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How To Lose An Election
smooth wombat writes "CNN has posted a story to their site about electronic votes from Miami-Dade County's first widespread use of touchscreen voting machines that were lost due to a computer crash.: 'The malfunction was made public after the Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition, a citizen's group, requested all data from the 2002 gubernatorial primary between Democratic candidates Janet Reno and Bill McBride.' Other groups are challenging a state rule preventing counties that use the machines from conducting manual recounts from them." Reader fatwater adds a link to the New York Times' coverage.
Raise your hand if you're surprised to see 'Computer Crash' and the Surname 'McBride' in the same headline.
0110100100100000011000010110110100100000011000100
To really fuck something up, that takes a computer.
-- Anonymous
What Republican got that law passed?
I TOLD YOU SO
Is it all that hard to add a 'print reciept' option to all of these voting machines? Honestly, if they had a ream of paper coming out of the back of the machine, and the option for Voters to print off a copy for their own records (and to verify their vote was recorded as they expected) a lot of the problems with the electronic voting machines would be alleviated. Votes could be recounted by going back over the paper trail, and there would be immediate response for vote tallies.
Clinton made me a Republican. Bush made me a Libertarian. Trump is making me question reality.
Maybe UN observers wouldn't be such a bad thing?
' ..."How To Lose An Erection"???'
Nope...just you.
The question that no one in this article has asked is what do you do if the voting machine has a hard drive crash during an election so you literally lose all of the votes cast on the machine before it can even report what votes were cast that day.
Multiply the number of machines in use across the country and eventually this will happen.
Do you ask all the voters who used that machine to come back and vote again ? Probably not.
For decades the USA has called for international monitors to elections in most 3rd world countries. It is sad to see that the USA's election system seems to be one of the most 3rd-worldish out there, with rampant corruption. Time for the UN to call for international monitors!
This upcoming election is going to be a mess. Of course GWB will steal it, and after much to-do, he will be re-anointed. Just the way they used to do it is South America. Soon, he will even start wearing a military uniform.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
``Our concern is voter confidence,'' Howard Simon, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, told the court. ``There is no way to know if a vote isn't counted by one of these machines.''
Joining the ACLU in Judge Susan B. Kirkland's courtroom were several other organizations that cited evidence in recent elections in Florida and Virginia that recorded abnormal numbers of blank votes or computer glitches that resulted in incorrect vote tallies.
Under questioning by the groups' attorneys, Division of Elections official Paul Craft said, ``All machines experience problems,'' but he did not know of any problem that had resulted in an inaccurate vote tally in Florida.
George Waas, of the state attorney general's office, told Kirkland that the advocates were suffering from ``the sky- is-falling syndrome.''
Sorry, but due to issues that happened in the 2000 Presidential Election in Florida I would certainly be "suffering" from the "sky-is-falling syndrome" too.
Why the fuck can they not manually recount votes? I honestly believe that when we elect someone to office we should be 100% certain that they were elected fair and square. None of this pre-election bullshit of skimming out legal voters through third parties, none of this "tough, the machines are right" shit, and certainly allow a recount.
Cheating is going to run rampant if there is no manual backup mechanism available. Why the hell was this written into law?
The sky-is-falling isn't exactly the way to describe this. The sky-has-fallen might be better.
Who did you vote for in the last election that you participated in? Can you prove it? Can they prove it? Why can't I verify if my vote was even counted let alone who they recorded it for? Why is there no verification or personal audit trail available for elections?
Speak truth to power.
Blue screen of disenfranchisement.
In December, officials began backing up the data daily, to help avoid similar data wipeouts in the future, said Seth Kaplan, spokesman for the county's elections supervisor, Constance Kaplan.
Hey, here's a novel IT solution: BACKUP YOUR DATA! Ever hear of fault tolerant disk subsystems? Sheesh!
what is wrong with a good old paper ballot and a pen to mark your choice(s)?
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
From the same state that gave us the mental wizards confused by the butterfly ballots.
This is always what happens when you let hysteria and demagoguery drive your decisions.
Punch card balloting is an extremely accurate and economical way to tally votes.
Instead of being men and telling voters to read the damn ballot and punch the card completely next time, we get all boo-hooey over a few idiots who don't do either, and let ourselves get whipped up into making stupid decisions by political opportunists exploiting said idiots.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
1. Be a known member of the KKK.
2. Promise to raise taxes.
3. ??? 4. Lose election.
One sure-fire way to get re-elected:
Commit adultery in the White House and claim that oral sex isn't adultery. Then ask the people at the hearing to define the word "is".
The crashes occurred in May and November of 2003, erasing information from the September 2002 gubernatorial primaries and other elections, elections officials said Tuesday.
Why the hell didn't they back up the votes after they were taken? That's like the primary rule in ANY business with electronic data storage: back up often.
That would be the Republican majority in the Florida state congress.
Trouble making decisions? Just flip for it.
Probably the best version of the most over used up-mod'ed /. 'gag' I've seen. The only thing which might improve it would be working Coca-Cola in there (the Mc prefix is a good start).
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
I'm sure designing a voting machine is fraught with rules and regulations I'm not aware, but just how hard is designing a system to keep track of a limited number of choices made avaliable to a user?
One would think with some thought and a little good design practice that a small group could produce a stable system with a paper trail and reproducable results.
Seriously, this is something second year software design / engineering students could tackle. But yet we still here about an extra million votes here, or a crashed machine losting all the votes there...
"liberty and justice for all those who can afford it"
an earlier reply suggested having a paper spool coming out of the back of the machine.
I had a similar idea.
What if for every individual voting, after they complete their session, their choices were sent to a local print server, that just printed out a bunch of scantron cards, with the voter id, and the list of their choices.
It would make it much easier to re-digitize the votes later, should the system crash.
I still dont think evoting is a great idea just yet though, too many X factors to be reliable.
But on the otherhand, they seem to have enough problems with out evoting (especially in FL), so who knows.
People in today's society are so use to computers crashing that most of them accept this type of stuff as part of the standard operating procedure of computers. In what other industry would this be tolerated and allowed to continue to go on? Sure when toilets "crash" you use a plunger, but you are throwing away cap to begin with. I hate to say this, but there needs to be better government regualation of this type of use of computers. Perhaps much as the same way the government regulates telco downtime (telcos are only allowed a certain amoing of downtime a year or they get fined up the a$$ IIRC). If a voting system doesn't have 5/6 sigma reliability that why bother using it at all? "We're a democracy and have free elections as long as the computer is running, but if it crashes, we'll just hope it doesn't happen in the next election."
Gee...from hanging chads to hanging prompts...nice improvement.
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
According to the article, recounts are only allowed under state law to determine "voter intent". I am completely against the 'no paper trail' voting machine monster that is pushed so heavily, but I agree with the judge when he says that determining "voter intent" is impossible. As a voter, I would be very upset if the election officials started looking through my votes and decided that I voted Republican for 4 offices and Democrate for 1, therefore my true intent was to vote Republican for all 5 offices, or more likely, my true intent was to vote Democrate for all 5 and my first 4 were mistakes :)
--- There are two kinds of people, those who accept dogmas and know it, and those who accept dogmas and don't know it
From the article:
In December, officials began backing up the data daily, to help avoid similar data wipeouts in the future, said Seth Kaplan, spokesman for the county's elections supervisor, Constance Kaplan.
Some more details would be nice, as would some assurance that the people in charge (or at least some individuals involved in the process) are considering redundancy, e.g. RAID, in addition to the daily backup.
The loss of data underscores problems with the touchscreen voting machines, the citizen's group said. "This is a disaster waiting to happen," said Lida Rodriguez-Taseff, chairwoman of the Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition. "Of course it's worrisome."
"Waiting to happen"? It seems the waiting was over quite a while ago. Waiting for the disaster to happen again - without making changes to strengthen the disaster recovery posture of the voting environment - is irresponsible.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
Does anyone else feel that the November 2004 elections are shaping up to be some twisted Monty Python skit?
And no I'm NOT aiming for +2 Funny.
Seriously, we've got just over three months to go and the system is not only unimproved since the November 2000 disaster, it's actually worse. Now someone can just change the results in critical swing districts without a trace.
Add that with the Florida "Felons Who Can't Vote" rolls that were only released after a court fight, and then immediately abandoned by Florida election officials when it was revealed to be terribly flawed. But only after a court order to make them public, of course.
Maybe we can call in the U.N. to observe the elections for us. This is out of control. Cradle of Democracy my ass. We're heading to be the laughing stock of Democracy. And we're the punchline.
Other groups are challenging a state rule preventing counties that use the machines from conducting manual recounts from them.
The rule exempts not prevents the machines from conducting manual recounts (from paper receipts). Slight difference.
Adidas To Bring Back Sneakernet
We are talking about electing people to positions of power. If you remove the voting trail, you remove accountability. Power without accountability...saaaay, that's the way to instill voter confidence, huh?
I'd rather take the chance that my vote may not be counted due to machine/process flaws than potentially letting politicians, corporations, and political activist groups knowing who I voted for.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
It is thier own fault the ballot was confusing to a buch of bussed in dumbshits. /. liberals, this is an on topic post.
If you are too stupid to vote, don't vote, or breed, or drive a moving vehicle.
Flame me
With only months to the next presidential elections in what is supposed to be the world's largest and best functioning democracy, I look at it (from the outside) and am very frightened.
How can you Americans stand idly by with ridiculous laws as the one mentioned that, instead of giving the right to perform a manual recount, actually takes away that right?
How can you have trust in a system that does not dare to have the voters verify that their votes are counted correctly?
How can you have "voting machines" that leave even the slightest doubt about what the voter wants to vote?
Actually, the election board is controlled pretty overwhelmingly by democrats in the affected areas.
And that is exactly why I don't promote video cameras watching our every move, voter receipts, paper trails, or computer-based voting machines.
The machines we have been using have worked rather well for the many many many years they have been in use. Why should we open ourselves to malicious code, malicious coders under the guidance of malicious politicians, and general problems?
How do we know no one is watching when we pull that lever or touch that screen?
A word is needed for the, um, logical fallacy? Dishonest rhetorical technique? Honest self-deception? in which administrators, and proponents of policies, use language that automatically asserts the infallibility of the device, technique, or procedure being proposed.
"This couldn't have happened because we have procedures in place that prevent it..."
For example: no recounts are allowed because no recounts are needed because our voting machines are perfect.
This rhetorical technique is used all the time (and on both side of the aisle). For example: who could complain about making sure that felons don't vote (in those states where felons are not allowed to vote?) On the other hand, who wouldn't complain about disenfranchising people whose first four letters of their first name, their surname, and their race happens to be the same as that of a felon?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
You know you want to
for purchases.
As the submitter for this story (thanks Timothy) I always chuckle when I hear the excuses from Diebold et al for not putting in a paper trail for electronic voting machines. The usual excuse is that computers don't make mistakes.
If that is the opinion of those producing these machines and their backers then they wouldn't mind not getting a receipt when they go grocery or car shopping. In both instances computers are used to calculate the total bill including tax (if any).
By their logic since computers are used to perform this calculation, and, according to them, computers don't make mistakes, then there is no need for a receipt to show how much each item costs. Instead, they're just told how much they owe.
I'm sure grocers and others would love this. A few cents here, a few cents there. By the time the bill is rung up you could end up paying several dollars more than you should.
For all the protestations we make about other countries not having open and fair elections, there are certain parts of this country which aren't too far behind.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Here's what we need...
A touch screen voting booth that lets voters select the canidates they want.
After the voter casts their vote the booth prints out a ballot that's machine readable yet understandable to the naked eye.
The voter checks to make sure that the canidates they selected are recorded on the ballot and then feeds it into a reader. It's this machine that actually records the voter's vote.
With this sysetm even if all the computer records are erased the paper ballots can either be re-scanned or counted by hand.
Another possible idea is that electronic voting is cheaper as it saves on paper. I heard someone suggest this once and wasn't entirely sure if it was serious. Yes a lot of paper is used but compared to the paper used for a simple taxform or indeed any goverment paper it is only 1 big sheet every four years. Can be recycled paper too.
