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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."
I probably haven't been paying attention, but is this really true ? I really can't imagine hacking something using a gameboy... anyone has an article about this? Wasn't able to find it with google...
- Leon Mergen
http://www.solatis.com
Internal changing of values happened in Las Vegas. Gurantee it'd happen in voting. www.geocities.com/James_Sager_PA
God spoke to me.
Actually, the best thing about the article was visualizing all three of the candidates standing on lawns with biting ants. Hmmm... wonder if I can get some
Jason Feeblehonker 2004
bumperstickers printed up?
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
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).
... I just can't tell anymore whether I'm supposed to be laughing WITH or AT people.
It works better than expected; in fact, without electronic voting we would never have guessed that nobody votes against the incumbent candidates. Its really interesting how people love our leaders so much that not a single vote is cast against them.
Back with messy paper, the vote was much closer. Now we know that vote is and was wrong.
Hokey religions and ancient punch-cards are no match for a good electronic voting machine in your booth.
I'm going to join the police. I mean, the tasers were always cool, but ... lightsabers? Dude, sign me up!
I'll bet he gets at least a few letters complaining about the sugar beet intelligence comparison - from sugar beets.
All forms of electronic voting should be banned. We've seen what can happen with the diebold machines, and we all know ow easy it is to manipulate data. Count all votes three times by three different groups of people and all discrepencies accounted for. This is our right, a democraticaly voted government. Fuck the costs.
RTFA. Really, do. It's funny. You'll like it. And if you're not a slashdot regular, probably it will be your first introduction to the fact that electronic voting is an issue that you should be concerned about. Of course, its not very informative, but it will at least lead you to think about hackers as a concern for e-voting. And you'll be participating in a modern American phenomenon -- using comedians as a major source of information about current issues. Yay USA!
Ok, so there's two checkboxes for excluding Politics in the preferences, neither of them seems to work and as long a these stories get posted on the front page, there's no way to avoid them.
So a small plea to the editors; please keep politics in their own Section until someone fixes the Exclusion? Please?
Realize that it's because we understand technology that we're against most electronic voting. We network out toasters, and then we share with everyone who wants to know how we did it. Then they can point out things we did that could burn down our house. If Diebold used Linux, a lot more people probably would be for it, because Linux is open source and we'd be able to look at how the voting machines were built and figure out security holes that could be exploited by less honest individuals.
One person with a hankerchief filled with super nasty germs...
I can see someone sueing the state over the health issues.
Besides, I believe in the sanctity of something called a paper trail. I do not know if the Brazilian system supplies a paper trail, but somehow I do not think that American Officials would want to use something invented in Brazil, even if it is really really good. The horror of it all.
Not that the Diebold has a paper trail or is unreliable or anything.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Not about the electronic voting or anything, but that is pretty dang funny.
...
I think he's got some points being funny though. I mean, how many people do you know who becoome so obsessed with this election, that even a mention of "a different" canidate will get you a glare?
Peopel need to tone it down a bit. Stuff like that really provides some needed comedy, when it's really needed too.
I walk down the hall talking to some people, and they say that this year is going to end up sucking. "Why's that?" I ask. "Because I've got several massive projects due in the start of December, my grandma is on the verge of death, and to top it all off, Bush might get re-elected."
This guy isn't even of legal age to vote, and he was literally thinking that Bush being re-elected is by far worse than anything else at the moment.
Come on people, live a little, joke a little. Rock on Dave Barry.
Nonsense, a computer running Linux is only a little less of a "black box" than a computer running a closed source OS. You really don't have anyway for sure to know if the source code you have on the machine is the code running.
If you compiled it right there, I'm sure someone could write a "gcc" program to look like you're compiling the source and checksum programs and such can be worked around and all that too.
Just use the polls on slashdot for voting. Somehow I suspect this would result in CowboyNeal becoming president.
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?
Pay up, sucker.
ATMs work because the institution has a vested interest in keeping everything on the level. Electronic voting will fail because the institution has a vested interest in making sure the results are "adjusted".
Spin the tables - tell your bank that you're going to withdraw $100 and demand unrestricted access to the vaults for 5 minutes. If you think that's a dumbass idea, then you think electronic voting is a dumbass idea.
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...
Woah there, because corporations don't have political interests? All this would do is make it easier for the corporation to adjust the votes to match their interests.
