New Jersey E-Voting Problems Worse Than Originally Suspected

TechDirt is reporting that the New Jersey e-voting troubles are even worse than originally thought. Apparently the "minor bug" which was supposed to be fixed is still not corrected, suggesting that Sequoia still doesn't know what is going on. "Ed Felten has received a bunch of 'summary tapes' from the last election in New Jersey, and while many of them do have the vote totals matching up correctly at the end at least two of the summary tapes simply don't add up, meaning that Sequoia's explanation of what went wrong is incorrect. Given how often the company has denied or hidden errors in its machines, despite a ton of evidence, we shouldn't be surprised that it was inaccurate in explaining away this latest problem as well. However, we should be outraged that the company refuses to allow third party researchers to investigate these machines. It's a travesty that any government would use them when they've been shown to have so many problems and the company is unwilling to allow an independent investigation."

Comments

Here's the link that should have been in summary

[langelgjm]

Here's the link that should have been in the summary, to the post in Ed Felten's blog, Freedom to Tinker, complete with images of the paper tape in question.

Same story, different day.

[Trigun]

This is getting old. Nobody in Government wants to say anything against this, as they might just end up on the wrong side of an upset vote. The people don't care as long as the majority doesn't feel disenfranchised. The minority can't do anything, because the majority doesn't care.

I hate bigs.

[DoofusOfDeath]

Apparently the "minor big" which was supposed to be fixed is still not corrected

I guess I'm a dork for enjoying the second-order kind of humor in that statement.

where are the whistleblowers?

[mcmonkey]

So many stories have "the company did this" or "the company denied that." Aren't these companies made up of people?

I can imagine an effort by management to cut corners and maximize profits at the expense of quality and company reputation, but is there really no one in a position of first hand knowledge who knows better?

With the multitudes of avenues for anonymous communications, it's not like I'm asking someone to put their job on the line. (Not that it would be too much to ask. There are people out there risking their lives in a very real way to protect this country. You won't even risk a job you most likely hate anyway?)

Re:where are the whistleblowers?

[Qzukk]

You won't even risk a job you most likely hate anyway? Whistle-blower laws exist because companies don't exactly line up to hire such paragons of virtue and honesty.

Re:Here's the link that should have been in summar

[RobBebop]

I think the scary part is that the small error is definitive proof that the voting machines are wrong, but that there is no mention of a method in NJ for the poll workers to go back and check out that there really were X number of votes for each candidate.

The thing that is important for the integrity of the election is that there is a verified paper "receipt" that the voter has checked and dropped into a box that can't be tampered with.

Sure, the summary print outs are "nice" for instant access to the results, but there isn't really a good reason not to have a bi-partisan check of the paper records at the end of the day.

After 5 or 6 election cycles are validated with this computer/receipt method, then we could start to put more trust in the machines... but Diebold and their ilk have proven time-and-time again that they cannot design voting machines that stand up to scrutiny of even the simplest checks (like Felten's comparison between total votes and reported number of total voters).

It's New Jersey...

[fahrbot-bot]

...and, you know, the voting machines fell off the back of a truck - if you know what I mean - which is why the state was able to get them "wholesale". You got a problem with that? I got your warranty right here.

Is +1 really that hard for a computer to do?

[erroneus]

I think the number one reason people are suspecting corruption and election tampering is the idea that adding one (1) is somehow a complicated action to perform. And that is the basic operational notion behind voting after all.

But why aren't people outraged? I think it's because we, the people, don't believe our votes count anyway and so none of this comes as a surprise. There may have been a time when men with pistols and rifles might gather and demand a recount, but guess what? We don't have gun ownership any more... at least not the kind that we had in the past. And if a group of people with guns gathered together for just about any reason at all, I think the potential outcome would be easy to guess based on recent historical events.

