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

Maybe a little offtopic but...

[leonmergen]

From the article: "One big concern is that electronic voting machines could be tampered with by ''hackers,'' as was the case recently when an 11-year-old New Jersey boy named Jason Feeblehonker, using only his GameBoy, was able to get himself elected governor of both North Carolina and Wisconsin. "

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...

Formicidae

[Stanistani]

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?

Technology

[In-gin-eer]

Hokey religions and ancient punch-cards are no match for a good electronic voting machine in your booth.

Beets

[Anonymous Coward]

Dave Berry wrote: These are supposed to eliminate the screw-ups we had in the 2000 election, in which the ballots of thousands of Florida voters were not counted because, due to poor design, many Floridians have the intelligence of a sugar beet.

I'll bet he gets at least a few letters complaining about the sugar beet intelligence comparison - from sugar beets.

Banned

[tuxter]

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.

Re:Banned

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

What about us conservatives that don't?

So you're willing to accept an invalid result if it saves you a few bucks? No wonder the Republic is in such dire straits these days.

Look at it this way: Naturally enough, you believe your positions to be correct. If you also believe in democracy, then you have to believe that your valid ideas will win out, long run, versus the invalid ones that compete. (If you feel this is pollyanna, fine... but then you don't believe in democracy.) Since you're clearly on the side of goodness and light, if an election were to be improper, it would be The Other Guys who rigged it. These are the guys whom you believe want to raise taxes to 100% while legally mandating all sorts of moral depravities. Do you want them to get in because you wouldn't shell out few dollars?

If you believe in your cause, then settling a contested election will lead to the "right" people being elected ... and then they can go on to slash revenues and so on. So long term, the spending for a valid election would be more of an investment, or at least, more like spending more money on flourescent bulbs: Down the road, you save more than it costs.

Comedy as news source

[Travis Fisher]

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!

I think Dave has some points

[ScytheBlade1]

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.

Slashdot polls

[Anonymous Writer]

Just use the polls on slashdot for voting. Somehow I suspect this would result in CowboyNeal becoming president.

Doesn't anyone think it's sad

[HangingChad]

It doesn't bother anyone else that people in this country were seriously asking for UN observers for a US election?

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.

Re:Doesn't anyone think it's sad

[cbare]

Whaddya mean third world country?

• rampant crony capitalism
  
• giant national debt
  
• devalued currency
  
• pointless wars motivated by crackpot ideology
  
• nominal democracy characterized by shakey elections
  

Naaa that'll never happen here. This is America!

p.s. in deibold we trust.

voting probs

[Spark00]

for our municipa elections here in Toronto we fill out a ballot (often with 20 or 30 candidates on it because for a couple hundred bucks any knob can get on the ballot), and what happens is you fill it out, then bring it to the 'box' which is a machine. it reads the pencil marks you've made, and if you've done it wrong it rejects it. It gives you a read out of your choices.

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.

30 Second Commercial Spots

[Izaak]

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.

Cthulu/Voldermort 2004

[xyloplax]

Why settle for the lesser of two evils?

Re:Excluding stories from homepage?

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

So a small plea to the editors; please keep politics in their own Section until someone fixes the Exclusion?

or fixes the election... :)

Kidding aside, this story is about tech and its impact, not just politics. It's not inappropriate that it appear on the main page. Here's a radical thought, if you see the headline for a story and you just know you won't want to read it: Don't. Participation on slashdot is voluntary in many degrees.

If you're so thin-skinned that you can't handle seeing the merest headline that indicates politics simply exists, then you probably would be happier unplugging the computer and TV, and simply watching the paint crack.