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Computer Problems Already Affecting Florida Voters
TAGmclaren writes "The Sun-Sentinel is reporting on computer glitches already affecting the election in - you guessed it - Florida. Of the 14 early voting sites that opened in Broward County on Monday morning, 9 were reporting problems. In Orlando County, the touch screens crashed. More generally, SFgate.com is keeping track of all voting issues across the country - including lawsuits and other ballot problems." Update: 10/19 03:38 GMT by T : Thanks to reader Dale J. Russell for pointing out that "there is no Orlando County. The city of Orlando, Florida resides in Orange County."
A bit of self fufilling prophecy. We've had 4 years to sit around wringing our hands and worrying, of course we're gonna have problems.
And we'll have the inevitable lawsuits, recounts and when someones declared the winner, the losers will yell about how it was stolen.
They're just better organized now. It used to be on a local level with party bosses in the area doing the rigging, now the entire party leadership (BOTH major parties) work at it.
Aliens must look down at the US electoral process, and regard it in a similar way as the US has regarded other countries electoral systems - IE; Broken and unsatisafactory.
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
You're a karma whore.
Fuck off.
Since when did correcting inaccurate information become karma whoring? Is this Karl Rove I'm replying too?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
why was the touch screen system connected to the internet?
"Evil will always triumph because good is dumb." -- Dark Helmet
I am trying to think of what the arguments will be...
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There is a simple solution to Florida's dilemma about how to determine which ex-felons are permitted to vote: get rid of the state's shameful felony disenfranchisement laws.
It is more than ironic that as the United States ostensibly seeks to promote democracy overseas, hundreds of thousands of tax-paying Florida residents are forced to stand mute on election day.
Florida is one of only 7 states that permanently deny all ex-offenders access to the voting booth. The consequences there are stark: some 600,000 Floridians are unable to vote, including more than 17 percent of the state's black male adults.
Some legislators raise bogus arguments about virtue being a prerequisite to voting--as though all those who have the franchise have led blemish-free lives. Underneath such pious sentiments are calculated partisan politics. Simply put, Republicans fear Democrats would benefit if Florida became a state that honored the fundamental precept of a free nation: the right to vote.
Five years ago, Human Rights Watch documented the outrageous consequences nationwide of felony disenfranchisement laws, including those in Florida. At the time, few Americans were even aware that nearly one and a half million ex-felons in this country were denied voting rights even long after they completed their criminal sentences. Somewhat naively perhaps, we assumed that once this fact became known, legislators across the country would promptly step up to make the necessary legislative fix.
There has been some progress--but not in Florida. Despite legislative debates and lawsuits, Florida stubbornly retains the law denying ex-felons the vote for life. An eighteen-year-old convicted of a single drug offense can never vote no matter how exemplary her subsequent life. The only option is to navigate the frustrating and cumbersome process of seeking a pardon or restoration of civil rights from the governor--and this is not much of an option. The current backlog of people seeking to have the vote restored is estimated to be more than 40,000.
The right to vote is a fundamental human right. It can be frustrated by hanging chads and butterfly ballots.
But Florida's felony disenfranchisement laws keep far more Florida residents from choosing their elected officials than these infamous--but not legislatively mandated--problems.
saru mo ki kara ochiru
Um, 2000 anyone? Bad sign. This just confirms my believe that Kerry will lose and Bush will win (unfairly). Time to pack for Canada.
Is it me or does anyone else find it hard to believe that all of the so called voting irregularities suddenly started in 2000?
I realize that it's popular these days to point out that these irregularities contributed to the last election outcome, but isn't also somewhat obvious that those same irregularities (or similar ones) have existed since the dawn of voting itself, I mean those punch machines of yore were around quite a while before 2000.
If we are complaining about them now, mabye we should have started when Jimmy Carter was elected. When are we going to stop the madness and realize that the only ones profiting here are lawyers not people. There isn't and will never be a perfect system for everyone.
