E-Voting Problems Are Mostly User Error, Says ITAA

Not very subtle, these folks by erick99 · 2004-10-20 00:14 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.

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http://www.busyweather.com/

Re:Not very subtle, these folks by Shakrai · 2004-10-20 00:27 · Score: 5, Funny

the way they went about it was condescending and insulting to the journalists

Of course this can only add to the image that most people already have of geeks being condescending towards anybody that doesn't understand what they are doing. The actual article linked from Infoworld only adds to this image.

For starters the damn article is titled "Problems with e-voting? Blame the humans". Let's take some other choice quotes: "Poll workers may not have plugged in the machines", "would be better off pointing the finger of blame at clueless poll workers".

Clueless poll workers? Maybe the writers of the "press-kit" should take some time off their overpaid jobs and go work as a poll-worker for $6 an hour (shift starts at 5:30am and runs until 10pm or later). Because if you aren't part of the solution....

--
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Re:Not very subtle, these folks by Qzukk · 2004-10-20 00:42 · Score: 4, Insightful

Journalists feel that it is their job to collect info and put things into context themselves. The ITAA shot themselves in the foot.

Journalists? I'm sure this stuff will be parroted day in and out by our news "personalities" that can tell you all about the voting crashes with a twinkle in their eye. The news sources these days are packed with more people busy looking out for their parent/grandparent company than corroborating stories, checking facts, or even researching a news item themselves as opposed to just running whatever press release is handed to them.

--
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Re:Not very subtle, these folks by drlake · 2004-10-20 00:46 · Score: 3, Insightful

Not only that, they're full of shit. Having widespread cases of voting machines not recording the correct vote or even any vote at all, crashing systems, etc. are not examples of user error, they're examples of shitty design.
Re:Not very subtle, these folks by Mysticalfruit · 2004-10-20 01:39 · Score: 5, Insightful

Exactly. Everybody in 2000 made a big deal about the butterfly ballots in FL.

What the media forgot to mention was that 96% of the people who used the butterfly ballot were able to figure it out just fine.

The reason the other 4% couldn't figure out the ballot was because they were stupid. Yet the media make it sound like the populace at large was dumbfounded by these "freakish" ballots.
They also forgot to mention that these ballots had been in use for years.

The bigger issue is that in presidential elections in the past, it's generally a landslide, so having ~5% of the votes going uncounted for technical reasons (i.e. voter stupidity) really didn't impact the election.

I suspect, as with 2000, this election will be so close that 5% margin really will matter. Especially in a winner takes all type of electoral college system. Which further underscores why I think we should dump the electoral college system and go with straight representative elections.

--
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
Re:Not very subtle, these folks by Fulcrum+of+Evil · 2004-10-20 01:44 · Score: 4, Interesting

Of course this can only add to the image that most people already have of geeks being condescending towards anybody that doesn't understand what they are doing. The actual article linked from Infoworld only adds to this image.

Bullshit. This is somebody trying to shift blame away from themselves. The fact is, these poll machines are woefully inadequate and crap is flying. This e-voting crap just isn't going to work.

--
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Re:Not very subtle, these folks by bman08 · 2004-10-20 02:11 · Score: 4, Insightful

Yes it is. Years, lawsuits and probably a few bad elections from now this e-voting crap will absolutely work.
Re:Not very subtle, these folks by halligas · 2004-10-20 02:37 · Score: 5, Interesting

The bigger issue is that in presidential elections in the past, it's generally a landslide, so having ~5% of the votes going uncounted for technical reasons (i.e. voter stupidity) really didn't impact the election. So your point is that because the reason that people had problems with the butterfly ballots was their own stupidity that it wasn't a big deal? Perhaps we should add a mini IQ test to the ballot, that would really screen out the stupid people. Like it or not, stupid people have a right to vote and a ballot that is confusing or convoluted enough to elminate ~5% of the electorate IS a "big deal". Yes, with any voting system, there will always be some idiots who will mess it up. But the number should be south of 1%.
Re:Not very subtle, these folks by 0123456 · 2004-10-20 02:50 · Score: 2, Insightful

"So your point is that because the reason that people had problems with the butterfly ballots was their own stupidity that it wasn't a big deal?"

Yes. Stupid people shouldn't be voting, so if they don't understand the ballots, that's a bonus.

Of course had I been Gore, I'd have been embarassed to claim that people who voted for me were too stupid to understand the ballot...

"Perhaps we should add a mini IQ test to the ballot, that would really screen out the stupid people."

Indeed we should: until and unless the vote is limited to smart people, the stupid people will keep electing losers like Bush and Kerry who promise to steal their neighbour's money and give it to them. The only way for democracy to be viable is for the vote to be limited.
Re:Not very subtle, these folks by ultranova · 2004-10-20 03:42 · Score: 4, Insightful

"Perhaps we should add a mini IQ test to the ballot, that would really screen out the stupid people."

Indeed we should: until and unless the vote is limited to smart people, the stupid people will keep electing losers like Bush and Kerry who promise to steal their neighbour's money and give it to them.

Why on earth do you think that smart people wouldn't want their leaders to take their neighbours money and give it to them ? Or do you think yourself as one of those smart, and want in on the action ?

Besides, as long as Bush and Kerry keep on being successfull, how can you call them losers ?

The only way for democracy to be viable is for the vote to be limited.

Taxation without representation is tyranny.

The purpose of voting for representatives is not to give people power over issues - it goes out of it's way to avoid that, with the electorial committees and whatever - it's purpose is to give people a way to peacefully replace bad leaders, as opposed to having to resort to an armed rebellion.

The only way for the democracy to be viable is that everyone, including EVERY LAST DUMBASS, not to forget EVERY F***ING DIMWIT, can give a vote of non-confidence to the current leaders. The second that someone is not given this ability, their choices are quiet submittal or armed rebellion (which would most likely manifest as terror strikes).

