Microsoft Moves To Change NY State Election Law

myspace-cn sends us to Bo Lipari's blog where it is revealed that Microsoft has moved forcefully into New York State with proposed changes to NY state election law drafted by Microsoft attorneys. A document has been circulating (PDF) among the legislators for a while now. The proposed changes would gut the source-code escrow and review provisions in current law that were hard-fought-for and passed in New York in 2005. Microsoft is siding with the makers of voting machines that run on Windows — the company doesn't want its code inspected by outsiders. From the article: "Now the software giant has gone a step further, not just saying 'we won't comply with your law' but actively trying to change state law to serve their corporate interests... Adding insult to injury, these changes are being slipped into a bill that may be voted on Monday or Tuesday, June 18 or 19."

Comments

Un. Bee. Leev. A. Bull.

[Temtongkek]

Read Subject.

Re:Un. Bee. Leev. A. Bull.

[HermMunster]

This is just something Microsoft will have to live with. If they want to provide access to software for that sort of device and that sort of service they need to make the code accessible to the proper authorities, otherwise stay out of that business.

Re:Un. Bee. Leev. A. Bull.

[perlchild]

It's not enough that they have to live with it...
Why can't we charge them with attempted electoral fraud, just for trying to hide the code?

Wrong

[Ramble]

No matter how sympathetic I am to Microsoft and no matter how much I like Vista. This should be illegal and it is most certainly wrong. Lets hope that NY state officials have the sense to stick with open source software.

Re:Wrong

[trolltalk.com]

Companies lobby all the time to get laws changed in their favor. This is just "business as usual."

The real cure is electoral reform, including campaign financing. As long as "lawmakers" (I use the term liberally) can be tempted by companies with deep pockets and the hope of a seat on the board of directors after the bums are thrown out, this will just keep happening.

This is a symptom, not the disease itself.

Re:Wrong

[UbuntuDupe]

Could you name one issue where current law diverges from majority opinion, backed by some recent survey?

Re:Wrong

[daeg]

I think having full "cvs blame" on ALL legislation would be a great start to complete overhaul.

Currently we can see some of the evolution of a bill into law, but much of the direct personal responsibility is masked by committee changes. A lawmaker would be far, far more careful if he knew everyone (media, citizens, etc) could see exactly what changes he made, and when.

The "when" is important, for instance, a change of a bill a day before being voted on should be a major red flag.

Re:Wrong

[IdleTime]

I can not believe what I'm reading...

When are you American going to say enough is enough and cut down this crap? The US political system is a disaster and designed for corruption and this you think is the best? It's one of the worst political systems I have ever seen.

But I guess, you all feel fine and still think that USA is greatest thing since sliced bread. It is not, I have lived and worked in 6 different 1st world countries and USA is by far the worst.

Re:Wrong

[Original Replica]

The real cure is electoral reform,

And a very significant part of the electoral process is haveing a voting system you can count on. From the proposed changes to the law, it looks like MS would like to make voting software from "off the shelf" Windows components. Why would they push for a differentiation between primarly-for-voteing or not, unless they were not going to be building this 100% custom? Do we really want our voting software to be compatible with home PCs? Do we want that software even based on a system that many many people have years of experience in finding weaknesses? Hell, if we are going to vote that way, just make the presidential election a web survey.

Re:Wrong

[trolltalk.com]

"Could you name one issue where current law diverges from majority opinion, backed by some recent survey?"

Totally irrelevant to the issue at hand, which is that companies have more "access" to legislators than the electorate does.

Electoral laws need reform.

But since you asked - the current war in Iraq. Current law funds it - current public opinion is that the invasion was a mistake and to get out.

Another one - the deficit. Current law says its okay to run huge deficits, and to keep raising the legal deficit ceiling. public opinion is WTF

The debt ceiling was raised just over a year ago. It's going to have to be raised again in the VERY near future.

Ten trillion or bust? More like Ten trillion AND bust!

