Slashdot Mirror
Diebold Demands That HBO Cancel Documentary
Frosty Piss writes "According to the Bloomberg News, Diebold Inc. is insisting that HBO cancel a documentary that questions the integrity of its voting machines, calling the program inaccurate and unfair. The program, 'Hacking Democracy,' is scheduled to debut Thursday, five days before the 2006 U.S. midterm elections. The film claims that Diebold voting machines aren't tamper-proof and can be manipulated to change voting results. 'Hacking Democracy' is 'replete with material examples of inaccurate reporting,' says Diebold. 'We stand by the film," said a spokesman for HBO. 'We have no intention of withdrawing it from our schedule. It appears that the film Diebold is responding to is not the film HBO is airing.'"
I hadn't heard of this before, but now I'm sure to record it (assuming it gets on the air).
I love publicity-bringing lawsuits, don't you?
My English teacher once told me that two positives don't make a negative. Two words for her: Yeah, right.
Nothing for you to see here. Please move along. Wow, they even got Slashdot!
On Sept. 26, Byrd wrote to Jann Wenner, editor and publisher of Rolling Stone, saying a story written by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., "Will the Next Election Be Hacked?" was "error-riddled" and that readers "deserve a better researched and reported article."
And the People deserve better researched voting methods and ones that aren't error riddled as the Diebold machines have proven to be. Diebold should be required to have warnings on their machines and paper ballot stations nearby.
Let the people decide which is better.
You have to figure HBO has a pretty sizable legal department, and wouldn't air a documentary that wasn't accurate (for fear of being sued). So if diebold's claims are untrue, all they are really doing are serving to help publicize the documentary before it airs. Brilliant move, haha. I know I had my DVR set to record it, but I can imagine many other /.ers did not... and now undoubtedly, some will.
... "The letter says Diebold wasn't in the electronic voting business in 2000, when disputes over ballots in Florida delayed President Bush's victory for more than a month and raised questions about the reliability of electronic voting machines." I would like to see an actual fact that states whether their claims are true or not. For instance, maybe they weren't in electronic voting business in 2000, but that doesn't mean they didn't still tally many paper votes (the aggregate of which amounts to 40% of the votes in the election)-- or that he hasn't screwed up interpreting what the film says (since he apparently hasn't seen it). Regardless of which, I think it's probably safe to assume if HBO isn't backing down, and does air the documentary, that this is largely smokescreen on the part of Diebold to try and convince the public that HBO is just an extension of the "liberal media" lying to them.
..but rather that HBO's spokesman is actually suggesting they are responding to this film, VoterGate, and not Hacking Democracy, whose UK working title is listed as "VoterGate" and whose tagline says, "Computers count America's votes in secret. 'Votergate' hacks the votes." The co-mingling of the word "Votergate" does lead to some confusion, even though the directors of each film are totally different, one is produced by "Digital Bazooka" productions and the other by "Teale-Edwards" Productions (which produced another good, but sad HBO documentary that I would reccomend watching -- Dealing Dogs). My suspicions are probably best supported by the line,"The company, which hasn't seen the film, based its complaints on material from the HBO Web site, Bear said." ..if they haven't seen the film, it's a bit difficult to suggest it is full of eggregious errors, and maybe they are commenting about 2004's VoterGate.
Regarding Diebold's claims, although the article is a little short on facts, for instance, following this section, "According to Byrd's letter, inaccuracies in the film include the assertion that Diebold, whose election systems unit is based in Allen, Texas, tabulated more than 40 percent of the votes cast in the 2000 presidential election."
Furthermore, the article is short on explanation, but I don't think this is just a crass comment, "It appears that the film Diebold is responding to is not the film HBO is airing."
On a personal note, I am a documentarian, and no documentary can ever be completely "true" to everyone. Laymen make the mistake of thinking to shoot a documentary you just point some cameras at stuff, edit it, and voila. But there is so much more than that.. a documentary is about capturing the "truth" the documentarian sees. For (s)he to use cameras and mics to tell the story that (s)he saw. There is always some bias in this, and one important trick to being a good documentarian is divorcing yourself from this bias as much as possible.
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
Why don't we take vote on whether or not the movie can be shown? We can use the Diebold machines...
protest too much, methinks
You got that.
Their crapy hardware is as hackable as a wondows 98 box.
It was built to do just that.
Vote Fraud.
Sue
When it's time,
it's time,
and it mabe sooner then you think.
Oh my, well golly, diebold's feelings are much more important than the integrity of our elections.
Apparently, Diebold actually did comment on the wrong documentary and screwed up factually too. Already reported on the BRAD BLOG .
If the reporting is truly unfair, the Diebold should sue, in a court of law.
Anything else is just posturing, and should be treated (read: ignored) as such.
Now this being Slashdot, I think we all know how we feel about whether or not their machines are secure.
I don't understand why an open voting system wouldn't work. (And yes I know the major hurdle would be beating the peoples in power to transition to one)
Source code is 100% open to find exploits and bugs, when you vote you're given a ticket with a number, anyone can go online and see how everyone voted but only you are able to tell which vote was yours by the corresponding ticket number. That'd allow for everyone to do their own count if they wanted.
I've just don't like technology getting a bad name because people abuse it. An electronic voting system would be more secure then a paper trail with PEOPLE manually counting each vote.
No?
*DrugCheese rants*
In other words, in the light of allegations of insecurity and the ease of which a Diebold DRE or tabulator (GEMS) can be modified, they nitpick the date in which they got into the voting machine industry.
Bravo, Diebold.
Also, the article's implication if I'm not mistaken is incorrect:
If I'm not mis-reading this passage, the article is implying that Florida ballots in 2000 raised questions about the reliability of electronic voting machines. The only problem is that the problems in Florida were due to "hanging chads" and the poor design of "butterfly ballots" in Palm Beach County, two problems which are entirely specific to paper voting methods. Maybe they meant to say "and raised questions about upgrading their voting technology" but who knows.
With people manually counting each vote, you can have representatives from all interest groups observe the process.
Looking back to an election that was pretty much STOLEN (by the Bush brothers and a cousin, just to mention a few), one has to wonder just how it was pulled off. Just HOW IN THE HELL do you successfully pull the wool over the eyes of 300 million people?
Easy. Manipulate the tools in which we have based our democracy, most importantly, voting. A huge portion of the votes tabulated in Florida were done so on Diebold voting machines. Since then, their use has become much more prevalent. I my home state, there are 11 counties using their machines for voting, including my own. I don't like it one bit.
Now I ask you this, If they were successful in taking a presidency illegally, wouldn't they want to protect the tools by which they did so? If not to keep stealing elections, but, at the VERY least, to hide the facts surrounding previous use of such means? That is exactly what Diebold is doing. Protecting their current tools of manipulation while preventing the public from questioning the past uses.
If your current state of mind prevents you from questioning the validity of the claims made in the show, just do a little research into Diebold. I did so. It took a surprisingly short amount of time to find apparent "conflict of interest" regarding Diebold. And its not just Diebold but Sequoia as well.
Watch the show, then do your own research. America and our Democracy are being stolen right out from under us. THAT doesn't surprise me that much, to be honest. What really surprises me is the transparency in which it is being done. Are we, as a nation, really that gullible?
Is anyone else reminded of Jim Carey in Liar Liar?
Fletcher: Your honor, I object!
Judge: Why?
Fletcher: Because it's devastating to my case!
Judge: Overruled.
Fletcher: Good call!
Coffee and oatmeal-raisin cookies bits out the nose - that stings!
...they are certainly bold. I wonder if they will live up to the rest of their name?
