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Indian Voting Machines Compared with Diebold
Hanuman_Ji writes "The Indian general elections, 2004 is now complete - and the result is an upset. As reported earlier, this election was conducted entirely through Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs). This article gives a nice overview of the machines used in this process and also adds a comparison with the Diebold machines. More information is also available at the equipment manufacturer's website."
Happy Trails!
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
Print out an alternate list of candidates, with your opponent swapped with an unlikely candidate. Stick it to the front of the voting machine. Anyone with 3 seconds unsupervised access to the machine can pull this off, and it may go unnoticed if it otherwise looks exactly like the original.
For those with concerns about security, hacking, etc. there are possible solutions. A good, low cost, locked-down EVM can be deployed on a standard PC - running any OS - the UI needs to be only a radio-button-type list box, with a submit/cancel button, and a tracker for each entry in the list box. The Admin views can be kept on a separate machine, and downloaded into the actual EVM PC. Top-class encryption can be thrown in with no additional complexity. A basic reporting app can tabulate and display results. No network cards needed on the EVM
What other features would ensure better acceptance of EVMs?
Elections in India are generally marvellous exercises in democracy. In national elections, hundreds of millions of people of many different kinds cast their votes and elect their representatives. Many people doubted whether democracy would flourish in India, but they are proved wrong after every election. However, the fact still remains that there are still a lot of irregularities in the electoral process.
The bulk of the states have generally free and fair elections. The poorest states, especially those in the North, do not. There, the local strongmen actively use force to swing voted to their side and in a lot of constituencies it is not the most popular candidate who wins, but the most popular. In the poorest of the poor states, this fraud happens on a very large scale.
Today, vote rigging is a very simple exercise. All you have to do is get a bunch of very strong men with weapons of some kind and visit each polling station one by one, threaten the officers there and stamp the ballot papers in your favor. The more organized efforts include printing fake ballot papers and having them counted.
Now that EVMs have been introduced, the potential for localized fraud will be several restricted in some ways. Fake ballot papers cannot be printed, votes cannot be changed or removed. However, the local strong men and criminalized parties will still be around. They will still be able to threaten/cajole/buy people and subvert the democratic process. These problems are more systemic and will solve themselves with the passage of time.
Centralized election fraud is a very different matter. On paper, it looks like EVMs can take care of it. The results of "electronic" elections can be easily verified repeatedly and it should be somewhat difficult to systematically rig EVMS. I'm sure that people will find some way of manipulating EVMs, but it shouldn't knew the results much.
Finally, EVMs have delivered a lot of tangible results in India already. For example, results have been tabulated almost instantly, considerably shortening the political and economic uncertainty associated with elections. They definitely help democracy at every level in India.
HOW'S MY POSTING? CALL 1-800-POSTING
From the comparison in the article:
Power Supply
EVM: 6V alkaline batteries
Diebold: electricity
So batteries don't produce electricity? Interesting...
"...and the result is an upset. As reported earlier, this election was conducted entirely through Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs)."
I see no reason why using EVMs would necessarily result in an 'upset', unless of course they are using closed source voting machines in which no one can review the code to see there isn't any hanky panky.
Things that should be open source: voting machines, encryption programs, anonymous p2p applications, the majority of things dealing with security.
as was discussed in this NYTimes from April 27 article (sorry, only abstract here, unless you're willing to pay). The Police were overwhelmed and the whole site was taken over by party workers, who then proceeded to push the button for their candidate again and again and again. The Times even had a photograph of it.
Certainly a big advantage of electronic voting is seen as being able to vote remotely, over the internet or whatever (it's certainly been used in the UK for local council elections). The Indian system just seems like small non-networked computers at the polling stations as a replacement for boxes of paper. It's got big advantages for counting etc. but it doesn't do what a lot of people would want (secure internet voting).
Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of Independent India had a daughter, Indira Priyadarshini Nehru who married Feroze Gandhi, a Parsi(Iranian)and took his name. Sonia Gandhi is the daughter-in-law of Indira Gandhi.
Interestingly, Feroze Gandhi's name was originally spelt Ghandy or Ghandi - this may have been changed to play on the allusion to Mahatma Gandhi.
There is a great book "The Nehrus and the Gandhis" that has interesting information on the dynasty. A bit out-of date as it does not refer to the new generation - Rahual, Priyanka and Varun Gandhi
Ah the results the upset, i understand now :).
Don't change my message though, I look forward to more EVM's in the future if they are done correctly.
I dont understand why everyone keeps calling this an "upset". We all know what a farce these exit polls are. Even Vajpai expected defeat in these elections.
Don't Panic
outsourced to India!
Sonia Gandhi is in no way related to mahatma Gandhi. Jawaharlal Nehru was the first PM of India and his daughter , Indira , also a PM ,married a guy whose last name happened to be Gandhi.
