymous

[foniksonik]

Back in the day people were ignorant and there were far fewer voters to persuade in order to determing an election by a) buying votes or b) forcibly compelling them.

In the present day there are millions of voters and we have very good methods of criminal science and investigation to deter lawbreakers. (Now this may not be relevant to regional elections as the number of voters as well as imperative to dissuade criminal activities are lessened.)

SO if someone did want to buy off an election how much would they have to spend to get even 2% of the vote? The CIA factboook says there are a little over 290 million people in the USA, around 60% of whom are of voting age... minus inelligibles, lets say 45% just to be safe, that's a little over 130 million people, lets say that 10% actually vote.. 13 million. 2% of that is 260,000 people for a presidential election. I don't know anyone who'd sell their vote for $10 but just for the hell of it... that would cost 2.6 million dollars to buy 2% of current voters. Now if you brought in all the non-voting but elligibles... the chances are greater that more people would sell their votes but the percent of total voters would change accordingly, meaning that the more voters there are, the less an individual vote counts, so it would take even more money to buy 2%.

Granted that 2.6 million isn't a lot compared to how much the candidates or their parties spend already... but it is illegal, so they would have to somehow pay off that number of people for that large sum of money AND hide it all from the government, the people, the media, etc.

This assumes that people would be willing to commit fraud a federal crime for $10 and risk going to federal prison for any number of years (I don't know the penalties).

As far as extortion goes, extortion is a crime. How many lackeys are really willing to put pressure on people for this? Knowing that they personally can't possibly convince enough people to make a difference.

The question is... do we really need an anonymous vote in the present day? SO what if your friend give you a hard time, you probably already tell them who you voted for anyways and already suffer the ridicule or whatever. We have anti-descrimination laws already on the books that could be extended to cover this as far as your job or any other official relationship is concerned.

Why not have your vote tied to you? The biggest drawback I can see is that you'll open yourself up to election related spam and direct mail campaigns every 4 years.

I'd like to hear about other real concerns and why we still need anonmous voting. bring it.

Re:Run the numbers on why it needs to be anonymous

[dave420-2]

The votes need to be anonymous - that's the whole point. Imagine if Bush's current trend of neo-fascism continues, you could well imagine the last commercial before election day was "VOTE FOR ME OR I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU!" - cut to a scene of Bush killing goats with hand grenades - "REPUBLICAN. OR ELSE.".

I'd be scared to vote for anyone else! I'd know he'd personally have a list of who's been a naughty little commie, and I'd also know he's got no qualms over sending a UAV to visit my house with a nice gift of C4 before the next election.

If that was the case, how could you vote for the other guy? If too many people caved in, Bush would win, and you'd be dead in a week. If you vote for Bush, you'll be alive in a week no matter who wins. That's the whole point. There can be serious repercussions.

Re:Run the numbers on why it needs to be anonymous

[Saurentine]

The question is... do we really need an anonymous vote in the present day? SO what if your friend give you a hard time, you probably already tell them who you voted for anyways and already suffer the ridicule or whatever. We have anti-descrimination laws already on the books that could be extended to cover this as far as your job or any other official relationship is concerned.

At a previous job, I had a boss who told me "You know, people who work here vote Republican". It was as if he thought I couldn't tell his preference by the signed photos of Republican politicians all over the office, and the every day blaring of Rush Limbaugh on the radio.

(Funny, the interview room was filled with the usual silly motivation posters, and had typical office "music" in the background.)

In the REAL world, people are still trying to influence each other, sometimes illegally. Part of the problem is that the line between legal and illegal is almost always different between enforceable and unenforceable, or between convictable and "case dismissed".

The voters' right to anonymity is still a major component that insures fairness in US elections. Don't tell Bush & Ashcroft, but that's one of the rights I'd join a civil war to protect.

Please don't treat a fundamental right so lightly.

Re:Run the numbers on why it needs to be anonymous

[deanj]

Hey, it's not like you're the only one. I'm surrounded by leftists of the extreme, and have to listen to their ranting BS every day. It's almost comical the conspiracy theories they come up with.
The sad thing is, they are some of the meanest people I ever met...something they accuse the right of being.

Anyway, either way, such overt crapola (left OR right) has no place in the workplace. Vote the way you want to vote. Spewing (usually) completely uninformed opinions (and the ones that are uninformed are usually the last to realize that), just pisses other people off.

Re:Run the numbers on why it needs to be anonymous

[hesiod]

> you could well imagine the last commercial before election day was "VOTE FOR ME OR I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU!"

Thanks, Mr. over-the-top, but your argument falls apart under any scrutiny -- such as reading it. At the point someone can get away with that, we have already lost the democratic process and we aren't voting anyway. Nice try, though.

