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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.
Is it just me, or do all politics lately revolve around this same theme?
;)
Corporate lobbies push for proprietary voting machines, the public interest is for open-source voting machines.
Corporate lobbies want extensions to patent laws, public interest is to reasonably limit patent protections.
Corpate lobbies want to DRM everything with legal enforcement, public interest is to have fair use.
The more explanations I hear as to why corporate lobbying is a necessary evil, the more convinced I become of how much of a negative influence they are having on our society.
...but then, on slashdot we're probably all just hopeless libertarians anyway
This can seriously only help.
(\_/)
(O.o) This is Bunny. (> <)
Will wonders never cease?
Something I agree with Kerry & Clinton on?
I don't read AC A human right
...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
for the love of god, please please please let this happen. just this once let a good bill pass.
-dave
http://millionnumbers.com/ - own the number of your dreams
... We are pleased to present John Kerrry!!!
Don't blame me -- I voted for Roslin.
The article indicates that Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA) are the primary proponents of this bill - though I'm sure Kerry also supports it.
The coolest voice ever.
This won't happen. For one, it makes too much sense. But, the biggest reason why it won't happen is because the government has been bought and the owners like what they have.
Man, the type-
setting of that
bill is aw-
ful. Do all
bills have stu-
pid margin
sizes?
Two TWO YEAR OLD BILLS that have already been introduced in the House and Senate would do JUST THIS, namely, require permanent, voter verified receipts and open source all code on e-voting machines. See my post here.
Also, Diebold already has the capability to add paper receipts, WHICH WERE NOT REQUIRED UNDER HAVA, to all of its e-voting deployments. They're just a contractor. They'll build and deploy whatever local governments will buy. But if you're one of those people who thinks that Diebold, a multi-thousand person corporation that prides itself on reliable customer interface systems, is literally conspiring to rig US elections on the basis of offhanded campaign quotes in the context of GOP fundraising by Diebold's CEO, however inappropriate they were, then I suppose none of what I just said will matter to you.
The prevailing sentiment on Slashdot is anti-big-business, anti-Republican, and especially anti-Bush, so it's not altogether surprising that a Slashdotter would support something on the Democratic side of things, particularly something that purports to ensure proper vote tallying amid questions of election legitimacy, machine tampering, cover-ups, et cetera.
How can it be proprietary voting machines?
it's like
Votes counted
and do some small math?
it's not exactly difficult.
"Is that a zero or a one, I think they meant to vote THIS way"
Why won't you little kiddies get it into your thick skulls that distrbuting source code doesn't make a system less secure. What would you rather have 10 M$ employees monitoring source code for vulnerabilites...or hundreds upon thousands monitoring it at all times? Mindless kiddies like yourself aren't just slowing down open source movement, you are slowing down the progress of all man kind, you douche. (southpark)
Um, I linked them both in the first sentence of the second paragraph of my post, and you can check on that for yourself, can't you?
I agree. A paper ballot recount should only be necessary is there is evidence the electronic data has been compromised.
Vote for Pedro
Basic take being, why should the system be fixed if it isn't broken? Assumption being, they like the results they got the last time, so the system is not broken.
feh
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
By your logic, a car manufacturer sells a car for $12,000. However, seat belts are an $8,000 option.
It's the consumer's fault that they're not buying the option package?
Since nobody has disclosed the prices of these voting machines, I'm going to assume that they charge some ridiculous amount of money for them to begin with, say $20,000. And I'd also assume that they do indeed charge a ridiculous amount for the paper-trail package, probably something to the tune of $5,000. Gee, what do you think a cash-strapped city/county/district is going to do?
It seems like ex-presidents are invariably more socially-concious than acting presidents. I guess it's because they can get away with it, whereas an acting president is still under the thumb of the big lobbyists.
"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!
These bills, and frankly this new bill as well, would REQUIRE it, therefore requiring local municipalities to do what they need to do to deploy it. And if you then ask, well, why didn't they require it, as I said, it was likely simply literally overlooked during the creation of HAVA, which was designed to make voting FAIR for the disenfranchised areas that were so bitched about in 2000. The e-voting vendors thought they were deploying reliable systems. These are people who make ATMs and baking systems, for fuck's sake. Just because they're proprietary doesn't mean that every single thing that happens with them is some conspiracy to help Republicans steal elections.
like intimidating minorities
I'd change a word in this. Minorities -> Voters.
Of course, I'm a equal opportunity supporter of the color blind philosophy.
It proposes that election day be a federal holiday
Now this is an interesting idea. Of course, you'd also have to close down non-essential services. So many places are open 365x7 anymore that simply having federal institutions and places like banks and offices close down really wouldn't prevent many people from still working that day. Maybe require places of work provide the opportunity to vote?
I don't read AC A human right
Quite often, the unions make a common interest with their corporate employers. For example, protectionism and trade barriers that the US steel industry wanted, also benefited the unions.
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
I now open this forum up to suggestions.
That reasoning is flawed, as Bruce Schneier explains here:
Hardware can have flaws, too, either accidental or intentional. Do we as citizens get the right to inspect the hardware, too, or at least some citizen watchdog groups? IMO, hardware stuff is much more sinister since it would be next to impossible to detect.
I honestly fail to see the reason, that convicted felons shouldn't be allowed to vote. If a convicted fellon has served his/her time, his debt to society has been paid, and there should be no further reason to punish him.
There is also the situation, that a person is convicted on a crime, that he doesn't think is a crime, but currently is a crime by law. Thus this convicted felon is no longer able to try to change the laws, by excercising politicl power.
So punishing a fellon even after he/she has paid his debt to society, is in my opinion immoral and revengefull, and won't allow a criminal to integrate properly into society again.
Point of order: nobody is talking about receipts. We're talking about ballots. Do you understand the difference? A receipt is something given to the voter to take away from the polling place. Receipts are specifically prohibited by current election law. Some people have argued to change that, to mandate the giving of receipts. These people are idiots who haven't read their history.
Just wanted to make sure you know the difference.
They should have called it
.....
"The No Vote Left Behind Act"
That'd satisfy the need the Administration has to name things using code words, like
"Help America Vote" - help citizens vote Right
"Can Spam" - yes, legally, now you can
"No Vote Left Behind" - leave the "No" votes behind, tally the "Yes" votes
On the one hand, it's distressing that this bill continues the recent trend of naming laws in such a manner as to automatically cast aspersions on the honor of anyone who opposes them. I mean, the public should (rightly) be worried if their elected legislators are opposed to Counting Every Vote. But if there was a genuine flaw in the wording of the bill, and a politician voted against it because of this, his or her opponents could certainly spin this act in a dishonest - but politically effective - manner.
But on the other hand, it's nice to see an apparently benign example of this phenomenon. By all acounts this bill is a Good Thing, entirely apart from partisan consideration, so our legislators should feel political pressure to vote for it. Contrast with the PATRIOT Act, for example, or the watered-down Help America Vote Act...
Imagine that.
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
Not really, as I'd bet you every cent I had that there would also be quite a number of people out there wanting to ensure there were as few as possible bugs in the software that would decide the next leader of their country. In reality this means systems would likely be more secure, rather than having us rely on an organisation selling voting machines to have done a half decent job; which by the way was shown not to be the case in 2004.
Bigger problem: somebody gets to be listed first on the ballot. Automatically, he gets more votes. California slightly fixes this, with per-county variation. It would be better to print ballots as needed, with randomized candidate order.
Heck, it is statistically valid to give out blank ballots, as long as every voter has an equal chance of receiving such a ballot. We could have 1-question true-false ballots: "do you think that $(PERSON) would be a good choice for $(OFFICE)?" That would sure speed things up.
If a person is convicted of a felony that they feel should not be illegal, or if they are wrongfully convicted of a felony, shouldn't they have the right to fight future injustice at the ballot box?
If a copyright infringement conviction were to make it impossible for you to vote, who will stop DMCA++?
Why is this listed under "Censorship"? What's being censored? I think it would be closer to "Your Rights Online", or politics, or whatever.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
the only real problem with last years election is that for most of /.ers, the wrong guy won. the us civil rights commission did two exhaustive studies of florida. guess what? nothing. no fraud, no intimidation, no disenfranchisement. sorry go home. the press did a thorough recount of the ballots. every scenario. guess what. bush still wins. if you want the links, i'll find them, but we're finding voter reg. fraud in ohio, but oops, they'er democratic. and washington state. please. dead people voting, "discovered" ballots, 500 people registered at the same address. recounts until the democrat wins.
i'm honestly taking sides, because i think there's going to be an amount of chicanery on both sides. but if this is your kool-aid, and you focus on voting problems, a system which has served us for 200 years, then you're living in la la land. the 1960 election was won by fraud. nixon didn't run around the country for years claiming he was robbed, etc. if you're unhappy, how about volunteering next time, as the democrats had to pay campaign workers, while the republicans had 1 million volunteers. oh, and lastly, if you're hanging out at kos, oh nevermind...
