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Florida Literally Scraps Touch-Screen Voting
Kaseijin writes "Florida Governor Charlie Crist is getting his wish. The New York Times reports the state will replace touch-screen voting machines with optical-scan models by July 1, 2008 — the most aggressive timetable of any jurisdiciton rethinking this approach to voting. The touch-screen machines most likely will be sold to other jurisdictions or stripped for parts."
I think we should buy one for each Slashdot 10th anniversary party and smash them.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
"The fight for freedom has only just begun." - Geert Wilders
Stripped for parts? Am I the only one thinking there won't be much of a demand for those? :/
That makes perfect sense
At first I was equating optical to retinal scan voting -- "Sorry, the correct choice was --" "AHHH! MY EYES!" In more rational terms, this is good, there should be a paper trail which is key to our voting process. You fill the circle in with a marker, slide the ballot in the dealy, it counts, and you can do a manual recount if needed. That's what is truly required.
There are enough problems with arguments about whether a vote should be counted or not as it is, in any system. With optical scanning of a ballot paper, surely there will be arguments about whether what the scanner counts as a vote or not is actually the correct definition of what is a vote or not? The voting system is likely to be attacked by people who disagree with its definitions whatever it is.
(1)DOCOMEFROM!2~.2'~#1WHILE:1<-"'?.1$.2'~'"':1/.1$.2'~#0"$#65535'"$"'"'&.1$.2'~'#0$#65535'"$#0'~#32767$#1"
...for parts? someone should buy all chips containing the software and look for some bogus going on in there.
At Defcon15 Bruce Schneier has said that he prefers optical scan *by far*.
Great, so now some criminal can steal a machine from the Town Hall basement and aim his attack at all the precincts that decide to buy the machines from Florida. (If you work for the NSA, please note the *sarcasm* when reading this comment. Am I paranoid? Should I be?!)
The losing side will contest the results anyway.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
As opposed to figuratively?
I'm stunned that in the first place a system that could not be 100% audited was allowed to be used in the first place! Seriously, even though politicians don't seem to give a damn what you think the voting process is supposed to be a key-stone of democracy. If you can't trust the ballots you can't trust the system. It's fundamental.
Shh.
Aggh,someone had to ask it.
Leave the gun, take the cannolis.
As a Canadian, I've never voted with anything other than a paper ballot, and I have never had a reason to question the voting process as a result.
Is that you can design the voting form in such a way to fix one of the fundamental problems with democracy. You can make it confusing enough that those with insufficient I.Q. are able only to spoil their ballots, thereby improving the overall level of decision making by the then elected government.
Deleted
I say good riddance. Those things were huge, and ungainly, and the stands always seemed to pinch my fingers on setup and take down.
Nobody will buy them.
Lets have one of the Universities write ballot marking software for these machines. That way we can reuse them for the disabled and go ahead and get rid of the few touch screen machines that are allowed under the law until 2012 for the disabled.
it'ld be interesting to see if anyone buys one and is able to find some major problem with it that might cause.... oh, i don't know.... never mind.
Help Me! I'm trapped in the tubes! Oh noes! Here comes a internet!
Yes, an anonymous coward actually read that poorly formatted post. What is this line doing in it?
How many of these touchscreens were purchased to replace good old levers and punch cards because of the HAVA act?
Now they spend more money to maybe get things right.
Maybe next time there is a perceived problem, congress wont rush headlong into an expensive act with a fasttrack deadline because we have to "do something!"
Sometimes you have to take the time to figure out what the real problems are and address them properly before pissing your money away on waste and potential changes that make things worse. In the case of lever machines and pucnh cards, the replacements were a waste of money and possibly made things worse.
You can throw some nasty little virus on there in the meantime :D
as Jerry Seinfeld put it, "where people go to die?," I doubt they'd be able to understand technology past a paper and pencil anyway.
.. I take along my PERMENANT marker and place a HUGE BLACK [X] on the SCREEN :)
http://www.rense.com/general79/wdx1.htm
Up here in Canada, we still use pencil and paper. Teams of real people look at real ballots and tabulate the results, which still arrive the same evening or early the next day. In return for paying people for a day of work, we get the benefit of a full paper trail, a simple ballot, and vote tabulation that is nearly impossible to fudge. Real democracy costs real money to implement; by cheaping out on elections, Americans get the discount democracy that they deserve.
If you can't trust the ballots you can't trust the system. It's fundamental.
