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Diebold Admits Ohio Machines May Lose Votes
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Premier Election Solutions (a subsidiary of Diebold) has acknowledged a flaw that causes the systems to lose votes. It cannot be patched before the election and the machines are used in half of Ohio's counties, but they are issuing guidelines for avoiding the problem that presumably contain a work-around. While Diebold initially blamed anti-virus software for the glitch, they have now discovered that the bug was their own fault for not recording votes to memory when the cards are uploaded in 'certain circumstances' — something their initial analysis missed. It would be nice to hope that Ohio poll workers would be tech-savvy enough to make this a non-issue, but they had poll worker shortages last year and might need tech-savvy people to volunteer."
It is at this point that I would normally point people to the Open Voting Consortium, but unless I'm missing something, the project stalled some time back in 2006. Yet they're still taking donations...
Am I missing something or is it time for a fork? Because I think we definitely need an open, easily verifiable voting system.
I don't even think it needs to be a LiveCD as the current project seems to have. What is so difficult about making a paper trail?
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
SURPRISE!
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
I recommend returning to Pen and Paper voting, and then using those paper ballots to vote out the officials who had paid to bring in these obviously inferior devices for wasting tax payer dollars.
Those who believe the Internet is private,
find their privates are on the Internet.
Get over it folks! It will only drop votes for Democrats. So clearly this is an isolated bug.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Only now you can't actually SEE the chads hanging
How much more do we, Americans, have to take before we take action?
They might as well have said, "Admittedly, we failed at not only our most important task, but our only task: Preserve and Continue Democracy."
Personally, I protest weekly in my town.. but when will we get riots in the streets.. the ones you'd expect from those good ol' freedom loving Americans? Are they too busy listening to the "proud to be an american" song to actually be an american? It's not just a status, it's not juts a privilage, it's a responsibility.
I'm dissapointed that this is on the front page of slashdot, and tomorrow, will be off the front page of slashdot, and that's all the waves it will create. I'm not proud, I'm ashamed of my country.
I stopped going to church because the people who went were too busy feeling good going to church to actually do good things.
Belief? Hope? Preference?The Existential Vortex
Turns out Diebold accidentally leaked a snippet of their C# source code that shows the conditions that the machines may fail to register votes:
if(vote.Party == "Democrat" && democratvotes % 3)
democratvotes++;
Oopsie!
I'm a big tall mofo.
Don't blame me, I voted for a';DROP TABLE users; SELECT * FROM data WHERE name LIKE '%.
but they had poll worker shortages last year and might need tech-savvy people to volunteer.
Want to really help? "Accidentally" run over the crate of voting machines, or allow it to fall off a bridge into a deep river. Do democracy a favor and destroy these abominations, you tech-savvy butterfingers!
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
You mean the 120 years young old lady working at the polling station can't help circumvent a software glitch with a viable workaround? /sarcasm
I love software, but for voting it sucks. Software has bugs; bugs require identification and workaround. The voting system in the USA (as opposed to a place like Canada) is not built for workarounds or second trys.
Plus the whole partisan from Diebold's CEO issue is spooky anyway. Down with E-voting!
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
Please, someone give me a reasonable explanation as to why these machines remained certified for the last 8 years despite all this crap?
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
..your website layout is a tragedy from 1998.
seriously, though, the last time I saw a layout that used that many pictures inside of HTML Table elements was on a porn site.
find / -name "*.sig" | xargs rm
I'd be more than happy to be a poll worker (I'd even forfeit my salary to be one), except for the simple fact that one has to be a registered Democrat or Republican to be a poll worker in Ohio, which requires a statement made under penalty of election falsification (a felony) that you do indeed agree with the principles of the party and desire to be affiliated with them.
As I do not support the principles of either major party nor do I wish to be affiliated with either one, I cannot be a poll worker unless I commit a felony (which would probably bar me from being a poll worker).
