Slashdot Mirror
Who's Blocking Verified E-Voting?
ClarkEvans writes "The NY Times has a great editorial today calling out the League of Women Voters for their counter-productive lobbying against verified voting. The article states that Diebold voting systems has given lots of dough to these opposition groups." There's an AP story about the issue as well.
It's not the votes that count, but who counts the votes.
Since women have gained suffrage in the US, we've seen:
- Prohibition
- The Great Depression
- Nuclear weapons
- The Cuban Missile Crisis
- The assassination of JFK
- The Vietnam War
It's time to stop the madness! Repeal womens' suffrage now!
This reminds me of a group I heard about who set up a booth and handed out stickers encouring and "end to women's suffrage". Apparently plenty of females were in support of this, not knowing what the word meant.
And there was me thinking that maybe, just maybe, the corruptive rot of politics hadn't sunk through to supposed grassroots groups like this. Guess I should've thought better and realised that astroturfing like this is doable after all. How much power do these groups hold? With the money they're being backhanded by Diebold, they might be able to exert some unwanted influence on the issue. :/
--
GNAA
"But simply printing out a piece of paper will not, in our opinion, address all the security concerns. People are talking about a simple solution to a complicated issue."
Who says we can't have a simple solution? Printing out a piece of paper most certainly WILL address all of the security concerns. At a stroke it allows voter verification, recounts, and auditing to find both corruption and machine errors.
She's obviously not an engineer. Often, the simplest solutions are best.
Who is against counting votes? Shesh counting votes should be a bipartisan goal, just like saving the environment we live in...oh. Whoops, my bad there are no more Teddy Rosevelts or Richard Nixons anymore, their good parts were exised and the bad smushed together to make Uber-Party as they did not completely conform to the Truth.
The submitter appears to have some issue with the League of Women's Voters, an organization whose only crime is buying the arguments of the groups who have been tainted by Diebold money. If I didn't read the editorial, I would have been under the wrong impression that The League had taken money from Diebold.
My other sig is extremely clever...
is for some white-hat slashdot reader to go and actually steal an election as proof of concept and then publicize it. Sure he'll probably go to prison for the rest of his life, but he'll become a legend among techies...
take one for the team!
As long as it is secure, I can't see how an electronic system could be worse than paper ballots that you look at and can't tell which candidate the voter voted for. If the system verified for me which candidates I voted for before I left the poll, that would be great (so I know my vote got registered correctly). And certainly there is some kind of permanant audit trail that could be verified later?
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Counting is what machines are good at. I trust them
(as long the code controlling them is open for
public scrutiny) much more than some group of
(always biased) humans.
Just goes to show that almost no group is above being bribed.
"What's even more troubling is that the group has accepted a $1 million gift for a new training institute from Diebold, the machines' manufacturer, which put the testimonial on its Web site."
The author is right there is no need to choose between "accessible voting and verifiable voting".
Without paper verification evoting has no future here.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
I've written the League several times over the last few months. Their stance is not only wrong-headed, but they refuse to listen to their constituency. The NY Times article refers to a group of disabled people, ones who happen to have a great deal of influence with the LWV, who were given foundation monies from Diabold. You cannot pretend that politics is not involved here.
Indeed. But, the LOWV do themselves no favour by indentifying themselves with disabled groups, as if women were a disabled group.
... if the League of Women Voters is friggin' stupid enough to support a cause that breaks elections, they're working quite well to make people regret granting women suffrage in the first place...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I don't know about America, but in Soviet Russia, verified e-voting blocks YOU!
Ceci n'est pas une sig
You may be saying that incumbents in general fear change in the election process, which may make some sense.
I've posted about this on Slashdot before but looks like it's appropriate to post again.
Here's a link to the realaudio stream of the radio show I refered to.
In our state our governor, Jeb Bush, is against the whole verified voting idea. Suprising considering the whole fiasco here in Florida last time.
Sexual discrimination is bad mmmkay, Mr. Garrison?
The Disability Lobby and Voting
Published: June 11, 2004
Two obvious requirements for a fair election are that voters should have complete confidence about their ballots' being counted accurately and that everyone, including the disabled, should have access to the polls. It is hard to imagine advocates for those two goals fighting, but lately that seems to be what's happening.
The issue is whether electronic voting machines should provide a "paper trail" -- receipts that could be checked by voters and used in recounts. There has been a rising demand around the country for this critical safeguard, but the move to provide paper trails is being fought by a handful of influential advocates for the disabled, who complain that requiring verifiable paper records will slow the adoption of accessible electronic voting machines.
The National Federation of the Blind, for instance, has been championing controversial voting machines that do not provide a paper trail. It has attested not only to the machines' accessibility, but also to their security and accuracy -- neither of which is within the federation's areas of expertise. What's even more troubling is that the group has accepted a $1 million gift for a new training institute from Diebold, the machines' manufacturer, which put the testimonial on its Web site. The federation stands by its "complete confidence" in Diebold even though several recent studies have raised serious doubts about the company, and California has banned more than 14,000 Diebold machines from being used this November because of doubts about their reliability.
Disability-rights groups have had an outsized influence on the debate despite their general lack of background on security issues. The League of Women Voters has been a leading opponent of voter-verifiable paper trails, in part because it has accepted the disability groups' arguments.
Last year, the American Association of People With Disabilities gave its Justice for All award to Senator Christopher Dodd, an author of the Help America Vote Act, a post-2000 election reform law. Mr. Dodd, who has actively opposed paper trails, then appointed Jim Dickson, an association official, to the Board of Advisors of the Election Assistance Commission, where he will be in a good position to oppose paper trails at the federal level. In California, a group of disabled voters recently sued to undo the secretary of state's order decertifying the electronic voting machines that his office had found to be unreliable.
Some supporters of voter-verifiable paper trails question whether disability-rights groups have gotten too close to voting machine manufacturers. Besides the donation by Diebold to the National Federation of the Blind, there have been other gifts. According to Mr. Dickson, the American Association of People with Disabilities has received $26,000 from voting machine companies this year.
The real issue, though, is that disability-rights groups have been clouding the voting machine debate by suggesting that the nation must choose between accessible voting and verifiable voting.
It is well within the realm of technology to produce machines that meet both needs. Meanwhile, it would be a grave mistake for election officials to rush to spend millions of dollars on paperless electronic voting machines that may quickly become obsolete.
Disabled people have historically faced great obstacles at the polls, and disability-rights groups are right to work zealously for accessible voting. But they should not overlook the fact that the disabled, like all Americans, also have an interest in ensuring that their elections are not stolen.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
it doesn't really make sense that they use 'Women' instead of 'Woman'. I mean, if I were to make a league of programmers who vote, I would call it the League of Programmer Voters, not the League of Programmers Voters (actually I would probably just call it the League of Voting Programmers but maybe that structure is too obvious for them or something). Are they missing punctuation or something? Like is it really the League of Women: Voters?
As he should have an issue with them.
Large influential organizations not doing research and misleading vast numbers of the public is worse than the Diebold-PR-agency to initiates those reports.
It's just like the NYTimes selling the pubic a war on behalf of Iran's spy.
My favorite argument against paper trails is how insanely expensive these machines would become. Really? I didn't know that the corner Kwik-e-Mart had one of these "expensive" machines to print a receipt for my $0.50 pack of gum. As far as I know, all ATM's have paper trails. How is it feasible to record a $20 ATM withdrawal but not a vote for supreme emperor of the earth for 4 years?
Politicus
http://jayceecorder.blogspot.com
nobody, but nobody is above reproach...
What?
-----
... The paper trail is the ambulance in the
Date: Fri, 7 May 2004 19:41:29 -0400
To: letters@nytimes.com
Subject: Secure Voting Techology
May 3rd's article "Who Hacked the Voting System?" begs the question:
why must these complicated voting systems be all encompassing?
Imagine a process where selecting candidates and tallying choices is
distinct. The voter enters a booth, uses a complicated touch-screen
machine, and emerges with a human-readable card clearly stating
their candidate. Then, the voter walks over to a brightly lit
election desk, feeds this card into the tallying machine, and
deposits their card into the ballot box.
Security is straight-forward. Voters will tell you when a
touch-screen system make an error. This leaves the tallying machine
to secure. Luckily, it is in plain sight and its operation is
simple. Further, if the tally is questioned, some or all of the
ballots can be reviewed by human eyes.
Candidate selecting technology is complicated. Card tallying ain't.
Let's keep them separate.
