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.

Comments

Ha!

[Malicious]

Raise your hand if you're surprised to see 'Computer Crash' and the Surname 'McBride' in the same headline.

Re:Ha!

[Rei]

I find it really scary that they reported *completely losing the results of an election* when it was desired to reanalyze it. Whether it is the case or not, in a state as hotly disputed as Florida, it reaks of partisan tampering.

Re:Ha!

[Jelloman]

Good god, this is political correctness RUN AMUCK!

Political correctness is a form of hate. You are expressing hatred and anger at someone for making a joke, a joke that CLEARLY had no hatred or bigotry in it whatsoever.

I realize I am also saying "shut up", which in general I think is ugly, but political correctness is so disgusting and counterproductive I had to say something. It's counterproductive because when someone wants to complain about real racism and bigotry, people ignore those valid complaints because they've been so numbed by all the BS PC whining like the above nonsense.

Re:Ha!

[Doc Ruby]

I expressed reservations at their weak joke, while talking about the subtle bigotries that pervade speech, especially under the guise of such weak jokes. I expressed no hate in my original post; to the contrary, I made a straightforward point about a subtle topic. Will you attack me for correcting your misspelling of "amok", by calling me "politically correct", accusing me of outrageously dragging an Indonesian word into a debate of another topic? What exactly do you think "political correctness" is, anyway? Sensitivity to rude behavior, especially when the rude person is ignorant of it, met with polite engagement? That's "hate"?

We don't have to choose between "big" bigotry and "little" bigotry. We can take them one at a time, as we encounter them. You might be comfortable with your own rudimentary appreciation of racism, although frequent attention to its ubiquity would make a truly sensitive person *chafe* at even small examples, rather than numb. But your reaction is more exemplary of people in denial of racism, who just want the whole bad business to be over, without eliminating it entirely from themselves.

Re:Ha!

[cburley]

impuning one "McBride" with another's bad reputation is something of an ethnic slur

So true. I remember Monica Lewinsky's father complaining about how his name became associated with a certain act because of his daughter's interactions with then-President Clinton in the Oval Office.

In fact, I believe his exact words were:

Republican attack dogs are using my surname to defame my entire family. Why, it's McCarthyism at its worst!

;-/

Re:Ha!

[Jonathan the Nerd]

...it reaks of partisan tampering.

I assume you've heard the saying, "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." My first impulse is to classify this as massive incompetence rather than deliberate tampering. But, as always, I Could Be Wrong.

Re:Ha!

[Bertie]

Oh, do shut up.

Re:Ha!

[Jelloman]

Your eloquence and soft words do not excuse your completely unconstructive negativity. You ask, "that's 'hate'?," and then contradict your own point by saying we don't have to choose between big and little bigotry.

I argue that "rude behavior... when the rude person of ignorant of it" is not rude at all. You may take offense, but that doesn't make it rude. (Please don't rebut this with one of the 178 definitions of the word "rude" you can find in some online dictionary.) The vast majority of people who hear a joke based on similarity of name of two individuals they do not personally know (especially when, as in this case, the negative connotation of the first name is not even being applied to the second person!) are not going to be offended by the joke.

People named Lewinsky, Clinton, Hitler, etc. may take offense at this kind of joke. But that offense stems from their own past negative experiences - being teased or mocked for their name's similarity to some famous figure - and not the substance of this joke itself. For every one of those cases, there are thousands of other triggers for negative memories. Saying, "lunch money" might trigger such a negative experience for me. So am I to complain of rudeness every time I hear that phrase? Ridiculous.

We DO have to choose between real bigotry and imagined slights. Most political correctness hogwash consists of party A attacking party B for an imagined insult to party C, e.g., a NYT op-ed piece written by a white woman lambasting Bill Cosby for his remarks about black culture in America, without any input from a black person at all, based only on her imagination of what a black person might feel in response. Or a Washington Post reporter being fired for using the word "niggardly" in a story.

Respectfully, your appraisal of my reaction as "more exemplary of people in denial of racism" is simply wrong. I've known several people who are deeply passionate about issues of race and ethnic hatred who believe as I do, that political correctness is extremely counterproductive and damaging to the effort of actually fighting against and educating people about the real problems. Most Americans are numb to racial issues, and political correctness run amok is one of the principal reasons for this.

In case you missed it when you were 3 years old, there's a story you should read.

Re:Ha!

[Doc Ruby]

I'm writing politely, because I don't know you personally, but from the heart, because I believe what I'm writing. If you don't like it, you're free to disagree or ignore it, but I'll stick to the style, especially for the benefit of anyone else reading who might be interested in how I connect the issues.

I'm not asking anyone to supress jokes that any adult can handle, even at their own expense, without being hurt. I'm asking people to consider that racism is clan rivalry writ large, and, conversely, clan rivalry is racism writ small. You might be too preoccupied with the more important and damaging "big" bigotry to care about its smaller versions. But I have attention enough to notice even the small, daily versions that infiltrate even sophisticated discussions.

I thought that I understood racism, and its perpetuation, after living in NYC and California. It wasn't until I lived in Louisiana that I really understood more of the whole cloth of that divisive, counterproductive competition. Racism and family competition feed off one another. Most Americans' numbness to racial issues comes from the limited, immediate benefits that racism gives them, like white privilege and lowered nonwhite expectations, and the broader, longer term benefits that their community leaders perpetuate by division and intimidation.

The notion of "Political Corretness" is a pernicious undermining of the gains in equity for all that have been produced through the political process, and are becoming normal mores across all American communities. Dividers and petty leaders are propagandizing these unifying developments into reflexive ridicule, before they lose the leverage from which they derive their power. Sensitivity and responsibility for one's actions, regardless of scale, are civilized traits we're busy working on together, and dropping out of that because one is scared to be correct, because that ethical measure was derived politically, undermines civilization.

That's all a lot to make out of a lame joke, playing on similarities in a family name. Too much, really. But the larger issue is real, and important. Our mutual disagreement over its existence, and its relevance to the original "controversial" post, might keep us from relating to one another's viewpoint. But I'm not crying "wolf" when there's nothing to fear. I'm whispering "snake", when everyone is fixated on alligators, but the snakes are there in the grass. You might be interested in the analogy of the boiling frog. It's just as fictional as Aesop's wolfboy, but also an illustrative parable.

To err is human...

[Anonymous Coward]

To really fuck something up, that takes a computer.

-- Anonymous

No recounts in districts with touchscreen voting?

[Anonymous Coward]

What Republican got that law passed?

We need a big...

[scaltagi_the_pirate]

I TOLD YOU SO

This is why there need to be reform

[SiliconJesus]

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.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Monty845]

What I don't understand is on what grounds someone could apppose a paper trail of verified printouts... Sure it may cost a few fractions of a cent per voter, but its a small price to pay for the knowledge that a free election has infact taken place...

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Steve B]

the option for voters to print off a copy for their own records

Absolutely, positively NOT. Permitting a voter to walk away from the polls with hard evidence of how he voted is an open invitation to corruption and coercion.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[kmmatthews]

That's not what the people pushing these machines are wanting.

Think about it - is there any logical or technical reason to NOT add an audit trail? No.

The reasons are entirely political.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[cuzality]

I can see it now:

Confused voter: "Excuse me, those election results can't be right -- I voted for Candidate X."
Election Official: "Oh, OK, may I have your receipt?"
Confised voter: "I don't know where that little piece of paper is!"

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Yep, that's the solution. It is mind-bogglingly simple and obvious to anyone who has any interest in fair elections. It follows, therefore, that the voting machine companies, which usually answer such demands with bullshit excuses like "the printer would jam" (that gem comes from Diebold, which also makes ATM's which surely print out many more receipts than any voting machine would be likely to, and do so day after day) do not have such an interest.

One quibble: the voters should not keep their receipts. Voter-held receipts are useless in the event of a recount -- how do you know that the receipt the voter brings in is actually the one he got on Election Day? -- and are actively dangerous, in that they provide a means for influencing elections through threat or bribery. ("Vote for candidate X or I'll break your kneecaps" / "Vote for candidate Y and I'll give you a raise"). The best sequence of events is to get the receipt, look it over to verify that it says what you want it to say -- and there's no reason receipts couldn't be printed in Braille for blind voters; some ATM receipts already are -- and deposit it in a ballot box.

For those who say, "But ballot boxes can be stuffed or stolen!" -- yes, this is true, and no election method yet devised is foolproof. But this would be a hell of a lot better than what we've got now.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[0x0d0a]

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.

Absolutely.

Now how, exactly, do you propose to provide a mechanism in which it is guaranteed to the voter that their recorded vote is the same as that which is on their receipt, without throwing away any of the anonymity characteristics that are also crucial to voting?

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[tuffy]

Is it all that hard to add a 'print reciept' option to all of these voting machines?

A receipt that tells who you've voted for would be quite valuable to anyone who'd like to buy your vote - or threaten you to vote for a particular candidate. Ensuring that all those receipts stay with the election officials is preferable, but then there's no point in using computers in the vote casting process to begin with.

And I don't think that's such a bad idea.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[hackstraw]

The trick is to have a receipt and maintain anonymity.

I never thought that in 2004 that it would be that difficult to count things. I'm not sure if everyone has seen this or not, but I just love this voting machine!.

Although its funny, its actually not a bad design. Especially for the elderly and visually impaired.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[zentechno]

A few comments, in order of increasing concern... Why do they need to back these up daily now - I mean, how often do the votes change. They didn't mention OS, so I wont either, though we've seen stories on these before. Most importantly, how long is it before the 'current' administration (a 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 to the point of requiring OS). What would a recount look like then, presuming it could even be determined that one was needed?

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[will_die]

And you would actually believe thoses piece of paper(provided that you could find them) that have no form of accountability.
Also they would be worthless for validating what was actually entered in the database, since if you are worried about people modifing what the people actually voted they would just print out what the person entered while enter into the database the modified results.
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.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[sphealey]

Now how, exactly, do you propose to provide a mechanism in which it is guaranteed to the voter that their recorded vote is the same as that which is on their receipt, without throwing away any of the anonymity characteristics that are also crucial to voting?

Voter reviews receipt and verifies correct. Voter places receipt in traditional ballot box. Random sample of ballot boxes counted and matched against electronic machine.

Admittedly this is a facile answer to a complex problem, but people like Peter Neumann have thought deeply about the problem for more than 30 years and have developed some solutions - none of which Diebold uses.

sPh

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Sepper]

Is it all that hard to add a 'print reciept' option to all of these voting machines?

Because that would be the logical thing to do... and you don't want tracable logical things when power and money is involved.

When there's not even a standard paper ballot for the whole 'voting' thing i'm not supprised paper trails and receipt are NOT priorities...

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[TopShelf]

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..."

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[JohnHegarty]

Two points....

1. People should not have anyway to remove the receipt from the machine. This is becuase someone outside with a baseball bat could say vote for the nazi party or i will take care of your legs. Oh and bring me a receipt.

2. If there is anyway to remove the ballet then we could have two figures at the end of the election , and I don't think america needs that again.

A viewing window to see the receipet before it drops into a sealed box would do the trick. Then a manual recount would give the same result as long as there has been no error.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[ishamael69]

Probably so. However, buying someone's vote is a whole lot less risky if you can get proof they voted the way you paid them too. In our current system, you can buy my vote all day long, but you'll never know whether or not I vote the way you tell me too.

On the other hand, if I had proof of how I voted, you could refuse to pay me until you've seen verification.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[rde]

Yes and no. What's needed is a perspex window (or something) under which the printout scrolls. It'd say something along the lines of "You voted for Al Gore". You then verify that via touchscreen. No bringing away evidence, and the paper trail exists; one that's been voter-verified.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[killjoe]

What's mind boggling is that the politicians made a law that makes a manual recount illegal. How much bribe money did that take?

BTW there should be TWO tickets, one for the voter and one for the official record. That way the voter can visually confirm his vote got recorded OK and perhaps come back during a recount to verify.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[james_in_denver]

Absolutely, electronic voting systems need a paper trail.

However in voting systems systems there can legally and technically be only one "ballot". And that is a piece of paper deposited in a ballot box. The "voting workstation" role in that scenario is to act merely as an audit for the paper ballots.

Furthermore let each voter have as many ballot "receipts", with whatever results on them that they want. That way voters are free from coercion or corruption. They can sell as many of these "fake" receipts as they want. Only the state voting commission server would know which had been cast as the official ballots, and which "receipts" were sham "receipts".

Please see for just such a solutionThere is also an OSS project underway to provide just such a system at Sourceforge. Any volunteers?

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[danknight]

yes, alll you need is a paper ballot, marked with a pencil and run thru a scanner.. Oh wait, we already have that... must have touch screen... shiney...

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Hmmm. I'm not sure about the viewing window; I think it's really important to know that your ballot goes into the box, and not one that you saw behind a sheet of glass. It would be easy enough to build a machine that shows you a ballot, shreds it, and deposits another ballot with the "right" votes. And again, there's the problem of Braille ballots for blind voters, which is significant.

I think taking the ballot out of the machine and putting it in the box would work fine. People might still try to take the ballots out with them, but they'd be hurting their candidate of choice, since the paper ballots would be the final authority in a recount. And anyone who tried to bribe or coerce them on this basis would know it.

Actually, I think the paper ballots should be the final authority, period -- make them so they can be electronically scanned, for quick vote counting, but they'd also be human-readable for recounts, and the actual voting machines would be dumb printers.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Monty845]

Should a challange be made all the paper reciepts would be counted and the tally would be compared to the electronic results, it would ensure that there was either no error in the recording or that any error that there was didn't give one side votes unfairly

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Daniel Dvorkin]

BTW there should be TWO tickets, one for the voter and one for the official record.

No there shouldn't, for the reasons I cited above. It would be nice if we lived in a world where people's votes couldn't be used against them, and where people could be counted on to bring back proper receipts ... but we don't.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[jgs]

BTW there should be TWO tickets, one for the voter and one for the official record. That way the voter can visually confirm his vote got recorded OK and perhaps come back during a recount to verify.

As others have adequately pointed out already, a voter-retained receipt is probably a bad idea due to the risk of coercion, etc. There's a reason we've never (AFAIK) had such things.

But regardless of the number of receipts printed, all of them should be visually inspected by the voter, and deposited by the voter into a separate ballot box, just like I do now with my hand-marked ballot. Clearly, any printed receipt I don't visually inspect could say anything, and is of no more probative value than a purely electronic record.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Marc Desrochers]

Haven't we essentially just gone back to the ballot method, with the extra overhead of having to get a receipt from the machine first? I've never given much thought to how an electronic election might be held, so I won't propose a solution, but this seems like it's not really solving anything. To verify the electronic votes, the paper ballots would have to be checked against the machine tallies.

It has become my belief that electronic voting will really only benefit those producing these machines.

I don't know what US ballots look like, but here in Canada, you are handed a little piece of paper, you go hide in a cubicle, make a mark with a pencil, return to the person who handed you the ballot, and you stuff it in the box, where 4 people are making sure you have only used one ballot. No one knows who you voted for except you. When it comes time to opening the ballot boxes, I would even go as far as to locally televise the counts, if for no other reason to keep the counters honest.

Maybe I'm wrong on the last part, but I see zero advantage to these electronic machines, and certainly even less in following them up with a paper trail. Is it just the government trying to "get with the times"?

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[TeamSPAM]

I would prefer a hard copy to confirm the vote. I don't think that the voter should take that hard copy home. The hard copy should be put in a ballot box after the voter has confirmed that indeed that was their vote. Similar as is done with normal ballots. If the results of a polling place are called into question, then we head to the ballot box and do a manual recount. So yes the individual voters shouldn't have hard evidence of they way they voted, but I want hard evidence for auditing purposes.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[sphealey]

Oh wait, we already have that... must have touch screen... shiney...

Personally, I agree with you, but counting 60 million paper objects is neither easy nor error free either.

sPh

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Short Circuit]

I wouldn't be as concerned about voters voluntarily selling their vote as I would be about employers, relatives, whatever pressuring me to vote a certain way, and demanding proof.

Anonymous voting(The "Austrailian ballot") added a lot to the fairness of our election system. I wouldn't want to lose that.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[McGillGirl]

Like some other posters have pointed, I don't think the voter should be allowed to keep a paper trail. That being said, here is what seems to be a good system. I saw it a few years ago for an election in Canada (can't remember which one though). The ballot-paper looked like a standardized test where you have to fill the circle corresponding to your answer. After filling the right circle, the voter would then feed his ballot-paper to a machine that would read the vote and then "swallow" the sheet to store it in what I presume was a locked compartment (somebody was there to assist voters that needed help, but it was obviously impossible for that person to see for whom the vote was cast). That way, they had a computer counting the votes and a paper trail.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[squiggleslash]

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..."

Doubtless the usual bunch of rednecks will protest that this is perfectly ok, after all, if someone is so stupid they're willing to base their vote on an such an offer, that's up to them, but the effect of this ultimately is on me and you and those of us who taking voting seriously. Sometimes laws need to be made not to protect people from their own stupidity, but to protect the rest of us from group stupidity.

We want everyone, regardless of what we think about them, to vote: no law has moral legitimacy if it is passed by a body where the people subject to that law had no say in its make-up. To achieve this, we need to protect the integrity of the decision making process. The US has been very lax in this for decades, with absurdly poor voter turn-outs and with many people - ironically too idiotic to understand the concept of representative democracy - keen on putting up as many roadblocks to voting as possible to limit the practice, in general, to only those they see as "appropriate". This isn't right, but improved turn-outs also have to come with sane controls that ensure that voting is easy, that voters are as informed as they can be, and that voters are - by and large - affected as little as possible by illegitimate influences.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[jfengel]

The concern isn't so much for the difficulty and expense of adding a paper receipt as for the confusion it would cause among voters.

No, not widespread confusion. Maybe just the most confused 1% of voters. How many of them would just take the receipts home, throwing off the recount? Or fold, spindle, and mutilate it to hide their vote?

That makes the paper count a different thing from the electronic count. Which means that every candidate who's unhappy with the outcome could request a recount, and be assured of getting a different (if not necessarily better) answer. The result is no better than the old paper ballots, but more expensive and with a higher chance of tampering.

Remember, these are the same people who couldn't figure out the butterfly ballots four years ago. In this election, 1% will make a huge difference.

I think this line of argument is rubbish. Sure, 1% of the voters would botch it. 1% is still probably less than the number of hanging chads, mis-filled butterfly ballots, etc. And most importantly, it is a solid checksum on the potentially massive miscounts caused by invalid, incorrect, or tampered-with software.

So there is at least one semi-valid reason to reject the paper backup. It's important to know that, so you can refute it. Even if you think your opponents in a debate are completely dumb, or motivated solely by malice, you are still obligated to understand what valid arguments they could be making, and then refute them.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Trailer Trash]

Voter-held receipts are useless in the event of a recount -- how do you know that the receipt the voter brings in is actually the one he got on Election Day?

Pretty easy. You put a 2D barcode on the receipt which has your identification and who you voted for with a 1-way encryption scheme (like your unix password) and digitally signed with a key known only to the voting machine. You can go back, scan the barcode, show who you are and who you voted for, and that particular machine can say "yes" or "no". And yet nobody can determine who you voted for.

There are plenty of people smarter than me who have probably come up with even better schemes.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Well, there are a few issues with hand-marked ballots, although I agree that they're better than the e-voting systems we currently have. But making sure that voters' marks are made properly would require someone standing over their shoulder, which of course is a Bad Idea. And pencil results, particularly, can become smudged -- not to mention the problems if someone incompletely erases one choice and fills in another; then you get to the whole "determining voter intent" mess that made Florida such a nightmare. Finally, once again, there's the problem of accomodating physically disabled voters; a properly designed voting machine can accomodate a wide range of disabilities. Using an electronic screen to make your choices, then having a durable, properly printed ballot to put into the box seems like the best of all.

I'm assuming that Canadian elections have procedures in place to deal with these problems; do you know what they are?

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[chrisopherpace]

Well, how about this: a voter recieves a number identifier instead of an identifier that could be tied directly to them. The voter can then, after the votes are tallied, go to some state.us site and verify that his/her number matches who he/she voted for. The broken kneecaps rule wouldn't work, as the nazis can't confirm its actually THAT person's reciept, they could have just found one that said what they wanted it to say. I'm sure after a while there could be a large stack of these reciepts in the trash that they could then use to give to the nazi party. The paper reciept (the one used for official counts) would then be printed and stored in a safe location inside the machine (perhaps have obvious identifiers to the reciepts, such as MANUAL RECOUNT on the background of the official one, and VERIFICATION COPY printed on the back of the copy John Doe or Jane Doe gets). Best of both worlds, really, IMHO.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[dave-tx]

Yep, that's the solution. It is mind-bogglingly simple and obvious to anyone who has any interest in fair elections.

What boggles my mind is why there's such partisan resistance to a human-verifyable backup scheme. It should be in the interest of both parties to ensure that the elections are fair and accurate. The staunch resistance by the Republican party to having a verifyable paper trail is only leading to wild conspiracy theory that could boil over if Bush wins re-election. That's not good for either party, and it's not good for the country.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[misleb]

Yep, that's the solution. It is mind-bogglingly simple and obvious to anyone who has any interest in fair elections. It follows, therefore, that the voting machine companies, which usually answer such demands with bullshit excuses like "the printer would jam" (that gem comes from Diebold, which also makes ATM's which surely print out many more receipts than any voting machine would be likely to, and do so day after day) do not have such an interest.

Another thing that make this a BS excuse is that a jammed printer only means one lost printed receipt and a sign that says "Voting machine out of order" rather than thousands of votes mysteriously lost to a computer crash. People understand printer jams and can deal with them (assuming it would happen, even if rarely).

-matthew

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[elmegil]

The bottom line is you need a manual recount method that works and is secure. Having a voter walk off with the receipt is NOT secure. Forgery after the fact to try to change the outcome of the election is just one obvious possibility.

The whole idea of print a receipt, verify it says what you want, and deposit it into a secured ballot box makes good sense to most people, and seems the logical way to handle this--and it even uses the same backup technologies that we've been using for decades, so it's not a huge additional burden on the system.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[TrollBridge]

I'm afraid I have to call bullshit here. While it's true that your registration info is available as public record, any politician who has a record of who you actually voted for could only have obtained that information illegally. The whole point of an anonymous election is supposed to prevent that sort of thing.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[freqres]

Because having a box full of paper votes doesn't mean the election is fair either. We have that system NOW. Why not just skip the computers, keep chads and save taxpayers a lot of money.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[freqres]

What's to stop any politician that loses to demand a paper recount? If every polling place has to do paper recounts why not just keep the paper ballots we have now, it would save lots of taxpayer money.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[abe ferlman]

Permitting voters to file absentee ballots/etc. has the same problem. So if there's going to be coercion, it can already happen imperceptibly anyway.

Furthermore, even if you can't prove who you voted for, you can prove that you voted so that if there's an undercount of votes a valid series of receipts will prove it.

More importantly, there are schemes that allow you to take an encrypted receipt with you that can only display your vote if you have the other half of the key- so you can confirm your vote while at the machine.

Preventing vote coercion is an admirable goal, but the advent of computerized voting machines is making the risks of not printing these receipts even greater than the risk of printing them.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[provolt]

You didn't solve the broken kneecap problem. You're counting on having a bunch of extra reciepts just sitting around that anyone can take. If I'm going to damand your vote, I'll just be at the polling place and make sure you never get one out of the trash.

If you can verify your vote after the election, I can verify your vote. If I can verify your vote, I can exert improper influence on your vote.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Minwee]

Nobody said that it had to be easy, only that it had to be verifiable and repeatable.

If elections were supposed to be easy, why would you only hold them once every four years?

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[hazem]

It's really simple. One machine has a touch screen with audio prompts, brail readers, etc. All it does is help you generate a ballot that indicates your actual voting desires. It doesn't count anything. It helps you generate a ballot and that's all.

You then take this printed ballot that is both human and machine readable (maybe using a font like you find on the numbers of your checks) and put it in a box. These ballots are now counted by another machine.

Now you have solved the problems that people were so concerned about in Florida:
1) confusing ballot forms are elminated
2) antiquated systems with chads and ballots that can degrade during a recount are eliminated

It's better than touch screen voting with a database because the process of creating the ballot and counting it are seperated. There is a paper ballot, and nobody has to trust the voting machine. The voter can look at the ballot and see if it says what they want it to. There is a "paper trail" of real ballots that can be manually counted.

If someone prints a ballot and doesn't put it in the box, it doesn't count... it's not a vote.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[BoFo]

I'm thinking that the whole concept of a "receipt" or paper trail is being taken too literally.

I agree that a record that the voter takes out of the polling place is an item subject to abuse. In addition, it's totally useless.

What is going to be done with these receipts? Are all the voters in a precinct going to meet in a local pub and re-tally their votes? Will one voter try to determine after the fact that their individual vote was counted by doing a database match on their receipt.

Well, that's a non-starter. There goes the secret ballot - each vote marked with a key that can be traced back to the receipt holder.

No, the paper trail should be a human-readable ballot that can be stored away by the election board to resolve any future recounts/disputes.

How about this for a voting machine with combines the best of both. There is already existing technology, currently used in many districts, that read paper/cardboard ballots that where selections are marked by connecting two arrows (via marker pen)and subsequently tallied by an OMR (optical mark reader).

Your "computer" voting process could then be the following:

- enter the polling place and receive a paper/cardboard ballot
- your name gets crossed off the voting list as having received the ballot
- you walk up to the voting machine and pop the ballot into the machine (the machine would validate that the form is oriented properly)
- the voter operates the touch-screen thereby gaining all of the advantages of having the computer enforce the voting rules to prevent undervoting/overvoting, etc.
- the voter finishes and his vote is tallied on the online voting system
- the ballot is filled in by the printer and popped out to the voter
- the voter can verify the vote on the paper ballot
- the ballot is slipped into the optical mark reader and processed, providing an immediate and automatic check against the online count
- the voter's name is crossed off the list controlling the exit from the polls

What a simple system. Small districts could even decide to simply skip the computer altogether and have voters mark the ballots directly.

If the online and OMR counts don't match -- dig out the paper ballots and recount as many times as you want. If it scanned the first time, it will scan during the recount.

Simple, accurate, and human-verifiable.

Boy, this would NEVER catch on.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[freqres]

Actually, I think the paper ballots should be the final authority, period -- make them so they can be electronically scanned, for quick vote counting, but they'd also be human-readable for recounts, and the actual voting machines would be dumb printers.

And how is this much different from the punch card systems we have now? Most polling places are run by old people and you want them responsible for making sure the computers are running ok? I can see some argument about the computer systems no being subject to voter confusion like the punch cards but that goes out the window when some polling official makes the G.W. button blue and the Kerry button red (or make the Buchanan button a rainbow and all the confused gay voters will vote for the religous fanatic).

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Anonymous Coward]

No they're not (at least not until these new machines arrived; the difference is left as an exercise for the reader).
I've voted in Miami-Dade County since long before the iVotronic. Back then it worked this way: you sign in with a trained volunteer poll worker (usually a civic-minded retiree) who checks your ID and records your ballot number with your signature. You insert the card into the machine and over the red alignment pegs. You punch for your candidates and remove the card. If you're smart and prepared you check the card for loose chad and that the numbers punched correspond to your selections; it takes under 15 sec. I did it every time. If you are unsatisfied, you ask for a replacement ballot. After the the third ballot they tell you no. Assuming you chose to vote, you put it into a paper envelope recieved with the ballot. You hand the envelope to the poll worker beside the ballot box who detaches the perforated top of the ballot card, containing only the ballot number. He places the ballot number card into a separate box for auditing and hands back your ballot. You place it in the ballot box. The ballot you cast has no identifying mark. No politician can trace your vote.
I have worked for a few political campaigns. They usually purchase voter data. It contains name, address, phone number, party, race, number of votes cast (presumably ballots signed for) in the last five elections. Phone is missing from about 10% of voters.
Voter secrecy is as crucial as reliable and auditable voting/tallying systems. Secrecy and auditability are at odds, but the problem is solveable in the physical realm as I have described above.
I don't see how elections can be proven secure when they are virtualized by software. Nothing less than a voter-verifiable paper record is acceptable.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[freqres]

And what stops the people who voted Nader, because the thought there was no way that Kerry could lose, to switch their votes to Kerry because otherwise G.W. would win? Or maybe just really muck up the system by changing your vote for every recount that is requested.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Umrick]

Agreed that no record of voting should ever leave with the voter.

That said, I absolutely disagree with the "we want everyone to vote" bit. If you (as a voter) are unwilling or unable to understand the issues, and can't even take enough interest to know who is running in the major offices of an election, you should not vote. I'd also add in that if you (in the general) are receiving federal handouts you should not be able to vote.

Government should always be what is needed, not what can I get out of it.

Can't work a voting machine? Sure, we'll dumb that right down for ya! Here's your rock, drop it on the candidate's foot you want to win...

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[TheLetterPsy]

I don't think it would be all that difficult to employ without corruption. Actually, it's a great idea for a double-check:

Joe Sixpack presses onscreen button for Candidate X and gets a printed receipt of his vote. He reads it, makes sure that it says Candidate X and not Candidate W (not so subtle, I know). Then presses the, "Yes, that is my final answer" button and then he deposits his receipt (e.g. via a mechanism similar to check deposits) back into the machine. That way you have the e-votes PLUS the paper trail.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[chrisopherpace]

In any event, its not really that big of a deal. Is a nazi really going to smack you a few times with a baseball bat in front of witnesses? I think not. The ability to double-check the system would be nice, although there would have to be watermarks, etc, on the actual reciept tickets as well to prove that they are geniune.

Ask yourself this, would you take the risk of getting capped for not voting for someone (again, unlikely), if you could double-check your vote in the event of a close win (or loss) by a canidate?

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[LimDesWein]

Ever hear of push polling? Large groups have been influenced using it. And for those wondering, it is public record (not just the pols) to see if person X has voted, but whom they voted for is not public record. Put push polling and the public voting record together you don't need to know who the person voted for, just that they vote. Push poll the people that vote and you can influence an election. Why would you ever need to record on a receipt who the person voted for? Systems that record an audit history have been around for a while, now. Plus, when there is a recount the entire voting population doesn't come back to polling place and show proof that they voted. Receipts are useless. System design is everything.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[AVee]

Haven't we essentially just gone back to the ballot method, with the extra overhead of having to get a receipt from the machine first?

No, not really. This way you'd have an electronic election with a ballot-backup, so to speak. The whole counting can be done electronically but the ballot-backup provides a way to verify the electronic election. Verification can be done by taking samples wich provide sufficient trust the machines are working correctly. And should there be any doubt, failure or anything that makes the results untrustworthy a manual recount is allways possible.