Perhaps these will be of interest http://itpolicy.princeton.edu/voting/ and a write up. http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/evoting.ar s
a documentary is about capturing the "truth" the documentarian sees more likely a domcumenary is about stacking up "evidence" to support the documentarian's point of view.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
For people concerned with democracy you'd think they'd let the whole censorship thing slide.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Lou Dobbs on CNN was talking about the Sequoia voting machines operated by the Venezuelan company, and I think we should bring to his attention the Diebold ones too. Please take a moment and send a polite comment at their feedback form
Try other big media outlets. We need the general public to become aware of this potential debacle before it's too late.
>I don't understand why an open voting system wouldn't work.
In principle it could provide unambiguous ballots, accurate counts, and as much audit trail as you could want or imagine.
In practice the systems aren't being bought with security as a criterion.
Also, hundreds of millions of people can judge the security and accuracy of a paper ballot system. The number of people who can spot off-by-one errors and exploitable memory corruption in 50+ KLoC is much smaller.
on election cheating... rfk jr. had a very nice article in Rolling Stone on 10/5 with many details; first few paragraphs below and link to full text.
0 5/robert_f_kennedy_jr__will_the_next_election_be_h acked
Along with all the OTHER deathblows dealt to liberty (even over the last few weeks) this one is also a critical blow. It feels like we're at the very end of a mortal combat battle and Democracy is sailing backwards into the spiked pit after the triple-katana lightning-strike mortal-blow-to-the groin attack.
ANYWAY, I found the full article fascinating.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/117171
Will The Next Election Be Hacked?
The debacle of the 2000 presidential election made it all too apparent
to most Americans that our electoral system is broken. And
private-sector entrepreneurs were quick to offer a fix: Touch-screen
voting machines, promised the industry and its lobbyists, would make
voting as easy and reliable as withdrawing cash from an ATM. Congress,
always ready with funds for needy industries, swiftly authorized $3.9
billion to upgrade the nation's election systems - with much of the
money devoted to installing electronic voting machines in each of
America's 180,000 precincts. But as midterm elections approach this
November, electronic voting machines are making things worse instead
of better. Studies have demonstrated that hackers can easily rig the
technology to fix an election - and across the country this year,
faulty equipment and lax security have repeatedly undermined election
primaries. In Tarrant County, Texas, electronic machines counted some
ballots as many as six times, recording 100,000 more votes than were
actually cast. In San Diego, poll workers took machines home for
unsupervised "sleepovers" before the vote, leaving the equipment
vulnerable to tampering. And in Ohio - where, as I recently reported
in "Was the 2004 Election Stolen?" [RS 1002], dirty tricks may have
cost John Kerry the presidency - a government report uncovered large
and unexplained discrepancies in vote totals recorded by machines in
Cuyahoga County.
Even worse, many electronic machines don't produce a paper record that
can be recounted when equipment malfunctions - an omission that
practically invites malicious tampering. "Every board of election has
staff members with the technological ability to fix an election," Ion
Sancho, an election supervisor in Leon County, Florida, told me. "Even
one corrupt staffer can throw an election. Without paper records, it
could happen under my nose and there is no way I'd ever find out about
it. With a few key people in the right places, it would be possible to
>
Then you surely are writing your representative and telling them you want public oversight over voting machine software and hardware?
I'm really forced to wonder if the Slashdot group-think would hate Diebold as much as they do if Gore won in 2000 or Kerry won in 2004. I sincerely doubt it. If anything, they'd probably be considered as heroes in that case.
Call that a flame or troll if you want (and I'm sure that politically-charged mods who love to abuse their mod privileges will be more than willing to do so); but with the collective hatred for anything republican on Slashdot, things have finally gotten to the point where any statements against Diebold are as knee-jerk or fashionable as the rampant anti-Microsoftism and anti-republicanism that we all see. They're almost as cliché as the "overlord" and "you insensitive clod" comments.
Anyone who's ever worked with any Diebold product shouldn't be surprised by any claim of insecurity. I've never worked with their voting machines, but I have with their banking products. Most of their Windows-based solutions are unpatched, and their stance on upgrading often invovles buying an upgrade. One client was told, for example, that if they wanted to patch holes in a current ATM produc they'd need to "buy a firewall upgrade." They configure sensitive databases with usernames/passwords of "DIEBOLD." And the list goes on and on. While many companies have started to see security as a vital part of development, Diebold is stubbornly stuck in the dark ages.
Unfortunately, as both the NYT and Washington Post report, the documentary itself is a stinker. They both claim it does little to present actual problems, showing instead unfeasible hacks that admittedly would never work, and contenting itself to merely cast doubt over the voting machines rather than providing any solid evidence. And let's be honest -- it's easy to cast doubt on anything, including paper voting or anything else. On top if it all, the woman at the center of it all reportedly comes off as a crackpot, rather than someone with whom the public would actually empathize.
Not having seen it myself, I can't make any conclusions of my own, but if the reviews are accurate, this film does a disservice to the concept of secure voting by further validating the fringe/crackpot image that people already have regarding this issue.
The real news is that Diebold is so furious over such a vague "expose." What they should be doing is simply ignoring the whole thing, unless questioned specifically. By launching their own campaign against it, they're legitimizing the film -- which may actually be a good thing -- and giving it more attention than it may have otherwise received.
Personally, I think there are much bigger problems with the voting system than the machines that count the votes. Primaries, party politics, and campaign financing all throw much bigger wrenches into the gears than a couple of districts in Ohio that might have gotten shafted.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
This is the best time for it to be aired (and the worst time for Diebold to try and stop it) because people might actually sit up and listen, it being election time.
Anyone who thinks that 5 days before an election is the worst time (because it might give people ideas and not enough time to stop it happening) are wrong because although it is relatively easy to hack a Diebold voting machine you still need a bit of know-how and the people who have this know-how will have known about it for a long time and there will be nothing new in the documentary.
Huh! A proposition just suddenly appeared on electronic ballots nationwide which proposes banning HBO on all cable systems and throwing all HBO executives in a Guantanamo prison. And the default value is set to "Yes" and the "No" box has been disabled. How odd...
Look, they know a genuine Panaphonics when they see one, hookay?
Is there heaven? Is there Hell? Is that a Tuna Melt I smell?-Primus
but how would we vote on it?
Fry the fuckers!
sorry, you missed the bandwagon.
-sekunder
Cause there's no way to catch that. No audit trail available, there. No way. Banks don't keep records, and customers don't even balance their books. Not once, not ever.
I am not a crackpot.
if electronic voting is going to be implemented then both the hardware and software should be Open-Source so it can be reviewed and checked for backdoors/rootkits malware & other misc. Vulnerabilities by non-partisan & impartial third parties, anything less is untrustworthy, the Voting process is too important to not be scrutinized...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
If you have some time, go drop a note to HBO at their feedback site. Make it polite and show that you appreciate HBO's support of US democracy. We really need more skepticism and scrutiny in the mass media.
I have to say as a Canadian living in Canada that I plan on voting in all forth coming U.S. elections. Thank you Diebold and American voting system for making it possible for anyone to tamper with the voting process.
Yah Buddy...
hay save that tuna melt for me.
Unless there is a Salmon melt waiting.
