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Voting Isn't Easy, Even if Cheating Is
Diebold also builds automated teller machines (ATM), the definitive model for reliability and accountability.
The AccuVote machines are what they are, not due to poor design or unintentional mistake. They are the result of a deliberate intent to enable fraud on a massive scale. Viewed from this perspective, the AccuVote design is very good. The real problem comes when Diebold realizes that it needs to become better at obfuscation and makes it harder to detect the fraud.
"Electronic voting machines with no paper trail are an insult to democracy," writes pieterh. "That they come with switches to bypass even the dubious 'safeguards' provided is hardly a surprise."
Paper trails, of course, are only as good as the people guarding the paper; readers familar with more recent allegations of vote manipulation may be interested in the 1946 confrontation in Athens, Tennessee (pointed out by reader William J. Poser) between WWII veterans and the election officials.
Reader Soong, though, provides a conspiracy-free explanation for the presence of such a switch:
Several readers pointed out that voters might better trust the machines as well as the process of electronic voting if regulation were more rigorous; as reader Animats puts it, "slot machine standards are much tighter":The ability to boot from different sources is a normal debugging feature, not in itself sinister. Should they have cleaned that up on the production model? Yeah, sure. But verifiability is ultimately a human concern anyway, not a tech one.
It all comes down to who you trust.
If you don't trust the polling place, make the voting machine tamper proof. But then you have to trust the guy who built the voting machine. You have to trust the guy who loaded the software on it at the factory or the elections office. You have to trust the guy who wrote the code. Even if you inspected the code, you have to trust him to give you a binary based on that and not pull a fast one. You have to trust his compiler to give him a binary without compiled in back doors. I feel like I probably haven't listed all the points where this voting machine chain of trust can break down.
The Nevada Gaming Control Board has technical standards for slot machines. They've had enough fraud over the years that they know what has to be done. Some highlights:Even if e-voting machines had a spec list that would pass at the Gaming Commission, Midnight Thunder is puzzled that tamper-proofing techniques aren't more evident on the Diebold machines:
- ... must resist forced illegal entry and must retain evidence of any entry until properly cleared or until a new play is initiated. A gaming device must have a protective cover over the circuit boards that contain programs and circuitry used in the random selection process and control of the gaming device, including any electrically alterable program storage media. The cover must be designed to permit installation of a security locking mechanism by the manufacturer or end user of the gaming device.
- ... must exhibit total immunity to human body electrostatic discharges on all player-exposed areas. ...
- A gaming device may exhibit temporary disruption when subjected to electrostatic discharges of 20,000 to 27,000 volts DC ... but must exhibit a capacity to recover and complete an interrupted play without loss or corruption of any stored or displayed information and without component failure. ...
- Gaming device power supply filtering must be sufficient to prevent disruption of the device by repeated switching on and off of the AC power. ... must be impervious to influences from outside the device, including, but not limited to, electro-magnetic interference, electro-static interference, and radio frequency interference.
- All gaming devices which have control programs residing in one or more Conventional ROM Devices must employ a mechanism approved by the chairman to verify control programs and data. The mechanism used must detect at least 99.99 percent of all possible media failures. If these programs and data are to operate out of volatile RAM, the program that loads the RAM must reside on and operate from a Conventional ROM Device.
- All gaming devices having control programs or data stored on memory devices other than Conventional ROM Devices must:
- Employ a mechanism approved by the chairman which verifies that all control program components, including data and graphic information, are authentic copies of the approved components. The chairman may require tests to verify that components used by Nevada licensees are approved components. The verification mechanism must have an error rate of less than 1 in 10 to the 38th power and must prevent the execution of any control program component if any component is determined to be invalid. Any program component of the verification or initialization mechanism must be stored on a Conventional ROM Device that must be capable of being authenticated using a method approved by the chairman.
- Employ a mechanism approved by the chairman which tests unused or unallocated areas of any alterable media for unintended programs or data and tests the structure of the storage media for integrity. The mechanism must prevent further play of the gaming device if unexpected data or structural inconsistencies are found.
- Provide a mechanism for keeping a record, in a form approved by the chairman, anytime a control program component is added, removed, or altered on any alterable media. The record must contain a minimum of the last 10 modifications to the media and each record must contain the date and time of the action, identification of the component affected, the reason for the modification and any pertinent validation information.
- Provide, as a minimum, a two-stage mechanism for validating all program components on demand via a communication port and protocol approved by the chairman. The first stage of this mechanism must verify all control components. The second stage must be capable of completely authenticating all program components, including graphics and data components in a maximum of 20 minutes. The mechanism for extracting the authentication information must be stored on a Conventional ROM Device that must be capable of being authenticated by a method approved by the chairman.
Those standards cover the possibility of an "alternate program" in a slot machine, and provide a way to check for it, with logs and an external program check capability.
The Gaming Control Board of Nevada was asked to take a look at Diebold, and Nevada rejected Diebold equipment as a result.
Voting machines need tough standards like that. They don't have them.
Several readers are for canning electronic voting for U.S. elections completely. Reader Iamthefallen wants to knowGiven taxi meters and electricity meters both have tamper seals, you would have thought that these would have visible tamper seals as well. If in doubt you could even have two tamper seals: one from Diebold and another from the voting commission, in order to ensure that both parties are satisfied with the state of the machine.
Similarly, slofstra writesHas anyone answered the question regarding need for automated vote counting in a satisfactory way?
Seems to me that manual counting of votes would be vastly more secure as it would take a huge conspiracy to affect the result either way.
Counting a hundred million votes is hard, counting a thousand votes in a hundred thousand locations is easy.
Sorry, I have never seen the point of these machines. Paper ballots are auditable, user friendly, and if electronics is put into the reporting system, can be counted in a few minutes and submitted. Voting machine are a perfect example of a technology fetish at work. It would make an interesting case study to examine the economic and sociological reasons why we sometimes buy technology that we don't need, don't want and further, serves no useful purpose.
(Augmenting electronic voting machines with a paper record is a frequently raised idea; reader megaditto, for one, asks "Is it that hard to put a thermal printer behind a glass shield?" A similar system is required in Nevada voting machines already.)
Paper ballots and electronic ones aren't the only options, though; lever-based voting machines have dominated recent American national elections. Mark Walling writesReader WillAffleckUW suggests skipping in-person voting completely; absentee voting is a good idea, he argues, not only in light of the flaws (demonstrated or alleged) in electronic voting methods, but becauseMy district switched to electronic- from lever-based. in 2004, at 7:15 when I voted on lever machines, there was no line, and just about as many signatures in the book. In 2005, the line was out the door and around the corner at the same time. The person in front of me took 5 minutes to use the electronic machine. People knew how to use the old machines, and they were reliable. These new things take the old people forever to use, and then they complain that they were hard to read ...
Not so fast, says reader JDAustin:absentee voters get a paper ballot that is not only delivered by a trusted source (the U.S. Post Office) who have a verified date/time stamp — and that the ballots can be audited, traced, and verified — now that is a reason to register permanent absentee.
Many thanks to the readers (especially those quoted above) whose comments informed this discussion.I suggest you take a look at the research into the recent Washington state elections done by SoundPolitics.com. They verified close to a 20% error rate in absentee balloting. The signature verification on absentee balloting is no verification at all due to non-verification being done by those who count the ballots. Additionally, the USPS is not a trusted source, they are just another government bureaucracy. The ballots themselves cannot necessarily be traced nor verified — and even when the signatures are completely different, they are still counted. Due to the nature of voter rolls, duplicate ballots are sent out all the time due to slight variation in a person's name, and the duplicate ballots counts are not caught until after the final tally has been done and the election finished. Finally, mischievous government officials can always delay sending the military their ballots so those serving overseas do not have time to get their vote in on time. This actually happened in 2004 in Washington state.
