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WI Assembly OKs Voting Paper Trail
AdamBLang writes "Madison Wisconsin's Capitol Times reports 'With only four dissenting votes, the state Assembly easily passed a bill that would require that electronic voting machines create a paper record. The goal of the legislation is to make sure that Wisconsin's soon-to-be-purchased touch screen machines create a paper ballot that can be audited to verify election results.' Slashdot has previously reported on this bill." More from the article: "Wisconsin cannot go down the path of states like Florida and Ohio in having elections that the public simply doesn't trust ... By requiring a paper record on every electronic voting machine, we will ensure that not only does your vote matter in Wisconsin, but it also counts."
Unfortunantly, this paper trail will still record your multiple votes if you live in Milwaukee.
The folks over at Diebold are happy to hear this--now they can charge a whole bunch extra for printers...
Of course they may have to spend it on software fixes...
Its too bad this doesnt work on punch cards, especially with those "pregnant chads"
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
While this will help people put greater trust in the system by providing a paper trail, the core problem is still there. If you can commit fraud by altering a computer system, surely you can commit fraud by altering the part of the system that generates the paper trail, or by altering/switching the paper trail itself. This is a limitation of technological solutions to problems of trust and reciprocity. They always encounter the problem of infinite regress, where the technological solution to a problem (often a problem generated by a previous technological solution) is always able to be undermined. This is one of the arguments why DRM is doomed to fail (eg DVD Jon can always hack the next "improved" version of DRM). In this sense, electronic voting systems are much like DRM: an inevitably limited and imperfect techonological solution that gets in the way of an important process of trust and reciprocity.
I assume that after the vote is cast, the voter can view the receipt. That way they can make sure their vote registered (no more dimple or chad issues). Also, if there's a discrepency between what you actually voted and what the receipt says, you can take it to the election judge.
If it ain't broke, it needs more features!
Oh...nevermind. I made that up. ;P
Blog: http://richardrandomrants.blogspot.com/
This takes care of one issue. Now they need to start requiring a photo id to vote. A couple of state politicians have presented plans that would work, including ones that provide free photo ids to anyone who doesn't have a driver's license. People who didn't have a photo id when they went to vote would still be able to cast their vote, but it would be flagged in case of a recount. The vote would be unflagged if the voter provided a photo id at any point after the vote.
It makes sense, especially when there were many cases of voter fraud in Milwaukee during the 2004 election. Many votes were cast from addresses that don't exist. Granted, a photo id won't solve all the issues with voter fraud, but neither will a paper trail. Both are still a step in the right direction.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
...everybody knows that votes on paper can never be tampered with.
A guy walks into a bar... well, I forgot the joke, but the punchline is that he's an alcoholic.
What would happen if the printer messed up and started printing on the paper ballots a few inches off?
The OSCE has done it before, they have experience and manpower to do this. I say let them survey the next elections in the US. Ironically the US go to war allegedly to bring democracy to other countries.
On se Internetz nobody noes your German.
and here are more or less the electoral fraud techniques used by the party in power for about 70 years:
* "pregnant urns". Before the votes took place, urns were already filled with votes.
* Operation "Carousel" - groups of persons voting twice, or more
* Operation "Tamal" (a tamal is some kind of corn candy kept inside corn leaves). You grab two ballots and fold them, so now you vote for two.
* Operation "Ratón Loco" (crazy mouse). Some guy steals the urns in strategic areas (specially where the opposition is strong) and disappears.
* Vote rewriting. Before impartial organisms counted the votes, the people in charge would alter votes that were against the party in power, and nullify them.
* Dead votes. People who had died managed miraculously to resurrect and vote in favor of the official candidate.
And the most famous of all... (drum rolls, please)
The system crash. In the 1988 elections, after all the ballots were collected, the computer counting the votes suddenly went down, and when the system was up again, the votes now favored the official candidate.
After having to endure all these forms of electoral fraud, laws in Mexico became stricter to make the elections safe from frauds. These laws were promoted and approved, of course, by the opposition congressmen. One of these measures, was the inclusion of photographs in the voting credential (official ID). Another was having a designated area to vote according to your registered address. The voting areas are usually schools or museums, not farther than 5 or 6 blocks from your home.
As a result of all these measures, we finally had a president from the opposition party in 2000.
And it's kinda ironic that we have surpassed the U.S. (whom we had taken as model for transparency and democracy) because of U.S. problems like electronic voting machines, and because we use the popular vote and have more than two political parties.
