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Buggy Voting Machines
dkleinsc writes "The NYTimes is running an article arguing in layman's terms that voting machines are inherently buggier (Sperm sample required. Sorry ladies) than most software systems because they are not tested properly. A fun quote: "Extensive discussions are under way at sites like VerifiedVoting.org, CalVoter.org, and the "news for nerds" forum Slashdot.org about inexpensive, practical ways to make automated voting as reliable as, say, buying books online. Their recommendations make sense."" We makese sense? Wah?
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The endless schemes that evil can conjure are amazing.
I TRUST computers. When I first used A.T.M.'s, nearly 30 years ago, I carefully saved receipts in a folder and matched them with the bank's monthly statement. Now I sometimes stuff the receipts in my wallet, but I almost never look at them again. The only banking error I've encountered in all those years was when a human teller left a final zero off a deposit I had made.
I still pore over credit card statements, but mainly to see whether some person, not some machine, has issued the proper refund credit or made an improper charge. I've sent e-mail messages to the wrong people by mistyping an address or hitting the oh-so-dangerous "Reply All" button, but never because the system routes it where it shouldn't go. When I travel, I assume that the e-ticket I booked through my computer will be valid and that frequent-flier miles will show up in my account.
Yet when I went to my polling place in Washington on Election Day, I waited an extra half-hour in line to cast a paper ballot, instead of using the computerized touch-screen voting machine. Am I irrational? Perhaps, but this would not be the evidence.
A columnist in The Washington Post recently suggested that nostalgia for paper ballots, in today's reliably computerized world, must reflect a Luddite disdain for technology in general or an Oliver Stone-style paranoia about the schemings of the political world.
Not at all. It can also arise from a clear understanding of how computers work - and don't. The more you know about the operations of today's widely trusted commercial computer networks, the more concerned you become about most electronic-voting systems.
The phenomenal reliability of the systems we trust for banking, communication, and everything else rests on two bedrock principles. One is the universal understanding in the technology world that nothing works right the first time, and maybe not the first 50 times.
When I worked briefly on a product design team at Microsoft, I was sobered to learn that fully one-fourth of the company's typical two-year "product cycle time" was devoted to testing. Programmers spend 18 months designing and debugging a system. Then testers spend the next six months finding the problems they missed. It is no secret that even then, the "final" software from Microsoft, or any other company, is far from perfect.
Today's mature systems work as well as they do only because they are exposed to nonstop, high-stakes torture testing. EBay lists nearly four million new items each day. If a problem affects even a tiny fraction of its users, eBay will be swamped with reports immediately.
Millions of data packets are being routed across the Internet every second. If servers, domain-name directories or other components cannot handle the volume, the problem will become apparent quickly. Years ago, bank or airline computers would often be "down" because of unforeseen problems. Now they're mostly "up," because they've had so long for flaws to become exposed.
The second crucial element in making reliable systems is accountability. Users can trust today's systems precisely because they don't have to take them on trust. Some important computer systems run on open-source software, like Linux, in which the code itself can be examined by outsiders.
Virtually all systems provide some sort of confirmation of transactions. You have the slip from the A.T.M., the receipt for your credit card charge, the printout of your e-ticket reservation. If your e-mail message doesn't go through, there is still the copy in your "Sent" folder. This is the technology world's counterpart to the check-and-balance principle in the United States government. The first concept, robust testing, protects against unintended flaws. The second, accountability, guards against purposeful distortions.
Which brings us back to electronic voting. On the available evidence, I don't believe that voting-machine irregularities, or other problems on Election Day, determined who would be the next president. The appare
The world's first national vote in which citizens could vote via Internet took place in Switzerland on September 3. The country, which has a direct democracy that calls on citizens to vote on issues as often as four times a year, has had much success in allowing Internet votes in several cantons over the past several years. Swiss officials, recognizing the success of the local programs, became convinced that it was secure enough to try it out in four Geneva suburbs on a national referendum. Citizens of those regions were allowed to choose between postal voting, going to a traditional ballot booth, or voting via Internet.