-----
Date: Sun, 23 May 2004 11:19:17 -0400
To: letters@nytimes.com
Subject: Demand Grows to Require Paper Trails for Electronic Votes
In the article Demand Grows to Require Paper Trails for Electronic
Voting, published May 23, 2004, Doug Chapin from the Pew Charitable
Trust said: "You can either build a fence around a cliff or put an
ambulance in the valley
valley. Certifying the machines and testing them in the first place to
make sure they are secure is the fence around the cliff."
I think Mr. Chapin's analogy is poor, it is not an either/or, one would
properly do both. However, if he insists with this analogy, I suggest
Verified Voting is more analogous with the ability to ensure that the
fence around the cliff is actually working. The only way to detect that
a voting technology reflects voter intent is to complement touch screens
with a simple print-out listing the canidates the voter has chosen. Then
the voter can review their choices and stuff this print-out into the
ballot box so random or challenge recounts can happen. Lacking this
ability to verify voter intent, we are left with only one way to ensure
that our democracy is working -- trust a for-profit corporation.
-------
Date: Fri, 11 Jun 2004 10:09:04 -0400
To: letters@nytimes.com
Subject: The Disability Lobby and Voting
I am so happy to see the NY Times call-out the League of Weoman Voters
for their counter-productive stand; also, I can't believe that despite
my calls, Senator Dodd has joined this nonsense.
An optical scan solution can offer the best of both worlds. A
disabled-persons friendly touch screen or audio-system can be used to
generate the ballot; while the actual counting of the optical ballots
can be done with a much simpler optical reader.
By breaking the problem of filling-out and counting ballots, we get the
best of both worlds; the intermediate ballot provides the paper trail.
It is also easier to test optical scanners for compliance -- there is
less code to review, and deterministic inputs/outputs allow testing to
be automated. Further, since only one optical scanner is needed per
district, and can be closely monitored. Let user-friendly voting
machines thrive, but make sure they don't do the counting.
His brother got elected president because of the system in Florida, so why would he want to change it? For him, it's working just fine.
There is a third requirement for fair elections, and that is balanced coverage. Forget the liberal bias, or the conservative bias, the truth in the US is that there is a 2 party bias. 3rd parties are ignored, and given short coverage in the guide of 'to be fair'.... In Europe, 3rd parties quickly gain recognition due to the mix of ballot variety (lots of parties to consider), election style (more representive focused) and the coverage they get. Here in the US, if you aren't a Republicrat, or a Demopublican, you have to fight for coverage. People with a true shot, ie enough ballots that they could win, or will likely affect the course of the election should be coveraged with EQUAL access
I'm voting for Michael Badnarik Libertarian, who is also on almost all of the ballots
and so should you, if you think Government is out of control. Kush and Berry won't change that, and you're just voting for the lesser of 2 evils.
Vote for Good, vote Badnarik!
Help achieve Liberty in your lifetime - join the Free State Project - http://www.freestateproject.org
From the dust-jacket:
"Jules Verne's prophetic words ring as true today as they did over 100 years ago when he first penned his scathing tribute to the abomination of women's sufferage. In this all-new edition dedicated to the Ronald Wilson Reagan Memorial Washington Monument(TM) in Washington Ronald Wilson Reagan DC, in anticipation of the newly-rechristened Fourth of Ronald Wilson Fucking Reagan Yet Again July, more than 35,000 pages of previously expurgated marginal notations made by Verne himself cast new light on the (a-hem) "marital difficulties" which prompted Verne to compose his great work. (134,000 more words of praise and 978,000 words of footnotes in very very tiny print omitted for the sake of our common humanity, such as it is).
Make a demo, I was put off by having to register, and I suspect I'm not alone. You're supposed to make us want to sign up by showing us how great your site is, but all we see now is some content-free site. Allow some of your conten to spill into a demo, and if it's so great, you'll see people registering.
The American Association of People With Disabilities wants to promote non-verified voting for people with disabilities then let them be the only ones to use them and everyone else can have verified e-voting.
If they don't feel verification is necessary for anyone, then why would they feel deprived if their members can't verify their vote by reading the paper its printed on.
-------- This space intentionally left blank --------
- Diabolical
- Diablo
Are you trying to draw a parallel?|/usr/games/fortune
The Disability Lobby and Voting
Fuck Diebold! and the other e-voting companies, who are at best inept and at worst more corrupt than a Louisiana politician. They are obviously more than willing to mangle the most fundamental right of our democracy (or what we call a democracy), the right to vote, in order to make a quick buck.
Can't they just build a good, secure system instead of resorting to bribes?
registering to read news is GAY
"not that there's anything wrong with that"
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Not all that surprising when you look at who came out ahead...
The real problem with Diebold isn't the lack of a paper trail. It's that the machines can and are being changed after being certified as reliable. A machine that gives you a paper receipt of your vote isn't worth a damn if someone can hack the smartcard that records the votes to log something else after the certification is complete.
You're right, as far as that goes, but you should also mention that some men think the majority of men are stupid and should not be allowed to vote, and I personally think the human race is a bunch of yammering cretins who can't be trusted with a fucking tennis ball, much less the sovereign franchise of free men blah blah blah.
I hate you too , by the way. And everybody else. It's just idiotic to try to pretend that some people are more less stupid than others: Infinitely stupid == infinitely stupid. Only a moron would try to compare the two. That, of course, is exactly why you're doing it.
Two obvious requirements for a fair election are that voters should have complete confidence about their ballots' being counted accurately and that everyone, including the disabled, should have access to the polls. It is hard to imagine advocates for those two goals fighting, but lately that seems to be what's happening.
Yes, indeed. And even after reading every linked article I still don't understand how, exactly, that requiring paper trails for electronic voting machines could in any way impede equal access to polls (for the disabled or anyone.) A little help here -- please?
The issue is whether electronic voting machines should provide a "paper trail" -- receipts that could be checked by voters and used in recounts. There has been a rising demand around the country for this critical safeguard, but the move to provide paper trails is being fought by a handful of influential advocates for the disabled, who complain that requiring verifiable paper records will slow the adoption of accessible electronic voting machines.
OK, here's a stab at it -- "requiring verifiable paper records will slow the adoption of accessible electronic voting machines." But, er, why would it slow anything? And, if it does, can't we just use the "old way" (traditional polls) until the "new way" (electronic polls) is made more reliable and secure? I'll try again:
Leaders said paperless terminals, which about 30 percent of the electorate will use in the November election, were reliable.
Er, OK, but this is both tangential and arguable. I still don't see how requiring verifyable paper trails impedes anyone's access to the polls.
They had "no reason to believe" computer terminals would "steal your vote," the league said officially.
Well, there is some reason to believe that they'll make a mistake or be susceptible to fraud. See linked articles. Again, why do paper trails impede the disabled from voting? I'f I'm in the League of Women voters, it seems that, not only am I not going to get a straight answer to that, but I must support the position publicly (or at least not oppose it) -- yikes!:
League bylaws stipulate that local chapters must act "in conformity" with the national organization's stances. Individuals who take contrary positions cannot identify themselves publicly as league members.
League president Kay Maxwell says paperless computers, which can be equipped with headsets and programmed in multiple languages, make voting easier for the blind and illiterate, and for people who don't speak English.
OK, most computers are "paperless." Generally, it's the printers that have the paper in them. And, in my experience, most (all?) computers may have a printer connected without much trouble. Kay seems to imply that connecting a printer will break headset or multilanguage support -- wha? I'm still confused.
Furthermore, she said, demanding a paper trail so close to the presidential election would require hundreds of counties that have installed electronic systems to spend millions of dollars on printers, paper and technical upgrades at the last minute.
Well, I guess they should have done a little more due dilligence before sinking time and money into an insecure voting system. Why should we all have to pay for that stupidity?
For current members, Maxwell said, voter registration problems and dismal turnout -- particularly among minorities -- should be bigger worries than potential hackers.
These aims are not opposing -- it's possible to address security without impeding the ability of minorities to vote. I can't even see how the issues are related. Sounds like smoke and mirrors to misdirect attention away from the payola they're taking in from Diebold. Sad, really.
"From a voting rights perspective, we care a great deal about the openness of the system and access to the system, tha
everything in moderation
Include blocking 3rd party candidates from the 2000 presidential debates. Remember? Those b*tches wouldn't let Nader in!
I'm a software developer with close to 20
years of experience. I was pointed to your position paper on VVPT.
Please accept my comments on your position paper.