Analysis from the Legislative Reference Bureau
and
Full text of AB 627, in pdf
Ben Masel: 51,282 votes for US Senate in the Wisconsin Democratic Primary
what we need is simplicity when it comes to voting, not complexity. i believe we should never go to electronic voting, and even get rid of mechanical voting booths, which has a sordid history of tampering
fraud happens in all forms of voting mechanisms, and voting is just too much of an important and vulnerable part of our social cohesion and the source of so much faith in and integrity of our government. being so vital and vulnerable, the point in my mind would be to oversimplify the voting process on purpose. the more complex the system, the more points of failure and the more possibilities of fraud. so make the process very simple: paper ballots
i mean seriously, why the technophilia? voting is a problem that is not solved better with more technology, just made more complex. paper ballots i say. the slashdot crowd of any crowd of people should know all about the various and sordid ways malfeasance can be achieved in electronic communication and electronic storage. voting is not a complex math problem. it's very simple. no computer need apply
the slashdot crowd, as technophilic as it is, should know better than any crowd of people why electronic voting can be a downright scary prospect. don't mess with it, simplify it, which means avoiding computers in the voting process like the plague. i'm not a luddite, i am simply saying that specifically in reference to the voting process, it must be simplified technologically to ensure faith and integrity in our government
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Who voted against it and why? That is to say, who was bribed and who was bribing?
I don't see what the fuss is all about. Many retail stores use (or used to use) a receipt system that is exactly what we're looking for. It was a roll of two-ply paper. One ply came out of the register as the receipt, the other ply spooled up inside the machine as the register journal. SInce both layers were printed to at the same time (the top layer got hit by the inked print head, and the bottom layer was carbon-less carbon copy), both said the exact same thing.
Think about it. You choose your candidate and the receipt prints. You look thru the 'window' and confirm your vote. The 'public' receipt emerges, and you take it home. It contains nothing but the vote, the serial number of the voting machine, and some sort of timestamp, all in english and a machine-readable barcode. This allows for 'manual' recounts, while eliminating the possibility of vote selling (there is no link between the vote and you).
The other copy of your vote remains in the machine, on a big roll of paper. This roll can be run thru a machine reader after the election to verify the votes. Any inconsistancies, and you perform a manual recount (see above).
See? It's really quite simple.
at least in my county they do... machine prints the record which is then viewable to the voter.
Brazil was the first country to use electronic voting system in 1996. In the last election 175 millions of people has vote. Its used on the president election and all others. About 0,5% of the voting machines has some problems in this election. And sometimes this votes really matters, most on some municipal elections, where the differences are really small. Unhappily they used windows...
The pregnant chads will reproduce themselves, so Florida will be the easiest state to count.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
reading all the blasted things requires a machine
of course, the reading machine is a source of fraud and failure right there, but i don't want 100 old ladies tabluating precincts for four months, so automatic reading becomes unavoidable. scanning a bunch of paper ballots might take a few hours, while tabulating a database might take a few minutes, but hours versus minutes is a tradeoff that SHOULD be palatable to people. even though we both know somebody somewhere will be impatient, but fuck them, they can stew a bit. so not instantaneous, but speedy enough to get results the next day
as for preparing the paper ballot, no machine need be involved. it's just as time consuming and, a case could be made, LESS daunting and complicated for voters (and costs a hell of a lot less) to fill out a paper ballot with a number two pencil than it is to tap on a screen
what do you trust? a machine controlled by the government? or a number 2 pencil? opportunity for fraud is increased with a complex machine involved in any part of the process
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
In my county (Summit) we don't even use machines, good old punch cards!
In any decently-sized business in the financial services industry, it is generally corporate standard to have audit trails for any non-trivial work that is done.
For example, software that is more than 50-100 LOC and not written as a "one-off" app generally must be documented with a project proposal, requirements, design, and testing docs, and so forth. It depends on the size, scope, business need, computing environment impact, etc. of the app, but other documents -- such as a cost/benefit analysis, architectural board approval doc, a traceability matrix, etc. -- may be required too.
What about government? Why should the process by which the democratic part of the election of our republican form of government be subject to any less oversight and bureaucracy than the financial industry?
It should not be news that the government is finally getting around to doing what it has demanded of industry via burdensome regulation for years or even decades... It is hypocritical and -- for a supposedly "free market" economy like that of the U.S. -- economically bass-ackwards to have such a situation as this.
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
In other news, Gov. Jeb Bush has signed a contract with Diebold for a system that can provide an electronic audit trail for Florida's paper ballots. Gov. Bush said "This is a great day for democracy. We will now have the capability to handle vote recounts in a fraction of a second."
Most states don't even really try to keep illegal immigrants from voting! The voter fraud in this country is getting out of hand and it has nothing to do with voting machines since it's a basic human problem. The bleeding hearts want the illegals to have a legal ability to drive or to pander for their illegal vote and the fat cats want the cheap labor.