--
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Re:Not very subtle, these folks by mav[LAG] · 2004-10-20 03:56 · Score: 2, Insightful

This is really a load of shit that should be placed in a tin foil hat.

I really wish it was. Unfortunately it's too well documented. Katharine Harris has admitted to the fraud (she was even successfully sued by the NAACP) and I cannot find one single rebuff of Greg Palast or BBC Newsnight's reporting of the subject that holds water for five minutes.

For starters, ballots don't show what color you are.

Of course not but you'll notice I didn't say that - I said voters rolls. The list of "felons" to scrub was given to Harris by private contractor ChoicePoint whose ties with the GOP are, shall we say, strong. All sorts of deliberate errors were made in the scrubbing process, costing Gore a minimum 22 000 votes on election day 2000.
Don't take my word for it - check it out. Do the background reading. Get a copy of the Best Democracy Money can Buy. Watch the Newsnight special which had an election official ripping off his mike and running to lock himself in his office when confronted with a secret document from Jeb Bush's office. Check Greg Palast's record and see how many times he's been wrong. Get the other side of the story as well from the quotes from the Governor's office.
But don't just label it tinfoil hat stuff until you've done the research. Actually I think I've described your country and media's problem right there: too little journalism and not enough independence and questioning of authority.

Two, for such a conspiracy to happen, the perpetrators would also remove many white votes as well if they were attempting such a lamebrain idea over county or district lines.

You would think so wouldn't you? But they really were as stupid as that. And they were caught.

--
--- Hot Shot City is particularly good.
Re:Not very subtle, these folks by halligas · 2004-10-20 04:33 · Score: 2, Insightful

You can't vote if you're under 18 you can't vote if you're in prison in some states you can't vote if you were convicted of a felony ages ago US residents without US citizenship can't vote (yet are taxed and subject to legislation)

Those are all issues of fact. There is no room for debate about whether someone is in prison, or 18 or a felon or a citizen.

Intelligence is arbitrary. There is no such thing as an objective IQ test. All tests express some bias of the creator of the test as to what he/she deems to indictate "intelligence".

This is a fundemental difference between the limits that exist today on voting and the OP's assertation that stupid people shouldn't be allowed to vote.

That said, the law says that convicted felons can't vote. In many cases they can have their voting rights re-instated. Often times this is done in what seems to be an arbitrary and biased manner.
Re:Not very subtle, these folks by natrius · 2004-10-20 04:39 · Score: 2, Interesting

Perhaps we should add a mini IQ test to the ballot, that would really screen out the stupid people.

I'd like to introduce you to Jim Crow.

"...Many state governments prevented blacks from voting by requiring poll taxes and literacy tests, both of which were not enforced on whites due to grandfather clauses. One common "literacy test" was to require the black would-be voter to recite the entire U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence from memory."

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - George Santayana
Re:Not very subtle, these folks by JimFromJersey · 2004-10-20 04:58 · Score: 2, Insightful

Except that would give political parties even greater incentive to gerrymander the congressional districts for their benefit.

--
between the greater and lesser infinities sleep the dreams undreamt
Re:Not very subtle, these folks by SpecBear · 2004-10-20 05:14 · Score: 2, Insightful

You know, I'm one of those condescending geeks, and I was still extremely offended by the ITAA's attitude.

You're building devices that have to be at least as good as the freakin punch cards they're replacing. Very few people have problems figuring out how to get people's votes collected using punch cards.

If you've built a system such that the average Jane has a small chance of screwing it up, you've failed. The average poll worker needs to be able to understand it effortlessly and use it with near perfect reliability because nearly half of the people who will be setting them up are dumber than the average poll worker. This is an election, not an online auction; people have a right to vote. Any significant failure rate because the users didn't understand how to work the machines means that your technology is crap and needs to be fixed.

On a side note, I've been pondering lately whether electronic voting machines could skew the vote towards Democrats. Younger people are more likely to be familiar with dealing with a machine than older people, and thus less likely to make a mistake or be frustrated by them.
Re:Not very subtle, these folks by DunbarTheInept · 2004-10-20 08:13 · Score: 2, Insightful

My fear is that the sort of problems these are going to cause in the meantime might make the very concept of elections themselves rather obsolete, once the wrong people use this flawed system to get into power.

--
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Re:Not very subtle, these folks by dvdeug · 2004-10-20 08:22 · Score: 2, Insightful

until and unless the vote is limited to smart people, the stupid people will keep electing losers like Bush and Kerry who promise to steal their neighbour's money and give it to them.

I guess you think that nobody at Halliburton is very smart, because they're behind Bush all the way. Everyone who can read the ballot is smart enough to understand why having too much debt is bad, but no amount of intelligence will give the wisdom to look at the long-term instead of the short-term.
Re:Not very subtle, these folks by OwnedByTwoCats · 2004-10-20 10:28 · Score: 2, Insightful

The machines prevent the user from making a mistake, such as having their vote count for candidates in the wrong party.

There are more than enough ways to bury features in the code so that it would be very difficult to discover evidence that the election was stolen. if (today != ElectionDay(thisYear)) {
addVoteToCorrectColumn()
} else {
addVoteToColumnButNotIfMyCandidateIsBehind()
}
i s very hard to disclose through a black-box test. A little more doctoring with the checkSum command, and you won't know that the code running is not the code you just built.

The Solution is Obvious by Shakrai · 2004-10-20 00:14 · Score: 5, Funny

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.

