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Judge Voids Un-Auditable California Election
For only the second time in California history, a judge in Alameda County voided an election result and called for the election to be re-run, because the e-voting tallies from Diebold machines couldn't be audited. The vote was on a controversial ballot measure addressing the operation of medical marijuana dispensaries, and the result was a close margin. Activists went to court to demand a recount, but after the lawsuit was filed, elections officials sent voting machines back to Diebold. The court found that 96% of the necessary audit information had been erased. The judge ordered the ballot measure to be re-run in the next election.
This happened in Alabama in 1965.
I can think of another close vote they should do the same with.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
Unfortunately, the corporations seem to win no matter what you do. Running a ballot measure is incredibly expensive. It costs a lot of money to raise public awareness of an issue and run things like get out the vote measures.
Dragging out a measure with a revote tilts things well in favor of corporations, who have the cash to sustain such an operation. Now the reformers are going to have to fundraise all over again so they can try to put forth an effort in the next election.
I'd be nice to eliminate the source of the problem, rather than have to litigate over the after-effects.
Here's some info on what was actually being voted on, because both the SLashdot and EFF summary treat it as a virtual irrelevance:
The plaintiffs were backers of Measure R, which would have allowed medical marijuana clubs to move into retail areas in Berkeley without public hearings and would have erased limits on the amount of cannabis that patients could have.
According to the county's certified results, the measure lost, 25,167 to 24,976. The initiative lost again in a recount.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
Shame on Diebold. Why did they ALLOW them to send back the machine before things were taken care of. Why did they ERASE the machines before things were taken care of?
Do they have any clue whatsoever about what they are doing? Has the nation not bitched enough about paper trails and how precarious votes are already? It doesn't take much sense to see that you can't take chances like this on a product that isn't proven and is under -heavy- scrutiny.
I'm in favor of electronic voting machines in general, but it's obvious that Diebold has not produced a worthy machine yet, and I find it unlikely that they will any time soon.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Yes, you would.
Now instead of politicians kicking stuff around forever so that no action is taken, we're also getting entire results voided until another election cycle comes around to clean it up. That's true progress! A whole new level of inneficiency is being introduced.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
Any coincidence that this corporation erased the trail of a vote was over a plant that other large corporations/industries lobbied hard to have banned because it could be a competing product?
Its a shame that people have to attack this issue under the guise of 'medical'. I don't even smoke tobacco and this irrational fear of MJ gets under my skin.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
If you had read the article, you would know that the problem was not the machines.
The city did perform a dump of the data before they returned the machines to Diebold; that was the responsibility of the people in california. Diebold was clearing the machines and when told to stop they did, however only 20 of the 400+ machines had not been cleared.
Diebold is pretty damn lucky with their taxpayer-money business model. They would be bankrupt several years ago if they actually competed in the private sector. Maybe they could make arcade boxes. Street Fighter 14?
Always someone has power over you. The thing to consider is this: Is the power good, or bad?
I'd be nice to eliminate the source of the problem, rather than have to litigate over the after-effects.
This will be enormously expensive for the state government. You can bet that they'll be seeing what steps they can take to prevent something like this happening again, and switching to a voting machine with an auditable paper trail will probably be one of the possibilities they consider.
Why bother with all that when you can just look at the paper ballots that where printed when...oh wait...there AREN'T ANY!
This is a prime example of why a purely electronic record of the vote is a Bad Idea. If paper ballots had been printed, reviewed by the voter before being deposited in a secure ballot box, and retained for a recount, there would be no issue.
Against the cost of re-running a vote, those printers are starting to look pretty chap, I'd wager.
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
But the problem really was the machines. Diebold's machines don't create paper trails. If there'd been a paper trail, that paper wouldn't have gone back to Diebold HQ and would not have been erased.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
We need to get rid of these electronic polling machines.
They should raise a proposition on this so that we can vote on the issue.
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
Most industries (finance, law, medicine, accounting...etc) would laugh at the idea of IT systems that have no audit trail. In the worst case scenario, the business could be held liable for damages (sometimes criminally) if certain controls and audit functions are not in place.
The fact that these machines were ordered, designed, and implemented without these controls shows incompetence (or corruption) at every level of the process - from voting administration, to the manufacture, sale, and installation of the equipment.
Those who allowed this to happen, should be the subject of investigation by the Department of Justice. Unfortunately, we may have to wait for another administration to do the right thing.
-ted
...just dropped another 40 percent. Call us right now with your credit card handy and we'll throw in a free rotisserie oven for your kitchen! Better hurry. At these low, low, prices, it won't last!
Why is this put to a public vote?