Permanent absentee is not the solution. Neither is electronic voting.
The true solution takes elements of the recent Mexican election to prevent fraud (voter ID cards, thumb inking, precinct-based monitoring and tallying) and combine them with the best paper-based voting machine.
Nothing for you to see here. Please move along
That's exactly what Diebold wants you to think...
[/backslash]
So which party/candidate would take advantage of this exploit first - the Democrats or the Republicans - both are ugly!
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
I'd bet he would get plenty of votes!
e r_programmer)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Thompson_(comput
...I'd rather scratch me 'X' on a piece of pay-pur!! Yaaaaarrrrrhhhhh!!!!
This message brough to you by the Pirate Party!
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Again I say to the teeming masses of Slashdot: lever machines are the answer! They have been proven for almost 90 years! I know that many of us /.ers want a computer chip of some kind running Linux in absolutely everything, we need to learn that electronic is not always better.
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
I have heard that it is geting hard to find parts for them.
C'mon, this is what got us into trouble last time. Remember hanging chads and butterfly ballots?
It should be obvious to anyone on this site that only open source code should be used in electronic voting machines. Undoubtedly, the most distinguished security researchers would all examine the code, and a very high confidence level could be achieved.
After reading through some of these... it's very apparent that securing these machines is an uphill battle. Do we really want to double seal the machines, tamper-proof the ROMS and secure the machines against a 20,000 volt discharge? Why do we need to jump through all these hoops? it's insane.
Good old-fashioned paper is the solution. It's cheap, it ensures a paper audit trail, and it's counted in public by thousands of real people who witness the count.
Of course you knew that.
- A private, confidential paper receipt, for each vote, that has:
- a voter-legible ballot that the voter verifies before leaving the vote,
-
a bar-code computer scannable version of the vote, and
- some kind of code or a non-serial 'serial' number that will indicate any missing paper receipt, or blocks of paper reciepts. We don't want a true serial number so that the vote remains secret and no one can tell who voted for whom by the serial number. Perhaps hashes of hashes?
- A secure, electronic, computer version of this receipt that has some kind of data integrity -- not just a tally of bits, but some binary sequence that has some kind of verifiable, tamper-evident integrity. Perhaps this digital ballot would have a hash stored in a seperate log.
This is just a preliminary brainstorm. Perhaps encoded into each vote's serial number would be a running tally? That would be one method of tamper-evidence -- by going through the votes, we should be able to tell where and when exactly the fraud happened. The tally should be consistent all the way through, and by the time the polls are closed, we have tallies for each booth.Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
Well, if we let computers vote, they'll probably just re-elect Nixon.
Badass Resumes
Even if Diebold was completely open source and verified by the Pope to be cool...
What choice do you have in your elections, eh?
You better start coding your own eGoverment with links to online sites that offer Jobs ad search income with the aid of Google Ads. Stop thinking about this not-so-entertaining game they show you on TV. And when they come to you house to put you into a concentration camp your time to shine for 15 minutes has come (thanks to the NRA).
Then build more! I bet that if a senior engineering class at Purdue (not even MIT) put their minds to the task they could build a mechanical voting machine that would not create the same level of controversy as Diebold's machines. There are not enough parts because people are not building them. Compared to the cost of computerization, building spare levers and new machines is dirt cheap.
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
Haven't heard that song in a while. Good stuff...
Nah, they would try to elect Blinky. (cookie for whoever can guess what webcomic I got that from).
"I thought what I'd do was I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes" ~ Laughing Man - GITS:SAC
I'm a data manager in disease research.
We use paper.
We could have gone to electronic forms with laptops, but there are a number of reasons we don't.
The primary one is user-readability, and verification of intent.
The second one is programming limitations on error checking - what is a permissable response? When dealing with human subjects - and likewise, human voters, one notices they don't always do what you want, but what they want.
Should we have electronic voting machines? Yes. For handicapped people, definitely. But, naturally, those should have a paper audit trail.
But most voting machines would do fine with optically-scanned human-readable paper ballots. In fact, what they don't want you to know is they are just as accurate as the electronic ones, in actual practice.
Now, does this mean the vote is accurate? No, because we're humans. Some people insist on voting for two candidates, or write in Donald Duck. Some people change their minds part way through.
Heck, when I vote, I sometimes decide at the polling place, as I'm voting.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
So we know that Diebold is capable of producing secure ATM systems, and that money is the root of all evil in politics, and that we have insufficient voter turnout. So here's my plan for a foolproof voting system. :)
Each polling station will consist of one (1) secure Diebold ATM system, which is capable of accessing the bank accounts of the Republican and Democratic parties. Voters will walk into the voting booth, and withdraw $20 from the bank account of their favourite party. At the end of the election, the party that has received the most votes/withdrawals from their account wins. To cap it off, voters have a new incentive to participate in "the process."
Alternately, the system can be turned upside-down, and people remove money from the account of their least favourite party. Not only does one side win, but the other side is bankrupt!
The verification mechanism must have an error rate of less than 1 in 10 to the 38th power
...and 1 in 10^37???? Well, jeez, might as well just build it out of matchsticks and glue if you're going to be THAT lax.
10^38?
Because requiring an error rate of less than 1 in 10^39 is simply unreasonable to ask.
(Disclaimer: I'm a libertarian, not a supporter of either major party and arguably am as amused by the Dems as I am bitterly spiteful toward the Republicans)
There is a greater culture of voter fraud at work here. The Democrats in particular are quick to scream about voter fraud, voter disenfranchisement whenever an ID-less black person tries to vote and things like that, that go back well before Bush "stole the election." They even have been known to put in fraudulent votes in the names of dead people.
Both major parties are bad about this. The Republicans now have leverage that can allow them to kick the Democrats squarely in the pants for all of the years of having to fight uphill against democratic-lead voter fraud. They aren't going to give up on Diebold lightly.
As I have said before, I think that voter fraud by a normal voter should be a simple felony. Six months, permanent revocation of all voting rights, even with a pardon. However, any conspiracy should be legally classified as a conspiracy to overthrow an elected government because that is precisely what organized voter fraud is! It is trying to use the system to bring down an elected government.
Take a bunch of these Republicrats, especially a few rich and powerful ones, out and give them a firing squad for attempting to overthrow the United States government. That will put a dent into voter fraud like this.
Count sets of 250 ballots. Use some variant of double entry book keeping to prevent miscounting. Recount random sample to check for cheating.
Now that's what I call a slashback! Nothing like having the same comments from the original article...
It has been a nervous year, with people beginning to feel like Christian Scientists with appendicitis.
I want RFID tags implaned in all of us so that, all we have to do is walk by our candidate, ballot, law, proposition, etc... to vote for it! They'll KNOW how all of us feel - real time, damnit!!
As a matter of fact, I want a chip in my brain that let's the politicians know what I'm thinking. Then, they'll really know what a bunch of jackasses that I think of ALL of them!!
HA! My CAPTCHA was 'indolent'. How appropriate!!!
Lever machines always steal my quarters, and rarely give me any back. Although at the end I feel raped, so I guess that lever machines DO support our kind of democracy!
Excuse my speling.
Making The Bar Project
Voting is easy. Do it early and often.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Go forth with the electronic machines, they're fine and we need to move forward eventually. However, there needs to be a paper trail. It's important enough that each vote be represented with an anonymous piece of paper that spits out of the back of each voting machine after each vote is counted.
Then, count the votes efficiently by downloading the results from each of the electronic machines. But make it easy for anyone to calculate a checksum from the stack of ballots by visually inspecting them, to make sure the checksum matches with the machine's electronic total result. And randomly check a subset of the machines even more carefully to make sure each machine's stack of ballots matches its internal count of votes *EXACTLY*. There's no need to check them all, as long as the checks are random. Anything less is inviting fraud.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
Clearly we need EAL7 certified open source voting machines.
