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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."
Simply vote, it prints your ballot, and you slip it in a box. You can verify your ballot was printed correctly, and they could have options to let you destroy your ballot if not, and reprint (or fill it out by hand)...
Or would that be too sensible?
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
You can have electronic voting that doesn't suck.
It just has to have a paper trail, not reveal to outsiders who you voted for, and, y'know, not be backed with Microsoft Access.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
It doesn't matter how the vote is made, it matters who counts the votes. We've already seen that dubious vote counters had ignored and thrown out ballots in a previous documentary.
That tag would fit very appropriately on this story. It's really hard to see anything other than complete incompetency in anyone who thinks that a black box e-voting machine is a good idea. There was an article related to this topic the other day, and someone posited the question "...what happens to my vote when I press that button?" The short answer is you can't. That's why I hope this lawsuit is successful. I think it has a real shot, as people are upset election practices. With the phone-jammings, hanging chads, etc. that Americans have endured the last two times around, transparency is on everybody's wishlist... at least for those who don't stand to benefit from electioneering and lucrative contracts that is.
I got a catholic block.
I have no problem with the idea of electronic voting machines but they should povide a paper trail and the source code for the machines should be made open for public inspection so that the public can be sure that when they vote for John Q. Public that the vote is recorded correctly.
Let's face it. WHO can verify the voting of open voting machines? We can. We, computers savvy people who understand computers and who can test, probe and verify the mechanisms behind the machines. Joe Average cannot.
Joe Average can look at a vote, see the cross and verify that yes, whoever casted this vote voted for the person or party where the X is. That's the difference.
Yes, of course we trust us. But can we be trusted? Hey, of course we can, I know that, you know that but essentially, it's the same situation we have with closed source voting machines: An outsider does not know whether we, computer people, are to be trusted. Like we, as outsiders, stand in front of the makers of voting machines and question their trustworthyness, so will non-tech people stand in front of us and question ours.
The only way to have elections that cannot be questioned by anyone is to create a system that everyone can verify if they want to. And the only system is simply one that everyone can "read". So it's paper or nothing.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You have handlers doing things like slightly damage ballots, so that they get invalidated... yeah, 1/1000, enough to swing a close election.
Computers count better than people do, otherwise, you would see calls for people to manually tally your bank balance...
This is my sig.
Or the paper and pen method... why introduce unnecessary mechanization? Occam's razor applies very well to voting. Simplicity is best.
I got a catholic block.
Maybe we could call in the UN to monitor the next round of elections?
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
The sick fascination with immediate results is what is causing this issue to begin with. Election results do not need to be available immediately. Taking a day or a week for counting is perfectly fine. For some reason though we need to have live coverage as the polls close to find out who wins. It really doesn't matter all that much.
Hey, if we're going to do e-voting, and you can't deny it forever, why not just have everyone vote one a week from their PCs on the actual issues and skip the (politicians) middle man?
I suggest you calm down a bit. Anybody can file a lawsuit like this, we'll have to wait and see if it's thrown out of court or not. Who knows, it might spur some legislation
Taking in my experiences in voting in the midwest, which have universally been 'scanotron' sheets, there are at least some states with a verifiable paper record that can be recounted by hand if determined necessary.
One problem with all this 'hand count' stuff is that even hand counting has an error rate - often a higher one than the scanotrons. At least as long as you make the voting rules for a valid ballot be one scannable by the machine*. Sure, a few will probably be kicked out - but it's much easier to deal with a couple hundred ballots to count by hand than a million or more.
On another tack, I'd much prefer the wacko extremists be filing lawsuits rather than the alternatives many wacko extremists select - such as building bombs.
*IE you place in the rules 'An X through the bubble doesn't count. A partially filled bubble doesn't count(showing a sample with maybe 1/3 the bubble filled in), a circled bubble doesn't count. A completely filled bubble counts.' Same rules as for ACT, SATS, and other such college tests.
I don't read AC A human right
After all, it shouldn't take a rocket scientist (or even a dim witted 3rd grader) to remember all of the "vote wrangling" that went on when various "human" counting systems were employed in Florida, Ohio, Iowa, etc over the last few general elections.
Because of course, a HUMAN would NEVER have any agenda at all when it comes to vote counting......
Oh wait........
Hanging Chad's anyone?
And note, this applies to BOTH sides equally, so if you desire to blame the "mean ole conservatives" or the "damn looney liberals",.....Don't.
We have fill in the dots, and turn the ballot into the box, which presumably checks for errors, before beeping and accepting the ballot for storage. Count them as many times as needed, either by machine or hand.
