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Ohio Study Confirms Voting Systems Vulnerabilities
bratgitarre writes "A comprehensive study of electronic voting systems (PDF) by vendors ES&S, Hart InterCivic and Premier (formerly Diebold) found that 'all of the studied systems possess critical security failures that render their technical controls insufficient to guarantee a trustworthy election'. In particular, they note all systems provide insufficiently protection against threats from election insiders, do not follow well-known security practices, and have 'deeply flawed software maintenance' practices." Some of these machines are the ones California testers found fault with last week.
I think we've seen sufficient evidence that Diebold has been inhaling deeply, if you will. And we, as a relatively technology-savvy audience, are acutely aware of the potential for disaster -- just imagine, if you will, a virus that infects just voting machines. Personally, while it pains me to say it, I think we should stick with the solution we use here in New Hampshire: good ol' SAT-like ballots. Darken the oval next to the candidate's name, and you're done. The Machine will either accept it, or reject it (in which case you do a new ballot, and the old one gets destroyed). Simple, easy, accountable. Yes, being able to use a computerized voting machine for tabulation is incredibly seductive, but voting is already something inherently prone to attempts at manipulation. Let's not introduce yet more potential, shall we?
Whilst I have no faith in electronic systems, I do know about pencil-and-paper elections, having taken part in several in the UK and been on UN election monitoring missions in Kosovo and Ukraine.
It is perfectly possible to make pencil-and-paper elections secure against the malpractices you suggest, as well as many others that you haven't thought of but the election designers certainly have!
Even if the entire system were corrupt, in terms of every single person involved in running the election being involved in a conspiracy, there's no way they could hide what they're doing from observers.
Now, in civilised parts of the world people don't always make use of all their observation opportunities. For example, in the UK the candidate can watch the ballot box being sealed, make a note of the number on the seal, and check that the same seal is still on the box when it is opened later at the counting hall. But we don't bother - we trust the officials, and we've been working for something like 17 hours with another 4 or 5 to go so we take the opportunity to have something to eat whilst the ballot boxes are being shifted around. But, if there were any suspicion that the election officials tampered with the boxes in their cars, we could do this check.
Oh, and as we all said goodbye to each other when leaving Kosovo the first time we were all calling out "bye, see you in Florida!", including the Americans.
The fact that the US cannot come up with a definitive "voting tabulation method" tells you that the whole thing is crooked from the git-go. And even if we did, we'd still have (at least) fifty different electoral commissions for national elections. Why is it so difficult to comprehend a system that tabulates votes and leaves an audit trail? But what's even more reprehensible is that the majority of Americans don't even consider the integrity of our elections when voting - or do they? The US has one of the lowest turnouts in the Western world (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout). Democracy at its best.
www.itjerk.com
First of all, if you think the people managing the booth aren't trustworthy, offer to do it yourself. I honestly see no reason why you shouldn't be able to do it.
And second, yes, a meteor striking or a truck crashing the voting site would certainly crush a voting booth. But since it's as likely as me getting abducted by aliens, I'm actually willing to take that risk.
I'm honestly amazed how people keep using incredible horror scenarios as an excuse for something not working (or, in case of terrorism, being necessary), without even considering that it's so unlikely that it doesn't matter at all. There is a minuscle chance that you die in the shower from lightning or some other freak accident, does that mean you don't shower anymore now?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I don't have to trust ATM machines. I have a full paper trail from the moment I get my money to the moment I get my statement. I punch in my desired amount, I get money. I can count that money and verify that it is as much as I wanted. I get a recept, stating the same. And a day later I can see on my account info that the amount was deducted from my account. And I can verify every single step thereof, and should there be the slightest discrepancy, I can immediately notice that.
Now, how should I notice whether my vote has been counted correctly or whether it has been twisted around?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Loss of car
... and being the candidate's officially appointed observer is a good excuse, so each candidate can have someone watching inside each polling station for any bad goings-on. Your putative "informant" might be able to gain entry to the polling station but wouldn't be able to watch people marking their ballots, as there would be too many other people watching them in turn.
