CA Secretary of State Bans Diebold Machines

Etcetera writes "The CA Secretary of State has just announced that they're pulling the plug on the use of Diebold voting machines (thank you KNSD) as a result of the flaws that came up where they were used during March's elections. More background on the issue (not updated yet) from the Secretary of State's perspective is available here."

Comments

I don't understand electronic voting.

[guru zim]

Wouldn't it be easier just to build some sort of error checking device for paper ballots, and have that at the polls when you submit your ballot? There's got to be a better way to fix the problems with paper ballot voting than moving it to computers.

Re:I don't understand electronic voting.

[Anonymous Coward]

If they have to use paper ballots, the best way to avoid errors would be to use large print and big checkboxes. Not that difficult.

Re:I don't understand electronic voting.

[Anonymous Coward]

The basic problem here is that, in 2000, the public was shocked, SHOCKED, to learn that if you ask a person to "choose one", there is about a three percent chance that he or she will attempt to make an invalid choice, such as two candidates (overvote), or 1/10 of a candidate (unintentional "undervote"). Sometimes this is a mechanical problem (e.g., hanging chads) and sometimes it's just a combination of poor directions and voter stupidity.

Mechanical problems can be fixed (once more, what's wrong with pen and paper?).

Voter stupidity can be ignored (if they don't understand that they are only allowed to vote for one person, then they don't understand the issues well enough to cast an informed vote).

As I understand it, voting in the USA doesn't allow for the possibility that you want to say that no choice is acceptable. In that case, you have the option of staying at home (and people assuming that it is voter apathy), or voiding your vote on purpose (and people assuming that you are stupid).

Re:I don't understand electronic voting.

[DunbarTheInept]

There is always a write-in choice for every single race. Unlike a parliamentary system, in the USA the political parties are not *officially* supposed to be part of the recognized government structure at all. (In recent years they have become so, but they're not supposed to be, dammit!) They are independant organizations that decided to put forward candidates, and advertise them, and hope that the public likes them and votes on them. States have guidelines for how to get your candidate's name placed onto the ballot, basically involving a petition. If you get enough signatures, you can put whomever you like on the ballot, with a label indicating who you are. (For example, "Dear state election board, We call ourselves the Democratic Party, and we want the name Russ Feingold to be put on the ballot for Wisconsin Federal Senator. Attached is a list of signatures meeting the requirement for us to make this request, as well as identifying proof that this Russ Feingold is in fact a real person and not somebody we made up as a joke, and that he meets the minimum citizenship requirements to be a Senator.") Anybody could do that, at any time, and *poof*, it would be a political party. What will show up in the ballot for that spot will be a line that looks like:

Russ Feingold
(Democratic Party)

But, just as easily, a group could spring up and send in the same form, but have it say "Hi, We call ourselves the Utterly Fed Up Citizens Brigade, and we want you to put the name Phyllis Blanche, a housewife from Pleasantville, on the ballot. Here's our proof she's real, and here's our list of signatures...."

And the result would be:

Phyllis Blanche
(Utterly Fed Up Citizens Brigade)

And, even more so, even if nobody sent in such a letter for the candidate you like, you can always vote for anybody you like, by writing the name in. Every race has a spot where you can say "other", with a line to write on.

So, someone wanting to protest vote should use that write-in blank to do so.

Or, in other words, you vote for a PERSON, not a Party. The parties simply put the names out in the public through advertising and sponsoring debates.

The large power of the two big parties is mostly a "de-facto" standard rather than a legally enforced one. (And being someone who often votes for a third-party's candidate, it pisses me off that the two party system is becoming more and more legally enforced - such as states saying that political parties must open up their private decision making process to the public, allowing non-members to decide for them whom they will sponsor. This is what turned the "primaries" into an official event. They're not SUPPOSED to be, dammit.

I can't believe it..

[cowmix]

I thought this would never happen..

How CA goes so goes the nation..

Now if only the rest of the states follow suit

[ProgressiveCynic]

We may actually have an election, just like a real democracy!

Possible Ramifications?

