Slashdot Mirror
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."
how hard is it to have a system that when person A votes for Candidate X, increments X's vote-count by 1? How can something as simple as basic counting fail. How bad are the programmers for this e-voting stuff?
Why are there no comments? Looks like we need independent auditors for Slashcode!
something seems buggy here
In Canada, for a federal election we record something like 15 million hand-written votes in a few hours.
Why can't the torch-bearer of democracy even remotely get this right? Is it because there is no federal standard, or do Amercians really not care that much?
just = (My)Opinion.toCents();
/puts flame shield on /removes flame shield
This seems to be, though the very idea may anger many on Slashdot, a situation where the application of technology is bad because we are trying to fix something that is not broken. Regardless of your personal party affiliation, what happened in Florida was at least mitigated by the availability of some kind of paper trail for the votes - once the electrons flow from the voting machine switch, there is no positive record that they ever existed. Also, it is important to remember the fact that people too stupid to manipulate a paper ballot probably will also have trouble with E-voting (reference recent Slashdot story "Fixing your parents PC").
It seems pretty open & shut. They have no clue what the real results should be.
Maybe they can call in some UN observers (or Haitian officials) to supervise the next round of elections.
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.)
Why does this have to be up to the candidates? Clearly by the mere fact that incorrect ballots were being shown, the people were not properly given the ability to vote for the candidate of their choice. Their choice may have not even been on the ballot, since many people were shown ballots for other precincts. Shouldn't this automatically trigger a "do-over"?
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
for those who prefer not to RFTA
"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."
cleetus
Maybe this is a reflection of society's attitude in general. I sense that a new level of apathy has developed over the last decade or so. Our politicians have stooped to such lows that they have no credibility left at all, and by association neither does the whole political system. We assume that politicians are lying and impotent, but we don't react with horror any more, because we just take it for granted. We assume that the election system is hopelessly broken and probably blatantly rigged, but we don't care anymore. What's the good of worrying about it if we feel there's nothing we can do?
Politicians know this about us too. They know they can rack up a rediculous deficit without getting thrown out of office, because we don't care. They know they can get away with starting a war on false pretenses if they feel like, because we don't care. I sometimes wonder what an elected official would have to do in order to get thrown out in protest. Is there any limit to what they can just shrug off?
Somewhere along the line, whatever systems we used to have in place that gave some power to individual citizens have failed us or disappeared. There used to be checks and balances in the system to stop governments doing rediculous things. Voters used to think they had some power through the ballot box. Individuals used to be able to run for public office and make a difference.
It's a sad thing indeed when a whole society loses faith in an important part of what makes it a functional community.
Not neccessarily. I think it may be because they're giving us the wrong access code or something. At least, all of my posts in this thread so far have shown up under an adjacent story which is posted on the same web site.
I swear, these electronic messaging systems are just too unreliable.
-- MarkusQ
P.S. And darn it, why can't I get a simple paper reciept when I post?!
Actually, despite the timestamps on the story I'd swear this story didn't even show up for me a couple hours ago, when the Kodak lawsuit story was at the top, followed by the SCO one. This is definitely a story I'd have clicked on.
Glitch in the Matrix?
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 .
Were voters walking into the election so blindly that they didn't even notice THE WRONG PEOPLE on the ballot?!?! I know it's probably on the difference in something like "Sanitation Commisioner" or some crap, but come on! No wonder the school boards here in South Carolina are filled with people who have last names beginning with a letter before M. They're alphabetically the first people on the ballot!
I was a poll watcher last spring at a polling place for a local election, as part of an assignment for my Political Science class. For the most part, it was very boring, but, like a true geek, I passed the time by recording demographics for my own notes: approx age, gender, couples, singles, kids, who had problems, etc. I also watched the actual poll workers a great deal. In a district where thousands and thousands of potential voters live, turn-out was in the low hundreds. The vast, vast, vast majority of these were elderly citizens.