Geneva's e-voting system uses a method of two-factor authentication that provides foolproof security. Citizens receive a card which gives them their option of voting over the internet, by mail or in person. The card includes a 16-character personal ID code, and a four-character security code, similar to a PIN number, which voters must scratch off to reveal. The voter who chooses the online option then visits a Web site and types in the personal ID code, and then a secure connection is established. Then, an online ballot form is provided. Before casting their vote, the second authorization factor must be entered, and the voter then types in their security code, along with their date and place of birth.
Because the online voting system is tied to a single register of voters, authorities can protect against voter fraud (multiple voting). The safeguard guarantees that a person can vote only once, whether in person, by mail or on the Internet. There are, of course, no hanging chads, and the results are extremely accurate. It took Swiss officials 13 minutes and five seconds to count the online votes in September's ballot. Twenty-two percent of voters from the test regions cast their ballots online.
I apologize for posting an incomplete list - it's difficult typing with one hand while my two year old son is sleeping in the other.
t ml
c ti on04_WPwappendices.pdf
Here is the complete list, which happens to be
IN THE CIRCUIT COURT
SEVENTH JUDICIAL CIRCUIT OF FLORIDA
IN AND FOR VOLUSIA COUNTY, FLORIDA
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/volusia-lawsuit.h
FYI:
Those SIGNED screen shots retrieved from the trash provided different results favorable to Mr. Kerry from those that was unsigned and offered to blackboxvoting.org. For what it's worth Florida sheriffs attempted to prevent the retrieval of these documents.
Please stick to the facts backed by numbers. The report I was referring to can be found here:
http://ucdata.berkeley.edu/new_web/VOTE2004/ele
Please reference page 5. Take a close look at the graph.
What OSCE thinks about it: http://www.osce.org/documents/odihr/2004/11/3779_e n.pdf.
"Long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead." (John Maynard Keynes)
The >100% has nothing to do with provisional ballots. Wyoming allows you to register at the poll on election day. The numbers you are looking at are tunout / pre-registered.
Actually, the fraud was so obvious in some places you don't need a CS degree to know something was wrong.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
That was the subject of an Asimov story. In the future, statistical methods become so precise that the vote of only a single well-selected voter is sufficient to determine the winner of the election.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed are not necessarily my own, as I've not yet had my medication today.
I actually have worked as an election official, so I can answer these questions for you.
Q1: What do your exection boards do when someone marks an X in BOTH spots?
A1: This ballot is spoiled and is not counted.
Q2: What if someone puts a slash in one, and a slash in the other?
A2: This ballot is spoiled and is not counted.
Q3: What if someone circles a candidate's name, and doesn't put an X?
A3: This ballot is spoiled and is not counted.
Q4: What if on the 10th counting, the light pencil marks on a ballot have been smudged off completely?
A4: When the ballots are counted, they are separated into separate piles, each pile for a separate candidate. Then each candidate's votes are put in an envelope and sealed.
Usually, if the votes are not contested, they will never be counted again. If the vote is contested, each of these envelopes is reopened and recounted. At this point a faint vote for a candidate will still be counted.
In general, the ballots see so little handling that the likelihood of the voter's intention being lost is exceedingly unlikely.
Q5: What if they just put a tiny dot in the middle of the first candidate's box (like they rested the pencil there), then didn't mark anything else in either?
A5: The instructions state the voter must make an X, but it is actually left for the individual officials to make the decision if the ballot counts or not. The general guideline is to count the ballot according to the voter's intention. A misshapen X or a round dot would probably be approved, so long as no other mark could be found on the ballot.
I'm asking because this is the kind of nonsense that put Florida on the map 4 years ago.
I agree, and they are good questions. In a tight election, a recount may be the best idea. Paper ballots do not do away with recounts in tightly-contested elections, but they do make vote counting very, very simple.
Before you write back saying that my answer to your first three questions (which was that the ballot is spoiled and is not counted) is unacceptable, ask yourself this: How hard is it to make a single, unambiguous mark (preferably an X as instructed) in a big white circle beside a candidate's name? And yes, to answer another question, for those people that have physical problems marking their ballot, they are allowed to bring an assistant or aide with them to mark their ballot.