Why don't we instead hear about them passing a new law that abolishes the old voter fraud statute and instead puts "intentionally false voting or aiding and abetting the same" as a possible condition for being prosectued for attempting to overthrow the democratically elected government? Seriously, what is voter fraud if not a low level attempt at a coup, especially if it actually changes the outcome of an election?
If there was any justice in this country, anyone convicted of organizing voter fraud would be given life in prison or, depending on the scale executed, and the regular plebes would be slapped with a minimum of a five year felony prison sentence. Of course part of the common excuses that the politicians and workers use is that people show up demanding their right to vote without having registered or that certain groups scream "disenfranchisement!" If you haven't registered to vote, tough luck and if you don't have an ID on you, I don't care what your skin color is, get out of the precinct as you have no right to participate if you won't prove that you're a citizen with the legal right to vote.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
Does anyone else think we should simply abolish political parties? Enough infrastructure has grown up outside of them to publicly, privately and illicitly back and fund any candidate that a particular think-tank, movement, foundation, PAC or other organization wants to see in office, so what purpose are parties serving other than being nuclei for political machines and holding back the entire system of government through allegiance catfights?
All we'd have to do is declare all political parties null and void and let the new political institutions drop into place where they already were.
cut the costs
how much does 100 number two pencils cost versus a touchscreen?
improve the speed of counting
i'll grant you that
give people more security
no: the more complex the system, the more avenues for exploitation
so you have 1 out of 3, i have 2 out of 3
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Someone passed common sense through this god forsaken state.
You don't know Wisconsin very well. If Madison didn't swing Democrat, there would be all kinds of warning bells and accusations of fraud being thrown around. Hell, Wisconsin voted for Dukakis. What does that tell you about the ticket?
I've always been surprised about the vote in Wisconsin, however. While Madison is extremely liberal, the rest of the state tends to be very conservative. (Thus the phrase, "Madison is 12 square miles surrounded by reality.") Yet the democrats always win in Federal elections, usually by a significant margin. My only theory is that Wisconsinites still have generational memories of Mccarthy. His little witch hunt for communists made Wisconsin look bad, and it didn't help the Republican party either. There had to have been a backlash against Republicans. Now the current generation of voters vote for Democrats because their parents did, and they don't even know the reason why.
It's just a theory, but it would explain a LOT.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
So someone in power in WI finally got hit with a "clue-stick"? I mean, wow, this kindof thing should be so obvious; I'm amazed they actually allowed a real vote in some states last election with zero audit-trail. Luckily I was able to vote in NV last election (all the electronic vote machines here had to have a paper audit trail last election).
We're so busy celebrating this, what of other states?
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Three times Governor Doyle vetoed the requirement for a photo ID. The fiasco in Milwaukee wasn't enough. This idiot Gov'nor won't allow us to validate the people who are voting! Currently the state allows same day registration. You can walk up to the voting booth (even if you don't have an ID) and register to vote. All you need is someone else there to "vouch" for you. ...It's corruption at the highest level.
Make people prove who they are if they want to vote!
reading all the blasted things requires a machine
A machine will make it a little faster, but it's not required. With machines counting what amount to scantron sheets, we start getting returns as little as a few minutes after the polls close. With paper counted by humans it might take a few hours, but you can still have pretty complete results in the morning.
Canada, which has a population similar to that of California, still uses paper for federal elections. They're counted by pairs (or more if their are more candidates) of real live people, who are party reps, at the end of the night. They don't even use a machine to mark the ballots-- just a pen.
I'd be more than happy to mark my ballot with a pen and have opposing party reps sit and count them together (along with whoever else wants to watch).
I don't even care if it takes a couple days to get the results. The less hype around instant knowledge of the outcome the better. People can take their time and get the count right.
But if you do the math, it's entirely possible to count each precinct accurately by hand at the end of the night. The throughput for voting is really low--it takes a long time to get people checked in and get the ballots marked up, but they all get marked in the 12 hours from 8 am to 8 pm, with a lot of dead time when most people are at work. Counting them is a much higher throughput activity, and there isn't the built in dead-time that goes with having a polling place waiting for people to show up.
I asked a poll worker how everything worked and he explained how it was all "triple redundant" and that "my vote would count this time". Other than that, I couldn't get much more out of him as he was busy. I'd like to know what role the paper copy plays in the official results. If the paper copies are only used in recounts, then all a crafty attacker would have to do is make sure he altered the votes enough that any recount would not need to be triggered.
Issues 2-5 went down hard when there were some polls that showed them ahead a few days before the election. I'm a bit suspicious when I hear issue 2 is going to pass 60/40 and it gets shut down 35/65 (or something similar).
