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Avi Rubin and More on Electronic Voting
jgo writes "Johns Hopkins Computer Science professor Avi Rubin, posted his experience as an election judge on his website. It's an interesting read and exposes some potential security problems with electronic voting. At one point he held in his hand the five memory cards containing all of his precinct's votes." Rubin had posted his experience in the primary election earlier.
"At one point he held in his hand the five memory cards containing all of his precinct's votes"
whats keeping him from replacing one/all of them with doctored records. He complains that the voting machines could be tampered with, but there needs to be more safeguards than just the code.
How hard is it to add a little printer? it would be much more conspicuous replacing a four-foot stack of receipts with ones from the back of your van.
Human mistakes could affect results in voting machines.
The voting machines should be supervised by robots...with shotguns
From Professor Rubin's account: "If we continue to use the kind of insecure DREs that were used in this election, it is only a matter of time before somebody exploits them. And the worst part is that we may never know it." [emphasis added]
It seems that no one really wants to come forward and raise this as a serious concern for this election, despite the fact that it's entirely plausible. Unfortunately, it seems highly unlikely that anyone who dares cast doubt on this election will be regarded as objective.
... CANADA ! I'm OUTTA here. Later suckers !
(free weed, no guns (only laser warfare), and you can travel and not be hated... amazing).
Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate !
With stuff like this already being detected, and such weaknesses in the system (one man being able to "lose" or otherwise destroy or alter all votes in an entire precinct), non-open source electronic voting is a dangerous situation.
We're on the verge (or way past it) of the average citizen losing all power and control within their country, and electronic voting is just another step.
The only hope is for citizens and groups to adamantly insist on open source, safety procedures, regular audits, and paper trails. Unfortunatley, I see few if any of those things happening anytime soon.
Lose Weight and Feel Great with Isagenix
Glitch gave Bush extra votes in Ohio.
Franklin County's unofficial results had Bush receiving 4,258 votes to Democrat John Kerry's 260 votes in a precinct in Gahanna.
Records show only 638 voters cast ballots in that precinct.
..as people from Canada still sound like yanks to the the rest of the world. Of course, we can tell you aren't when we notice you aren't arrogrant and don't sy things like "It isn't like this back home...".
Also when you don't threaten to sue everyone we know you are from Canada.
How's this for a way of safely conducting electronic voting...
Give everyone a GUID, a complete random key of sufficient length that you can't simply guess and get a valid GUID. Mail it to them.
When a person votes, their vote is stored against their GUID, in a publically accessable database. Anyone can check that their vote has been correctly counted by looking up their GUID in the table.
Voting would effectively be pseudonymous instead of anonymous. (With a new pseudonym for every election).
When all of the votes are on one machine, one person can contol the votes. We need checks and balances.
With a manual system, it takes hundreds of people to count the vote. Sure, it takes more time, buit I can wait. Sure there may be a few people with nefarious intentions, but those few people might be able to throw a precinct, not a whole state (or country!) Usually when hand counting, two or three people count anyways, so there's even more checks and balances built into the system. Our country is built on checks an balances. We need that in the voting system as well.
I truly belive voting problems are the number one issue facing our country. If can't trust the vote, then we don't have a democracy. If one election can be stolen, the next one will be stolen as well. Very slippery slope.
Please watch this free 30-minute film about black box voting machines.
We have all been scared about Diebold and other black box voting machines, and for good reason. Apparently one of the central machines from Election Systems & Software Inc. tallied 115 votes for Bush in a certain county, while another machine tallied 365 votes for that same county. Which one was right? There is no way to tell, because "it is too hard" to add a printer to a counting machine. It is not like they have been doing that for 30 years. But who needs to do a recount when the machines are infallible, right?
Most infuriating of all is that Republican Senator Hagel, the former Senate Ethics Director, resigned after admitting that he owned Election Systems & Software! That's right, the same voting machine maker that 60% of ALL VOTES in the U.S. are counted on, the same one that provably miscounted votes in Ohio and other states, and the same one that refuses to print receipts to recount these votes. No wonder legislation trying to require printers on voting machines is taking so long to get through congress when congressmen can vote themselves into office without a paper trail.
Probably old news by now, but what the hell, editors can dupe stuff, why shouldn't i?!