I really don't think our votes count. They don't because of a variety of reasons prior to the ballot being printed. Independents don't stand a chance... even the people who are actually pretty well liked by most. The news media is incredibly biased. When debates are being held, lots of people are simply not allowed to even participate. Some states such as Texas even have laws that state you cannot participate in getting an independent on the ballot if you have voted in any party primaries. The end result is that we can "vote" for whoever we want... but the selection is more or less out of our hands.

If people really believed their votes counted, they would be outraged. The lack of rage is a pretty telling indication that the people aren't interested in voting irregularities in the least. If there were irregularities in their bank statements, their phone bill or their paychecks, they'd be outraged to the point of violence as is often the case when such issues occur. So if outrage is an indicator of how much someone cares when things go wrong, then I'd say people are more upset over [literally] spilled milk than they are over elections.

Re:Man...

[sumdumass]

It isn't really all that screwed up. But we do have a few problems. First is that each state (province in most other countries) decide how to have their elections independent of the federal government. Then you have situations where someone demands that fraud happened because their guy lost and they aren't willing to accept that. So you get state governments wanting to figure out how to look like their going to do something to compensate for what really amounts to stupid citizens and here comes all the companies with plans to make them money.

So know you have politicians who think something needs to be done, companies lobbying them thinking they can make a buck, and when they do, it isn't enough, they have to cut corners, which then turns the same sour puss crowd that turns it into a We gotta do something again message that perpetuates the companies claiming give us more money and we can fix it.

The problem is that it is getting represented as worse then it is. There might have been a few problems here and there but the major ones you hear about are more or less citizen errors. Things like claiming disenfranchisement because someone passed out a flyer saying Vote on X day if your voting republican and vote on Y day if your voting for a democrat (ohio), people claiming disenfranchisement because cops are parked in the medium strip watching traffic 4 or 5 blocks away from a polling place, or that they couldn't figure out how to line up their cards properly and look to see if a hole was actually made on certain selections (florida). Now we have new jersey and Maryland where where Electronic voting seems to have made a couple of errors that would be somewhat par for the course if paper ballots where used anyways. But because it is electronic, it is receiving much more scrutiny.

In all, it isn't nearly as bad as it is being made out as. Still it isn't something that should be ignored either. The real interesting thing is that they areas having the problems seem to be more liberal in nature which is probably why you get the loud screaming if something doesn't go the way they hoped it would. (the perpetual underdog syndrome where we can raly the grass roots but claiming someone is mysteriously attempting to use the magic smoke in the decices to stop your vote from counting.)

I'm a little surprised...

[crmarvin42]

that members of this site haven't started an open source project around developing an OS and maybe a basic hardware specification for cheap E-voting machines.

Considering how many people get upset every time some article like this comes up and the expertise many claim that this hasn't occurred to anyone yet. I'm no programmer (outside of incredibly simple perl scripts) so "I" couldn't do it but I can't imagine that members of the Slashdot community would do any worse than these asshats. Besides, even if they did do a crappy job it would be open source so that security hats could look through it and point to all of the bugs for fixing.

Gambling Machines!

[Facegarden]

Someone made this comparison in an older post and i think it is key to making people see the point: gambling machines are required by law to go through a very stringent and thorough set of checks, including source code examination, in order to be certified for use. Why we don't do the EXACT same thing with voting machines is ABSOLUTELY beyond me. It makes perfect sense and it is insane that we don't. -Taylor

Bullsh!t

[mpapet]

The minority can't do anything

And there's your excuse for you and the ~4 moderators let sleeping dogs lie.

It's partially your fault for not participating. Own up and get involved in the voting process.

Or, maybe you'll have another excuse for doing nothing.

What bothers me

[dj245]

What is really bugging me is that computers are great at counting and adding. ITS WHAT THEY DO! The fact that nobody can come up with a believable voting machine tells me something really rotten is going on. I could understand if they were having troubles with advanced CFD code making or some other complex process where the real-world results are not completely understood, but these machines are basically taking $NumVotesCast +1 many many times.