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The State of Electronic Voting in Georgia
An anonymous reader writes "The AJC is reporting on the current state of electronic voting in Georgia. The article discusses both sides of the debate and mentions Bev Harris and her work at Black Box Voting. Is touch screen voting the best solution available or is a conspiracy afoot?"
When there's a choice between conspiracy or no conspiracy, always go with conspiracy. If it's true, you'll be right and prepared to overthrow the government. If you're wrong, oh well, no big deal, at least there wasn't a conspiracy.
here
Some profs doubt the reliability of the proposed voting equipment (!)
I believe there has to be some secure way of implementing touchscreens. Just because we use technology it doesn't mean we have to be stepping into unknown territory. Someone needs to sit down and think up a better way of counting votes but still have it be electronic. Some of you may cringe at the thought of your vote being counted as a bit but I cringe at the thought of a human counting votes in his head.
Atlanta Journal Constitution. (Atlanta is in Georgia... the state, not to nation state of Georgia.)
I've yet to hear a cogent statement of the problem that electronic voting will fix.
Many of the statements sound similar to the first comments about office automation. Computing was introduced into the office "just because", without a lot of thought going into which procedures should be automated vs. eliminated entirely vs. left alone.
A paper ballot (be it punch card, pencil fill in, or what have you) can't crash, is a permanent record (yeah yeah, they can be destroyed, but so can anything made up of atoms. I'll drop a stack of paper from 5' and you drop a touch screen from 5', we'll see which one survives), and can't be easily intercepted or altered without evidence of tampering.
What problem are electronic voting advocates trying to solve?
We need transparency in the voting process if we are going to move to electronic voting. The current proposed system is simply unacceptable. Bev Harris is doing a wonderful job bringing attention to this train-wreck waiting to happen.
Currently, we have companies making the voting software which is not transparant, which have ties to political parties (from the top of the company, no less), and to top it off apparently can't design a decent, reliable application to save their very lives.
As I said before, THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE
I am a senior citizen living in Florida. In 2000, I voted but I wasn't sure who I voted for. Why? Because the ballot was confusing. I wanted to vote for Al Gore, but I'm afraid I voted for George Bush!
If this make those complicated ballots a little easier to understand, then I support it.
Thanks,
Cecil
I'm not worried about germs or anything... but seeing a bunch of finger-print crud on one place on the screen when you're about to place your vote might have some impact, not even considering the basic security concerns.
What's wrong with paper & pencil? Countries all over the world count those in remarkably small ammounts of time - do we HAVE to have an instant ballot in exchange for a loss of a paper trail and many layers of security concerns? This part is already redundant... but it NEEDS to be redundantly said to as many people as possible.
Ryan Fenton
I didn't realize working a paper and pen was so difficult. I mean, have we ever had a problem with that before?
*cough*
When I am king, you will be first against the wall
With your opinion which is of no consequence at all
The _State_ of Electronic Voting in Georgia. It says it right there, duh... ;)
A touch screen voting booth that lets voters select the canidates they want.
After the voter casts their vote the booth prints out a ballot that's a machine readable.
The voter checks to make sure that the canidates they selected are recorded on the ballot and feeds it into a optical reader. It's this machine that actually records the voter's vote.
The touch screen machines and the optical reader should be produced by two seprate companies and operate on different networks and they should both keep a tally. If the two systems ever get out of synch we will automatically know that a problem has occured. If such cases we can fall back on the paper ballet. Since it was laser printed it will avoid all the problems Florida judges had with hanging chads and strange marks left by stupid voters.
This way not only do we get the benifit of a machine count but a paper trail to boot.
Our country is doing quite well as it is, so why do we need this "voting" business? That sort of thing can only harm our unity and national security
Why is it so impossibly hard to make an electronic voting system work right? I mean seriously... I honestly don't understand why it can't be done.
Even a stopped clock gives the right time twice a day.
well, the obvious argument for it is that its just the next step in the natural evolution of the voting process. oh, woops, cant say "evolution" in georgia.
Please note the USA flag just to the right of the post.
If you have images off, it's not going to take more than 5 seconds to figure out which Georgia we're talking about.
Sorry, AV. You keep karmawhoring, I keep pointing it out.
/. is a bit US-centric. But no, AV wants to curry your modpoints. He'd like you to believe that he thinks there's an Atlanta in the Republic of Georgia.
He isn't a professor. One of the institutions he claimed to teach at doesn't exist, the other doesn't show him on the faculty.
Note the asskiss technique: "And a fucking damn good one at that." Please. Even those of us who ARE American can tell that
AV, I hope that you've noticed that there's more than one of us. I'm not the only one to have noticed what a karma whore you are, and I'm not the only one who will continue to out you.
(Besides, you're forgetting the stereotype that we the international readers are so much smarter anyway that we'd know that Georgia is also a country.)
Hell is not other people; it is yourself. - Ludwig Wittgenstein
This is truly horrible... apparently Florida has decided that since it is not possible to do a recount for electronic voting machines, it is not necessary to attempt anything of the sort. Realize that the next election might be hacked, support Rush Holt's Voter Confidence bill, and don't forget to get the Diebold memos from the SCDC.
Free Speech, Free Software, Free Culture
And I actually helped the local district preview the new touch screen machines at my college. The damn things are frightening - they don't look well built and the lack of a paper trail is scary. There is some murmur down here that Max Cleland lost his race (despite giving three limbs for his nation) because of "voting irregularities."
I hope the Republicans don't use these machines to pull a fast one - if we find out after the fact, we won't get to change Presidents, as happened in 2000.
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
Funny, because when I keep hearing this crap on the radio about 'Coup in Georgia's Government' and stuff, I keep thinking those hill-billies have ransacked Atlanta. Yes, I'm British and even I associate Georgia with the US. Heck, that Georgia place in the CIS probably didn't even exist before 1989?
What about if there were bugs in the software or exploits?
What happens if you found an exploit that made your vote count as 1000 votes?
What next, voting over the Internet?