So electronic voting is vaster but who cares, it is once per 2 years in the US I think, do a few extra hours matters to anyone but CNN? It costs in paper but who cares again as you can use recycled paper and at the end all the paper is neatly collected into stacked piles ready to be recycled again.
So there really is no reason. It just looks fancy. India has an electronic system that seems to work. Kinda says it all about america. When a third world country has a better voting system then the US. Anyone know if Pimsleur has a hindi course?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The US did not permit UN election monitors in the last presidential election.
I think that any election should have some international monitors, even if only in limited numbers. Countries should be proud that they have fair election practices.
George H.W. Bush, George W Bush. Jeb Bush,
Neil Bush.
Or has the Bush name become synonymous with "unreliable" and "untrustworthy"
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Probably a good idea, because I doubt you can truly aspire to such middling heights.
Maybe we can call in the U.N. to observe the elections for us. This is out of control. Cradle of Democracy my ass. We're heading to be the laughing stock of Democracy. And we're the punchline.
So move. Go live in Ulan Bator or something. Who gives a fuck about you?
few comments, in order of increasing concern... First, why do they need to back these up daily now - I mean, how often do these votes change? Second, they didn't mention OS, so I wont either (ahem), though we've seen stories on these before. Plausable deniability is no place to dump our constitutional rights. Lastly, and most importantly, how long is it before the 'current' administration (a[ny] current administration) declairs voting in-public too risky (e.g. terrorist bait), and declair we all have to vote on-line? Never mind browser/OS requirements (yes, there are those that go beyone browser reqs to the point of requiring OS), what would a recount look like then, presuming it could even be determined that one was needed?
âoeThe wall between art and engineering exists only in our minds.â -- Theo Jansen
I've got to ask, for something as important as an election, what's wrong with paper and pencil and manual counting?
that sounds just like something that would come from florida
Nathan Friedly
If there is no paper trails and nobody (expect for the company that made the program) knows really what the program does, how do you know its going to be a fair election? I might be wrong saying the program is closed source but if it is, who can verify the fact that the program does what it is supposed to do on election day. It kinda reminds me of shareware programs that work perfectly until a certain date, then it goes bonkers.
The only legitimate election is one in which the level of blatant fraud is kept low enough to ensure a generally correct result. Those who believe that partisan politics are responsible for people wishing to have accountability in their elections are sad, sorry excuses for human beings, who cannot see past the current election cycle to a time when THEY might be on the receiving end of that large anal dildo called electoral fraud.
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
People write the name of the person they are voting for on a piece of paper. Some poor bastards have to sort the pieces of paper (they do it voluntarily, yet can be forced to do it), and afterwards each pile (of unique names) is weighted. As one exactly knows the weight of one leaf, one can easily estimate the number of papers there are. This system works so well that we do so for many many years. Of course, where I come from is Switzerland so we have it double checked by counting manually if somehow the result is ambiguous. This is not short of still banging the rocks together, but hell it works. Besides, I do not believe that voting with touch screens does make it easier or safer for people to vote.
Black holes were created when god tried to divide by zero
It seems to me that this is wrong. If I purchase a lotto ticket, it has a refernce number on it which identifies the ticket, or in this case the vote. Providing a voter linked to a number which can be checked online to verify its "result" certainly seems to be the best option. Of course, who would want the citizens to be able to verify their votes?
Using the Internet and Cryptography, it would be possible to create an anonymous voting system where each voter could verify their vote AND where audits could provide proof of tampering (with the help of some subset of voters providing some mouse clicks).
At the most basic level what would be required is the computerized voting machines asking for a secret keyword at the time of the vote - hash that keyword, bind with the voting district and you have a unique key into a database. If there is a collision, request a different keyword from the voter. Store the vote along with the key. Anonymity is retained because there is no binding between the identity of the voter and the vote, only a secret passphrase.
A voter could hop on the internet, type in their address and keyword and voila, out pops their vote.
Audits could be performed by requesting certain districts to verify that their votes are recorded correctly. Once again, this would involve the secret keyword/passphrase and voting district, and the results would be pretty unambiguous.
The only other fraud that could occur is "additional votes" inserted into the database. Statistical measures could be used to determine this, once again in coordination with volunteers from voting districts - if demographically similar districts have vastly different response percentages for requests to verify under the same amount of coertion (e.g. radio, tv), then it is a strong indication that something is wrong - and further checks need to be made.
This is a basic model - more analysis could lead to a much better one. I did this off the top of my head and I'm just the average slashdot geek (with some security background). Why isn't anything like this being discussed "out there"???
The reason that it can be true that 1+1 > 2 is that very peculiar nonzero value of the + operator
...if you don't do something about this. 2000 was a farce and made the U.S look stupid. 2004 could be (and probably will be) far far worse.
So.... so much for exporting democracy - the U.S should get it right itself first before cluster-bombing and napalming other countries into their way of thinking.
I am getting an absentee ballot. Not perfect, but if enough people refuse to use the machines by voting absentee maybe someone will get the message.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
fuss and such aside, I'm surprised Floridians were able to use the machines... an youth advocacy voting group brought a few to my university for the CA primaries to sort of demo them but moreso to promote youth involvement in voting. whatever. anyway, the machines were a joke. I (a computer engineering junior and fairly adept at using tech stuff) couldn't get the damn thing to work. The touch-screen needed to be pressed very hard (alarm bells for shoving on an LCD), the system was so slow, I couldn't tell at first if it had accepted my answer, and the final response screen had a huge prompt that said 'Continue' that took me back to the voting screen, and a small 'Finished' button that ended the process. It was a nightmare. And if I couldn't figure it out, there's no way in hell that 80 year old Ms. Goldowitz of Palm Beach will have any idea how to use it. And the things were so big, they could have fit one of those nifty 'laptop' printers inside the case.
... complete with fountain pens and small check boxes.
But whatever... I vote for old-school voting
Guess the topic got under my mind or something...
After the voter casts their vote the booth prints out a ballot that's machine readable yet understandable to the naked eye.
...
You mean something like a punch card or optical mark card. Hmmm
Ohio in the most recent election was still using punch cards. I always check my punchcard (the punch fields are numbered) against the column #'s on the ballot, and (since 2000) also check for 'chad'. It takes a few seconds to do so. Then I place the card in the locked voting bin. For all the bad press punchcards have gotten, I trust them more than an untested and potentially unsecure proprietary touch screen system.
[Insert pithy quote here]
Reminds me of someone who was involved in the last elections here in Belgium. They discoverd an error where if you voted two specific people from different parties, then both would get a vote.
Normaly this is NOT possible and would result in a unvalid vote. However they caught the bug.
When asked how many bugs they DIDN'T find, he looked surprides and proudly said: NONE! He didn't get it.
Just use paper ballods. Yes, errors can be made. Yes, there can be fraud. It even might take much, much longer then with a PC. You however still have a papertrail. Either that or open the source.
When I told that to the person I sugested, it became suddenly security trough obscurity. He even told me the source was safer, because only four (4) people know the source. I feel realy safe now.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
We already have corruption and coercion without a receipt? If enough voters suspected vote rigging (granted, they'd have not not be watching sanctioned media like CNN and FoxNews to give a enought of a dman), then they could go to each other and ask who voted for whom? If they can prove a discrepancy between the receipts and the official count then there's proof of vote rigging.
I can see the headline now after the next election.
Seriously, did anyone think that computers would be flawless? Even if under trials they were more reliable, there are still unforseen errors.
Example: I almost fried my digital camera. I have a motorcycle tank bag that attaches with VERY strong magnets - almost put my camera in it, but luckily I had just installed the 1GB CF card and thought hmmmm... magnets, memory, not good. Not to mention the firmware on the camera. But this certainly was not the first thing that came to mind when I bought the bag (specifically for the camera) - especially since it would have likely been ok with a normal one.
Votes being lost.
Rules against recounts.
Talk of the election being post-poned.
1934 anyone?
We are treading some thin ice here folks.
you seem to think the US cares what the rest of the world thinks,
sorry we dont, and for good reason, the opinion of a lot of countries ranks really, incredibly low.
That is true, however they have no jurisdiction since it is the state supervisor of elections and the republican majority that is precluding the use of a paper trail of touchscreen voting machines.
This is not a bug in the process, it's a feature. Create enough opportunities to manipulate the vote without detection, and voila! Instant third-world country!
no yuo dont
You blather and blather, but you never do anything. March on the Diebold home office and pelt the CEO with rocks and garbage. Torch a voting machine factory after hours. Get up off your pasty asses and do something, you girlie men.
Who's in charge in Florida. A different Secretary of State = a complete screw up of an election. It's not that hard. Anything that doesn't produce an audit trail is junk.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
See, that's the point. Everyone who was born in the US, has no major criminal record, and is over 18 gets a vote in the US, period. That includes stupid people, people with eye problems, elderly people, and people in general who have a hard time adapting to change.
Telling someone they are stupid and should read the ballot is not a possibility here. Exactly how does one draw the line between someone who can or can't vote because they are too stupid? That's the whole philosophy behind the US voting system, is that no one is allowed to draw that line. Plus, one man's stupid decision is another man's honest mistake. You can't make that judgement here.
That being said, the voting system must try to be as accurate as possible. Bush won Florida by less than 1000 votes, and over 2000 votes were invalidated because a number of elderly people couldn't differentiate between which hole was supposed to be for Gore or Pat Buchannon on the ballot. So they simply punched a new hole. Okay, they messed up, but you don't call them stupid for a simple mistake. People only get a chance to vote once a year, and that process can change several times. It needs to be as easy as possible and try to prevent mistakes, and it needs to allow to easily reverse mistakes.
The voting process has to strive for idiot proofness, even if it is not 100%. Punch ballots are simple to make, simple to work, and cheap to buy, but they are by no means idiot proof. They are notoriously inaccurate because of hanging chad, poor ballot layout, and variable accountability when it comes to recounts (i.e. the voting workers had to make a decision as to which ballot counted as a vote and which one was not because the hole may not have been punched properly). We make a big deal about this because of the margin of victory in the last election. We need to make sure every vote counts
An all paper system might work, as in other countries. I like the lever system, because its got a low incidence of error (at least as far as I have seen). Current electronic systems are knee jerk solutions to a real problem, but will end up causing just as many problems without some serious research and design.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
'A plausible but misleading or fallacious argument.'
Still not quite right, since this supposes that they sound plausible...
This article is over a year old, but...
5 .htm
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0307/S0006
Shows some of the security problems with the voting machines. Even if the article is over a year old, it's still troubling: storing results in MS Access databases, introducing the ability to "correct" vote tallies and erase the trail. If voting machines are going to be computer systems, they need to be designed from the ground up for security, not just "secure enough right now". And not having any backup as in this story? Sounds like these machines were made by amateurs.
First, apart from Bush and Cheney, none of the administration needed to be elected. Heck, John Ashcroft lost to a dead man. It doesn't seem to matter.
Second, Bush and Cheney didn't win the popular vote either. They didn't need to.
Third, as the Supreme Court made clear last time, you don't even need to win a popular vote in the state to win its electoral college votes. It is up to each state to decide how to form its electoral college: most hold a popular vote and give the winner all their electoral college votes, some split the electoral college votes proportionally, but in principle, if a state decided to throw all popular votes into the sea and give all electoral college votes to the state government majority party, that's constitutional too.
Why does this qualify as a democracy?
And let's not forget that the US historically disenfranchised minorities, and even today disenfranchises entire categories (such as ex-convicts) who tend to be disproportionately minorities. Not because minorities are more criminal. Drug-possession is as common among whites as blacks but far more blacks are jailed for it.
So forgive me if I don't think these further perversions of democracy are going to matter hugely.
Use some of the advanced printing technology used in all these new dollar bills on printing paper ballots that cannot be duplicated in bulk on a copy machine. Canada uses paper ballots and has no problems.