Re:The Solution is Obvious by tomhudson · 2004-10-20 00:42 · Score: 2, Informative

State law only alows you three minutes to vote
Are you serious?
Guess we do things differently up here. I've worked at the polls in Canadian elections, and we have to take a class beforehand - the only thing we were told, IIRC, was that the voter can take all the time they require. No interference.
And we STILL get to count all the votes and declare a winner the same evening. (Yes, we still use paper ballots, so we can do a recount if one is requested).
Hey, maybe we should export our "use a paper ballot technology" to the US.
Re:The Solution is Obvious by Fulcrum+of+Evil · 2004-10-20 01:49 · Score: 2, Insightful

It seems Florida's election running machinery, which is largely run Democrats by the way, would rather make up some labyrinthine system that people can't understand, screw the whole thing up and then blame Republicans when they can't change their stupid rules mid-game. That's what they did in 2000 anyway. How hard is it to make a simple voting procedure?

Pop quiz: Who is the governor of Florida? Who runs the election system? Who illegaly DQ'ed 50,000 ex felons in 2000 and attempted to do the same for 2004?

--
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"

Ummm.... by antifoidulus · 2004-10-20 00:16 · Score: 5, Insightful

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

Re:Ummm.... by Zachary+Kessin · 2004-10-20 00:24 · Score: 5, Informative

I really think the old paper balots where the best bet. When I lived in New Hampshire you filled in a paper balot and they fed it into a machine to be counted. (Think SAT tests here). THe computer counted it, but if they had to I am sure that they could re-do it by hand.

It was easy, cheap and low tech. I really think much of this e-voting a solution looking for a problem.

--
Erlang Developer and podcaster
Re:Ummm.... by peragrin · 2004-10-20 00:34 · Score: 3, Insightful

How bad are these interfaces??

It should be really simple.

on Screen Pick a person to vote for President.

Under that Pictures of each canidate, and the parties that support them.

You select one and press the vote button at the bottom, It then verifies you want that canidate, yes / no with no going back.

repeat for each election.

If it is any more complicated than that the system is wrong. The computers themselves shouldn't crash. Crashes are signs of bad programing.

I know people who can use Palms and Graffitti, but don't know how to use a computer. Why Because the interfaces are to much.

--
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Re:Ummm.... by Idarubicin · 2004-10-20 01:03 · Score: 4, Insightful

on Screen Pick a person to vote for President.
Under that Pictures of each canidate, and the parties that support them.

Nope. You're still making the system too complicated. No pictures necessary; just the candidates' name and party affiliation (the latter is even optional.)
Pictures are an invitation to disaster--remember the debacle when Time altered OJ Simpson's mugshot photo for their cover, probably to make him look more threatening. (Links: Time mugshot image; comparison with Newsweek print of same image.)
What if you discover partway through election day that your candidate's image is being garbled? What if the tint or contrast settings on some of the screens are off, so your candidate looks purple? No pictures, thank you.
You select one and press the vote button at the bottom, It then verifies you want that canidate, yes / no with no going back.
You forgot the last steps: the machine then prints a human-readable (optionally also machine-readable) ballot with all your votes, which you verify and drop in the ballot box before you leave. A touchscreen system with no paper trail is unacceptable.

--
~Idarubicin
Re:Ummm.... by garcia · 2004-10-20 01:10 · Score: 2, Insightful

You forgot the last steps: the machine then prints a human-readable (optionally also machine-readable) ballot with all your votes, which you verify and drop in the ballot box before you leave. A touchscreen system with no paper trail is unacceptable.

And this is the exact reason that this method is unnecessary. Voting is already a pain in the ass for people apparently as so little people do it. So let's make everyone's lives more difficult by adding MORE steps, more pieces of paper to think about, and more places to screw up.

Keep the current system in place. It works just fine.
Re:Ummm.... by dbitch · 2004-10-20 01:15 · Score: 5, Insightful

Well, what I find interesting, is that the /. crowd, who are aguably the most informed and knowledgable about computers, are the ones who are arguing against evoting. Why is that?

1) /. knows that the users ARE stupid, and nothing can change that, so go for the least common denominator (paper ballots).

2) They know that, despite assurances, there's always another bug, and that none of them trust their vote to a damn computer (despite the fact that their livelyhood depends upon it).
Re:Ummm.... by DenDave · 2004-10-20 01:15 · Score: 2, Interesting

well I guess it depends on which side of the fence you sit. *Imagine* that you are a member of political-industrial family and you have acquired power. Now you see the opportunity to bring e-voting in to the mainstream. One of daddy's buddies makes machines to do this and well.. yeah he could bugger the tally a bit in a software glitch, if given the exclusive contract to make the machines and is awarded a patent or two... nothing dear old dad can't arrange... so how a bout it eh? no more bugsome voters and you can smile and make jokes throughout the campaign! You'll look better than ever! Really, any voting machines should be public property and the software either open source or at least public domain. Checksums and double entry score keeping should be mandatory. The law for hand counting states three people need to tally a vote so should a computer keep multiple registers and have a failover....

--
-if at first you don't succeed, stay the heck away from paragliding.
Re:Ummm.... by Zachary+Kessin · 2004-10-20 01:21 · Score: 2, Insightful

I think its some of both, but more number 2. Systems and not just computer systems. Have bugs. A good way to reduce the number of bugs is to make the system as simple as you can. You will alway have some number of mis votes where someone checks the wrong box or something, but if you make the system simple you will hopefully minimise that.

Also remember that election systems like this are used by a huge number of people once ever few years. So you want the system to be quick to use, cheap and simple as people only see it ever so often.

--
Erlang Developer and podcaster
Re:Ummm.... by lynx_user_abroad · 2004-10-20 02:03 · Score: 2, Insightful

The bottom line is that we need to accept the fact that voting systems will not be 100% functional.