I touch-screen voted two weeks ago in the Virginia primary (not a Deibold machine, but the other guys whose names escape me now; I didn't RTFA). It was very easy to use and gave good feedback for when an item was selected. It then presented a summary of what you'd chosen at the final Vote screen. However, since the election was solely for the VA primary (no other votes or referenda), it was hard to see how effective the summary page would be with many votes and issues. :-)
That being said, I have no idea if my vote counted, or if someone hacked in and made Kerry the winner.
Well, a conspiracy anyway.
Not quite voting machines, but certainly the eligibility of blacks to vote was manipulated by supporters of the republican side of things. It's all pretty well documented in Michael Moore's book "Stupid White Men".
For the democratic side of things, look to tammany hall or Chicago. Political corruption in Chicago is legendary.
I guess my point is...if you think virus-making "hackers" (sorry) are bad, just wait until the political machines, or even their hardcore supporters start cutting their teeth on e-voting.
You ain't seen nuthin yet...the corrupt are always looking to find a new low. Politics is a war, and neither side is above this kind of manipulation and fraud, even if the trail leads all the way back to the manufacturer of the equipment.
I guess it must have been the "voting" part that caused the confusion...
No. The prevailing Superpower gets to be the default context. Think "GMT" and the British Empire before us (us, meaning US).
Don't mod this as funny.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
For an international reader the state of eletronic voting in Georgia [the country] is so interesting as in Georgia [the US state], that's why is good to clarify. Both have the same importance level.
I was fortunate enough to get my hands on about 10 administrator and 10 voter access smartcards for the voting machines. I don't have a smartcard reader, so they've become pretty useless to me. If anyone is interested in "hacking" the smartcards to get a better idea about how they work, let me know. I will gladly give you a few for educational purposes.
The Elections Liberation Front
Blockquoth dictionary.com
One of the best arguments in the article is this:
"What we do know is that every condition needed for fraud did exist. The question is not whether it has happened. The question is whether it can happen."
Granted, there's no perfect security. But electronic voting companies seem to have a problem at least making an attempt to fix any possible vulnerabilities. When the Patriot Act passed 98-1 in the Senate, the lone dissenter (Russ Feingold of WI) said that it's not whether or not people have abused the law... it's that the potential exists. Sometimes it's really hard to teach someone the value of security until they've been victimized/directly affected by it. The problem, unfortunately, is proving that it happened.
With regard to Cox's response on a paper trail:
"It really adds nothing to the system, [and] the people who think it will don't understand the history of voter fraud we've had with paper."
Personally, I don't think removing one potential of fraud and replacing it with another really solves any problem. And suppose something does go wrong (massive failure, serious bug, fraud)? Is there anything to fall back on? And at least if you want to fix the elections, it makes it a bit more difficult.
I spoke to Rep. Lewis about this issue at one of his "Meet and Greet" sessions several months ago. Contacting your representative *does* have an impact.
The whole point of electronic voting is to get around the recount mess. The election officials don't want to wind up on TV like they did in Florida in 2000. So they devise a system that can't be recounted. They get the people that sells it to clam it is perfect, why would anybody need to recount?
They will not wind up on TV and the same people who have faked votes over history (LBJ in Texas, Daily in Chicago, etc.) can keep doing their thing. There is a long history of vote fraud in the USA. Those in charge just don't want it to wind up on TV and embarrassing themselfs.
Supposedly there have been a lot of "patches" installed right before election day here in Georgia. There is no source code overview that I can tell. They keep telling us the machines are perfect, but they don't tell you what deficiencies are being "patched" with all these "patches."
As far as I'm concerned, these "patches" are "patching" the election results, not the voting equipment.
Check out last week's article from Salon.
There is NO murmur down here in GA about Max Cleland losing for any reason other than voter dis-satisfaction.Cleland was a weak Senator with no power to bring home the goods who voted a if he represented NY.CAor MASS.
The "murmur"referred to has its origins on foreign anti-American websites.Everybody here knows Cleland was beaten fair and square.
Stop posting about electronic voting in the US every other day.
We're geeks , not philosophy or politics majors, and often not even american. A couple of those a year I can stand, but every fucking week you have 2-3 articles about electronic voting systems
I have a blog about the issue in Canada: Paper Vote Canada.
I made a post about this in the SCDC livejournal community, which I'll quote here:
Q: So why do people want electronic voting? What are the perceived benefits?
A: Electronic voting is largely popular because of the perception that it will fix problems like those experienced in Florida in the 2000 presidential election. The Help America Vote Act made tons and tons of federal money available for voting technology, and companies like Diebold rushed into production with shoddy products in order to capture marketshare.
Of course, the irony is that with paperless (read: un-auditable) machines, there is both an increased risk of vote-counting problems (as the Diebold e-mail archive demonstrates) and NO MECHANISM to recount the votes. In other words, if another Florida happens, we'll basically just have to flip a coin.
One of the most important arguments in favor of electronic voting machines is that they will enable the disabled to vote unassisted. For instance, DRE's can tell blind people the options through headphones. This is a noble goal, and it is a valid reason to want to have electronic voting machines. The thing is, why is it not sufficient to make an electronic ballot-printing machine, which then could be verified by a blind person using a simple barcode scanner, or which could be printed with raised letters? Why must the voting be completely electronic (i.e. Direct Recording Electronic)? Is it right to say that just because a blind person may not be able to verify a printed paper ballot on their own, that nobody else should be allowed to verify their votes either? There are certainly ways that ballots could be designed that would allow blind people to verify their votes without assistance, but even if this were impossible, that wouldn't be a good reason to eliminate paper ballots, it is merely an argument for machines that aid in filling out and verifying the ballots.
Finally, there are the arguments that electronic voting allows us to tally votes cheaper and quicker. My response is that we should take the time and money to get our elections right. Also, DRE's aren't more efficient at tallying our votes if they don't record our votes at all.
Unless we can build an electronic voting system that can meet these specifications before the 2004 election, I have little confidence in any vote cast using DRE's, and I recommend at least a temporary return to old-fashioned hand-written and hand-counted paper ballots.