I've posted elsewhere about the differences between ATMs and voting. ATMs work because if they don't, the bank is screwed. Electronic voting won't work because if it's screwed up, the only people who lose are the voters and the minority party.
There is literally NO INCENTIVE for the people with power to support a fair electronic voting system. There are at least a dozen ways to get crooked code onto the machine and basically no way to find out about it short of taking the machine apart.
By the way, this is a bi-partisan rant. I don't want anybody advocating electronic voting. The concept is not sound.
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.
You can't handle the truth.
Politics has always been kind of an ugly business, but I don't remember a campaign in my lifetime that was so bitter, petty, angry, divisive and deliberately misleading. We have collectively sunk to the ethical level of Karl Rove.
Not only do we not deserve a leadership position in the world, we are becoming ugly and pathetic. We are in real danger of turning into the richest third world country on the planet.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
this does a couple of things. one, it confirms your choice. (no more florida issues). and two, it automatically counts the vote. when the polls close, the total is uploaded to the central 'counting' station, and within minutes they have totals. the only timme we get into recounts is when the margin is so close that it triggers one.. in which case they manually count them.
seems to work. paper & technolgy together . just a thought but there's no reason to get all weird about improving the voting system.
one other thing i'd say is that having ONE voting system accross the entire system is not a bad idea. votind districts don't control it, the cheif electoral officer (municipal, provincial, or federal depending on the election) decides what system to use. that way if it's buggered up, it's buggered for everyone.
now if we could only get rid of first past the post we'd be laughing.
... but why not do this nowdays: give me some "cookie" number when I vote and let me see later (via INet most probably) how have you really counted my voice. Can be done like this: I pull my voting blank from a pool of those (like in a lottery), there's an unique number on it that no-one knows but me. I can write it down to my notebook/PDA if I wish and you - when counting the votes - store to some DB that a given cookie number is registered as a vote for this or that candidate. You can also give me some kind of receipt so that if I find my vote has been messed up somehow I have something to proove it.
The part I liked best was his rif on 30 second commercial spots. They do nothing to inform the voters, yet they are often the thing that swings the election. They are a primary reason money has become such a huge corrupting influence in politics. Like those Swift Boat Vet adds. They have been completely discredited, but many people will never learn that part of it and only remember the adds themselves. This is why I urge people to do a few google news searches and inform yourselves of the issues before going in the voting booth.
The Bolachek Journals
Why settle for the lesser of two evils?
-- "You can lead a yak to water, but you can't teach an old dog to make a silk purse out of a pig in a poke" - Opus
Yeah, but nothing is illegal unless you get caught. The problem isn't HOW to perform the validation, the problem is that you NEED validation in the first place. Yes, people can burn your paper ballots and forge some replacements, but we have 225 years of dealing with that problem. We don't even have a reasonable handle on spam, identity theft, or porn pop-ups in elementary school library.
It doesn't matter how tightly electronic voting is validated. You couldn't even print out the source code for the machine on every voting receipt - how can you trust that what was printed is what was actually compiled? It's a faulty idea. Punch paper; give a receipt; count paper. If someone is unable to punch paper, so sorry - that doesn't justify forcing the entire nation to vote using "magical boxes of trust and NO YOU CAN'T LOOK INSIDE IT! TRUST US!".
Take a gander at PayPal - it's a concept similar to electronic voting and it has a history of foul ups. PayPal can't even help me buy a collectible PEZ dispenser without dicking me around, and now I'm supposed to trust a similar system in a national election? It's preposterous.
Say you have 10 candidates. So you set up 100,000 voting stations across the country (I am not an American). At each station you have 100 (10 rolls x ten booths to allow 10 people to vote at the same time) extremely large rolls of paper tape encased into a transparent plastic cover. The paper rolls are of different color. The paper tape has candidate's name printed on it over and over again on the face side. On the other side of the name there is a number printed as a bar code binary format and in a decimal format, this is a sequential number that identifies the paper roll, and the position of this number within the roll.
As a person enters a booth, (s)he sees 10 buttons, of which only one can be pressed at once and once a button is pressed the other buttons are deactivated until the next person enters the booth. Once a button is pressed, the voter can see a candidate's name cut off from a corresponding tape, the piece of paper falls into a box.
So now by the end of election with this particular setup you have the following:
1. 100 boxes with papers on them in each voting location.
