Slashdot Mirror
E-Voting Problems Are Mostly User Error, Says ITAA
grcumb writes "InfoWorld is carrying a story today which mentions a press kit being distributed by the Information Technology Association of America. Its purpose? To 'help journalists put election equipment-related snafus in context.' Most e-voting problems, they insist, are [l]user issues, where people who don't know how to deal with the new technology cause delays as they seek assistance. They don't seem to feel the need for journalists to understand basic system design issues (like making sure your computer and human processes work), why testing didn't identify these problems, nor why this is better than paper ballots."
These people need to learn some lessons in human relations. I am sure they have some valid points to be made, however, the way they went about it was condescending and insulting to the journalists. I mean, really, I cannot imagine telling journalists that I am going to "help journalists put election equipment-related snafus in context." Journalists feel that it is their job to collect info and put things into context themselves. The ITAA shot themselves in the foot.
http://www.busyweather.com/
The problems with e-voting are user error? That's funny I thought it had something to do with miscounted votes, buggy or crashed systems and clearly biased voting machine companies.
Hell! If it was user error this whole time then the solution is obvious -- we need a phone in every voting booth with a direct line to some Level 1 tech support guy! Can you picture this?:
Support Guy: "Thank you for calling Voting Machines, Inc. my name is Tony, how may I assist you today?"Voter: "I'm having a problem voting -- smoke seems to be coming out of the back of the machine and there is a bad grinding noise."
Support Guy: "Yes sir. Before I can help you I need your express service code."
Voter: "I don't know where that is! This machine is not letting me vote."
Support Guy: "Sir, I can't help you without your express service code."
Voter: "Grrr. It's XXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-X"
Support Guy: "Thank you sir. Now is your voting machine plugged in and turned on?"
Voter: "Yes! Why is smoke coming out? It won't let me vote."
Support Guy: "Is your ballot on the screen or do you see the desktop?"
Voter: "I don't know! Grrr... what about the smoke??"
Support Guy: "Sir, I have a procedure that I need to follow and that procedure requires me to know if your ballot is on the screen or not."
Poll Worker: "Sir, state law only allows you three minutes to vote. You need to hurry up and finish."
Voter: "Damnit! I am almost out of time. How can I vote?"
Support Guy: "Sir, your voting machine is clearly infected with spyware and we don't support that. I highly recommend that you call Microsoft for further assistance. Thank you for calling Voting Machines, Inc. and have a nice day."
Voter: "How do you know it's spyware? We haven't even gotten anywhere yet!"
[Click. Dialtone. Sounds of fire sirens in the distance]
Voter: "Hello? Hello?"
Poll Worker: "Sir, your time is up."
And just think of the fun if they outsourced the support center overseas....
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
this is the ITAA? Aren't they supposed to advocate GOOD software design? Guess what, if the user is making errors, then it's the problem of the software maker. Obviously they didn't design their interface right, obviously they didn't write their instructions well enough etc. The user isn't supposed to have to study a user's manual before voting.
Come on, this "blame the user" bs is getting really old. Appearently corporations are allowed to be totally incompetent with their own products, but it's always the users fault if they don't know how to use them......
Monstar L
When Diebold rewrites my vote as a vote for Bush, it's going to be a problem for me the user.
If guns kill people, then CmdrTaco's keyboard misspells words.
...for an example of such "user errors", please consult this demonstration movie (definitely turn your audio on!):
;-)))
http://www.joker-inc.com/movies/votingmachine.wmv
"While electronic voting machines aren't blameless, but are just one part of an election day puzzle..."
/me is very glad we still use pencilled numbers in little boxes on paper here.
So the excuse is "Sure the machines don't always work, but the people stuff it up too, so it's fine.
India, the worlds largest democracy recently had an all electronic voting. Thats a few hundred million voters. Isn't he USA one of the most educated countries in the world ? The highest distribution of luxury goods ? 99% of the voters has cable TV, whereas in india many voters see a monitor once every 5 years : when they vote.
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
You need cellphone voting, look some kind thoughtful European's have set up a system to show you the way - www.picktheprez.com It even has a distracting game to keep the MTV generation happy.....
# Don't complain about lack of options. You've got to pick a few when you do multiple choice. Those are the breaks. # Feel free to suggest poll ideas if you're feeling creative. I'd strongly suggest reading the past polls first. # This whole thing is wildly inaccurate. Rounding errors, ballot stuffers, dynamic IPs, firewalls. If you're using these numbers to do anything important, you're insane.
The ones that says "click 'yes' if you are (insert deaming phrase here)" and as you move your mouse to click the no, it turns into a yes...
In seriousness, why don't they just put the canidates faces on the ballot? Or graphic representations of thereof?
Of course previous voters might take liberties with a sharpee pen on the voting screen.
Just like all reported Windows security flaws were actually caused by buggy third party software.
Just what we need, another double A organization.
RIAA
MPAA
ITAA (It's new!!! : ^D)
I suggest we all comence drinking heavily and then meet up at AA.
The cancel button is your friend. Do not hesitate to use it.
A fundamental design feature of any voting system must be that the expected "user error" rate must be well, well below the expected vote differential otherwise the system fails in its primary task of capturing the wishes of the voters.
User error can be engineered away. Not by "genius" engineers sitting in some back room coming up with better UIs, but "average" engineers with clipboards field testing the system, watching where users make mistakes, and adjusting the system to compensate.
While it's fun to bash Diebold and everything, I can see how most of the issues are user problems. I worked as a cashier in a grocery store for years and if I had a nickel for everytime someone got confused on how to use the credit/debit card machine at the register, I'd be a millionaire. People didn't know which way to swipe the freaking card, they hit 'cancel' instead of 'OK', etc. They screwed up in ways I didn't even think were possible. So it comes as no suprise that user error is largely to blame for e-voting mishaps.
is the user's error of voting for the "wrong" candidate.
Monstar L
They openned one of the voting machines up and found a bunch of cash cards pressing against the electronics.
At the same time banks received a larger than usual number of complaints about faulty ATMs.
The dean of the College of engineering at my school does a class on technological literacy in the general population (pet peeve of his). Many people never learn the skills to quickly learn a system. /.'ers are the opposite, super literate and techno-savvy to a fault.
Giving a civicly minded old biddy(who probably just wants to gloat in her gossip circles about who didn't show up to vote) a crash course in operating the machines wont make her any better off than the person she's trying to help, except she can say "I know how to do this" even if she can't. (I think I've been reading too much BOFH)
Bacardi + slashdot = negative karma.
User error? But the voters are the users - if the voter cannot use the system, then the system should not be used! It's not enough to just sit smugly and say "well, it was a user error", if you've already anticipated that as a problem.
If the users - the voters - will not be able to use the system, then ditch the system for something they can use. Surely that was the whole point behind ditching the punch card system? What's the point in ditching one system for another that the voters still can't use?!
The ways of gods are mysteriously indistinguishable from chance.
Perhaps the United States should drop those machines, use paper ballots and outsource the actual counting to India. With more than one billion citizens, India is the biggest Democracy on the planet, and they always get their ballots counted in time for their electors to mount their horses and take a two-week-trip to Washington.
The idea behind the media primer is to get journalists to better understand how electronic voting technology works and not always assume that problems with voting are due to failures of electronic voting technology, said Bob Cohen, senior vice president of the ITAA.
What kind of distortion of reality is that??? If there are problems that exist solely because of the fact that electronic systems are introduced into the voting process then those systems are at fault for all delays, failures and problems that occur simply due to their being there.
If a problem would not exist if some entity was not there, then that entity can be considered a cause of that problem; this statement is true no matter what your stance on e-voting is!
-- Language is a virus from outer space.
When I went to vote in 2000 it was a multi-fold 8.5"x11" (I think) ballot with the names in large type, use a marker to connect an arrow by the candidates name. None of this punch card chadding, miss aliging of marks, or any of the many faults in the butterfly ballot. The only way you could screw that up was to drool until the ink smeared.
Oh my god, did I just figure out the next big problem, drooling idiots shorting out the touch screens.
Bacardi + slashdot = negative karma.
The better web designers do user testing. Industrial designers do user testing. Marketing gurus do user testing. You'd think an issue as important as, oh I don't know...choosing the leader of one of the most powerful nations in the world would involve user testing. Sad...very sad.
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
Who the hell are these guys, what makes them experts on voting, and more to the point who the hell is paying them to do this?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
...we do our voting by putting one piece of paper (a list, actually, as we do not vote for individuals) (we have a king, yes) in an envelope the people at the polling station give you. Then you put the envelope in a box. Then you leave.
By the way, the people at the polling stations are chosen from the different political parties.
Then the boxes are sealed and sent to a counting station (sometimes the same place as the polling station, sometimes somewhere else). There, the votes are put in stacks and counted.
And you know what? It seems to *gasp* work! Revolutionary system, huh?
Roses are #FF0000, violets are #0000FF, all my base are belong to you
This is a known limitation. The high-level process of recording votes is very simple: present a list of options, record the ones selected. Under the cover a lot of other things need to happen (security, communication, etc) but the part exposed to the workers should be painfully simple, and as close to idiot-proof as possible.
I'm talking about the connections all being large, brightly color-coded and distinctly shaped. Better yet, bundle all the wires required into a single cable, and have a single yellow plug which goes in the back, and securely locks in.
When designing a UI, take the dumbest user you can imagine, then imagine them drunk. If this user can't make the machine work, it's not ready for the general public.
Take a look here:
http://www.itaa.org/about/members.cfm
Diebold is one of their member companies. This group is just shilling for the e-voting machine manufacturers.
This is the same group that pushed thru doubling H1-B visa .
.
cap limit from 100,000 to 200,000 in the year 2000 after the
DOT BOMB was recognized to have gone off
With friends like them, who needs enemies
Peace !
