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E-Voting Glitch Alters Election Outcome
An anonymous reader writes "According to a local news source, 'A recently found computer glitch in the voting machines in Franklin County, Indiana has given a Democrat enough votes to bump a Republican from victory in a County Commissioner's race.' Any ideas on how we can check for similar problems in other close elections?"
hack diebold:
:= demvotes + 1
while (republican == winner) do
demvotes
repeat until (lawsuits stop OR
democrat(VictoryStatus) == true
Apply routine to all voting machines to achieve desired results.
Paper trail!
-- The morphemes of your disquisition are ascertainable, but they have eschewed an ambit of transpicuous exposition.
I don't think these electronic voting machine problems should be characterized as trivial "glitches". They are complete failures of the software, since the whole purpose of these machines is to accurately count votes. Would losing a few hundred database records at your company be considered a glitch?
By referring to these problems as glitches, the media are downplaying the severity of the problem. Regardless of the candidates, if voting can not be reliable and verifiable people lose trust in the process and the outcomes will always be questioned. We either want democracy in the United States or we do not. But using technology that fails in its basic function should not be acceptable.
Remember that human volunteers have a high chance at screwing up also. Most of the volunteers in my area are over 60 years old (yes I live in Florida... LOL) and had huge glasses and were kinda crazy... like remember Will Ferrell as Harry Caray on SNL? yeah anyways..
of course there were a high percentage of the voters that were like that too...
Anyways, the best perfected machine (read most accurate) for counting votes should be the one we use. It should be the 99.9% accurate reflection what the votes were.
So what I say is, how can we tell these closed source systems work to 99.9% accuracy? Oh we can't.
So we're just supposed to close our eyes and trust the outcome we see on TV? Oh we are... hmm ok.
Makes me feel all tingly inside!
Get paid to code OSS
In any county where there is a close race, check the laws on recount and find enough people to insist upon a recount. Should be done countrywide at this point, given the problems we've seen.
Why the whole freakin' country can't just go to a proven system like Oregon's mail in ballots checked by scantron is beyond me. If it's good enough technology for SAT tests, it's damned well good enough technology for elections.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
The glitch in the machines recorded straight Democratic Party votes for Libertarians.
That's not a bug... it's a feature.
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
There are a number of voting machine-related challenges on the national level. Ralph Nader has successfully requested a recount in New Hampshire, and groups like BlackBoxVoting are working on fraud audits. Also, in Ohio, the Libertarian and Green Party candidates are reportedly joining together to demand a recount. There are local challenges going on as well. {Jonathan}
-------------------
Prof. Jonathan I. Ezor
Assistant Professor of Law and Technology
Director, Institute for Business, Law and Technology (IBLT)
Touro Law Center
300 Nassau Road, Huntington, NY 11743
Tel: 631-421-2244 x412 Fax: 516-977-3001
e-mail: jezor@tourolaw.edu
BizLawTech Blog: http://iblt.tourolaw.edu/blog
It isn't about red team vs. blue team, or sore losers, "desired results" or any of the other nonsense that is being thrown about to cloud the issue. I happen to be a republican, but I'm adamant about wanting this looked into. Why? Because honest matters more to me than "winning."
The way I was raised, if you cheated you didn't win, no matter what the score board says.
I have yet to hear a rational reason why anyone should oppose doing whatever it takes to make sure elections are fair, unless they are either cheaters or suspect that their side cheated and value victory more than integrity. What bothers me is that there are so many people in both parties that seem to fall into the later category.
-- MarkusQ
The text:
"A recently found computer glitch in the voting machines in Franklin County, Indiana has given a democrat enough votes to bump a republican from victory in a County Commissioner's race.
The glitch in the machines recorded straight Democratic Party votes for Libertarians.
The votes were re-counted last night, by hand.
The company who made the voting machine is also checking into programming of it's equipment in nine other Indiana counties. "
---------------
Doesn't this sound contradictory to everyone? The machine accidentally counted straight democratic ticket votes as libertarian while accidentally giving the democrat enough votes to beat the a republican?
