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Dutch Securing E-voting After Being Pwned
An anonymous reader writes, "After the Dutch we-don't-trust-voting-computers foundation demonstrated glaring security holes in Dutch voting computers last week, the Dutch government has ordered (Dutch) all software to be replaced, all hardware to be checked, unflashable firmware to be installed, and an iron seal to be placed on voting machines. A certification institute will double-check all measures, and on election day will cull random machines to check them for accuracy. The Dutch intelligence service AIVD has been approached to consult on the radio emissions issue. Furthermore, foreign observers will monitor the upcoming elections on November 22nd. But the action group is still not confident (Dutch) that all problems are solved." US elections are controlled at the local level, so unfortunately such a nationwide fix would not be workable here.
I assume they are referring to TEMPEST attacks. It was a Dutchman, Vim van Eck who first brought TEMPEST attacks to public attention while in the U.S. even the security standard was classified. I imagine many Slashdot readers will recognize his name from the "Van Eck phreaking" described in Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon .
What is "pwned"?
behind not controlling American elections at the National Level?
In Canada we still use pencils and paper... call us inefficient and backward, but at least we never had an illigitimate government, b1atches!!
Oh, don't worry, I have it on good authority that the elections will be fixed here.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
...of the group is that they are simply replacing eproms with proms, while the group demonstrated that the chips could be replaced, not just 'reprogrammed'.
This is probably still something some politicians 'fail' to see over here: we can buy these chips in any electronics store, so why reprogram them - apart from the fact that reprogramming would take much more time than simply replacing.
It (the prom instead of eprom) is probably a failing idea of the company Nedap, which makes these monsters. Heck, they need to change their own software too, from time to time.
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
They do all of these things, and yet still do not create a paper trail of each vote?
It appears that the machines only create a paper copy of the results at the end of the day...
I get it, see, e-voting is worth all the trouble and hassles because it...does...what better than paper voting?
Maybe somebody can enlighten me, besides the ease of rigging an election what exactly do 'we' gain from e-voting?
Error 407 - No creative sig found
Pwned? What is this, Digg? Next thing you know you'll see headlines like this: ***RUMOR*** Apple might make iBooks a slighterly darker shade of white!!!!
Arguments for local control of voting regulations.
(posting as AC to save my devil's advocate ass)
1 - The United States Of America was designed as a confederation of (mostly) independent states. Only the powers explicitly given to the federal government are not the jurisdiction of the states.
2 - The innovative power of the open market. The belief that by allowing a competition of ideas in how best to run elections (as long as they meet minimal standards) the best choice will be eventually reached.
3 - Local boards of elections consist of an equal number of members of both parties. The belief is that Democrats won't allow Republicans to steal the election, and vise versa.
I thought we all agreed that "pwn" should not be in the topic. Why the hell does it keep popping up? "Up next... the prescription medication you bought may in fact be pwned by that super-duper company who is roffling poopsickles to pimp the quick buck, ha ha." /. is better than that.
Why the hell wouldn't it be? Sure it would cost more and probably be harder to setup than in holland since there is more territory and a much higher population count, but not workable? We're talking democracy at stake here, I don't see much that you could want to "fix" more than the risk of losing your voice, of making your votes irrelevant and inexistant, or being cheated out of choosing your leaders and the way your country will behave in the future.
Of course, some people may be more interested in there being a high risk of electronic electoral fraud, if they're committing or benefiting from the fraud in the first place...
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
Pwned is the term for when you randomly add the word "Dutch" in parenthesis to any section of text.
They should turn to those who know democracy best and contract out to Diebold.
Our little scandals here are not enough to prompt this type of action, so it should be good enough for them!
If true, this is a major step. The voting process hasn't been very transparent, with Nedap trying to keep the software and voting procedures a secret. Wijvertrouwenstemcomputersniet forced the issue using the Dutch 'freedom of information' act to get access to documents.
Let's hope this committee will have access to the source code, and will be able to monitor and verify that the new PROMs actually contain the code the committee has been reviewing.
I, for one, welcome our election-monitoring overlords. Where do I sign up to be one of them?