Sue
Rhen it's time,
It's time,
And
It may be sooner then you think
I would just like to state that I've personally seen democratic voter fraud, and it appears a manual grassroots sort that is easier to do in thousands of small packets across the country. Obviously diebold will make it easier for republicans to execute their own sort of big corporate voter fraud, as one would expect.. but do not dismiss the possibility that republicans are excited about it because electronic machines will help put to an end the democratic voter fraud. And do not dismiss the possibility that democrats are overplaying the devious failure of these things in order to undermine public confidence in them. And I do not dismiss the CERTAINTY that regardless of all these conspiracies, sheer ignorance and pressure from vote reform laws is causing fundamentally flawed systems to be rolled out. Failure does not imply criminal intent, only criminal negligence.
Disclaimer I dont know anything about republican voter fraud. I never looked. cue jokes about katharine harris and supreme court. and now hacking and backdoors and secret code and embarassing quotes about delivering the election. oh ho ho ho so old.
I look forward to watching this show and learning something new.
If Gore had won the 2000 election, we wouldn't HAVE to hate Diebold as much, because asshats like you would be doing it for us.
_ id=1099030
"Hatred for anything Republican" is not just a property of Slashdot, Anonymous Coward. Take a look around. If it wasn't for the amazing redistricting done by the Republican congress, we'd be looking at a huge Democratic victory next Tuesday.
If you don't believe me, check out this article from the Economist:
www.economist.com/world/na/displayStory.cfm?story
and spend a few minutes at http://www.fairvote.org./ They've got some very interesting articles on the ways redistricting and electoral rules changes have been implemented to give the GOP a "permanent majority".
That the coming election is even going to be close given this fundamentally rigged system is an indication of just how widespread the hatred of Republicans really is.
It's interesting that in a place like Slashdot, where you find people who are likely to have read something besides the bible and the Limbaugh Letter, there's a huge Progressive bias. But as we all know, technology, like reality, has a well-known liberal bias.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Libertarians and Greens demand that all Republicans and Democrats drop out of the running and give them a chance.
Seriously, it is like Diebold is trying to shoot themselves in the face.
... the last municipal elections in the province of quebec used 'e-voting' and the whole thing was a total disaster in most cases. even if the system involved using a paper input, the votes did not get recorded well.
In post-mortem tests conducted by the Directeur Général des Élection (Elections General Director), the SAME paper ballot passed multiple times in the machine recoreded votes for DIFFERENT candidates. From there on, a moratory was imposed on e-voting in the province.
so tell me, whats so hard with making an X in a circle? why do we have to make such a simple thing as voting for 1 candidate in a list so complicated? oh yeah now i get it: the harder it is to vote, the simpler it is to cheat!
I saw the ad for this on HBO and was pretty psyched, but it didn't seem like it was getting promoted heavily, not enough to get enough people really concerned (as they should be). But like great things in this wonderfully Karmic universe, Diebold starts fussing and inadvertently calls mass attention to something that normally would have slipped under the lemmings radar.
The real beauty of it, is that this was a story that the mainstream wasn't touching for whatever reason (hell maybe they are really the ones in control of the voting machines), but now that Diebold is making a fuss.. now that's News! Whoo hoo... boy howdy, get 'er done... whatever... life is funny.
--- Nothing To See Here ---
Mayor Quimby: Demand?! Who are to demand?! You're just a bunch of low-income nobodys!
Aide: Um Election in November, Election in November.
Mayor Quimby: Again? This stupid country.
"The people" aren't really qualified to make that decision. Hell, most elections commissions aren't qualified.
I'm obviously not going to defend Diebold, but having multiple systems of voting is just asking for trouble. It is one thing to have provisional ballots available as a backup or for questionably-eligible voters. It's another thing entirely to have multiple balloting systems running at the same time in the same location. Plus, paper ballots are no less susceptible to voter fraud then electronic systems. Many ballot boxes have gone missing in the history of democracy. The key issue is that the flaws in Diebold's systems may allow relatively few people to manipulate a large number of machines.
In any case, a low-tech solution to the problem is available: voter-verified printouts attached to the electronic machine. You get all of the benefits of the electronic machine, and the losing party can still count paper ballots if they wish. The only downsides are increased system cost, increased maintenance, and decreased reliability. It's a fair trade off in my opinion, but apparently not to the knuckleheads in charge of procuring these machines.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Spare me the whole straw man argument as though the Slashdot crowd is just so-o-o-o-o ethical and unbiased that the collective hatred towards Diebold is due to a geniune dislike for the company's technology. Bullshit. Go though the thousands of posts regarding Diebold, and the vast majority of them equate the results of the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004 with Diebold fraud as though the democrats are so pure and would never take advantage of any kind of situation like that if they could. You know damned well that they would. The only difference is that if they do it, it's justified because of the hatred for dissenting views. If they're the target, well, that's just shameful! SHAME! SHAME!!! Your hypocrisy is absolutely staggering.
Oh, look! I said something that is totally honest but the mods don't like that I correctly identified the Slashdot group-think towards Diebold! Time to censor^H^H^H^H^H^Hmod down the AC!
Source code is 100% open to find exploits and bugs, when you vote you're given a ticket with a number, anyone can go online and see how everyone voted but only you are able to tell which vote was yours by the corresponding ticket number. That'd allow for everyone to do their own count if they wanted.
You're as clueless as Diebold. We don't want a reciept. Employers could require that their employees show their reciept number, and then verify that they voted as the company said so or else...
And you thought the backlash from getting your /. comment wrong was intense.
If the world becomes an angry mob, it's time to get in the pitchfork-and-torch business!
This post © Copyrite Duggeek, all rights reversed.
Maybe for their next move, they can send in some guy with baseball bats to break the knees of those darn journalists. That'd be sure to fix all their PR problems!
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
>with the collective hatred for anything republican on Slashdot, things have finally gotten to the point where any statements against Diebold are as knee-jerk or fashionable as the rampant anti-Microsoftism and anti-republicanism that we all see.
What does "hatred for anything republican" have to do with Diebold, unless Diebold is Republican? Shouldn't a voting machine company be politically neutral?
"Diebold Demands That HBO Cancel Democracy"?
I guess I've read too many Diebold stories...
Paper ballots are just as tamper prone. This seems to be a fact that always goes unmentioned with these discussions.
[...] ones that aren't error riddled as the Diebold machines have proven to be.
I'm not sure you're being accurate, here... it's only error-ridden if the software doesn't work as the designers intended (regardless of what the users want/expect it to do).
Oh yeah? Well, I demand that Diebold retract their demand!
While I'm at it, I demand that the entire Diebold board of directors watch "Hacking Democracy" in its entirety...
and in one sitting...
with no bathroom breaks!
Ha-ha!
Also, I demand that Diebold go back and conclusively verify the integrity of voting machines used in 2004!
Furthermore, I demand that Diebold verify all electronic and paper ballots from the 2000 election!
Take that y2k! Take that Electoral College! Take that... er... YOU-!
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the only U.S. president to serve more than two terms.
George W. Bush, the only president to serve two terms without ever being elected.
This post © Copyrite Duggeek, all rights reversed.
The review over at the Washington Post wasn't exactly steller. It seems the documentary could have used facts much more to their advantage but rather relied more on implication and innuendo rather than following through on their leads.
The New York Times and The Washington Post are the LAST places I would look for reviews of a documentary that criticizes the tools of the current administration. Both are notorious for "selective" journalism.
Its my honest opinion that ANY mainstream news outlet is suspect. Both the NYT and TWP are reliant on politicians/insiders for "scoops" and because of that, have an inherent interest in "serving" them to some extent.
As I said in another post, watch the show, do your OWN research and come to your OWN conclusions. Do NOT let others decide for you the validity of the ISSUE. The content may be skewed, but the whole premise of the show is to bring to the forefront of the american consciousness the idea that maybe, just maybe, the idea of voting in a manner that gives someone the ability to control elections is POSSIBLE.