Another thing i don't understand is the usage of touchscreens. I havn't seen them, but they seem to cause some confusion. Here, in holland we use machines with just an old fasioned lcd and a few rows of buttons for the different candidates. Press a button and the machine displays your intended vote, press the big red vote button and your vote is cast. That makes the voting process really simple and understandable even for 98 year old never seen a computer people...

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[freqres]

And then the crooks, who already have several scams against the paper ballots, screw up the paper count and they machine and paper counts don't match. The voters will inherently trust the 'tried and true' paper over the new 'hackable' computers and election fraud will still have occured. The real problem is that a fraud proof voting scheme is not possible with 'secret and anonymous' voting scheme (and I have my doubts that any voting scheme is fraud proof).

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Bull999999]

I'll bet they they'll still find a way to fuck that up as well, i.e., running out of toner, jammed printer, corrupted print driver, etc.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Tassach]

its a small price to pay for the knowledge that a free election has infact taken place

As if our Republican overlords and their corporate buddies have any interest whatsoever in free elections.

I wouldn't trust a Diebold voting machine any further than I could throw it. Until the auditing and security requirements for electronic voting machines are stricter than those required for electronic gambling machines, they have no place whatsoever in the polling place.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[royalblue_tom]

Nothing - that is the whole point of having the paper trail. Your question should be - "what are you going to do if you want a recount, and you don't have a hard copy?"

The idea of having a paper copy to backup the computer means that eventually, only a few random recounts will be needed as people come to trust the initial computer count. Also, the computer print out may make manual recounts easier due to clear format, etc.

People trust ATMs, because they can always check their statement later - would you like the banks to stop sending you a statement, and just trust their computers to correctly handle their money with no recourse if it gets it wrong?

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[hazem]

But what's the real benefit of a voter receipt?

Sure, you can go check to see if your vote appears to have been counted like you wanted. But how does that validate the integrity of the system? In a recount scenario, to get anything useful from this, you'd need to round up all the people who voted and have them present their receipts.

If electronic voting is to be used, the best way is to have one machine that helps you generate a machine and human readable ballot that is free of errors. You put this ballot in a box. Those ballots are then counted by another machine.

This approximates what we do now, but helps get rid of the problems of ballots not actually reflecting what people wanted to vote. That was the problem in Florida-2000.

Giving people a verifiable receipt only lets the voter go back home and do a big "doh!" when they realized they pushed the wrong button.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Daniel Dvorkin]

The Nazis did just such things in Germany. In the US, the main fear is bribery or less violent but no less effective means of coercion. The biggest problem here is probably corporate malfeasance -- bosses can, and have often been know to, tell their employees how to vote. There are all kinds of pressure that can fly under the radar of any reasonable voter-protection laws; anonymous ballots alone offer protection.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Steve B]

I have a better idea: keep the secret ballot system and keep the paper backups secured at the polling places where they belong.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Loco3KGT]

Of course, it's worthy to that Democrats recently gave away free beer if you registered to vote at their booth.

http://www.democratandchronicle.com/news/0618SM4KQ J4_news.shtml

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Short Circuit]

I like that. In fact, that's what I always thought the "paper trail" was about. That way, people can't provide counterfeit ballots, they can't prove who they voted for, etc.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[FLEB]

Cause it's not fuuuuturistic enough!

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[maxpublic]

As if our Republican overlords and their corporate buddies have any interest whatsoever in free elections.

Neither do our Democratic overlords and their corporate buddies, when the Democrats are in charge.

It's all football. The only thing that changes is the color of the jerseys.

Max

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Steve B]

How many of them would just take the receipts home, throwing off the recount? Or fold, spindle, and mutilate it to hide their vote?

Or use the receipt as a template to forge additional copies to help their candidate if somebody actually did try to use the receipts in a recount?

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Just Some Guy]

Umm, no. A receipt that looked like "John Smith voted for Bush, Bush, and Smitty" would obviously be a stupid thing to have.

However, a receipt that was an encoding of the vote record encrypted with the voting machine's secret key and protected by the voter's PIN, and that by law could only be decrypted in a special booth where only the voter was allowed entrance, might not be so unreasonable. Who said that the receipts needed to be human-readable?

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[sapbasisnerd]

"the printer would jam"

The actual concern and it's a legitimate one is "the printer could jam".

It is a problem that can be dealt with but it to be analysed completely. What do you do if a printer jams or otherwise malfunctions?

This is not as simple as it looks at first blush. If you print the ballot, ask the voter to confim it and then formally record the vote how do you handle the case where a voter prints a ballot, repudiates the printout and starts again? Now they have two slips of paper. How do you make sure the correct one becomes the audit trail? Without voilating the voters privacy rights? OK so you have to make the process flow such that the voter must surrender the repudiated printout before they can start again. If you're using an ATM style printer this becomes a huge administrative nightmare for the poll workers as you have to keep track of who has voted successfully, who has repudiated a printout etc. The chances of error or abuse are simply too high.

So so instead use a printer like some ATM passbook printers where the voter must insert the blank stock ballot to be printed on. Each voter gets issued one blank and to get another they must turn over the one they have repudiated. So that takes care of preventing repudiated slips from getting into the ballot box but there is still an opportunity for someone to print a ballot, repudiate it, perhaps by mistake, leave the booth and put the ballot in the box. Now you have this person having a vote not counting in the electronic count that would count in a manual count.

And so on and so on. A printed ballot confirmation is not as simple as it sounds. The only way I can think of doing this right is as follows. You get issued a folder to contain your ballot and keep it private (just like is used with the systems we have today that use optical readers) You go into the voting booth, make your selections on the computer, it prints a ballot, you validate it or repuditate it, this lights either a green or red light on the exterior of the booth. You take your printed ballot, put it in the folder and take it back to the poll clerk, if you have a red light they feed your ballot into a shredder and give you a new blank, if you have a green light they feed your ballot into a reader and only then is the vote recorded. The actual voting machine records nothing, it is just a ballot printer but you get the benefits of computerized voting (multi language, large print, complex ballot handling etc.) without the risk of a machine failure losing legitimate votes.

Still you need to think about how do you implement appropriate controls on the paper stock to prevent its use in ballot stuffing? (there are substantial checks and controls over paper ballots where they are used to prevent ballot forgery).

The problem with any voting system, even the simplest (like we have here, mark a X in the circle next to canditates name you prefer) is that it's possible to mess up (I've scrutineered a few elections here it's amazing how people manage to spoil their ballots, many obviously intentionally as a protest but in some cases "mark an X in a circle" is too difficult to handle), the trick is to keep the error rate as low as possible and to build in opportunities for candidate scrutiny of both voting (without violating individual voter anonymity) and recounting.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Steve B]

Ensuring that all those receipts stay with the election officials is preferable, but then there's no point in using computers in the vote casting process to begin with.

First, the paper printouts need to be the ballots, not mere "receipts" (i.e. the result of counting the paper printouts is the official vote that supercedes anything else if there is a disagreement).

Second, there are several advantages to using a dedicated computer/printer to generate the paper ballots, such as: 1)It produces a neater and more uniform (and thus easier to count by OCR scanning) document than handwriting, 2)It facilitates access by the disabled (for example, a blind voter could have Braille labels on the touchpad and a small earpiece to read back the entered vote for verification before casting it).

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Xibby]

Many here are comparing electronic voting to financial transactions. There is a problem with that: votes are much much more important and infinitely more valuable than financial data.

In Minnesota (or at least my county...don't know if this is state wide) our ballets are a Legal sheet of heavy stock paper. They are also rather simple...the candidates have triangles pointing at their names. To vote for a candidate, draw a line through the name of the person you are voting for, connecting the triangles. Even my grandfather who is barely able to hold a pen due to his health was able to successfully complete his ballot.

The 2000 ballot would have looked something like:
|> George Bush Al Gone Ralph Nader Some other guy Yet another choice |

Once you fill out your ballot, you leave the booth and go to the election official, who instructs you on how to run your ballot through the electronic vote counting machine. If the machine can't read your ballot, the official stamps it with a stamp that indicates that the machine could not read it. The stamp invalidates the ballot. You are given a new ballot and pen and return to the booth and fill out your ballot again, but you keep the first one if you with to copy your votes. When you finish with the second ballot, go back to the official at the vote counting machine and feed the second ballot to the machine. If the machine accepts the second ballot, it is deposited into the secure ballot box automatically, and the election official instructs you to feed your stamped ballot into the paper shredder.

Electronic Voting machines should produce a paper ballot in a similar fashion. The paper ballot must be readable by both machines and humans. That's why the line through your candidate works well. When you look at your ballot, your choice has a line through it. The machine knows the layout of the ballot and can thus count your vote. If you used a system like this with an electronic voting machine, you'd have three ways of counting the vote. You could trust the computers, your could run the printed ballots through the electronic counting machine, or you can hand count the votes.

Maybe this just makes too much sense. I don't understand the logic behind no paper ballot on the electronic voting machines.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Steve B]

I think it's really important to know that your ballot goes into the box, and not one that you saw behind a sheet of glass.

Have a slide made of transparent material from the viewing window all the way down to the collection box. Simple.

And again, there's the problem of Braille ballots for blind voters, which is significant.

OK, that's a legitimate reason for allowing the voter to touch the paper copy. The most secure arrangement I can think of would still be to put the paper copy behind a transparent window, with a hole where the Braille goes.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[tsm_sf]

I'd also add in that if you (in the general) are receiving federal handouts you should not be able to vote.

What if I only work for a goverment contractor, and don't actually own the company?

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[WNight]

The computer-voting with paper-ballots is actually a neat idea. It lets you display more information, confirm ballot-correctness, and confirm choices with candidate photos, etc. It then prints out the ballot (in a human-readable fashion - likely looking much like a hand-filled ballot) and you take it to a second (completely seperate) machine to have it verified before dumping it in the box.

The second machine would show you what it thought you voted for on-screen to verify, and would stamp (punch-out, whatever) a second set of validation marks right next to the original choices. This second-level of confirmation ensures that the ballot will be readable later when recounted, avoiding the hanging chad problem. You know it's borderline because the verification and counting machine won't accept it. This last machine also does the official counting (unless a paper recount is ordered) so you get your fast results.

As for actual receipts - I think there's no way to do it right. You can't provide a useful receipt (for proving a miscount), that doesn't let someone force you to provide it as proof of a bought vote. Even creating fake receipts doesn't really work because they *must* be distinguishable at some point or you've created potential evidence of a miscount - you risk the vote-buyer cracking this system and finding out the vote they bought wasn't cast their way.

But, I think the system of dropping paper slips into a box and not letting the box out of sight of many different representatives, all of whom want different results (and to implicate their rivals in vote-spoiling scandals), is secure. Not much need for receipts if the original system is more trustable.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[doctorfaustus]

What are you talking about? The current system gives better tax breaks to the rich than to the common working man... Where's your Equal Protection in that?

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[johnnyb]

Here in Oklahoma the Democrats will not let ANY bill through that mandates voters present identification when voting. We have a lot of people in nursing homes who haven't voted for 10 years that have called up the election board and found out that they had voted consistently for the last 6 or 7 years. We also have people who's address is an empty lot voting, and still the Democratic state legislature will not allow any election reforms.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Bob 4knee]

The voter doesn't even have to touch the paper ballot. It could be displayed behind a glass window. He/she hits a "yes, that's my vote" button to drop it in the bucket or a "no, start over" button to shred it (right before their eyes) and start over.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[SiliconJesus]

That is what I was trying to say. Perhaps I was a tad quick trying to get out my idea, but yes, let them have a reciept that perhaps gets shredded before they leave.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Rei]

Oh? A lot of cases of people who haven't voted in 10 years listed as voting 6 or 7 years? Please, reference.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Rei]

Doesn't mean that you have to register democrat. :) Giving stuff away at registration booths is hardly new; the only controversy is that they're giving away beer.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Trailer Trash]

Oddly, I agree with you. But if someone's going to do a receipt, this is a possibility.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Rei]

To clarify, push polling is the act of calling up people with an intent not to poll, but to establish a concept in a voter's mind. For example, a push poll might ask some basic poll questions, and in the middle ask "Would you be less likely to vote for Candidate A if they were convicted of child molestation"?

Probably the most famous real-world case of push poling was what Bush's campaign did to McCain in South Carolina. His campaign asked: "Would you be more likely or less likely to vote for John McCain for president if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?". McCain was campaining with his adopted Bangladeshi daughter - having semi-dark skin, this helped convince people that the question on the poll was, in fact, an illegitimate black child.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[badasscat]

However, a receipt that was an encoding of the vote record encrypted with the voting machine's secret key and protected by the voter's PIN, and that by law could only be decrypted in a special booth where only the voter was allowed entrance, might not be so unreasonable. Who said that the receipts needed to be human-readable?

And who programs the machines that read these receipts? Diebold? The Republican Party? Some virus writer who's hacked the codes?

Hopefully you see the problem in your solution.

Anyway, one thing I'd like to point out is that there's nothing in this linked article that says anything (that I could find) about votes being lost in this case. That would really be a major story. It only says "information" was erased. Which is still bad, but just as I feel it's very important to get the voting system itself right, it's also very important to get any media coverage of the problems with these touch-screen systems right too. If claims are made about these machines that are not accurate and are obviously sensationalized, it will make it easier for the manufacturers of these machines to simply pass off concerns about them as luddite paranoia.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[bear_phillips]

I'd also add in that if you (in the general) are receiving federal handouts you should not be able to vote.

I went to a publicly funded state University, that I am sure has recieved some federal funding. Does that mean I should not vote? I also took the highway on the way to work. Damn, it was partly paid for with federal handouts. Guess us commuters shouldn't vote either.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Jester99]

You then take this printed ballot that is both human and machine readable (maybe using a font like you find on the numbers of your checks) and put it in a box

Even easier.

Call up the Autotote corporation. They make the machines you use to bet at the horse-race tracks. Each time you bet, you get a receipt on a slip of paper; the font at the top is nice and readable, explaining your bet "#15 to win in race 7", and below that's a 2d barcode with the same info recorded.

When the race is over, you go to another machine and feed in your receipt; it scans the barcode, and pays out your winnings (Assuming you got some).

These machines already exist. Just change the menus on machine #1 to "one vote for Kerry/Bush/YourMom" instead of horses, and change the back-end of machine #2 to just count instead of pay-out.

The hardware's tested by thousands of people every day.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[2WheelCowboy]

What a waste of time and money! There are already procedures in place to assist those people that physically have problems filling out their ballots.
The people that are too stupid to read a ballot and color in the appropriate circle should just stay home on election day.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Chris Mattern]

> Permitting voters to file absentee ballots/etc. has the same problem.

Yes. Yes, it does. That's why some of us are disturbed that it's becoming too easy to get an absentee ballot. You used to have to prove you needed one.

Chris Mattern

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[DavidTC]

No 'CS major' has anything against a computerized system with a recorded printout. The entire issue is that anyone who any knowledge of computers at all knows that computers can lie, and lie very convincingly, if you tell them to do so.

Any system that relies on computers to tell the truth is as completely and utterly as broken as can be. If it doesn't rely on that, if the computers can be checked, it's fine, no one has any problem with it, except people the confusion where people say 'receipts' and mean 'paper backup' and people who think that means you take that with you.

Frankly, the best solution is to have a nice computer interface that prints a paper ballor, which you then run through a scanner that keeps it. Then you have three counts...the printer, the scanner, and the paper. In most cases, if the printer and the scanner agree and it's not close, you don't need to count the paper.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[cayenne8]

"What if I only work for a goverment contractor, and don't actually own the company?"

I think you answered your own question...the key word being work. The govt. does need people to work for it. But, it is not a 'hand out' or welfare....

Contracts, for the most part, are competed out....voting really shouldn't play a part in this, but, those who get govt. handouts will always vote those in who promise to give them the most for nothing...this is a dangerous cycle. That's why you see suggestions that those on the govt. dole don't get to vote...it promotes a vicious circle, that has helped spiral the budget and work ethic down the drain....at least in the poverty level and project levels of our society.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[johnnyb]

It was actually a radio report. You could probably follow up by calling the radio station - (918) 743-7814.

Just for fun and a little offtopic, here is another story about voter fraud in Oklahoma during Democratic runoffs - http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/7/27 /150807.shtml

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Politburo]

Doubtless the usual bunch of rednecks will protest that this is perfectly ok, after all, if someone is so stupid they're willing to base their vote on an such an offer, that's up to them

Well, they already do, to some extent. Except instead of a taco it was a $300 refund (he just didn't tell us about the $450 billion deficit first, that's all).

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[jilles]

Because you don't call votes this way only a randomly selected subset of boxes to confirm that the machine count matches the paper output. Only in case of a recount based on solid information that in fact something is wrong with the machines (e.g. because) you proceed to count all votes this way.

Consider it as a backup option, something you guys don't have now. Something worth paying for and something that maybe would have resulted in Al Gore beying a democratically elected president instead of George Bush being a court appointed one right now.

It's impossible to assess whether George Bush was democratically elected now because all the evidence was burned shortly after the courts put an end to the whole recount circus. Whatever your position on this matter is, I don't think either party would have protested the outcome of the elections without any evidence of vote machine failure to register votes properly.

BTW fair elections are fundamentally not a technical issue. Elections are bought not won these days. Without a big bag of money for advertising you don't stand a chance of winning the elections. In order to obtain the necessary money you need to be corrupt (i.e. promise to use your power in someones favour in return for money). So whomever wins the election is guaranteed to be corrupt. Given that there are only two parties to choose from (and some independent candidates who have no chance whatsoever to win), you basically have to choose who is the least corrupt candidate or the best candidate in spite of the corrupt tendencies rather than being able to vote on a person you actually trust. I never liked Al Gore and I despised Bush in 2000. If I were American (which I'm not) I would have voted Gore though. I don't like Kerry and Edwards either and Bush exceeded all my expectations in being far more corrupt and stupid than I believed him to be in 2000. So despite me not liking Kerry, I'd vote Kerry nevertheless because he can't possibly be worse than four more years of Bush.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[AuMatar]

Yup. Here in San Diego, I had the option of using Diebold, or driving to the central office and filling out a paper absentee ballot. I drove. I wanted to make sure my vote counted.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Rei]

What exactly in that article are you referring to as "voter fraud"? If you're referring to the use of churches to rally voters, I suggest you read this. NewsMax is so preposterously partisan that they just completely ignore things like this.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[dgatwood]

Better yet, print a bar code that incorporates all of your votes and a unique identifier for the voting record (but not who you are). Walk to another machine and scan it. It will ask you to verify the vote. If it is correct, you push "yes". If it is not, you push "no". If you said "yes", you then put the barcoded ballot into that second machine. If you said "no", you walk back to a voting machine, insert the barcoded ballot, and it destroys the prior record and lets you revote, just like you would do with a screwed up paper ballot. This makes vote recounts much easier (no OCR needed) and fraud much more difficult.

Best of all, that second machine can keep a separate local count of votes. The device is not networked in any way, and should boot off of a read-only medium like a DVD-R to make it much harder to tamper with it. It would also mean that any vote fixing would have to be a very sophisticated effort, since you would have to modify the central database in precisely the same way as the hacked vote verifying machine to avoid triggering a system-wide audit. The system-wide audit would involve physically opening each of the locked deposit champers in the verifying machines, scanning each vote, and verifying that each voting record in the central database matched, by ID and by vote cast.

The chambers should require two keys. One should be held by the state attorney general, the other by a media outlet, to prevent any possibility of physical tampering. Of course, if someone could get a fake machine, they could swap the machines. That's where the vote IDs come in.

Because the vote IDs would be based on coupling a UUID with a high entropy PRNG, with a "verification" copy hashed via an external encryption device that is locked in a similar two-key lock box in each voting machine, this would eliminate the possibility of someone stealing a vote verifying machine and replacing it with one containing rigged ballots. The key in the fake machine's lock box would not be on the list of keys stored in escrow by some random federal agency, so even if they managed to rig the database with data generated by the fake voting machine, they still couldn't fake the votes successfully.

Thus, the election results would be verifiable, short of a "vast right-wing conspiracy".

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Waffle Iron]

I'd also add in that if you (in the general) are receiving federal handouts you should not be able to vote.

Did you drive your car on a federal highway this year? I'm sorry, you're disqualified to vote.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[DavidTC]

That's basically what I suggest, except there's no reason not to count the printed ballots, too. Which also means you need to count the shredded ballots, also, but, hey, why not? There's no harm, and almost no cost...you have one scanner hooked to a shredder, and one hooked to a ballot box.

I think the way to stop ballot tampering is to keep track of as much as possible. There's no harm in keeping track of printed ballots. Also, there should be a serial number printed on each ballot, that should be kept track of, so in the end we can say 'Ballot RE-203828193 was printed by machine H-392, which recorded that it was for {list of people}, and scanned by machine RW-3927, which recorded the same votes, and placed in box PQ-393812, and here it is, and it clearly has the same votes on it'.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[mstahl302]

This is exactly what all the current proposals for Voter Verified Paper Ballot mean.

The commonly describe approach is a receipt printed behind glass that the user can inspect. He presses one of two buttons, to either accept the paper or shred it. He never touches the receipt directly (so even he can't alter it.)

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[cheese_wallet]

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..."

Don't forget the "Vote for Kerry and get a free Waffle! Just bring your receipt to any of our..." :)

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[TheMeddler]

What do you do if the printer jams?

Shut the machine down and stop using it.
Fix the paper.
Have a backup printer ready.

Isn't that difficult, really.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[HiThere]

If they can do that widely enough to skew the election...then
1) That *SHOULD* be front-page news
2) They can use force more subtly to defraud the election in other ways, no matter what system you install.

Remember, getting some particular person to switch their vote doesn't buy you much. You need to manipulate large numbers of them. For that, the efficient way is the subvert the computer program.

Elections are a weak tool to use in removing a corrupt government. They have too many other ways to shape the system to their ends. And they use them. From the point of view of a corrupt government, the main purpose of elections is to get the citizenry to buy into the idea that they chose the bastard in charge. "Well, he might be a bastard, but I voted for the ***, and next time I'll know better." (Or "at least he's OUR bastard.") An obviously fraudulent election diminishes this effect, so governments prefer to avoid those. Otherwise the citizenry might get violent, and that's always unpleasant, and sometimes dangerous.

Do remember that the current system of elections was instituted to have a weak group hold the balance of power between the king and the nobles. Today the nobles wear different garb, but the vote is still used in a similar way. When the two strong groups agree, the vote isn't consulted.

Yes, it's actually more subtle than that. But that's the essence. Don't believe the fairy tales they teach you in civics class, go the the city council and watch them making decisions...and see when they act on public input.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Fastolfe]

Receipts offer no benefit over a printed, but left behind, audit trail. One you take out (and possibly lose, possibly forge, or possibly offer as proof to keep your kneecaps or get a reward), and the other you leave behind (which makes it less likely to be lost, forged, and makes it difficult to violate the integrity of the system).

Why are we looking at this as a "receipts" versus "no receipts" argument when we can effectively have the audit trail that a receipt provides without actually giving it to the user? There is a middle ground.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[canavan]

Joe Sixpack presses onscreen button for Candidate X and gets to see a printed receipt of his vote under a closed glass window. [...] Then presses the, "Yes, that is my final answer" button and then he^W the machine deposits his receipt.

That's the way it should be. No way for Joe Voter to take the receipt with him. If there's a problem with the receipt, call one of the official people, have them unlock the machine, remove the receipt and allow him to vote again.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[SuperBigGulp]

Dude, who votes in your world?

Not people who work on goverment contracts, since the money comes from the government.

People who work for the government probably could not vote, since they take money from government. This category is rather large and would seem to include civil servants, elected officials, police officers, firefighters, and members of the armed forces.

People who get tax refunds couldn't vote, and people on welfare and/or social security obviously couldn't vote. Getting old or going on the dole is just a ploy to throw the election anyway.

Anyone covered by Medicaid or Medicare couldn't vote, since thats just another form of government handout. Damn those people with end-stage renal disease for taking a handout.

Likewise, employees of NASA, Amtrak and the post office couldn't vote. Hey everybody has choices to make, like: vote or explore space.

Native Americans probably couldn't vote, what with the reservations and all.

So, let us know when you find the cave-dwelling hermit who is eligible to vote in your world. He'll probably vote for Nader, who will win in a 1 vote to nothing landslide.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Politburo]

I'd also add in that if you (in the general) are receiving federal handouts you should not be able to vote.

Others already slammed you on this, but I couldn't help joining in.

Everyone is receiving federal handouts, it's just that the poor get more explicit handouts, since they don't have many other ways to get assistance. People with money don't get money, they get tax refunds, tax credits, tax exemptions, federally assisted loans, federal disaster insurance, student aid, small business aid, etc. What's a poor person going to do with tax exemptions when they don't pay tax? Or a federally assisted homeowners loan that they can't afford?

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Marc Desrochers]

We do have a method of dealing with "voter intent". I worked an election years ago, and here is how it's dealt with. Pencils are provided so everyone uses the same. They have no erasers, so no one is erasing. You are also told that you either make a checkmark, or an 'X', anything else is discarded. We discarded some with circles, happy faces, pentagrams, Xs that had been scratched out and filled in elsewhere, hybrid x-checkmarks etc. It's voter responsibility to do this right. It's also not a huge problem. Some people spoil their vote deliberately, for that there is nothing you can do other than provide better candidates. Smudging was not at all an issue, we don't go rubbing the ballots, and the ballots are counted at the polling station and only the results are sent to the elections board. The ballots themselves are then placed in some envelope (or box, it's been years and I've forgotten) sealed, all 4 people at the table sign the seal so it is obvious if it is opened, and sent to the elections board should they need to be recounted. There are 4 people involved in counting each ballot box, and each have to agree on every ballot. In total, at my polling station we discarded only about 10 votes per ballot box. What can you do, it's your right to not vote, or to vote incorrectly.

It basically comes down to this: If you want to vote, do it properly, it's not rocket science. For the illiterate, You may have someone (a friend family member etc) read the ballot for you. After that you simply put an X or a check in the little white circle next to the candidate's name. Spoiled votes are simply non votes. Some people would rather note vote at all, and spoiled votes are simply a way for these people to make sure no one else votes in their place.

We recently voted in Canada. I was in and out of the polling center in less than 3 minutes, I almost felt cheated. Somehow it felt that it should have taken longer.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Fastolfe]

It's not just coercion, it's the ability to sell your vote willingly. What's being advocated is the introduction of ballot policy to make that easy to do. There's no reason to allow that printed confirmation to leave the polling station.

Plus, how many of these receipts would get lost, or washed, or simply thrown away? If a recount is needed, can you see certain demographics that might be more likely to lose their receipt, or less likely to present it when a recount is demanded? How would that affect the recount?

There will always be an absentee ballot "problem", but I don't really see why we need to introduce additional integrity issues when it's not really necessary. Absolutely, something should be printed for an audit trail, but deposit these in a locked box, not the voter's hand.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[TeamSPAM]

If you note above, I said "would prefer". I'm not sure that the computerized polls would be any better. But if counties and state are going to use them, then I have an opinion on how they should be function. The old system has a paper trail and I want one in a computerized one. I literally want the system to be bullet proof. If a system now has a bullet in it and is no longer functioning, I still want the votes that were taken to still count for the election.

A losing politican should be able to ask for a recount. I also think that random polling places should do a manual audit to confirm the system works for every election.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[octothorpe]

The receipt would not have to have the result of your vote, just the record of it. Each voting machine should have a unchangable unique id so the reciept that the voter gets could have the id of machine, a timestamp and the id for the vote itself. The internal paper strip would have those three data points and the vote result itself.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[johnnyb]

That's odd. I must have pasted the wrong URL. Here's the one I was trying to paste:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/774567/post s

I think I was mixing my X-Windows clipboard selections when I pasted the original.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[0x0d0a]

Why would someone make a challenge unless they had a close election or completely ridiculous numbers, neither of which need be the case with remotely non-stupid vote fraudsters?

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[drooling-dog]

Neither do our Democratic overlords and their corporate buddies, when the Democrats are in charge.

Just about everyone I know who votes Republican - often against their own interests - gives that same excuse: "It doesn't matter, because they're all the same." Well, if the last few years have shown anything at all, it's that they are most certainly not the same, and if you don't think so you're just not paying attention to what's been going down lately.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[squiggleslash]

If you (as a voter) are unwilling or unable to understand the issues, and can't even take enough interest to know who is running in the major offices of an election, you should not vote.

No. Absolutely wrong. Elections are never directly about issues, they're about putting faith in people to represent you. That's why they're elections, not referenda. And if the issue is about people unwilling to understand the difference between one party or another.

I'd also add in that if you (in the general) are receiving federal handouts you should not be able to vote.

Why? If you're in receipt of benefits, are you some how not subject to the law? Just because one party benefits from a system of government (or perhaps they don't, perhaps they're more likely to gain employment if the government policy changed to something they'd prefer), it doesn't somehow suddenly make them non-persons, the entirety of the legal system still applies to them and the laws passed by government still apply.

Government should always be what is needed, not what can I get out of it.

And the two are mutually exclusive how? Are you proposing, say, a Kazaa user should only support candidates who support stricter copyright laws or employees of the entertainment industry should only support candidates like Richard Stallman? That's insane.

You obviously are not happy with your tax money being used to help the desperate. That's a reasonable position to take (if one I disagree with), but it's one thing to suggest that, quite another to insist on the disenfranchisement of those whose legal behaviour you disagree with. That way, my friend, leads to fascism.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[cpeterso]

This is the best proposal for a safer, easier voting system I have ever heard. :)

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[ftzdomino]

Simple. Have *two* printers which feed into a box on each machine. Pick the printer randomly. Use a mechanical shutter to show the voter the output of the printer being used. As long as you have more than a few people voting at each machine, you have no way of knowing who made which votes, even if you record the order of people that went to the machine.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Platinum Dragon]

It's all football. The only thing that changes is the color of the jerseys.

Then maybe the solution is refusing to support either team and walking away to play our own game.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[sapbasisnerd]

If you are trying to produce a 99.9999% accurate paper trail of the electronic votes cast, allow voters to validate their entry into the paper trail while not violating voter privacy and not open the system up for more abuse or errors than a paper based ballot it isn't that easy.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Vindicator9000]

However, buying someone's vote is a whole lot less risky if you can get proof they voted the way you paid them too (sic)

Interesting. Perhaps this is the reason why Congress is so corrupt. Too bad we can't keep their voting records away from corporations, lobbies, and interest groups.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[tsm_sf]

Yes, but is it not also a 'hand out' to pay someone $1,000 for a hundred-dollar job? What about subsidising large agri-businesses when their crops either fail or turn out to kill people? Rescuing a failed bank, building roads on fed land for private companies, selling mineral and grazing rights far below market value...

Everybody gets a piece of the action, it's just interesting to see who complains when the beneficiaries aren't white (I'm not calling you a racist, I'm calling you a tool).