We have no elections that are nationwide, for one thing. The biggest scope of any election is statewide.
US elections are controlled at the local level, so unfortunately such a nationwide fix would not be workable here.
Sure it would. Powers reserved for the states have been nationalized over and over again by the simple application of cash: The federal government offers funding for a particular project but you have to follow the federal rules to get it. The federal rules are rarely too onorous and the money you don't have to collect in local taxes is too much to turn down when the neighboring states all take it.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
"...and an iron seal to be placed on voting machines."
Cast or forged? Does the form of a whiskered sea mammal have some kind of mystical or psychological significance to the dutch? Or does the iron somehow prevent WiFi access? The dutch are so weird.
Please, "pwned" in a story title, again? Has Slashdot been taken over by 12 year old Counter-Strike players?
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
Using your monitor as a AM transmitter. This little program is a real eye opener for those who still thinks that TEMPEST attacks are something you just see in the movies.
Doolittle :
Bomb no.20 : To explode of course.
"US elections are controlled at the local level, so unfortunately such a nationwide fix would not be workable here."
Um, as an American currently living in Switzerland, I have to ask... do you know how big the Netherlands are (is? that's a tricky one)? Smaller than Chicago, if I remember correctly... so being applied at the national level there is essentially the same as the local level in the US.
They should do it just like the financial industry does it.
You swipe your card, enter your pin number, and get a receipt. You get a bank statement sent to you in the mail. You then match your receipt to your statement. When it comes to money, people don't fuck around.
It's not like the e-voting problems are a technical 'glitch' or software error. It's a design problem, one that has simple solutions for.
The current e-voting systems in place are purposefully designed poorly so they can be exploited. Wake up people.
With a paper trail, this would be less critical.
Without one, it is insufficient.
OMFG YAY!
"Pwned" has been showing up constantly recently, and it's always kdawson.
What Slashdot need to remember is that their headlines show up in a variety of professional places (by rss) - Google news for one, and having words such as "pwned" looks beyond amateurish.
How about the next story being "Slashdot editors pwned with a dictionary, improvements expected all round"?
Anyone could get us Canadaians to observe the election. And we would be happy to do so.
Shh.
...the voting machines pwn you!
Electronic voting in India was first introduced in 1989 and used on experimental basis. From Year 2003, all state elections and by-elections were held using EVMs. In India the chances of tampering with machine is less likely, since it is considered easy to fix people rather than machines. ;-)
Tempest can be used to find out "who voted for whom" on an individual basis. The entire confidential process can be breached in this manner. Chances that Tempest being used are more since it does not require physical access to the machine.
electronically for almost 15 years now.
AFAIK election tendencies have not been altered as compared to paper voting
Also voting is not faster, only counting requires much less people.
Here, magnetic cards basically replace paper and the computer only serves as
sophisticated crayon. Handling of the cards is guarded by representatives
of political parties and are sent under sealed envelopes where again representatives
of the parties continue monitoring.
W
When you think about it, elections are rapidly becoming nationally controlled through the use of electronic voting machines, which are controlled by a national or international corporation. I believe at this time only a handful of corporations make such machines, and when the inevitable corporate mergers occur, it will gradually tend toward one company controlling everything nationwide (assuming bought-off politicians, of course).
I remember when this was on the news (I live in the Netherlands), there was a spokesperson for Nedap who said something like:
``Our machines are fine. I don't understand why the website is called "We don't trust voting machines", rather than "We don't trust people".''
I think that about sums up their approach to security. We don't need any security measures; people should just behave themselves. Yeah, right.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Come on, it's been in three headlines (that I've seen) so far and it's just not funny or clever.
Frankly it makes me cringe to read it and I don't even have to put up with this kind of crap on Kuro5hin, it's more annoying than Roland.
CUT IT OUT!
What you got was a two-party system where Diebold rules the market, no matter the number of scandals they're the center of.
Anon to protect my truth-telling ass.
"US elections are controlled at the local level, so unfortunately such a nationwide fix would not be workable here."
;)
US-local and NL-nation wide are more or less the same
Privacy is terrorism.