Exactly! The US has a huge amount of people voting as well (100+ million) -- electronic voting allows decreased costs (know how much the paperwork for voting takes to publish and distribute every election?) and a highly accurate vote count. I've used electronic voting in the last few elections here in California (and used again last week) -- no paper trail, simple touch-screen voting process -- easy to read, choose, and verify (it reviews my selections at the end). Having used electronic systems for tests, company questionaires, and other data-recording purposes I have no problem or discomfort with this. 0.5% of the voting machines have problems? Now I'll admit that 0.5% of 175 million is still a pretty big number (I work in the semiconductor industry -- we strive for 0.001% failure rate or better) it's miniscule compared to the failure rate of paper ballots. I'd say the whole concern is media hype, but reading here on slashdot (which I would have thought to be less technophobic) proves otherwise. Maybe we're just more paranoid?
What about electronic scanning of paper ballots. I remember in college some of my libral arts courses had massive amounts of students and we would take our multi-choice test on ScanTron cards. I don't see what would be so hard about putting a stack of cards through a reader. The voter would know that there vote is recorded on the card correctly, the counting would be quick and not error prone. All we would need to do is check the source code and we could all be happy, happy voters. Why not?
Welcome to the land of the free...pay toll ahead...no photography...please open your bag...
The new printers on the Sequoia machines worked. Well worked well enough. I work as a ROV'er for my county's registar of voters, and we had 5 out of 25 printers jam in the 4 precincts I covered. Replacing them was as simple as turning the machines off and replacing the printer, which used a lpt cable. The machines run linux on AMD Geode 300 MHz procs with 64 megs of ram.
"we will ensure that not only does your vote matter in Wisconsin, but it also counts."
Sorry, but they may be able to guarantee only the last part of the statement. Voting is a way of reducing a big number (the votes) to a small number (the elected). As this reduction factor is usually in the order of thousands (local) to even milions (presidential elections), the chance that your vote has any effect is likewise one in thousands to milions. Democracy is a way of deluding individual people that their single vote can influence the powers that be. That is not true: You can stay at home, and the outcome of an election will be exactly the same (minus that one vote).
The only way we can achieve a form of democracy in which your opinion may make a difference, is by creating a kind of moderated idea outliner where people can bring in their arguments and facts regarding any subject. Each fact/argument would be included only once. You would create openness, and improve the quality of decisions because smarter solutions can be considered. Even if those are not available, the stupidity of some solutions brought clearly forward helping to prevent politicians from implementing them.
Dutchmen can see a (primitive) example at www.democratie-nu.org
Bert
For a regular November election in the States we may be filling 20 -30 offices, plus a referendum or 4, or 15 in California or Oregon, so hand counting's not so simple. If you pass the paper ballots to pairs of humans each counting a distinct office, you end up with "Did i count that stack yet?" Canada doesn't map.
Ben Masel: 51,282 votes for US Senate in the Wisconsin Democratic Primary
Pat Robertson said the United States should assassinate the president of Venezuela. You know what pisses me off the most about that? If I tell people I'm a Christian, they'll think I agree with people like him. :-\
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
If they were truly serious they would also require photo id's to vote, and eliminate same day registration.
My Weblog
Any paper trail is worthless unless each voter is able to verify the printed record, *AND* the printed record is considered equivalent to any other vote. The Wisconsin bill only requires that a paper record be produced, not that the voter can see it. Why is this so important? Because of the FEC source code review clusterfuck.
HAVA [Help America Vote Act] gives the FEC governance over electronic voting, including establishing source code review procedures for all machines used in a Federal election (read: all voting machines). However, there are so many flaws in the FEC review procedure that it's downright scarry.
1. Coding standards more concerned with technical compliance than correct function. Turns out, the coding standards say more about the correct format of a "for" statement, or the appropriate amount of boilerplate documentation per method, than they do about defining correct operation, error tollerance, or anything else.
2. FEC code review doesn't cover "libraries". Want to include malicous code that only kicks in on the appropriate date, with sufficient voting volume to bury aberation in the noise? Throw it in a library, and use it in the project. Want to be really sneaky? Rebuild an open source library, or some external piece like a database driver or print driver with your malicous code.
3. Fudging alowed in FEC testing. System can't stay stable enough to run 100,000 votes sequentially on a single machine? Throw in automatic application restarts at a set interval into your test harness backend; test harness code isn't reviewed.
4. No enforcement procedure to verify reviewed code is the code running on election day. Not even checksums are required to verify compiled libraries/assmblies/executables are the same as the day they were submitted for review.
5. Reviewer incompetence. FEC reviewers may not be familiar with the language being reviewed. One claimed unequivocally that "length" was a Java keyword, and as such, couldn't be used as a variable name (a glance at the Java spec confirms his mistake). Why? Since it was used without parens like a method call, it must be a keyword.