Seems to me to work rather well.
Two advantages. It scales easily, and it is auditable. Braille ballots for the blind, and help for the handicapped. Everything original paper, with the right to be reviewed and recounted.
This is really sooo simple folks. Everyone, especially the election folks, should be on-board with these types of demands. It's really not that difficult to do what the "Fair Elections" people want, unless you really ARE trying to manipulate the elections.
1) Demand that Diebold and all of the other voting machine folks print a receipt for every voter. This wouldn't be any more difficult than printing a receipt at the supermarket. You get to look at it, you put it into the basket on the way out. The paper becomes the "official" ballot always, the machine is just there to give quick results.
2) All the vote counting is redone at a central location, and EVERYONE can watch on the cable access channel or over streamed video. Want to watch 96 hours of vote counting from front to back? Sure, knock yourself out. The video feeds are provided the the cable franchise holders in every city to present on their networks on the usually blank city council channel. For those without a cable franchise for the city, you can simply lookup the video feeds on the internet.
The foot dragging on this issue is really starting to make me believe that the elections ARE being manipulated. All the horse-pucky form Diebold and the like about "too hard to make a printed tally".... Yeah, sure... And it's also too hard for cash machines and cash registers to print a receipt and verify that I've got funds before you give me cash...
As far as ballot counting, the infrastructure to let everyone watch is already there.
We just need to keep pushing until this gets done. I'm getting really tired of the 50.01% vs. 49.99% vote manipulation that's passing for "legal and fair" elections in this country. Making things look "close" is really the smoothest form of manipulation, I don't think anyone would believe the old Soviet style manipulation where the votes are always 98% for the party, but shaving just enough to make it 51-49 would be almost believable.
This really does need to get done NOW. No more fooling around, OSS voting machine code, printed receipt, video feeds of the counting and no more voter supression!
The problem is that bits can vanish without a trace - heck, nobody is sure they were there in the first place.
Atoms, however, are hard to dispose of - yes a paper trail gets counted too, but it's much harder to deny the physical reality.
A voter can verify his correct paper ballot went into a locked box, and observers can make sure the locked boxes are transported and the contents counted. If there is a question, it can be repeated with closer inspection.
When I touch the "vote!" box on a screen, I have no idea what happened next, and verification is difficult.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
1. Bad hand writing. 2. If it is done by your hand, then it is easier to forge. If it is done by computer, they can use special inks, paper, and maybe a confirmation bar code. 3. The electronic machine could do a 'pre count', so that while the official count is not till next day, you get something to report tonight. 4. The machine can also save a record of things like how many people voted in each district, providing another double check to prevent voter fraud. And it could even double check what district you are SUPPOSED to be in, and if you are in the wrong district tell you the proper place to go to. 5. Environmentally better as printed ballots can use less paper and ink. 6. A well done machine can remind you to vote for all things voted on, possibly explaining a 3 paragraph refererdum without wasting lots of paper and ink, or time for those that don't need the explanation.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
A paper trail just gets you a manual recount process that has a demonstrated error/uncertainty rate
greater than the percentage of votes by which George W Bush "won" his first presidency.
If you're going to have close elections like that, then with a human paper counting system you may
as well just call it, heads or tails, because that will be just as valid as the alleged "result."
Some kind of open-source hardware and software stack, top to bottom, using public key encryption and
digital signature techniques to allow verification that a ballot was counted in the result without revealing
how the ballot was actually voted, should be fine. Why is this so difficult to comprehend?
The idea that all competent mathematicians and computer geeks, who could vouch for the system and the
process and the result, are somehow all in favor of one side in an election and so would engage in a vast,
unanimous conspiracy to defraud the populace is so far fetched that anyone who believes it should
have their right to vote revoked anyway, because if the quality of decisions made by those they support
is anything like their own decision making prowess, we are all completely f**ked.
Oh yeah, we already are, I forgot.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
The machine generated ballots can be used for initial counting estimates counted by machines. That will satisfy Americans' urgent need to instantly know who won after they each cast their vote. Those counts should not be legally binding. The ballots should be counted by hand for the officially binding count. In the event that there's any substantial differences, the state should automatically open a formal investigation into vote rigging. Which would deter that kind of rigging, so it would rarely be tried, and the investigations rarely begun.
There's no reason the official count can't take a few days to complete, even doublechecked by multiple counts. That kind of human responsibility for the counting is entirely consistent with the democracy we're populating with the votes.
--
make install -not war
I'm not sure the loss of security and reliability is worth the gain in speed.