Electronic Voting Machines and Voter-Verified Paper Trails (VVPT)
League of Women Voters
http://www.lwv.org/join/electionshava_dre- vvpt.htm l
The League of Women Voters strongly supports full and equal
voting rights for all eligible Americans, including persons with disabilities. The League also supports voter verification of ballots, including the requirement in the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) whereby the voter verifies the ballot before it is cast and counted. However, the League does not support proposals for a new requirement for paper-based voter verification - the voter-verified paper trail (VVPT) system that would require Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines to provide an individual paper confirmation for each ballot for each voter to verify.
A VVPT requirement undermines voting access for people with disabilities or limited English proficiency, raises costs, fails to guarantee security, unnecessarily complicates the voting process, undermines federal certification standards, and slows the replacement of outdated voting machines.
To be clear, VVPT would require DRE equipment to print out a physical paper receipt that the voter could review and then stuff in the ballot box. These printed ballots would then be the official record of the election.
These printed ballots would:
- be printed out when the user has completed selecting all
of their choices via the DRE's touch screen interface
- would only print out the individuals selected, and thus
is very simple to understand and uncluttered
- would be printed in the language used by the DRM machine,
cross-language support on paper is quite easy
- be in large font for reading impaired and could be handed
to an election worker to read for those who are blind
- would have an encoded version of the votes via a bar-code to
make scanning in the votes for semi-automated recounts easy
- would be printed on card stock using your average laser
or inket printer; thermal paper does not last long enough
To be more concrete about this, and to make it absolutely clear what
we are discussing, there is an open source application [1] with an
on-line demo [2] that produces this sort of printed receipt [3]. Be
advised that the user interface for making the selections is not
important to this discussion, the only thing that is salient is the
final receipt printed.
[1] http://www.openvotingconsortium.org/
[2] http://gyaku.pair.com/~vote/ballot2.html
[3] http://clarkevans.com/tmp/ballot-receipt.pdf
With this background, let me address your specific concerns. Before
you continue with this statements, I ask you to download the
referenced PDF file above and print this so that you can see exactly
what is being requested by the VVPT community.
* The voter-verified paper trail requirement undermines voting access. DREs make it possible, for the first time, for persons with visual disabilities or limited manual dexterity to cast secret and independent ballots.
The VVPT does not replace DREs. People would still use touch screens
to make their choices. The printed 'receipt' would be in the
individual's language and printed in a large enough font so that it is
absolutely clear.
Because DREs can be programmed in multiple languages, voters with limited English proficiency can participate fully and equally. The millions of Americans who face literacy challenges also can take advantage of the audio features of DREs to cast independent votes without embarrassment.
There is no reason why the printed receipt cannot print out results in
the voter's choice of language. During an official manual recount, it
wou
Not wanting to register to read the New York Times editorial, I searched on Google to see what I could find. I was surprised to find many news articles about how this is a real issue withing the League Of Women Voters. [google.com]
Maybe electronic voting at the regular polling places and not internet style votes, but then again I can see it now... Press the button for Bush or press the button for Kerry, and the buttons are labeled like they are on cell phones with a little line above em, you press either one, THANK YOU FOR VOTING FOR BUSH! GAHH!H!HH!H!!! NOOOOOOOOOO!!
Try not to offend minorities if you want to be taken seriously. I'm posting AC because I don't want to get involved in a flame war, which I didn't start, that will screw up my karma.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/11/politics/campaig n/11league.html
I agree that the LWV is on the wrong side of this issue. I don't buy your contention that the reason they are on the wrong side is that they have become tainted by Diebold money from their association with groups who took that money.
LWV's Mission statement:
The League of Women Voters, a nonpartisan political organization, encourages the informed and active participation of citizens in government, works to increase understanding of major public policy issues, and influences public policy through education and advocacy.
Clearly the LWV is sensitive to changes in the election process that could disefranchise a group of voters. That they agree with the Federation of the Blind's argument does not demonstrate that the LWV is "in bed" with Diebold.
Concerning your last statement, you are not asserting that politics are involved, rather that Diebold's money is causing these organizations to take unreasonable positions.
I can tell you that IMHO where the LWV is involved in this debate, money is not the issue.
My other sig is extremely clever...
BTW, paper trails are not infallible either. This guy questions the disability advocacy group's backgrounds on security. Well I question his background on security if he thinks paper trails are some magic key to ensure fair voting.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
Do you want a vote that counts, or do you just want to feel like you have a vote that counts?
If it's the former, than we need a paper trail. If it's the latter, I'll put up a web page where they can cast their ballot. They won't know if their vote actually counted or not, but it wouldn't have been any better with a paperless electronic voting machine, and the rest of us can continue to have real elections.
paintball
Who says we can't have a simple solution?
RTFA: Women do.
paintball
What's even more troubling is that the group has accepted a $1 million gift for a new training institute from Diebold, the machines' manufacturer, which put the testimonial on its Web site.
Suck my cock a fucking gift! Oh i see its a gift when i slip a 50 to the traffic cop who just pulled me over. Of course its a gift when i ask the jury if they would like their new cars in red or blue and its certainly a fucking gift when presidents get donations from group x and then their policies and actions just happen to benifit group x.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
great, so now all that's needed to nullify an election is contradictory "pre-election" polls
suspecious: ah, Freudian slips at their best
I honestly don't understand the concept behind this e-voting. Why do Americans think that voting constantly needs to be mechanized? First, the goofy mechanical lever system. Then the goofy punch cards. now the goofy computers. And all in all none of it ends up ever being any cheaper or faster than just filling out paper ballots by marking an X.
Now everyone is talking about printing out a paper receipt for recounts etc. So now we are using at least as much paper as paper votes.
You *know* the first time these machines are used in any contested election, one of the parties will cry foul. And there will be a recount. Which will take just as much time with paper votes.
So why the *hell* not just use paper votes in the first place? Empty boxes, you mark an X. We have been doing this in Canada forever, and we are still doing it this year. Why? Cause it is cheap, and it works. There's no hanging chaffes, no computer error, no security issues, it's totally transparent to the public.
All of our money, nuclear power, nuclear weapons monitoring and management, life support systems, transport systems, airliners etc are managed by computers, yet apparently they are not up to the task of incrementing a counter for a name.
If Diebold machines get in the 2004 primary election, we're all screwed if we're not voting for Bush. Think about it.
If by some chance, Kerry wins the election, I predict all our critiques and cynacism will end up being used against us, as the mainstream media will suddenly ressurrect the Diebold story and use it as fodder to throw the whole election process into question, and likely land it back on the steps of the supreme court. I know that sounds like a ridulous assertion, but so was what happened last election.
With no paper trail to verify, and the media going apeshit because Bush has been dethroned, it wouldn't be unrealistic to have yet another major election up in the air.
The first thing I can think of, is if for example, they did away with providing a receipt for credit card transactions. Maybe a lot of companies would only deduct the correct amount but what would you do if someone over charged your account and pocketed the difference? You would probably not realize the error until after you received your bank statement and then disputing the issue would be more difficult without you being able to produce documentation to support your claim that there is an error.
It's so boneheaded and stupid I can't believe it is a subject to be argued over. Unbelievable.
Last time I voted for Nader. Not because I really wanted to vote for Nader, but because I wanted to vote for the viability of a third party.
But, now I know just how evil Bush is, so voting for a third party will just have to wait until 2008. Right now it's more important to make sure we're not down to one party by the time 2008 rolls around.
paintball
Who says we can't have a simple solution? Printing out a piece of paper most certainly WILL address all of the security concerns. At a stroke it allows voter verification, recounts, and auditing to find both corruption and machine errors.
Just how will a piece of paper printed by a computer enable recounts and auditing?
(cue dream-sequence-end music)(cue "Wayne's World" dream music)
Don't get me wrong - I like the idea of voter receipts, even though they could be faked just as easily as any other software effect. But they aren't going to magically fix any problem other than increasing the belief in vote security among the lay public.
For a change, the tin-foil-hat crowd may actually be right!
You have misunderstood the argument. Machines with paper trails would be insanely expensive because the n W would have to buy votes the old fashioned way and that costs much more money than hacking the system. This would be very expensive for him. See they said the machines would be expensive just not for who. Hope this clears it up for you. :)
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
The same thing could be done much more easily now with absentee ballots. "You better register for an absentee ballot and bring it to the shop/church/nursing-home/whatever so your boss/pastor/spouse/doctor/parent can make sure you vote correctly".
I think going to a polling place to vote, where you can vote without anyone's interference, should be pretty much required - and the absentee thing should just be for really unusual circumstances, and not at all encouraged without a good reason.
Imagine the scenario of "show your voting receipt to your union foreman if you ever want another raise in your career." It would never be that obvious, but word would get around.
