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caving to pressure from Slashdot readers (or maybe it was all their peeved members), The League of Women Voters rescinded its support of paperless voting machines on Monday."

7 of 15 comments (clear)

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

    When endorsements that were bought stayed bought.

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    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. 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.

  4. 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!

  5. 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