Slashdot Mirror
Maryland Fights to Keep E-voting
crystalattice writes "Apparently Maryland election officials never have computer problems. That's why they're fighting so hard to keep their Diebold e-voting machines. Washington Post reporter Marc Fisher received nothing but bad attitudes, dodges, and excuses when he attempted to discuss the issue with the state elections administration and Diebold." From the article: "I asked the state's elections administrator, Linda Lamone, whether Maryland wasn't just a bit too quick to adopt electronic voting. Doesn't the computer at your desk ever freeze up on you? 'No,' she replied. Never? 'No.' But surely people in your office have had that experience? 'No.' (Maybe we've found the solution to Maryland's voting problem: Everybody head on down to Linda Lamone's office, where the machines work 100 percent of the time.)"
Maybe they dont use Windows software on their computers??
That's pretty scary. Do you think they're getting kickbacks? Follow the money...
...everyone in Linda's office uses either Linux, OSX, or BSD?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Have there been any investigations into whether or not certain officials involved in this debacle were paid off by various interests?
When we hear repeated answers like "No." over and over again, that would seem to indicate that somebody has something to hide.
Any bets on how long till the underpaid helpdesk personal that are always having to run around and fix all their computers "which never fail" posts the helpdesk logs on the internet?
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
an open source voting system development project yet? This seems to be a fundamentally solvable problem, that well thinking people in the open source community care about, and lots of smart people have weighed in. I dare say, that even I, a person of at best high average systems skills, could lead a project that would create a better result than Diebold.
It would be interesting to see if an open source design could be engineered, and then licensed broadly to hardware providers under a GPL style license.
How does something like this get going?
I was taught to respect my elders. The trouble is, it's getting harder and harder to find some.
...that it is the Republican Maryland governor fighting for paper ballots and the Maryland Democrats fighting to keep everything on e-voting.
""I asked the state's elections administrator, Linda Lamone, whether Maryland wasn't just a bit too quick to adopt electronic voting. Doesn't the computer at your desk ever freeze up on you? 'No,' she replied. Never? 'No.' But surely people in your office have had that experience? 'No.' (Maybe we've found the solution to Maryland's voting problem: Everybody head on down to Linda Lamone's office, where the machines work 100 percent of the time.)""
Show of hands. How many here know the difference between an embedded system and a desktop machine? Now how many know why that difference is important?
I wonder if all those machines were funded with the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). HAVA dangled a bunch of money in front of localities and a fast track process with tight deadlines. Most chose to take the money and run without thinking things through. I wonder if they have to give money back to the feds if they go back. I think HAVA is yet another example of big, top-down government making things worse. Those punch cards and lever machines seem better and better as time goes on.
In Maryland, Deocrats outnumber Republicans 2:1. The Republican governor is in an extremely tight race where turnout could be the deciding factor. Current trends indicate Democrats across the country are set to turn out in large numbers, which would hurt the governor's chances for reelection. So he has called into question the election process, and has been actively telling people to stay away from the polls and instead fill out absentee ballots - despite the fact that he recently vetoed a bill that would make it easier for people to do just that. (The Democrat-controlled legislature overruled his veto.) This isn't just a matter of whether it's a good idea to use electronic voting machines; it's a matter of a seasoned politician trying to exploit the political machine a matter of weeks before an election. Please remember to keep all of that in mind.
http://www.openvotingconsortium.org/
But "open source" voting systems are just as useless as proprietary ones without a permanent voter-verifiable paper audit trail.
In fact, given the choice of 1.) open source voting systems, and 2.) a permanent voter-verifiable paper audit trail, you'd be foolish not to pick 2.) every time.
Now if we could have both, fantastic. However, you'll probably go a LOT further arguing for a paper trail in ALL instances than trying to unseat traditional enterprise and commercial vendors in any market.
Where civil servants become uncivil masters.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
I live in Merlin. As I understand it, the following issues are affecting this decision:
1. The election officials don't believe that they can re-gear the process in time for the general election, which is only 6 weeks away. I certainly don't think they can pull it off, given their record so far.
2. The Democratic leadership is convinced that Republican Gov. Erlich is trying to suppress the vote in this majority Democratic state by raising fears about the process. They have good reason to believe this, as he has consistently fought efforts to make it easier for people to vote. Yesterday he urged everyone to use absentee ballots, yet last year he fought efforts to make it easier for people to use those ballots. He also vetoed a bill to allow early voting, which is popular in working districts (mostly Democratic) because some people have trouble getting to the polls on Election Day. When the legislature overrode his veto, he fought the law in court and won.
So as much as I hate and distrust the machines (I'm applying for an absentee ballot myself), I'm on the side of the Dem leadership and the election people (a bipartisan group).