It would be that obvious, and it was that obvious. Chicago ward captains were famous for it during the Daley pere regime. So were company stores in Southern textile towns during union-accreditation voting. Any time one's vote can be observed or reverse-engineered, it can and will be coerced.
What they really mean is that all the worthless Die-bold hardware they bought at inflated prices would be.. well more worthless. Its such a fucking piss take because i know any half decent group of slashdotters could come up with a far better system that would cost a fraction of what diebold charges and they wouldnt even want to profit from it. Its like paying a pedophile to look after your kids.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
They're just not up to the task of preventing the counter from being overwritten, or preventing me from incrementing the counter 1,000 extra times.
There's one more issue you're missing: With banking, nuclear power, nuclear weapons, life support, transport and airline computers, the people who manufacture, maintain and control the computers have an interest in making sure the computer functions in the way it is advertised to function.
The people responsible for the manufacture and maintenence of the voting computers may have a greater interest in having the computers function not in the way they are advertised to function, but in a way that selects the manufacturer's prefered candidate.
Security isn't just about the mechanics of a system, it's also about the environment that controls how those mechanics are operated. For example, an auction works very well for establishing the fair price of an item when multiple buyers bid on the item. The mechanics of an auction don't work so well if you change the environment to allow the seller to also secretly bid on their own item.
Security isn't just about the mechanics of a system, it's also about the environment that controls how those mechanics are operated. Computers become much less trustworthy when the people in control of the computers may not want the computers to do what they're supposed to be doing.
paintball
Put an end to this atrocity!
Checksum.
Let the people voting see a checksum of all the voting data from their location and the number of votes cast so far on a big screen, on the web etc. Update it every minute or so. Make it public. Then, when it's time for making sure, use that (public) checksum. If there's something wrong, you can trace it back, minute by minute.
I suspect there might be some fundamental flaw in this though, but I can't seem to find it...
Binary-encode the results and a serial number (used to uniquely identify the vote in the tally - note that all current ballots, at least where I live, are serialized), salt it, then encrypt it using one of several public keys (there could be thousands of them). Append information that determines which key is used. Print out the data as a two-dimensional barcode. This barcode could be read at a machine at various government offices.
Yes, there is potential to have someone else read the barcode, but there are physical ways to limit the abuse (have a "trusted" person or people put the barcode through the reader, the voter can then view the vote through goggles or an American-Football Instant-replay style viewer, there are many other options). At this point you can make sure nobody is going in there to check more than one vote. Someone could, with a great deal of effort, check several receipts, but it would be impractical to verify votes on anything even approaching large scale. You could make it a felony to knowingly do so, etc.
This gives you a printed receipt that no one can read (unless they get all of the private keys) or trace back to a specific voter. The voter can personally go back to the gubmint and verify their vote against the database. This could, of course, still be rigged, but it would require a more or less complete compromise of the systems involved.
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Which, if it makes your comments worth hearing, makes mine moreso as I've got over 25 years behind me. :-)
and laterYou do realize that these two statements are at odds, right? The whole idea behind voter verification is that the voter can verify that his or her vote was cast as intended. If the recounts aren't done with the exact text the voter approved, the whole scheme falls apart.
It ain't astroturfing. If you'd, y'know, read the article, you'd notice that local chapters of the LWV are up in arms about this, and there's a very real chance that this issue is gonig to cause a change in leadership.
This is a case of Diebold buying the president of a nonprofit, and the members becoming outraged that their views aren't represented. Luckily, they can change that, and that's just what they're doing now.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
With electronic voting, you should (in theory) get more accurate results, in less time, using fewer people. The paper verification means that if there is a dispute and a recount is called for, the option is available. However, you don't have to front that level of expenditure everywhere. It's much more efficient.
It's worth noting that in their national elections in 2000, Canada had 21 million voters and the US had 105 million. You can see why the US might be a little more obsessed with the cost and speed elements.
Counting is what machines are good at. I trust them (as long the code controlling them is open for public scrutiny) much more than some group of (always biased) humans.
Actually, what machines are good at is following orders. If they're ordered to count, they count. If they're orderd to fake it, they fake it.
I too trust them to do a better job of counting than people - as long as that's what their orders (the program) tells them to do. But I have no way of knowing that the code that the public examined is actually the code running on the machine - and I trust the machine to help hide what code it's running if THAT's what it's been ordered to do.
That's why I can never trust the machine to count.
Now, I CAN trust:
- the paper a machine prints to remain unchanged until the period for recounts is over.
- electors (who are paying attention) to become irate if the machine prints the wrong votes
- the partisans for MY candidates and side on ballot measures to do their best at any recount to assure that the partisans for the OTHER candidates and sides don't fake the count.
So I will trust the election if, and ONLY if, the machines are printing the TRUE ballot, which is then checked by the voters and stored in a ballot box, and the electronic count on the machines is simply an accelleration, subject to being tossed out in favor of the manual recount if there's any question.
Note that once the audit trail is in place there is much less incentive to hack the voting machines. It would be ineffectual AND it would be detected. Without the audit trail there's no way to correct such tampering, or even know it has occurred. So there's a much greater likelyhood it will be attempted.
How do you know it hasn't happened already?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The receipt is supposed to go into a ballot box, not home with the voter. This should allow for a manual recount later if needed. If the voter wants a take home printout, that is a different issue an has other potential problems but is not at issue here.
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What works for Canada doesn't necessarily scale so well for the US.
Yes. You are totally correct. Thank you for the correction.
Beyond the damage that this does to democracy, the other sad thing here is that by focussing so narrowly on their special interests the disabilities groups are very likely hurting themselves in the long term. Presumably most of us sympathize with people with disabilities and support measures to make life easier for them. In the future, I'm going to have to look very carefully at what these organizations want to see whether it is really a good idea. I won't be able to assume that they know what is in their own interests and that it isn't going to be harmful for everybody else. Their bad judgment in this matter has made them less trustworthy.
If by some chance, Kerry wins the election, I predict all our critiques and cynacism will end up being used against us, as the mainstream media will suddenly ressurrect the Diebold story and use it as fodder to throw the whole election process into question, and likely land it back on the steps of the supreme court. I know that sounds like a ridulous assertion, but so was what happened last election.
They'll do that regardless of who wins. (If Bush wins they'll also get to rag on the connection between the Diebold CEO.)
And unlike the last election this one doesn't even have to be CLOSE to be claimed to be corrupted.
If you thought Florida in 2000 was a goon show, you ain't seen NOTHING yet.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Think it could it help with dupes?
They're probably ignoring you because you have a penis.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
It's still hackable, the same way they do it now. Ever wonder who counts ALL the ballots? You can get a count at the precinct level with a poll watcher and a dispute, but higher than that level? It's done by private accounting firms. Only in a rare instance like in 2000 in florida is it publically transparent.
The vote has been hijacked for years, they just keep coming with variations on the same scam. Everyone got a computer by the late 90s, so they had to "computerise" it, make it new and shiny like everything else. There's no way to have a locked down system that is safe from government intervention, especially with the connivance of media at the top corporate levels. THEY do the counting and THEY report on it. all you have is their word against...who's? Really, who else gets to count the entire vote? You can have 15 paper trail receipts, it still won't matter. And it REALLY doesn't matter when they control the political process by such shenaningans as only allowing the top two parties in the official national public debates, or allowing broadcasters with a public granted "license" to reject running contrarian political ads, or by never/minimally covering third parties or alternative candidates in the so called "news", or by even ignoring a lot of the contenders except the top few mainstream ones in the two major parties.
The system is rigged from the start, not to mention legalised bribery from lobbyists.
I still vote but it's from inertia more than anything else, I don't think it really matters, the system is NOT going to allow a non-system candidate to "win" anything important. Who we get as a "president" is determined in advance by a coteire of important international but not publically welll known figures working in the background, and that's it.
It is NOT a coincidence that the shrub was ostensibly visiting the pope at the vatican while simultaneously a few miles away in stresa italy the planets most powerful people were meeting in ultra secrecy and with an almost total media blackout of the event. Contrast that verifiable meetings news coverage with the current G8 summit. Same or higher level of important and powerful people at both events-yet, who really knows about the former, you see anything about it on abc/cbs/nbc, etc? Neither the timing nor the news blackout was any sort of coincidence.
"Presidents" are picked and put into power, they are not voted-in by the electorate nor by the electoral college, that is political melodrama at best,it keeps the "marks" happy/confused to use an old carny phrase, gives them the illusion that they have any real say in matters.
The ballot would be printed in a very large,
clear font; and any OCR technology worth a snot should be able to do the counting; especially if the ballot format were a national standard, where the font, and position (in inches) from the upper left corner, and other details were specified.