DOS

[dachshund]

There is no real solution for the plain, old-fashioned Denial of Service attack. Not to mention the many more elaborate versions of this scheme. And that's the real problem with any voting system that uses the Internet.

I have an even bigger question...

[midifarm]

What in the HELL is the Pentagon doing deciding ANYTHING about our voting process? As far as I know the Pentagon is a division of the Department of Defense. What is the military doing making decisions for or about anything that a CITIZEN does? Beware folks, the "Wolf" is loose!

Peace

Re:I have an even bigger question...

[Erwos]

You totally missed the point. The Pentagon is responsible for all those troops overseas (South Kora, Afghanistan, Iraq, Germany, etc.). They've got to have a reliable way to vote. They were examining an electronic way, instead of just mailing the ballots.

People stationed at home will vote at their base, just like your local citizen votes at the schools. Nothing sinister here, it's all in your head.

-Erwos

Re:I have an even bigger question...

[midifarm]

This decision wasn't made solely for those members of the military, it was for ALL US CITIZENS overseas. Yes many of our citizens living overseas are in the military, but there are many that aren't and that decision was made for them as well.

Open your eyes a little wider to what is going on, it's not all candy and sunny days!

Peace

Re:I have an even bigger question...

[dave420-2]

Lockheed-Martin run lots of worker financing deals all over the US... it's not a new thing :)

Anyway, from what I understand, the Pentagon is looking into ways for its meatheads, I mean soldiers, to vote from abroad.

Re:I have an even bigger question...

[/dev/trash]

I think because the majority of Americans overseas, are in the military.

Re:I have an even bigger question...

[midifarm]

It shouldn't matter... the Pentagon has no business being involved at all with the election process.

Peace

Re:I have an even bigger question...

[/dev/trash]

So who should make sure that soldiers overseas get to vote?

Re:Online isn't necessary. It's already happening.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow man, I wish I had mod points. Your post was well thought out, easy to understand, genuinely insightful, didn't degrade into petty partisan finger pointing, and pointed out people doing something wrong without persecuting or turning it into a racial issue.

Seriously, Bravo.

The real reason they cancelled the system

[John Hurliman]

Not to sound too important, but I'm pretty sure they scrapped the idea after I sent them an e-mail asking why they are ignoring the security flaws in the system.

;-)

preference deals

[nounderscores]

Not that I have any idea what the solution is. Possibly approval voting would fix this (where you can vote for more than one candidate).

we have that in Australia. It leads to the profound uglyness called preference deals where the Pro-life/anti-union/aspirational voter people walk up to the black/gay/dredlocked/pro-healthcare/greenie/anti-w ar people and say "I'll put you as number two on my 'how to vote guide' if you put me as number two on yours, but if you say no deal I'll put the White Supremecist/Ultra Nationalists as number two on mine instead. Oh, and they bought lunch at my meeting with them. So what's it to be? Me in your no 2 slot?"

If it works often enough, the vote that was split between the minor parties all flows back to the center-right conservatives, even though the majority thought they were voting left.

Of course the left does the same trick... but they don't have any stormtroopers to scare people with after the communist party became illegal.

Re:preference deals

[I(rispee_I(reme]

Do you have anonymous voting down under? What is to stop you from telling the Pro-Lifer, "Sure, I'll do that." and then voting any way you like?

Re:preference deals

[micromoog]

Ethics? Integrity?

Re:preference deals

[spitzak]

I have seen arguments that the "Instant Runoff Voting" method used in Austraila is mathmatically flawed and this may be a result. Straight "approval voting" where you don't rank anybody is apparently better.

A whole lot of information is here. Note that the site appears to have a slight Libertarian bias, but I don't think this detracts from the mathematical accuracy of their analysis.

Re:Don't forget...

[Anonymous Coward]

more like they dont want any1 hacking into the system and finding out Bush is rigging the next election again like he did 4 years ago.

Heh

[Cyno01]

Posterior or posterity, freudian slip maybe? :p

Re:Heh

[Anonymous Coward]

Entirely intentional.

OG

Liability

[AvengerXP]

It's all about whos responsible if it fails in some way. No one can come and take you away if you're in Australia let's say and you cheat on the American vote. You can't use the Internet to vote plain and simple because there is no liability to do so.

To have a succesfull electronic means of voting, you'd have to have some kind of Intranet. Then you'd be able to make legitimate accusations against people. My work can fire me for misusing the internet but what i do at home is pretty much the hell i want to be. It's pretty easy to track the blame to me at work but think about how you'd have to track people through the globe, it's impossible.

Internet voting is dead even before being born.

Security of normal polling places?

[jdparker]

So this means that they have figured out how to prevent dead people and minors from voting at the normal polling places?