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Doc Ruby]

Except it's not football. We can't walk away; the US government will affect your life whether you accept it, or not. But that doesn't mean we can't change the rules. These "system games" that (mostly) Republicans have played lately most threateningly imperil the right of the people to change the system so it reflects the orderly behavior of a free people. A sensible strategy for reform is to elect Kerry, and even break the Republican control of Congress (probably best in the Senate, which is the more focused power of the two halves), without creating a controlling Democrat (or Republican) majority in either body. So voting for Independent congressmembers, a viable option, fertilizes the ground for breaking the "party" stranglehold on American politics. Then the small momentum for reforming the "winner-takes-all" system that is best served by oligarchical political parties has a chance. We might join the nations and organizations with "instant runoff" (proportional voting) elections, to better reflect the electorate's consensus, or we might join the nations with coalition governments, which require cooperation among the parties. The US has the world's oldest existing governmental form, because it was the first to systematically include mechanisms for ongoing reinvention. Let's use them now, while we have the chance and the need, rather than ignore them and lose them forever.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Catbeller]

Printing a copy of vote for your own records is useless. The printer can print a "yes" while tallying a "no" vote. You've no idea how the tally is being aggregated at any level.

To make an electronic tally work:

1. You vote by touching the screen.
2. A ballot is printed out. You visually confirm that the ballot matches what you chose.
3. You put the ballot into a box.
4. EVERY BALLOT IS KEPT. The option is not up to the voter.
5. If a recount is called for, the sealed paper ballots are retreived from their storage and MANUALLY counted. The tallies from the manual -NOT ELECTRONIC- recount of the paper ballots should match the electronic vote total EXACTLY. If they do not, machine error or outright cheating occurred.

The preceding is the only way you can trust an electronic balloting system. Printed receipts for the voter, or aggregate totals made at the docking stations, don't mean squat. The vote on paper ballots should match the electronic tally. This way you get all the benefits of the electronic tally system with the auditability of the manual.

I once posted an analysis of the time required to recount all ballots nationally. It takes less than a day. Canada gets it done in hours. I see no reason to have an electronic system; it's expensive, designed for cheating, and gives you no real benefits RE recounts other than eliminating them.

It's interesting how hard the voting machine companies are fighting the paper ballot audit trail. Since they lose no money by adding the printer, being totally reimbursed + massive profit, they seem fixated on eliminating the audit capability. As blackboxvoting.com(.org?) shows, the systems are practically designed for cheating; the only explanation for their stonewalling or suggesting inferior paper receipt audits is that they simply know the jig will be up if someone opens up that black box.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Rei]

Could you explain what is the big issue concerning four druggies trying to fake 15 ballots in a primary, compared to, say, a state-run "felon" purge list with 22,000 blacks on it (by far democratic voters) but only a few dozen hispanics (in Florida, notably Republican leaning)? How can this possibly be explained by an "accident"?

Heck, I remember when the Republican party tried to show a list of 3723 people who supposedly voted more than once in '2000. Connecticut's investigation, for example, found 51 of the 54 were erroneous. The first name on North Carolina's list was a state Rep. Etc. The whole list was one big McCarthy-Communist-List-style piece of garbage. In South Dakota, to try and allege voter fraud so that they could win the election, they sent people around to "seek out affadavits". Of the three that they got, one of the people couldn't even be located, and the other two, apon investigation, were found to be perjury. Then, it was discovered that the "affadavits", according to an article in the Argus Leader, were pre-worded by Republican lawyers before they were even taken out around the community.

So really, what's your point?

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[admiralh]

I think you answered your own question...the key word being work. The govt. does need people to work for it. But, it is not a 'hand out' or welfare....

While on a superficial level you're argument makes sense, there are some deeper issues regarding the government "dole" on so on.

Contracts, for the most part, are competed out....voting really shouldn't play a part in this, but, those who get govt. handouts will always vote those in who promise to give them the most for nothing...this is a dangerous cycle.

The plain fact is that the govenment is a huge consumer, and so tilts any market they choose to enter. If the government chooses to buy 1 million XYZ widgets, doesn't that raise the demand curve in such a way that the price goes up, making it more profitable for those who provide said widget. So while the makers of widget XYZ are working for the money, they are making more than they would if the government were not buying said widget.

You could say that the government is giving a handout to them in the form of these increased profits. That they are on the dole in the amount of these increased profits. Doesn't that them give the makers of XYZ widgets a vested interest to vote for those who promise to keep the government buying XYZ widgets, and not possibly switching to ABC gadgets? Or not buying any at all?

it promotes a vicious circle, that has helped spiral the budget and work ethic down the drain....at least in the poverty level and project levels of our society.

Many studies have shown that this "vicious cycle" that produces so-called "welfare queens" who lives their whole lives on the government dole is largely a myth (there are a few true cases, blown totally out of proportion to the problem), promoted by those with an ideology that the government cannot help people make their lives better. However, I do agree that people who are on the dole should be required to do something to improve themselves. Parenting classes and sex education would be great places to start, so they can raise the kids they have better and not have more that they can't take care of. I personally believe that is more important than job training, at least for those with school age or younger children.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Doc Ruby]

That's a crazy story, although believable. However, the recent news in the case indicates that although there's probably something going on in that sheriff's race, the candidate doesn't face charges, and the original charges have been dropped. Even the statement that they'll be refiled isn't conclusive. And the arrests cited in your Free Republic post (needless to say, wildly biased in their reporting on alleged Democratic shenanigans) were on the word of an unnamed "informant", in a rural Oklahoma county's sheriff race, involving drug trades. Hardly a clear comparison to dropping eVotes when they conflict with a Republican winning the Miami mayor's office. Or any support for your hearsay about the Oklahoma legislature.

That said, it's clear that the actual infrastructure of voting in America is inadequate to represent the "people's choice" in representation. Why the sheriff, or any other justice official, is chosen by some of the people over whom they must administer impartial justice, especially including campaign bribery, is an example of the broken system. Some of those problems are flaws in old techniques dealing with old technologies. And some are problems demonstrated by our centuries of experience with our largely successful experiment in democracy. Let's fix them, now that we know how they go so wrong.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[cayenne8]

"Many studies have shown that this "vicious cycle" that produces so-called "welfare queens" who lives their whole lives on the government dole is largely a myth (there are a few true cases, blown totally out of proportion to the problem), promoted by those with an ideology that the government cannot help people make their lives better."

All I can tell you about this is from experience and what I've seen from growing up in the deep south. You see this in New Orleans....this city is poverty stricken...and this cycle has been repeating itself for decades....the projects in the city here are monuments to it. The poor, decaying neighborhoods are a testament to it.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Doc Ruby]

No, we don't need to choose before/after for our corruption. But we can avoid the corruption that cheap and easy vote buying offers, by avoiding saleable receipts of proven votes.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[cayenne8]

"Everybody gets a piece of the action, it's just interesting to see who complains when the beneficiaries aren't white (I'm not calling you a racist, I'm calling you a tool)."

Hey, I think the govt. needs to be a 'better businessman' too....make better decisions. I mean, NOT using their large buying power to bargain with the drug companies in the medicare fiasco? Geez, that was stupid. Sure, they need to be better about their business dealings, but, again, this isn't a handout, it is payment for goods/services needed. It isn't a 'hand out'...money just to give someone an existance that contributes nothing positive back in return...in fact it costs the govt. more in the long run with the crime and loss of property values that follows it.

By they way, why do you assume I'm white? I've said nothing indicating my race whatsoever. I don't like anyone on the govt. dole that can be out working, no matter the color or sex.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[TheGavster]

If you do work for the government and get money for it, that's not a handout. If you sit on your couch and get money because you lack the willpower to shape up and get a job, that would be a handout. No reason for someone in that situation to not get a vote, though. The idea behind a democracy is that every view, even the ones along the lines of 'I want a government that gives me free money', is taken into account in the selection of elected officials. The guy with the million dollar federal contract and the guy with the welfare checks count the same, under our fine constitution.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[TheGavster]

We had a system like this on campus when the drinking age was 18 ... vote in student elections, you get a mug of beer. There was a beer truck pulled up next to the poll, even. There was a marked dropoff in voter turnout and interest in student government when the practice was stopped ...

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Catbeller]

Oh, there's so much more!

The western and southern states, the rural ones that hate welfare and federal handouts?

For decades, they've been taking in more federal money than they pay into the Federal kitty. Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho, name a Red state, mostly. Contrariwise, the urban states, like California, the Northeast, Illinois, Ohio, the older states that eat up the handouts in the eyes of the Red states: they've been receiving far less back from the Federal pile than they've been paying in. In other words, the most conservative, we-pay-our-own-way-no-welfare-queens-please states have been on a massive welfare program since the fifties that dwarfs anything the poor or other people who got "handouts" received. They who complain most about the largesse the receipients of the Federal dole get are it's biggest consumers.

AND: the king of all handouts?
Try the federal debt.

When Bush cut the taxes mostly for the wealthy, those trillions were borrowed, essentially from the wealthy of the world. About 12-18% of the federal budget simply pays the interest on the debt already accumulated; strangling the tax base siply increases the debt AND THE INTEREST paid on that debt.

We're talking tens of trillions over a period of decades going to national and international investors. It's the biggest wealth transfer in history. The biggest handout, dwarfing anything we spend on individual handouts for the poor.
And how does that debt keep getting bigger? Try massive tax breaks for corporate entities. The biggest get money BACK from the Feds every year. And the money borrowed to pay them goes into the debt, which increases interest payments, which goes back in financial instruments to the very corporations who don't pay taxes in the first place...

The handouts are there all right, but they're all going UP the ladder, not down. This is Bush's real power base: those who are raking in the illimitable cash from his "policies" and using the moolah to buy even more property and power.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[sadler121]

Or you could record the votes electronicly, print out a verified ballot that is placed in a ballot box.

The electronic vote would be used to declare a winner, however, in order to confirm that the person is a winner, there MUST be a recount of the printed paper ballots. Which wouldn't take long, we would have between the beginning of Novembet to the middle of January to do the re count.

I really dont see anything less as Fair and Balanced(TM), (there will always be voter fraud, IE, graveyards voting, or peoplein retirement homes voting who haven't voted at all.), but we have always had those problems, even when we where checking boxes with pencils/pens.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[dorsey]

Have a slide made of transparent material from the viewing window all the way down to the collection box. Simple.

How exactly is that "simple"? Seems like an unnecessarily complex and *expensive* solution to a problem that's basically a nonissue.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[admiralh]

All I can tell you about this is from experience and what I've seen from growing up in the deep south. You see this in New Orleans....this city is poverty stricken...and this cycle has been repeating itself for decades....the projects in the city here are monuments to it. The poor, decaying neighborhoods are a testament to it.

I don't disagree that there is a problem. If you want descriptions of poverty, read Charles Dickens. It's been around a long time. The question is, did welfare promote or exacerbate the problem? Remember that correlation does not imply causality.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Catbeller]

This message brought to you courtesy of the Republican National Committee Meme Repetition Project. Waffle Waffle Waffle, remember Kerry Waffles!
This message also brought to you because we can't think of anything to else nail this guy with. Waitaminit! He wore a blue clean suit at NASA!
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Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Fred_A]

"So, let us know when you find the cave-dwelling hermit who is eligible to vote in your world. He'll probably vote for Nader, who will win in a 1 vote to nothing landslide."

Hey, wait, so you mean something good can come out of his idea ?

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[0x0d0a]

You're still exchanging a significant degree of anonymity here.

Suppose, for instance, the last line on each printer is "Republican". You know the vote of the previous voter.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[SiliconJesus]

Not in the least bit. Would it strike you as impractical if teachers didn't do the same thing (or at LEAST have very reliable backups) when it came to your grades?

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[WNight]

I think you want to require that the paper be in the box for the vote to count. My ideal system would be one fancy touchscreen, full-color, braille labelled, etc, machine, and one of the final vote counting machines (or something with the exact same sensor), and a final cardboard box you drop the ballots into.

The first machine is all user friendly and helps people fill in the right boxes.

The second machine verifies that your vote was recorder in a way that will count - it eliminates the hanging chad problem. If it accepts it, it'll be counted at the end, if it doesn't, you start again with a new ballot and fixed machine.

The second machine can provide the end-of-election tentative results and the final results wait for someone to arrange the votes into a neat pile and feed into a card reader for the actual binding count.

Any paper that leaves is a vote that doesn't count - vote buying can't be enforced. Any vote that isn't properly marked doesn't make it past the official scanner machine, and any vote that does make it passed is guaranteed to have worked in an official scanner and should be redundantly marked to enable human oversite later if it fails a later check. The initial mark might be borderline, but one or more of the other three (or so) marks on the same line should be adequate to decide voter intent.

I really like the simplicity of the cardboard box, but I understand the need for better verification (hanging chads in florida) and voter assistance - some of the ballots contain many issues - anyone could miss one accidently.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[WNight]

1) There's no system to verify that punch-card machines produce legible ballots - see the hanging chad issue. Having a second machine to verify that (with the same system used to count final votes) means you don't get ignored on a technicality.

2) Ideally the software used would have a government-mandated GUI (this could go for the paper ballots as well) and would at a minimum double-check your selection. "Did you mean to vote for 'Ross Perot' (Y/N)." Even if there was confusion in the order of candidates you hopefully will read the name (also printed on the ballot it marks) and see if it's what you want.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[johnnyb]

"compared to, say, a state-run "felon" purge list with 22,000 blacks on it (by far democratic voters) but only a few dozen hispanics (in Florida, notably Republican leaning)?"

Are you sure they weren't, say, felons? In fact, I'm pretty sure felons mostly vote democratic. This is why the democrats are trying to get laws changed through the ACLU to permit felons to vote.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[0x0d0a]

That's an interesting idea, and it reduces the degree of paper counting costs by some percent, and only decreases the trusted nature of the system by that same percent -- and you're right, we can probably get away with less than one hundred percent verification.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[WNight]

The pre-printed blank is probably the cheapest and easiest. The way this is handled in Canada is that the ballot box is in front of the polling officials. You stuff your own folded cardboard ballot into the box. If you tell them you made a mistake they dispose of your card - ideally shredding. There is no red/green light, you simple either follow their instructions ("put the complete ballot in the box and you're done") or ask for another.

I think there's also value in having a second machine in the polling booth, a separate validator - to detect the hanging chad issue. It would mark next to the first hole punch with an ink blot and another hole punch, for example, and you'd check that the (optional) display showed the right info, and that the mark it made was in the right place on the card (next to the other mark).

Maybe the verification machine could punch a hole in the corner of the card (seen even when folded for privacy) to indicate you'd properly checked that ballot. If you hadn't, they'd stop you when you were about to stuff the ballot into the box.

The official counting would then use the same type of machine that was in the ballot booth for verification, so ideally it'd have the same failings (and thus warn of potential problems).

As for preventing ballot stuffing, I think you keep track of the number of cards issued, those shredded, and the number properly entered into the ballot box. For physical security you use something like a night-deposit box at a bank, where you can't reach past the hatch. If the ballots were stuck shot (tab a into slot b, or tape, or whatever) they could fall into a clear box, making it easier to monitor for tampering.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Rei]

Wait a minute. Are you saying that there are 22,000 black felons in Florida, but only a couple dozen hispanic felons? Are you serious?

Besides, it's already been extensively investigated; the vast majority of people on the list were *Distinctly Not* felons. Name a number of articles on the subject that you want *from the mainstream press*, and I'll get you them.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[mikedevx]

I am far more concerned about a state or national power corrupting a paperless electronic system than I am of a thug with a baseball bat lurking outside of my polling place demanding my receipt. At least the thugs can be fought.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[johnnyb]

"Wait a minute. Are you saying that there are 22,000 black felons in Florida, but only a couple dozen hispanic felons? Are you serious?"

I'm saying I have no idea. None of the reports - even the critical ones - I have seen have suggested an alternate source for the data. If you could supply me with one that would be greatly appreciated.

"Besides, it's already been extensively investigated; the vast majority of people on the list were *Distinctly Not* felons."

So how was the information gathered? Did they pull random black people out of a hat?

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[sapbasisnerd]

If you tell them you made a mistake they dispose of your card - ideally shredding.

They don't shred them, they are kept, the poll clerk (or the DRO can't remember which) gets a bunch of envelopes for each ballot box, one is for repudiated ballots and there are others for counted, spoiled and unused ballots. That way if there was ever a suggestion of fraud the ballots of all types can be counted and they should match the number that were printed.

You're right as long as each voter is only issued one blank ballot at a time and the machine in the booth is only marking and not counting the ballots there is no need for signalling. The voter can submit or repudiate the ballot on return to the poll clerk.

As for the "ballot box" itself you can use a system like they use for the Toronto municipal elections, the optical scanner is mounted atop a sealed box, the input of the scanner is designed so it can pull the ballot out of a privacy folder directly, the output of the scanner dumps into the box, the only way to get a ballot in there is to feed it through the scanner. The seal is only broken at the end of the day by the DRO with the scrutineers watching. Since the ballots in the box are all valid and already counted all they do at this point is place them in a sealed envelope in case of a judical recount, AFAIK since they started using this there hasn't been a recount.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[johnnyb]

Doing some reading, it appears that it really was a computer glitch. There were multiple databases. One of them did not have a "hispanic" category, listing hispanics as white. It appears that in order to be excluded, both their names and races had to be identical on the voter registration and the exclusion database. Since voter registration included the "hispanic" category and the crime database did not, hispanics who did not classify themselves as white in their voter registration were excluded from the exclusion list.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Minna Kirai]

How would that affect the recount?

And furthermore, as we saw in the last presidential election, you don't have time for a recount. In 2000, they had all the paper ballots in-hand, but the court ruled it was more important to have a result quickly than to take time to go through the paper again.

If they first had to collect all the reciepts from everyone in the state, the deadline to accomplish a recount would become even more impossible...

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[clambake]

Is it all that hard to add a 'print reciept' option to all of these voting machines?

With a paper trail, how, exactly, are we supposed to rig elections?

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Minna Kirai]

Permitting a voter to walk away from the polls with hard evidence of how he voted is an open invitation to corruption and coercion.

If you get a smart mathematician to design the reciept, it will not consititute hard evidence. The trick is to have a reciept which isn't human readable text, but only a single inscrutable digital number.

That number does not, by itself, tell which way you voted. But, when brought back to the center and combined with the corresponding number recorded (on paper) in the voting machine, it reveals your choices. Both the voter and the machine hold 1/2 of the reciept- but by cryptography, neither piece is enough to learn what it says.

Of course, that creates a problem in that the voter still in the booth can't tell if the reciept he's getting is accurate, or if it was printed by tampered software. So a more advanced solution won't just have a number on it, but a subset of the pixels making up the candidate's name, so that the 2 reciepts together show the selection. (There is a webpage somewhere which shows pictorally exactly how this works... but I don't recall where)

(It's separately debatable on whether or not vote-selling is truely wrong. Sure, conventional wisdom says it is, but isn't that an anti-capitalism position...)

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[BorgCopyeditor]

BTW fair elections are fundamentally not a technical issue.

No, but it's easy to imagine how an election could be made unfair by technical means, as we seem to be shaping up to do here in the U.S.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[BorgCopyeditor]

it appears that it really was a computer glitch. There were multiple databases. One of them did not have a "hispanic" category, listing hispanics as white.

A fact that those who asked for the report were warned about numerous times, but ignored, even though they were told what effect this would have on the results that were reported. This is covered in the New York Times article.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[tsm_sf]

Nobody loves a freeloader, and I'm definitely not trying to say that the grasshopper is morally superior to the ant.

That being said, is there any goddamn reason someone should go without food and shelter in our society? We're rich. RICHEST NATION ON THE PLANET EVER(USA! USA!), in fact. Yet we still have people complaining when the poor fill their cups from our overflowing bucket. Should they starve instead? It's a toughie... perhaps there really is some sort of ultimate answer to the problem, though. A 'final solution', if you will.

By they way, why do you assume I'm white? I've said nothing indicating my race whatsoever.

Um, hello, your webcam? And I'd appreciate it if you'd put on a shirt, Fozzie.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[BorgCopyeditor]

those who get govt. handouts will always vote those in who promise to give them the most for nothing...this is a dangerous cycle.

Oh, definitely. We can see how the budget is being simply decimated by spending on welfare. </sarcasm>

If you want to see cash for votes (or for policy) on a large scale going in both directions, look at the unhealthy connections between government and defense contractors. Or is your outrage just a posture?

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Jardine]

Each time you bet, you get a receipt on a slip of paper; the font at the top is nice and readable, explaining your bet "#15 to win in race 7", and below that's a 2d barcode with the same info recorded.

What stops the people who make the machine from programming the machine to change the barcode to a different candidate? Or even just having a bug that prints the wrong barcode.

I think a font that a human and a machine can read would be better.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[WNight]

My only concern with a system that had the verification machine on the ballot box is that you want to be able to see your vote enter the box, not a complicated machine that could fake ballots to substitute. Also, you want a scanner that you don't lose your vote in, for when you make a mistake...

An adaption on what I said before then is 1) the voting machine/vote marking machine, 2) the vote checking/optionally extra-marking machine, and 3) a small scanner that couldn't contain fake ballots through which you put your vote into the ballot box.

Ideally you could see the card both entering and exiting the scanner at the same time, to see it's the same card, and see it drop completely (transparent neck on the ballot box?) away from the scanner.

In other words, introduce no new threats of ballot replacement, while getting the benefits of all-electronic voting.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[johnnyb]

"A fact that those who asked for the report were warned about numerous times, but ignored, even though they were told what effect this would have on the results that were reported."

But it was not their decision to make. The method of determining who got excluded came from a lawsuit settlement.

I won't argue that Florida's IT department isn't incompetent - I'm sure they are, just like most government IT projects. However, if you look at the claims from each side, you'll find that the state's side has clear argument and specific reasoning (we had this lawsuit, coupled with these computer systems, which gave the given result), while the accusers only have speculation (we think you're guilty, even though it was unlikely to affect actual vote counts very much - the insinuendo from the article was that hispanics are just as republican as black people are democrat, but in fact among hispanics it's about 55/45, and the democratic prison population, like most prison populations, is probably a little left of that.).

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[iamplasma]

While I may be a CS major, the "vote selling" argument is more real than you think. I'm told that in Italian elections there have been known instances of fraud where people have been coerced or bribed into voting for specific candidates. Admittedly, the actual way in which the fraud worked was to have someone on the inside steal a ballot paper before the election. The cheating party would then fill out the paper, and give it to the person going in to vote, who must then pocket the blank ballot they have been given, and put the pre-completed ballot in the ballot box. That way by bringing out a blank ballot they can prove they must have deposited the other ballot, and the cheater on the outside has another blank ballot to do it all over again.

I'm sure by now you're saying "wait, this has nothing to do with receipts", and you're more or less right, this kind of cheating can be done without receipts, but there are two points which must be made. Firstly, this just goes to show that people DO attempt to cheat at elections, and so that it is a genuine risk which must be averted. Secondly, without a receipt, this kind of cheating is imperfect, for example it seems to me that an individual voter could just say he made a mistake, hand in his ballot (the pre-completed one), and get a new blank, but given an actual receipt, there would be no avoiding this.

I did a bit of checking, and I found my source for this at http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=154354 6&lastnode_id=124, in an everything2 writeup by someone who has actually worked as an italian election official. Apparently now that camera phones are becoming available, they're being used to effectively make "receipts" by photographing ballots. Though again, this kind of cheating would still be vulnerable to just asking for a new ballot, but adding receipts would make it unavoidable.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[BorgCopyeditor]

Are you purposefully evading the issue? The information in the articles flatly contradict your claim that this was a "computer glitch." The difference in how the two databases classified race had a predictable effect: almost no Hispanics were on the merged list and plenty of African-Americans (even those who had subsequently had their right to vote restored) were. Those who asked for the list were told that this would happen, and they did nothing. This makes it more than idle "speculation" that they were going for a certain result.

Furthermore, there is no "insinuendo" in claiming that in Florida (you know, near Cuba?) the Hispanic vote is predominantly Republican. That is indeed different from the 55/45 number you cite, a fact I'm pretty sure is also prominently mentioned in the New York Times article.

Claro?

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[provolt]

I agree that it's not likely today that someone is going to smack you around. However, it is very likely (and it has happened in the recent past) that a job would be dependant on your vote.

"You're resume looks excellent, can I please see your most recent ballot verification card."

"The election is Tuesday. Please bring your ballot receipts Wednesday. Performance review will be completed Thursday."

"You wanna work, you gotta join the union. You wanna join the union, you gotta vote for the pro-union guy."

It's not just a possiblilty. It will happen if the votes can be verified. The negatives HEAVILY outweigh the small positives of being able to verify a specific vote after the election.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Chris Burke]

I don't think it matters much. How do you know the counting machine correctly increments the vote for the same candidate printed on the card? If you're re-counting by hand, then the human-readable version is all that matters. If you are re-counting with a machine, there will always be the question of whether the machine does it correctly, and the best way to ensure that is to test it yourself.

Though I agree with you, machine-readable text would be ideal.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[cheese_wallet]

"I once posted an analysis of the time required to recount all ballots nationally. It takes less than a day. Canada gets it done in hours. I see no reason to have an electronic system; it's expensive, designed for cheating, and gives you no real benefits RE recounts other than eliminating them."

I totally agree that there is no reason for electronic voting. The potential to 'disenfranchise' voters is only magnified. By the time you finish fixing all the problems with electronic voting, you've found yourself back to the plain old paper ballot.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Doc Ruby]

No, Kerry is not an independent - obviously, he's the Democratic candidate for President, and spent decades in the Senate representing Massachusetts. I stated only that Kerry is an acceptable president, while we extricate ourselves from the mess that Bush has made, and the political system we inherited, which we must stop perpetuating.

I'm no Democrat party member, and I've just reiterated my point about the limited value of Kerry and the Democrats. But your snipes at Kerry are false. His fellow soldiers have stood beside him, notwithstanding those who are now highly paid by the Republican Party to oppose him. And he earned those medals. Not to mention that your "not independent" criticism and "not a warrior leader" criticisms are a non sequitur.

Even if those stories weren't true, and are exaggerations of a man who acquitted himself merely adequately in Vietnam, we are choosing between him and Bush. Bush didn't even complete his cushy Air National Guard deferment from Vietnam, and has covered up his record at least to the extent of illegally destroying his military records. Now he sends *hundreds of thousands* of US troops into a war for his political and corporate backers. And he will keep doing so, at irreparable harm to this country, until we're used up. Kerry won't. Plus, Bush *acts* like Gomer Pyle.

The choice between the two is clear, and that's all we're faced with this year. If we make the wrong choice, Bush, we won't have the luxury of choosing a better path in the future, because all our choices will have been squandered.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Rei]

My bad. I'll take part in all future debates by trying not to convince other people of my points. Thanks for your advice.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[dbIII]

"what are you going to do if you want a recount, and you don't have a hard copy?"

One solution that is utterly trivial and predates computers, is to punch a hole in a reel of paper tape behind a little window, then spools on a bit before the next voter. The downside is someone that watches the booth and has access to the reel can work out that you, as the thirtieth visitor to the booth, voted for the party that is soft on terrorism, so you should be locked up as a suspect. Not the sort of thing you want to export to a country that is having its first free election.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[johnnyb]

"The information in the articles flatly contradict your claim that this was a "computer glitch." The difference in how the two databases classified race had a predictable effect:"

But it was mandated by a lawsuit settlement. I don't see how you get around that. The other option is to just not put in place the filter, which is what they are doing with this upcoming election. Of course, that means that many people will be voting in violation of state law, but I'm sure that will get very little media attention.

"Furthermore, there is no "insinuendo" in claiming that in Florida (you know, near Cuba?) the Hispanic vote is predominantly Republican."

The _CUBAN_ hispanic vote is predominantly Republican (80%). The rest of the hispanic vote is 60% Democrat. In addition, I'll have to look the numbers up again, but I think that the "other hispanic" is more populous than the "Cuban hispanic" group, by a 60/40 margin. Therefore, if the goal of the filter was to influence the election for republicans, the effect would have been minimal at best, or possibly even negative for republicans, given that this is a prison population that they are allowing to vote.

So, the accusatory side of this issue has no motive, and the defence has a clear explanation - they were trying to comply with a lawsuit.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[cayenne8]

Don't own a webcam...

Well, you know there are people that just don't want to help themselves....so why should we bother? In the old days...this was selective against those with poor genes....maybe we are going against nature and not letting the gene pool clean itself...sounds more cruel that I intend...

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[ftzdomino]

Ideally, the voters wouldn't be able to see any of the previous entries. You would still run into issues like this with the last voters on the machine. Another thing you would have to mechanically protect against is the machine printing out extra votes while nobody is using the machine. During an audit, the extra votes would be picked up, and then you would have to discard all of the votes from that machine. If you wanted to swing an election as a programmer, you could easily just have the machine ruin results in an area which favors your opponent.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[drooling-dog]

You are such a liar. You don't know any Republicans.

My mother, for one, and not because she's particularly conservative, a bigot, or thinks that the lives of American soldiers and huge deficits are a small price to pay to further the business objectives of Bush, Cheney & Co. It's because the son of a friend of hers is a union member, works a lot of overtime, and therefore makes more money than she thinks he deserves. That's it.

And just what has gone down lately? Your taxes...

Oh yes, the good, responsible conservative likes an entertaining war as long as he isn't asked to actually pay for it. Let's borrow the money so our kids can do that, with interest. A $1500 bill from Uncle Sam to cover your share of the show would wipe that smirk right off your face, wouldn't it?

a lot of terrorists...

You mean those guys in Guantanimo that they've been holding without charge? Could it be that those people are there for show, and releasing many of them would be a political embarassment? The numbers are in, Bucko, and incidents of terrorism are UP. Bush has zero interest in finding Bin Laden and has even said as much.

and Monica Lewinsky

Good Grief, Monica Lewinsky. This is what you think is important. Well, I'm sure you'll be delighted when the most important issue ever to face this republic, gay marriage, takes center stage. The institution of marriage must be "defended," lest all God-fearing conservatives seek divorce en masse to escape their sullied matrimony. Yet another nice distraction to help them keep their heads buried deep in the sand (as if any assistance were needed)...

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Mr. Slippery]

Currently, that is impossible.

"Show me your receipt showing a vote for XXX or else..."

It is not at all impossible. Or are you unfamiliar with absentee ballots? "Fill out and mail your absentee ballot for XXX, or else..."

Anyway, crytographic schemes make possible receipts that the voter can verify that his vote was counted without disclosing the contents of that vote (Google "Chaum ballots two-layer").

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Mr. Slippery]

I'd also add in that if you (in the general) are receiving federal handouts you should not be able to vote.

So everyone owning stock in a corporation benefiting from corporate welfare, or receiving specially targeted tax breaks for the wealthy, doesn't get to vote? That might be interesting.

Can't work a voting machine? Sure, we'll dumb that right down for ya!

