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The World's First National Internet Election
InternetVoting writes "Expanding on the limited 2005 Internet voting pilot successes, the small European nation of Estonia will become the first country to allow voting in a national parliamentary election via the Internet. Fresh off the news of France's successful primary election using Internet voting and the announcement of 12 new UK election pilots, is Europe leaving the U.S. behind?"
As soon as "internet voting" has been reviewed to see how well a rigged election can be performed, the U.S will switch, too.
If everybody else is doing it than it must be safe and we should jump off of the bridge to. Didn't most of us outgrow this?
Given the amount of spyware and trojans on machines now-a-days, couldn't a online election be easily rigged by malware authors?
Do all ethnic Russian votes go to /dev/null?
I would like to take this opportunity to pre-emptively congratulate CowboyNeal on his appointment as Estonia's new prime minister.
The voting will take place by people putting their state-issued ID card, which has an electronic chip on it, into a reader attached to a computer and then entering two passwords.
And, to follow up, I'd like to kick off a flamewar by pointing out that yes, Estonia is leaving the USA behind, particularly as the USA is crippled by paranoia over ID cards while Estonia is using them to advance democracy.
is Europe leaving the U.S. behind?
I didn't know they were related...
Nice dis of the US though [for no reason whatsoever]. I should point out that Canada doesn't have voting over the net either. Neither does most of the free world. [and yes, I'm Canadian...]
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Most American states rival the size and population of European countries. On a small scale internet voting is ok. Large scale internet voting would be disastrous!
You constantly struggle for self improvement - and it shows.
Hooray for bad Engrish on fortune cookies
I think whoever had the bright idea to make an online election must have been a little bit Estoned.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
I mean I can already see the trojans and bot nets whose design is to fake votes or just DDOS the election servers (likely to give one side an advantage if they have less e-voters). Ah the joys of a brisk black market for selling and buying votes.
Always a zing on the U.S. for insta-popularity!
We've had prestigious internet voting for years. Take, for example, the brutally honest Hot or not, or the illustrious Rate My Poo.
Those Estonians have nothing on us!
Don't all the qualms with electronic, paperless voting apply here?
The question is, is that a bad thing? We have enough problems trying to secure our electoral process without internet voting to make everything even more difficult. In addition to the security concerns (now elections can be hacked from anywhere, Russia, China, Iran) there's also the problems with coercion. With secret balloting, it's more-or-less impossible to coerce voters, because there no way to prove how someone voted. But when you can stand over their should while they vote, it becomes a lot easier.
I think the biggest question is, what problem is this trying to solve? What's wrong with non-internet voting that internet voting will fix? And will whatever that is be worth the consequences? I'm one who feels like the days of a pen-marking-paper ballots should come back (hey, we still have them in my district) and leave behind all of these more modern, more easily hacked systems. Is it really that important that the results of the election be known the of the election? Important enough that we're willing to sacrifice the security of the balloting?
In the beginning the universe was created. This made a lot of people very angry and is widely considered as a bad move.
Really, the point of voting in person is to provide a safe place so that no one sees who you vote for except for yourself.
What measure did they take to ensure that no one looks over the voter's computer screen and bribe/threaten the voter ?
Dear Estonia,
Good day.
Please, I want to introduce myself and this business opportunity to
you. My name is James Pwner,a 1337 haxx0r.
I wish to know if we can work together. I would like you to give me the
right to rig this years election. The reward is the sum of $12.5M
and one nice house in Spain.
If you are interested you do let me know so that I can give you
comprehensive details on what we are to do.
I urgently hope to get your response as soon as possible.
Best regards,
James Pwner.
"No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson
Is this can work securely, how about just letting the people vote on laws?
Getting rid of the middleman, so to speak.
I always thought voting for some guy who might have ideas that might be more to your liking than some other guy's is far from 'democracy'.
And how about some sort of incentive for people to vote on laws, like tax returns?
Population of Estonia: 1,324,333
Number of votes that will be cast in next Estonian election: 13,371,337
This is a bad idea for the reason that countries have secret voting.
A significant part of "secret voting" is that not only is the government unable to look into how you personally vote, but it must also guarantee that nobody else can look into it, so that the vote is yours and yours alone.
When you vote from home, this guarantee cannot be fulfilled, as you can be pressured into voting for whatever by whomever else happens to be in the house with you at that time. That is not necessarily a very pleasant experience.
