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E-voting State By State
jcatcw writes "One-third of Americans will use voting machines next week that have never before served in a general election. Computerworld.com provides an overview of e-voting in each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia — equipment, systems for voter registration, polling, significant legal challenges to the systems, previous media coverage, links to government watchdog sites, the vendors, technologies and laws that are important to the issue, and a review of 'Hacking Democracy.'"
One-third of Americans will use voting machines next week that have never before served in a general election.
Not to worry! I hear that the machines help you pick the right candidate, if you have trouble. Diebold actually licensed the clippy AI from Microsoft for that one.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Here is to a problem free election in Arizona and across the states!
Invexi - a Phoenix, AZ based web design and web development company.
I just heard on the news that the average age of poll workers is 70! I've seen many older people, even younger than 70, try to use a computer--and figure out what it's doing, and it's painfully difficult to watch. It's just a technology that they haven't grown up with, and have a hard time grasping. I'm not knocking the abilities of old dogs to learn new tricks, but it seems to me that the younger generation (including myself), need to step up to the plate here and start to help out in polling places.
I mean I'm not trying to sound cynical or mean, but alot of the poll workers I've encountered have a difficult enough time trying to find my name on their roll sheets. How are they supposed to be the safe-guards against people tampering with these machines?
For the 3rd or 4th election we're using electronic machines that read a paper card. The candidates have an arrow pointing towards their name with the center missing, you vote for the candidate by filling in the arrow. It's simple as hell and older people don't seem to have any problems with it. Dunno why everyone wants a touch screen or something similar. There is simply nothing wrong with paper.
The new state law requiring state issued picture ID is a nice touch too.
Oh yea, Harrison Country, Indiana btw.
Gone!
Never confuse movement with action. --Hemingway
You can't rig an election from just one angle. For starters it makes it look too obvious.
On the other hand if you where say to pass a law that basically makes gerrymandering totally legal, find ways to stop people from voting that may vote against you and also use rigged electronic voting then your in with a chance.
Couldn't most of the issues involved in e-voting be solved by producing the voter with a paper 'receipt' as proof of their vote (as well as a corresponding receipt for their precinct)? Taking it a step further, they could then, somehow, verify their vote by showing proof using this receipt. I'm purposely leaving out a lot of details here. But I'm just wondering if the voting system could benefit from the electronic monetary transaction technology and protocols that we interact with on a daily basis. What are your thoughts?
Faith is a willingness to accept something w/o complete proof and to act on it. Reason allows you to correct that faith.
May the best hacker win!
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
What are you trying to argue here?
Voting fraud is OK, because it was done in the past?
Because the "other side" did it?
emt 377 emt 4
This is one place where paper is still called for. Even if the paper is generated by computer in the form of a reciept, there must be some way to account for every vote. Perception of the voting machines alone is enough reason not to use them without a paper trail.
DeviantArt Page
NSFWThanks to our Cowboy heritage, we ain't got these newfangled eVoting machines here in Oklahoma.....yet.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
I know quite a few poll workers and I don't know any of them that I would trust to be
able to turn on a machine much less anything else more technical that needed to be done
with one.
Got Code?
For example, exit polls are a proven and incredibly accurate way of estimating results. In fact, the only times anywhere in the world ever that they have broken down is when gross electoral fraud has taken place - except in America during the last two presidential elections where the pollsters suddenly and catastrophically failed to conduct an accurate exit poll, but it wasn't due to electoral fraud, oh no.
It seems to have turned into a party political issue where the supporters of the winning party accuse the losers of "whining" when the actual evidence of fraud should scare them more than their opponents because it means that they, the loyal voters have become expendible. They don't need you anymore. They can win the election without you. The president now has the power to declare martial law & he has the machinary (hah!) to deliver the results he wants.
What are you listening to? (http://megamanic.blogetery.com/)
What is wrong with paper ballots? Anyone? Bueller?
Seriously, what is the reason that so many of the counties in the US are switching to electronic voting machines when they're clearly unverifiable, untested, and unreliable?
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
Just dont know which direction.
"You may say you want 'fair' elections, but you don't really want a return to the bad old days, do you?"
If by "bad old days" you mean "auditable" then yes, bring 'em on. The old fashioned style of "rigging" took a hell of a lot of coordination and involved intimidating large numbers of people (a true conspiracy). Much more can now be accomplished by one person "coercing" one machine that, as you say, doesn't care less. Worst still is that nobody can start a legal shitfight since the coercion of inaudatible machines can not be detected. I hope the rest of your post was intended as sarcasm/humour.