6. Bogus documentation passes inspection. Don't have all the required class/method/variable documentation for the 2002 standards? Write a comment generator, fix it up a little by hand, and you're set!
OK, so the coding review and coding standards suck. What's that have to do with the voter verifiable paper trail? Everything. Unless the voter can visually check the ballot (and ideally should have to "sign off on it" before the electonic vote is committed), what's to stop hidden/poorly reviewed code from altering the printout *AND* the electronic vode database?
What about the paper receipt being equivelent to a traditional paper ballot? Some voting legeslation only allows the paper ballot to be used for verification, not as a true ballot. So, while you may recount the paper trail, the numbers from the recount are not legally votes, and cannot be used to change the outcome of an election (a fact that would be gleefully used by the conveniently "winning" side in a contested election). The Wisconsin bill does not specify in this matter.
How can we do better? Take a look at the procedure recommended by the Open Voting Consortium http://www.openvotingconsortium.org/>. The *primary* representation of a vote is the printed paper ballot, with a machine readable representation output beside the human readable representation. After voting concludes, each paper ballot is scanned, and compared to the electronic count.
By the way, hope your voting machine vendor has valid source control procedures (like not using a single account for all checkins?), so a malicious contractor can't check in random changes to the code base/libraries. [Evil laughter...]
Scott Severtson
Senior Architect, Digital Measures
It pisses me off when people stereotype other people, too.
Just give a hint that you may have voted for George W. Bush, for instance, and some people automatically assume you are a bloodthirsty war-advocate, and dress and look like the rich guy printed on the 'Community Chest' cards in the game Monopoly.
resigned
Do your headline writers know that to those of us outside the USSA "WI" stands for "Womens' Institute"?
now they can charge a whole bunch extra for printers...
The printers are free. But the ink costs $1,000 per cartridge.
paintball
Finland has ~5M ppl and uses paper ballots that are counted by hand in a matter of days. Why can't US cities and counties of similar size use this old system? Just scale up the number of people doing the counting.
'Once scientists, even the dim-witted social scientists, get muzzled, the Western Civilization is finished.' - oldhack
With the old system its almost trivial to modify some votes... With a electronic one, i believe is more difficult to change a small part of votes
you're absolutely right, with an electronic one, it is more difficut to change a small amount of votes... because with an electronic one, it is easier to change a LARGE part of votes
you don't have to be paranoid to appreciate what i am saying: which system is more trustworthy? answer: the LEAST complex system. is trustworthiness in a voting system important or not? to think that trust is an important element, nay, the MOST important element, is that paranoid or not?
it's also the cheapest
yes, it's a lot slower
but i'll take cheap and trustworthy but slow over more expensive, more error or fraud prone, but fast any day
what do you value most in a voting system?
trsutworthiness/ error/ fraud vulnerability? cost? speed?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
but you didn't address what i was saying: more complexity=more chance for fraud
additionally, my way is also cheaper
handicapped, blind, spanish speaking?
i believe large print paper ballots, braille paper ballots, and spanish ballots address all of your concerns, and again, a lot cheaper and less error/ fraud prone
so what do you value? more trustworthy, cheap, but slow?
or more error/ fraud prone, more expensive, but fast?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Each county does things differently... so, what I said probably is only true in one. sorry for the uh, misinformation.
Yeah, but the problem with paper votes is that they are easily fraudable. All I have to do is have my vote counters damage the ballots of my opponent and they will become rejected. I can do this in any way, by making an extra mark (voting twice invalidates), by accidentally ripping one, etc.
The powers that be that are arguing against electronic voting are basically arguing to keep the old games in check. They will use the paper trail to trump the more accurate results of the machine and have something to manipulate and anyone that believes otherwise is a moron.
This is my sig.
When the original count was done the results showed that the Republican candidate had won by a 173 vote margin. However, someone noticed that the Republican candiate was coming in as a Democrat in this one district so anyone who voted a straight-party democratic ticket was inadvertently casting votes for the Republican candidate.
A hand recount was ordered and after the recount it was found that the Republican candidate had a 2 vote margin (not in the article but the local news has stated this). This isn't the end though. The provisional ballots still have to be counted.
Maybe in the end the Republican candidate will still win but had a paper trail not been available, and someone sharp enough to notice the discrepancy, a recount would have been nearly impossible using only the computerized records.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Yeah, "disputed elections", that's what we've got. Are you reading these articles, or are you living in the 19th Century?
--
make install -not war
You should have to register to vote and give a fingerprint, then sign on to the system with said fingerprint.
That would cut out quite a bit of fraud.
