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Senators Clinton and Kerry Submit Open Voting Bill
An anonymous reader writes "DailyKos is reporting that a group of senators and representatives including Hillary Clinton, John Kerrry, and Tubbs Jones, have proposed an 'open-source' voting bill. This bill (The Count Every Vote Act of 2005) corrects many of the problems in the last election. Notably, it requires paper receipts, and that the source and object code of all electronic voting machines to be open and readable by the public. " Commentary on the bill available at the Miami Herald.
...scarily like a good idea. It'll be interesting to see how far this can get, and how long before the inevitable corportate opposition to this begins to mount. I can already see Diebold rallying their forces...
And tomorrow the stock exchange will be the human race
Why should the manual count paper of paper ballots be the official recount. Why would there be a recount of a machine tabulated vote? Does someone think the machine miscounted? And why why why do people keep thinking that a hand count done by humans would be more accurate than a machine count?
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm
"Paper records of electronic voting:" Good, as long as voters can't prove to somebody else who they voted for. That would facilitate vote buying.
"Election-day registration": Need to read the bill. If volounteer (partisan) groups get to haphazardly register people at the polls, that's a bad thing. Registrations should be in order some weeks before the elections.
"Election Day as a national holiday.": Good. Productivity could go down, but it could increase turn-out and the importance of the election in people's minds.
"Restoration of voting rights for former felons": Not sure. Is a felon that has served its sentence entitled to the same rights as others?
"the source and object code of all electronic voting machines to be open and readable by the public." Definately good. The many-eyeballs approach to security validation is perfect for this case, since it's an application with such a huge number of interested parties.
Now, how about non-citizens voting and proof of identification? Anything on that?
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
I'm sure that this bill will only have a positive effect if it gets voted in, but paper reciepts are pretty useless and a waste of money IMHO. Not exactly. With paper ballets it leaves less room open for fraud. Example:: A hacker breaks into the voting system. Seeing as how the ballot voting system is based on wondows ME, this is not unlikely. With paper involved, if said h4x0r adds on, say 1400 votes for candidate X, they will have a paper trail allowing them recound the ballots quickly, effectivly, and without dragging things on for months and months (florida anyone)? But thats just my opinion based on what little I know...
Behold, another webcomic!
I too am at a quandry. Agree with Senator Clinton. I think hell froze over or something.
But paper is probably required. Simply by law of most states where they must be able to recount. Also if someone is gamming the system it would be a bit more obvious with a paper trail than with 1/0s that can be manipulated to whatever you want.
Allthough what is to say what is printed out is any better as it will be coming from a computer?
Like the paper may say 'voted for X' but the bar code they probably will put on there says 'voted for Y'...
> Thats why campaign contributions should only be able to be made by those legally able to vote.
I second that! If you look at why the concept of the corporation was invented anyway it was primarily because it eased the beurocratic overhead of making sure all the investors received their investment returns and could collectively manage a project.
I would argue, with modern tools, one could set up a system with independent contractors (think Ebay) that could achieve the same effectiveness without the foolish idea that "corporations are legally just like people".
communism and democracy are not mutually exclusively, you phenomenally ignorant and silly, silly man.
True communism has yet to be tried.
Those (soviet russia, cuba, ect) are all basically dictatorships behind the facade of socialism.
True communism would have no "elite", no leaders of any kind.
Unfortunatly, due to human nature, that will never happen.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
As for paper ballots, the idea is good, but will it really work well in practice? The machines will have to be able to void individual paper ballots if the voter, looking through the viewplate, realizes he didn't vote the right way. All this paper handling adds a lot of mechanical complexity to the machine, making breakdowns more likely.
Here's the text of the bill calling for programmers to have background checks (p. 10):
The public interest is for a hand-counted vote, observed by all the candidates and other independent members of the public, which in other countries is typically completed well within 24 hours of the polls closing.
