Slashdot Mirror
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.
That's cute, TFS calls them 'stinkers'. I might call them 'all-too-common evidence of corruption in Congress'.
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.
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
Only budget legislation. Other types can be started in either branch of congress.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
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.
We need E2E (End to End) voting systems period. Note the period.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
What does it matter who gets to vote? The only thing that matters is who gets to count the votes.
Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early
We can watch all we want, the Electoral College will do it's thing and decide who rules...
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Senator Robert Bennett (R-UT) introduced the Bipartisan Electronic Voting Reform Act
Bipartisan? I see the names of two republicans.
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 install -not war
That's a funny glitch.
Here's the link to Dianne Feinstein's Senate legislative record.
--
make install -not war
I would love to see them implement the e-voting, and then see some districts get hacked without a paper trail, and have a few times the number of registered voters have votes. And have it be widespread enough to not be able to be swept under the rug.
Maybe I'm just too passive aggressive and like the 'I told you so' attitude.
This is not the funny you're looking for.
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.
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.
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
The Republican Party sucks. Diane Feinstein is the worst and here we have some supposed Republican guy caving into her left wing fantasies about the need for a manual paper record when no other way of tracking information has the same requirement. It's just absurd.
The Republican rank and file does not want to sit and watch its leaders hide in the shadows and take crap from these traitors. If there was to be any sort of a Republican bill on voting and vote counting, and any sort of compromise, then we should add clauses that benefit Republican concerns as well as Democrat ones and have a real compromise. For example, people that receive federal aid or federal workers should not be allowed to vote because the conflict of interest is terrible.
This is my sig.
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.