Now, I'm obviously going a bit overboard here. No one really cares if you lie about your partisan identification. Republicans crossed over like crazy in the primary to vote for Clinton, but no one ever got arrested for it. In any case, I take such oaths seriously, so I can't be a poll worker.
Either there has to be a second place where democratvotes is incremented or no Democrat would get more than three votes per voting machine. I'd think both would be a design problem, regardless of the coder's intent.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
So it never increments if democratvotes == 0? Give them credit for more subtlety than that.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
This story is not entirely true. I went to 3 election polling stations and each had a technical person on staff. Also, would this glitch mean we can protest the overwhelming victory the Democrats had? Shall we demand a recount and invalidate the Democrats win?
why is this thing running windows? anti virus software, come on guys.. will never get anywhere unless you start out right.
he who controls the spice controls the universe
What if democratvotes was a pointer?
That would mean that some machines wouldn't register democrat votes, right?
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
Actually, I was thinking tech-savvy volunteers would be more tempted to fix the elections when Diebold machines are used.
Hey, I said it was a snippet that was leaked!
Don't blame me - I actually took 5 minutes to write up a whole function only to discover the stupid Slashdot filter won't let you post source code (Use less funny characters it tells you).
So I had to greatly (and I mean greatly) abbreviate the joke. Now that I've explained it, I'm sure it's 100x funnier.
This new comment system is really messing with my head. I need to sign off now. Can we go back to Slashdot 2005?
I'm a big tall mofo.
At least they can be recounted/inspected by hand!
They'd never get more than 1 vote, assuming it was initialized to zero. ;-)
In Democrat-heavy districts. After all, these things are created to benefit the evil evil Republicans.
Unfortunately, the way the US elections are managed, we can have some type of "instant results" from voting machines or we can just let the TV News announce a winner based on exit polls and the like.
One way or the other, there will be results announced the night of the election. There is just too much ad money riding on the election coverage. It has to be relevent. And by relevent, I mean a winner has to be announced. Period.
They announced Gore as the winner in 2000. We're still getting over that. What happens this year if they announce Obama as the winner and then on Thursday the announcement comes out that, well, really, after counting all the votes for real it looks like McCain won? What do you think will happen?
So they have been malfunctioning for years and this is supposed to be a good thing?
"Secure" is not the same as "counts correctly". Besides which, anyone who reads Ed Felten's blog knows that the "other election safeguards" are frequently not implemented properly.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Our county in Illinois uses both optical scan machines and touch-screen voting machines. I asked the election commission via its website what plans there are to handle a case where the electronic voting machine returns more votes than there are registered voters. The reply was that since they test for all possibilities this would not happen. (Sigh.)
Would those "'certain circumstances" be "over 50% non-republican votes?"
While it sounds good that a properly trained tech person at the polling places can reduce the chance of the lost votes by following the workaround, it also means that they can make it happen.
If someone were so inclined, and in precints that were predominantly "the other side", intentionally doing the action that causes votes to be dropped might shave a few points from that party.
The existance of procedures that can trigger vote loss should be sufficient to toss the machines.
Why don't we all just gather in washington for the election and we'll all put our heads on our desks and someone will count hands raised as the candidates names are called out.
"I don't have to think. I only have to do it. The results are always perfect, but that's old news." - Meat Puppets
to hepl with elections, they're important.
Yeah, I know we are all busy with out lives. Make time.
Plus Volunteering looks good on a resume.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
they have now discovered that the bug was their own fault for not recording votes to memory when the cards are uploaded in 'certain circumstances'
Let me guess, those certain circumstances just happen to correspond to polling results by district as shown in these maps.
You mean they'd never get one vote, and you're right.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
"votes in at least 11 counties had been dropped in recent elections."
They built a system without an auditable result so we don't know which way they voted.
Obligatory XKCD reference: http://xkcd.com/463/
http://www.mhall119.com
Your Mickey Mouse is one big stupid dope!