...outsourced the handling of his campaign to American campaign experts, one of the few areas where we Americans still have a comparative advantage.
...it was a big surprise upset? In the US elections last fall when it happened, they're still saying that the upset was due to the machines being misprogrammed/miscalibrated/0wned.
Who really knows?
I hope we don't get Gore ][ when Kerry loses in November.
I've chosen to post anonymously because of the censo... err.. moderation system on /.
"Diebold system works on Microsoft software, it has no seals on locks and panels to detect a tempering. It has a keyboard interface (!!!) and the server was tested to have "Blaster" virus."
The claim is that a Diebold box was insecure enough to be wide open for use by any passing hacker via the back-door.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
He has also started construction of a massive sign extending right across the Indian sub-continent proclaiming "0wn3d" in large black lettering.
Each machine has its own strengths and weaknesses based on various design goals. If you happen to be looking for fair and accurate voting tech, by all mean go with the Indian setups. Diebold's customers have different requirements is all.
..these elections have been a landmark for the country, and not just because of the use of EVM's. EVM's had been used earlier for state elections, but this was the first general election in which they were used.
:-)
It also marks a shift in public opinion - the ruling party admits it miscalculated the public poll and did not do well with its India Shining campaign.
For a more insight into the surprises brought by the election, have a look at the pictures here [BBC] (among them, the EVM's being transported by elephants)
http://efil.blogspot.com/
And while we're talking about Indian Election results, I would like to point out that she was an Italian citizen till 1983 when she obtained Indian citizenship - she's still a Roman Catholic - though she follows Hindu practices (for example during former PM Rajiv Gandhi's (her husband - no relation to Mahatma Gandhi) funeral).
In addition, India, a primarily/traditionally Hindu country has a Muslim president - Dr. Abdul Kalam - who's an all around great guy and a scientist/genius - and an open source advocate. RMS met him personally when in India.
I know I'm tottering a little OT, but I think it's something to be proud of, when a country and it's citizens can be secular/open-minded enough to ignore religious/cultural differences and choose their leader based on personal merit - moreover with today's world affairs.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
yes
It works because the main responsibility still rest with the election officials, not the electronic device.
The main difference from a normal electoral system is that the "box" is a button-based data recorder here, instead of a ballot paper box. Everything else is the same, no roles were being replaced.
Btw, anyone knows if there is a button for casting invalid vote?
Hey, that's my password you are typing
to quote mississsippi masala:
"They should all go back to the reservations"
" Not THOSE indians, you idjit!"
Can be found here at the BBC.
I am pro-lifechoice.
Along with the use of EVM's in India, at every polling station, there are usually representatives of all parties and/or independent candidates besides the Election Commission's representatives, who have with them the voter list for that constituency.
Every voter has to produce a proof of identity. Upon verification, his/her name is called out, and all the representatives go through their individual paper lists, as well the EC representatives, and they mark that person has cast a vote.
After you cast the vote, an indelible ink mark is put against the fingernal of the index finger (or other fingers if you have any handicap), which takes a few days to dissolve and disappear.
The number of people that cast the ballot is then verified against the number of people who have been marked as "voted" in these individual paper lists at the end of the polling day.
On the final counting day, of course the EVM provides the actual votes cast, but the count of votes is re-verified against EC representative's list.
http://efil.blogspot.com/
I saw Greg Palast in Berkeley a few weeks back and he was talking about the 'systems' in place in Florida. In one county if you spoiled your vote, the machine spat the ballot back at you and you got a fresh chance to vote. In another county, your ballot disappeared into a chute and if you spoiled your vote, you never knew about it. In the case of the former, the county was overwhelmingly white (and Republican-voting) while in the latter the county was overwhelmingly black (and Democrat-voting). But then invesitgative Journalists like Mr Palast are just 'conspiracy theorists,' aren't they?
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Diebold does indeed suxx0rs. Even if you ignore their obvious bias in favor of the Republicans, their code is bad; it runs on Windows, and transmits results over a network. All of those are insecure. Dubya should have lost, but Al Gore ran a pretty bad campaign.
America sucks!
As any physicist can tell you, nothing sucks. Things can only pull (with gravity) or push (with pressure). Sucking is just a function of creating a low pressure zone. Higher pressure moves to fill it, and can move things that get in its way.
India is great, they have a Communist party!
So do we. But in India they have a possibility of winning, which does make them better. Two party systems produce very poor results. People vote for one candidate because they hate the other guy, rather than because they love their candidate. Creating more options stops this and allows people to voice their opinions. Eliminating winner-takes-all elections is a good way to do this. I'm sure there are some republicans out there who don't want to be associated with the Theo-cons.
India is great, they are poorer than we are!
That didn't make any sense. If you are intimating that "unpatriotic" Americans want everyone to be poor, you're wrong. Actually, I would like to see a minimum wage in India, larger union activity, and better programs to help the poor and the environment in India. This would bring the poverty level down and increase upward mobility in the nation, which is good for their economy.