The ablility or inability to communicate with machines is not reflective of general intelligence - and certainly not reflective of political wisdom.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[CodeRed]

Replace understanding the issues with "agreeing with my views" and government hand-outs with "services I want to get rid of because thats solely my view" and you pretty much have your true Fox News message in plain unfancy Bushfree-speak english :-)

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[Anarcho-Goth]

so.....

Would you be more likely or less likely to vote for John Kerry for president if you knew he was The Anti-Christ? :)

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[rsheridan6]

Parent poster has obviously been frozen in an iceberg since 2000.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[BandwidthHog]

More likely.

Re:This is why there need to be reform

[4of12]

However, a receipt that was an encoding of the vote record encrypted with the voting machine's secret key

Exactly.

A one-way hash that uniquely expresses the vote profile, the time, place and machine used to cast the vote.

The printed receipt will only offer superficial evidence that the possessor voted, but not for whom they voted.

There is no need to enable anyone and everyone to reverse the process to determine the candidates that the voter selected.

Only that it should be possible for recounts to occur, with optical scanning (just like lottery tickets!) to verify that a particular transaction took place at a particular place and time and machine, but without identifying the name of the voter.

Only if the voter shows up with his printed receipt at the official recount location should it be possible to reveal the vote selection he made.

Election Observers

[Lucky_Norseman]

Maybe UN observers wouldn't be such a bad thing?

Re:Election Observers

[sinnfeiner1916]

undermining soverignty is unpatriotic. pink commie.

Re:Election Observers

[Bearpaw]

Maybe UN observers wouldn't be such a bad thing?

I wish I thought this was a silly idea. Aside from the fact that it may make Birchers go bugfuck ... er, more bugfuck ... it might be a good idea. An official request has been made; I haven't heard whether there's been an official response.

"Several members of the [US] House of Representatives have requested the United Nations to send observers to monitor the November 2 US presidential election to avoid a contentious vote like in 2000, when the outcome was decided by Florida." Link.

(Fair Warning: This is a link to an unabashedly progressive website, and therefore may not be suitable for work.)

Re:Election Observers

[kashgar]

I'm sure the UN can send observers from IRAN/CUBA/CHINA etc. ensuring Ralph Nader gets the usual 99.9% of the votes

Re:Election Observers

[TrollBridge]

I agree! Nothing brings democratic credibility to an election quite like an organization comprised two-thirds of oppressive, corrupt dictatorships.

Re:Election Observers

[David McBride]

(Fair Warning: This is a link to an unabashedly progressive website, and therefore may not be suitable for work.)

Is progressive the new euphemism for 'liberal' now? And, pardon the bold, but why the fuck would that make this site less suitable for work than, say, slashdot?

Re:Election Observers

[JaredOfEuropa]

After all, the UN observers do so well in preventing corruption in other countries.

That is not their job. At most, their job would be to discourage corruption by overseeing the election process. All they really do is observe (hence their job title), and report any irregularities or lack thereof.

Re:Election Observers

[Silverhammer]

If we're going to edit for context, then let's do it right:

Several [low-ranking Democrat] members of the [US] House of Representatives have requested the United Nations to send observers to monitor the November 2 US presidential election to avoid a contentious vote like in 2000, when the outcome was decided by Florida.

And then there's this gem, from the same story:

Thirty-six days after the November 7, 2000 presidential election, after several state court interventions and vote recounts in numerous Florida counties, the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of Republican George W. Bush, awarding him all of Florida's 25 electoral votes.

Funny, I thought it was the State of Florida that awarded Florida's electoral votes to Bush. The SCOTUS ruling simply overturned the lower court's order for yet another round (third? fourth?) of selective recounts. Recounts that would have continued past the statutory deadline for certification.

Regardless of whether one feels justice was served or betrayed, can we at least stick to the same set of facts?

Re:Election Observers

[Minwee]

"Nothing brings democratic credibility to an election quite like an organization comprised two-thirds of oppressive, corrupt dictatorships."

The Congress and the Senate may not be perfect, but I think calling them dictatorships is a bit much.

Re:Election Observers

[jb.hl.com]

What, like the US?

Puh-lease. The dictatorships should have a say too.

Re:Election Observers

[Space Coyote]

Nice try, but if the US supreme court believed they were doing anything more legitimate than fixing an election, they wouldn't have ruled that their decision was not to be used as precedent, you know, in case the shoe was on the other foot next time. Read the dissenting opinion of the 2000 election to learn a thing or two you might want not want to know about the last US election.

Re:Election Observers

[Bearpaw]

Is progressive the new euphemism for 'liberal' now? And, pardon the bold, but why the fuck would that make this site less suitable for work than, say, slashdot?

Apologies. Even after so many years, I still sometimes forget that tongue-in-cheek rarely plays well in text.

Re:Election Observers

[ConceptJunkie]

Because your evil corporate overlords don't want you to be looking at anything that might give you ideas?

I personally find most liberals these days to be anything but "progressive", so many of them are wrapped around the axle over the failed ideas from the 60's.

Re:Election Observers

[Soong]

Why don't you just go observe the election yourself? Take the day off work and do it, if it matters that much to you. Of course one precinct isn't enough. Do what I'm doing and tell everyone everywhere to do the same and we'll cover all the precincts and we'll count every vote three times and the election will be clean and the result will be clear.

Re:Election Observers

[freqres]

So this would mean US military service people standing around the voting places with machine guns? Does any other country actually do anything having to do with the UN except bicker and argue?

Re:Election Observers

[Bearpaw]

If we're going to edit for context, then let's do it right: ...

Well, that's certainly edited for a different context. I suppose that it does make a difference that they were only lowly Democratic representatives. Is it more of a partisan act that they did this, or is it more of partisan act that no Republicans joined them?

Regardless of whether one feels justice was served or betrayed, can we at least stick to the same set of facts?

That would be nice. Now if we just could get the facts ...

Re:Election Observers

[Silverhammer]

Blockquoth the parent:

Is it more of a partisan act that they did this, or is it more of partisan act that no Republicans joined them?

For the same reason that no other Democrats joined them: because as Americans, they knew that asking the United Nations to intervene was not only thoroughly illegal, it was also a stupid, pointless stunt that would only make whatever problems we have even worse.

The United Nations -- that august institution that lets terrorist nations (Libya, Syria) head the Human Rights commision, repeatedly ignores genocide (Iraq, Rwanda, Serbia, Darfur), rapes the women under its "protection" (Serbia again, Congo), and tries to bury billions of dollars in corruption (Oil for Food). Oh yes, we certainly want them telling us how to run our elections.

For crying out loud, they only got nine Congress-critters to sign onto the thing. I could get more than that to sign onto legislature banning Red Bull.

Re:Election Observers

[lucidvein]

http://www.firstcoastnews.com/news/topstories/news -article.aspx?storyid=21452

Representative Brown said, "I come from Florida, where you and others participated in what I call the United States coup d'etat. We need to make sure that it doesn't happen again. Over and over again after the election when you stole the election, you came back here and said get over it. No we're not going to get over it and we want verification from the world."

Those comments drew an immediate objection from Republican members of the House. Leaders moved to strike her comments from the record. The House also censured Brown which kept her from talking on the House floor for the rest of the day.

Re:Election Observers

[amliebsch]

The dictatorships should have a say too.

Keep in mind we're talking about US elections...

Reason #825 why Democrats Lose Elections

Re:Election Observers

[Ari_Haviv]

oh I see. dictators should have a say but you want to shut down the British National party's website. So i guess only the dictators that you like should have a say

Re:Election Observers

[jb.hl.com]

How about the dictators in charge of countries? Sure, they're dictators, but they also (sadly) control countries, hence they get a seat in the UN.

Re:Election Observers

[Ari_Haviv]

I think it would be better to give the seat to the people who have to live under those dictators. They have absolutely no voice

Re:Election Observers

[kashgar]

As I wrote they will be very reliable in making sure 99.99% of the vote go to Nadar

Re:Anybody else read that as...

[Dutchmaan]

' ..."How To Lose An Erection"???'

Nope...just you.

What about a crash during an election?

[rstewart]

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.

Re:What about a crash during an election?

[Dutchmaan]

This is where redundancy comes into play. The more redundant the system the less likely such a scenario is to take place. On the other hand it also increases cost and complexity of the system.

However IMHO redundancy whether it be mirrored hard drives or paper records is a plus in my book when it comes to elections. After all elections are kind of important to our system of government and is one area where skimping probably isn't a good idea...

Re:What about a crash during an election?

[MindStalker]

I'm pretty sure I read it records of flash ram, but thats really no more reliable.

Re:What about a crash during an election?

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Millions -- tens or hundreds of millions? billions? -- of financial transactions are conducted electronically every day. These transactions are stored on RAID and other redundant error-correcting systems that are as near to foolproof as any data storage system ever devised by hand of man, and yes, that includes handwritten paper records. Very, very few of these transactions fail, and when they do, there are some pretty serious laws about what has to be done to correct them. Most of these transactions are conducted by businesses that have far fewer resources to throw at the problem than does the US government, or even any state government.

It is entirely possible to produce a reliable e-voting system ... just not if that system is produced by the current crop of voting machine companies. I'm a big fan of "never attribute to malice what can properly be attributed to incompetence," but in this case, malice -- i.e., a desire to produce insecure, unreliable machines that can easily be rigged to produce the "right" electoral outcome -- really is the simplest explanation.

Re:What about a crash during an election?

[Dman33]

Am I the only stupid idiot that thinks it would not be terribly complicated to have a printer and redundant NVRAM? Hell, throw in mirrored HDs too, they do not have to be that large.

Perhaps I am missing something???

Re:What about a crash during an election?

[lessismore_moreorles]

Your absolutley right. Think of all the money, time and effort spent on electronic transaction processing in the past 60 years. These payment processing systems are more secure, redundant and fail proof than any other commercial systems in the world, probably more so than most government systems.

We need to apply this same dedication to security and uptime to voting.

PS. YEAH, my first post.

Re:What about a crash during an election?

[rsteele19]

The problem, as I see it, is one of accountability. In the case of financial institutions, if a computer somewhere starts "forgetting" transactions, someone will notice when they get their statement in the mail and their account is short a couple hundred bucks. But in the case of e-voting, there's no way to tell if your vote didn't get counted.

A computer is an inscrutible black box. How do you know what's going on inside it? Sure, you can open the source code up for inspection. But how do you know that code is what's actually running on the machine when you go and vote?

Pencil on paper, counted by people, remains the most incorruptible system.

Re:What about a crash during an election?

[Anonymous Coward]

"but in this case, malice -- i.e., a desire to produce insecure, unreliable machines that can easily be rigged to produce the "right" electoral outcome -- really is the simplest explanation."

I don't think that's the case, rather, it's companies like Diebold knowing the governments of American have _billions_ to spend on this and are fighting every requirement in order to extract as much as possible before competition sets in.

Re:What about a crash during an election?

[stanmann]

Then it would make sense to go with a company with expertise in this area? Like DieBold?

Re:What about a crash during an election?

[freqres]

I beleive multiple pencils and paper ballots with a pencil sharpener would be a more cost effective measure.

Re:What about a crash during an election?

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Aaargh. I've been on the publisher about that for months. Aaargh again.

If you want, please check out my father/coauthor's site, which has more information ... and a Harry Turtledove blurb.

Re:What about a crash during an election?

[AK Marc]

Pencil on paper, counted by people, remains the most incorruptible system.

So there are no problems with dead people voting on paper and pencil? Or, to restrict it to medium-related issues, are there no paper ballots lost? Are there no ballots mismarked due to confusing instructions or layout?

I have to assume your premise is wrong. I get paid electronically. The vast majority of my expendatures are electronic, many automated. I write less than one check a month, and I spend less than $100 cash a month. More than 95% of my mothly finances are handled electronically (though I get recipts for about half of that). Electronic systems, properly designed and administered, are much more trusted and trustworthy than you assert.

Re:What about a crash during an election?

[mcc]

Millions -- tens or hundreds of millions? billions? -- of financial transactions are conducted electronically every day. These transactions are stored on RAID and other redundant error-correcting systems that are as near to foolproof as any data storage system ever devised by hand of man, and yes, that includes handwritten paper records. Very, very few of these transactions fail, and when they do, there are some pretty serious laws about what has to be done to correct them.

Yeah, and you know one of the reasons why? Because when these systems go wrong, there are CONSEQUENCES. If your financial system products lose data people are not going to be buying your financial system products anymore.

Meanwhile when Diebold goes wrong there's no consequences whatsoever, people keep using the Diebold machines, in fact the governmental systems seem to be cheerfully trying to keep people from even investigating these malfunctions.

One of the crucial aspects of any democratic voting process is that WE SHOULDN'T HAVE TO TRUST THE PEOPLE WHO OPERATE THE PROCESS. At the moment, there's lots of reasons-- like these documented voting machine crashes-- to actively mistrust the operators of the process. But even if we're using RAID systems and all kinds of backups, the problem still comes down to trusting the machinery. There is NO GOOD REASON for this.

I don't mind if touchscreens are involved, but I think it is reasonable to demand a system where the votes themselves are little slips of paper put into locked boxes and then counted and kept. That way I don't have to trust the mechanism, or the people implementing it, because we can have volunteer election monitors standing around and watching to see if anyone's fiddling with those boxes. You can't have election monitors standing around and watching the bits on a hard drive be flipped.

Re:What about a crash during an election?

[Fulcrum of Evil]

So there are no problems with dead people voting on paper and pencil?

No problems associated with the medium itself. Dead people voting is a matter of verifying ID, which won't be affected by electronic voting.

I have to assume your premise is wrong. I get paid electronically. The vast majority of my expendatures are electronic, many automated. I write less than one check a month, and I spend less than $100 cash a month. More than 95% of my mothly finances are handled electronically (though I get recipts for about half of that). Electronic systems, properly designed and administered, are much more trusted and trustworthy than you assert.

You have a printed receipt to verify your purchases at the end of the month, whereas voting cannot do that. And frankly, choosing the next president is more important than your checkbook - too bad it's being implemented by a bunch of assclowns.

Re:What about a crash during an election?

[AK Marc]

So there are no problems with dead people voting on paper and pencil?

No problems associated with the medium itself.

Ah, but you snipped the ones that I wrote that were medium specific, then implied that because I didn't list any specific to the medium that there weren't any. A blatent lie through omission. Care to address the points I brought up, or are you only going to snip them out to promote your agenda?

Yes, I am in a pissy mood. I stated problems that were paper-only, and you snip them and claim there are no paper-only problems.

You have a printed receipt to verify your purchases at the end of the month, whereas voting cannot do that.

No, as I stated and you obviously could not comprehend, I do not. Electronic bank statements. Electronic credit card statements. Electronic transfers for house/car payments. Electronic payments for utility bills. Electronic statements/bills for utilities.

I don't get paper recipts for most of my expendatures. As your premise is incorrect, I must presume your conclusion is incorrect as well. Electronic is good enough for the money that buys the politicians, so it should be good enough (when done right) to hold the elections to choose between Kang and Kodos.

You also presume that there can be no recipt for voting. I can conceive of a recipt that would not be usable for voting fraud/blackmail that you could walk away with. That you can not does not mean it is not possible. Again, if we were working off the same assumptions, we may come to the same answer. But you seem to have made up your mind and are ignoring everything that doesn't support your conclusion.

Of course, everyone seems to be comparing the absolute worst electronic voting machines with the best non-electronic means and declaring that the medium is the cause. Try the best of both or the worst of both and see how it comes out.

Re:What about a crash during an election?

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Ah, but you snipped the ones that I wrote that were medium specific, then implied that because I didn't list any specific to the medium that there weren't any. A blatent lie through omission. Care to address the points I brought up, or are you only going to snip them out to promote your agenda?

Wah. I only asserted that there are no problems with dead people voting that are specific to paper. My agenda is clear: I don't trust Diebold, as they have a vested interest in Bush being elected.

No, as I stated and you obviously could not comprehend, I do not. Electronic bank statements. Electronic credit card statements. Electronic transfers for house/car payments. Electronic payments for utility bills. Electronic statements/bills for utilities.

Ok, fine, you have electronic receipts that you can verify at month's end. Doesn't really matter.

Electronic is good enough for the money that buys the politicians, so it should be good enough (when done right) to hold the elections to choose between Kang and Kodos.

Unless they suspend the elections. Then people will start voting with lead. I'll be in some other country, god willing.

I can conceive of a recipt that would not be usable for voting fraud/blackmail that you could walk away with. That you can not does not mean it is not possible.

That you have not cared to mention how this would happen does little to inspire confidence. Or were you hoping to sell the idea to Diebold?

But you seem to have made up your mind and are ignoring everything that doesn't support your conclusion.

I'm happy to change my mind. Just come up with something factual.

Of course, everyone seems to be comparing the absolute worst electronic voting machines with the best non-electronic means and declaring that the medium is the cause. Try the best of both or the worst of both and see how it comes out.

Or we could compare the tried and true paper ballots to currently used electronic voting (yay Diebold) and decide which we'd rather use in November. It's not about proving that E-voting could work. It's all about choosing the most reliable method for the next election.

Re:What about a crash during an election?

[AK Marc]

My agenda is clear: I don't trust Diebold, as they have a vested interest in Bush being elected.

So you use underhanded rhetorical techniques to achieve your goals? Yeah, that's real big of you, fight impropriety with impropriety. Since you don't like Diebold, you are anti-electronic voting, even if someone (other than Diebold) could come up with a system more reliable and cheaper than the current system?

I'm happy to change my mind. Just come up with something factual.

Fact: electronic voting can have verifiable, yet anonymous, paper recipts. That Diebold is against paper recipts is irrelevant to what would be the best method.

Re:What about a crash during an election?

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Since you don't like Diebold, you are anti-electronic voting, even if someone (other than Diebold) could come up with a system more reliable and cheaper than the current system?

No, I don't trust the current system, and I doubt that what you describe is possible. Prove me wrong.

Fact: electronic voting can have verifiable, yet anonymous, paper recipts.

Until you provide an example, it's just conjecture.

Re:What about a crash during an election?

[Filiks]

Every voter gets a paper receipt which will show how they voted. The receipt has a random 10 or 20 digit number which is also recorded electronically. The receipt goes into a box just like paper ballots. The paper receipts can then be randomly compared to the electronic record. Or every single vote can be compared to verify the electronic machine reported the votes correctly.

Re:What about a crash during an election?

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Every voter gets a paper receipt which will show how they voted.

Not acceptable - it makes vote buying easy.

Re:What about a crash during an election?

[AK Marc]

Encrypt the vote serial number on the recipt so that the person must be physically at the poll to be able to read the vote (not the vote itself, but the link to the vote in the database). The "owner" of the recipt is in the clear on it and would be verified by the polling place so that no one other than the voter could see the vote.

It allows for anonymity, and no one other than the voter would ever know how the voter voted. I can also think of other ways. I'm surprised that you seem proud that you can't think of any possible ways to have a system that is both anonymous and verifiable. I'd probably be too ashamed to run around announcing that I'm incapable of creative thought. But then, I expect that you will just dismiss this as "conjecture" as well, as no one has implimented such a system still is conjecture that such a system could be implimented. In fact, you can dismiss nearly all posts in this thread and most others in /. as conjecture.

Re:What about a crash during an election?

[Filiks]

No it doesn't, unless the vote buyer is in the polling place. The receipt goes into a locked box just like paper ballots currently do. The current no-tech method is just as succeptable to vote buying according to you.

I like what Nevada is doing with machines from Sequoia. The paper receipt appears behind a plastic window on the machine. After the voter approves it, the paper advances into the machine. All votes end up on an anonymous roll. A vote buyer would have to look over the voters shoulder at which point nothing can be done to make it anonymous. I suppose someone could be counting how many people use a voting booth and look on the paper roll, but presumably that paper roll is never supposed to be looked at unless there's a recall. I'm sure it's supposed to be locked up as soon as the polling place closes.

To make it even more random, the paper could be cut by the machine after each voter and shuffled internally to scramble when the receipt was made.

Time to call for international monitors?

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

Re:Time to call for international monitors?

[rdsmith4]

You would call on the UN to solve "rampant corruption?" Sounds like a paradox to me.

Re:Time to call for international monitors?

[steveb964]

You would call on the UN to solve "rampant corruption?

I for one think that Canada should oversee the U.S. election process, eh?

Now...who are those candidates again? ...Jenna Bush and, ah, Drew Kerry?

;o)

Cat got your tongue Florida?

[garcia]

``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.

Re:Cat got your tongue Florida?

[KMAPSRULE]

Why the hell was this written into law?

So Cheating Can run rampant

Re:Cat got your tongue Florida?

[welloy]

``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.

[snip]

speaking of the ACLU. Have you signed up yet?
Freedom can't protect itself. And Freedom is not free, thank a vet!

Re:Cat got your tongue Florida?

[sphealey]

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.

Not trying to defend the law here, but the thinking is probably this: no counting of 60 million objects is ever going to be perfect or precise. Every time you recount you will get a different answer. Yet an election must have a "final answer (tm)" in some definite amount of time, otherwise there will be a perception that it is being subverted during the process of recounting (both Dems and Repubs can insert their favorite Flordia anecdote here).

That's was probably the reasoning behind that provision: to avoid and endless series of recounts and lawsuits.

sPh

Re:Cat got your tongue Florida?

[MindStalker]

No I think its more of an issue of it being a computer system without a paper backup. How the hell do you recount a database. Its not going to spit out different data everytime you ask it. Its going to have one count that can't be changed. Weither that count is right or not, is a whole different story.

Re:Cat got your tongue Florida?

[nharmon]

Absolutely not. I have cut any ties whatsoever to the ACLU and the NAACP. They have simply become puppets of the Democratic party, and no longer serve their original purposes.

When you have the NAACP endorsing a white democrat over a black republican, what is going on here?

When you have the ACLU arguing against the outlawing of child pornography, yet agreeing with Reno that gun ownership is not an individual human right, what is going on here?

No thank you. I have decided that such organizations are not worth my time, and that other organizations are far more worthy of my money.

Re:Cat got your tongue Florida?

[Kombat]

no counting of 60 million objects is ever going to be perfect or precise. Every time you recount you will get a different answer.

Really? Banks seem to have no problem counting millions, and even billions. Think people complain when their vote goes missing? Try seeing what they do when their paycheck goes missing.

Maybe we should be getting the banks to handle the elections?

Re:Cat got your tongue Florida?

[Kombat]

When you have the ACLU arguing against the outlawing of child pornography, yet agreeing with Reno that gun ownership is not an individual human right, what is going on here?

One is a clear-cut case of free speech rights, and the other is a constitutionally-ambiguous issue of gun ownership, and the definition of a "well-regulated militia."

Re:Cat got your tongue Florida?

[jp10558]

One thing I don't get is why all the whoopla about absoultely correct vote tallies for the popular vote for president.

As far as I can tell, it doesn't matter - aside from various sports like commentary entertainment on November 2nd, and party back thumping - the popular vote has exactly nothing to do (0% influence) on who becomes president.

The president is elected by the electors selected by the (state legislature or appointed by the state goveners? IDK, but will check this out) in the electorial college. There is no law, custom, or requirement that any electors vote any way but how they want, they do not have to try and approximate the popular vote, heck the system was designed when they probably would have no idea what the popular vote turned out to be anyway.

My guess is that to have any real say (as much as is possible today) you should be voting for state and local governments that are in your party, and making sure their elections are scam free - because they will be the ones (state) that actually pick the president, they will be the ones making or breaking things like the recently proposed constitutional ammendment etc... They will be affecting you as much or more than who is in the whitehouse.

Of course I'm not saying I agree with the way the government is currently set up. Sadly it seems to be mangled between a states have the power system as originally set up and a Federal power system as has been pushed more and more since the civil war. So we have elections originally set up to go through the states, when the federal govt was more like the EU than today, but much more local control from the federal government.

Re:Cat got your tongue Florida?

[micromoog]

When you have the NAACP endorsing a white democrat over a black republican, what is going on here?

If that candidate's policies are better for African Americans overall, the NAACP's action was right. Blindly endorsing a candidate solely based on the color of his skin would be silly.

Re:Cat got your tongue Florida?

[alphaseven]

Banks screw things up all the time, but at least you have receipts and records to help sort things out, they don't have the burden of keeping everything anonymous.

You can go doublecheck what you deposited last week but you can't (and shouldn't be able to) go back and doublecheck how you voted last week.

Re:Cat got your tongue Florida?

[temojen]

Why the fuck can they not manually recount votes?

Because with touch-screen voting machines there's nothing to count but database entries. The question before the courts is whether or not election officials should go back after the vote and make printouts of the database entries to count by hand.

This is particularly useless because if the database is wrong, the printout will be too.

The obvious solution is to have a paper ballot Whether it's counted by machine or by hand, there's always a recourse in case of error.

Re:Cat got your tongue Florida?

[FreeUser]

When you have the NAACP endorsing a white democrat over a black republican, what is going on here?

If the white democrat is a Bill Clinton with a reasonable history of promoting issues important to people of color, while the black republican is a Clerance Thomas with a history of hostility on those very same issues, it is perfectly reasonable for the NAACP (or any organization whose charter is to promote the rights, civil liberties, and concerns of people of color) to choose the candidate that better represents their cause regardless of the candidate's race.

Indeed, to do otherwise would not only be racist, it would be self defeating.

In other words, what is going on is rational thought, something that seems to be increasingly in short supply, particularly among the ever-more radical right.

When you have the ACLU arguing against the outlawing of child pornography, yet agreeing with Reno that gun ownership is not an individual human right, what is going on here?

Again, more rational thought. Child-porn laws create a dangerous loophole in the protection of freedom of expression. Much as I abhor child porn (and would like nothing more than to see all such people rotting away in prison until the end of their days without any possibility of parole), the situation we now find ourselves in is a fuzzy definition of what child porn is, and worse, the situation in which any recipient of SPAM that contains child pornography, or any web surfur who clicks on the wrong hyperlink, suddenly has illegal data cached on their computer and is subject to hard core jail time.

And lest you think that is far fetched, there are already people serving prison sentences because of such things. The FBI is notorious for going after people who engage in unpopular professions, such as ADULT pornographers (who wouldn't touch child porn with a 10e50 meter pole) who received bad SPAM or clicked through on a deceptive link (why child pornographers feel the need to label things "hot older women" and direct people whose interests are at the opposite end of the age spectrum to their filth is beyond me) because they could get them on a technicality of the law combined with a browser's persistent cache, not because the people had in any way engaged in any willful illegal act. Technical folks like us know enought to purge a web or email cache if anything questionable comes across our screen (and lately, SPAM is the greatest offendor. Even with beysian spam filtering, that stuff still passes through the server), but the average person is defensless against this sort of thing. Most people who've ever received SPAM, or ever clicked on a pornographic link by mistake, are probably in some trouble with the law without even realizing it, and certainly without ever having done anything wrong.

Virtually anyone who looks at porn is at risk, in that there are as many deceitful links as legitimate ones. So we see child-porn is now effectively a back door into criminalizing all porn, which is contrary to both the intent of the child-porn laws, and the express wishes of the founding fathers vis-a-vis the first amendment.

The ACLU is right, the "do it for the children" crowd are wrong. We could put all those jerks in prison without creating a class of "illegal" data simply by treating the child porn as evidence of a crime (which it is) and the traffikers as accessories to the crime. Impound the materials as evidence and you get the same net effect as the anti-child-porn laws currently seek to achieve, without the deliterious civil-rights implications, or the ever steeper slippery slope of banned speech we now find ourselves on.

As for guns, the constitution clearly states that we have the right to form malitia's. Whether or not each individual has the right to an arsenal is ambiguous in the verbiage of the constitution. I personally think the interpretation that we do have that right is more accurate than the one that says we do not, but either can be supported by the text of th

Re:Cat got your tongue Florida?

[johnjay]

Sure, state's rights and electoral college and all that, but wouldn't you be mad to find out that all the votes in CA and TX were set to one candidate because of a vulnerability?

It's getting so that I'd be in favor of a constitutional ammendment along the lines of: "National elections, although still administered in accordance to state law, are required to meet standards set by congress. [insert dire consequences for failure here]" It seems that states like FL can't get their act straight, no matter how big the outcry.

Re:Cat got your tongue Florida?

[LaCosaNostradamus]

Maybe we should be getting the banks to handle the elections?

That one thought is worth a Score: 6, Insightful. Alas, you probably aren't an elected official.

Re:Cat got your tongue Florida?

[jp10558]

OT, but as to your signature - I can't comment on Kerry's plan as I have no idea what it is.

However, I don't know what Bush's plan is either, especially as he isn't supposed to release the next term plan till the RNC as I understand it.

I can only comment on what I have seen Bush do, in my experiances.

One, he has stated a desire (And carried it out once) to attack any country that might be against us - especially in the middle east. This seems like it could easily expand across the globe - and is hardly a good strategy.

Two, he seems to support various laws or ammendments designed to limit civil liberties, privacy rights, and research. IE The stalled ammendment to prevent same sex marrige, the ban on federal support for stem cell research, USAPATRIOT act.

Three, his plan seems to be to remove many environmental protections, IE Clean Water act change, Suddenly pulling out of Kyoto convention, drilling in the artic wildlife reserve.

Four, cutting taxes, raising spending hugely - run up a huge deficit. Also, the tax cuts for a middle american seem unclear to me, I recieved a check for $400 but then my tax return (on unchanged income and circumstances as far as I can tell) was $1000 less than previous years. I don't feel like I got a tax break.

Five, Geneva Conventions violations at guantanimo bay. Holding people without charges, indefinately.

Overall, if his plan is at all close to his actions (and not just hugely bungled) than I certainly don't think he's a good choice for maintaining the American Ideal.

If he meant to do something else - the famous no nation building promise from his campaign - and ended up with this, I am almost more scared. It would be like I set out to make a cake, and ended up with a car. Of course I don't know what his original plan was, but poor execution seems to be a very bad thing.

Re:Cat got your tongue Florida?

[sjames]

This is particularly useless because if the database is wrong, the printout will be too.

Receipts and a journal roll can solve that. Voter gets receipt showing their vote and a 'transaction number' Voter is allowed to look at their vote on the journal roll as well.

Any disagreement between the database and the hard copy journal rolls will indicate a problem. In that case, recount from the journal roll is possible. Concerned voters can even match their receipts against the roll at a later date.

This is not some mysterious new procedure, it's been in use for decades to keep cashiers honest, verify transactions, and correct any errors that might come up.

I find it interesting that Diebold, a maker of ATMs and (IIRC) cash registers can't seem to understand the importance of that paper trail as part of a voting system.

It's sad that state governments can't seem to understand it either. I'll bet that if Diebold told banks and retail businesses that new ATMs and cash registers won't print receipts or a journal, they'd be out of business just as fast as their reserve cash was spent.

Apparently as a nation, we value the $0.25 off coupon more than democracy itself.

Re:Cat got your tongue Florida?