Everyone seems to be overthinking these voting machines.
Poll workers verify the voter's ID as usual.
The machine should poll the voter asking about each issue.
The machine should re-display each of the voters choices and
verify.
The machine should printout a single human readable ballot that
the voter can read and finally verify. The Ballot will also be machine readable for quick counting. The method of machine reading will be to OCR the human readable part.
Ballots will be printed like this:
Kerry [ ]
Bush [ ]
Nader [x]
prop05 yes[ ]
prop05 no [x]
so the machine only has to detect an "x" or a space.
The Ballots are handled as they have been.
- It's election night, and early returns suggest trouble for the incumbent. Then, mysteriously, the vote count stops and observers from the challenger's campaign see employees of a voting-machine company, one wearing a badge that identifies him as a county official, typing instructions at computers with access to the vote-tabulating software.
See also a reprint of the Independent UK article and a longer LA City Beat article on the event.When the count resumes, the incumbent pulls ahead. The challenger demands an investigation. But there are no ballots to recount, and election officials allied with the incumbent refuse to release data that could shed light on whether there was tampering with the electronic records.
This isn't a paranoid fantasy. It's a true account of a recent election in Riverside County, Calif., reported by Andrew Gumbel of the British newspaper The Independent.
It's also interesting to note that most other democracies require positive identification to vote. Yet here in the US, it's the Democrats who raise the specter of "RACISM!!!" if such any such proposal is made. Heck, solidly Democratic San Francisco is even going so far as trying to allow illegal aliens to vote...
I guess the just need to get back to the Democrat designed butterfly ballet.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
You forget that an election is supposed to be 100% anonymous.
But is there no way to let me just verify my vote was counted? Forget about who I voted for, can I at least get an anonymous confirmation that my vote was even counted? I don't know, like each ballot in a district having unique serial numbers where I can go check online if that serial number's vote was counted with a simple true/false.
I'd rather take the chance that my vote may not be counted due to machine/process flaws than potentially letting politicians, corporations, and political activist groups knowing who I voted for.
They all already know what political party I'm registered with (your state may not have this), where I live, where I work, how much money I make, how I spend my money, who my family is, who I communicate with. Is a person's voting record the camel-back-breaking straw to the US "social contract" that keeps us from total political corruption?
Speak truth to power.
There will be no saving of paper with e-voting. They will have to print vast quantities of voter guides to instruct people on how to use e-voting machines. Paper ballots are much simpler and intuitive. Far less printed instructions will be needed for paper ballots.
... with the outcome of the election, Florida is, once again, about to become red meat. Or, should I say, dead meat. I can already hear the lawyers booking hotel rooms, condos, and time-shares for November.
Research shows that 67% of those who use the term "research shows", are just making shit up.
Because it's only the evil Republicans that would ever want to rig an election. Though rigging elections is just a small step after they've rigged peoples minds to just be party fanboys.
Rampant Ninja related crimes these days...Whitehouse is not the exception
Oh the shame of having the UN oversee our voting process, and having the dictators of the world criticize our election process.
Actually, the decision makes 100% perfect technical sense.
The votes are stored in a database. The question is, if there is a "recount", do the election workers have to print copies of each screen and count them by hand to make sure the machine counted right?
Obviously, that would be a waste of time - humans counting printouts of what's in the database will be less accurate than just taking the total from the database. Since it's a printout, any vote for a particular candidate looks identical to any other vote, so there's nothing there (like a hanging chad) to recount in the first place.
The *REAL* problem is that there are no paper coies of the ballot printed at the time of the vote in the first place. But that wasn't the question the election board was answering - the queston was 'I've got a computer here with a vote tally in it. Can I just look at the total votes, or do I have to print a piece of paper for each vote and count those?"
paintball
Miami-Dade "lost" the records the same way that Al Gore "lost" the 2000 election.
We can't complain about dictators when it was the CIA that put most of those dictators into power in the first place.
It's the big, important stuff that the UN fscks up worse than a football bat.
That and putting countries like Syria in charge of the Human Rights Comission...
Why is it touchscreen voting that marks the only time that Republicans don't want to kill trees?
Having a hard copy of a vote doesn't take away from anonymity at all. If the persons name or identification doesn't show up on the ballot, then there's no way to tell how any particular person voted. But having the actual hard copies ensures that there has been no mishandling of the ballots. If there's machine voting, how hard is it to produce a little printout along with the electronic counting? If it comes down to a matter of trust, especially in something as important as an election, I'd take a person who can be held accountable over a machine that can't.
This is left as an exercise for the reader.
Why not use nice, big touch screen computers, and then have them print ballots with both words and a BAR CODE which stores your vote? Then, your vote is simply scanned into a computer, and any discrepency would be obvious to the counters (hey Bob, this guys paper says, Nader but the scanners reading it as GW?) and verifiable to the humans. I for one feel a lot better putting a physical piece of paper into a box. Preseumably, I can follow that box all the way to the counting agency, and watch as the ballots are pulled out and read by hand. This is not true with a computer. Ideally such a system would be simple, verifiable and accurate, with no hanging chads. Bar codes are used sucessfully by people who check out our purchases at stores, it shouldn't be hard for politicians. Also, the counting would go pretty damn fast. To me this makes sense, unless, of course, the point of computerized voting is to make the system decidedly not accurate and verifiable.
My solution to electronic voting is simple...
Create a peripheral that punches a small card of paper for each and every vote. Design the device so the paper spools out into a enclosed box.
Store the punched cards in n archive for X years. Ever need a recount and the data got lost? Just count the punched cards.
Seriously -- how hard is it to understand WHY these voting machines, despite having backups, printed copies, etc. to verify that they work in a test environement, are crapping out, crashing, being manipulated, etc.?
ELDERLY VOLUNTEERS AT THE POLLS!
Come on! Whenever I've gone to the polls, I've never seen anyone younger than retirement home/Tuesdasy night bingo age running the show.
Certainly, they're nice and friendly, but seriously -- this is the generation that, for the most part, yell and scream if someone automates anything in their life with a computer.
The same generation, for example, that tells a postal worker (who is TRYING to speed up the line by recommending the vending machines) that he/she won't use the stamp vending machine...BECAUSE IT'S "ONE OF THOSE MACHINES!" (Swear to God, I almost bought the woman's stamps for her so I could move up a spot in line.)
Christ, people -- we're telling these volunteers to NOT hand out pencils or punching tools. Instead, they're asked to monitor COMPUTERS! MACHINES! CONFABULATORS DESIGNED BY THE WHIPPERSNAPPER GENERATION!
Do you not think they're even more terrified since the grandkids turned on The Matrix during their Sunday afternoon nap? Since they read in Readers' Digest that Jar-Jar Binks was, in fact, not a stereotypical ethnic actor wearing a really dumb outfit, but instead a computer generated character?
Shit -- we're lucky that the voting machines haven't been secretly replaced in the wee hours of a major primary with #2 pencils and handwritten ballots. With the closet in the corner of the school gym bulging open with a Diebold display hanging out near the bottom of the door. And the volunteers looking around nervously like someone spiked the retirement home Jell-O mold with Maalox.
IronChefMorimoto
The "equality" guaranteed by American law is equality of opportunity (e.g. everybody has a chance to vote using a consistent set of standards) not equality of result (e.g. if you screw it up through your own fault and fail to cast a valid vote, too bad).
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
well you're only making things worse for yourself. remember that in a few years time when you're sat at the check point waiting for your papers to be checked so you can leave your street.
Unfortunately, a series of terrorist events will cause the government to indefinitely "postpone" the election. Of course, martial law will follow and anything that doesn't tote the party line (slashdotters lookout) will be summarily seized and thrown into a black hole. That's the good news.
We will all live happily ever after...
Voting machines are dangerous because they introduce a new risk - lost of anonymity. In worst case scenario someone might trace what candidate was voted by each voter in a global scale. The whole stupid idea of voting reform came from sour losers democrats who could not stand losing by few votes. Think about it who can have the candidate voted by only 49.5% win instead of the one voted by 50.5%, but it doesn't matter, since basically the voters could stand either of them. With the old system there was no chance someone like Ralph Nader or Pat Buchanan could win with the few points of support, but with the new and improve they stand a real chance of winning
Yup, here we go. Democrats are already greasing the wheels so they can claim election fraud when they lose this November.
You guys are so predictable. Why don't you say something to scare senior citizens to make your post complete?
I see your point about vote buying. Let's solve it.
New modification to presented idea: 2 Step double-blind vote verification.
First step: 2 passphrases (example: Question / Answer - come up with by the voter). This replaces the single passphrase.
Second step: Verification is accomplished by voter entering first passphrase (e.g Question) and address. Hash is computed. Record is looked up.
Third step: Verification asks for second passphrase (e.g. Answer)
Forth step: Assuming voter passed verification, voter re-enters vote (does not see existing record). This vote is re-recorded for later verification
In this scheme, the voter is never allowed to see his original vote and not allowed to know if his vote was recorded accurately. But it does allow auditors to see if voters have verified with the same vote (without giving away voter identity). There will, of course, be some statistical deviation from 100% due to stupidity or change of mind, but the mathematicians can figure that one out...
The reason that it can be true that 1+1 > 2 is that very peculiar nonzero value of the + operator
Since people are complaining that idiots need their votes counted, let us do it the same way they do it in THIRD WORLD countries.
Print the damn picture of the candidate right there on the Freaking Ballot. Take a big fat sharpie, and have them put an X on the picture.
Then the stupid idiots who cannot read, write or follow simple instructions can vote for the democrats all day long and not cry "Disenfranchised voter".
My question is this, why are all the problem with voting found in Miami-Dade? What the hell is wrong with all the idiots there?
My next question is this, why would anyone vote the same way some idiot, who cannot read, or follow directions vote? Just tell me who you are voting for, so I can make sure I don't vote for them.
How about we REINSTITUTE Literacy requirements to vote? NO it isn't racist, white people can't read either.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
I'm pretty certain that the CF card should be fine. They're sensitive to static, but not magnetic fields. Although I'm not sure what'd happen if you put one in an MRI machine, normal magnets (even those from inside a hard drive) should be ok. Unless of course it's a microdrive, in which case there may be a problem. But even in that case there are some pretty strong magnets inside the microdrive.
The problem is that someone could be coerced to vote a certain way, and would be required to show proof. Currently, that is impossible.
"Show me your receipt showing a vote for XXX or else..."
"How 'bout I show you my badge. It says FBI. I regret to inform you that you have committed a federal crime, punishable with FEDERAL TIME. You have the right to remain silent..."
See guys, that is why we have laws. To enforce punishment when people do bad things. This whole argument is suspect. It is no different than saying that we should not let people walk down the streets with money because it is just giving muggers an opportunity.
The whole "we're giving criminals a chance" argument is invalid in America. If you want to control your populace utterly and make sure they vote a certain way, may I humbly suggest many of the stellar totalitarian regimes that exsist worldwide. They have some great work opportunities.
You might need to learn understand, that here, IN AMERICA, we don't restrict the freedoms of our citizens because those freedoms MIGHT be abused (current administration excluded). That is why you can buy a shotgun at a Wal-Mart. That is why they don't outlaw chewing gum like they do in Singapore (its messy to clean, so IT IS OUTLAWED, it is criminal to own it).
We prefer to arrest people AFTER THEY HAVE COMMITTED A CRIME. I know, it's all new fangled, and hard to wrap your head around, but it is the way we do things 'round here. Y'all got that?
Thanks for the argument though.
And all this time I've been trying things to keep my election?!?!?
Chile, Iran (under the Shah), Guatamala, Laos, Haiti (several times), Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Zaire, Brazil, Indonesia, Greece, Bolivia, Uraguay, Cambodia (which led to Pol Pot and Khmer Rouge), Angola, El Salvador, Honduras... all had dictators installed by the CIA... all of which has been proven with US Government documents gotten through the Freedom Of Information act. You didn't do too well in history class, huh?