/ 10083861.htm C T/MGArticle/NCT_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=10317 78939157&path= g litch_1.html a per/2004/11/05/a29a_BROWVOTE_1105.html
(found on dailyrotten.com)
http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/news/local
http://www.wnct.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=WN
http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/11/02/HNevote
http://www.nbc4i.com/politics/3894867/detail.html
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/news/ep
...for standardized, reliable, secure, auditable national voting procedures & infrastructure --
but we have plenty to use for Pentagon studies on psychic teleportation.
We walk into a grocery store and usually buy stuff instead of stuffing it in our pockets and running. We know it's wrong to leave without paying.
Why do votes need uber security check technology? Whatever happened to scrutiny by peers?
IMO, paper ballots are best because it is just tougher to destroy them. But, we should get receipts showing how we voted for our own records.
But, trying to turn the entire election process into zero possibility of error or fraud undermines the election itself and goes against the ideals of our society. People in general are honest - and those that aren't get caught eventually by honest people.
Suggesting that 'one person' should not be able to hold an entire precincts' votes just doesn't make much sense. People are often responsible for others. I suppose twenty people should all carry a piece of the nuclear football too..
--- We need more Ron Paul!
There is a question, of course, about how long you might be locked up for doing so.
The scary part isn`t the stuff that you can trace back (i.e he exchange some of the memory cards for some containing results in favor of Candidate A or B), but stuff you can`t nor detect, nor trace back.
Remember, NO LOGS of the voting process are kept on these machines. Think of "Irregularities" in the code that add a vote for Candidate A when a certain vote pattern is met. Or as Mr Rubins said, physical tampering allowing you to "one could change a few bytes in the ballot definition file and votes for the two major Presidential candidates would be swapped. In that case, none of the procedures we had in place could detect that votes were tallied for the wrong candidates."
Great. Maybe this time no one abused the system. But think long-term; in 50 years, when e-voting will be predominant and everyone will be confident in it...
Eureka Science News - automatically updated
then you are simply naive, imho. It seems clear to me that no matter who you vote for, the powerful remain in control and the powerless carry the costs.
Words to men, as air to birds.
that Open Source is not going to be able to address.
The reality is that electronic records of the vote require the humans trust the machine. Open Source or closed, the binaries on the machine can not be directly examined, rendering the nature of the code used a moot point.
Voting by machine is voting by proxy. We must trust the proxy and cannot observe its operation. Subtle manupulations of the vote will go unnoticed, unless we keep paper records and perform mandatory audits.
This means the only electronic solution is one that records the vote on a ballot that both humans and machines can read. Those ballots can be machine counted and audited as we have always done.
What's the point really? Why not just use paper ballots and make them easy to use and read by both machines and humans and spend the money reforming the process to make it fast, taking humans into account.
Remember, there are plenty of old folks willing to do their civic duty. We can get fast and trustworthy results with a far smaller investment than we have made on electronic solutions to date.
This is not a hard conclusion to come to. The fact that it is ignored means those in power WANT IT TO BE THAT WAY.
It's wrong and we need to demand change continiously until we get it; otherwise, we lose our democracy.
Blogging because I can...
I'm as much of a geek as anyone here, but there are some problems that cannot be solved by technology. I don't care if the voting machine is open source, voter verified, paper backup... whatever, when the votes are counted on a machine, there is more chance for abuse. Single point of failure,
I am a voting Luddite. Vote on paper, count on paper. Distribute the load.
The idea is that the voter can verify that the printout matches their wishes. The printout is the master copy, not the internal count. The latter is just more convenient -- for the voter and for the tallier.
By adding a printer, you're conceding that the electronic voting machine may not innately be able to provide complete confidence in the result.
No piece of non-trivial software can ever be considered bug free, and therefore, no software ever deserves complete confidence. For that matter, hand-counting shouldn't have your complete confidence either. People make mistakes; shit happens. That's the whole reason for QC.
By conceding that the electronic voting machine's results cannot be trusted, you're saying that you have no basis upon which to reject a request for a recount of the paper receipts. In other words, you're back to hand-counting paper votes each time.
