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Source Code Access Denied in Disputed Race
MrMetlHed writes "A judge ruled Friday that congressional aspirant Christine Jennings has no right to examine the source code that runs the electronic voting machines at the center of a disputed Southwest Florida congressional race. From the article: 'The ruling Friday from Judge Gary prevents for now the Jennings camp from being able to use the programming code to try to show voting machines used in Sarasota County malfunctioned. Jennings claims that an unusually large number of undervotes (ballots that didn't show a vote) recorded in the race implies the machines lost the votes.'"
This is precisely why government shouldn't be using closed-box commercial software. We have no idea whether the machines are functioning as advertised. Do people not realize that we're essentially just handing a bunch of ballots to these companies and then just accepting the verdict they hand down? It boggles the mind that any democracy-loving representative can stand for this. Maybe there just aren't any left?
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
The source code for such nasty machines should by definition be publicly available. Who the fuck trusts those devices when its source code is unavailable??
But I am able to call bull shit when I see it. And refusing them, or at least a mutually agreed on qualified party, to review the code in question is asinine.
And proof positive that these things, if allowed at all, MUST be open source.
What the article doesn't discuss is the quarantining of machines from the actual election and reproducing their inputs in the "independent test." Anything less is uncertified evidence.
OTOH, should voting results have a presumption of validity? The problem is that voting bureaucracies are not designed for validation by authenticating ballots or statistical checks, but only on prompt decisiveness and the appearance of not having irregularities in the balloting or counting.
Wouldn't all this be solved by encrypted online voting, where you could check your own votes by a profile tied to an anonymous registration key issued by the DMV? Then make the data public for verification by the media?
I don't get it. In this case, the plaintiff isn't allowed to view presumably proprietary/copyrighted source code for a voting machine to go on a fishing expedition to see whether it caused her to lose.
On the other hand, the RIAA gets not only to view the contents of a woman's hard drive to go on a fishing expedition to see whether she was sharing music files, but they get to make their own copy of it, including all that stuff they don't hold the copyright on (Windows, the woman's e-mails, etc.).
It seems to me that what's good for the turkeys oughta be good for us chickens. Or something.
The inability to assess the logic of casting votes defies reason.
How long must we sing this song? A democracy without transparent practices for the transfer of power is not a democracy. All the way down to the ones and zeroes. Every question with regard to voting should be able to be answered.
It seems so primitive that it baffles me how someone could arrive at any other conclusion than "the process of voting is sacred and should, in fact *must*, bear great scrutiny".
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There's definitely something screwy going on. From the article, about 18000 votes were accepted that didn't actually vote for anything. Now, if I was designing an e-voting package, there's no way I'd mark a vote as accepted if it didn't vote for something, especially in a country like the US where voting is not mandatory. After all, if they've bothered to turn up at the voting booth, you can assume they actually intended to vote.
You're misreading the article.
"Some 18,000 Sarasota County electronic ballots did not register a vote in the race, a much higher undervote rate _ nearly 15 percent _ than in others such as those for governor or U.S. Senate. Jennings contends the machines lost the votes. Buchanan backers and the company say that if there was an unusually large undervote it was likely because of bad ballot design."
There were 18,000 people who did not vote for either Jennings or Buchanan (or another option, if any). People routinely vote for "none of the above" when they dislike each of the candidates, when they have little information about the candidates, etc. You cannot refuse to accept the voter's selections once the voter has showed up at the polls and voted in even one race, because that may very well be the voter's intent. Arguably, you cannot refuse to accept a submission that contains no selections, because that too may be the voter's intent.
You are at best arguing about the sufficiency of the selection review prior to a submission. There is not enough information in the article to discuss this information, and it does not support the candidate's allegations of fraud, so that it is essentially irrelevant to the legal case taking place after the election. You're free to argue against the ballot presentation selected/entered by the various Boards of Election, but you can hardly argue based solely on the undervote that this was a programming "feature" or design defect.
"The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything."
Please don't be confused... I don't think Joseph Stalin was a great man. I consider him a despicable and cold blooded tyrant. At the same time, I also happen to think he was a pretty sharp thinker, and a successful tyrant because he understood how political systems function. A democratic system cannot work unless there is absolute transparency in the voting process.
I'm an open source supporter but not a zealot. I don't have any problem with the existence of closed-source commercial software and I believe it has a right to exist. That being said, there's simply no place for closed-source software in our voting process. Voting is the foundation of our political system, and we can't settle for any ambiguity in its implementation. It's not as if vote counting is a technically demanding job, and there's no argument for keeping secret the process by which it's done.