It was the Republican senate. But if you look at it, it makes sense. it says a "manual recount may not be conducted of undervotes on touch-screen machines".
You cannot recount undervotes with a computer system, even if you print out receipts. An undervote is when the total number of votes for a race are less than the number of ballots cast. In punch card or other manual voting methods, the electronic system can miss a mark or a punch that is obviously a vote to a human eye.
However, there is no way for a human to look for an uncounted vote. If they user pressed the button on the computer it will be recorded. If they do not, it will warn them that they have not voted for races that they did not pick a candidate for. If it prints out a paper, the paper will not have the vote either. No stray marks, no hanging chads.
What does have a paper trail is the precinct by precinct totals. So each ballot location prints a summary from their machines which they verify and turn in. The summaries can be compared to the electronic totals.
I would promote a receipt system for the voter. The voter should be able to take a small receipt with some type of unidentifiable hash result on it. If there is an accusation of tampering or lost votes it could be compared to the records in the database to make sure it was counted appropriately. In order to prevent people from being held accountable by nefarious entities for their voting decisions, it should not be able to be reversed into a proof of voting.
In fact they could get one and leave one in a box for auditing of the computer system. Technically this is not a recount. When you check a manual count against a computer record, it is an audit, since there was no "counting" done in the first place.
My country doesn't have free elections, you insensitive clod!
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
Bullshit. Is that the game we are playing? Prove it. Offer more information or hell, even a resource for your quote. Otherwise your allegation is outlandish and your reasoning false.
Okay, I'll save you the five seconds it would take to google for "Diebold deliver electoral votes", with an article from the ol' KZoo Gazette: Here ya go..
Come on. This is hardly new, nor is it a fact that is under dispute. The CEO of Diebold said he is committed to delivering Ohio's electoral votes to the president. Their machines have demonstrably failed in real elections. They have been caught violating regulations by installing uncertified software on deployed voting machines in California. Voters have been disenfranchised by them, a fact they do not dispute.
If you would like more information, my signature should provide one-click access to plenty of information.
The only reason you have to call "bullshit" is 1) ignorance and 2) a predisposition to believe that it couldn't be true, that a rich CEO of a powerful corporation couldn't possibly be trying to subvert democracy. Sadly the first is quite common, and the second unjustified by any analysis of history.
The enemies of Democracy are
It should be very simple, If this election matters to you, get the day off work and go sit in your precinct's polling place. Better yet, sign up to actually work it. If your precinct would otherwise be electronic only then: first, demand paper ballots accompany the electronic vote; and second, if your call is not answered, get some people together to pay the printing costs and make enough ballots for your precinct. Everyone voting on an electronic-only machine should ALSO fill out a plain paper ballot that goes into a good old ballot box. Then, after the polls close, since we have a profusion of volunteers hanging out at every polling place, COUNT EVERY BALLOT BY HAND. No doubts, everybody wins.
Start Running Better Polls
If you want to use it for validation, the last time I used electronic systems it had a validation screen for my votes. That worked just as well for validation purposes.
The validation is a) for the voter and b) in the case of a manual recount. Now a) can certainly be done equally onscreen or in paper. The paper is for validation b). Printing a bogus receipt (one that matches the voter's choices but not what's tallied) would be revealed if the manual recount of the ballots came out. Granted, the idea of direct and purposeful e-tampering is on the outer rim of plausibility. I seriously doubt that's an issue, but the massive rise in identity theft forces me to accept that computerizing anything makes life (and therefore fraud) more efficient and therefore more attractive.
Now let's talk about a much more present concern with electronic voting. Am I comfortable with even a remote possibiilty of this system crashing in the middle of registering my vote? A 0.1% chance of failure to register is frighteningly high; that's 160,000 votes lost if the entire US were voting electronically. Poking a hole in a punchcard can only fail if I screw it up. After 2000, I guarantee you everyone's going to make sure they're poking the proper hole and poking it clean through.
Personally, I'm not going anywhere near an electronic voting system. Dismiss me, call me a conspiracy theorist if you like, but Reynold's Wrap's stock is up 50% since we went to war in Iraq.
Me? I'm requesting an absentee ballot and mailing it in. Certified Mail.
jaz
Death to Argument by Slogan!! (This post twice-encrypted with ROT-13. Replies not using same will be ignored)
Why is it lately every time I hear a Republican speak all I can hear is that voice they use to portray Saddam saying "Hey guy, don't worry, trust me".
Not to mention something along the lines of "Vote for Bush and get a free Taco! Just bring your reciept at any of our chain of restaurants and..."
You can't do it now, you won't be able to do it in the future.
-OR HOW ABOUT THIS ONE_
"Show your Republican Party card and get a twenty percent discount!"
Once again, that is just like inviting the DOJ and the FBI to your business.
Exceedingly dumb. You'd hate to get imprisoned, or best case scenario, a federal suit filed to you from the Department of Justice. Trust me, I read these things all the time, they will hound you forever.
I think electronic voting is an incredibly stupid idea for this very reason. The voting system should stay the way it's always been, physically marked, physically counted, and recounted. To hell with using computers, or the internet, it's creating way too much of a possibility for error, miscalculation, manipulation.
It is already too late though. We, the American people are already stupid enough to believe that elections are no longer rigged, or will no longer be. Electronic voting has been developed so that vote rigging can be easy with fewer questions asked.
That should be the next slashdot poll: How many of you feel confident in the integrity of votes counted from electronic voting? I think the results would speak for themselves honestly. What makes this worse is the light hearted attitude that the entire country seems to be taking towards this. We're talking about a system that determines our countries political leaders, which is slowly having holes and flaws bled into it by the implimentation of these indiotc, flaw infested, unreliable methods of vote registration.
end rant.
The systems you describe are designed to associate the individual transactions exactly with the people who did it.
Voting is required to be anonymous in order to prevent a whole lot of nastiness that has been pointed out in this thread.
Designing a system that would let someone say Hmmm
At least with physical, paper ballots if you can prevent box-stuffing and keep the ballots secure, you have both verifiable and anonymous.
Hell, how long before the companies would start using the DMCA or something else to start saying that the records of your vote is covered under their copyright and they could do anything they wanted with it.
Yes, I want my bank to be 100% sure of what money comes out of my accounts and be able to assure the transaction is reproduceable.
Having your government or a private company having that information about how you vote is a recipe for disaster.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Call and get your Local Reps to Co-sponsor the "Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act" or HR2239.
e ers/hr2239_effort.asp/
For more information go here: http://verifiedvoting.org/resources/hr2239_volunt
Or to read the bill in full: http://www.theorator.com/bills108/hr2239.html
Let's get this passed so we don't have to worry about anyone monkeying around in quite possibly one of the most important elections this country has seen in decades-with two very divergent paths for the American people.
Something intelligent here.
Fear of Fraud, by Paul Krugman Discusses what has happened in the past with electronic voting and what problems we will face in the next presidential election.
"I've got to stop masturbating! It makes me too lazy! Stop it, Albert. Stop it." -- Albert Einstein
Search Ugly Woman on Google (safe off).
:)
You're welcome.
Ouch you meant eLection.
Sorry man. Don't know about that. I guess getting caught with one of these beauties before being in the oval circle would do the job
Sneak teach kids Algebra using a game
It's interesting how the article starts out with a link to CNN.com.
./ logic (Check out the Turner thread), CNN is owned by an evil right-wing corporation and it only spreades right-wing lies like the rest. So since the story about election machines losing votes are right-wing lies, just as the reports of American soldiers and Iraqis dying everyday are right-wing lies, when actually, the soldiers and Iraqis are having daily picnics at the flower gardens.
This is a classic case of "Don't trust the mass media except when there's an article that I agree with, in which case, trust the mass media".
According to the
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
Your country is corrupt. I'm sorry to say it, but it is. It is no longer the shining beacon of incorruptible democracy it once was. After its prodigious economic growth, all subsequent governments have done is to continue the status quo where the US is king, through little escapades like the crushing of Socialism/Communism, kicking the shit out of smaller countries for economic reasons and many other happy fun little things which are all designed to keep America at the top and everyone else at the bottom. The permanent members of the Security Council are more or less only there for token reasons right now. The world revolves around the US, and any number of countries could collapse if the US removed economic support and financial aid from them. before all the "RAH RAH RAH AMERICA RULES" crowd pipe up, look at the big picture. Both your major parties are the same. Your president is hated-reviled even-worldwide because he acts like a jackass. Your country is overreacting to one terrorist incident, which, in my eyes, your government deserved for its relentless campaign of the bombing, napalming and slaughtering of innocent civilian people to get its way, and your civil liberties, which the government and the people love to crow about, are being systematically removed from you. Government is in the pockets of the corporations: GE, Microsoft, Exxon et al all practically own all of the parties. Open your fucking eyes up. I know I may be preaching to the choir here on Slashdot (the /. populace generally have a fairly left wing bent anyway) but just look at what is around you and what is happening to your country.
:)
:)
My call to you is this. Do something about your government. Don't just vote Democrat, that will do nothing in the long run: vote Green or, if you wish, Libertarian. Heck, vote Communist! Go hog wild! Get involved in the political protest. Turn up at the White House lawn with a picket and protest. Mail your senators and congresscritters. Get active. Do something and end the US-inflicted nightmare that has descended on the world over the last century. Please. At least do it for the children, who you all seem to love making rash political decisions for
As for my politics, I am a very left wing Liberal Democrat in the UK. May as well say that to appease all the people who will probably cry "UNAMERICAN BITCH COMMUNIST SLUTWHORE"
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
Voter checks reciept against the vote they wanted. Stuffs it in aballot box & walks away, you window-lickin', short-bus ridin' retard.
The issue of incompletely punched cards was largely the result of clogged machines - clogged by previous punchouts and/or by years of accumulated dirt. You can't punch a chunk out of a piece of paper if there is something behind it resisting your punch.
Around here we do the "fill in the bubble" thing, then insert our ballot into a machine for counting... Machine counting WITH a clear paper trail.
In that election one of my relatives experienced the following with a Dade County voting machine: voted for McBride, then upon rechecking her ballot, saw that the opposing candidate was checked. Reselected McBride, rechecked again and once again Bush was selected. She went through this about four times until finally called an election worker over to witness it, and asked outright, 'Is this voting machine rigged?" On the fifth attempt her selection stayed selected, or at least it stayed selected on the screen. We may never know what happened behind the scenes when votes were counted.
Here in England we have an organisation called the Football Association (FA). For Football read Soccer if your Uncle is called Sam. Stick with me, I'm going somewhere with this. Many years ago, the FA mandated that if a player was to be replaced during the game, a match official would hold up two bits of paper (well, card really) one with the number of the player to be taken off and the other with the number of the player to be put on. This worked very well. The numbers were large and could be read clearly in all except the darkest of situations. They don't play football in the dark so this didn't matter. The paper was cheap, worked every time, and never showed anything other than what was intended. Then, the FA went all techno. They replaced the paper with a digital thingy. A big heavy plastic box with LEDs on it. The official would now press buttons on this thing and the LEDs light up to show the numbers. These things cost a lot more than paper, often didn't show any numbers, sometimes showed the wrong numbers, broke down and most significantly could be seen very clearly in the dark but not at all in strong sunlight. They often play football in strong sunlight so this did matter. So, a cheap, trusty, proven, solution with one irrelevant drawback has been replaced with an expensive, unreliable solution with one major drawback. Luckily the FA look after football and nothing more important that that. I find the parallels here to be interesting however. Punch cards caused problems so we replace them with an even more techno solution. Why not go back to holding up a card with a number on it?
I followed some of the threads and noted some attitudes and opinions that should be hilighted.
The first opinion that seems to stand out is that e-voting seems to be a Republican (read that as "right wing") conspiracy to harness elections. If these folks do their homework, they'd note a preponderance of e-voting initiatives are being pushed in majority Democratic districts.
The second, almost universal, view seems to contain the idea that e-voting is OK and the only problems exist in the margins. The major details seemed to be accepted. The "gee whiz" glitz seems to have misplaced general intelligence.