The ballot system does not need to be 100% accurate. It needs to be accurate enough for us to determine if the number of undisputed votes for the leading candidate exceeds the number of undisputed votes for any other candidate were we to grant all disputed votes to him. When it does, the election can be settled. If it doesn't, we need to turn some of the disputed votes into undisputed votes, and repeat until the equation completes.
The Year 200 Florida problem resulted from a close election where this question could not be answered without going through the process of turning disputed votes into undisputed votes by examining chad, filing lawsuits, etc.
The problem with electronic voting machines is the number of ballots potentially affected . Instead of having individual ballots where the disputed/undisputed wheel must be spun, an electronic ballot system raises that question for all ballots cast on that machine, or all machines running that software release, or all machines manufactured by that company.
This election isn't going to be settled by the voters on November 2nd, but by whatever remedial vote resolution process each precinct subscribes to. If the losing party refuses to give up it's assertion that the vote was stolen, we will have a second disputed Presidency.
Strap yourself in. It's gonna be another long election cycle.

--
The thing about things we don't know is we often don't know we don't know them.
Re:Ummm.... by cduffy · 2004-10-20 02:23 · Score: 2, Insightful

And this is the exact reason that this method is unnecessary. Voting is already a pain in the ass for people apparently as so little people do it. So let's make everyone's lives more difficult by adding MORE steps, more pieces of paper to think about, and more places to screw up.

I'd argue that the actual process that goes on at the polling place has little or nothing to do with turnout. The hassle of getting to the voting place -- sure, I'll accept that that impacts turnout, especially for people without vehicles. What happens once you're there? Naah. If people cared enough to go to the polling place, and once there were so annoyed by the process as to not vote in the future, they'd complain, and we'd hear it in a very big way. Instead, they just don't go.

In any event, there are ways of having paper-backed touchscreen systems that are simpler than that. For instance, the machine could display the printed copy behind glass, and have a button which (in full view of the user) either feeds the paper into a lockbox or into a shredder, depending on whether they confirm it.

(What "current system", btw -- paper-only, or unverifiable machines?)
Re:Ummm.... by ch-chuck · 2004-10-20 02:45 · Score: 2, Funny

Pictures are an invitation to disaster

you mean like this ?

--
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Re:Ummm.... by Guppy06 · 2004-10-20 03:52 · Score: 3, Insightful

"just the candidates' name and party affiliation (the latter is even optional.)"

No, this is America; the former is optional.
Re:Ummm.... by demachina · 2004-10-20 04:17 · Score: 4, Insightful

I don't think voter intellect is really the issue with evoting. They do in fact make it pretty hard to make a mistake.

Early indications are the tech savvy of the poll workers setting up systems with a lot of interconnects and make everything work under pressure is certainly a concern. I'm not sure but you get the impression Florida in particular is relying on a working internet connection to the home office which seems insane, problem plagued and wildly insecure, at least the guy they showed on the news was rambling about not being able the machines not being able to connect to the "mainframe".

But system design would certainly fix that if you insist on using them. First off these machines should need nothing more than a power plug. They should be setup in a central location under nonpartisan supervision, locked and sealed, taken to the poll and then when done transported back to a central, secure, location to unload the results.

But the damning thing about evoting is there HAS TO BE A PAPER TRAIL. There is an interesting case study in Venezuela which recently had an election involving Hugo Chavez, who is reviled by the Bush administration, and was under constant accusation of trying to rig elections. They used all or mostly evoting machines, BUT they all had printers and a paper trail. The opposition tried to levy charges of election rigging but they simply didn't stick.

Now turn to the U.S., bastion of democracy, who spends tons of time and money telling the rest of the world how to vote. It appears all or most of the evoting machines have NO PAPER TRAIL. A glitch happens and people's votes disappear. Worse its ridiculously easy to rig the election. The U.S. really is turning in to a laughing stock for the rest of the world, and a shining example of a democracy gone bad.

Another serious flaw was pointed out by Jimmy Carter on Larry King last night (you can revile him all you want but he does know good and bad electoral process). The U.S. and assorted other international election monitors push hard for elections to be run by impartial, nonpartisan officials. In the U.S. the are almost universally turned over to very partisan hacks who have huge biases, think Katherine Harris in Florida or any election official appointed by biased governors(for example the brother of one of the candidates). You give these people complete control of the election machinery, and you give them electronic voting machines with no paper trail, and no chance of a recount or audit. It will be a miracle if they can resist the temptation to steal the election because it is SO EASY.

--
@de_machina

Well it's true by Exmet+Paff+Daxx · 2004-10-20 00:17 · Score: 2, Funny

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.

Re:Well it's true by los+furtive · 2004-10-20 00:37 · Score: 5, Insightful

I think with any new technology there is a certain level of justifiable distrust, but sooner or later we all need to move on.
We all need to move on to a system where no paper trail is kept? Oh for Christ's sake you're a fool and a root cause for your nation's democratic demise! What is so hard with putting a mark in a circle on a piece of paper and have it either counted by hand or fed into a scanner?
I have yet to see any benefit from the electronic voting process besides profit for the people who sell them and a chance for the news to wrap up it's election coverage by 11pm (and look what ended up last time they tried that).
People like you need some real perspective. The voting period in India was a month long. In Afghanistan they didn't even start counting the ballots until days after it was over, and in Canada people still vote with a paper and pencil, and it is no more complicated than putting an X in the correct circle. Whether it is hand counted or run through a machine at least there's something available to audit if a recount is necessary, and rarely do pencils or paper break down and when they do it takes a hell of a lot less time and money to get them working again.