America is proud, they deserve to have egg in their face!
We already have egg on our face. We deserve it for electing Bush and not stopping his revenge/oil/Freedom (as in beer) war. Disagree? Great, that's what being American is about.
America is too successful, they need to be taught a lesson!
And how will having massive voter fraud teach America a lesson about being successful? By saying that Diebold hacking their own system so Bush can win again would be a lesson to not be so successful, you are admitting that Bush's economic policies are void.(Bush's plans don't work, therefore if he gets reelected it would be bad for the economy, therefore we would be taught a lesson about being successful.)
Whatever, I still want my tinfoil hat!
There's a difference between paranoia and questioning of a corporation who have been shown to be biased and produce poor-quality goods. I don't want Diebold casting my votes. If I knew they were going to be used in my district, I would vote by absentee ballot.
The system that India uses is very similar to the one used in my district. It's customizable for every election, has a simple interface, and is very tamper-proof. We don't need networked voting machines when I've been using this kind of equipment since I could vote.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
I actually worked with BEL many years ago. I worked for a company that developed this with BEL (we did the simulator part, they did everything else).
Yet Another Web Site
Just my $0.02 worth.
There is a votes-per-hour limit on each machine, and a total-votes-per-polling-place limit of 1500 votes.
So even if you managed to capture the entire output of a polling place, you only affect 1500 votes maximum. With the votes-per-hour limit, you have to hold that polling place for hours to do even that.
Thats a lot of risk for a pretty uncertain and limited advantage.
Hey, John Ashcroft lost an election to a dead guy in Missouri, too!
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Even then it's still better than the worst
With ballot papers, the favorite hobby of quite a few people used to be to mimic a printing press for a few minutes to fill the ballot box
(I am not sure about the actual duration) but the evm accepts only 1 vote every minute I guess
and that makes it slightly difficult for the Human Voting Machines
Damn the EVMs beat the HVMs
Why aren't we purchasing our voting equipment in the US with the same rigid standards as casinos take to their games machines? I mean honestly, some of the stupidity taken with some of these (for instance the wifi access to an MDB file ...) is just ludicrous if you had offered the same level of "security" to a casino with their electronic poker machines they would have laughed you out the door.
Simplistic devices with a single input method and a disabled output method until the machine is closed out for voting. At that point only those responsible for the voting machines can even transfer the votes. On top of which a verified paper ballot is essential in any election with electronic devices.
Sadly the US populous is far less informed than the rest of the world. Most don't even care how big an upset the Indian election was, nor the fact that it is historic for it's electronic voting methods. I doubt this will have much of an impact on the Diebold hotbutton of the week.
I am not an Open Software fundamentalist, as I use interchangeably Windowns and Linux in the course of my work. But I always get to see the direct result of my actions, even when they don't occur in the exact same manner I intended them too (sometimes, it's just because I did it wrong :) )
But as far as software-only e-voting, how the hell can I trust my vote, of which I have no feedback, will be registered right by a system whose source-code I have no access to? In this case, I believe that OS is clearly the way... and I agree with the article on the need for simple solutions. Such a complicated architecture is bound to have errors!
But, I live in Portugal, where e-voting is still just not an issue :) It just scares me that elections in such an important country, as far as the world equilibrium is concerned, might have it's leadership stolen
Last elections in Liberia were won by a candidate which boasted a full 1500% votes. :))) Hope I never hear anything similar from that side of the Atlantic
1. Rig elections of country that is sucking jobs from your homeland so that socialist wins
2. Sit back and watch said country's ecconomy crumble.
3. Reclaim jobs for your homeland.
4. ????
5. Profit!
As the /.-ed article mentions, the system does not allow the casting of more than 5 ballots in a minute. So the party workers can press all the buttons they want, but it will make almost no difference unless all electoral booths are overtaken OR the police are really really slow OR the party workers somehow manage to keep pressing the buttons for hours on end.
americans tend to vote against candidates they don't want rather that for the candidates they want. This mentality tends to shut out alternative voting such as green party, libertarian or independants
The problem is not with the voters. It's with the election. The system of single plurality (one vote, one candidate), is mathematically a very unfair, almost undemocratic way to run an election whenever there are 3 or more candidates. Using a better system like instant runoff or one of the many others would enable people to vote for their favorite candidate, without helping their least favorite to win by doing so. But until then, Republicans will love the Green party.
The Indian EVM machine appears to use the same single plurality vote, supporting up to 16 candidates. If someone wants to win, they'll convince a dozen other candidates with the same beliefs as their opponents to run and fill up the rest of the candidate list. The results may be quite accurate, but who knows if the winner was really who the voters wanted?