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
I understand that there is always going to be people that fear anything resembling a computer, but if you design the UI to be as easy to use as possible this shouldn't be an issue.
I've seen what our own districts systems look like that I talked about here and it seems to be simple enough. The big problems I saw during voting was the first year, because everyone not computer literate feared them, but once you got there the machine itself would walk you through everything and voters got more used to it over time.
Most of the voting problems your seeing is not voter user error but system error or pollster user error, and if it is voter user error, then the voting machine (or at least the UI) should be tossed and replaced with something that doesn't have a UI issue.
Basicially if you cant train a monkey to use it then it's not useable as a user interface.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
Opensecrets information on this group.
from just about every software author/vendor -- including myself.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Warning: Parent's link is redirecting to their home page with pics of boobies and muffs!
Are these guys out of their mind? Voting systems have to be used by the greatest common denominator. The only thing you can expect is that people have a minimum of reading skills. There can not be a user error because you can not expect the user to know anything. Last elections in Belgium, the voting machines were available weeks on beforehand, filled up with soccer teams and their players instead of parties/candidates. In this way the public could excercise using them with help from town hall staff. Special sessions were organised for seniors etc. Why not put a dummy machine half way the waiting queue so people can try it out?
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
[] None of the above (Click here to spoil your ballot)
At least with paper ballots you have an option for expressing your dissatisfaction with the process while still exercising your democratic right.
You sly dog: you got me monologuing! - Syndrome
It is a poor citizen who blames his tools.
.\.\att Clare
I would say, most of the society is still not used to computers. I work at middle-sized ISP, but even the technical collegues face challenges about obvious things, like top-posting in mails, clean development policies, etc. Not to speak about my family, they would really drive me mad, if they were among my users. They don't know what the difference between icq and msn is, cannot imagine that they can send their mails somehow else than their webmail reached from their IE, would like to send their full-cd familiy-photocolelction per email, and so on. They're lost if they don't find their 'Start' button in the left bottom corner of the screen. My father had on his notebook's display somehow at 800x600 in the middle of the notebooks LCD, and thought that was usual.
All in all I see to solutions: People wanting to use a computer on their own(especially when connected on the net!) can choose: They get one stripped-down pre-installed PC with couple of icons on the desktop like browsing the net, writing text, working on spreadsheets, and writing mail...etc.. OR they do somekind of course to learn the basic usage of a computer (on the net). Learning the somewhat standard way to go. Kind of a computer driving-licence, where if you regularly do bad mistakes online, you'd have to do the course again.
We'd have less virusproblems, hacked windows-zombie problems, and so on. Computers became to be parts of our culture, let's face it.
Or we still can wait 1-2 generations time, to go the 'natural'(?) way.
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they attack you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
People should be marching on their state capitols demanding that the current e-voting machines be replaced with verifiable voting methods such as paper ballots until such time as everyone can be satisfied that the e-voting machines are fair and reliable. (Which probably means when they produce a clear paper trail.)
The foundation of our system of government is put at risk by sloppy or malicious coding and we all sit at home and go about our lives as if nothing is truely at risk. The degree of apathy that has been shown on this issue is astonishing.
Avi Rubin, the leading authority on e-voting, gave a great interview in the recent Dr. Dobbs Journel. I think what he says is something that every voter should hear. (His writings on e-voting are here.) The problem is not whether or not a certain political party or company has rigged these machines to fix the election, it's that the very design and nature of these machines makes it possible to do so in a way that is undetectable.
Up until now, if you wanted to steal an election, you had to coordinate the work of a large number of people in across a large number of states unless you could blame it all on a bunch of people voting incorrectly in one county in Florida. Now, you could subtley alter the programming of these machines and shift a small percentage of the results produced by each one. It would be almost impossible to detect.
It's not just the presidential race that is affected, its all the races. Think of the money that is controlled by these politicians and the incentives available to people who want to make sure they get the "right" political climate in the future. If this type of cheating doesn't happen this election, it will happen in another, and soon.
The only way to make sure that these machines can be trusted is to:
They say we get the government we deserve. If we don't raise hell with out state governments and election boards over the use of these machines, you can be certain of it.
-All that is gold does not glitter - Tolkien
www.ra
A well educated, responsible voter is going to take their time and pay attention to what they are doing when voting thus get it right. However, the voter that was grabbed off the street by someone that was paid in crack cocaine (no joke) is going to be a sloppy voter. We are going to see a lot of complaints of "voter disenfranchisement" on Nov. 2 when most of it is really irresponsible voters and people who shouldn't be voting in the first place. The mass voter registration drives are harming this country not helping it. Voting is a right that should be taken seriously and should not be exercised citizens that can't even register without some paid political operative pounding on their door.
If Futurama is any indication of our future...
Linda: [on TV] The sheer drama of this election has driven voter turnout to it's highest level in centuries -- 6%
Morbo: [on TV] Exit polls show evil underdog Richard Nixon trailing with an estimated zero votes.
Leela: Yes! The system works!
Linda: [on TV] The time is 7:59 and the robot polls are now opening...and the robot vote is in. Nixon has won!
Leela: No!
Fry: What?
Bender: Get out of town!
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
The technology industry group, which is a staunch supporter of electronic voting technology, made that argument in a document that was distributed to "help journalists put election equipment-related snafus in context."
So this is standard practice in this day and age. Diffuse focus away from the real issue.
By now any advocate with money tries to cloak their position in an "infotainment" package that is ready-made, not requiring any expensive or embarrassing reporter leg-work to dig out all the details of an issue like ACM's position on e-voting, and is sure not to upset any sponsors of the media-outlet.
The unfortunate fact is that U.S. Constitutional protections against government suppression of free speech are insufficient to prevent the development of a lapdog press that relies on money and ratings.
There is absolutely no reason why the press must be factual, truthful, unbiased, complete, or even relevent to the issues of the day.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
How about I Insert a sheep or lemming squarely in your ass, you fucking troll. Why don't you post with your real name assclown?
U b3 fuXX0r3d!
...well, not the serious problem, anyhow.
The odd interface-related snafu here and there gets media attention, surely, but the serious issue is the potential for election rigging with no ability to detect or correct for it after-the-fact. Claiming that the only issues these machines have are interface-related is a slick slight-of-hand, taking attention from where the serious problems lie.
(After all -- interface-related mistakes, like hanging chads, are made by everyone, and on average shouldn't swing the election very much. If there's election-rigging going on, though, that'll swing things in the favor of a specific candidate -- the one favored by the rigger(s)).
I buy that 100%. It's stupid users.
The easiest fix would be to not use these new systems.
Glad we got that worked out.
Just wait till some crappy band steals your nic.
who is the ITAA? are they funded by Diebold or something? I don't trust any of these consumer groups anymore because there is no central agency you can refer to verifying that a group actually does what it's charter is for. lots of groups that appear to be for the consumer really have someone else in mind. like a bunch of banks get together and form a banking rights for people group but you know who the end results of it are going to benefit. maybe bill gates can start a people for the slow of linux in government (PSLG) concerned citizens group to "help" inform journalists how windows needs to be tested in order to be superior...
User errors in such a system are mostly design mistakes, says I (wi' a curse).
---- Take the Space Quiz!
...do Journalists deserve respect? And since when do Journalists get tech subjects correct with out their hands being held?
"Journalism" these days (and perhaps always?) is a whole lot of sensationalism. Most news comes from a limited group of sources anyway, so its not like Journalists are doing all that much collecting of information. It's a phenomenon that's hard to see when you pick up your local paper (unless you pick up 10 papers a day, you don't realize that every paper has the same news articles from the AP or Knight Ridder), but the same principle is painfully obvious in the "blogosphere". Someone has a story, then the next day, everyone has the story (copied form the first blog).
"Nobody writes jokes in base 13." - Douglas Adams
Yes...there being no paper trail on most of these systems, or the demonstrated ease of having their database cracked...it's all just user error. Of course!
ITAA is the industry group founded by Harris Miller. ITAA is funded by microsoft. Harris Miller is an "immigration attorney" who made his name lobbying for more guest workers for the California agriculture industry. That's right, the richest folks in California get special access to cheap foreign labor. So, Microsoft thinking that special access for cheap foreign labor was a great idea for Bill Gates, decided to expand Harris Miller's "indentured servant" program to high tech.
Harris Miller is the guy with cooked up numbers that said that more H1-B workers would be a win situation for American labor and industry.
Well, he said this and a paid off Congress gave us a flood of H1-Bs. Then what happened? Dot bomb. Tech recession. Millions of jobless American techies.
Bottom Line: Harris Miller and the ITAA are the enemy and do not tell the truth.
http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=Ne
Most e-voting problems, they insist, are [l]user issues, where people who don't know how to deal with the new technology cause delays as they seek assistance.
One dangerous assumption is that people can read. There are those that cannot. But they still have the right to vote.
And then there are others who can read but don't see beyond the first line.
In the UK, we have hand-counted paper ballots. We have had them since we started having elections. It is a system that everybody can understand, and it's evolved over the years to be surprisingly robust.
Each ballot slip is placed whole into the box. So it's verifiable if necessary, by re-counting. The fact of your voting is recorded, but in such a way as not to be able to link your name to a particular ballot paper. In case the ballot slips are secretly marked or anything like that, you can pick your own if you feel sufficiently paranoid {you aren't forced to accept the one the presiding officer gives you}; so it's secret.
Each polling station takes votes from an area no bigger than the volunteers working there could comfortably count by hand all the votes from. So it's scalable -- if you have more voters, you just add more polling stations. It's also quick -- in each polling station, there are only a few thousand votes to count. All this is going on in parallel, results are initially telephoned through and then the ballot papers are sealed back up in case they need to be re-counted.