Only on Slashdot would you not only get a joke written in C#, but also multiple replies complaining that it's not technically sound.
http://xkcd.com/463/
Just lie and pick a party. By lying, you are in fact following the principles of either party. Problem solved!
That was one of the links in the summary....
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
They only lose Democratic votes, and those are worthless anyhow! No worries.
...that by some amazing coincidence, the lost votes will be all Democratic?
I challenge anyone to find a single "error" in a voting machine that resulted in a lost Republican vote. Funny how that happens.
Someone should flip the 120 / 220 switch to 220 and force them to go to back up system. Having all the machines not working is better then having them half work and lose votes.
They'd never get more than 1 vote, assuming it was initialized to zero. ;-)
0 % 3 == 0, correct? If it were initialized to zero, it would stay at zero. Unless in C# 0==true.
http://www.mhall119.com
Actually, I was thinking tech-savvy volunteers would be more tempted to fix the elections when Diebold machines are used.
What do you mean by fix ?
I can just see it now, a miracle happens and Barr (L) wins the Presidency!
And just think... you aren't even counting the problem with the non-atomic increment losing votes if multiple threads execute it at the same time!
The horror!
rm -rf
Then no one votes and I guess the courts would decide. The courts who are filled with many Bush appointees. What could possibly go wrong?
I thought they had staff dedicated to this, like the CEO.
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
To go back to the 2005 /. layout.
The majority of the local population here voted for the current version.
Oddly though, just shy of 2/3rds of /. users didn't vote...
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
If I was a tech-savvy worker in Ohion, I'd run for the hills before volunteering to be legally responsible, or associated in any way, with these buggy voting machine known to malfunction and dump votes.
Although the guy above with the Boston-tea-party-throw-them-from-a-bridge-accidentally had a really good idea, you don't need to be tech-savvy for that (well, other than working knowledge of the theory of gravity)
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
to make a voting machine that works? It's not like they're simulating a nuclear explosion or something.
I don't think C# has pointers per se
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
That was one of the links in the summary....
In the what?
http://www.mhall119.com
As a conservative, I've always been suspect of liberals trying to fix the vote too (esp. the dead vote). So let's get rid of all of this and try to have fair elections.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
While Diebold initially blamed anti-virus software for the glitch, they have now discovered that the bug was their own fault for not recording votes to memory when the cards are uploaded in 'certain circumstances'
"Certain circumstances" -- a.k.a "voting"
"Certain circumstances" - voting for a Democrat.
Sure C# has pointers, but it might need to be run in the unsafe environment:
http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/UploadFile/rajeshvs/PointersInCSharp11112005051624AM/PointersInCSharp.aspx
Behind the scenes it has to have pointers, of course.
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
I had this great joke about how Obama could rig the election but I don't think it is appropriate.
"This thing we built to do one thing and one thing only does it inaccurately and insecurely."
Please tell me that this is the nail in the coffin for these machines. Sadly, I don't think this is going to be the case.
I'm wondering if this will have a negative impact on the trust the voting public has in their elected officials. I have heard plenty of "I didn't vote for him" apathy in the past and am now wondering what will happen if enough people feel that the results are illegitimate.
Oh wait...I forgot the general election of 2000. People will do absolutely nothing and then renew our sentence for another 4 years.
... what if they announce McCain won?
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
when Bush wins again
Why is Diebold still getting money from the government. At this point the only work the executives of this companies should be doing for our government involves stamping out license plates at state prisons.
Is this a joke?
% is a modulo in C.
It means democratvotes gets incremented each three democrat vote.
Actually, C# requires true boolean logic inside 'if', 'while', etc statements which means the "democratvotes % 3" would cause a compiler error. Something like "Can't implicitly convert an 'int' to a 'bool'". Believe me, I saw this error about 1000x when making the transition from C/C++ to C# :-)
"False hope is why we'll never run out of natural resources!" - Lewis Black
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/diebold_accidentally_leaks
Old, but appropriate.