All of the poll workers were retired. The people who are running our elections at the local level are the ones who a) were thoroughly taught pride in our nation's democratic process and b) have enough time to register to vote, decide who to vote for, and then actually get up off their butts and go vote. It is not surprising in the least that the mostly elderly population of poll watches has trouble doing anything more than the simplest tasks on a completely foreign computer application.
After seeing the way the supposedly 'trained' poll workers at my polling location were left clueless when anything even slightly out of the ordinary happened, it's obvious that some reform is needed in this area (our city used pen+paper voting, counted by machine).
Unfortunately, until more people start to care about elections, poll workers will consist of whoever is willing to sign their name for the job, regardless of whether they are truly able to do what's required.
More people voted than 100% of those registered?
Shocked! I am appalled.
Sincerely,
Chicago
the future is here, it is just not evenly distributed - w. gibson
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!
This seems like a flaw in the technology itself. The old way, you'd have to assert your name and address to a human poll worker, who then gave you the specific ballot.
The method described in the article is equivalent to the poll worker giving you a stack of ballots, one for each district, and just accepting whichever one you decide to give back to hir.
Even with paper ballots, the poll workers could have given out the wrong ballot to the voters. It wouldn't have made a difference in the results. It's still the wrong ballot, whether it's paper or bits.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
where they say that recounts aren't needed due to the wide margins of victory. Did these braniacs ever consider that maybe the reason for the wide margins IS THAT MORE PEOPLE VOTED THAN REGISTERED.
Poll worker incompetence aside, the only real alternative to this is to start over. I don't care what they think the margin of error is, due to the number of blatantly screwed up ballots, as soon as there's ANY QUESTION, you THROW THE VOTE OUT AND START OVER. This may not be economically feasable; I'm unfamiliar with the frequency of these kinds of problems.
If you've caught this many misvotes that actually hit the system, how many did you miss?
Ya, I go to UCI here in Orange County and I know that only 3 (myself, my gf, and my roomie) of the 20 people I know who even care to register, voted. My friends and I saw some scandalous result like this coming a mile away what with other "success" like this having occured in tests and other area around the nation. How could we not see this coming? Just think about it: 1)Needless, expensive upgrade to a faulty, lesser secure technology 2)OLD poll-workers who still believe computers are the internet teaching younger and older voters alike how to use he polls if the voters are to lazy to watch the video. 3)The majority of active voters are people of the same demographic. 4)The interface is user-UNfriendly. Watch the video. Access codes, wheels instead of arrows, and a physical end-all-and-submit-ballot-whether-or-not-your-actu ally-done button. It was either doomed from the beginning or planned to fail.
>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.
I never realized how unstable the US voting system was until the Florida incident. How do you know that votes are tabulated correctly in Canada and/or the UK? Maybe your Labour vote was really given to the Tory (or whatever).
Obviously, the problem *in this case* is twofold:
1. They didn't test these systems enough.
2. They have no way of fixing the problem, since they have no audit trail.
Another point is that the problem that arose is not a technological one per se. They could have made the same mistake in previous elections. If people are sent to the wrong voting booth or given the wrong ballot, you have the same effect. This is exacerbated by the fact that this is the first Presidential election since redistricting (in 2000, people may have voted in a different place). Further, the new electronic machines probably increased turnout.
Again, I say: "How do you know that your ballots are counted correctly?" How do you know that you (and everyone else) filled out the correct ballot (the actual problem here)? How do you know that the way you (and everyone else) filled out the ballot is the way that the ballot is meant to be filled out (the problem in Florida)?
Are you really so sure of your system that you can say absolutely that it is working? On what do you base this? Lack of complaints?
So the election officials panic at the problems in 2000 and run out and the newest, slickest gadgets they can find. Somebody should give them some valium, have them count to ten, and show them how NASA does procurement.
You don't use untested technology for something this important. The perception is that all the old voting systems are inadaquate. What a load of bunk. In the Twin Cities, we use optical scanners, which are fast, easy to use, and hard to screw up. The scanning machine can even complain instantly if you do something silly like vote for two condidates in the same race. I'll stop rambling now.
Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do. (Isaac Asimov)
Of course you wouldn't know it by reading the headline...
Uh, how was the the headline misleading? It said more e-ballots cast than there were voters, and in some precincts more e-ballots were cast than there were voters. The headline didn't claim there was any misconduct and neither did the blurb, all it said was that there was a fuck-up, which there clearly was.
The fact that there was no misconduct doesn't really make the situation any better, in fact in some ways it makes it worse. If there was clear fraud involved it would probably be more likely for the vote to be redone, instead they're just shruging and saying oh well.
The fact that some precincts lost voters while others gained doesn't make it "even out" or anything like that either. The people who were given the wrong ballot _didn't_ get to vote for the person they wanted in their precinct and most likely voted for someone completly random in another precinct.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Very well put. I was just thinking about this today... feeling a bit depressed that the upcoming Presidential election is just going to be another chance to choose the lesser evil. What happened to our leaders? Oh, I remember... they bowed out and threw in for the party line. Some leaders.
I still hold out hope that the citizens of some big state like California will lay the smack down on the Federal government and threaten to secede if things don't change. I'd like to see my own state do it, but we don't have the clout. "Fuck with Indiana and we'll... we'll... stop selling you corn!" Oooh, scary.
What is this about party affiliation? Is that talking about political parties? The way that I read that is that the ticket issued by the worker somehow contains information about the political party that the voter is (presumably) disposed to vote for. If that is true then it is anything but a secret ballot.
I suspect (and hope) that I have misunderstood something here -- can someone please explain.
As an election officer for Fairfax County, Virginia, this sounds much more like a training issue than a problem with the machines.
I can't speak for Orange County, but in Fairfax County we have fairly a sophisticated training program that allows our officers to have time with the machine.
We learn to set it up, activate the machine, give voters access, close the polls, and generate the final results.
I don't know about Orange County's machines, but ours are preprogrammed with all the ballots for the precincts and the initialization of the machine with our precinct location smartcard determines that we have the correct ballot.
Our instructions even instruct us to check the ballot against what we were given in our kits to verify that the machine is correct.
It's possible if these machine work in similar fashion that the Orange County Registrar sent out the wrong precinct location cards, and that resulted in the numbers getting skewed.
In all honesty, any voting machine will work properly, but training deficiencies are where the problems arise. You don't need a paper trail, you don't need old fashioned paper ballots, but you do need poll workers that have been trained and familiarized with the equipment and contingencies for when things go wrong.
Fairfax County has been working without a paper trail for years now. Our old Shouptronic 1242 machines recorded the results in a large memory cartridge and only printed out a final tape at the end of polling.
Even the old lever action mechnical machines didn't create a paper trail. I think many in the slashdot crowd are a little deluded in thinking that a paper chit will solve all of voter ills.
In Flordia, one report I read pointed out that the chad trays filled up and prevented the punch from fully extending through the machine. Emptying the chad tray would have solved the issue. But that goes back to training for the poll workers and election officers.
But this last election was only a primary, and as such was a good testing area for the general election coming up. Most jurisdictions know what is at stake, and I'm positive they will be ironing out procedural bugs which will be the correct way to solve the issue.
But regardless, everyone needs to realize that there are always going to be a percentage of spoiled ballots in any system, whether it's written, circle filled, butterfly or electronic. Yes, you can minimize the chance, but in the end it comes down to how your set up your methods and procedures.
But as I can personally attest, I've seen people successfuly use and have trouble with the touch screen voting systems, and it doesn't matter if you 18 or 80. Some people get it, some will be confused. Training and procedures are what get you over that hurdle.
-Crolis
This animation is really funny..
Isn't this problem about the level of a Freshman Programming Assignment?
What the hell is this world coming to when this is really such a problem? If it's not the programming (and it shouldn't be!!!), there's something wrong with our election monitoring process that's allowing people to vote more than once.