Something that came up in a discussion with someone who develops electronic voting software. His specific concerns about Internet votin were:
How do you safeguard against me holding a voting party on election day? I'll sit next to my partner and make sure the newfangled voting technology doesn't confuse her into making an incorrect vote. Me and my friends will keep note of who doesn't attend my election day voting party, we'll all watch each other vote so we know we agree on who to vote for. I'll also make sure my kids vote properly as they are too young to understand no matter what the electoral acts say. Then I'll help my dear old grand parents vote as they don't have a computer at home.
Even in a society where there is no overt coercion, a non-trivial portion of the population will be disenfranchised. This sort of change should not be rolled out before solving the meat-space issues.
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
Voting over the internet has its attractions, but it often involves leaving behind the concept of the secret ballot (as does mail-in voting as in Oregon of course) and also can generate serious security risks. Not enough details on the Estonian system -- if the real voting is done on the small box they put their card into and it can generate a secure channel to the voting system, then it's possible to do it securely even with a compromised network or PC, but if the PC is involved in anything but passing along encrypted traffic, there are serious risks.
Likewise if these are terminals at home, secret ballot goes out the window. If these are terminals in a secured location just using the internet as a platform for encrypted communication with a server, you can still have secret ballot.
But in any case, voting over the internet presents real problems in auditability. Where is the paper trail?
It's good to be left behind in these areas.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
On behalf of internet users everywhere, I'd like to thank Estonia for giving us this wonderful opportunity to participate in its elections.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
YES ( )
NO (*)
Never play chicken with a passive aggressive.
B-(
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I always knew Internet development was driven by pr0n. Way to go, Europeans!
"Estonia is using them to advance democracy"
How is using national ID cards advancing democracy?
Whats democracy like in Estonia? Is it corporatised like the rest of the planet?
Last time I looked, democracy around the entire planet is pretty much dead, replaced by corporate dictatorships.
And now plugging your ID card into your home PC is advacing democracy?
Sounds like advancing the police state to me.
Down with corporate governments! All power to the peoples local assemblies!
CowboyNeal
It's all good.
Posting AC because I do not have a slashdot account. This comic should answer everyone's questions about electronic voting. As a bonus, it's also got a funny punchline. http://www.verifiedvoting.org/downloads/ft061029.g if
Estonia can afford to go nationwide with national smartcard IDs and internet voting, because Estonia is small enough to reasonably manage and oversee it. Individual citizens have a reasonable chance to find out if the system is being gamed, and to do something useful with that knowledge.
In the US, and the most populated of its constituent states, it's difficult for someone to be reasonably certain they've got a handle on the situation, much less do something about it. This is due, in part, to the vast disparity in power (ability to act) between the power brokers and the average citizen. In addition, there is vastly more at stake in gaming the system nationally in the US, and so potentially more resources brought to bear to do so.
So, I wouldn't call the "paranoia over ID cards" crippling, but healthy. If an individual State, particularly a small one like Delaware or the Dakotas wants to experiment with the idea, that's what Federalism is for.
Luke, help me take this mask off
We no longer have those communications restrictions. With TV, www etc, you can find out everything you want to know about pretty much any issue immediately. So, why have representatives and parliments?
Instead of voting in representatives, why not just have an online referendum for every law change etc?
That would make a lot more sense than the current set up. Say you like Party A's education policy but Party B's health policy. Under the current mechanism you're stuffed: you have to pick one or the other and make a compromise. With individual voting on each issue you'd be able to vote for what you want on every issue. Surely that would be more democratic?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I had to wait in line for over an hour just to cast my ballot. I had to stand outside (in South Florida), listen to old people bitch about everything around them, and then get harassed by the security guards---all to vote in a free election.
Suppose the issues were so important that, in the absence of the election, you'd have volunteered to fight in a civil war over them. How much discomfort would you endure to fight for your beliefs in that war?
Elections are NOT about being nice, or being fair, or because there's some magic reason why (50%+1) voters should run the lives of the other (50%-1). Elections are about convincing the losers that they can't reverse the decision - on the issues, or on picking decision-makers - by going to war to overthrow the government and install their party/dictator. This stabilizes the republic.
That's why, until a few years ago in the last canton to repeal the requirement, the Swiss carried swords to their elections: They used to vote by raising them to be counted. That's why, in the US, the franchise was originally only for the classes of people who were the major fighters in the revolution (property owners and merchants), and was extended to one group after another as they proved themselves able to engage in organized violence to advance their political agendas.