;-)
OR
We need hand counted paper ballots.
Let's vote on it.
Start Running Better Polls
That is almost the system we have now. However, regardless of who you vote for, the money comes out of your account and into theirs. When our government didn't send that Alaskan piece of crap republican straight to jail for threatening to quit if his state didn't get Katrina relief funds so he could build the famous bridge to nowhere...it pretty much put it right out in the open. Some very simple changes to how federal dollars can be allocated would fix a great deal of our issues, allowing the states to have rights again. Unfortunately...all the Fed has to do is say "well...we will take money out of your state through federal taxes on your residents...but if you don't set the laws WE want you to set (speed limit, drinking age, etc) then we won't give you any of the money back!"
Our United States are no longer United States...We are very little more than Federally owned and operated States of America.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
I think a tamperproof voting machine would not be that hard to build. However no politician wants one. Be it that they want the possiblity to manipulate votes, or the excuse of manipulated votes to call for a revote. Their are too many foxes in the hen house. If independant companyies were allowed to build the voting machine, with watchdog agencies in charge, we wouldn't have a problem.
I'd much rather stick with plain "X" marks your choice paper ballots. I can stand waiting a couple of days to see which goon received the most votes.
In Canada we count our ballots manually and generally have results in under two hours after polls close. The USA has more polling stations (with 10 times the population) but not necessarily more people per station. In practice, a manual counting system could be implemented with only a modest increase in people. It could probably pay for itself in time and resources saved not installing/testing/servicing voting machines, and the inevitable audit trail (does anyone still count handing chads)?.
The LOVE of money is the root of all evil.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Diebold should take a lesson from the casino industry. All the modern-day slot machines, video poker machines, etc. that you see in casinos undergo rigorous certifcation testing by the state gaming commissions. First of all, these games would never have the ability to boot from flash, secondary eprom, etc. like the voting machines can. Beyond that, they will lock themselves out if they detect any sort of tampering, from bad checksums when booting up to the device being physically opened. The only way to make the games operational again is to have somebody from the gaming commission come in and physically reset it using a private key of some sort. Sad that the money you throw away at casinos is considered more important than your vote....
Is that a) Insightfull b) Funny or c) Troll? Is there a "this-is-so-obviously-insightfull-that-it-is-funny "-button?
The most vtelling point by far is that standards for electronic slot machines are so much more stringant. The message waiting just below the surface is that the many various election commissions who should have the deepest possible respect for democracy place a much lower value on it than Vegas puts on a few thousand dollars.
Would you want to continue employing a night watchman who said (of your property) "It's just a bunch of crap, who cares?"
Considering the cost of these machines, I find it hard to believe that the issue is money (otherwise, they wouldn't buy them at all), so it has to be a combination of gagit-itus and a deep disrespect for democracy.
Vegas has proven that a higher standard is available. Given the number of voting machines out there, sufficient volume for economy of scale should be no issue.
You guys are missing the main meet of the story here..
9 202389150&q=hacking+the+vote
Clint Curtis, (the man who testified to having rigged the software for the diebold machines at the behest of tom feeny, officially the most corrupt politian in office at the moment)
http://www.clintcurtis.com/
http://www.house.gov/feeney/
the "suicide" of the investigator that followed up his allegations (warning some graphic images)
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=1244
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clint_Curtis
It all fits together quite nicely, a little switch, a preprepared flash software inserted whilst the machines were 'sleeping over' at the republican officials houses. Noone can possibly see the difference
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=811282555
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=2449
Yang Enterprises - curtises former employer, linked to feeney, and a chinese spying ring to boot.
http://www.yangenterprises.com/
Ultimately what this boils down to is a trust issue. If you do not have a physical record of your vote that is impervious to digital tampering, it does not matter how much security there is. With digital voting there will always be the perception that somebody could rig the vote.
In a democracy, the perception of vote fraud is almost as dangerous as the actuality of vote fraud. If we all go into the booth and we all come out convinced that we've had our say and that it counted for something, then even when we lose, we can feel we were a part of the system. If we go into a booth and don't even have that basic reassurance, why go into the booth at all? Why work to change the system if you have reasonable suspicion that the system has been rigged against you in the first place? People in that mindset will either drop out of the system entirely, or seek to voice their feelings through alternative means (violence, etc).
We've had two national elections in a row that were close and had an air of suspicion about them. There are countless anecdotes of votes getting switched on the computers, voting machines dissapearing overnight, etc. Even if there's not actual fraud going on, all of that adds up to a suspicion of the system itself. We can't afford to have that suspicion if we want to remain a democracy.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
It also solves another issue: Annoying campaign ads. Candidates won't have much money to spend on campaigning if they need a full bank account for the election. Besides, the campaigns are all empty promises, groundless slanders and hot air. Let the media handle the campaigning. They pretty much do anyway.
The voting machines can be assembled in a fool-proof unopenable casing at the main station, and returned to the main station after the elections.
And building physically tamper-proof packages is relatively easy.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
This has the possibility of making certain districts in the US top heavy with incarcerated voters. A lot of prisons (federal, state and local) are grouped together in close proximity such as near Beaumont, Texas. We are already have enough "crooks" in Government. Let's not give their incarcerated peers the ability to make this situation even worse. Can you imagine the campaigning for these voters?
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
This might be a troll, but I think you've been unfairly moderated.
The problem with electronic voting is not inherently a party-specific problem, but rather one of trusting the system. Democracy is an institution which exists only because people believe in it. (Minor digression: this is sort of like money, which works because people agree that the pieces of paper and electronic bits represent stored value.) Right now, Republicans have the Presidency and both houses of Congress, so any lack of trust in voting is going to be concentrated on the Democrat side, but the source of distrust is bound to switch when the Democrats start winning some elections. (You can tell right here that I don't agree that there's election-rigging going on...)
The really dangerous thing about e-voting is not necessarily that it can be rigged, but that people believe it can and is being rigged. This belief is absolutely poisonous to democracy. In the U.S. it's pretty clear that e-voting has gotten off to a shitty start, and it's quite possible this means that it simply can't work, even if all the trust problems were magically solved tomorrow. Regaining public trust would take much longer.
...following the principles of Heisenburger's Uncertain Cat...
"When our government didn't send that Alaskan piece of crap republican straight to jail for threatening to quit if his state didn't get Katrina relief funds so he could build the famous bridge to nowhere..."
Uh.. As much as I dislike Ted Stevens, he did not demand "Katrina relief funds", and the "bridge to nowhere" actually is the only thing connecting a tribal land to the 21st century (it being "nowhere" is a matter of opinion.)
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Isn't the most safe option to have 3 separate company's develop -one- machine?
- One company develops the casing and only uses old fashioned electronic push buttons.
- The other two other company's each develop a counter module which are both connected to the same buttons.
This way, the final results should match.
If they do not match, the device is broken, or one of the two company's are attempting fraud.
By keeping the push button system simple, the connections to the counter modules can easily be veryfied by looking at them.
If the whole thing would be sealed and shielded by a glass plate and the wires would be clearly marked, everyone could in theory check the correctness of the machine.
This way, for fraud to be commited, the three company's would have to work together which is more unlikely.
Also, it is possible to prevent the company's from getting in touch with eachother.
A very important point here is: Keep it stupid simple.
Ken Thompson for President
I'd bet he would get plenty of votes!
ROTFL!
For those who aren't aware, Ken Thompson admitted to actually writing and installing a back door in the unix login program and the associated C compiler, as described in his 1983 Turing Award lecture.
This worked by having the compiler recognize what it's compiling and:
- If compiling login, insert the back door.
- If compiling a later version of itself, insert the compiler patch.