If the medical establishment say that something has a clinical benefit, what business is it of the public?
Should we have a referendum for every new drug?
simon
Why not (if we must do it fully electronic) on flash cards or other removable media, that the election board keeps. Send the bare machine back to Diebold.
Of course, some sort of paper ballot would be better, but election boards seem to be following the "Oooh shiny!" train of thought.
Change this to a presidential election (circa 2000) and try to recount an unauditable trail. Yeah, they argued about hanging chads and the whole mess, but there was a paper trail that said "absolutely, one voter, one vote, auditable". They even had a non-partisan group do a recount after the fact, and the paper trail showed that Bush in fact did win Florida. (uh oh, forgot to put on the flame retardant overcoat before I said that -- so folks, keep it cool -- I'm not particularly fond of Bush lately anyway!!).
But folks, I think that the significance of this decision is being totally overlooked, which is this: the American governmental system has worked again -- perhaps a rare again lately IMHO -- to let the people's voice be heard, in an accountable way. Good for the judge. Right call.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
Funny, their ATM machines never fail to deduct my withdrawal. Why is it that they cant seem to keep votes straight?
'd be nice to eliminate the source of the problem, rather than have to litigate over the after-effects.
Agreed but it's highly illegal to take all politicians and corperate executives and kill them on pikes in public.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The focus of discussions on e-voting machines always seems to come down to the reliability and accuracy of the audits. What this ignores is the potential for the actual voting records to be altered prior to inclusion in the overall voting record.
The problem with e-voting (in my opinion) is not so much the audit trail, but the fact that e-voting adds unnecessary levels of complexity (and obfuscation and unaccountability) to the voting process. This is the result of government leaders attempting to perform vital civic services on the cheap: why pay poll workers and vote counters, when we can just use machines that do this fast and automagically?
What the use of e-voting machines invites is the ability/potential not only to count votes FASTER, but to do so behind a hardware/software interface, where much malfeasance can be conjured in code and executed on-the-fly, beyond the observational capacity of effectively the entire voting population.
Some things are better dealt with in the analog world. A true and accurate accounting of the will of the people is too important to a democracy for us to cut corners. I think it is worth the cost of paper ballots and carbon-based vote counters to effect the will of the people (however much one may or may not agree with the peoples' will).
That's my two cents on a Thursday before 11am (the time of the morning at which my brain always chugs to life).
Mmmmmm... Bold, yet refreshing!
Praise God! I love hearing good news for a change.
Maybe I missed something, but it seems to me that this is simply an issue about whether the machines should have a printer attached.
Obviously many people think that would be a good idea.
Do others suggest it would be a bad one? Why? What is the reasoning behind that? Or was it just that nobody thought of that when designing the machines?
Why hasn't this been fixed already?
Last election they used the Sequoia Optec voting system - which uses a mark-sense ballot - for most voters and AVC Edge with VeriVote Printer for vision-impaired voters. Prior to that, they used the old-fashioned mark-sense forms that they use for absentee voters for everybody. Vision-impaired voters could have their ballots read to them or use one of the few remaining Diebold systems in local city halls.
I haven't heard yet what system we're going to be using for the Primaries in February, 2008.
Agreed but it's highly illegal to take all politicians and corperate executives and kill them on pikes in public.
Would a Jury convict? As a practical issue you might need to ensure you had enough pikes.
A study done by a newspaper consortium, which included the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, that had the recount proceeded statewide of overvotes and undervotes Gore would have prevailed under 7 different standards. But if there were only partial recounts as requested by Gore then Bush would have won under each scenario.
Much of this is irrelevant at this point because in the end the vote count was really 5 to 4. So much for democracy, eh?
[i]"Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything."" - Josef Stalin
It would set precedent for the "But he really needed killing" defense.
There is a war going on for your mind.
Its all a matter of perspective.
man, I feel like mold.
Reasonable intelligent supporters of marijuana legalization don't think it's harmless, they just think it's less harmful than alcohol, which is legal. I don't know enough say for sure that marijuana is less harmful, but I've never seen any good studies suggesting that it's more harmful. (Certainly the study you link to could have been about alcohol instead, and no one would bat an eye).
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
No one ever talks about the good things about electronic voting machines so I'll try.
1) They save paper. No umpty-ump thousands of paper ballots to print out and truck around.
2) They save time with the vote counting. Computers can tally in an instant while manual vote tallying by an army of poll workers takes hours, and sometimes days.
3) They restrict access to the balloting to just a few people. Instead of all of those vote counters putting their hands all over a mass of paper ballots, there are just a handful of people who operate and service the machines and then report the results.