No sig? Sigh...
then I suggest that you throw away all your calculators and computer equiptment, as humans can count better.
This is probably the number-one reason why electronic voting machines aren't ready for the real world, probably never will be. People understand and can work with paper; no fancy training necessary.
What will happen if people who were trained can't make it on election day (sickness, car accident, etc.)?
Insisting on "correct" English is like saying that there is only one, definitive recipe for chili.
I am worried about the possibility of mallicious actions, I could care less if a few machines lock up and people have to wait a bit to vote. And I don't believe the machines will spontaneously make accidental mistakes that lose people's votes. I worry only about humans, whether they be programmers or elections officials purposefully rigging the system.
Thus I don't care if her machine locks up or not. Stupid question that shouldn't have been asked as it sidetracks the issue.
She's doing a great job taking the heat on this.
In these situations, the people pushing the project through is intentionally unclear.
This is the beauty of most structured proposal systems that local/state/federal gov'ts. From a citizens perspective, they look like they control graft and corruption. It only creates a level of obscurity.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
The problem is that Maryland's state technology help desk most probably went to the lowest bidder. Ergo, the chances their helpdesk know anything about /. are slim. Hopefully, though, they do read the Post...
"A little misunderstanding? Galileo and the Pope had a little misunderstanding."
The solution is all ready well known, it gets mentioned everytime in all of the various e-voting threads - a duplicate receipt system. You punch in your votes, you get a receipt, the system has a receipt - probably in a self-contained cartridge - with a window to view the current transaction. If all 3 match, you're golden. This is all old news. The interesting item is, just who voted to eliminate/not require a paper receipt on the current generation of machines. Peel some of the loony left away from the latest 'who REALLY brought down the towers' conspiracy, and put them on that. :)
-- Zieggenfus
Sadly, I think the tech-savvy readers are the majority of people thinking this whole thing is a really bad idea. Unfortunately, there's not enough of us with deep pockets and loud enough voices to stop this potential train wreck in time.
I think a more appropriate question would have been:
Do all of your computers in your office freeze up at the same time?
Since there will be more than one machine at any given polling booth. I've never been to a polling place that had all booths open, electric or otherwise.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
I found the article very interesting, and adequately detailed. The system seems well thought out and adapted to fit into local conditions (high illiteracy rate, resource crunch, simplicity, etc).
From TFA:
Voters enter a booth and pop a clear glass marble into one of three drums representing the candidates, instead of a putting a ballot paper into a box...snip...The drums are painted in the colour of the candidate's party and have their photograph and party symbol...snip...The marbles are placed into trays with either 200 or 500 holes - similar to a solitaire board - which makes it easy for officials to verify numbers.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
He's posted it all here:
http://blackboxvoting.com/s9/
He's been around since the start of the fight.
- j
I would like to extend a thanks to Marc Fisher for being an actual reporter.
Let's start dragging these guys over hot coals, there's absolutely no practical reason unless you're trying to rig an election (in my opinion) to switch to e-voting.
Error 407 - No creative sig found
Where I live, the official that oversees elections is, themselves, elected.
How is the Maryland election commission selected? It may be too late for sanity to prevail in this election, but how much possibility is there that before or during the next major election, some kind of popular challenge could be engineered to replace the Maryland election commission with people who would oppose and remove e-voting systems*?
* To avoid an unnecessary argument, pretend I'm making some kind of distinction between touchscreen and evoting systems here.
-9999999999, Fact contrary to the Slashdot Hive Mind line.
They make great paper-weights, tho their televisions get in the way of our Underwood typewriters... Freeze up? No, we keep it around 75F in the office, they never freeze up. The only problem we have with them is dusting - they're real dust magnets. And... the cup holders really are not well designed either. What? Turn them on? Er... for what? Holy cow - look at that pretty Blue Screen (tm)!!!!! And there - an aquarium we don't have to feed! Just wish they'd be smaller so our typewriters would fit better on the desks...
I can think of two easy ways off the top of my head to cause MacOS X to get into an unusable state from user space:
1. Draw to the same OpenGL context from two different threads at the same time (i.e. not using or incorrect use of synchronization objects). This will cause a kernel panic from your application. There is a simple reason for this (opengl allows direct access to the hardware), but it certainly allows you to kernel panic the machine without having to be a driver or a kernel extension.
2. Leak a whole bunch of memory - such as from a loop that is always running. Leak enough memory this way and you will have a hard time using the GUI at all from any application. It won't crash the computer - and it is possible to recover (ssh in from another machine and kill the process). But you can easily slow down the GUI enough that most users would call it a "freeze".