Disclaimer: I have never been to the US, election officals here in Australia dissmissed these machines as a steaming pile of junk using the same critisims as seen on slashdot. Do americans know their voting system is rigged and simply pay lip service to democracy (ala Saddam), or is the "fairness" of the voting system a partisan issue, or are american election officials genuinely too stupid to understand the concept of an audit?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Voter fraud is already happening, and is extremely obvious, in Texas, according to a local news station: http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/11/01/more-alle gations-of-voter-fraud-and-guess-which-party-it-fa vors/
Paper Ballot / Optical Scan
Accept no substitutes.
when I arrive at my polling place and am confronted with an electronic voting machine with no voter-verifiable paper trail, how do I opt out and fill out a paper ballot? Is there a standard procedure that I've been unaware of?
Who else will be trying this?
They're supposed to be a verifiable, permanent record of the vote. Not being reusable is the whole bloody point!
Good! I trust a printing press printing 100,000 equal ballots more than I trust a thousand computers running flawed software to always correlate a touch-screen press for Candidate Y with an Access entry for Candidate Y, 100% of the time. There are multiple possible points of failure for the latter scenario, and only one easily noticable one for the former.
Again, good! People can be held to account for their failures. Machines cannot.
It takes a calamity or capital crime to 'lose' 100,000 ballots, but only a single hard drive crash or power failure to lose 100,000 electronic ones. I know which system I'd rather have.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
I still like absentee balloting best. There's a voter verifiable paper trail, despite all the jokes about the post office, they do treat absentee balloting very respectfully and carefully and it's quite secure. 90% of washington now votes by absentee ballot, so we've got to be doing something right.
Here, you not only have a paper ballot, but you are also required to actually write in the name of the candidate. However, Japan still manages to get a decent turnout, and get the votes counted in a reasonably short span of time, even for local elections which had, in my local town's case last month, about 40 candidates vying for 35 seats.
Knowing the result at 10pm versus knowing it at 2am surely doesn't really make that much of a difference?
As for literacy, surely the same degree is needed when comparing ticking a box versus pushing a button or a touch-screen?
No, no, no, and for the last time, NO. Didn't vote for the candidate that the mobsters down the street are in collusion with? Don't expect a pretty outcome when they come knocking to check out who you voted for.
BTW, not your comment, all of these damn articles re: election/vote theft.
May the better crook win!
I missed the registration deadline AGAIN. I had an excuse last year, I had never lived in a state with a deadline before. This year it's all my fault, but it still sucks.
No, not really, but returning to those bad old days might very well be an improvement on the bad new days.
Wholesale, undetectable election fraud has become a possibility using the types of electronic voting machines that are currently in use ("DREs", "direct recording electronic" machines that have no paper trail being the worst offenders). These electronic voting machines allow attacks on the Democratic process that are much less labor intensive, and hence much more likely to be attempted, than the old fashioned approaches.
Establishing a re-countable, auditable paper-trail is certainly not a guarantee of secure elections, but it is the first step that needs to be made. It's a pretty obvious step, really, recommended by everyone who understands the problem.
I say ditch the voting machines, print up ballots, stock pens at the polling stations, and hand count the ballots. It can't be any worse than the system we have now.
"I went to the office and voted by paper ballot that looked like it was meant to be optically scanned. Whether it will be or not I do not know. Regardless, it has to be better than voting on a Diebold machine."
Most optical scanning ballot readers in service are also Diebold products. Many people do not realize that Diebold has not recently entered the voting machine business.
That said, I do maintain a distinction between the flaws in the Diebold electronic machines, and the integrity of the elections in which they are used.
As a computer scientist, I regard the flaws in a certain way, based on my security and cryptography background.
But I also realize that the accountability problems, and the fact that there *could* be undetected manipulation of election results, does not necessarily mean there *is* tampering.
On the other hand, I live in a district where liberal democrats prevail anyway. Not only that, but I actually know personally several of the candidates. I think it's quite cool to know (or at this point, to hope on a reasonable guess) that a good friend and neighbor is going to the State Legislature, and that a neighbor who I know in passing, is going to the US House.
I know where some of these people stand on certain issues, not because of their campaign statements, but because of actual personal discussions we've had over the years. So from where I sit, government does not seem like this faceless machine which is deaf to my voice - at all. Far from it. My local government has quite the responsive backchannel.