[hfis]

I'm an Australian, so I'm not particularly sure what the 'status' of the election is/was, but could this mean the result may be overturned? This could lead to undesirable consequences such as new state/country level laws being made defucnt couldn't it? Please enlighten me if it was overturned, as this is the first that I've heard of them.

Kevin Shelley

[mikeophile]

If it's on paper, you'll have my vote next election.

Please let Maryland be next!

[ralphmyers]

I can only hope that MD is next in line to dump Diebold. Don't get me wrong, I love technology, and I'd really like to see the voting system automated, but lets do it the right way. Now if I were a true geek, I'd have a link to the John's Hopkins study on the Diebold machines.

Don't worry

[Anonymous Coward]

It was only Diebold's machines that were banned, not black-box voting machines in general.

Diebold will spin off its voting machine division, and it'll be bought out by some other manufacturer like Sequoia or AccuPoll. You'll see these machines again. They'll just have another name on them.

bans for a while

[Wellmont]

The've banned it for the next elections, and only in certain counties....they're in the only counties that had the machines up and running, but that doesn't mean another county couldn't push for it that isn't on the list of banned.
Personally Diebold should have taken initiative and just attached a printer to the machines and used the printed ballots as proof-of-vote/voting-means. But it seems like they get the money and then they don't think to fix their problems...initially when this whole fiasco came up I was supportive of the whole electronic initiative because it made it SO much less confussing and set a standard for the entire state. But i guess they screwed that up.

Re:I used one of these in March

[SultanCemil]

I agree whole heartedly with this.

Honestly, why is it so hard to print out a paper receipt. I'm not a tin-foil hat type of guy, but this just REEKS of conspiracy. What possible reason is there NOT to print out a receipt and put it in a box JUST IN CASE?

I mean, wouldn't the easiest system simply be a touchscreen vote that printed out a receipt and also did vote1+=1 ? How is that so hard to mess up?

Re:Finally...

[MillionthMonkey]

Myself and my family are from Napa, CA (one of the cities that had some serious problems with Diebold), and I can't explain how frustrating it is to not be sure if your vote was counted properly or not. For democracy to work, you must have faith in the security and validity of the elections.

Well said. This is a subtle but critical point and it goes straight over most people's heads. "Our county didn't have any problems!"

A common rule of legal ethics states that the appearance of a conflict of interest is a conflict of interest. It creates unaddressable concerns about impartiality and undermines faith in a process that depends on it. Voting is the same way. The appearance of voter disenfranchisement is voter disenfranchisement. It deprives us of our rights as citizens to know for certain that our votes are being counted, which is what disenfranchisement is. Perfectly reasonable voter concerns about touchscreen voting have not been alleviated, nor can they be alleviated. So you voted touchscreen? How do you really know? You really don't, and what's more, you really can't. Worst of all, in some counties, it turns out you really didn't.

Thomas Jefferson said the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. I bet wasn't even considering pretty flashing lights as a threat to the republic.

Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you know? The system works.
Dodgy company does dodgy things. This goes unnoticed at first but eventually enough people take notice and the powers that be move to make amends.

I'm always amused by the hysterical ranting of, slashbots. Take this example...
Headline: "Corrupt politician introduces bill that gives excessive power to corporation X"
Slashbot response: "It's the end of democracy as we know it!"
Reality: The bill hasn't even been debated and has zero chance of passing.

Basically, there always have and always will be people who try to subvert the system. Eventually, they get noticed and changes are made to stop them from doing it. This, my friends is the endless cycle of human existance.

I know that Slashdot is a media outlet and likes a beatup, but do try to chill out a bit more; we're supposed to be more intelligent than tabloid readers.

Re:Good.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Slashfolk don't do anything but whinge and whine on a site that only geeks visit. "

Rubbish, we've had story after story where Slashfolk have voted, lobbied, written and protested. Me included.

"Lets face it, a significant number of people here havn't lost their virginity and live in their parents basement..."
and a significant number of people run companies, are leaders or have strong political influence.

It's okay: people like them!

[Handyman]

Diebold has been a frequent target of such groups, though most California county election officials say problems have been overstated and that voters like the touch screen systems first installed four years ago.