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
Here is another place to read about this: http://rawstory.com/news/2005/index.php?p=118
That reasoning is flawed Not necessarily. There are extensive checks and audits built into these systems as well. They're not designed to be unreliable. And, in fact, most non-partisan voting analysts, such as the MIT-Caltech Voting Project, said that the election was surprisingly smooth considering the amount of new technology being rolled out, and they were, overall, pleased with the e-voting equipment and its performance. Yes, there were deficiencies, and yes, most people agree that fundamentally, an individual voter-verified paper trail is a good idea. But believe it or not - and forget about all of the endless vitriolic rhetoric you've read and heard about e-voting from people with clear agendas - it's possible to do something like accurate e-voting. And note, I DO think there should be a receipt for everyone - if only to quiet the critics who will think any Republican victory from now on must be an illegitimate one. But computerized voting systems can also get reliability from audit. Just because a voter is externally anonymous doesn't mean there's not a reliable way to internally track a voter. Now, if you presume there are malicious attempts to alter the election outcomes, then yes, I agree that a paper trail is the only way to be sure. But keep in mind, then, that every election that deploys such a system will no doubt have hand-recounts requested in each and every jurisdiction. And then, what exactly is the purpose of e-voting?
The issue is not felons per se, or any kind of deep, logical paradigm about the disenfranchised ex-cons and illegal immigrants. It's about self-interest: Democrats will propose any change to voting laws so long as it helps them. Immigrants, poor, hispanics, and blacks (and like it or not, felons disproportionately fall into the last three categories) are more likely to vote Democratic, so naturally Democrats want them to vote more. Conversely, since Republicans own most voting machines, they will do anything to oppose open voting, at least in part because it constitutes a monetary investment, and tacitly because there's at least a possibility they could fix the election.
What someone is bashing our Empress, Mrs. Clinton?! Mod Down! Mod DOWN! This man has a good point. I find two problems with the proposed bill. One is mentioned above: The system simply cannot handle the voting public anymore. As the country with the second largest voting public in the world (I don't know how India does their's), there are simply too many voters, too many different systems, too many everything to expect that you can just fix everything with a simple bill. The logistics of implementing a nationwide voting reform are staggering, not mentioning the budget that would be required. This would bring me to the second point: Elections are in the hands of the states. Period. It is not in the federal government's jurisdiction to say how a state should run an election. The only constitutional clause pertaining to this states simply that states cannot prevent citizens from voting. How they vote, who is on the ballot, when they vote - all that is up to the state. Personally, I strongly oppose anything that takes power from the hands of local, easily monitored politics and moves it hundreds of miles away to Washington.
For the record and all, it was Boxer, Clinton, and Stephanie Tubbs Jones. She may only be a representative (and not a Senator), but she deserves to have her name written properly and fully.
For the interested, she's the Representative from the 11th District of Ohio - which seems to include most of Cleveland, and some of its suburbs. She was also the Rep. who (with Boxer) officially objected to the counting of the ballots from Ohio.
Cue The Sun...
Although I support open source voting machines and paper receipts and such, I don't like those issues being packaged with the restoration of voting rights to felons. I believe the open-source voting should be debated (and hopefully approved) on its own.
Packaging the issues together allows the Democrats to win either way this goes, though. If the Republicans in Congress oppose it because of the felon-voting issue, Democrats can still claim that Republicans "opposed a bill guaranteeing open voting standards."
Get rid of the electoral college, the Iowa caucus, the New Hampshire primaries, and force advertising to be factually correct. Then maybe, just maybe, there'll be a reasonable candidate.
Damn. What makes you think this stuff is so cheap? You really don't know what a dollar is worth, do you?
I want a new world. I think this one is broken.
why is the program any more complicated than just storing a hash table of votes that occurred? It just seems like a really simple app, I don't get how there can be so many problems with it.
Lots of programs would be trivial to implement if everyone in the world just behaved themselves at all times. Almost all of the parties involved have an incredibly strong incentive to mess with the hashtable. And it has to be completely auditable, so you can see exactly what changes were made to the hashtable and when, by whom, and for what reason. It has to provide a way to guarantee that a vote for one candidate did not get stored as a vote for another. But you also have to avoid a system that will allow the winners of the election to punish anyone who voted "incorrectly", since it's only a matter of time before someone decides to crumple our beloved Constitution into a ball.
The standards that Diebold had to meet seem to come straight from the 19th century. The Diebold machines had to survive being dropped from three feet, for example. Nobody has ever updated the standards to account for the more complicated and potentially devious behavior of software-based systems as opposed to mechanical devices. This looks like an attempt to do so. Let's see how far it goes.
Ok... we have electronic voting... But NOW we're going to pass bills to avoid issues, and make sure there is a "HARD COPY" also made at the same time. Umm.. ok. On top of that, we're going to be concerned that the vote was counted correct?
What's wrong with people today?
Just give them a god-damned old fashioned piece of paper... tell them to color in the circle, check the box, whatever... and then put it in the machine.
WOW... there's not a HARD COPY, and we're using the same standard reliable machines that we've always used, and no one has complained about THOSE counting the votes wrong... they're not open source software or hardware... but hey... those are ok.
We're re-inventing the wheel... and forcing the same outcome. Instead of pushing a button... and then having it spit out a piece of paper.. most places get the paper first, and then put it in the machine.
Dozen of one, 2 1/2 dozen of the other... Who's winning here?? The freaking company that is making and forcing these counties to buy the hardware and software... Then we have 90 year old ladies running the place... and we wonder why the machines don't work?
I say screw these voting machines. If people are always going to wonder if their vote was "counted" (what a stupid saying really...) then stop using them.
www.slightlycrewed.com - Because aren't we all?
.. is, then, a corporate lobby which pushes for the end of all corporate lobbying.
...)
that'll screw 'em!
(oh, btw, it should be a publically traded corporation
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
I read you post and checked the status of the previous bills. They both died in committee two years ago.
It looks like someone did let it die, and Clinton and Boxer are now trying resurrect the protections in the bills.
I guess that renders almost your entire post as both FUD and moot.
This bill (The Count Every Vote Act of 2005) corrects many of the problems in the last election...
As much as I'd like to believe it was a conspiracy that cost us the election, I just see too many redneck wackos with their gun racks and SUVs and 'W the president' stickers to believe that there isn't a very large portion of this country that willingly supports devolving back to the horse and buggy age as quickly as possible.
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
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):
> Again, go ahead and argue with me if you want; I won't even bother reading it.
And we have to endure reading you? You see this is one of those things that bothers me about the debates these days. Instead of trying to find a compromise we are in a screaming match on who can scream loudest WITHOUT listening to the other person.
So here I go rambling with my own off-topic ideas....
There is a public interest, and often some people represent the public interest. So the original poster is probably not that far off the mark
Now regarding patents...
>>> I'm not going to get into yet another stupid argument over them, but I will state my opinion: Patents are good things.
Gee, you scream "I am not going to listen to you and I am going to give my opion".
Likewise I will do the same and ramble my thoughts. Patents are legal monopolies that protect a unique idea. Sounds good, but it misses the obvious point, there are not that many unique ideas as there are patents granted! Humanity is not unique! We are only as smart as predecessors! So how can you patent something where the basis was created by somebody else? As a patent holder will you give those people who provided you with the knowledge money? My point is nobody lives in a vaccum.
Lets consider the following perspective, in a world of globalization there will be multiple people that will come up with the same idea. It is because our evolutionary nature of ideas. Yet one can get a patent and the other not! Why not? They both came to the same idea and yet one is considered a copy cat! Ooops, sorry beep wrong answer.
Patents do not protect markets because if you look at some of the most competitive and richest markets they HAVE NO protection from patents. Examples include, cars, software (before the scams), food receipes (cooking, etc), movies, music, etc. Patents cause more problems than they are worth.
I do fully endorse copyright, however with less length. My thinking is along the lines, life of creator + 15 years. I agree with DRM, but on an optional basis. DRM should not be shoved down our throats.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
I swear that including OpenSource in the Bill is more because it is just a new buzzword than anything else. I do not want to discuss the matter of more secure/less secure, because that is not the issue here; the issue is the safety of the vote results.
I think that the main threat to an electoral process will come from the company providing the service (as the single point of failure); and they can just make all of the code completely Open Source and just load in the machines another compiled, thus making the complete Open Source useless.
The big issue in this Bill is remind that votes should be verifiable against mistakes and manipulations and, hence, a receipt should be print to:
a) Asure all the people that the results are correct, and hence there is no room for complaining, and
b) Asure all the people that the results are correct and so the new elected officials meet all the moral requirements to be obeyed (as long as the law stablishes).
The Open Source "buzzword" is more harmful than anything, because a Bill with a simple objective now has two and this can distract people (what happens if the Congress do accept that the software is Open Source but does not require the receipts to be prompt? A minor gain for a major loss).
Why can't
There is always some fraud in the election, on both sides of the bench, but I do feel the need to point something out.
I know it might sound like B.S., being on the internet and such, and it's not my story so I want to keep the details obscure for now, but during the election, a friend of mine was in Ohio volunteering for the DNC. His job was to follow the votes from the polling place to a non-partisan truck, that would bring them to be counted. The man carrying the votes was hostile to him, and it was late at night (because of all the delays) but he nonetheless went with him, even though he was a bit nervous.
Eventually, the man he was following brought all of the votes to a Bush '04 campaign truck, and put them inside! According to the rules, it was supposed to be a neutral truck (obviously). Well, he got a picture of the situation, and I think it might appear in a publication soon.