--
I'm a writer, a poet, a genius, I know it. I don't buy software, I grow it.
Re:Well it's true by Dr.+Evil · 2004-10-20 00:52 · Score: 4, Informative

As somebody who ran a polling station once, hand-counting is pretty damned easy. A couple thousand voters go to each polling centre, There's a half-dozen or so polling booths, that's only a few hundred votes to count.
You count them in front of a peer and volunteer party representatives. Then to be pedantic, your peer counts them again.
The count starts, of course, once the polls close.
If you think of the level of real patriotism left in the U.S., is it really that hard to find a school or public facility to vote in? Is it really that hard to find people to sit at the polls? Is it really that hard to find people to watch over and audit this process?
These electronic voting companies make it sound like voting is drudgery which nobody will volunteer to help with... there is no end of volunteers!
BTW, I've been told that there's at least one state, I don't recall which one, (Winconsin? Wyoming?, some "W" state I've never been to) which uses a similar system to that of Canada.
Re:Well it's true by lottameez · 2004-10-20 00:54 · Score: 2, Interesting

We have electronic ATMs. Do we need them? No, bank tellers were fine. We can buy the latest bestseller from Amazon, but we *could* still get it from the local bookstore. I can make an online flight reservation, but in your world I should just call the ticket agent instead.

FWIW, I never said anything about not having a paper trail. I understand [some] voting machines have the ability for a receipt.

--
Yeah? Well I think you're overrated too.
Re:Well it's true by cduffy · 2004-10-20 01:17 · Score: 2, Insightful
Perhaps the writer of your ATM's software is also skimming off your account and directing it to the RNC?

Generally Not Done, and here's why:
1. Voting machines are designed to provide anonymity to their users. ATMs are designed to deny it.
2. ATMs keep a paper trail
3. People can and do double-check after the fact that their bank accounts are correct; allowing voting machine users to do the same would enable vote-selling, and so is unacceptable
4. Based on election officials' positions in the media when some level of innacuracy has occurred, losing one's customer is to a bank is much more serious than losing just one citizen's vote is to an election official
5. ATM security audits aren't utter and complete jokes -- because there's a serious pecuniary interest to get it right
Sure, we need to move on some time -- after the problems that caused our distrust in the first case are resolved!
Re:Well it's true by beamin · 2004-10-20 01:23 · Score: 2, Interesting

While voting machines have the ABILITY for a receipt, the state of Florida has not REQUIRED manufacturers to produce receipts for the votes. Instead, they chose to CHANGE STATE LAW that required the ability to perform a recount. And you believe that this is a benign change?

Voting is not about convenience. It's not a commercial endeavor. It's the way that we are supposed to be able to select our government. The overwhelming motivations should be accuracy and security. Throwing millions of dollars at proprietary systems that have demonstrated numerous flaws is more than foolish; it's dangerous.

Bullshit by selderrr · 2004-10-20 00:20 · Score: 4, Informative

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 ?

Re:Bullshit by erick99 · 2004-10-20 00:25 · Score: 2, Insightful

Ever stood behind behind people using an ATM? It is astounding to see them read the instruction "Please insert card" and shake their head and stare at the machine and begin randomly pushing buttons. I can understand the difficulty in filling out an electronic ballot. Unfortunately.

--
http://www.busyweather.com/
Re:Bullshit by MyHair · 2004-10-20 00:48 · Score: 5, Funny

Yeah, but in India everyone is already trained in level 1 tech support.

New warning sticker on E-Voting machines by jonasw · 2004-10-20 00:20 · Score: 5, Funny

# 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.

Reminds me of those old joke programs... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-10-20 00:21 · Score: 2, Interesting

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 what we need by DrWho520 · 2004-10-20 00:22 · Score: 3, Funny

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.

There is no such thing as "User Error" by mumblestheclown · 2004-10-20 00:22 · Score: 5, Insightful

There is no such thing as "user error" in such systems. There is only "design error and failure to adequately test."

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.

user error by donnyspi · 2004-10-20 00:23 · Score: 4, Insightful

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.

Re:user error by MyHair · 2004-10-20 00:52 · Score: 5, Insightful

Oh come on. I'm a very technical guy and good with geometry, and I don't know which way to swipe the card. They're all different. They have a little pic with the stripe on one side, but I still have to stop and think to spatially imagine it.

The buttons are in different locations, and the procedures are different for different machines.

ATMs are more consistent than those things.

And they're stupid to begin with. WTF? It says to hand my card to the cashier to verify signature? Why didn't the cashier just swipe it him/herself in the first place?!?!
Re:user error by Qzukk · 2004-10-20 00:54 · Score: 2

Why should it matter which way I scan the card? Why not have a reader on both sides of the slot? Why do I have all of these prompts?

From watching my parents try to use these things, there should be a minimum of two steps: 1) verify the price on the LCD. (at this point, adventurous types can add cashback) 2) swipe card if the price is right. The card type should be identifiable from the card's number. If its a debit card, beep to indicate the user should enter their pin now. If its not a debit card and the user selected cashback, it beeps and tells the user that its not a debit card, and the user should swipe another card, or hit OK to continue anyway. If the user tries entering the PIN (ie, doesn't read the screen and assumes they swiped their debit card) ignore the first OK push after pressing a number.

--
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.

The reason why the Florida machines are crashing.. by chipmeister · 2004-10-20 00:23 · Score: 2, Funny

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.

But voters are users! by Armchair+Dissident · 2004-10-20 00:30 · Score: 5, Interesting

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.

Outsource it! by Bombur · 2004-10-20 00:30 · Score: 3, Funny

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.

Load of bullsh*t! by PontifexPrimus · 2004-10-20 00:31 · Score: 2, Insightful

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!

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-- Language is a virus from outer space.

Same here in Texas by goneutt · 2004-10-20 00:33 · Score: 4, Funny

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.

Re:Same here in Texas by slackerboy · 2004-10-20 01:31 · Score: 2, Funny

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.

They use pretty much the same system where I'm at. (OK, I think it's a double-sided 8.5x14, unfolded card.) It is possible to screw it up though. Say, for instance, someone wasn't paying attention and accidentally marked two candidates for the same position. Then the machine catches the error and they send you back to the desk to dispose of the invalid ballot and pick up a new one and they tell you not to feel too bad because someone actually screwed up two ballots before getting it right. Ummm, all of this is theoretically speaking, of course...