You should have no basis upon which to reject a recount. The paper ballots are the masters. If there is a serious challenge, then they should be recounted. But in any case: you should verify a selected sample of the machines' votes in every polling station to make sure that they are giving reasonable numbers. This is just the application of industry-standard quality control procedures to voting machines. It boggles my mind that electronic voting was ever considered without them.
To within half a percent, pi seconds is a nanocentury. -- Tom Duff
H.R.2239 and S.1980, discussed further here, will amend the Help America Vote Act (an act designed to ensure consistent voting systems that meet certain standards be available to ALL voters in ALL jurisdictions), such that there is "a voter-verified permanent record or hardcopy" attached with each and every ballot cast by every voter.
.[1] Don't believe people who make it seem like companies like Diebold are resisting. They aren't. They'll build - and sell - whatever municipalities will buy.
Please, simply support this legislation.
Additionally, the electronic voting manufacturers, such as Diebold, already have the ability to add permanent, individual voter-verified paper audit trails to their products
The roadblock, as it turns out, is often local election boards. First, the new paper verification systems NEED to go through the government certification process - remember, it's the e-voting watchdogs who are chastising non-certified patches/updates being put into place; the paper audit systems need to go through the same certification process. Further, many municipalities can't understand why they should be forcing paper audit trails; after all, they think, they are just getting away from paper ballots - why should they be arguing for paper ballots (and all the headaches that go along with them, ON TOP of the headaches they already have from learning to deal with e-voting), so why should they go back to them?
Folks, so many people are involved in elections at so many different levels that there is literally no way that any central entity could rig an election across an entire state. Experts dealing with e-voting don't even have this on their radar. Their concern is more errors and failures. E.g., most of Ohio is still punchcard as it is (the majority of the 35 counties moving to e-voting pushed off the transition until AFTER the election because of problems), and someone like Diebold doesn't even have access to this equipment after the fact. Yes, an unscrupulous election official or enterprising hacker might be able to breach individual machines and potentially even a county - it's possible. But the likelihood of something like that happening on any significant scale, ESPECIALLY without being caught (the articles we're talking about here actually prove that the audit processes, be they what they are, do work) is very, very low.
That said, we absolutely should be ensuring that there is a permanent, voter-verified, paper record. It is absolutely critical to our voting process, even if the software is still proprietary on these systems (though it, too, should be open for public inspection). But the permanent voter-verified paper record alone eliminates the chances for any widespread fraud with the counting process itself, and at the very least makes any fraud easily reversible and/or detectable.
Contact your representative and senators, and urge them to support the above bills. It will be a lot more productive that imagining fantasies about Diebold "handing" Bush the election. (If ANYTHING remotely like that happened, there are a shitload of professors, campaign staff, scholars, journalists, and researchers who know a LOT more than you do who would be all over this in a heartbeat. Kerry's $300 million, two-year campaign didn't just roll over for no reason. Bush won, whether anyone likes it or not, and it wasn't because electronic voting handed anyone anything. The POINT here, is that instead of inventing wild conspiracy theories, we should be ensuring that there is voter verification and a permanent paper record for all future elections, because HAVA will require a shift to electronic voting for everyone - before that happens, we should make sure that it's veri
The machine doesn't just print out a paper record internally; what voting rights groups are asking for is a voter-verifiable paper trail: the voter can inspect the paper record of their vote. This paper record goes into a ballot box, just like a normal ballot. If the result is disputed, it's possible to have a paper recount.
Of course, this is still subject to security problems -- e.g. what if an election judge discards some of the paper receipts? -- but they are problems shared by traditional paper balloting. The thing is, it's a lot harder to get a corrupt election judge in every precinct than it is to get one corrupt programmer in every voting machine company, so widespread rigging is more difficult and easier to discover.
They want electronic voter sign in. The books will be replaced by an electronic sign in. This will be connected to the voting machine. So much for a secret ballot, so much for comparing the number of voters to the number of votes cast.
BTW, the owners and main programmers for Diebold are not just Bush pioneers, but are also Dominionist. Google the goals of the Dominionist.
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I voted on an electronic machine here in Atlanta, GA. Previously, I have voted using mechanical machines in NY and Pennsylvania. One big difference: less privacy with the electronic machines. It's not a particularly big deal to me, but some might feel weird about that. Especially if they intend to vote for a candidate that is very unpopular in their district.