Also, just a note, the voting machines in ohio (I live there) do take both the electronic vote and print something, I heard a printer in the machine when I submitted the ballot.
There also needs to be a consistent and reliable way (technological or procedural) to make sure that the votes cast on the machine are cast once and only once by a living, breathing legal citizen of the United States who is eligible to vote.
Conclusion? Mexico seems to have been slowly and steadily improving as some adjacent parts of the US seem to have been steadily going downhill, electorally.
Pining for the fjords
If you'll take a gander at the following: http://bigpicture.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized /where.jpg. You'll see that Kerry had very strong showings in large urban counties with high population densities. The fact that Kerry got about 48% of the popular vote is due to the very large margins that he accumulated in few heavily populated urban counties.
If you do a bit of homework you'll find that seven states: Washington, Oregon, Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Illinois, would have been won by Bush but for the largest urban county (please note the singular tense) in each of those states.
Furthermore, New York State would have fallen into the Bush column but for NYC, and California was but three counties (LA County, SF County, and Contra Costa County) from going into the Bush column.
The point of my post is that the US is divided, politically, into urban, and non-urban political spheres. The Demos win LARGE margins in urban counties, but the GOP hold sway in the vast majority of non-urban counties. This has lead to very close elections in 2000, and 2004 in terms of the popular vote.
"Oh drat these computers, they're so naughty and so complex, I could pinch them." --Marvin the Martian
Connecticut passed a similar law last July, thanks to pressure from citizen action groups. All DRE machines must include paper verification.
I can't decide if this post is interesting, funny, insightful, or flamebait.
I failed in the parent post to point out that if either Milwaukee County, or Dane county, not to mention both were subtracted from the rest of Wisconsin in the 2004 election, Wisconsin would have gone Bush.
For Michigan it was Wayne County,
for Oregon it was Multnomah County,
for Minnesota it was Hennepin County,
for Pennsylvania it was Philadelphia County,
for Washington it was King County,
and of course for Illinois it was Cook County.
Each of these counties are the most populus in their respective states.
"Oh drat these computers, they're so naughty and so complex, I could pinch them." --Marvin the Martian
As a campaigner here in AZ against Prop 200, I suppose I have to answer, although it seldom appears that explaining this results in much information being absorbed. Warning: as some actual facts are included below, it's a fairly lengthy post.
First, prop 200 requires proof of citizenship in order to register to vote. This makes it extraordinarily difficult to register people. In the past, voter registration drives have generally been run (by both parties and nonpartisan groups) by going out to where people are, with a table or some clipboards, and getting them to sign up. This is no longer possible; people need to have a copy of their birth certificate, naturalization papers or passport with them, and attach a photocopy of it to their registration form. This pretty much means no one can register without planning to do so and going down to the county recorder's office during business hours. This isn't exactly a flat bias, either; it's much more difficult for people who are less likely to have their paperwork carefully filed away where they can get it (students, the poor, non-native-english-speakers) and those who have less free or flexible time to deal with the problem (pretty much the same list.) (Caveat: the big exception is that if you have a recent, Arizona driver's license, you've already dealt with the same problem at the DMV and don't need to again. That's many eligible voters but far from all. OTOH, if you have changed your name - usually because you married - you also need the documentation of that name change attached. Sorry, ladies!)
Then we get to actually voting. Now you need to bring proof of identity with you to the polls. These rules were only finalized a few weeks ago, so apologies if I get any details wrong. Your proof of ID has to be government-issued photo ID, or else the typical pain-in-the-ass of multiple utility bills or the like. In either case the address must match the address you're registered at, which legally has to be your current residence - moved since you got your driver's license five years ago? Sorry! A student in a dorm who doesn't get utility bills? Oops! The same groups, again, have a harder time voting. The alert Slashdot security geek, or anyone who has ever gotten into a bar with a fake ID, will note that this methodology isn't exactly a vast increase in security. It will, however, make lines at the polls a lot longer, particularly in places with high concentrations of - again - students, transient people, non-english-speakers. And it raises the bar for knowing the rules in advance. Who's least likely to get the information about the new rules? You guessed it. Who has the least flexibility in their lives to devote a couple of hours to the voting process? Yup.
We had to fight to get these rules as lenient as they are, actually; at least if you don't meet the ID requirement, you're supposed to be able to vote a provisional ballot, although the process for counting those leaves a great deal to be desired. It took a veto by our governor, gods bless her, to get that far - even though it would seem to be a basic, fundamental idea to anyone who actually cared about vote integrity: no ID? we'll check your status afterwards.