From the article summary:
"And you can trust us on this because we are the experts on inaccurate reporting!", they continued.
After all, five days is just long enough for the documentry to teach Republicans how to eploit the "bugs", but not long enough to deal with the red tape of changing the voting devices. They'll have it rigged more than ever!
I'm not just going to record it, I'm gonna make sure my parents and others who HAVEN'T ALREADY heard about Diebold security flaws.
Anyone got a torrent of this show?
Thanks!
emt 377 emt 4
"The people" aren't really qualified to make that decision."
Yes, This would seem to be Diebold's official stand on choosing Government officials.
We are all just people.
Well, if you're going to make a documentary about the integrity of Diebold's voting machines, don't the machines have to have at least some integrity?
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Anymore, I feel more like a lab rat than an actual citizen.
Hmm...No wonder "the Matrix" struck me as a horror movie....Hmmm.
I still just cannot quite comprehend Joe Average not getting this (the whole e-voting spectacle in it's current [mis]use!); Damn- how frikkin' dense do ya' gotta be!
Chief Test Monkey and Head Lab Rat signing off with this reminder kiddies:
In Soviet^H^H^H^H^H^HDiebold America, machine votes for you.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Love the Simpsons reference. But are you sure it's not a Magnetbox, or Sorny?
It's much easier to fraudently signup voters or submit fraudulent change of address forms like ACORN does.
i -acorn-voter-fraud-scandal.html
Here's one blog with links and such.. (not mine.)
http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2006/10/missour
--- Relax, that mass muderer is just trying to reduce our carbon footprint, one fetus at a time...
I understand that this is a little off topic, but I have a suggestion to the voter issue you have in your country. Make the ballot officials in each constituency be selected the same way you select jurors for a trial. Instead of lawyers and Magistrates overseeing and rejecting potential candidates, have a duly selected representative (or better yet, the person who's name is on the ballot) performing the role. This way it will be impossible to bribe the officials, as noone will know who they are until a few days before the election. It will also be impossible for any of the major parties to cry foul over issues of rigging paper ballots.
I tend to agree with the general feelings on Slashdot in regards to these machines, but for a slightly diferent reason. A corporation has its own bottom line to consider, why the hell wouldn't they want to keep in power, the people that pay them millions for their technology.
I am watching Hacking Democracy on HBO as i write this (about 45 minutes into the 1 hour program). My conclusions are: 1. Diebold has a broken system that needs fixing. Without more checks & balances, and verifiable ballots (paper receipts, etc.), voting systems will continue to be a sore topic. 2. The folks at BlackBoxVoting.org are zealots that are against any voting technology other than hand-counting votes. 3. Much like viruses, there will always be people attempting to obtain any possible advantage during an election and as long as politicians are involved, an optimal solution will *not* be implemented. How is this different from any other election in history? Maybe it is the *system* that is broken, not the machines...
Open electronic voting would allow anyone to observe the plan, not the process. There is no way to guarantee that the published software was actually running on the voting computers at the time. You know that you have a recorded vote in a database. You do not know that that vote was actually cast, or that it is what the voter intended. For that, you need paper ballots.
That said, paper ballots and electronic voting are not mutually exclusive. There are automatically scanable paper ballots available that give the advantages of both sides.
As reported in the Register, the machines are already taking care of their masters.
Pity the electorate, sheeple though they are.
Some days it's just not worth
chewing through my restraints.
An open source electronic voting system could certainly be beneficial, but I'm not convinced that any system will work unless the people who administer it are both capable and motivated to administer it properly.
In response to your other suggestion:
This should never be allowed in an anonymous election, because it means that votes are only anonymous for as long as the voter is not threatened to hand over their receipt, or to prove their vote to someone else, which defeats the purpose of having an anonymous election.
Besides, consider what would happen if the elected representatives did something that was unpopular. Want to cast doubt on the authenticity of the election after the event? Just find enough people to claim that their vote was recorded incorrectly. It's their word against yours.
All the idea offers is a feeling of satisfaction for voters, but it opens the door for more controversy. If voters need to feel satisfied that their votes were recorded correctly, it should be accomplished by having a stable and reliable system that all voters (within reason) can understand the complete workings of. Perhaps this would require a mandatory manual recount of the voter verified paper trail after the election to confirm the result, at least in areas where the count was reasonably close, but I think it'd be absolutely worth it to have a fair election.
"The question is addressed to those enthusiasts that do care and will sort the matter out in a few hours..."
LOL. MOD PARENT UP. I love the feeling of power that technically knowledgeable people have. And it is increasing. (I'm not suggesting that anything illegal be done; I just love the feeling of knowing how things work.)
Talking about power, anyone need Diebold parts? You must have an account with them, but hey, no problem, right? Just tell the local elections boss, "Oh yes, we'll need two of those fazongas immediately." Response: "Well, if you say so, order them now." Check out the memory card at $155.00 for 128 MB. Ohhh, it's "industrial grade". Well, all right.
Off topic: Did you know that George W. Bush had a top-of-the-charts song written about him? The song, "American idiot", was number 1 on the music charts in Canada, number 3 in Britain, and in the top 10 in many other countries. No matter whether you vote Democrat or Republican, you'll have to admit that is amazing.
--
Funniest George W. Bush Comedy Videos
'Checks and Balances' are also a strong solution in the problem of fraud in an election.
I was watching a replay on C-SPAN3 12/07/04 History of the 2004 Election Process: Common Cause and Century Foundation where election officals were addressing the electronic voting machine and they ansewered some Linux and Open Source questions also.
Specifically David Jefferson the California Secy of State Technical Oversite Committee Chairman.
He basically says that do not soley rest on the case of open sourcing it is the final solution but it goes far beyond that. He himself says that he would eventually like to see it open sourced.
"Source code is 100% open to find exploits and bugs, when you vote you're given a ticket with a number, anyone can go online and see how everyone voted but only you are able to tell which vote was yours by the corresponding ticket number. That'd allow for everyone to do their own count if they wanted."
You've solved one part of the problem, but here's something a lot more difficult:
How do you know the binaries on the voting machine match the source code you're looking at. I think that problem is non-trivial.
I think a better way to use electronic voting machine is use them so that all they do is "print" a paper ballot. The paper ballot is put into a ballot box (as done now), and the results can be tabulated using a scanner. The voter can verify the vote is as he/she cast it, and there is a record of the vote.
Simple.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
We complain about these electronic voting machines and how they can't be trusted because the code is propriety and no one can examine the box, etc. Let's do something about it.
Here's a challenge for the Slashdot community:
Certainly among us, and perhaps pulling in others at places like SourceForge, we have the talent needed to design electronic voting machines. Let's design the hardware and software for several models of voting machines, and then put these design in the public domain, or perhaps released under something like the GNU license. Let anyone who wants to, make and sell these things as long as the design is open to the public. What do you think?
and man I'm pissed off.
It's not too labor intensive, just hire some Mexicans to do it!
when you vote you're given a ticket with a number, anyone can go online and see how everyone voted but only you are able to tell which vote was yours by the corresponding ticket number
That's illegal - because it enables a voter to prove how he voted to someone else.
- This enables vote-buying schemes.
- It also breaks the secret ballot by enabling pressure (by employers, thugs, and corrupt officials) on the voters to vote a particular way and prove they did.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
1.Make it Open Source along with good security for the machines to prevent tampering (heck, this is one of the few places Trusted Computing would actually be usefull).
2.Use open documented hardware so that even less binary unverifiable code is required. (do touch screens and reciept type printers exist that have open specifications?)