In an address on national television Mr Vajpayee said he accepted the verdict and said it was a demonstration of India's strong democractic roots. "My party and alliance may have lost but India has won," he said.
This is amazing. Why can't our politicians act like this when they lose? Maybe I'll move to India. It's probably easier to get a job there anyway.
Off-Topic
"choose their leader based on personal merit "
Anyone with something between their ears'd tell you that this doesn't apply to Ms. Sonia Gandhi
Everyone and his/her dog knows that she's becoming the PrimeMinister only because of being the widow Mr.Rajiv Gandhi who happened to become the PM only because of being the son of Ms. Indira Gandhi who again happened to become the PM only because of being the daughter of Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru
Enough said
now flame me
nt
This P.I.G. will walk on the water, This P.I.G. will walk on the sea, This P.I.G. will walk whereever he wants.
...where the previous party in power was of the gang sort, was this possible. In most locations, things went quite smooth.
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
It's just too hard to fix an election if the system is simple or reliable. It seems there is a need to keep voters confused and distracted, and this would fit perfectly with the Diebold design.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
They build their own electronic voting machines, and outsource their prime ministers :) ;)
Shouldn't it be the other way around? no wait.. Humm..
All said and done, we've just witnessed how a real democracy ought to operate its elections. No hanging or pregnant chads, or dimpled and pimpled ballots.. Importantly, a minority vote cannot decide the fate of a government and that of thousands of innocent people elsewhere in the world.
And most importantly, a robust, self-governed machinery that operates the elections, NOT county officials who can be influenced by the local political establishment (Florida, remember?). The election commission of India answers to nobody but the president who has luckily so far has been someone with little autocratic ambitions, and anyway there are constitutional safeguards against that. Election officials operating the poll booths are school teachers mostly from the neighborhood, meaning that they'd likely know you by name anyway. I remember seeing my primary school teacher ticking off my name at the poll booth, just as she used to do in the classroom when I was younger.
Talk about first-world and third-world democracies
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Wow a simple, low cost, people intensive system that makes simple democratic hardware possible. Where is the big corporation and the multi million dollar pricetag paid by a government deeply in debt??
Of Course microsoft wont waste its government lobby dollars, I imagine a USA solution would require a network gui and a windows logon. They could even use the indian system, after the logon, and call it their innovation!
Why can't we cannibalize ATM technology for voting?
Features:
reciept printer for hard copies
speaker and braille for the visually impaired
simple interface
card reader/PIN entry to identify the voter
cash slot to reward you for for voting for the correct candidate ;)
So, voter walks up, inserts card & enters pin, voter interacts with candidate selection screen (maybe a slightly larger display than an ATM with up/dn arrows and a select key) - Hell, maybe when choosing a candidate, a blurb about that candidate's platform could be shown on-screen (for that last minute campaigning and public education), but IIRC that's against US voting rules...
And while we're at it, why not issue a freakin smart-card based Social Security Card to use with these machines - I'd gladly replace this blue piece of paper with an ancient version of my signature and seemingly typewritten SSN with something more durable like a credit card!
-- In Soviet Russia, radio listens to YOU!
One also should not fail to notice the amount of paper and trees saved by india's shift to the electronic voting machines.
this sig violates slashdot rules
In India, the demand for power far exceeds the capacity for generation. At any given time, a many districts are experiencing a complete power cut, though this is properly distributed so that no town goes without power for more than a few hours each week. I guess it would not be possible to have uninterrupted supply from morning to evening in all places going to polls on a particular day. :)
Sometimes if any generating station is overloaded, the entire regional distribution grid collapses, plunging a quarter of the country into darkness, and this happens every few months and needs hours to resolve. Currently the only city in the country which can disconnect itself smoothly from the grid is Bombay, and that is the only place where you can bank on electricity.
Also, the system uses simple box-type EVMs which are more like calculators than computers! There is no networking - every machine is tallied separately on a particular day at the district headquarters. So batteries are really the more sensible and reliable option. And as somebody mentioned elephants, portability is not a problem
I think a small change will help to make rigging more difficult - The order of the listing of the candidates should be changed after every vote is casted. This will make it more difficult to rig false votes.
Parsis aren't Iranians, any more than other Indians are. They are Zoroastrians who have lived in India for centuries, but whose ancestors came from Persia (present-day Iran). If you care about that, the Vedic Aryans from whom today's Indians are descended, too, came from the Caspian Sea region near present-day Iran, a couple of millenia earlier.
Check out evidence of vote fraud
F B0 F11F93A5E0C748EDDAD0894DC404482
April 27 2004 New York Times
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=
ABSTRACT - Indian officials are trumpeting introduction of electronic voting machines as example of the new India, but old India abruptly reappears; in state of Bihar, two small bombs explode near one polling place and party workers threaten five policemen guarding booth, then brazenly take control of it; as poll workers and police avert their eyes, young party workers push button for their party on electronic voting machine over and over again, casting vote after fraudulent vote; incident suggests that like rest of India, country's political operatives are becoming more businesslike and more technologically savvy; photo; map (M)
IT wasn't originally spelled as anything in ROMAN CHARACTERS!