Simple - sell all the votes

[NotQuiteReal]

Simple:

1) Constitutional amendment banning all taxes.
2) Fund all Govt programs via voting fees.
3) Each vote costs one dollar [serial number verification posted]
4) buy as many votes as you like, but only in your district.

Basically you vote for representatives to spend the money they have. Not the system now, where you vote for representatives to spend money they don't have and take from wherever they can.

I could be wrong, but I still think it would be hard to "buy" enough representatives to, say "drop all pollution laws" or whatever you think "rich evil corporations" would buy votes for. At the same time, I imagine it would greatly limit the "feature creep" of benefits that government has become. If "people" really want all this stuff why do I (and others who are net payers) feel so screwed at our (high) tax situation?

I could blather on... this is a ridculous idea, but logically, what is so wrong about the idea that those who are paying for govt programs shouldn't have a bit more say in what they will be?

The opposite point of view is that 6 guys in a dark alley "out vote" you when they say you need to pay "taxes" to support their next McDonald's run...

Obligatory India Remark

[Anonymous Coward]

The government will of course now outsource the development of the Internet voting to India...

Votes

[forgetful]

Just credit the Pentagon for securing the most sacred of American democratic instuitutions: the vote.

Are you kidding?

[metalhed77]

Run offs would rock! We need to be able to list the candidates in order of our preferences. The concept of someone only wanting to vote for one, and just one, person is silly. This is one of the reasons we have the current, entrenched, two party system.

Of course there's more to it than Florida

[KarmaOverDogma]

for a bit of voter humor check this out (flash plug-in required):

http://www.markfiore.com/animation/voting.html

.

Homeland security rules...

[midifarm]

So... nothing is secret anymore!

Peace

More likely...

[MintSlice]

While the Pentagon claims it "won't use an Internet voting system for overseas U.S. citizens this fall because of concerns about its security", its more like they don't want US citizen's who haven't been brain-washed by the US media expressing their informed opinions in the voting both.

Who knows what someone who has been exposed to non-US media might think about any given topic? There's no way any right thinking politician would try to guess the voting habits of the well informed. ;-]

Re:More likely...

[zhar]

All our soldiers that are U.S. citizens (at least in my unit) are required to vote. If an absentee/overseas ballot is not turned in by every soldier, the LT's and company commanders catch hell.

Re:More likely...

[foniksonik]

So you would have us believe that foreign media sources are any more informing than US media? I'm sorry but they are just as biased in their own ways. Well informed individuals are well informed because they do their own research, not because there is some magical source of accurate information about everything just outside US waters/borders...

How many servicemen do you think take the time to do that research, in addition to their normal duties.... not that many I suspect.

It was almost there...

[MukiMuki]

Actually, no, this can theoretically effictively kill spam.

See, the thing is, if someone is spamming, his email server is spitting out messages as fast as he can, but it is at a CONSTANT RATE. His computer will never try to overload itself.

But if he's spamming on this other system, his server has to conform to the habbits of the readers. There are peak times, and slow times. At peak times, his server will be DDOSed, killing the majority of his spam attempts. And you'll be able to tell spam when checking an email results in "error 573 : email sending server not available" or something of the sort.

You won't be able to truly fake an email address, because their very reading of it makes it obvious that the server is real. I have to contact YOU, so I know exactly where YOU are.

Unfortunately, now that I give it some thought, I realize that it won't work. One day someone will complain about a sender server being offline (ironic, no?), and email services will automatically download the senders' messages while the user is logged off. It'll be touted as a great feature, adopted by competitors, and then everything will go back to ground frickin' zero.

But it was a nice idea.

Why don't they use the PKI Keys on DOD ID cards

[quan74]

I presume that the pentagon was researching this to allow soldiers, DOD civilians, and contractors who are overseas to vote. All US soldiers, DOD Civilians, and DOD Contractors now have an ID card that contains a smart chip with a PKI key on it. You're telling me that the Pentagon could not come up with a secure, anonymous, yet auditable method of voting using that?? What a shame. I guess the DOD needs more geeks, or maybe just some geeks with real skills and not an MBA.

The fraud is not in the ballots!

[Anonymous Coward]

How many times do I have to scream this from the top of my lungs:

THE FRAUD IS NOT IN COUNTING THE BALLOTS! IT'S IN THE REGISTRATION OF THE VOTERS!

The ballots can be perfectly legit, secure, authenticated, whatever. But it doesn't mean squat when one person can use the identity of a dead person to vote several times.

Re:Online isn't necessary. It's already happening.

[Anonymous Coward]

There was one address in Berkeley that had over 4,000 absentee ballots in a recent election. (Tried to claim that they were a mail drop for some street people. 4,000 of em? Yeah, right!)
Um, could that have been the giant university there. All my colleges mail gets delievered to 1 single address, so 4,000 absentee ballots is not unreasonable.