Re:Wrong

[Martin Blank]

The Democrats control both houses and would have already done this if they didn't think it would get them kicked out of office at the next election.

No, that's a balance of power issue. Pulling the troops won't hurt the Democrats in the next elections -- not as a whole, anyway -- but Bush will veto any bill that contains a deadline, and Congress doesn't have a veto-proof majority on the topic. What ends up happening (theoretically) is that the troops eventually don't get supplies, and due to that the Democrats get hurt. The president simply has the upper hand on this issue, regardless of the feeling of the populace or the majority party in Congress.

Re:Wrong

[Original Replica]

I would like to see reform go even farther. How about, "only one specific topic per bill" no tagging anything on any bill, ever. There would be no need for a line item veto, because there would ever only be one line item. With the enormous bloat of our legislation we don't need to worry about the efficiency with which more law can be passed. But we do need to have clarity in what is being proposed, and voted on.

Re:Wrong

[Spy der Mann]

A lawmaker would be far, far more careful if he knew everyone (media, citizens, etc) could see exactly what changes he made, and when.

I have the impression there's a name for that.
BTW, I think Slashdot and Transparency Intl. should collaborate more closely. Just a thought.

Re:Wrong

[value_added]

Totally irrelevant to the issue at hand, which is that companies have more "access" to legislators than the electorate does.

While I agree with the sentiment, I think that statement is somewhere between overbroad and naive. Put yourself in the shoes of an elected official (in any level of government) and see if you can answer the Pop Quiz "Whose call would you take?"

(a) Brad and Angelina call to make an appointment to discuss an issue of importance.

(b) A non-profit public interest group calls to advocate their positions on a specific matter of interest.

(c) A vocal and annoying citizens group (one that represents a large voter base) calls to schedule yet another meeting on a series of topics.

(d) A CEO whose business employs several thousand people in your district and generates big tax revenues for the economy calls to schedule an extended lunch appointment.

(e) Numerous well-informed, educated and articulate individuals who want to make the world a better place call to share their opinions.

If you picked (e), congratulations on being well-intentioned, but good luck making up with all those folks (the ones that matter) that are now pissed off. And good luck getting re-elected.

Electoral laws need reform.

Indeed. But getting that done is uphill both ways. Much like getting citizens to actually vote.

Re:Wrong

[Cheviot]

Backed by a current survey... no... but...

Recently a 14 year old girl was charged with producing and possessing child pornography for taking and sending a topless picture of herself to her 14 year old boyfriend.

Now, no one thinks she should be doing this... but likewise I think the majority of people in this country can agree that not only wasn't she producing child pornography, but that she's also not a sex offender, as she would be automatically classified if she's convicted of the child pornography charge.

Re:Wrong

[644bd346996]

Duh?

Music Piracy.

Re:Wrong

[erroneus]

I don't think a survey should be necessary in the case of the DMCA. It was passed through unscrupulous means and measures. It is abused more often than it's used and it definitely does not reflect the interests of the public at large. And without resorting to a poll, I think it's safe to say that nearly 100% of all people in the US would like to be able to back up their movies and record any given TV show or movie for later viewing whether the recording device is a tape, a DVR or a DVD+-R.

Re:Wrong

[Alsee]

The president simply has the upper hand on this issue

Maybe I'm missing something, but it looks exactly the opposite to me. Congress supplies funding for the troops, Bush vetoes the funding. After the usual delay in running a new bill through the legislative system, Congress should pass the exact same bill funding the troops. Bush yet again vetoes funding for the troops. After yet another delay, it's "UhOh we need money for the troops ReallySoonNow" and congress makes a big production "Rushing" to push the exact same bill to fund the troops through the process again. Bush again vetoes funding for the troops. Now it's "Oh my god troop salaries have to be paid THIS WEEK" and Congressmen rush back in from all over the country for a special weekend Super Super EMERGENCY SESSION dedicated to the sole issue that the troops need to be paid immediately and they suspend all the usual Red-Tape procedural rules and in a single 8-hour session they slam through the exact same god-damn funding bill.