2. 100 tape enclosures with some tape left on them.
So now to count just look at the end of the tape, the last sequential number must tell you how many votes were cast for this particular candidate.
The boxes and the tapes must be stored seperately for a recount purposes.
-----
Here is how to make counting of the totals possible:
Have a website where the people doing the local counts login into and post their numbers against their voting location.
These numbers must be accessible by all, the person who just submitted them will see them on the site and if something funny happens to them (like they change one way or another) then have the local news notified.
This website should be well secured though. Please.
You can't handle the truth.
Yes, you're right, but that is not the problem.
The problem is that there is no feasible way to prove that the instructions in main memory on every voting machine corresponds, without exception, to the source code on a piece of paper.
You can't trust the compiler:
http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/Back_door
You can't trust the hardware - it would be trivial to implement instructions that dump the "right" code from memory while running something else.
Never in history has society had a need to mistrust their computers. They have always been tools built and instructed to help us out. If it fucks up, well we must have misused the tool. Electronic Voting is an entirely different use for computers and very few people understand the subtle difference. This is the first time in history where something critical is being trusted to computers while someone else has something to gain by misusing the tool.
A hammer is a hammer, but when for the first time I'm holding the nail with my fingers and giving you the hammer. And what the fuck for? Because a handful of people can't handle the paper system? Hell, let that handful of people use the electronic voting system. I'll be voting by paper (absentee if necessary) until I die.
Argh, I fail to see how GWB is making the US a safer place. The US has now gone 3 years without a terrorist attack. Gee, I think there wasn't an attack between 11 Sept 1998 and 10 Sept 2001, was there?
If anything, Bush is making it a lot worse, what he's done is create a lot of anger against the US, and anger creates extremists. Attacking Afghanistan was right, but attacking Iraq? Abu-Ghraib isn't exactly creating a lot of sympathy points for the soldiers (who bloody cares who's responsible for it, the soldiers or Rumsfeld, Americans are all the same, in the viewpoint of (probably) the majority of the Islam world.
No, "Oh, we can just kill them", is not a solution.
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
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
The Bolachek Journals
If it's illegal, it's still illegal - there are just no consequences unless you're caught.
And from what it sounds like, there is very few consequences from voter fraud.
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
This is the worst argument against reciepts I've ever heard. Unfortunately, it is also the most common, and also the "offical" objection. Let's drive a stake through it right now, shall we?
On the one hand, if we give receipts, someone might buy some votes. Now, in order to have this effect the ellection, they have to let people know about it before they vote. Otherwise they are just paying people to vote for X when they would have (and did) vote for X anyway. They would just be wasting their money. Likewise, they'd have to let their offer to buy votes for X be known to people who wouldn't have otherwise voted for X--just telling the faithful doesn't help. And to make any difference they would have to tell a large enough number of people to swing the vote--and they don't know beforehand how close it will be, so they'll have to err on the side of "caution" and tell lots of people.
On the other hand, without receipts, an electronic election can by twisted any which way by just fudging the data in the system--with closed source software, this could be done by a single individual or a very small group of people, with no need to tell anyone who isn't already commited.
So, on the one hand, we have the possibility of a conspiracy that can only work if it is announced beforehand to a large number of people at least some of whom probably don't agree with its goals, and on the other hand the possibility of a conspiracy that can be carried out in secret by a very small group of insiders.
Which would you be more worried about?
-- MarkusQ
If they were smarter, they wouldn't vote for Bush. But dumb people need representation too, right?
Aside from the parent being an obvious Troll, this is a perfect example of what is wrong with most politicians. The parent is likely a Democrat, but in truth you can probably find it in each and every party.
These type of politicians automatically assume that their personal experience and knowledge was arrived at through flawless logic and insight. Subsequently their view points are the only correct view point possible.
Then they go on to extrapolate that anyone who has a different opinion obviously is less intelligent and thus unable to achieve their own level of flawless logic and insight. And in short, patently wrong-headed (because they don't agree with "me").
I'll grant that your view point may be logical arrived at considering your limited experience. But to claim insight requires one to consider diverse view points in a fair and critical manner of some lenghty temporal span. And from your use of language I am unable to identify any such insight.
-- No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats, approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less.