Ok, so now I know where you live, but do you know where I live?
I still don't see how to check the counting of votes in a voting machine (isn't it a constitutional right to check the counting of votes in any election?). How about publishing the source code? How can I be sure the right source code is in the machine? I will give $100 to the first one who can convince me that the following code is NOT in a voting machine: if (vote == VOTE_DEMOCRAT && 54321 * rand () % 12345 == 0) vote == VOTE_REPUBLICAN;
We need to start working on a minibar-key fix first, in my most humble opinion.
If you visit their site, you'll find information about what you can actually do. You are allowed to stay in the voting room, as long as you don't disturb the process of voting. More information can be found on their action page .
Our system is much more efficient. There is no need to control the VOTING on a national level, when one can just control the RESULT.
Let me fix that for you:
There. No problem, no need to thank me.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Good post. Just to clarify some things:
Arguments for local control of voting regulations. [...]
1 - The United States Of America was designed as a confederation of (mostly) independent states. Only the powers explicitly given to the federal government are not the jurisdiction of the states.
Actually a federation rather than a confederation. The difference is slight but important. Nonetheless, the 10th ammendment is very specific about the limits of powers of the federal government vs state governments.
Most of the expansion of federal authority has been carried out under the commerce clause of the Constitution -- that Washington has authority over matters of interstate trade, which has been used to enforce federal regulations from industrial emmissions to minimum wage to drug enforcement, etc. And it also comes into play when the Feds distribute federal HAVA (Help America Vote Act) funds to states. Though these only really apply to federal elections (i.e. Congress and President), no state is willing to maintain one election system for local and state elections and a second for federal elections.
The 14th ammendment guarantees equal access to the polls, but does not, and cannot dictate the mechanisms and procedures used on the state level, other than making sure that they are compatible with the 14th ammendment and the Voting Rights Act.
2 - The innovative power of the open market. The belief that by allowing a competition of ideas in how best to run elections (as long as they meet minimal standards) the best choice will be eventually reached.
The first point is far more applicable. Elections are the responsibility of the state, not the federal government. Each state has the power to determine its own election laws and practices, and laws vary widely. WA, for example, is moving towards all-mail voting. SD is exempt from HAVA provisions mandating state-wide voter databases since that state does not require voter registration.
Some states allow election day registration, others do not. Some states allow any voter to vote in all primary elections, some allow it for one primary election, and some states require that voters be registered in a given party to vote that party's primary ballot.
The benefits of open competition are positive, but a side effect.
And to the Anonymous Asshat who replied earlier: Diebold is not the leader in voting hardware. ES&S machines are used in roughly 50 percent of precincts and by roughly 50 percent of the US population. I believe, though am by no means sure, that Sequoia is the number two vendor by market share.
3 - Local boards of elections consist of an equal number of members of both parties. The belief is that Democrats won't allow Republicans to steal the election, and vise versa.
Again, this depends on the state. In some, like Ohio, the State Board of Elections is divided by state law between the two major parties. In some states the board is appointed while in others others Board seats are elected positions. While I'm not aware of any states that have election boards made up of members from only one party, there are many states that do not allocate board seats by party affiliation.
we = We dont trust voting machines group
==
We are glad it has been acknowledged that voting machines could have security problems.
We have been thanked by the government for our actions.
The only strange things is that it looks like the goverment doesn't want us to analyse the other voting machine before election day. They probably already know the outcome of such an investigation.
We think that replacing the EPROM's with PROM's is not an adequate solution. Nothing will help, no locks or security seals. The only solution is to dump these machines / destroy / ban them.
We are disappointed that the government still holds the opinion that the software should be secret/closed source and that they don't want to guarantee the possibility that electionresults will be checkable by a third party in the future. Also the government doesn't seem to be willing to discuss the very big role companies play in the election process.
These problems are the fundamental questions that we are concerned about. The problems with security are much less a problem for us.
We will talk with the government again and based on that we will decide whether we continue with our court process against the State.