And then if Bush feels like it he can veto the bill. And then he can stand up there on the fucking Whitehouse lawn and explain why he refused to permit the soldiers to be paid. He can stand up there and explain how he is supporting and protecting the troops by denying them paychecks, he can explain how he is supporting the troops by denying them vital supplies. The US Army can grind to a screeching halt in total chaos and he can stand up there and explain how he's a hero for vetoing the Emergency Fund Our Troops Bill cutting off their money.

In general I consider the Democrats to be way better than the Republicans, but oh my god most Democrats are fucking incompetent cowering twits.

Bush can give all the speeches he likes, he can have his press secretary up there in press room day after day, yammering endlessly about how Democrats are Evil and how much they hate the troops and blaming congress and blaming Democrats yada yada yada... but at the end of the day the Constitutional division of Powers firmly hangs the noose around Bush's neck. At the end of the day Bush can let the bill go through and fund the troops, or Bush is the one standing there denying the troops paychecks and denying the troops supplies. He's the one standing there shutting everything off.

Bush is the Commander in Chief giving day-to-day orders to the military, but Congress is the one that gets to pass laws and supply money and how that money may be spent. Bush's power is and always has been to veto laws if he chooses... Bush power is and always has been to refuse to accept the money if he chooses... Bush's power is and always has been to refuse to pay the troops salaries if he chooses... Bush's power is and always has been to refuse to send needed supplies for the troops. Bush's power is and always has been to order the troops to strip down to their underwear and dance the Electric Boogaloo if he chooses.

I'm baffled (but sadly not too surprised) that Congress and the Democrats went all wussy and rolled over for Bush yet again. All they had to do was keep repassing the exact same god-damn bill to fund the troops and plant the noose firmly on Bush's neck.

-

Microsoft shouldn't be in the voting business

[cyberianpan]

Any form of eVoting will raise trust issues. Without source code there cannot be trust of a complex computer program - testing won't work. E.g. maybe only when sysdate is 15.May.2009 will a particular "feature" manifest. Microsoft are a closed source firm so they shouldn't go near eVoting.

Re:Microsoft shouldn't be in the voting business

[Harmonious Botch]

What's the big deal? It's already a BLUE state...

Re:Microsoft shouldn't be in the voting business

[Anonymous Coward]

Testing with source code or inspection doesn't work either.

The only thing that works is a verifiable paper trail, so arguing about open vs. closed source on voting machines is totally moot.

Re:Microsoft shouldn't be in the voting business

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if you get the source code, you still can not trust "eVoting". How do you know the voting machines aren't using modified source code?

Answer: You don't.

Re:Microsoft shouldn't be in the voting business

[Tatarize]

This is a match made in heaven though. The mission critical nature of eVoting combined with the fantastic security of Microsoft.

There's a reason so many Computer Scientists oppose eVoting, we think we could steal an election if we tried... and that's just a wee bit too easy.

Re:Microsoft shouldn't be in the voting business

[QuantumG]

The only thing that keeps the voting system honest is *people* who care more about the accuracy of the results than whether or not a particular party wins. In other words: little old ladies, and they're not the ones pushing for these devices. They're perfectly happy to keep counting the slips of paper.

rent-a-center, or Rent a Senator?

[v1]

these changes are being slipped into a bill that may be voted on Monday or Tuesday, June 18 or 19."

Can someone explain why it is that politicians are allowed to "slip" completely unrelated items into bills that must be voted on all-or-nothing? They do this all the time, tacking on things that only a small minority want, onto a bill that is important and that everyone is going to pass because the main item is needed by most/all.

One reason I could see is if they believed that congress moved too slow to be able to vote on everything unless things were bundled like this. That's a sad excuse still.

The other reason I could see is that there may be too many cases where it was impossible to get a majority vote on any single issue without puting something into the pot for several different interests to help the bill pass.

Anyway, what is this process by which they can just tack on other unrelated provisions? And who gets to say what gets added? Just pay off a senator and it's in basically?

