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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.
"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.
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...
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
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
I'll agree with you there. Probably the best way to make sure the Right Thing gets done with e-voting is to not bring up specific people or parties if at all possible.
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.
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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?
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.
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.
That would be bad. One of the reasons for adopting the secret ballot was to eliminate the possibility of coerced votes.
Secret ballot:
Louie McFingers: "Youz vote for Pepsoco, or I breakz yer legs."
You: Um, ok.
You vote for Bipzi instead.
Louie *doesn't know*.
Online-verifiable receipt:
Louie McFingers: "Youz vote for Pepsoco, or I breakz yer legs. And bring yer receipt."
You: Um, ok.
You vote for Bipzi instead.
Louie checks your receipt online and *breaks your legs*. Or, if you "forgot" your receipt, Louie *breaks your legs*.
This is also why home (e.g. Internet) voting is a bad idea (e.g. Louie can stand over your shoulder while you vote), and why voting using absentee ballots is generally only allowed under limited circumstances.
DNA just wants to be free...
90% of Americans wouldn't vote for a Libertarian candidate even if they did know what they stood for. Plus, their candidate looks like a dork.
Best Slashdot comment ever
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.
I don't think that this is a case of astrotufing. That implies that both groups are corrupt or that one group is accountable to the other. Rather I think it's more like a case of the Baptists and the Bootleggers where two groups want the same thing but for vastly different reasons. I'd like to think that the disability rights group really does just want better access in voting, and that they just don't understand the consequences of their actions. The money is probably not so much a payoff as it is Diebold taking advantage of the situation and bolstering a potentially valuable ally. Of course, I haven't done my research, so for all I know the group is made up entirely of ex-diebold employees.
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
But while laws apply to everyone, so should voting.
Anyone who thinks this joker's post is Insightful must not have clicked on that oh so insightful GNAA link. Geez, they give mod points to just about anybody these days.
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.
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
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
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.
I do wonder what scalability problems paper voting has. Counting votes should scale nicely and linearly with the number of counters, and it's not like adding the results from each group of counters is a problem.
So, please, tell me: How do you manage to make a problem out of counting 10 times the number of votes with 10 times the number of counters, and adding the results (per state)?
But he won't win. And it's dumbasses like you who are going to get Bush re-elected, because none of the third party candidates take away from the Republican vote. Any other year I'd have your back but we need Bush out and Kerry is the only realistic chance of that. There's no argument you can have that could say that any 3rd party candidate has a chance this year. Maybe in 50 years, but you can wait 4, or else there might not be a country when the terrorists nuke major cities because of Bush's horrible Middle East Policy.
in bed.
Why is it so damn important that results be known RIGHT NOW? Less than half the people in your country vote, and therefore don't care. For those that do your TV networks are projecting winners the second polls close. Up here we know the results before we go to bed. By morning most of the counts are official. Within days MPs are being sworn in.
Why is efficiency even an issue? I care about efficiency when I order a pizza. I care about efficiency when I buy a car. For one night every four years (or so) efficiency can go to hell. When deciding who will be governing me and my country I want accuracy.
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.
Ah yes, the old "That won't work here, we're special" argument.
Yes, you have an order of magnitude more voters. But that also means that you have an order of magnitude more polling stations and volunteers to count votes. In terms of voting there is no fundamental difference between a Canadian city of 1 million people and an American city of 1 million people. The fact that you have 10 times as many of those cities is irrelevant to this problem.
Serve Gonk.
As to the number of women who don't know what "women's suffrage" means, it would be kind of fun to do this to men -- see how many are willing to sign a petition to end "men's suffrage". I'm sure that would resonate about equally with them. (Hey, what do you know ... maybe enough would sign to take away their right to vote. )
I was taking one day at a time, but then several days got together and ambushed me. (from a Rhymes with Orange comic)
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...and the media going apeshit because Bush has been dethroned
I think this is a good time to remind everyone that Bush's dad used to be head of the CIA.
I would be much more afraid that Bush wins (despite the "mission" being "accomplished"), with the help of some help from the same type of folks who brought us Iran-contra.
I would definately not put it past a memeber of the Bush family to break the law for politcal gain, so long as they think they won't get caught.
Life is too short to proofread.
How can my vote serve better than to express MY preference for who should lead us?
Your notion of "wasting votes" is the most destructive opponent to equitable political discourse in America. My vote is MINE. I will cast it for the person I want to lead. "strategic voting" is the same thing as group-think.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Uhm actually the problem is that not enough people vote. I have friends who hollar and comlain about politics but have never stepped ina voting booth (and yes they are old enough to vote). If you didn't vote you can't complain about bush fucking things up is my opinion. It also seems a lot of these people act like they are too good to vote. "The candidates are fucking idiots" Well, one of those idiots will be running the country so choose which idiot you want and vote for him.
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.
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
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
...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.
"But he won't win. And it's dumbasses like you who are going to get Bush re-elected..."
A man should never be asked to walk away from his principles. Voting your conscience is the only vote that matters. Most people are voting the way they are today because they do not like the other guy. They are not voting their conscience. Let me give you an example:
If you were on death row, and you had a 50% chance of electrocution, and a 45% chance of lethal injection, and a 5% chance of escape. Which would you choose? Logic dictates you would attempt escape. Well the two party system we have in this country is so close in scope that it is often described as one party with a mild right or left bent. In short, both are heading you toward a destructive end. Just look at how far we've come in the last 90 years. We are on life support with regard to our liberties. And the powers that be want new laws like The PATRIOT Act passed by Congress.
Libertarians believe in the Liberal ideas of freedom to do whatever you want, coupled to the (what used to be) Conservative ideas of fiscal responsibility. We believe that you know what's best for you and it's not up to the government or anyone else to tell you how best to live your life. It's your life, after all. Live it the way you want to, so long as you take responsibility for your actiosn and do not harm others in so doing.
By the way, the Libertarian ideals were exactly how this counry ran for the first 125+ years of its existence. It is government propoganda and intentionally crafted laws which have bound you to chains you are not even aware your bound to. If you want to know what freedom is, and what rights the government has and doesn't have, read The Declaration of Independence to establish the mindset of why this country was begun in the first place, then read The Constitution and The Bill of Rights (which does not grant you your rights, by the way, it merely enumerates some of your individual rights).
The Constitution was ratified in 1789. The Bill of Rights was drafted in 1789 as an appeasement features for some of the delegates to address concerns by the citizenry that people did not have specific rights. Ten of the original Twelve Amendments on The Bill of Rights were ratified in 1791.
- Rick C. Hodgin - foxmuldr@ameritech.net
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
the 130,000 members (less than the number of /. members)...
Good point.
Where is the League of Slashdot Voters? Sure, I contribute to the EFF, but if you could go to your local political candidate and say "I represent 10,000 voters in this state, and over 250,000 nation wide, and we want you to fix the DMCA" or what ever, they might actually take notice.
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
Personally I hold my own government and its allies to a higher standard than I do others.
If you tell me that some foreign power with a long history of human rights abuses is torturing people then that's terrible, but I'm not surprised. If you tell me that the government of a country that I have some respect for is torturing people then that's far more disturbing. If you tell me that my government, acting in my name and spending my money is torturing people then that's worst of all because I'm responsible for it, and I have a responsibility to try to put a stop to it.