3.Everyone who votes gets a record in the database (i.e. add to the counts) and a paper ballot. The paper ballot contains a human readable and machine readable record of the vote (one answer is to use something like they use for those electronically scanable multiple choice tests, another is to print a barcode along with a human readable vote record)
4.If there is a question over the accuracy of the internal database count, you can go back and scan the balot papers.
5.If there are still questions, you can go back and manually count votes.
CHeck this out wow http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=2609 065&page=1 news
No wonder i like opensource, we should be able to create a comunity sponsired project in direct oposition ti diebold, s%*t we do a better job than them at least.
"Too bad that bureaucrats' hunger for power is never matched by greater quantities of wisdom or intelligence!!--Could it
the guilty always plead the fifth... FIFPH!!! FIIIIIIFH!!! (sorry... I really couldn't get the whole chapelle show infection out with letters)
why can't you just use the slashdot poll to vote for your next president? ;)
with good technology. That is if you don't mind 12 year-old hackers deciding who gets elected in your elections, instead of the people. I guess it is just a matter of what political party will bribe the 12 year-old hackers the most to rig the election in their favor. Imagine the Green or Reform party wins with 51% of the votes in every state. Imagine in 2008 that the Communist Party gets their candidate elected as President. Heck, I can do even better, imagine that Hackers form their own political party and win every seat in the House, Congress and Senate in 2006, and the Whitehouse in 2008. Imagine Kevin Mitnick and Gary Morris Jr. as President and Vice-President of the USA from the Hacker party.
P.S. Doesn't Diebold use OS/2 in their voting machines like their do their ATMs? You know, the OS that hasn't been patched since IBM gave up on it way back in the 1990's and finally stopped supporting it in the early 21st century, except for the OEM copy called eCom Station or whatever. OS/2 the OS that Microsoft helped develop with IBM, and then eventually dumped for Windows and basically stole from IBM to make Windows NT, Windows 95, with major modifications. OS/2, the OS that AmigaDOS users joke about being Half an OS because IBM never finished it and the slash is a division symbol anyway. OS/2 which never got modern things like USB support, and modern hard drives over 120Gig have problems with it. Few things are more pathetic than OS/2, like GEOS, GEM, QNX, 386-MOS, Desqview, and CP/M-X86. OS/2, the operating system that time forgot. Yeah, that OS/2, that IBM abandoned for Linux over. OS/2 the only OS that shoot itself into the foot with the WIN-OS2 subsystem that ran 16 bit Windows programs so that developers no longer needed to make native OS/2 versions anymore as the 16 bit Windows versions ran on OS/2 just as well as the real Windows. Then after just about everyone gave up on making native OS/2 versions, Microsoft pulled a switch with 32 bit Windows programs that didn't run under WIN-OS2, and locked IBM and other OEMs out of using 32 bit Windows code in competing operating systems anymore. OS/2 the cursed operating system that took its users down with it. OS/2, even using Star Trek marketing like calling version 3.0 Warp, and using actors from Star Trek to advertise it, still couldn't give copies of OS/2 Warp away for free to most of the world, including Star Trek geeks. OS/2 the operating system uploaded to the Borg flagship and caused it to crash because there was no drivers available for supporting the Borg hardware, causing the defeat of the Borg fleet and saving the Earth. Yeah that OS/2 at the heart of the Diebold voting machines.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
I had hoped for a powerful documentary such as HBO's normal fare, or something from PBS's Frontline. It seemed more like "gotcha" journalism, or some UFO investigation. I realize that it must be entertaining in addition to just mundane reporting, but it was a bit too much.
In principle I agree that an open source voting system would help lend some kind of transparency to elections, but only in principle.
In practice, it would do basically nothing. The problem isn't really that we don't know what the code in these things is doing, it's that we have absolutely no checks and balances in place over the machines at all.
There is more or less nothing stopping people from putting something completely different on these machines to begin with. They publish the source code, and it checks out fine, but what's running on the machines is nothing even close to what they published.
The process involved in making sure these machines haven't been tampered with would work nearly as well with closed source as with open source. There would need to be tests that would fool these machines into thinking it was the real deal and then make sure that each vote is counted correctly. If they're not, the machine fails.
But this process doesn't exist, so whether or not the source code is open makes little difference.
Much harder.
Especially considering that the Dow isn't a good direct indicator of economic health. If you consider how well the dollar isn't doing, the DOW isn't doing that hot.
The Bush spend and spend fiscal policy has pushed the US debt to the greatest it's ever been. As Alan Greenspan tried to explain, increasing the national debt is the worst thing you can do for the economic health of the US. At least the Democrats want to balance the income and the outgo, as anybody with a pocketbook and a job should understand.
As far as the Republicans being tougher on terrorism: prove it. Prove that Iraq wasn't a distraction from real terrorism. Prove that Iraq didn't contribute to terrorism, as a recent intelligence report indicates.
So, assuming you weren't being obliquely ironic, you are a nard. If you were being all ironical and stuff, I apologize. I'm not in the most subtle of moods right now, as there are a lot of Bush apologists out there, considering he's an asshat with a terrible approval rating, and I'm really worried that Bush and his gang have fucked us over to the point of no recovery.
In any case, Allah Be With You.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
This is a bad thing... no matter what the outcome of the elections is, (democrat, Republican, landslide, close...), election fixing is going to be claimed/suspected. Where there are several races which are purported to be very close, this will only fuel internal divisions in the U.S. voter base. (How many documentaries, (propaganda), hacking guides, etc... have/are going to be released slandering Diebold machines before the elections. It also seems like someone wants to keep voter turnout to a minimum.)
I know it isn't the best solution, but, after the recounting fiasco of 2000, who could blame government agencies for wanting to make the voting computerized?
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to govern any other" -John Ada
I've read up on some on PunchScan, though I'm no expert. I think its got potential.
- Alice, @acarback
Let's see.
Tens of thousands of voters from poorer (usually Democratic) counties being erroneously included on a list of felons, thus not being allowed to vote. The list was compiled by a company in the employ of Republican campaigners.
Per-capita, older and fewer machines being sent to Democratic counties.
Unofficial recounts that indicate that Gore won.
State-initiated opposition to recount requests.
And the list goes on.
There's good, solid evidence the 2000 election was stolen, pure and simple. Whether it was intentional or not is another question. But there were more than enough anomalies without electronic voting to make it . . . irregular, to say the least.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
OK, assuming the worst-case scenario - the elections are stolen - can a class-action lawsuit be started to nullify the election results on the grounds of insecurity and force a re-election with only paper-based voting allowed?
That would definitely work, but at that point, why even use a machine to make the initial mark at all?
You could just use a piece of paper and mark it with a bingo blotter (a really big, heavy magic marker) that was reflective or absorptive of UV light or something, and then scan that.
Having a touch screen is just unnecessary and wasteful in the first place. A fill-in-the-bubble sheet with REALLY BIG BUBBLES (so that all the retards in Florida could figure it out) would work just as well, and probably be less confusing to many people.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
So democracy compromised is okay, because it favors your team?
Only if by "no less susceptible" you mean "also susceptible."
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
You use the machine, it prints a ballot with your choices in human-readable format. You check what it did, click ok, and it sends in your unofficial vote electronically (but not over the public Internet). You drop the official ballot in the box -- which is the act of voting. The paper remains the officlal ballot. By the time the polls close on the West Coast, the unofficial results can be announced. The official results come out in the next day or so, and if they don't match, bring in the lawyers, reporters, and accountants.