That's what they say, the problems are overstated because voters like the machines? Hell, I like a lot of things that are easy to use, but that doesn't mean they're good for me! Think about these:

* beer
* cola
* sweets
* credit card
* slot machine
* M$ software

You don't: Re:I think i speak for us all.....

[samjam]

We all know its possible to design secure and tamper evident voting machines -- its probably not even that hard.

What rubbish you speak. Election counting is and always has been simple.

When you get a complex system like a computer you need to be sure thats all its doing and thats all its ever doing.

When steel ballot boxes are being stored they can be stored in a warehouse. Its hard to tamper with ignorant steel boxes in a meaningful way.

To subvert thousands of humans who count ballots manually leaves, lets say, thousands of human witnesses.

When electronic voting machines are being stored they need to be watched carefully to make sure they aren't modified, don't have their guts swapped out, etc, this between-election security is also very expensive.

Its expensive before you start, its expensive to run, and expensive to store with many possible points of subversion.

It will do humans good to count votes and realise they don't want to delegate safeguarding their democracy to fickle machines.

Sam

Re:You don't: Re:I think i speak for us all.....

[Anonymous Coward]

When steel ballot boxes are being stored they can be stored in a warehouse. Its hard to tamper with ignorant steel boxes in a meaningful way.

Heh, obviously someone who wasn't alive to see Richard Daley's shenanegans.

Ignorant Steel Boxes sitting in said warehouse can not only be opened and tampered with, they can be wholesale replaced. This has been done countless times in past elections. Crap, there were enough physical ballot related shenanegans going on in Florida last election to point out that that system is still flawed.

"Oh, sorry, we 'ran out' of ballots. Yes, I know, we had an accurate count of how many registered voters were in this area, yet somehow we 'ran out' all the same. Next time live in a more Republican county, they've got plenty."

Not to say that electronic ballot boxes are the way out, especially ones manufactured by a company run by a GWB dittohead.

Re:You don't: Re:I think i speak for us all.....

[TyrranzzX]

You miss the point; anyone who can say "Donkey" or "Elephant" can insert their drivers lisence, press a button with associated picture on a touchscreen, and vote. It doesn't matter how technologically retarded or just plain dumb they are or weither or not they can read or write.

Personally, if you can't fill out a scantron form or write your own name in english or some language, you shouldn't be voting. Older people are the exception, since all this tech is so new to them that telling them they have to figure out some electronic box is cruel. Of course, keep the paper ballot handy and required by law. This way, people have the option of using paper if they don't trust the machines.

Re:You don't: Re:I think i speak for us all.....

[gnu-generation-one]

It's not just one massive replacement machine you need for voting. It's incremental improvement over paper voting.

[a] Design a machine which helps voters to tick a voting card. Uses whatever touchscreen display is fashionable this month, and spits out a card with that box ticked.
- If it fails, voters can tick the box by hand.
- If it misvotes, voters can bin it and ask for another card
- It can be verified as the voter takes the printed card and sees the tick in the right box

[b] Design a machine which takes poll cards and sorts them into piles, depending on which candidate is ticked (plus an "invalid selection" pile)
- If it fails, the cards can be sorted by hand.
- It can't misvote because it has no knowledge of which box represents which candidate.
- It can and should be verified by people flicking through the sorted piles of cards to confirm they're all for the same candidate.

[c] Design a machine which can count how many cards are in a stack (similar to banknote counting machines)
- If it fails, the number of cards can be counted by hand.
- It can't misvote because it has no knowledge of which candidate's cards are being counted at any one time
- It can and should be verified by people randomly selecting piles of cards to count by hand, as many as they can manage, and checking the accuracy of their answers against the counting machines.

How hard can it be? Why do people insist on votes being recorded electronically? Why do people insist on votes being sent by modem, rather than announced by the returning officer? Why do people trust machines to count their votes, when it's trivial to do so with a hall full of volunteers? It's not even much faster to use a computer, especially not when the machines are untrustworthy and the result can't be announced until the lawsuits subside.

Re:You don't: Re:I think i speak for us all.....

[Anonymous Coward]

What rubbish you speak. Election counting is and always has been simple.

Then why did so many states have problems with recounts during the last election? Not just Florida, but Oregon and New Mexico too? And how would steel boxes deal with hanging/pregnant chads?