Any kind of mechanised vote counting whatsoever serves to hide the vote counting process from the electorate. Receipts are a red herring; they are the only way to verify the electronic count and, as a result, render the electronic count completely redundant.
I'll agree with you, that Bush won the war. But he has lost the peace. If you take a look at the world at present:
Please don't forget that the attacks on the US was motivated by hate to the US. How can one claim to create a more secure world, if one is only stirring up more and more hatred ??
And to all the military-centric folks: No, a great big military doesn't help, because you are not fighting an organized army.
So no, I'm not in the opinion, that Bush has done a very good job while in office.
Instead of counting every vote, why not count every legitimate vote. Too many dead people voting for Dems these days.
the ultimate democracy: revolution I'm not a Communist, but i'm smart enough to see through the sort of knee-jerk reaction I'm supposed to have to Communism.
If you were a paid agent of Rove, you could not be more effective at pissing off the undecided voter and making sure the Democrats lose again and again.
It is said that one should never interrupt an enemy when they are making a mistake, but I am sure that you will pay absolutely no attentention to what I am saying:
Attitudes like your are what got my ass to the voting booth at 6:30 AM, to vote for the very first time in any election.
I am going to be there again at the next election, and I hope I can vote for Condi Rice.
Please, continue to call W voters inbred rednecks who cannot drool out of both sides of their mouths at the same time.
Please, continue to call W the new Hitler.
Please, contine to make personal attacks on people whose politics you disagree with.
You are far more effective at pushing people away from the Democratic party then I could ever be in pulling them toward the Republican one.
And for the record:
I am a
Pro-Abortion
Pro-gay-marriage
Anti-racist-preferences
Pro-gun
Pro-low-taxes
Pro-war
Pro-drug-legalization-with-regulation-and-taxati on
Destroy-the-**AA
Republican.
Yup, the Republicans must be dumber than Homer Simpson because they don't agree with you.
No no, the Republicans are very smart and very evil. The people are very gullible, and very stupid.
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
The bill stinks of having been written by lawyers with no worthwhile input from software people. The buzzwords are there, but the end product is incoherent.
If the code is open to inspection, there is no need for the background checks. That's just a way of inadvertently preventing the best people from working on the code. Any attempt to license coders sets a disastrous precendent in any event and should be rejected outright.
"Chain of custody" for code is bullshit; this isn't the pharmaceutical industry. What's really needed is verification that the binary is derived from the published source. The correct way to do that is to fully specify the development environment and configuration that generated the code. Then anyone else can reproduce it.
The other thing that's needed is a means of verifying that the binary loaded onto the machine is the one generated from the code using the specified development environment. SHA512 (or whatever) hashes can help with this, as can digital signatures. The "can't transfer over the Internet" requirement is inane and seems to be there only because of ignorance about methods of verifying integrity, regardless of how the file gets transferred. Think they've ever heard of VPNs? Do they think there's a risk in using them?
I agree with a number of the goals of this bill. But it kind of depresses me what a dog's breakfast they have produced.
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty
Where was the UN the last 2 US Elections ?
America: "1 Rule for Us, Our Rule for the rest of the world"
Type unto others as you would have them type unto you.
Hmmm ... It sounds like he/she lost in an election that didn't have a paper trail.
It's worse than that. He lost in an election without a paper trail to the incumbent who was supervisor of the very election he was running in.
Or how about the right to vote? If groups inherit the rights of their members, then they can cast a vote, right? Dems and republicans can each make millions of paper corporations, and the votes of actual people will be irrelevant. It always started out simple, and needs to be returned to that way.... Here's roughly what it should be, though perhaps I defined citizen a little too narrowly...
1) "People" in the constitution refers only to citizens. The constitution shall not be construed as to confer any rights upon fictional or artificial entities or groups (nations, corporations, unions, etc...), nor upon non-citizens. Non-citizens (this might be unwise), corporations, nations, and groups would get their rights through treaties or laws, such as the Geneva Convention.