It's lots harder to tamper with two systems that use completely different mechanisms.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
I saw the HBO documentary a few hours ago. Damn, those machines are sickeningly easy to manipulate. And yet Diebold still says they're safe as they can be. This place is fucked up beyond belief, I really hope this is some sort of bad dream and that we'll all wake up and forget about it.
Squeakiness is next to godliness.
Here is the long and short of it: E-Voting machines are not perfect and we need to secure them for 100% accuracy.
That is it, sorry to disappoint - the evidence they had saying Diebold favored the GOP were hearsay at best.
Invexi - a Phoenix, AZ based web design and web development company.
The Washington Post review is more like what you described, but even with them their chief complaint is that the film doesn't give enough time to other examples of Republican voter fraud. They said:
As for Bev Harris being a crackpot, well, she is. Everyone I know who has had personal contact with her has been burned by her. But she does seem to be effective at raising the awareness of this issue, even as she detracts from it with her behavior. She seems to be a two steps forward, one step backwards type of person. But whatever her motives, she's doing a service to her country by making people more aware of the problems with Diebold.
Actually you said something rather juvenile and insipid. It doesn't really matter whether the machines are being used to favor democrats or republicans. I'm sure they get messed with by whomever happens to be running things in a particular district. The point is that they are bad for democracy. The implementations are extremely shoddy and provide no way to verify the actual vote that doesn't depend upon the machines that are already in question. Until such time as a sound, verifiable method of operation is implemented, these machines should not be used. Simple as that. And regardless of whatever bias you perceive, Slashdot has all sorts of people, and all sorts of opinions get aired here. If we all thought the same, we wouldn't have so many huge argument threads all the time.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
I just finished watching this documentary on Movie Central here in Canada.
IMHO it is a very well presented out documentary that manages to express the technical oversights of Diebold in a way that the average person can understand. The final scenes where they prove to the election officials that the smartcard hack is possible using their machines under theit control was pretty moving. One election official lady even started to cry and I must admit I actually felt a little choked up.
This documentary does make Diebold look very bad and it will no doubt sway at least sway some favour away from the name Diebold.
A persecution complex, expressed with vague whining: check.
Cowardly posting with an anonymous account: check.
An inability to understand that legitimate elections matter in a democracy: check.
A stated belief that the only ethics or motivation anyone has is whether or not their candidate wins: check.
Yep, you're a Republican all right.
And I remember a time when posting right-wing, Ayn Rand type opinions was the norm on Slashdot, and it was the liberals who had to constantly defend their beliefs from multitudes of conservatives. That time was when Clinton was in office and we were enjoying peace and prosperity. Amazing how six years of incompetence, ignorance, malfeasance, and evil can change the tone of a forum, eh?
NO lawsuit! First Amendment and New York Times v. US--no prior restraint, which resulted in the removal of an injunction against the New York Times for publishing the first in a series re: the Pentagon Papers! Diebold is trying to pull the same kind of crap AND they don't have a leg to stand on.
I don't understand why it has to be computerized.
Just about everyone is familiar with scantron type forms from school.
With scantron you have your paper trail that can't be messed with through software and a way to count ballots quickly.
Yes, political protest songs are often popular. But I've never heard of one that called a president of the United States "Idiot".
It wasn't Gore's intention to "game" the system by asking for the first recounts to be in those four counties in Florida. Rather, that was the legal mechanism he was supposed to follow in order to eventually trigger a state-wide recount. I think he should have taken a page from the Republican playbook and said "screw the law, we're going to win this in the court of public opinion and then make a new law". He should have loudly and immediately agitated for a full state-wide recount regardless of Florida's electoral procedures. He really opened himself up to Republican attacks by giving the appearance of wanting a selective recount.
There was, of course, one full state wide recount, the NORC recount done after the election by a consortium of media groups. That recount used six possible criteria for spoiled ballots and found that Al Gore won the state under all six scenarios. Further, the judge that would have ruled on a state wide recount said that he would have insisted that overvotes be counted, that is, votes where voters punched a chad for Gore and also filled the write-in field Gore due to ambiguous instructions. This alone would have given Gore more than enough votes to win the state and the presidency regardless of butterfly ballots and Katherine Harris's various manoeuvres.
If you are to stupid to put a hole in a card, or fill in a blank box, you shouldn't be allowed to vote. Period.
It's the same reason we don't allow convicted felons to own guns - obviosly, they can't handle the responsibility. Gun ownership and voting are guaranteed by the Constitution, but just as guns can be taken away from felons for demonstrating the lack of responsibility, voting should be taken away from people who can't stab a steel punch rod through a flimsy paper card, or fill in a blank box.
There needs to be a minimum here - you must at least have the ability to do what they were - by some act of God - UNABLE to do in Florida: Follow the arrow to their choice, and then use a steel punch rod to punch through a PERFORATED PAPER BALLOT.
Would you let an epileptic or paranoid schizophrenic fly a commercial airliner? I think you get the point.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
The film also reveals the shocking truths that the sky is blue, water is wet, and confirms the long-held rumor that former Pope John Paul II was in fact Polish.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
- CEO promises to help Republicans win the vote
- CEO is actively involved in Bush re-election campaign
- CEO's company makes voting machine with no paper trail, no audit capability, no way at all to verify that the numbers being spit out are related to actual votes.
- Company's voting machines are used in states with close outcomes
- Company's voting machines are used in states whose election outcomes were starkly different from the straw polls, but the difference was not randomly distributed--the variation benefited only one political party, the very one the CEO promised to keep in office. Straw polls are mathematically reliable enough to be use to spot actual election fraud on other nations. Even if you don't consider them reliable, they are still used to spot election fraud, meaning statisticians do consider them reliable enough to analyze election results.
- People get suspicious
- People like you are suddenly mystified why the hell anyone would be skeptical. You can't think of any reason, any reason at all, why someone would be less than credulous about Diebold election machines.
It must be liberal bias, you say. Yep, liberal bias. Nothing to see here. Did you strike your head? I'm not calling you a flame or a troll--I'm calling you deliberately obtuse. Even if Diebold is in actuality as pure as the driven snow, even if in actuality their voting machines are not crooked, it still stinks to high heaven. There is EVERY reason to be skeptical. You have proven, admitted bias, plus a black-box voting scheme where it is (by design) possible to steal an election and not get caught, and then the results don't match the straw polls, the very polls that were considered reliable BEFORE your vote tallies didn't match them. Are you serious?...only authorized republican-minded Diabold-techs can manipulate the results!
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
It is amazing how arrogant the people/parties/groups that think nothing but reaching their own ends by any means (negativity) can be.
I amaze at how this 'diebold' firm can come up and object to some documentary about their intendedly faulty product, when their product's flaws were exposed with visual proof in a spectrum ranging from state investigations to high-profile late night tv shows.
And more amazing is that how these people have not been sued and punished yet.
Read radical news here
I remember that when I was in the US Navy in 1972-76, I cared a great deal about who was president because the Commander in Chief was the man making decisions like should the country spend my life on this or that. There is a lot more to who wins than just partisan politics. It makes a crucial difference to our fighting men and women, our poor, and our unemployed, who is in charge. This country obviously needs some strong leadership, from someone with some rationall values. Fiscally conservative would be nice. I have lost count of how many zeroes there are in the national debt. I think when I was in high school the national debt was in the hundreds of millions of dollars. I indend to vote in a few days, and I sincerely hoope my one little vote at least gets counted correctly.
am I the only one that finds the icon used for Diebold's central counting software being an image of the earth with a hand behind it creepy.
G.
I just finished watching the documentary. They were so focused on saying "fraud could happen" that they ignored that incompetence already seems to have occurred.