Re:rent-a-center, or Rent a Senator?

[Bender0x7D1]

Amendments are reuired to meet germaneness rules. However, if you try hard enough, you can make almost anything sound germane to a specific bill. For example, if you are working on the state budget, you could attach almost anything since the costs associated with it affect the budget. Highway bill - anything related to oil and gas and automotive industry. Heck, even air travel since widespread construction may change the number of people flying. If you are changing the deadline for election paperwork, almost anything regarding elections. Oh, elections might be electronic? Then software laws may be germane. See how easy it is?

You just pay someone like a lawyer or lobbyist to come up with a plausible connection to some bill that is about to be voted on and attach it.

Re:rent-a-center, or Rent a Senator?

[Smight]

The idea is that in order to get a bill passed in which 45% of the people agree you will add on some things that that you aren't happy about to get the opposition to vote for it.

In practical application though they create a bill that 65%-70% would agree with and then see how many things they can stick on to make their constituents happy or those that give them funding.

Some would argue that items should pass on their own merit. But then how are you ever going to get a $315 million bridge built to an island with a population of 50?

Re:rent-a-center, or Rent a Senator?

[quacking duck]

They're called riders.

Slashdotters may remember software patent proponents in Europe tried attaching a rider to an agriculture and fisheries bill a few years back allowing them. Because you know, software patents are SO relevant to fish stocks and pig farmers.

These damn things should be outlawed. The supposed benefits are far outweighed by those that think nothing of abusing the good intention of riders ("think of the children!" "it's to fight terrorists!")

microsoft for president!

[widget54]

Lets cut out the well bribed middlemen and just elect corporations to run the country...think of the money it would save them!!!

how convenient

[hxnwix]

* Voting machine manufacturers want their code closed so that they can take bribes for deciding the winner.

* Microsoft wants their code closed in order to protect lock-in.

* Those in power take bribes from Microsoft and the voting machine manufacturers, and moreover, they want to be able to hand their offices to friends and supporters when their own terms are up.

Summary: things are happening that appear to be motivated by agendas antithetical to democracy.

Used car salesman

[sjames]

When the used car salesman if performing gymnastics to guide your eyes away from some aspect of the car, that's where you'd BETTER look if you don't want to be ripped off.

What we have here is a salesman who is desperate to keep us from examining the source of the OS.

ATM failures

[Dr.Merkwurdigeliebe]

This is the company that sells software to Automatic Teller Machines, which are very important pieces of machinery in how they can effect a person's life. We've all read horror stories about ATM's running windows crashing, but MS expects people to put their trust in them when deciding who runs the country?!? This is lunacy!

Corporatism

[k1e0x]

Here in Soviet Amerika, Microsoft and Haliburton write our laws. This is Corporatism, its Mercantilism, and its evil.. If we let it continue we will find ourselves homeless in the country our forefathers conquered.

Re:Loaded Words Much?

[budword]

Which almost never happens. It happens so rarely that it makes the news when it does, and even then, these guys spend years out on bail while they appeal. Then they go to a country club "prison", and get out early anyway, when they aren't out on "work release". They are almost never punished to begin with, and the few times they get busted are not a deterrent to the rest of them.

Just use avionics (or gambling :) ) standards!

[PaulBu]

Given that voting is (generally) considered quite an important activity, with natinal security implications, I see no reason why the relevant software/hardware combination should be held to lesser standards than, say, software in avionics on our planes or on-board software on our satellites, both of which seem to work "just fine" (relatively speaking, yes, you get thousands of newspaper articles when there is a single failure).

Or, (google for the story) apparently writing the e-voting bill was really easy in Nevada, they said "Hey, we'll use the same audit standards that we already have for our slot machines" -- and all the Diebolds decided to skip NV as a customer... :)

Paul B.

Contact your NY state representative...

[feranick]

From Bo Lipari's blog:

"Take Action Now - It's urgent that you call your State Senator and Assembly representatives on Monday, June 18, at their Albany offices, and tell them they must not weaken New York State's escrow and review requirements. Remind them that the Legislature passed a strong law 2 years ago - they must not give in to pressure by voting machine vendors to undermine those protections.