The only "real" spelling of foreign words and names is in their own character set my friend.
Are you sure about that? In North Indian languages (other than Urdu), "g", "gh", "d" and "dh" are all completely different letters, so this isn't just the movement of an 'h', a respelling. It's a complete change of name.
diebold
is
expensive
broken
obsolete
lacking
dumb
The Indian EVM machine appears to use the same single plurality vote, supporting up to 16 candidates.
4 EVMs can be chained together, to support 64 candidates. I believe the Election Commission was prepared to have more on standby if there were more than 64 nominations from a constituency. In the last few General Assembly Elections there haven't been more than 34 nominations per constituency. (Nominations cost money, which one forfeits if one doesn't get enough percentage of votes.)
If someone wants to win, they'll convince a dozen other candidates with the same beliefs as their opponents to run and fill up the rest of the candidate list.
The best part about a functioning democracy is that while this sort of ballot-DDOSing is fun to talk about, the legal system ensures that in practice they're not worth doing: Candidates found guilty (after due process, of course) of messing with the poll system get debarred from contesting elections upto 5 years.
;-)
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
India is great, they have a Communist party!
Although the communist party in India is having its largest presence at the centre in all of India's democratic history, there is not much cause of worry. BJP took the intiative with reforms, but its fruits were mainly for the elitist in India. Now with the congress in power and backed by the communists, there will be reforms and this time a more equitable one.
Comparing who purchases the systems has nothing to do with Diebold - that has to do with the national system for handling voting. In the U.S. (irrespective of the company producing the machines), each country handles their voting methods somewhat independently within the bounds of state and federal law. Thus several counties were on contracts with Diebold, but the state could over-ride those.
I'd also like to know where the author gets the idea that illiterate Americans don't get to vote. (Or maybe that was not what he was implying when he mentioned that illiterate Indians use thumbprints rather than signatures.)
Finally, I don't know about other areas, but my polling station is five blocks away from my house. If I wanted to use the one near my work, it wouldn't be that hard to change either. Most difficulty I've heard of comes when people forget to change their voter registration information when they move.
I don't know that Americans would be willing to have their finger stained for two weeks to ensure less chance of fraudulent votes. Of course, with only about half the eligible citizens voting, it could be worn as a badge of honor.
I was taking one day at a time, but then several days got together and ambushed me. (from a Rhymes with Orange comic)
We deserve it for electing Bush...
No, we did not elect bush, he was appointed by the supreme court.
The legend I heard is: The Nehru family had a problem allowing their daighter to marry a "Parsi", a non-hindu. Mahatma Gandhi didn't like that, and officially adopted Feroz and hence he became Feroz Gandhi.
Interesting, but unfortunately wrong! From the Wikipedia page on Feroze Ghandi:
Feroze Gandhi (12 August 1912 - 8 September 1960) was an Indian politician and journalist. He was the husband of Indira Gandhi, the daughter of India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.
Not the same person as Mohandas!
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
One thing that really bothered me was the statement in the article that blind people could just take someone in with them to help cast their ballot.
:)
Sure. This works. And it's what was done in most American polling places until the advent of the electric machine.
We have a large blind community at the polling place where I usually work - and I asked one how the new machines worked. She was practically in tears because she was so excited - she had just cast a vote by herself for the first time in her life (and she wasn't no spring chicken).
I realize in the scheme of creating a fair election system, this may seem like a minor point, but it certainly wasn't to her or anyone who talked with her and cares about the human dimension of democracy. Just a quick thought
Elections in America rarely involve voting for one candidate over others for one office. You can have president, senator, congressman, governor, state senator, state representative, mayor, sheriff, district attorney, judge, and other people to vote for. Plus, there are the various states that have the initiative process, in which the voter votes for certain issues including state constitutional amendments.
You need a more complex machine for all that.
But your process has some good ideas. For us, maybe the following: Have some kiosks with touchscreens that all plug directly into a box like in the India method. This box will have a small server and a 16-port ethernet switch all within it, plus a small built-in touchscreen on top. When a kiosk is plugged-in, press a button to validate on the server. Then press a voting start button. When someone comes in, activate a machine for voting on the server like in the India method. Voter punches buttons and gets a paper receipt with a transaction SN. When all's done, press the "voting complete" button on the server, which will close off all ports, encrypt and sign all results and shut down, unable to restart without a key.
The state elections office will have the boot key and the key to decrypt the results and check the signature.
All OSS of course.
I find this to be a well written article, especially for non-Indians who want to understand India's country-wide voting stations. The other likes India's EVMs, with some justification, I think, despite the absence of paper ballot.