I wonder, if they do things so openly, how much the electronic voting machines were messed with? We all know that they are not nearly secure (with updates being sent without being checked, etc.), and we've all heard the stories about people voting all for the Democratic ticket, only to see their receipts showing a vote for Bush.
Anyway, I don't think there was widescale corruption just by the Republicans. I'm sure both sides are equally guilty. And personally, I think Bush is doing much better this term, but still a little scary.
This idea seems like a good one, it will help against Republican and Democratic corruption.
The article and the press release doesn't even mention Kerry. They talk about a Boxer and Clinton bill. Who's editing this shit?
Will wonders never cease? Something I agree with Kerry & Clinton on?
... bridges that might make those leaders obsolete.
You (understandably) got modded +Funny.
But you've touched on a completely serious issue -- the politics of finding common ground.
Our current political circus is built on the lawyer/contention model -- either I'm totally for you, or I'm totally against you. My party right or wrong, your party be damned. A world of Total Contention.
But Total Contention is an illusion. Life isn't like that. Real people aren't always wrong, aren't always the enemy. I vote for X, that doesn't make Y a total idiot. It only seems like Y is a total idiot, because the X party has a vested interest in Total Contention.
Too many leaders feed us the Total Contention bullshit, because Total Contention keeps us distracted, keeps us from thinking clearly, keeps us from building bridges to each other
Harry Tuttle put it well: Listen, kid, we're all in it together.
I'm not talking about a Sixties love-fest here. We do need to debate issues. We do need to promote the views we cherish, and challenge the views we hate.
But if we're going to get past Total Contention -- get past the politics of hate -- get past all of that "Us Versus Them" crap -- if we're going to achieve honest intelligent debate, if we're going to find some kind of common ground where we can live on this ball of mud without hating each other to death -- then we've got to learn to listen to each other and learn from each other.
-kgj
-kgj
We'll stop bringing it up when both sides quit bringing up September 11th.
Stop intellectual property from infringing on me
Also, the manufacturer is required to do a background check on all contributers, so that rules out an open source development model.
Mandatory recount of paper ballots is required at 2% of precincts (chosen randomly). This is an improvement, but in my opinion, too low. 98% too low. The electronic count should be used to satisfy those who don't want to wait two weeks to find out who won, but electronic counts should never be considered trustworthy by themselves.
He said it in a fund-raising letter. Diebold systems are incredibly easy to hack, and almost certainly helped in the voting irregularities in the 2004 election.
To top it off, a highly partisan republican, Kenneth Blackwell, managed the votes in Ohio and has been uncooperative in investigations.
This says nothing of the exit poll discrepancies...
That's a good thing. Until the systems have been developed to a point where they can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt to every interested party that the electronic transactions are completely accurate and untainted, there should be a manual backup recount of every election.
If it's not possible for them to ever get to that point, then the whole idea should be scrapped in favor of pencils and paper.
I'm talking about "receipts" in the form of a physical piece of paper that the voter can look at, associated with their individual vote, either through a window in a printing machine tied with their voting terminal, or spit out so that they can physically look at it and verify their votes, and then possibly placed in an envelope and dropped in a box, and not taken with them when they leave.
I'm not talking about a piece of paper that is taken away from the polling place, and I'm making the assumption that no one else is either.
(The reason why I'm saying "receipts" is because that's what everyone's calling them. But I haven't seen anyone argue for them to be receipts in a context of taking the thing with them. They're saying "receipt" in the context of what I said above, and I'm using the same terminology to avoid confusing the situation any further.)
You forgot the other main segment of the populace in which Democrats almost always win out: people with Ph.Ds and college students.
What possible reason could I, as a Libertarian election lawyer, have for opposing the bill?
Well, how about the part about making 'deceptive' statements about the election a felony?
I blogged about this 2/18/05 ballots.blogspot.com.
Rick Hasen's www.electionlawblog.org is a good place to track these issues.
If you are very familiar with how Senator Clinton works, a "deceptive" statement is one she doesn't agree with.
I suspect, and this is only a suspicion, that the bill is an unconstitutional violation of free speech and voting rights. As a person who has sworn to uphold the constitution, I couldn't go along with that. Does that make me evil?
...if it passes. As I see it, voting is something that needs to be taken more seriously in this country, and this bill would be a decent step forward. I like the fact there would be criminal penalties for interfering with an election, and I like the hardware and software standards that would be applied.
Personally I don't see why both sides of the fence aren't jumping to support this. The Dems want it in place to reduce the number of fubar'ed elections and the Reps should want it so when the next election comes around they can actually prove they won. There would be more work, and it isn't a magic solution to the problems (both reasons why it might not pass), but it is a good start.
I agree. They shouldn't be able to lobby either.
Only PEOPLE should vote.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
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."
Which problems of the last election? That every single media entity couldn't talk us into voting for a guy who can't make up his mind, or that the Democrats lost in general?
I can't remember the last time so many media people pushed so hard to support such a weak opponent. I was ashamed for the Democrats; they've fielded so many, much better candidates. This guy took indecisiveness to an art form. Does anyone, even today know what he stood for? Yet movies, newspaper comics, standup comics, SNL, made-for-tv movies, New York Times, street vendors, taxi drivers, and just about everything but Apple Jacks boxes were turned into lobbying devices. And Bush still won. It all seems kinda hollow, coming from the Democrats.
No, wait; I can remember. Regan versus Mondale. Regan was an idiot of course, a dottering old fool who woke up one morning, reached for the 'nurse' button and missed, hitting the 'nuke' button instead. The entire world exploded in a fireball that rocked the solar system. Liberals all over the world were unsurpised.
Where are the _real_ democrats, those that had ideas and advanced them? This time it was all "we hate Bush". That's no platform!
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
In Canada, electoral officials must be politically neutral.
Um, Diebold's employees aren't "electoral officials". The county electoral officials using Diebold's equipment - completely out of Diebold's reach[1] - are the "electoral officials". The same people to whom we've been entrusting our elections for decades. Are the people who manufactured the markers and pens and the paper mills who made the paper for previous elections "electoral officials" who must remain impartial.
The counties are executing and auditing elections with higher technology equipment. Nothing more. Yes, they could potentially have a problem with, say, a crash on one machine. And there are holes in the process that need to be closed. And so on. But that doesn't make Diebold's employees, including the CEO, electoral officials. Was what he said bad form? Absolutely. Moronic thing to say. Even to be in a position of the most remote appearance of conflict. But I'm less concerned with his comments and more concerned with people who think his comments are somehow "proof" that the election MUST have been stolen, with complete and utter disregard for the complexity of the entire process and the number of checks and audits that exist in the electronic system even as it stands now! Diebold does not have any central or direct access to the equipment once deployed. The ONLY control you could argue Diebold might have is in the form of patches, and these patches have to be certified and reviewed, including at a source code level, by the FEC and a third party. And yes, I'm aware that uncertified patches, which could include anything from errors to malicious code, have been deployed. But the problem is that you take isolated, fringe examples, and make it out to be widespread. I see the same stories, analysis, and links to liberal blogs and sources constantly, as "proof" of some position.
As for dying in committee, it sure would have been nice if Clinton, Kerry, Boxer, and tubs would have SUPPORTED them the first time around, eh?
Due to hava upgrades, about 1 million more votes were counted in 2004 than in 2000. The result was the same either way. HAVA cost about 6 billion. If my math is right, that's $6,000 per extra vote properly counted. I would cheerfully have sold my vote for a bit less than that. Certainly, it would have been well worth it if it had somehow kept Bush out, but since it didn't I'm not convinced the money was well spent.
Most of the stuff in these bills are already in the pipe, and are being debated on in congress (i.e. the open voting systems, ect.)
The rest is partisan stuff, and most of the liberals on these boards know it.
The first one is the holiday for voting day, sure it sounds good in concept but if you peel the layers away you will find it is nothing but a partisan attempt to try to get more votes for democrats. Who are the only people who are guaranteed to get such a holiday off? Most people who are non-union or non-government workers work most of the minor holidays, so the only group that is guaranteed to benefit from this holiday are the democrats two largest voting blocks. Companies who actually have to make money, cannot afford to pay their people for yet another day off.
Second is the convicted felon issue, which is, and should remain a state issue. Some states even allow convicted felons to vote once they have served their time. However if you peel the layers away again, you will notice that pretty much every poll that has been taken has shown that convicted felons overwhelmingly vote for democrat.
This bill has nothing to due with counting every vote, or anything of the sorts. Its an attempt by the democrats, who have been unable to win with the current rules, to change the election system so it is rigged in their favor.
Instead of counting every vote, why not count every legitimate vote. Too many dead people voting for Dems these days.
What you are saying is absolutly correct, if the only thing that is to be taken into consideration is the correctness of each vote as it is cast. The essential safeguard that having access to the source code of the machine protects against, and which paper ballots does not (unless there is a recount based ONLY on the paper ballots) is the mallicious injection of votes into the system by an outside souce. If you are going to prevent this, you must either have manditory recounts of all votes (difficult) or have certification of the integrity of the machine at the time of the vote (hard, but not impossible). This is why, for example, most voting machines have some sort of tamper proof seal on them. You WOULD phsyically check that each machine matches the published source code before you set it out, then you would seal all inputs on the machine (remove drives, plug ports) put a paper seal on the box, and set it up. Not easy, but do-able.