Meanwhile, the real hole in the voting system - I don't consider this an actual problem, but certainly from a security geek standpoint it's the obvious point of attack - is voting by mail. Far easier to fake in quantity than it is at the actual polls, right? No ID requirement was added to VBM at all. Yup. Show up in person, you're lucky you don't have to take a DNA scan. Send in a piece of paper from anywhere in the world, no effort is made to verify its source whatsoever. Who's least likely to vote by mail? There we are again.
The list of peop
No not good enough. you have no wa of knowing that the machine isn't tampered with later.
The only way to be sure is for each ballot to have a unique key that you tear off when you vote. Later you can use a database server of some kind (probably web based) to check that the vote stored is the vote you made. Obviously, people must also be able to consolodate their lookups by having the ability (but not the requirement) to inform political organizations what their key and votes were. Perhaps a unique subkey could be used to allow voters to give information about one particular vote only leaving all others unrevealed.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
On 2005-11-21, the California Secretary of State will hold a hearing regarding the recertification of several Diebold voting systems. Anyone in the Sacramento area with something to say, please attend.
The Notice: http://www.ss.ca.gov/elections/voting_systems/agen da_112105.pdf
Thank you for your post, and I appreciate your courteous reply, although our opinions may differ. I was going to point out the reason many people object to these reasonable fraud-reducing measures, but you did it for me. The reason, quite simple, is that these mysterious people ("students, the poor, non-native-english-speakers") are, in fact, the democratic voting bloc. I am not a Republican nor a Democrat, but it is obvious to a free-thinker that the real reason most people either support or oppose these measures are not because they care (or don't care), but because these people traditionally vote Democratic. Although you mentioned this, it bears repeating.
Voting is a major responsibility and a major right that should not be taken lightly. I am sure you are opposed to military recruiters walking around with billboards asking people to sign away four years or more of their life without a second thought, why wouldn't you be opposed to signing someone up for the power of controlling the lives of everyday Americans that same way? It should not be taken lightly, it should be something that you must sit down and think about before you go and do it.
Your next issue is showing photo ID at voters booths. This, with all due respect, I feel is a radical belief if you do not feel that voters should show ID when they vote. You may speak about the "mythical" voting fraud that occurs (but everybody here has an opinion when the subject of electronic voting comes up), but if it doesn't exist (which I'm just giving you the benefit of the doubt), why allow the potential?
"In either case the address must match the address you're registered at, which legally has to be your current residence - moved since you got your driver's license five years ago? Sorry!"
I don't know for sure, since my state (New York) requires you change your address on your license within 10 days of moving, but isn't this the case in Arizona? There is no fee to do this. I don't think this is a big request.
"the obvious point of attack - is voting by mail. Far easier to fake in quantity than it is at the actual polls, right?"
Have you ever voted by absentee before? I did, last week. I had to request the ballot, which came with an envelope with my name, address, district, town, all the works on it. There is no way, if everybody does it this way (and I don't know whether or not they do) that this can be exploited.
By the way, one more thing, McCain is not a conservative, he is a liberal with an "R" on his name. I'm sure you'd say the opposite about former Senator Zell Miller, and I would agree.
"Meanwhile, the number of legitimate people denied the right to vote by paperwork problems, poll worker errors, long lines they don't have the time off to stand in, and the like is somewhere in the region of five percent."
How come we didn't hear about this five percent when Clinton was in office? Quite frankly, I feel this is one of those "lies, damn lies, and statistics" polls. I don't see how anyone without a motive (and Democrats' motive is to make sure their poor, students, and non-English speakers vote without problems, no matter what fraud may occur) can think that the people disenfranchised by requiring a proper ID when you vote outweighs the potential fraud that is prevented. Honestly, it's not that hard to get an ID, or a utility bill, or some other form of ID.
Again, thank you for the respectful post, however, as it's always enjoyable to have a reasonable discourse with someone whose opinion may differ.
they had paper trails for their last election.
Yes, but the people was forbidden to count them.
Electronic voting machines in general only serve to increase the probability of fraud.
The counting of votes must be done publicly using a system that can be verified by everyone.
A computer that counts the votes simply cannot do that.
My heart is pure, but make no mistake, it's pure evil
Jack
if you have a system with 10 gears, and you have another system with 100 gears, the one with more gears has more places it can fail or be sabotaged on purpose
if you have a voting system with electronic communication/ storage, the myriad ways in which it can fail or be purposely altered are orders of magnitude more varied than with simple pencil and paper
do you understand the concept?
it can never, ever possibly be less error/ fraud-prone
it is a simple matter of increasing complexity
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
And how many times have you cast your vote based upon which candidate spent the most money on TV and radio ads?... or is it just everybody else?
I look at it this way. If it takes George Bush being President to get our voting systems reviewed and all the dirty laundry brought out in the open then I say "so be it".
