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Voting Machines Wreak Havoc in Maryland Elections
An anonymous reader writes, "Voting machines are wreaking havoc in Maryland elections today. From the article:
'Election Day in Montgomery County and parts of Prince George's opened in chaos and frustration this morning, as a series of problems and missteps left thousands of citizens unable to vote or forced to cast provisional ballots... Montgomery County's Board of Elections held an emergency meeting and agreed to petition the Circuit Court to extend voting times until 9 p.m.' It's simply shameful."
Maybe it's just me, and not to troll, but is there anything wrong with paper voting?
I read alot of horror stories about the insecurities of 'modern' voting machines, and i ask myself 'what's the point?'
I live in Toronto, and the elections held in Canada use paper. Why? Becasuse there's an audit trail if a recount is needed, and it's simple. No duplicated effort. The system isn't broken, and it _just works_
Technology for it's own sake is fun, but in critical applications such as voting, I ask: "is it really necessary?"
This is not the greatest
You mean the voters? Some know, some don't. It is our job to educate people.
If you know the politicians and beaurocrats? Some know and care, some know and delight. Any randomness is going to increase the chance of a slightly losing candidate to actually win.
It will take a bit more before the voters do the the necessary open rioting, however.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
I think that then goes back to KISS. If you only have to remember the ballots and either hole punches or pens, it's not that hard. But when you get to having who knows what along with the machines, it's reasonable for someone to forget something, especially if it's not well documented (and/or they aren't properly informed). There's a lot that goes into this. The big part is, there's a lot of room for human error in this one unfortunately.
34486853790
Connection too slow for X forwarding? Try "ssh -CX user@host"
Yes be sure to discount the pile of evidence of voter fraud around this country.
Parties are full of people...some people will do anything to win.
The right thing to do would have been a revote.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
As a Canadian who has read Slashdot for many years, will someone please explain to me what is so hard about voting?
;-) http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20031211. html
1. Take a piece of paper.
2. Mark an X in a big box CLEARLY beside the candidate you want.
3. Put it in the ballot box.
Can it really be that simple? Yes!
As a software developer, I have to ask:
WHY IS ANYONE IN THEIR RIGHT MINDS USING A BLOODY COMPUTER TO DO THIS? I don't care if it's open source or closed source software on it, running on Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, whatever. All of these are harder to verify (if not impossible) that no tampering was done than SIMPLE PIECES OF PAPER.
Here, I'll link to Cringely, that way you'll know it's true
...and I'm outright amazed.
Based on how the equipment in Arizona works, I suggest the following: If one has a voter registration card then the voter should be able in this technological era to go to any balloting site and with the card have the appropriate PAPER ballot generated on the spot. If they're not at the normal for that precinct then their ballot, after being optically scanned is fed into a seperately collated output bin so that it can be sent to the proper storage bin later. This allows people to vote for their district regardless of where they happen to physically go to cast. I also suggest that anyone over hte age of 18 who is a citizen be able to vote so long as they can get to a polling place, and that everyone that has any kind of government-issued ID is automatically registered simply by obtaining that ID. This eliminates people being disenfranchised on account of name confusion with convicted felons, which was a documented problem in Florida in 2000. It also ensures that every American Gets The Right To Vote and doesn't infringe on anyone. Yeah, some won't like convicted felons voting, but if they've been released from prison and are part of the civilian population then they've been released back to society and therefore should be let to vote, in my humble opinion.
The more complex the voting system gets the worse the process gets. Yeah, it's labor-intensive to physically count ballots, but we must maintain a paper record of all voting activities in case the electronic count doesn't work. The optical-scan ballots allow for that, and still give us the near-instant return that we like without compromising the ability to audit or recount.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
this fiasco is brought to you by the people who insisted that the old, manual, punch-card machines were too unreliable to be trusted.
Clear, Dark Skies
Why are they using computers?
Because somebody, somewhere is getting a cut of the contract costs...
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Voting like that is pretty easy, but it would take forever to count the tens of thousands (at least) of ballots.
Ok, so even if there wasn't any intentional wrong doing here, I think this is a pretty straight-forward example of where technology is not the best solution to a problem.
Electronic voting machines just add another big layer of complexity to a process that really doesn't need to be so hard. A paper ballot has just two parts, the ballot sheet and a pen. If the ballot sheet breaks, the voter can just grab a new one, and the whole process gets held up for a minute, instead of hours or more. If someone forgets the pens, you can run to corner store and grab a box, or chances are enough of the first batch of voters will happen to have pens with them that they don't mind leaving behind.