So yeah, I feel like my vote counts. Especially on local propositions. Those are usually decided by, oh, a few thousand votes or so. When I see numbers like that, I actually believe I have a voice.
Tuesday's going to be fun. The candidate I mentioned who is (hopefully) going to the state legislature is planning the victory party at the Doubletree. The governor of the state is expected to be there. I'm invited. It should be fun. Partying with a *governor* on the night that the Democrats took over Congress.
All these people have made it abundantly clear that Diebold electronic machines are not welcome in our state, and will not be approved on their watch.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Yeah, and isn't that a scream? I think it's great that the forces of darkness and/or the republican party keep coming back to that line -- it's so transparently lame.
You're right that the widespread silence on the subject has been seemed pretty weird... Mark Crispin Miller likes the "they're in denial" theory, which I suppose is as good as anything. The American public has always been a little slow on the uptake, with the current state of the big media, they're even slower, but I would guess they'll figure out eventually that this is an issue of more than passing importance.
But what I really wanted to say is that you don't want to be carried away by your rhetoric: "democracy has been extinguished"? Well admittedly maybe it has, but on the other hand maybe it hasn't -- the fact that there are some holes in the system doesn't prove it's completely busted: the problems we've got may, in fact, turn out to be fixable by the traditional process of "throw the bums out", followed by "vote for a better system".
If they need to -- or even if they don't -- I expect that the Republicans will steal control of the Senate this election; but I have hopes that they'll let the control of the House go. It would be a lot of work to steal it, and even if they could manage it, it would be awfully goddamn obvious. That may not seem like much of a hope, but it'd be a start.
The right response to reports of election fraud is not to stay home: we need an even bigger turnout to overwhelm the bogus votes.
An election has to be seen as free and fair and those that are elected have to actually get put in the post - look at Algeria as an extreme example of what happens to a country when people start playing with elections. Even having a fair election that doesn't look fair due to a lack of checks and balances gives groups the idea that they will never get anywhere without violent action. It has to both be fair and verifyably fair. From a distance Diebold looks like a nest of criminals due to a few suspicious actions - IMHO it is in their own best interests to let these things be audited by anyone that cares.
Especially since some forms of voter fraud are intended to be obvious, discovered and a form of embarrassment for the other party...
As I was saying, they worked just fine in DeKalb County, GA.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
What do I mean? Well, if a county with 10,000 registered voters logs 10,000,000+ votes each for both of the main candidates and 15,000,000 for the libertarian (or other "fringe") candidate not even Miami or Ohio's election supervisors would be able to turn a blind eye. Also the "wrong" candidate would have won - a sure reason to fix the system ;)
What are you listening to? (http://megamanic.blogetery.com/)
``In the middle years of America's history, elections were rigged by parties like Tammany hall through voter coercion and having supporters vote several times in several different districts (or multiple times at a single poll).''
Ah, but you know this, right? The problem is that many (all?) of the voting machines offer no accountability, which means elections could be rigged without this being detected.
Another problem is that, although wrong results from voting machines have been detected, somehow this seems to have been downplayed as "minor glitches", as if a known _wrong_ election result is somehow a minor thing.
As for voter coercion: this is why votes should not be traceable to voters. If nobody (including yourself) has a way to prove what you voted, you can always claim to have complied with the wishes of the people who coerced or bribed you, whereas you actually voted something else. Of course, I'm not saying people will realize this and not believe the people who say "We will know if you voted against our party."
There are also procedures that protect against people voting multiple times.
All in all, the situation doesn't have to be as bad as in the "bad old days" you speak of, but it's a whole lot _worse_ today.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
I keep seeing people in here with methods of printing out reciepts with hashes to "check" your vote online. How about you select your candidate (preferably have a none option) the machine adds your vote to its tally then spits out a filled in ballot paper that you then drop into the box as per normal. This way we can get an instant tally from the machine and the paper ballots are counted for verification. Other than lost ballot boxes (pretty damn hard to lose one of them here, not sure in the States) there should be zero descrepancy between the automatically tabulated results and the hand counted ballots.
"I propose we leave math to the machines and go play outside" -- Calvin
That happened in hungary, and they tossed out everyone who made it to the final round of candidates.