I felt the process and UI was fine (clear, minimal opportunity for human error, etc.).
Main complaint (other than security concerns): the potential of the electronic machines was not realized. For example, there were several initiatives on the ballot here. One was a widely publicized gay bashing, er, I mean, marriage protection ammendment. Another was a lesser publicized amendment relating to judicial jurisdiction. (Both described here) I knew a great deal about the gay bashing measure, but hadn't heard of the proposed amendment about the courts. All they put on the ballot was a yes or no to the following statement: "Shall the Constitution be amended so as to provide that the Supreme Court shall have jurisdiction and authority to answer questions of law from any state appellate or federal district or appellate court?" Um, how about maybe?
It would be great if a more clear explanation could be added to the ballot. The electronic medium makes this crazy easy. It's no more expensive to do. The website linked above even has a very clear description that could have been used. (Of course, this opens up questions about potential bias that can be worked in to the description. However, I think something is almost certainly better than nothing.)
I think electronic voting will be a good thing if the security concerns are worked out. Will they be? That's hard to say. In the near future will most Americans think they are? Yes, almost certainly.
In Arkansas, your ballot is numbered and the number of your ballot recorded next to your name in the voter registration book. They can look at will to see how you voted. Entirely unamerican if you ask me.
Avi Rubin. The only thing more perfect would be if he'd given this report to an online TV station, it could be Rubin.Avi then.
I'm gonna change my name to Mpeg Smith in honour of him.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
Why are we introducing the chances for errors into our most important civic institution? This is insanity! As another poster wrote there is no reason that a printout will accurately reflect how the machine handles your input, it's only showing you what was sent to the printer. We have so many other obfuscating problems as well, like magnets and code tampering and using phone lines to transmit results.
.5% in the polls. It'll be 10 people and 10 ballot boxes per precinct - tops. Wood is not expensive so don't go there.
/. so you've got more insight than most folks.
The real problem is taking the physical stylus out of the hand of the voter. I would only consider eVoting for disabled persons, and I would think the majority of them have few problems.
1) To avoid fraud, why not submit the ballot into more than one ballot box. One for each candidate on the ticket. If democrats and republicans have their own ballot box - they'll likely have the same number of votes - the incentive to cheat is removed without duopoly.
2) Allow all candidates nationwide to be on the ballot if they garner
Here's a nice page to Federal Contact Information http://www.eff.org/congress/ - tell them what you think - you're on
Stuff that matters.
And once Govenor Schwarzenegger wins the presidency and these shotgun toting robots refuse to listen about a little thing called the constitution, what then? :)
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Paper Ballot
Ink pen
Ballot Box.
Cheap, reliable, fair, honest.
Thats the way we do it in Australia too, works well.
But some people have a "need" to apply technology to everything.
"Go into the hall of mirrors and have a bloody hard look at yourself" - HG Nelson
Avi's not the only election judge recording his experiences. So are his minions: http://cs.jhu.edu/~mgreen/election_judge.html
The man knew what he was saying. While US election system is more robust to fraud than, say, popular votes in other countries (fraud can only occur on state level) with electronic voting this may change. One CIA agent will be enough to affect the vote of the entire states. Heck, CIA agents may not even be necessary, because there just may be a secret fragment of code in software which will basically go:Look at countries which merely have electronic vote counting systems (even though the ballots are actually paper), like Russia. Whoever controls the system wins, always, repeatably, with predetermined percentages.
In the US correspondingly whoever controls the companies that make voting machines will win. Right now these companies are controlled by Republicans. Democrats, take note.
It's ironic that some are paranoid that their purchases are tracked electronically, but that others are also paranoid that their votes cannot be tracked electronically.
Move along. These aren't the votes you are looking for.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Let's assume the worst-case scenario (from an effort point of view, not from an accuracy point ov view) and say that the votes are challenged every time and the paper ballots end up having the final say. How has the electronic counting helped?
