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Super Tuesday Not So Super For Electronic Voting
October_30th writes "It's Super Tuesday in 10 states (including California, New York and Ohio) and various reports are coming in that the equipment built by Diebold and various other manufacturers is proving more troublesome than previously anticipated."
For all the voters who will be voting for the fist time, or just aren't familiar with the terminology, 'Super Tuesday' is the first Tuesday of March when 10 or so states have their primary elections.
These elections run from January through June. This means on the first Tuesday of March, a candidate will pretty much know what his chances of winning the nomination really are.
...don't question it!!!
They've cracked passwords to gain access to computer servers and showed that some systems relying on Microsoft Windows lacked up-to-date security patches that should have been downloaded from the Internet.
Wait, I thought computers were only vulnerable after the patches were available...
...don't question it!!!
Just as an FYI regarding this, the Diebold machines have numbered plastic seals that are recorded weeks prior to the election. If a seal is broken, the machine number is recorded and removed from being used in the election.
Also, the actual machines inside the boxes ARE protected with a lock and key. You can't even turn them on without the key.
Having the boxes sitting unprotected sounds stupid, but they are really safer than it sounds. Obviously not impossible to someone that really puts some effort into it, but a little better than the Georgia Tech student observed.
Call you a right-wing conspiracy theorist? You're not even trying. The previous CEO of Diebold is a Republican Senator, having won his seat in a surprising upset...
When I went to vote this morning (Orange County, CA), there was this 30-something having a real difficult time with the voting "tablet". He kept wanting to give up and leave, but the poll vounteer won't let him go and tried to help him. But the poll worker can't cast votes for him, and doesn't want to know who/what he wants to vote for. So it made for a very interesting scene for all.
Funny thing is that the poll worker looks like a 60+ retired volunteer trying to talk a much younger guy through on working the tablet.
I was done in just a few minutes. I think it's much faster than the old punch card ballot. Though the tablet navigation didn't quite work as I expected. For example, I was expecting it to be touchscreen, but it wasn't. Instead, you use navigation buttons on the tablet. Also, there was one item where you can vote for up to six people. Everytime you select one candidate, the cursor moves back up to the start of the list, instead of staying on who you just voted. So you have to "cursor down" all over again from the beginning.
I wonder how long the other guy took to vote.
I also noticed there are twice as many poll workers this time. I've voted at the same place for years, and it's always been the same three people. Today the same three are there, but there are three new poll workers also, for a total of six. I think they anticipated there will be problems.
Part of it, I'm sure, is that Virginia isn't using Diebold machines. ...
:-)
Are you sure? I thought Fairfax _was_ using Diebold. And there were problems with last Fall's election (VA is unusual in that state offices are elected on odd-numbered years). At least 6 electronic voting machines failed, needed to be repalced/ rebooted,
Yeah, last fall's elections had problems, but the primary last month didn't...or if they did, they were well-covered up. It was not a Diebold machine. I looked very carefully at it, but not enough to remember what it was.
Apparently the CEO of Diebold is a staunch Republican and contributed heavily to the Bush campaign.
As a Republican, I see these posts and usually think it's leftist crap. Low and behold I found this site It looks like a heck of alot donations to the good ole Republican party. I am sure Diebold greases the skids on both sides, but it does make you stop and think. After the ruckus in 2000 you think they would have learned.
Save a Life. Donate Blood. Please.
I worked in the state of Kansas elections for the presidential election in 2000.
Our location had an electronic system to cast votes. As a person walked in, we wrote their name down next to a ticket number. That ticket was then placed in an envelope attached to the outside of the machine they would vote on. In case of any inconsistencies, we could bring those people back to revote (note that we hadd no way of knowing who they voted for).
The voter entered the machine and pressed the button next to the name of the person they wanted to select. It used what was essentially a large piece of paper over a touchscreen with the canidate's name.
At the end of the night, we printed out a receipt with the results from each machine. These were called in by the location manager for early (unofficial results). Every result was also electronically recorded into two (1 backup) cartriges. These two cartiges and the paper receipts were then hand carried by the location manager to the headquarters where they were analized and verified.
*note that there were steps taken before the machines were used to verify they were not hacked.
No networking to allow hacking and whatnot. The number of votes is verified and electronically verified. There was also the ability to have people re-vote if neccessary. After the election, of all the locations using these machines, I (and the location manager) heard of only 1 technical issue. A machine had failed to boot, and was replaced an hour before the polls even opened.
So my quesiton is, what the hell are these new machines doing that equipment has been able to do for a decade (or more)?
If these machines are comprimised it's due to the gross incompetents of the designers. It really isn't hard to develop something like this and keep it secure, think about it this way.
Use a standard computer, with two hard drives (and a printer with a big newspaper like spool of paper if you please). Have it so that in the back of the machine, a specific card has to be put into the machine: the card contains a hash written onto a rom chip used to encrypt and validate the votes. Set up a keyboard and a program that simply displays the name of the office, and store in a randomized list the name of the officials you can vote for (randomized to the user, increases security). Set up the software to write the vote onto both harddrives and onto the spool of paper. Store all of this in one of those bulletproof steel boxes with a safe's locking mechanism.