Assignment 1 - Week 1
1. Create an array of variables to hold election counters for each candidate.
2. Create an array of text strings to hold election choices. Use a multidimensional array so that rows may indicate offices of election and columns can indicate names.
3. Display Election choices on the screen
4. Increment array from step 1 as choices are made. Allow only one choice for each row.
Extra Credit: Allow write-ins.
This proves my theory, if they would make voting easier then more people would vote, see how good it worked. More than everybody voted which you can't argue with is much better than a measly 40% turnout.
500 dollar reward for tip(s) leading to the arrest of the person(s) who stole my sig.
Perfect example of why printed receipts are needed.
Here we have an election where the results were obviously wrong, yet no recount is possible.
The fact that the fraud is not alleged and that election was not close enough for the error to matter is irrelevant. What happens when the election is close?
There has to be a way to check the results.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Actually, under the electoral college system your single vote is more likely to sway the election in the event of a close vote than it would be in a direct majority count, and is therefore, theoretically, _more_ important.
/. article where some educated person posited this inane theory. Yes, it does in fact amplify the power of groups of small groups of voters thus allowing them to effect the larger election in ways their raw numbers would not. There are a couple reasons why the electoral college is still bad.
Ah yes, I remember the first
First, it assumes that having the chance for one vote to sway the entire election is a positive thing, or the best measure of the importance of your vote. I don't really want my vote to be the one that decides the election; I want it to be the votes of myself and everyone who has similar views, wherever they may be.
Second, as you said: your vote can only turn the election if the race is very close in your county/state. Thus only votes in contested districts are theoretically more important. Votes in uncontested districts are instead nullified. They are less important. In fact they are completely irrelevant. So to give individual voters in highly contested districts more power, you remove power from individuals in uncontested districts entriely.
This is not a good tradeoff. You disenfranchise political minorities so that a voting machine... er, I mean voter in Florida can turn the entire election.
Let me put it this way: I live in Texas. I'm not going to vote for Bush. Tell me again how the Electoral College makes my vote more important?
The enemies of Democracy are
which was understandable given the horrid design of the Florida ballots
Actually, I'd like to point out that those horrid ballots were only used in a single Florida county, Palm Beach county. A large number of counties here in Florida use optical scan ballots. These ballots, at least in the form we use where i live (Orange County) easily satisfy 1, 2 and 3 on your list above. And the poll workers easily satisfy 4.
1. Each candidate's name has a broken arrow next to it. You use a special marker to connect the two parts of the arrow next to the candidate you want to vote for.
2. After completeing your ballot you put it into a machine that scans it right there in the precinct. If you have marked your ballot in an invalid way (ie voting for two candidates for the same office) the machine spits the ballot back out and the poll workers will destory it and issue you a new ballot. I believe the law gives you 4 or 5 trys to get it right. Not that anyone should need more than one try with this ballot.
3. Since the ballot is collected, and has the candidates names on it right next to the place where people mark there vote, the ballots are in human readable form. And if you accidently mark the wrong candidate, you can ask the poll worker to destroy your ballot and give you another one, and again you have those same 4 or 5 trys to get it right. Not that any person should even need a second try, but it's there just in case.
4. While the ballot itself doesnt verify that people are in the right place, the poll workers do. They have a list of every voter in their precinct. When you come into vote, they ask for photo id, and if you use some id other than your driver's license they ask for your address. They then locate your name on the roll and verify your address, and have you sign the roll.
It's not how bad the programmers are, it's how much money the politicians are paying them to cheat at election time. Black Box Voting Until electronic voting is gone, there wont be one election we can trust. What's the problem with hiring people to count them? It gives the economy more jobs!
If carrots got you drunk, rabbits would be fucked up. - Comedian Mitch Hedberg R.I.P. 03/30/68-2/24/05
The founding fathers were in fact called 'terrorists', & most of those who signed the declaration of independence were killed (by which I mean hung - along with their families) in the resulting war.
