Dave Barry on Electronic Voting

eggoeater writes "With the general interest Slashdot has with electronic voting machines, I thought we'd all enjoy reviewing Dave Barry's take on touch-screen voting machines and debating the merits of police officers carrying lightsabers."

Comments

Re:Maybe a little offtopic but...

[PeterBrett]

He's being facetious... he's being OTT and silly to emphasise his point? Jeez, haven't you heard of dark humour before?

Eletronic voting booth

[gustgr]

Brazil has been using eletronic voting devices for about 6 years. Next month we will have elections sessions for municipal mayors, and we are going to use the eletronic voting system. This system is very reliable.

This Java applet simulates the Brazilian eletronic voting system we use (it is in portuguese).

Re:Eletronic voting booth

[gustgr]

Actually we have already used this system in two Presidential elections, in two Governor elections and in one Municipal Mayor election.

Brazilian government has applyied successfully a campaign to teach the people (a lot of poors and uneducated) how to use this system.

Re:Eletronic voting booth

[Mark_in_Brazil]

This system is very reliable.

Unfortunately, there's very good reason to believe it isn't secure or reliable, at least in the sense of actually recording the will of the voters.
Here's a link to a site where one can download a book (in Portuguese) entitled Burla Eletrônica ("Electronic Scam"). The book contains am objective and yet scathing analysis of the (lack of) security and reliability in the machines used in every Brazilian election since 2000. It's really scary. The government has ignored calls to make the machines more secure. It is left as an exercise for the reader to guess why...
I have said before that I believe Brazil's democracy is much healthier than that of the USA, and I believe this is due to the true multi-party nature of the political system here (as compared to the effectively two-party system in the USA). But the dependence on these "electronic ballot boxes" ("urnas eletrônicas"), with no serious scrutiny being given to them, and with the government trying to sweep signs of trouble under the rug, makes me worry for Brazil's young and vibrant democracy (I say "young" because the first free elections after the military coup of 1964 were held just under 20 years ago).
A point that should hit home for /.ers is that these machines, like their Diebold counterparts, do not leave a paper trail, and make recounts impossible. The subtitle of Burla Eletrônica on the download page is "A máquina que faz seu voto sumir" ("The machine that makes your vote disappear"). It's not clear to me if the big question mark is to punctuate that subtitle or to stress the questionability of these machines.

--Mark

Use a paper absentee ballot

[shawkin]

The Republican Party is now telling voters in areas with electronic voting machines to vote using a paper absentee ballot. All voters would do well to follow this advice.
You _are_ voting, aren't you?

Back door in Diebold machines

[qengho]

We've seen what can happen with the diebold machines

Yeah, but have you seen this? Don't even need a Gameboy to hack the election...

Bring back the punch cards and provide receipts

[roman_mir]

Nothing is 100% secure, right? I mean what stops someone from taking all paper votes from a particular state and burning them and just tossing in a few million of forged papers?

How do we *know* that the computers used in voting are not tampered with? I mean how do we really know that noone switched the good tested machines with their own versions? Oh, but the central processor should in principle be able to identify a PGP encrypted signature of a specific machine that has the machines' Intel processor ID in it as well as an authentication number, the key should be sent to the central processor and the processor ID should be requested seperately to authenticate the machine or some such, and the process should be transparent etc. etc. But there will always be people with too much access, the people wearing all black, who can make police shut the hell up, the people who can drive to the machines at night, switch them with their own versions of hardware, the people who have physical access to the central processor, the people who are on in it with the Man.

So bring back the punch cards + receipts, I say.

Why is it that when you buy something in a store they give you a receipt of a merchandize but during an election you don't get one? Aren't you buying something for your tax money, a governor or a senator or a president?

2 thin cardboard cards stuck together in a fassion that allows to perforate both of them simultaneously with names printed on both and with perforated contours of holes to be punched out by the voter. The voter then punches the hole corresponding to the name they choose and give the face (top) portion of the card to a processing person, who runs the card through a simple card reader and then throws the card with into a sealed box. The bottom portion remains with the voter.