However, India's EVMs are not really applicable to a US context. While the idea promoted of "make it as simple as possible" is a good one (violated by Diebold in many ways), the author seems to forget the "but no simpler" corollary. The design of the Open Voting Consortium's system (see http://openvoting.org and http://evm2003.sourceforge.net) strikes the correct compromise.
In fairness, in an Indian context, the idea of having elections with dozens of different races, each with a dozen candidates, plus a bunch of initiatives, might seem strange. But that's what we have in some US jurisdictions. Some US cities have even begun to use ranked preference voting (so far, usually scored as IRV, but maybe Condercet, Burda, Weighted, etc. someday).
The requirements for casting one vote for one MP are rather simple, and India's EVMs add no extra complexity to that.
Buy Text Processing in Python
So now we've outsourced the frontiers of democracy, too...
He obviously confused "Parsi" with "Farsi".
That does not make him any less of a dumb ass, however.
Why can't we cannibalize ATM technology for voting?
Er, what do you think Diebold's primary line of business is?
(For anyone who had ever walked up to a Diebold ATM or point-of-sale terminal and seen a Blue Screen of Death, none of the news of the last two years has come as any kind of surprise.)
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
More information is also available at the equipment manufacturer's website.
To put it in technical terms, there's not a chance in hell anything on the equipment manufacturer's website after a scandal like this can be called "information", even when stretching the definition of the word until it hurts.
If you want information about a product, you can't trust the vendor. End of story, unfortunately.
Who fled to India when Islam took over Persia.
If you care about that, the Vedic Aryans from whom today's Indians are descended, too, came from the Caspian Sea region near present-day Iran, a couple of millenia earlier.
This is part of the Aryan myth. See me earlier post on this issue. There are no proofs of this as such.
where did my sig go? where's my sig at?
What's with all the overrated mods? This is funny! Are there some Indian moderators who are sensitive to jokes like this? Doesn't seem racist/slanderous to me (honestly).
But tell me --
-- what specifically are you saying there? I'm not trying to strike up sparks, here, just curious what "abuses" we're talking about in "some cases." What harm's recently been done under the banner of secularism in India?
(I'm having some trouble imagining similar abuses in the US. Armies of secular people doing what? Marching in Pro Choice rallies, or something?)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
"You can have president, senator, congressman, governor, state senator, state representative, mayor, sheriff, district attorney, judge, and other people to vote for."
Yes, but not in the same election! They may be on the same day, and even (if you have a paper-ballot) on the same voting sheet, but fundamentally what you are doing in most parts of the US is voting for one candidate over others for one office. Then another one candidate over others for another office...n
Plus in many parts of India there were more than one election held. For instance the sacking by the locals of the tech-savvy Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, which may impact that state's ability to invest in infrastructure for the IT industry (or to put it another way, will probably help poor local farmers with free electricity).
Braille Paper Ballots. High tech solution - vote by txt msg!
Too late! Dubya wasn't elected by the populace. His brother handed the Presidency to him.
>The system that India uses is very similar to the one used in
>my district. It's customizable for every election, has a simple
>interface, and is very tamper-proof. We don't need networked
>voting machines when I've been using this kind of equipment
>since I could vote.
The voting machines in my town are also perfectly fine, I fail to understand what the big deal is.
Here, in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio, you face what looks like a 5'x4' white easel. Behind a thin, clear plastic covering is a large white printed out paper that displays all the options. Red LEDs blink through the white paper and appear next to each unvoted option. You simply press the blinking light next to the one you want. Your option turns solid red, and the other options for that particular vote turn off. To undo, either press the one you picked or press clear for that option (one or the other, my memory is rusty).
Each section is clearly labeled and easy to understand. Since the whole voting surface is just a 5'x'4' sheet of white paper, they can configure it however they want to accomodate as few or as many candidates and issues as they need. Also, they have room to include lengthy written explanations of what each "issue" is (instead of just listing: Issue 1 -- Yes or No).
To finalize your choices, you press a large green "VOTE" button below the white voting surface to the right. It's impossible to forget to pick a choice on something since the lights will continue to blink until you have picked an option. (You can of course finalize your vote with things unvoted if you choose.) You can also press the large red "RESET" button at the bottom left of the white voting surface if you want to clear everything and start over.
When you've finished, the overhead light turns off, and you leave. That's it. I imagine the system keeps an electronic log of all votes which is gathered at the end of the night. There are NO moving parts (other than the large RESET and VOTE buttons, which you have to press an inch into into their slots before they take effect), no visable interfaces, and no software to hack. (I'm sure there's a way to interface somewhere on the opposite side of the unit, but seeing as you go behind a curtain in the front to vote while people are watching, there's no way to "sneak" and try to figure it out.) Nothing is ever printed out, and the machine is perfectly silent, other than a loud bell to signal the start and finish of voting.