While I realize there are issues with printing verifiable ballots and having the code be easily audited and such, I could easily make a voting system in a few hundred lines of PHP code that wouldn't drop votes (that's what SQL transactions are for).
I just don't get it. It's so easy. A first year student with a basic knowledge of database design could do the same.
It boggles the mind.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
I'm pretty sure the research shows all Diebold voting software is an unsafe environment.
Because your vote doesn't count, nor does it matter.
I hate being such a negative nancy, but it's true.
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
On Slashdot C# is the joke.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Huh.. Used to be that when making a comment, there was a list of allowable tags below the comment box.
Anyway, one of those was <ecode>
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Diebold you fucking jackasses. Your machines have a "bug" that just happens to lose tons of votes for Democrats?? You think any of us really think that was accidental?
That wouldn't even compile. democratvotes % 3 is not a boolean.
Can someone explain to me how it could possibly be difficult to write the software inside a voting machine? Is there more to it than just a GUI and a series of counters? How could anyone get this so wrong?
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
I don't understand why these machines exist. I've only voted in one general election (here in the UK) and we used the old "cross in the box then put the paper in the slot" technique. The result was still in by the next day, so what problem are these machines supposed to be solving?
It means democratvotes gets incremented each three democrat vote.
Read that again, Stroustrup.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
My long-standing disapproval towards Diebold nearly has me joining in on the "Diebold BAD!" chorus here, but let's step back for a minute.
Let's let go of the fantasy that electronic voting will produce a 100% perfectly tallied result. Let's also let go of the fantasy that paper balloting wasn't rife with tabulation errors.
Precisely how bad is this flaw? How likely is it to occur, and how many votes are we looking at being lost? Is it election-changing in scope, or is the practical result of this flaw a tiny, minute blip?
For so many strongly-worded opinions to this story, I'm seeing a very significant lack of details.
'a';DROP TABLE users; SELECT * FROM DATA WHERE name LIKE '%'... if you're reading this, it didn't work.
the only legal solution in Ohio is put 'em all in a closet and use paper ballots. only. legal. solution. as in "nothing else."
now, how are those slot machines looking as an investment, hmmmm?
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
could it possibly be to make a machine that counts properly?
That C# is legible enough, even by non-coders (the modulus might throw people, but they'd still get the general idea). The real test would be if the joke was written in perl.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
A story in the Washington Post gives a bit more technical detail; it sounds as if this might be a problem not in the voting machine software but in the software in the central computer to which the voting machines upload their vote counts, if the electoral district using the machines chooses to do that (not all do, apparently), and that the problem might be a race condition that shows up if multiple voting machine memory cards are uploaded in parallel.
... the bug was their own fault for not recording votes to memory when the cards are uploaded in 'certain circumstances' -- something their initial analysis missed
Would that "certain circumstance" be every tenth person to vote a certain way by any chance ?
It doesn't even come down to volunteering -- in my area (Prince George's County, Maryland), it's $200 for the day, plus $50 for the training session. (+$100 if you're the chief judge).
Check with your local area's election board. Odds are, you'll be compensated for your time, and a lot better than jury duty. They need technical workers, so if you're willing to burn a day's leave from your normal job, consider signing up with your local election board.
(I've served as the Chief Judge for a local municipality for 2 terms -- had to deal with getting ballots printed, dealing with absentees and all that stuff too ... whereas with a big election, you just have to do the day + training)
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Tech-savvy people know the machines are shit. Having them volunteer won't help; these are quite simply a broken product. It's like "Ohh, my X-Box red-rings, get someone tech-savvy to help me with it." Won't help, it's defective. Same for the voting machines. If the machine needs someone tech-savvy to *set up*, it's defective by design.
You don't seem to understand what overthrow means.
Elections merely replace people in certain positions in the government. Those people are just employees and are responsible for defined job positions.