That's why (until recently), registration was about as hard and inconvenient as signing up with a militia, and voting was about as hard and inconvenient as showing up for a muster.
Does the outcome matter to you, enough to fight a war over it? If so, it should matter enough to stand in line for an hour or two. If not, you shouldn't vote.
Now if voting is made harder for some than for others you have a gripe: Such bias lowers the accuracy of the model - until it may NOT predict the outcome of the civil war, and thus not prevent it. Such distortions need to be hunted down and eliminated.
But making it so easy that masses of people who would never be bothered to fight still vote on issues that don't bother them, and count as much as smaller groups of people who really care and are chomping at the bit to promote their agenda - by violence if necessary, also biases the model and destabilizes the country. So it's a really bad idea.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
YES (*)
NO ( )
I mean all current ways of "protecting" and "identifying" individuals are based on techniques which are supposed to be secure because current hardware would take too much time to break them (... needless to say that it's the case provided that the implementation is flawless ...).
Moreover, if i don't care people know who i vote for now, maybe it won't be the case in a few years ... some guy who recorded my vote may just brute force it with his brand new [insert favourite vendor] station.
At least the EU isn't cozying up to the likes of Diebold. You can argue democracy vs security all you want, but at least they are *trying* to set up an E-Vote that isn't rife with security flaws out-of-the-box. Dare I mention the rampant corruption at our highest levels of government, much less with corporate 'entities'? Nah, I'm not much of a troll anymore ;p
In Soviet Europe, powerful politicians vote for you (using professional Indian click-frauders).
> what problem is this trying to solve?
Benefits of electronic voting:
* Convenience: no need for risky, ballot-box-at-a-time, physical-vote tampering
* Participation: more corporations can now be involved in helping to bring about the right result, making those pesky "political donation" caps irrelevant.
* Fewer errors: once a computer is involved there's no reason any vote should ever be disqualified (currently a significant proportion of ballot tampering is eventually discovered)
Yes, in many fronts. One that interests me particularly is boat building (sail boats I mean). In this aspect the Europe is two decades ahead the United States.
Ivan.
I will never, ever trust an election where people vote through a computer. There are things that are so important for the future of a country, such as a presidential or a parliamentary election, that you just have to go back to the basics: a pencil and piece of paper. I don't care how long the process takes or how expensive it is. The whole process has to be transparent to voters.
In my country (as in many countries) you go to a booth, you vote in secret, you drop your vote in a transparent box, the votes are then counted publicly one by one, with everybody (party delegates, voters, the press, etc.) carefully monitoring and counting the results. This way parties are able to independently count the results and compare them with the official results. Tell me how this beautiful, democratic process can be replicated when voting on a computer, where your vote goes through a black box?
There are some things that are just too important to be left in the hands of computers.
Can't you vote blank in the US? They always count the blank votes in Danish elections. Of course, they are always paper ballots. Paper ballots works fine, nobody even discuss the option of using anything else.
At first glance I was intrigued at the idea of a National Internet Erection.
Hey, guys. Big gulps, huh? Cool. All right! Well, see ya later.
What you describe is "direct democracy". They had that in Athen. It has all kind of fun effects, like first executing the homecoming officers for leaving their dead beind after a lost battle, then, after realizing that was a bad idea, executing the people who ordered the executions. Or executing one of the worlds greatest philosophers (Socrates) for being a stubborn pain in the ass.
The idea behind representative democracy is to avoid the "heat of the movement" decisions. In fact, the major problem with representative democracy these days, is that with the constant polling and professional politicians who adjust their views to follow the vims of the (voting part of) the population, we are getting closer to direct democracy. Representative democracy works best when politicians actually stand for something.
The next president of Estonia ... Steven Colbert!
They guy got his name at the top of the list for a bridge somewhere. Named a team mascot somewhere 'Cobeagle The Eagle' or some such. Why? Presidency is the next logical step! He is quite well versed in addressing 'the nation'. And this is the perfect opportunity. He has got to be planning this in his secret lair somewhere.
An overview of the technical and organisational aspects of the Estonian e-voting system can be found at http://www.vvk.ee/elektr/docs/Yldkirjeldus-eng.pdf
Like it fucking matters, if you have so many goddamn elections why is it YOU STILL ONLY HAVE TWO MAJOR PARTIES TO VOTE FOR.
perpetually dwelling in the -1 pits
I thought the country was Elbonia.