...En að Besta Sem Guð Hefur Skapað Er Nýr Dagur
I, for one, am extraordinarily disappointed with the lack of quality of trolls in this modern day and age. I remember when a decent troll would satisfy my cravings for ignorance. But recently, the quantity of good trolls has been steadily decreasing.
Is someone dumping raw sewage over the side of your bridge? Come one people, you have to _make an effort_
Defenestrate Windows...
> the source and object code of all electronic voting machines to be open and readable by the public.
Heh... requiring object code to be readable by the public, now there's a whole new challenge. Let's add another three years to high school and cut english altogether. Either that or come up with turing complete object code that was also gramatically correct. And, say, in rhyming iambic pentameter for fun.The only reason corporations have power is that they have lots of money. The only reason lots of money is important is that a trained monkey with lots of money will win over Abe Lincoln with a stack of fliers in the back of a Honda Insight.
Now, if you had a well-informed populous with sharp critical-thinking skills this wouldn't be the case. But that's not what we have and it isn't.
So, the only way to get corporations out of politics is to teach children how to reason. Good luck.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Are you going to address anything I've said, or just continue one-sentence replies that imply anything I say must be invalid because of using the word "liberals"?
The issue of election integrity is bigger than the Kerry Bush race. For the first time in the history of this democracy, we are trusting electronic tabulating machines to count votes in a presidential race. Machines which reknown computer scientists and cryptologists have proven to be insecure and untrustworthy.
In addition to being insecure and untrustworthy these machines left no "paper trail", no way of verifying the machine's count in a recount. When you have no paper trail, the only tool to investigate the integrity of a machine count is that of statistics, as Berkeley researchers were forced to rely upon when they concluded that voting irregularities lead them to believe 260,000 votes were invalidly awarded to Bush. In fact when 4,258 votes were awarded by a Diebold machine to Bush in Franklin County, Ohio we only knew that result had to be wrong because only 638 voters had casted ballots. Unfortunately this wasn't an isolated event as Diebold has stirred a string of such voting irregularities. According to Bob Fitrakis:
Which leads us to question the integrity of the election especially when the exit polls were so clearly in favor of Kerry.
The CEO of Diebold has made no attempt to hide his support for Bush. Ironically, he has publically stated that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year". Later he stated it was a mistake to have said that, he meant it as an American, not as the CEO of a corporation that was contracted to count votes in Ohio. The CEO however isn't the only one to be painted with a big brush of suspicious, as at least five convicted felons secured management positions in his company. One of which served time in a Washington state correctional facility for stealing money and tampering with computer files in a scheme that "involved a high degree of sophistication and planning."
In my response I have analyzed the integrity of the Ohio election through the prisim of electronic voting, others have made other arguments regarding why they think an investigation is warranted as I can assure you the problems with Diebold is not limited to Ohio nor is electronic voting the only "irregularity" in Ohio [1] [2]
For instance, I am strongly opposed to this "paper receipts" idea. The reason why current election law prohibits anybody from taking anything away from a polling place that can be used to determine how that person voted is to prevent vote coercion. "Vote for John Smith or I'll break your kneecaps," says the hired goon. When you come out of the polling place he demands to see your receipt. No receipt, no way to coerce voters.
So that's why you use secure receipts. Known problem, known solution, just waiting for will and implementation.
You describe a problem with a simplistic implementation of receipts and then proceed to blast the entire concept. Actually, that's pretty close to how people on the other side of the DRM issue from you feel - the current implementations are poor and onerous - when they're not they'll be OK with it.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I'll donate $1000 to the cause if both John Kerry and Hillary Clinton can explain what source code and object code are.
I intentionally linked to a couple of legitimate sites because I figured you'd bash any with a liberal bias. I didn't say the election was stolen. I did however indicate that there were irregularities for which there is suspicious involvement of partisan officials in power, similar to Katherine Harris' bullshit in 2000. John Conyers is a legitimately elected congressman who felt these irregularities were worth investigating. He is obviously not the only one.
Notice I link to nonpartisan websites there (with the exception of rawprint, which has a scanned copy of an offical letter). Besides, even republicans should be outraged at Blackwell's lack of co-operation.
Yes. They did die in committee. Can you answer any of the following questions:
- Why didn't Clinton, Boxer, Kerry, and Tubbs more vocally support these initial bills, the two basic features of which - namely, paper receipts and open source - are identical to the two previous bills?
- Why doesn't any news outlet or commentary that I've seen so far make any reference to these previous bills, making them look like they're completely new?
No, it doesn't render anything moot. What it means is that it's no more than a stunt. Why were they themselves not cosponsors of the original bills? Every senator or representative has an opportunity to sign on. What's worse, is that not only do they address the primary complaints, which is fine, they go further to create artificial argument over something we already prohibit, i.e., voting fraud. It's designed to play to the base of people who think minority voter intimidation is widespread, or that Diebold's CEO stole the election for Bush. It's a fucking emotional play, plain and simple. The initial bills were uninteresting. They simply called for a verifiable paper trail and open source software. This one faux-valiantly says, essentially, we know that the 200{0,4} election was stolen, and now we're going to fight to prevent it!
Voting should not be made easy. A person who will only vote if the effort involved is near-zero will not take the trouble to find out the nature of the issues and the quality of the candidates. To the extent that he does understand the issues he will vote to get things at no expense to himself: he will vote for a kleptocracy.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Dumbass. That's not the point. As I've asked about 3 or 4 times now (and I'll assume you're the same MOD PARENT UP ac from the other thread claiming that my argument is "destroyed" because the bills died in committee).
The POINT is, if this is so utterly important, then where the fuck were Clinton, Kerry, Tubbs, and Boxer for the first bills, before even the 2004 election took place? If receipts and open source are such a fucking good idea - I mean, this was after the 2000 election and before Bush's second run, for fuck's sake - then where the hell were they?
The POINT is, why is there no mention of the fact that there were bills that were identical in the two major features, and indeed the primary things always mentioned, namely, receipts and open source, in any article on this "new" (old) bill?
I didn't leave out any facts. I said the bills were old as time, and I provided LINKS to them, with clear status, and asked, categorically, where is Clinton and Kerry's support for these bills? I doubt you'll provide an even remotely on-topic answer.
And remember, I support paper records and open sourcing e-voting code.
My question is... why is a felon forced to support the government (via taxes) and draw on its benefits (libraries, highways, etc.) and yet not allowed to dictate its form (through voting)?
In all, whatever logic there is for this has so far alluded me, unless it is simply supposed to be an overwhelming dis-incentive, like the death penalty. And considering all the things that are felonious, I wonder if its really that smart an idea, or if helps deter at all.
Looks good for your age..
They're already illegal.
The problem isn't contributions; it's that it costs so damn much to run a serious campaign and candidates have to spend 12 hours a day raising money instead of being out campaigning. Why does it cost so much? TV ads!
We need to reduce the cost of political ads on *our* public airwaves.
First time in a long time that I can agree wholeheartedly with Senators Clinton and Kerry! What's next, will Bill Gates come out in favor of the GPL?
Are we going to require public disclosure of the source code for the applications, compilers, libraries, operating system, device drivers, VHDL for all of the chips, CAD/CAE tools? How transparent do you want it to be?
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Did the people you mention vote for the bills, and are they on the committees that let the bills die afterward?
By "support", I mean sponsor and promote the bills.
No, they didn't vote on them, since, as I know you know, and as you know that I know, they never came up for vote. But I'm not asking that.
I'm asking: Where were they, in support, promotion, and/or sponsorship of these important bills?
And it does not matter whether any of the sponsors were on any of the previous committees. Frankly, I haven't looked to see if they were. But it doesn't matter, because that is NOT what I am asking. I am asking: where was their support (in print or verbal) and/or sponsorship of the previous bills almost two years ago if the provisions were so important?
Because bills allowed to die in committee don't matter anymore. You don't seem to get this--or you're ignoring it to promote your anti-"liberal" agenda.
Sorry. I've been trying to get these bills attention ever since they were introduced. I've posted about them numerous times in this and other forums, and written by Representative and Senators on this issue several times since mid 2003, and immediately after the 2004 election.
The problem is that not mentioning them makes it look like this is some new, valiant effort to get voting accountability, when it's anything but.
Indeed, an example where an actual communist party was elected (if you people out there think that Stalin represented actual marxism/communism, then I'm not sure I can break through that ignorance) and was deposed by forces quite decidedly undemocratic. (Anyone sketchy on the facts can brush up on them somplace like wikipedia). The sad truth is, the factions and people that believed in Communism as an actual expression of what is best for the people, well, they were often put down by heavy-handed measures on the parts of their opponents. The ones that espoused the ideology but really were just in it for power, those were the successful ones (and when they weren't, afterwards they were taken care of by those that were; Trotsky actually believed in what the Soviets claimed to, but Stalin, in it only for himself and unencumbered by any ideology otherwise, easily ousted Trotsky).
Note, also, the times that communists have been cheated out of elections; in the Weimar Republic in germany, near the end, both the Nazis and the Communists were making significant gains in the elections. The Nazis spread fear about the Communists, burned down the Reichtag building and blamed it on communists, and just generally used underhanded methods to manipulate people into handing power over to them.