Free Speech, Free Software, Free Culture
It ruins any credibility your argument might otherwise have.The US Civil Rights Commission found NO individual disenfranchised in Florida in the 2000
election.The few who were wrongly removed from the rolls were allowed to vote provisionally and there votes were counted.Many non-elligible persons voted as well and their illegal votes were counted as well.
With Bush's numbers so low, why not? Mod this down, but if there is some way to cook the numbers I don't see it above ANY political party in any country to at least try. Considering Diebold et al are mostly GOP supporters even to the point of the CEO of Diebold promising to deliver Ohio to Bush it seems plausible that something "semi-illegal" might be tried.
Look at Harris's "felon" list from the 2000 election in Florida. It lists thousands of people who are not felons or felons who have gotten their voting rights back in other states. Harris can just say "whoops it looks like the database people dropped the ball" even though she hired them arguably knowing what the results will be. Now we're looking at an even worse case scenario, officials playing dumb on why these electro-gizmos keep "breaking" and voting for one particular candidate over and over and then passing the buck to the vendor.
- Florida ballots in the 2000 election supposedly confused some people. The electronic system (assuming no version upgrades) would have a more standardized format that didn't have to worry about getting all the issues and candidates on one ballot card.
- Some dorks cast weird ballots with more than one choice, etc. These cause arguments over how they are supposed to be counted. By making a system that won't allow you to vote improperly you decrease the issues in a recount. Of course, by eliminating the ballot altogehter they have trashed any audit or recount to begin with.
- I would say most people out there are not computer experts. As a 30 year old programmer, I don't think I have ever used a punch card except to vote. It's not something you would normally do so it is understandable that people might not know to align the card properly and clear the chads. Many people don't realize that you have to completely erase the pencil mark if you chose the wrong one. I'm sure there are other minor technicalities I'm forgetting. Since the electronic system has the ability to confirm your choices, it might save some people's votes from being cast incorrectly.
- Americans with Disability Act compliance - while I don't think any of the voting machines support it yet, it is possible to add braille or audible prompts to them. Even still, the Diebold Voting machines used in Georgia have probably a 20 point backlit type that is easier for people with poor vision to read.
- It's also easy to change the language on the system to accomodate a lot more languages besides English and Spanish. While candidate names don't usually need translation, referendums are usually a paragraph or two that you read and vote yes or no to.
Those are some of the issues I've heard the systems are supposed to solve, however, I think the cure is worse than the disease in this case.Just don't be surprised when George P Burdell get 4 million votes for every office.
On a similar note, our university tried to implement an online voting system for their student federation. It did fail (the excuse given was that there was "too great a demand"), but it would have greatly increased voter turn out. Many of our co-operative education students (or students on internships as US institutions may refer to them) are often not on campus, or maybe even in the city to be able to vote. Yet they pay fees to the college or university, and those fees pay the salaries of the student federation executives. Needless to say, the lineups at peak times are often rediculous, and online voting would abolish that issue for the most part (online queueing may be necessary depending on the resources available). They should be given an appropriate venue to vote, without having to strain or mess up their schedule.
Online voting systems are possible, and will eventually be developed. They will make a world of difference in promoting a truly democratic society. Electronic voting systems have huge potential benefits, and should be pursued.
Heck, that Georgia place in the CIS probably didn't even exist before 1989?
Only for about 2300 years! History of Georgia
"Please note the USA flag just to the right of the post."
I browse with the "no icons" option and I still see the topic name in brackets, like this: [United States]
Obviously, the dumbass who claimed that he was confused by "Georgia" was not being sincere. He is just a karma whoring troll... who pays to do it!
"Is touch screen voting the best solution available or is a conspiracy afoot?"
What sort of stupid question is that? Next up on Slashdot! Clothing! Does it cure cancer, or will it cause the downfall of civilization as we know it?
Correct voting answer - it fixes some serious problems with current systems, introduces some potentially serious problems, and is being pushed not as part of an Evil Conspiracy, but by well-meaning but niave people who seek a technological panacea despite not really understanding the concepts involved. It's cargo cult security - "these systems are secure, and they're electronic, so lets if we need security, we just need to make everything electronic!". Morons.
Since when has there been a country called "Grenwich"? GMT is not a "default" it's an internationally decided standard. There was a big conference and it was decided that there needed to be a single start point for time zones, and GMT seemed a good choice (the size of the British Empire had something to do with it, I'm sure, but that still doesn't make your comment the slightest bit relevent).
Of course, we could also get into the America!=USA debate, but I'd rather not bother.
Stop posting about electronic voting in the US every other day. We're geeks, not philosophy or politics majors, and often not even american. A couple of those a year I can stand, but every fucking week you have 2-3 articles about electronic voting systems.
... mainly "I don't trust electronic voting", which is reasonable, but uninformative.
Amen to that.
I'm concerned about this issue -- it's a hot button for me -- but damn, the responses cover a very limited range, over and over
-kgj
-kgj
Florida's enlightened judiciary has found a Catch-22 way out of a state congressman's lawsuit to require auditable paper trails in voting machines there.
--
make install -not war
Read this article from the NYT.
There are many on slashdot who won't even register for nyt. Just read this and it will make you privacy panaroids cringe.
"This is a complicated business. Each party's databank has the name of every one of the 168 million or so registered voters in the country, cross-indexed with phone numbers, addresses, voting history, income range and so on -- up to as many as several hundred points of data on each voter. The information has been acquired from state voter-registration rolls, census reports, consumer data-mining companies and direct marketing vendors. The parties have also amassed detailed information about the political and social beliefs that you might have shared with canvassers who have phoned or knocked on the door over the past few years. While specifics vary, a typical voter profile like my own, for instance, would show my age, address, phone numbers; which elections I've voted in over the past 10 or 15 years and whether I've ever voted on an absentee ballot; and my e-mail address. It would include my New Jersey party registration (Democrat), whether I've ever made a political donation (none that I recall), my approximate income, my ethnicity, my marital status and the number of children living in my house. Thanks to the ready availability of subscriber lists, mortgage data and product warranty information, the parties might use records of the newspapers I read (this one), the computer I work on (a Macintosh), the men's-wear catalogs I receive (Brooks Brothers, Land's End) and the loan-to-value ratio of my home."