--
Things to do today: See list of things to do yesterday

User Testing by chia_monkey · 2004-10-20 00:35 · Score: 5, Interesting

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

In Norway... by say · 2004-10-20 00:40 · Score: 3, Insightful

...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

You can't totally blame the poll workers by Halo- · 2004-10-20 00:40 · Score: 4, Interesting

In the US, (in my 10 years of voting experience,) the polls tend to be staffed by well-intentioned, generally older, volunteers. These people are indispensable, and we owe them a great debt; however, I wouldn't trust them to program a VCR.

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.

Diebold by UdoKeir · 2004-10-20 00:41 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.

Re:Who are the ITAA? by rlp · 2004-10-20 00:42 · Score: 4, Informative

The ITAA is a lobbying arm of the big hardware/software corporations. They're the ones that keep issuing studies saying that there's a 'shortage' of American IT workers so the U.S. needs to bring in more H-1B's and outsource more. I'd say they have about as much credibility as certain other more well known *AA's.

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[Insert pithy quote here]

user error? by spectrokid · 2004-10-20 00:46 · Score: 2, Insightful

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

I am amazed by rben · 2004-10-20 00:49 · Score: 5, Insightful

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:

Make the source open to viewing by anyone who wishes to see it. The source should be posted on the Internet and paper copies should be supplied to voters on request.
Run the software on an operating system that is also open source. It's already been shown that the Diebold machines can be compromised via the Microsoft Windows operating system.
Produce a paper audit trail and a printed voting receipt that can be used to verify the results the machine reports.

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

"News" by 4of12 · 2004-10-20 00:51 · Score: 2, Interesting

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."

Ok then. by GodHead · 2004-10-20 00:55 · Score: 2, Funny

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.

since when... by darth_zeth · 2004-10-20 00:58 · Score: 4, Insightful

...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

Re:since when... by Fulcrum+of+Evil · 2004-10-20 01:46 · Score: 4, Insightful

Journalism" these days (and perhaps always?) is a whole lot of sensationalism.

Nah, journalism deserves respect. The problem is that it's very rare these days.

--
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Re:since when... by darth_zeth · 2004-10-20 01:55 · Score: 2, Interesting

thats actually the point i was trying to make. most "Journalists" are just parrots. They don't actually go out and colelct data, they just repeat what other "journalists" are saying.

--
"Nobody writes jokes in base 13." - Douglas Adams
Re:since when... by OmniGeek · 2004-10-20 02:29 · Score: 2, Interesting

You might be interested in reading Bob Edwards' book on Edward R. Murrow and the origins of broadcast jounalism; I just finished it, and it's quite interesting. I gather from it that quality journalism has always been somewhat the exception, less so in the early days than now, and has suffered enormously from corporate profit motives in broadcasting (ownership of broadcast networks by non-broadcasters, elimination of the FCC's Fairness Doctrine, corporate treatment of news organizations as profit centers, and massive media ownership consolidation).

I'm afraid we have many fewer "journalists" today than "people who pretend to be journalists on TV and radio but aren't really."

--

"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."

Unnecessary by ajs318 · 2004-10-20 01:03 · Score: 4, Insightful

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!

Re:Unnecessary by sholden · 2004-10-20 01:42 · Score: 2, Informative

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.

That's simply not true. In the UK your ballot papers have serial numbers on them (not secret marks, but obvious serial numbers on the back) which connect each ballot to the counterfoil on which your electoral role number is written when you receive the ballot.

The idea being this can be used in cases of electoral fraud.
Re:Unnecessary by at_18 · 2004-10-20 03:11 · Score: 2, Informative

That's not just the UK. Almost all European countries vote in the same exact way. And no one this side of the Atlantic was able to figure out why Florida's manual recounts took more than a few hours.
Re:Unnecessary by ajs318 · 2004-10-20 04:28 · Score: 2, Interesting

I work for an ISP. And knowing what I know, there is no way I would let the fact of who I voted for get out on the Internet.

In a paper ballot, you give every voter an identical ballot paper, and they give it back to you with their vote on it. To emulate this electronically, you would need to issue a token to each voter which is revoked as the vote is cast. But that isn't quite perfect. Paper ballots can't be copied {well, they can; but you aren't allowed to take the ballot paper out of the polling station, nor to bring the necessary wherewithal to make a copy of the paper into the polling station, and let's assume the presiding officer is running a tight ship here}, so you know just from whether or not the paper is in the ballot box, whether or not the token has been revoked; and you know from whether or not the voter's name has been crossed off the list, whether or not the token has been issued in the first place. To be able to know which electronic tokens are valid and which have been revoked, every one would need to be different - and thus identifiable. Furthermore, you have absolutely no idea what is going on in transit between the server and the client and back. If you aren't actually sitting there in a polling station, then you can't supervise voters to make sure they are not misbehaving. They could be "printing their own ballot papers" {generating valid tokens for themselves}, or "stealing other people's ballot papers" {misappropriating valid tokens issued to other people}. How do you know, given the proliferation of Windows PCs, that a client machine has not been infected with a Trojan horse that hijacks its internet connection? You could maybe give out bootable CD-ROMs with a secure OS and client software on them, but then how do you ensure that your special protocol doesn't get reverse-engineered and misapplied between issuing the CD and the vote being cast?

The problem is simply that every time you fix one of the existing failure modes, you introduce some more new ones that you hadn't thought of before. Some of the limitations are not limitations of technology, which can be overcome by invention, but limitations of the universe, which can only be overcome by breaching one or more fundamental laws. At least the failure modes of paper ballots are well understood, and mitigated to the fullest extent possible.

--
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!