No, election counting on that scale is not simple. As with anything done by humans, do it enough times and there will be errors.

In fact, it's so hard that I daresay that giving all the votes to the winner irregardless of the actual count is probably not mathematically valid. Perhaps there should be a margin of error (0.5% maybe) in vote counting. If the difference between the top candidates falls within that margin of error, the electoral votes for that state should be split between those top candidates (in some way - lots of states have exactly 3 electoral votes).

Re:You don't: Re:I think i speak for us all.....

[gnu-generation-one]

"Electronic voting is in theory 100% accurate. It's not susceptable to getting a ballot jammed in the machine"

Good point. Is the guaranteed accountability of a paper system worth the additional inaccuracy it might introduce?

"Two reasons I'd trust a fully audited system over a hand counted one"

What could possibly be audited about an electronic system? You touch the screen, and *as if by magic*, the machine somehow records a count.

To quote slashdot:
[1] Take your vote
[2] ???
[3] Announce a winner

Did you vote? Well, I pressed the button on the machine, so I assume that my vote got counted, and for the correct candidate.

Perhaps we underestimate the scale of the auditing necessary. Look at the methods for producing safety-critical software, an approximate standard for something which MUST be verifiably correct. A quote from NASA indicates $1000 per line of code (that's 1960's money), and even then they were accepting a certain probability of errors for which they had to compensate with additional checking and redundant systems.

How many lines of code will a voting machine take? For it to be "fully audited", somebody needs to spend that $1000 per line of code. And don't forget that the voters are expecting a shiny antialiased GUI at $1000 per line, encryption (which is difficult enough to verify at the best of times), and everything down to the disk access, kernel and filesystem needs to be verified. It's a big job, just to reach the same standards that paper ballots already offer.

And what standards will we set for ourselves? At the moment, they're using which can only be descibed as Visual-Basic like.

When people talk about electronic voting, they're talking about using Access databases, and Windows interfaces, and programmers who haven't even heard of auditable development techniques.

Re:You don't: Re:I think i speak for us all.....

[plalonde2]

Don't move the ballots! You *must* count the ballots at the polling place if you want any accountability. It's not hard for any serious candidate to provide an observer for each polling place; they can even count by hand. If a candidate can't provide an observer his/her organization has serious problems and shouldn't be using up ballot space.

People keep thinking that moving ballots makes them easier to count, instead it just opens another opportunity to commit fraud by switching boxes, or similar shenanigans.

Stand up for your right to fair elections: request in-place counting immediately at the close of ballotting, with a representative of each candidate present.

Re:You don't: Re:I think i speak for us all.....

[plalonde2]

You don't have reps accompany the ballot boxes to the central place because there is no reason to move the ballots, as well as two compelling reasons not move them: Counting efficiency and graft-proofing.

If you count your ballots locally you get to apply completely scallable divide-and-conquer methods to vote counting - single polling places each only get so many ballots, compared to a centralized location.

Furthermore, after centralizing the ballots it requires *less* graft to corrupt the election: only people counting at the central place need be corrupted, plus they control more votes! Instead, if the votes are counted in smaller batches more people would have to be compromised, and each such compromise would have less effect on the final result.

Re:You don't: Re:I think i speak for us all.....

[DunbarTheInept]

There is no reason you can't marry the best aspects of both an electronic count and a paper ballot. A paper ballot is the least corruptable record of the vote, and leaves a manual method for disputes to be settled. An electronic count makes less errors that a human count, and can get the final tallies done within a few seconds of the last poll closing.

The system I use when I vote is just like that. You complete a ballot on paper using the provided felt tip pen.

Then YOU, the voter, walk the ballot from the privacy booth over to the scanner machine, and then YOU, the voter, feed your ballot into the machine (either direction - it can tell which way it is and read it rightside up, upside down, top to bottom, or bottom to top).