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
"count in the open" does not necessarily mean count by hand. With paper voting, the ballots are still largely counted by machine. However, if there is a discrepancy, the paper votes *can* be hand-counted in a recount. With purely electronic voting, a hand recount is not possible.
Nothing interesting to say...MUST...NOT...REPLY...ohtheheckwithit.
Computers can't crash if the users haven't figured out how to turn them on yet.
Had the same thing happen while at the DoD.
Me: "So these tools can help monitor for any issues you have on your system. Is there anything you'd like to see from the security side of things?"
Them: "No"
Me: "Have you ever had a security breach?"
Them: "No, we have never had a security breach."
Me: "You mean none that you know of?"
Them: "No, we have never had a security breach."
Me: "Yes sir"
Either they are much better at their job than anyone believes, or it's easier to ignore the truth than to try fixing the problems.
I believe it was the rousing Ad campaign that has them sold them on Diebold voting machines
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be-T J
Your standard seems to be a two-edged sword.
I'm not really interested in which party the presence or absence of e-voting would hurt. I am just primarily interested in the voting process being fair. But:
You claim that what we're seeing here is an unpopular incumbent trying to discourage people from voting at all by waiting until the last minute and then trying to raise questions about the voting process.
So why not just do what the Washington Post reporter suggested and the allegedly unpopular governor appears to be now advocating, and switch to paper ballots for the election? Why can't they do this? Why would this be bad for anybody? How would this benefit the incumbent governor over anyone else?
As a Brazilian, I'm very proud of our democratic system. For a country which was under a military dictatorship until 1986, our voting system is clean and everything but messy. We've been using voting machines since 1996 (first in only one State, just a trial then in the biggest cities and now everywhere since 2000) and voting fraud dropped to zero (or something around that). In our last election we had about 87.5 million people voting in a single day (from 8 AM to 5 PM) and we knew the results around 11 PM in the same day and it was uncontested (although the opposition to the current won the elections). It's sad to see a country like the USA (which claims to be a example of democracy) to have elections the way it has. Just sad and pathetic (DISCLAIMER: americans, don't get me wrong. I'm criticizing only the voting system).
;-)
If you guys are curious about our voting machines, take a look at Wikipedia. By the way, yes, it does run Linux!
So say we all
If you have to work around the clock to make the voting machines usable, then there was a SEVERE problem with them when they came from the manufacturer. Rushing to get them operable before election, instead of scrapping them entirely, is pretty crazy. There's more.
Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to conviction
I'm just sitting and staring.
Could you provide me with the URL of a webpage guaranteed to freeze your machine? I'm using Fedora Core 3 with the next-to-latest version of KDE. While it freezes occasionally, running Opera in Linux with 50+ open subwindows is kind of asking for it. Are you using the default Gnome window manager? Unless you've got some reason to be really fond of Gnome, you might want to upgrade.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Leave her alone, maybe it doesn't crash. Ever consider she's runing *BSD on the desktop?
Would you be defending this situation in the exact same manner as you just did if it the Republican and Democratic tables in this situation were turned?
I will opine that you would indeed not be, and that there are many who would be quick to defend anyone who is non-Republican, and vilify Republicans in any part of this process, even if it conflicts with their other beliefs (e.g., that electronic voting is bad in general).
If electronic voting is so horrible, and indeed, if there really are active conspiracies within Diebold and within the e-voting process that would allow Republicans to steal elections under the radar, it should be no problem for the governor to hold onto power, right?
Even if every single assertion and assumption you make is true, I highly doubt that you, or any others reading it that find themselves rationalizing this in their minds, would be so quick to make this rationalizing argument that is implicitly in favor of Diebold, paperless e-voting if the Republican and Democratic places were switched in this instance.
The electoral commission is a bipartisan organization.
Also, in Florida, the issue was not e-voting, it was how votes were counted. But nice try to stretch the analogy there, slim.
Screw paper ballots. Yes, I've seen computers make mistakes, but the largest source of problems is always between the keyboard and the chair.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Look up your favorite Democrats at OpenSecrets and find out about how much of their campaign money comes from the Hollywood content cartel. . . and you won't need to wonder just where bullshit like the DMCA comes from. Hint: In Hillary Clinton's career campaign contribution profile of individual donors, Disney (as in The Path to 9/11) is #15.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Linda Lamone later stated that the buildings are kept to the proper temperature in order to prevent computers to freeze.
I believe my county in Ohio is moving to some form of new machines this year. Here's hoping that it isn't a total disaster.