This makes me seriously concerned for a number of reasons.
First, these computer problems were blamed on the Internet connection used to access the registered-voter database. No voting system, even if it uses a VPN, should be connected to the Internet. If remote data is necessary, do it over a telephone connection. That's worked for credit card companies for many, many years.
Second, the article references the general apathy of workers running the poll stations. It seems that democracy may end in this country, or at least in Florida, from this more than from any of our elected leaders.
Third, and most speculatively, what happens if a more serious error occurs on Election Day and a large portion of ballots get lost? Four years ago, we could go back and read hanging chads. What will the courts decide this year if an entire state's ballots go missing?
By all accounts, this election could be more dangerous to the future of the nation than 2000.
It's not the touch screen crashing that is the problem. It's what happens underneath that is the big concern.
These systems have been made so complex and closed source that there is no audit trail.
I get these images of a huge casino with electronic slot machines - whoever put them in did so with a view to making profit out of them. If you're the end user, you have no idea what they're doing under that screen - but you can be well assured you can't take them at face value. So if casino machines can statistically determine when or if they should pay out depending on the bank balance of the casino, what the heck are these voting machines doing?
In Australia we mark numbers on sheets of watermarked paper.
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
These problems have been known for a long time, and the apathy about them in the news media is simply astounding. A brief web search will give you an idea how widespread the problems are, and how well known they are, yet little has been done. Why do you think that is? Well, elections are run by the states, particularly by each state's Secretary of State. That's an elected position. Guess which party the Secretary of State in most of the problem states is a member of?
If you look at the history of presidential elections, I think you'll find that this recent unpleasantness (VERY close percentages) has not characterized past elections. Reagan won all but 1 (yes, that's right, ONE) state's electoral votes when he was up for re-election.
Don't take my word for it. BBCNews has a nice little applet which lets you look at all of the past electoral college breakdowns for our past elections.
Now, the election counting definitely worries me, and I agree with a past poster that the more you know about computers, the more you worry that they control the receipt, storage, and counting of our votes. If you ask me, democracy is already easy enough to steal with money. Why we're making it easier to steal with simple computer hacking is beyond me. At least we all know politicians are dishonest. Until now, we probably had SOME faith in the voting system, as such.
The problem is that there is a problem.
Look what happened in the last election and what it meant. And after that you would have had 4-3.5 years to fix it. And you still show up on the news as having problems on day 1.
There is zero reason for not being able to connect to a database, not when you've had this much time to prepare for it.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Actually, I'm quite confident about my county's electronic system. We were covered on slashdot last year at some point because the votes took an extra day to count. (Anyone remember Fairfax County, VA. Just south of DC) The reason? The software was designed to dial into an election computer so it could tally all the votes. The "Disconect" routine was forgoten when it was programmed so the machines never hung up. Its fixed now. And before anyone says something about the machines being insecure, I was talking to the election commisioner for the county. She made sure they were as secure as they could be made. I'm not gonna worry about it.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
If I were you I would write a letter to someone at the local news station and explain to them that the reporter made a baseless claim that is contrary to the truth.
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Not to mention, that if they have this problem on election day, when record vote turnouts are expected, thousands of people might not vote, because they can't afford to stand in line for 8 hours.
What?
Sorry folks, the issues in 2000 weren't technical.
To have a democracy, you need a critical mass of basically decent people. People who are prepared to lose, if need be. People who are prepared to agree to rules before the election, and stick with them, not swirl around in post-modern uncertainty.
Absent that, forget it. Why bother? If you're going to demand a perfection that is not of this world, you will never get it. And you'll obsess about the supposed illegitimacy of your opponents when they win. And you'll work yourself into a froth and decide that anything goes to oppose them.
Forget trying to "fix" elections with technology. Just reclaim decency. Stop assuming that your opponents are three-headed monsters that eat babies for breakfast. Stop accusing everybody of cheating. Just work hard and persuade lots of people to agree with you. Win by a big enough margin that none of this crap matters. And accept that it might not work, and that you might lose.