==
Sorry for the bad English. I think it is interesting to see that they are more concerned with the closed source voting process and the influence of companies on the election then the minor problems of security. I'll hope they will indeed change these points!
did the Dutch we-don't-trust-voting-ballots foundation demonstrate glaring security holes in Dutch voting ballots too?
...TNO stands for "Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research", but one of the major concerns - also pointed forward by the wedontrustvotingcomputers organization - is that TNO refuses to publically state its findings on the NEDAP voting computers.
I know 'independent' is not quite the same as 'open', but for a thing like the public voting process, doesn't it make sense to make these findings public ?
Apparently, they found some errors in the past - as they have tested the voting machines for years ! - but did not reveal them.
So, if "independent" stands for "TNO", as a Dutch voter I'm afraid - very afraid - that those voting machines will not be checked thorougly.
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
..it would take on election day, across every precinct in America, a mob of folks, pissed off folks, with sledge hammers smashing the living crap out of all those ripoff machines, then marching to the local city hall, and swapping the sledge hammers for pitchforks, and demanding two things-normal voting boxes with paper ballots, something that anyone with at least one remaining good eye and having the ability to do simple sums can "verify" the count with, AND a complete and total end to the two criminal gangs posing as "political parties" who run those corrupt out of the chute cloned candidates every election and have completely hijacked government and run it as a massive jobs and skimming scam operation now.
It makes little to no difference if your "vote" is recorded accurately if all you are doing every two years is swapping out one criminal goon for another!
Want to know what a REAL "wasted" vote is? One cast for a D or an R. Look at the results we have RIGHT NOW. Look at 15 years ago, or 30, or 45, it makes no difference, go back and read history-it's a corrupt gang run government, and that's it! It's a D and R organized crime run government, and it sucks! It's sucked for generations. This is called a clue! Enough! I mean make those two corrupt gangs illegal for all of eternity and bring a whole passle of so called "leadership" folks and big money "contributors" in those gangs up on RICO corruption charges and TREASON.
Until that happens,both those things, voting is a big fat joke and we will just continue on until there is no difference at all between the US and any dipshit third world dictatorship cesspool. We are at least half way if not two thirds of the way there *right now*. I still vote, I want to be able to comment on it and bitch about it, I still laugh about it, and I will also make my election prediction right now-IT WON'T MATTER ONE DAMN BIT if this time the blood profits controllers decide to let the Demonrat mafia gang run stuff instead of the Retardican'ts, "we the people" will still get the shaft, and politics will still be as crooked as ever, and trasnational corporate bribers will still run everything by paying off whomever, that and if they can get some more juicy blackmail targets they'll do that, because that's even cheaper and more effective than bribery.
The innovative power of the open market.
Voting a market? Whoo how. Slow down.
Voting isn't a market! There are several market conditions that are not met.
Where is the price?
Where is the costumers free choice? (In fact it's all a set of "monopolies".)
Where is the comparisen mechanism? Who determines what is better and whats worse?
Where is the economic equilibrium?
Nooo. Voting is no market. Nooo...
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Karma 50, and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt.
Today on l337d07.o®g WHAT THE F. Really Pwned does not belong on a legit profession web page about serious topics. This is not a gaming chat room.
OMG Ponies!!! with Glitter!!!! I miss Pink
... and they are NOT content. The group said that the new measures seem to be in place to prevent them from checking up on other (types of) voting machines. They feel that it is absolutely necessary that they can check on the software used (the closed sourced Windows XP) and judge the whole voting procedure. The new measures prevent them from doing so.
Plus, they are still concerned about the fact that it is possible to 'hear' who voted what, because the nachine makes a noise every time someone votes. This is researched by the Dutch Secret Service right now, but it is not adressed by any of the new measures minister Nicolai has ordered. As it is required by law that voting should be possible in absolute secrecy, they think the next elections cannot use voting machines. Unless of course the issues are adressed, but that is not likely.
They are still considering to ask a judge to forbid the use of the voting machines in the next elections, to be held on the 22 of november 2006. If the judge complies, it is very thinkable that the elections will not take place in november, or even this year.
For those that can understand Dutch, Maurice Wessling of the group has given an interview (wma) to the Dutch national news broadcaster NOS saturday afternoon.