Click the monkey and win a prize!

[plover]

or is that "click the donkey and win another prize?"

Are those ads still around even? I haven't seen banner ads in a long time, so I don't know...

Re:Online isn't necessary. It's already happening.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't expect any respect for law from people who grew up in a country where the government is totally corrupt...

Uh, you mean, like ours?

New Virus?

[Bombcar]

Perhaps one interesting side effect of this could be new viruses that vote! Instead of DDoS the litigious bastards, it could vote from your machine!

Then the elections would be decided by the Virus Wars.

Final count for 2008:

Cheney: 233,346,152,856,123,253 votes
Kerry: 233,346,152,856,123,254 votes
CowboyNeal: 999,999,999,999,999,999 votes (buffer underflow!)

Why bother?

[superhoe]

Hah, why would anyone bother to take the personal risk of hacking anything like that.. From what I've read, the system was so full of flaws that the outcome would have most likely ended undecipherable anyway, without any extra intervention.

Re:Online isn't necessary. It's already happening.

[Anonymous Coward]

UC Berkeley doesn't actually have a street address. It has a ZIP code (94720).

Not the voter anonymity problem

[Gorimek]

One fundamental flaw with Internet voting is that there is no way to verify that the voter does not have a gun held to his head while voting, or is subject to some other pressure.

Only by having the voter go in alone in a booth to vote out of sight of everyone else can that be assured.

Re:Not the voter anonymity problem

[Eraser_]

As opposed to current absentee ballots, where I hold a gun to your head int he privacy of your home, and have you fill in the ballot. I do agree that voting in a public place is the best way to do it, but absentee voting is just as prone to problems.

The thing they see as the issue with internet voting isn't the gun to the head, it's stuffing the ballot box with bogus votes.

Re:Not the voter anonymity problem

[Gorimek]

That's a problem in that case.

In my native Sweden absentee voting has to be done either in a post office or a foreign embassy or consulate. In either case there is a an enclosed private area to do your vote in, and an employee that makes sure anonymity procedures are followed.

I've lived in the US for 9 years, and it's fairly shocking how sloppy the voting system is here. It's not really hard to design a fool proof system, if you actually try. It costs a little more money, but come on, it is the entire power foundation for the society. So I have to wonder how much of the sloppiness is there by design. After all the people in power got there through the current system...

Re:Not the voter anonymity problem

[Eraser_]

That makes a lot of sense. This country would never buy it. Why not? How dare you force those who cannot get to the post office to not be able to vote.

Threat to Democracy in Ireland

[zoney_ie]

Yep - here in Ireland we get our name ticked off against the register of voters when we go to vote.

Incidentally - the Irish govt. is bringing in electronic voting for the upcoming presidential and European Parliament elections. I'm not at all happy about it. No paper trail at all - we have to trust a closed system. How hard would it be to have a voter-verified paper copy which is put into a ballot box? Then in addition to checking manually any stations where there's suspicion of tampering, faulty software or a close result, random checks of voting stations could be carried out as Quality Control.

Check out the Irish Labour party's policy document on e-voting, it lists the main concerns and suggestions for the Irish system. Oh yes, I forgot to mention that the entire voting system for our country is being change by the leading coalition parties, not one opposition party supports the changes in their current form!

In the News: 7 Florida Judges crack Voting Server

[hol]

After ruling readable punch card ballots illegal and ruling in favor of Blacks with Misdemeanor convictions can't vote in spite of what the election law and constitution say, the Judges announced today that "all your votes are belong to us" - presumably Dubya agreed.

Uh... I think my US Visa just got cancelled ...
NO CARRIER

I want to implement online voting for our party

[Quizo69]

I've begun a political party here in Australia:

www.neteffect.org.au

with the intent of using the internet to allow members to vote on policy formation etc.

I want to do this using open source software, whether we build it ourselves or not. Surely there exists a group of programmers out there who together can craft such a system?

I think it could be one of the most important examples of how open source benefits the greater good if we could pull it off, and the flow on effects could be enormous since it would be open for anyone to use across the globe. I'm more than willing to make our political party site the home of it if you are interested.

Come on Slashdot, if we as a group of geeks can't solve this problem, what hope is there that anyone else will?

You are welcome to post in our forum about such a system, and download our Constitution which lays out the rules we plan for online voting, so please have a look at what we're hoping to accomplish and see if it can indeed be done successfully.

Re:I want to implement online voting for our party

[dave420-2]

Because the powers that be won't let it happen. As they say, "If voting changed anything, it would be illegal". Their very jobs rely on the fact they can manipulate the voting. Once someone comes up with a global, secure, perfect voting system, their jobs are truly down to the public, which they don't want. They want to stay put. I admire your stance, but there are more problems than just technology with this issue.