And sometimes communists (or movements that started out as communist, but later became just power hungry regimes, a common story with revolutions in general, the French Revolution being a shining example of good intentions gone bad) had no option of democratic elections, because there were none in the country in question. So the fact that few communists have been elected worldwide is not that much of a strike against them; the number of examples when fundamentally different systems were elected to power are few as is, it's hardly a show of superiority when the status quo is re-asserted.
Although, to go to the literal wording of the grandparent: name a communist that was elected in a real election. Well, that isn't very hard at all, there are even communists elected at this very moment around the world, maybe not as the ruling governments, but if you're looking just at communists that have been elected in real elections you don't have to look very far. I searched for about half a second and already came up with some evidence of communist activity and success in the democratic process.
Methinks the grandparent is perhaps a tad irrationally biased, to make such blanket statements.
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
By the way, I have read the Mitofsky-Edison report to which I assume you are referring regarding the exit polls. I do find it interesting that there are other statisticians who conclude differently.
"...source code available for inspection upon request to any citizen"
This sounds like it is going to give the appearance of voter verification of the software, without doing so in substance. I can just see me sitting down to a hundred thousand line listing of a voting machine program, and trying to look for backdoors or subtle miscounting tricks. The code needs to be available in machine readable form so we can add internal checks and logs and then run it in a test environment.
The machine vendors would be protected from code theft because any rival would have to make his code public too, so the copying would be easy to see. I am sure protestations would be made that some of the source is shared with non-open source things like ATMs, but being able to fully verify the voting programs should take precedence.
I have not looked at the text of any of the bills, so I don't know if any or all of them actually have provisions for adequate access to the source code. Since I would expect a lot of vendor resistance, I would be surprised if all of them did.
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
Would you be screaming about this if some Republican representatives and senators who didn't cosponsor the last bill put up this proposal, or are you just engaging in knee-jerk anti-"liberal" rage?
Yes, I would have. Because I've brought it up here and in other forums whenever I've had the chance. And I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I voted for Kerry (on the sole basis of this speech excerpt), not Bush.
That's not a receipt. That's a ballot. A lot of confusion can be avoided if the correct words are used.
Mary's ballot asks if she thinks Nader is better than Bush. Lisa's ballot asks if Kerry is unfit for office. Martha's ballot asks (only) if marriage should be defined as the exclusive union of one man and one woman, unbreakable except via death. Sue's ballot asks if Nader is worse than Kerry.
Questions are asked in both positive and negative forms. When more than 2 choices are available, every pairing of candidates is equally likely to be asked about.
Besides making voting fast, this keeps most people from gaming the system. While it is provable that all voting systems are susceptable to gaming, the psychology makes a difference.
S.330 and H.R.704 are new versions of the same bills I previously discussed, introduced under the same title (with a new year) on February 9, 2005.
Why splinter support for this bill - the most important part of which mandates a permanent, voter-verifiable paper trail - with partisan pandering about voter intimidation (which is ALREADY illegal) and rhetoric that echoes of conspiracies about Diebold's CEO?
Well, S.330 and H.R.704/H.R.550 are new versions of the same bills I previously discussed, introduced under the same title (with a new year) on February 9, 2005. The Senate version already has 9 cosponsors and the House version has 102.
So I again, and now even more relevantly, ask: why are Clinton, Boxer, and Kerry trying to splinter and divide support for bills that add a voter-verified permanent paper trail - presumably the most important feature of any such legislation?
At first glance, this proposal is so partisan that it is dead on arrival. It ignores Republican concerns about the methods Democrats use to manipulate elections. Restoration of voting rights to felons is a state issue, not a federal issue. It mandates "no excuse" absentee ballots, which have proven to be a fertile source of fraudulent votes. It ignores the poor quality of voter registration lists.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
S.330 and H.R.704/H.R.550 are new versions of the same bills I previously discussed, introduced under the same title (with a new year) on February 9, 2005.
Why not support this bills, instead of introducing another bill that splinters support, but features vitriolic, partisan rhetoric that plays into emotional conspiracy theories?
S.330 and H.R.704/H.R.550 are new versions of the same bills I previously discussed, introduced under the same title (with a new year) on February 9, 2005. The Senate version already has 9 cosponsors, and the House version 102.
Why not support these bills?
To encourage more citizens to exercise their right to vote, the Count Every Vote Act designates Election Day a federal holiday and requires early voting in each state. The bill also enacts "no-excuse" absentee balloting, enacts fair and uniform voter registration and identification, and requires states to allow citizens to register to vote on Election Day. It also requires the Election Assistance Commission to work with states to reduce wait times for voters at polling places. In addition, the legislation restores voting rights for felons who have repaid their debt to society.
I think these points are at least as important as any other in the bills. First and foremost because it means another paid holiday for the government. But it also allows voters to register on election day which means that thousands of lazy people who wouldn't have registered otherwise will join in!! And I can't think of who I'd rather have deciding the fate of the nation than a bunch of lazy people. Also felons. Not that I think it makes a difference who gets elected.
In all seriousness, I think felons still deserve the right to vote, and making the registration process more convenient is a good thing. Also I get federal holidays off with pay, so that works for me.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
As people are selected, we collect their votes. US Federal Marshalls or Secret Service officers meet the people in person, then take them to vote.
We ask people until 99.9% statistical certainty has been acheived. If the votes are close, we might need to ask 1000 people. In cases of a landslide, the required statistical certainty will be acheived after only a few dozen votes have been collected.
Cool, huh? This would save lots of time and money.
This is one of those types of bills that will be a test of corruption. This should not be partisan, if it is, then that says something about the side that goes against it.
He's Grrreat!
Someone please explain to me the purpose of provisional ballots. It seems to me that we've been fine for a long time without them, and they seem ripe for fraud.
I thought it was to assist people who arrive at the wrong polling place. But that seems like a real stretch. At least in Maryland, you don't have to go but a few miles to reach a polling place (nearly every school, public or private, is a polling place). The location is sent to you many months in advance. Plus you can call and verify it ahead of time. It seems more likely to be a way for people to vote numerous times without any real way to track down the duplicates.
S.330 and H.R.704/H.R.550 are new versions of the same bills I previously discussed, introduced under the same title (with a new year) on February 9, 2005. The Senate version has 9 cosponsors and the House version has 102. So the initial post is still 100% valid.
So it's now UnAmerican (tm, GOP) to want legal safeguards for a free vote for all? As usual, our Republican friends in power (who spend oh such my time craying about how they are the poor persecuted minority,) like to dismiss bills like the one described as ridiculous and unecessary. But here's where the Dems win:
Just how is it wrong to codify specific conflict of interest behaviors that impugn the legitmacy of our democracy as 'wrong'? How does that make liberals wackos? I believe the question should be: "Why do Republicans hate democracy?"
"What we elect to call imagination is mere combination of things not heretofore combined." - Frank Norris
I'm a slashdotting technophile as much as anyone else here, but I can't at this time support the use of voting machines.
It costs about 10 times as much to cost a vote by machine compared to hand counting. We pay an unreasonable premium for election night returns. We could have every vote counted by three separate people and get more trustworthy results the next day. Who do you trust? Do you trust the machine manufacturers or your neighbors in your precincts?
http://bolson.org/cgi-bin/vote_tco
Start Running Better Polls
Unfortunately, the Republicans are in power and they probably figure that most previously convicted felons would vote Democrat. In some states, that could have changed the results of the last two presidential elections. That alone will probably doom this bill.
Yes, one of the prison tasks is to prevent the felon to perpetrate in further crime, but one of the tasks is also to punish the felon in a way, ideally, that is proportionate to the crime. When the time has been served, you have made up for your crime, and thereby you have payed your debt to society.
If you are arguing, that serving prison time doesn't repay your dept to society, then there can only be two ways to punish: Either don't, or capital punisment to all that breaks the law, since they'll never be able to repay their debt and thereby remove the vengeance placed upon them (Which prison in reality is). This is of course out in the edge...
Please note, that i'm not talking about money here, I'm talking about moral debt.
One of the riders on this bill will allow convicted Felons to vote!
This will definitely get vetoed for sure... No way in hell would I support a convicted felon the right to vote. Like it or not Bush will veto this bill.
...then why aren't Clinton, Boxer, and Kerry supporting bills that would do just that?
S.330 and H.R.704/H.R.550 are new versions of the same bills I previously discussed, that would specifically add a permanent, voter-verified paper trail to every vote case, introduced under the same title (with a new year appended) on February 9, 2005. The House version already had 102 cosponsors; the Senate version, 9.
Why not support these important bills that resolve the main concern, namely, that of a permanent, voter-verified paper trail (which renders concern about things like open source and an e-voting vendors' reliability or scruples moot, since the outcome can always be 100% manually verified), instead of introducing another bill that splinters support, and features vitriolic, partisan rhetoric that plays into emotional conspiracy theories, and gives both sets of bills collectively LESS of a chance of passing?
In the case you suggest, voter fills out a paper somehow and it is read by a machine, usually the machine reads it "silently" not giving any indication of how it understood the voter's will.
Someone once said:
It's not who votes that counts, It's who count the votes.
Do you understand what the word federal means? How about ochlocracy?
