Slashdot Mirror
All Fifty States May Face Voting Machine Lawsuit
according to an announcement made by activist Bernie Ellis at the premier of David Earnhardt's film "Uncounted [The Movie]" all fifty states could be receiving subpoenas in the National Clean Election lawsuit. The documentary film, like the lawsuit, takes a look at the issue of voting machine failure and the need for a solid paper trail. "The lawsuit is aimed at prohibiting the use of all types of vote counting machines, and requiring hand-counting of all primary and general election ballots in full view of the public. The lawsuit has raised significant constitutional questions challenging the generally accepted practices of state election officials of relying on "black box" voting machines to record and count the votes at each polling station, and allow tallying of votes by election officials outside the view of the general public."
The voting machine prints out Presidential runner X, but internally notes you voted for Presidential runner Y. That's been the general problem.
Because buying and selling votes is illegal.
Seriously, this has been discussed to death in the security / crypto circles and there are *a lot* of really good ideas floating around. All that's really needed is a competitive process to select the best one... like the crypto community did with AES.
This problem is so solvable the current state is infuriating.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
The possibility of hiding a skewed algorithm in an electronic voting machine is much easier than to get a really skewed result from hand-counting. This implies that there are several persons doing the hand counting, and that they are evenly distributed through the parties. A skewed algorithm in an electronic counting can easily drift to one side, while the hand-counting will have an error that is around the center. It's only if the outcome falls down to very few votes that it may matter.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
I'm perfectly happy with the way voting works in Oregon.
You get your ballot in the mail, and fill in the little bubbles with a pencil or pen, just like the standardized tests we're all familiar with. You fold it up and seal it in a "secrecy envelope" which does not have any personally identifying marks. Then you seal that in another envelope which has your name, mailing address, and a barcode on it; this envelope must be signed. You can either mail it, or drop it off in a secure ballot box somewhere (such as at a public library). You can do this at your convenience, it doesn't have to be on election day.
As ballots are received, they're scanned, unopened, and the signature is compared to what the state has on file from your voter registration. If the signature doesn't match, they'll contact you. If they receive two ballots from the same person, they'll contact you. If you don't receive your ballot, they'll send you another one with a different color outer envelope, so if they receive two, they know to discard the original one.
Finally, on election night, the outer envelopes are opened and the inner envelopes are mixed together, then the inner envelopes are opened and counted. It's done by machine, but could be done by hand just as well (it'd just take longer). They get the results very quickly.
Everything is done in the presence of observers from different political parties and members of the public (I haven't volunteered for this yet, but I think I'll look into it next year). All the machines involved are tested with a known quantity of sample ballots to make sure they're working properly. If somebody tried to rig the election, people would see it. Recounts are not a problem.
The only problem with our system is that it doesn't prevent vote buying, because someone could watch you fill out your ballot, seal it, sign the envelope, and drop it in the mail, then pay you for voting the way they wanted. But so far this hasn't been an issue, and in general, most Oregonians won't stand for that sort of thing. We'd much rather accept that risk in exchange for the convenience of being able to vote how we want when we want, without trying to get to a polling place on election day.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Where I live, they use paper ballots with optical scanners. It's amazing how many of these get rejected and require them to be re-filled out because someone accidentally voted for the wrong candidate and thought they could just "cross it out" or somethign stupid like that.
The nice thing about printing the vote is that you get the electronic tally right away, so the world can know a "tentative" result by that evening, while a full count could take all night, or or maybe even a few days to certify.
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
In '52, huge computer called Univac changed election night.It is the story of how Univac predicted that Eisenhower would win by a landslide, and CBS news wouldn't report the results because they didn't believe in the machine, nor that Eisenhower would win by a landslide. I found the piece fascinating, and think it kind of pertains to now, over half a century later. History does indeed repeat itself, although I doubt it ever EXACTLY repeats itself.
-mcgrew
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
They're arguing that the laws enabling these services are unconstitutional something which is entirely within the purview of the courts to determine. Thus your so-called "step 1" hurdle is off-point.
-AC
-Lars
Am I missing something? New York doesn't even have electronic voting. They still use mechanical lever machines from the '50s.
What we need to do is eliminate the electoral college and just go with the popular vote. Imagine a country where the voice of the people actually counted for something.
The electoral college is designed to punish candidates who appeal to a limited geographic region.
The only time the electoral college system makes any real difference is when the popular vote is close - then the number of states you won ends up making a difference.
The 2000 election is a good example. Al Gore won the popular vote by 0.5% - but Bush carried 9 more states, which earned him 5 more EC votes than Gore.
Is this a good system? I think so. It doesn't ignore "the voice of the people" - you elect the electors, and the system forces candidates to represent the entire country instead of just the East.
DATABASE WOW WOW
Basically, when you vote, you're given a ballot that looks something like this:
Alice | ___
..... | [barcode]
Billy | ___
Craig | ___
After voting, you retain a receipt that contains only the right-hand side of the ballot:
___
_X_
___
[barcode]
The only thing you can verify yourself is that the information on the website exactly matches the information on your receipt. From that point on, you have to trust the tallying process (which, like I said before, can be independently verified by multiple parties).
At the end of a pure-paper election, you're left with a bunch of ballots and a bunch of names of people that supposedly voted. You can check the list of names for validity, but you have no guarantee that it actually corresponds to the ballots in the box.
Did you miss the word "independently?" There can be many verification programs written by completely independent parties, and attacking all of them simultaneously sounds pretty difficult.
- Nate
NY state polling workers get paid $15 per, from experience. 15 hours with no break! It kinda sucks.