The numbers involved mean that to "buy" an election, you would have to pay off a lot of people. So it's actually quite tamper-proof. And if any shenanigans are suspected, a recount can be ordered -- or, in the worst case the ballot repeated -- in just the known affected polling stations.
It is not clear to me how this system could be improved on without introducing new failure modes. Any kind of vote-counting machine is susceptible to tampering. Even if it is absolutely open to public scrutiny for the days when it is not being used for an election, there are stunts that could be pulled on the day. And even if the machine is verified by a hand-count, it will still takes the same number of people to hand-count the ballots after the machine is done, so what have you saved?
If you're going to rely on human honesty, it's best to distribute that reliance as widely as possible, i.e. to trust several thousand people to be just a little bit honest rather than trust a few people or just one person to be very honest indeed. After all, the majority of human beings are generally honest, and more so when the stakes are low. What benefit is there to dishonesty in counting a few thousand votes among tens of millions? On the other hand, if you are the managing director of the company that makes the only officially-approved voting machines, you effectively have every election in your hands -- and that is where the benefits of being dishonest do start to show.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
The IEEE generally takes the same positions as their contingency -- computer scientists, coders, hackers; and generally the more competant section of the crowd at that.
The ITAA, on the other hand, appears to represent not the folks who actually do IT, but rather the "industry" -- that is, the folks who own IT companies, rather than the folks who actually do all the work and understand what's going on.
I don't want journalists thinking these schmucks represent me.
----->>>>
Election Technology Council - ETC
The ETC is a coalition of companies dedicated to the development, delivery and support of electronic voting solutions to the American electorate.
Visit http://www.electiontech.org for more information.
----->>>>
On the about ETC page:
Council Members
Advanced Voting Solutions (AVS)
Diebold Election Systems
Election Systems & Software (ES&S)
Hart InterCivic
Perfect Voting System
Sequioa Voting Systems
Unilect
VoteHere, Inc
----->>>>
'nuff said
Our voting machine is so much well designed: http://www.tre-sp.gov.br/urna/figuras/urna.gif
...or was that some sort of IT joke? Maybe we've gone from a (fill in the) bubble sort for optical ballots and a heap sort for absentee ballots to an insertion (of Diebold's candidate) sort?
Sounds like your run-of-the-mill OSS tech support, if you ask me. Why is it OK to blame "idiot users" when they have problems with complicated OSS, but unacceptable to blame them for not knowing how to use a TOUCH SCREEN?
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Aside from the fact that they're probably lying, a good proportion of the problems in Florida 2000 were "user error". That doesn't mean they were ignored.
there are people out there who can't figure out how to use condoms.
oh wait, many of them are here, aren't they?
"Nobody writes jokes in base 13." - Douglas Adams
I know that many here won't believe Diebold, as they believe a campaign statement by its CEO (which I agree to be in very, very, very poor taste) means that a 13,000 employee company is secretly working to "hand" elections to Republicans, but Diebold claims there is a paper trail:
http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/375954
"Diebold strongly refutes the existence of any "back doors" or "hidden codes" in its GEMS software. These inaccurate allegations appear to stem from those not familiar with the product, misunderstanding the purpose of legitimate structures in the database. These structures are well documented and have been reviewed (including at a source code level) by independent testing authorities as required by federal election regulations.
In addition to the facts stated above, a paper and an electronic record of all cast ballots are retrieved from each individual voting machine following an election. The results from each individual machine are then tabulated, and thoroughly audited during the standard election canvass process. Once the audit is complete, the official winners are announced. Any alleged changes to a vote count in the election management software would be immediately discovered during this audit process, as this total would not match the true official total tabulated from each machine."
Sadly, the press kit misses the same point that so much of the computing industry misses today. If the problem is the users, then the problem IS the code. As computing/IT professionals part of our job is to make technology both accessible and usable by people -- the very same people who will make silly mistakes, and not understand what is being asked. HSI is a critical component in any design that will be used by people. This is why, despite the high cost, so many people love the Apple Macs. The OS is fairly intuitive, looks nice, and works in the way a human might anticipate.
If your answer to a problem is a human error that happens once in a great while, fine, but if it is consistent it is an interface/UI/code problem, and it needs to be fixed. We write code, or design systems for humans - not the other way around.
Sorry for the semi-rant here, I even had to log in from a public terminal to get this one out of my system.
Would you care for a jelly baby?
http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Infor mation_Technology_Association_Of_America
Ah yes consultants, explaining something that is totally correct but totally irrelivent. Err the biggest safety problem with concord was the low height of the doors, people kept banging their heads! Most issues people have with windows is how to remove things manually from the add/remove programs list. We recalled 5,000 baby monitors (that had a high risk of catching fire), customers complained that the buttons were confusing.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
I can see how most of the issues are user problems [... on credit/debit card machines at grocery stores, customers...] hit 'cancel' instead of 'OK', etc
That's because most debit card machines at grocery stores are deliberately designed to confuse the user into using their card in a way that costs the grocery store less. I started noticing this recently... in the past couple of years... and it started happening first in new machines but gradually older systems have been reprogrammed with the same scheme.
The motivation is obvious: If you use your "credit/debit" card as a credit card, the grocery store pays a credit card fee, you pay the amount on the ticket. If you use your "credit/debit" card as a debit card, the grocery store pays less (if anything), but you pay a transaction fee that can be over $3.00 in some cases.
So, to use it as a credit card: about half have a "credit" or "debit" button you can hit before swiping, so you select "credit" if it's there. Either way, you swipe, then it asks you for a PIN. If you enter the PIN it switches to debit mode, so you have to hit "cancel" at this point. Then it asks you to select "credit" or "debit". Sometimes it asks you to hit "credit/debit" then "credit", if there are other choices (like check-cashing cards). Then, it asks you if the amount is OK. This time you hit "OK" and it goes on to complete the transaction.
I'm not exaggerating, here. Almost every machine does this, and at least half make you go through all these steps.
So, I would NOT classify the problems you're seeing as user error. They're the result of customers being systematically trained to hit "CANCEL" as a necessary part of the transaction. This is a user interface design problem.
And that's just the deliberate design problem... sometimes there are actual bugs in the user interface as well.
For example, the machines at Home Depot in Houston are not all that agressive about the credit/debit card thing, but they will sometimes briefly switch to a screen asking you to swipe your card or hit cancel before bringing up the signature box: this appears to be a programming error, but it looks like there's a problem with the transaction and the first time it happened I hit "CANCEL" at that point, just in case... because I'd gotten charged twice at a pharmacy when it did something similar.
I'm a computer professional: I've been programming computers regularly for over 30 years, using everything from paper tape and punch cards to experimental OpenGL-based 3d user interfaces. I'm not a naive user who isn't used to a variety of user interfaces. Yet I have occasionally hit "CANCEL" at the wrong time. I'm not at all surprised that some people are regularly baffled by grocery store card readers. And these are MUCH simpler than voting machines.
I don't know who this ITAA is, but if they're telling people that voting machine problems are "user error" I wouldn't trust their judgement further than I could spit a Diebold executive.
Seriously, this is the same exact thinking that has existed in the Information Technology for decades and will likely exist for many more decades.
Why is it suddenly a big 'issue' now when most all of us have been guilty at one point or another of implementing, designing something without thinking for a moment how some non-technical person would interact with it?
Oh, that's right it is about voting now. So, suddenly we are supposed to throw out decades of learned behavior that the IT industry thrives on because our glaring failure is suddenly involved in something important...
Reality Check, our glaring failure has existed in extremely important aspects of life for nearly the entire life of the computer industry. I don't care who you are in the IT Industry, if you aren't considering non-technical end-users in your design (of most applications/interfaces), you are only contributing to the problem.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
Reply Without Reading The F*sking Article
If a clueless person cannot simply walk to the kiosk and vote, ignoring all instruction, and have their vote registered -- The software isn't ready!
Why doesn't someone copy the software used in Brazil? They have e-voting and I am aware of no problems.
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
My home country Germany still has simple sheets of paper which have instructions on how many votes you have and where you just check one of the large boxes next to the names/partys. I have to admit that it's low tech, but it does not have the error rates of punching cards or deploying an electronic system that is vulnerable to simple attacks.
Now I understand that Germany is about the size of North Dakota (world population rank 15 whereas the U.S. are rank 4 CIA World Fact Book Link) but we have the first preliminary results after 6 p.m. when the voting offices close and the final results on the next day. If enough people help counting, I would imagine this to be possible in the US too. At least until they figure out a somewhat secure way of e-voting.
Of course I have no idea how many volunteers they have to help in the voting process...
Must be eye-dee-ten-tee
ID10T
"Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely."
I have been using "electronic" voting machines for quite some time now. They have levers that clearly indicate with a black "X" that I have voted for a particular candidate or proposition and they are lever-based. They were developed in the 1950s and "feel" mechanical. I think they are probably trustworthy.
But the issue here is not the machines, and we (the press) are guilty of not being completely honest with the public. The issue here is that there is a feeling that, in the year 2000, the election was stolen. The purchase of new machines to tally votes is really a side issue.
We have made little of the fact that Al Gore won the popular vote and lost the electoral college. We have made nothing of the fact that the US Supreme Court completely ignored States Rights when it comes to the States deciding for themselves how to apportion their Electoral College vote -- Even agreeing to consider the case of Bush v. Gore was extra-Constitutional, it was all ready in State Court in Florida.
Instead, the people I work for called it a "Constitutional Crisis," which is really funny because our Constitution has specific instructions for times when the Electoral College vote is questionable. Everyone paid lots of attention to a bunch of "Activist" Supreme Court judges who wished to pre-decide a State matter. Outside election observers should have commented on that.