4) They generate new jobs for technical people as the machines become obsolete every 3 or 4 years and are replaced by the new models.
There are probably more advantages but those are all I can think of. Now, I know what you're thinking: 'So what about the so-called advantages...the process is inherently untrustworthy.' To that we would say...(crickets chirping)
Yes, but how much would it cost to bribe them to pass a bill allowing that?
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
>[From the article]In her ruling Tuesday, Smith said county officials had failed to >retrieve backup data from electronic voting machines, logs of activity on the >machines and other records as she had specifically ordered. > >Instead, the county ignored the request and returned the devices to their >manufacturer, Diebold Election Systems, after the measure's advocates had >sued the county seeking access to the data, the judge said. > >"Why the county did so is anybody's guess," the judge wrote. "But the >result is absolutely certain: The information on those machines is lost >completely." The county screwed up and destroyed evidence it had an obligation to preserve. (Note: This sort of thing could have happened with any audit material. For example, they could have lost paper ballots that they were supposed to retain for recounts.) In particular, the country destroyed evidence after a judge specifically ordered that this material be preserved. What is the consequence to the county for this? Is this not criminally negligent?
Follow my election reform blog at AllAboutVoting.com
A judge specifically told the county to retrieve backup data from the machines. The county not only totally ignored her request - they acted in such a way that the data she requested was permenantly destroyed. How is that not contempt of court?
I'm used to government inaction or incompetence affecting elections - it happens all the time - but when government officials purposely act contrary to a judge's order, that brings corruption to an entirely new level.
Note to self: Stop putting jokes in my insightful comments so I can get something other than +1 Funny!
EFF supports HR811 and considers it to be an improvement over our current system.
Some other prominent folks support it such as Avi Rubin.
Me? I'm still neutral on HR811. I have not taken the time to thoroughly research it and I find that the advice of those I trust is split on the matter.
I also have concerns that it will too sharply limit promising end-to-end verifiable systems such as Punchscan.
I don't consider end-to-end verifiable technologies to be ready for widespread deployment, but I do think:
Follow my election reform blog at AllAboutVoting.com
We have a huge country. No matter how fair and rigorous are our election laws, we're going to have the sampling error that even our basic science cannot avoid. So those election laws should require that elections be won by greater than the margin of error.
A 2% victory on one Tuesday in November that governs 2, 4 or 6 years, especially with the power of incumbency multiplying all those terms, is a recipe for an ungovernable populace. A do-over (eliminating minor candidates proven not to be viable to win) would not only produce a more reliable result, but most importantly it would eliminate much of the claims of the loser's voters that their candidate was the winner, and therefore refuse to recognize the winner's authority.
Democratic elections are much more important for gaining the consent of the governed than for picking the best official. Any official who actually best represents the population would never fear a repeat of their winning vote.
--
make install -not war
>If you had read the article, you would know that the problem was not the machines.
...and everything below hand counted paper ballots is below my threshold for suitability.
>The city did perform a dump of the data before they returned the machines to
>Diebold; that was the responsibility of the people in california. Diebold
>was clearing the machines and when told to stop they did, however only 20
>of the 400+ machines had not been cleared.
I did not see mentions of these details in the articles. Link?
I do agree with the point that the core issue here was that the county did not
successfully retain evidence that it had an obligation to retain. Such a thing
could have happened even with a hand-counted paper ballot.
Separately there is, of course, the issue of whether the use of an unverifiable
voting machine like those provided by Diebold can have a meaningful audit.
In terms of meaningful audits I see it as
end-to-end verifiable systems like punchscan
BETTER THEN hand marked paper ballot with optical scan and recounts against samples of the paper ballots
BETTER THEN hand counted paper ballots
BETTER THEN voting machines with voter-verified paper trails
BETTER THEN voting machines
Follow my election reform blog at AllAboutVoting.com
a Schedule I drug according to the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, which classified marijuana as having high potential for abuse, no medical use, and not safe to use under medical supervision. Which any scientific study will tell is a load of steaming bullshit
True. Regardless of any feelings on the morality of marijuana use or whether it should be legalized, its Schedule I status, putting it on the same level as crack and amphetamines, is simple stupidity. It has well documented uses, is quite safe, and is no where near as addictive as any number of illegal drugs, and may be less so than alcohol. It does have potential for abuse and that is a different question.
The concern is, presumably, that admitting it has uses, given that it is relatively safe (particularly as compared to commonly prescribed opiates), it will become widely used medically. This is a political issue though and a stupid one. It has nothing to do with medical facts and a lot to do with fiber production.