Someone can just go through the box and make a bunch of undesirable ones defective by punching extra holes. Not much difference from tampering with a voting machine. Voting software doesn't have to be "millions of lines of code" to just store a line of CVS for each vote and later add things up. It can authenticate a voter through a cryptographic signature and give him/her another signature that can be verified by the voter or given to a watchdog group without compromising ballot secrecy. Again, cryptography can let a user vote from any personal or library PC to avoid racial intimidation, uncooperative boss or plain laziness/busy schedule. Paper ballot elections can and did have numerous accidents (Florida for Bush and hanging chads), dead people showing up to vote and so on. With open source hardware and software, computer-based voting can be much more secure. If Diebold is not it, it's another story.
I was wondering about the money. Not the potential kickbacks, but the federal funding.
... <sarcasm>yeah, it can only be kickbacks and voter-rigging.</sarcasm>
The Help America Vote Act has millions of dollars of funding allocated for both (1) transitions from punchcard or lever systems and (2) overall improvements.
So, there may be a question of money but not of the kickback type - that they spent a lot of money on a system that may not be compliant or, at least, insecure. That would be a, "Yeah, we didn't do our homework.".
Alternatively, this may not be about the money at all. Even if this system is deemed 'compliant', the situation may just be about the unwillingness of establishing a different system very late, and not wanting to go through with yet another round of training. Also, they may be of the mindset that any replacement for the existing system may not have time to comply with HAVA for this election, either. That would be a, "We can't do anything about it anyway.".
I agree that they're probably doing something wrong, but for a different reason.
Oh wait, this is the politics section
Lamone was appointed by Democrats in the State House and has been backed by them even as she keeps giving them Hideous advice. Maryland's governor is a Republican and a great deal of this shoving back and forth over the machines has devolved to party wrangling. This is the interesting part about the whole e-voting situation. In some states poor systems are being instated and backed by Republicans (Ohio, California, etc.) In other states the very same systems are being doggedly defended by Democrats (Maryland, Pennsylvania, etc.). In some states such as Maryland it is Republican governors who are taking the lead in cleaning things up and in others it is Democratic governors like Bill Richardson of New Mexico who are taking charge. Ultimately its not about party nationally but local party power. Who ever was in power was sweet talked by the manufacturers who, at the end of the day, just want the billions of tax dollars that Bob Ney made us spend on this.
There are some great videos of Linda Lamone on Youtube:
What the hell does an office computer have to do with a voting machine? A reporter should know better than to ask a question like that.
Ditching e-voting at this stage would require Ms. Lamone to effectively admit either failure or error on her part (or that of her staff [same thing]). It's a shame people like this cannot understand that short-term failure is an integral part of long-term success. Find out what doesn't work, fix it, and move on...
"If you want to succeed, double your failure rate." - Thomas J. Watson (Founder of IBM)
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
...they discover that Laura Roselyn has won the election. Then we can accuse them all of being Cylons and shoot them out the airlock. Or something.
True story.
... they blocked off a few streets, and there were tons of vendors, performers, etc etc. Sandwiched between a flower stand and a sunglasses place was a Diebold booth with 2 reps talking up how great the system was, etc. etc. They actually had a few people there trying out the machine.
I live in Baltimore, and recently we had a flower mart downtown
Enter me. I walk up, admittedly predispositioned to not like Diebold, and asked them some questions.
1. What hard copy proof can I have of my vote?
2. Where is the paper trail with physical evidence of all votes?
3. In the case of a recount, what validation process is in place to ensure the machine's records are correct?
They gave me some BS about how at the end of the polling you can print out a list of all votes entered. I told them what I was asking for was a single, one-person, one-vote physical record, not a grand list at the end of the night. They had absolutely no answer to any of these questions.
Then I brought up the many instances of Diebold machines being hacked and asked them what security measures were in place to fix this issues. I was told they were not aware of any issues and that the machines were unhackable. I asked them if they knew how absolutely ridiculous this sounded.
At this point, some other folks had become aware of the conversation and were starting to ask the same questions about accountability and verification processes. They 2 reps balked and stalled while I pressed further, citing specific cases where Diebold machines had been compromised and blasted them for basically lying about the 'unhackability' of their machines.
Then 1 of the reps walked away. A few minutes later he returned with 2 police officers who asked me to leave. I had not raised my voice, acted theatening, or any other misconduct that would warrant my being ejected. I told the officers I was simply concerned about my right to vote being taking seriously and protected and wanted my questions answered by a company rep while I had the opportunity. The officers told me I was being disruptive. Other people came to my defense. One of the officers had his hand on his gun. They asked if I would rather be removed against my will.
So I left.
"Welcome to Maryland - You'll vote electronic and you'll LIKE it! Or else we might arrest you for asking too many questions."
Granted, I have called Dell to get replacement motherboards 6 times (there is apparently something amiss with some of the capicators on some of the earlier model Optiplex's), but, other than that, I haven't had a call of a workstation crashing.