Considering this medium draws a lot of people in various technology fields, I'd think the overwhelming opinion would be a complete distrust of e-voting based on the potential abuses of the technology and the means to manipulate the outcome of an election.
The basic logic points should produce an overwhelming distrust for this form of individual duty and trust.
Mod me troll, if you must, I can't help it.
I guess you didn't do too well in math class, huh?
How to lose an erection? I usually just wait it out, and it goes away eventually. Painful sometimes when you have to pee really bad, but it's not like you can siphon it out or something. Believe me, I've tried.
You forget that an election is supposed to be 100% anonymous. While ideally we would have voting systems that were reliable, a paper trail identifying who voted for what candidate would fundamentally damage the concept of anonymous voting.
I'd rather take the chance that my vote may not be counted due to machine/process flaws than potentially letting politicians, corporations, and political activist groups knowing who I voted for.
Stealing and using an anonymous public voting record for personal gain? Sounds like you are paranoid. If someone did that? Well, I am sure that there are plenty of rooms at the federal prison in Terre Haute, IN.
Look, I understand this argument, but this is currently an issue that needs to be ratified with the times. That is why we have a congress. To make new laws and remove those of little relevance anymore. We need verified voting now. With all of the crap going on, and the inconsistencies, it is now a necessity. With all of the legal hijinks that our founding fathers never saw coming, and all of the current and OBVIOUS corruption that is going on, and let's not forget the slim margins and high population that this country has, it has to be done to maintain any integrity in the system. How many more votes have to be lost before you all realize that our democratic process is being hijacked by individuals? How many more scandals are going to come out in this November before we all wake up?
Come November, when all of these votes get jacked, it is going to blow this country out of the water.
If we can have bank transactions in the multiple billions per day, then what is the problem with this? No one gets my bank statement but me, and I can check it... without anyone knowing it. How are my bank records not anonymous? Why on earth would a person say to me that a system with no failsafe is the best for democracy, when obviously the system failed before?
If your voting record enters a courtroom, then I will believe you. Then it is active revolt time. And by active, I mean, no paying taxes, and IT IS ON. If there is someone that steals it and sends me literature every day to join a different party or whatever? Then I CALL THE FBI. If someone demands to see my voting record receipt and threatens me? I CALL THE FBI. Just that simple.
The last time I checked, it is a federal crime to get someone's bank records illegally. Why can't we have verifiable voting and the laws that says that if you use this information against an individual it is a FEDERAL CRIME. Anonymous is not what you think it is... and you can still verify something and be anonymous. These kinds of protocols are so common now that we are using them on the net as we type right now.
There are absolutely a million ways to make a system where I can cast a vote, get an anonymous key number specific to my vote, and go home and verify it over the net. HELL, it isn't even expensive. How many server farms do you need to make it 'net accessible? We are talking 270 million hits. Yes that is quite a bit. But when you talk about the federal gov't, that ain't squat.
Don't even tell me that the receipt is the problem. It doesn't even need to tell you on the receipt WHO YOU VOTED FOR. It only needs to tell you the way to access your vote to verify it.
You forget that an election is supposed to be 100% anonymous.
I can conceive of *many* ways in which a vote can be anonymous and verifiable (they may not be good or practical, but I can think of them, so smarter people than me should be able to make something work). Just because you can't think of a way to do it does not mean it should be dismissed.
Under the assumption that you can retain anonymity, can you see any reason to exclude verifiability?
Learn to love Alaska
Leftie had a good list. He did leave out a string of corrupt dictators the U.S. proped up in South Vietnam during the war. A key reason South Vietnam fell was because the governments the U.S. was propping up were so corrupt and so unpopular they served to fuel the Viet Cong's success.
As for Mao its noteworthy that he is dead. But his party still runs China, but for some reason you didn't list Jiang Zemin or Wen Jiabao. They've moderated since Mao but they are still basically the same party and a repressive dictatorship for all practical purposes. The only thing thats changed is they now allow private ownership of capital and a lot of rich American business men and multinationals are making a pretty penny there so right wingers don't bad mouth them anymore.
I think Muammar is the best friends of the Bush administration now, since he turned over his WMD's, WMD's I wager he bought some just so he could turn them over and get the sanctions lifted. They like him because they can claim him as proof their "get tough" policy in Iraq worked though that is a dubious claim. I'm pretty sure Cheney/Halliburton and the rest of the U.S. oil and gas industry are chomping at the bit to do business with Muammar and get back in to his oil fields. Again as long as there is money to be made the U.S. LOVES dictators.
Hugo Chavez is democratically elected. He is a socialist and the Republican's hate him with a passion, he hates them too, but he was still elected. The Bush administration has tried to overthrow him at least once, and if they succeed that would probably lead to a dictatorship, but Venezuala isn't under one now.
Khomeini, well that one is interesting. He came to power because the U.S. toppled the elected government of Iran when they nationalized their oil fields taking control of them from their former colonial masters the British, who were taking the lions share of the profits. The U.S. installed the Shah of Iran who was a brutal repressive dictator. The Iranians turned to Khomeni because they hated the Shah more, and hate the U.S. to this day for inflicting him on them.
@de_machina
Check out blackboxvoting.com for more info on how these systems can be used to a candidates (dis)advantage depending on which end of the stick you receive.
Makes you feel like we're back in the era of fixed elections - oh wait - did we ever leave?
...is that humans have to feed and maintain them. And they cost money - industrial-strength slip printers are expensive.
But, printed paper reciepts are still the best, most tamper-resistant way to create a human-readable audit trail. They can be text so they can be read by humans or by OCR (works for checks, why not ballots?)
As I see it, the job of the touchscreen should be to provide a better UI to prevent mis-votes, period. Yes, it could count votes too, but only subject to audit - the paper ballot should still be considered authoritative.
Why? A number of reasons. One, the voting machines lack the physical security of the oft-compared ATM network, so they're vulnerable to tampering. Two, the systems and infrastructures in the roll-outs thus far seem to be "beta" quality. Three, their back-office systems aren't "hardened" against single-point failure well enough (the latest Florida fiasco being evidence of this point.) Four, the systems are proprietary and not subject to truly independent review.
In short, Diebold, Sequoia et. al. have shown that they are not ready for prime time. They don't "get" that the job their machines are being asked to perform has importance on par with, say, the Shuttle's flight control software.
So, paper redundancy is needed.
I didn't think leftie enumerated anything. Another key reason the South fell was the continued support the North got from the USSR after the US gave up on supporting the South...
As for Mao its noteworthy that he is dead. But his party still runs China, but for some reason you didn't list Jiang Zemin or Wen Jiabao. They've moderated since Mao but they are still basically the same party and a repressive dictatorship for all practical purposes. The only thing thats changed is they now allow private ownership of capital and a lot of rich American business men and multinationals are making a pretty penny there so right wingers don't bad mouth them anymore.
I made my point without having to list the current leaders of China. And the Democrats don't bad mouth them either - one of the great mysteries of US policy...
I think Muammar is the best friends of the Bush administration now, since he turned over his WMD's, WMD's I wager he bought some just so he could turn them over and get the sanctions lifted. They like him because they can claim him as proof their "get tough" policy in Iraq worked though that is a dubious claim. I'm pretty sure Cheney/Halliburton and the rest of the U.S. oil and gas industry are chomping at the bit to do business with Muammar and get back in to his oil fields. Again as long as there is money to be made the U.S. LOVES dictators.
Ad hominem attack on the US in general, and Bush in particular. If the US in general and Bush in particular LOVED dicators when there was money to be made, they would have made the deal with Saddam that the French did: let us have all you oil contracts and we'll work to lift the post-Gulf War I sanctions.
Hugo Chavez is democratically elected. He is a socialist and the Republican's hate him with a passion, he hates them too, but he was still elected. The Bush administration has tried to overthrow him at least once, and if they succeed that would probably lead to a dictatorship, but Venezuala isn't under one now.
I hate to have to throw this in here, but Hitler was also democratically elected. And just like Chavez, it only happened once. Chavez has rewritten the Venezuelan Constitution - among other things abolishing congress and the Venezuelan Supreme Court. He's also undemocratically extended his own term. Hardly the acts of a leader that isn't a dictator.
Khomeini, well that one is interesting. He came to power because the U.S. toppled the elected government of Iran when they nationalized their oil fields taking control of them from their former colonial masters the British, who were taking the lions share of the profits. The U.S. installed the Shah of Iran who was a brutal repressive dictator. The Iranians turned to Khomeni because they hated the Shah more, and hate the U.S. to this day for inflicting him on them.
Gee, if we're going to keep putting on the tinfoil hat, why not try to examine the role the Soviet Union played in the actions of the pre-Shah Iranian government? The simple fact is the Soviet Union was bent on world domination despite all the revisionist history being spewed nowadays. Marxist belief in "historical inevitability" and Kruschev's "We will bury you" exclamation - among other inconvenient-to-the-left facts - belie this. Russia has historically coveted the Persian Gulf area - an attitude the Great Russian Empire (for a time known as the Soviet Union) continued well into the 1970s and 1980s.
That, or leave out certain items. Creative editing.
In any case, with behavioral modification via television, it's not all about facts. It's just as much about flavors, biases and emotional manipulation. Television is far more powerful in selling non-overt lies than it is about the stuff it's actually talking about. Women shave their legs, why. . ? Look into how that started, how it developed and where it has led. All of it was very deliberate right from the get-go. Then consider what it has done to our world. --Just to mention one example of media control over human behavior.
In any case, re 'voting machine scandals', this is I suspect, a case of total mis-direction. It doesn't matter which of the two idiots gets put into office as the same agenda will be adhered to. Indeed, if the 'Voting machine scandal' is defeated and JFK (ugh) is put into office on the cheering shoulders of the masses, then the populace will likely settle down and be less apt to complain when the next Middle Eastern country is invaded, (or whatever). Conversely, part of controlling people is for them to accept the control. That is, as a fascist overlord, (or psychological bully) it is important to let the curtain up enough so that the people can see the dark machinations, but make it look so difficult to fight that they choose instead to submit. With that submission comes a submission to all other abuses occurring at the same level of 'hotness.' So the set-up is almost air tight; fight the voting machines, get Kerry and more of the same bullshit. Don't fight the machines, and submit to more of the same bullshit. And THAT is how you control a nation.
But beyond this. . , it's not about which problem is examined on television, or which news channel you watch. The fact of the matter is that when you step back, you see a couple hundred million Americans spending an hour or more every day staring at a flickering CRT with a zoned-out expression as the dark messages feed directly through any possible barriers and pour right into the core of their psyches.
And what is the message we should take from this state of affairs?
As McLuhan put it: "The Medium IS the Message".
-FL
Once we move to an electronic voting system, can't the choice of anonymity be left up to the voter?
When a vote is cast, the voter would get two receipts. The first receipt would confirm that his/her vote has been recorded locally, backed up, and received by the central site. The other receipt would detail the vote (the vote cast, non-identifying demographic information, etc.)
No database would record any information to tie the two reciepts/records together, so identifying information is independent of the vote.
If voters continue to have trust issues regarding their vote being recorded accurately, the receipts could include hashes/keys that allow online databases to be queried. The identifying ticket's hash would be unique. This allows one to verify that their vote was received. A series of these hashes over the years could also be used to show a voting history (that votes were cast, not the votes' contents). The second ticket would include a hash that indicates the vote's contents and non-identifying demographic data. This would allow one to verify the contents of the vote online.
The only concern with anonymity is if the voter chooses to release both receipts together. If the vote contents are up for blackmail, then maybe only the first receipt would be issued and not the second. Is blackmail really a realistic concern?
The upside of the second voting receipt is that it would allow a person to verify that their vote has been accurately recorded on the central server and that the system isn't corrupt (at least that one part).