If Abe Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address today, you'd find a way to take a sound bite from it, and use it to condemn him as a traitor.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
What I'm suggesting is that people prove that the voting machines are insecure by proving it during a real election. Starting websites, proving theoretically it's possible is just not cutting it. Even having former Diebold employees admitting to committing electoral fraud is not breaking through to the mainstream media.
The only thing that will is a big gesture.
What are you listening to? (http://megamanic.blogetery.com/)
That's the same fallacy as taking a bomb on an airplane because the odds are more strongly against there being *two* bombs.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
>I moved to Oregon recently and voting is great. It's by mail. For everyone.
Disemfranchises the homeless, though. If you are a citizen, but have no mailing address, how do you get your ballot?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
No it's not. If there's a voter turnout 30,000x higher than is possible given the size of the voting population it's a message that voting machines are hackable and cannot be trusted. That seems to bear no relation whatsoever to your analogy. Please explain further if you disagree. Rememeber some precincts in Ohio 2004 had a higher number of votes than registered voters (by a few %) and they were ratified. The gesture needs to be unmissable otherwise it'll be swept under the carpet & ignored.
What are you listening to? (http://megamanic.blogetery.com/)
>>""One-third of Americans will use voting machines next week that have never before served in a
>>general election."
>OK. So how many people will NOT vote in their local elections because the above are being used?
I never thought of the idea that the whole "anti-Diebold" thing might be *GOP* propaganda.
The Republican conspiracy machine promotes the notion that the Diebold machines are rigged. The left wing folks investigate. Find some possible flaws, make broad speculations, and further promote the idea that the machines are rigged.
Net effect: Republicans still vote, maybe even with the incorrect notion that their vote counts twice, confident that they are casting their lot for the winning side. Opposition voters don't bother, believing incorrectly that the voting machines are rigged to favor Republicans anyway.
Repbulicans win, which propogates the myth that the election was rigged.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
It's a cute thought, but I think you'll find that the bad guys have no problem at all jumping up and down on your case about doing something that they've been doing all along. Their first move would be something like to try to blame all the irregularities on you -- the appearence of Republican fraud was faked, in order to make the Democrats look good!
Don't get too clever... play it straight, and let the other guys step on their dick.
(One thing that could turn out to be the Right Thing to do is have a left-wing government buy out one of the voting machine companies... the people who would never worry about Republican fraud will then go apeshit about the possibility of subversion by foreign communists.)
Excellent. I was just predicting that someone would start working that line over in another thread.
Where ever America instates democracy, they always enforce the use of paper votes so that they can be counted and recounted if necessary to prevent tempering with the votes.
... I think that tells everything there has to be told about e-voting.
The trouble is the Republicans DID "step on their dick" during both of the last presidentials but it's been ignored & swept under the carpet by the "Left Wing Media".
I agree that if the vote was hacked this time they'd scream blue murder & blame everybody but themselves but I guarantee that the re-vote would be scrutinised very carefully - hopefully too carefully for any Republican (or Democrat in all fairness) BS to be a factor. Also if you're VERY lucky the re-vote would use paper ballots.
Nice idea. Trouble is could it ever happen? Maybe the French government would be interested :)
I never understood the anti-French thing. All they did was refuse to back a (now discredited) war & all of a sudden they're "Cheese eating surrender-monkeys" when they fought very valiantly in WW1, 2 and Vietnam (Dien Bien Phu anyone?) long before the Americans could get up off their isolationist butts & join in.
What are you listening to? (http://megamanic.blogetery.com/)
Verified Voting has long had The Verifier up on their site. This provides an interactive interface that gives more detailed info often on a county-by-county level. In many U.S. States the nuances of machines chosen and how they're deployed are up to the counties not the states. This results in an interesting patchwork of systems being run (often quite differently) under general and variable state laws.
Because if it's required, and if it isn't issued for free, then Indiana has reinvented the poll tax.
Additional State info can be found at VoteTrustUSA vtUSA has good links to individual state and local groups as well as to programs that one can become involved in such as
Voters Unite is also a good resource especially for lists of State Groups, Failures grouped by individual vendors, and a howto on helping entitled Pray With Your Feet.
In August of 2005 North Carolina unanimously passed a law to meet the 2002 HAVA requirements. Our law requires a VVPAT and random audits of the paper. Without random audits a paper trail is useless. This law also requires vendors to post a US$ 7.5M bond to cover the costs of any problems. Additionally the law requires the CEO of any vendor to sign off on personal responcibility for any problems. The law carries felony penalties for things like switching the software version. The law requires the vendors to allow the state board of elections to examine their source code.