Now, how about that recount? Recount the top portions of the cards in the box and allow people to come in with their portions of the cards and run them through a card reader.

Re:Cthulu/Voldermort 2004

[Coryoth]

Minor correction:

Yog-Sothoth is running in the VP slot for the Cthulhu campaign this year I believe.

Jedidiah

Swift Boat Ads Discredited

[Izaak]

But they haven't been completely discredited.
And since you didn't offer any proof of your assertion, I won't either. nyah nyah.

Several of the original swift boat vets for thruth members have recanted their stories. Other vets have come forward saying they were interviewed by the organization, but their testimony was not used becuase it confirmed John Kerry's story (which matches official Navy records). There is even video footage of one of the swift boat vets for truth completely contradicting his current story; eight years ago he praised Kerry and described Kerry's heroism under enemy fire. Rather than reproduce all the sources here, I will refer you to the great work done at FactCheck.org. They have a well researched and footnoted analysis of the swiftboat claims:

Fact Check looks into Swift Vets.

There has also been huge amounts of evidence that the sift boat vets for thruth have direct ties to the Bush campaign (a violation of campaign finance law if true). The web off connections has been document in the New Your Times as well as various web sites.

Cheers,

Thad

Re:Swift Boat Ads Discredited

[Izaak]

If there was even a hint that Bush has been involved in a conspiracy to murder US Senators, the mainstream media would be dogging him until he resigned. Even if Kerry did indeed resign in disgust after the plan was voted down, one has to wonder why a man who now wants to be President didn't immediately report the plot to the FBI.

I just read the article you pointed to, and I think you misrepresent it. Nothing was ever 'voted on'. Lets quote the relevant part.

At this meeting, a VVAW member named Scott Camil advocated the assassination of certain politicians who favored continuing the war, including Senators Strom Thurmond, John Stennis, and John Tower. This idea was quickly shouted down and was never seriously discussed.

Yup, some plot Kerry was involved in. I agree though, this election is spending too much time on events that happened decades ago and not enough on the hear and now.

Re:Swift Boat Ads Discredited

[Izaak]

Of course it later came out that the Kerry Campaign and MoveOn.org shared the same lawyer too when this same Kerry/MoveOn.org lawyer publically defended the Bush/Swift Boat lawyer's ability to act independently while handling both accounts.

MoveOn.org was created during the Clinton administration by a couple of married computer professionals. Its original purpose was to organize a petition to skip the impeachment of the President so the country could 'move on' to more important issues. It has since grown, taken on new goals, and attracted the attention of various notable liberals, including George Soros (who donated a sizable chunk of money to them). While there has been some movement of staff between MoveOn and other liberal organizations, it seems to be mainly in the direction of Democratic candidates hiring away people who have shown talent as a volunteer.

Contrast this with the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which was only recently created to take down John Kerry, and which has many ties to Karl Rove and the Bush Campaign. It shows all the tipical fingerprints of a Rove operation, even using many of the same people he used when attacking John McCain in the primaries. There was a wonderful New York Times graphic showing all the links to the Bush Campaign... I wish now that I had bookmarked it. I probably still have it in my email at work and could post it tomorrow if anyone is interested.

Re:Pork Barrel budgets?

[login.pl]

Really? The freedom of millions of people in Iraq is for nothing? I'm sure the people of Iraq feel differently than you do. I'm sure that there are millions of people grateful that they no longer have to live under the rule of a evil dictator. It seems to me that most Democrats want us to fail in Iraq. I don't understand why. Maybe they forgot that the Democrats also voted to go to war. Maybe they want everyone else to forget that too. Seems kind of two-faced to me. At least George Bush is willing to stand behind his words.

Re:Banned

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Wrong. It's an O(log n) problem. Ten times as many votes takes twice as long to count; 100 times as many votes takes three times as long to count; etc. Not a big deal, and much less vulnerable to tampering than machines with closed hardware and software, and apparently zero security, made by a private company whose CEO has declared his allegiance to a particular candidate for the highest office in the land ...