Thousands of people in Florida were denied their right to vote. Also thousands of ballots from black districts went missing.
How exactly were those votes counted?
You are saying gay people are less of a person than straight people. See? Flamebait.
I rarely, if ever, hear voting questioned in America. The times I have heard anything about tampering the report is treated with distain (Obviously some jaded canidate is lying).
If you think about it, considering human nature and our voting system, votes HAVE been tampered with, and probably on a pretty wide scale.
It is unbelieveable that nobody ever caught anyone tampering.
Tampering would help incumbants, those with the power to use it and hide it.
I can believe that tampering is rare, but to never have heard about it at all?
I believe the LWV is well-intentioned, but a bit misguided in this matter. A few thousand folks pointing this out may help considerably. They may be contacted at:
1730 M Street NW, Suite 1000,
Washington, DC 20036-4508
Phone: 202-429-1965
Fax: 202-429-0854
They also have a feedback form at:
http://www.lwv.org/forms/contactus.cfm
Here is a copy of the note I sent them.
I recently learned of LWV's opposition to use paper audit trails in electronic voting. As a computer professional I can assure you that this is a grave mistake, which will result in elections where the true winner may never be known. The prolems are myriad, from buggy software to willful, and untraceable, manipulation of the results from people within the company running the election, local officials or skilled hackers from the outside. My specialty is "software quality assurance", which means I am a specialist in finding "bugs" in software. The very first axiom of software quality assurance is that all software containing over a few dozen lines of code contains bugs. Some are never encountered, others cause your computer to crash or corrupt its data. The most serious are those which leave computers wide open to intruders. Even the best software, written by highly skilled professionals contains serious bugs which may not be discovered for years, sometimes because it is discovered that someone is taking advantage of the problems for their own gain.
The most serious problem, I believe, is the possibility of an insider manipulating the results. If an election is entirely electronic insiders can and will make changes, despite any attempts to secure the systems through encryption, digital signatures and other technologies. Let me give you a quick example. A couple of years ago I worked at a company where people could purchase web services online. Customers were told that their transactions were secure because their connections were encrypted. Anyone in our company who had access to our main database had access to the full details of all of our customers credit cards, address, name, expiration date, phone number, etc. Definitely enough information to commit substantial fraud, if done carefully. The only barriers to this fraud were the honestly of my company's employees and the credit card companies fraud-detection systems.
Your concern for the rights of disabled citizens to vote in laudable. All I would ask is that each voting machine have a printer attached to it which would provide a backup copy of the votes for a recount. This could be easily done in time for the fall elections.
For the long term, we should look at standards for electronic voting machines, developed with input from the public and computer professionals. Such standards should include public review of the computer programs running within election machines, to ensure accuracy and security, as well as digital signatures at every stage of the vote-counting process, paper and electronic. This more extensive process could be completed in time for the 2008 elections, but the key is to have a paper audit trail for this fall, which will be counted along side the electronic results to produce a results the will can be counted on to be tallied correctly by the American public.
I love computers, but I do not believe that they are a panacea for the problems which we encountered in the 2000 elections. Please reconsider your position. There is no real conflict between having truly auditable elections and protecting the rights of the disabled.
Thank you very much.
I do see potential for abuse, even if the identity is verified 100%
Consider these scenarios:
-People selling/stealing votes. What is to prevent me from casting a vote on behalf of my parents or siblings? I have access to all their information including SIN numbers, drivers license etc., especially if I know they will not be voting? On the same note, what is to prevent people from selling votes or letting others vote for them? In the current system with video cameras, picture ID, paper trails, trained people who are hard to trick face to face it is indeed much harder.
-What if on the day of election, an email comes around claiming that a candidate is any one of: violent, gay, homophobic, sexist etc. with links to spoofed or fake newspaper articles showing fake evidence. You may not think much of this, but how many people are tricked by email hoaxes everyday? A nasty email/IM might trigger someone to vote abruptly for a stupid reason who would previously not have even voted but with the convience an uninformed vote is made easier.
I am not saying that e-voting should not be implemented, just that we should seriously look into the ramifications. Personally I think at a minimum, there should be audit organizations, paper trials (confirmation number with vote that can be matched to one on public record perhaps?) and people should be notified by postal mail if they voted.
In Canada we have an immense problem getting young people to vote, but I don't really see how making it easier (in a possibly flawed way) will make the government represent the people more...
I don't know if people understand just how bad this could get. I was one of many who felt that the 2000 election was a bit fishy, but since it was really close, I could accept that it was effectively decided on a coin-flip. In any case, it was decided, and there was nothing reasonable to be done about it at the time. At least I knew there was another presidential election coming up in 2004.
Since then I've come to *really* distrust Bush and company. Besides the deceit leading up to Iraq, it seems that the Bush administration has developed a pattern of deciding that their desired policies are more important than legal and constitutional niceties like habeas corpus, trial by jury, the Geneva Conventions, etc. I can completely imagine some members of the administration deciding that "staying the course" is more important than the peculiarities of one election.
Maybe I'm over-reacting and being paranoid, but there are a lot of people like me, people who sat quiet after the 2000 election because they had faith our democracy would handle things eventually.
Now suppose the 2004 election is decided for Bush by state or two which uses a bunch of these voting machines. Then what do I do? Do I take it quietly again, when I've got no way to know if there was cheating?
Again, I'm one of many. Our democracy may not be strong enough to handle 35% of the public believing in a pattern of stolen presidential elections. After all, what do we do if voting can't change things?
It was a statistical tie. Of course, since this is politks and not science, we have to pretend that the result (that is way more noise than signal) is important.
If the results are close, you're still more likely to be right if you go with the one that shows the higher count than the one that shows the lower.
Further, going with the guy who got a handful MORE votes rather than the one who got a handfull LESS means you're following the rules. This is a constitutional republic, so (unlike some other countries) the rules are all we've got. This makes it very important to stick by them - because if the people running the show can deviate from any one of them with impunity, they can deviate from ANY of them. Then it becomes a rule of men rather than laws, and all bets are off.
The important thing about an election in a republic, though, is that it stabilizes the country. It does this by convincing the loser that they can't win by force what they lost in the ballot box. When the election is close that still holds true, even if the results of the count are wrong. That's because the loser needs a big majority of force to stage a successful civil war or coup (and because a lot of people who might have preferred him will change their minds and fight against him if he tries to overthrow the system.)
So a "best effort" count is adequate - as long as the people running it really do their best to get it right.
(The same would be true if Gore had "won" by a handful of votes)
But the reaction would likely have been different.
First: the press (which is heavily biased towards the D side) would have been cheering the squeaker victory rather than griping about the squeaker loss.
Second: Bush and his people (like Nixon before him) would have been unlikely to challenge the result - or at least to fight so long and bitterly.
The two parties attract people with two different styles of thinking. (This is what makes it so funny when figures on one side accuse those on the other of some wrongdoing that is characteristic of those on the accuser's side but anathema to those on the side of the accused.) Republicans attract the (sometimes pathological) rule-followers, Democrats the rule-benders. I'd expect a Republican to respect the result, not pursure recounts beyond all reason, and try again in a later election.
For those of you not familiar with it: The Nixon/Kennedy election was also very close. Kennedy won that by Illinois. And he won Illinois by less than one vote per precinct in Cook County. Cook County was the center of the regime of Mayor Richard Daily, the head of the most corrupt political machine of the time. It is virtually certain that, absent Daily's machine's vote manipulation Nixon would have won.
But Nixon refused to challenge the result, despite pushes from other prominent Republicans to do so. He claimed concern about the turmoil and damage to the citizens' faith in the country's institutions if he challenged the result - especially if his challenge succeeded. Instead he conceded the election, ran for governor of California, lost that, and retired for a while, then tried again and THIS time he won.
Remember: This is the same Richard Nixon who characterized his own no-holds-barred electoral style as "Ratf*cking", and who was later impeached over his own operatives breaking into the Democratic office in the Watergate hotel in an attempt to obtain information useful for his campaign. (Note also that, unlike Clinton, he RESIGNED after his impeachment, rather than let the country take the damage of going through the impeachment trial. Another example of the same difference in style.)
If I recall correctly Bob Barr did much the same when it appeared his seat was stolen by a mass of votes from illegal immigrants. He fought his loss in court for a short time, but threw in the towel rather than pushing it when the lower court said he didn't have enough evidence to prevail, and couldn't collect more under the laws in force. (And he's STILL out.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Evil Republicans, of course!