Argh, I fail to see how GWB is making the US a safer place. The US has now gone 3 years without a terrorist attack. Gee, I think there wasn't an attack between 11 Sept 1998 and 10 Sept 2001, was there?
There were a bunch of attacks against the U.S. between 11 Sept 1998 and 10 Sept 2001. The Kenya Embassy bombing, the Kobar Tower bombing and the USS Cole bombing all come to mind. And lets not forget that the World Trade Center was a frequent terrorist bombing target (with some success) around and prior to this time frame.
To play devil's advocate, U.S. troops have been targetted targetted post 9/11, so I think its difficult to show that we haven't experienced terrorism as you seem to say President Bush says we haven't (assuming you haven't mischaracterized his statement).
But it is does seem to hold true that we haven't experienced attacks against civilian structures like those similar to the World Trade Center and the U.S. Embassy in Kenya since 9/11.
Though I think having our men and women fighting these same terrorists outside military compounds in foriegn countries is probably insulating us here in the civilian world. What will be telling is whether or not terrorism incidents resume against civilian targets after we decrease our presence in Iraq/Afganistan.
-- No matter how great your triumphs or how tragic your defeats, approximately one billion Chinese couldn't care less.
I like shiny new things as much as the next Slashdotter, but, give me a break. We love shiny things because they're cool to toy with.
Elections are something you don't toy with.
It's all about being trustworthy. When there is a recount, you damned better well be able to take a hand count of the votes observed by both canidates. With an electronic system, you're left with what the machine says, and thats it. Thats just not acceptable.
It might not be kosher to say, lets step back to something not bleeding edge, and full of buzz words.. Here in Wisconsin we use optical scan machines and they work excellent. The elector gets their ballot, and for every office theres the list of canidates. To select one, they just complete the aarow on the side of their name. They slide the ballot into the tabulator, and the tabulator counts (or kicks it back if its an undervoted or overvoted ballot). There is a permenant record of their vote--the actual ballot they filled out. In the case of a recount, its very hard to argue that the voters intent lies elsewhere.
There's dirty politics in every country, and has been for hundreds of years, and the US is no exception.
Some notable election thefts prior to the 2000 election, some of them much more blatant:
John F. Kennedy won the 1960 election largely due to ballot stuffing and double-voting organized by the Democratic Party political machines in several major cities.
John Quincy Adams, as 2nd-place finisher, won the 1824 election by basically buying the electoral votes of Henry Clay (the 4th-place finisher) in return for giving him a position in his government, thus propelling him ahead of Andrew Jackson (the 1st-place, but less-than-50%-majority, finisher).
Mayor Daley 1 and Mayor Daley 2 have collectively been mayors of Chicago for eons. Not all those elections were won fairly, as you might expect.
Etc.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I see no advantage in cost, speed, security, or accuracy with moving from the system we are currently using to some ethereal electronic touch-screen system.
The E-voting machines have a number of advantages. Since you mentioned speed, hey just poke the tallying computer and it spits out the totals. That's fast. Need a recount? Poke it again, and it'll give you exactly the same numbers again. Is that great or what? No messy disputes. There are further advantages for election officials using Diebold machines: Enter the proper two digit code, and you can change the totals to more accurately represent what your community really intended. Oh, and there's an easy way to change the logs, so pesky reporters and other snoops won't cause problems. These new machines have tons of features that make them far superior to older voting methods. It's Luddites like you who are holding back progress and the election of my favorite candidate. :)
They died for oil. Register as a Republican and you'll get a secret PIN to punch into the gas pump.
I'm really enjoying the 87 cent gas.
Stop the world; I need to get off.
How long before we demand direct democracy.
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch." - Benjamin Franklin
Stop and consider all the areas where you are or could be in the minority before you wish for a democracy.
So what you're saying is, there are no Iraqi terrorists?
No, I'm pretty sure that the parent was saying that there is no evidence of collaboration between Iraq and Al Qaida.
(In case you don't know, Al Qaida is the terrorist organization responsible for 9/11. Also, Japan caused Pearl Harbor and Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by an American. Iraq isn't connected with any of these events.)
The only way to remove the threat is to extinguish it. And that is why we are in Iraq. The people of Iraq are happy that we've removed Sadaam. Why aren't you?
Let me put it this way. There are two people who have personally profited from both 9/11 and the Iraq war. These people are George Bush and Osama bin Laden. Analyze the effectiveness of the US strategy in this context.