I do this every election cycle. I take my ballot, vote on all of the bills, and vote for none of the candidates.
#include ".signature"
Using his distributed fanbase ballot stuffing technique, I predict Stephen Colbert will try to get himself elected!
The more complicated the ballot is, the easier it is to do it from your PC than in a voting booth. On your PC
at least you can look stuff up.
Internet voting is also a lot easier than the ballot box when it comes to multiple regions. You can vote thousands
of times in thousands of regions all from the comfort of your home. Thats the rub. Validating voters
is fairly easy. Validating that the vote being transmitted is the actual vote of the person in front of the computer,
when there are millions of compromised computers, that is the problem. Voting machines can't be trusted either.
Whether you vote on a voting machine
or at home, the vote needs to be printed in a SINGLE form that is simultaneously human and machine readable (such
as check boxes next to names in an OCR font, not text and a barcode) on a tangible physical medium such as paper
and the tangible medium presented for counting where it is counted by multiple independent tabulators.
Home printers can't really be trusted for print quality which is why you would want to use a voting machine.
Voting machines themselves can't be trusted. The purpose of the voting machine should be to render the vote onto
paper in a totally unambiguous format (scanning it as it is printed to check for print quality) that is subsequently
verified by the voter. And in all cases, at least one box must be checked, even if it is just the no-vote box.
The voting machine's job is to eliminate loose chads, dimples, erasures, marks added after the fact where the
voter had no preference, multiple votes, missing votes, etc. The paper cancels out the weakness in the machines
and the machines cancel out the weakness in the paper.
Tabulators need to be secured by having multiple tabulators operated by both partisans from multiple parties and non-partisan watchdogs and by having every vote listed individually by a unique serial number rather than mere total.
Serial numbers should not be traceable to a particular individual. Voters can't take home an actual receipt
for their vote if vote buying or thugs outside the polls is a concern but they can take home a random receipt from a raffle drum which they can then check online to see if that ballot was listed on the right candidates list. Assume that they won't file a complaint if they got a receipt from a voter who voted differently so around 50% won't be checked but that means that the other 50% can be checked for accuracy. It then becomes impossible to change a significant
number of votes without detection.
What he neglects to mention is the last trials in electronic voting in the UK were a dismal FAILURE.
Not that anything is anonymous anymore (check that large SERIAL number on the election form and you need your ID), I would imagine this gives alot of nice "instant" profiles on a person. On the other hand I would sure like the government to know I just give them the birdie :) after all I do PAY them and delegate my power to them. So this is probably a good thing :)
...Chuck Norris! In a surprise result, Norris swept with over 2,500,000 write-in votes, narrowly beating the next runner-up, Stephen Colbert. (Estonia's 2006 population was 1,324,333)
It's called direct democracy.
And it's already the case in Switzerland. By law an change in the constitution must be approved by a referendum. Any law proposed by the public (a public initiative with enough signarutes) must also undergo mandatory referendum. Same goes for any international treaties (when Switzerland accept some treaty it's not in fact the country but the actual swiss population !). And any petition that collects enough signature can ask any other proposed law to undergo referendum, which happens almost always. Thus almost no law haven't been voted before being applied.
Although that sometimes people aren't interested about the vote, there's always at least one third of the population that participate in any vote (that's still a much more important and more representative part of the population than any assembly), and much more citizens get involved in more important votes (up to two third approximately. There's always a third that don't give a damn shit about what's happening and accept whatever the other want).
And unlike other
And the fact that we constantly vote (each few months) has three results :
- The population isn't fed up with voting. In fact at least one third of the population is getting used to the idea of always, no matter what, giving its opinion on the voted law.
- Being used to give its opinion makes that the population more often votes according its opinion of the law. The votes aren't used as ad hominem attacks to express disagreement with the politicians that are proponents of them (unlike what happened in France where the EU constitution was also partly refused because people disliked the politicians that encouraged the pro-EU vote, and note only because of the content).
- In the USA because the biggest part of the population contribution to politics are election and they only happen seldom, the different parties pile up a lot of money and then deploy campaign that start to look as marketing. In Switzerland nobody could afford spending that much money every couple of month and therefore, most of the information the public has comes from debates, from (non-paid-for by the government) journalists' articles, experts on the subject (economists / scientist / or whatever is related to the subject of the law being voted) from both camps give opinions, etc. Therefore the population tends to vote being more informed as enticed by ads, and end up accepting difficult decisions, fully knowingly the implications.