The people who are most quietly passionate about freedom in this country are in now or were in the military. If it came to a revolution you can bet more than a few tanks would be rolling in favor of the opposition. Picking a side is practically a time honored tradition in the military and I believe still taught as a moral imperative at West Point. Which means precisely that if there were any real form of revolution in the US, a decent chunk of the US military would already be on your side.
The worst case scenarios you hear of (where the US forces crush any attempt at rebellion) assume that the military and intelligence and all of the civil defense authorities do exactly what politicians tell them to without question, up to and including blowing up orphanages. Fortunately, reality is a lot more brutal.
Even more fortunate, no matter how bad the system gets in America the foundation still allows the forces of rebellion to take over legally without ever picking up an assault rifle. That's why we have elections - if you had enough people to start a rebellion you could just get elected. If you didn't have enough people on your side, you're keenly aware that the majority of the people don't want you in charge. And if you ever lose your right to vote, you and all your neighbors (and most members of the military) have that rifle handy to remove the minority that stole your right to vote.
In regards to 4, they had that here. Then they messed it up. What you are talking about is the initial decision. What I am talking about is *verifying* that initial decision. If they put you in the wrong machine, give you the wrong ballot, or miscode your smart card, then something needs to be done at that point to verify and catch the error. Note that this happens *after* you sign the roll (i.e. the mistake is made after correctly identifying the precinct).
Note: a simple verification method is to just have all voting districts in separate locations. Then you don't have the problem of miscoded smart cards or incorrect machines. I suppose that they could issue incorrect ballots, but not by mixing them.
You must be American. Obviously you have no idea what a real armed revolt looks like.
... why, going on right now. These histories amply demonstrate that your concept of overwhelming force is a fantasy.
... for who could stand against their endless lines of redcoats in the field? Answer: American militia shooting them from behind trees and walls of field stone.
... and they dare not leave that base during the night, due to all the snipers.
Your sentiment is lost in the histories of WWII Stalingrad and the Warsaw Ghetto resistance, as well as your beloved government's military actions in the Middle East
Firstly, an armed populace a la the US Constitution should have whatever weapons the military has -- because the population WAS THE MILITARY. The modern Western forms of military (essentially degraded into mercenary forces) have broken with that. But, to an important degree, if the citizen solider can get his hands on an assault rifle, he can match the standard issue of the mercenary soldier (i.e. those "serving" in the US military today).
Secondly, if your concept of overwhelming force really functioned in Reality, then Vietnam would be America's 51st state, and Iraq would have been the 52nd by 1993. Those didn't happen, and that's because even the best equipped solider in the world can be shot in the neck at dusk in a mountain pass. Firebombing hardly dictates the outcome of a campaign.
Overwhelming force is the Big Lie that brought the British Empire their defeats in America
The right to keep and bear arms is still fundamental to a free citizenry. And they can still use it to prosecute war against their own government, should it come to that. The gov can issue forth the tanks, planes and helicopters, but will find themselves torching houses with no inhabitants, while they get picked off by rifle and bazooka fire as they make their way back to base
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
That's good.
But -- just to be clear. I don't think it is important, or even a good idea for me to have a paper copy of my vote. In fact, sending me out of the polling place with a copy of how I voted is a potential violation of the secret ballot.
One could imagine how this would work in some third world country. Perhaps the national police or an organized militia or gang could force people to vote a certain way -- and could check on them by asking to look at their ballot copy. This is not that far fetched of a scenario even in the USA. Here in Orange County, we have had instances of "volunteers" policing (and intimidating) Latino voters at polling places to prevent voting by "illegal aliens." The potential abuses are enough to require that no one leave a polling place with a paper ballot showing how they voted.
The point to having a paper ballot is so that I can stuff it into a box (after I have verified that it is correct) at the polling location where it gets mixed with all the other ballots and cannot be traced back to me. The paper ballots are then stored using an auditable, public and secure method. They are them made available for random audits and manual recounts to verify the integrity and correctness of the vote.
I made another post here about the problems with Orange Counties "access codes" and how they endanger the concept of the secret ballot.