2) Citizenship cannot be stripped or given up except by mutual consent of the United States, and the citzen in question, in writing, witnessed by a court of competent jurisdiction, and only contingent upon the receipt of foreign citizenship. Nothing of value, other than another citizenship, may be offered in exchange for relinquishing US citizenship.
3) Citizens cannot be denied the right to vote for any reason whatsoever.
4) Those who are born in the US are automatically made citizens. (this is how it is now).
Something like that. Would clean up all sorts of little loopholes. For instance, a Deleware court's decision so many years ago that (in a blatant act of Judicial Activism) gave corporations the rights of "people". In addition to the "Lock up as many black and poor people as possible, and then we can prevent them from voting us out of power after they get out..." and "declare them terrorists so we can strip their citizenship and we don't have to treat them like humans or let them vote..." angles.
Might only require a single amendment.
Come on, who mods stupid crap like this up to 5?
1. That volunteer estimate sounds awfully high, and "1 million" sounds like the sort of number someone would just pull out of their ass
2. No, the republicans are not the only ones who have volunteers
3. No, the democrats are not the only ones who pay campaign workers
Oh yes, and please punctuate, you ignorant cunt.
Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
I like that you called it a paradox, because just like all paradoxes, while superficially confusing, it really does make sense if you look at it from the right perspective. Voters don't like negative political ads because they reveal what scumbags the candidates are. Negative political adds work because the candidates actually are scumbags, and the ads tell that truthfully. Voters simultaneously want as much information possible about the candidates, and want not to be disillusioned with the political process. That's why they express conflicting opinions about negative ads.
What's that about the First Ammendment? Giving someone money isn't speech.
But campaign finance regulations, if they work, work specifically by obstructing political speech. The goal may be to keep corporations from buying influence, but when you do that by having the government make decisions about which organisations can and cannot freely pay to make their ideas widely heard, you do run into First Amendment concerns.
The right to free speech would mean nothing if it meant a right to speak freely only in your own closet: it is also essential that you be free to use effective means to make yourself heard. Imagine, for instance, that wood pulp was strictly controlled by the government, with only selected classes of people or organisations permitted to use it. Everyone else would be free to "speak", and use printing presses - they'd just have a hard time getting the paper to put out any books, newspapers, pamphlets - would that not raise First Amendment questions? Or substitute ink, or copper wire, or fiberglass... or spectrum, which is controlled, in ways that constantly raise Constitutional questions here on slashdot.
No, money isn't speech, and neither is paper, or copper, but campaign finance laws operate specifically by controlling political speech (which should be the most strongly protected form of speech), by controlling how money can be used to get political speech into the public eye. I was disappointed that the Supreme Court didn't overturn more of McCain-Feingold.
Anyway, doesn't it worry you to have laws designed in effect to keep us from having "too much" speech?
As for "corporate citizenship" - No, corporations aren't citizens - but they are owned and controlled by groups of citizens, who ultimately decide how the corporation will act (usually by delegating to a smaller group of people the power to make those decisions). I don't think that corporations should buy campaign ads - I agree that the interested individuals should contribute through some other, non-business channel - but I also don't know that they can constitutionally be forbidden to do so.
Churches, like corporations, are not people - should it be legal to prohibit churches from making statements on political issues? Or from paying to publicize those statements? And if you think that should be legal, how do you go about deciding which organizations should be able to freely make, distribute, and pay for political speech? A list of government-approved political organisations?
Sorry about the rant; I think I share your basic goals, but I don't see that corporations are particularly being given rights that do not follow naturally from their being a form of collective action by individuals who do have those rights (can a corporate property be searched without a warrant? should it be?) - and I don't like seeing the First Amendment eroded, even for a good cause. (It's always for a good cause, isn't it?)
That's precisely why the press cheers. He's a huge success! The problem is, you're neither in his "base" nor a Bushie (ie, moonie). Sure, it looks like failure, but if you've got money, it rocks!