For a sense of reality the "insanity expensive" device in question is a printer.
I think I see why they'd think this. Go to the store and price printers. $200 up to $5,000. You'd expect that something as important as the vote would need the very best printer so think upper price range.
But the mistake is this isn't an ink jet printer who needs a lot of expensive ink or a lazer printer with toner carts.
Recept printers are thermal and hammer and have been around for a very long time. When thermal printers were expensive I got my hands on a very expensive recept type printer. A whole mind bolging $50.
The paper is like $2 for a box of 5 rolls. This for the specal high quality made by the printer manufacter (muahahaha we get to overcharge becouse we have you by the balls) paper.
This was BTW a very nice high end printer. Fast quiet and amazing in every respect. Plus this was when some companys (Commodore, Atari) had propritary printer interfaces so a printer adapter cartrage came seprately.
I used it for my BBS printing a log of user activity and system feedback as it happend.
It died becouse of a leak in the roof (dam leak into the printer itself nothing else was damaged) so I switched to a standard dot matrix and soon switched off the logging. My wanting to sleep at night you see.
As far as I know this is about as expensive as they get. Actually for like $60 you get the industral swap out printer that is used in some supermarkets. This is a hammer printer it is designed to last something like 10 years non stop use. We don't exactly need something that can spit recepts for 10 years on end for 1 night do we?
I think maybe Dibolt is using a voter rights group to confuse them about the technical issues of verified e-voting.
What should be made clear is the consummer printers are feature rich even the hammer, thermal and lable printers. They have a whole diffrent set of technical issues than is needed by a simple recept printer.
Consummer printers don't need to last long. In fact there is an industry consept called "planned obsolesence". The consummer won't be using it in an industral way and the consummer won't buy a new printer unless the old one dies.
Consummers when shopping for printers care about features features features. Speed, quality, memory sticks even the user interface is considered.
Goddess what is a color screen doing on a printer?
Then comes the industral printers. High end printing. No interface no fonts loud slow and simple. They feature two things above all else they must last and when they die (not if) they must be easy to swap out for a new one.
This becouse in an industreal setting printers are driven day in and out. They are pushed byond the limit. It is nessisary becouse business must be done.
The office printers being both becouse your boss needs the quality, speed and he needs it constantly. The UI is missing byond setting the printer up for office use.
But a voter recept printer....
Your burger king resept printer only cheaper.
I don't actually exist.
First off, did you even read any of the damn press coverage over the election scandal, or are you just parroting the party line? Go check out some of the meta-reportage of six months after the election.
Second, the vote totals were within 200 (GWB on top) when the rererecounting was over. However, there were more than 500 votes that were counted that were later found to be illegal (military absentee) votes. It was obvious who they were voting for, of course. But they were still illegal. All of the Democrats' obvious-but-illegal votes were denied, and 500 illegal-but-obvious Republican votes were counted.
And that's not even to mention the literally thousands of voters who were denied voting rights because of fictitious prison records. Overwhelmingly black. Overwhelmingly Democrat. Illegal, but apparently (in your eyes) irrelevant, because they were unable to actually cast votes.
I can't believe I'm even bothering with this, everyone has made up their minds about it, in the face of or in denial of the evidence as the case may be.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
LWV's position is indefensible... How can any organization not endorse a completely open voting system with paper trail and software which is open to public examination? LVW's current position threatens the fabric of democracy by entrusting corporations, not citizens, with the critical task of ensuring that our elections are credible.
Moreover, opposition to a public advocacy group such as verifiedvoting.org implies that a conflict of interest exists within LVW which pits its leadership against the very members which they are supposed to represent.
What's next? Speaking out against nonpartisan efforts to register voters?
This is a shameful time for the league.
After they saturate the market, they'll grab their foreheads and say "oh, these machines need to be replaced with ones that provide a paper trail" we must avoid recount debacles like 2000 and 2004... so we propose... like... OUR NEW MODEL! Buy buy buy! It's only tax money!
In the meanwhile, they might well steal another election for Bush, which might do wonders for their bottom line.
... the most insightful circular argument I've ever heard.
Funny!? Funny?!??!?!?! wtf how is this funny? you think the fact that your country is run by nothing more than liers, crooks, and businessmen out only for their own money making interests is funny? maybe its funny that you're about to loose the ability to vote because people care more about some quick cash than a fair system? or is it funny that the president wants to do a darl mcbride on america? maybe enron is funny to? haha look at that deficit graph! look bush is a chimp! ooh ooh ooh! ROFL
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
This is just dumb. The state government posts totals by precicnt; and idiot can total them. If any precinct leader sees a discrepancy they holler wolf.
Seriously. There _are_ problems, but this isn't one. By being stupid like this you detract from the real concerns and make people who question ballots look worse. Get a clue... please?
While many slashdotters may think they would be able to verify for themselves that a voting machine hasn't been tampered with, I'm sure many of us could come up with a way to ensure our tampering wouldn't be detected.
We vote, what, every couple of years? It is arguably the most important thing most of us do for our country. Is counting bits of paper really that hard?
The only way I can see that the electorate can see for themselves that democracy is being done is for ballots, once marked, to be put into transparent ballot boxes, transported to the counting station in full view and counted in full view. I can see no other way the average person can be confident the election is fair.
Intellectual Property
Intellectual: of the mind
Property: that over which one has control
If you didn't use verified voting, you could just integrate electronic voting with set-top boxes and allow people to vote using the TV remote! You would probably have a higher voter turnout. The remotes are eventually going to have fingerprint scanners anyway for DRM.
The ironies here are that Diebold is corrupt has been accused of favoring Bush, whereas the LoWV claims to be a "good government" group and tends to support left-leaning candidates.
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This just seems to be part of a larger problem of people unfamiliar with computers just not getting the issue so I've constructed what I think is a pretty good metaphor of the problem.
There's this company, called Diebold, and their employees are fast counters, really fast, so fast they can count all the votes in an election almost instantaneously. The problem is they need a warehouse to do the counting in.
So at all the voting stations they build themselves a warehouse. An election official come in a few months before the election and look around, lots of boxes are around, a whole bunch of different gadgets, the officials can't look over everything but it seems alright. The official remindes Diebold it's against the law to touch anything or let anyone inside before election time for security reasons. A couple days later the Diebold employee in charge goes back inside, he moves some things around and is seen driving up in moving trucks and taking boxes in and out but the election official doesn't see. One day when the Diebold employee isn't at the warehouse a guy is walking down the street and notices a door wide open, he wanders in and finds himself in the warehouse. He decides to take some pictures, windows are left open, most of the doors are unlocked or just have a piece of rope to tie them shut and their security alarm is a mute poodle. This guy shows the pictures around, security companies everywhere are just appaled, they can't believe how bad security is and are screaming it's way too unsecure to hold votes in but the government and Diebold ignore them.
So election time comes around and you have to vote. You go to the lobby at the front of the warehouse and go into your booth. There you mark your ballot as usual (except they have really nice ballots and pencils). Then instead of putting it in a box you go and give it to a person standing behnid the counter, it's supposed to be an elections official but it could also be a guy who snuck in off the street. Your ballot is out of sight for a minute as he carries it over and hands it to the Diebold employee, the Diebold employee then tells you he'll put the ballot in a box and he'll count it at the end with the others. He then goes into the warehouse and that's the last you, or anybody else but the Diebold employee, see of your ballot. After the election the Diebold employee comes out and tells everyone what he counted and who won the election, it not who most people expected and a couple people ask for a recount but the Diebold employee says that he threw out the ballots as he counted them so you just have to take his word for it. A couple of people ask why they didn't just put a photocopier and a traditional ballot box in the lobby where everyone could see it and no one could tamper with it. After marking your first ballot you would be be able to make exactly one copy of it, you could then put the second ballot in that ballot box and at the end if they wanted a recount they could just count the ballots in the traditional box. The Diebold employee (who lost a bunch of the ballots before counting them) says that his counting is good enough and that the old ballot box couldn't be trusted. Oh yeah, that Diebold employee was also campaigning for the guy who won.
Please feel free to redistribute this or give me any suggestions you might have on how to make it better. I've tried to be as factual as possible (not sure about leaving the upset in there).
I stole this Sig
a vote for supreme emperor of the earth for 4 years?
I didn't know we were voting for CEO of Microsoft.
He's referring to the verification in the goddam voting booth you moron.
*splat*
while I understand why you are doing the analogy,
it is too long and drawn out; really, people (or at least the poeple that make desisions) are much smarter -- treat them intelligently, educate them. This _is_ a complicated problem, don't treat it like it isn't. Cheers!
f'ckn brilliant observation
> Who's Blocking Verified E-Voting?