[statusbar]

Try seeing what they do when their paycheck goes missing.

Millions had that happen to them: http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/banking/
--jeff++

Re:Cat got your tongue Florida?

[Cro Magnon]

You can go doublecheck what you deposited last week but you can't (and shouldn't be able to) go back and doublecheck how you voted last week.

No, but you SHOULD be able to verify that if you vote for Kerry, the machine doesn't register a vote for Perot. A human-readable paper slip that you drop in the voting slot before you leave solves that problem.

Re:Cat got your tongue Florida?

[KMAPSRULE]

I wasnt implying one side or the other are the cheaters I am just saying that there are those on extremes of all sides that believe so much that their side is right that they will use any means necessary to try to help their side win, whether its legal or not.

Bottom line in my opinion is that if there isnt a verifiable paper trail...its not a valid way to vote

Re:Cat got your tongue Florida?

[jak163]

Cheating is going to run rampant if there is no manual backup mechanism available. Why the hell was this written into law?

My hypothesis is that it's part of the argument which said that the recounts were an effort to distort the electoral outcome, rather than clarify it. The "recounts of recounts" until you get the desired result argument that Cheney started putting forward to halt the recount in 2000. This despite the fact that recounts are normal if elections are very close. So they're prohibiting recounts with the idea that they are fundamentally an effort to distort the voting outcome. This is of course an insincere argument, but it's very popular among conservatives and I would guess a shibboleth among Republican Florida officials.

In other words, they want to preven a repeat of 2000 too, and avoid any mischief. But in their view, the recount of the vote was the mischief.

Re:Cat got your tongue Florida?

[Mandoric]

In most places, the electors are chosen by the direct popular vote; they're typically, if not bound by state law to vote for the candidate they claimed they would, at least chosen from among party loyalists.

Re:Cat got your tongue Florida?

[Chris Burke]

How is it ambiguous? What definition of "well-regulated militia" puts the definition of "the right of the people to keep and bear arms" in question? Everywhere else the Constitution the word "people" is meant to apply to individuals, not just the group. I've heard every possible explanation for what "militia" means, but none that make "right of the people" any less clear.

How is child pornography a clear-cut free speech issue? Free speech, like all of our rights, ends where it harms others: libel, shouting "ninja pirates!" in a theater, sexually exploiting children.

I'm not going to condemn the ACLU; they do good work. But that doesn't mean I think they can't be wrong, or that these views couldn't have been influenced by partisanship.

Re:Cat got your tongue Florida?

[Kombat]

How is it ambiguous? What definition of "well-regulated militia" puts the definition of "the right of the people to keep and bear arms" in question?

Because you can't take the second fragment out of context. You're trying to treat them as two separate clauses, but that's not how they were written. It is written as one, big, long sentence. The "well regulated militia" part is a qualifier for the "right to bear arms" part.

I'm don't want to debate the issue with you, I simply wanted to simply point out the fact that there is room for debate. It is in fact ambiguous, as evidenced by the enormous amount of debate over this very issue. If it were really as clear-cut as the first amendment, then there wouldn't be so much debate about it. It would be an open-and-shut case. But that's not the case with the second.

How is child pornography a clear-cut free speech issue? Free speech, like all of our rights, ends where it harms others:

How does a fictional story about paedophilia "harm others?" How do CGI-rendered, pornographic photos of children "harm others?" Again, don't misunderstand my position - I'm disgusted by the material. But that doesn't change the fact that the law is the law, and if the material isn't actually harming anyone, then it shouldn't be illegal.

The only part of child porn that "harms" others is the actual taking of the photos, and there are already tons of laws making that activity illegal (taking advantage of minors, underage sexual behaviour, child abuse, neglect, assault, forcible confinement, take your pick). We don't need a law that makes the pictures themselves illegal, or you get into situations like this.

Re:Cat got your tongue Florida?

[Chris Burke]

Because you can't take the second fragment out of context. You're trying to treat them as two separate clauses, but that's not how they were written. It is written as one, big, long sentence. The "well regulated militia" part is a qualifier for the "right to bear arms" part.

I'm not treating them as separate clauses. I'm saying: Tell me how you think the phrase "well-regulated militia" could modify "right of the people" such that it doesn't mean "right of the people".

Why don't you consider "right of the people" to be a qualifier for "well-regulated militia"? Why don't you consider "necessary for a Free State" to be a qualifier for "well-regulated militia"? If the only question is what "well-regulated militia" means, I think it should be obvious that the rest of the Ammendment can provide clues as to that hidden meaning. Nevertheless, whatever militia means, the right to bear arms was given to the people.

The existence of debate doesn't mean the issue isn't simple. Right now, at this very moment, there is a great deal of debate as to whether 14th Ammendment protection should extend to homosexuals. That problem word "people" shows up again, and there's a lot of "debate" about whether it applies to gays and if "equal protection under the law" means marriage laws as well. Is it a complicated, ambiguous issue? Or are there a lot of homophobes who are willing to abandon logic to make it an issue?

People can debate whether people means people. That doesn't mean the issue is ambiguous. It means they have a preference and want to shoe-horn reality into that preference.

As to child porn -- if a child saw a photoshopped picture of themselves having sex with a horse, would that cause the child harm? A purely cartoon representation of said child having sex with a horse? "Harm" isn't always cut and dry. I was just pointing that out.

Re:Cat got your tongue Florida?

[johnjay]

Thank you for being polite and reasonable. You aren't the first to be so, but most people who respond to my .sig get pretty nasty. So, you're already head and shoulders above the average.
Sorry, this ended up being pretty long.

I'm going to respond to you in order; you'll probably like the responses to 2-4 more than 1 or 5.
he has a stated desire...to attack any country that might be against us.
This is a part of his strategy I agree with. I think the actual attacks have been pretty poorly handled, but I don't think the strategy is bad. He could use this policy to attack a country wrongly, but I don't see that happenning. He would have to be bent on some sort of expansionist policy, and I don't see that in his character (pre-emptive invasion based on fear, yes. Empire-building, no.) I don't see the policy of America being feared by rogue nations as a worse policy than what we had before.

He seems to support various laws or ammendments designed to limit civil liberties, privacy rights, and research.
I'm right there with you, dismayed at the way he pushes for the FMA and against stem-cell research. I disagree on the Patriot Act, though. I initially thought it was bad, but after reading more about the intelligence failures leading to 9/11, and how they could have been prevented, I think a temporary enactment of the Patriot Act is ok. The terrorists hit us by taking advantage of our free society. A temporary encroachment of civil liberties is reversable, but death is not. I only know the broad strokes of the Patriot Act, so I bet there are some things in there that I wouldn't like, but the damage to civil liberties hasn't been very serious/notable at this point, and several suspected groups of terrorists have been found in the US since 9/11 (I believe the Buffalo cell is no longer "suspects" but "convicted terrorists" at this point). It's an unpleasant compromise to have to make, but I'm not willing to let the terrorists slip by our law enforcement just because of what would be ideal. Law enforcement is a practical matter, and laws have to be changed to handle new situations. An analogy is how the law had to be changed to dismantle the mafia.

His plan seems to be to remove many environmental protections.
Since I don't know much about the Clean Water Act and the drilling in the artic wildlife reserve, I'm suspicious of both of them. I like my environment, and if lots of people are screaming that these are bad, they may be right. They may also be the same people who oppose nuclear power plants (i.e. short-sighted nuts), but honestly, I don't know. Bush's actions on Kyoto weren't so bad, though. Dropping Kyoto was bad publicity more than bad environmental stewardship. The Senate unanimously passed resolution 98 (S. 8138) on July 25, 1997, saying they would not ratify any climate treaty that forced Developed countries to have more stringent environmental safeguards than Developing countries (I couldn't find a link for exact text this resolution on the U.S. govt's website. All I could find was the resolution reprinted on other websites (like this one). I tried to give you enough info that you could google it yourself if you wanted to). This is exactly what the Kyoto accord ended up requiring. Clinton signed the agreement anyways, because it looked good politically, even though (since the Senate had said unanimously that they wouldn't ratify it) he knew the treaty would never be ratified. All Bush did was cut the crap and admit that the Kyoto Treaty wasn't going to happen.

cutting taxes, raising spending hugely - run up a huge deficit.
I don't like this very much myself. The cutting taxes part is ok, and even the spending is ok. That's just the Keynsian Economics recipe for getting stalled economies going again. But, I don't like the amount of spending the gov'ts been doing, or what they've been spending money on. The Medicare drug stuff, for example, seems lik

verification

[spoonyfork]

if you are a US citizen of voting age...

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?

Re:verification

[amliebsch]

The reason is historical. The idea has been that a personally identifiable voting record is so prone to abuse, both by the gov't and third parties, that it's better to not have any at all.

Re:verification

[garcia]

Why is there no verification or personal audit trail available for elections?

So that you cannot be held personally responsible by a repressive regime when they find out who you voted for.

Re:verification

[Anonymous Coward]

The flip side of this:

Do you really want a public record stating who you voted for? If the record exists, I guarantee you won't be the only one able to access it.

Being able to 'prove' who you voted for will only result in more bad voting. Examples:

Your boss: "Prove you voted for candidate X or you might find yourself up for review"

Your union boss: "Prove you voted for candidate X or you might find yourself involved in a tragic accident in the workplace"

Random Shady Character: "Prove you voted for candidate X and I'll give you $20"

Random Shadier Character: "I'm coming back here in late November and if you didn't vote for Candidate X, I'm going to break your legs and set your house on fire."

The last one is a stretch, but the first few aren't.

Re:verification

[Gannoc]

Can you prove it? Can they prove it?

"Mr. Smithers will give $5 to anyone who turns in their voting receipt saying they voted for X, please spread this among the poor population!"

"We expect all union members to go out and vote for Y, anyone who doesn't turn in their voting receipt is in trouble."

"Hi, i'm your boss. If you want time off to vote, I need to know that you actually voted, so I need to see the receipt. What? You voted Republican? Now I will treat you differently!"

Re:verification

[Al Dimond]

It's important, to avoid coersion, to ensure that a person can vote his or her conscience in private. So having a personal vote check would be bad. Having a hard-copy record of how you just voted would be nice.

What would be even nicer is if you could see it being printed after making the vote, but couldn't take it out of the booth... like have a printer spooling off in a direction so that it's easy to read for the voter, but behind glass, and also so that it folds up neatly into stacks when it's done. Seems like it wouldn't be all *that* hard to make, and it would be worth it to ensure the fairness of the election.

Re:verification

[laigle]

This is an unfortunate downside to anonymous voting. The upside is that it's the only thing standing in the way of complete corruption of the process, because name-recorded voting would eventually lead to employers forcing their workers to vote their ballot, armed thugs harassing or blackmailing political opponents, and all the joys one normally associates with elections in the Third World.

A permanent, unalterable record solves the problem without needing to be tied to the individual. You check the name off on a piece of paper, you drop it into a secured box (or better yet a glass container that can only be opened by breaking it). At the end of the session the ballots are taken out and counted, with mutliple observers of opposing political factions. You set in place a challenge system beforehand so if there's an issue you're not ad-libbing. At the end of the count, the ballots are placed into another sealed container for storage at a secured site in the event of a future recount.

No shiny, expensive electronics needed.

Re:verification

[Zak3056]

Why is there no verification or personal audit trail available for elections?

Picture your boss telling you you'll be fired if you don't vote for GWB. Picture some thug telling you he'll break your kneecaps if you don't vote for John Kerry. Picture someone else offering you $50 if you vote for Ralph Nader.

With a secret ballot you can always lie and tell whoever is pressuring you that you did their bidding. With an audit trail, that same pressure can be brought against you to prove you're telling the truth. And that's NOT a good thing.

Re:verification

[MagicM]

That's the problem with computerized voting. When you check a box on a paper ballot with a pen, and then drop the ballot in a box, you KNOW that your vote is in that box.

When you push a button and a message on a screen says "thank you", you have no idea whether your vote actually registered.

It's the difference between trusting the laws of physics and the quality of the computer code.

Re:verification

[CrimsonAvenger]

You set in place a challenge system beforehand so if there's an issue you're not ad-libbing.

Florida had that last time.

Gore tried to bypass the system. This led to a series of court decisions, finally decided by the US Supremes, that reduced to "use the pre-existing system for challenges".

Democrats to this day believe the election was "stolen".

A challenge system is absolutely necessary to ensure proper balloting. It must, however, be carved in stone - noone, not the Legislature, nor the courts, and especially not the candidates should be allowed to mess with it during an election. Once the election is over, by all means, work on "better" ways for the NEXT election, if it makes you feel better.

Re:verification

[sparty]

That opens up the coercion problem again...watch and note who goes into the booth, in what order, and that's the order the "neatly folded" votes are in...oh, so you voted for X, you lousy scum-sucking anti-American leech? It's too bad that would be illegal to note on your next performance review, *wink*

(I think you'd have some issues with deterministic stacking; if it just spit receipts, cut them, and let them fall as you exited the booth or as the next person walked in, that might work, but you'd still run into the issue of later votes being on the top of the pile.)

Re:verification

[IWannaBeAnAC]

Actually the last one isn't so much of a stretch.

Camera phones were banned from the last election in Italy because the mafia were demanding a photo of your 'correct' vote.

Re:verification

[ConceptJunkie]

Finally, someone who actually gets it.

Florida was all about trying to change the rules in mid-stream. The existing rules were seriously flawed, but you have to stick with them until the appropriate time to change them.

This used to be a principle in the U.S.

Of course for all you clueless "Selected not Elected" people, several independent recounts done after the fact still gave the election to Bush.

Re:verification

[AK Marc]

So that you cannot be held personally responsible by a repressive regime when they find out who you voted for.

I can conceive of a verifiable way that they can not find out who you voted for. Verification doesn't require elimination of anonymity.

Re:verification

[shic]

Why is there no verification or personal audit trail available for elections?
So that you cannot be held personally responsible by a repressive regime when they find out who you voted for.

Contrary to your suggestion there are techniques that would allow every voter to verify that their vote was counted - yet not disclose the candidate against which the vote was registered. If there was a dummy candidate "abstain" then a well designed system would make coercion at least as difficult as it is today - yet would still improve confidence in the voting system by making it less likely that counting errors could sway the result yet remain undetectable.

Re:verification

[swv3752]

Bush lost the popular vote.

It should have been if Miami couldn't get its act cleaned up to do a proper recount, then there should have been a new election held. Or discount all of Florida.

Re:verification

[AK Marc]

That's the problem with computerized voting. When you check a box on a paper ballot with a pen, and then drop the ballot in a box, you KNOW that your vote is in that box.

When you push a button and a message on a screen says "thank you", you have no idea whether your vote actually registered.

But when you place it in the box, you still have absolutely no idea whether it will be counted, or how it will be counted. If there is a problem with missed votes, you can't make sure that yours isn't one of the contested ones so you can make your intentions clear.

In both circumstances, you are told your vote counted, but you have no way of knowing whether it will actually be counted.

Re:verification

[sjames]

"Mr. Smithers will give $5 to anyone who turns in their voting receipt saying they voted for X, please spread this among the poor population!"...

Make it a felony to request a voter receipt.

Re:verification

[TheMeddler]

Sure. I voted absentee. Paper trail and everything.

Re:verification

[Chris Mattern]

> Bush lost the popular vote.

And your point is? Unless you mean he lost the popular vote in Florida, in which case you are incorrect, as was shown by several investigations.

> It should have been if Miami couldn't get its act cleaned up to do a proper recount, then there should
> have been a new election held.

And your reason for doing something flagrantly illegal under the Florida electoral law is...? Besides that the guy you wanted didn't get elected, that is. Hey, let's keep voting until we get the result we want!

> Or discount all of Florida.

Florida, now 40% off! Or, if you're talking about throwing out Florida's electoral votes, you're now talking about something flagrantly illegal under both Florida and Federal election law...

Chris Mattern

Re:verification

[ErikTheRed]

I can prove I voted; here in California they give me a serialized receipt.

Re:verification

[EvanED]

Machines would definitely need to cut the ballots. Other than that, have a big box they fall into and pretty much any semblance of being able to figure out who voted for who would go away. I doubt the distribution of votes changes much over the course of a day, so it's not like the people who vote before noon are all gonna vote for Kerry and the people who vote after are all gonna vote for Bush. So looking at the stack at the end of the day wouldn't give much more information than looking at the stack an hour into the vote.

And remember, any place that has paper ballots now would have the same problem, but I haven't heard of any acts like this.

(If you're still concerned, put a fan in the box or shake it or something.)

Re:verification

[demachina]

This is interesting. Yesterday I was called by a computerized phone system, ITC or IDC or some such acronym, doing a 1 minute presidential poll. Press 1 if you plan to vote for Bush, 2 for Kerry. and of course no #3 for Nadar. I hate Kerry but of the two choices he was the worst of the two evils. Then it asks question 2, are you voting for Kerry 1, because you like him or 2, you don't like Bush. I press 2.

Now that I think about it a political party or government in power can do a pretty good job of cataloging everyone by which side of the fence they are on just by computerized polling, the only people being safe are those who refused to be polled.

Re:verification

[CrimsonAvenger]

Irrelevant. Electoral College is all that counts.

Discount Florida? You are aware that the Fourteenth Amendment has something to say about not being allowed to vote for Electors, right? Also that the Constitution specifies that day of the Presidential elections? So, Florida couldn't do it over. If the Florida Courts (the US Supremes had no power to do this, but the Florida Supremes might have been able to get away with it - unlikely, but possible) had decided that rather than do it over, no Electors would be chosen from Florida, Florida would have lost its House Delegation as well, till the next Presidential election.

As to Miami being unable to do a proper recount, they were prevented by the Gore campaign. Florida's election law provided for recounts under certain specific conditions. Gore's campaign chose not to take advantage of that, but to try to use the Courts.

Note that I do NOT believe that that particular decision was Gore's idea. It was probably the worst decision he ever made, if in fact he did make it, since the time wasted in Court made the normal recount procedures impossible within the time allowed by Florida law.

Re:verification

[Anarcho-Goth]

Now that I think about it a political party or government in power can do a pretty good job of cataloging everyone by which side of the fence they are on just by computerized (telephone) polling, the only people being safe are those who refused to be polled.

Well, two ways to look at that. Anyone who refuses to answer is either really political, or apathetic. But then the apathetic people might just choose the one whose commercials they like best.

But if it was a small minority that refused to be polled (I think there might be a backlash against "phone spam.") then they compair that list with lets say the books you've purchased or checked out from the library.

Then "they" have a list of "potential terrorists" to put in jail, because we don't want people thinking beyond the Democrat-Republican dogma that's shoved down our throats. Think of the Children!

BSOD

[Anonymous Coward]

Blue screen of disenfranchisement.

Best quote

[devorama]

My favorite quote 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.

Hey, here's a novel IT solution: BACKUP YOUR DATA! Ever hear of fault tolerant disk subsystems? Sheesh!

Re:Best quote

[neilb78]

Yep, that caught my eye too. Obviously they do not have proper policies and procedures in place for data backup and retension. I wonder if the new State Technology Office is in charge of those systems, or if the elections dept. gets to do their own thing? I used to work at FDLE (FL Dept of Law Enforcement) HQ in Tallahassee; it was a mess too, and I'm not at all surprised that a Florida State agency lost some data.

Re:Best quote

[Zak3056]

Hey, here's a novel IT solution: BACKUP YOUR DATA! Ever hear of fault tolerant disk subsystems? Sheesh!

Your RAID array isn't going to help you if the access database (really!) the votes are kept in eats itself.

I really don't see why the touchscreen systems everybody is pushing don't come equiped with a printer. You enter your votes, the machine prints out a properly filled out and formatted ballot for you from the choices you made. If everything is correct, the machine tallys your vote and you drop the ballot in a ballot box. If not, you give the spoiled ballot to an election worker, and start the process over till you get it right. In the end you get the promised benefits of computer voting (instant counting, ease of use) along with a hard, easily verified record in the case of irregularities.

The fact that companies like Diebold are DEAD SET against seeing something like this says that they have a vested interest in machines that just don't count the ballots correctly. Our elected representatives constantly trying to smooth things over instead of fixing the problem just makes things worse.

I can only conclude (as many others have before me) that the planned outcome of all this is rigged elections. That being the case, start trying Diebold execs and the people who buy and implement their crooked machines for treason. Anyone who tries to meddle in our elections deserves the rope.

Re:Best quote

[Wizzo1138]

But why do they need to back up the votes daily? I wouldn't expect the results to be changing that much.

But, I live in Chicago, so I cetainly understand the need for "negotiable" vote counting techniques.

Re:Yup, yup...

[amliebsch]

So...the only legitimate election is one that Kerry wins?

why electronic?

[night_flyer]

what is wrong with a good old paper ballot and a pen to mark your choice(s)?

Re:why electronic?

[solive1]

Hahaha... people are too lazy to sit there and count votes. Also, you have to get unbiased people (not likely in an election, especially for President) and people who aren't going to "skew" the count.

Re:why electronic?

[ZX-3]

One of the major arguments in favor of electronic voting is that it can allow many more disabled people to vote on their own.

Re:why electronic?

[will_die]

The biggest problem with pen ballots is that it takes a long time to count. You could go with something like having a machine read the results but then you are running into the same problems they had with the chad based ballots.

Re:why electronic?

[NormanEinstein]

The fact is that Americans don't simply have one ballot to fill out because the president isn't the only thing they have to choose they go to the polls. Americans sometimes have dozens of items to vote on ranging from presidents and judges, to various propositions and referendum items. That is why computerized systems are so popular.

The American system often gets trashed by the media, but like it or not, it's a brutally democratic system.

Re:why electronic?

[amliebsch]

what is wrong with a good old paper ballot and a pen to mark your choice(s)?

This actually IS an insightful question. There are paper-based voting systems already used in many areas that are quite effective. The ballot shows the names of each of the candidates next to an arrow with a broken stem, like this:

=== ==>Bush
=== ==>Kerry

You simply use any black ink to fill in the stem of the arrow pointing to the candidate you want to vote for. Seems very straightforward and obvious to me. Then, you personally insert your ballot into an optical scanner. If you have overvoted, it will immediately warn you and you can get a new ballot. Otherwise, it electronically tabulates your votes. At the end of the day, you have a reasonably accurate computer tabulation AND a paper record created by the voters themselves which can be hand-counted and used to audit the computers.

This seems like an ideal system to me.

Re:why electronic?

[cemcnulty]

Because when a computer interface is done right, it can be far superior to a paper interface. It provides feedback, it can do large print, it can do multiple languages, and it can provide audio. There is no doubt that a computer can provide a great way to make voting easier. What computers aren't so great at is storing data. Paper will *always* be a better solution than any magnetic or optical storage medium you care to name. For those who argue otherwise, how many college notebooks do you still have and can still read vs. floppy disks. I graduated college '99 which means that I used 3 &1/2 diskettes, and not one damn one is still able to be read.

Re:why electronic?

[Eccles]

You could go with something like having a machine read the results but then you are running into the same problems they had with the chad based ballots.

Not really, since even seniors could read or hear "You voted for Pat Buchanan" -- perhaps with an accompanying picture provided by the candidate -- more easily than they could read the butterfly ballot. Likewise, multi-punched, partial-punched, etc. ballots would be identified at the time, perhaps with the machine making its own mark on the ballot to indicate its interpretation (as an optical reader might get different results from scanning a border case when run a second time.)

This really is the way to go, and it's how Howard County, MD's machines were the last time, except it gave no feedback on who my votes were for.

Re:why electronic?

[R.Caley]

The biggest problem with pen ballots is that it takes a long time to count.

UK elections are done with pen and paper and the results are in overnight. Since the number of people available to do the counting is more or less proportional to the number of people who need to vote, I see no reason why a US national election run with pen and paper ballots would take any longer to count.

Re:why electronic?

[sphealey]

The National Federation for the Blind has been filing lawsuits against election boards for several years, claiming that such a system is discriminatory because it requires a blind person to have someone in the voting booth with them.

BlackBoxVoting.org has discussed this several times, although that site has its own partisan spin. It isn't something that is discussed much though.

sPh

Re:why electronic?

[figleaf]

By going Elecronic, huge democracies like India save a susbtantial amount.
With a population of about 1050 million, India saves about about 50 million dollars by going all electronic.

Re:why electronic?

[Andy_R]

Exactly... the recent European Parliament elections used simple paper ballots, were roughtly the same scale as the US elections, and they were timely and scandal-free.

Re:why electronic?

[IWannaBeAnAC]

Same in Australia too, and I think most of Europe. The number of people you need simply scales with the size of the population. It shouldn't be any harder to do this in the USA. I think they are just obsessed with technology. Even early on, they didn't use pen & paper but had fancy machines for punching holes in paper.

The number of state ex- returning offices that are currently in prison shows how long and glorious the tradition of rigging elections is in the USA. I don't think there is any pressure from the governement itself to get a transparently reliable election system.

Re:why electronic?

[iantri]

To answer you and IWannaBeAnAC, this has been brought up before.

I am Canadian. The common link between all the countries mentioned (UK, Australia, Canada) is that they are all essentially parliamentary democracies. You vote for who goes to represent you in your country's lower house, and if your country has an elected upper house, you may vote for someone to represent you in it.

That is pretty simple and easy to count.

Americans, however, having an obviously vastly superior system, have decided that this isn't good enough for them and they vote for upwards of a half a dozen people for various government positions.

This makes counting more difficult, combined with the size of the country.

BTW, Australia uses some e-voting systems; however they were Government-designed, use Linux and are open-source -- you can get the source code from the Australian Government's website, if you so desired.

Re:why electronic?

[Tassach]

Maryland had these kinds of ballots for as long as I've been voting. Now the braintrust in Annapolis has decided to switch us from a proven, reliable, and auditable system to the piece-of-shit, demonstrably insecure Diebold touch screens.

I'm seriously considering filing for an absentee ballot, but I'm sure they'll find some way not to count it if it doesn't have the answers they want. Of course the voting technology used is irrelvant if King George decides to go ahead and postpone the elections for "security reasons" like he's already proposed doing.

Re:why electronic?

[CaroKann]

How about those old mechanical lever machines? They can be used by the blind, they prevent overvoting, and they make votes easy to count.
They don't produce a paper trail, however.

Re:why electronic?

[R.Caley]

[...] they vote for upwards of a half a dozen people for various government positions.

This makes counting more difficult, combined with the size of the country.

The size is an independent issue -- both the number of timezones and the existance of remote areas are going to slow things down no matter what method is used to actually record votes.

The number of votes isn't really a qualitative difference. It's common to have combined elections here (eg local plus scottish parliament, local plus European), so 3 or 4 ballots aren't unknown. Doesn't cause any significant delays. Certainly I don't think there has been a UK election which took as long to sort out as the last US presidential one (given the Florida mess) in modern times. And the Scottish elections are not a simple first past the post poll.

The biggest problem there has been in the UK recently was in the most recent election when they experimented in some areas with postal voting. In accordance with expectation, when they tried to fix something which wasn't broken, they ended up with a mess. Pens and paper really does work very well.

BTW, Australia uses some e-voting systems; however they were Government-designed, use Linux and are open-source -- you can get the source code from the Australian Government's website, if you so desired.

The only really sucessful move to electronic voting seems to have been the Indian one, where they designed something to do the job, rather than starting with all the fun technology they'd like to charge the government for.

Re:why electronic?

[AK Marc]

Paper will *always* be a better solution than any magnetic or optical storage medium you care to name. For those who argue otherwise, how many college notebooks do you still have and can still read vs. floppy disks. I graduated college '99 which means that I used 3 &1/2 diskettes, and not one damn one is still able to be read.

Every CD I bought in the 80s is still perfectly readable. Every 3.5 disk I have from college is still readable. I've thrown out three textbooks because they suffered failures (one from water, one from an act of Dog, and one from a catastrophic binding failure).

It is some perverted fallacy that you claim "magnetic or optical" are failure prone, but restrict your challenge to magnetic only. You sound like you've made up your mind, facts be damned.

Re:why electronic?

[pjt33]

Last time I asked that question I was told that Americans don't have the patience to wait until the next day to find out who won. Ironic, when you consider how long it took to determine who won the last U.S. Presidential election.

Re:why electronic?

[Cro Magnon]

You don't need unbiased counters. You just need to make sure all the Dem counters are being watched like hawks by Repubs (and vice-versa)

Re:why electronic?

[floydden]

Thank You!!! I live in Oklahoma and this is the method that we use. It gives directions at the top of the ballot, and tells you upfront that if you don't mark it correctly that your vote won't count. This eliminates the problems from Florida in 2000, and provides an anonymous paper trail. Simple and trackable.

Re:why electronic?

[EvanED]

It's common to have combined elections here (eg local plus scottish parliament, local plus European), so 3 or 4 ballots aren't unknown.

Are 100 ballots unknown though? And yes, there are ballots in the US that have over a hundred measures on them. Especially in jurisdictions (*cough* California *cough*) that put forth tons of referenda in addition to all the local, state, and federal offices. One /. poster claimed in the last discussion on this topic that their last ballot had about 135 measures.

('course, not everyone is gonna vote for all of these (- an understatement too, sadly), but the job is still gonna be astronomically more lengthy than even a large ballot in many other countries.)

Re:why electronic?

[EvanED]

Every e-voting discussion someone asks this... this is what I posted last time, combined with ideas from other people:

1) Accuracy. A secure evoting system should be 100% accurate. Unless you happen to have more than 2^32-1 voters in your district all voting for the same person. Now look at Canada. Count the votes 5 times. Do you think you'll get one result, or five? I'm betting on the five. Humans make mistakes. Granted, they will probably be close, but there have been elections in the US (not presidential, but the point stands) decided by literally 12 votes in a large populated area. A couple states in the US in 2000 were, IIRC, decided by under 100 votes.

2) Along with that idea: judgement calls. Maybe the person made a stray mark and didn't notice; was it intended as a vote? You have to decide. With electronic voting, the system says "ok, here's who you voted for" and you can rest assured that the machine recorded it correctly. (We're talking a good system here, not a Diebold system.)

3) Speed. For better or for worse, we're an impatient country. If we can be told the vote totals right after elections close, we're happier.

4) Along with #2, the electronic machine can verify your votes and tell you if you overvoted (in which case you can't submit) or undervoted (in which case it just asks for confirmation). In other words, the DRE can make sure someone doesn't misvote.

5) It is much easier to offer different languages. You don't have precincts ordering boatloads of extra ballots because that many people could show up for the election.

6) People with disabilities can use e-voting systems without assistance. See the ADA's amicus curae briefs in many casese.

7) Even in a recount, there would be no problem to discern the voter's intent. The printer prints a ballot with the names of the people the voter voted for and out it goes. No holding up the ballot to the light to figure out if the ink is closer to a "Bush" shape than a "Kerry" shape.

See the original discussion. There's a fairly hefty discussion that ensued from it, so there's a fair chance that any objections you have were brought up there and you can read them any my responses there and save both of us time.