Our local/state government has figured out how to implement an electronic system without all this crap (one that allows voting on mutiple issues *and* multiple candidates per issue, unlike the one described for the Indian primary). With an obviously electronic system such as this, why are we wasting our time with voting machines that run Windows of any sort? Why are we allowing Diebold and other firms to complicate this issue?
"Fancier" is not always better. We can get perfectly good electronic voting without all the useless bells and whistles.
That would require a HUGE change in machine.
Right now the candiates are just stickers pasted on the surface of the machine. To get the names to rearange you'd need to add an electronic display of sorts. and then add the code to change the names around. Just adding the display might suck up more power than those 6V batteries can provide. and what happens if the display flakes out? And displays have really complex electronics. With that "one small change" youve changed what was a battery powered calculator(in complexity) into PC. Shame on you
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
Question: if we suspect something is amiss, all evidence points to something being amiss, and investigations prove that something is amiss, are we still being "paranoid"?
[o]_O
...by wearing a plastic-like device on your finger, to absorb the ink. The article says you can't remove the ink without hurting yourself for 2 weeks - presumably this is to make sure you don't vote twice. But couldn't you could keep the ink from touching your skin. Put on, vote, peel off, replace, vote, peel off, etc.
Think of the batman movie where Robin kissed Poison Ivy and still lived, by wearing "protection" on his lips.
Ah, now I know where you're coming from. You must feel traumatised that not only did the government that wanted to rewrite textbooks lose the election, but the minister personally responsible lost individually too.
"Kinda like not everyone in the US is a cowboy"
There haven't been cowboys in any number in the united states in in over 140 years.
Today, there are very few cowboys left; corporate farms have all but erased the cattle drives of Louis Lamour's books.
...is that the Indian machines are all pre-programmed to vote "Congress".
Second,the real trouble, if you ask me, is that people in India have started watching, and reading into, *too much* television. :-) Everything from exit polls to IndiaShining (tm), to reactions on Gujarat 2002 [*], to even Chandni Chowk elections can be explained by this thesis.
Time we have a slashdot.org.in or something, I guess. ;-)
[*] - Gujarat 2002 was different from independent India's other ethnic fatricides in that we were able to see it live on television; which is why people on both sides of the political spectrum tend to lose perspective while discussing it.
More than mere navel gazing.
Let us consider a scenario to explain his point further. Consider the elections for the parliamentary constituency of Nalgonda, which, as I mentioned earlier on this site, once really had 400+ candidates running for the seat. Now, assume that the main issue, so to speak, for the constituents is the availability (or the lack) of irrigated water for their fields during the Rabi (rainy) season.
The political situation is as follows. The incumbent candidate, a political bigwig with remarkable political skills but little policy vision or initiative, has decided he won't address that issue at all, and instead has decided to make the construction of a teeny-weeny temple in some north Indian town that no one has heard of, or visited, as his main plank. Outraged, the constituents decide that enough is enough and step into the electioneering process en masse. Each of the 400 or so people have a specific idea in mind to solve the region's water crisis; all of them agree that the only way it can be solved is to bring waters from the nearby River Krishna to the district. Which is exactly what our Average Voter thinks is the right solution. The problem, however, for him is this:- he has to choose from 400 like-minded candidates! What does he do? He opts for the more prominent ones, leaving out the lesser known ones instead.
The damage, however, has already been done; while in cumulative terms, the constituency as a whole has voted for candidates who address the water problem, in individual terms, the guy who gets the most votes is the dude fixated on that silly temple. That is to say, while the constituency voted for water, the guy who eventually won is someone who hasn't addressed that question at all.
Now, scenarios such as this are not common these days for a very simple reason:- political alliances. Both the BJP and the Congress have learnt this the hard way, but there's no real reason for them to split their vote share by competing against like-minded, but regional, parties. Which, incidentally, is the real reason why the Congress, for instance, won the Assembly elections in Andhra Pradesh; it took care to not split the anti-TDP/BJP vote between itself, TRS and the Communists. So, if you were against the incumbent government, all you had to do was to vote for the "Not NDA" guy, and obviously, there's only one such person shown on your EVM.
However, the splitting of the electorate manifests itself in another stupid way, in terms of constituencies. Look at it this way:- a hefty 41% of Andhra's electorate actually wanted the TDP back in. Quite clearly, this is a statistic that is not immediately apparent when you look at the final seat tallies; TDP/BJP got a mere 49 seats, or 12% of the Assembly, despite the fairly okay-ish vote share. Reason? Most of the seats won by the Congress had winning margins of less than 1000 votes. A margin that, as a wag put it in on a discussion forum elsewhere on the web, could be easily "bought" over by wealthy candidates in their respective constituencies.
This, if true, would also explain why some assembly constituencies, particularly those in Bihar and in parts of Andhra Pradesh's wild south, are often called 21st century zamindaris despite having a robust democractic tradition for the last fifty four years.
