A Step Backward For Voting System Transparency

Verified Voting is reporting that Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Senator Robert Bennett (R-UT) introduced the Bipartisan Electronic Voting Reform Act (S. 3212). While having many commendable features, this bill also has a few stinkers, including language that would exempt from any verification requirement those paperless voting systems purchased before January 1, 2009 to meet HAVA's accessibility requirements. This would leave millions of voters (particularly those with disabilities) dependent on insecure paperless electronic machines for years to come. The Senate Rules and Administration Committee will hold a hearing tomorrow, so if you have an opinion, now is the time to make yourself heard. Rush Holt has a much better bill.

Comments

Stinkers

[baffled]

That's cute, TFS calls them 'stinkers'. I might call them 'all-too-common evidence of corruption in Congress'.

Re:Stinkers

[clang_jangle]

It is also possible they are just ignorant or haven't thought it through.

It's their job to be informed, and to "think it through". Oh, so ignorance and stupidity excuse what amounts to treason now? What will it take for the people of this nation to adopt a zero tolerance policy regarding government shenanigans?

Re:Stinkers

[elnico]

Oh, so ignorance and stupidity excuse what amounts to treason now?

We all appreciate your enthusiasm, but ignorance of the exact contents of a bill is by no means treason, nor does it "amount" to treason. You know that.

And have you considered that there might be a reason the bill has this exception? Perhaps it's just not feasible to get machines that are both accessible and verifiable before 2009, so they chose to just go with accessible. Your immediate jump to corruption is rather silly and paranoid.

Re:Stinkers

[oGMo]

Another idea is to fine anyone who votes for a bill that is later found unconstitutional.

Hell send 'em to jail. They broke the Constitution---the highest law in the land. If that's not worth some jail time, what is? What, it'll cause lawmaking to grind to a halt and only the most well-considered and constitutionally-sound laws to be passed? Awww... ;-)

Re:Stinkers

[elnico]

Or this would just have the unintended consequence of making judges very reluctant to declare laws unconstitutional, because they don't want to send a legislature to jail.

Re:Stinkers

[Red Flayer]

What, it'll cause lawmaking to grind to a halt and only the most well-considered and constitutionally-sound laws to be passed?

No, it'll just expand the bribery to the judges who rule on Constitutionality, or, as it is now, keep it with the people who put those Judges on the bench.

Seriously, our judicial branch, while more resistant to the corporate smegma that rule this country, is slowly becoming part of the corporatocracy.

Re:Stinkers

[AySz88]

This isn't a good idea at all; funny, not insightful. It would throw the current checks and balances totally out of kilter. The Supreme Court would effectively become a third house of the legislature, with veto power, except appointed and holding office for life, plus allowed to throw any legislators into jail they wanted (or at least make them afraid to show up, lest that happen). Allow any one party to hold onto the other two branches for a decade or two (or an unlucky term where a majority of the justices die), and they'll be able to hold onto legislative power for a generation. And I'm sure an actual government scholar can poke more holes in this than I can.

Re:Stinkers

[gd2shoe]

Good, as long as one of them is a balanced budget. (I can dream, at least.)

Re:Stinkers

[PopeRatzo]

On the other hand, warrantless wiretapping is blatantly unconstitutional. It'll be overturned as soon as (if) it hits the Supreme Court

Not with the current Supreme Court makeup. Alito, Scalia, Thomas and Chief Justice Roberts love the idea of the "unitary" executive and are purely partisan actors. As long as there is a Republican president (or confidence in enough Republicans in the Justice Dep't or federal court), they will grant the President whatever powers of arrest and surveillance he wants. Warrantless wiretapping would sail through the current Supreme Court. I was shocked that they gave the Guantanimo guys the right to federal court access, but I think there were too many honest JAGs to guarantee they would get a full set of convictions. This way, when they find that many of the Guantanamo detainees are innocent, they can blame the radical "liberal" justices in the Federal Court.

Believe me, we have reached a point where the Bush Administration does not believe they have to listen to the Supreme Court even. Just look at how they are gaming the ruling from last year about the EPA having the authority (and are required actually) to regulate emissions. Bush basically is telling them to fuck themselves. After all, what are they gonna do? The Supreme Court has no authority to enforce anything. It's like the subpoenas of the Bush lawyers by Congress. You think that a prick with ears like Atty Gen'l Mukasey is going to disobey his boss and enforce the law? Again, what is Congress gonna do about it?

There is a Constitutional crisis of the most serious proportions going on in our government right now, and the media is absolutely unwilling to cover it. Wexler and Conyers are trying to lay the groundwork for a case against the White House, and the report from the Justice Dept about Monica Goodling is just the president throwing a little fish under the bus.