Three vendors were certified to sell their wares in our state; ES&S, Diebold and Seqouia. Diebold and Sequoia decided to not sell their products in NC. Gee, I wonder why? Maybe someone was scared of doing time in one of our fine correctional facilities.
The rest of the US needs to take a look at the law passed in NC.
S223
For one thing, voter rolls that the poll workers use (usually!) contain the DOB. So, it'd be hard to pull off the grandpa angle. For another thing, the town clerk should be coordinating activities with the state to purge dead people. Additionally, in (smaller) precincts, people know each other, and would notice.
Most importantly, however, is that for this form of voter fraud to have a significant chance of impacting the outcome of a race, it would have to be done multiple times. If done by the same person, he risks getting recognized. If done by many people, they risk their conspiracy being leaked, since it means far too many people keeping the same secret.
In MA, the fine is $10,000 and/or 5 years in prison... to cast a single fraudulent vote. Now, how many people do you think would risk that kind of punishment to cast a single fraudulent vote? Not bloody many.
Requiring voters to show ID is designed to filter out certain types of people. Who isn't likely to have a current, valid drivers license with their current address? City dwellers. The poor. Young people like college students who move frequently. All of these groups tend to vote Democratically (big D). So, is it any surprise that the Republicans are so afraid of the lone fraudster casting a vote under his grandfather's name, when it oh so conveniently also places a hurdle (both bureaucratic and financial) in front of so many voters who, statistically, will vote for Democrats? The GOP wants to discourage people like me -- a graduate student who lives in a city, doesn't own a valid drivers license, but has been voting (legally!) in my neighborhood for four years now -- from voting, since I likely won't vote for their candidates. Suburban and rural voters, where the GOP gets their votes from, almost always have valid drivers licenses. The requirement oh so conveniently isn't a burden on statistically likely GOP voters at all.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
What scares me is how apathetic I am to the cheating. I am certain that is not only those evil republicans who are rigging the election. There has been a focus on a few locations where they probably cheated better, and have come close to the line of getting caught.
In the end, I dont like either of the big parties. If some behind the scenes wrangling is what is required to win now, an argument can be made that the election is a practical exam of manuvering and behind the scenes quiet manipulation. Getting into office may not be based on votes, but by who can arrange best.
Int the end, the cheaters suck, but it doesnt matter who won... they would have been cheating too.
Any state interested in better voting service, not just corporate welfare for digital voting system vendors (and who knows, perhaps rigged/broken elections), would test these new machines side by side with the old ones.
Not the "public beta" insanity that puts machines known to fail into the critical path for so many votes. Rather, just have a demo booth, and ask every voter to vote on the demo machines, after they've voted on the machines that will be counted. Don't count the demo votes. But compare their totals to the totals of the regular machines, mostly out of curiosity. The real data will come first from interviewing demo voters about whether the system seemed to work for them. After those UI bugs are worked out, then we can try a demo cycle testing teh actual counting of the demo votes.
The government has one of the best beta program populations available. Because it's large, geographically distributed, highly varied in skill, mostly highly motivated to take the process seriously, and already showing up to perform this function on existing machines. Of course, we're giving that benefit free to voting system vendors, but without forcing them to feedback the results into their production, or even preventing beta results from making important changes to essential real-world systems.
Let's roll back the rollout, and scale up the beta, before we crash the whole system. Our political system, which relies on voters trusting the voting process.
--
make install -not war
I'd be interested to know what kind of maintenance, testing, and calibration these things have to go through and how often. Any machine that is unmaintained will eventually malfunction. The errors you describe could all be credibly ascribed to the incompetance of the local election officials in not maintaining and testing the machines before the election, instead of an inherent flaw in the machinery.
I would think it should be trivial to test all these optical scan machines before the election. You just need a set of a few hundred pre-made control ballots (say 200 for Ballot Option A and 200 for Ballot Option B), feed them though the machine, and see if you get the expected result back from the machine. Do it three times. Wrong test result on any run means the machine needs to be pulled and serviced. This is an obvious test to run and if the officials don't do it, then they are incompetent.
So crime (vote fraud) has fewer side-effects in the broken limbs and blunt trauma areas, now. But the desired effect, manipulated elections, is still possible. I don't know if I want to return to the bad old days or not. Although if people were actually being assaulted for their votes, perhaps the issue would be more front-and-center. Kind of like the Vietnam-era draft: it brought the war home for many Americans vs. Iraq war today.