Popular election of senators has already caused a lot of damage to the US. Popular election of the president would cause even more damage.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
However, I'm still not sure how to verify the FPGA. Maybe you second-source and distribute the different chips at random, but who's to keep Xilinx and Altera from colluding?
They say the mind is the first thing to
Just how is it wrong to codify specific conflict of interest behaviors that impugn the legitmacy of our democracy as 'wrong'?
It's not. That's why such actions are already illegal (i.e., voter fraud and intimidation). Because they're so, you know, widespread and commonplace. *Cough*.
And besides, I thought the slashdot crowd was pro-enforcing-the-laws-we-already-have, instead of making new ones?
This is pandering, plain and simple. The actions they purport to attack are already illegal.
I believe the question should be: "Why do Republicans hate democracy?"
On the contrary. I believe the question is "Why are Clinton, Kerry, and Boxer, the supposed shining stars of the Democratic party, introducing a new bill with vitriolic rhetoric and echoes of conspiracy theories tacked on, splintering and dividing support for bills that ALREADY EXIST that would address the primary concern, i.e., adding a voter-verified permanent paper trail to every e-vote cast?"
MoveON PAC is hosting a petition to support this bill and other similar bills in the works ... the petition is simple and non-partisan:
"Congress must support electoral reforms such as guaranteeing paper receipts for electronic voting machines, providing remedies for long lines, and prohibiting partisan election officials."
http://www.moveonpac.org/repairthevote/
More here.
Finding the text of this bill has been difficult. The PDF at the PFAW website is gone (why???). Here is Google's HTML cache.
Also, I am absolutely convinced there is some form of incestuous relationship between DailyKos and Slashdot. Way too many stories crediting Kos's blog are making it to the Slashdot front page.
Good heavens Miss Sakamoto - you're beautiful!
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
Others have been having fun extending your logic, and I certainly don't want to be left out:
- Either you'll die in Texas or you won't. Seems that if you cannot prove you'll die in Texas, you won't die in Texas. So get yourself to Texas right now!
- Either your wife is pregnant with a girl or a boy. Seems that if you cannot prove she's carrying a boy, you must not be having a boy. So paint the bedroom pink.
But unlike dying in Texas or having a girl instead of a boy, there's a burden of proof involved here. And you've got it ass-backwards. The burden of proof rests on the state, not the voter. It's not my responsibility to make sure that the machine I vote on isn't stealing my vote. The state bears a fiduciary responsibility to guarantee auditability and transparency to the voter. They must be able to prove to us that our votes were accurately counted. If they cannot prove that the election wasn't stolen, it must be presumed to be stolen, even if we conversely cannot prove that it actually was. The burden of proof is on them, not us.They failed at this wherever they introduced Diebold vote counting machines. They had plenty of time to prepare, they had our tax dollars, what did they do with it? They bought pretty black boxes that made voting "fun" even as they removed the auditability of the voting process. Now they can't prove the election wasn't stolen in those districts. Oops. And this will happen again, and again, in future elections, including ones whose outcomes you may not like.
It's related to the notion of a conflict of interest. The appearance of a conflict of interest is ethically considered to be a conflict of interest. If you're an FDA commissioner, for example, the burden of proof rests on you to prove that your second job at Novartis won't affect your objectivity when approving their pharmaceuticals. If you can't prove it, then the appearance of a conflict of interest remains, which means you've got a conflict of interest and should step down. It's not our job as consumers of FDA-approved drugs to prove that your heart isn't pure and to be on guard whenever we swallow a pill. We pay taxes so that we don't have to worry about that.
(Merely disclosing your conflict of interest as you take a position- yoo hoo everyone, by the way I may have a conflict of interest in this job I'm about to take- has become fashionable in the past, oh say, four years, but it's not ethical- you shouldn't be accepting a position at all if it places you in a situation where you even appear to have a conflict of interest.)
And who where plans to write their senators and urge them to sign onto this important piece of legislation?
By Law the voting process in a state is up to that state. To say otherwise violates the 10th Amendment.
Get a free ipod.
WRT point [1], it doesn't matter whether the liberals are pandering and fear mongering -- if there is even 1 instance of voter fraud or intimidation anywhere, it should still be a felony. If you disagree with that, then drop the ad hominem attacks and address the proposal on its merits.
Matt Slot / Bitwise Operator / Ambrosia Software, Inc.
As an experiement, I'd like to see one senator from every state get elected by a process other than popular vote.
...and see what kind of results that produces.
Lets say, jury trial. If it's good enough for mass murders, it's good enough for our political leaders.
Just get a random sample of 100 people have them listen to a detailed analysis of the issues, debates from the candidates (a candidate being the top 5 people in terms of approval rating in a public survey or somthing other than that. I'm not sure )
It would at least get some folks not motivated entirely by major corporations... maybe.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
What, no facts to back your opinion up? Here, I'll help:
Enron Democrats. (I hope The Nation is liberal enough for you to trust.)
Also, let it be noted that you think burglars, tax cheats, car theives, and embezzlers are not "oooo evil". Victimizing the innocent is certainly a fine way to prove your civic pride. Why, they must be fine citizens! Let's force the states to let them vote! States! Do Our Bidding or Lose Your Funding!
Good heavens Miss Sakamoto - you're beautiful!
Did anyone read in the bill that the dynamic duo wants voting day to be a Federal holiday? Do you know who benefits from that? Democrats.
Do you get to take off on all Federal holidays? Thought not. Most of us don't, but all Federal employees do, as do unions, including teachers' unions. Guess who those groups vote for.
A better plan would be to have 24 hours of voting and have all the polls in the country open and close at exactly the same time. That way, no matter which shift you work, you could vote more easily. Even better would be holding the election over the weekend - polls open from Friday noon until Monday noon. Don't hold your breath; it ain't gonna happen anytime soon.
Of course, laws concerning voting are supposed to be left up to the states, but when has the Federal government kept its nose out of state affairs?
I have the main section of the code. Here it is:
vote_count++;
First thing they need to fix is the fraud. No matter what side you were on in the last election, you're sure that the OTHER side committed fraud. That's got to stop.
...and make damn sure that people that commit fraud, in whatever form it takes, get prosecuted. A few convictions on that would stop voting fraud pretty damn quick.
Get the dead people off the voting lists, make sure that people that can vote are allowed to vote, make sure the people that shouldn't be able to vote aren't voting.
> Popular election of senators has already caused a lot of damage to the US.
Care to back that up with facts?
The party in bed with Enron.
You mean the Democrats? After all, Enron flurished under Enron... You people act as if this money was only put in place under Bush. No wonder it's such crap anymore; people who think that 50% of the mainstream is a godsend and the other 50% is just waiting to rape your wives and feed off your childrens bones? Get your head out of the sand.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
He may not be perfect, but if he were, there would be plenty of suckers hating him. The 2004 US election did not have half the level of validation that the Chavez recall had. Did you forget the Chavez recall had 3 paper trails? and 2 international groups said it was valid? and that his strongest support is in the largest demographic groups?
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
I think your second question answers your first. Those senators know that timing plays a big role in whether a bill even has a chance. They're calculating, but that's different from not caring.
It's on the table. Are you going to support it or not?
-- . . ramblin' . . .
It's H.R. 550, and can be read from the Library of Congress. It has 102 cosponsors, all of them Democrats.
Tough bill. All voting code must be available for inspection by anybody. Diebold will hate this.
You are pro-low-taxes and pro-war? Then, logically, you are pro-enormous-national-debt. Pardon me for saying so, but I think $7700000000000.00 in debt is enough. That's one hell of a inheritance to leave your kids. I'm burning spent mod points to say this so I might as well speak my mind here; America has spent enough money ousting Saddam to buy a new home for each and every one of the 1.3 million homeless children in America. So, as an American, which do think is most important? Nevermind, I know your duckspeak answer.
chance of this passing.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I agree with them too?! I gotta go reexamine my premises...
Geeky modern art T-shirts
This bill does absolutely nothing. How does open-source fix anything in this case? If you have voting machines put together in 50 different ways by 50 different tech solutions, who does one call to fix a problem? Who are you holding accountable for security of the votes?
The answer is state control versus corporate control. The state (either all 50 or more likely the federal government) is going to be the one dictating the "open" standard. And if it's a choice between corporate control and government control, I'll take corporate, thank you very much.
After all, if they don't live up to my standard, I can always fire them.
If we're going to do that, how about also limiting donations so that said individuals can only donate to politicians for whom they can vote? I.e., no money from Massachusetts going to NY Senator Schumer. And/or, how about putting all donations in one big pot for a given race and apportioning it equally to all candidates in that race? It really isn't fair that the tinfoil hat wearing loon who harrasses the pigeons is at such a disadvantage in his bid for Congress.
Actually, you might need Bill Gate's funds to better your education. The US is a REPUBLIC!
If we can't fix it, we'll fix it so nobody else can!
You can read the bill here: http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/dfiles/file_493.pdf The act doesn't make the source code open. * It only requires source code be viewable by the commission, which is exactly as it is now. The public are now allowed to view the code, however they are not allowed to receive it over the internet, modify it, or redistribute it to anyone. They are also not allowed to use it to make their own voting machine. The bill requires background checks on programmers. * How this affects open source development should be rather obvious. I can't possibly make a voting machine if I have to run background checks on the thousands of people who have contributed to Linux throughout the world. This requirement looks specifically designed to thwart open source development. The bill prohibits distributing voting machine source code over the internet. * This is an effective ban on open source software being used for voting machines. I cannot believe how ignorant or corrupt a politician would have to be to support such a travesty. I knew there was something wrong when Barbara Boxer actually appeared to have done something useful.