Then, and this is the important part, the scanner processes your ballot RIGHT AWAY, in less time than you can blink an eye. If the green light lights up, then the machine understood your ballot , tallied it in it's local count, and dropped it into the archival lockbox, and you can leave. If the red light lights up, then the scanner makes it really obvious your ballot wasn't readable because it spits it back out at you instead of putting it into the box. That way you know your ballot is fouled. The poll worker who's watching over people using the scanner will get you a new ballot, destroy the old one, and let you walk back to the privacy booths to try filling it out again.

This solves so many of the stupid problems Florida had:

1 - The voter knows when he leaves, that he leaves with the confidence that his ballot was readable by the machine.

2 - The voter has a chance to correct his unreadable ballot HIMSELF - so there's no need to second-guess what the voter intended. Every ballot that's saved in the lockbox is one that you know is scannable because it already *was* scanned.

3 - The tallying is fast because the scanner machine keeps it's own sub-tally as it goes. When the polls close, all that needs to be done is to sum up the subtotals from each scanning machine.

4 - When a voter uses a write-in blank, the ballot is marked specially in a way that flags it for human counting later, and is sorted in such a fashion that these ballots are easy to find in the pile.

5 - A paper record is preserved as well as an electronic one.

6 - The ballot is so simple that I can't see how a touchscreen interface could be any simpler.

7 - To double-check the integrety of the scanner machines, a random selection of a few of them is audited every time, with it's subtotal compared against a human count of the ballots that passed through it. If these spot checks show suspicious discrepency, then the whole vote is human-counted, and investigation into the problem will begin, or at least that's what I'm told. (So far this process has not uncovered discrepency, except in a few cases where it's understandable why the human count and the machine count differ - like a stray mark that a human considered a double vote, but it wasn't dark enough for the scanner to see it.)

Re:DIebold may actually face criminal charges

[JaredOfEuropa]

This guy gives a nice twist on things, when confronted with the possibility of criminal charges, after uncertified software was installed on 'production' voting machines. (from the Wired article:)

"This doesn't solve the problems," Iredal said. "It just sets a tone of confrontation at a time when we should be working together to address issues with the certification process."

Soooo... there is a problem with the certification process, rather than with the business practices at Diebold. Of course Diebold should be allowed to install whatever software they deem neccesary on the machines, we can trust them, right?

Electronic voting with this level of security and accountability would be as safe as doing a paper ballot vote, then giving all the ballots to me for counting. Of course I'd promise to count accurately, wink wink, nudge nudge.

Re:The Real Reason

[LostCluster]

Nothing Diebold ran during the primary elections turned out to have its certifications in order. They got caught running an uncertified version of their software on the day it most counted.

The list of violations is just plain piling up, and in an industry where one use of uncertified software is too many to be tolerated.

Re:Finally...

[LostCluster]

Worse than just having an apparent interest in the outcome of the elections, Diebold managed to trip over the safety valves that are supposed to make sure no company can tamper with the results for any reason.

The software they ran, everywhere in the state, on election day was not the version that they submitted for certification. You just can't skip these kinds of checks and expect to be treated like your software is honest, because these reviews exist because we're just not going to take anybody's word for it.

At best, they cut a corner they weren't allowed to. But worse yet, they undermine their credibility in claiming that we can trust that they're not going to attempt to fix what is likely to be an extremely close election in November.

Good vs. Bad

[NoSuchGuy]

Good for democracy
Bad for Diebolds Business

Which one do you prefer?

Re:DIebold may actually face criminal charges

[Triskele]

I'm surprised there has been so little reaction like this in the US. Over here in England, gerrymandering or interfering with the ballot is a very serious offence comparable to treason. Given how seriously you lot take your 'democracy' I'm surprised you don't jump on Diebold from a very great height leaving nothing but a few jailed execs and bankrupt investors.

We fined Dame Shirley Porter 30m for rigging the sale of council houses in her constituency to Tory rather than Labour buyers.

We still hand count things cos we're a quaint backwards country but I'd rather that than trust a machine who's owners I don't trust.

An overlooked alternative?

[beforewisdom]

Remember those achievment tests in school?

You get a number two pencil and blacken in the dots for your choice ( no hanging chads)?

Why not use those? You would get the best of both worlds: electronic voting...and an easily verifiable paper trail.

Listening to the radio last night ( Air America ) some congressman introduced a bill offering a similar ( but not the same ) alternative in a bill.