Long standing democratic traditions voting the grave yard. They even have official programs 'get out the vote money' to pay to bus voters from polling station to polling station. Voter turnouts exceeding 100% are normal in some districts (e.g. St. Louis MO).
Not that the republicans are much better.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I basically scoff at the idea of a secure election in general.
Voting methods have price, check.
Localities are allowed to choose within limits, check.
Lots of interest in results. Embarassment for locality when things go wrong (e.g. FL 2000). Comparison is political but does happen, not always reasonably to our eyes but that's kind of the nature of markets. Check.
Economic equilibrium? No monopolys on voting machines, multiple buyers. Check.
Selection of voting method is a marketplace. Back to school for anshil.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Problem solved. There's almost no way someone can remove all the epoxy on a board to change anything on it. But then if it's fried, it's fried : throw it away. Or if you want to keep some form of cooling, just isolate them on a daugher board.
* I cannot choose the voting system, uncheck
* voting security does not have a setable price, uncheck (the cheapest voting system isn't the best...)
* you are mixing up: the market of voting systems against the market of voting machines. There is no Economic equilibrium on voting sytems, uncheck
Winning votes for your party... has a price! What a horror having a market here.
Ethical driven system cannot and should not work with market logic. Not with a supreme overlooker driven by another logic than economy.
(Take medicine as another point, if there isn't an ethical issue like the hippocratic oath, and a system to check what the doctors do to you, they have an infinite income in never healing you completely. But we do expect more from doctors than working purely economical....)
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Karma 50, and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt.
You can in fact choose to vote absentee, which is a paper ballot everywhere I know of. But that is besides the point.
You (misunderstanding the GGP post) state the conditions for a market don't exist. You were wrong about who the customer is, you continue in this misunderstanding.
You now move the goal posts by stating 'voting security does not have a setable price' which is'nt a condition for a market at all, just something you pulled out of your ass. No form of security has a 'setable price'. Yet we use market forces in the process of securing stuff all the time. e.g. rent a cops at the mall. You spend in proportion to the potential damage and call it good enough (just like the canadians call their imperfect voting system good enough).
There are multiple vendors of punched paper ballots, electronic voting machines, printed paper ballots etc. Each locallity can choose the method and machine that suits them. There is absolutely a market.
Your medicine example is laughable. It would require collusion between all market participating doctors and drug companys. Have you actually studied economics? You know more then three people are incapable of keeping a secret?
Ethically driven systems? Name one? (Donor organs? Not in practice.)
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The market in voting methods is the only process chaotic enough to unravel this mess. It only takes one locality to put some light in the right places and the whole circle jerk is exposed.
This whole mess of dualing cheaters came into being using voting methods like are used in Canada today. Paper ballots and voting boxes have been proven in practice to be easy to cheat. If you believe Canadian elections are perfect your smoking crack.
The downside of parlamentary systems is obvious in reviewing the last hundard years of european political history. It often gives far too much power to fringe groups that act as tie breakers. Italian communists anybody?
That said Washington DC needs a decent strength third party more then anything else. In the short therm it won't be the greens or the libertarians. They have both marginalized themselves out of viability.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Ethically driven systems? Medicine. Just as I told you. 100%-Market-logic does not work here. Not well. And yes you do see where it won't work. Many markets need a state (political) regulation without them they wont work. Take the food market as an another example, without the legislative system ensuring food quality (and penality if it doesn't work) the food market would collapse.
Get back to the original post. I think you misunderstood it.
The innovative power of the open market. The belief that by allowing a competition of ideas in how best to run elections (as long as they meet minimal standards) the best choice will be eventually reached.
We are not talking about the market of voting machines.
We are talking about a hypothetically "market of ides how to best run elections".
Such a thing is not a market in an economic sense but the decission is a political issue.
How much shall we spent for vote security? This answer is not solved on a market.
The ideas are not set on a market here, and you cannot mix that with market of the used hardware.