Why Not a Beta Pilot Program?

[gglaze]

I tend to agree with those that say if they can't make it work, they just aren't doing it right - companies are using the internet to ensure extremely high-profile transactions, and yes there are differences in verification, etc. - but the basic security principles are the same.

However, I also understand why the idea shouldn't be pushed out before it's ready. What I don't get is - why not an "official-unofficial" beta pilot program, where everything is provided as it might be the next time around in a production scenario, and internet votes will be tallied, but in the end those votes will not actually be counted towards this year's election - at least this would be a way to introduce the technology and the new system to the public, and to monitor for any problems. This would also potentially be a way to guage to some extent the level of security and the demand for attacks. But I suppose if the hackers knew it wouldn't count, they would have no incentive to attack...

Still, it seems a shame to simply say "we are throwing away the idea".

Re:Unbelievable

[dave420-2]

Well, the current administration can't even get electronic voting to work using custom hardware, let alone using a public infrastructure. The original post isn't as absurd as you say. He's not blaming the internet's lack of intrinsic security on the bush administration, just their lack of commitment to secure (or even truthful) voting.

In china, they still shoot impure voters

[hol]

But then again, it's ok if they fire people for bing pregnant in the factories making IBM Thinkpads, HPs and Dells.

Link

Re:Unbelievable

[deanj]

More mindless blag from an uninformed AC.

If you have facts to back up your little conspiracy theories (post links please), please do. Otherwise, it's just another rant from someone making stuff up.

Re:Online isn't necessary. It's already happening.

[MarkedMan]

You said:
With motor-voter you can crank out as many registrations as you want. (There's an illegal immigrant on my street who brags about how he goes from precinct to precinct on election day and shows off his >20 registrations. His reaction to questions about whether this is right: "They don't care. If they cared they'd do something to check.")

This sounds like some Rush Limbaugh FOAF. It doesn't make sense. An illegal immigrant got twenty licenses? From your state DMV? With 20 different addresses? Paid all the license fees 20 times? And each time he took the trouble to register to vote? Man, that's a guy who really wants to screw up the system!

Sorry, it just doesn't pass the BS test.

What you can do

[beforewisdom]

4 or so years ago amid the Supreme Court hearing regarding Florida's hanging chads an engineer for the old fashioned voting machines testified before the Supreme Court that the machines WERE FINE

The hanging chad and other issues were the result of not cleaning the machines out after previous uses. Ever have a hole punch you didn't clean out?

Negligence.

Its been reported on slashdot that several states, including Maryland and Florida have adopted new electronic voting machines that are CLOSED SOURCE with no sort of verifiable reciept system.

Should there be a close race again( all the polls show about a 50/50 split ) there will be no way of backtracking votes.

Cheating/vote fixing is highly possible.

Here is what you can do:

Go to this web site:

http://www.congress.com/

You can easily find your US representatives email address and/or contanct information.

Write them a letter/email asking them what they plan to do to insure fair voting in 2004.

Demand, as on of their constituents that any voting machines used have a reliable means of vote verification....reciepts, punched cards, whatever.

These things do make a difference and a lot is at stake

End of sermon :)

Steve

Re:What you can do

[demachina]

It depends on the individal congressman but all indications are just writting a letter is unlikely to make any difference unless you enclose a sizable campaign contribution in the $1,000+ range. If you get a couple hundred people to write the same letter with the same size checks then you MIGHT get some congressman in your pocket assuming the competition doesn't outspend you. The competition being, for example, the trade association formed last December by the electronic voting equipment companies, led by Diebold. They have a vested interest , backed by lots of cash, in defending their cuts of the multibillion dollar voting machinery pie Congress handed out after the 2000 election.

Re:What you can do

[beforewisdom]

It depends on the individal congressman but all indications are just writting a letter is unlikely to make any difference unless you enclose a sizable campaign contribution in the $1,000+ range. If you get a couple hundred people to write the same letter with the same size checks then you MIGHT get some congressman in your pocket assuming the competition doesn't outspend you. The competition being, for example, the trade association formed last December by the electronic voting equipment companies, led by Diebold. They have a vested interest , backed by lots of cash, in defending their cuts of the multibillion dollar voting machinery pie Congress handed out after the 2000 election.

Public opinion can and does influence US representatives...and... bush/elections are a hot issue.

Im sure you can think of some issue where public opinion has swayed such things.

No offense, I think you are writing this off far too quickly.

Writing a letter will cost you the price of a stamp. Writing an email will only cost you about 15min of your time.

Considering what is at stake, and the potential for good I would say that the investment of 15min is worth a gamble.