This has the advantage that, once you get it working, you can throw out the source code and it still propagates.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
So all you really need is for an electronic voting machine to generate a very clear unambiguous paper ballot which gets posted just like a traditional ballot - but without any hanging chads and with everything spelled out (ie: no mention of people you didn't vote for). If the voter doesn't agree with it, they throw it away and redo it... or feed it back into the machine to get another vote, to avoid potential overvotes. When they're happy with it, they walk it over to a sealed box and deposit it.
On the paper, they have a nice 2D barcode that has all of the votes encoded within it. However, it has a plain English description of those votes as well. Boxes can be opened after the election and very easily (and foolproofly) scanned, incredibly quickly. Some small percentage of them are also hand-counted (there shouldn't be much disagreement in reading the English printout) and the totals compared to the scan-counted totals. Any discrepency forces a full recount.
So its the best of both worlds. Fast scoring, full paper trail, and no significant chance of fraud. Where's the catch?
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
The best solution I can think of with electronic votes is to use some form of public key encryption with an authenticating block encryption mode. One half of the keys would be provided on a TOTALLY random basis along with the voter card. The decrypting keys would be kept in a tamper-proof computer that is designed to be write-only with the sole exception of the count at the end.
The voter comes along and enters their vote. The vote is encrypted with their key. As nobody (at this point) has the decryption key, or another copy of the encryption key, it is impossible for the vote to be altered. A copy could then be printed out for backup purposes and placed in a regular ballot box.
So far, doesn't sound much different from anyone else's electronic system, right? Except that we're not tallying yet. Well, read on. The votes are collected in their encrypted form and kept in some secure system OTHER than the one doing the counting. They are then fed into the counting machine. The counting machine knows what keys are allocated to a given precinct, so tests each potential key against each vote from that precinct. Once a key is used, it is deleted.
If a vote has no valid decryption key, the vote is invalid and is rejected. This will include duplicate votes (the key has been deleted) as well as votes for which no key has ever existed. The (still encrypted) vote would then be output as a reject.
The votes are kept seperate and tallied. The output will be the tallies, the votes that comprise that tally, and the grand totals involved. The grand totals should be the same, provided the counters are working correctly.
Now, what basic checks can we perform, using this sort of system? First, let us say there is a recount. The recount would be of the votes placed into the ballot box. There should be exactly one such ballot box vote that is not spoiled or a duplicate for each and every valid vote printed by the tallying machine and the totals should match exactly. There should ALSO be exactly one spoiled or bogus ballot paper for every rejected vote, although further comparison would be impossible as the rejects are encrypted and the spoiled ballots aren't.
Ok, how do we know the software is valid? Well, we know that the vote that the user put in the ballot box matched the one they entered in the computer, and we know that there's a 1:1 between the results in the box and the results in the computer, so we know that the computer has to be producing valid data.
Then what happens when there is a discrepency? With two sources, how do we know which is the one that has the valid data and which does not? The votes are encrypted in a way that is essentially tamper-proof, the ballot boxes are not. The only way to resolve this is to make the ballot boxes reasonably tamper-proof. I'd suggest a wooden or metallic ballot box that has a lid that can be attached with spring-loaded bolts, where the only way to open the box is to cut it open. You want unique non-sequential numbers on RFID tags, to ensure that boxes don't go missing anyway.
After all that, you will have a more honest system than you do at the moment. You might even discourage those who would cheat the system from even being a part of it. However, ultimately, politicians are professional liars and the extremely rich will always be power brokers. The best system in the world can't clean up the human race, it can only clean up one very small part of the feedback loop. Which is better than nothing, but should not be assumed to be everything.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Again I say to the teeming masses of Slashdot: lever machines are the answer! They have been proven for almost 90 years!
And have been hacked for much of that time.
One hack consists of the election officials that set up the machine presetting the wheels for the guy you want to win to some additional number, and (if you think there will be a lot of votes) the guy you want to lose to the nines compliment of the number, then weakly gluing stickers with zeros on them over the counter wheels and locking the inner door.
The poll watchers see the zeros and lock the outer door. First vote for each candidate knocks the stickers off, and they fall to the bottom of the machine. (If no votes for the candidate, the sticker remains visible saying "0000".) You send one of your own guys in to make sure your guy gets at least one vote if necessary.
The outer door is unlocked and the numbers read. The inner door remains locked until opportunity for recount is over. The inner door is only unsealed and opened (probably by your guy WITHOUT poll watchers) when it's time to do maintainence and set it up for the next election, at which point he can sweep out the stickers.
Downside: If your guy dies, is fired, or moves on, or misses a sticker that gets caught in the guts of the machine, the fact that the scam had been used might be discovered by some opposition functionary (or honest worker) at a later time. Such stickers HAVE been discovered in lever-type voting machines.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
This is the perfect example of the reason for the Second Amendment. If the government had the ability to deny arms, corruption would have succeeded.
Especially when my vote probably isn't being counted, anyhow, I think I honestly *will* vote for the Pirate Party, even if I have to pencil in "Long John Silver" or something equally ridiculous on the ballot.
...but I wouldn't be surprised if the powers that be were trying to enhance national security by removing the unpredictable voters from the process. Morality aside, public policy can be streamlined if you don't have to fear public backlash to a father-knows-best approach, and you can ensure that a capable successor will be in place to continue what you started.
Also, I never understood why there is so much resistance to having a paper trail. Are we worried about expense? Effectiveness? Too lazy to do manual recounts and want that option off the table? The Afghan man who sells me hot dogs out of a trailer has a paper trail, but I guess it's too advanced or expensive if it protects our right to self-determination.
We've had the Diebold machines in Georgia since 2002 after that debacle in Florida and according to all the statistics and studies that I've seen Georgia has gone from one of the worst states ranked around 49 regarding voter fraud and miscounted ballots (with 94,000 undervotes in the 2000 election) to one of the best.
The machines were instituted state wide and are faster and easier to use in my opinion. With a touch screen you simply press the button with your candidates name and at the end before submitting your ballot you even get a chance to review and make corrections to your ballot. And as an extra measure to prevent fraud the state is even instituting paper reciepts that will be turned in and kept at the polling place in several districts.
They aren't perfect but to me at least they seem way better than the alternative. And I can't believe I'm the only one who seems to think voting machines are a good idea. Voting machines are much more accurate, and they are the future. If you want a America where every vote counts this is the way to go.
A good voting system should allow every individual to check that their vote was recorded correctly, so I propose the following:
Every time there is an election, a computer uses a randon number generator and some cryptographic one way cipher along with a individual's SSID to generate a unique voting 'key' - this key is then sent out to the voter with a computer readable and human readable (OCE) number.
Internet voting and voting at a polling station are no different, except that at a polling station, there is equipment which can read the 'key' automatically.
All the votes are verified cryptographically before they are inserted into a database.
The database is publically readable - some web site - where if you know the 'key;, you can check the vote (date time, candidate).
When the polls close, no more inserts into the database is permitted.
The votes are then counted electronically by ploughing through the database and the results are declared.
Individuals for several months, maybe even a year, after the polls close can check their vote in the database. The database may be compressed and burned onto a DVD for anyone to purchase and is made available at public libraries.
Due to the randon component used in creating the key and the one-way hash, there is no reasonable way to deduce who voted for whom without knowing their voting 'key'.
Voting keys are valid for one election only - and as they are signed, they can be verified as a valid key for a particular election.
Can anyone see any problem with this voting technique?
No sig. Move along - nothing to see here.
not to vote this time around. honestly from what i have seen the system has been corrupted in a way that you cannot make effective change from within the system. you can't get any higher then your local city government if you refuse to sell out to the corporations on either major party(which in my honest opinion is the reason why we only see dem's and repub's higher up.)
i am going to hunker down and wait for the firestorm to blow over and then try to help who ever survives pick up the pieces.