I really wished that they had set this limit to increase yearly with inflation. This gives them an excuse years down the road to raise it to something like $5,000, a value which inflation wouldn't have reached yet.
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
And the first salvo goes to Candidate H. Clinton.
Write up a legislative proposal in which most everything sounds good and simple, honest and true. Bury a couple of things in it which are clear attempts at tweaking election results in the favor of the Democrats.
The real key issues here are the election-day registration, and the votes for felons.
Election-day registration is, to me, a nightmare of an idea. Without any undeniable proof of citizenship or way to enforce one and only one vote per person, I can envision buses full of illegal aliens being sent from one precinct to another, adding votes for whatever party is paying them. Over the top? Ridiculous? Perhaps... but then, who would have thought we'd have had a local party rep paying people (WITH COCAINE) to fill out batches of bogus voting registration forms? That happened in Ohio in 2004.
Votes for felons? Well, the current law says they don't have the right to vote. Whether or not that's the right thing to do is certainly debatable. But it's clearly an attempt to generate votes for Democrats -- statistics show that a large majority of felons would likely vote that way.
If Republicans back the bill, they're giving Democrats a potential (and depending on your views, perhaps unfair) advantage in the next elections. If they don't, the Democrats will make the cry "They're against honest votes!" to the media. Repubs are kinda stuck, since they have no way of doing line-item votes.
Now... if a politician actually wanted to FIX the system, instead of twist it to their personal favor, we'd resolve the issue of proving citizenship and voting only once. The first is hard, since the US doesn't really have "citizenship papers" like most other countries. The ink-on-the-thumb solution used by the Afghans and Iraqis seemed a pretty simple solution for the second one.
''(iii) The manufacturer shall ensure that any software used in connection with the voting system is not transferred over the Internet."
... So if I want to examing the software, I can't download it over the internet. OK, I suppose they'll have to have it available on CD.
Hmmm
But this clause seems to say that, if I read that CD on my computer and email you a copy of part of the software, that software instantly becomes illegal to use. The manufacturer did fail to prevent me from transferring a copy to you over the internet.
So if I want to sabotage some voting software, all I need to do is find a copy and email it to a friend. I present evidence to a court that I did this, and the court will issue an order that the software may not be used in a voting machine.
Why would these senators want me (or anyone else with internet access) to be able to do this?
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
dehumanize (...) hence the original poster saying "are we okay with giving a felon back its right to vote?".
:-)
That was me trying to be gender neutral. You sexists, you.
A person is an "it" too. So is "a human".
This PC nonsense would be hard to do in a language like mine, or in German, where the gender of a word does not necessarily have anything to do with sex.
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
I don't like open source. I'm a programmer. I can recall looking at a "how to spot security holes" site, reading some code to find a problem and being unable to find it!
OpenBSD with some of the best, most paranoid code reviewers in the world let slip one hole in the last 8 years. (Might be more by now) That hole was an accident, written by a coder who was trying to do things right and failed. It was not intentionally placed there by someone trying to hide his tracks.
If you want to see hidden tracks, go see some entries in the IOCCC. Some are cleaver enough to fool the judge until the program was run. Now imagine that The author of this entry was trying to cheat the system on a large scale? Could you detect it? I don't think I can. (And I understood that code enough to not be fooled)
The intent behind this is fine, but here's the problem: can you prove that the code you inspected is running on every single voting machine, on voting day? Until you can solve that problem (which I would argue is basically impossible) then these legal improvements are at best small patches on a fundamentally flawed system.
I write about electronic voting in my blog, Paper Vote Canada.
They propose a bill that would make voters produce ID in order to vote. At least that way, we could see what a REAL vote in Illinois would look like.
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
Blame Reagan for the broken Social Security system, since he's the guy that raised the amount taken out of your paycheck to 15% (capped for the wealthy of course). Not only that, blame him and every president since then for loaning the additional $200-300 billion dollars generated by this to the government to be spent elsewhere. Finally, if Bush 43 has his way, you'll be able to blame him for dumping all that extra money into the overvalued stock market. Incidentally, that is just before the baby boomers tap out their mutual fund investments all at once to stagnate/crash the market, thus saving retirement for this generation while screwing the next. Fantastic plan. Boomers: 2 Kids: 0. Any other pearls of wisdom you "fing" interesting? How about this instead: Stop taking my 15% and let me manage my own retirement.
I wonder how many people imagined nitro-glycerine before at last someone lived long enough to be able to have claimed to invent it...
Yet they are against requiring proof of US Citizenship to vote in US national elections...
The US Commission on Civil Rights found massive evidence of voter disenfranchisement. They recommended immediate litigation by the Attorney General's office, a recommendation that was, of course, ignored.
The NORC recount by the media organizations showed that Gore won in a state-wide Florida recount under all standards possible for hanging chads and such. They had half a dozen scenarios for accepting ballots and Gore won in every single scenario.
And that's even after you factor in the obvious GOP cheats like accepting late overseas ballots in GOP counties (and only GOP counties), hiring private companies to "scrub" the voting lists of legal voters (most of whom were black), illegally excluding valid Gore over-votes, and the curious "Jews for Buchanan" phenonemon in Palm Beach. Even after all that crap Gore still would have won if the Republicans had allowed a full, fair, state-wide recount.
Count the votes, Gore wins. Don't count the votes, Bush wins. It was that simple.
Now what we need to do is dissolve the electoral college as it is, and introduce a set up in which everyones vote counts towards an outcome. A system where votes are added up, and the person with the most votes wins. A little more democracy is just what we need. Where it doesn't matter what the majority of the state is, that a republican in Massachusetts, or a Democrat in Virginia knows that their vote does count...
Mabe in my lifetime...
3 degrees of separation from Vladimir Putin
subject goes here
Retired from software... maybe. Sort of.
"...and that the source and object code of all electronic voting machines to be open and readable by the public."
Wow, I'll be impressed beyond belief if the public will be able to read object code.
=\/\/= If it's too loud, turn it down.
In the latest election Diebold delivered the election to the Repubs by an altogether sneakier means. They simply under-delivered machines to those districts which were heavily Democratic and/or delivered "broken" machines to those districts. It worked like a charm. Ohio and Florida were scrutinized closely, but there it appears that this sort of thing went on wherever Diebold and their "brother" company were involved.
-- thinkyhead software and media
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?)
Funny, Deibold seems to get the money I order out of the ATM rights *EVERY TIME* and I've never had a problem with my bank balance - *EVER*.
.mdb file! That costs real money, especially when you're relying on election workers to fix problems in the back end by directly editing the audit log.
So you never had a problem with your piddly little bank balance. This is relevant how? I know a mechanic who lives up the street and fixes my car's water pump and AC all the time. He never screws up, so I'm letting him install a stint in my aorta next week.
Banks insist on proper security features from Diebold. After all, with an ATM, money is involved. If our election commissioners were as demanding as banks, Diebold's voting machines would print the same internal paper receipt that is produced internally by their ATM machines. Diebold saves some money by not including those things. Not only does the printer cost money, it means you have to be able to reconcile the paper receipt with the audit log in the Microsoft Access
Not bad at all. Finally something me and members of a major non-fringe political party can agree on.
I assume you're talking about the 1886 SCOTUS case Santa Clara County (yes, that's Silicon valley) vs. Southern Pacific. Itsaid that corporations had the rights of individuals under the 14th amendment.
Funny how conservatives talk about liberal activist courts. I don't see a single mention of corporations in the 14th amendment.
And obviously corporations have more rights than individuals. Corporations don't have death penalthy cases with a court appointed defense lawyer making $8 an hour. Corporations aren't drafted to fight wars.
The Republican party had rapidly changed, Lincoln said this in 1864: "I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed." However, all 9 justices at the time (and it was a 9-0 ruling) were appointed by Republicans, including 2 by Lincoln himself.
im gladbush won, then i wont have kerry taking my guns and raising taxes even more. You claim and feign poor interface when the vote doesn't go your way. All you people strive for is egalitarian fascism/communism with the exception for the "think for you" "armchair experts on everything" politicians like Kerry. As long as everyone gets fucked equally you are happy. YOU will not take my guns. YOU will not take my rights. YOU will never succeed in breaking the back of "redneck" America with your vile disparaging hypocrisy. Give me non-authoritarian centrist Libertarianism, or give me a break. You fools that shill for the Democrats and somewhat the GOP are a joke. HAHAHAHA. you insinuate the deibold machines got it wrong, when the properly reflected the will of the people and WE WON, and you communists lost. BWAHAHAHHAHA!
You're the same AC who claimed upthread that anyone who uses the term "public interest" is a Communist. Your spelling and grammar gives you away. Why don't you just post under a username, so we can tell who we're talking to without having to rely on your spelling errors? Defend your beliefs like a man.
That's some castration complex you've got going on there with the guns, by the way. I don't know what sissy sidearms you're packing but I personally couldn't care less about them.