And you guys spew vitriol over website registrations? That's the least of your worries...
Whether we like it or not, the US is the most powerful country on Earth, with an enormous economic and military influence. Its government consequently has the diplomatic clout to influence governments the world over, for good and bad. Its "soft power", as the generator of more exported popular culture than anywhere else on Earth, and much of the world's scientific output, is also profound.
Additionally, for a native English speaker like myself, the USA is another part of the Anglosphere.
So, for the vast majority of Slashdot's foriegn readership, I'd think what happens in the US state of Georgia is more interesting than what happens in the former Soviet republic.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Fucking third worlders
in a brothel, not on the battlefield. He was playing Hot Potato with a grenade with his buddies when Max dropped the tater. Boom! No word on the nearby prostitutes.
It's the truth. Wait until you find out how John Kerry earned 3 Purple Hearts, which gave him an early out of VietNam.
Sad but true.
As the inventors of "democracy", voting machines, and electronic vote fraud, we Americans deserve the best voting system we can get. We should have both electronic reporting and an official paper tally. Fast results, reported immediately upon the last poll closing, will satisfy American expectations of immediacy and interactivity. But the official tally should be the paper count, probably through overseen optical scanning. How to get there from here? Test the electronic voting in the next few elections (they happen all year long, every year, around the country) while using only the paper counts, and compare the two counts for test/revision of the electronic counts. Once the entire electronic count and audit system is consistently reliable, and public trust is developed, roll it out for fast reporting only. Move the paper counting process to a slower one, but the one which provides the only official count. Any challenge to the official count should cause a recount if backed by any candidate, or even any petition of constituency voters signed by either the margin of victory or 5% of any one candidate's total, or more. The paper records should be kept for three times the length of the term limits of the elected office, to enable recounts under the administration of the winner and at least their two successors. In fact, the paper records should just be preserved in a dry mountain bunker indefinitely, if not for legal value, then eventually for historical value. Our votes in our democracy are the first-order artifacts of our liberty, and deserve at least the reverence of ancient Egyptians for their Pharoahs.
--
make install -not war
If there was a coup in Georgia's gov't, it would be ousting the Hillbillies FROM Atlanta. Atlanta and Savannah are about the only progressive areas of Georgia.
Of course, by the same token, most people here, in Georgia, where I am unfortunate enough to live, are too uneducated to hack a voting machine, so democracy is pretty much safe here.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Is touch screen voting the best solution available or is a conspiracy afoot?
This totally misses the point. The point is not whether voter fraud has been committed, the point is that there's no way to tell if it was or wasn't.
Diebold's system is completely proprietary; we can't examine it to see if there are any "loopholes" or not, and we can't check its security. We can't go back and audit to make sure nothing funny happened. Adding icing to the cake, the Diebold leadership is openly pro-Republican.
To summarize; by adopting Diebold's system here in GA, we've privatized the election by giving complete control over it to a private corporation that's biased in favor of a particular outcome. To say it smells fishy would be an understatement of monumental proportions.
Instead of focusing on whether fraud occurred or not, we need to be demanding an election system that is auditable and verifiable to the people. Open elections are key to democracy; Diebold's system is anything but open.
Gifts for Geeks - Stuff that really matters!
The reason voting should always have a paper trail is because no one can make changes to 100,000 pieces of paper in three hundred different locations without some major difficulty. It would require massive manpower and a lot of time. Changing 100,000 lines in a database can be accomplished by one person in less than five minutes.
I don't trust anyone that governs me to sit the right way on a toilet seat, much less control an easily tampered file that keeps them in power.
(Apologies to Rowan Atkinson.)
In more than one county, Republican absentee ballots were permitted even though the voter information on the ballot was incomplete, while democratic absentee ballots with the same incomplete information were not.
The courts in Florida decided that this was a "non-issue" even though the number of rejected absentee ballots in those districts was more than enough to change the result of the statewide election.
The Gore lawyers made the mistake of asking that the ballots accepted with incorrect or incomplete information be rejected in order that the valid ballot requirements be applied equally to Republican and Democratic absentee ballots, but it is (rightly) more difficult to get a previously counted vote invalidated than it is to get a previously rejected vote accepted (as long as the rejected ballots are properly stored and their handling is propperly supervised).
Read, L
Thankfully, I am not in a state using touch screens. Anyone who IS in one, should sue for disenfranchisement.
I am an election judge for the upcoming primary in MD, and we had to take a class on our new electronic voting machines, made by Diebold. Unlike the system described in the article, the ballots themselves are not encoded with the ballots, simply the party of the person voting. If your card has bits set the certain way, your ballot will pop-up for which ever party is encoded on the card. The only problems are when the card operator punches in the wrong party, then I would have to go over to the machine and cancel the ballot.
The only problems with the system that I can see are human. If you work with another election judge and, for instance, encode the wrong cards repeatedly for the other party and don't cancel the ballots, but submit them, then you can tamper the vote. The same thing could happen with a paper system, but admittedly it is harder and slower to cast lots of fake ballots.
In the end, it's up to the election judges and the local board of elections to make sure every vote counts, just as it would be with a paper system.
Yes, the state of voting in Georgia was very bad:
2 00 31129_129325.shtml
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200311/29/eng
Though it seems they fixed it.
Two places which have details on arguments against the current state-of-the-art of electronic voting are verifiedvoting.org and Electronic Frontier Foundation.
yes.
Touch screen voting is the best solution as long as votes are recorded in an auditable manner (paper record), but there is a conspiracy afoot to prevent autiting of the voting process and to eliminate any possibility of investigation if it is beleived that the process was corrupted in any way.