"as secure as they could be made" is not good enough. Not nearly good enough.
"more secure than paper ballots" would be a start. *ONLY* a start, mind you, as it doesn't begin to justify the additional expense, but it'd be a start. I'm not advocating a Chicken Little approach by any means, but sticking your head in the sand and singing "it'll all be OK because the person presiding over this mess said so" stopped being a viable response about when the war in Iraq 'ended'.
We know software that's as bulletproof as our democracy deserves can be written - it runs on mainframes day in and day out for years and years. Then the only reasons why the election hardware/software is so buggy is incompetence or malice, and either way we shouldn't be using it.
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Maybe it just guarantees that all voting machines will be obsolete by the next election, forcing an upgrade path that Diebold hopes they will have the contract for. But, then again, maybe I'm just getting too cynical in my old age.
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The scantron and other optical scanning systems have been used in the United States since the 1960s for all sorts of standardized tests and forms ranging from college entrance exams to state lotteries. Why not simply have the touch screen voting system print the voter's choices on a perfectly printed scantron card which can then be inserted physically into the ballot box. Then the ballots could be either machine counted or hand counted with a very high degree of accuracy and certainty (no hanging chads...no disagreement about which bubbles were marked). This solution is obvious and combines the best of both worlds. Why has such a system not been implemented?
The point is, there are software practices than can be used to ensure the damn stuff is reliable enough to be used in something as vital as voting. Like writing multiple versions of the code and making sure the results are identical. Like not putting it on top of an overcomplicated OS. Like extreme peer review, including open sourcing the stuff. Any case where voting software goes into production with a line of code which someone has 'forgotten to comment out' is a case where the voting software is not up to standard by a long long way.
Absence of evidence for bugs is not evidence for absence of bugs.
The thing is that *if* we did go to a purely popular vote system, then you would see the rule of the country go to those who live in LA, NYC, Chicago. A state such as Wyoming (population 501,424 from the US Census 2003 est) wouldn't even be a blip on the radar in terms of representation. Do you even think a presidential canidate would even bother traveling to Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montanna, Rhode Island, Nevada, or New Mexico? Do you think that a Senator from such states would have any say at all? Take a look at the issue of Yucca Mountain, or some similar unpopular project. "Hey it's not in LA so why should the senate care".
./'ers compilain about being M$ forcing a once size fits all solution)
While the current system isn't perfect, at least it does try to protect some minority populations from the majority rule. (And
I see you've never made an honest mistake and forgotten to uncomment out a line of code before.
While a simple mistake on the part of one programmer is just a simple mistake, the company is being incompetent if these things are not picked up in exhaustive reviewing. As someone else has so ably pointed out, peer reviewing of the source code would help weed out mistakes.
Efficient? By which you mean faster? Cheaper? Is it cheaper and faster? Even if it is, does it justify the lack of reliability? Does it justify the lack of transparency? Could anything justify it?
We are talking about democracy. The transparency and reliability of democratic election is something infinitely more important than any kind of efficiency could ever be, for without transparent and reliable election there can be no democracy.
Besides, what exactly is inefficient in using pen and paper? Please read my other post before you reply.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
I don't understand some days. Software can be written great. It can be written flawlessly. And how fucking hard is it to say 1+1 = 2? Ok so you may have to keep track of each vote. Thats where a database comes in. But seriously people, how fucking hard is it to write a piece of software with a touch screen that breaks? Ok... lets see touch screen passes point on screen to software. Software translates point into multiple different regions representing the intended vote. Software then confirms vote with voter. Voter leaves booth. Voter enters booth, voter touches screen a few times, voter leaves booth. I mean no shit, I could design using PC hardware and a touch screen, a pretty unbreakable, unproblematic voting machine. And you know how long it would take me to do it... 6 months. The first month is all planning. The second month is design. Third month is redesign/replanning. Fourth final design. Month Five, guess what fixing small bugs, which shouldn't be a big problem with the proper planning. Month Six, taking the machine out on the public and letting them try to break it. Find elderly people at a retirement home let them test it for ease of use and understanding. Take it to corporate america and let them see if it will let them vote fast enough.