In Tallahassee, about 8 years ago, there was an electronic voting system that made perfect sense. There was a long line of electronic voting machine s that you entered your choices on. You choose one, and after all your choices were made and confirmed, it printed a piece of paper with all your choices on it. You could see what choices were made by looking at the paper. Then, you took this paper (which was the official ballot) and put it into a vote counting machine at the entrance to the room which read the paper and counted your vote. need a recount? You can still access the stacks of paper ballots in the counting machine, no problem. Nobody walks home with their ballot either. Problem solved.
Can anyone tell me why we still use an Electoral College at all?
If I recall my history correctly (admittedly: it was my worst subject), it was originally established because there were so many problems/ inaccuracies in counting votes, it was a way to guess, or summarize, the intentions of the people.
Besides contributing to voter apathy and being a nice source of potential corruption, I don't see a reason for it any longer.
Consider. .
It doesn't matter which of the two Skull and Boners gets put into office as the same agenda will be adhered to. Kerry is just as big a war supporter as Bush.
But if the 'Voting machine scandal' is defeated by the people and JFK (ugh) is put into office on the cheering shoulders of the masses, then the populace will likely settle down and be less apt to complain when the next Middle Eastern country is invaded, (or whatever).
Conversely, part of the technique of controlling people is for the people to accept the control. --That is, as a fascist overlord, (read, 'psychological bully'), it is important to let the curtain up enough so that the people can see the dark machinations, but make it look so difficult to fight that they choose instead to submit. With that submission comes a submission to all other abuses occurring at the same level of 'hotness.'
So the set-up is almost air tight; If you fight the voting machines, you get Kerry and more of the same bullshit, and are apt to go back to sleep believing that you, 'took care of things'. If however, you don't fight the machines, you instead submit to more of the same bullshit under Bush. In both cases, the result is a population which has been calmed and subdued either through submission or daydreaming, but which hasn't prevented one iota the march toward totalitarianism.
And THAT is how you control a nation.
Humans, when incited are very hard to keep locked down. They have two arms and two legs, and brains to make them move. If everybody, all at once decided to storm the halls of government and behead the criminals, there's not much which could stop them. And this is well understood by those who hold the tenuous threads of corrupt power. This is why everybody is drugged both chemically and electronically, locked into exhausting, soul-sucking jobs, and sold hundreds of self-defeating behavioral traits and lies from they day they are born. Sold the belief that they have no power.
But there is another way out which the controllers, blinded by their own selfish predisposition to wishful thinking, cannot see and which is taking power steadily and with geometric growth. . . What is it? Unless you know, you won't grasp it until it bites you on the nose. This decade is getting more interesting by the day!
-FL
"Or I can do a vote swap with someone in another state. Anyone have any adivce on how not to waste my vote?"
I'd strongly argue against vote-swapping. It's a system ripe for abuse. Simply vote your choice. It's not a wasted effort even though it may seem like that drop of water in the river doesn't affect the flow.
The key is the collective weight of all those "one drop" voters casting their ballots. And even if your state is 80% for/against your candidate, it still adds to the collective voice. Go for it!
At first glance I read the story headline as 'How to Lose an Erection'...
Although I suppose reading any story involving Janet Reno would be pretty effective there as well.
You forget that an election is supposed to be 100% anonymous.
That doesn't preclude keeping a record of votes using a serial number as a key. I know the serial number of my vote because I have the receipt. If I see my serial number's vote attributed to the wrong cantidate, I may CHOOSE to identify myself and show the error (just like I can choose to tell people how I voted now). You just know that someone (could be nearly anyone) voted xyz.
It's funny how everyone focused on the butterfly ballot, the overseas military votes, hanging chads, etc. These dealt with hundreds to low thousands of votes. The real scandal was the voter purge list. A "felon list", all but a tiny portion of the people on the list were not felons - and it was *heavily* skewed towards democratic voting groups. For example, the list banned 22,000 blacks, but only 61 hispanics.
"You abandoned me! You abandoned my hatred!" "I... I have cuttlefish..."
That's not the only reason. It also gives states flexibility in how they choose electors (it doesn't necessarily have to be by popular vote, nor does it have to be winner-take-all). It also somewhat balances the power of populous vs. populous states.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
you see, the free beer offer was just to register to vote, it had nothing to do with how you voted.
HAND.
Why does these systems have to be SO overly complicated!
I could take a PII 400 Mhz (which is probably overkill). Get a bunch of dumb serial terminals. Design an IDIOT simple menu screen for voting....attach a dot matrix printer to print out each vote as it happens and get a very reliable system for voting (It would be almost trivial to build a slackware box for this purpose).
Am I being overly simple in my design? Arrogant? Would something that simple work?
Seems like a new Florida story comes out every week. If they're not tinkering with voting machines or the voter rolls, they're shuffling underperforming kids from school to school so their standardized test scores won't count toward the statewide average. Is anything in Florida on the level anymore?
Paper trails are not needed to secure voting. They are expensive and slow things down. What is needed is a system where anybody can easily count the votes, and anybody can easily verify their own vote.
This system must, however, insure voter anonymity.
So here is the solution. Everybody has a private cryptographic key. When they vote they encrypt their vote with their key, possibly using something like a Java Ring or iButton or maybe a smart card, and the system records the pair ( encrypted vote, unencrypted vote ). The important thing is that the private key must be kept secure and secret even when interfacing with a malicious sever, terminal, etc. Finally, everybody has access to the entire voter database via the internet.
Independently, anybody could download the entire database and count the vote... verifying the government's count.
Similarly, anybody could verify that their vote was recorded correctly by checking that their pair ( encrypted vote, unencrypted vote ) is in the database.
Giving up a little anonymity, but still keeping a person's choice secret would allow further system integrity. The database could store the identity of all registered voters along with the elections they voted in. This data could be used to verify that the total vote database does not contain more votes than the number submitted by valid registered voters.
Of course it would be up to the people to verify that the system accurately recorded:
1. their registration status
2. whether or not they voted in the election
3. their actual vote (as described above)
The system could never lie because it would never know who is requesting the data. Individual counties, companies, organizations, and individuals would be able to download all or part of the database. These independent organizations could verify the integrity of the data. An individual person could verify the data directly or indirectly through one of these organizations.
Hence the importance of the entire database being freely accessible. The system could even be distributed in the sense of distributed databases or distributed operating systems... so as to further insure reliability, scalability, integrity, etc.
Everyone should read the stuff about the 2000 election the "liberal media" left out. Like the fraud committed by DBT (acquired by Choicepoint) in the voter lists. Particularly intersting is the stuff by Greg Palast, author of "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy". His book even has pictures of Clayton Roberts, a FLA GOP election official, running away when asked about the voter list deal.
i ght/117411 5.stmi on.html = 1& s=palastt #Florida_V oter_File_Contractw s/2000election.html
Electronic voting could also be handled by DBT/Choicepoint. Perhaps the US elections could be held under the review of UN officials to make sure they're free and fair...
Links:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/events/newsn
http://www.infernalpress.com/Columns/elect
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010205&c
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChoicePoin
http://www.choicepoint.com/ne
This is left as an exercise for the reader.
If you generate a random code for each voting machine and another for each vote, printed it at the top of the ballot/receipt and filed the vote in a database properly according to both, you'd have the paper trail AND the possibility of anonymous verification.
The vote machine wouldn't know WHO you are, nor would anyone be able to retrieve that information. If you (or your party) suspect fraud or error, you can check the DB against the receipt without EVER giving your name.
respectfully BJ-beware the man of one book
As obsolete as a punch card is, a punch card won't crash - it's about as permanent and anonymous as you can get without resorting to pen and paper or chisel and stone. Sure, they can burn or shred, but what are the odds of that?
This sig no verb.
Pee in the bathtub. The walls are waterproof.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
"I made my point without having to list the current leaders of China. And the Democrats don't bad mouth them either - one of the great mysteries of US policy..."
... excepting the Bush family liked Kuwait's dictator...err... emir better and when Saddam invaded Kuwait they had to pick one oil field over another. Besides which its a lot better now that the U.S. has control of Iraq's oil through a puppet government that takes orders better than Saddam did.
Actually you really didn't. China wasn't in the UN during most of Mao's reign. He was on his last legs when they were admitted.
I'm not a Democrat or saying they are any different. There are rich Dems making a buck in China too.
"...they would have made the deal with Saddam"
"...but Hitler was also democratically elected.'"
Well so was George Bush, sort of but not really. Chavez had been facing a U.S. backed revolt pretty much since Bush came to office. Its not a very conducive environment to democracy in any form. I'll agree with you Chavez has issues if you agree the Bush administration has culpability in the mess that is Venezuela.
"Gee, if we're going to keep putting on the tinfoil hat"
Not sure why the overthrow of the Iranian governmen t by the CIA is a tinfoil hat issue. MK Ultra is the code name for the project its pretty well documented, do a google search.
Not sure why you wandered off in to your rant on the Soviet Union and Russia. It was kind of tangential to the topic here.
@de_machina
I'm not sure why "undervotes" were ever a big deal to begin with. Some people simply choose not to cast a vote for a particular race, and I don't see why they shouldn't be able to do this. If someone didn't cast a vote for a race, then there is no vote to record, period, end of story. Make the machine alert the voter that a vote wasn't cast and then if they approve the ballot anyway, it's nobody's fault but theirs if no vote is counted for that race. If someone can't figure out how to properly cast a vote despite clear written and verbal instructions, I don't want them picking our next president anyway.
Don't know why this one got modded up as insightful, but...
ELDERLY VOLUNTEERS AT THE POLLS!
Come on! Whenever I've gone to the polls, I've never seen anyone younger than retirement home/Tuesdasy night bingo age running the show.
The obvious solution to this problem is for the self-proclaimed technically elite to volunteer to work at the polls.
Certainly, they're nice and friendly, but seriously -- this is the generation that, for the most part, yell and scream if someone automates anything in their life with a computer.
I've not found this to be the case. All of the people over 65 in my family are comfortable using computers, and only get pissed off when some "whippersnapper" decides to make dramatic, arbitrary, and unasked-for changes to the systems they they use. Getting bent out of shape over having to learn something new to do basic and necessary tasks is not unique to the elderly. How much bile has been vented on a weekly basis by the technology elites here about changes to the Nautilus file manager?
Of course, blame the user is the ultimate cop-out for bad design. Touch-screen voting machines are being pushed as even easier to use and manage than the mechanical systems they replace. I'm finding it hard to believe that the errors we are seing are due to technically naive poll volunteers who somehow managed to deal with systems that (at least according to touchscreen voting companies) more complex. Even if we assume that poll workers are fools, voting machines must be foolproof to ensure that every vote counts.
Pretty soon, GWB will have killed more Americans (by sending them to their deaths in Iraq) than Al-Queda.
Go ahead: one little -1 won't affect my Karma.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
CNN briefly mentions problems with electronic voting in general. I think in a years time, saying voting machines are flawed will be seen in the same light as UFO sighting or Elvis conspiracy. At the moment its on the kind of "Yeah, but what can you do?" level. Allot of companies and states have allot of money riding on this so its not in their interests to admit they screwed up, which is why its in the interests of the people to know exactly whats going on in the government at all times. Your politicians shouldn't be allowed to so much as hold a phone conversation with a major corporation without it being public or atleast in sight of several judges, and all over the desk instead of under. Maybe we should let juries leave the court and have little chats with the defence and prosecution, maybe go for a coffee? perhaps the jury would be interested in a free kitchen installation from the guy on the stand for murder? or perhaps he could install some new court voting machines? Well thats how the government works and its all legal?
Seriously school exams have more integrity than the presidential election!
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
And it's not fun being the butt of national jokes....heheh....
but in my county we use a scantron-type thing where we fill in cirles using a felt-tip marker and the machine scans it. Every ballot is then collected and can be recounted. Easy and it solves the problems of the last election. I don't know why all those counties down south still used that stupid punch-card system when ours worked so well. Interesting thing is i've used the punch card when i lived in Tampa and it was very easy to use. Weird that so many people can't figure them out.