:)
Democrats...
...but nearly every guy I know would ask "what the hell does that mean" before getting too worried about it. However I've noted that a fair number of my intelligent female friends are quicker to act like they know what something means when they don't.
It's not that women are less knowledgable, but they're less likely to admit it, and risk looking stupid. Sad thing is that it usually backfires as there's few things stupider looking than being highly confident in one's ignorance.
I figure women do this is because of all the pressure for an intelligent woman to prove she's not ignorant. But really the smartest people are quick to ask questions and admit when they don't know something. How else would they learn so much?
Kinda sad that it works out that way.
Cheers.
Boy, those where the days, back then, in the great gilted era, a man knew his place. Amazing how far we've wandered; oh well, there is hope, this new voting technology will fix all of our problems.
Why would we want to keep up with the so-called "Great Generation" (aka the WWII 'heros') who stole from the aristrocrocy and gave to the ... oh horror of horrors -- average public! Oh. We _will_ reverse their wrong doing; and the "hippies" who never had to earn their own keep and who bitched about Vietnam will be our pawns. Their generation will undo everything that their parents had put in place. And what a glory it will be. Perhaps we can go back to the days of Scott F. Fitsgerald.
If we're to the point that people can't vote their conscience without fear of reprisal then the First Amendment is already dead and revolution -- violent revolution -- is necessitated.
Seastead this.
I don't have a 'plan' so much as a roadmap. As they say, a plan doesn't survive contact with the enemy. As a libertarian represtative would be the 'enemy' of both the Republicans and Democrats, a plan wouldn't survive.
/.
1: Decriminalize 'victimless' crimes as much as possible. Reason: It tends to hurt organized crime, as they lose the income from running black markets. Besides, if all people involved are consenting adults, why is the government involved?
2: Reduce/Eliminate Welfare. Or at the very least, make them work 40 hours a week for it!
3: Reduce/Eliminate corporate welfare schemes.
4: Stop federal funding of local programs. A State's schools should be funded by the state, not the feds, for example. There are all sorts of studies that show that programs run at a federal level have pathetic efficiency. I've read that only 30 cents on the dollar makes it to the 'end user' in welfare!
There's more to it, but this post would quickly get too large for
I don't read AC A human right
... if it was, we'd have run those punch cards down in Florida through an IBM 2501 and been done with it in a couple of hours definitively. Some ballots will be rejected by the automatic process, all OCR technologies have a less than 100% scan rate. As do all other technologies - I own and have used a card saw.
Technology isn't the answer because it isn't a technical question. We wouldn't even be having this debate if Gore lost Florida by a metric crapload of popular votes. The problem is political - whenever the swing count is small, every vote matters, and some ballots will be open to interpretation.
Someone should tell these blind people about Braille.
Or are they deaf, too?
Perhaps we could use some sort of water pump to verify their votes.
his previous posts indicate that he clearly understands the issues
I think I have a solution to all this voting nonsense. The first step is to issue every voting age american a Public and Private Key , as per PGP.
Then, when the voting is actually taking place, the votes are encrypted using the Government's widely-known public key, and is digitally signed using the private individual's Private key.
This way, even the voting machine doesn't know what votes a given data stream actually contains, since the signature of the individual changes the representation of the votes. When the gov't. recieves the vote, it decodes the message using it's own private key, and then re-decodes it using the voter's known Public Key.
In other words, don't count on a machine to do the counting at the voting machine level. Assign one public, open-source machine to decode all the votes once they have been registered. There is no reason for the voting machines to do the counting themselves.
Another possible method would be to use two seperate machines for the voting. The first has a touch-screen and all the bells and whistles, and punches you a physically verifyable ballot, which is then put into the second machine, which reads the card and asks you to confirm the votes again. When you do, then a physical counter is incremented. The first machine is all or mostly electronic, and the second entirely mechanical, so there is no funny business.
Well, JohnQ, as much as I like XEDIT (and THE),
I really do think that Rexx (and Regena) suck.
People believe what they want to and conveniently ignore that doesn't fit their preconceived notions of reality.
Doesn't matter if they are left or right wing, people ignore what doesn't fit their view of the world.
Take the Florida 2000 elections. Plenty of TV coverage and each side thoroughly believed that something was going on just outside of the cameras to sway the "vote" in a way that was unfavorable to their side. Why, because we believe only the other side does underhanded things, and we are also well aware of how anything on TV can be faked.
We live in the Silver Age of the Conspiracy Theory. It seems like everyone has some story about what the Dems/Reps did that comes from the Twilight Zone that is the political paranormal.
Seeing things isn't going to matter.
Being intimately involved would matter, but 300 Million people can't be intimately involved.
People already can't say want they want due to political correctness.
And I don't see any revolution.
How is allowing people to be harassed and ostricised for voting how they want going to help?
Plus, to be cynical, by not having an actual 1:1 vote to person matching, your favourate Special Interest Group can complain that the votes were fixed, and no one can actually check their claims.
I disagree but have no mod points. Someone please censor the parent and mod it a Troll.
I don't want to actually argue facts with the parent, because I might lose. I just want to vilify the poster and censor their beleifs.
Please censor and mod the parent Troll.
expense is relative.
the cost of war in iraq is hella expensive. we'll be paying for THAT for decades...
price of printers and paper? PUH-LEEZE! gimme a break.
orders of magnitude and importance. you cannot put a price on something as important as who the next clown will be to ruin^Hrun our country.
seriously. price should not be an issue. we've wasted a few hundred million on plane tickets that we'll never see again (thanks congress...) - what's a few dollars to the IT INDUSTRY (that we all know needs help) to buy some damned printers and cash register paper tape along with some non-diebold consulting to integrate same into the machines.
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
I've hammered on this in several other posts - a receipt which the voter can take out of the polling area opens many doors to new abuses. Imagine the scenario of "show your voting receipt to your union foreman if you ever want another raise in your career." It would never be that obvious, but word would get around. Once there are verifiable voting receipts, your vote can be coerced after the fact.
This is a solved problem. Using various cryptographic methods, the voter can take out an encoded receipt that he, or anybody, can use to verify that his vote was correctly counted, but which cannot be used to determine who he voted for.
If you want people to vote Libertarian, we need more political fragmentation.
Right now, there is a fairly even break between Demms and Reps. Nobody wants to vote for a third party, because it *does* effectively throw away their vote. We have an extremely contentious election, with Kerry opposing Bush on a number of hot topics, including abortion, gay rights, and war stance.
The best time for third parties to get votes is when people are sufficiently fed up with both the Republican and the Democratic candidate, when the election is being done over relatively lackluster issues, and both are very similar.
May we never see th
Exactly when have Democrats said black people were allowed to vote?
They have cried wolf for 30 years. I am not listening to them anymore.
The LWV does not support any particular candidate.
My other sig is extremely clever...
When Diebold builds an ATM, they make sure there is a printer in it, with paper in it that prints a record that a banker can read. The banks demand this.
I really am suspicious of Diebold. If you follow the money it doesn't make sense. If IBM made fortunes on selling 80 column cards and printer companies nearly give away printers with tiny ink cartridges so they can make it up on replacement cartridges, why would Diebold pass up the opportunity to sell printing supplies every election for the machines they sell that should last for decades?
My best guess is that Diebold wants to sell you the voting machine with the printer after they sold you the one without.
It is a shame that they are so content to create a system so inviting to tampering. It's also a shame that our elected officials are happily encouraging this.
I am glad to live in Minnesota with our opticaly read marked ballots.
>>I think this is a good time to remind everyone that Bush's dad used to be head of the CIA. Director of CIA George Tenet,who just resigned,was put in under Bill Clinton. The CIA conspired to get George W into office. Then forged all those WMD reports so he would race off to Iraq and make a fool of himself and thus be not elected. A-HA. The League of Women Voters are pulling the strings of the CIA. We knew it!
Is there an open source voting solution in the works? Some group should develop a fantastic open-source electronic voting solution to compete with Diebold and the such. So why not actually start creating an actual replacement for the current overly priced, pitifully designed systems instead of just talking about it?
Dustin - A different story...
People act as if this issue (and, for that matter every other issue) has a clear solution. As if any reasonable or intelligent person can't debate the causes of the problem and the proposed solution! This is kinda arrogant. Most issues in politics are very complicated; simplifying them usually only helps the politicians and does not make a simple solution more desirable.