Now, we're reporting about "lack of paper trail" and "hackable voting machines" because we're all excited about the possibility of great ratings if there is any question in this close election again.
In other words, we're not really interested in fully informing the American People, we're interested in trying to make them watch our "news" shows.
Fact is, all ballot boxes can be stuffed. All totals may be altered. All elections may be rigged. What's important is the believability of the process in the mind of the majority of the voters. And the press (which is what this article was truly aimed at) is more interested in sowing fear, uncertainty and doubt in hopes that it creates ratings and sells newspapers.
Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people.
Well, no one (or very few) will read this now, I know that. But I must say that if this machines are hard to use, assemble and whatever this is tha fault of whoever design them.
Brasil have eletronic voting in a national scale for some years now. Here we have mandatory voting, this means that every Brasilian must vote or at least justify (if you're away for instance). This includes a large portion of the population that is iliterate.
This means that in a federal election, like the last one that elected Lula in 2002, we have eletronic voting machines installed in places in the middle of the amazon jungle, that can only be reached by "donkeys", and those machines are sometimes installed and operated by people who are not intimate with any tecnology at all, and the voters sometimes can't even read.
[]'s Victor Bogado da Silva Lins
^[:wq
Ok I admit I don't know a lot about voting systems around the world, but the one we have in Norway seems to me to be less error prone than punching holes in a card.
Here we have one card per party. Each card has the name of the party clearly marked on the top, and the names of the candidates for that party. If you're "pro" you can give additional votes to certain candidates and such (doing this wrong can easily invalidate your vote), but for a plain vote, take the card and put it into the envelope. Only way to screw up is to put multiple cards into the envelope.
These cards also have bar codes on them, which allows them to be machine read.
Maybe they already know about these problems, but you can only dumb down the process so much.
How about punch the monkey to vote for Nader.
...you're part of the precipitate.
"Nobody writes jokes in base 13." - Douglas Adams
This was the very issue that touchscreen voting was supposed to have solved, the sole redeeming virtue of touchscreen to counterbalance all the negativities.
The user interface problems, I trust, will eventually get solved on their own. But the underlying problems with electronic voting that we are all familiar with -- the most pressing issue -- will not be solved unless the public is made aware not only of the problem ("eat your vote", as the InfoWorld article blithely leads off with), but also the solutions.
So often I hear in social and political gatherings that "paper trails" are bad because paper shouldn't follow voters home lest their be voter intimidation. No one is familiar with printouts behind a glass window until I tell them about it.
That doesn't even get into secure paperless schemes, such as the one invented by David Chaum, the first inventor of digital cash (secure, anonymous, digital) and founder of DigiCash (another underreported technology that could solve all sorts of privacy issues such as with automated road tolling). Chaum's new voting technology is discussed in the October, 2004 Communications of the ACM, which is dedicated toward voting technology issues. ITAA should follow the lead of its academic counterpart ACM rather than propagating ignorance, and by extension, tyranny.
The same people that are not supposed to have the skills to operate a voting machine seem to manage quite well with slot, video poker and lottery ticket machines.
Why does a voting machine need to be any more complicated than that?
That gives me an idea - Imagine the turnout if 1 random voter were chosen to receive $250,000.
...were my favorites for dispensing voter-rage justice. Flipping the mechanical levers next to the names, changing as many times as you want, then that satisfying *crackhackhackhackhackhackha* as you pull the handle and make you decision permanent.
As for overall ease, and being a student in the scan-tron era, I liked the fill-in-the-bubble cards I used once in Maryland. Simple to fill out (we used them for all our standardized tests from preschool though SATs), simple to tally, simple to automatically recount, simple to manually recount.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Well, it's the old "blame the user" attitude. When a group like ITAA makes such a statement, it's not surprising that so much information technology still is so crappy.
In different words, you shouldn't even have to read a user manual to use a modern desktop application. And you certainly shouldn't have to read a user manual in order to vote.
"Well, I don't think there is any question about it. It can only be attributable to human error. This sort of thing has cropped up before and it has always been due to human error."
As my friend Hal says, this sort of thing has cropped up before and it has always been due to human error.
Any time a system breaks because a person does something stupid, a rational analyst asks if there is a way you could change the system to avoid giving the user the opportunity to screw it up. Usually it is. If user-friendliness wasn't in their requirements list, someone responsible for the design of the system screwed up. If it was in their requirements list, it sounds like it probably failed the requirement, so again, someone screwed up. It really sounds like they're just scapegoating the voters here.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
This is a late reply, but figured it couldn't hurt. I volunteered to be an election officer in my local voting precinct this year. Even if you couldn't program a VCR, you get classes on both 1) the procedures to ensure proper voter process, and 2) an overview & demonstration on how the voting machines work, from startup to shutdown, along with procedures & chain-of-command to follow if something goes wrong. There are further in-depth classes on how the machines work, if you desire.
Here in my precinct, they use electronic voting machines, but there's a paper backup (which upon viewing, many of us breathed a sigh of relief).
This doesn't solve the problem of poor interface programming, but please be assured that those manning the voting polls aren't simply thrown in "cold". Whippersnapper. ;-)
I was listening to Bev Harris of blackboxvoting.org on the radio last night. Disclaimer, this is anecdotal, going on memory here, but it's the gist of it. She was saying that they ran an inquiry to the county level of all the counties in florida and ohio,because they are important swing states, to ask them a simple question. The precincts send their results to a central place someplace in the county where one machine tabulates all the precinct reports, then it moves upstream. They asked these officials if they had a record of who had keys for the room that THAT machine was in, over 90% said they didn't have it, and weren't sure who had keys. These machines are the "central tabulators" using GEMS and I believe slashdot covered the story on how easy it was to hack them babies with a two digit password access.
So not only are those machines easy to change the results in, but it's apparently easy for unknown parties to get access to the machines themselves!
I just looked, so here's a paste from her site about the problem in general with following the vote tabulation trail:
"Another subtle change:
It used to be that access to voting systems was granted only to certified and sworn elections officials, whose names we knew and who were accountable directly to us. Nowadays, such access is typically also granted to unsworn and undisclosed county computer techs, employees of vendors, and even temporary workers hired off the Internet by subcontractors of the vendor. These individuals are not only not sworn election officials, but often aren't even from the state where the election is held. They do their thing and then fade away, sometimes carrying data or disks from the election with them."
FWIW
I'm currently volunteering with the Kerry campaign in Brevard Co, FL (home to Cape Canaveral and KSC). In this county we have optical-scan ballots.
The last two days, I've spent about five-plus hours as a poll watcher. In this office, they use the same ballots for the early voting as they do for the absentee ballots. All of them are pre-folded - three or four folds.
About every 10 minutes or so, one of the folks in the office has to clear a paper jam. The ballot is counted...but then hangs up trying to go into the receiving box (the whole unit's the size of a 55 gal. drum, except plastic and with a square cross-section).
Unfolded ballots drop...but the manufacturer obviously DID NOT CONSIDER folded ballots at all. A cheap scanner or print that I bought that jammed that often would be returned for another brand within days.
Oh, and just to make me even more confident, I called the Supervisor of Elections a few weeks ago, and found out that the software that tabulates the votes is from everyone's favorite, non-buggy, no-back-doors maker, Diebold.
Wannaful, wannaful.
mark
Sorry to tell you this. But you (=read: citizen of the USA) are the laughing stock of the "democratic" world.
...) $other group
Your administration threatens to bring democracy to so called rogue nations and can not guarantee a fair and equal vote in their own country.
Now a group of people want's to blame the other group of election fraud in "the land of the free and home of the brave" because of technical reasons.
1) Laws that forbid the recounting of votes,
2) no papertrail,
3) faulty technology
4) internet connected PCs / Laptops
==> tampering with the election result made easy!
You have to be registered to vote! Can someone tell my why? Why have you to tell you are a republican or a democratic voter?
Your voting system is fucked up! With or without technical assistance!
Rember your Supreme Court decision to stop the recounting of votes! In a democracy the people have only one chance to directly influence politics with their vote. Now the your Supreme Court denies you your right that every vote is counted and that all votes are equal! Think about it!
The old paper ballots are proven to be the best why spend millions of tax payers money for some bad products.
In the occupied regions the prisoners are/were tortured in the name of democracy by soldiers and intelligence personnel or contractors.
Just ask the iraqi people what's the difference between the regime of Sadam und the new proclaimed democratic gouvernment (=read: puppet regime) under supervision of the "coalition of the willing".
They will answer that the infrastructure is destroyed and their oil ressources are under an freign power (Halliburton).
I've said enough.
I'am sad to see the USA go down the drain.
Some years ago I wanted to visit the USA as a tourist and maybe work for some time.
Now you became a nation where free/other/liberal ideas are suppressed by fascistic groups like the Neocons, sects (=Church groups) or companies.
These groups have to much influence.
The pecking order is
1) politican
2) companies / lobby groups
3) religious groups
n-1) animals
n) people
Mod me down if you like -
I don't care because I live in a world more free than the USA.
In Germany we learned 60 years ago to not run into wars anymore like some brain dead void of commonsense.
Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
I know that the majority of Slashdot thinks e-voting machines are evil, but give me a break. Do you have any idea how stupid the average person is? Have you ever walked your computer illiterate mother through clicking on "Start, Settings, Control Panel"? It takes 20 minutes just to do that! Who would think they could handle using a computer to vote any better?
Feel free to mod me down for this opinion, but I'm not sure if you should be voting if you're one of the 1% of people that just can't figure out how to do it. I mean, there are even people who couldn't properly hole-punch a card in the last election! How about people that accidently voted for the wrong name? People that voted for two different people? And these are on paper ballots! What hope do these people have of being able to vote through any mechanism? And should we care if they can't?
I'm a big tall mofo.