One of these days I'll write a full description of the evoting system I imagine... maybe now. We'll see.

Re:why electronic?

[fforw]

Exactly... the recent European Parliament elections used simple paper ballots, were roughtly the same scale as the US elections, and they were timely and scandal-free.

We use electronic voting ( with paper trail ) in Germany and we used those voting machines in the EU election, too.

Re:why electronic?

[Tassach]

Give me a link where GWB said that.

GWB is the head of the executive branch of government, making him personally responsible for all policies set by the executive branch. He did not publicly repudiate or express any disapproval of the plan to delay the elections proposed by the Dpt of Homeland Security (an executive branch agency headed by one of his cronies).

His failure to comment on the plan is a de-facto admission that he approved it. If he was not aware of a major policy decision that was made by his subordinates then he is guilty of the high crime of dereliction of duty.

A leader is ALWAYS responsible for the actions of his subordinates, because their authority derives from the power which he delegated to them. The first thing they teach you in ANY leadership course, civilian or military, is that you can delegate authority but you can never delegate responsibility.

Re:why electronic?

[iantri]

The size is an independent issue -- both the number of timezones and the existance of remote areas are going to slow things down no matter what method is used to actually record votes.

I'd just like to point out that we in Canada have both two more time zones and many more remote locations and we manage it by paper... the complete results are in by a day or two after election night.

Re:why electronic?

[Anarcho-Goth]

I'm seriously considering filing for an absentee ballot, but I'm sure they'll find some way not to count it if it doesn't have the answers they want.

3000 absentee ballots in the San Diego primary one month ago were miscounted. 'The miscounts occurred because multiple scanners simultaneously fed the absentee ballot data into the computer tabulation system....

At least in this county, I think what they were doing was feeding the absentee ballots into the Diebold system.

It might be the rule for most counties using Diebold systems.

Thanks a lot, Florida

[cuzality]

From the same state that gave us the mental wizards confused by the butterfly ballots.

Re:Thanks a lot, Florida

[Sovern]

It is pretty sad that an election can swing on 19,000
people who where to dim to punch out hole 21 to vote for Gore.

or waz dat bukana iz spoz tu vote fo.

Re:Thanks a lot, Florida

[Sovern]

Typed in TOO much of a hurry. By law there can be no test for eligibility to vote. But the question is how far we must lower the bar to allow all voters a chance to have their vote counted

I hold the election officials in that county as responsible as the public that failed to object to that ballot when it was displayed far in advance

"Gore was going to lose no matter what"
True according to several media recounts using the Gore campaigns standards.

Re:Thanks a lot, Florida

[EvanED]

Actually, some (reasonable, or at least as reasonable as most others) standards of counting would have put Gore ahead even with the votes that were cast.

Re:Thanks a lot, Florida

[EvanED]

Quoteth Jon Stewart:

"We have a situation. There is a voter dispute, in Florida. They spent thirty-two million dollars since the 2000 election debacle to fix their voting procedures in Florida, and the first time they used it in a major race, let's say for governor, they f[beep]ed it up again. Now here's what I want to say, to Florida, and I'm sorry to have to say this, we're gonna have to let you go. I'm sorry.

"I'm not saying you didn't try hard... There could be a wonderful chance for you to catch on with South America... And you've certainly done some good work in the past, I think the wet t-shirt contest was a wonderful, um... smuggled pot, thank you... But unfortunately it's just not fair to the other forty nine states. And if you don't think we're serious, we've already gotten Puerto Rico to take your job. So there you have it Florida."

No big surprise

[b-baggins]

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.

Re:No big surprise

[jandrese]

Punch card balloting is an extremely accurate and economical way to tally votes.

I see you were living in a rock in 2000 when all of these questions about dimpled chads and hanging chads came out.

Re:No big surprise

[spinkham]

No, I think he's merely saying that the stupid people should have checked to see if they did in fact compleletly punch out the circle they thought they did. It's not that hard...
Of course, I prefer the old manual voting machines they have in NJ that allow you to see and verify your choices, then record votes onto a "secured" paper tape. Never have heard of them having much of any sort of problem...

Re:No big surprise

[travdaddy]

Using Darwinian principles may sound like a good thing (i.e. dumb people who don't understand voting machines are not given a vote), but you forget that the US was founded on the idea that "All men are created equal," meaning the clueless idiot's vote should count just as much as your's does, despite how high your IQ may (or may not) be.

My point is that yes, we should get all boo-hooey over a few idiots whose vote didn't count.

Re:No big surprise

[shawn(at)fsu]

Okay get rid of the punch cards fine, some people in Fl couldn't handle it. But what about the rest of us in FL who didn't have a problem with the scantron type ballots. Why did they feel the need to reinvent the wheel?

For Gods sake they can teach kids in first grade in FL to mark the right bubble and not to go out of the bubble. I still remeber the when we had to spend a while the day before the CTBS test making sure that we all could make our mark where we wanted it, and lets be honest unless you have a handicap it's not hard to put your mark where you want it to be.

Look at all the money it costs for this touch screen system, look at all the headache it caused and then think about all the other places that use scantron type systems and don't have these problems then if you live in Fl ask the people in power why?

Had I not moved I'd be asking myself.

Re:No big surprise

[AK Marc]

Punch card balloting is an extremely accurate and economical way to tally votes.

Yes. And there may be more economical and more accurate ways of tallying votes. Should we refuse improvement if the current way is acceptable?

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.

Poll taxes and voter tests have long been outlawed. They were used for systematic elimination of rights from select people. If you come up with some way that excludes idiots, you will get someone that tries to define some group of people they don't like to fit into that class of idiot (for example, I am seeing much more anti-immigrant sentiment these days, H1B visas, a resurgance in making English the official language, and other stuff, so I can imagine someone trying to make English ballots required, or some language test that will be much more likely to exclude non-natives).

Of course, the solution is that you accomodate the idiots and do what you can to make sure that all their votes are counted, as is the democratic process.

Re:No big surprise

[FearUncertaintyDoubt]

let ourselves get whipped up into making stupid decisions by political opportunists exploiting said idiots.

Let's not forget the profiteers. That's probably why we are seeing such slapdash work on these machines in the first place. After 2000, the Diebolds of the world probably knew that they had to produce a electronic voting machine and secure their contracts immediately or risk getting left behind...meaning, if you took the time to do it correctly, you would be too late.

Any time you see some kind of crisis (2000 election, 9/11, Iraq War), all the profiteers come out ready to milk the situation for favorable contracts and sell the government and public some sort of expensive snake oil.

It's the product of a political process that punishes politicians for thinking before they act. Your opponent can make political hay out of your inaction, even if it is out of due diligence -- hence an unread PATRIOT Act gets passed by a room full of Congressmen afraid of looking like they aren't for strong, decisive measures in the War On Terror(TM).

Re:No big surprise

[canoe_head]

"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."

That's almost like asking people on Slashdot to read the article first, right?

Re:No big surprise

[mstahl302]

Punch card balloting is an extremely accurate and economical way to tally votes.

It would help when making such statements if you were prepared to back them up. How about research from the Caltech-MIT Voting Technology Project that did some comparisions. According to their 2001 Report on Reliability of Existing Voting Equipment (executive summary),

We find the performance of punch cards alarming: punch cards are an established technology and the residual vote rate [spoiled or unmarked ballots] of this technology is nearly double that of alternatives.

Hardly what one would call "extreemly accuate", though I won't quibble with "economical".

Re:Yup, yup...

[FunWithHeadlines]

"Soon, he will even start wearing a military uniform."

I guess you missed his "Mission Accomplished" moment. He's already been known to play military dress up.

Re:Yup, yup...

[Merk]

His own military uniform? What, like a flight suit or something?

Backups please.

[GerbilSoft]

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.

Re:No recounts in districts with touchscreen votin

[aborchers]

What Republican got that law passed?

That would be the Republican majority in the Florida state congress.

Another example

[orthogonal]

Also see this article, the subject of a Metafilter discussion today:

At around 8:50, Soubirous's campaign manager, Brian Floyd, received a call from an election observer in Temecula informing him that the vote count had been stopped - apparently by Registrar Mischelle Townsend herself. The reason was not made clear. So Floyd and another Soubirous campaigner named Art Cassel jumped into a car and drove to Townsend's office to investigate. Sure enough, the counting area appeared to be near-deserted. But then they noticed two men huddled at one of the vote tabulation computers.

How hard is it?

[DigitalGodBoy]

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...

realtime paper backup?

[The_Real_Nire]

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.

Re:realtime paper backup?

[nadamsieee]

Or how about a Free/Open Source voting machine where the paper is the legal ballot...

Re:realtime paper backup?

[alkali]

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.

Absolutely. Or just have the machine print out a marked paper ballot with a bar code, and count the vote only when the voter deposits that ballot into the reader. That guarantees all ballots will be marked accurately and be readabe. If a printer runs out of paper, no problem.

Re:realtime paper backup?

[CrimsonAvenger]

Even better, we can print up ballots ahead of time, and the people can mark/punch/whatever them in accordance with the directions conveniently provided at the voting place, and deposit them in a ballot box.

Re:realtime paper backup?

[pentalive]

Leave off the voter ID The ballot is suposed to be anonymous.

The printserver is a single point of failure, use dedicated printers at each voting booth. (Once the ballot is printed the booth locks untill a poll worker unlocks it.. If the printer is out of paper or ink the poll worker can cause the ballot to re-print)

Each ballot does get an ID number (date-machinenumber-ballotnumber).

Sad that we accept this

[FerretFrottage]

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.

Why Allow Recounts for "Voter Intent"

[VeriTea]

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 :)

Re:Why Allow Recounts for "Voter Intent"

[LaCosaNostradamus]

Go and read the book "Jews for Buchanan". Other than being a very good (although biased) account of the 2000 Florida election, it did show copies of certain rejected votes. One that I recall had a checkmark by Al Gore's name, but then had the name "Al Gore" written in the write-in spot. By the rules, this was an invalid vote. By voter intent, this was a vote for Al Gore.

But I still agree with your sentiment. The rules for voting are too simple. We should dismiss the doctrine of "voter intent". I'd rather concentrate on voter education than highly-suspiciuous recount actions.

Re:Why Allow Recounts for "Voter Intent"

[VeriTea]

I was specifically refering to votes made by electronic voting machines, however I would apply the same to paper ballots. A closely contested match in nearly any arena (sports, politics, etc) will come down to a question of who most closely followed the rules. We need to have very clearly defined rules for determining valid votes. The 'voter intent' doctrine cannot provide a clear undesputable guideline (just look at the disagreement among election officials in the Florida recount). Well designed ballots approved by multiple parties and some basic voter education at the polls would go much further and cost far less then the solutions that are being investigated right now.

For Democrats who feel that the 'voter intent' doctrine is sound, ask yourself this question: Would I be comfortable if my candidate had officially won a close election and a recount was being held, in a county he won by a narrow margin, with predominately Republican election officials using 'voter intent' as their guide?

The doctrine of 'voter intent' threatens to make even the most stringently honest election officials suspect. 'Voter intent' can too easily become 'election official intent'.

Re:Why Allow Recounts for "Voter Intent"

[LaCosaNostradamus]

ask yourself this question ...

Believe me, I have, and I come down firmly on Nugent's sentiment: I don't trust vote counts in the hands of partisans. It's better to fulfill vote-recount requirements with machine kickouts than with people with punchcards in their hands and axes to grind.

Add to this the knowledge that many local election areas are highly partisan (strongly Republican or Democrat, and have been that way for a while ... effectively local "political machines"), then we should run screaming away from the idea of hand recounts.

Now we must educate the masses into understanding that e-vote machines are a whole other class of risk for vote fraud. Sometimes I despair.

"Disaster waiting to happen"?

[sczimme]

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.

Re:Yup, yup...

[JosKarith]

"Soon, he will even start wearing a military uniform."
Well I guess there has to be a first time for everything.

Re:Yup, yup...

[Monkelectric]

This is my greatest fear. Diebold promised to "deliver electoral votes" to bush.

The only reason I can think of for these voting systems to be *SO* insecure is so they can be tampered with, then if the deception is discovered they will say "oops, can't tell you who did it or how it happened... we don't keep records ;-)"

Whoops, the Cat's Eaten It!

[MooseByte]

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.

Re:Whoops, the Cat's Eaten It!

[killjoe]

I think history will look upon the last election as the beiginning of the end of democracy in America.

It seems like we are no longer enamoured of democracy anymore. Over 80% of the people in this country live in a state that always votes for the same party. Over 90% of the people in this country live in a house district that has been specially made so as to always elect one party.

The way I see it only 10-20% of the people in America experience democracy.

Re:Whoops, the Cat's Eaten It!

[Oddly_Drac]

"Cradle of Democracy my ass. We're heading to be the laughing stock of Democracy. And we're the punchline."

It's purely black comedy.

I was reading on Wired yesterday about the new 'Free speech' zones that are being put up, which are chainlink and razorwire cages under the lenses of cameras, after the 'Patriot' act (and only America could load the word 'patriot' to emotive effect), which allows for searches based on a whim of law enforcement, and *seems* to completely stomp on the concepts of privacy to the individual you appear to be watching the land of the free turn into the most draconian police state this side of China...China also uses the 'if you have nothing to fear' line, too.

Seriously, for a while I've wondered why you accept a system that rewards the guy that can gather the most cash as your representatives and keep supporting the system in the face of people from the outside telling you that you should have started fighting four years ago.

Hell, I don't think any system is entirely perfect, but America is heading for rocky terrain as the 'Land of the free'.

The other thing is that horrendous feeling that people on the outside are anti-American; some dumbasses are, but there are also people like myself that think that the American national psyche is one of thoroughly good people who want the best, both for themselves and everyone around them, but Your rights are being wholly eroded in the name of producing fear.

For the sake of little green apples, don't get moulded into a fearful nation; our (Britain) government has blown £8.3 million on an Ad campaign designed to tell us what to do during a terrorist attack; like we don't know after 25 years of bombing campaigns and shootings...it's intent is to allow further legislation to get waved through on 'security' grounds.

Re:Whoops, the Cat's Eaten It!

[marcop]

Over 80% of the people in this country live in a state that always votes for the same party.

Yeah, this is pretty sad. I have been debating whether or not to vote for Bush since 1) I am a Republican, but 2) I can't stand the guy. I even have discussions with friends and family about it. Then I remind myself that I live in NY State which votes for democrats mainly. Bush lost 2:1 to Gore in NYS in 2000. My vote will not matter.

I could vote for Nader and give his party the 5% of votes needed for federal funding. Or I can do a vote swap with someone in another state. Anyone have any adivce on how not to waste my vote?

Re:Whoops, the Cat's Eaten It!

[quisph]

I could vote for Nader and give his party the 5% of votes needed for federal funding.

Not this time. He's running as an independent.

You could vote for David Cobb, though.

Re:Whoops, the Cat's Eaten It!

[Soong]

There's a long list of what's wrong with our democracy: campaign finance, voting machines, ballot access, the media, and so on. But my biggest issue is: One vote reinforces the Two Parties. Ranked or Rated ballots make voters matter again and make elections fair for any number of candidates. I think that'd revive democracy.

Re:Whoops, the Cat's Eaten It!

[LaCosaNostradamus]

You should have obtained this opinion with some careful study of the formation of that Florida felon voter list in the months before the Nov 2000 election ... as well as the failure to "fix" it in time for the 2002 elections.

The methods of making of that list could only have involved criminal intent, since they clearly generated (many) false positives. That was the design. Yet, to this day, then-Sec'y of State Harris and Gov. Jeb Bush remain uncharged and unconvicted of the crime.

On average, each American is perfectly happy with vote fraud ... as long as their party benefits thereby. After all, who really listened to Ted Nugent when he paraphrasingly said he'd rather have his vote counted by machines instead of partisans?

Re:Whoops, the Cat's Eaten It!

[ihaddsl]

The US Goverment is doing the same (ads to tell you how to prepare for a terrorist attack) which tells you nothing very useful at all.

It's already happened, the Bush administration has made this country into a fearful nation. I only hope the country wakes up and realizes how fear is being used to control us by our own goverment.

Re:Whoops, the Cat's Eaten It!

[themo0c0w]

I'm going to get modded a troll for this, but it needs said anyway.

The US was not founded as a democracy. Read the original Constitution: states select electors, who appoint a President, who appoints judges for life. Senators are selected by the state legislatures. The only arm of the federal government democratically elected were the members of the House of Representatives.

The Constitutional Convention put those restrictions there for a good reason, too -- they were afraid of the tyranny of the majority. Judges appointed for life could protect liberty without being held to popular opinion; an Executive selected by electors would be less likely to be a popular tyrant oppressing the freedom of the minority. The only example they had of a democracy up to that point was Athens, and it eventually failed because of people voting for their self-interest rather than the good of the state. Madison, et al., sought elected Representatives who would make the best decisions for the whole rather than their re-election -- i.e., a republic rather than a democracy.

In the time since 1789, most of these protections have been removed in the name of democratic reform: the President is now (almost) popularly elected, Senators are elected in statewide elections, etc. Never forget, however, that democracy is not the cure for all evils befalling a society -- as many popular revolutions can tell us, the majority can be dead wrong in what it decides is best for a nation.

I'm all for some democracy. I want a say in how my government is run, since it only rules with my authority (and that of all other citizens). However, I am not about to cede all government to the will of the majority, since they are apt to deprive me of my freedom if it does not benefit their self-interest.

Re:Whoops, the Cat's Eaten It!

[killjoe]

Personally I favor swapping votes. I don't know how you would do it but....

Re:Whoops, the Cat's Eaten It!

[SlashDread]

No matter how idiotic, everything about elections suddenly sounds more likely, when you add ...in America!

Re:Whoops, the Cat's Eaten It!

[MooseByte]

"No matter how idiotic, everything about elections suddenly sounds more likely, when you add ...in America!"

If I hadn't already posted in this thread I'd use one of my mod points to toss a "+1 TragicFunny" your way. :-)

Re:Whoops, the Cat's Eaten It!

[Arkaein]

Vote for a 3rd party candidate or independent, any of them. One more vote won't matter a whit to one of the big party candidates, but voting 3rd party actaully matters to their cause (1 vote in a a few thousand is much more significant percentage wise than one vote in a few million) and sends a message to the big two that you're not happy with the status quo.

Correction

[travdaddy]

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.

Re:Correction

[Bearpaw]

The rule exempts not prevents the machines from conducting manual recounts (from paper receipts). Slight difference.

Given voting machine makers -- especially Diebold -- the difference is slight enough to not matter.

Re:Correction

[civilizedINTENSITY]

Recounts are only legal for the purpose of determining "intent". Machines are never unclear as to intent. Therefor its not legal to do a recount, as the recount can't be for the purpose of determining "intent". Thus your "exemption" is indeed prevention.

Voter confidence is the key or lack thereof

[FunWithHeadlines]

Voting officials or voting machine manufacturers who respond to these allegations ususally say those who argue for a voting trail are introducing voter confusion, or underminding confidence in the voting process, or some other Orwellian doubletalk. In fact, what underminds voter confidence is the knowledge that there will be no way to recount votes and verify what happened.

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?

Verification? What about anonymous voting??

[goldspider]

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.

Re:Yup, yup...

[October_30th]

James Ellroy in the preface of American Tabloid: "The real Trinity of [JFK's] Camelot was: Look Good, Kick Ass, Get Laid."

Look good, kick ass and get laid. That pretty much sums up what a great president is made of.

Troubling times ahead

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:Troubling times ahead

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Many of us are not standing idly by http://www.blackboxvoting.org/

How can you have trust in a system that does not dare to have the voters verify that their votes are counted correctly?

Many of us don't trust the system, but are forced to use it.

How can you have "voting machines" that leave even the slightest doubt about what the voter wants to vote?

Ask Diebold and the Republican politicians that they so unabashedly support.

Re:Yup, yup...

[antic]

He's already appeared in a military uniform:
http://www.dailyprobe.com/arcs/050603/bu sh.jpg

And here's him in that same uniform, but alongside some teletubbies!
http://www.davidstuff.com/usa/lincol n/bush-attenti on.jpg

Funny.

Re:Yup, yup...

[daniil]

No. It's the one that Al Gore wins.

Re:No recounts in districts with touchscreen votin

[sc2_ct]

Actually, the election board is controlled pretty overwhelmingly by democrats in the affected areas.

Re:Verification? What about anonymous voting??

[garcia]

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?

Word needed. Fectassertion? Infalliclaimism?

[dpbsmith]

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?

Re:Word needed. Fectassertion? Infalliclaimism?

[Thing 1]

who could complain about making sure that felons don't vote (in those states where felons are not allowed to vote?)

Actually, I find the practice abhorrent to remove voting capability for the rest of one's life after serving time.

And of course it makes it really easy to stay in power: declare something innocuous to be a felony (like smoking pot or, back in the 20s, drinking alcohol), and lock up all your opponents. BAM! You've just swung the vote.

Of course, now that we've got Diebold making voting machines, perhaps we don't need vote-fixing-felonies any more? (One can dream.)

I'm reading the Discworld books and recently came across the footnote "Ankh-Morpork had dallied with many forms of government and had ended up with that form of democracy known as One Man, One Vote. The Patrician was the Man; he had the Vote."

Re:Word needed. Fectassertion? Infalliclaimism?

[Anarcho-Goth]

Actually, I find the practice abhorrent to remove voting capability for the rest of one's life after serving time.

I think only 10 states in the union permanently ban convicted felons from voting.

Maybe we need a rehabilitation project that also moves them to states where they can vote?

Florida is a shithole anyway.

If no paper trail for voting, no paper trail. . .

[smooth wombat]

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.

This is what we need....

[jjh37997]

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.

Re:This is what we need....

[BCW2]

This so simple that lawmakers will never get it. Bureaucrats can't do anything the simple way, we must make it as complicated as possible. Thats how they justify their existance.

I mourn the death of common sense.

Re:This is what we need....

[Xylaan]

You mean like the voting machines made by Sequioa mentioned in this article.

After the user makes their choices, it shows a printed ballot behind glass, and asks that the voter confirm it. After confirmation, it is stored inside the machine.

Re:This is what we need....

[pentalive]

He who votes decides nothing
He who counts the vote decides everything

May I build the vote scanning machine?

Re:This is what we need....

[philbert26]

I was just about to post the same thing. I've been thinking about this problem for a while now.

The only problem I see is the possibility for machine cheating. You could program your machine to put 1 in 1000 votes for A into B's total.

Of course, if anyone suspects cheating, then there could be a manual recount. Open software would also be very helpful in preventing cheating. So I think this system is actually pretty good.

You could design a machine that only counted votes as it sorted the papers into piles. A light dependent resistor records a vote for A when the machine passes a ballot through slot A. A human could pick up the pile from slot A and easily flick through them to look for mistakes.

What's the downside?

Re:This is what we need....

[LMCBoy]

The only problem I see is the possibility for machine cheating. You could program your machine to put 1 in 1000 votes for A into B's total.

I agree that this potential for abuse exists in the grandparent's proposal. However, we should understand that the same risk of abuse already exists in machine-counted manual ballots. We have always had to trust a computer to count our votes accurately. The security comes in the possibility for a human-scrutinized manual recount if "irregularities" are suspected. The proposed system allows for the same kind of recount.

Open software would also be very helpful in preventing cheating.

Yes. But an interesting problem is, how can you be sure that the code which the voting booth is executing is the same as the source code which you scrutinized the night before? Short of allowing voters access to the booth's executable so that they can hash it with their own copy of md5sum, can it be done? Perhaps a voting official can cryptographically sign the executable after verifying its integrity, but again, it would be easy to hack in the "this voting booth has been verified" message.

Re:This is what we need....

[megalomang]

The voter checks to make sure that the canidates they selected are recorded on the ballot

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha... how many of the incompetent computer-illiterate (or even illiterate) morons in FL who couldn't figure out how to push the right buttons on the screen will check their ballots for errors?

You would probably have to show a photo of the candidate on the screen and print a photo of the candidate on the ballot and then require that the voter stand in front of the machine for at least 1 minute to compare the two to make sure that's what he wanted. And even then I'm sure FL could somehow skew the "intent" of the vote in a subsequent hand count.

Re:This is what we need....

[lowe0]

Better idea:

Record votes in both places. Compare the two totals at the end of the day. If there's a mismatch, pull out the paper slips.

Of course, that doesn't remove the human element of fraud from elections. But hey, when you promise your brother you'll deliver your state in the elections, I guess you kinda have to deliver, no matter what the voters have to say about it.

Re:This is what we need....

[spitzak]

May I build the vote scanning machine?

Sure you can. If you want to cheat you have to figure out a way to produce the same results from the counts in the vote recording machines that printed the ballot, and the same result if humans count the paper ballots.

Re:This is what we need....

[dave420]

Then you have to worry about the accuracy of the machine-readers, which will mechanically read the papertrail. If someone corrupted that, you're still screwed. That's the problem - even though it's machine-readable and human-readable, the counting is done by closed code, which is most definitely not human-readable.

What happened to "put the tick in the box next to your candidate"? It scales REALLY well, doesn't cost millions, and can give you an accurate count within hours. And, recounts are more than possible. :)

Re:This is what we need....

[NASAdude]

I think your idea has some merit.

It seems that some of the basic needs for a voting system are:

• Voters trust the system to be accurate and unbiased
• Some means is available to re-count the votes. For digital systems, this may include *backups* or a combination paper/electronic system as mentioned in the parent comment
• A means for voters to affirm their voting intent (perhaps a sub-point of 'trust')

I was pondering a means of doing electronic voting at normal voting locations. If system crashes / HD crashes are a concern, why not just keep real-time backups? Local backups could be via RAID or a locally networked backup system. A receipt could be given to indicate the vote was recorded *and* backed up. Once you go this far, why not have a networked centralized system to do live collection and reporting?

If the link to the central server is lost, queue the data for later uploading. The only problem with this is if you want to give a voting receipt to confirm the cast vote was received by the central server. Maybe if data are queued for later uploading, allow the voter to confirm that the vote was sent to the central server. Each receipt would be unique, but not tied to a specific voter, so anonymity isn't an issue.

And once you go that far... make the entire election database available for download. Then we each can perform our own re-count.

Re:This is what we need....

[Bob 4knee]

This is exactly what we need, except w/out the computer. When I lived in Maryland, one voted by connecting a line (drawing an arrow) next to the candidate's name. You could look at it, and read the vote. A machine could look at it and figure out who you voted for. If the process was messed up, they could revisit the paper ballot

Do we really need to try so hard to give the franchise to people who are too stupid to figure out such a simple process? I think not, but for those who will disagree: what makes you think slapping a computer (more difficult to operate than a grease pencil) on the front end will fix anything?

Re:This is what we need....

[Remlik]

Remove the computer, give the voter a felt tip pen and have them check the appropriate box (on a machine readable form) and you have the same system without the computer costs or failures.

In fact, I live in MN and thats how I've been voting for the last 7 years. The machines that read the ballot are even smart enough to detect common mistakes like two votes in the area and spit the ballot back out to be destoyed. The nice elderly person manageing the machine examines the old ballot, tells you what you did wrong, gives you a new ballot and sends you back to start again. The old ballot is shredded into another locked box.

This is not rocket science people, there is no need to use a computer to make a small mark on a piece of paper. What was Ockums Razor again? The simple solution tends to be correct.

Re:This is what we need....

[data_securt]

Amen.

That is exactly the sort of solution that gives folks the sort of advantages that electronic offers, while still satisfying the security requirements.

Re:This is what we need....

[TheSync]

The problem is that printers are 1) expensive and 2) break down quickly. Instead of"hanging chad," you'd have "worn-out printer ribbon".

If everyone could afford to go to existincing mechanical counter style machines, that would be an excellent way to go.

But expense and maintenance is a major problem when you have tens of millions of machines.

Paper ballots of any kind are also not a perfect solution. Often individual paper ballots "escape" through box failure.

Re:This is what we need....

[beakburke]

No, it scales extremely poorly compared to computerized tallying. It's much more expensive to handcount votes, and there is much more room for "creative interpretation." Yeah there are problems with computerized voting, but mechanical counting is likely more honest and less corrupt.

Re:This is what we need....

[jak163]

This is not rocket science people, there is no need to use a computer to make a small mark on a piece of paper.

I'm with you, but I think most /.ers are of the belief that a computer is always better for every situation because it somehow gets rid of human error. HAL was right, the problem was due to human error. And even if he wasn't right, he did the right thing to save the mission.

Re:This is what we need....

[zsau]

I've got a better idea, used by millions of democracies around the world. Here's a pen, here's a piece of paper. Tick/number/whatever the boxes. At the end of the day, round up your counters and your scrutineers and count the damn things.

Re:This is what we need....

[dave420]

How many corrupt people it would take to skew the vote in a manual count? Hundreds. To skew the vote in an electronic count? One.

You only need a few people to count a few thousand votes, so it does scale well. Sure - not as well as a Diebold RecountMaster 9000, but it's easily performed, verifiable, open to the public, and a whole less biassed.

Harder to rig, duh. Stupid person.

[SmallFurryCreature]

There is no reason except possibly that there is some urgent need for the result to be known in a few minutes after the ballots close. Media might like this but media also likes to show boobies and goverment doesn't let them do that either.

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?

Monitors Denied

[nuggz]

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.

Re:Monitors Denied

[CrimsonAvenger]

Hmm, Canada have any in their last election? The UK? France? Germany? No?

International monitors do not make for fair election practices. Bringing a suit against the Election Laws when you lose does, however, give you UNFAIR election practices.

We don't need electronic balloting. Some states have had it a long time, and it works fine. Some are rushing to get into it because of the hysteria during the last election. Therein lies the issue.

Re:Monitors Denied

[nuggz]

I am not aware of serious problems in the last Canadian election. There were some recounts.

Actually in the past when there were serious concerns they have a byelection in that riding.
If they are illegally shutting down polls or denying voters, or creating other barriers to a free election, I think the only way to overcome it is to run it again.

Re:Monitors Denied

[CrimsonAvenger]

I am not aware of serious problems in any US election. Unless "Al Gore didn't win" is a "serious problem". The votes were counted. Gore lost. He sued. They were recounted. He lost. He sued. Repeat until it got tiring.

Noone illegally shutdown polls last election. Though, as I recall, one area kept its polls open illegally past the specified closing time - the only Democratic stronghold in a largely Republican state. Federal Court had to order those polls closed, though no effort was made to undo the illegally cast votes.

However, I expect that all the "improved" electronic voting machines will produce "serious problems" in this election. Specifically, they will undermine democracy by allowing the losers (whoever they happen to be - I think it is by no means clear yet) to claim that the "election was stolen". Claims like that tend to do bad things for democracy.

Re:Monitors Denied

[CrimsonAvenger]

Ahh, struck to the heart! You have neatly countered my every argument! Your acumen is, as usual, incomparable!

