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.

To err is human...

[Anonymous Coward]

To really fuck something up, that takes a computer.

-- Anonymous

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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

Election Observers

[Lucky_Norseman]

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

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

[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: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?

[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?

[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.

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?

[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?

[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?

[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.

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

[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.

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: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?

[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

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 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...

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: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.

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.

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: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?

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....

[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....

[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:realtime paper backup?

[nadamsieee]

Or how about a Free/Open Source voting machine where the paper is the legal ballot...

Re:Time to call for international monitors?

[rdsmith4]

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

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?

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

[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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

[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.

[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.

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).

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: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.

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.

[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: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.

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:America is turning into a scary place!

[csguy314]

Uhhh, do you perhaps mean 1984?
Though, granted, the 1930s were a scary time in history.

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

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.

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 :)

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.

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?

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...

[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: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: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.

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.

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.

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: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.

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!

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!).

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.

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: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.

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?