Source code was only up for a few seconds, but it used ASP to connect to an MS Access database! Now, seeing as I'm biased because I hate both of those products, I don't have a very high set of expectations for the developer's abilities.
From what I can gather from the short technical descriptions, it appears that Diebold doesn't understand that security encompasses every step of the process. And from what little security they demonstrated, it appeared to be snake oil at best. They are obviously a company whose product is controlled by business people, not scientists/engineers.
I don't think I would trust Diebold to count pebbles, let alone run a democracy.
Am I open minded towards open source, or closed minded towards closed source?
I really don't get it.
/confused
A voting machine is pretty simple, is nobody else allowed to bid for the contract? After so many cockups it seems to me like Diebold should be out of business by now but they keep on coming back like some sort of undead thing.
Are the board of directors giving their daughters to the Bush family for consumption or something?
No sig today...
that's right, it doesn't matter if the voting machines work correctly or not - america will re-elect GWB anyways...
why? simple: there will be another terror-threat from osama in the week of the election - the same thing happened last time, so this might not be enough - so then there will be another act of terror (remember my words)...
people will be afraid and when they are afraid, they love the war against iraq, they give up their freedom voluntarily - yes, george, protect us - we'll let you spy on us 24/7 if neccessary... and kill all those bastards over there, so they can't harm us anymore...
just remember: the bin-laden family is still good friends and business partners with the bush family
same thing with that sheik, that paied 100.000$ to Mohamed Atta in the week before 9/11/2001...
the bin-laden family, the bush family and al-quaeda get rich from the war against iraq, because they hold many shares of the weapon indudstry... war puts lots of tax money in GWBs pocket! remember that whenever you hear which country "is about to develop an A-Bomb" next...
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
One major problem I can see thats led us to this Diebold mess is that we seem to feel a ned to modernize the election process and to computerize it to bring it, somehow, into the digital age. Electronic voting machines are the wrong way forward, for many reasons, but the main way I want to see American elections modernize is one thing: Get rid of the Electoral College.
There have been three Presidents in american history that have been elected without the popular vote through exploiting the electoral college system (With the 2000 election being one of them) and any look at the media blitz during an American presidential election will show you that 90% of attention has become focused on particular "swing states," which by virtue of being unpredictable demographically recieve the bulk of attention from politicians and analysts. The remainder of the US population are virtually written off, as they reside in states where one can predict a result based on pure party lines. Thus the concerns, grievances or issues of non-'swing-states' are more or less unimportant to them.
This was an old system that was necessary in the USA's early days when communication was slow, but in the modern era, it's something that should be discarded, completely done away with in favor of a nationwide popular vote. Why won't this happen? Because it would require a constitutional amendment, which requires most of the politicians' approval. Thing is, every politician in office today remains so thanks to their ability to use/manipulate/exploit/master the democratic systems we have in place, and it would be contrary to their own personal interests to make the country better by making this change. A presidential candidate doesn't want to have to think about 50 states in an election year (though he or she should) so it suits them to only have to deal with 4 or 5 swing states.
Ultimately, it's my view that Diebold is just one facet of a very broken election system (at least a national election system, local and congressional elections have their own issues, just ask Tom Delay) which won't be fixed because those that can fix it are the ones benefiting from it being broken.
Yup...
>Unfortunately, as both the NYT and Washington Post report, the documentary itself is a stinker. They both claim it does little to present actual problems, showing instead unfeasible hacks that admittedly would never work, and contenting itself to merely cast doubt over the voting machines rather than providing any solid evidence. That's not what the articles said at all! Everyone pls go read the FA's. They say the show is undramatic, showing lots of lines of computer code, not terribly visually compelling to the average Bubba. And they don't "prove" there was or will be fraud, just that it's very very very possible, and they do it several different ways, on camera. Nobody can at this late date "prove" that fraud occurred or will.
Seems reasonable, no?
For those of us who don't have HBO, anyone have a torrent/link/YouTube/whatever?
Chris Knight is my hero.
For those interested in a good discussion of the whole problem, there is an excellent article in the latest ACM Queue magazine (November 2006,Vol 4 No 9) entitled "A Conversation with Douglas W. Jones and Peter G. Neumann". These are both experts in the field, and have a good discussion of the total picture. Highly recommended -- but I don't believe it's on the ACM website yet (http://www.acmqueue.org/).
Source code is 100% open to find exploits and bugs, when you vote you're given a ticket with a number, anyone can go online and see how everyone voted but only you are able to tell which vote was yours by the corresponding ticket number. That'd allow for everyone to do their own count if they wanted.
Totally defeats the purpose of a truly secret ballot.
In a secret ballot there should be no way to tally a vote with a person
even for the person itself. A ticket number could be used to prove/disprove
who someone voted for which is contrary to secret ballot.
You cannot bribe/threaten someone to vote one way or the other
if there is no way for you to verify it - this must be preserved.
Saying that the election officials shouldn't have hired these crooks/incompetents doesn't mean that these people aren't repsonsible for being crooks/incompetents. It just means that there's more than one group to blame! I agree with ScentCone that we shouldn't give our election officials an easy out by just blaming Diebold. But that doesn't mean that blaming Diebold is inappropriate!
This isn't an either/or.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Jo: I object!
Judge: Overruled!
Jo: I STRENUOUSLY object!
Attention deficit disorder is a complicated issue, spanning several major... HEY LET'S GO RIDE BIKES!
Voting is run by the localities, not the federal government. The feds have no say in what contracts Diebold will get. This is a good thing. It makes our election process a mess of different technologies, with small groups of non technical people choosing voting platforms, but it does keep control of the overall process out of the hands of any single organization.
Now, I completely and totally agree that people working on their own inside Diebold or in the polling locations could influence the vote. This shouldn't be possible, but as we've seen repeatedly, the machines suck.
Conspiracies only work when the number of people involved is one or two. As soon as more than that are required, it falls apart quickly.
Maybe we should ask the UN to send in observers to make sure the election is handled fairly. That would at least put us on par with Haiti
Only a moron or someone looking to game the system would find the current faith-based voting machines to be adequate. When I cast my ballot, I have no idea if the vote is registered correctly, I have no idea if the correct vote tallies are sent to the state, and I have no recourse of possibility for a recount if the totals seem strange - as they did in 2004.
The problems that computers are good as solving in the voting booth are the problems associated with producing clear, understandable ballot choices that are accessible to everyone. Computers are good at this because they now have nice, bright, colorful screens with plenty of room for wide names, multiple candidates etc. Also, computers can offer magnified screens, and audio output for people with hearing and vision problems. Finally, computers can print out a perfectly legible ballot with no hanging chads or overvoting.
That, in my opinion, should be the extent of the role of the voting computer. The voting computer should produce a ballot that is human and machine readable. That is to say, the ballot should say on line 1 - President: John Smith with the "A" bubble filled in, on line 2, Senator: Sally Jane with the "C" bubble filled in, etc. etc.
The ballots should then be run through an optical scanner and also be hand-counted by an election board. When the two counts are within statistical insignificance, the result should be phoned in as well as sent in electronically by the optical scanner machine.
If we followed this procedure, the person voting should not be confused at the ballot box, there should be no hanging chads, etc. The voter can look at their ballot once cast and see that they voted for whom they intended to vote. Their ballot would be ran through an optical scanner for immediate feedback, yet checked by a human count. The official results would be sent by two separate vectors to reduce the possibility of false tallies being delivered and there would be no step that would be susceptible to hackers or people deliberately altering the machines. In addition, if there were questions about the totals, we could actually reform a recount.