Now here is the kicker... using fiber optic cabling, port security enabled on switch, and 5 redundant counting mechanism on 3 different machines, two machines which are off site. Oh and guess what... all I need to communicate between the site and the servers offsite is a 56k modem. Why so small bandwidth? Because passing votes around doesn't require much bandwidth... its not a movie or even streaming audio, its text, that would of course be encrypted using massive shared keys. So phone tapping won't work, shit, I will go ahead and implement an error checking mechanism ontop of the already existing modem error checking. Why can companies no do simple things simply. I bet a good portion of those machines are running windows... why because windows sounds good. Hell, I can remember a touch screen on Apple IIe computers, we can use one of them for our clients. They had modems for those... We can do some rudimentary encryption and error checking on them.... whats wrong? Afraid of using older simpler hardware to do a simple task.
Oh well, I got to rant, now I wonder if this will be modded troll or interesting.
Conflict of interest? Or merely unqualified to "make sure"?
Last count I had Soros spending 19M. Not 40. Anyway, in an election where there will probably be near (if not over) 1 billion spent....he's just one of the bagmen. It's not like Bush doesn't have plenty like him.
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
They forget an integral part of the software, the "disconnect routine", and you still have confidence that they were thorough in their security approach?!?
That's like saying, "I just got this new Ford Mustang, and it's the sweetest car I've ever driven. They forgot the brake system when they designed it, but I'm pretty confident in the air bag system, so I'll be fine. Sweet car, d00d."
Unreal.
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Iraq, etc., is not about democracy. I'm not 100% sure *what* it's about, exactly, but democracy it is not. The modern GOP is primarily concerned with maintaining power, not democracy, or liberty, or justice in any meaningful sense.
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What measures are put in place so that the right machines can only communicate with the right machines?
You have a machine A that's dialing (using PSTN?) an election computer B.
So has anyone made sure that only A can talk to B?
Or can C dial A's number just as A "picks up the phone to dial" B, and result in A talking to C but thinking it is talking to B.
Countermeasure: get Telco to ensure that no inward connections can be made on lines used for outbound calls.
Personally, given the US thought it was worth spending BILLIONS to choose the leaders of Iraq (a crippled country albeit with tons of oil), I don't see why you guys can't spend a bit more on choosing the leaders of the World's Most Powerful Nation, and do things properly.
But no. Instead we see crappy machines like Diebold's being used.
Y'know, maybe the US should outsource their elections to India as well. The Indians seem to be able to do elections even if they can't do Tech Support.
The U.S. didn't go to war for democracy -- that's just the Claim of the Day. The U.S. went to war for money and power. And the elections are basically being rigged for money and power. Funny how the motives are so consistent -- it's almost as if the same people were involved. Oh, wait...
(And yes, the Democrats are no different, because the people who are really behind all this, those who run the megacorporations in the U.S., control both parties and use that control to give the appearance of a choice to the voters).
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
You know what, I have. Many times. Here's the thing, the real kicker here: when my code fails, nothing bad happens. When *my* code fails, no one's pacemaker stops. When my code fails, nobody's automatic medication overdoses them. When my code fails, planes don't fall from the sky.
When the code on a voting machine fails, democracy fails. The instant that a mistake is made there, in one of the most important systems in the world, catastrophy strikes. It is not exagerating in any way to say that forgetting to uncomment a line of code could result in the deaths of millions, as the minority's leader drives us into a war we don't want.
I don't bet the fate of the world (and don't tell me that electing the wrong official wouldn't affect everybody) on my 'honest mistake'. When that comes up, I expect more. I expect a lot more testing, a lot more review. We know how to write reliable software. It's a crime to surrender our nation by not doing so.