Steve

Revised Heading

[LittleGuy]

"Pentagon Cancels Internet Voting System"

'Only Terrorists Need to Vote'

DC

[MuParadigm]

This is just a nitpick, but: Washington DC doesn't have any say in the presidential elections. It's not a state, so it doesn't have any electoral votes.

Doesn't have any Senators either. I think they have one token rep. in the house for lobbying purposes, but the rep. isn't allowed to vote.

In terms of federal representation, DC is even more screwed than NYC.

Re:DC

[Scratch-O-Matic]

Not quite. D.C. doesn't have any delegates to contribute to the party nominations, so their "primary" is symbolic only. However, D.C. residents do vote for president:

D.C. residents have a limited Presidential vote equal to the smallest state regardless of their population, and have only had the right to vote for the President since the 1964 election.

(source)

Re:DC

[MuParadigm]

Thanks for the correction. My bad.

Re:Old ways (not so old)

[SenorFluffyPants]

I was (last Tuesday) a site manager for the Democratic caucus in New Mexico. I ran a site located on a reservation. Anyway, each ballot had what looked like a signature line at the bottom, but was, in fact, a place for a write-in. I cannot tell how many people asked if they should sign their ballot. No one said it, but it seemed to me that they were used to having someone "confirm" that they voted the way they were supossed to. Amazing.

Not towing the line

[Anonymous Coward]

This is going to scare the pants off Bush. He was counting on using this system to cast countless fraudulent ballots to hijack the election like he did last time...

Christ you're Naive

[Anonymous Coward]

Both parties pull all kinds of nasty tricks to get their candidate elected. In Palm Beach County, FL (ground zero of the election debate), senior citizens are bused from housing centers to the polls by Democratic party workers, who, as a free civil service, explain to these people how the ballot works. Then they tell them who to vote for, by giving explicit instructions on which holes to punch. They do it in the poorer, urban parts of the county, too. The catch is, in 2000, the voters screwed it up in spite of the coaching.

You want to know how politics REALLY works? Supporters (Republicans, Democrats, Greens, etc, etc, ad nauseum) will do ANYTHING, and use any means, to get their candidate elected.

Keep on crying about 2000. The rest of us will move forward and concentrate on 2004.

Why punish non-voters?

[MachineShedFred]

I don't understand this concept. If we cherish the freedom provided by the Constitution of the United States of America, why should we take steps towards removing the freedom to not act?

BTW, I am a registered voter, and I do vote; but I don't think it's right to move down this road. This line of thought smacks of systems where you have to be a member of a certain political party in order to participate in society (Stalinesque Communism, National Socialism done the Nazi way), or the Heinlin "citizen" concept from Starship Troopers.

Penalizing people for not voting is like penalizing someone for not having an opinion on every and all subjects.

Re:Why punish non-voters?

[TR0GD0RtheBURNiNAT0R]

Penalizing people for not voting is like penalizing someone for not having an opinion on every and all subjects.

Perhaps I should have made myself more clear. YOU WOULDN'T HAVE TO FILL OUT A COMPLETE BALLOT In fact, you could vote for yourself on everything, or just leave the damn thing blank. As long as you bothered to show up and help our government work.

If we cherish the freedom provided by the Constitution of the United States of America, why should we take steps towards removing the freedom to not act?

Being a U.S. Citizen carries with it many obligations, the highest of which is to VOTE! A rebublic doesn't work if it's citizens don't participate!!! The entire point of this is to persuade citizens to preform their civic duty. After all, you would be upset if punishments for violating other laws were lifted (at least, I hope so). So why get upset about penalties for other cop-outs of civic duty?

This line of thought smacks of systems where you have to be a member of a certain political party in order to participate in society

I find it kinda difficult to draw this conclusion. This is actually the exact opposite of that. The whole point of this idea is to get more people to vote, regardless of beliefs. There would be no obligation to vote, just a reward (getting Social Security) if you did.

However, you do raise legitamate questions. My idea is anything but ready to be enacted into law; its just something me and my friends thought up.

Re:Why punish non-voters?

[MachineShedFred]

Okay, like I said before, I understand the drive behind getting more people to vote. However, in a country that holds freedom to be a basic inalienable right, I should have the freedom to choose whether I vote or not, without negative consequence.

Here's the negative consequence I speak of: I have Social Security deductions from my paycheck. In a theoretical world, I would be getting this money back after retirement (probably won't happen, but this is theory, not practice). If something is enacted that makes it so that by using a basic freedom (to vote or not) I don't get MY money back, don't you see that as being wrong?