An overthrow might end the office of president and the congress and replace it all with a parliament or a dictatorship or socialism or something else.
This is why you hear about people defending the Constitution. That defines the government and that is what must be overthrown, not just replacing individual people within its structure.
Voting machines with electile dysfunction. I can already see the headlines. Hanging Chads. Pregnant Brads. And some dude named Bob who can't get it up.
McCain/Palin '08. Now THAT's hope and change!
After I gave them bush, they vote for anyone, even a small furry creature. MAhaaa!
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Sequoia's data base upload software used microsfoft access which silently dropped all records after the first 32,000. As a result NM lost 12,000 votes in a presidential election decided by 500 votes. The same thing happened in NV the previous election cycle.
Google it. 12,000 votes lost in bernalillo.
the company took the machines and files to denver and then announced had "found" the votes, which were then counted. Sequois is owned by a shadowy Venzuelan consortium that is believed to include hugo chavez.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
They happen every year too and are rather predictable. The dirty tricks are kinda birthday-like too.
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
The reality of this insane suggestion...
...
1. Polling place has paper ballots, BUT
a. Nobody who works there knows how to use them because it's been too many years since they had to do it.
b. There aren't enough devices (pens, pencils, whatever) to use for voting because they weren't supposed to have to do this.
c. Lengthy lines caused by chaos make many people just give up and go home without voting.
d. Candidate that you wanted to win loses because of c (you didn't expect that, did you?)
2. Federal government takes a VERY dim view of how you "disenfranchised" voters and created a very big mess that they now have to deal with every election by placing armed guards in the polling places to prevent repeats from jerks like you. Your reward? Years in a federal pen, with Bubba to make sweet, sweet love to you every night whether you want it or not.
3. Lack of sympathy from all parties who hear about it. Perception of you as a lunatic who could have just "tried to explain to the state government about the problems instead of taking the law into his own hands". Loss of your job. Maybe also as a free bonus you pick up a nice disease like, I don't know, AIDS, from Bubba (see point #2 above.).
Please let us know when and were you will be doing this so we can watch as you destroy your life to make a point. Otherwise, shut up talking smack about stuff you are never going to do.
Wish I had mod points
What the fuck is so hard about tabulating the number of times certain buttons are pressed? Why the hell is this so difficult?
Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk
And yet I got modded insightful for being redundant, and you got nothing while being informative.
You gotta love Slashdot.
http://www.mhall119.com
Unless the machine does physical slight of hand, that method would work pretty well. If the machine does physical slight of hand, officials can check it and PES(Diebold) would get in trouble. The only problem I see is if the machine "had a bug" and "counted votes differently" than the paper trail says. When this happened, as corsec67 says in another reply, we should just count all the paper trail.
God spoke to me.
But if the contractor messed up this bad, and can't come up with a solution in time, just what does the contract include as penalty?
Seems to me the contract is just a cashcow for that Premium Voting corporation...
I'd have said reschedule the election at their expense, but I imagine that's not possible in this case.
Screw that, why even *have* a database.
Keep a text-file open. Write to it. Download all files at day-end, tally up.
A database is for semi-complicated data-manipulation. Choosing (a), (b), or (c) is pretty much as simple as it gets.
Makes it kind of obvious who did the hacking, don't you think it's better not to create a trail?
Or was it a valuable feature that got them the contract?
Every few months, another story about a screwup in a Diebold machine comes out.
How fucking hard is it to make a machine that counts?
There is an option somewhere in the preferences to use the old comment system.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
The machine has one job. One job only. It counts votes.
I've been developing software for almost three decades, and I can't understand how you can write software so bad that it can't count.
I can't believe it is a simple error. There is a reason why this is happening and it isn't about "counting" votes, its about about choosing which votes count.
You can't blatantly steal an election without getting noticed. You can, however, lose a number of votes that don't seem statistically important on any one machine, but when combined with many, can alter the results of a close election.