If they can't sort it out, I'd rather they required the old-fasioned, manually recorded, paper ballot. I see no reason for the results to be tabulated on that evening after the vote took place (except for possibly increased advertising revenues for the networks, but BOO fscking HOO!).
Read, L
Umm, for me the idea that an Eastern European country might be experimenting with electronic voting is quite interesting, especially considering the possibility for fraud.
It seems like most of the enemies of electronic voting have hit upon printouts as a solution to the problem. However, Cox points out in the article that there's been fraud with these too. So why not do some intelligent auditing of all votes. I mean, recheck a sample of the ballots at each county level and make sure that you get within .1% of the reported tally proportions. If not, check again. If that time doesn't work, there's been a problem and people should vote again.
In this system paper printouts are necessary, as would be a physical record of each vote cast, no matter how that vote was cast. The statistics provide an additional and difficult layer of security that's hard to circumevent.
Why is this so hard?
Use the Firehose to mod down Second Life stories!
In Australia the AJC is the Australian Jockey Club. I thought "Jockey Club, voting machines, yeah that's appropriate"
I am not a robot. I am a unicorn.
It can sound zealot, but I mean it. How can you accept a voting booth if you can't count the votes. Same in the code. If you can't see the code, it the source isn't open for every citizen to look at it, how can it be call democracy?
DON'T PANIC
It is ridiculous that we are able to streamline and technologically advance every aspect of life except for voting! It should be quite easy to make voting electronic, and in local elections I have voted electronically and had absolutely no problem with it.
I think an independent committee of computer science professors from prestigious institutions should be assembled and given the mandate to create a transparent e-voting process.
Post apocalyptic gaming goodness
There was a big conference and it was decided that there needed to be a single start point for time zones, and GMT seemed a good choice
It's more than just time zones. A point in Greenwich, England is used as the international definition for zero degrees longitude. This is what's called the "Prime Meridian".
For many years, France promoted their own rival Prime Meridian which passes through Paris. But sometime in the 20th century they finally gave in to the international standard.
Your standards are *pitifully* low then. I post here for entertainment value only.
As a Georgia resident I found much to dispute about the 2002 votes. For one, most polls had ex-gov. Barnes out in front of now-gov. Purdue by several percentage points just prior to the election. Ex-Senator Clelland was a tougher call because President Bush came down to personally stump for him on several occasions but the race was still deemed close just before the election. I thought is was *very* suspect after several reports emerged of long lines and electronic voting machine problems in areas known to be democrat-friendly. Normally I vote Republican, but no system failure should allow vote manipulation as easily as the patching situation could have in the last election.
P.S.: For additional confusion, Kathy Cox is the state school superintendent that tried to get the word "evolution" removed from public schools while Cathy Cox is the Secretary of State who is trying to get the electronic voting machines in place.
As long as there is a Second Amendment, there will always be a First Amendment.
Wanna trade places? I live in a socialist hellhole in the Northeast. We have corruption up here that would put yours to shame.
I'll take hillbillies over a bunch of latte-drinking, volvo-driving, NPR-and-Lake-Wobegon-listening nincompoops anyday.
Unfortunately, after a fruitless argument with a Democrat Virginia election official at the Fairfax Fair in October, I suspect the problem is massive ignorance. He assured me condescendingly that he could get a printout of local Vote totals any time he wanted, so what was the point of a paper trail.
Unfortunately, such massive ignorance leaves the system open to abuse by unscrupulous individuals of either party.
I have called my representatives in Washington demanding auditable voting (all Republican - Virginia likes to vote Dems locally and Reps nationally). Since the Republicans are in power at the moment, they are key to getting some kind of auditability requirement passed nationally. Notice that a Republican I voted for, Ken Cuccinelli, is trying to address the E-voting disaster in Virginia.
Strict conservatives believe that it is the responsibility of the State Government to address such problems, and that the Federal Government should stay out of it. This does not mean that conservatives want unaudited voting - in fact they blame the Federal mandate following the 2000 debacle for causing the current problem.
While I really appreciate the work Bev and many others have done to bring this to the public's attention, I know in my heart it is not the fastest solution.
An act of civil disobediance is needed by MANY people across the US. Simply disseminate via internet simple instructions for how to adjust the votes on various types of electronic machines, and use them to cast an enourmous amount of votes for the least likely canidate in every single election. If this happened in even a few cases around the country the news and governement would have no choice but to take electronic tampering completely seriously. If it happened thousands of times in the next election I think Diebold, et al, would most likely backpedal to an open source and completely transparent system so fast it'd set their boardroom carpets afire.
Would I myself chance jail in order to commit an act of civil disobediance which could forever ensure the future of voting is fair and trustworthy for ordinary citizens? Just show me the simple instructions on how to get the job done...
Jonah Hex
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I don't understand the big push for electronic voting. What exactly are we fixing? So it takes a couple more days to count all the votes... it's not like the political system grinds to a halt during those precious hours while votes are tallied. Strange that our country has for centuries done perfectly well with the traditional method, yet all of a sudden it's such an important issue that requires technological intervention.
The first line says most of the story:
The other part of the story is that the software produces a paper ballot that can be read by both the voters and by machine.
The ballot-producing machine itself can be touch screen - or something else for use by physically impaired voters.
The system is a) inexpensive, b) voter verifiable, c) adaptable to the needs of voters with physical impairments and d) open source.
- Since when has there been a country called "Grenwich"?
What a great counter to my point! If my point was that Greenwich was a country...alas, it was not. The point was that by the 1880's Britain was undoubtedly the reigning world superpower. France tried to resist Greenwich, England as the world's Prime Meridian in favor of its own Paris, but in the end capitulated (a theme to be repeated quite often in the next 120+ years).- GMT is
... an internationally decided standard.
*Snicker* International. *Snicker*- GMT seemed a good choice (the size of the British Empire had something to do with it, I'm sure, but that still doesn't make your comment the slightest bit relevent).