Now, if the network admin or one of the software specialists go to tinkering with one of the servers, that's a different matter. We have this software that runs on on AIX that all the workers use. Ugh. You'd think they'd come up with something a lot more friendly than what they're using, but, that's not in my realm if responsibility.
I haven't had any calls about Office other than the usual "how do I do such-and-such".
I don't reply to Anonymous posts; if you have something to say to me, identify yourself or I won't reply.
http://avi-rubin.blogspot.com/2006/09/my-day-at-po lls-maryland-primary-06.html
This is his third time as an election judge. Avi is a well known computer security researcher and critic of e-voting and yes, he did have problems with the e-voting machines.
If an OS crashes, most of the time it's buggy device drivers. At least from what I've seen. I've seen every version of windows act weird, and I've seen every version act rock solid, the onyl major difference was the hardware. Linux is more stable more often, but even in Linux a bad device driver can take down your system. Macs tend to be the most stable because Apple makes (made? I've been out of the Mac game for a while) most of the hardware themselves.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I was suggesting KDE 3.5.3 as an upgrade, though you'll probably have to add the Fedora yum repository at kde.org to get access to it via installer.
However, if you're running metacity as one of those 'lightweight' WMs, your window manager is probably not the problem. Though there's no harm in trying another one.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Now, I hate Diebold as much as the next person (or at much as the /. groupthink), but I think that the reporter is making an unfair comparision .
He's comparing general purpose computers to single purpose computer based devices. He's basically saying "because desktop computers crash, we should never have electronic voting". Which is just silly. E-voting machines are specialized computers with known, controlled hardware and limited, controlled software. Comparing them to the average office worker's Dell is apples and oranges.
There is no technical reason why Diebold cannot make electronic voting machines just as reliable (both in runtime and security) as automatic teller machines (which they also make). And ATMs, in my experience, are pretty damn reliable.
Now, the fact the Diebold can't seem to make an e-voting machine as reliable as an ATM suggests, of course, that there is something more than technical reasons going on here.
just about everyone I know that values their money keeps their own books to double check against what the Bank's computers tell them. Should I recommend they stop this practice because the bank's mainframes count better? Your argument is a straw man.
The point of paper ballots is not that humans can count better, it is that the process of their counting is completely transparent, well understood and repeatable. even open source systems like linux can be hacked if not implemented correctly. why not take a system that is known to work, cost effective and fast? newer is not better when dealing with the primary function of a democracy.
"That's pretty scary. Do you think they're getting kickbacks? Follow the money..."
AC's get kickbacks from Slashdot. Gives the moderators something to do other than play with themselves.
fyi - hand counting has been shown to be efficient and fast in other countries. break down the counts to small groups and tally the results. simple. if a machine counts, you need to first show that there could be an error before a count can happen. often by this time volunteers have left and the candidate has conceded. why not just do it in the open to begin with?
all machines and software can be hacked. hand counting is of course prone to error, but is much more resistant to wholesale fraud.
I hate DMCA as much as the next Slashdotter, and the Democrats who've been supporting the telcos and fighting Net Neutrality deserve to be thrown out too.
But let's not pretend there's "enough blame to go around". There has never been a congress as corrupt as the Republicans who've been in control since 1994 and there's never been an administration as foul as the Bush Junta. We heard this kind of bullshit after Jack Abramoff was found to have purchased the votes of scores of Republican congressmen and senators. "Well, the Democrats took $500 from Jack Abramoff, so that shows they're just as corrupt as Bob Ney who took over a million dollars and actually SOLD HIS EFFING VOTE to the highest bidder." It's a red herring and complete crap. Even if the Democrats did take money they haven't had anything to sell to the generous donors like Abramoff who have purchased the Republican Party and Bush Presidency.
Let's not forget that since 2000 the Democratic Party has exactly ZERO power in Washington. They've been completely shut out of the legislative process by rules changes and the "K Street Project." 3 million-plus Americans have gone from "getting by" to outright poverty since Bush and Co. took over. 40 million Americans-plus don't have health insurance of any kind since Bush and Co. took over. And the war, tax cuts only for people who make more than $250k, this shiny new security apparatus and the "rebuilding" of Afghanistan and Iraq are all being put on the USA Credit Card so my kids and grandkids can pay it off while eating macaroni and cheese. How do you think they're paying for those secret prisons, wiretaps, and data mining? You think black hoods and stun guns are free?