Look the market is not the all-to-everything solution some people want it to have. And yes I do study economics at the university. Take for example the neoclassic economie that has the "everything is a market" assumption. Well in the 20th century they e.g. discovered when the market indeed does give the optimal allocation, why are there so many people working in companies instead of working alone offering they work power on a market? Inside a company the ressource allocation is not done by a market, but by command. Of course with cost center accounting there are incentives to recreate a market inside a company, however the decision is still done top-down by command, even if it relies on cost center "prices".
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Karma 50, and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt.
Fixing elections is like a national past time here, and when that doesn't work, we have the electoral college to just let us know how we should have voted.
So, um.. it's been over two hundred years. How come our election methods still suck?
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
Nope. Here (New York State) the polling places have books containing entries for each of the registered voters. The entries contain your name, your signature (from when you registered to vote) and a blank line. When it's your turn to vote, they ask your name, look up your entry, cover the signature, and present the book to you to sign. (I don't know how the corner cases --- people who can't sign for whatever reason --- are handled.)
One thing overseas readers should keep in mind when reading
People bought and sold food before it was regulated. The food market can never collapse: people need to eat.
TO ALL US CITIZENS. WAKE THE FUCK UP.
place all electronic voting machines into the stump grinder, end to all diebold, ess, sequoia, and al those fucker who support, piss on all the us media blackout, bush appointee'd fcc, revoke network frequency license renewal, hit the public files of all blackout networks, vot on paper under the sun over a series of days without electricity, restore the us constitution, hold impeachment hearing now, destroy all snooping databases of honest citizens, all party partisen oversight of all wiretapping, upgrade ssn system by addition of extra digits to ssn, allow name change of anyone with identity theft, revoke security clearance of government corruption facilitators starting with karl rove, end facism, end domestic terrorism, end dictatorship.
TYPE IN ALL BOLD CAPS WHEN YOU SCREAM THE FUCK OUT.
US elections are controlled at the local level, so unfortunately such a nationwide fix would not be workable here.
Hmmm, the Dutch aren't exactly Botswana or some place in South America where votes might be escorted by military convoys. Yet, the Dutch will have FOREIGN observers?
Wow. Considering all the diebold bullshit going on, one would think and ask where are the INTERNATIONAL observers when US voting (local, county, state, federal) elections occur.
I think the UN should declare an occupation to several major US cities. Make things interesting a bit....
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
This may be the most accurate and insightful post I have ever read on any of the e-voting topics.
As for market share, I believe the parent poster is correct in placing the vendors:
1) ES&S
2) Sequoia
3) Deibold
However, it may be splitting hairs between 2 and 3.
Tim
"Troll", eh? Too bad there isn't a meta-moderation for "deluded."
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
and, hopefully, leave! then I'm in favor of it. /. would be vastly better if malda just banned every whining pedant who thinks the rest of the world needs to know how you all feel about modern slang.
I mean, read your own post, tosser. Do you sound "legitimate" or "professional"? Jeez...
23 skiddoo, baby!
Before the food market was regulated, like the historical farmer market, it was not an anonymous market in the sense it was very small. I knew the seller personally. Something that often cannot hold true for today dimensions. Before the food market was regulated there was no genetical engineer available, the was no pesticides that can be used, etc. The farmers just sold personally to you what they have grown.
Today with the need to write the ingrediences on a product, without the worries about trials if you sell bad food, the market would brake down, in the sense there is little incitation for procuders to sell good food.
People need to it, but without regulations they would eat crap.
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Karma 50, and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt.
I agree the troll moderation is bad...
What is the point of an observer with a black box voting machine?
Will the observer get to see the source? Will the observer understand the source? Can the observer verify that the specified source is actually running on the voting machine? How will the observer see if the computer malfunctions in any way causing incorrect counts? Checking the seals is pretty pointless as well, even assuming they are unforgeable and unbreakable, how do we know nobody who places the seals was bribed and changes were made before the seal was placed?
With proper elections the observer can actually OBSERVE stuff:
beforehand:
- is the box empty when the elections start
- is it a normal, intact box?
while voting is taking place:
- is the person on the voting list?
- is the person who he/she claims to be?
- is everybody putting exactly one ballot into the box?
while counting ON SITE:
- is every ballot being counted?