- Your Voter record number
- Your Voter ID
- Your Votes as cast
It would seem that you could have a Web site, or a third party at the exit that could scan your receipt and have you validate your choices. It should be implemented by another vendor than Diebold (due to it being an open standard) and work like a Credit Card machine. The print-out could be in three pieces (cut 99% of the way allowing you to tear off the final bit if you choose) so that your ID, voting record ID, and the actual voting record would be all separate. As you walk out, the UN (or similar) could scan your bar code, validate with you that those were the right selections, and you could go an about your day. Or you could do it from home or the library. This way, if the UN / third party gets an appreciably different count than the "official" count, an investigation could be spawned immediately. To me, there is no good way to ensure that the link between the printer and the database is exact in software (i.e. write one value to the database, print out something else). An external procedure is needed, and must be based on a standard that it could be implemented by a third party. I don't care if someone records my actual votes, as long as it isn't tied back to my actual vote instance or my identity. However, I want to ensure that:- My votes were recorded correctly
- My actual vote was counted
- My voter info is correct
Those are separate, but related tasks. Heck, if you did it right, I could vote at home, print it, walk in, scan it, and walk out. What do you think? TTFNSo, if there were an open standard way of doing a "voting receipt" so that you could get:
It would seem that you could have a Web site, or a third party at the exit that could scan your receipt and have you validate your choices. It should be implemented by another vendor than Diebold (due to it being an open standard) and work like a Credit Card machine. The print-out could be in three pieces (cut 99% of the way allowing you to tear off the final bit if you choose) so that your ID, voting record ID, and the actual voting record would be all separate.
As you walk out, the UN (or similar) could scan your bar code, validate with you that those were the right selections, and you could go an about your day. Or you could do it from home or the library.
This way, if the UN / third party gets an appreciably different count than the "official" count, an investigation could be spawned immediately.
To me, there is no good way to ensure that the link between the printer and the database is exact in software (i.e. write one value to the database, print out something else). An external procedure is needed, and must be based on a standard that it could be implemented by a third party.
I don't care if someone records my actual votes, as long as it isn't tied back to my actual vote instance or my identity. However, I want to ensure that:
Those are separate, but related tasks. Heck, if you did it right, I could vote at home, print it, walk in, scan it, and walk out.
What do you think?
TTFN
Look, the honest truth is people cheat to gain advantage, so we must expect this, and mitigate it whenever we (as engineers) can. So, as such the perfect Nevada Gaming Comission approved paper trail keeping, encrypted output, design would still be vulnerable to fraudulent paper ballot injection. One candidate (be they crooked or not) would demand a recount, (thinking the equipment faulty) and the paper votes would return a slightly different result in their favor.
You can't trust a citizen to be non-political completely if the vote will affect them in any way. So, essentially you need to pay someone to be your referee. And it would have to be someone who wouldn't be affected at all by the result of the vote.
So by those qualifiers we can't guarantee, ever, that every element of the existing paper vote is secure.
Two copies of your vote, one right after the other, printed and spewed into two different physical ballot boxes. The second box would contain tamper proof seals and would only be opened in the case of a full manual recount by a third party. As well as two digital copies, signed with a hash which was printed on a receipt (and mailed to an email if you like) you could verify against the other copy sent to the national voting database. Might be marginally better.
That way you can count all the votes all night and as the final results are tallied any innacuracies between the national and local databases would have to be rectified before any results were accepted from the precinct with invalid data.
Democrats especially are worried about Republicans hacking the digital voting systems.
Republicans especially are worried about votes by ineligible voters (such as illegal immigrants and felons), multiple voting, and fake voters.
Of course if there IS such corruption, neither side wants to unilaterally disarm. But perhaps a simultaneous disarmament would work.
Would you support a compromise bill like this?
For all federal elections:
1: Electronic voting machines must produce a paper trail, printing a voted ballot that is both human and machine readable, delivered to the voter for confirmation then to be placed in a ballot box. They MAY count votes too, for a quick unofficial result. But the paper ballot is the official ballot, available for recounts, etc.
2: A national voter identification system is instituted, to insure that each voter is actually alive, legally eligible to vote, and votes no more than once.
- Voter elegibility is confirmed upon initial registration and periodically thereafter (which can be done by showing up to vote and presenting ID).
- The identity and elegibility of absentee voters are also confirmed in person periodically thereafter (and their registration suspended if they are not confirmed).
- Identity and elegibility of all currently registered voters will be confirmed within a prescribed time period (no more than four years) after passage, and those not confirmed will be purged. Voters subject to this will be notified of this reregistration requirement in the mailed election paperwork and at polling places when voting in person. Procedures to reregister under the new rules will be no more difficult than initially registering a new voter under the new rules. Timely assistance will be provided for the handicapped.
- Any voter at a polling may be challenged (by an election worker, poll watcher, or anyone present) to provide his voter identification information, and will be denied a ballot if unable to produce it. Such challenge may not be construed as intimidation or racial discrimination.
- After the passage of the bill, any non-citizen who commits fraud while attempting to register to vote, actually registering to vote, attempting to vote, or actually voting, in a state where such non-citizen voting is not legal, is permanently barred from naturalization. States are presumed to bar voting by non-citizens unless they have explicitly authorized it.
- (Suitable language to bar use of the voter ID for any other purpose, interception and arrest or tracking of persons on their way to or from voting, punishing or tracking inelegible voters who attempt to register but do NOT do so fraudulently, etc.)
Seems to me such a bill would be a win all around (except perhaps for any REALLY corrupt and successful machine politicians, and those concerned about a "national ID card".): The honest on both sides would support it, of course, since THEY have less to lose than to gain. The dishonest could save face by claiming to be honest, while obtaining some assurance that the unknown amount of corruption they believe their opponents are perpetrating would be suppressed as they give up their own, known, amount.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
It may have been Rep. Don Young who got the funding for the bridge in the first place, but according to the Washington Post Stevens blocked the proposal to cancel the bridge and use the money for reconstruction after Hurricane Katrina. And why exactly is this bridge needed? There is already a ferry service that takes only 15 minutes for a crossing.
Let's move on to a system of voting that the majority of American's can understand...
To vote for candidate #1 call 1-900-ILIKE01 or send the text message "VOTE" to 9901 on your Cingular phone. Phone lines are open now...
Wanted: witty unique signature. Must be willing to relocate.
Register in a precinct with a big majority of the opposite party. Get in late to vote. Fry the machine with whatever means at your disposal. Preferably something that leaves no trace and/or cannot be blamed on you. Injecting salt water with a small syringe, or discharging a small battery through two long needles into the machine look good options. Puff, all those votes go out in a plume of blue smoke.
I wonder if this will get me on to a government watch list:
The strongest method of protest is to take down the system in question. If the government continues to push the use of flawed electronic voting machines, then a group of concerned citizens might consider exploiting these flaws, and then publicly announcing their actions. This would invalidate the election, of course, but might be enough to convince the government not to use such flawed machines the next time.
Right now the populace doesn't even know whether or not it's being tampered with. Open attacks against the system might be the only way to strengthen the system. Sure, a few elections might be voided, and it's illegal. But as a method of protest, it will definitely catch people's attention.
Here are some possibly less illegal variations on the theme:
1. Just the threat would catch attention. Some enterprising individual might consider putting up a website before the next election, threatening to rig the vote through software. Once this is done, make phone calls to your local media.
2. Release vote rigging code on the internet, and include the source as well as any information on the voting machines themselves. Direct media outlets to links where they can find it and download it themselves.
So I'm sent home with a barcode that -- from anywhere with internet access -- enables me to confirm my vote.