Yeah. They picked it because of the scientific discovery that there is a longitudinal ridge that passes through the village of Greenwich and makes a really good marker to count revolutions on an otherwise roundish planet. That it was the choice of Britain, the reigning world superpower, definitely had no relevance. (By the way, thanks for helping me make my point.)-
Of course, we could also get into the America!=USA debate, but I'd rather not bother.
Why not, then? After all I didn't bring it up, but when has that stopped you before? Here's my answer to US != America: Without the US there would not be an America, North nor especially South or Central. This would be Europe 2, or, New England and New Spain. Heard of the Monroe Doctrine? The position that the US took -- Europe, stay out of America's affairs and we'll stay out of yours -- created America as a separate entity from Europe (follow the link, it is interesting to note that though the doctrine was Monroe's the enforcement was carried out by the British Navy for the first 100 years; interesting). So, while US != America, America - US = Null.Thanks for playing! We have some lovely parting gifts for you right through that door, bye!
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Fairfax, Virginia, 5621 Smithenson lane, 20219:
None.
I've seen the security precautions and everything about the touchscreen voting myself. What makes you think that paper ballots are so much better? There are fail-safes in place all over the place with Touch Screens. You can't hack into them via the internet because they aren't even HOOKED to the internet, every malfunction has a recovery none of which involve adding votes and forgetting about it, security agencies have tested them and could not break into them. Sure, you can tamper with them, but I can guaruntee you that it won't go unnoticed. Once the machines are prepared for election, and something doesn't check out when they are opened on election day, the machine is not even used. When you download a file from an internet site that gives you an md5 checksum to check it's integrity by, if that doesn't calculate you know somethings not right, that it's been tampered with. If by law you were required to notify someone about that md5 checksum coming out wrong, and you didn't, the only way you'd get away with it is if you were by yourself, and even then, there are just too many people around for that to happen. It's roughly the same way with the voting machines. Everything is recorded about how the machines were prepaired pre-election and re-checked on election day, if those values don't match, red flags go up and everybody knows it.
Where have you been?
The CEO of Diebold promises to deliver his state to George Bush in 2004.
Another voting machine company is a front for the
CIA.
And none of the machines by anybody can be audited, despite the fact that every other financial industry machine made by the same companies is auditable.
You think?
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
I'm going to say this in tags. Why in the hell do companies get away with stuff like this? Is the fact the technology has changed made it that more difficult to understand? If there's no physical, unchangable record of the vote, there is 0 reliablitity. Any explenations?
Why are people pursuing touchscreen ballots? Why not hook a computer up to a more physical interface (ie one would have lcd's next to real buttons with the candidates name)? I find it much more, enjoyable to push a button than tap a screen (Of course mashing a screen until it produces a permanant black mark is fun too).
Anyway thanks for any insight.
There is nothing wrong with being gay. It's getting caught where the trouble lies.
I agree. It would be better to consider the whole world when writing stories for Slashdot.
If I were in charge of voting in an area I would use a simple and cost effective method of counting vote electronically- the auto-grading machines in the local city schools. I would print out the ballot as voters checked in, giving you the security of not having extra ballots along The only real downside would be that the blind would need assistance (you could create large print, but people would still have to read) and that it would be very hard to have tests in the schools on the same day as elections
Uh. that was exacly my point with #2. You and a machine can read the account number on your checks. I've never seen this with the alphabet, but it probably already exists / wouldn't be too much trouble.
"You saved 1968." - Ms. Valerie Pringle to the crew of Apollo 8
I don't understand the big push for electronic voting. What exactly are we fixing?
:)
They're fixing the election, of course. Sheesh, you must be new here.
As this is GEORGIA, let's stay away from WORDS on screen and things like that. Not everyone can read, ya know.
Stick to 'gooeys' with pix of the candidates in their military uniforms and things like that.
Let's get the vote out!
Here in Ireland, as I mentioned last time this subject came up, we are due to be subjected to country-wide electronic voting. This will happen for the upcoming Presidential and European Parliament elections.
The suggestions made by the parent poster, re: a paper audit trail/receipts is exactly what the opposition political parties and campaigners are asking for. It's essential for an e-voting system. Not only can you manually count from actual ballot boxes in case of close result, suspiscion of tampering or soft record fault, but it is vital to have random voting locations chosen for manual audit.
Here in Ireland we have Proportional Representation with Single Transferable Vote. (PR-STV) I won't explain in-depth, but it is a complicated system (to count at least) whereby we vote our preferences. Candidates are eliminated in an iterative process (lowest acheivers first) whilst those reaching a (3rd/4th/5th = no. of seats + one) of the total vote (reaching the quota) are voted in. BOTH these types iterations mean extra votes are redistributed (the next preference the voter made) - those who reach the quota have extra votes they don't need redistributed.
It's one of the fairest democratic systems around - but don't tell me electronic voting isn't needed when general election results can be final sometimes only after a week or more! (imagine a recount in a constituency with 12+ iterations (counts))
But I want a e-voting system I CAN TRUST!!!
-- *~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...
Not only could we count these now - but any historical dispute arising up to 2500 years later as to the result of an election would be easily settled - pot shards from 500BC and earlier have been found, and with a bit of care we could even stretch the traceability to 35,000 years (the oldest known ceramics date from around this age).
OK - people have to mark their own pot shard, and it relies on the probity of the counting officials, but it's still a damn sight better than relying on dodgy software and potentially biased private vote counting.
Besides, the thought of the Supreme Court being deluged with shards of pottery in case of dispute is a nice image.
oh brave new world, that has such people in it!
Unfortunate? Where in Georgia do you live? I live here too, and it's really a pretty decent state.
...occurred last week!
I hope that none of the technologists / scientists and "hax0rs" are tainted by this dubious code being available.
Afterall, if there is ANYTHING questionable about the UPCOMING Nov. 2004 election, it's not which canditate was voted for - it's WHO to blame for HACKING things.
The solution will be a simple signature on some ambiguous bill (Patriot ][ anyone?) that will make ALL REVERSE ENGINEERING / DISASSEMBLY / and other potentially controversial in-the-name-of-science acts ILLEGAL without government approval.