I posted this idea in a previous discussion: modern cryptography allows you to have your cake and eat it too, at least in this case. My solution:
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. At this point, even though you can't necessarily claim perfect security, you can say it's reasonable (hell, with any system you could use your cell phone to take a picture of your selections, etc).
Anyway, 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.
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
Deposit it in the bin marked "In case of electronic system failure or challenge, open this bin and count by hand."
... whatever... 0.5% of the electronic count, the government keeps your deposit, if the count is off by more than a small margin like that (or the recount changes the result of the election being contested), you get your deposit refunded from a grateful public.
99.8% of the time we'll agree to use the electronic count... same as ATMs. However, there's always a good thing to have that little bit of backup just in case...
Require a deposit to do the hand count. If it's within
I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.
I can print a million ballots and stuff it into the "box" after I figure out the way the system works. I can pay others to do the same.
Flawed.
MYTH MYTH MYTH
Fisher spent their own money to develop the space pen and then gave it to NASA. Before that NASA and the Russians both used pencils. After both NASA and the Russians used the space pen.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
says that immigrants being granted citizenship in Florida were handed forms to indicate their voting preferences when they registered to vote.
All the preferences were prechecked "Republican"!
Some of the immigrants complained to the Democratic Party officials in Florida and the Federal Elections Commission is investigating.
It doesn't get more obvious than this.
Why Florida is still part of the United States instead of Germany - or maybe North Korea - is a mystery to me.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
If you disagree with the ACLU on something, its probably more effective to remain a member and let them know. (Similarly for the NAACP) Claiming that they are just "puppets of the Democratic party" makes you look like an ignorant idiot (dittohead), someone who gets his ideas primarily from Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and the like and who never bothers to think through the issues or do any research on his/her own. (Not that that is uncommon these days, indeed you are just emulating the Shrubbery in the White House who seems proud of the fact that he never lets facts get in the way of his beliefs.)
oh i did SO misread the title.... :)
the computer is online
i am not at it
what a waste of ressources
Sounds like you are paranoid. If someone did that? Well, I am sure that there are plenty of rooms at the federal prison in Terre Haute, IN.
Not paranoid, because it's happened. You need to go back and take the second (probably) semester of U.S. history. That's why laws were passed requiring anonymous voting in the first place. Bosses of big companies were telling workers to vote for the candidate that is friendly to them and unfriendly to the workers or be fired. The bosses would go look at the voting records or get a receipt to verify the votes.
There are absolutely a million ways to make a system where I can cast a vote, get an anonymous key number specific to my vote, and go home and verify it over the net. HELL, it isn't even expensive. How many server farms do you need to make it 'net accessible? We are talking 270 million hits. Yes that is quite a bit. But when you talk about the federal gov't, that ain't squat.
Don't even tell me that the receipt is the problem. It doesn't even need to tell you on the receipt WHO YOU VOTED FOR. It only needs to tell you the way to access your vote to verify it.
If it tells you the way to access your vote it also tells your employer the way to access your vote. The most that system could do is to tell you if you voted, which is pretty useless really. It can't tell you who you voted for, or your employer can demand that you show them. (You could solve this problem by allowing people to change the displayed vote, but that opens up a whole new can of worms by making such a record useless for recounts, which is much of the reason for having it in the first place.)
I'm not saying that if anonymous voting went away you'd see instant widespread corruption. BUT THE RISK IS TOO GREAT. We all know how corrupt businesses are and how they will do anything, even criminal acts, to gain an edge. Allowing people to verify voting in any location outside of the polling place opens the door to corruption of the vote *casting* process. Such is, IMO, much more dangerous than corruption in the vote *counting* process.
This is why I would take unverified, fraud-susceptable DRE machies over ones that allow people to check who they voted for in any place where another person would be allowed.
(It is, of course, completely unnecessary that we should have such a choice between two great evils.)
...and, as they've shown in the past, they have little interest in assuring accurate vote counts in areas that are "overwhelmingly" Democratic.
Little mistake on my part. Got my CIA malevolence code words mixed up. MK Ultra was its program to abuse test subjects with LSD.
The project to overthrow Iran's very popular Mossadeq and replace him with corrupt dictator, the Shah, was TPAJAX.
@de_machina
Cmmon this is slashdot, how about the real questions.
- Where are the Backup Tapes
- Can the necessary data be recovered from the hard drive
- Can the data be restored from backup
- What is your disaster recovery plan
- Why were you working on live data without a backup
- why does your software crash and delete valuable data
- why did this happen now and not before the results were posted
I think that the answer will be a little be scarier than we would like- The data was not lost in a crash
- The data was deliberately destroyed to hide tampering
- the blame was put on a computer crash as a technical scapegoat.
- when people hear about things that involve computers they
automatically assume just about any damn thing is possible.
In my 10 years of working with computers i have never lost any critical data due to a crash or a computer failure. there are too many ways to prevent accidental data loss and to recover data from a completely hosed hard drive. this data was probably not lost in a computer crash it was deliberately destroyed. call me paranoid but i challenge anyone on this board with more than 5 years field experience to site a single case where data was lost due to a crash (not including incoming data during downtime) and not recoverable. if you do post a case than you shouldn't be in this business.Yeah, us felons love to vote democrat (when we're not traveling through time, that is). Whereas criminals never favor republicans, and republicans never nominate convicted criminals to influential positions in government.
But I might as well blame republicans for the imaginary voting habits of felons, since republicans blame people like me for the existence of the AIDS virus, the decline of marriage, and the world's ability to distinguish between defense and de facto.
~A liberal, and therefore un, American.
right?
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
I am not aware of serious problems in any US election.
You must not be looking hard, I'm only in my 20's and I have heard of election problems at some level in many democratic countries.
In the last Canadian Federal election at least one poll opened serveral hours late because they didn't have the ballots. In some areas peoples registration cards indicated their polling station was unreasonably far away (20+ minute drive when there is one a 10 minute walk away)
A full scale national election is a big project, if there weren't some reports of something going wrong somewhere, I'd guess they just aren't reporting it.
Don't be so sure. If you had a hard copy without a name or any other ID information and someone forcibly removed it from your person shortly after seeing you leave the polling location, it would be reasonable for them to assume that it represented your vote. This becomes even simplier in the case of voluntary ballot-stuffing. However, I am more worried about various organizations corrupting the system by coercing people against their will.
Step 1: Nominate John Kerry.
That's how you lose, run in a totalitarian dictatorship like the United States, you don't stand a chance then.
Could we use this space pen for paper ballots?
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
I thought it was a dictatorship?
If you care about your vote, write a complaint to letters@marketplace.org.
...we could just say that anyone too stupid to fill out a punch card ballot correctly is arguably too incompetent for their opinion to be of any value ANYWAY.
Oh but heavens, that would be so unfair.
One of the two parties DEPENDS on the votes from illiterate and uneducated voters, who else is voting the "bread & circuses" ticket?
-Styopa
"Another key reason the South fell was the continued support the North got from the USSR after the US gave up on supporting the South..."
Forgot to answer this one. Well yes the US could have kept an occupation army in the South forever and propped up one corrupt dictator after another. It would have cost another fortune in gold and blood. If the U.S. actually wanted to WIN and get out the South Vietnamese needed to find a popular, independent and strong government. A key problem with the U.S. in Vietnam is the U.S. backed the French when they were propping up their failing colonial empire. The French colonial occupation of Vietnam was thouroughly brutal and one in a string of occupiers of Vietnam. The Vietnamese people mostly wanted a nationalist government that would throw out foreign occupiers whoever they were. When the French finally gave up, unfortunately the U.S. picked up their mantle and started out being hated by all the Vietnamese who hated the French.
For better or worse Ho Chi Minh in the North and the Viet Cong were the only nationalist alternative and it was the basis for their popular support. They were nationalist first and communist second mostly to get the backing of the Soviet Union and China. Again that government has mellowed some but its the same one that won in the 70's and the U.S. has no problem doing business with them today, as long as they allow profit taking.
Its a lesson the U.S. should have learned for Iraq and Afghanistan. Unless those countries find popular, independent and sovereign governments they will continue to be a screwed up mess and the U.S. will be stuck having its sons and daughters stationed there propping up puppet governments and getting killed and wounded in a futile effort for basically ever.
Another key point about your rant on Marxism and the U.S.S.R is that thanks in part to Gorbechev, Yeltsin and Russia's Afghanistan vets the U.S.S.R is gone and Russia isn't adventuring at anything resembling the same scale as the U.S.S.R. The U.S. is, on the other hand, still manipulating the world with abandon and on a scale that rivaled anything in the 20th century. There is now no power to keep the U.S. in check when it abuses its power as it did in Iraq.
@de_machina
How did Janet Reno, powerful predecessor of Attorney General John Ashcroft, let those votes disappear without obtaining justice for the voters? What the hell is wrong with Florida? What makes democracy there such a debacle?
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make install -not war
Hitler was NOT democratically elected. The nazi's did get a lot seats in the Reichstag, but Hitler used a lot of manipulation and political powerplays to get into power, from the wikipedia article on Hitler's rise to power:
But Hitler did not yet hold the nation in thrall. Hitler's initial election into office and his use of constitutionally enshrined mechanisms to shore up power have led to the myth that his country elected him dictator and that a majority supported his ascent. He was made Chancellor in a legal appointment by President Hindenburg. This was a bit of historical irony, as the mainstream parties had supported Hindenburg as the only viable alternative to Hitler, not realizing that it would be Hindenburg who would bring about the end of the republic.
that's the easy way in the US. The less easy way would be to not run in the Repubocratic party
This isn't insightful, it's a troll!
Just because you are a republican bashing flaming liberal doesn't make their comment insightful.
You've all been brainwashed by the left...
Why can't they just slap a printer under the machine and let it print a line for every ballot submitted inside its little locked cabinet? Then, if they really don't trust the database, they can count up the lines on the paper log to their hearts content. Why does such a simple concept as voting have to be such a huge issue?
Why do we need paper? Have every voter toss a pre-printed marble into a candidate's jar after voting. (one marble per voter, the machine can dispense the marble) At the end, each voting district can weigh the respective jars as a cross check of the electronic votes. Okay, I admit it needs more work, but the point is there may be alternatives to paper :)
"Hardly the acts of a leader that isn't a dictator."
Having refreshed my memory on Venezuela I see they are going ahead with a Chavez recall August 15, the recall being the thing Chavez has been resisting, not elections. He was elected to a six year term in 2000, though the elections were heavily disputed, just like America's 2000 election. Much of the blame then fell on electronic voting, provide by America's own Republican backed ES&S. Not sure why they would have trusted their election to a company with potential ulterior motives but they did and it was a disaster. A case study in evoting gone wrong.
The August recall will also make extensive use of electronic voting machines this time by a little know Florida company, Smartmatic.
If Chavez is the dictator you say he is, and I'd say its 50/50, he will, no doubt, use these machine to insure victory. Of course, if he does rig the election using electronic voting he will just prove a dicator wannabe in the U.S. could do the same thing a few months later.
Oh, but wait apparently Venezuela's evoting machines will provide a printed record so I guess we would have to say their elections have a slightly better chance of being on the up and up than our own. Odd, that in a head to head trustworthiness contest between Chavez and his voting machines and the Bush family and their voting machines I would say Chavez wins.
@de_machina
substitute politician for Republican and I'll second that
Two questions about (Republican) touchscreen voting machine designs:
1) Why is it necessary or acceptable for a supposedly well-tested black box system, with software that is supposedly certified by election officials, to allow software updating via PCMCIA card and even worse, to allow a user to pop up a window where they can enter and execute arbitrary new code? It seems to me the only purpose of this latter feature is to allow vote tampering with a minimal evidence trail. And that arbitrary code feature is obviously what the Sequoia people have been practicing with.