More than mere navel gazing.
Think about if the problem really needs to be solved. As I see it the only benifit you get from having an electronic voting system, is that it gets counted faster.
The current electoral system (in ireland anyway) is paper base. (But not for long I suspect. Tests with electronic voting were carried out at the last election.) While it takes a while to count there is no doubt about the validity of your vote. You could, if you wanted to, sit and watch the box that your vote went into until it made it to the counting station. Then examine the seal to see if it was tampered and watch as its counted.
An electronic vote disappears into the mystic void and who knows what happens. You may have some hope of finding out with the indian EVM as its in assembly and fairly short. If your in the USA good luck figuring out all that crap (WinCE, MsSQL server...).
Without electronic voting, the Indian election would have taken months to count I assume. 1 billion voters is a lot so perhaps an electronic method is needed. But in most european countries those problems don't exist.
There is no problem so don't try and fix it.
the voting machines catered for illiterates like the indian ones do.
GWB would probably get a few more votes as well, as neither he nor his supporters appear to be able to read.
As any physicist can tell you, nothing sucks. Things can only pull (with gravity) or push (with pressure). Sucking is just a function of creating a low pressure zone. Higher pressure moves to fill it, and can move things that get in its way.
Nothing sucks? I take it you dont have a girlfriend? On the other hand "higher pressure moves to fill it" sounds very familiar....
Sorry, just had to...
On the other hand, perhaps an American electoral college-style election, with its checks and balances, would be better suited for a large and diverse country like India, but the usual reason given against that it is too 'federal' for New Delhi's unitary worldview.Which goes to show the Nalgonda constituents did not know how to play the game well. Independent candidates have a history of winning in India, so why did they not consolidate their platform and run on an Independent ticket, making water one of their main platforms? Their political naivete is no reason to blame the Westminster model.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Apologies, then -- I misunderstood your post, thinking that you were saying Feroz and Mohandas were one and the same.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
I brought up the Nalgonda example because you seemed to suggesting that candidate list spam is illegal in India. It isn't; anyone who doesn't mind gambling Rs 10,000 can still participate in the elections. The fact is, the best bet against sock-puppet candidates [love that term! ;-) ] is only a generic hue and cry; there is no institutional safe-guard against such abuse. And even on that count, I'm not really sure how you can legislate against it without trodding on a citizen's right to contest any elections he deems. (I'm one of those people who happen to think that even the Rs 10,000 deposit is inherently undemocratic and unfair to a majority of our population, but that is a different matter altogether).
While I do believe (or am sctively considering such a viewpoint, and so am open to ideas) that a proportional representation system, in principle, could be better, that is not the point I'm trying to demonstrate here. I'm just trying to point out that on occassion, in may very well be that
A majority of the people might have one policy view, but it could so happen that the candidate with a contrary view might get elected.I'm thinking you didn't read my post down to the bottom, especially where I talked about why vote-buying might matter and why there are zamindari-constituencies.
More than mere navel gazing.
A majority of the people might have one policy view, but it could so happen that the candidate with a contrary view might get elected.
;-)
:-p) Even after seeing no improvement in their standard of living for 50 years, these people are still fractured along caste lines and cannot _think_ of voting out people who cause them pain (of course, inept Opposition parties also helped). End of day, democracy also means choosing your own destiny. They got what they asked for.
This happens in more sophisticated systems too (e.g. Bush/Gore 2000). The question is: why do the undeniably smart men who created the system allow this loophole? The answer is, because the benefits of the loophole (voice to smaller states, etc) outweighed the disadvantages.
Likewise, the winner-takes-all model has advantages: it is easy for the average Indian (who is used to shenanigans in politics otherwise) to grasp and accept; can you imagine what a fractured polity we would create if we institutionalized coalition discussions after every election by adopting a German-style proportional representation scheme?
I'm thinking you didn't read my post down to the bottom, especially where I talked about why vote-buying might matter and why there are zamindari-constituencies.
About the thin Andhra victory margins: I did not respond because this is classic conspiracy theory ranting: impossible to prove wrong.
TDP/BJP got a mere 49 seats, or 12% of the Assembly, despite the fairly okay-ish vote share. Reason? Most of the seats won by the Congress had winning margins of less than 1000 votes.
If the Congress/Telengana combine, out of power, could "buy" votes with such accuracy and across "most" of their win-seats without any serious accusations of malpractice, then they deserve to get a book contract from IDG to write a book on Rigging for Dummies
As for 21st century zamindaris - *shrug* I was born in Bihar and all I can say is that people get the government they deserve. (South Bihar at least was intelligent enough to secede
Btw, fairly decent take on proportional representation. Can't say I can think of adding to that.
More than mere navel gazing.
This is only a test. If you read this, you are reading a test.