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Maryland Scraps Diebold Voting System
beadfulthings writes "After eight years and some $65 million, the state of Maryland is taking its first steps to return to an accountable, paper-ballot based voting system. Governor Martin O'Malley has announced an initial outlay of $6.5 million towards the $20 million cost of an optical system which will scan and tally the votes while the paper ballots are retained as a backup. The new (or old) system is expected to be in place by 2010 — or four years before the state finishes paying off the bill for the touch-screen system."
Diebold are going to have real trouble building their reputation back up after this; even though other machines may be vulnerable, the fact that this case has been so well publicised is seriously going to damage Diebold's public image.
Those using pirated Tinysoft signatures(TM) are a real threat to society and should all be thrown in jail.
Good riddance to bad rubbish. Whatever happened to "If it ain't broke don't fix it"?
Can this momentum spread to the federal level? Perhaps by having the money given to the states with the express implication that it be used for as secure and verifiable voting device as possible?
Or, you see, return them as faulty and demand the (taxpayers') money back?
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
The difference is that both Diebold and their clients (the banks) have a vested interest in making sure ATMs *DO* record every transaction accurately.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
That's true, as far as it goes.
But voting systems can -- and have been -- imagined that make it much more difficult to get away with such an attack.
I like to say "It's OK! This is how we LEARN!" but unless the responsible parties are actually held accountable for their decisions they won't learn either. While in a perfect world this would lead to some people losing jobs or offices, I find that it's quite rare that people pay attention to huge wastes of taxpayer dollars. Putting it in terms they can understand ("They just threw away $25 of your tax bill last year!") might drive the point home a little better. Or maybe not...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Optical scan ballots really aren't a dramatic improvement in reliability. In fact, the touchscreen systems replaced optical scan ballots in many locations.
Designing a reliable balloting system is really quite easy. The UN nailed it down decades ago:
1. Printed paper ballots wherein each ballot is marked by grease pencil or felt marker.
2. Ballots are folded and placed into a slot on top of a locked clear plastic box.
3. The boxes are guarded, transported to a central location, and then opened and the ballots are all hand-counted by volunteers in front of observers from all parties.
I live in constant fear of the Coming of the Red Spiders.
Thanks for the info. Nice to see that my home state scores as highly as I would have thought, and that FL was apparently sufficiently embarassed by screwing up the 2000 election to get its act together.
I do have to say that I find it troubling that so many states don't require either a paper trail or proper auditing of elections. Seems to me that democracies work far better when there's somebody keeping an eye on things to make sure that partisans don't cheat the masses.
If the state buys a touch-screen voting system that is later proven (without a doubt) to be flawed in any of a number of ways, all of which contribute directly to an incorrect tally of the vote (the very reason the machines were procured), why does said state still have to pay for that contract? Are states not naturally covered by the same laws we are? Did they not get a warranty? Did no one even stop to fucking ask?
Hmm... an all-electronic system doesn't work, and neither does all-paper. Gee, I wonder if there's someway to combine the two and maybe get some sort of hybrid, combining the best of both worlds...
TFA does describe a method of combining electronic and paper, the optical scanners. A person votes on a paper ballot which is then fed into a scanner. The scanner allows for quick tabulation of votes but if there's any questions about the votes the paper ballots are still available. And there's no reason touch screens or other electronic voting machines can't have a paper record either. Diebold, one of the companies making these machines, makes ATMs as well and ATMs print out receipts. Just require the machines to print out a record of the vote on a roll of paper, the voter can check to make sure the name of the person he or she voted for is on the paper. Then the paper is stored in case there are questions on the results.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Separating the human readable and machine readable ballot, and then shredding the human readable one, keeps the door open for tampering with the counting software (you might have marked choice A for your candidate on the human readable ballot but what if the counting software counts choice A as a different candidate). How do you then prove how it was supposed to be counted? If you're going to in some way securely preserve the human readable portion, why bother separating them in the first place? Also if you keep a copy of your cast ballot then a voters can be intimidated by threat of retaliation, and bribed with certainty of the result. What is so freaking bad about a ballot which is simultaneously human and machine readable which is turned in via secret ballot? It seems to work ok for the many other countries with international oversight.