If there is anything in government that you don't like since 2000, you can bet that no Democrat has had anything to do with it. Not that they're such fantastic leaders, but there is nothing about the last 6 years you can pin on them. Nothing. And I know Republicans hate to hear this, but the guy who was supposed to be protecting the American Homeland on September 11, 2001 was George W. Bush. No other. NOT Bill Clinton. Say it again until it sinks in. It was a Republican President who told the National Security Advisor a year before 9/11 after being told Osama bin Laden should be a top priority "OK, you've covered your butt." It was the BUSH ADMINISTRATION that said our soldiers would be greeted with flowers and candy when they marched into Baghdad (this is absolutely true. spend a few minutes with Google to see for yourself) and it was a Republican Vice President (the guy with the evil, baby's-blood-drinking sneer) who said"The war in Iraq will be over in weeks rather than years.
I could go on (and I probably will, soon), but the next person who tells me "oh, there's plenty of blame to be spread around the two parties) is going to get my size 11 Hush Puppy right up his crack. Now, "alizard" if that is your real name, why don't you go dunk your head? That BS isn't going to play around here any more.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I feel like that was some sort of very subtle post-modern troll. Like, it was so blatant, it forced you to contemplate the whole phenomenon of trolling in general. Truly a masterpiece.
Or yeah, maybe it was just terrible.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Just because she says she never saw a computer crash doesn't mean she's lying. A more apprpriate question is "Have you ever seen a computer, then?" Why, just this coming Monday, John Titor and I went back to Victorian England for some ancient sight-seeing. I asked this pretty young lady exactly the same question...
Me: Have you ever seen a computer crash?
Her: [pause] No.
Me: Have you heard of any derailed mag-lev trains in your life?
Her: Never.
Me: Is my friend's TMS-600 hot plasma cannon capabable of penetrating your fuzzy-logic-selective personal EM force-shield?
Her: Sir! I am insulted! Absolutely not! *slap*
With that, I have concluded that old Victorian England had amazingly reliable computers that never crashed, mag-lev trains that haven't seen a single fatality for at least twenty years, and personal defense technology is so advanced that it can defeat even anti-armor weaponry. I don't know how the human race has fallen so far in the last hundred years or so, but John has assured me that we won't have to worry about that in 34 years.
So yes, I can see how the office mentioned in the article has never had a computer crash.
Solomon
"Twice half-assed makes an ass whole." --Solomon K. Chang
Baltimore cops acting like jerks? Whatever next!
So far as I know, there has never been an issue using this method.
That's sort of the crux of the whole matter. There was never really any problem with either paper or mechanical systems (with paper backups) in the past, except for the punchcard systems in Florida and the whole hanging chad business. But that was specific to a certain class of systems, and could have been remedied separately, or through better user training.
Really, all this e-voting stuff is a solution in search of a problem. A problem which it will probably create itself.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
It never freezes.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
This country stopped being what it was a long time ago.
It has become a sham. We all just have it in the back of our minds "that's how it is".
We accept the corruption, idiocy and incompetence because we're used to it.
This shit needs to stop, the buck passing, the lies, the outright flaunted decadence and waste.
I don't believe in capital punishment, except for an exceptional set. I believe in the death penalty for any government employee who works to subvert/attack/damage the constitution/ourRights/democratic processes. In that case I believe it should be the default.
Fine, I'm a radical, whatever. The fact is, such people hold the lives and rights of others in their hands, they have more responsibility. The penalty for corruption and treason, yes TREASON, should be death. Treason is thrown around by all the political camps like water, "it's treasonous!" they'll yell. No, high treason is betraying one's country, NOT ONE'S GOVERNMENT. When a politician sells out the people or the country, they are high traitors, and I'd like to see them put to death in PUBLIC. Public for cruelty? Public to incite fear? No, hardly, public for the same reason the bodies of Saddam Hussein's sons were put on display. To prove to the people "YES THEY ARE REALLY DEAD". In such a time, and particularly with these dealmaking weasels, it might be neccessary.
Fuck Hunting; This is why I'm a second ammendment supporter.
Happiness does not come from having much, but from being attached to little.
Just remember that the majority of things you and I don't like coming out of the Beltway were voted into law with the help of Democrats. You know, people like your friend, Joe Lieberman. Remember the bankruptcy bill?
I'll just say that if the Democrats are so powerless, why does the entertainment industry think their votes are worth buying? You need to call Disney and tell them they're wasting their money when they give it to Senator Clinton.
Ever heard of the Democratic Leadership Council? Did you know that it has accepted funding from the Bradley, Olin, and Smith-Richardson Foundations. . . i.e. the same people who fund the rest of the right-wing noise machine?
How about the the Democratic Party's brave stand against torture. . . listen to them roar. [sound of crickets chirping] OK, how about Pelosi's brave defense of Bush against what Chavez said about him? At least that actually happened.
I vote Democratic these days and I'll contribute and work for the occasional progressive Democrat. But respect our elected Democrats in Washington? You've got to be kidding.