Don't you think that this system would screw over a whole lot of people that are getting bilked out of voting due to some technicality or another? Here's an example: In the State of Oregon (where I live) you have to register to vote 60 days before the election. This includes address changes. What happens if I move 37 days before the election, and cannot vote due to moving across polling districts? Sure, you could build in some clauses to protect against all that, but now we have another taxpayer burden to pay for administration of this new system, as well as people that will inevitably try to cheat it in some way or another, so you have more legal and law enforcement costs for the county / state / federal government to incur, to say nothing about if it would be stricken down by some superior court judge the first time the Social Security Agency ruled against someone's claim.

Besides, if you force everyone into going to the polling place, and they fill out the ballot with pure unbridled bullshit, how much waste would be generated at the local elections office when they have to weed through all that in the effort to count and certify election results?

You say "The entire point of this is to persuade citizens to preform their civic duty," however because of the financial penalty, this is more of a government-sponsored racketeering program. Positive incentives work way better than negative ones. You have good intentions, but introducing more costly government administration at the taxpayer expense, and financial penalties to the non-voting citizen is not a way to improve the voter turnout or statistics, IMHO.

However, you just might get Mickey Mouse elected for the US Senate!

Re:Why punish non-voters?

[TR0GD0RtheBURNiNAT0R]

Like I said, this is only an idea. What I came up with for the whole "getting taxed for nothing" problem was this: Social Security would have to be funded just like any other government program, and not with a special tax. That way, people aren't charged specifically for something they don't get. And, If you're still upset about that, consider this: You are paying for public schools, highways in Pennsylvania, and tax breaks for rich CEOs with your taxes. I doubt you use all those things, but you still have to pay for them. Yeah, paying taxes sucks, but it's a necessary evil. And also, once you pay your taxes, that is the GOVERNMENT'S money, not yours. Once again, this sucks, but that's how it works.

About the "Added Costs" you speak of, do you have any clue how much the government spends on getting people to vote? I'm sure you could fund a program like this with that money.

And, about fraud and excess work, I have this to say: There will always be people who try to cheat the system. And personally, I would be willing to wait a few extra days on an audit, if it meant that the majority of people actually bothered to cast a ballot, bullshit or not.

Finally, the whole point of this would be to turn social security into a reward for those who care about the future of their country, not to penalize those who are too lazy to take a few hours every year and participate in the government.

Yes, I know my idea is flawed, but we need to do more than throw money into ad campaigns to get people to vote. It sickens me when I see 35% turnouts for elections in my home state, Colorado. There will be ballot issues determining the entire course of our state government, such as how to handle growth and water resources (a huge issue here), and only about a third of the state cares enough to take some time and say how they feel. The whole point of a democracy is that the majority rules, but if only a minority decides everything, we're heading down a bad road.

And hey, imagine how awesome the country would be if Mickey Mouse were president!

Re:Why punish non-voters?

[MachineShedFred]

And hey, imagine how awesome the country would be if Mickey Mouse were president!

Even though the name on the door has changed for the last 16 years, I thought Mickey Mouse WAS president...

Re:Why punish non-voters?

[TR0GD0RtheBURNiNAT0R]

you have a point...

The importance of online democracy

[Quizo69]

Which is WHY it's so important to do this as an open source project - that way no government can stop it, except by violent repression, and most people by now understand that repression always ends up with the repressor being either tried, evicted or killed, even if it sometimes takes many years.

If only people would realise their collective power, the world would be a better place. Imagine an entire nation, or even multiple nations, going on strike until the government agrees to their demands. Imagine a WORLD STRIKE against the occupation of Iraq, for example. No one works until their governments pull the troops out. Hit the power brokers where it hurts - the economic bottom line. Forget terrorist bombings - they serve only to piss off the people you should be enlisting the help of. Instead, just down tools at a national level until governments realise they are there to SERVE, not RULE. It IS possible, which is precisely why repressive governments try their utmost to prevent people communicating openly with each other and gathering together.

The internet can assist by providing a global staging point for such events that no one can stop. I only hope we can implement our secure online voting system such that it can be readily adapted for such uses. The whole world stands to benefit.

www.neteffect.org.au

A shady explanation

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they realized that members of the military are going to vote against Bush this time around.

What probably happened...

[rixstep]

... is that Wolfowitz found out most of the overseas vote would go against W, which would hardly be surprising.

Re:Online isn't necessary. It's already happening.

[Nopal]

Bullshit.

Though there may be a tiny amount of truth in your post, I can't help but think that most of it is just inflamatory BS. Most of the people that come from corrupt systems such as Mexico already don't give a crap about voting because they come from a system where their vote doesn't count for much. It's difficult enough to get naturalized citizens to vote, let alone non-citizens who may lose their only shot at getting their status legalized by commiting fraud. You must think that illegals are idiots because they are willing to potentially throw their future away for practically no gain. Your condescending attitude betrays your xenophobia. I know many illegals, and trust me, they are far smarter than that. For starters, they are here and not starving back in their country, aren't they?