And why oh why is your country not populated by people who might be inclined to provide a set of concrete sneakers to anyone who sells them untrustworthy elections?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Unless this thing was negotiated on handshakes and golf games, there should be a good amount of evidence for the state to press for elimination of that debt due to breach.
Let's start holding them accountable for their shenanigans instead of just taking our ball and going home.
The more I learn about this Diebold outfit, the more I think they should be kept far away from any part of our electoral system. Just yesterday, I read an interesting story about a county clerk in some rural Nevada county who looked the machines over carefully and, not being a techie, called in a few trusted computer people to check out one of the systems. Naturally, Diebold's machines are closed source, so they say this County Clerk violated their EULA. The worst part of this is that Diebold put pressure on the County Board until this clerk was forced to resign. They've got that much power.
Just the idea that our elections would run on a closed-source, impossible-to-audit system is unbelievable to me. Especially after the rate of undervoting (ballots that were completely filled out, except the Diebold machines say there was no vote cast for President that only seemed to occur in heavily Democratic precincts in Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Ohio. In some minority districts, the rate of undervoting was EIGHTY PERCENT in 2004. That means, in a heavily contest year, in an area that has a high turnout rate, voters went in and filled out their computer ballot for all the local races, all the judgeships, county board, etc., but for some reason did not cast a vote for President. It's absolutely ridiculous. Problem is, since there are no paper ballots, it's impossible to audit. Diebold sends in the count and that's it, jack. Four more years of a jug-eared dry drunk in the White House.
It's going to take a while, and maybe a few election cycles, but if we can't get honest paper ballots in every single precinct in the USA, there needs to be some serious shit a-flyin'.
You are welcome on my lawn.
That is exactly the way we've been voting in my city for years.
Here is our process:
1: Show up to the polling place (Some people find this pretty hard to do).
2: Give them your name and DL, Military ID, State ID card, or Passport.
3: They look up your name, address, and Party and give you the appropriate ballot in a hard, opaque plastic sleeve with a black marker pen.
4: You go into a little stall and take as much time as you want figuring out which corrupt blowhard you want to "give" your vote to.
5: You then bring your ballot and pen back to them, in the sleeve, and they tear off the end stub and give it to you as your reciept, and ask you if you want an "I Voted" sticker (which I always get).
6: They then take your ballot out of the sleeve and place it into a scanner that automatically scans the ballot and then drops it into huge, secure safe the size of a washing machine.
7: You then go home, crack open a few beers and wait to see which idiot got elected.
If you are disabled, they always have numerous volunteers from each party specifically designated to aid those with disabilities.
After an election, the paper ballots are tallied and matched against the electronic tally.
How could people find this so goddamn difficult to understand?!
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
I love computers, but I think they have no place in the electoral process.
Transparency should be the order of the day. Computers will always tend to obfuscate things for the common man, because as far as he is concerned, anything that happens inside a computer system may as well be a form of arcane magic. There are a far higher number of people who understand the principles of "counting", given you a far greater pool of competent election officials to draw from.
Understanding cryptographic signatures and ensuring that some part of the chain of trust, including the toolchain, isn't compromised, is far harder than understanding that "here is a locked box containing paper votes, anyone tampering with the contents is a BAD man".
The only reasons for using computers in elections are
* Impatience
* Pork
* Making it easier to subvert the democratic process
A roomful of geezers inflated with civic pride is a counting device that is far harder to corrupt than a thumbnail of silicon which slavishly obeys every command it's given.
Christ, only a third? I am abd on a Ph.D. in history and even I don't know that off the top of my head (minority whip maybe?).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Notice I said "...or force them to ask for assistance..."
:)
I meant to post sarcastically; obviously the blind and seriously disabled are going to HAVE to ask for assistance no matter what system is used, the brain dead/comatose shouldn't be voting (unless you're a Democrat, in which case you're in favor of ID-free voting, felons voting, so I expect you're in favor of voting for the dead or nearly-so, since it worked so well for Kennedy), and ultimately this whole ISSUE was touched off by a few urban Florida counties where the people were too stupid to figure out a frikkin' PUNCHCARD, so I'm not sure how they safely cross the STREET much less it being a critical issue that these informed, responsible individuals need to cast their ballot.
-Styopa