Instead we have computerized machines that require specialized knowledge to set up and service, and which can break in a huge number of ways.
Even a secure, tamperproof, open-sourced electronic voting machine is a waste of money. The only problem it solves is speeding up the tallying of votes. And all that is really good for is letting the media report on partial results before half the people out there have even had a chance to vote. That benefit hardly seems worth the extra complexity or cost.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
Voting like that is pretty easy, but it would take forever to count the tens of thousands (at least) of ballots.
"Forever" is perhaps more precisely stated as "several hours for initial results, a few days for the recounts".
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Really, that argument just doesn't stand up. It works out fine in Canada (ya ya, there's nobody in Canada or whatever -- but we do have large population centres like Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, etc. that do it just like everyone else).
The reason that argument doesn't work is simple: the ballots don't go to some central location for say, the entire province or anything like that. There are people in each riding doing the counting (and in fact, multiple locations within one riding). That way, you just need enough volunteers from within an area to cover that area. In other words, the number of voting stations and people counting scales with the population.
But you know, everyone loves to solve non-existent problems with computers.
As a fellow Canadian, I believe I can tell you the answer is "not always that simple" in the case of US elections.
People could be electing their Sherrif, councilmen, or a state refferendum on the same ballot as they also vote for either their state or federal representatives. It's my understanding that some ballots can have over a dozen issues on them. (Anyone who has better first hand knowledge of this feel to correct me if this is an inaccurate summation.)
I guess there is the perception that electronic voting is better, or less error prone, or people can understand what they are doing better. Or, that due to low voter turn out, get them to answer as many questions as you can so people get to voice their opinions on as many things as possible as once.
I do believe that a typical visit to the polls for our American cousins involves more than the greatly simplified answering of exactly one question we do here ("which candidate do you like for the job you're voting on")
Cheers (eh)
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Canada, including Toronto (2.5 million people, 5th largest in N America including Mexico City), counts millions of paper ballots without our computerized problems. Our computers have repeatedly proven bad at this job.
Canada has several official languages and handicapped people.
Their paper doesn't seem to have "interpretation" problems.
Everyone I know who makes computers do things knows that computers are the wrong tool for voting. Their flexibility makes it easir to commit fraud, and much more easy to leave no evidence, especially coordinated in complex ways over distant areas - perfect for voting fraud.
Computers aren't just overkill. Their risks so outweigh their benefits in voting that they are the wrong tool. As has now been proven over and over for years. Including today in Maryland. How much more demonstration do you need that just paper ballots are better?
--
make install -not war
These arguments are simply not valid, for one very good reason: The rest of the democratic world does just fine with manual voting. When was the last time you heard that there were problems counting votes in Germany, or France, or the UK, or Norway, or ancient Greece, or whatever.
First off, why you people even need to make an X on a long list of candidates is beyond me. Here in Sweden (where there'll be an election on Sunday) each party has its own ballot, you simply stick that in an envelope, give it to a voting-official which checks your identity and suffrage, that voting offical puts the envelope in a box, and you're done! No confusion over votes, no-one can vote twice, no arguments over which candidates are first on the list (you can get ballots from all the parties in the parliament right there, and there are usually people handing out ballots for the other parties at the voting station). I repeat, for the rest of the world, this is not a problem,
As a plus, if it is desired, this can easily be counted by machine. Since each ballot is unique, you could easily have a machine recognize from what party it comes from. Not that you'd have too, it shouldn't take more than, say, 6-12 hours after the polls have closed to have a result counted by hand. In the last few years, I've never heard of any democratic and free country, that doesn't have wide-spread voter fraud (ie. psuedo-democracies, that deliberatly tamper with elections) messing up an election. Except for America.
I can think of very few things that are more stupid than elecronic voting. The manual system works perfectly, and has done so for a century! Why, ohh, why, mess it up.
So you missed things like this
Louise Bradley said she arrived at her polling station after the electronic cards had been delivered, but her card did not work properly. When she got to the section of the ballot listing candidates for the Democratic central committee, it was already filled out. Bradley said she had to remove the computer's choices and insert her own.
and this
At Luxmanor Elementary School in Rockville, Larry Schleifer cast a provisional ballot, then groused that it would not be counted along with the electronic tallies expected later in the day. He said he was frustrated that no one had crossed his name off the voter registry when he was handed a paper ballot and was concerned that election workers would not keep track of who had done what.