Given that computers are less prone to make careless errors (OK, they don't make careless errors), even if they might be more prone to systematic errors, they give you a number to compare against. Let's say that the computer told you it had printed out 2,523 votes for Bush and 2,427 votes for Kerry. When the vote-counters counted it, however, they counted 2,525 votes for Bush and 2,425 votes for Kerry. The first thing that one should assume is that the vote-counters miscounted, and should recount. If a second recount (by different people) got the same result as the first human count, then we have a problem. The error could be: (1) the computer mis-counted, or (2) the computer mis-printed. Unfortunately, either one is possible. However, since the voters would be encouraged to look at their ballots prior to them entering the box, it would seem more likely that the computer mis-counted, in which case the human count should trump the computer count.
However, notice that the computer count still helps. It gives us a number to compare against. If the human count on the first count matched the computer count, there is little reason to suspect that both counts are wrong. (Although, theoretically, the computer could still have mis-printed and mis-counted in a matching way. This would be an unlikely accidental error, and a very risky deliberate hack since the voters can verify their votes before they go in the box.
Of course, this only works if the printed version can be viewed by the voter prior to it going in the box.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
It seems like the major benefit of the electronic voting machines is that they provide a good user interface. Much better than your standard ballot. I think you could just have an interface that prints out a ballot. Then the voter could validate the ballot if they wanted to. Then have another machine do the counting.
You are arguing that the existance of a paper record would result in all elections being recounted. This is false. The point of an electronic system with paper ballots is to provide very quick results in most cases while still allowing for recounts and audits in special cases. At least one state requires electronic machines with paper ballots, and it works well, so your concern is misplaced. There are rules for recounts and audits, they don't just happen.
But without paper ballots, a significant fraction of the population will lose confidence in election results. (Go over to the dailykos blog if you don't believe me.)
With paper ballots, false concerns about elections can be rejected as false and this increases confidence in our democracy. What is do bad about that?
Shotguns are prone to failure. Then people will demand a re-shoot. The only verifiable solution is to equip the robots with laser beams. Frickin' laser beams, of course. On their heads.
Also in Canada.
This only works where there is one thing to choose on the ballot. It would take many hours to tally votes for many positions as I assume is done in the USA. I am custodian in a school that has been used for federal, provincial, and municipal elections. It takes a couple of hours after the polls close to hand count the 'choose one candidate' ballots and finsh the paperwork.
For the municipal election in Edmonton, where we vote for mayor, councillors, public or separate school trustees and any plebicite issues, I feel we have an excellent system. The ballot is paper and your choice is marked by filling a gap in a 1/8 inch wide arrow with a sharpie marker. The ballot is in a privacy sleeve and is immediately fed into a counting machine. The paper ballots are there for verification. After the polls close the machine provides immediate results for the election officials, scrutineers (candidate representatives), and the media - to be compiled at a central location for the official results. The ballots and the voting machine are handled by separate people and transported separately to reduce the likelihood of tampering.
I think it is a simple and elegant solution and it has been used for several elections here.
Do what is right. You will please some and astonish the rest. --Mark Twain
Second you let machines count the votes...
...and the next thing you know you're strapped down in bed in a permanent dream state virtual reality with an army of robots harvesting your nervous system for energy!
Third you give the machines shotguns...
Fourth you give the machines control of SkyNet...
That's the not the future I want. (Unless I'm rich and the chicks are all hot in said virtual reality.:)
Your mileage may vary.
In New Zealand we have party-appointed scrutineers looking over the shoulders of our (human) vote-counters; as a result, we're pretty sure that our votes will be counted correctly. And they're all counted by the end of election night -- no dimpled chads :-)
But our election system is much simpler than that of the US. I've seen your ballots - they've got vast numbers of choices on them, and this makes manually counting the votes much more difficult. Here, and I suspect in most other countries where votes are counted by hand, there are just two votes per ballot, so manual counting is relatively easy.
Pretend that something especially witty is here. Thanks.
Why are there these cards at all? Shouldn't the electronic voting machine contact a local district with results via phone line. Make it work much more like a fax machine (transmit results to a location). If the phone line is dead then should a AUTHORIZED person only be able to remove data from the device..