Afterall, if the government is the entity in question, they can easily secure their position
"over" the people by knocking down any non-gov't sanctioned research activity.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
A new technology.
The scientists don't want it and think it's unsafe. From my readings of major scientific magazines and journals, e-voting as it is being implemented in the US is raising major alarm bells.
People well-versed in computer technology think it's dangerous and unsafe.
Management (ie. the electoral officials) want it.
Companies (who will profit from it) want it.
Basically those who are usually the most gung-ho about new technology and most technologically literate think the idea needs careful thinking and the technology is flawed. Those who are the most technologically illiterate and those who stand to make money out of it are all for it. This is a case of management over-riding the concerns of the engineers who are waving red flags going "Danger, danger".
I see a disaster in the making here.
Oh well, it will all come out in the wash when lawsuits from losing candidates start. Or we have another Florida, except this time as another poster pointed out as there is no audit trail, we'll have to flip a coin to see who is President. Or I guess redo the entire election.
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
Wouldn't it be rather fun, if all the conspiracy nuts got together with all the hackers and gave ALL the votes in an election to the politicians who wants to introduce a paper trail in elections? If no such politician can be found, just make them all blank votes/write-in for 'Ficus'.
...
I mean, the other politicians can't really cry foul, because they said themselves "paper trails aren't nescesary" and in effect "we trust the effectiveness of the system"
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
I have worked on the diebold systems (in texas performed various testing and diagnostics on the units) during our testing process there were so many different steps we had to use to diagnose any problems with the units and had to catagorize very carefully all the unit's odometer readings (yes each unit stores the amount of times it has been used) along with the hardware's condition and to make sure all the hardware worked, as far as security all of the units are perfectly capable of working in standalone mode and if no power source is available then you can have them run on battery mode (not sure how long but it is a 50 pound unit of which most is that damn lithium ion battery, a pain to pick up :) ).
And even at the end of the testing process they are closed and sealed with a tamper-proof seal, and if it is tampered with they are not used. Though I am not at liberty to say what kind of medium they use to store the results or anything related to the internals of the physical unit I can tell you that they are very hard to tamper with and if you do it IS noticeable even for the untrained eye.
Interestingly, the entire US still relies on a very basic and analog[ue] method of chosing 6 numbers for LOTTO (Lottery) numbers.
/. a few months back, but I can't seem to find it now].
Digital technology that can determine 6 random numbers has existed for over 30 years now - So why then, do we still use such a blantantly ANALOG method of determining who will receive Millions of US dollars every week?!
The answer is simple - those devices are believeable. Ironically, if Diebold and Mrs. Harris^H^H^H^H^H^H Cox really think that unauditable digital voting machines are "the only best solution" they are sorely mistaken.
With something as significant as electing the MOST POWERFUL MAN IN THE WORLD at stake, why choose an unauditable digital medium? If every night the LOTTO displayed 6 random digits on the screen, people wouldn't buy it! Why should we buy what these machines say about our[US here] Democratic Republic?!?!?
The city governments that put ELECTORAL power in these machines are exponentially mistaken.
Diebold claims that NO OTHER VOTING SOLUTION IS AVAILABLE...
Now, while I can't find the link, a superior method for e-voting machine auditing does exist. It consists of a digital voting machine that provides a perforated ticket than can be separated in two. One half can be deposited into a voting box, and the other can kept by the recipient as verification.
Can someone please post a link to that article? [I saw it here on
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
Max Cleland lost the race because he didn't support the tax cuts.
Barns lost because he pissed off the teacher union.
The 2002 election was a marketing scheme to sell the system to the public. The real "voting irregularities" are coming March 2nd and November 2nd.
The journey is better then the end.
I'm an election worker in Ga., so I have a bit of experience on this issue. Also, you obviously didn't RTFA.
First, the white voter turnout in south Ga. was much higher than the pre-election polls suggested in 2000, providing a big bounce for the Republicans (Sen. Chambliss and Gov. Perdue are both from south Ga.).
Also, the only major flaw reported by any voters in Ga. was that every 1 in 800 or so ballots would have their ballot choices automatically changed from whatever candidate they had voted for to the Democratic candidate, not the Republican candidate. This only showed up on the "ballot summary" screen, so unless the voter checked their choices very closely before hitting "cast ballot", then they would have voted for the Democratic candidate. Sounds to me like that would have given the Democrats a boost, not the Republicans.
No system is perfect, but I for one, as both one who works with computers and an election worker, think the electronic voting system is a step forward.
- Proofs of Sturgeon's Law Delivered Daily -
Then I'm a troll ;7
Hell is not other people; it is yourself. - Ludwig Wittgenstein
A Secure and Verifiable voting system:
0 3/11/25/21 3206&mode=thread&tid=103&tid=126&tid=172&tid=9 9
http://www.vreceipt.com/article.pdf
Was mentioned in this slashdot article:
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=
It is complex, but it is much closer than Diebald to a system which meets the criteria:
A) Auditable by voter
B) Auditable by independent trustees
C) Paper trail can NOT be used for vote selling!
We should accept nothing less than this.
*sneeze* Whoops, I just voted for everybody on the touch screen...
-- Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
The write-in candidates are going to make the screen a bit messy.
Even with paper last parlament elections in Georgia fired so much conflicts that it led the republic to one more revolution, the president has resigned and they had to re-elect the president.
If you don't want to have the same chaos and anarchy in USA - don't use electronic election kiosks unless all parties have approved and control all the data flow in the real time. Any offline will lead to conflicts.
Less is more !
But. I'm feeling cynical and I know that 1) Slashdot is US-centric (or at least the editors are) and 2) Amsterdam Vallon is a troll, so I don't believe he really thought of the international readers when he pointed out the "problem".
Hell is not other people; it is yourself. - Ludwig Wittgenstein
So your point wasn't the point I countered. Fine. Your point was instead complete nonsense and offtopic. Britain using its power to make 0deg longitude in London is completly different to Americans thinking that their state has more right to its name than the country, which had the name for much longer.