This same system allows anyone else to, from anywhere, force me to verify my vote to them. Your system is open to a different and entirely easier form of voting fraud -- paying off or otherwise coercing voters. Imagine if I offer to give you money if you come back with your barcode, and I can verify you voted for Bush III. Or, I threaten to break your knees if you *don't* come back with said proof.
--
"I personal[ly] think Unix is "superior" because on LSD it tastes like Blue." -- jbarnett
Most of the problems with electronic voting machines are getting better attention this time around, but I still don't see much attention given to the problem that, for me, kills the whole idea of electronic voting, paper trail or otherwise.
We know that a well aimed antenna of appropriate characteristics can steal the data being typed at the typical keyboard.
What is to prevent the engineer who designs the motherboard from adding an innocuous physical loop in a data line somewhere and a carefully obscured bit of code that pumps every vote out that loop?
Then you have a few teenage geeks on the local political machine's payroll skateboarding and listening on AM radios outside the polling place, and one of those little cameras you can buy for about $35 these days focused on the voting booths, and the boss sends somebody around to offer a little education to those who voted wrong in the last election.
With a little social engineering, most of the recievers of the education will not even be aware that their vote was know, only that some influential friend is offering them political opinion that sounds kind of persuasive. And you don't have to educate the whole group, just those who seem respected in general.
I'm in favor of electronic tabulation, as long as the tabulation system doesn't force a design decision that makes it hard for the voter to check his or her vote. But the tabulation must be done after the ballot has been sequence-washed in the locked ballot box. And there should be a required hand tabulation, at the polling place, after the polls close, and before the election judges go home.
And no receipts, of course, no external paper trail that could be walked backwards in sequence in some dustly closet somewhere.
(Part of me sometimes wants to use random sequence numbers to make sure that the ballots in the box are the ones the judges had to pass out to the voters, but I have never been able to break the problem of walking the sequence backwards.)
We've had the Diebold machines in Georgia since 2002 ... and ... Georgia has gone from one of the worst states ranked around 49 regarding voter fraud and miscounted ballots (with 94,000 undervotes in the 2000 election) to one of the best.
Since there is no way to check that the Diebold machines are counting corretly - or even that they're not making up votes on the fly to be a close match to the number of voters using them - all you've proven is that now that youv'e switched to Diebold machines you no longer can FIND fraud.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Uniform PAPER ballots that are about as idiot proof as you get. any mark on the large 1" circle is a vote. They are counted by hand and people who count poorly can be held accountable.
ADD:
Exit polling for pointing out problems
Uniform National Ballot (locals print in the names)
Special Paper (like currency) with a serial number and barcode (or simply print digital signatures on normal paper)
Account for where series of ballots are shipped (4 tracking problems at polling places)
Each area's ballots are shuffled before shipped so they are not handed out serial # order
Instant Run Off because its a mathematically better (kill 2 party duopoly)
FULL DAY OFF for everyone
Require an ID to register. Register on or before election day
Absent ballots are the same format; require time-stamp reguardless (remember 2000?) must be snail mailed to USA unopened. Votes must be cast in private (looking over to the Marines...)
Any CITIZEN over 18 can vote. no silly rules (like stopping a group by taking their right away)
Provisional ballots are like absent ones. Must ALL be counted before election certification. The only dispute: proof of citizenship
ID must be FREE and no homestead is required
Areas with over voting will be examined
Fine people who don't vote (at least do a blank one) to fund the system
Lawsuits for not being counted are allowed against the district
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Giving you a "keeper" reciept is illegal.
If you could use it to prove to YOURSELF that your vote was counted as cast in a particular way, you could use it to prove to SOMEONE ELSE that your vote was cast in a particular way.
This enables vote-buying schemes.
As a result, such reciepts are generally banned by law.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Why not make it so that you remove money from the party you don't want to win, and the last party with money in the account gets the seat?
That way, you have the advantage that the party can spend as much money on advertising as they wish, with the result that they have less "votes against" before they lose.
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, however, there is.
eom
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
As I see it, the system needs to provide these features:
With those goals in mind, here's how I envision the voting process working:
--
"I personal[ly] think Unix is "superior" because on LSD it tastes like Blue." -- jbarnett
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
On thinking deeper about what I wrote, I'm not sure that the "secret number" and its second hash -- one of those ideas I had while in the middle of writing -- actually provides any benefit at all. I'm sure someone else will post an explanation of why, if they even understand my intent behind it in the first place. Which, by the way, was:
If an attacker alters a record, he can -- knowing the hash algorithm -- accurately calculate a new hash. Even if the next record's hash is based on the current record's hash, the hashes could all be recalculated down the line.
The "secret number" was my attempt to prevent this, but I can't think of an implementation that provides the security I intended, while still allowing the hash to be used to detect tampering.
--
"I personal[ly] think Unix is "superior" because on LSD it tastes like Blue." -- jbarnett
then people could use it in the same manner that paper ballots have been used for years.
I hate the current electronic voting machines... Thank GOD I can still vote with an absentee ballot in Washington State
anybody else wondering if there will ever be a backslash on a backslash?
it could go on infinitly...
It's kinda scary that your post has gotten "insightfull" moderations. Funny, yes. Insightfull, no.
If for no other reason than that it'll make it even more impossible for any third party to run for any kind of election. As it is it's hardly an election when your only choices are "The Plague" and "Cholera".
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
So we know that Diebold is capable of producing secure ATM systems
This is a claim, incidentally, that has been made many times, but not substantiated. The banking industry is surprisingly clueless when it comes to security issues, and I don't think it's a safe assumption that Diebold makes ATMs which are significantly more secure.
I suspect that ATMs simply haven't undergone the level of attention that voting machines have.
asks "Is it that hard to put a thermal printer behind a glass shield?"
Thermal paper might be good if you don't care about verifying the election more than a month or two down the road. I'm a terminal procrastinator when it comes to doing my accounting, and it royally pisses me off when I look at a receipt and see a slightly tan piece of paper with just a few hints that it ever carried any information. Ballots should be archivable.
There are hiccoughs in electronic balloting today, and it is clear that many do not see the value of moving away from a paper-based system. I belive, however, that paperless voting, as it is being tested today, is only the first step in a logical progression toward electronic voting that may be initiated by any citizen from any terminal in the world, with all of the appropriate authentication, authorization, and verification methods in place.
Envision this: Citizens go to a secure website and log on using a unique voter identification number (not SSN). The citizen reviews the ballot, makes his/her selection(s), and submits the vote. An encrypted confirmation message (a la Zix) is sent to the citizen, asking him/her to confirm the recent vote. Once confirmed, the vote is logged to a central repository, and the voter information is encrypted using the voter's private key.
The crux of this system would hinge on the ability to issue identification credentials on a national scale, to ensure that only the true individual can vote as the individual. This system could be strengthened with biometrics and some other two-factor authentication device (e.g., smart card. RFID chip).
Electronic balloting today is just the start of the journey...
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
Cartoonist Carl Moore just published what might be the best comment so far on the topic.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
The problem isn't one of engineering, but of trust. Or, rather, mutual distrust. A system like that (e.g. election system) can't function in the long term without transparency and verification by all parties. This means the system needs to be a simple as possible, preferably with mechanical parts that can be eyeballed by anyone familiar with the system. After verification, the party (political parties, election officials, equipment maker) needs to be able to apply their seal to it. A firmware or electronic system in general is inherently unsuitable because of the difficulty of verification. It's also very difficult to adequately tamper proof, while DRM can be used it's not easy to check whether some other party has replaced the DRM system itself with a lookalike.
Another system built around mutual distrust was the cold war relationship between the USSR and the USA. Both parties accepted a high degree of spying and snooping, because it created some level of transparency and permitted mutual verification. Without rampant spying chances are good the paranoia had grown on both sides until it reached a point of war. 'Trust but verify'.