Theoretically, an infinite percent of registered voters could've voted in an election:
If there was nobody registered until election day, even if 1 person registered, the ratio would be infinity.
What actually happened in Washington is that a lot of people registered on election day.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
We Canadians use a simple system. Old fashioned paper ballots. When you go to vote, you show them your elections card that was sent in the mail, your name is crossed off a list, a ballot initialed by the elections officer is handed to you. You go behind a screen where there is pencil, you mark an X next to the whatever you're voting for, fold it back up and hand it back to the elections officer, who checks for his initials, rips off a "counterfoil" portion, hands it back to you, and you stuff it into the box. Your name is then checked off as "already voted." Done. Results in a few hours (usually by midnight or so). Official validation from all polls within seven days. The box, the screen and all documents are made of cardboard and come folded up in a compact package.
More detail.
Or it would tell you it recorded a vote for Kerry, and that would get magically changed to Bush later.
The only way this differs from the Soviet system is that they are perpetuating the illusion of choice. As long as most everyone thinks they have a choice, there aren't going to be mass protests, riots, and civil war.
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
This has been disproven repeatedly. Under every possible scenario, if a recount had been conducted, Gore would have won the election.
Why do you people continue to insist the exact opposite? Do you enjoy living in a lie?
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
That attitiude of you are either with me or against me gets REAL old. People need to know that their government is honest and that the people elected are honest. We have not had an honest president since carter. Hence the reason why this election was most likely stolen.
Hitler, USSR, etc. all got started by groups of people with the same attitude. We are far more fasicst than people are willing to acknowledge. Worse, we are killing our country with huge deficits and unjust wars.
> That's the whole point of good vote
> counting -- to find out IF he has a
> mandate.
Really? I can't seem to find anything about a mandate in the U.S. Constitution.
Actually Kerry's records are not, last time I checked, open for examination. He's refused to sign the form allowing full public disclosure of his records.
Bush has signed this form, however some (NOT all) of his records are missing or incomplete.
I suspect BOTH are avoid unpleasant items in thier record.
Oh yeah, those 'lies' you are talking about I assume to be the wmd screwup? If so please note Kerry also supported invasion on those grounds, even to the point of advising people who did not believe him to NOT vote for him. He changed his tune later for political convience.
Kerry and Bush are both Yale graduates and members of the Skull and Bones secret society. If you honestly think thier not in this as co-conspiritors (so to speak) your exactly thier kinda sheep, keep up the good work. At best this(the presidential race) was just a friendly competition. At worst it was sham to deprive the people of a real choice in the election.
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
The Swiss system doesn't provide propper 2-factor authentication, as both pieces of information are something the user knows. No biometric or hardware token authentication is invoved. Itercepting the card and knowing a little about the person will give an attacker access.
Even 3-factor authentication doesn't provide foolproof security, unless you mean secure against fools as attackers.
Copyright Violation:"theft, piracy"::Anti-Trust Violation:"thermonuclear price terrorism"<-Overly dramatic language.
One out of three isn't so bad... Howard is the Australian PM, not Austrian.
My apologies if you really meant to talk about the Australian PM's influence on the voting habbits of a population halfway around the world from Australia.
Copyright Violation:"theft, piracy"::Anti-Trust Violation:"thermonuclear price terrorism"<-Overly dramatic language.
Historically, I bet there have been tons of screwed up things that happen in US elections with noticable rates of error (not this few thousand votes type crap, like 10% not counted) How many electronic voting machines were used in the swing states? Ohio was something like 98+% non-electronic.