ITAA Members by femto · 2004-10-20 01:05 · Score: 4, Interesting

Members: ITAA Enterprise Solutions Division (eVoting)

----->>>>

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

RTFM by goldspider · 2004-10-20 01:08 · Score: 4, Insightful

"I am sure they have some valid points to be made, however, the way they went about it was condescending and insulting..."

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

Re:RTFM by Minwee · 2004-10-20 02:13 · Score: 2, Insightful

It's okay to blame users who have picked up your software for free, ignored the documentation which clearly answers their questions and still have problems with complicated software.

It is _not_ okay to blame users who, as taxpayers, have paid ridiculous amounts of money for a system which is _supposed_ to be fool-proof and simple to use when they find that it is too complicated for them to use and too easy to fool.

By default the responsibility lies with the user to figure out what he or she is doing. When you hand a briefcase full of cash to someone who just signed a contract to provide you with systems which are easy to use, then that responsibility shifts to the vendor.

You can't blame the users for not being able to do on their own what they have just paid you to do for them.

NOT "user error". by argent · 2004-10-20 01:22 · Score: 4, Interesting

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.

Voting the old fashioned way in Germany by O0o0Oblubb!O0o0O · 2004-10-20 01:24 · Score: 2, Interesting

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...

Maybe you should learn from brasil by bogado · 2004-10-20 01:34 · Score: 4, Interesting

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

Why punch holes? by Lord+Crc · 2004-10-20 01:36 · Score: 2, Interesting

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.

if you aren't part of the solution.... by darth_zeth · 2004-10-20 01:40 · Score: 3, Funny

...you're part of the precipitate.

--
"Nobody writes jokes in base 13." - Douglas Adams

Bev Harris by zogger · 2004-10-20 01:59 · Score: 2, Interesting

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

No, it's the manufacturer by whitroth · 2004-10-20 01:59 · Score: 2, Interesting

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

Give me a break. Contrarian Viewpoint. by bigtallmofo · 2004-10-20 02:03 · Score: 2, Interesting

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.

Ignorance is no excuse by TheConfusedOne · 2004-10-20 02:12 · Score: 3, Insightful

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.

Re:Ignorance is no excuse by OWJones · 2004-10-20 03:06 · Score: 4, Insightful

The infamous "butterfly ballot" was designed by a Democrat.

You mean Theresa LaPore, the former Republican who was a Democrat for all of six years (1996 - 2002), before she switched back to an "Independent", and is now working with the Republicans again? That Democrat?

All the counties that Gore requested recounts in were run by Democrats.

And thanks to the tireless efforts of those crooked Democrats, President Gore has done a fine job.

It is estimated that there were still many thousands of illegal votes placed by felons in the 2000 election in Florida.

Ah, yes, those spooooky felons trying to cast votes. The reason for the big crackdown? It turns out that felons cast about 100 votes in the 1997 Miami Mayoral election, out of a few hundred thousand cast.

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.

Ah, the "pass the buck" game. "We're going to make this list of tens of thousands of felons, and you have to guess which ones are actually felons!" Bullshit. If the state is going to spend 2.3 million dollars for a list that's 95% wrong, it is squarely the fault of the people who paid for that list. And if she tries to make a list for 2002, even when the FL legislature passed a law saying she couldn't, I imagine that's the fault of the Democrats, too?

The facts are far too challenging.

The facts are far too challenging for you? I've noticed. That's probably why you didn't have any references, just assertions.

-jdm
Re:Ignorance is no excuse by ChaosDiscord · 2004-10-20 04:00 · Score: 2, Insightful

OWJones does a great job of refuting your silly claims, so I'll just address two points that OWJones didn't:
The infamous "butterfly ballot" was designed by a Democrat.

Off topic and irrelevant. Did the poster suggest that the butterfly ballot was a conspiracy? Did he even mention it? No. The butterfly ballot was just bad user interface design, it doesn't take a conspiracy theory to say that it was a bad thing.
It is estimated that there were still many thousands of illegal votes placed by felons in the 2000 election in Florida.

We appear to have a disagreement here. I'm willing to accept that some illegal votes will be cast in exchange for minimizing the number of legit voters denied the vote. You appear to be willing to accept that some legit voters will be denied the vote in exchange for minimizing the number of illegal votes.
There is a similar problem with criminal law: the easier it is to convict someone the more likely you are to put criminals behind bars. Unfortunately it also become easier to put an innocent man behind bars. Our country decided that convicting innocent men was so abhorrent that we set the standard for convictions very high ("beyond a reasonable doubt"). As a result more criminals get away with their crimes, but I still approve of the choice. I for one am unwilling to tell someone "Sorry you didn't get to vote, but you're an acceptable loss."

--
Search 2010 Gen Con events
Re:Ignorance is no excuse by workindev · 2004-10-20 04:24 · Score: 2

We appear to have a disagreement here. I'm willing to accept that some illegal votes will be cast in exchange for minimizing the number of legit voters denied the vote. You appear to be willing to accept that some legit voters will be denied the vote in exchange for minimizing the number of illegal votes.

The problem is that the US Commission on Civil Rights failed to find a single person who would testify that they were incorrectly denied the right to vote. They received testimony from several people who were incorrectly identified as potential ineligible voters, but everybody they heard from eventually was allowed to vote.

The Miami Herald, on the other hand, estimates that 5,600 convicted felons voted in the Florida 2000 election because counties completely scrapped the felon list.

They are kinda justified by asoap · 2004-10-20 02:28 · Score: 5, Interesting

Have you ever worked with poll workers? The press kit is kinda justified.

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

Re:They are kinda justified by Shakrai · 2004-10-20 03:14 · Score: 4, Insightful

Have you ever worked with poll workers?

I have worked with poll workers. I am a poll worker. I'm probably the youngest one in the state of New York (in my 20s). Well maybe not -- but I am the youngest one in my county by far (I guessimated the next youngest in her 50s at the class we had to take).