Well, that's the thing. And, Nixon could see that in 1960, although Gore could not in 2000. Let's the Dems "win" after 8 recounts, and suddenly Gore is president in 2000. How long do you think it would be, before every Republican on the planet began crying out that the "fix was in", and this was just part of an overall liberal conspiracy. It didn't matter who really won in Florida 2000. Even Iraq is less important, long term, than the national disaster that began when Al Gore's lawyers first contested that vote. From here on out, no matter who wins an election, we will not trust the people that counted the votes. At some point, mute protests from either side will give way to even greater distrust, and ultimately, we'll do what the Romans did in their electoral disputes - spend a century in civil wars until we beg for someone like a Julius Caeasar to come around and save us from ourselves.... at that point, sometime in the distance, Democracy will truly be dead, but nothing will save Al Gore from being the first man arrogant enough to throw the stone against the glass wall of our democracy, and for that, he deserves to be judged quite harshly, indeed.
This is my sig.
Somebody's uncle got very wealthy marketing touch screen voting machines to state and country governments. Probaby the same guy that sold Broward County their chad-laden punch cards.
Why do they always involve some type of machine to do the counting in the US? Is there a shortage of volunteers to do the counting?
I would never trust a system like that. At the very least, the machine-counted vote should be confirmed later (but before the election is officially confirmed) by a manual count, no matter if there is a dispute or not.
In Sweden, the ballots are counted by volunteers in the precincts on election night under the supervision of observers from the parties and interested citizens (anyone can observe the counting), and the vote is later confirmed when it's counted by the counties, again under the supervision of observers.
The latter process takes several days (it starts on the day after the election) but counting in the precincts is usually done by the end of the day.
If there are multiple referendums or positions to be voted for, just use colour-coded ballots and ballot boxes.
Shades Red and Green should make it easy.
We use them here and they work great. You put an X in the circle of who you want to vote for. Very simple and they work well. No screens to navigate and completely verifiable.
---- aut viam inveniam aut faciam
Haha, you got modded offtopic fucktard so now why not practice what you preach and go earn yourself a Darwin Award.
crap is a term used to describe waste metal. Old, unwanted metal such as parts of vehicles, building supplies, and surplus materials, are taken to a wrecking yard (known colloquially as scrapyards), where they are processed for later melting into new products.
Even selling them for parts isn't literally scrapping them
You can't take the sky from me...
BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!
Oh you poor beguiled Floridians. You've just been taken for the old bait and switch. If you had paid attention to the debacle of the last presidential election you would know that it was the optical scanners that were compromised, not the touch screens! An in-depth statistical analysis was undertaken by a mathematics professor of the exit polls compared to the "counted" tally. A vast number of anomalies showed up in Ohio in districts with optical scanners. Calculating the odds of those discrepancies show that it was less likely for Bush to have won that election than for him to have been hit by lighting and win the lottery on the same day (paraphrasing of course).
:T:R:A:N:S:
The basic problem in 2000 was that Florida had stupid people running the election. They came up with the dumbest ballots possible. When they are rebuked, they buy (using federal money) the worst election machines possible. These people are still there.
Only the retired volunteer.
And yes there is a shortage.
is to turn a few of them over to so of the crackers, reverse compile them, and lets see exactly how many bugs there are? In particular, I want to know, were the elections valid. For that reason, I suspect that the courts and the pubs will fight the idea of turning ANY of those over to an academians or crackers.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Why not just go back to using hammers and chisels on stone tablets? But seriously, why can't I fill out my ballot online, print it, and either mail it in or hand deliver it? I can do this with an airline boarding pass...
I live (and vote) in NH. When I voted in the 2004 election, I had to feed my ballot into a machine of some kind. I assumed it was scanning the ballot when I did so. It certainly did more than just feed it into the lock box. And it didn't sound like a shredder.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
I voted yesterday with pencil and paper - putting numbers in boxes. The polling booths closed at 5pm. At 9:14pm the full results appeared on the net after being added up by volunteers and scrutenised by all interested parties. Forget the machines - this is a situation where volunteers do a far better job. Ironicly Slashot is showing me an ad at this point with the slogan "the power of human energy" - which is apt since the retired people that have trouble working out how to run voting machines by all accounts (and are never given training) are very good at counting up votes on ballot papers.
I would too, after reading this. (Warning, PDF content)
"Be grateful for what you have. You may never know when you may lose it."
In top ten format: (although not the top ones)
10) Optical scanners, their communication system, and the central tabulator ALL have been hacked before. (not all models, but most are only less stupidly designed than the touch screens)
9) The scan card itself as far as I know has not been hacked yet. re-scans will not show the errors depending on attack.
