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LWV Reverses Electronic Voting Machine Stance

Posted by michael on from the rabble-rousing dept.

sirshannon writes "Apparently caving to pressure from Slashdot readers (or maybe it was all their peeved members), The League of Women Voters rescinded its support of paperless voting machines on Monday."

15 comments

  1. Hey... by xgamer04 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This just shows that people still understand how to use democracy in this country.

    --
    When you look at the state of the world, how can you not become a radical, liberal anarchist?
    1. Re:Hey... by SpaceLifeForm · · Score: 4, Insightful

      This event will have much more effect if it is properly covered by the mainstream media.

      --
      You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
    2. Re:Hey... by xgamer04 · · Score: 1

      Let's hope it is. Of course, with the media being a giant oligopy, this probably won't get covered except on page A14 of your newspaper.

      --
      When you look at the state of the world, how can you not become a radical, liberal anarchist?
    3. Re:Hey... by jhylkema · · Score: 2, Funny

      This just shows that a woman still has the right to change her mind at anytime, and will exercise that right at the drop of a hat.

  2. I remember the good old days. by base3 · · Score: 5, Funny

    When endorsements that were bought stayed bought.

    --
    One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
    1. Re:I remember the good old days. by frankie · · Score: 3, Interesting
      If it's any consolation, they haven't updated their web site:
      It has been suggested that DRE machines are inherently subject to fraud unless there is an individual paper record of each vote. This seems extreme. DREs are extremely sophisticated machines and most DREs store information in multiple formats and in multiple places within its program. To tamper with a DRE someone would need to know each and every format and storage capacity and be able to manipulate it undetected. Additionally, it must be remembered that DREs are not an election system unto themselves; they are simply an instrument within a complex election system. The key is to design an overall system that builds in multiple checks making it improbable that the system will be tampered with.
      Those "sophisticated" Diebold machines store all of the vote AND audit data in unencrypted MS Access databases. Various tiger teams have found it trivial to make undetectable changes (assuming you can break in to the Windows XP environment, har dee har harr)
      The LWVUS does support an individual audit capacity for the purposes of recounts and authentication of elections for all voting systems, including, but not limited to, DREs. The LWVUS does not believe that an individual paper confirmation for each ballot is required to achieve those goals; in fact this is unnecessary and can be counterproductive. An individual paper confirmation for each ballot would undermine disability access requirements, raise costs, and slow down the purchase or lease of machines that might be needed to replace machines that don't work. Simply because a voter verifies their vote on a piece of paper does not guarantee the same results have been be recorded within the machine and vice versa. And why would we assume that, if the total from a paper count and the total from a machine count are different, the paper count is accurate?
      Hopefully they delete the entirety of this paragraph except maybe the first sentence.
  3. Pressure from /. by vijaya_chandra · · Score: 1

    "Apparently caving to pressure from Slashdot readers"

    and this guy was saying that he's surprised that /.'ers weren't trying to take credit for slashdotting the entire WWW

  4. How was that pressure applied? by Irvu · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If /. Readers had an impact how was it done? Was there a petition link on the previous story that I missed? Was there a letter writing campaign that I missed? Or the the LWV leadership (and the hundreds of their members who oppose paperless ballots) simply derive all their impetus from the firestorm going on in the comments? Did thjey for example read them and think, "wow we have to move now or these people may moderate each other more heavily!"

    I am not minimizing the role of discussion here nor am I saying that posting a comment on /. is a waste of time.

    What I am saying is that comments on /. stay on /. If you want to pressure other groups don't expect that they will read your comments and change their minds. What you do is take action at the EFF, join the ACLU, get organization info from Blackboxvoting.org, or send letters to the appropriate people (Congress, Whitehouse) . You can even create your own online petition at PeitionOnline.com. The key is to branch out to others and raise their conciousness level not preach to the choir.

    1. Re:How was that pressure applied? by Planesdragon · · Score: 1

      What I am saying is that comments on /. stay on /.

      Yes, they do. And when your server's hits spike up by several thousand, with referrers from a site you've never heard about, you go take a gander--and you may just change your mind.

    2. Re:How was that pressure applied? by Irvu · · Score: 1

      Granted but that is a far cry from getting the word out. I'd be willing to bet that the LWV noticed the traffic but, traffic or no, that gives them no reason to care what the referring site says. Nor does it gurantee that they will even link the two together. The same goes for any company or elected rep. In some cases (e.g. slashdotting the RIAA or Orin Hatch) I'd be willing to bet the recipients will treat it negatively ("were under attack") and behave accordingly.

    3. Re:How was that pressure applied? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I thought it was a joke. Read the blurb again. I'm pretty sure it's a joke.

    4. Re:How was that pressure applied? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      > What I am saying is that comments on /. stay on /.

      Not necessarily. I know I will fire off an email to a person/institution mentioned in a Slashdot story, if I feel strongly enough about an issue.

      For example, I got a very nice reply from the author of that crappy anti-open-source book telling me what he thought of me! It also confimed to me that he was pushing an agenda and had reached his conclusions before writing his book.

      Normally I am civil in my emails though, and a barrage of emails politely pointing out the error of one's ways, along with reasoned argument, can have an effect.

  5. RTFA, you insensitive clod! by JohnQPublic · · Score: 5, Informative

    (or maybe it was all their peeved members)

    What part of the following don't you understand?

    The League of Women Voters rescinded its support of paperless voting machines on Monday after hundreds of angry members voiced concern that paper ballots were the only way to safeguard elections from fraud, hackers or computer malfunctions. About 800 delegates who attended the nonpartisan league's biennial convention in Washington voted overwhelmingly in favor of a resolution that supports "voting systems and procedures that are secure, accurate, recountable and accessible."
    ...
    E-voting critics who attended the five-day convention, which ends Tuesday, said the league's revision was welcome -- if not overdue. "My initial reaction is incredible joy and relief," said computer scientist Barbara Simons, 63, past president of the Association for Computing Machinery and a league member from a chapter in Palo Alto, Calif. "This issue was threatening to split the league apart.... The league now has a position that I feel very comfortable supporting."

    Whaddaya know, this "democracy" stuff works!

  6. They are not fools. by gurps_npc · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Eventually they had to realize that there is NEVER a good reason to support less secure voting methods.

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    excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com