I've written lots of UIs--mostly industrial, and I can tell you that blaming the user does NOT solve the problem.
Blaming the user generally means a crappy programmer, not a stupid user.
As much as we like to point the finger, users are actually NOT stupid. They are often ignorant of the conventions of your particular UI design.
If the user has a choice whether to use the system in question, you can reasonably expect him to educate himself in the quirks of the UI. Or choose not to use that system.
Even this, does not excuse sloppy design. It simply makes the penalty for such poor work a loss of profits (or geek points if you're giving the SW away)--rather than a violation of the user's constitutional rights.
In this case, however, the user (voter, taxpayer, and ultimately EMPLOYER of the government) will soon NOT have a choice whether to use this particular UI. It is the responsibility of the UI designer to come to the voter.
Remember the most recent failure of a voting system UI--the famous "butterfly ballot". Lots of folks said "users are stupid". Lots of other folks said "the ballot is misleading". Given that the confusion produced by the ballot allegedly produced systematic errors in voting, lots of folks put on your TFH and said lots of other things.
Remember that line about the user (voter) being the employer of the government? Lots of folks are going to get fired over this.
There's no excuse for crappy design. It's a poor designer who blames his users for the failure of his design.
(2 more to go)
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
Why have I been seeing so many people reporting favorably about e-voting that have nothing to gain from it? It's not as if Diebold sponsors news programs.
The only problem I can think of is if you don't fill in the circle completely (or if you can't stay within the lines) and the machine doesn't count your vote.
The ITAA will be telling us that we're all too stupid to vote and can't make our own decisions. We'll need special representatives to vote for us, because we're too dumb to know what's good for us. Wouldn't that suck.........
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
Elections are run at the county level. The ONLY roll that the state government has is in certifying the results or picking the winner if no results come from the counties.
The infamous "butterfly ballot" was designed by a Democrat. All the counties that Gore requested recounts in were run by Democrats.
The "felon roll" was a list created by the state but it was up to the individual counties to decide what to do with the list. Many counties (including Broward and Dade IIRC) simply ignored the list. Others utilized various procedures to vet the names provided to them before purging their roles. It is estimated that there were still many thousands of illegal votes placed by felons in the 2000 election in Florida.
But hey, continue living in your "Bush stole the elction" cocoon. The facts are far too challenging.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
losing one's customer
Oops -- in point 4, I meant to say "losing a customer's deposit". Much better analogy to losing a citizen's vote.
It seems to me that the next "elected" president of the US will be whoever can hack the most machines at the last minute.
"Teleporting Rodents with D-Cell Battery Displacement" theory -- IgnoramusMaximus (692000)
landslide? there is this thing called 'facts'. they are very hip these days with all the kids.
And about this word... I think describing problems with e-voting as "SNAFU" is the most accurate assessment I've heard to date. Bravo to these people for coming clean!
Read some of the chapters from the book Votescam to find out more about what goes on behind the scenes in an election. Debating e-voting is the tip of the iceberg. http://www.constitution.org/vote/votescam__.htm
My mother worked in the last Canadian election as Returning officer. She basically ran a district in an election. She was in charge of making sure everyone was trained, renting the offices, highering the accountant, getting signs printed, etc etc etc.
I was in her office a couple of times and you would be suprised on the signs they have posted everywhere. It's like "Elections for dummies" in there. Everywhere you see a sign that tells you how to do your job. "If this happens, do a b and c. If this happens do x y and z".
I will not be suprised if these electronic voting systems come with big ass signs that say. "If machine is not on, make sure it is plugged in the wall. If machine is not on, and it's plugged in the wall. Please check that the socket has power."
The main thing that I noticed is that most people's job at an election office has been so simplified and so documented as to what to do that almost any person can do that job, regardless of personal intellect. If you can read and write, then you're qualified.
While I do admit that this doesn't help the geeks reputation of trying to be all high and mighty. They won't be the first people to assume that the people running an election are morons.
-Derek
Treat me like a marketing stat, and I'll treat your movie like a series of ones and zeros
this is a PR company for the IT industry. any other industry would do the same.
lets say someone discovered cigarettes probably cause cancer in 10,000 people a year. the cigarettes PR people would flood the media with press releases telling reporters to put the studies in 'context'.
oh wait that really happened.
its the way PR works. your product/industry gets slagged in the media, so you fight back. its simple tribalism, nothing more nothing less. has nothing to do with the issues.
its partisan hackery, as jon stewart would say
In fact, I left the dog show business years ago.
Those felons were not even removed from the lists in most counties.
You have over 500 slashdot comments. You should know about Google and Wikipedia by now.
I suspect that one of the remarks that will come from the OSCE observers will be that the lack of I.D. control at the polls, combined with stale voter registrations (dead people and other uneligable left on the voter lists), makes voter fraud easier.
Most e-voting problems, they insist, are [l]user issues, where people who don't know how to deal with the new technology cause delays as they seek assistance.
:)-
That's what happens when you beta test in Florida.
(Can I calll you Chad, you've got such cute dimples.)
-- Just another unsolicited opinion... from the Peanut Gallery.
3) Electronic systems are easier to manipulate, with many single-point-of-vulnerability opportunities to own the entire system, and are MUCH harder to design and implement in a really secure way than those primitive old paper things. Geeks understand these problems much more acutely than almost anyone else (with the possible exception of certain parties interested in gaming the election results again...?)
Ouch! That tinfoil hat is suddenly getting very hot!
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
Weren't Miami's problems in 2000 also "user issues, where people who don't know how to deal with the" (old) "technology cause delays" etc.?
I sent this to Bartlett Cleland, the VP of Public Policy at ITAA. I suggest others do the same. His e-mail address is bcleland@itaa.org.
- - - - -
Mr. Cleland,
Please excuse me if you are not the ITAA staffer responsible for the e-Voting segment, and please forward this to the appropriate person.
Also, let me state at the outset that I am an IBM employee, not an IBM spokesman. My opinions are my own, though my position at IBM assures that they are informed.
I read an InfoWorld article this morning that discusses the press kit you're distributing and I'm writing to tell you that I, and virtually everyone else in the industry you purport to represent, is appalled by the stance you're taking. You are doing a disservice both to the industry and to the country as a whole.
Your press kit tells the world, first, that the IT industry is incompetent. You're saying that we are incapable of making electronic voting equipment that is properly designed for the task, and that we have to resort to blaming the users for not knowing how to use the systems, rather than performing proper requirements analyses and user testing to assure that such a crucial system -- a system designed to be used by volunteers without formal computer education -- will in fact function as designed.
I understand that the makers of the current crop of voting machines have botched the job in virtually every way imaginable, but if you want to support the IT industry you should properly be calling for them to use the appropriate tools to fix the problem, and to get assistance from others where needed, not working to convince the world that all of the IT industry is as incompetent as these few companies.
Even more seriously, though, your press kit will lead journalists to believe and report that the IT industry in general is in favor of e-voting when nothing could be further from the truth. Outside of the small handful of companies currently in the business of making voting machines, IT engineers are nigh-universally opposed to purely electronic voting. Moreover, if there is anyone at all in the IT security industry who thinks it's a good idea, they haven't spoken out. The senior IT professionals who have the deepest understanding of how one would go about creating a secure, trustworthy electronic voting system say, unanimously, that it cannot be done.
Papering over the failures of the current crop of voting machines paints the IT industry as incompetent, and supporting purely electronic voting, in the face of expert opinion that it cannot be done securely, damages both the industry and the nation. Please stop. Instead, you should be pointing out that more responsible portions of the industry are pushing for the creation of voting machines that produce paper ballots, are designed to be foolproof and are adequately tested both for security and usability prior to deployment.
Thank you,
Shawn
--
Shawn E. Willden
Senior I/T Security Architect
IBM Global Services, Global Smart Card Solutions
[ e-mail and phone elided to avoid massive spam ]
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
So, if (as seems likely) there will always be some voter stupid enough to screw up any voting system ("Make It Idiot Proof and Someone Will Make a Better Idiot"), does that mean we should give up on voting entirely and jump straight to dictatorship?
Seriously, the questions are: does this system represent an improvement over the previous system? and, is it potentially improvable more than the previous system is potentially improvable? While I don't think the new system is an improvement in terms of security over the old, it is at least equal or better in usability. Furthermore, there is potential for improving the new systems to be better than the old systems.
Usability is a question of human factors engineering, and represents an approachable problem. There is substantial room for improvement in electronic methods, despite being presently comparable to the old punch-card methods. As for security, there are obvious methods, most of which Slashdot has discussed. Open source implementation. Dedicated hardware platform. Non-flashable ROM based operating system. Hardware platform inspected, using standards comparable to the Nevada Gaming Control Board's standards for slot machines. (Hey, they're used to people trying to cheat.) Criminal penalties for tampering. Hardware backup systems comparable to a network data center.
Security is difficult, but understandable. Perfect security (including denial of service attacks) is impossible. But a team of 4th year CS undergrads with one grad student supervising could probably come up in a month with a set of design requirements that would require a Mission Impossible team to compromise, and a "blow up the polling building" scenario to DoS. And if anyone gets that desperate to tamper with a US election, this country will be in far bigger trouble than Bush claims we're in now.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
I spent some time asking her the 'hard questions', you know the type of questions that add context, put things into a different perspective and such. The real silly thing is that I was partial to the slant she was writing into the story, it was just interesting that someone like me, without a college degree, could actually educate someone with a "News Reporting" degree on how to actually tell the news...
It seems to me that we need to have people that weren't trained to be reporters actually doing the reporting in this country.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
The user voted wrong, so we changed it for them.
you're welcome, Ms. Harris, see you in four years.
"this is the ITAA?"
For the most part the ITAA == Professional Liars Association.Remember them making all those tech worker shortage projections right in the middle of the dot com collapse? 1.6 Million, 900K, then 600K.