Buggy as compared to the chads?
.MDB files. Election Day hasn't even arrived yet and already people have been busy introducing systematic error into the pool of registered voters. Even if the 2004 election involves pretty blinking lights, and is the most precise ever, it will undoubtedly be a less accurate measurement of the desires of the electorate than the election we had in 2000. This is what Stalin meant when he said that those who cast the votes decide nothing, and those who count the votes determine everything.
What are you talking about? The punch card system proved itself to be a very accurate method of vote counting, even under the extreme condition of a tie- to a precision of several hundred votes. Much attention was paid to the relatively few cards that had chads hanging, but the vast majority of the cards were quite unambiguous in their representation of the voter's intent. Unfortunately they occurred in equal numbers for both candidates. The entire system was at least as auditable as any vote counting system can possibly be.
People don't understand the difference between precision and accuracy. Precision means that, given a measurable X, your measurements are sharply defined. But that is not the same as accuracy- which implies that the measurements actually reflect the true value of X, and not the influences of other sources of systematic error- like air resistance, or the thermal expansion of the ruler you're using, or the political affiliation of the manufacturer of your measuring equipment. A measurement is only accurate if sources of systematic error have been minimized. Sources of random error- like hanging chads- merely degrade precision.
The outcry for computerized voting that followed the 2000 election- to "bring our elections into the 21st century" and similar nonsense- was most unfortunate. We are making the transition from an accurate but slightly imprecise system to a new system that promises only extreme precision with no guarantees of accuracy. What is worse, we are about to trade susceptibility to random error for something far worse- susceptibility to systematic error- which is fundamentally different from a human perspective since it introduces a huge motive for people to screw with the accuracy of the electoral process.
The 2000 election had its share of systematic error. There was that butterfly ballot, which confused both Gore and Bush voters alike, but had the effect of transforming Bush votes into Bush votes and Gore votes into Buchanan votes. There was the Florida felon purge, which knocked thousands of blacks but only dozens of Cubans off the rolls. The 2000 election is still bitterly disputed, but very few people still complain about the hanging chads, which were sources of random error with relatively nonpartisan effects. The sources of systematic error had a much more corrosive effect- they cast doubt on the very legitimacy of the outcome, since they gave the election the appearance of having been stolen.
I have no doubt that we have an ultraprecise election ahead of us- computers are good at being deterministic, after all- but as far as accuracy goes- we'll see. There are many who would love to insert some systematic error into those Access
I was watching an interview with John Sayles the filmmaker he said something to the effect of..
Their [the media] idea of balance is that when you have somebody on your show who tells the truth for 15 minutes you have somebody else on who lies for 15 minutes. What they never do is to say afterwards "this guy told the truth 80% of the time and this other guy was full of shit 80% of the time".
evil is as evil does
Just because I feel the need to correct stupid misconceptions like this one when I see them quoted...
Yes, John Kerry voted for the $87 billion spending package before he voted against a later version of the bill. The version he voted for specified that the $20 billion for reconstruction should be a loan to Iraq, which they should easily have been able to pay back later with oil revenue. Later, the bill was modified to make the $20 billion into a gift rather than a loan. Seeing as how we're already running a huge deficit, Kerry voted against this version of the bill. His hope was, obviously, that the bill would be voted down and then modified back to the original version, so that he could then vote for it again. However, the bill passed even without his vote. (This is why a "NO" vote in the senate means nothing. Often senators vote against bills that they mostly support simply in the hopes of getting it back to the drawing board where the parts they don't support can be fixed.)
The Repbulicans know this. They are 100% aware that their using this as "proof" of "flip-flopping" is a huge distortion of the truth. So why do they continue to quote it?
Answer: They believe the ends (getting Bush elected) justify the means (lying to the American people). In fact, they believe this to such an extent that practically every point used against Kerry by the Bush campaign is exactly this sort of distortion. So, yes, hopefully America will teach Karl Rove a lesson next month: A campaign built mostly on lies and deception will not get you elected.