The debate over whether marijuana should be recreationally legal, whether its use commonly endangers others (say, driving under the influence), and what any penalties should be is heavily clouded by this problem. It also makes the whole drug problem harder because it makes the entire drug classification system look partisan and useless, which, to some extent, it is exactly that. It results in a loss of respect for the system.
What is really interresting about this is that not only do they totally ignore the fact that pot can be eaten (not exclusively smoked), and that it too can be filtered (water pipes, etc), but that there are no studies that show an increase in cacer from smoking Cannabis, in fact, some of the studies done show a decrease in cancer incidence from people smoking pot, because while nicotine is a cancer-causing violent poison, THC is a cancer-reducing psychotrope with no know toxicity level (it is impossible to have a lethal overdose of THC). But they talk about the other substances, besides from nicotine, that are also present and nasty... and assume that no one ever filters them out, or simply bypass their creation by cooking it instead of burning it.
It is illegal in spite of all available science, it was made illegal temporarily in waiting for this evidence, but once the evidence came, it was ignored. The law is a clear fraud, and a deadly one at that: Peter Alexander McWilliams (August 5, 1949 - June 14, 2000) was a writer and cannabis activist. A vocal supporter of medical cannabis due to being terminally ill with AIDS and cancer, McWilliams was investigated by the Federal Drug Enforcement Administration and convicted for violating federal marijuana laws, even though medical marijuana was legal under California state law. He later choked to death on his own vomit when he was forced to switch from cannabis to Marinol in order to remain free on bond pending sentencing .
No honest man should stand for this travesty.
You can't take the sky from me...
'Voting machines forget their audit trails on marijuana initiative?"
Sometimes the headlines write themselves...
I'm going to burn some karma here, but did you mean "better than"? I usually ignore grammatical mistakes, but you made this one four times in a row in capital letters.
By "BETTER THAN", I mean "is better than". When I first wrote the post I used '>' but it looked too much like I was quoting text.
I think that I used the correct grammar: http://www.grammartips.homestead.com/than.html
Follow my election reform blog at AllAboutVoting.com
I just flicked off a Diebold truck on the way to work today! I'm serious.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
We're about to change the meaning of "earmark" . . . :)
hawk
As a Californian, I think too often the source of the problem is similar to the source of many computer security problems. Security and convenience don't mix together very well. Election officials too often are more concerned about convenience than security. They want cheap elections, easy to run elections, and none of those unsightly recounts. When someone starts complaining about electronic voting machines the election officials are quick to defend them and defend their decisions. They point out how inconvenient and messy and expensive the paper systems were, as if the convenience and cost were the only issues they cared about. Security is treated as a nice bonus if they can get it, but certainly not necessary in their world view.
The "just good enough" approach to security is everywhere, and election officials are catching that attitude too. If credit card companies are willing to write off actual monetary loss for fraud rather than beef up security at the expense of convenience, because that's good enough, why should election officials behave differently?
The important thing in elections isn't that they're fast. Convenience is slightly important, since it encourages voter turn out. Even having extremely high accuracy isn't the most important things. What seems more important is that the electorate trusts the results. Election officials do not seem to be making a significant effort in building up trust, and the manufacturers of the machine certainly aren't. Instead there's a lot of people saying "trust us" without actually earning the trust.
Ultimately the most obvious and glaring reason for suspicion regarding the motives of Diebold (and the other black box voting machine companies) is the intentional disregard for profit that would come from having a more expensive auditable printer package.
Considering how simple it would be to include a printer that would produce a record, and how much money they could charge state and local governments for those printers, it is indeed a very curious thing that these companies REFUSE to make that money.
The Generation
I'd say something witty here, but I'm not that bright.
According to Google, you're wrong:
Results 1 - 10 of about 4,050,000 for "better then" (your original spelling)
Results 1 - 10 of about 95,000,000 for "better than"
"better than" is correct, "better then" is what you used, and it's wrong.
Just another "DOJ fascist authoritarian totalitarian bootlicker" -- Zeio
>"better than" is correct, "better then" is what you used, and it's wrong.
Agreed.
Now, how do I make my grammar mistakes blink?
Follow my election reform blog at AllAboutVoting.com
Oh, don't worry.
To us Grammar Nazis, they blink already.
Just another "DOJ fascist authoritarian totalitarian bootlicker" -- Zeio
Well, the French got away with it....
Thank you, Judge Winifred Smith! May the judges of our nation follow your example and restore the Republic.
The vote was sacred and now reminds stolen by these black boxes.
Agreed but it's highly illegal to take all politicians and corperate executives and kill them on pikes in public. Then we need a ballot measure to make that legal...oh wait
"You're arguing for a universe with fewer waffles in it," I said. "I'm prepared to call that cowardice."