"The world is a construct of forceful imagination. Those who don't know walk around in the reailties of those who do"
So insightful Republican and Democratic posts get modded up, but so do the Democratic trolls and idiots. There is often a decent argument with both sides being presented here. It's just that the majority of readers here lean Democratic and often promote trolls that lean that way. (Mostly for comedic value, from my observations.)
And, just to clarify, intelligent people don't blindly side with one party over another. That's something that people incapable of critical thought must rely on. And unfortunately, there are a whole lot of those people on Slashdot as well. (Democrat, Republican, Pirate Party, or whatever.)
The fact that Diebold is asking them to stop speaks volumes. If the documentary is libel then Diebold has legal options to force them to stop showing it. The fact that they aren't using the courts means Diebold can't prove the allegations are untrue.
I find being offended by me offensive.
so... why does this CNN story about the NORC recount say:
The story goes on to say that under the two main possible scenarios -- the Florida Supreme Court ruling being upheld rather than struck down by the US Supreme Court, and the original Gore-requested four-county recount -- Bush would have come out on top.
Mainly you do not want to allow the buying of votes
Why not? How would the direct buying of votes be any different from politics as usual?
For example, when you hear a Republican candidate talk of lowering taxes, isn't this the same thing? - elect them, and you'll have more money in your wallet.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
The article opens with:
Further in is what you're looking for:
But it goes on to say that all those 5,277 votes were deemed invalid by any interpretation of existing Florida state law. It seems your statement "That recount used six possible criteria for spoiled ballots and found that Al Gore won the state under all six scenarios" is false. Now, I didn't read the article in its entirety. Care to point out what I'm missing?
Now, I still believe that enough of a majority of Americans wanted to vote for Kerry (or against Bush, like I did). But in many, many local precincts many voters were deemed ineligible or "discouraged" from voting. One common law I have a problem with: denying those with previous felony convictions the right to vote. I'd dead-set against giving convicts in jail the right to vote - but when they get out and have "paid their debt to society", then their right to vote should be restored. Unless, of course, the reason they went to jail in the first place was for election fraud...
"A little misunderstanding? Galileo and the Pope had a little misunderstanding."
Force - by law - the database itself to accessible to independent verification software. Better yet - force, by law, again - for the vote accumulation software - the front end that the voters use, to be separate from the vote tabulation software - i.e. separate suppliers. And force it down to the precinct level. Diebold records the votes, ESS or heck, IBM even, tabulates the data. In the next precinct, vice versa. Then have multiple independent verifiers check the accuracy by tabulating the raw data on a county by county and state by state basis.
And for even better security, have the voter front-end system, the tabulator, and the verifier all publish SHA-1 or MD5 checksums to verify the database wasn't tampered with.
"A little misunderstanding? Galileo and the Pope had a little misunderstanding."
I caught the last half of this show last night on the Canadian equivalent to HBO: Movie Central.
It was certainly worth watching, even if the issues where "dumbed down" for the average viewers. I also thought the protagonists in the film, Black Box Voting, to be annoying fundamentalist technophobes, even though they're probably right. Perhaps they personalities just rubbed me the wrong way...
The demonstration at the end of the film, where they more or less proved the hackability of diebold voting machines, was pretty cool to watch though...
Amazing. George W. Bush is the most disrespected person on the planet! I'll add it to my article: Bush Comedy and Tragedy.
Anyway, here's the actual tallies from the NORC recount.
-PREVAILING STANDARD: County election officials told Florida journalists how they would define votes
if required to do a recount and in this scenario the majority standard was imposed statewide. In
punch-card counties, ballots with at least one corner of a chad detached counted as votes. In optical
scan counties, where voters are required to fill in blanks on a paper ballot - like on a standardized
test - ballots with any affirmative marks counted. That means a vote counted even if the oval was not
completely filled in or a candidate's name was circled or underlined; so did ballots on which a voter
correctly filled in the oval and also wrote the same candidate's name in the space for write-ins.
Result: Gore ahead by 60 votes.
-TWO-CORNER STANDARD: At least two corners of a chad must be detached to count as a vote, a position
that had been argued, at times, by Bush supporters. Same as prevailing standard for optical scan
ballots.
Result: Gore ahead by 105 votes.
-MOST INCLUSIVE: Ballots with dimpled chads count as votes, an argument often made by Gore supporters.
Same as prevailing standard for optical scan ballots.
Result: Gore ahead by 107 votes.
-LEAST INCLUSIVE: Only cleanly punched chads count as valid votes. For optical scan, only fully filled
ovals and those ballots on which a voter filled in the oval and wrote in the candidate's name, too.
Result: Gore ahead by 115 votes.
-COUNTY-by-COUNTY: Drawn from the county election officials. It accepts results from Broward and
Volusia counties because those counties completed hand counts that were included in state-certified
election totals. For those counties that said they would not count overvotes, relies on prevailing
standard.
Result: Gore ahead by 171 votes.
-PALM BEACH STANDARD: Based on a standard Palm Beach election officials briefly used, this counts
dimpled chads as valid votes if a pattern of dimpled chads exists elsewhere on the same ballot. Same as
prevailing standard for optical scan ballots.
Result: Gore ahead by 42 votes.
Here's some media reaction from the time:
A close examination of the ballots suggests that more Floridians attempted to choose
Gore over Bush.
-- Chicago Tribune
Gore would have won most recount scenarios that included "overvotes," ballots that
showed votes for more than one candidate. Democrats long have contended that a plurality of Florida voters intended to cast
their ballots for Gore but that thousands spoiled their votes because of confusing instructions, badly
designed ballots or other obstacles. The study adds evidence to bolster that case.
-- LA Times
One of the most compelling questions since the election has been: Who would have won
if all the uncounted ballots were hand-counted using the same standards? If that had happened using the counting methods most widely used in the state, the
study shows, Bush would have gotten an extra 3,607 votes, Gore an extra 4,204 -- giving Gore the state
by a scant 60-vote margin.
-- Orlando Sentinel
But if Gore had found a way to trigger a statewide recount of all disputed ballots,
or if the courts had required it, the result likely would have been different. An examination of
uncounted ballots throughout Florida found enough where voter intent was clear to give Gore the
Now, that was one of the six standards used in the NORC recount. CNN didn't mention the other five in that article, but they all had the same result: Gore wins.
Common misconception.
Computers weren't designed to do stuff people can't do, they were designed to cut down on the number of skilled people needed by doing it faster.
So, if you use computers to count ballots I can compromise one programmer and throw the election without a trace (true - read up on it!) but if you use people to do the counting the sheer number of ballots pushes the number of people I have to suborn in order to throw a single election into impractical numbers, making it nearly certain that determined investigators would catch me.
Because large elections are still being held all over the world without computers, there are strong, highly evolved methods of doing so, and there are willing volunteers to man the necessary positions, so computers simply aren't needed.
Make sense?
http://www.torrentz.com/torrent_1091493.html
Come on now, if, IF! Are you really that dense? Why is it so hard for some to understand the importance of the election process being trustworthy? In your glee that your preferred pilferer is in power can you not wrap your mind around what the consequences of wholesale subversion could be?
ie: Quit frickin' whinin', up against the wall you traitorous wuss!
Look I know it's poor form to bitch about mods, but "Funny"? What the hell is funny about the post folks? Maybe I am dense myself but I don't get the joke. Unless it is a sick type of funny like the "hire the handicapped their fun to watch" line? I think the poster is serious, and that's, well, it's just pitiful, and you folks should be ashamed for finding humor in it. ;)
sheezzzz MatthewWe really need a new category for an insightful exposition of something that should be obvious.