8) Districts. There is no algorithm for district definition; its not fixed either. (perhaps fixed is better than adapting to population? Perhaps a proxy voting system would work better?)
7) Faulty closed equip. Our optical scan system has NO lights; it to spits the paper back out.
6) Ballots are not authenticated, nor are their numbers tracked
5) Recounts are for "sore losers" so cheat a lot and quickly get the "loser" to fold without a fight
4) Cheaters are REWARDED and protected (Jeb Bush- fought in court, lost, then violated the same law and court orders backing those laws- before 2000.)
3) Some laws do not make a hand count of paper the official count; which is should be out of common sense (screw the laws that say otherwise which BTW, are written by #7 with no fear of the 2nd amendment.)
2) Voter registration & denied rights. Registration is a nightmare. Everybody votes or many are wrongfully denied.
1) Exit polls have been banned (here anyway) no error sampling allowed. (despite all the science, I'm amazed global warming even got past the filters.)
The severe damage to the USA has already been done; is the system healthy enough to ever fully recover? (not that going back to a pre-2000 condition is all that great.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
The left STILL won't be able to figure out how to vote. Get ready for more whining next election and judging "intent" because the morons can't follow directions.
(As stated by others in this thread) There is no need for an expensive middle-man in the voting process. Having comparatively delicate machines involved adds no security to the process.
My reason for making the suggestion about transforming DREs into very expensive pencils is that local governments are notorious for their inability to face the economic "sunk cost" problem: They claim that they paid lots of very limited money for the machines and they insist on Getting Their Moneys Worth. They also say that getting ballots printed is Very Expensive.
My wife and I, along with our friends in the hand-counted-paper-ballots coummunity are having a difficult time getting past the local election officials who just love their precious machines and think of paper ballots as backward and out of date. They Want To Be Perfectly Modern Government Officials.
Nearly every computer professional or security professional that is asked about electronic voting answers that it's either insecure or too expensive. Statements to that effect accelerate as they flow between the ears of local election officials.
Here's further support for your thesis:
I've stated elsewhere in this thread and other places that electronic machines constitute a perfect way to bias voting paterns in a perfectly legal way: Favored/wealthy precincts are allocated plenty of voting machines, while unfavored/not-wealthy precincts receive inadequate allocations. The result is that some voters have a strong time-based disincentive from voting. This amounts, in my opinion, to a denial of the vote to selected groups of people.
Can they not even use a touch screen?
That kind of suggestion is the real reason some politicians are so eager to delegate the rights of citizens to computers.
I agree with you in part; voting machines are a crappy idea. But I side with Bing on getting rid of them. That should be done locally, by the same jurisdictions that made the mistake of using them.
The federal government can only screw up situations like Hurricane Katrina in proportion to how heavily the citizens of the country, on average, rely on it to resolve local problems.
All 19 hijackers were known terrorists 09-10-2001. Lack of FBI intelligence does not justify warrantless wiretaps..
Much faster and easier to throw it to finding god or aliens. Finding an honest politician is a n^M hard problem.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
An ideal system would use paper ballots, with an "open" ballot format specification. Basically, the specification would define the paper size, and the set of locations on the paper where the little circles or ovals are to be located, and a protocol for marking details like which end of the paper is "top", and which page of a multi-page ballot is being scanned. If several different companies and/or open-source projects produce the scanners, then we could have N-version verification of elections, without the need to do tedious hand-counting.
The elections office would provide ballots in that format, and a ballot scanner that can scan that format, for each precinct. If the scanner at a precinct breaks, they could rescan those ballots using a spare scanner either at the precinct or at the central office. The ballots themselves of course must be maintained under multiple-control, but security of physical pieces of paper is well understood and easily implemented.
The interesting part of an open ballot specification happens during the auditing. Each interested party or candidate could provide their own ballot scanners, with their own hardware design and their own software. Those would have to meet a minimal specification -- such as that they must not add marks to the ballots, and they must not damage the ballots. After the election, each of the ballot scanners provided by the parties would be used to rescan the ballots. If the scanners, having different hardware designs, different software programs, and different ownership, all come up with the same results, then we can be pretty sure that those results are correct.
If the machines don't agree with each other, a public hand-count of one or two precincts can quickly establish which machines(s) is(are) wrong. There is no gain to be had by making a machine that is not accurate, because the inaccurate machine will be quickly exposed. So, there is no incentive to provide an inaccurate scanner machine.