... and the system has thought them up, and has safeguards in place ...
What would the impact be of a carbomb going off in one of the vehicles transporting the ballots? If a district were known to be heavily in favor of a certain candidate, wouldn't the destruction of those ballots negate their votes?
Depends.
Round here, in a local election there are three ballot boxes for my ward, and they are probably transported to the count in two cars. The loss of any one of those boxes would clearly invalidate the election. Whether the election would have be run again in the entire ward, or just in the area(s) for the lost box(es) I don't know, but I think "the entire ward" would be a good guess.
For a parliamentary election, there are around forty ballot boxes for this constituency. If one box were lost, and that box held, say, 1,500 ballots, and the count of the remaining boxes gave someone a majority of, say, 4,000, then the result would be clear without that box. Otherwise I expect that again the entire election would be re-run.
(A car transporting me to a polling station, of which I was in charge, in Kosovo broke down. I finished the journey sitting in the back of the van that our armed guard was driving. A novel experience for a Brit - most of us can go through life never seeing a real live gun, and having one a few way away from you is a bit weird.)
Publicity for false election day
Dunno about the American South, but round here that's something I'm pretty sure would go through the courts, with a re-run of the election a possible outcome.
Company pressure
There's no way you can have an "informant watching the polls" in a propery run election. Everybody in the polling station needs to have a good excuse
Now, this sort of buying / forcing votes is possible with postal votes - your crooked employer could lean on his employees to request postal votes and then hand over the ballot papers. There isn't an answer to this, which is why we (my party) really don't like postal votes very much, other than for the traditional good reasons (housebound etc).
(This sort of employer pressure was thought to be widespread in the Ukraine election that was re-run because of the various complaints. I went to the Boxing Day re-run (a novel way to spend Christmas away from my family) and we were told that the employers hadn't applied any pressure the second time round, basically everybody involved had decided to stop trying to cheat and to hold a clean election.)
if we can't actually verify that each vote is registered
Do you mean voters who don't make it onto the electoral register? Yes, that's part of the wider system rather than polling day security. There's two theories about natural safeguards here:
(a) candidates will make efforts to get everybody onto the register
(b) actually it probably doesn't matter that much, as someone who can't be bothered to get onto the register is quite likely also somebody who can't be bothered to vote, so who cares.
And there are plenty more ways of gaming elections you haven't thought up yet
And you have routines in place for dealing with what happens if votes are lost in an accident, such as re-doing the election.
This isn't difficult stuff, it's been worked out centuries ago.
When you undertake a transaction with an ATM machine, the machine is just the conduit to the bank. You're trusting in the bank's paranoia about money to keep everything square. And the bank provides sufficient paperwork and even a dispute resolution process in case of a discrepancy. The ATM does not balance your account nor even decide if you have enough money to withdraw, the bank does. Before Diebold set about fixing^H^H^H^Hmaking voting machines, they made ATMs.
With electronic voting machines, though, there isn't the equivalent of the backing bank in which you can trust. The intelligence, if you will, is in the ATM machine alone, something the bank would never allow. It's like assuming that the pen with which you sign a contract somehow guarantees your rights in the deal. It's not the pen, it's the court system behind the pen.
why is it so very gorrammed hard to follow the method used in india (http://techaos.blogspot.com/2004/05/indian-evm-compared-with-diebold.html)? is that so very difficult?
i think it's pretty clear that american manufacturers of e-voting devices are either unforgiveably incompetent or deliberately introducing devices with obvious non-security. i'm not sure which prospect i find more troubling, but to be honest, what i find even more troubling is the fact that the media largely appears to be ignoring the matter.
ed
Instant Runoff Elections solve this problem.
Vote for your third party candidate as #1 then you can avoid "wasting" your vote by ranking the others. If your #1 choice doesn't make it, then at least you still have a say in the remaining candidates.
Most importantly, everyone can see how many people voted for your third party, since nobody will vote for a more popular party as #1 thinking it would be wasted.
=Smidge=