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Orange County: More E-Ballots Cast Than Voters
"David Hart, chairman of Texas-based Hart InterCivic, which manufactured Orange County's voting system, said it would be impossible to identify which voters cast ballots in the wrong precincts because of steps the company had taken to ensure voter secrecy. For this reason, an exact account of miscast ballots is impossible. The good news, if the folks there can be believed, is that there is no evidence yet that any result is in jeopardy. In a masterpiece of understatement, elections system analyst Kim Alexander is quoted as saying, "Certainly this kind of problem that's occurred in Orange County doesn't do anything to contribute to greater confidence in electronic voting systems." Steve Rodermund, Orange County's registrar of voters, is quoted as saying that despite the problems, he is satisfied with the performance of Orange County's new electronic voting system."
If you read the story, the errors weren't a programming problem, they originated with the people running the booths. Some of them gave voters the wrong access code (not realizing that some of the polling stations served more than one precinct), and so the person's vote was cast for the wrong precinct.
Once again a post appears which completely misleads /.ers. This time, despite the long post, the poster failed to mention that the reason for the vote discrepancies is that workers gave voters the wrong codes, and therefore, people were voting in the wrong precincts. Most likely, the 1st precinct on the list got vote from other precint voters, resulting in a larger than %100 turnout. Simple case of garbage in-garbageout. There was no machine cracking or even machine errors that anyone has mentioned.
Vote for Pedro
I think this story is kind of misleading. There was no error in the electronic voting machines, there was no programming error, no hacked results. As far as I can tell, it seems like the problems came entirely from the people running the polling booths, who hadn't recieved adquate training/instruction. This kind of screw-up could have happened regardless of the method being used to tally the votes! The REAL problem is not that the electronic voting machines are unreliable, it's that humans are, and without the paper trail that normal procedures generate, there's no way to go back and fix mistakes. If people want to implement electronic voting on a wider basis, I think traceability is a key issue. (Provided, of course, that voter anonymity is preserved, but this shouldn't be any more of an obstacle than it is with paper ballots.)
I live in California, and have experienced this situation first hand. When i went to vote (luckily right down the street from my house) I was surprised to see how secure the system was.
(besides seeing that it was manned by a bunch of old ladies who wouldn't know how to operate the machines themselves)
The machines use no internet connection, in fact the number of cards, steps, and the size of the voting system makes it "almost" impossible to hack.
Brief description for those of you who have not come into contact or heard of the system yet:
You walk in and provide them with your name, they hand you a card with a smart chip (flash memory) and you walk over to the tablet-computer-like voting machines to cast your vote. At this point your name is on the flash memory, and when you insert the card you can begin the voting process. the only cord leading away from the unit was a power cord and I didn't pick up any WiFi signals with my ears.
You continue your voting, and the selections you made on the screen are put onto the card when you finish. Then your card is ejected back into your sweaty little palms.
you hand said unmarked card to the attendant and she puts it safely with the others. I've also heard the cards are kept for a manual tally back at the voting offices.
What is so great about this you ask? Well considering that the machines are not biased and that the people who built or were contracted to build them did not tamper with them, there is very little chance for a misread vote, or a "purposefully changed" vote. On the other hand from the information I've gathered the system is also open to a more wide spread hack or foul play because of it's final form: mass data statistics. one file or even multiple files holding numbers...MUCH easier to change as opposed to 6 million ballots, but at the same time much harder unless you have the knowledge or skill set which is (I suppose) very steep, deep, and wide.
Weighing all of the factors, I believe that the system is just about as secure as before, but it still needs a lot of work. (it could be ten times better, easily .
We were getting it right before this. We had minor problems here and there, but nothing that drastic. Then, Florida. Because it was the deciding state, the vote was extremely close, and it had no uniform standards for what counted as a 'vote,' it became a battle to the death that had to be settled by the courts finally. And because of inherent "flaws" that hadn't caused any big problems up to then, the ACLU sued everyone who was using the punch bllot and forced them to go to new methods which produced (surprise) chaos the first time out. My city had clueless poll workers who couldn't even boot their machines for hours at the beginning, turning away hundreds or thousands (no one is sure even now) of voters. Even scarier, the poll workers were getting assisted by walk-in voters who had technical knowledge and were helping them to fix the problems. I heard one guy on the radio talking about how he'd poked around in the OS (WIndows CE, no less) on the Diebold machine, looking for the missing application. A number of poll workers took the manines home after they were trained and stored them in their garages until voting day. The 'seal' was a sticker that could be easily removed and reapplied without detection. Not exactly what you'd call secure. Tell me this is better than what we had, I dare you. Thanks, ACLU!
>Thanks, ACLU
This is bullshit. The ACLU and NAACP wanted shorter lines and a felon list that included only, you know, felons.
In fact the debacle in Florida showed us we WEREN'T getting it right and we needed a federal standard, like most western nations, but the states were sold on the 'digital voting' snake-oil and here we are. And make no mistake about it, they were sold on this knowing full well how easily these machines can be manipulated.
'Tis politics as usual.
Why repeat it if you are not sure. Before our Democratic Governor was recalled, Pete Wilson was the Governor of California, a republican.
California has a very liberal state assembly because of how the districts are laid out, however Californians tend to vote conservative. In recent years we passed propositions to get rid of bilingual education, stop illegals from getting government assistance, only recognize a marriage between a man and a woman, and recall our Democratic governor.
The idea of a Republican taking California in a presidential election is not far fetched at all.
Spare me the open source mantra of it's "The only way to know your vote is counted". As big of a fan of OSS as I am open source would do nothing to make sure my vote is properly counted.
You might say "Sure we can view the source" but how can you A) Make sure that's the source running on the machine; B) Make sure the results aren't edited after the election (vi results anyone?).
The only way for e-voting to be secure (open source or closed) is with a paper audit trail. Print me out a paper ballot based on my voting selections and let me drop it into a drop box. Until that happens I won't trust any e-voting system (closed or open source | copyleft or copyright). Anything else has the potential of being fucked with. I don't trust any balloting scheme that can't be recounted by my 85 year old Grandmother who volunteers for election day -- and neither should you.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Take a look at the elections for the past several years. California is nearly always caried by Democratic candidates, even with the democratic candidate isn't all that popular nationwide.
OK, let's look:
(source: Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections
Year Candidate who got CA electors
2000 Al Gore (D)
1996 Bill Clinton (D)
1992 Bill Clinton (D)
1988 George Bush, Sr (R)
1984 Ronald Reagan (R)
1980 Ronald Reagan (R)
1976 Gerald Ford (R)
1972 Richard Nixon (R)
1968 Richard Nixon (R)
1964 Lyndon Johnson (D)
I think 40 years is far enough for now. Anyone who's interested go back further on their own.
Now, what do we learn from this, kids? That California is just as likely to vote for a Republican as a Democrat. To state otherwise is foolish.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.