I am not a crackpot.
There have been a lot of comments along the lines of "The old paper/optical scan system works fine, why go electronic".
There are many reasons to move to a different system. Most of them dealing with accessibility. Electronic voting machines can present a ballot in multiple languages, electronic machines could present an audible ballot for the blind or a large print ballot for the sight impaired. Electronic machines are easier to vote on than filling in circles for those with motor skill issues.
A 2003 article presented error rates for the technologies as: 2.5% punch cards, 2.3% touch screen, 1.8% paper ballots, 1.5% optical scan and level machines. The real mission for electronic voting machines is to allow more people to vote unassisted but to do it in a way that is as accurate or more accurate as existing technology. The technology is clearly not available yet.
It seems a lot of reliability issues result from the use of touch screens and touch screen calibration. It seems that a machine with buttons around the screen (like most ATMs) would make more sense and would more closely duplicate the old lever system that proved to be so accurate. I will admit ignorance of the usability issues for this type of interface.
So the question that needs to be asked is, if a paper audit trail is so important, why is it being universally ignored? The answer lies in the reliability of the printing mechanism and the typical usage scenario that result in voting machines being idle for two years between uses. This was, I believe, the justification for leaving the printer requirement out of the first (defeated) IEEE proposed standard, but also, in some people's opinion, the primary reason why the standard proposal was defeated.
I have already voted in this election. I was offered the choice of touch screen or optical scan ballot, I chose optical scan.
You're absolutely right. I 'just said No' to electrons years ago, I'd I've enjoyed a very positive life since then.
What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?
Would be fun if someone exposed the security flaws in those machines by electing Santa Clause.
i'm pretty sure people would go for it if they all received gifts instead of taxes.
What the hell are you talking about?
There are some complaints about voter id, but that is not one of them. The poll workers check your name against the voter registration rolls, so they know who you are (unless you lie, but that will cause trouble if the real voter shows up, and is really what voter id would solve).
Anonymous Coward, I appreciate your right to free speech. You have used it admirably.
Allow me to exercise my right to free speech.
If you feel that strongly about not voting and government as an ever-growing-power-base-so-why-vote.
Leave my country now.
It sickens me every time someone goes on a screed how voting is worthless. It is
because people DON'T vote that causes the problem. Become more aware and active.
I only hear these reasons for not voting:
1. I don't agree with either party
2. I'm not registered to vote
3. My vote doesn't count
4. I'm too young and uninformed to vote
1. Fine. If you don't agree with either party. In this day and age it's understandable to not have any party identity considering how far to the left and right each party has gone. Why not form an actual third party? Maybe call it the Moderate party, because that is where the majority of Americans are in their views. No one candidate can be everything to everybody, but common sense would be nice. If every disenfranchised voter cast a vote for a third party, that candidate would win by a landslide. Do I have any evidence to back that up? No, but check around your own circles of friends and peer groups. Who isn't a voter tired of the two party system? We wouldn't even have articles about eletronic voting fraud if people weren't upset by what it does to the value of your vote.
2. OK. We're all busy people, but then support motor voter registration laws. How about registering on an off election year and that way you are done. College student with residency back home? How about an absentee ballot?
3. I look at it like this. Americans died in wars all the way from the American Revolution until now to support our way of life which includes the right to vote(representation). It might not have been what the war was about, and might not justify a particular war. That was and IS a part of what US soldiers are fighting for when they fight for "The American way of life". Sounds like propeganda. Probably, but for those who justly died and put their life on the line, so I could vote I'm going to do it! I'm going to fight and struggle to make sure my vote does count and my voice is heard. My one vote might not do it. I am one of many. I look forward to the day when politicians have to consider the "Geek vote" or the "Computer Worker" vote.
It's difficult to hold this opinion when there is potential for voter fraud and confimed allegations of voter fraud in the past.
4. For all those men and women who are 18. I look back and regret every day I didn't vote. I didn't start until right before I graduated college. Trust me. You are ready to vote. If you dont' feel you are ready then read, learn and ask people. After that, find your own opinion and VOTE! I think would be especially crucial to those folks going to state universities and colleges. Depending on the place, State government does have some impact on your tuition.
Map requires Flash. Anyone care to compile the data for the 50 states plus a district in a text-friendly post?
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
>
How do you prove you are a citizen of Oregon? Maybe just migrating to Calif. for the winter
from Wash.?