- is the box empty when counting starts? (i.e., is EVERY ballot being counted)
- are the counters counting properly?
after counting:
- are all the ballots put back into the box?
- is the box properly sealed?
- are the correct counts made public?
Posting publicly, for life lived cozily is probably not fun- or interesting... I guess I should expect Inflammatory, Off-topic, or Troll
1. STOLEN from inhabitants who were decimated, drugged, small-poxed or anthraxed, payoteed to death or shipped off to Korea or Vietnam despite the dwindling indigenous male bloodlines of the North American Natives; before and after that, the "confederation" nearly tore itself apart, spilling blood of countless descendants of those who were too cowardly to behead their own corrupt queen/monarchy (which led to the occupation of this land... just a little history)
2. "EVENTUALLY"... Humm, meanwhile, companies like diebold continue to sell all sundry of products (building alarms ang gongs/bells & systems among many other things) rake in the dough while corrupt/paid off (paid off by whom ever you can link them to) politicians and lobbyists reinforce this sick feedback loop
3. Equal Number... Not, they're not only equal.. they're equally corrupt, two sniping, flaming heads on the same dragon's slimy, scaly body; time to introduce MORE parties that so dilute things that no two parties can rule with collusion or singular power. Oh, wait, that goes against bi-polar, schizoid, malefactor corrupt "democracy" (just remember FLORIDIANs who were disenfranchised by a **texas** database company that provided information that kept mostly minority and democrat-leaning/registered citizens (not many of them even felons or prohibited, either) from voting
These assholes don't speak FOR me. They can take my taxes, jail or detain or economically destroy me, kill me, kill abroad (overseas for some of the low-IQ here... not "kill a broad"), and lie to the world about the efficient, trustworthy voting system "we" have, but they don't speak FOR ME. They can misrepresent me, but that does NOT imply my complicity: I just utterly lack the resources to malevolently swing down a hammer from the heavens to rectify things on a higher plane of morality that isn't based on "impartial"/"colorblind" economics and bullshit such as family crests.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
When the Federal Gov't re-distributes wealth from the richer liberal states to the poorer conservative states....it makes me sad. Aren't these 'rugged individualists' down in the violence and divorce centers of the nation supposed to be getting by 'on their own'? They demand that welfare be stripped back so they won't pay for lazy minorities...but there they are. My state only gets 63 cents per dollar contributed...some of these midwest and southern states get 1.20 or more for every buck contributed.
Blar.
" US elections are controlled at the local level, so unfortunately such a nationwide fix would not be workable here."
So? As part of the EU, Holland is more comparable to a single state in the US. US elections are controlled at the state level, corresponding to Holland. So the Dutch fixes could certainly be a model for American states' fixing our own problems. And America's longer united history and stronger federalism make our individual state changes more transferrable to other states, when those other states want to follow their neighbors.
This Dutch reform is a signal lesson to the US. We should take it and run with it. Our elections are only 3 weeks away, on TUE November 7, 2006. Various organizations have already started reforming in the US long ago, so it might not even be too late to switch away from our untrustworthy machines. Even if it is, that makes it that much more important to watch for fraud next month, so we can discard those tainted results. And get started on testing for the 2007 elections, which at a much smaller scale are a good test case. Because 2008's elections, with so many Republican Senate seats, all House seats, and both White House offices on the line, are all too important to trust to today's untrustworthy voting machines.
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make install -not war
"Tempers are wearing thin. Let's just hope some robot doesn't kill everybody." --Bender
a Beowulf cluster of pwned voting machines? Surely you can, it's called a U.S. midterm election!
So are hackers busting 128 bit encryption now? Are they hijacking VPNs? Hacking enterprise router? What is the problem with e-voting?
I don't think he meant collapse as in "no food would be available" but more collapse as in "Armerican farms would go bankrupt". Without trade barriers to protect American grown crops from foreign competitition, many food prices would drop substancially in the United States. That might actually be a good thing in some ways, unprocessed foods would probably drop the most. The down side, is that the United States would become dependent on foreign countries to feed it.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
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