I can't write any more about this now. My wife says she can tell when I'm writing about the Bush Administration because I grind my teeth, and I have to stop right now and go out in the garden with her.

Anyway, you're a bright bunch. Go read this stuff for yourself.

Re:Stinkers

[daemonburrito]

Playing the devil's advocate, what you call "legaleze" appears indecipherable because it uses specialized forms to eliminate (or try to) ambiguity.

This is almost a meme on slashdot now: Legal language is similar to code, in that both must use arcane structures to be unambiguous; ideally, any machine will interpret code the same way every time according to the rules of the language, and, ideally, an interpretation of a legal document will be similarly consistent.

That's often not the case, of course. But when it is abused, it is not the language that is at fault but the obfuscation. Banning legal language would be like banning C because it can be so spectacularly obfuscated.

Step #1: Organize Observers....

[mikelieman]

I'm not convinced the votes are even being *counted* in the first place, so I think we need to have spotters at every step of the process to ensure it's fairness in the first place.

Once we have the ability to actually tell what is going on, *THEN* we can start patching the bugs.

Expected result.

[Anonymous Coward]

Curious, but expected.

Apparently the democrats who in the past hated e-vote machines for the potential it offered the republicans to rig the vote are discovering that it can be turned to their own advantage.

I wonder how long it will be until we start seeing republicans touting how evil the e-vote boxes are?

Perhaps they will figure it out before November, perhaps not.

Re:Expected result.

[GungaDan]

It's somewhat of a stretch to call Dianne Finkstein a "democrat." Sure, she caucuses with them, but she also knows that her bread is buttered by her war-profiteering military-industrial-complex-supporting husband. She's one of the more whorish "democrats" out there.

We need end to end verification

[linzeal]

We need E2E (End to End) voting systems period. Note the period.

It Doesn't Matter

[johnshirley]

What does it matter who gets to vote? The only thing that matters is who gets to count the votes.

More and Better Than Feinstein

[Doc Ruby]

Dianne Feinstein is an excellent argument for not just more, but better Democrats in Congress.

I'd say the same about Republicans, but they seem incurably hellbent on "more", and never the possibility of "better". Which has sent them spiraling towards minor party status.

Make myself heard?

[Alien Being]

Seriously? If those *expletive deleted*s in congress cared to hear from us they wouldn't be considering such a move in the first place.

The U.S. is literally sick in the head. It's about time we chop it off and grow a new one.

We should start by holding Bush/Cheney accountable for their crimes and punishing them appropriately, i.e. execute them.

Re:Paper trail/backup does not help

[pluther]

Paper trails can do more than "print it out and have you look at it."

And dismissing it as a "computers are scary" mentality is just silly when you're talking about the majority of Slashdot users.

The point of a paper trail is that the paper is kept. It is available. If, for example, pre-vote polling was showing candidates A, B, and C getting about 45%, 45%, and 5% of the votes respectively in one county, but the machines registered A=45%, B=5% and c=45% instead, you could, in theory, ask for a recount. If there's a paper trail, you can look at it to see what actually happened there (Database error? Or did all the Republicans really suddenly decide to vote for the Socialist candidate instead?) Without one, you will never know.

Open source is certainly a step in the right direction. But that alone isn't enough.

Re:Rush Holt's HR 811 Bill was CRAP what changed?

[cdrguru]

OK, but with this sort of outlook we also need to line the TV news (network, cable, all of 'em) up against the wall and execute them. For treason. Why? Because they are well on their way to overthrowing the country.

What happened in in 2000 was pretty simple. Sure, you can focus on Florida and such but pause a moment and remember how the results where announced. CBS announced that Gore won. Not "looking good for Gore", not "perhaps Mr. Gore has won", it was just "the next president is Al Gore."

People went to bed knowing that Gore won. They got up the next morning and found out the election went a little differently. Many of these people haven't gotten over the idea that because of this the election was obviously stolen. After all, their trusted news people SAID GORE WON.

Paper ballots simply cannot be counted in time for the midnight deadline for the news folks to announce the winner. They have to announce by then or their entire election coverate is pointless and nobody will watch. If nobody watches, they lose millions (or tens of millions or hundreds of millions) of dollars in ad revenue. This will not happen. Therefore, they will clearly announce a winner in order to remain relevent.

They might get lucky. After all, there is a 50/50 chance of them being right. With today's split of voters, I don't see it being much closer than that unless the results are really in. Otherwise the results announced will be based on exit polls and other information like surveys. Accurate? Probably not. But the ad revenue will remain.

If the 2008 election is announced incorrectly (again), my guess is we will see an uprising like hasn't been seen since 1917.