The only difference with what you said is that we don't use internet that much for voting (except for some pilot projects). Only as an information medium.
Voting is still mainly done by dropping an envelope in an urn, or by mail. But there are active development done to introduce e-voting in order to facilitate the voting procedure and attract a higher participation)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Well that would depend which country you're talking about? The UK isn't Estonia yet both are in Europe. Europe is a continent like The Americas not a country. I wish non-Europeans would get this.
Living in Estonia, I can provide a concise summary and name two major shortcomings.
Summary:
Voter encrypts vote with counting system's public key. Voter signs vote with ID card's private key. Validation system validates vote against ID card's public key. Counting system decrypts vote with its private key and counts it.
Shortcoming 1: keys on ID card issued by state.
While issuing an ID card, a subverted or corrupt state entity can preserve private keys, and subsequently falsify any records which those ID cards sign. Including votes.
Shortcoming 2: anonymity of vote not guaranteed.
An attacker who holds signed votes, and holds the private key of the counting system, can determine who voted for whom.
Conclusion:
Those currently in power should be considered the most likely attacker of a voting system. This system fails to reliably protect against them. Privately issues keys would defeat the security shortcoming. Nothing I know will defeat the anonymity problem.
read The World's First Internet Erection?
Hungary and Estonia are different countries, doh, not even adjacent to each other. I think maybe you should use teh interweb and brush up on your geography?
For all the bitching that goes on around here about the "ease" of rigging an election with Diebold voting machines, I don't get the logical conclusion that internet voting is somehow a good idea. Oh my God, I can hear the screams now about people "unable to get to polling places" and "being denied their civil rights."
This is a country where we think it is a violation of civil rights to ask for a photo id which you can have issued for free, when voting! You really think we could pull off an election via the internet without absolutely massive voter fraud, "hacking voting devices" and whatever else people get creative with? If I were an Estonian, I would be cringing.
Derek Greene
The idea behind representative democracy is to avoid the "heat of the movement" decisions.
I'd say it's more so the country isn't run by the silent majority who have absolutely no idea what's best for them. Then again, maybe we wouldn't be in Iraq if many of the people making the decisions don't even know where that is...
Thanks for sharing your experience with Switzerland.
Sounds good, my only qualms are that I don't know how it would work out on a larger scale, and that it's probably expensive to set up that many votes, but it's probably worth it in the long run - the cost of the referendum is one issue that always comes up in my home country (Uruguay).
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
...world's first national internet erection
YES ( )
NO ( )
Chuck Nagel (*)
In France, presidential elections will happen in April. Elections are organized by the Minister of the Interior. The minister is one the candidate (currently the one leading the polls) he is also a strong advocate of electronic voting. In order to be authorized, an electronic voting machine has to be inspected byt his minister but there are no precise criterions. In fact we have already used electronic voting machines that have been ruled insecure by Belgian authorities.
So yes, the parent post is funny. It's funny because it's true.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
I don't want to put important decisions to the vote in this way - I don't believe that regular open votes will be given enough attention / time / effort by the voters for there to be sensible choices made.
:-(
People tend to have a distrust of politicians (which is healthy), but politicians should be considered 'experts' when it comes to voting on complicated issues. It may well be that a vote on foreign policy, public spending, constitutional affiars etc is EXTREMELY complicated and convoluted, and requires literally HOURS of debate for all involved to be informed enough to vote. Glibly choosing the side that seems right can be dangerous when the issue is a minefield of consequences and comprimises.
Also, who exactly will be doing the debating? For people to vote one way or another on an issue requires the sides to have been worked out, for the options to have been hashed out - the wording and content of any resolution should be debated thoroughly before it's voted on.
The Parliamentary system works when you have well qualified representatives, who take their duties seriously, and who are held accountable in their positions by their voters (this last area is where improved communications should be best able to make a difference).
Unfortunately, IMHO, some countries seem to have healthier expectations of their politicians than others. Some countries seem to require their policians to be expert debaters, the best-and-brightest (even if they are sleazy mofos) - others just seem to want the most charismatic... who have the most winning smile and down-at-home charm
No.
Longer answer: Internet voting is a spectacularly bad technology and process choice for a reliable, trusted election.
so are they changing their name to E-stonia?