At the same time the tech industry was laying off workers faster than you can imagine. They did it to promote their H-1B agenda.. Note: They're still at it.
Debunking the Myth of a Desperate Software Labor Shortage...."The congressional General Accounting Office found ``serious analytical and methodological weaknesses'' in the [ITAA/Dept. of Commerce] reports.";
The ITAA was counting all the positions held by Computer consultants and contractors as UNFILLED!!
Yikes !!!
---
Now for a little bit about the ITAA with electronic voting and Mr. Miller's pitch to the electronic machine manufacturers. August 22, 2003, Democracy for Sale, CHEAP!
"Harris Miller (ITAA) Gives the intro spiel about the company and how it can help the industry stave off short-term attacks" from academics and "activists".
"Harris: .. And there can be two scenarios there: The companies may
want to hide behind me, they dont want to say anything... frequently
that happens in a trade association, you dont want to talk about the
issues as individual companies. We have that issue right now with the
Buy America Act, for example in congress. No company wants to act like
its against Buy America -- even though theyre all against it so I
take all the heat for them."
They read your mind using implanted rfid devices.
You're right. Flamebait. Sorry cranky.
Nothing to see here
Google: +florida +butterfly +ballot +designer
l e=/c/ a/2004/09/02/MNGTK8I8IE1.DTL
Link: Designer of Florida's butterfly ballot loses job
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?fi
Theresa LePore was the election supervisor for Palm Beach County. The irony is that the "infamous" ballot was actually published in the newspaper before the election (as required by law) and had a number of weeks time for review and comment. No one raised any complaints until the counting got close.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
this video, which shows how they work:
:-)
Voting Machine
Parent is the perfect response to the stupid ITAA press release.
...why anyone would want to use all this e-voting. You don't need touchscreen voting machines. You don't need machines that punch holes into cards for you. There is a simple, effective and rather secure voting system that has been successfully used for decades. Just use a paper ballot with a list of names/parties, a circle next to each name and tell people to check one of the circles with a pen.
In a process as important as an election, a system must be used that anyone can understand. The results must be 100% verifiable.
I don't think it's very useful to discuss whether voting machines should be open source or closed source. Such systems can only be understood be a relatively small (compared to the whole population) number of people. Of the people that can understand it, only a small percentage will actually investigate the systems in depth. In the end, we will have to trust a handfull of experts that the machines work the way we expect them to. Some of these experts will work for institutions with their own political agendas. Even those that are truly independent will make mistakes, miss some bugs. Furthermore, they will only be able to inspect a few systems, they can never verify that every single one of thousands of voting machines across the country is working correctly.
We have seen so many machines getting hacked in the last years, open source or not, and sooner or later it WILL happen to voting machines.
Some comments here suggest to add paper trails by giving the voter a printout of his ballot which he can verify. Sure, this is an improvement over pure electronic voting, but why not use paper in the first place? I wouldn't even trust scanners. All counting should be done by hand.
I have been a volunteer at a few elections here in Germany and I think the system we used is very secure.
When the voter comes to the voting center he receives his paper ballot. The ballots that are given out are counted. The voter votes and puts his ballot in the ballot box. His name is checked on the voter list, the checked names on the list are counted.
In the end of the day all ballots in the box are counted. The number has to agree with the number of checked names on the list and the number of ballots given out. The ballots are sorted, one pile for each party/candidate, each pile is counted independently by at least two volunteers. Of course all counts have to add up to the total number of votes. All in all, it is highly unlikely that any counting mistakes will go unnoticed. In the end, all ballots are put into a sealed box and sent to a central state authority that can check the results again.
IIRC the whole counting process is public, so you can go to your voting center and see your vote being counted (I haven't seen anybody doing that though).
I think this process is hard to manipulate, even if all volunteers in a voting center worked together they could only change a few thousand votes and such foul play could easily be discovered.
Sure, the counting takes a few hours, but isn't it worth the wait?
From a technical viewpoint I find voting machines and the different ideas to make the process secure very interesting, but I don't ever want to trust them with my vote.
speaking as a budding interface designer... it's never the users' fault. never. you just didn't design the interface right. even if your users are "abnormal" (blind, deaf, color blind, short), well, you still didn't account for them. users are never "too dumb" or "non-technical," they're just naive and you didn't prepare them enough.
"it's the interface, stupid."
ok, ok, maybe this helpful journalistic organization is thinking like a programmer. in which case it's always the user's fault, never the program's.
- emilio
neurostyle dot net - it's all in your head
Where did all these Evil Associations of America come from? Is there some kind Uber Evil Association of America that keeps spinning these guys off?
But there is really no reason that technology can't be used to make the process easier and less confusing than the current system. Now, me, I always vote via mail-in. Mostly because I get to vote before a lot of the last-minute mud really starts to fly, plus I have a good, long time to peruse my ballot, vet my candidates, and make an informed decision from the comfort of my own couch. But the system is really simple - fill in an arrow. If the computer ballot is any more complex than that, it's too complex. I haven't seen it, of course, so I can't say.
Also, is there some reason a mock-up of the screen couldn't be mailed to the electorate beforehand so people have a chance to see what it's like before they go in? Perhaps they did, which means perhaps the parent is right: if you can't figure out how to press a button next to the name you like, why the hell are you even allowed to vote?
In short, without seeing the screens, we really can't say either way. Anyone from Florida care to comment?
Do not touch -Willie
Just because you don't agree with the premise of socialism doesn't mean that everyone who thinks that pure capitalism is a bad idea is an idiot.
Very interesting. Facts are now considered Flamebait. I wish there was a feature where moderators could insert comments, because I would really like to know why this post is considered flamebait. Unless it was auto-moderated down because of a keyword match, which I have suspected for a while is a "feature" of Slashdot.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
There really isn't much to say in the "comment" field as I've said all I need to say in the "subject" field.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
Most importantly, your claim that the felon list was in any way just a suggestion is flat out 100% untrue. You can see the law for yourself at http://www.flsenate.gov/statutes/index.cfm?App_mod e=Display_Statute&URL=Ch0097/ch0097.htm which clearly states that the chief election officer is ordered to (11) Create and maintain a statewide voter registration database.
Even if your claim wasn't completely false, the number 1 responsibility for the DoE is right there at the top: Obtain and maintain uniformity in the application, operation, and interpretation of the election laws. So if they were just sending out material (which they aren't) and not following up on it they would be derelict in their duty.
The Department of Elections has a huge role in the election proceedings and although their role is often refered to as "advisory" it's advice you're given whether you want it or not and which you have to take. Under "Procedures on complaints of violations of Title III of the Help America Vote Act of 2002" the statement is "The department shall have sole jurisdiction over complaints filed under the provisions of this section."
Meaning, you have a problem with us? Take it up with us and we'll decide if it's worth investigating. "This section provides the sole avenue of redress for alleged violations of Title III of the Help America Vote Act of 2002 and does not give rise to any other cause of action."
As far as the butterfly ballot, who laid it out is irrelevant. I lived in Florda at the time and I can assure you in months of chatter about it I didn't once hear anyone claim it was a partisan trick. You can draw your own conclusion about whether it's important to compensate for the inability of the voter to communicate their real desire, but the thing was a shit design. You can actually see it - if you can stand to confront your obsessively held position with actual facts - here along with designer Bruce 'Tog' Tognazzini's commentary.
I have no interest in conversations about the election being "stolen" and think they are counterproductive. But the idea that there's just this mass democrat anarchy and the republican election officers in Tallahassee had nothing to do with the fuckupedness (I doubt those clowns were togeter enough to create that situation deliberately) is nonsense.
Bad management trumps ideology - Show the world you want better leadership. http://www.timefornewmanagement.com
It seems odd to concentrate only on what's actually happening, rather than what a detailed analysis suggests might happen, but shouldn't be allowed to.
It's valid to document the acutal problems instead of the potential problems, but not when it means ignoring the potential problems until they bite us (collectively) in the ass.
Part of a systemic analysis is the opportunity to fix the flaws before they're exploited.
User errors make up the majority of all computer problems, but most individual user errors have significantly lower potential impact than system flaws that could allow intentional mischief. It's valid to put this in context, but not to whitewash the severity of system problems by masking it with the predominance of user errors.
http://drteknikal.blogspot.com/
well, here's the proof that it is not humand error.
. wm v
http://www.boomchicago.nl/images/Voting_Machine
Enjoy
The Christian Science Monitor is an excellent independent news source. They don't rely on wire services and have their own reporters scattered through a dozen countries. And despite what their name suggests, their reporting is completely unreligious.
I note that despite your spin LePore was in fact a Dem during the years in question. Additionally, the ballot in quesiton was both published in local newspapers before the election and had the usual mandated period for review and approval. No one complained. No one whined until the count came up close.
Honestly, do you think that if a person cannot navigate a ballot of this design that they have the ability to rationally choose a President?
So then why did Palm Beach County feel they could simply ignore that purge list? here:
That dog won't hunt.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
Make something idiot proof and along comes a better class of idiots!
There are politicians and businesses that blame every single problem on somebody/something else. Worse, our society accepts this. These folks do not want to take any responsibility for their own set of issues.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Tampering with votes is not a trivial crime.
So, if there is tampering with votes. What is step 2?
Exceptional post - thank you - nt
Just what we need another organization with a name ending in AA(think riaa, mpaa ...) telling us what to think.
The perversity of the Universe tends towards a maximum. - O'Toole's Corollary
How? Why?
As a software engineer it is my job to tell people how to get things accomplished. I also have to tell them when they have over reaching expectations.
Evoting has not been adequately proven to my estimation.
Given what happened in Venezuela, I would say that evoting should be avoided.
but the 'leadership class' likes it because it let's them control the outcome.
