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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?"
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.
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.
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)
The two advantages of e-Voting that I can see are: votes can be counted more quickly and e-voting systems don't involve humans at the counting stage so in a perfect system errors can't be introduced deliberately or accidently.
The first advantage is pretty irrelevant, as I think most of us can wait overnight for something as important as democratic elections to be counted properly. And as for the second one, we all know that a perfect system doesn't and never will exist. Also, so many people are involved in the counting stage of a manual process that errors probably cancel each other out.Decode these
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.
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
Its a joke, when the whole election fiasco was going on you had dozens of old people being paraded out onto national TV telling everyone how stupid they are. They couldnt figure out the ballot and thought they might have voted for the wrong person.
The "old" people I know were offended by the media getting these idiots and making them all look ignorant.
But you are right, the ballot wasnt confusing (I was in FL at the time) and election workers will help out.
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
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.
"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!
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
That is the great misconception that the pro voting machine crowd would like the public to think. But who programmed and designed them, GOD? Humans are in the process still. It is just that there efforts are more closely hidden then ever before. Any kind of mechanical counting is BY DESIGN an effort to hide vote counting from the public. It is a deliberate effort to rig the vote(or at least put the mechanism in place to easily rig it.) Even now in most states votes are not counted in public view but at the court house and anybody can tamper with the ballot box(or even outright replace it) before it reaches the court house to be counted.
Most people would be unable to check the accuracy of the programming and thus could be fooled into thinking the vote is safe. I'm not a programmer so I would have to rely on others to check on the vote and there are only so many programmers. Also would they allow me to spot check on demand? How do I know that the machine I'm using is running the same program as what was certified. If sheriff deputies can play musical ballot boxes on election day what is stopping them from playing musical hard drives or ROM chips?
Sorry give me human counters that count paper ballots AT THE POLL. Otherwise why bother to vote?
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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.)
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
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.
The problem that electronic voting will fix is that it will be easier to fix an election.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
I commend you for helping out in your local election, but you seem to trust the Diebold corporation more than most people.
Come play Moral Decay!
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...
...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.
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.
Whats more likely: Diebold is trying to rig the election, or you are a freak paranoid loser with no grip on reality?
Here is a hint: Conspiracy 101- If you are involved in an evil conspiracy to rig the most important presidential election in the world, don't publically announce it 18 months in advance.