There are solutions but they aren't technical, first step, do away with the secret ballot, register a voter to a vote, record that, maybe even make it a public record. How's that going to make the people that are convinced of fraud feel? They are already paranoid, that would kill them. Regardless of the technology, methods of recounting only provide fuel for the masses to get pissed off. Electronic machines with a paper trail, well what happens when a recount changes the outcome? You do another one. You'll never get the same results (counts) from multiple recounts, even a hand recount, humans screw up, ballots may become corrupted by the recounting process and being handled. At best it will confirm the outcome of the election multiple times with different counts of the votes. As has been mentioned many times, what if they change the software that counts them? In Boulder colorado they had that problem, the printer had different specs for the scan sheets than the scanners, the good thing was that they couldn't read the ballots rather than miscounting the results. So the actual votes themselves are questioned, then the reciept can be questioned, then the machine that recounts the reciept can be questioned, then if there is a recount everything can be questioned again.
The real solution is to have some ideas and generate support for your candidate without snap polls. Right now they are using all the same data to formulate their "opinions" that the elections have to be close, it's not that the country is divided, I think they want us to believe that, it's that they are feeding us a bunch of bullshit ideas and at the end of the day both parties are in the pockets of a few big corporations, we can't vote for a different party to cause change.. As long as the American political process is this way, all future elections will be close like this until the electorate becomes jaded enough to stop showing up again.
I don't think you have to much further than the Ukraine to deduce that most elections today are shams. Eastern Ukraine(industrial and tied to the old U.S.S.R) and Russia were trying to steal the election in one direction, Western Ukraine, agricultural and closer to Europe, with the help of the U.S. and the CIA are trying to steal it in the other. At this point its impossible to tell who actually won. One thing that speaks highly of the Ukranians on both sides, they actually care enough to turn out en masse in freezing weather to protest fraudulent elections. The question is can they actually hold a fair election with the U.S. and Russia and their puppets doing everything in their power to rig it.
:)
By contrast American elections are starting to look equally corrupt but no one in the U.S. seems to really care.
You don't even really need electronic voting to steal elections, there are old fashioned ways that work just as well, here is a report from Tampa on simple voter intimidation. Here is an unproven allegations of an effort to suppress black votes in South Carolina.
If you live in a swing state you were probably bombarded by auto dialers and recorded messages which if you actually listen to them, you found were basicly slander. Apparently there is no accountability or regulation of the bile you can pump out to voters, en masse, using computerized dialers these days.
Many right wingers love to point out how Afghanistan had "free" and democratic elections for the first time in nearly forever. Well they forget to mention that one candidate, Karzai, former oil executive, and America's hand picked ruler had a U.S. supplied helicopter so he could visit every tribal chief, while the rest of the candidates couldn't campaign much outside Kabul because its to dangerous the roads in much of Afghanistan. And of course when Karzai flew in to a tribe he could hand out buckets of "reconstruction" money to the tribal chiefs who in turn tell their tribe how to vote, illerate people in the countryside with no media access so it works.
Its going to be interesting to see how rigged the elections in Iraq look. Putting my hands to my head like Karnak, I predict the U.S. favored candidate will win
At this point nearly every contested election in the third world is being "influenced" by the U.S. and the CIA, and increasingly Putin is trying to influence them his way in Russia's sphere of influence. Of course Russia's elections have also reached the point they are a sham. Putin controls most of the media, and suppresses opposition parties so he is for all practical purposes a dictator again.
Its not really such a leap to assume U.S. elections are being rigged either. The 1960 election was probably rigged by the Democrats and swung the election to Kennedy. It would appear likely that since the Reagan era and especially since the late 1990's the Republican's have formed a well oiled machine for acquiring power at any cost. Not sure you can just blame it on electronic voting. It includes intimidation of minority voters, massive mobilization of white, conservative voters through churches in violation of their non profit restrictions, ruthless smear campaigns against the Democrats(Clinton impeachment and Kerry Swift Boat Vets). Of course the Dems help them out a lot by being incompetent and pathetic(exemplified by Kerry).
The next move you are going to see towards a Republican dominated police state, and they are already talking about it, is a change in Senate rules for approving judicial nominations. Since the Republican's didn't get the magic 60 votes to steamroll the senate, they are apparently going to try to just change the rules for approving judges in the Senate to a simple majority vote. They can then proceed to pack the courts, especially the Supreme Court, with radical right wing judges. I predict it may well happen
@de_machina
Me either.