Honestly, I don't have a problem with Mrs. Clinton.
My comment is merely meant to inspire people to consider also this ramification of a GWB win in 2004.
Most conservatives I've met consider the idea of a female President reprehensible. Not sure if that's a vestige of the bible belt mentality, or what.
Mrs. Clinton is putting on an ass-kicking show as a NY State Senator. If Kerry loses this round, then she will practically be a shoo-in going against Mr. Cheney in 2008.
Unfortunately, that requires an unbearable four more years of GWB bungling.
"Those who cast the votes decide nothing; those who count the votes decide everything." - Josef Stalin
The U.S. didn't go to war for democracy -- that's just the Claim of the Day.
Did anybody even claim that? I thought the _claim_ was that the US went to war for it's own security -- a claim that now appears false but was never exactly idealistic in the first place.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
. . . why not just vote via absentee ballot? I'm a Florida resident and I did. You've still got plenty of time.
Also, I think some credit is due to Florida for wisely giving people a chance to vote early. It's more convenient for the voting public, and allows officials to use the equipment with real votes before November 2, which is just not the same as testing stuff in a lab. This is the first time that electronic voting has ever been offered in many parts of our state. Instead of constant bitching, whining, and criticism, acknowledge that there are problems and things will be difficult the first few times, and have a little faith in people to fix the problems with the machines. The folks in the trenches fixing the problems are most likely not part of some evil Republican conspiracy to delete Kerry votes or change them to Nader votes -- they're probably just hardworking IT guys and girls like you who take pride in their jobs and just want to see things go smoothly.
I'm confused by this flip flop mantra that republicans keep chanting. Surely changing your position on an issue in the face of new evidence is a "Good Thing". It implies an open mind and critical thinking, whereas sticking doggedly to a position that has since been shown to be wrong is just stupid.
For example, on the Iraq war vote, Kerry voted for the war on the basis of the evidence made available by Bush. We now know that the evidence for war was wrong, incomplete and selectively chosen by a broken system. If you believed the evidence that was presented at the time then voting for war was the only option (as it happens I didn't believe the evidence, but that is a freedom a popularly elected official doesn't really have if he wants to be re-elected). In the light of new evidence it appears that the case for war was not based in fact, but speculation (if you're feeling generous towards Bush), or greed (if you're being less generous). Faced with the new information I would be deeply concerned if someone did not change their point of view. It is a deeply valid thing to do.
Making a decision on the best available information is a good thing. Making a decision on ideological grounds and the selecting evidence to support your position is not a good thing.
You can't win Darth. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
What Pan says is worth being repeated:
- We are talking about democracy. The transparency and reliability of democratic election is something infinitely more important than any kind of efficiency could ever be, for without transparent and reliable election there can be no democracy.
Besides, what exactly is inefficient in using pen and paper? Please read my other post before you reply.
These e-systems have no "write-only" visually verifiable audit trails that can be seen and observed by the general population.For all doubters, apologists and naysayers:
People mess with elections in lesser nations, what makes you think there aren't people in this nation that aren't inclined to do that also?! Potential perpetrators here will be even more ingenious and skilled in going about doing this.
Many crimes are crimes of opportunity, this opportunity has to be kept at a minimum.
The American system is good, but it's not based on trust, it's based on checks and balances.
When I think of trust systems I think of systems that are not open to criticism and change by those that "trust" the "entrusted". That is not what we want.
______________________________________________
sigamajig...
You forgot the most important part of that entire debacle - Bush publicly said he would veto the version Kerry voted no on...and then he signed it, creating this situation. Doesn't that mean Bush is the flip-flopper (if anyone is) in this case?
was engineered partly by Jefferson to ensure his own presidential victory, as his Southern state allies got more electors by counting slaves
Take off the tin foil hat, it wasn't Jefferson trying to rig the presidential election. Ratification of Constitution - 1787, Election of Jefferson - 1800. So Jefferson planned the 3/5th vote for an election 2 presidents (including one of his rivals John Adams) later.