What everyone doesn't understand/get: 1. The paper receipt is there as a justification tool against what's on the memory cards or electronic storage media. It doesn't guarantee though that the vote hasn't been tampered with. It could very weel be tampered with while the person is pushing the "vote" button. 2. The purpose of the DRE (touchscreen), is to prevent over and undervotes. Overvotes *confuse* optical scan machines. Remember the standardized tests back when you were in grade school? This is why they told you to darken ONE oval...the machines are intelligent enough to determine what's what...so if someone darkens two ovals for the same candidate, it doesn't count either...it records it as an error--in this case an overvote...so that vote doesn't count. DRE's prevent this from happening. You can only choose Kerry OR Bush...you can't choose both. 3. You can't just take the memory cards out and change the ballot or the results. It doesn't work that way. Different companies use different ways of encryption and verification. Basically, if that key on the memory card doesn't match one on the aggregating machine that also programmed those memory cards, as well as every file validity check --depending on the company, this could be CRC, PGP, MD5, and the list goes on--but the files just aren't there waiting to be modified/deleted/replaced. The machine/process ceases to work if one file is changed/deleted/modified in any way...period. That's how at least two company's technology works. One thing I find funny, is that since all this proverbial shit has hit the fan starting a couple years ago, Avi Rubin in one year has all of a sudden become it seems the world's expert on voting machines. There are very talented programmers who work on this stuff every day...and have worked on this every day for the past 20 years. And before you can understand the issues that may plague an election system, you have to understand the laws in whatever jurisdiction those election systems will be deployed in. And that's one HUGE issue that no one wants to address or take the time to learn. I'm pretty confident Avi Rubin doesn't know why some Florida laws prevent touchscreens from being used in say, Texas...and vice versa. Any jackass can get on 60 minutes and say "This sucks, that sucks, it all sucks, and my vote isn't secure." But it takes a person of a little bit more intelligence to understand why it is that way. Example: I hear arguments all the time (from Computer Science people like Avi Rubin) that say that relational databases and other technology like that should be used to validate votes vs voters coming into the polling place. Wrong. The whole democratic system in the USA is based upon the fact every voter should be able to remain anonymous in the polling place regarding what/who they voted for. Introduce a database to keep track of voter and their ballot results and you've just violated the very law/premise that our democracy stands on. My message to everyone including Avi Rubin and anyone else in Academia who thinks they are an election system expert after one year: Learn every state law...then try to build an election system that conforms to every single state law with the same piece of software. If anyone can do that within 5 years, I'll be very impressed... If you want a system that can't be electronically compromised, do it like the jurisdictions in the UK. They scan all the paper ballots electronically, then recount them by hand until the numbers match. That's the only way to ensure they aren't electronically altered, and that no over/under votes are incorrectly counted.
In the most recent posting on comp.risks, the lead article is a compelling summary of the issues surrounding evoting & contains a link to an extensive document that summarizes many problems from the past decades.
The elephant in the living room that no one will acknowledge:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=10393
Also:
"Our video files have been attacked and taken out. Who doesn't want you to see this film? We are working around the clock to get the video files back online right away. Please check back soon."
http://www.votergate.tv/
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/
~hylas
..is obvious. The tally is not human readable. It has to be filtered through the computers programming. Programming can make any output reflect any input. The amount of money and power that is represented by controlling the US government is simpy staggering. It is the largest potential jackpot a criminally bent individual or group can approach. The temptation is overwhelming,and now *they* have the complete technical ability to achieve that goal and to get away with it, the perfect crime.
A traditional paper ballot in a locked box is human readable/countable by anyone who can count at the end of the day. It requires very little in the form of specialised skills or hardware. It is very inexpensive. Challenges can be mounted and results verified quickly and transparently. Once you get into machine reading, whether tabulated bubbles or punched out cards or pure digitial like with the diebold machines-then you have your potential problems, and with the last few elections we can see we have new problems, and they look a lot more like "on purpose" troubles than accidental. They especially look on purpose given the revelations of what was found on diebolds website and published, and with other anecdotals showing some rather distrubing intent as to election honesty. The consortium pushing electronic closed source computer voting is a who's who of the mega-profits from tax money and governmental contracts military industrial complex. This is three serious alarm bells to anyone really thinking about this subject.
The old way had it's faults, but computerised has introduced faults above and beyond that can not be addressed without trusting what is inherently untrustworthy by it's design criteria.
"A wrinkle is the fact that all the early exit polls pointed to a Kerry victory,"
This would actually be expected in most voter models. Republicans should get the early advantage in people voting on their way to work (the first hour or so); then Democrats get the advantage as people out of work or in odd shifts vote (those same early exit polls also indicated that 60% of voters were women--the mid-day housewife bump); then Republicans recover in the evening as people get off work. This is more a problem with watching exit polls throughout the day.