Maybe the slashbot moderators saw a joke containing sex and cmdr taco and instantly thought 'WINNAR!'.
Well, in a way the cycle is inevitable. People grow content, resign their rights, then end up with a dictatorship.
The Weimar Republic didn't even take too long to be replaced by the Third Reich. The French Revolution produced... emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. The Romans killed Caesar to keep him from becoming king, and preserve their precious republic. Then named his successor, Octavian Augustus, _emperor_, high priest, tribune of the plebs, and half a dozen other titles. (And FFS, a noble as tribune of the plebs is freakin' ridiculous.) Ancient Greece, that was the birthplace of democracy (and gave us the word for it too), and... periodically some of the worst dictatorships in history. Etc.
Human civilization itself, was born of the water despotism of Messopotamia. I bet those people felt very secure at first knowing that those nice people are operating the water dams for them. Then it became a case of "pay up and obey, or we'll cut off your only water supply and laugh as you die and your crops wither."
Had some of the most fun ancient empires there too. The Assyrians for example. Now those were fun. That was an empire ruled by sheer terror. Fun stuff like not only having the most horrible executions, but then also burrying the bugger near a road and detailing the execution on the tombstone. Just so the others know what's waiting for them if they don't obey.
And so the wheel of history goes on and on. People become free, grow complacent, take democracy for granted, then they become slaves again. I suppose it can't be helped. The US is more of an exception, having lasted this long without a proper despotism. But, heck, they can't last for ever either.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The 'backdoor draft' as those articles put it is no secret. When you sign up to join an armed service, you sign a contract. Included in that contract is an agreement that you can be called upon even to serve again even after your tour of duty. When you sign up for an armed service, you sign up for everything that comes with it. That includes being sent places you might not want to go, to do a mission you might not find worthy, at a time you find not to your liking. I would suggest people who find that thought that they might be pulled back into service unthinkable NOT sign up in the first place. If you sign a contract that with the US government that says you agree to be called upon at any time to serve, even after your service is over, don't be surprised when the government comes to collect. I personally could never live under such terms - hence I never signed such a contract.
Next, the president does have the power to instate the draft WITH the approval of congress. I absolutely would laud Bush a hypocrite if he ever did such a thing. The point is that he hasn't ever even proposed reinstating a draft. If anything, I think Bush clearly understands the implications of the draft, as do most Americans who grew up in that time. Bush decided to dodge it. I don't see how doing everything in your power to not get drafted is proof that one doesn't understand the implications of it. On the contrary, I think it shows a clear understanding of the implications - getting sent to fight war you don't believe in and potentially being shot in killed without ever once having agreed to such terms. If your argument is that only people who have been drafted understand the implications of the draft, and therefore are the only people who should be allowed to serve as president, then I shouldn't need to point out that none of the presidential contenders on any side had ever been drafted, Kerry included. If your point is that you need to service in the military in order to be able to command, then again I should point out that most presidents and most politicians have not done this, including ex-president Clinton and the vast majority of congressmen and woman.
Finally, I didn't say that young people should not be held to their decisions. I said that there decisions at the age of 18 (17 for Kerry) shouldn't be considered the end all and be all of their existence. Most people change their opinions radically over those years. Kerry was practically a communist by the time he got back from Vietnam, but I sure as shit wouldn't hold him to everything he said. He was a young left wing radical, like many young people are. If their opinions change after 30+ years, good. Dredging up Bush's attempts at the age of 18 to get out of being sent over to fight a war he didn't want to fight in against his will, is like dredging up the ultra-leftists crap that Kerry said at the same age and calling him a hypocrite now for being a moderate democrat. It is stupid and an example of dumb political game where each guy tries to one up the other on some dumb and minor point, instead of focusing on a real issue.
There are lots of reasons to dislike Bush or Kerry that actually has relevance and meaning. The dumb shit they did when they were still just teenagers doesn't need to be dragged into it - 30 years after the fact. For fucks sake, I hope I never run for presidency. Someone might find out that I played D&D a few times in the sixth grade, which as everyone knows is a clear sign of Satanism.