2) Why do people automatically assume that touchscreen voting machines require network-based vote tabulation? Almost all of the security and verifiability problems are due to network tabulation, not the touchscreen terminals. They could easily be designed to print out paper ballots directly, which would add voter verifiability (greatly reducing rejection rates due to problems with the touchscreen systems), and then optically scanned - with a MUCH lower rejection rate than normal optically-scanned ballots. The touchscreen systems and scanning systems could be provided by different vendors. This approach might cost more, but if the vendors were non-profit orgs, it probably wouldn't. And it would probably result in the lowest rejection rates of all voting technologies, as opposed to the currently prevalent networked touchscreen approach, which has the highest rejection rate (yes, higher than punch cards).
I have been increasingly alarmed at the lack of attention paid to this issue by the Democrats and the national media. I've been telling everyone I can since early 2003 that Bush will "win" in 2004, regardless of the actual votes cast, because the election is rigged in 15 or 20 states (and it probably only needs to be rigged in 2 or 3 states). And NFB (nfb.org) and LWV (lwv.org) are idiotically backing this conspiracy, for what they think is a noble purpose (better disabled access to voting).
Check out Verified Voting!
1. the voting instructions are highly confusing.
2. you guys are all really dumb
and the option for Voters to print off a copy for their own records
This is completely unacceptable as it would destroy the secrecy of the ballot, there is no way of guaranteeing that the voter would not be held (by a vigilante etc.) and searched for his receipt.
The idea of an other poster here to have a ticked with a hash that only prooves the validity of the vote, not the kind of vote, might be a sort of solution.
And even that, there have been instances were people were coerced NOT to vote or make an invalid vote, in those cases the criminals behind this scheme would still have a clue about the voter's compliance.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
To lose an election, just think about your glandma naked. That, or run out of Viagla.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
In the UK, ballots have a serial number. When you turn up at the polling station and are given your ballot, the serial number is written beside your name. The returning officer can match that serial number against a particular voter if required to investigate allegations of fraud but everyone seems to be pretty comfortable with the system and I have never heard anyone seriously complain that the system is not anonymous - there are many other criticisms of our electoral system but that is not one of them.
There is no voter receipt so there is no possibility of coercion (unless you consider mobile phones with cameras, perhaps) and it would take a large amount of effort for anyone to actually determine which candidate any particular voter actually voted for, so voters are confident that it will not happen unless someone has a very good reason.
Almost anonymous voting and verifiable. Is 100% anonymity really necessary, or is it sufficient that it would take a lot of effort and access to all of the ballot papers for anyone to extract the information?
flossie
Write now. Defend liberty
I want to know how someone knows they "accidentally" cast a vote for the wrong person, leaves the voting area, and then, quite suddenly, figures out that they were disenfranchised hours later at home. Oh yeah, it was because their candidate was suddenly shown as losing on the news, so they got riled up and started bitching about it.
Gore lost, get over it.
Sure, flamebait. The fact that there were ~22,000 blacks on the felon list and 61 hispanics on the list means that hispanics are little angels, while blacks are all convicted violent thugs. Right?
What's your "alternative explanation"?
"You abandoned me! You abandoned my hatred!" "I... I have cuttlefish..."
Rather, it was that a private firm compiled that list at the behest of Republicans, which suggests that the racial disparity was politically motivated. Yes, there are numerous Hispanic felons in Florida, but Hispanics in Florida on the whole tend to vote Republican, while African-Americans in most of the U.S. tend to vote Democrat. The fact that almost no Hispanics were on the list commissioned by Republicans for the purpose of challenging people's right to vote strongly suggests that they asked for the kind of skewed information they got. Is that clear enough?
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
They could have learnt lessons from before Vietnam.
"For, although one may be very strong in armed
forces, yet in entering a province one has always need of the goodwill of the natives"
Machiavelli, The prince
The Bush administration has an apalling grasp of history and as they say, those who do not understand history are destined to repeat it.
meh
Diebold can't even do the verify part. Why are they even allowed to do this?
.... "Trust But Verify."
We need to get those policy maker to repeat after themselves: "Trust But Verify", "Trust But Verify"
All boils down to my post's subject title...
> If the US in general and Bush in particular LOVED
> dicators when there was money to be made, they
> would have made the deal with Saddam that the
> French did: let us have all you oil contracts
> and we'll work to lift the post-Gulf War I
> sanctions.
except that saddam wanted to be paid for his oil in euros, not US dollars. and that would have upset the pre-eminence of the US dollar on the world money markets. a deliberately provocative act by saddam and one that ultimately led to his downfall.
it would have helped to cement the euro's emerging position as the standard of exchange - the world would have become more dependent on the european economy and less on the US economy.
that's reason enough to not do a deal with saddam.
apart from that, why do a deal when you can invade and seize the oil fields? plus they get a honeypot to attract loony terrorists from all around the world AND the permanent war they want so badly to justify more military spending and military adventures now that the cold war has ended.
Nyuk nyuk... -Ice Uck
"There isn't a real-world problem I've come across that doesn't have common human ignorance at its core."
Perhaps this is one situation where outsourcing to India is a good idea, they have shown themselves far more capable of running a fair election under difficult situations than any organisataion in the USA.
Why the expense of computer voting systems that are less than acceptable for tallying votes? Our county here in Virginia uses scanners to tally paper ballots. Easy to handle. Voters just fill in the circle next to the person they're voting for. Scanner picks up the mark and the vote is cast. Recounts are easy and there is a permenant record of the vote. Sometimes computers just may not be the best answer. KISS Cheers
You apparently haven't read this (written by Ed Kast, ex-chief of the Florida Division of Elections, in response to inquiries from a group of Supervisors of Elections in Florida):
"In the context of a manual recount as prescribed by section 102.166, Florida Statutes, counties
utilizing touchscreen voting systems are not required to print or review the electronic ballot
images of undervotes occurring in the recounted race. In addition, because the rule provides no
standards for the review of electronic ballot images and because the Florida Election Code
requires uniformity in the application and operation of the election laws and rules among the
counties, you have no authority to do so."
Someone hasn't been doing their homework on election law...
I know who I voted for. I don't need to prove it to anyone. In fact, anyone that asks will get rebuffed. More forcefully as the requests build up.
In the case of a close election/recount, I expect that the local election board should be able to show there were n votes cast, and for whom. Not by whom. x+y+z=n
Common usage for the term democracy means republic.
You ask people if america is a democracy, they say "yes". You ask people if america is a republic, they say "yes". In common usage the terms are interchangeable.
You knew what the poster was saying. You knew he was talking about "one of the forms of governance where the people have a voice in goverment". Sure if you were writing a political science paper you would be more specific and not use republic and democracy interchangeably.
But you just had to give us a history lesson. *sigh*
Anyway, the problem isn't democracy vs republic (given the population size a democracy is out of the question). The problem is federalism. Originally the "United States" was an aggregation of confederated states. Since then our government's center of mass has risen like a hot-air balloon. Once again, the problem isn't the majority making decisions against the minority, it's the uninvolved majority making decisions against a concerned minority. In our system people in Hawaii have equal say as Alabama in the way schools are run (not explicitly, but if they want federal funding...). People always want to take their problems to the top. In a de^H^Hrepresentative government deciding at the top means that uninvolved sides tell you what to do.
A bottom-up approach to government insures that only the people involved have a say. (This is not exactly the same as "state's rights". A bottom-up approach begins with the individual: I decide what I do, we decide what we do, the city decides what the city does, the county decides...the nation decides what the nation does [and *only* what the nation does])
Where did you get the list of 1000000 valid serial numbers for your fake ballots?
In Brazil we have been using electronic voting machines for several years and nobody has complained.
In the last presidential election, the guy that was running from the ruling party (Jose Serra) lost and the challenger (Luiz Inacio LULA Da
Silva) won by a huge majority.
Maybe, we, brazilians, can teach americans a lesson on DEMOCRACY.
So if I want to calculate a million digits of pi, will my calculations somehow be more accurate and trustworthy if I record the intermediate steps to some paper medium???
The power to postpone an election is solely in the hands of Congress. No one else can do so.
Not to keep bothering you, but....I just saw something today that was the latest summary of Kerry's plan. This blogger is obviously a big Kerry supporter (I'm not steering you toward some right-wing website). Here's her report.
I agree with all 4 points (who wouldn't, really?), but they're very broad. I'm glad that I agree with Kerry on this much, though, since he might be president.
I'm pretty rabidly anti-electronic voting (as currently implemented), but these two papers I stumbled across have me rethinking my position:
CFP'93 - Electronic Voting - Evaluating the Threat
Paper v. Electronic Voting Records - An Assessment
WSJ's OpinionJournal.com has a pretty poorly written article as well at:
No Doctored DRE (Subscription might be required for this one though)
Enjoy.
"Welp, that test run passed with flying colors!"
Just because >you are a Liberal bashing flaming Republican doesn't make your comment any more worthy!
And might I point out that you've been trained to parrot right wing zealotism?
Just to destroy your Anonymous Bushit Coward lies, I dug up the citation that debunks that pack of lies. Kerry never made the film you're helping to invent. Those "Swift Boat" veterans never served with Kerry. And of course your non sequitur connecting your imagined Kerry/Kennedy "Camelot" fantasy and Vietnam battles is total bullshit. You're a Bush zombie, quoting bullshit lies about Kerry, because you've got nothing else. Get back in your barracks, Gomer, while a real leader shows you how this country can run right with a real manager at the helm.
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make install -not war
You go to the table where you get verified as a legimated voter, and get a slip of paper from autotote like machine which has a 2d barcode containing a specially generated, encrypted & salted key number with the polling site number, machine number, transaction number and the public portion of two key numbers (Public & Private Keys) printed on it, one of these serial numbers (the private one) is sent electronically to a central database which creates a verified voter count record for that key, and the rest (public key & so on) of the info is printed on a human & computer readable transciption roll on that auto-tote machine for safe keeping to audit later as needed.
The voter then takes that slip and brings it over to an ATM like machine which reads in the public key number and presents the voter with voting screen, and selects his/her votes while the ATM like machine generates another yet private key and sends the voters choices along with it's salted private key, transaction id, machine Id, and polling site number in another (second) central database, as well as logging it all with a copy of the public key from the slip to a transaction log in the ATM like voting machine. Then the ATM like machine prints it's transaction ID on slip of paper and gives it back to the voter, who takes it back to a different auto-tote like machine which reads in the transaction ID & Public Key and sends them back over the to the first central database, which runs a read only query against the second central database and shows the voter his recorded votes for verification, and he/she punchs yes or no.
And when it's no, it just has the database destroy the record and start over, when yes the Auto-tote appends the it's transaction ID as well as the ATM like machine's transaction ID into the first central database, then prints all that info on a human & computer readable transciption roll. And now that the vote is finished & verified, it prints it's transaction ID on the voters slip and gives it back to the voter, who could then deposit their slip of paper in a locked bin for later recounting or just walk out with it. (Now if anyone wants check for errors, through an electronic or human audit, they can audit the three different voting machines, the two databases, and possibly... the slips of paper!)
So the voter got paper receipt, through which the voter was able to verify his/her vote was registered properly with the system and is kept highly auditable, while maintaining voting anonymity... So it's a little inconvenient to take one slip of paper from one machine, and visit two other machines with it, but what a small price to pay for your kneecaps or your democratic right to vote, Hmm?
[Now, I'm off to lift my le... Um, visit... at another place.]
Circular reasoning (circulus in demonstrando) : attempting to support a proposition with an argument that presupposes the proposition, or the truth of the conclusion is assumed by the premises.
The voting machines do not make mistakes because they are infallible.
I hate Liberals and Conservatives.
If you are a Liberal or a Conservative, then HAVE A NICE DAY!
Courage.
How about Salvador Alende of Chili? Democratic chosen, thrown out by the USA...
WE DON'T NEED NO BLOG CONTROL.
Our voting machines are made by Procomp, now owned by Diebold.
They are simple 386-class machines, with flash memory, diskette drives, a B&W LCD display, a dot-matrix printer and two simple numeric keyboards - one for the voter, other for a person that inputs the ID number of the voter.
If Diebold has such problems in US, what can happen to elections here in Brazil?