There is a similar problem with watching the actual results. Republican suburbs report first, then Democrat cities, and finally republican rural areas. Thus, for most of the election, Democrats are over counted.
A more critical issue is that some feel that the *final* exit polls were more Kerry than Bush in a number of eVoting states. However, I have not seen independent support of this. CNN's exit polls agree with the vote count. It is possible that they may have adjusted them to better fit the actual voter profile.
"The house of representitives elections are becoming insane, with a lot of stupidly safe seats. only something like 10% of house seats are competetive,"
Becoming? They were always like that. In general, most races that involve an incumbent are safe (incumbents consistently win over 95% of the time, except in elections like '92, when only 92% of incumbents won).
It is hard to overcome the three advantages of the incumbent: one, the voters have voted for the incumbent previously and it is difficult to make them change their vote (one of the reasons for negative ads is to break people loose from their previous vote choices); two, the incumbent gets to send postal mail at taxpayer expense (worth about $250,000 in money that a challenger must pay just to match the incumbent); three, it is more worthwhile to bribe (contribute to the campaign) of an incumbent who can definitely help you now (and who has a voting record that you can use to verify that helpfulness) than a challenger who might be able to help you (if victorious).
Gerrymandering actually *decreases* the safety of seats. The point of gerrymandering is to move all the opposition votes into one safe district and to make as many seats as possible where you can be competitive. As practiced by Republicans, gerrymandering creates urban districts and suburban/rural districts. Gerrymandering will also frequently pit incumbents against each other to attempt to reduce the incumbents of your opponent, thus creating competitive elections where they would otherwise not exist.
If you want to reduce the number of safe elections, look to term limits (reduces the number of incumbents), primary reform (eliminate the artificial separation between parties that keeps centrists from winning primaries--half their support is in the other party; this could allow two members of the same party to emerge from the primary; where the moderate would normally have lost), multiple candidate management (plurality voting favors the candidate with the largest minority in multiple candidate elections; it loses the secondary, etc. preferences; i.e. it forgets that the liberal prefers the moderate to the conservative and the conservative prefers the moderate to the liberal; plurality voting doesn't allow for compromise), and campaign finance reform (in particular, changes that allow a challenger to match the incumbent's finances).
Funny you should ask. My senior capstone is on this subject. There are six basic requirements of democratic voting.
Anonymity - this is obvious. The vote cannot be tracked back to whomever cast it.
Verifiability - the ability to go back and recount ballots.
Reliability - the count is done the same way each time and accurately reflects the intent of the voter. Punchcards are unreliable because of chads. Processes like optical scanning give different counts when run mutliple times because of borderline ballots
Usability - the design of the voting system reduces the likelihood of mistakes. Butterfly ballots are the obvious bad example here.
Security - the system is secure from tampering, such as system hacking or stuffing the ballot box
Accessibility - all of the above remains true for all demographics, such as the disabled. For instance, being blind should not mean that you can't vote anonymously
No system as yet developed fits all of these for a scale such as a national election in the US.
Other, less important requirements include cost,speed of tallying and administrative ease-of-use.
This is too important an issue to become a vehicle for self-promotion.
155,000 provisional ballots were cast in Ohio. Probably Democrat, but not quite enough to close the 130,000 vote gap. (Because about half were cast in counties which went Kerry.) But just in case. .
-FL
Just to keep it real, Nixon trounced McGovern (who btw was a highly declarated WWII vetran) with similar attacks on his ability to providea strong defense, McGovern choose to rise above the fray and lost horribly. But just remember only three years later Nixon had been impeached, due to his attempts to thwart the democratic process, and faced possible a prison sentence. Of course his veep Jerry pardoned him, a move that may have cost him the presidency. I say if anything can be proved let's impeach Dick Cheney first or at the same time. Matthew
The powers that be in this country don't want a simple, understandable system. Fraud would be too easy to detect. We have long verbal wars about voting on TV news shows, but it never clears things up. It just makes things muddier. Why would the news and gov't want to make things so difficult? Why would they act like this is so hard to fix?
Think about it.......