For instance, I wonder how many of those paper receipts could be dusted for fingerprints. Wouldn't that make it easier to figure out who voted for whom? Is it easier or harder to backtrack the voters than traditional paper ballots? And what about all those methods for electronic security. What makes a computerized voting system easier to fraud? If I wanted to fix a traditional election, all I'd do is replace ballot box with an identical one with my votes. Digital results can be harder to fake (md5 sums, multiple copies transported, and even quantum encryption could identify interception of the results by a third party).
Really, what's the difference between not knowing how a computer stores its information verses ignorance of how a box of ballots are handled? They both are vulnerable.
It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do.
- Jerome Klapka Jerome
This is the same group of people who outlawed alcohol
and caused a situation where the contry was brought to its knees from rampant crime.
ive got nothing against women voting but the LWV does more harm than good.
call me crazy but i once read a series of articles about some john titor guy from the future who said that america went though a revolution after a botched election in 2004 untill recently i reguarded it as claptrap but i think im going to look it up again
You are correct about barcodes undermining the solution. However, the other poster here has a point about using OCR. So what if it is only 97% accurate. Use a human for the other 3%. ;)
The way things are going, we're going to see an unparalleled turnout of the voting population in the US November elections.
We're going to see massive hoards of people who have never participated in polls, who may likely have a radically different impression of how their country should be run, in sharp contrast with what is represented in the mainstream media.
What happens when polls say Bush has a 41% approval rating and he gets 21% of the vote? How is the media going to handle this?
This is what we need to think about. And this is exactly where this voting issue becomes a lynchpin in maintaining the status quo.
There's always a substantive percentage of the populace that is ignored. We may find these groups becoming more obvious in the upcoming elections. The question is, if the stats differ dramatically from the official result, how are both sides going to react, and re-react?
This is exactly why women should not vote. Look what happens when we let them vote... they insist on being submissive and let someone else vote for them anyway.
please don't call it a receipt. It is a record of the vote cast. Small distinction I know, but one that will save a lot of wasted discussion.
Blogging because I can...
Seriously, there are plenty of us willing and able to do the work of democracy. Why spend all this money on a system that gets us nothing in return?
Keeping people directly involved is a good thing. It's not like we are making hamburgers or something. The manual process is good enough, plus it can be trusted to a much higher degree than any electronic one will.
Besides, what else are the older folks going to do? They can at least vote and be a respected part of the process.
You make good points, but I am not sure I see the return to society overall with electronic voting systems.
Blogging because I can...
make use of them. Leave the rest of us able to vote and confident in the process used.
Blogging because I can...
Joe Stalin, Left-wing Leader, nuff said
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If we had condorcet voting, then yes, I'd vote libertarian, because I could still rank Kerry above Bush.
But we don't, and so I won't, because I just absolutely do not want Bush to win.
Condorcet voting is the only way the two party system is going to get broken.
Like Bo Derek, or Britney Spears.
The only one who knew what suffrage meant was an educated leftie.
You know it's true.
BTW: Ann Coulter is more a man than a woman. Heck, she's got more testosterone than George W Bush does, (that monkey-spankin coward...)
My Mac's "secure".. If I was running Linux, instead of OS X, it'd be "secure..." At least from them damned winders viruses... Or exploits... But wait, Linux, which is OSS, and OS X, which largely relies on the open BSD have vulnerabilities... So my Mac's not secure... It won't be.. Ever... While I may have laughed at Windows users who suffered the effects of Blaster or Bagle, and want to shoot those whose computers are still running spam relays, my mac's not safe... Even if Steve GPLed all the code tomorrow, it wouldn't be safe in my lifetime, or the universe's for that matter. /doesn't/ require such safeguards.
Just because no worm TODAY will turn my machine into a zombie to shill viagra, and its OS is less likely to allow the worm to control my system than XP doesn't mean it's immune.. It isn't.
The printout must be the only ballot counted. The voter verifies the printout before putting it into the box.. The printout is optically scanned using OSS software, and THEN submitted for counting. The elements scanned are human readable, no barcodes, or whatnot.
An optical recognition and processing system, which has been in constant development for millions of years, clustered, serves as a backup.
Even this kind of setup will never be perfect, but it is a damned sight better than trusting a system which
Paper lasts nearly forever, and is damned durable... I own books printed in the 1600s, where EVERY word is legible... Make a digital format with that kind of durability, given that putting a tape or cd in a hot car can fuck it up, but I've never had papers in similar situations burn, or become otherwise corrupted... Or that the interface is obsolete... I can still see 400 year old text with no problem.
The LVW quit being trust worthy when they started endorsing ballot issues and stuff in the state legislature. The WCTU brought us prohibition. Screw them.
Diebold can kiss my ass. I am voting by absentee and using a paper ballot.
If you don't like what I write don't be a CS and mod it down. Refute it.
Yea I can't spell. So what is your point?
Easy, the incumbent emperor supreme (yikes) would prefer to actually be elected this time. That whole election process is *much* easier to manipulate when there's no paper trail. So he and cronies will do everything to avoid a paper trail.
The solution is to demand (and IMO require by law) these groups open their books and show where there money comes from and where it goes. IMO this isn't unreasonable since they enjoy nonprofit status unlike, say, a lobbyist group. The extra benefit would be honest nonprofit groups would grow. Honesty really is the best policy.
Any group (or church for that matter) that is not willing to show who gives them money and what they spend it on should get nothing and be treated with suspect.
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
You know, i don't care so much about the vote...F*ck the vote. We should be ARMED.
When women have guns, then we can talk about equal rights.
It is often said that if JFK were alive today he would be a Republican.
If Stalin was alive today he would be a Democrat.
Use the electronic voting machines used in India. Proven to have no backdoors/bugs. But its not *e* - that is, it is not networked.
- Conduct one elections with these machines.
- Before the next elections, figure out a way to network these machines
The point is for something so critical and important, don't experiment!! Use the stuff that works and make small quantifiable changes!!
I would join your League, but I fled CONUS to live in Australia when things got rough.
Then John Howard came to power.
Look where trusting our instincts with regard to intellectual property has taken us
NOT less. The counters are volunteers so it doesn't cost any more money but the more people involved the lower the chance of electoral fraud. I have to wonder why the US government is so desperate to reduce the numbers of people involved in determining who the government should be.
We've just had European elections. Around 200 million voters, about a 50% turnout overall. PAPER ballots, very simple and very effective, we won't know the results till Sunday, but does that really matter?
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
The reason that the US like the UK is basically a two party state (democracy?) is the election system.
You, like Britain use a first past the post system. You vote for an individual to be your representative. The problem is that the voting system doesn't ackowledge the fact that these individuals have banded together into parties. e.g The Labour party in the UK got only 42% of the popular vote across the country, that's a minority, 68% of the population didn't want them in power but the election system has given them a large majority of 65% in the parliament. That's a kick in the teeth for the majority and for democracy.
The solution is to change the election system to a proportional representation system. It increases the political complexity, but that basically is a reflection of the complexity of peoples lives.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
It doesn't get more stratigic than that.
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
Paper ballots mean tons of volunteers counting them. Tons of volunteers counting votes leads to tons of people who are involved with the election process. Tons of people involved with elections means tons of people who think they can make a difference in government. The current powers do not want more people involved in government; they already have power; why would they want more competition? So they spend some of our money implementing systems that reduce the number of people needed to run the government.
I just recommended to a small business that they not add more computers because computers would increase the time required for record-keeping. The few benefits of having electronic records were not worth the cost, effort of installation, and on-going effort of maintaining a new system. I will be helping create a proper website, but that will not be much more than a brochure site and an email form because they do not want any customers who will not visit the store. Their business is value-add through personal configuration, not reselling, so they do not want relationships with customers they have not personally measured. Sometimes using computer/internet technology will not add value.
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The Slashdot quote for this page was:
Anything is possible on paper. -- Ron McAfee
Very relevant, but even more is possible if your voting system is based on MS technology.
I spend my life entertaining my brain.
It may have been distributed by the Daughters of the American Revolution -- there were DAR members in my family -- who at the time served as a civilian women's mouthpiece for the Department of War, as it was then called. (The military were highly opposed to women voting.)
It never occurred to me before reading the grandparent post that the button might have been intended to confuse people who didn't understand the word.
I have no love for Diebold. After this fiasco, they should be fined in to submission. However, the prices of these things would easily allow someone to build the machines and make a bit of money doing it.
We have been handling votes for the sight-impared for a while now. That is not a reason to continue with electronic voting for the masses. Funny, Oregon has a mail in vote, they also run a limited number of ballot drop points if you miss the mail. There are no polling places and we manage to get the vote done, and we can get a recount.
Blogging because I can...