Yes you are right, many things in the constitution were done to preserve state's rights. States were more like seperate countries, with their own systems of taxation, goverment, etc. Why would a state like Delaware join a union where it would have no voice? For the union to be formed compromises needed to be made. These protections were put in place to protect against mobocracy towards smaller states.
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I dont even understand why they would even need a platform as powerful as this. they should be using the K.I.S.S. method when it comes to these things.
I live in Mercer Co. Pennsylvania, and we went from ancient 7 foot voting machines to a electronic system. The systems appear to be running some sort of simple low power propritery system on a simple and inexpensive black and white passive lcd display which most likely saves the vote data to flash memory. You basicially just walk up, press the screen and your done. afterwards it prints out the results on standard ribbon paper that an adding machine uses.
In fact they had a crash in 2003 with one of the boxes in one of the precincts, but the paper tape backup was more than adaquate to verify the results.
Basicially, a computer system equivelent to a first generation palmpilot could handle Evoting in a reliable manner.
All an evoting machine needs is:
* An inexpensive but mission critical reliable low speed system (ie: 386 class speed or even less if the OS is super efficient)
* a reliable, small, efficient, and simple mission critical OS dedicated only for evoting programmed in flash rom on the motherboard (almost BIOS like in design)
* use SD or CompactFlash flash memory to obtain the ballot data for the OS to display the voting issues and store results (32-64MB with a super efficient os should be enough for any voting situation you can possibly imagine let alone 128-512MB)
* use a simple cheap and inexpensive black and white backlit touch screen LCD display
* have an internal thermal printer to print a result that can later be interperted into a vote and if the paper runs out or an error occurs with the printer, it will disable the machine until the problem is fixed.
* Optional, but design the syetm to drive multiple LCD screens or drive terminal based LCD systems through a Local area network (not internet or wireless, we're talking 10baseT here) to a local equally simple server to consolidate all the vote gathering terminals from one precinct into one box.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
Unless your brother happens to be the governor of a key state and the person certifying the election used to work for you...
Tell it to Boss Tweed. "Stop them damned pictures. I don't care so much what the papers say about me. My constituents can't read. But, damn it, they can see pictures!"
Now most people don't even look at the pictures. Pitiful, ain't it?
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
A campaign built mostly on lies and deception will not get you elected.
Well, at least not twice. Hopefully.
Bingo. So far, while watching TV at night, I have yet to see one Republican TV ad that provides any insight into the current Administrations policies on anything. (Healthcare/Social Security/War). All the commercials that I have seen have simply portrayed Kerry as weak/indecisive.
Ok. So? What are the Republicans going to do differently? What policies are they going to support (just from the TV ads)? The amount of negative ads that I have seen on both sides really ticks me off, but at least a couple of ads by Kerry actually discuss the real issues.
Sig it.
If I don't want to vote on November 2, dammit, I don't want to vote. Who's to tell me what I have to do and when I have to do it? I can see it now. US passes law: "All eligible voters must vote or be imprisoned."
I'm an Australian, so I'll explain how it works in over here in practice. You have to show up to the polling booth and have your name marked off, but you don't have to actually pick up a ballot and vote. If you do take a ballot, but don't like any of the candidates, you can vote informally by just sticking a blank ballot in the box.
If you don't get your name marked off, they send you a letter asking you for an excuse. Any excuse will do -- if you write "I felt sick" in crayon, that's fine. If you do ignore the letter they fine you $50 of our worthless plastic money. There's no gaol time. If you complain about the fine (providing an excuse in the process), you don't have to pay it.
So, you don't have to vote, you don't even have to leave the house, you just have to have your name marked off. I can see how one might consider that an infringement of freedoms, but I think on the whole that I feel better living in a country where giving a fuck one way or the other is a requirement of citizenship.
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