"What's going to stop somebody from voting twice?" he fumed. "I think it's unconscionable that this has happened."
"The last thing I want to do is deal with a bunch of people who want something."
Major Major
If there was ever a need for moving Mod points to +6 level it's the parent-post. Increasing the level of technology involved in any endeavor increases exponentially the human interventions involved, which increases the possibility that errors can be accidently introduced, which makes it possible to introduce errors intentionally, which (if even short of gaming the result) can call into question an entire district's reported results, and when seen already that the Supreme Court doesn't want us to waste time on verifying the exactitudes of such a small number of votes, regardless of how major that impact might be.... Technology doesn't muck thinks up. Technology makes it possible for people to muck things up and get away with it. (Speaking as another software developer).
Exit polls will give a reasonable estimate on the results.
Are these the same exit polls that predicted a win for Gore, then Bush, then Gore, then Bush? No thanks, I'd prefer to wait for the official totals. Some people lie to exit pollers. I'm one of them.
A properly designed electronic voting system will be far more accurate and far more secure than counting ballots by hand or using punch cards or optical scanners. Additionally, the results can be tabulated a lot more quickly.
Unfortunately, proper design seems to be something of a stumbling block among e-voting manufacturers.
Democracy and Communism are orthogonal. Democracy refers to how leaders are selected and Communism is an economic system. Their antonyms are Totalitarianism and Capitalism, respectively. And for the record, America is not a a Democracy, we are a Democratic Republic.
Actually, not quite so offtopic in this thread I guess.
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
Wrong. 2200 of about 80000 electoral districts used Nedap voting machines in the last Bundestag election. Our German readers might find these articles (2005) informative (2006).
I hope I didn't brain my damage.
I am certain that if resolution of an election in those countries was as big of a circus as the Florida 2000 debacle it would have warranted news coverage.
Complaining that the world watches (and laughs) at our elections is like someone with a bolt through their nose and a "Social Leper" tattoo on their forehead saying "what are you looking at" for staring at them.
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
What are you talking about? Anything that interferes with the ability of a republic to hold a fair, impartial vote should be described as "wreaking havoc". The very survival and essence of a republic revolves around the ability of the citizenry to vote for their representatives. If that ability is in any way obstructed, then the result to the republic will be, as you put it, great destruction or devastation, and ruinous damage.
I would, too. Which is why the exit polls are an estimate. As you know, in 2000, the vote was officially decided by 537 votes -- a statistical dead heat. They didn't do too bad. If I go home and see that candidate X or ballot issue Y is winning by 10% on the exit polls, I can be pretty sure that when the final tallies come out, that candidate will win or issue will pass.
And he wonders why exit polls don't work. What an ass! The only thing lying to pollsters does is increases the suspicion of fraud in elections, something you're ostensibly working against, and perhaps gives you some giddy feeling that you're lying to someone for the sake of lying.
I live in Montgomery County
I showed up at the polling place, very smallish in a local elementary school. I knew there were problems because the line was out the door, yet none of the voting booths were busy.
By the time it got to me, they inserted, the card into the "activation" station, and then they said something like "Oh, the system has crashed again", and they called over the election official. They timed it until it came up and it seemed to be a few minutes. They inserted my card again. They told me "Oh, the system said you already voted" and they called over the election official.
They ran to the back of the auditorium looking in a big manual. After 10 minutes, they came back and said "The manual is missing the part where it tells us what to do now. You can wait until we get it figured out, fill out a provisional ballet, or come back later". I opted for a provisional ballot which means that your vote is no longer a secret vote, and it takes 5-10 minutes to do, because you have to fill out two forms, and sign in two places.
I checked out the equipment while I was waiting, and sure enough it was Diebold. When I see this equipment in use, I feel like I might was well take my vote and throw it in the trash. Based on the errors that I saw for other people while I was waiting, the chances of a meaningful result in the primary seem somewhat in doubt.
We have a very good punch-card system in Montgomery county (nothing like the chad based system in florida) which produced a nice computer card that was obvious if it was correct when it was done and then you dumped it in a ballot box, ensuring anonymity and also making sure your vote was going to be counted as cast.
This new system did nothing except make a mess.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you