Sorry about your facist dictatorship,
it was user error.
no recounts.
Really we are sorry.
Just keep paying your taxes or we will put you in jail.
--I see a "press release" like this, it makes me wonder. I'm an old timey government corruption rabble rouser, been a hobby of mine for decades. I will fully admit I am a cynic and a skeptic by default on this sort of thing. Call it busted too much FUD in the past to take these things at face value. The expression is "smell a rat" and over and over and over and over again it always seems to be pointing to the same rat herd... onward, see if I am correct....
:
So I run a whois on itaa.org, right off the bat I get a personal DINGDINGDING BS BS CHECK FOR FUD AND LINKAGES TO THE SUSPICIOUS RATHERD alert because it's arlington virgina. Now that is just a city in the US, "so what?" sez anyone, well, it's "so what?" to me because so many times in the past I see this area come up, over and over again with various shenaningans with the ratherd, it's because it's retired and now consulting or still active or sheepdipped spook central, that's why "so what?" to me. Them boys got nothing better to do then to get their fingers in every smelly rotten and extremely lucrative pie out there where they can make a black market buck, it's their primary reason for existence now and has been for quite a loooong time. any sort of national security they play act at to keep the sheeps buffaloed. Oh ya, they got a long running congressional and judge blackmail operation going, that's another story for another time.... continue looking... this is fun for me, BTW....
That is my OPINION, and it's not relevant other than it got me to get looking at this....and itaa. I've obviously seen references to them in the past, but now I want to see if there's anything else. Freekin acronym overdose lately...grumble...
So now I go to google...simple query, really a broad cast look-see here,just for grins and giggles, I used itaa, cia as the search string
hmm, these guys sure busy, like back in 2000 when they had a meeting
first paragraph there
"Former CIA Chief Gates to Headline Global Information Security Summit
September 20, 2000
For More Information Contact:
Tinabeth Burton (703) 284-5305 tburton@itaa.org
Washington, D.C. - Dr. Robert Gates, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency from 1991-1993, and intelligence analyst serving six U.S. Presidents, will address the inaugural Global InfoSec Summit on October 16 in Washington, DC. Gates' keynote speech will address the growing challenge of information security in the global arena. Produced by the Information Technology Association of America and the World Information Technology and Services Alliance, the two-day Summit brings together government and business leaders to forge the type of cross-industry cooperation necessary to build and secure a strong global economy. "
Well, cool, just a buncha good ole boys getting together deciding how they gonna run things and stuff. Funny though, government and corporate cooperation has a name as in a political system of ill repute, but we know not to say it out loud on a forum so as not to invoke goodwin's law.....
anyway, I am juiced now, these folks are interesting... lemme look some more...yes, I know, I should have previously known more about them, mea culpa and so what... I am learning more now..
--ok, s'more, didn't take long, now HERE is an interesting story Also a link there to interesting pdf with more links...
synopsis
Fatcat corporate industry group hires lobbying firm,err, "Independent IT association" whatevers... fatcat group with the cashola contains voting machine companies and defense contractors and "auditors" for electronic voting. They have this meeting,in which were outlined efforts to smooth over voter 'fears" and whatnot. It is allegedly not going to be called lobbying. "Prestigious" IT industry org gets paid nice sum of cash
I heard of the fighter accident some time before 1990. It was on a CBC program called 'Ideas'. It made a big impression on me because I was designing and installing stuff in airport control towers (among other places) for the Canadian Department of Transport (now Navcan). It made me pay a lot more attention to how I grouped controls and indicators.
I remember a couple of other stories from the same program. One involved reconstructing a passenger plane accident. A crew went up in a plane identical to the one that crashed and did everything identically. At one point the pilot put a cup of coffee down beside him and then moved a lever. The coffee spilled and all hell broke loose. He was about to do a flight correction that would have reproduced the accident when he realized that the warning lights were going off because something had been shorted out by the coffee and not because an engine had failed.
The other item concerned how the British were handling audible alarms. The idea was that an alarm would start out at a low level and get louder but eventually they would go back to a low level. The idea was that if all the alarms in the cockpit were going off, it would be counterproductive to have all of them at max volume. The pilot would be well aware that there was a serious problem and didn't need to be deafened.
The US implementation of e-voting technology is a nearly complete, abject failure, and instead of doing a critical analysis of the situation and learning from the mistakes made, they are conducting a ham-handed PR exercise. That choice, above the condescention and arrogance demonstrated in ther actions, is what has made the ITAA lose a lot of credibility in my opinion.
The reliability of the hardware and software is only a small part of the problem with the US election e-voting system. The most serious and disturbing headlines have nothing to do with reliability at all. Stories about terminals BSODing or hard drives crashing or systems freezing are not he big headline grabbers.
The problem is abysmally poor design/engineering practices. These systems have shoddy security. They are complex to set up. They produce no hardcopy backups or other means of verification. The data is typicaly stored in MS Access (!) database files, and the schema looks like it was designed by someone whos sum total of database design experience comes from reading "Access for Dummies". Add to that, the touch screen interface confounds those not comfortable with computer technology.
Other issues aren't even technology related. Development of the voting system was awarded to a company run by executives with partisan interests. The system architecture and source code was closed until some concerned people dragged them kicking and screaming into the open. There was an inadequate auditing process throughout the process as well.
The answer the ITAA has to this problem? Voters are either stupid or naive, thus journalists have to stop being sensationalist and along with others have to do their part to help educatate people on how to vote and run polling stations. WRONG WRONG WRONG. The solution is to get qualified people to develop the system, employ extensive usability tests and make the entire process completely open to public scrutiny and verification by non-partisan election authorities.
If you need to read a manual, article, pamphlet or other fine print in order to figure out how to vote then the system is a failure. India conducted an election using electronic voting machines without major issues, and a good deal of voters there are not even literate.
I hope there is a decisive winner in the US presidential election, because with the state of e-voting going into it, a close result will make the Florida recount look like an election for the local dog-catcher in comparison--guaranteed.
I don't think its posible to make it 100% imposible to screw up a ballot. People are just really good at screwing things up. In every election there are always a few ballots over which people fight. That was not strange in the 2000 election. Its just that normally they don't determine the outcome of the race.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
It's amazing how many people around here take the idea that a paper trail is a non-negotiable requirement for voting. It's true that some systems produce a chit during the vote process (butterfly ballot or scan-tron ballot for example) but many systems don't provide any type of physical chit representing a ballot.
/. users have, I'm sure many county governments would jump at the chance to have fresh faces working the polls, especially those who have a comfort-factor with regard to technology, and don't mind helping people.
Some of you may have remembered the mechanical vote counting machines, the one where you stand in a curtained area and drop levers against a candidate's name. When finished, you physically throw a larger lever to advance the counters and reset the machine for the next voter. They never produced a chit recording your preferences onto a ballot.
Moreover, I can remember being confused standing in one of those mechanical machines. I spent time carefully reading the instructions because I was not clear on which switch to drop for my candidate, the one in the row above the printed name or the one below.
The point is that there is no foolproof method of voting. Even with written ballots, there is the threat (not so much in the USA, but not ouside the realm of possibility) of ballots being "misplaced" or destroyed intentionally. Or a bunch of ballots turning up when you least expect them.
The new electronic voting machines are here to stay for the most part. One reason driving the push to electronic machines is the recent Federal law passed after the 2000 election that stipulates new accessibility guidelines for voting machines. Now they have to be accessible to the disabled, but they also have the means to provide an audio ballot or large-type ballot to voters with special needs, typically visual impairment.
I work as an Election Officer for Fairfax County in Northern Virginia. Last election in 2002 we had our first rollout of the WinVote voting machines.
Did some people have a problem? Yes. I distinctly remember one older gentleman who became so fustrated that he left the premises and instructed us to cancel his ballot. On the other hand, I saw octogenerians use the machine with no problems and even remark that it was "neat". For those elderly or disabled, we were able to physically move the machine to them, either in the car where they could vote "curbside" as provided by law or directly to their wheelchair or bench if they had a problem standing.
While there will be growing pains with any new voting system used, it is a temporary condition. The solution I've found for making the act of voting go smoothly really comes down to making sure the election officers get proper training on the equipment, have well documented procedures for handling any contingencies and have the good people skills to make the voter feel at ease and help them through the process.
A previous poster mentioned that the majority of poll workers are older Americans, and I've found that to be true. If you really want to help make sure the system works well, then you should volunteer to work in the polls. With the technical savvy that
But posting here and whining about the evils of electronic voting or putting forth tinfoil-hat-black-helicopter conspiracy theories about how Diebold and the Bush Administration will be "stealing" the elction doesn't solve the problem.
Whether you work the polling place, represent your party as a designated poll watcher, or stand outside and champion your candidate, good citizenship and a sense of civic duty/responsibilty are necessary for our Republic to remain healthy.
-Crolis
We'll have to see how this plays out....
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Machines vote on you!
The "technology" in question was a wide sheet of paper and some bubbles running down the middle that you were supposed to mark.
All the bellyaching about the butterfly ballot is wasted breath. It was designed by a Dem, it was printed in the local paper weeks before the election, it was given a full time for review and comment per the regulations of the county.
That was the time to complain. Not after the fact because it was a close count.
I'm not at all suggesting an IQ test. I am however pointing out that voting is a priveledge that should be taken seriously.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
Troll.
Do I need to sign one to vote?
I voted early yesterday here in FL. I didn't see any major issues. I didn't really like the fact the system can display multiple voting items per page. They really need to keep one item to one page. Also something to take note on, I saw a 90 yr old woman vote using the e-voting system and didn't have a single problem!
then it's been poorly engineered.