A path of concerns...

[zentechno]

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?

Paper and pencil anyone?

[daffmeister]

I've got to ask, for something as important as an election, what's wrong with paper and pencil and manual counting?

Re:Paper and pencil anyone?

[Pratiz]

've got to ask, for something as important as an election, what's wrong with paper and pencil and manual counting?

It takes a long time to count them. I don't know about the number of eligible voters in US, but here in India The Election commision used the electronic voting machines for the last general elections (with around 400 million voters) and the counting hardly took couple of hours..

Re:Paper and pencil anyone?

[Kwil]

Bogus response.

I'd rather wait overnight or even a couple of days to know who the voters chose to lead my country rather than only waiting a couple of hours but not knowing whether it was the voters or the voting machines who chose.

Re:Paper and pencil anyone?

[daffmeister]

When you've got a lot of voters you've also got a lot of people that can count the votes. Australian elections are numerically smaller (maybe 10 million or so voters) but we get the result on the night of the election with hand-counting and I don't see any reason why this wouldn't scale.

Re:Paper and pencil anyone?

[Pratiz]

I'd rather wait overnight or even a couple of days to know who the voters chose to lead my country rather than only waiting a couple of hours but not knowing whether it was the voters or the voting machines who chose.

Yeah and provide ample time for the corrupt/baised officials and other elements to change the result....

from nyt

[nFriedly]

quote from the NYT article:

"it may very well be too late - Florida is headed toward being the next Florida,"

that sounds just like something that would come from florida

No source code?

[TejWC]

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.

No

[Vengeance]

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.

Where I come from...

[condensate]

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.

Re:Where I come from...

[Baron_Yam]

Sometimes the easiest solution is the least obvious...

Do we really care if a politician wins by x number of votes? Knowing he got 10% more would be enough, and certainly you could divide the weight of his ballot pile by the weight of the individual ballots to get a good approximation.

Makes recounts damn fast, too - just switch scales and make sure the results match.

Re:Where I come from...

[kashgar]

The problem here in the US that the democrats can only win if all the idiots vote for them and they can not afford losing any of them because he/she can not read/write/is-blind/is-mentally-ill etc. This line of thinking force us to be as idiot-proof as possible i.e. computer program with big pictures of the candidates and so on.

Lotto

[simpl3x]

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?

Verification, Cryptography and the Internet

[Corpus_Callosum]

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"???

Re:Verification, Cryptography and the Internet

[LincolnQ]

Your 'keyword' system falls to the same problem that people above you have articulated -- not only does it need to be anonymous, you actually need to PREVENT people from being able to access their own voting record. Otherwise you can get people saying 'prove you voted for X and I won't give you this punishment/will give you this reward.' That hurts the voting system immensely, so it should be impossible to walk out and prove that you voted for X.

The best you can do is allow them to inspect their own vote as it goes into a counting box, but then have them lose accountability for it beyond that point.

(As for your 'keyword' system, you don't need to have people pick unique keywords if you use a 'salt' or initialization vector in the encryption.)

Re:Verification, Cryptography and the Internet

[CrimsonAvenger]

No, this still leaves open the possibility of coercion or vote buying. Being able to PROVE how you voted can (and will) be used against you.

All of the previous arguments against receipts apply as well to this system.

Re:Verification, Cryptography and the Internet

[Corpus_Callosum]

Your 'keyword' system falls to the same problem that people above you have articulated -- not only does it need to be anonymous, you actually need to PREVENT people from being able to access their own voting record. Otherwise you can get people saying 'prove you voted for X and I won't give you this punishment/will give you this reward.' That hurts the voting system immensely, so it should be impossible to walk out and prove that you voted for X.

It does no such thing, really. There is absolutely no proof whatsoever of any specific voter connection in the model I presented. It does allow an individual to verify his/her own vote, but provides no record of that same thing. All one has to say under coercion is I don't remember my passphrase. Or they can use some published "abstain" passphrase or whatever. Case closed. Secret is retained.

(As for your 'keyword' system, you don't need to have people pick unique keywords if you use a 'salt' or initialization vector in the encryption.)

Salt of what? I am suggesting the passphrase to maintain anonymity and prevention of coercion and that passphrase is in fact the seed to a cryptographic hash that, when combined with a voting district, results in a unique key into a database of votes.

I'm sure my model can be improved on, but the point is - it has all the characteristics required for unequivical voting security.

Re:Verification, Cryptography and the Internet

[Corpus_Callosum]

See my response, above, to the other poster who suggests this. Think about it carefully. There is NO way that you could be coerced in this model, any more than you could be coerced to tell someone your vote. A simple, "I forgot my passphrase" is enough.

Re:Verification, Cryptography and the Internet

[Bombcar]

"Hey youse! Youse gonna vote right, eh?"

"Uh, I guess...."

"Yes, youse! Youse bring me proof you voted right, or I bust your caps!"

"But what if I forget my passphrase?"

"Then I'll bust you twice! Now GIT!"

Re:Verification, Cryptography and the Internet

[CrimsonAvenger]

"You need to prove you voted to take time off from work to vote."

"How?"

"Show me your voting record"

"What if I forget my passphrase"

"Then I'll have no proof you voted. By the way, you've been absent a lot this year. One more, and I'll have to fire you"

Re:Verification, Cryptography and the Internet

[Steve B]

All one has to say under coercion is I don't remember my passphrase.

Oh, yeah, somebody who is trying to bribe or coerce you for your vote is going to believe that....

Or they can use some published "abstain" passphrase or whatever.

That won't help, even if the person attempting to pressure you is too stupid to look up this published passphrase for themselves to make sure you aren't using it. If the big burly Teamster is going to break your kneecaps if you didn't vote for Kerry, generating a bogus "abstain" result isn't going to protect you.

Re:Verification, Cryptography and the Internet

[stanmann]

The voting machine, doesn't know who you are, therefore once your vote is recorded, you should be able to request a reciept(which will match a legitimate vote) for any combination of votes which has already been made.

face it: you're all screwed...

[Anonymous Coward]

...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.

Advice to voters in '04

[plopez]

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.

Yeah, yeah: "undermining" not "underminding"

[FunWithHeadlines]

Guess the topic got under my mind or something...

Audit trail w. old tech

[rlp]

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.

Belgian voting

[houghi]

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.

Great

[Prince Vegeta SSJ4]

now we will have 'Hanging Screens' instead of hanging chads. Or should that be 'Hanging Clippies'. Clippy: it seems you are trying to pick a candidate

• Click here for Bill Gates
• Click here for %^%$Error file not found

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.

Re:Other ways to lose an election...

[Bearpaw]

It'll be interesting to see whether redefining reasons to go to war can get someone re-elected.

Um, no, I guess we won't see that this year. Might get him elected, though.

Re:No recounts in districts with touchscreen votin

[yderf]

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.

Re:Yup, yup...

[SamuraiiProgrammer]

So the systematic purging of likely Democratic voters from the 2000 Florida roles was an accident?

The attempt to repeat this same action in 2004 was also an accident?

When the same accident happens over and over, I get suspicious.

That's a handy "feature," actually

[FunWithHeadlines]

If you are a Republican in charge of the voting process in a heavily Democratic county, you can go "oops, it crashed" and wipe out all the votes. Conversely, if you are a Democrat in charge of the voting process in a heavily Republican county, the "oops" move will work equally as well.

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!

So *DO* something, pussies!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

It doesn't seem to matter

[BCW2]

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.

Re:It doesn't seem to matter

[wayward_son]

This crap has been going on in Florida since long before Bush and the Republicans held office.

Many of the things that caused the 2000 (and 2002) fiascos were reforms passed by Democratic Gov. Lawton Chiles and the then Democratically controlled legislature in response to massive voter fraud in the 1997(?) mayoral election in Miami.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

No, it is not accurate

[hellfire]

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.

Re:No, it is not accurate

[kashgar]

If the vote was lost by less than 1000 votes it means it was more or less equal so both candidates are acceptable to the public. The idea if popular vote still stands since the radical non acceptable candidates (Nadar, Buchanan ) were filtered out no matter how you count.

Sophistry?

[epexegesis]

Sophistry

'A plausible but misleading or fallacious argument.'

Still not quite right, since this supposes that they sound plausible...

The most important thing...

[Al Dimond]

This article is over a year old, but...

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0307/S00065 .htm

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.

American "Democracy"

[rsidd]

I'm always puzzled by the nature of American "democracy".

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.

Re:American "Democracy"

[Bull999999]

I'm always puzzled by people who believes that they can learn all about politic from Micheal Moore movird.

The Supreme Court didn't decide that you don't need to win the popular vote in the state to win its electoral college votes, as Bush had more votes in the last "official" recount.

And can anyone here tell me why not a single Democrat Senator signed the paper contesting the election results?

Re:American "Democracy"

[rsidd]

I'm always puzzled by people who believes that they can learn all about politic from Micheal Moore movird.

I said nothing about Moore and there was nothing in his movie that was new to people who get their news from sources other than Fox News. I'm always puzzled that people are learning all this stuff for the first time from Moore's movie. The international media have been covering it for ages.

Re:American "Democracy"

[misleb]

The Supreme Court didn't decide that you don't need to win the popular vote in the state to win its electoral college votes, as Bush had more votes in the last "official" recount.

Who decided what was "official?"

-matthew

Re:American "Democracy"

[Bull999999]

The FL eletction officals. They could have recounted a thousand times with diffent results each time. The whole process was screwed up and this I put the word offical in quotes.

Bush vs. Gore election was a statical tie when given the margin of error for such a large poll. The idea but unrealistic solution would've been to hold another election with just Bush and Gore on the ballet.

Re:American "Democracy"

[Bull999999]

I said it because your comments were one sided just like Moore's movie. It always get me when people bash one source as being biased while introducing their own biased sources.

It's interesting how Moore asked the people in Flint about every one that they know who went to Iraq to get the largest responses while he limited the question to only childrens when asking congressmen about it to get the lowest responses.

Re:American "Democracy"

[amliebsch]

The Florida State Legislature, when they codified the state election procedures. All the SCOTUS basically did was hold them to their own laws.

Exactly. Just improve paper ballots

[leftie]

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.

Re:Verification? What about anonymous voting??

[pentalive]

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.

In Riverside County

[Anonymous Coward]

This incident in Riverside County, described in Paul Krugman's latest NYT column, is even scarier:

• 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.
  
  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.

See also a reprint of the Independent UK article and a longer LA City Beat article on the event.

Re:No recounts in districts with touchscreen votin

[Bull999999]

I guess the just need to get back to the Democrat designed butterfly ballet.

Re:Verification? What about anonymous voting??

[spoonyfork]

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?

E-voting won't save paper

[leftie]

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.

For anybody unhappy ...

[krygny]

... 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.

It's teh correct decision.

[raehl]

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?"

Re:It's teh correct decision.

[pgnas]

remember the "hanging chad"?

Please, don't let the people be involved, as it is I can't seem to wipe that goofy guy examining the ballot out of my memory.

Can't we just put these two guys into a ring and let them slug it out?

I will give up my vote for it.

Re:It's teh correct decision.

[zentigger]

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.

Thats right! Because there is no way that a programming error could possibly result in an incorrect tally...

Re:It's teh correct decision.

[Overzeetop]

And we know that processors never get the math wrong.

*cough* pentium 90 *cough*

Re:It's teh correct decision.

[Soong]

Congratulations, you have found that they made the correct solution to the wrong problem. Everyone knows that the real problem is the lack of paper ballot as the primary recording medium.

Re:It's teh correct decision.

[unitron]

Wasn't it the original Socket 4 Pentium 60s and 66s that had the floating point errors, rather than the Socket 5 75s, 90s, and 100s?

No such thing as coincidence

[LukePieStalker]

Miami-Dade "lost" the records the same way that Al Gore "lost" the 2000 election.

A question.

[teamhasnoi]

Why is it touchscreen voting that marks the only time that Republicans don't want to kill trees?

Re:Verification? What about anonymous voting??

[csguy314]

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.

Easy way?

[swordofstars]

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.

Isn't obvious? Elderly volunteers are to blame!

[IronChefMorimoto]

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

Created Equal

[Steve B]

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).

Re:Created Equal

[travdaddy]

Still, in the future, we should strive for voter intent, not teaching how to cast a valid vote.

Re:Created Equal

[b-baggins]

What an asinine comment. Since no one can know what a voter's intent was except the voter himself, the best way to strive to represent voter intent IS to teach them how to cast a valid vote.

Re:Created Equal

[kulack]

I agree. We should all have an opportunity to type in the hex representation of the of the jpeg file containing the Times Roman name of our chosen candidate.

I'm sure that bit twiddling freak "Joey 'jpeg' Smith" will make a good choice because his vote will be the only one that counts.

Seriously though, I agree. We take protecting idiots WAY too far in this country. Could be because EVERY ONE OF IS is an idiot at times and we have some emotional reason to protect them... Dunno.

Re:Created Equal

[travdaddy]

I'm not sure replacing chad machines with computers is taking it too far. It seems like a good idea overall! That point can certainly be argued endlessly though, especially with what we've seen in the implementation.

Certainly with other things (like warning labels) we do take protecting idiots WAY too far.

No no no, there won't be an election

[ScooterBill]

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...

Re:No no no, there won't be an election

[Codebender]

I really, really hope that you're wrong.

Re:No no no, there won't be an election

[/dev/trash]

Oh please. Times were a LOT worse in the 60's and 70's, and we had elections then.

Re:Verification? What about anonymous voting??

[kashgar]

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

Ok, let's solve vote buying

[Corpus_Callosum]

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...

Re:Ok, let's solve vote buying

[CrimsonAvenger]

Let's try this, then. The election in your district is a close one. Really close. So the strong-arm types from one party or the other (or any interested third parties) start offering $100 to re-vote their way.

Or are you assuming that the second "vote" doesn't do anything, or reveal anything? If so, what's the point? If the "second vote" counts, then you can buy votes with it, if needed. If the system will verify to the user that his "second vote" matches his first, it can be used to coerce the voter.

I don't think there is any way to do non-anonymous voting fairly. It will be abused WAY more than anonymous voting ever was.

That said, there should be some way to allow any voter to verify the software of a voting machine, if such is used. Which is to say, open-source software and generic hardware must be used in construction of the voting machines. And an option to get an MD5 checksum of the software actually running on the voting machine should be available to every voter.

Re:Ok, let's solve vote buying

[Corpus_Callosum]

Or are you assuming that the second "vote" doesn't do anything, or reveal anything? If so, what's the point? If the "second vote" counts, then you can buy votes with it, if needed. If the system will verify to the user that his "second vote" matches his first, it can be used to coerce the voter.

The second vote is not a vote - you are correct. It is only used for vote VERIFICATION. So that in the event that foul play is suspected, a govt body may make a request of a voting district to VALIDATE their vote. The idea is to get a statistical measure of the accuracy of the originally collected data. Not to get a re-vote.

I think the only thing coercion could accomplish in this scenario is to slightly skew the statisicts, making it look more likely that either (A) there was some vote tampering or (B) there are alot of people in that district that are not doing what they are supposed to be doing (e.g. validating their original vote). I don't know what the mathematical models would look like off hand, but I'll take a guess that large scale coercion to mess with vote VALIDATION would be largely a waste of time.

Re:Ok, let's solve vote buying

[CrimsonAvenger]

Ahh. I see.

I disagree that tampering with vote validation si a wasted effort. If you can make vote fraud look more likely in a few key districts, then you can produce results like 2000 - where one party is swearing up and down that the other party stole the election.

A democracy cannot survive unless pretty much everyone trusts the process. If you set up a system that can be monkeyed with in a big way, you have a fundamental problem. If you set up a system where the APPEARANCE that it can be monkeyed with is just as big a problem.

Is there a better way than the traditional anonymous ballot? I can't say "no", since there is always the chance that some bright person could come up with something really novel. But noone has yet.

Re:Who cares?

[MooseByte]

"So move. Go live in Ulan Bator or something. Who gives a fuck about you?"

"You" as in the American voter? Apparently piss few. Damn sad given how many people have served our country defending the privilege. Am I safe in assuming that you, who care so little about it, aren't among those ranks?

The amusing part is that many conservatives who are staying silent on the e-voting matter will be the FIRST to jump up and scream if their boy doesn't win the November 2004 elections.

Here's a simple test. Flip the results in your mind - Gore wins FL, Bush loses in 2004. If the system that produced the results would raise questions in your mind and have you screaming about vote tampering, insecure e-voting implementations and inability to conduct a recount, then the time to scream is NOW!

Any system that can't even approach the simplicity and recount-friendly nature of clearly marked paper ballots has no place in a democracy, much less the country that hinges its identity on the concept.

So who cares? Anyone who claims to believe in democracy. You apparently do not. So we'll keep our country and fight for the system so many have sacrified for. You, on the other hand, can move to any number of countries that don't bother with that whole "democracy thing". Enjoy.

ot - CF card should be ok

[epexegesis]

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.

Bad argument.

[El Camino SS]

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.

Re:Bad argument.

[OWJones]

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?

Dear God, I hope I never use a machine that you sysadmin. By your logic, we shouldn't have passwords, IDSs, or backups. Because, you know, if anyone does anything bad we can just arrest them.

It's called taking preventative measures, and this particular preventative measure -- not letting the voter keep a record of their own vote -- is the result of centuries of conducting election, in this country and others.

This is why a voter-verified paper ballot is so important. The voter knows that there is a tangible, hard copy of their vote that they personally have examined and deemed to be correct. It's up to the election officials to make sure nothing bad happens after that.

So, tell me, which seems like a better solution:

• Keeping an eye on election officials and the ballots between the time you cast your vote and the votes are tallied,
• or
• Making sure that no one ever threatens a voter to provide them with a copy of that voter's receipt, or even bribes them to vote for a given party (provided they can prove that they did vote that way).

-jdm

Re:Bad argument.

[wildwood]

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?

Arrested by who? The guy who just stole the election?

Prosecuted by who? The D.A. who was just installed by a corrupt political machine?

At least the judge, who was _surely_ elected in a fair and reasonable manner, will give him a fair trial...

Do the math. When you have voting corruption, it's no longer reasonable to assume that people will be arrested and prosecuted for crimes they commit. Especially when their crimes benefit the corrupt powers.

Re:Bad argument.

[Em Emalb]

what in the holy hell does the judicial system have to do with his computers?

I don't grok your comparison.

Re:Bad argument.

[OWJones]

His argument is that not giving voters a receipt of their ballot is a restriction on our freedom, and that if any Bad Person(tm) does try to coerce people into voting a given way, the FBI will arrest that Bad Person(tm).

My point is that not giving voters a receipt is a preventative measure against vote-buying, and that it is much more effective than after-the-fact policing and cleaning up the mess caused by the Bad Person(tm).

So if this person runs computers the same way they would run an election, no one would have a password (preventing someone from accessing another person's account), and they wouldn't use an Intrusion Detection System (giving the sysadmin notice that someone was trying to break in, before they did damage) or a firewall (preventing known attacks from coming in) because you can trivially arrest and prosecute anyone who does anything bad, and cleaning up afterwards is a breeze.

-jdm

Re:Bad argument.

[gnu-generation-one]

Is it worthwhile to make a system wide-open to cheating, and then ask someone (you suggest the FBI) to shore-it-up by trying to catch those who cheat?

It sounds like a Microsoft maintenance plan... "No need for a secure system, we'll just keep fixing it each day"

While it's nice that police are able to respond to election fraud, it's better to have a system which intrinsically prevents it. It's easier to run, for a start. Also bear in mind that when the police arrest people, their first targets will be those showing the fallibility of the system by demonstrating how easy it is to cheat. Like for example, the poster you responded to - such people are easier to catch because they want to alert the world to problems that need fixing. So your FBI agents will be enforcing security through lititgation, and preventing some serious problems from being resolved.

Re:Bad argument.

[Em Emalb]

Ok, fair enough.

Re:Bad argument.

[demachina]

"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"

I must of missed something. Have they arrested anyone in the White House for exposing the identity of a CIA agent. That was a felony, there are a few people in the White House who know who did it and in fact no on has been arrested "AFTER THEY COMMITTED A CRIME", a felony punishable by I think 10 years in the federal pen.

Sorry but in this country we only arrest some people who commit crimes, others get off scot free especially if they have money or connections. We often frame people for crimes they didn't commit, especially if they are poor minorities, for example the governor of Illinois had to take everyone off death row after it became apparent Illinois police and DA's were time after time framing poor minorities for crimes they didn't commit and the frames were falling apart thanks to DNA testing.

All in all the U.S. isn't the bastion of perfection in "Freedom and Deomcracy" you seem to think it is.

The other obvious problem with relying on local police to enforce election law is its not uncommon for the police to be involved in the election rigging. Mayor's and elected county sherrifs have in the past frequently been involved in vote rigging. There were accusations police in Florida were obstructing access to polls in poor black areas in the 2000 elections.

Another tangential example, a number of people in Afghanistan have been killed recently because they were carrying papers showing they had registered to vote. The remnants of the Taliban and local war lords who are opposed to the elections are killing people for registering. All in all, voters carrying around slips of paper is not a good idea. I see today Doctors Without Borders has decided Afghanistan is so dangerous today they are pulling out after 24 years. Kind of undercuts the Bush administration of what a showcase of success the new Afghanistan is.

Re:Bad argument.

[Politburo]

Do you mean to argue it is an inalienable right to have a voter machine printed paper record of how you voted? Those are the kinds of rights and freedoms that you have in America. Not the right to do whatever you want. In fact, no one is stopping you from making a paper record of how you voted, or announcing to all of us how you voted. What is being argued against here is the use of a take-home receipt. What restriction on your freedom is it if the machine does not print a receipt for you to take home? (Leaving the re-count problem aside as I am not arguing against voter-verified receipts, but take-home receipts.) Do you at least understand the argument against take-home receipts? To simply say any coercion is illegal is silly. Lots of things are illegal, and people get away with them all the time. In fact, using our legal system of innocent until proven guilty, it would be hard to prove voter coercion. I don't think it would become a widespread problem, but a take-home receipt opens up the possibility for coercion, offers no benefits, and gives no additional freedom. I hope you understand that the veracity of our voting system cannot be compromised in any way, and that is the priority here. Florida 2000 was bad enough.

Re:Bad argument.

[beakburke]

I think they have been threatening to pull out for quite a while. While I don't doubt that the situation in Afghanistan is dangerous, it certainly hasn't changed all that much from, say, a year ago. Maybe they just decided in hindsight that it was too risky to begin with. Or, knowing that their members tend to be very left/anti-Bush, they could be doing it to spite Bush. But all of that is just specualtion, since we can't know what they are really thinking. Personally, having Doctors without Borders leave doesn't really change my opinion one way or the other about how truly dangerous it is in Afghanistan (or any other place).

Re:Bad argument.

[bigpat]

"but a take-home receipt opens up the possibility for coercion, offers no benefits, and gives no additional freedom."

well said.

Re:Bad argument.

[Teun]

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.

Damn you live in a different world than those likely to be the victim of such schemes!
This is a real world scenario, it has happened and it will happen again.

Re:Bad argument.

[dbIII]

We prefer to arrest people AFTER THEY HAVE COMMITTED A CRIME

and then charge them and give them access to a lawyer in under two and a half years. The rules have changed somewhat guys - terrorism is the universal excuse. There's already been some clown of a representative that has suggested that the federal election be postponed for reasons of national security. Once someone that is not way off on the fringes suggests such a thing you know the democracy of the country is in trouble. Fortunately things will have to get a lot worse first.

Personally I think there should be universal sufferage. Make it the duty of every citizen to vote, and don't exclude felons or people who fail literacy tests or the various dirty tricks of the past. The US tracks people by social security number - use that number for voter registration and let every adult vote, just like in other democratic countries.

There are a lot of good voting systems out there, but the important thing is not to go with the local boys who generate jobs, or the company that gave you campaign contibutions - whoever is in power should see it is a bigger issue than that - the important thing is consistency, making sure that you are measing the same thing in every state and every county for the same contest. If India can get it right with a vast population, universal sufferage, and election violence, theft of voting machines and corruption impeding the officials, surely it isn't a big deal for Florida.

Why use a touch screen anyway, when a sheet of paper stuck on and a few buttons does the job? It's not as if the display has to change. Keep it simple, make it trivial to audit, then make it shiny afterwards if you have to. A good looking voting machine that doesn't do its job is far less useful than dropping a pebble in a bucket.

Re: Living in Denial alert

[leftie]

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?

Re:No recounts in districts with touchscreen votin

[CelloJake]

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.

Sobs....

[HungWeiLo]

My country doesn't have free elections, you insensitive clod!

Re:Yup, yup...

[workindev]

So the systematic purging of likely Democratic voters from the 2000 Florida roles was an accident?

Nope, it was no accident. Florida State Law requires that convicted felons be purged from the voting rolls. This law dates back to 1836, so you can hardly blame it on those evil Republicans in Florida today.

Okay.

[Chris Burke]

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.

Re:Okay.

[Monkelectric]

thanks for handling that, amazingly awesome 4 digit user :)

Re:Okay.

[Chris Burke]

Oh... It's just a line to blackboxvoting.

Re:Okay.

[jmays]

> This is hardly new, nor is it a fact that is under dispute.

I did not know that .. I digress.

>The only reason you have to call "bullshit" is 1) ignorance

Wrong. I missed that quote in the news but I am certainly not ignorant of the general situation.

>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.

Very wrong. I do believe CEOs and Corps are slowly taking over and trying to place their people in politcal power.

More over, the intention of MY post was to address the issue of an unlinked quote. I am not going to Google for every single quote that has no resource. In fact, an unattributed quote detracts from the conversation. IMHO the original poster should have included a resource for thier quote. End of story.

Re:America is turning into a scary place!

[csguy314]

Uhhh, do you perhaps mean 1984?
Though, granted, the 1930s were a scary time in history.

We can run an election, it's easy

[Soong]

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.

Why I kill trees

[jazmataz23]

...they would be worthless for validating what was actually entered in the database, since if you are worried about people modifing what the people actually voted they would just print out what the person entered while enter into the database the modified results.
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

Not a good argument...

[El Camino SS]

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..." ...and go to the Federal Court System for election tampering. The laws are exceedingly specific about things like this.

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.

Re:Not a good argument...

[KevinKnSC]

Try this one: Vote for me, and I'll give you $100. I also promise to pardon anyone who gets in trouble for supporting me in this manner. How does the FBI and DOJ handle that one, now that the guy who is tampering with the system is in charge of both the FBI and DOJ?

No electronic voting

[Monoliath]

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.

Reliable but not anonymous ...

[gstoddart]

It is entirely possible to produce a reliable e-voting system ...

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 ... in the last two elections you voted Independant -- the government has decided to cut off your social security would be an entirely bad thing.

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.

Re:Reliable but not anonymous ...

[Daniel Dvorkin]

I'm not saying that voting machines should run exactly the same way as ATM's; I am fully in favor of voter anonymity, and I understand that the requirements of an anonymous system are different from the requirements of a system in which -- as you say -- identification is of paramount importance. But my point is that secure, stable, reliable, and speedy electronic transactions of enormous complexity are possible, and that the electronic financial system proves it ... so we should be able to apply that technology to voting, which is really much simpler, and achieve similar performance. And the only reason we haven't done so, that I can see, is that the people tasked with creating the systems don't want them to work. Or rather, they want them to work a certain way ...

Re:Reliable but not anonymous ...

[AK Marc]

At least with physical, paper ballots if you can prevent box-stuffing and keep the ballots secure, you have both verifiable and anonymous.

I don't see it. If I drop my ballot in the box and it is later lost, it most certainly isn't verifiable. If I misread my ballot, I can not verify, after putting it in the box, how my vote would be counted. I don't see anything in the current (or proposed) physical ballot systems that gives anything I'd call "verification."

And, my other opinion is that "verification" of me ensuring that my vote is what I wanted it to be does not require that the government know what my vote was or that any 3rd party be able to verify my vote. Drop the straw men about some poorly implimented idea being abused. Would you like a way for you (and only you) to verify that the governemnt counted your vote in the manner you intended? It doesn't matter what media are used or methods. Just, would you like anonymous verification?

Re:Reliable but not anonymous ...

[Fulcrum of Evil]

And, my other opinion is that "verification" of me ensuring that my vote is what I wanted it to be does not require that the government know what my vote was or that any 3rd party be able to verify my vote

Nobody cares about your opinion, only what you can prove. Besides, if you can verify your vote, then so can the guy buying it.

Drop the straw men about some poorly implimented idea being abused.

They aren't straw men - the systems in place for the recent CA election were poorly implemented and very open to abuse. CA is currently suing Diebold.

Would you like a way for you (and only you) to verify that the governemnt counted your vote in the manner you intended?

Sure, so long as it doesn't allow for vote buying. Unfortunately, that pretty much makes it impossible.

Re:Reliable but not anonymous ...

[AK Marc]

Nobody cares about your opinion, only what you can prove. Besides, if you can verify your vote, then so can the guy buying it.

You can't prove that. That is only your flawed opinion. I can conceive of at least one way that will let you verify your vote without being able to prove your vote. So why are you spouting your opinion without proof in the sentence after whining about someone else posting an opinion?

Sure, so long as it doesn't allow for vote buying.

That you are incapable of coming up with verification and anonymity concurrently does not mean it is impossible.

Re:Reliable but not anonymous ...

[Fulcrum of Evil]

You can't prove that. That is only your flawed opinion.

It is my assertion, not opinion. Learn English, please.

1. Guy demands that you vote for Bush.
2. You vote.
3. You verify that you voted for Bush.
4. Guy from step 1 verifies your vote.

How does step 3 not allow step 4?

I can conceive of at least one way that will let you verify your vote without being able to prove your vote.

Go right ahead.

Re:Reliable but not anonymous ...

[AK Marc]

How does step 3 not allow step 4?

Any verification that doesn't allow you to share your verification. If there were "verification booths" at the city hall that would let you go in (alone) and verify your vote. You don't have someone looking over your shoulder when you vote, you don't get one looking over your shoulder when you verify.

I've thought of others, but it only takes one to disprove an absolute. Of course, I'm not saying it is perfect, either, but it certainly is a way to verify without being able to prove it to anyone else.

Re:Reliable but not anonymous ...

[Fulcrum of Evil]

If there were "verification booths" at the city hall that would let you go in (alone) and verify your vote. You don't have someone looking over your shoulder when you vote, you don't get one looking over your shoulder when you verify.

How do you tie the receipt to a person without also tieing the voting record to that one person. You could have a serial number for each vote, but now you have to guard against people getting access to the serial number and also deal with fake ID (mostly the former). You also have the problem of recording devices and crooked people in city hall.

Re:Reliable but not anonymous ...

[AK Marc]

You also have the problem of recording devices and crooked people in city hall.

And you have the exact same problem at the polls with paper or electronic voting.