It's really as simple as that.. I could go into more detail, but that'd just bore most of you.. I'm sure a lot of you have thought of better systems yourselves. You see, it's nothing more than incompetence that they didn't implement anything like this.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
Sorry to burst your bubble, but right-wing conspiracy theorists were there long before the left wing commies. See votefraud.org and votescam.com for examples. I don't know whether there's really a conspiracy like they believe, but they've been trying to make people aware of these issues since 1992 (votescam) and 1996 (votefraud).
I claim first use of "Error No. 0B" - or "No. 0B error." It'll be the new ID 10T!
That's interesting. Considering that if you would've read the article you would've read the following line:
Among their surprises: all of Maryland's machines had two identical locks, which could be opened by any one of 32,000 keys or be easily picked.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
"The computers crashed," I was told. There were three poll monitors, all on cell phones, trying to get through to somebody - anybody - to help them reboot.
Once they got through, I couldn't hear everything that was said, but I did hear the words "OK, now I see 'Windows CE' - what should I do?" I left. I am going back now. I hope I get to vote.
No Inflation Taxation without Representation
He is in the race. He is not pursuing the position actively. It means that his name is on the ballots and if people like him, they will vote for him.
(Think of it as setting error bars on the poll results. Do you want to be able to believe the results to 5%? 1%?)
Wouldn't it be funny if, in November, the voting machines actually worked properly and were not rigged, but the election was STILL stolen? Contrary to popular belief, the main problem in Florida was not unreliable paper voting systems, which accounted for a few hundred misplaced votes. The main killer was the erroneous exclusion of tens of thousands of blacks from the voter lists by Database Technologies (DBT). http://archive.salon.com/politics/feature/2000/12/ 04/voter_file/
Diebold may come out of the 2004 election smelling like roses, so nobody will care when 2008 rolls around. And the election can still be stolen in both instances, with one weapon (manipulated voter lists) in '04, and yet another (rigged machines) in '08.
Who says the neocons are dumb? Not me!
I voted on the touchscreens here in San Jose for the first time today.
It was a weird experience. I hit big yellow on-screen "button" at the end to cast my vote. The computer made a trilly beep and ejected the smart card. It was very uncomfortable not knowing whether my vote had been recorded correctly, though.
But then I thought back to my very first time voting, in 1996 in Brookline, MA. They had these big booths with little levers beneath every possible thing you could vote for (a little lever beneath each name, a little lever beneath "yes" and "no" for the initiatives). You'd pull the appropriate levers to indicate your vote. The thing is, I wasn't sure how to make sure that my ballot was cast. I surmised that just opening the ballot booth cast my vote--but I wasn't sure.
(There's a description of it under "Mechanical Lever Machines" at http://www.lwvnj.org/booth/machines.html. And, I now know for the first time that I surmised correctly.)
It turns out that those machines also lacked a paper trail. So for all of the times I've voted, I wonder how many times my votes actually counted.
At least with the computer, I'm SURE I cast it correctly. How do I know? Because the computer made a trilly beep to tell me. Somehow, that's more reassuring.
My vote may not actually be counted this time, but at least I KNOW it wasn't because of my screw up.Just remember if your local voting station is having technical problems (which is true for about 100% of them) dont offer your help - If you even touch the machine other than to vote you are probably commiting atleast 16 offences. Trying to diagnose the problem could be considered a federal offence, a terrorist act, and a violation of the DMCA all in one! not to mention of a violation of your local states 'visible errection in a public place' law.
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Hanging chads are a lot different to crosses in boxes. In Australia we use paper and pencil in our elections and we don't have any problems.
We also have the Diebold machines in Alameda County, California. I can tell you that your vote is not stored on the smart card. The precinct workers have a machine that activates the smart card, writing a token onto it that identifies which party's ballot you should get. Once you select "cast ballot" on the machine, it deletes the token from the smart card so that you can't vote twice. The smart cards are reused repeatedly during the day.
One of our team spoke to the minority leader of the Ohio Senate, and she is very upset that they are using extreme political pressure to get Ohio counties to use Diebold no matter what.
Mike Wertheimer, our team leader in our original test, will be on ABC news tomorrow morning and CBS news tomorrow night. Look for it.
We witness not a fallen world, but falling every day - The Call.
I asked for a "paper ballot" -- an absentee ballot. Mailed in my request 2 weeks ago, sent in the vote 2 days ago, no muss, no fuss. Voting "in the comfort of my own home". Although it would have been more satisfying to complain in person. In 2006 when they add the paper receipts, I'll go back to the polls.
It was exactly what had happened when I went to vote this early evening in San Diego, and it was even worse. Both poll workers (there were only two) LEFT the place unmanned for more than 5 minutes while discussing the problem with their supervisor upstairs. Needlessly to say the voters witnessing the whole thing were totally outraged.
American's only vote when it matters.. like who's going to be the next American Idol.
I know you were only joking, but the funny thing is, you're actually right, and network execs have noticed. The wheels are already turning for an "American Idol"-style TV show to choose a presidential candidate. The show is called "American Candidate," and although it won't let me see the page because I'm not in the US, here's the link.
The hope is that if an election is "glammed-up" like TV shows, that voter interest will be piqued. In all seriousness, a surprising large number of people actually do vote in shows like "American Idol," and "Big Brother." If we could harness that kind of excitement and focus it on something like an election, we may just be able to restore voter interest.
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