Turned my ballot in last Sat.
A most pleasant way to vote.
NB Washington seems to be backing into the same system (vote by mail).
One less thing drawing people to Oregon.
Don't Californicate Oregon
"One-third of Americans will use voting machines next week that have never before served in a general election."
Given that it's a midterm election with only a handful of close races, I doubt that one-third of (eligible) Americans will be voting AT ALL next week, much less using new and potentially unreliable machines.
Many states have programs that allow you to vote early. Here in Iowa, it's not unusual to walk into a supermarket a week or two before the election and find a table set up for early voting. The system uses the same paper ballot as absentee voting; the only difference is that you fill it out there and then drop it in a box.
I voted earlier this week. If your state has a similar program, take advantage of it.
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
have you read the Moderation Guidelines Addendum?
I consider myself a patriot, a realist, and an optimist. And as those things, I ask all you hackers on Slashdot, for the sake of Democracy, somebody, please steal an election. Preferably a major one.
I don't want votes flipped between Democrats and Republicans. I don't want Greens or Libertarians to get a disproportionate amount of the vote, or even win. I want Oscar the Grouch to win a Senate seat on a write-in campaign. Preferably, several Senate seats and maybe a governorship or two.
As Sunday's Foxtrot elegantly put it, the scariest thing this Halloween isn't that Democracy may have been stolen from us, but that hardly anyone seems to know or care.
The only way I can see to shift the priority of this issue in the American Mind from somewhere below whether or not one's going to run out of Doritos all the way up to putting it on par with who's going to win a reality TV show, is to make Oscar win big. Don't let the news get away with their "unbiased" reporting where they say "Princeton says the vote's not secure, but Diebold says it is. Are hemlines on their way back down? Stay tuned for the new fall fashions, when we return." People don't think this is an issue. We know it should be. Make it one.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
There's no place I can be, since I found Serenity.
Ain't it interesting how all the errors in code (bugs?) all favor the republican candidates? What are the odds!
No. While the nuances are up the counties a) many of them are using the same machines, and b) vote fraud is often purpetuated locally. In fact if local actors cause fraud in different ways and different places the national pattern will be less obvious and similarly harder to detect. Keep in mind though that the last two U.S. Presidential elections were "decided" by a single county in a single state. In both cases people knew that those counties would be the key areas well in advance so it wasn't an absolute surprise.
When you think about it though, national fraud (e.g. a Presidential Election) is of a different character than local fraud. It also requies a much larger base of people and resources to pull off. Local actors messing with machines (and they are not that hard to mess with) are more likely. Local elections typically have smaller margins and the payoff can be a lot closer to home. A single unscrupulous bagman might swing a mayoral election and get the district re-zoned in his favor or swing a County election and get the new highway contract. Surprisingly large amounts of money and corruption re in the offing in local elections. People just spend a great deal of time focusing on the national stuff.
Go volunteer! I'm taking the afternoon off to do a shift as a poll watcher. I'm in a heavily-D area, so the outcome is pretty much a foregone conclusion, but its the principle of the thing.
Sig cannot be found.
Stealing from organized criminals is a pretty serious crime and usually punished way out of proportion, whether its money from the Mafia or elections from the Republicans. I for one do not volunteer for the job! I think you'll have a hard time finding someone smart enough to do it and dumb enough to think they can get away with it, pragmatic enough to think the end justifies the means and idealistic enough to think it's worth the self-sacrifice.
I also suspect the political spin machine would give the hoi polloi a different impression of such shenanigans than you're hoping for. Can you say, "domestic terrorism"? They'd probably use the resultant frenzy to push through a whole new super-HEVA that would replace all remaining paper-based machines with *New*Improved* all-electronic machines with armed guards, and mandatory blood tests for all voters.
Even though I'm not a programmer, that sounds like there is screwed up programming, IMO.
You mean the ones they don't count until a week later and aren't included in the results by the time the election is called?
What are you listening to? (http://megamanic.blogetery.com/)
Good grief, I expected to get modded to troll hell not an aknowledgement (albiet from an AC). You guys really need an independent "weight's and measures" department for elections, the "public service" (hah!) can make sure grocer scales, petrol pumps, ATM, and even money itself are all trustworthy but "somehow" can't do that for elections, get the fuck outta here, you guys have got to be kidding?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
By the way, in case you didn't get it, I meant Venezuela and Sequoia.