It is probably because I'm from Urp, but this behavior is totaly unrational to me, claiming to belong to a political party witch you don't have much in common with.
What is it? is it based on place of birth? on age? on color of your shoes?
And its not just one political party that has this behavior, both Republicans and Democrats have it, extualy most US residents seem to have this emotional tie with there "local" party.
Wouldn't it seem to be the right time to let go of your blind dedication to a certain political body and actualy vote on the party that you agree with on most points?
So, given the ability to vote in what is probably the single most important election the world will see in at least the next four years, you based your decision off of a statistically insignificant sample of attitudes and behaviors that have nothing at all to do with the candidates in question?
Fuck you for being part of the problem.
If other reasons we do lack, we swear no one will die when we attack
. . . to use the parlaince of Yakov Smirnov, in Soviet Russia, not the modern day group of countries that at one time were under control of a communist dictatorship.
"No beer until you finish your tequila!" -Leela's Dad
They can try, but i don't think that it can correct the problem of Democrats losing in a big way.
Sanity is the trademark of a weak mind. -- Mark Harrold
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!
R23well.
it seems like usa has a pretty bad % of volunteers for this stuff. around here they're hand counted, the votes themselfs are numbers on paper. we get first night results, and if the % of people willing to volunteer woulb be the same it would scale pretty well.
though.. the real reason why electronic voting is being pushed is that it's a business. they have an intrest to lobby it through.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
When the bill requiring public school teachers to be homosexual atheist liberals passes.
Not that it isn't a civilized idea but added in the federal holiday almost assures Republicans have an out to vote it down on "corporate freedom" issues.
Every vote counts..but what's more important, is who's counting those votes.
A good friend will help you move. A really good friend will help you move a body.
I think this bill was intended to fail, probably to embarrass republicans.
95% of it is proposing apple pie, the flag, and mom, but the the last bit about allowing ex convicts to vote is perfect fuel for the republican spin doctors who would want to shoot it down.
The people who proposed this bill are seasoned politicians and had to know this so I am concluding it is designed to bait the republicans into voting it down.
Fewer. Your gun has killed fewer people than Ted Kennedy's car.
See, this is what happens when teaching relies too heavily on phonics!
Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
Your question really should be:
Is being convicted of violence that put someone in hospital for two weeks reason enough to be stripped of your voting rights for the rest of your life?
I will agree with your comments as long as the law does very specifically state what deceptive statements are. For instance, listing the wrong date or polling places on a flyer. I'm not sure what else could be included. One could not say that statements like "George Bush: the right choice for liberal America." While he is not a liberal some will argue that he is still the right choice for liberal America. Also it should not be a felony. A misdemeanor punishable with fines and community service should do with that service performed in the community where the deception occurred. My real problem with the bill is automatically giving felons their franchise back. These are not the sorts of people I want participating my government. Additionally felons should not be allowed to hold elected office either. Perhaps some sort of clemency could be used to give felons back the franchise but this should be something one has to work for not just be given.
This is the first proposal by either Clinton or Kerry that I can get completely behind.
Being a Republican (for most intents and purposes) of the opinion that the 2004 election was legitimate, I wholeheartedly support any legislation that will make the election process less succeptible to both fraud and suspicion of fraud.
Bravo!
I wish that my inferiority complex were as good as yours.
-RenderHead
All right!! I've always wanted human-readable object code!
Why, oh why, didn't I take the Blue Pill?
The bill includes a provision for felons who have "paid their debt to society" to be allowed to vote. You have to consider that felons tend to have an anti-social/sociopathic outlook or disorder. The select few are the Jean Valjeans (sp?) of the world who statistically barely exist. Bad idea in the middle of a good bill.
Bang 'ole Bess, man. --BESS
"that the source and object code be readable by humans"
How the heck are they going to make object code readable by humans? A hex listing?
Source code yes but object code? I think this is just a publicity stunt at best or else they would have researched it better.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Deceptive under the bill, section 603, is any intentionally false statement about the time place or manner of a federal election.
Say you were trying to register blacks in florida 40 years ago, or petition to get Nader on the ballot. You might make some innocent mistake about the manner of voting, that has nothing to do with depriving anyone of their voting rights. Now be prepared to defend yourself in court and raise a reasonable doubt that it was unintentional. Good luck with that. It's already hard to recruit volunteers for these kinds of activities. I've had clients who made some innocent mistake about which campaign forms to fill out when be threatened with jail. Bills like this chill free speech, and are selectively enforced in ways that impact racial and political minority groups. It might hold up in court - McCain Feingold did, mostly - but it is badly written and won't accomplish what they want it to.
Also the price tag for this bill is $3 billion for the first year.
The reasoning behind letting a Felon out and still not voting is that while they may have paid back their "Debt" to society, they still have to earn back the trust. That said, not all felons have their voting rights eliminated. Also, felons can get their voting rights back by a court order from a judge.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
However, even with *that* twisted of a sound, "fewer" and "less" hardly sound close enoguh to each other to confuse . .
hawk
hawk
The black helicopters are on the way. Resistance is futile.
Good day!
Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
YOU will never succeed in breaking the back of "redneck" America with your vile disparaging hypocrisy.
Nobody really gives a shit.
If you had a scrap of integrity, however, you would quit living off of my subsidies you fucking pathetic leech.
You prove how arrogant you are by citing grammar and other nonsense when the meaning of the passage is clear.
But I have to cite your "grammar and other nonsense"! You keep posting as an AC, so there's no other way to identify you!
You would have not let Dred Scott have his day in court because "The dumb nigger wasn't educated enough to speak proper English and read."
Eh? Dred Scott? Why don't you just tell people you're talking about outlawing abortion, instead of introducing this code word stuff about slavery and Dred Scott? It's fundamentally dishonest. Hasn't Dred Scott been through enough? Can't the man rest in peace without his former slaveowners digging him up to use as a political cudgel? If you want to outlaw abortion, just be honest and say so. Leave Mr. Scott out of it.
This part is hilarious:
Your reasoning is sad. You are a failed ad-hominem based attacker with little ability to debate. You are a communist who loves bureaucracy against those who expose your fundamentally flawed thinking. Keep speaking. Your own words are a testament to your failure. You own words make it transparent as to the nature of your flawed thinking.
I might say that "you are a failed ad hominem based attacker with little ability to debate", but that would be an ad hominem attack, wouldn't it?
As a "communist" with flawed thinking who denies standing to escaped slaves who are really being used as props in a dishonest argument about abortion, I have to say, although this has been fun, you should really calm down. I've clearly gotten you mad as hell and raised your blood pressure, and stress isn't good for your health! Maybe you should sit back, relax, light a cigarette, and seek a less demanding forum than Slashdot.
Well, the problem is not your guns. The problem is the guns of Pimpy McThugThug in upper Cracktown, and the fact that they can shoot a lot of bullets very quickly and he doesn't really care who's in the general viscinity of his targets.
The problem is Todd, who has been stocking up his army to make all the kids who laughed at him pay.
The problem is Bubba, who knows that The Feds just found out about his 17 wives (13 of which are also his daughters) and isn't going down without a fight (or without his wives).
These people have are neither militiamen nor well-regulated. They stated the intent of the amendment clearly, and it had nothing to do with vigilanteism, hunting, or "rugged individualism" - the right to bare arms is for the purposes of war. Such is the function of a militia. Anyone of those other causes may or may not have merit, but they do not necessarily fall under the 2nd amendment.
Oh, and they did not necessarily say that the purpose of said militia was to overthrow the government - although it was hinted in some letters. And particularly they did not have the obvious bias of only overthrowing left-wing governments.
So, in short: please stop trolling. You're hurting America.
You just dedicated a hundred words to arguing with me over semantics, and I'm the one playing word games?
That's not semantics. That's a straight lie designed specifically to deceive.
The fact that you don't know the difference explains why you fall for the blizzard of propaganda coming from the right these days.
- Hail to our fearless misleader! Fool speed ahead!
Wow, you seem to know an awful lot about me from my position on the 2nd amendment (which is not the same as my position on gun control). Do you tell other people's fortunes too? Do Taco next!
Like I said - you're hurting America.
The next step is to make sure there is good encrption/authentication at each step where the votes are recorded _and_ to have good control of the physical ballots. For example, at each point when a machine is step up and an observer is placed, that observer/tech should record their key. Similarly, whenever ballots are transferred, multiple folks(of different parties) should be in control of the ballots. Still, there is at least a start here.
- http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=327
- http://archive.salon.com/politics/feature/2001/08
/ 04/florida/print.html
- http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=2004051
7 &s=palast
- http://www.newtimesbpb.com/issues/2002-10-31/news
/ news2.html
Friends of freedom ChoicePoint and Katherine Harris play prominent rolls too. Good thing they support the party in power or they'd be in for some serious jail time.Lawsuit on same:
- http://www.naacp.org/news/2000/2000-11-28.html
Enjoy.The corporations selling the voting equipment should only be furnishing the hardware, not the software.
The software should be written by a public open source organization, like the Open Source Applications Foundation(OSAF) or a Sourceforge project. Then all hardware manufacturers must use the same software. When bugs are found in the code, new code should be furnished to the hardware manufacturers.
We are letting the tail wag the dog here. We should be controlling the corporations, not the other way around.