The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.
the future is here, it is just not evenly distributed - w. gibson
>And why exactly is this bridge needed? There is already a ferry service that takes only 15 minutes for a crossing.
It connects a growing town with its airport.
What planned and budgeted civil project did your town give up to support Katrina relief?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Technology beyond the understanding of the users may as well be a magic black box.
Its not just voters who could cheat on a small scale but the officials in charge of securing the system would cheat if they could cheat. Its a large scale security problem where the officials at the top would cheat if they could.
The ONLY solution is an open system with checks and balances that the public can understand (sorry constitution, you've become too complex...)
Paper counting in a simple process meets this criteria.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
My reading of Slashdot is that we all want to keep technology out of voting. In particular, my reading of us for'ners is that pen on paper is the way to go. You can have essentially complete results that same night, especially for the trivially simple FPTP system you Americans use.
(OTOH, in Australia, the Senate results are counted by computer, but the vote's done pen-on-paper --- the process of counting would be so complex to do it by hand it's just not feasible. Even still, Senate results aren't finalised till weeks after the election. I understand the votes are mostly entered by foreign working-holiday type people.)
Look out!
This one's even better!
WTF? You get a reciept when you use an ATM!!! Sound like some are getting nervous about their next election.
There is one question that interests me about electronic voting systems. How many years are they designed to last? These things tend to be stored in basements and the like during the off season where there is high humidity and poor HVAC control.
Information wants a fueled airplane waiting at the hangar and no one gets hurt.
Remove the fines for not voting. None of the above should always be a choice. Not voting is not throwing away anything. It is a clear statement that the democratic process in this country is a farce and that any candidate that is allowed onto the mainstream news will yield mostly the same results in office.
There are those of us who believe it literally does not matter which puppet is chosen since the same puppeteers will pull the strings.
What do you think of the idea of performing an election by jury? It is much easier to control for fraud, and has other benefits as well.
I like these review thingies they have now on /. Saves me the time to comb long threads for interesting and insightful comments. Kudos to Taco et al!
-- Cheers!
Do you know that "cant" is a different word than "can't"? It means "sing". This difference renders your signature irrelevant.
...which only give out a limited amount of cash.
Voting machines cannot, but can lead to billions spent for nothing and global thermonuclear war on terrorsim.
Atari rules... ermm... ruled.
dupe
People who cheat the voting process are obviously saying, in effect, "I do not want to live in a democratic political system".
Thus, people who do want to live in that system should have a right to get rid of those who don't. Evixtion, execution, something.
Will the cheating end if the cheaters are eliminated? Maybe!
It's amazing how we all sit here and complain about the lack of a paper trail for the voting machines when the single biggest lack of a paper trail is verifiable ID for the voters themselves.
How many states actually require you to produce a photo ID in order to vote? Every time another state tries to introduce it we hear shouts of "Jim Crowe" and how it will disenfranchize those who don't have ID.
How about all the voters who are effectively disinfranchized by those who vote more than once? (In this case it's even worse as the action is invalidating the efforts of someone who actually made it to the poll and voted.)
So, how about this: limits on absentee balloting, verifing ID at the poling station, national standard for voter registration, and electronic machines that print out completed paper ballots that are then put in a ballot box (both an automatic tally and the paper tally is then available).
Oh, and one final thing. If all this is in place than can we stop with all of the "they stole the election" rubbish?
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
I thought that ongoing 'progress' in gerrymandering meant that you Americans soon won't need to resort to voting at all anymore, yes?
We have probably all read where ballots were pre-punched for a candidate. The most common stories said that either Bush or Gore had pre-punched cards, usually in Florida. In some jurisdictions I have been amazed that official ballots had no control numbers, nothing to verify that they were actually real. Maybe it just seemed that way.
Sounds like something has to be done that also includes something not known until the event occurs. Something that fraudulent votes can be found immediately. I also think we should purple-thumb people to prevent multiple votes by people. Again in the 2000 contest, one college student proudly proclaimed on TV that he had voted over 50 times, in Chicago. He may have been kidding, however I bet a lot of people got mad at that. I know some privacy advocates don't want that here because they say people may be intimidated if they vote. How about in places like Iraq and Afghanistan where they are purple thumbed and it is far more hostile there.
So, essentially you need to pay someone to be your referee. And it would have to be someone who wouldn't be affected at all by the result of the vote.
Wrong approach. You don't get someone who won't be affected, rather you get zealous partisans, one from each of the parties in contention, plus some of the minor parties, and use them collectively as your referee. You won't have to pay them, and you can be sure that anything slightly amiss will be reported.
So by those qualifiers we can't guarantee, ever, that every element of the existing paper vote is secure.
Guarantee, no. There's always the chance that the party reps are going to collude against their own party's interests. It's quite unlikely, though, especially if many parties are represented.
As well as two digital copies, signed with a hash which was printed on a receipt (and mailed to an email if you like)
Very, very bad idea. If people can prove how they voted, the local union boss can threaten to break their kneecaps if they don't show him the correct, verifiable receipt. Or the pastor can threaten to ban the voter from church. Or... you get the idea. Votes must be individually unverifiable or vote coercion/buying becomes a problem. Yes, Oregon's system is totally broken.
The only way the receipt/e-mail could be implemented without causing problems is if the voter could prepare two ballots and select which one they wanted a receipt for separately from which one they want submitted. Too complex.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
...when Democrats start winning.
There you go.
Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
In -- I believe its Australia -- they have mandatory voting. The thing is, you are required to get your ass up of the couch and come into the polling station. Once there, and registered as present, you are not required to vote. Not voting is still a valid statement. Not bothering, however, is not.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
I guess what I'm looking for is a way to get enough votes to count that vote buying schemes become ineffective, or at least grossly detectible.
It's really aboutgetting people to vote and trust the system...
thanks for the comments!
TTFN
I like the full spectrum representation angle, that makes things nice and hostile, kinda like prison with everyone waiting to rat everyone else out for a better deal.
You'd need a public end of the database and a private end, hence the hash. Your hash would prove you voted at all (and could be used to count voters), the index hash (privately held) could be used to tell what your hash did, but nobody but you would know your hash. And only with the index would someone be able to tie your hash to your result. It would of course change every time you voted, but the physical security aspect of keeping people from voting more than once would also have to be thorough.
I like the full spectrum representation angle, that makes things nice and hostile, kinda like prison with everyone waiting to rat everyone else out for a better deal.
BTW, that's not my idea, nor is it new -- it's the way it's actually done, and has been done for many years.
the index hash (privately held) could be used to tell what your hash did, but nobody but you would know your hash
It's not clear to me what you want to accomplish with this. What's the point of this index hash that no one but the voter (and anyone that coerces or bribes the voter) will know?
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
> ... the other side is bankrupt!
Morally, at least, they both are already.
What a long, strange trip it's been.
Giving up or not giving up isn't really the point. Its stomping around acting like a child demanding your state get that money. Is this how we should expect senators to act? I bet it would have been a tad different if he had family down there...ok well maybe not seeing his track record with money. But I bet it would have been different if he owned investment property down there. Now yes growth is important...but I think rebuilding Katrina damage should take a bit more priority over "connects a growing town with its airport".
Besides that...this is the same fool that described the internet as a system of pipes that get clogged with data. Either he is clueless or he is bought and paid for by various special interests. I suspect the latter.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to conviction
>Its stomping around acting like a child demanding your state get that money.
:-)
>Is this how we should expect senators to act?
I think you characterize Senator Steven's behavior according to your bias and imagination, and not
by what he actually has done. I don't support the man's politics, but I can observe that the behavior you
cite is based on reported spin, and not something you have actually observed. The man is actually quite articulate
and direct in his dialog.
>but I think rebuilding Katrina damage should take a bit more priority over "connects a growing town with its airport".