I realize what it says is that after correcting the glitch the democrat gets enough votes to beat the republican who was previously determined to be the winner, but man that was horrible wording.
A simple search of Google News reveals it was a optical scanner, not a Diebold touchscreen system. Of course, if it had been a Diebold system, we wouldn't have this problem. No one would know the results were screwed, and no recounting would be possible.
l e? AID=/20041116/NEWS01/411160333/1008
4 21 -098.html
URL:http://www.pal-item.com/apps/pbcs.dll/artic
URL:http://www.indystar.com/articles/1/194039-4
They are complete failures of the software, ...
These are system failures. The entire workflow and resulting system design is plagued with deficiencies that many have reported. The software is only a tiny part of the problem. And, while e-voting greatly increases the number of potential failure points (many of which aren't software related), it's not just about e-voting. We have moved more rapidly to e-voting because of an equally bad paper-based design (punched cards with poor visual layout), but an election can also turn on something as seemingly trivial as washable thumb-print ink in Afghanistan. In every one of these cases, the state of the art at the time was much better than the poor systems that many people actually got. The major problem as I see it, at least in the US, is lack of pressure from vigilant voters on decision makers who should know better.
Diebold OWNS the company that produce(d) these optical scanners.
We need non profit & organized voting standards. If corporate america can stand behind ISO standards why can't the federal government do the same?
If states require the rights to decide individually the votes (and laws) they cast for federal offices i'm not sure we can ever have a trustworthy system in the foreseeable.
I also believe we should streamline voting and make sure the right is protected and if people vote illegally it is punished for the crime it is. Partisan vote police shouldn't be allowed.
But the guy on TV said it was all OK. Those people complaining about the voting machines are just sore losers. At least, that's what I think he said. It was the guy that does the news right before the show with the girl who swears a lot.
-- Joe Average
According to USA today
So it must be the name of the county, not the technology, because the machines are from different manufacturers. Errm, yeah.Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
What people don't understand, and it's not their fault because they're never taught it, is that vote manipulation is easy. It's trivial.
And thus, we do everything in the open.
We have ballots sitting out in the open where everyone can watch them given out. We have ballot boxes locked with keys that have known locations, and we have the boxs sitting in the middle of the floor. We have voter registration rolls sitting on the table, open, and we watch workers making marks next to the names as people get their ballot.
It's a secret ballot, but almost every single aspect of the process is completely open and transparent.
You can sit there and watch the blank ballots get unsealed from the box. You can watch the ballot box, set up, empty, and yes they really will show the public that it's empty. You can watch each ballot get handed off to someone on the list who identifies themselves get crossed off, you can watch them take their ballot, you can't watch them mark it, you can watch them put it in the locked ballot box, you can sit there and stare at that ballot box until the polls close, and they crack it open. Then you can watch each ballot get counted. You can watch them add up the totals, and post them on the door. Then you can watch the news and see the totals from your precinct.
Or, at least, you used to be able to do all that.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
But, let's face it: it's harder to alter both the computer AND paper records identically than to just do one or the other.
Two scenarios, then:
1. Honest computer glitch gets discovered when paper ballots don't match up;
2. Dishonest computer manipulation gets discovered when paper ballots don't match up, although paper ballots aren't necessarily correct, either.
If you take the position that most (if not all) of these issues are honest glitches (as the emachine defenders often do) then you should be thrilled to have paper trails, as they'll uncover the glitches -- just like what happened in this circumstance. Really, it's delightful to see what can happen with a paper trail backup, isn't it?
On the other hand, if you know that the "glitches" are usually manipulation -- then you're probably going to avoid paper trails like the plague.
To put a finer point on it, what would you call an "error" in banking software that systematically deposited money into the wrong persons account? A glitch? Or what about a spyware program that consistently failed to report one particular company's spyware?
It isn't as if this software "failed" in the usual sense of the word--which implies that no benifit accrued to anyone. They didn't spit out error messages. They didn't burst into flames, or lock up. Instead, they superficially appeared to work perfectly but in fact were secretly highly biased.
-- MarkusQ
From the Indianapolis Star website, Glitch causes Franklin Co. recount
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