( about time ).

He said out of 400 members, 140 jumped on the bill with him to cosponsor it.

Guys, Gals, if you care about your vote and your country now is the time to write your US Representatives to get them off their ass:

http://www.congress.com/

Re:An overlooked alternative?

[MtViewGuy]

Nice try, but I would NOT allow the use of pencils in filling out the blank spots. That's because you can have a situation where the pencil mark may not be dark enough to read for both machine and hand counts.

Now, fill in the blank with a small black ink stamp marker (where the mark on the ballot is unambigious) is something else altogether.

Re:I think i speak for us all.....

[mrdogi]

we know the republican shenanigans in florida won the presidential election.

I am getting so tired of reading this. As I understand it, Gore shot himself in the foot. If he had asked for a recount for the whole state, he would have won. Instead he decided he only wanted a recount of the counties where he thought he should have won, but didn't. Ironically, those counties Bush would hve won anyway.

I could be wrong on some of those details, but that is how I remeber the whole thing.

PAPER?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I get a Paper Receipt for my $0.99 Slurpie
at 7-11,
why can't I get a Paper Receipt when I am voting
for THE LEADER OF THE USA ?!?!

Is that Too gosh darn much to ask for in a Democracy?

Let's try this solution.

[MtViewGuy]

After reading from a small sidebar article in the November 2003 issue of Popular Science magazine, it appears that the best method is something akin to the Scantron sheets used on the SAT and ACT college-entrance exams.

Remember the controversial ballot punch card machines? Well, instead of punching holes in a ballot it allows a small space for you to put a small ink stamp mark on the ballot at certain point. I emphasize the use of an black ink stamp mark because it makes it very unambigious what you chose for your ballot selection.

The result is a ballot sheet with clearly-readable ink marks, something that will allow for both machine and hand counts with no worries about things like hanging and dimpled chads. :-)

Re:Finally...

[drinkypoo]

I am from the USA, and I can't explain how frustrating it is to not be sure if the election was railroaded or not. Dubya and his cuz have seriously undermined this, especially in this country.

etc etc.

It's not that i'm not worried about diebold - I am. It's not that I'm not worried about the safety of e-voting, because again, I am. But really, I don't have any faith that my vote will mean anything whether it's counted properly or not.

Frankly I think it's that loss of faith the reps were going for when they either A> sabotaged the election or B> made it look like the election was sabotaged - I'm frankly not sure which it was, and neither is anyone else, except the people responsible for the flap down in FL. But the fact remains that more old people vote than younger people, and older people tend to vote republican.

What I can't decide now is whether I should vote with my heart since I don't think my vote actually means anything, and vote libertarian, or vote as if my vote did mean something, and vote for the lesser of two evils.

Re:I used one of these in March

[2short]

Sigh.

Look, I love open source too, but it alone doesn't solve every problem. Are lots of people going to review the code running on every machine? The internal structure of the chips in every machine? The integrity of every bit of every communications link used to report votes?

Give me a paper trail. I'd like the code to be open, but really the machine can do whatever it wants if it fills one simple criteria:
Produce a hard copy of the vote that can be inspected directly by both the voter at the polls and by election officials after the fact.

Then we can double-check some random sampling after the fact, or everything if the sampling finds problems or the election is close.

Verifying the integrity of the system beforehand is fine and dandy. But no amount of it is ever going to be any substitute for verifying it's integrity AFTER the fact. If you can't independantly check up on the results and confirm the machine did what it was supposed to, I don't care how much checking you did ahead of time to ensure it would do what it was supposed to.

It makes me mad, because it's not like what I (and others) am asking for is in any way hard. Just augment the existing system instead of replacing it. Currently I use a stupid (purely mechanical) machine to mark a paper ballot that I drop in a box. If you want to replace that stupid machine with a more high-techy device that counts the votes as they are cast in addition to marking a paper ballot that I drop in a box, that would be awesome. If you want to eliminate the paper ballot I drop in a box, that's just obviously stupid. I don't see any reason someone would advocate eliminating the indepenantly verifiable record unless they have some interest in not being able to tell if the machine messed up. Whether that interest is based on their wanting to rig the election or on wanting to avoid exposing problems in order to sell more machines, I don't care.