How do you tie the receipt to a person without also tieing the voting record to that one person. You could have a serial number for each vote, but now you have to guard against people getting access to the serial number and also deal with fake ID (mostly the former).

If people do get the serial number, it is useless unless they also have the database to check it against. There would be a possibility of corruption in the gvt that would have people accessing the db when they shouldn't. However, since the vote wouldn't be tied to the voter, it would take someone finding the serial number for a voter, then linking it to the vote. If you don't want that to happen, and you are not concerned about verifying your vote, then destroy the recipt upon recipt. If you want to verify your vote, then keep the recipt until you verify your vote. If someone (other than someone with direct access to the vote db) gets the recipt, they shouldn't be able to use it.

Call your Rep to support HR2239!

[hethatishere]

Call and get your Local Reps to Co-sponsor the "Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act" or HR2239.

For more information go here: http://verifiedvoting.org/resources/hr2239_volunte ers/hr2239_effort.asp/

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.

Related Times Op-Ed

[kingLatency]

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.

That should help you out!

[Pastis]

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 :)

Re:Yup, yup...

[Chris Burke]

Hello... they weren't felons. That's the whole point -- the list of felons was pure and utter shit.

A classic case...

[Bull999999]

It's interesting how the article starts out with a link to CNN.com.

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 ./ 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.

Re:A classic case...

[Idarubicin]

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".

How about don't trust the mass media, or independent bloggers, or Linus freaking Torvalds, or any news source.

Read the article. Test the arguments. Compare with other points of view and other speakers with other axes to grind.

If CNN publishes a well-reasoned article that contains sound arguments, verifiably factual information, and no apparent lies of omission, then yes, in this case the mass media can be trusted--or rather, is worth referring to.

Re:A classic case...

[/dev/trash]

What is ./?

Re:America is turning into a scary place!

[harley_frog]

Screw 1934. From where I'm sitting, it's starting to look a lot like a 1984.

Re:My new Ballots

[Tazzy531]

That's quite a confusing ballot. Does the X over the person's face mean that you're not voting for him? Or does it mean that's the one that you're voting for?
What if you draw mustaches on the candidate? Does that count?
Sorry, just be facetious...

Re:Yup, yup...

[Silverhammer]

Blockquoth the parent:

So the systematic purging of likely Democratic voters from the 2000 Florida roles was an accident?

You shouldn't get all of your "news" from Michael Moore...

Here's the truth: after the 1998 Miami mayoral election was invalidated because an unusually large number of convicted felons had voted, the State of Florida hired an outside contractor to purge felons from the election rolls. Unfortunately, due to sloppy programming, many eligible voters with similar names were mistakenly removed as well. Even worse, these voters did not learn they had been removed until they reported to their designated polling places on the day of the election.

However, post facto analysis showed there was no correlation between the mistakenly removed voters and their race or voting preference. In fact, the contractor's refusal to take such factors into account actually contributed to the confusion.

And in the end, several thousand felons still voted in the 2000 election despite the purge, and 68% of them voted Democrat.

Source: Palm Beach Post, 27 May 2001

Re:My new Ballots

[Tazzy531]

Also, since you brought up literacy requirements, why don't we just get rid of this stupid electoral college? Even the Iraqis said that it was a stupid idea when we tried to implement it there.

Paper vs Silicon

[Bertrum]

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?

Re:Paper vs Silicon

[t_allardyce]

Its the same as the old "NASA spends millions developing a special pen that can write properly in space, the Russians just use a pencil" story. You can tell some PHBs spend hours trying to come up with a powerpoint presentation to persuade states to use electronic voting instead of paper, and words like "synergy" "solution" and "ease of use" featured. I think most voting machines cost several thousend dollars.

Re:Paper vs Silicon

[amliebsch]

Well...excepting that there were some good reasons NOT to use a pencil...

For the record...

[mratitude]

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.

Re:For the record...

[Vancouverite]

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.

Well, assuming that this particular tinfoil-hat theory is correct, I would expect to see the majority of machines moved into majority Democratic districts. After all, under this theory, the Republicans would want to shift votes from Democrat to Republican, and a 1% shift in a primarily Democratic district is more significant than one in a primarily Republican district.

Re:For the record...

[fishbowl]

"If these folks do their homework, they'd note a preponderance of e-voting initiatives are being pushed in majority Democratic districts."

Why would it make sense for the Repubs to push their stuff in Repub areas? Of *course* they want their machines in Democrat territory! They already *have* their own turf covered, no need to manipulate anything there!

I think it would put a lot of people in their place, if one or more states whose constitutions allowed it, decided to send their electors by vote of the legislature, and not by an at-large election.

Check your state constitution, it's quite likely that there is nothing in there that actually requires the electors to be chosen in a popular vote election. With all the talk of manipulated voting machines, or federal cancellations, or any of the other issues, I think it would be very interesting if a state legislature were to decide on that state's electors.

Re:For the record...

[Anarcho-Goth]

Check your state constitution, it's quite likely that there is nothing in there that actually requires the electors to be chosen in a popular vote election. With all the talk of manipulated voting machines, or federal cancellations, or any of the other issues, I think it would be very interesting if a state legislature were to decide on that state's electors.

Yet another example of why the Electoral College should be replaced with popular vote, as well as how most people are utterly clueless about how the Electoral College actually works.

Most people don't realize that for the first 100 years or so, citizens didn't even vote for the Electors, or that the Electors voted for do not have to vote for the person they are supposed to represent. That's how the Libertarians got their first Electoral vote.

But then what's the point of electing by popular vote if the election is a fraud?

Re:For the record...

[fishbowl]

"Yet another example of why the Electoral College should be replaced with popular vote, as well as how most people are utterly clueless about how the Electoral College actually works."

I would support a popular vote if the states were to be made truly sovreign and completely independent from one another. Whether that means there would be a federal government at all, is debatable.

Re:For the record...

[mratitude]

Also for the record, without the electoral college, the population in 6 states would control the Presidential office cycle after cycle.

It's a winner-take-all system based on the individual outcome of each state. The Presidential election is not a simple majority vote.

Once you understand the implications of how the President is voted into office, you understand that the United States is not a pure democracy and why it is not a pure democracy. No pure democracy exists that did not eventually spiral into a totalitarian mess.

lose a what?

[kwoff]

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.

Re:Yup, yup...

[J-Piddy]

Actually, the voters in Florida who were incorrectly purged WERE NOT felons. That's why it was incorrect to purge them.

Now, to be fair, a number of them were black; while you seem to imply that we should be ashamed that "felons" vote democrat, should we be ashamed that black people do too?

Re:My new Ballots

[Archangel Michael]

Actually, that was a hidden point. It really doesn't matter what form the ballot is, some people will just be confused, and not get it right.

While it is important to give EVERYONE the opportunity to vote, there is NO REQUIREMENT that every vote be counted. Tons of ballots are not counted each election, simply because they are mismarked.

What is amazing is that some people cannot get over the fact that they lost. Every recount in Florida showed that Bush did in fact get more vote. Not once did Gore win the recount. This is simply ignored by the likes of Gore.

Not that I am a fan of GW, I am not. I am not a partisan republican, I am Libertarian. Which at least gives me some level of objectivity beyond D = bad, R = good or the R = bad, D = good rhetoric.

And who is the idiot who suggested the UN come and help us run elections? The same UN that has Libia on the Human Rights Committee.

Re:Verification? What about anonymous voting??

[El Camino SS]

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.

Re:Verification? What about anonymous voting??

[AK Marc]

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?

Re:Tinfoil hat alert!!!

[demachina]

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.

Re:Who cares?

[dave420]

"You, on the other hand, can move to any number of countries that don't bother with that whole 'democracy thing'"

Or, he could move to one of the many countries that does it better. Don't think the US is the last bastion of democracy. It wasn't the first, and it sure won't be the last. America is nothing special.

Re:Yup, yup...

[adius]

Reminds me of a boss that hires a contractor and doesn't give proper instruction for the job. If you had only one choice, who would you blame? The "contractor" hired to do a job or the boss that's in charge of it all? If blaming a contractor on everything (sloppy programming) makes you sleep better at night then go ahead. I blame it on the public officials (bosses) that we trusted to handle the task. We need a regime change in other places than the White House. FYI, I'm in Florida.

the reason printers suck...

[dvd_tude]

...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.

The medium. . .

[Fantastic Lad]

The only way to sell lies on a regular basis is to tell a steady stream of 'truth', (or perhaps, that should be better put, 'stuff people have already been taught to accept as real'), and then bend it at key moments in ways advantageous to the controllers.

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

Re:The medium. . .

[Bull999999]

You pretty much took the words out of my mouth. I'd mod you insightful if it wasn't my own thread...

It seems that the /. was down for a bit, and I wouldn't be suprised if the tinfoil hatters start blaming Bush for it.

Re:Verification? What about anonymous voting??

[NASAdude]

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).

This won't get read b/c the thread is too big

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Individual votes are still somewhat meaningless...

[kirel]

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.

An almost air-tight set up. Almost. . .

[Fantastic Lad]

Regarding the, 'Voting Machine Scandals', this is I suspect, a case of mis-direction.

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

Re:Who cares?

[MooseByte]

"Don't think the US is the last bastion of democracy. It wasn't the first, and it sure won't be the last. America is nothing special."

Absolutely, fully agree. America is quickly on its way to being a backwater of quasi-democracy if things don't turn around ASAP. And that's sad. Very sad.

Re:My new Ballots

[misleb]

I think one of the reasons for the electoral college is to give smaller states a little more influence. Like how the Senate is organized compared to the Congress. I'm not sure how Iraq is organized, but I'm pretty sure the that the reason the electoral college doesn't make any sense there is because they don't have states as we know them.

-matthew

Please don't vote-swap

[MooseByte]

"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!

How to Lose an Erection

[radimvice]

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.

Re:Verification? What about anonymous voting??

[sjames]

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.

Re:No recounts in districts with touchscreen votin

[Rei]

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.

Re:Individual votes are still somewhat meaningless

[amliebsch]

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.

Doesn't really compare...

[warrax_666]

you see, the free beer offer was just to register to vote, it had nothing to do with how you voted.

Re:Doesn't really compare...

[Loco3KGT]

you see, i believe that's exactly what I typed.

Re:Doesn't really compare...

[Procrastin8er]

Sure but if you register as a Dem you get a Sam Adams, if you register a Repub they gave you Old Milwaukee.

Why?

[Danathar]

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?

Re:Why?

[Beardo the Bearded]

It's the verification that takes the time and effort. At first glance, it does indeed seem quite simple to make an electronic voting machine. All you require is two variables:

do
{
if( candidate1_button )
{
candidate1++;
print_result();
}
if( candidate2_button )
{
candidate2++;
print_result();
}
}while( ELECTION_TIME );
announce_winner();

However, that's going to assume that everybody in the system is honest and you've only got one machine. You've now got to verify that every user in the system not only is a registered voter, but hasn't voted at any other terminal. In addition, you have to make sure that someone doesn't get into the box and change the code or just break the terminal. (If you have physical access to a box, you have root / administrator access.)

One slackware box is cheap. Millions might not be. It might be cheaper to go with slackware, but I think a large part of the price involves the touch-screen. Compared to the diebold machines, it would probably be a little cheaper, so I can see your point here.

You now have to put in code that checks with, say, the driver's licence. Now you've got to interface with the DMV database. Ah, nuts, I said database. Now you've got communication protocols and database protocols. If it's not the DMV, then it's going to have to be some other set of records. It's not that hard to do, but I think there's a substantial difference between "getting it to work" and "Guaranteed to work under all circumstances, and we promise that everyone who should vote gets to vote."

Okay, the power goes out. It's restored within about 20 minutes, but what does your box do? Has it lost the votes of the previous people? Does it boot up into voting mode, or does it sit there waiting for a tech to show up? Does your techs want Bush or Kerry in the White House? Do they not care, but were paid off one way or the other?

My view is that the voting machine code should be held to the high standards that military-grade software is. I mean, if the voting machine code is not a national security issue, I don't know WTF is.

Re:Yup, yup...

[cheezedawg]

It says that the election supervisor of the county that they live in is to blame, and the 25 counties with the highest error rates were administered by Democrat supervisors. Why do you ask?

Re:Yup, yup...

[cheezedawg]

According to the USCCR, the error rate of the list was around 14%, so it wasn't "pure" crap. Many counties didn't even use the list at all, but we don't know how many because the Democrat majority in the USCCR didn't bother to find that out before they proclaimed that the felon list was responsible for disenfranchising "countless" innocent people.

The highest estimates are that prior to the election, about 1,100 non-felons were incorrectly removed from voter registration (again, this is from the USCCR). The vast majority of them successfully appealed this and were allowed to vote. In fact, the USCCR did not hear testimony from a SINGLE person that was incorrectly prevented from voting because of the list.

We need a new topic: "Your Rights in Florida"

[Max Threshold]

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?

Transparent Electronic Voting

[Jagasian]

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.

Required Reading for US Voters

[csguy314]

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.
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/newsni ght/117411 5.stm
http://www.infernalpress.com/Columns/electi on.html
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010205&c= 1& s=palast
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChoicePoint #Florida_V oter_File_Contract
http://www.choicepoint.com/new s/2000election.html

Re:Verification? What about anonymous voting??

[papaZen]

Not necessarily an impossible requirement.

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

Re:Yup, yup...

[workindev]

Thats funny, because the public official who hired the contractor was Ethel Baxtor, and she is a Democrat. But let me guess, thats not kind of "regime change" you were talking about, is it?

The old way is the way to go

[dacarr]

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?

Re:Yup, yup...

[workindev]

How come US Civil Rights Comission couldn't find a single person that was incorrectly denied the right to vote? They found about 1,000 people who shouldn't have been on the list, but every one of those people ended up voting in the 2000 election.

Easy fix:

[Beardo the Bearded]

Pee in the bathtub. The walls are waterproof.

Re:Yup, yup...

[YrWrstNtmr]

As was the purposeful failure to count many military absentee votes in the 200 election. Which are usually pretty strongly in the anti-democrat camp.

It is good to be suspicious. Of both sides.

Re:Tinfoil hat alert!!!

[demachina]

"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..."

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" ... 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.

"...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.

Re:America is turning into a scary place!

[pclminion]

No, he really does mean 1934.

Re:No recounts in districts with touchscreen votin

[gcaseye6677]

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.

Re:Isn't obvious? Elderly volunteers are to blame!

[kirkjobsluder]

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.

Election 2004: The Mickey Mouse Referendum

[t_allardyce]

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!

Re:Keep counting bodies.

[jb.hl.com]

The US is responsible for more pain, poverty and strife than any other nation on Earth.

Al-Qaeda is responsible for much less.

I find it ridiculous that nobody is standing back and saying "Why are they attacking us? What have we done in the past that might anger them?".

But no, we have politicians flinging rhetoric. Yay.

This is doable

[ErikTheRed]

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.

So don't leave the polling station with the paper!

[lilgerry]

Deposit it in the bin marked "In case of electronic system failure or challenge, open this bin and count by hand."

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 ... 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.

Re:Space Pen

[onkelonkel]

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.

Re:AMERICANS, LISTEN UP

[jb.hl.com]

We have since recognised that Dresden was horrific, and we have apologised for it and consider it an atrocity.

America is unrepentant for just about everything.

Re:Yup, yup...

[edhall]

Let's see; from the US Commission on Civil Right's Is America Ready to Vote? Election Readiness Briefing Paper, page 50, last paragraph:

In 2000, the Commission also found that prior to the elections, officials in Florida had removed thousands of names on the grounds that they were convicted felons. In fact, only a fraction of those removed actually had felony convictions; most were Floridians who had similar names. After the election, state officials ordered the names replaced on the rolls, but affected Floridians had already been barred from voting.

(Emphasis added.)

-Ed

Another Recent Article I Read

[Master of Transhuman]

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.

Re:Another Recent Article I Read

[yderf]

This actually happened in my hometown (Jacksonville) at my university (UNF). *shivers*

It was reported in the folio weekly. Unfortunately they don't have an online version.

An interesting note in the story was the lady that discovered it and went to the Democratic Party headquarters in town was a republican. Who would have guessed?

Re:Another Recent Article I Read

[mratitude]

The moral of the story is... ... When you walk up to a Republican registration table, don't be surprised that the forms are pre-checked Republican.

On a more serious note, considering the problems that Floriduh voters had in general during the last Presidential cycle, information like this should be taken with a grain of salt (and then throw that over your shoulder!).

Re:Another Recent Article I Read

[yderf]

A point that was clear in the article but wasn't mentioned here was that the table never claimed to be a republican registration table, and in fact when question the people at the never refused to speak to the lady. It was all very fishy.

*snicker*

[i chose quality]

oh i did SO misread the title.... :)

Re:You are incredibly stoopid!

[0x0d0a]

Voter checks reciept against the vote they wanted. Stuffs it in aballot box & walks away, you window-lickin', short-bus ridin' retard.

Right. Which simply removes electronic voting from the loop.

I'm talking about using electronic voting meaningfully.

Re:Verification? What about anonymous voting??

[EvanED]

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.)

Re:No recounts in districts with touchscreen votin

[drooling-dog]

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.

...and, as they've shown in the past, they have little interest in assuring accurate vote counts in areas that are "overwhelmingly" Democratic.

Re:Tinfoil hat alert!!!

[demachina]

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.

Re:Yup, yup...

[workindev]

Then allow me to quote from the Dissenting Statement from 2 commission members:

VI. The Commission's Analysis of the Felon List is Misleading The report asserts that the use of a convicted felons list "has a disparate impact on African Americans." "African Americans in Florida were more likely to find their names on the list than persons of other races." Of course, because a higher proportion of blacks have been convicted of felonies in Florida, as elsewhere in the nation. But there is no evidence that the state targeted blacks in a discriminatory manner in constructing a purge list, or that the state made less of an effort to notify listed African Americans and to correct errors than it did with whites. The Commission did not hear from a single witness who was actually prevented from voting as a result of being erroneously identified as a felon. Furthermore, whites were twice as likely as blacks to be placed on the list erroneously, not the other way around.

The compilation of the purge list was part of an anti-fraud measure enacted by the Florida legislature in the wake of a Miami mayoral election in which ineligible voters cast ballots. The list for the 2000 election was over-inclusive, and some supervisors made no use of it. (The majority report did not bother to ask how many counties relied upon it.) On the other hand, according to the Palm Beach Post, more than 6,500 ineligible felons voted.

Based on extensive research, the Miami Herald concluded that the biggest problem with the felon list was not that it wrongly prevented eligible voters from casting ballots, but that it ended up allowing ineligible voters to cast a ballot. The Commission should have looked into allegations of voter fraud, not only with respect to ineligible felons, but allegations involving fraudulent absentee ballots in nursing homes, unregistered voters, and so forth. Across the country in a variety of jurisdictions, serious questions about voter fraud have been raised....

The table reveals that 239 for the 4,678 African Americans on the Miami-Dade felons' list objected when they were notified that they were ineligible to vote and were cleared to participate. They represented 5.1 percent of the total number of blacks on the felons list. Of the 1,264 whites on the list, 125 proved to be there by mistake--which is 9.9 percent of the total. Thus, the error rate for whites was almost double that for blacks...

Most notably, the Commission did not hear from a single witness who was prevented from voting as a result of being erroneously identified as a felon. One witness did testify that he was erroneously removed from the voter list because he had been mistaken for another individual on the felon list whose name and birth date were practically identical to his. However, he was able to convince precinct officials that there had been a clerical error, and he was allowed to vote.

So, basically, the majority opinion of the USCCR study concluded that most of the people that were not allowed to vote were incorrectly included on the list even though they didn't receive testimony from a single person who fit this scenario. That sounds like some good investigative work.

Our computer crashed so we lost the votes.

[eadint]

This happens after someone requests an opportunity to review the voting records.
Cmmon this is slashdot, how about the real questions.

1. Where are the Backup Tapes
2. Can the necessary data be recovered from the hard drive
3. Can the data be restored from backup
4. What is your disaster recovery plan
5. Why were you working on live data without a backup
   
6. why does your software crash and delete valuable data
7. 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

1. The data was not lost in a crash
   
2. The data was deliberately destroyed to hide tampering
3. the blame was put on a computer crash as a technical scapegoat.
4. 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.

blame Republicans

[phyruxus]

>>felons tend to vote overwhelmingly Democrat.

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?

Election problems

[nuggz]

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.

Re:Election problems

[CrimsonAvenger]

Serious problems, I said. I don't get consider one poll opening late for lack of ballots "serious".

Nor do I consider polling stations far away from home to be "serious", unless it is a systemic failure - all the Democrats have polling places two hours from home, while all Republicans are 50 yards from their polling place, for instance.

I do not argue that there are not problems in ALL elections, except the ones in Iraq under Saddam (100% of registered voters voted in his last election, and every one of them voted for Saddam! Talk about a well run election!).

However, there are seldom "serious" problems in any elections in places with a long tradition of democracy. I think Canada and the USA count, as do most European countries. Australia. Places you find problems are where people routinely game the system, where they have no tradition of democratic rule.

Re:Space Pen

[t_allardyce]

Could we use this space pen for paper ballots?

Speaking of ATMs

[frankie]

Amelia Tyagi on NPR's "Marketplace" had a disgustingly smirky feature story about computer voting machines. She flat-out laughed at the notion of computer fraud, specifically mentioning that everyone trusts ATMs, why not e-votes? (answer: IT'S THE PAPER TRAIL, STUPID!) She also threw a straw man argument about 91-year-old Tillie, volunteering at the local polling place, secretly being a 1337 HAX0R and rigging the election for County Clerk. I wanted to reach into the radio and slap her face.

If you care about your vote, write a complaint to letters@marketplace.org.

Re:Speaking of ATMs

[Minna Kirai]

(answer: IT'S THE PAPER TRAIL, STUPID!)

Nope. The paper reciept you get from an ATM is too easily tampered with. It doesn't improve trust in the ATM system at all (except prehaps in an irrational way). It's just a convenience for the customer's own recordkeeping.

What, you think that you can walk into a bank with a reciept and tell them "I only withdrew $30, not $3000, so put $2970 into my account immediately." Good luck! (If it does work, it'd be due to a personal trust between the banker and you, not the strength of a faded slip of paper)

specifically mentioning that everyone trusts ATMs, why not e-votes?

That's the rational position. An ATM fraud would be enormously more damaging to the victim than a voter fraud- it's $1000s of dollars versus a single lost vote that statistically wouldn't have changed anything anyhow.

Of course, rationally, we wouldn't vote at all... so it's good we're not always rational.

Re:Speaking of ATMs

[cmdrwhitewolf]

(answer: IT'S THE PAPER TRAIL, STUPID!)

Nope. The paper reciept you get from an ATM is too easily tampered with. It doesn't improve trust in the ATM system at all (except prehaps in an irrational way). It's just a convenience for the customer's own recordkeeping.

What, you think that you can walk into a bank with a reciept and tell them "I only withdrew $30, not $3000, so put $2970 into my account immediately." Good luck! (If it does work, it'd be due to a personal trust between the banker and you, not the strength of a faded slip of paper)

But, your forgetting that there still is a paper trail with ATM's - their just inside the ATM where it keeps a record of all of it's transactions, so the bank can track how much money was given out and to whom. Since electronic & mechanical mishaps, like not giving out bills on withdrawls (or gives out to many), happens often enough that there's a need for an audit trail of what exactly was supposed to happen with each transaction.

So, sure the bank may not completely trust that little faded slip of paper in it's customers hands, but they certainly do pay attention to that transcript roll inside the ATM - because it means the difference of losing hundreds of $20 bills to some 'lucky' smuck who only intended to withdraw $40!

Re:Speaking of ATMs

[Minna Kirai]

But, your forgetting that there still is a paper trail with ATM's - their just inside the ATM where it keeps a record of all of it's transactions

But that paper is not more trustable than the ATM itself. The software in the ATM printed it, after all!

If you suspect that a hacker (or fraudulent banker) has modified the ATM to cheat you, you should be equally worried that he has changed the very software which prints that internal paper.

(Maybe if the paper was visible in a little plexiglass window, before stacking up inside the machine... that might inspire a little more trust)

well

[argStyopa]

...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?

Re:Tinfoil hat alert!!!

[demachina]

"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.

something's missing

[Doc Ruby]

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?

Re:something's missing

[jdeisenberg]

How did Janet Reno, powerful predecessor of Attorney General John Ashcroft, let those votes disappear without obtaining justice for the voters?

Well, if I read the article correctly, the voting took place in 2002, well after Mr. Ashcroft had become Attorney General. She was running in a primary for governor, but she wasn't in charge of the Justice Department at the time.

Re:something's missing

[Doc Ruby]

Yes - I'm pointing out that Reno wasn't just an ordinary challenger for mayor, but rather an informed, connected, tough challenger. Moreover, even if the discarded votes wouldn't have been enough for her to win, her career in "justice" might have compelled her to act, merely to ensure that those voters' ballots were fairly counted. Puzzling.

Re:Tinfoil hat alert!!!

[foidulus]

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.

Re:Yup, yup...

[beakburke]

Actually it gets even better. The purging debacle was well known at least one month BEFORE the election, and an appeals process was setup to allow those incorrectly purged to appeal their removal. Approximately 5% or those purged were put back on the registration list through this process. However some counties decided instead simply not to purge any of the names from their voting rolls and allow the fealons to vote rather than risk disenfranchising some legitimate voters who they feared might not appeal their removal from the eligible voter list.

So florida had multiple problems. 1. Incorrectly purged voters had only a month or maybe two to appeal their removal, thus some people elegible to vote were not able to. 2. Some counties simply allowed everyone on the "purged fealon list" to vote, allowing some people to vote that were not allowed to under florida law. 3. The calling of the election before the closing of polls in the panhandle region of florida. 4. And the argument over the absentee military ballots.

Re:My new Ballots

[cliffmeece]

I've read the opposite

Re: This is why there needs to be reform

[EzraTeneflin]

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 :)

Re:Tinfoil hat alert!!!

[demachina]

"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.

Designed for tampering

[Jelloman]

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!

Re:No recounts in districts with touchscreen votin

[Anonymous Coward]

Looking at your current president either one of two things are possible:

1. the voting instructions are highly confusing.

2. you guys are all really dumb

No direct receipt!

[Teun]

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.

That's an easy one to do...

[Esion Modnar]

To lose an election, just think about your glandma naked. That, or run out of Viagla.

Re:Verification? What about anonymous voting??

[flossie]

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.

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?

Re:No recounts in districts with touchscreen votin

[BorgCopyeditor]

The point, I'm guessing, had nothing to do with how many people of various races commit crimes.

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?

Re:Tinfoil hat alert!!!

[dcam]

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.

Trust But Verify...

[Dark Coder]

Diebold can't even do the verify part. Why are they even allowed to do this?

We need to get those policy maker to repeat after themselves: "Trust But Verify", "Trust But Verify" .... "Trust But Verify."

All boils down to my post's subject title...

Re:AMERICANS, LISTEN UP

[dbIII]

It is no longer the shining beacon of incorruptible democracy it once was

There has always been some corruption from day one - but a lot has been acheived despite it. The world has been made a better place by those elements of US admisinstrations that are not corrupt. Even Nixon made a major positive contribution to the world, despite foreign policy decisions being made on the basis of donations to the republican party by foreign leaders.

...just stop taking your Viagla!

[Ice Uck]

Nyuk nyuk... -Ice Uck

Florida AGAIN? Send in the UN to supervise

[dbIII]

It's been four years since the incompetance of the electoral system in Florida recieved international attention, and they are still having problems. It must be time for a body outside of Florida to come in and supervise - if no federal agenecy can be found give the UN a bit of money and they have groups that run fair elections in very untrustworthy situations. State pride should only be allowed to go so far.

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 bother with insecure computer systems???

[kmeister62]

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

Re:Who cares?

[shadow_slicer]

So where to next once America's a dictatorship? What bastion of democracy is safe from american peacekeeping?
UK is their lapdog. Canada is moving in that direction as well. Mainland Europe might be okay for a while, but France isn't really safe from the US right now, and the EU is a puppet government vested in american interests (thought not nearly as bad as the UN..).
We're running out of democratic societies to turn to. There's Australia, but they have crappy internet access.
</cynicism>

Nunya dam bidniz

[YrWrstNtmr]

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

Re:Nunya dam bidniz

[spoonyfork]

I appreciate, understand, and respect the need for anonymity in elections. However, if you don't know whether your vote was counted or not (forget about who for) how would you know if you were disenfranchised or not?

Slashdot Pedant Strikes Again!

[shadow_slicer]

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])

Re:Who cares?

[MooseByte]

New Zealand has cute little furry flightless birds, plus all the backdrops for the LotR trilogy. :-)

Re:America is turning into a scary place!

[csguy314]

Actually, he was appointed chancellor in 1933. In 1934, after Hindenburg died, he united his office with the president's to make himself fuhrer; but he already had control of the country.

Re:Further applications

[innocent_white_lamb]

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???

Yes indeed, they will. Recording the intermediate steps to a paper medium allows someone else to check the accuracy of your work and verify it after the fact. Remember your math teacher's instruction: Always show your work!

Re:Yup, yup...

[adius]

It doesn't matter which political party you are a part of. If a superior does a bad job they deserve the blame and not the employees/contractors. I'm independent ;)

Kerry's Plan

[johnjay]

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.

Articles on e-voting that are worth reading

[Specter]

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.

debunk and rebunk

[Doc Ruby]

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.

Ok, how's about this for a voting system...

[cmdrwhitewolf]

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?

Circular reasoning

[Anarcho-Goth]

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.

Re:Tinfoil hat alert!!!

[LuSiDe]

How about Salvador Alende of Chili? Democratic chosen, thrown out by the USA...

What will happen in next Brazil's election?

[edsonw]

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?

Re:Who cares?

[dave420]

The US has a corrupted democracy, but most of the countries you've mentioned don't. People are listened to in the UK (there's much more public scrutiny, and the public don't get instantly sedated when someone waves a flag). The idea of the UK being the US's lap dog is funny, but not terribly accurate. For one thing, Bush wanted to go to war with Iraq on 9/12, but Blair stood up and tried to get international backing. Blair realised the best way to stop Bush destroying the world is to be his right-hand-man, and steer him from his inner circle, not stand opposite him screaming insults. I know it sounds stupid, but those are the facts. Anyway, most of Europe has a much higher regard for democracy than the US, and so do the ex-colonies of the British Empire (Just look at India - the largest election in the world, and it was more of a success than the last US election. Wonder why all the jobs are going there? Doesn't seem so strange or unfair any more).

Every country has its faults, and most admit them. The US walks around like its shit doesn't stink, when it craps out the most stinky shits ever. It's idea of democracy has always been broken, and always will be. The whole "Leader of the Free World" is lip service, and tries to stop people actually seeing beneath the hood of US democracy, and exposing the crapulence that lies within :)