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Building a Better Voting Machine
edmicman writes "Wired News has an interesting article about what would make the perfect voting machine: 'With election season upon us, Wired News spoke with two of the top computer scientists in the field, UC Berkeley's David Wagner and Princeton's Ed Felten, and came up with a wish list of features we would include in a voting machine, if we were asked to create one. These recommendations can't guarantee clean results on their own. Voting machines, no matter how secure, are no remedy for poor election procedures and ill-conceived election laws. So our system would include thorough auditing and verification capabilities and require faithful adherence to good election practices, as wells as topnotch usability and security features.'"
the best algorithm in the world is worthless in a poor implementation. enacting legislation that governed the process of counting the votes and verifying them is just as important as the machines themselves.
...vividly encapsulates that post-Watergate/pre-punk/coked-up moment when you could trust no one, least of all yourself.
No one said Democrats don't steal votes. Well, no one with a clue. However, while we don't have any proof that Dems have stolen any presidential elections, we have piles of proof that the reps have stolen the last two of them.
Nixon was a Republican until he ran his 1972 campaign independently. Really, he was still a Republican, but I think he was just trying to insulate his party.
How convenient that Bush repeated the "votes from beyond the grave" gambit (which is older than democracy - oh wait, no one has ever actually tried a true democracy, they've all been representative or restricted, even unto Athens) in 2000... and succeeded.
Of course, you seem to be forgetting the scam with which thousands of non-felons were added to a list of felons who were not eligible to vote down in Florida. The company was explicitly told that they would get paid if they did not check their list for validity.
You are either an idiot or a troll. I put my money on the second. The recount was not completed, it was illegally stopped by the unilateral action of a single supreme court justice. The recount did NOT give the election to Bush; it would have Definitely given it to Gore.
A lot of this is because in the florida precincts where they used the scan-tron type forms, they had a form scanner with a switch on it. This switch determines whether mismarked ballots are kicked back out to the person inserting them, or silently accepted. In at least one primarily black precinct this switch was set to silently accept; in the majority of precincts it was set to reject. I guess in florida you only get to have your ballot checked at submission time if you're white.
The electoral college is the thing that makes our claims of Democracy a farce. Even given all of their cheating bullshit, the republicans still lost the popular vote in the last election. This is only like the fifth time that the electoral college has overridden the popular vote, proof that it is utterly unnecessary, but also proof that it sometimes goes against the will of the people and should be disbanded.
The electoral college was instituted because it was supposedly believed to be a necessary item to prevent mob rule. In reality, it is a power structure created to keep the powerful in power eternally.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If you take away a verifiable record (be it an ID you can look up or an actual copy) of your vote, you open yourself to the following type scenarios:
1) Boss: You know, I really need to see your vote receipt so we can make sure you're protecting our interests. If you refuse or you don't vote the way we wanted, see you later.
2) Abusive spouse: Honey, lemme make sure you voted the way I wanted or I will beat the crap out of you.
3) Church: You heathen, you voted for people out to destroy our morality. I, requesting that you be excommunicated.
etc, etc...
Don't leave your mind so open that your brain falls out. Don't close it so much that you cut off the blood.
Personally I have seen enough examples to believe Democrats routinely steal enough votes to gain a 1 or 2 point advantage in any national election and substantially more in certain local races. But we Republicans simply spot em the handicap and go on to win elections.
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http://www.leanleft.com/archives/2004/07/27/3244/
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http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/05/17/wednesd ay/index.html?eref=sitesearch
You need to read more. There are plenty of cases of Republicans doing shifty things.