Find your Assembly member's contact information here:
http://www.assembly.state.ny.us/mem/
(Not sure who your Assembly member is? Click here to search by Zip Code)

Find your State Senator's contact information here:
http://www.senate.state.ny.us/senatehomepage.nsf/s enators?OpenForm
(Not sure who your State Senator is? Click here to search by Zip Code)"

Re:Life, liberty, and the pursuit of blogs.

[BakaHoushi]

It sounds like the only way to solve America's growing problem of corporations taking over is... a good old fashioned rumble.

Microsoft v. Wal*Mart!
GE v. Disney!
Halliburton v. Exxon-Mobile!

This sunday, sunday, SUNDAY, watch white collar workers get red in the face and a bad case of the Mondays! Marketers place ads all OVEr each other's faces! Accountants will be adding up plenty of lumps!

And for the finale, Steve Ballmer v. Eisner! Hold on to your seats, because somebody is gonna get CEOwned!

Re:The power of the vote.

[tourvil]

Now, with the automation of so many of life's crucial processes, fewer and fewer people are needed to rig any thing.

Which is why I think we should return to traditional paper ballots, honestly. The field of computer security is simply too new and too fast paced to trust with the foundation of our democracy: elections.

At the very least, I feel that any software used in the election process should have its source viewable by the public. It doesn't necessarily have to be free/open source (though I think it would be beneficial), but people should at least be able to audit the code used to determine the nation's elections.

That is why we should have stuck with paper ballot

[Attila Dimedici]

This is just one more reason we should have stuck with the paper ballot. Despite all the complaints about the 2000 election, there was a clear paper trail to follow. I do not believe that there is any way to make an electronic ballot that there is a way to make it so that the average person could be confident that the vote wasn't rigged. Even with open source software, unless you compiled the code yourself (or at least were present when it was compiled), how do you know that the "open" code is actually what they installed on the machine?

Re:Quick solution

[QuantumG]

Shya. The public would go on a rampage alright.. to lynch hackers. That's the way it works. Hackers are the bad guys, the idiots who make software with big security holes in it because they can't practice well known techniques are the victims.

Why an OS?

[Pig Hogger]

Why an OS for an appliance computer? (Because a voting machine is basically an appliance computer).

I mean, what does a voting machine needs to do? Read a keyboard (or touch screen), write to a display device, print a receipt/results, read and write to a RAM card (to get the candidates and put the results).

So why do you need a whole goddammed operating system to do that? Are programmers becoming sufficiently incompetent to be unable to do those basic I/O tasks from scratch???

What's so difficult in booting from ROM? Set stack pointers, memory access registers, jump to start of POST routine and go.

It's not very hard at all.

So why do you need schwindoze (or schlinux) to do all those basic things????

Re:Hahaha... these Americans...

[ozmanjusri]

I know they would still vote Bill Gates for president.

Not Gates, Ballmer.

I'd say if Microsoft gets away with this, there's a damn good chance McCain'll be your next President.

"the 70 year old presidential hopeful also said that he would ask Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to serve on his cabinet to deal with technology issues if elected."
http://www.thedailybackground.com/2007/05/30/mccai n-comes-out-against-net-neutrality-says-would-hire -microsoft-ceo-steve-ballmer/ Conflict of interests? What conflict of interests?

I for one

[Premo_Maggot]

Would like to say get the fuck out of my state Microsoft. -A New Yorker content without M$ fucking with my legislation.

Re:Loaded Words Much?

[mcvos]

Why is that Microsoft doesn't deserve to have its interests represented by their government the same as every other citizen and corporation.

Because Microsoft isn't a citizen, and corporations don't have the same rights to representation as citizens. Or shouldn't have. In these plutocratic times they actually appear to have more representation than citizens, but that's not the way it should be. Not if you want to pretend you live in a democracy.