My point was that a statement like "clueless poll workers" is not helpful. Undertrained and overworked yes... but clueless? That's insulting and demeaning towards people that selflessly devote their time for the betterment of our country.

I would like to see the authors of that report try to be a poll worker. Deal with the people that don't understand what a Primary Election is (why can't I vote for the Democrat?). Deal with people that insist that they have the right to vote at your place even though the street finder (using the address they provided) shows them at another station. Deal with the rush of dozens of people that come in when the polls first open or right before they close. Deal with the guy with enough booze on his breath to ignite that calls you a "fucking dimwitted asshole" because you can't find his name right away because he slurred his speech and has no idea what his own last name is. Stay at the polls for an hour past closing trying to get through to phone in your results (beep... beep... beep...). Then talk to me about "clueless poll workers".

It's ashame that more people don't volunteer. What are you doing on November 2nd?

--
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Re:They are kinda justified by hesiod · 2004-10-20 03:58 · Score: 4, Funny

> What are you doing on November 2nd?

Working, so that I can pay taxes to the government that is supposed to provide a working voting system.

Yeah, in Florida! by PeanutGallery · 2004-10-20 02:35 · Score: 2, Funny

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.

Don't forget 3)... by OmniGeek · 2004-10-20 02:37 · Score: 2, Insightful

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."

My letter to the ITAA by swillden · 2004-10-20 02:41 · Score: 4, Interesting

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.

ITAA == Professional Liars Association.. by FirstOne · 2004-10-20 02:49 · Score: 3, Informative

"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."

Combination: Diebold, Bush, Florida leads to... by O0o0Oblubb!O0o0O · 2004-10-20 03:01 · Score: 2, Funny

this video, which shows how they work:

Voting Machine :-)

it's not the users, dammit by Mr.+Slurpee · 2004-10-20 03:10 · Score: 2, Interesting

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

Socialism != stupidity by stewby18 · 2004-10-20 03:15 · Score: 2, Insightful

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.

Your ignorance is not excused by phearlez · 2004-10-20 03:24 · Score: 2, Insightful

With respect, bunk.

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

Re:Your ignorance is not excused by workindev · 2004-10-20 04:17 · Score: 2, Informative

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.

You are reading the wrong law. The administration of the statewide voter database is detailed in Chapter 98 of Florida Election laws, specifically 98.0977:

(d) When the supervisor of elections finds information through the database that suggests that a voter has been convicted of a felony and has not had his or her civil rights restored or has been adjudicated mentally incompetent and his or her mental capacity with respect to voting has not been restored, the supervisor of elections shall notify the voter by certified United States mail. The notification shall contain a statement as to the reason for the voter's potential ineligibility to be registered to vote and shall request information from the voter on forms provided by the supervisor of elections. As an alternative, the voter may attend a hearing at a time and place specified in the notice. If there is evidence that the notice was not received, notice must be given once by publication in a newspaper of general circulation in the county. The notice must plainly state that the voter is potentially ineligible to be registered to vote and must state a time and place for the person to appear before the supervisor of elections to show cause why his or her name should not be removed from the voter registration rolls. After reviewing the information provided by the voter, if the supervisor of elections determines that the voter is not eligible to vote under the laws of this state, the supervisor of elections shall notify the voter by certified United States mail that he or she has been found ineligible to be registered to vote in this state, shall state the reason for the ineligibility, and shall inform the voter that he or she has been removed from the voter registration rolls. The supervisor of elections shall remove from the voter registration rolls the name of any voter who fails either to respond within 30 days to the notice sent by certified mail or to attend the hearing. (e) Upon hearing all evidence in a hearing, the supervisor of elections must determine whether there is sufficient evidence to strike the person's name from the registration books. If the supervisor determines that there is sufficient evidence, he or she must strike the name.

You will notice that the entire responsibility of verifying the names on the statewide list, notifying potential ineligible voters, and striking ineligible voters from the registration rolls is soley in the hands of the County Election supervisors. The State Department of Elections has no discretion in the matter beyond providing list of potential ineligible voters. The State doesn't even have any say in the appeals process -- it is handled by the county circuit court in a de novo trial goverened by the rules of that county.

Man, have we become a wouse society. by WindBourne · 2004-10-20 03:41 · Score: 2, Insightful

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.

OK, so I run a WHOIS... by zogger · 2004-10-20 04:07 · Score: 2, Interesting

--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

Re:Whee, Palast and the Beeb? by OWJones · 2004-10-20 04:58 · Score: 2, Insightful

I note that despite your spin LePore was in fact a Dem during the years in question.

I note that despite your spin, you don't have to take a lie-detector test when you register to be a member of a certain party. In areas that lean heavily towards one side or the other, that party's primary essentially decides who will win the race, so a lot of people who are from the other party register as members of the dominant party so they have a say in who gets elected.

Translation: registered party affiliation proves nothing. Actions speak way louder than words, and LePore has all but screamed that she's a Republican.

Skeptical of the list's accuracy, elections supervisors in 20 counties (including Palm Beach) ignored it altogether, thereby allowing thousands of felons to vote.

Conversely,

Convinced of the list's accuracy, elections supervisors in many counties followed it to the 'T', thereby preventing thousands of legal voters from casting a ballot.

They're both a violation of the law. Which is worse? I'm going to go with the latter.

That dog won't hunt.

Rrrrrrright. Sorry, simply asserting you're right doesn't make it so. Trying to assert using a colloquialism still doesn't make you right.

-jdm

Infoworld screwed the pooch by alizard · 2004-10-20 11:32 · Score: 2, Interesting

The truth about DRE machines is probably somewhere in between the positions taken by people like Harris and Cohen, said Dan Seligson, editor of Electionline.org, the Web site of a non-partisan Washington, D.C., group that tracks election reform across the U.S.

"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

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