Well, the people of Alaska did not agree. You would force them to agree with you? On what merits? On what grounds that would be constitutionally valid? Because your ethos requires it? That's not government, that's insisting on getting your way, and presuming that your way is correct. That's tyranny.
>Besides that...this is the same fool that described the internet as a system of pipes that get clogged with data.
As a network engineer with decades of experience, I fail to see how that metaphor is invalid
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
My description of his behavior may be a tad colorful but his politics remain the same. My statements accurately reflect what I feel about him because I hold these leaders to a higher standard and am getting quite tired of their nonsense, uneducated, or purchased votes. Give me line item veto, give me meaningful term limits, true blind personal investment, campaign finance reform, etc...any offical who doesn't support these sorts of basic power checks really is in it for personal gain, not American good.
The Senator of Alaska did not agree. By proxy the people, but we don't have a direct democracy so you can't really say the people did not accurately. As far as dispersement of the money and so on, we are operating so far from what the constitution says anyways it hardly is relevent any more. States rights is a joke because of the way federal money is handled. However, that being said, I'm pretty sure I could dig up references here as far as the welfare of the people and whatnot from the Charters of Freedom on why it should go to disaster relief instead, albiet a bit sketchy interpretation, but hey that hasn't stopped much lately. But unless the spin was outright lies, he threatened to resign if he didn't get the money...pretty pathetic.
As a network engineer and system admin with a decade of experience I would counter that its networks that get clogged with stupid rather than pipes clogged with data. Users are a limitless supply of stupid and if we could only harness that as a energy source the world would be a better place. While I certainly understand the humor in your statement, he was using it to defend the telco plan of double shafting everyone on that thar intarweb thingamajig...saying his staffer sent him an internet and it took it 5 days to get to him because of clogged pipes. So...my counters to that are as follows
1. An Internet in 5 days?! That has got to be the fastest connection on the planet...downloading the internet in 5 days is a NSA wet dream.
2. If that really is to slow...Instead of allowing telcos to double charge connections, the federal government should create a Department of Intarweb and hire tons of pipe scrubbers to travel down the pipes and scrub the data off the sides to prevent buildup. Thus in true modern American government fashion we can tax the hell out of the people, pass on the profits to the corporations (someone has to build intarweb pipe scrubber equipment), all for a nonsensical solution to a problem that doesn't really exist.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
As I said, I'm not a supporter of Ted Stevens or most other members of his party, but,
his knowledge of law, and of congressional procedure, is quite thorough. He is a very
literate and articulate person.
I would defer to him on questions of procedure or Senate protocol, and would not underestimate him
on his ignorance about his technical comprehension in my own area of expertise.
"The Senator of Alaska did not agree. By proxy the people, but we don't have a direct democracy so you can't really say the people did not accurately."
I am not a resident of Alaska. I have never heard from anyone in Alaska that believes himself to be misrepresented in Congress or the Senate. I am not willing to make that judgement on their behalf.
What you call childish antics, may also be interpreted as being willing to take a bullet for the people that elected him to office, when the rest of the country was attempting to take money from non-wealthy people in his own state and give it to people, admittedly in great distress, in another state.
If his constituents believe themselves to be misrepresented, they need only wait until 2008 to end the Senator's 37 year tenure. It's that simple. I have no intention of moving to Alaska in order to be part of that movement.
But the fact that you used the buzzphrase "bridge to nowhere" indicates your bias, and I doubt I can persuade you.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Other senator were calling it the bridge to nowhere before the media took off with it. I actually read about the "bridge to nowhere" in an article written by a Republican senator from Nebraska quite some time ago. I didn't read that he was involved in that Katrina relief fiasco until relatively recently, my original encounter with "bridge to nowhere" like I said was by another senator writing a blasting article about pork barrel spending (and that wasn't the only project blasted).
As far as takign the bullet for the poor people of Alaska. I'm not a resident of alaska, but I have known plenty (never talked to them about this guy though as my awareness of him has only recently come up with the Katrina nonsense and his support of the telcos in the raping of the customer). You know that you get paid to be a resident of Alaska? They get a cut of the oil money from the state...you just gotta live there for I believe 2 years. They also have a very nice state sponsored tuition assistance program last I checked. So I would hardly call Alaska a poor state, they make big bucks from the oil and have relatively few people to split it amongst with incentives to go live there to keep their population up.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
If there is a hash, without an index hash, then the vote is thrown out since it would have to be fallacious. Unless, a whole district had no indexes, then they would have to hand count the sealed paper ballots. I must further stress ONLY you, not even the state, would know your hash.
Getting up and going to the polls when you have no intention of casting a vote; simply to make the 'go vote you bastards' people happy is ridiculous. Simply because one does not vote does not make you lazy. That's like digging a hole just to fill it up again, except digging a hole would at least result in a measurable amount of exercise.
I am a registered voter, I have been since I turned 18. I follow politics (at some times more closely than others) but have not voted to this day. It has nothing to do with laziness. I genuinely believe the democratic process no longer functions in the United States IF it ever functioned in the first place. I view voting within the current system as having the same impact on what will actually come in the future as whispering to someone on the opposite side of a hurricane. If I ever believe otherwise and am willing to support a candidate then I will vote. In the meantime I will not waste part of my day going to the polls to NOT vote. That is ridiculous. I could use that time to do something more productive like collecting my naval lint and sorting it by color.
Forcing the ignorant masses to the polls is not going to help anything anyway. Quite frankly the average person is a pretty dumb animal and we are better off without them participating. However, if you want them to participate you need to be prepared to encourage children to think for themselves rather than mindlessly obeying authority figures. This means children who are meant to be heard as well as seen and who consider a request from their parents rather than blindly obeying (of course that doesn't mean there won't be consequences if they don't obey after considering). Critical thinking and logic courses should be taught in grade school if you want concerned masses. Teach children to question authority and to think for themselves and they will care about what goes on around them. Teach them to do as they are told because it makes them easier to manage, and they will be managed by 'authority' figures their entire lives.
>You know that you get paid to be a resident of Alaska? They get a cut of the oil money from the state.
Yes, I know lots of people who have lived in Alaska.
You have not made the case that a bridge connecting a town to its airport should be dubbed "nowhere", and I do
not accept the basic premise of the idea, no matter what subject you'd like to change it to.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Fine...lets split hairs then. We will call it a small sparsley populated island with a working ferry that doesn't really a bridge nearly as bad as Katrina victims need cleanup, clean water, food, and places to live. "Nowhere" is just considerably shorter and works to describe all the other small cities throughout the US. And as long as you are on this kick about how he is just representing his people...I will point out that my original gripe is that this ass threatened to resign if he didn't get these funds. So if he is representing his people...do we kick Alaska out of the union if he resigns, since he is only representing the will of the people...if we don't get what we want we are leaving.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
You know what...I just did some fact checking because it had been a while since I read up on this. The Gravina island with a population of 50...will be connected to the sprawling city Ketchikan population 8,000. The airport runs fewer than 10 commercial flights per day. All for a bridge that is nearly as long as the Golden Gate Bridge and 80 feet taller than the Brooklyn Bridge. So for you to be so hung up on "nowhere" as just being a media buzz attack, you maybe should check it out yourself...it really is almost "nowhere" not some growing sprawl that desperately needs this monster bridge. Also the residents of Alaska are actually apparently pretty upset by this and have been rather vocal in their local news and paper how this is unacceptable. This was one of the qoutes I found in articles on the subject.
"How is the bridge going to pay for itself?" asks Susan Walsh, Sallee's wife, who works as a nurse in Ketchikan. She notes that a ferry, which runs every 15 minutes in the summer, already connects Gravina to Ketchikan. "It can get us to the hospital in five minutes. How is this bridge fair to the rest of the country?"
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.