Honestly, that's how I've always felt. It's one thing if the guy is yelling Alu Akbar, and fragging your hootch of voting machines. It's another if the lady left a booger on the dialogue box and it kept registering the booger rather than her finger.
Engineer for the booger. Engineer in case she hacks a lugi. Engineer if she shoves a fork in the printer port. Engineer if she decides to chew on the power cable (dude, old people have some REALLY off-days sometimes).
Poor engineering gets people killed and makes Colt Peacemakers detonate in your hand.
A Quote
Katherine Harris the Republican Secretary of State for Florida. You'll have to look at Palast's book to see this one backed up I can't find a link online.
You could also point out that elections machines in primarily african-american counties were set to "eat" ballots that were bad thus preventing anyone who made a mistacke from voting again while those in predominantly white counties were programmed to return them for re-use. This too was done at the behest of the Republican Secretary of State for Florida, Katherine Harris. She's now in the U.S. Congress. Her homepage is here.
See Here
be trying so hard to get to the polls.
Voting is supposed to be for pretty much everybody. If the system is designed and/or implemented in such a way that user error is POSSIBLE, it's a design/implementation error.
I haven't seen the interfaces of these machines, but what's wrong with:
Candidate A [Button]
Candidate B [Button]
Candidate C [Button]
Oh right. OK. This is in in exact opposition to everything any serious engineer or (psuedo) engineer
like those of us in software engineering are supposed to think. Hey? What's so difficult. Press
the big pretty button, message "this is what you asked for? are you sure? wait for response, if yes,
ok, the bimbo {of either sex} meant it.
(always confirm anything important even if it's annoying)
Yawn. That's an application? Don't I wish.
Perhaps someone should ask "how many chromosome pairs do you have" and *sterilize* you if you get it wrong. I bet Ronnie's co-star in many B-movies
would have gotten it right...
The real problem with the DieCowardly (R) machines, and any other machines of their ilk (and
people watch how the ATM's are creeping towards using Windows XP embedded to be really scared!)
is: Microsoft has no sense of social responsibility.
OK, I'll calm down now and go back to my nice comfortable padded cell...
(in the meantime I'll twitch just to annoy people)
(Worms on voting machines could be serious so
the homeland security folk's in many intel agencies ought to start mugging up on what CERT etc. are doing *yesterday* - why? You see even
in places like the UK where voting is (rumoured)
to be anonymous it isn't.
The kicker is when an organized gang can harvest
this information. FUD on steroids, and serious
trouble for democracy is the issue.
So, if anyone in the NSA/CIA/MIxx(uk)/Mossad etc.
is listening listen clearly. This is the next
terrorism.
I'll say it now, because later we'll all see it in
the news every day.
Someone has to point this out now, and I'm pretty
sure I'm not the first... Hope the bad guys aren't
GNAA...
http://www.boomchicago.nl/Section/Videos/BoomChica goVotingMachine
http://www.boomchicago.nl/images/Voting_Machine.mo v
What power has law where only money rules.
The real reason to vote electronicly, instead of with paper ballots, is efficiency in stealing elections. Years from now, an all electronic, all automated, universal, ubiquitous, omnipresent media will invent facts, poll data, and vote data. We're damn close to that now.
By the way, all the crap going on in Iraq is just a repeat performance of the Vietnam war. Its all about money. Not freedom. Not communism or terrorism. Not about democracy. Its for money. Its about money. Its only about money.
"Most e-voting problems, they insist, are [l]user issues"
Well, yes, I suppose it is true that if we have a voting station, and in the course of the election day 25 voters have problems figuring out what to do, and also the computer crashes once for an hour and irretrievably loses all its voting records, then we can say that "most" of the problems were user issues.
Sounds like this was written by lawyers and PR people.
but what is wrong with a pen and a piece of paper? You go into the voting booth, strike the name(s) of the candidate(s) you'd like to see elected (or are afraid to see lose), and voila! Valid elections in both perception and reality. And how can you ask for a more effective paper trail? -----
I am not an animal! I am something worse!
It should be that that hard to realize that the same people who couldn't poke holes ballots are the same ones who can't e-vote. Stupid people remain stupid people no matter what they use to vote.
In Palm Beach County (home of Terry's Butterfly Ballot) there were 32000 errors out of 450000 votes. That's over 7% error rate. Note that typical error rate for non-butterfly punch cards is 4%, whereas optical-scan (aka pencil & bubbles) is well under 2%.
It was a usability disaster.When I was 18, I'd already heard so much controversy over democrats being disenfranchised (locally and in other parts of the nation) that I registered as a Republican. I'm very much a democrat in nature and in my beliefs, almost to the point of libertarianism, but I live in a very conservative and predominantly Republican, and I'll be damned if I'm kept from voting because of the party I signed on with. After hearing about all of the latest efforts (ie. signing up democrats to vote and then trashing the forms) to disenfranchise democrats, I'm glad I belong to the GOP.
When I walk out of the voting booth, though, I'll proudly proclaim "I'm a Republican and I voted for John Kerry" as I leave. I'll still be Republican on paper, though.
Just thought I'd give a personal example of how absolutely right you are.
> They don't seem to feel the need for
> journalists to understand basic system
> design issues
<sarcasm>
Damn journalists. Next they'll be asking basic questions like 'how does the Electoral College work?'. Doesn't everyone know that elections aren't meant to be in public.
</sarcasm>
I was talking at work with a friend of mine about how this really is not that hard to do. You give them a list of options, they pick one. You give them a way to confirm their choices, they say yes.
There are a number of ways to then store and count this data, with or without a "paper trail". The problem has never been the machines, but the fear of an unscrupulous person goofing with the data to be counted, the same problem we've had exist and seen in action on numerous occations in the past.
Its not the machines, its the people around them.
Anyway, the friend then made the point: "Once these systems are proven to work, and you can count everyone's vote accurately in a matter of a few days and double check it with current technology, the need for an electoral college is now moot. We CAN accurately use the popular vote to decide national issues.
"This changes the total dynamics of the voting process and removes power from people that now have it, and they're not very hip on giving that power up."
Thats really pretty much it, I think.
s'wut i sed.
"There are two sides of this issue: Elections officials say that (DRE machines) are one hundred percent safe and accurate, and on the other side, computer scientists say they're fraught with problems. The truth is in the middle. No system is 100 percent secure, nor are they rife with security breaches."
And what are Dan Seligson's qualifications in the area of computer technology?
The mistake InfoWorld made was to review this as a public policy issue having to do with technology as an issue on which reasonable people can disagree.
The DRE issue is one where the only people who have a right to have their opinions treated with respect are persons with expertise in computer security. If a person doesn't have this expertise, the best he or she can do is provide pointers to people who do have it.
I am not aware of any report by technically qualified people not on the Diebold/ES&S payroll that says that the technology packaged by this company (they are effectively one) is remotely close to adequate.
An IT publication is supposed to write about issues from an IT viewpoint according to the facts and informed opinions available.
On no-paper trail touchscreen voting machines, there is no support an IT publication should take seriously for the viewpoint that Diebold/ESS has provided its customers with anything but a total FUBAR.
Tech Public Policy stuff
As far as I know, it's not a holiday for most people (nor for us college students), but your employer is legally obligated to give you a chance to go and vote if your work shift would otherwise prevent it.
One of the unexpected results of elections is that (at least in my state), you can't buy alcohol while the polls are open. I guess the temperance movement made a lot of headway in my state back in the day.
... that Rome fell on a monday.
The reason I keep bringing up the "designed by a Democrat" issue is that the Democrats keep bringing it up as how those "evil Republicans [tm]" are trying to disenfranchize voters.
The point is that the Dems ran 24 of the 25 precincts that had the highest vote spoilage rates in Florida.
As for the whole "UI" argument the bulk of the people are not bringing it up as "we should fix this" they're bring it up as "this is how W and Jeb stole the election". The irony is that in their anger they're not actually doing anything to address the issue. They're just busy pointing fingers and saying how the Repubs are up to it again.
The "butterfly ballot" was used before the 2000 election as well. Did we hear any huge cry about it then? Of course not, the only reason that people were pointing fingers at it was because they were shopping around for 600 votes and wanted ANYTHING to blame for it.
Remember that your "UI" design is constrained by laws when it comes to ballots. In this particular case you had competing issues of the number of candidates for president on the ballot (which all had to be on the same page) versus the desire to have larger print so that elderly people could read the ballot.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
"Computers are here to help people, not the other way around."
Problems that people have with systems are not the peoples fault, period. It's so easy to blame people for not understanding an "intuitive" design, but if something is something is so god-d@mn "intuitive" then it should work without guidance.
Most systems, software, and even web-pages are made without ever being tested or seen by average users till production stages. If any summative testing is even performed before the product goes live, its too late to fix anything! If design changes need to be made, they need to be discovered in the design phases, through prototyping, usability or full fledged testing/experiments, and other HCI methods.
I bet if a prototype of the butterfly ballot had been given to a small number of users (6-10) and these users were told to select one of given the different choices on it, you would see a number of people struggle with selecting the right one even if they did eventually do it correctly. Just because a user can adapt to a poorly designed system doesn't mean it is "intuitive" or fit a user's mental model of how such a system should work.
You suggest that the only reason those 4% of users weren't able to correctly locate their selection is because they are dumb. What if they were in a hurry after using their lunchbreak to vote? What if one of a number of other reasons why they couldn't spend the required time figure out a poor design came up? The only thing dumb here is your assumption.
You also mention how these ballots had been used for years and seem to imply the design is solid. Who cares this ballot has used previously? Precendence doens't improve your design. It appears that in this case, the design flaws went unoticed until an election hung in balance. Improving the design wasn't considered important until after it failed.
Next time you are blaming users for problems, remember not only what your system is intendend to do, but WHO IT IS INTENDED TO SERVE.