This election is going to be a tight one, with the Shoot the Russians Party narrowly edging out the Shoot the Russians and Toss their Bodies over the Border Party.
wouldn't be the first time now would it? ;o)
<ducks and runs>
Free Schooling, Social Services and Health
A strong Police force and Armed forces
Low cost essentials of life, like food and housing
A fully green economy
No taxes
Great public transport
free hookers and a beer volcano
A Strong America, standing proud!
Thanks to the Internet, thousands of Russian hackers were able to participate in the elections of the President of Estonia (c)
How totally stupid. So the government will probably send special hash codes (id numbers) to everyone. People leave these lying around, get picked up with other people. Kids could collect them. People can steal those numbers.
Then they go online and vote.
How stupid can they get?
ive had erections on the internet everyday for as long as i can remember
Change is not always progress.
If this new voting process is better, then it will play out. I don't mind Europe playing lab-rat for a voting process, but the political structures between Europe's nations and the United States render them incomparable in the voting process.
If there is a problem in U.S. voting, it is that only the extreme factions show-up for primary elections.
If you want to change the choice, and understand American politics, you know that the PRIMARY ELECTION is the most important election, not the general election. A no vote or abstinence from the general election is absolutely worthless in a U.S. general election save for voter-turnout gee -wiz info. Anyone trying to "get out the vote" is a shill trying to get their personally selected candidate through the general election.
You want to pick your leader? Vote in the Primary.
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to govern any other" -John Ada
This works real well in Australia.
The politicians here are excellent at representing the United States.
Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...
Vote often...
How the fuck can "A = ½B => 2A = B" be informative, insightful or interesting?
I don't understand Americans.
Why does everyone think paper voting is so secure? Add a ton of poll worker volunteers. Add in a bunch of different counties. Allow poll workers to actually run the votes through the counting machine. So you all think if you take thousands of people and let them all be part of the voting process, somehow it's secure. Sometimes it wont scan right and the poll workers just put it through again not knowing if they just gave someone 2 votes. Volunteer at your local polling office and then tell me how secure you feel about paper ballots.
Banks have reasons to make sure their onlines systems balance. Political parties have reason to make sure they win at all costs. The purpose and auditing of online voting is different that other IT projects. It's more like gambling online, where somehow you assume the house will play fair. It won't.
Voting through computer systems is not a question of when it will be hijacked, but how soon. The difference between paper and electronic is this: you will never know that the computer systems are hijacked, now and forever, worlds without end, amen. Who will blow the whistle when the manipulation begins? Are you all aware we've already had a whistleblower programmer in Florida? He's been ignored, as all the future snitches will be. How do you keep a computer system honest if the media reporters start with the assumption that whistleblowers are conspiracy fanatics, and therefore to be ignored? If you don't believe that they hacked the elections in '02, '04, and '06, why will any of you listen in the future? Democracy is dead as long as these systems are operational.
Canada uses paper with a hostile counting system. Seems to work nationwide, and results are announced within three hours of closing the polls. There simply is no reason for electronic voting -- other than as a cover for cheating, either now or when no one cares to investigate cheating claims anymore. And how the hell do you prove cheating, ever, when all the logs match the votes cast? Paper backup of voter registration? Texas had major election fraud when the voting registration showed fewer voters than votes cast by a wide margin, in one local race. Big scandal, if you're rational -- but we've successfully ignored the fact that someone manipulated that election, that and a large sample of other miracles that've happened in the last five years.
is another way to not vote for any candidate. To make it really count, you need to write in someone who would be a valid potential candidate, though.
check this out! http://www.2008horserace.com/ its just an online poll, until you scroll down and see that one candidate has been suspended for voter fraud. the site mod claims that spam-bots generated "unrealistic" votes of over 10 per minute for Dr. Paul, and yet it says on their main page that only 2 votes will be accepted per IP address. clicking on the current results link at the bottom of the left hand column, reveals some interesting things about the site's operator(s). http://vote.sparklit.com/popup_poll/999583 for something that presents itself as professional, the rather juvenile name calling responses added to peoples comments is a bit disconcerting. i myself have had my IP address banned for questioning this, and my question removed. if ever there was a type of site that i would love to see 'shashdot-ed' this would be it.
The article linked to is great, I may have to check out the book.
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
I propose a slightly modified version of Godwin's Law for Slashdot: "As Slashdot discussion regarding Estonia grows longer, the probability of comparison involving Elbonia approaches one."