Seems to me that they are a little too familiar with the subject. Perhaps reporters should ask some questions here. "That's interesting. Could you give me some details of how a recent Georgia election was 'fixed'? What was your part in that election?"
Welcome to the Turing Tarpit, where everything is possible but nothing interesting is easy.
- completly different to Americans thinking that their state has more right to its name than the country, which had the name for much longer.
My friend, at no point did I nor anyone suggest that the only legitimate Georgia was the Peach State. What did occur was this:- A US-based, American-run website posted a story about Touch-screen voting issues in Georgia, which would be naturally understood as the "State of" to the context of the authors and the vast majority of the readers -- even if they are not in the US
- Although the story references the Atlanta Urinal & Constipation, a Troll pays money to rag on the lack of distinction between Georgia the State and Georgia the very-unlikely-to-be-using-touch-screens-anytime-s
o on country. - Said Troll uses the occassion invented by itself (him? her?) to complain about American-centrism.
- Realizing the Troll game I briefly responded that it was altogether natural to assume that the default context was the State of Georgia, and as a justification I cited the Golden Rule -- he who has the Gold makes the Rules -- as is applied to nations.
At no time was the former Soviet satellite in dnager of being renamed Georginski, or any other substitute. Never was a claim made that the State named after King George I (whose son my ancestors fought in the Jacobite Rebellion [the McQueens] being subsequently deported to the New World and whose grandson others fought [the Taylors] in the Revolutionary War, but I digress as one lacking regular sleep is prone to doing) should have more or less right than the country. The only point being that when Americans write for an American-run website to a largely American audience in an American-dominated world (how many people around the world saw "The Breast", again? Anyway, America is the only country that can have a sport whose teams all are based in the US and that can call the winners "World Champions" without raising eyebrows) to assume a default American cultural point of reference unless clarified otherwise.So, there's lots to which you can disagree with me, and there's plenty opportunity I've given for you to challenge me on, but still you continue to appear to be replying to the wrong parent post.
Strange, that.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
I have no problem with your interpretation of the Golden Rule. I also assumed it meant the state, as that makes much more sense, and would agree that it didn't really need clarification. My problem is with your comparison to GMT, which is a completely unrelated issue. There are no assumptions involved in using GMT as a standard. The reasons why it is a standard may have relevence to superpowers, but it was internationally decided, so there is no doubt what people mean when they say 0deg of longitude.
I suppose it was an "international" decision that put the UN in New York?
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
I imagine it was, what's your point?
The controversy surrounding the Florida recounts and the 2000 Presidential election still simmers.
And recently a number of prestigious computer scientists came out on record as cautioning against all of the possible problems with electronic voting.
And still I hear recently of some effort where electronic voting is being made available to mall shoppers in Orange County.
But, Georgia?!?
For those with short memories, Georgia was to the 1800 election as Florida was to the 2000 election.
The current issue of The Atlantic Monthly has an interesting article about how Thomas Jefferson, then VP and President of the Senate, recorder of the votes, and a candidate in the election, was put into a conflict of interest when evaluating "irregularities" associated with the electoral votes from Georgia.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Sup my /. peeps,
/.'er I also provided links to stories about the problem and a link to the electronic voting used in Australia that developed using open source development. Needless to say, she wasn't very supportive.
I've been following this problem since it was first reported in New Zealand. I've written Mrs. Cox 3 times to express my concern over the problem. Being the proper
Here is the text of her reply...
Dear Mr. Atkins,
Recent reports published by academics, computer scientists and software security professionals have raised questions about security with electronic voting systems. It is important to note that these reports have been written by computer scientists who state very clearly that they know very little about how elections are administered and completely disregard the internal and external security measures in place for Georgia elections. Following this email I have attached for your review a response from Diebold, Inc. which addresses the flaws and erroneous assumptions made by the researchers in the Johns Hopkins University study.
Concerns about the use of proprietary software in electronic voting machines have been raised and suggest that the software should be an open source, completely out of the control of commercial enterprises. On this topic we must respectfully disagree. Allowing public access to the source code, we believe, would open up the integrity of our voting systems to every interested hacker around the world. We currently have access to the proprietary software of our system and it is secured in an escrow account for our use and verification before each and every election. Our elections experts have developed a procedure using this escrowed version to ensure that the software running elections in Georgia is accurate and untampered with.
If we were to post our source code to the Internet, any hacker, any person interested in manipulating the system, would have access to all of the security built into the software code and could then attempt to manipulate a state or county's system with relative ease. Why make it easier for someone to destroy the integrity of our voting systems?
It is important to note the series of tests our voting equipment goes through before its use. These tests begin with national certification, in which voting equipment is tested at an independent testing authority (ITA) to meet the national standards for voting equipment established with the approval of the FEC. Then, the state of Georgia conducts state-level certification testing to further test the accuracy and integrity of the systems before they are sold in Georgia. Thirdly, each and every individual voting unit goes through logic and accuracy tests prior to election day and then are sealed until the morning of the election, at which time the seal is broken and even more tests are run to assure the integrity of the equipment. I am fully satisfied that our equipment itself, when used in conjunction with our battery of tests, makes it extremely secure and virtually impossible for anyone to manipulate or tamper with.
As you may recall in Georgia, after you touch the names of all candidates you wish to vote for, the computer itself gives you a summary of your choices and enables you to change those choices before you leave the voting booth. That summary screen is the opportunity for voters to verify their votes, and adding a paper receipt, which presumably would be printed out while the voter waits, would add delay (as printers are very susceptible to breakdowns, jams, paper and ink shortages, and other problems). Additionally, after a paper receipt is printed, the voter would have no ability to make further changes to their vote without a very complicated adjustment to the DRE unit, which most poll workers would not be well-equipped to accomplish.
We share your commitment to fair, secure and accessible elections in Georgia and thank you for taking the time to share your views with us. I would also like t
http://www.servesecurityreport.org/