Several years ago an icumbent legislator lost a county-wide election here in Orange County, California. He cried foul and said that it was the illegal vote that made him lose the election. After a thorough investigation they found something in the order of 10 (yes, TEN) illegal aliens registered for that election.

Re:Online isn't necessary. It's already happening.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

You said: With motor-voter you can crank out as many registrations as you want. ... It doesn't make sense. An illegal immigrant got twenty licenses?

No. He got twenty-something voter registrations.

The (federal) motor-voter law requires that voter registration forms be conveniently available in certain public offices - including especially secretary of state's drivers' license offices. In California, at least, (I don't know if THIS is mandated) the implementation also promotes people taking stacks of forms and making them available elsewhere (i've found them at supermarkets for instance), or setting up tables in public places for people to register and mailing the forms for them.

The idea was to ease voter registration - in reaction to a perceived bias against working people in states where a visit to the county clerk's office during working hours was necessary to register to vote.

The effect was to make stacks of mail-in, create-a-voter-free-no-ID, forms available to anybody who wanted to stuff ballot boxes.

- - - - -

By the way: The flap about drivers licenses for illegal aliens in California is also about illegal alien voting. In those few instances where it is even legal to ask for ID for voting, a driver's license is adequate ID. (Also federal law, I believe.) The proposed drivers licenses would not have any indication that the licensed individual was an illegal alien, ineligible to vote, who got it by presenting a certificate from a foreign government's consulate (or a forged version of one).

Re: Penalizing non-voters

[shubert1966]

It is win-win in concept, but then those people become more of a blight over time. I hate these damn conundrums!

No Library card = Illiterate
No Driver's license = No commuting, shopping, taxdollars derived therefrom.

What we need to come up with is something that non-voters want, but that taking away from them will not hurt the rest of us . . . Ooooh - I know: Cable TV !

Serendipity!

Re:Online isn't necessary. It's already happening.

[MarkedMan]

You said:
The (federal) motor-voter law requires that voter registration forms be conveniently available in certain public offices - including especially secretary of state's drivers' license offices. In California, at least, (I don't know if THIS is mandated) the implementation also promotes people taking stacks of forms and making them available elsewhere (i've found them at supermarkets for instance), or setting up tables in public places for people to register and mailing the forms for them.

OK, valid point. It wasn't clear from the original post. But I would contend that although the problem may be real, the benefits are real too. It is no accident that in general the democrats favored this, since it truly does make it easier for their supporters to register, and the repuclicans opposed it, since they also believed it would register more democrats.

If there are serious flaws with this, then the republicans could have tried to change the law to fix those flaws. But since their main concern was trying to keep democrats from registering, they were only interested in keeping the status quo, not in trying to make it easier for people to register.

BTW, I recently heard a historian talking about why we still have voting on Tuesdays (It was originally done to benefit farmers who may have had a day or more journey to reach the polling place). He contended that it makes it more difficult for the clock punching working class to vote.

Here's an interesting and reasonably argued support of that position. http://www.bostonvote.org/vra/3/

voting (democracy) makes a country weak

[lkcl]

all of this is completely missing the point.

see http://www.globalcountry.org.uk.

democracy keeps countries in a totally weakened state where ill-informed and self-serving majority groups decide who is to make decisions and who is not.

the result is that you get politicians who fear to make responsible decisions.

for example, in france, the politicians CANNOT sort out the pensions crisis that is due to hit in the next decade, because it involves increasing the retirement age of state-run jobs from 50 years of age, where the number of state-run jobs is some ridiculously large proportion of the working population.

see the press releases at globalcountry.org.uk for more details on the problems of democracy and the solutions.

technology is _not_ the answer.

Who decides?

[midifarm]

That would be the FEC or Federal Elections Committee. They are the ones to oversee any and all ballots for US Citizens. Why not let those that are supposed to do it decide? Last I checked the FEC was not a part of the DOD. They (six members) are appointed by the President and approved by the Senate. I think they are more qualified to judge election processes than those that deploy ways to kill people.

Peace

more insidious than that

[nounderscores]

the actual ballot you cast could look like this

1) education for all party

2) australian labor party (center left greatest chance of winning)

3) healthcare first

4) some other random make my life better party

in counting it looks like this

1) didn't win 1st round counts -> preferences go to center right party

2) still a contender till 3rd round then preferences went to the greens who subsequently lost.

3) didn't win 1st round counts -> preferences go to the center right party

4) didn't win 1st round counts -> preferences go to the center right party.

so you have to map all the preference deals to work out which way your vote will go after you don't get what you want.

most aussie voters (under compulsary voting I might add) don't bother to work it out and then don't care about the result because they reckon that all pollies are the same, really.