With the Oval Office up for grabs, why not be sure we've elected the jerk correctly? A few days' wait isn't going to kill anyone.
I don't think candidates should be allowed to concede an election. An election isn't over until all the votes are counted and certified. period. If the candidate concedes before then, that should nullify the election as the voters were not choosing from the actual candidates. They were instead choosing between one person who wanted the job and another person who wanted to distract voters in some fashion.
I don't know...
man, I feel like mold.
Keep on hand ballots for English, Spanish, Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese, Braille (which could go to audio cues), oh, and large type varieties for people hard of seeing.
Should a non-citizen have the right to vote? I vote no. As you have to speak English to pass the test to become a US citizen, I see no need for other languages on the ballot in the US.
As to large print, before I had my operation (click the sig) I had trouble reading the ballot as I forgot my reading glasses. NOT having large print as the standard is stupid; unless you've had a CrystaLens implant, by the time you're 50 you need reading glasses, as everyone's focusing lens gets hard and won't focus.
You only need one ballot, in one language (French if you are in France, I guess you'ld need two languages in Canada) but one typeface - LARGE. The braile could be on all the ballots as well.
-mcgrew
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Except that this lawsuit is to outlaw ALL counting machines. Hand counting is expensive and less accurate, yet that is what these people insist on, nothing less. States are willing to change their systems if you work with them. Just don't be religiously dogmatic, refusing all compromises. Unwillingness to budge on hand counting only guarantees you a protracted and expensive fight.
I personally see nothing wrong with counting machines. Yet some of you act like Herman Hollerith was the instigator of a massive shadow conspiracy. The requirements for valid voting are few: 1) recountability; 2) certification; and 3) transparency. The off-the-shelf Diebold machines won't pass muster, but most of the tried and true optical and punch systems will.
Oh, and next time don't wait until two months before the primaries start. Sheesh.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Of course you will have these machine printed ballots print all the vote selections in clearly readable text. But in addition to that, also include a copy of all the votes in bar code, along with a secure checksum. Before putting the ballot into the box, scan it on a verification machine. This machine performs optical character reading (OCR) of the text. It compares that to the bar code, and generates a checksum to compare as well. If anything is inconsistent, it reports an error so that vote can be done over. It should also put a red stamp on it. If the ballot is OK, it records an UN-official tally, sending that to a central site over a secure channel, for a master UN-official tally. The UN-official tally can be given to the media for public release right after all the polls close. They would be able to report 100% within seconds of closing (and get back to regular TV programming). In the mean time, the process to count the ballots officially begins. The ballots are shipped in their locked boxes to the central facility under armed guard, where they are counted again by machine scan. The ballots must be kept for the duration of the longest term of office voted in that election. They can be hand counted if ever needed.
Voters will also receive a receipt that prints the time and location of their vote, which ballot printing machine they used, and which vote scanning machine they used. That information plus the vote itself is then securely checksumed and that is printed numerically and in bar code. Every receipt is totally unique. The same info is on each ballot and is to be recorded during the official vote. The list of counted votes (using the same checksum as the receipt) shall be copied to a central computer that can be queried by receipt number to confirm that a vote was counted. The receipt shall NOT contain the actual votes.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
If you're talking about the 2000 election, Gore was the one who contested it. It would make no sense for Bush to contest since he was ahead at the time. Now, It was announced that Gore took the state based on exit polling an hour before voting closed due to time zone issues. Apparently, MSNBCNNBCBS doesn't have a map or something. But that was not the tally from the actual polls.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
And as an added bonus, you can instead sign everything but not seal it, then hand it off to the person who's buying your vote and get paid (or threatening your employment if you vote "wrong").
The request by Bush for the US Supreme Court to intervene was over whether Gore's requests were lawful. It followed Gore's request for a recount, Gore's cherry picking of counties, and Gore's Florida Supreme Court lawsuit to essencially change recount procedures as defined by Florida law.
Not to mention that the actual problems with the election couldn't possibly have been addressed by simply counting again: Some people were alleged to have been denied the ability to vote through last-minute changes to less convenient polling places and others claimed to have been confused by the ballot and having voted for a candidate they did not intend to. I believe there were also claims that sheriffs departments were actively preventing people from reaching polling places. I don't remember if they followed up with lawsuits or charges of their own.
None of those issues would have resulted in a single ballot which could turn up in the recount.
In the matter of recount requests, though, at no point did Bush look at Florida and say, "well it was close so let's count it out." For the simple reason that he won Florida. And then he won the first recount.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!