I predict...

[Guppy06]

... that Diebold will now attempt to sue the state of California for one reason or another.

RE: ... Diebold has been demonized by...

[innerweb]

So, we switch out one set of problems affecting a small percent of votes for a larger set of issues affecting a larger percentage of votes...

The basic problem is ensuring that the vote is correct and not tampered with. How can you trust a company to not tamper with something as profitable as a vote when you can not trust them to keep to the terms of the contract?

Diebold has proven beyond a doubt that they can not be trusted. They not only did not fulfill their contract, they tried to sneak a patch into a certified machine (thus de-certifying it) before an election. Hmm... If they had not been caught at that, what else could they have gotten away with. How much are local elections worth in bribe money? How much are national elections worth? If all you have is a small number of people to work with in the bribe, how hard is it? Oh, and they have a vested interest in seeing people get elected who support them. They may not use it today, but what about when times get tough and they are comfortable?

I love using computers for work flow. I help companies manage work flow for a living. Yet, there are those who have no business using these technologies at this moment. I would not trust my voting to any computer system yet.

My reasoning has to do with complexity. The more complex a system is the easier it is to pull something off. Complexity hides errors and cheats. A voting system would need to be based on something very simple. It would need to have very strong security safeguards. And, it would have to be completely open to inspection, by anyone at anytime. Anything short of this simply allows mischief to be hidden more easily.

Look at all the fallout in the Florida presidential elections. Most of it was introduced by a company that "messed up" buy disallowing people to vote in the elections. All computer based with little or no over site, tied directly to the winning family. There may be nothing to be seen in this case, but the appearance of impropriety is bad enough to damage the operations of government.

The problems with elections is not liberal or conservative. It is American. People who are drawn to power tend to do what they can get away with to keep power. Why give them one more option to illegally wield power by putting an untrustworthy system into place?

InnerWeb

What happened in texas was appalling

[FreeUser]

The other side's just as dirty, and in the USA, that kind of thing goes on all the time.

Gerrymandering is a national past-time with our elected officials.

What happened in Texas was more dramatic, and sinister, than that.

No, Gerrymandering doesn't go on "all the time." It is however fairly common, and occurs generally once every ten years when districts are redrawn as a result of census results (populations move from state-to-state, changing the electorial and congressional map, and from region to region within a state, changing local and state electorial maps).

What happened in Texas was that the Republican controlled congress conspired with the Republican governor to redraw district lines just three years after they had been redrawn (as a result of our last census)...the difference this time being that there was no democratic majority in one of the houses to force a reasonable compromise on the ruling party's governor (back then, Dubya Bush).

Because such an extraordinary action required a quorum to be present, and various other parliamentary machinations, a number of Democratic state senators made a point of not being around when the Republicans tried to steamroller these changes through. The result was the governor putting out an arrest warrant on the senators (with the idea of taking them to the capitol in chains and having the necessary quorum present), forcing the senators to seek asylum in neighboring states.

It was positively banana-republic-esque ... which is essentially what my country (the United States) has become over the last four years.

In the end other parliamentary maneuvers were taken, and I believe the Gerrymandering (without the need to compromise with the opposition) went through, guaranteeing the republicans several seats in the Congress that are currently held by democratic constituencies now divided into Republican-majority districts.

We are watching the the decline (and probably, ultimately, the fall) of a once great nation. Four years ago, after Bush Junior had stolen the election, I argued that, while we have to endure four years of a usurpur running our country, we will survivie this, and can elect a replacement in four years.

Now I'm not so sure. Even if Kerry does win, the mess they've created in four short years (the strategic and political blunders that have cost us the world's sympathy, the world's respect, and most of our non-military influence in the same world, and left the middle east a shambles, not to mention the (possibly irreversable) erosion of our fundamental constitutional rights in this country) is so tremendous that, while he at least will probably not inflict further damage, it will probably be more than one presidency, or even several, can adequately repair.

Add to that the fundamental attack on our democratic institutions, of which Diebold, Florida, and Texas are but a part, and one wonders just how much longer our civil society will survive, in any form.