Fraudulent voting was not a problem until the people relying on it saw it used against them or had it thwarted. Electronic voting put a big crimp in the works of those who relied on fradulent voting. As such they had to scare the public into believing the old system's amount of fraud while verifiable was "manageable".
Look at Chicago and its elections. People joke about dead people and people voting multiple times because a "joke" is the last bastion of those who have already giving up. The apathy about it simply turned into morbid humor.
I do like how some groups toss Ohio out there as an example of distrust or voter fraud when it was never a close contest. It simply was the closest state to victory of one part over another. Two other states showed much more possibly voter fraud but have been overlooked simply because of the party they went for. In other words, when you lose make sure people think the other side cheated, after all losing because you fail to appeal the majority isn't much fun.
Verifiable voting and verifiable voters are BOTH needed. Having one without the other leaves the problem unfixed.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Well, so civil a reply deserves one in kind, even if no one is reading any more.
/.ers would know. Almost all republicans holding elected office in AZ distanced themselves from Prop 200, though I admit some were just holding their tongues so's not to anger constituents.
Your next issue is showing photo ID at voters booths. This, with all due respect, I feel is a radical belief if you do not feel that voters should show ID when they vote. You may speak about the "mythical" voting fraud that occurs (but everybody here has an opinion when the subject of electronic voting comes up), but if it doesn't exist (which I'm just giving you the benefit of the doubt), why allow the potential?
Just to make sure we're clear: vote fraud, of all sorts, is probably pretty common. Exactly how common is obviously unknown. But vote fraud by means of having unregistered people vote or people vote more than once is a vanishingly small problem. It's not just me saying this; there are no known election-changing cases of this happening in, at a minimum, decades, and it isn't particularly hard to detect after the fact if you go look. If you think about it, stealing an election by getting enough people to vote illegally and not getting caught is pretty difficult, certainly compared to other methods availible.
Now, I consider the vote sacred and election fraud to be high treason. I would be thrilled to ID everyone infallibly at the polls. But there aren't any freebies here; measures like this that attempt to catch fake voters are going to stop a much larger number of real voters from voting.
I don't know for sure, since my state (New York) requires you change your address on your license within 10 days of moving, but isn't this the case in Arizona? There is no fee to do this. I don't think this is a big request.
Changing your address is free, but actually getting a license with your new address - which is all that will help you - is not; I think it's $15. Little enough to you and me, maybe, but... And I don't think anyone seriously expects that students will replace their driver's licenses every September and June. Should they, legally? Sure. Will they? No. Is not getting to vote an appropriate penalty for that? Absolutely not.
By the way, one more thing, McCain is not a conservative, he is a liberal with an "R" on his name. I'm sure you'd say the opposite about former Senator Zell Miller, and I would agree
Well, that's a bit silly - McCain is a stout conservative on just about every issue of fundamental importance to conservatives; he just doesn't always march in step on more debatable issues. But its' beside the point; I was just picking a name
How come we didn't hear about this five percent when Clinton was in office?
People who are in this game for purely partisan reasons are certainly making more noise about it these days, and DREs have raised the general conciousness about election problems in general, but plenty of groups interested purely in a legitimate election process - People for the American Way, say - have been pointing to this for a long time.
Quite frankly, I feel this is one of those "lies, damn lies, and statistics" polls.
This is pretty much hard data. We know the fraction of ballots that are 'spoiled' and never counted - varies widely, but worth 1-2% on average; from things like provisional ballots and records of people turned away at polls we know a lot about how many people try to vote and fail because of ID or address problems. 5% certainly isn't an exact figure, but it's the ballpark we're in; it's clearly more than the margin of many elections.
I don't see how anyone without a motive (and Democrats' motive is to make sure their poor, students, and non-English speakers vote without problems, no matter what fraud may occur) can think that the people disenfranchised by requiring a proper ID when you vote outweighs the potential fraud that is prevented. Honestly, it's not that hard to get a
Furthermore, New York State would have fallen into the Bush column but for NYC
I beg to differ. Subtract New York City and Kerry/Edwards has 2,486,265 votes (including the Working Families Party) to Bush/Cheney's 2,375,033 (including the Conservative Party). That's a margin of 111,232 votes. Subtract Long Island (Nassau and Suffolk counties) and it's still 1,847,286 Kerry to 1,776,729 Bush. A margin of 70,557 votes. Either way it would have made us quite the battleground state but Bush still loses.
You underestimate the Democratic Party in Upstate New York (mostly urban but also rural) and the fact that New York Republicans are typically fiscally conservative Republicans -- not religious right Republicans -- and they probably had a hard time voting for Bush.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
It's better to spend tax money on verified voting than the billions wasted in Iraq. Nearly 9 billion has gone unaccounted for with no oversight from the Republican-controlled Congress.