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Florida Electronic Voting Machines Crash
crash24601 writes "For a dose of one of our favorite topics, abcnews.com is carrying the story of a tabulation machine for electronic voting crashing during testing. Naturally, this happened in Florida. They are also carrying the article Is E-Voting Fundamentally Flawed? Though mostly a lightweight rehash of issues brought up before, it is good to see it published from a mainstream source."
So, this election may be postponed on account of rain?
The thing about things we don't know is we often don't know we don't know them.
...According to Rumsfeld, four fifths of a country voting is ok.
Isn't that enough?
"He said an election could perhaps be held in "three-quarters or four-fifths of the country. But in some places you couldn't because the violence was too great"."
I hate my sig.
Mr Feces, meet Mr Fan. Fan, this is Feces.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
that Americans think that by pressing a button on a machine (that they have no idea of how it works) is democracy, digital makes the potential for corruption so easy its just too tempting an opportunity to let go
paper voting is still used all over the world because it is the EASIEST and SAFEST
sure it might take a week to count the votes by hand but are you in a rush ?
its far harder to lose 2 tons of paper ballots than press a secret key combo on a computer and poof all those votes have gone without trace or record
but hey you carry on, its a great show watching what was a free and democratic society turn into a totalitarian corrupt theocracy, perhaps when the riots start you might ask where you went wrong
Not to be insensitive to natural disasters, but:
Why do I get the feeling that everything that's gone wrong in the state of Florida for the last two months was ultimately caused by bad weather?
A computer "stored" in a hot room shouldn't be damaged. These must really be delicate devices.
sigs, as if you care.
It was the machine which tabulates the votes that crashed. The actual were still safely recorded, untouched, on the counter keys (basically removable memory units) from the voting machines themselves.
As someone who writes software for a living, I have to ask just how hard is it to count votes?
What kind of monster math could these things be doing that could cause a machine to crash?
Could bush.voteCount++ have caused an overflow as the the algorithm ratcheted the count over 4 billion?
I mean, c'mon. This has to be the simplest programming task in the world: increment a variable every time someone votes for a given candidate on a ballot. The only part of this that seems remotely hard would be the handwriting recognition on write-ins.
Security and verifiability? No problem. Simply log every transaction as it happens and print a receipt that can be checked by hand if necessary. Additionally, make the source open and public. Let people see what the program does.
Frankly, I believe this is what you get from companies like Diebold or other large vendors doing this. They have an interest in making this stuff more complicated than it needs to be in order to make more money.
Just be sure to wear the gold uniform when you beam down -- you know what happens when you wear the red one.
This is a perfect example of a urgently needed technology that an Open Source solution would be great for.
<wild-accusations>Electronic voting will *NEVER* work right as long as it is being done by companies like Diebold that are on one party or another's secret payroll.</wild-accusations>
An open source solution would accomplish a few things:
1) Provide a verifiably secure solution to electronic voting that would be resistant to tampering. I don't think I am exaggerating when I say the possibility of tampering with elections could degrade freedom in this country.
2) Give Open Source's strengths the kind of publicity that reaches far beyond the current Microsoft/Linux squabbles. The majority of the public and news media has no idea what Open Source is about; But if Bill O'Reilly, John Stewart, GW Bush, and John Kerry are talking about it you can bet that tremendous numbers of people will be introduced to the ideas.
3) Give some impressive visibility to the developers on the project. Visibility usually leads to marketability, jobs, projects, etc.
Of course, visibility won't be great when the Diebold hitmen show up...
Australia has some well made electronic voting running on Linux which can serve as a proof-of-concept for us Americans.
So who's game?!
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
What a crap title for an article. They've just equated "Diebold" with "e-voting" just for the scare-mongering. It gets worse.
The researchers also questioned the use of C++ for the original code, calling it an "unsafe language." Microsoft Windows is largely written in C++, and most UNIX systems are written in a combo of C and C++. It's not impossible to write good code in C++, but it's much harder than using modern code. "Modern code has features to help prevent you from making the most common mistakes," contended Wallach.
Modern code does what? Write the E-voting machines in assembly and make them run on the simplest RISC processor out there. Unless you plan on using the voting machines as public solitaire terminals during the off season there's no reason any complex OS or programming language should be involved in voting. The voting booth devices just need to add. The tabulation machine... adds some more. If you want pretty graphics make the system about as big and scary as an Amiga and leave it be.
Direct away from face when opening.
This is a perfect example of a urgently needed technology that an Open Source solution would be great for.
It's too bad that's impossible. Your customers can trust open source software, because they can compile and install the software themselves. Voters can't do that, so the best a company can do is publish some source code and make promises that the exact same program will be the only thing running on the voting machines. Since such promises are difficult to verify (see the Diebold machines that got updated with uncertified software for example), you can never be sure that the voting software you're told is open source really is.
To prevent people's votes from being miscounted or uncounted by an electronic system, the only sufficient solution will be a paper trail and/or a cryptographically verifiable receipt. Even then, to prevent electronic systems from adding false votes will require vigilance at every polling booth. Using open source in addition would be nice, but it's neither a necessary nor sufficient solution.
Suppose we were to place the burden of proof on the election supervisor to prove that the votes are counted honestly and accurately. If the election supervisor fails to prove this (in court, with adversaries, experts and a jury) then the election supervisor is executed for treason.
I suspect very few election supervisors would be willing to use anything other than paper ballots.
Q: What will happen in the Presidential Election if another hurricane strikes Florida sometime around November 2?
A: Nothing; the Supreme Court is in Washington, D.C.
There have been reports in several places of campaigners trying to register as many people as possible to vote, then tearing up and throwing away the non-republican registrations at the end of the day.
It may seem funny but it happens. Where I go to school there was a voter registration desk for one night. That night they took a measley 74 registrations out of say 1000 students.
I only wanted to change my address as I've moved into city limits and wanted to vote in the city council race (for once). Low and behold my registration never was sent in. You can check these things at the local Board of Elections website.
I pulled a few people aside in school and let them know that their registrations were likely never sent in as well. We checked, and not one made it to the Board of Elections. Two people can't vote in their first presidential election because the deadline had already passed.
I can't think of a reason for them not sending the registrations in because our student population is all over the political map.
Get your Unix fortune now!
St. Arbirix wrote:
If Diebold can't even keep their money machines running how can I trust their voting machines? Man, you've got to be able to keep your "stack" (or "grip" if you prefer) in check before I can even think about trusting you.
Well, at least there will be music for the revolution (see link).
Get your Unix fortune now!