LAS VEGAS -- Elections officials have rebuffed an attempt by a former GOP operative to purge about 17,000 Democrats from the voter rolls in the battleground state of Nevada, where the two presidential candidates are in a dead heat. Dan Burdish, former head of the state Republican Party, filed a challenge last week claiming the Democrats should be removed from the rolls because they were inactive voters. When asked why he did it Burdish told the press, "I am looking to take Democrats off the voter rolls." http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,135334,00.htm
2004: The State of Florida compiled a list of 47,000+ felons to be barred from voting. Jeb Bush struggled to keep this list secret. After a lawsuit to make the list public, it was discovered that African American felons (who tend to vote Democrat) made-up 50% of the list, including a number of African-Americans who had regained the right to vote, while hispanics (who tend to vote Republican) made up only 61 of the 47,000 felons on the list. http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/07/01/florida
Clint Curtis testifies under oath that Florida Representative Tom Feeney asked him to create a voting machine that could secretly switch the vote to whomever is pre-chosen to win an election. http://www.boingboing.net/2006/10/09/video_testim
2002: In New Hampshire, Democrats setup a phone line where disabled or elderly voters can call to get a ride to the polls. On election day, they are mysteriously jammed with calls from people hanging up. Legitimate voters can't get through. After some investigation, they trace the calls back to "GOP Marketplace" in Virginia. Republicans are convicted and admit that they did it to stop Democrats from getting to the polls. James Tobin, New England regional director of the Republican National Committee is convicted. http://bigbrassballs.wordpress.com/tag/gop-scanda
The $5000 gets you several things. It gets you a gigantic touchscreen about the size of my dell 20 inch monitor for the visually impaired (recall that a significant number of voters are elderly), along with a headset for those who really can't read well at all. It gets you a computer and stand that you can collapse and carry. it gets you a limited subset. And it gets you a machine primarily assembled in the states. It includes the cost of certifying the product design with one of three approved labs that test and vet these things. It includes a removable and theoretically secure pcCard slot for transporting the ballots. And the software needed to run all the various features, from translations to screen readers to the operating system. Like all government contracting work, the price is overbearing, mostly because so very few vendors are in the market. Even if you go with a cheap hard drive, cheap processor, and skimp in general on parts, I don't think you're going to get the screen alone for under 200. And remember, there's no room for error (theoretically) here. No failing power supplies, no broke hard drives, no blue screens, or those votes might simply be gone.
There are interesting arguments in favor of a computerized ballot system. The implementations I've seen universally suck, sadly. Whether its a function of cost cutting or a simple consequence of an incredibly complex system I can't say with certainty.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
Voting machines should be at least as secure as slot machines. The state of Nevada has standards for those, as I wrote in a previous Slashdot article. Nevada is concerned with collecting taxes and not cheating customers when the machines are owned by very shady people. So they have technical standards with teeth. Stuff like this:
(a) Employ a mechanism approved by the chairman which verifies that all control program components, including data and graphic information, are authentic copies of the approved components. The chairman may require tests to verify that components used by Nevada licensees are approved components. The verification mechanism must have an error rate of less than 1 in 10 to the 38th power and must prevent the execution of any control program component if any component is determined to be invalid. Any program component of the verification or initialization mechanism must be stored on a Conventional ROM Device that must be capable of being authenticated using a method approved by the chairman.
(b) Employ a mechanism approved by the chairman which tests unused or unallocated areas of any alterable media for unintended programs or data and tests the structure of the storage media for integrity. The mechanism must prevent further play of the gaming device if unexpected data or structural inconsistencies are found.
(c) Provide a mechanism for keeping a record, in a form approved by the chairman, anytime a control program component is added, removed, or altered on any alterable media. The record must contain a minimum of the last 10 modifications to the media and each record must contain the date and time of the action, identification of the component affected, the reason for the modification and any pertinent validation information.
(d) Provide, as a minimum, a two-stage mechanism for validating all program components on demand via a communication port and protocol approved by the chairman. The first stage of this mechanism must verify all control components. The second stage must be capable of completely authenticating all program components, including graphics and data components in a maximum of 20 minutes. The mechanism for extracting the authentication information must be stored on a Conventional ROM Device that must be capable of being authenticated by a method approved by the chairman.
That's part of what's needed. Those standards cover the possibility of an "alternate program" in a slot machine, and provide a way to check for it, with logs and an external program check capability.
erm.. You will be using all open source tools, freely open for community and peer review .That will include ROM burning utility.
Heck you know there is some platform out there which is build from ground up on open source, including OS, file system , drivers etc..mmm what the heck it was called...