The reasons for the elite tax cuts were to reward his "base" and to drive up the debt. As long as the illogical cuts (wartime, "unfair") didn't become an issue, the deficit could be used to justify a pro-base/anti-dem budget (all defense & security, cuts to the undeserving non-wealthy).
If the Social Security suicide pill is swallowed whole, it will murder or mortally wound the despised New Deal. Bonus side-effect: it alienates Democrat supporters. Betrayal, broken promise. Republicans would then (theoretically) have decades of power. The dawn of a tyrannical reign of terror.
The tax "deform": eliminate income and payroll taxes, add national sales tax @ 30% ("23%") would literally be money in the bank, for Bush's base. Rate is low on purpose to force further cuts to Democrat programs. To recoup lost revenue, the rate may need to be jacked up to 50%.
All of that Bush does is for power, for his base and for perception management. Everything is success or neutral, failure does not exist. Things might suck for 90% of the country, but the base is yumming it up. Bush is a paradox: the best and worst President in history simultaneously!
R23Bush's policies result from us taking in 16% GDP in 2004 instead of 20% in 2000. However, in 2000 the GDP was 9.7 trillion, while in 2004 it was 11.7 trillion. I did the calculations with 4 significant figures earlier and came out with the federal government taking in $70 billion less now than in 2000, out of about $1.8 trillion.
.
Face it, the GDP grew in 4 years by 20%. We can afford to take in lower taxes about as much as we can afford to take in the same rate. Right now the growth based model is working, as we've visibly accelerated growth.
And a final note, my uncle owns a business. By the end of the year since the Clinton era, he's managed to deduct enough expenses (a perk of incorporation, you can deduct any and all expenses from your taxes) that he literally gets a check from the government to cover the money they owe him. You think Microsoft and IBM pay taxes? Maybe. You think they pay more than a few tens of thousand? Doubtful.
Incidently my uncle advocates a 23% flat tax and elimination of all loopholes so that businesses actually pay 23% instead of deducting enough to have the government pay them. He's willing to start paying taxes when everyone else has to start paying taxes too. I too advocate a flat tax. . .
As for iraq, the official stated goals of the invasion, according to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, were to:
- end the Saddam Hussein government
- help Iraq's transition to democratic self-rule
- find and eliminate weapons of mass destruction, weapons programs, and terrorists
- collect intelligence on networks of weapons of mass destruction and terrorists
- end sanctions and to deliver humanitarian support (According to Madeline Albright, half a million Iraqi children had died because of sanctions.)
- secure Iraq's oil fields and resources
Yes, we wanted saddam, we wanted oil too. We also were looking for WMD programs, and guess what? We found some "Dual use" equipment and materials that could easily be used for WMD, and "shakey evidence" that it may have been planned. Saying we found "nothing" is the equivalent of someone walking into your house with a loaded gun, and assuming he's into skeet shooting so that you can rule out the possibility that he's here to kill you. And yes we found some lines where saddam had access to materials for WMD, which he declined to use at the time (possibly because buying WMD materials right-out for the explicit stated purpose of WMD during your covert secret governmental operation is retarded; you WILL get caught).
So we did pretty good on what we were looking for, the media just has a massive ass spin. I read the comprehensive report of the special advisor to the DCI on Iraq's WMD, so I know what we found and what we didn't. Short version, Saddam did a good job of storing Kerosene and Sudafed "for headaches and the gas heater" instead of keeping around rocks of meth.
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"Palestinian oppression was one of Bin Laden's main stated reasons he declared war on America"
While as a card carrying member of Amnesty International that symphatize with the palenstian plight, this is factually incorrect. Up till about 2000 or so (if iirc post 9/11), the Palestinian's weren't even in the picture. American troops on Saudi soil. This goes all the way back to Bin Laden asking the Saudis to let him remove Hussein from Kwait. Next thing you know, Americans are in the holy land. This is pretty well documented.
His goal are pure and simple, an united theocratic islamic state. Starting with the Saudis.
Burn Hollywood Burn