This strikes me as a clear judicial mistake (not that I've read the article... too drunk and tired, frankly). In general, our judges don't seem to understand information technology well enough to make informed decisions. They don't understand that changing the results of an election is elementary for any programmer. Isn't that concept terrifying?
Our society is enamored with the labor saving possibilities made possible by the past century's technological advances, but thus far, the understanding of these technologies in government has not matched their application. This trend must not continue if we value our republic. In the strictest sense, our system is no longer a democracy if it has no educated oversight.
Our government needs an elected body of IT experts -- some kind of technically proficient oversight body that can rule on information technology as it applies to our system of government. Without any such educated oversight, our freedom and sovereignty is bit by bit diminished, and can be turned against our people. The possibility alone demands action.
Our founding fathers certainly didn't foresee the coming of mechanical information processing, but I firmly believe they would have wanted it to be open to review by the common man. What we need now are are IT patriots willing and motivated to take up the cause.
You can't win, Darth. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
15% of people who voted on the rest of the ticket, mysteriously didn't vote for their Congressman. Even funnier, it was very very strongly biased in favor of Democrat voters, 18% of people who voted Democrat on the remainder of the ticket didn't vote for a Congressman. Even stranger still, it was Florida the former seat of Katherine Harris, even stranger still other neighboring districts showed more typical errors of 3% or so with no political bias.
Fix the vote, make it verifiable, even now when you think the last vote was fair, you don't know it was, nobody can show it was, and there's so much money and power at stake, the vote must be totally trusted.
Florida has a Democrat voter majority, yet elects Republicans and it is more than gerrymandering.
The loser says this happened because the software went all wonky. The winner says it probably happened because of poor layout -- voters didn't even find the race, or they found and misunderstood the race, or they fat-fingered the ballot.
The loser, of course, can't challenge on the misunderstood-ballot theory, because it implies that her support base is statistically more likely do do something stupid than her opponent's.
That said, I find this ruling intolerable. When the government is formed by the counting of ballots, the method of the counting must be open and available. I think it was Boss Tweed who said it best: "As long as I get to count the votes, what are you going to do about it?"
This is not my sandwich.
When a judge makes the determination that the interests of a single business over those of a democratic process such as an election, then this judge's leanings are clear and obvious. I don't think the issue could be more complicated than that.
Instructions: 1. Vote 2. ? 3. Democracy! (oh, alright: and the winner PROFITS!)
There is no democracy in USA, it was lost decades ago. It is a two party dictatorship. (Not exactly - It is actually the Corporate rule)
Proof: Try finding answers to the following on internet. (Rest of the media is a PR tool of the dictators)
1. Why no independent wins any seats.
2. Why is it always a very close battle. (e.g. 250-251)
3. What is the percentage of members that get re-elected in a communist country(say former russia) and what is the percentage in USA.
Internet is the only remaining free media but not for long. No matter what we do, it is just a matter of time before the internet is also governed by the corporate. Ways to control are already in the works.
About half of the world knows who is responsible for the 11 towers, but only a handful in usa.
The answer is on the internet. Do your own research.
A 'None of the above would be great'. IMO we already have that though.... people who stayed at home.
I have this continual argument with a friend who believes that voting should be compulsory and the spoiling the paper should be a crime - forcing you to vote for *someone*.
I argue the other way - that actually the way the voting turnout is dropping is actually healthy. People should vote for what they believe in... ideally policies, but 'he has a nice suit', although not something I'd encourage as a voting decision, is at least a positive vote.
People stay home for 4 reasons:
1. They don't believe in the system
2. They believe in the system, but are not in a marginal so believe it doesn't work for them (similar to (1)).
3. They don't like any candidate
4. They don't give a flying fuck.
I don't *want* people in 3. and 4. to vote. They'll vote randomly, introducing noise into the results. If the purpose of democracy is to elect good government (debatable in itself, probably) then making them vote is against that purpose. 1. and 2. can be sorted out by things like politicians getting off their butts and actually canvasing (thus involving the people.. I haven't seen a politician around here ever), some education, and maybe reform (smaller voting regions perhaps, making them more representative to counter 2.).
Me, I'm a 3. so a 'none of the above' answer would be great. If a politician actually bothered to even ask for my vote, or *gasp* try to tell me why I should vote for them (and party policies don't count - I don't vote for parties I vote for people) then I probably would vote positively.
So, have I got this right -- the Courts of the USA have ruled that a corporation's secrets are more important than the processes of democracy?
I'm really glad I live in a country that still uses pencil-and-paper votes counted by hand.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!