Perhaps after Lamonting a few more DLC types, the rest will suddenly act like people worthy of respect.
As for your shoe, I suggest you pull it out of your mouth before figuring out what to do with it. Perhaps it might fit up your ass?
Tech Public Policy stuff
Election officials get jobs at voting machine vendors, and my summary for your friends and relatives.
"Didn't Maryland just a bit too quick to adopt electronic voting"
"Doesn't the computer at your desk ever freeze up on you?"
"But surely people in your office have had that experience?"
These are combative, accusatory, and ineffective questions which is typical of today's media.
How about this...
"In hindsight and in view of all of the reported problems with electronic voting, do you think Maryland made the right decision to adopt electronic voting when it did?"
The reporter had an agenda. And TFA reveals no clues as to whether it is an opinion piece or straight reporting.
Either way, it revealed no new information and as far as news goes was totally useless.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
A vendor is insulting their intelligence with misrepresentations that are just too obvious. Finally Dilbert and his colleagues can't stand it any more and shout "We demand BELIEVABLE lies!".
Someone who says that none of the computers in the office ever locks up is more than dishonest, she's contemptuous of the people who pay her.
Your description of events totally disgusted me. It's things like this that really make me believe we have no due process anymore in the united states. Sometimes I think the only thing that will help our situation is revolution.
I know others would perhaps say you should have gotten his badge number, sued the police department or stood your ground and taken it to court. who knows if you'd make the issue more well known by telling people what happened or by taking it the legal route? You could have been railroaded instead of getting justice.
Maryland Welcomes hackers to tamper with Voting Machines, they even have a "Come one, Come Hax0rz" sign posted in City Hall ...In other News Arnold Schwarzenegger is now going for Senate in Maryland. Gary Coleman Has Decided to go Against him....again.
-Noc
Ah but the point would be any system where the cop is assumed to be correct is by definition unfair. Assuming the cop to be incorrect also has it's issues. Monetary damages after the fact dont fix the situation, untill judges have the power to fire cops they are insulated from any wrong doing that isn't a felany and even thats iffy (undercover cops regulary engage in criminal activity to catch the big fish) your not going to see the system get any better. Cops abuse power because they can and there is a culture of doing so. I dont fault the individual cops like most humans they are trying to do there job with as little effort as required.
No sir I dont like it.
would be an interesting experiment, it's one I don't quite have the nerve to try.
The real problem here is that since my working environment is Linux, I'd really rather avoid burning that many of my CPU cycles in the Windows session. I'm better off simply practicing better operating habits.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Let the election go on as planned. Keep VERY careful track of all voting-related problems in as many districts as possible. Chances are very high that the election will get hosed in some way, thereby proving Ms. Lamone's comments somewhat comedic, if not completely stupid. Then, file charges against the elections commissioner/administrator, perhaps even suggesting that an act of treason has occurred - the problems with E-voting are well-known and well-documented, and anyone who professes that their presence has not betrayed the trust and confidence demanded by the electoral process in our democratic republic, is not acting in good faith.
The major UnAnswered question from the story:
> What was Soooooo bad about paper voting that made it worth wasting over $100 Million bucks?
I voted using a 'NEW VIVID COLOR!!!!' Touch screen machine - and at the end of it - I felt robbed.
I asked for a paper receipt from the attendant - sorry no receipt. No records, no verification of any kind.
'I get a receipt for a $0.79 candy bar from the nice guy who can't speak english at the mini-mart gas station.
So, what you are saying is that the election of our government servants, and all of our rights as citizens,
are worth less than a candy bar?'
'Ya, I guess that's about right.' is what the guy said, laughing. Unbelievable.
Oh, and by the way - our voting booths are impartially located in a Catholic Church.
Sorry if that is offensive to Hebrew or Muslim people.
Should Protestants be reminded every voting day that the Pope has authority over their government too?
How is that separation of church and state?
Don't worry - your tax dollars are being shipped out for 'faith based initiatives' -
probably safe and sound in someone's private bank account.
You don't need to see any paper trail for that money either.
Why do you ask so many questions citizen?
Are you some sort of a terrorist?
...every time someone posts a comment like this one, it gets moderated down into oblivion. Now, moderating it as "offtopic" would be reasonable, but someone moderated it "flamebait" when it is clearly my honest opinion and I took care not to just go off making stupid personal attacks. Moderating it "offtopic" could still be a sneaky attack against the message rather than the idea of where it is, but moderating it as "flamebait" proves that their intentions are unjust.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Not surprising. I lived in the Peoples Republic of Maryland back in the 80s. I can remember at least one state level election that included uniformed state troopers handing out "information" in the polling places. Of course this information happened to support the governor's, (Schaeffer), position on several issues. Maybe Diebold can adjust the electorate without having to pay overtime to the police.
