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CS Students Called In To Monitor E-Voting
An anonymous reader writes, "Electronic voting machines used in Tuesday's elections apparently caused only isolated problems, although watchdog groups say it's too early to give an overall grade to their performance. One county in California, hoping to avoid any technological glitches, hired computer-science graduate students to set up and troubleshoot the machines. The behind-the-scenes look revealed some warning signs of e-voting." From the article: "The county election official expected many elderly poll workers to be confused by the technology, so she recruited... 59 computer-science graduate students from [UC] Davis to help poll workers troubleshoot the machines on Election Day."
Maybe they should have brought in some CS students to check the slashcode.
...and lo, did the students look at the polls, and in wonderment, they did ask, "Where is the CowboyNeal option?"
There is no mod option "-1: Disagree" for a reason. "Overrated" is not an acceptable substitute. Post something instead.
They really need to change the name of 'computer science' here in the states. We CS majors don't know anything about software. If you want some good software gurus, talk to the math people.
What a numbnut. Do it immediately or don't bother doing it.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
More likely these 733t h4x0rs reporgrammed the voting machines to write in Cowboy Neal.
Woah! A whole 15 pages? That must be rough. Who do they have running those polling stations?
Oh, I guess that explains some of the phyche of the people running the polls in California.
Grad students are cheap but the most effective choice would have been IT operations people, with the experience to yell immediately if someone with a clipboard and a vendor nametag shows up to install a patch.
CS grad students would be a great choice for auditing the design and the source code. But that's not what happens on Election Day.
Credit for good intentions, though.
I believe they only want to identificate and send to jail anyone who can point out the flaws of the electronic voting systems.
"Sir you published a way to change the votes in your web site, and that is clearly an act of terrorism. You are under arrest!"
So in the future no one would even try to publish that kind of results.
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
Woah! A whole 15 pages? That must be rough. Who do they have running those polling stations?
Just because it's "only" 15 pages, doesn't mean it's 15 pages of useful info. I'm willing to bet that 5 pages are "stuff you shouldn't do with the unit" like "warning! not for interal use!" and "warning! do not operate when when". 3-4 page of FCC certification "this unit doesn't emit interference, and accepts interference from other units", and finally, one page of troubleshooting, which covers "try turning it off and on again" and "please call tech support (not open election day)". The other pages are likely a "quick start" guide, on how to power on the unit, and how to insert/retreive the memory card, but likely not too much info on what to do if something goes wrong...
Magic doesn't work in my presence. My power of disbelief is too strong.
"Will you please go help that old geezer get that machine set up? I know you're "on a raid", but Jesus..."
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
If the GOP had carried one or both houses of congress by a slim margin, you people would be screaming about this. The article references many of the same problems that have been expressed in past elections w/ electronic voting machines and in many of the same well known precincts such as Broward County in the Miami area yet there has been little to no response here on /. or elsewhere. I repeat, if the GOP had carried one or both houses and the problems happened as reported in this article, there would be screaming matches over it...Why aren't there now?
I am conservative and I was very unhappy to learn about all the problems w/ e-voting..even when Conservatives won elections. I want it to be understood by all involved that if someone wins an election, they did so by real votes, not fake ones. Just because someone wins by a close margin should not automatically mean the opposition can immediately accuse them of vote rigging. The fact that no one is making a stink about these problems now that the GOP lost ground bothers me a lot. If you were out there preaching the evils of e-voting before, do so now as well..I don't see any significant improvement from the last election in this area. Where are your voices now liberals? Practice what you preach!
...quicker, easier, more seductive the darkside is...but more powerful, it is not.
I don't know if anyone has brought this up yet; however, a colleague of mine raised a seriously good point. If anyone is an expert at fraud prevention with electronic selection, it has to be the casino's or the people who build electronic gambling devices such as slot machines. I mean, isn't there some sort of permanent record on all slot machines where the casino can verify that no cheating has occurred? Haven't casino's figured out the majority of ways people can defraud them of money? Maybe people should let casino's run elections. I mean, you'd probably get a better voter turnout at the casinos when there's a possibility of a free buffet as a frequent voter!
Yeah, because when your democracy absolutely has to work, you want to trust it to college students, when the professionals couldn't design the machines well enough so a 70 year old could use it. And give them the task on the last day before the machines are due for production. Perfect, students are used to pressure.
Oh You POS
As a CS student, I have a job to look forward to when I graduate!
Bring back the hanging Chads I say. :-)
In all seriousness, e-voting should be as easy as taking a multiple choice quiz. Make the mouse (arrow) look like a pencil for the old timers. They can wiggle it back & forth over their candidate to "circle him/her in". Then the computer will inevitably ask... "are you sure"....."are you really sure"...
--TS