The fact that this post and its parent were modded up pretty much invalidates the point, doesn't it?
Georgia officials handed over the election to Diebold:
They exploited their illegally unsupervised opportunity:
Then they covered up their exploit:
It worked. We don't know the role of the patch in Georgia's vote tallies, just as we don't even know what was in the patch. We didn't even know about the extent to which Diebold ran the Georgia election until these guys started talking - years after the fact.
Remember, Diebold is the company whose CEO said in 2003 about the following year's reelection of Bush that he's "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."
And Diebold is counting the votes again this year.
--
make install -not war
I had a SuSE Linux installation running continuously as my personal computer for well over two years. Then, alas, I installed SAMBA on it and tried to transfer some files from a Windows box on the LAN. Linux crashed and I had to reboot. It's like the Nazgul, all they have to do is touch you and you die.
Only his tendency toward a dazed stupor prevented him from screaming aloud.
The Lt. Govenor, Michael ("My Opposition is made of bad mud-slingers, but I like puppies")Steele, is also running for Senate. I think it is as much about that race as any other.
... But it was the Evil Republicans who *stole* the election with the voting machines.
Here is the part that gets me:
In the last round of elections, we all said that DieBold and cohorts stole the election with electronic voting machines. Granted, we all know that we could hack the machines with our left testicle (Women Too)
Here we have a guy (Whom I do not like) stating that the state should go to computer-read Optical Scan Ballots. (Read: *Computers* with a PAPER TRAIL) Why are we not supporting the bozo with the right idea. The Election will always be between a douchbag and a bloody tampon because that's what it takes to run. (Southpark reference) - but when one gets the right idea (e.g. paper trail), we should support it.
Life changes. A paper trail doesn't. Get one: Priceless.
This message should in no way reflect that optical scan ballots cannot be manipulated. (Just send the wrong type of pencil to the precincts who will vote for Y.) But the paper trail can be inspected for any grand irregularities.
I dont really know what a computer is although there is a big blue light on my desk.
Thank you for posting about your experience. You showed lots of courage doing what you did that day and I believe doing so may, just may, have opened the eyes and mind of others who saw what took place.
Come on, you were being disruptive. You weren't there to merely ask questions; you were here to share your opinion and what you've heard. That was their booth, not your soapbox.
Maybe they dont use Windows software on their computers??
Maybe they just run Windows and MS Office, and maybe internally developed apps. Maybe they do *not* install games and other apps that install driver level copy protection crap, maybe they don't download and run crap off of the internet, etc.
I run WinXP (and Fedora Core 5 and Mac OS X on other boxes) and use MS Office, and keep both patched. I install the occasional retail game, and have a few retail utilities installed, and a few FOSS utilities installed. I browse the web with Firefox. You know what, my system doesn't lock up. Now this system is something I built from good parts. I actually built two systems at the time, mine and one for a nephew. Same parts, a subset of the software mentioned above. Now this other machine is royally screwed up on a regular basis, perhaps it is not MS software or the hardware. Perhaps, just maybe, it is the 12 year old nephew downloading and running everything anyone at school mentions and Dad visiting a bunch of spyware infested poker sites. To be honest I have to mention that this system has been less troublesome since I it switched from Norton to McAffee.
Now does MS deserve a slap or two for allowing the later to happen. Yes, absolutely. However, the former case is also true. Windows boxes used every day can be extremely reliable. If the Maryland folks are just running the software their IS people installed it is plausible their systems are trouble free.
You should know better than to ask such questions in the new Republik. Next time you will be deterred as a TERRORIST.
~X~
~X~
Huh? So aside from just uttering some non sequitur insults, care to elaborate?
I never said that there weren't problems with the electoral process, just that these problems weren't specific to paper balloting.
I.e., there has always been and probably always will be various levels of voter fraud, double voting, disenfranchisement, vote buying, gerrymandering, etc.; but exactly none of that is attributable intrinsically to paper ballots, and none of it would really be reduced or eliminated by the introduction of electronic systems.
E-voting adds additional layers of complexity on to the voting process that don't exist with paper, makes auditing nearly impossible, and leaves almost all of the same vulnerabilities that have worked for centuries with paper still open to exploitation. In that way, I stand by my statement that it is a problem in the guise of a solution, looking for a problem.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Peace brothers and sisters.
If carrots got you drunk, rabbits would be fucked up. - Comedian Mitch Hedberg R.I.P. 03/30/68-2/24/05
But my office PC has not crashed or locked up in the year I've been there. So it is possible.
(C) Kaki Sain, 2011. By reading this, you have illegally copied my property to your brain.