That's what gerrymandering is all about, keep everything close, and small errors can let you win.
After over 7 ½ years of rethug in-your-face corruption, incompetence, trampling of rights and malfeasance, it's amazing to hear that someone can still stand by them. Sorry to hear that you've been isolated from reality for such a long time.
...makes sense, if they only count half the electorate why pay full price. FEI, Diebold CEO was Ohio state campaign chair for Bush in 04 and I think in 2000. Privately declared at Rep functions, "I will do whatever it takes to make sure Bush wins Ohio and the Presidency." Mission Accomplished in 2004. Kerry shoulda challenged Ohio results - Rolling Stone expose showed vote fraud/disenfranchisement was well over his losing margin.
These machines lose votes, sayeth TFS.
Is that:
loses votes as in Fred's vote got counted, but Bill's got lost,
or:
loses votes as in the Democrats lost the vote but the Republicans won it?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Anyone else remember 2004, when the Diebold CEO said he would "deliver" Ohio to the GOP?
He sure did. According to the exit polls (which had been rigorously redone after the questions around them in 2000), Ohio should have gone to Gore by several points.
Instead, in a situation that can only be called MAGIC (or theft), it went to Bush.
They are just setting the stage to do it again. Mark my words.
"There are laws that enslave men, and laws that set them free. " - Sean Connery as King Arthur
In capitalist Russia, C# invades you!
.5: Arrange a lawyer on retainer/willing to work pro-bono on your case
6. Call said lawyer.
Having a lawyer available right off, while showing premeditation will also help you get out of jail far quicker, as he'll already have arrangements made.
Bail money would be a good idea. Expect it to cost at least $50k, but that depends on the judge you ultimately get.
I don't read AC A human right
That's easy, it would be:
&*($#_$#&*($#Q_$#_Q_$#Q&*($#Q&*($#()_$#Q&*($#Q$#Q++
(It's been a while since I've used Perl at work, so there might be a minor bug or two in there.)
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
1. Good
a. Is it that hard to fill out a bubble sheet?
b. then why did they bother to get the paper ballots? - Quick trip to office supply store should fix
c. Not good, I'll admit, but what's better, people honestly not voting or letting these faulty machines be used for another election(then another, then another)...
d. Do you suggest that any one party's voters are significantly more dedicated than the others?
2. Martin Luther King Jr willingly spent time in a number of jails because of his actions; presumably our machine-killer is prepared to do the same for what he believes in. As for armed guards, why don't we already have them? After all a nut can appear anywhere anyplace*, and is it going to be a problem once the known defective machines are gone?
3. Said violator, as long as he only goes for the machines, is unlikely to end up in max. Especially if he follows my additional first and last steps(pre-arrange lawyer, call lawyer).
*Though armed loonies tend to pick on gun-free zones, oddly enough.
I don't read AC A human right
The problem I have with barcode ballots/receipts is simple:
They're not human readable. Does the barcode really say "Obama" or "McCain"? OCR devices aren't complicated today and allow the same piece of information(the vote) to be read by humans and machines effectively.
Of course, I believe that ballots should generally be of the #2 pencil bubblesheet variety. Though scanning systems today don't need the #2, black/dark blue pen will work as well.
I don't read AC A human right
The reality of this insane suggestion...
Actually, it's not that insane. But it would take a fairly large force to make a real statement. And the participants should make sure they dress in Colonial-era clothing, to help stress the point that they're acting in the spirit of the Founding Fathers (I'd suggest painted like Indians like the original Tea Party participants, but that's likely to be misunderstood).
And the point isn't to get a given candidate elected (or it shouldn't be, anyway); it should be to draw attention to the problems with electronic voting. I'm not entirely sold on whether this is the best way to go about it, but am at least intrigued by the idea.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Democrats spent $5 million desperately looking for some ... any ... use case where they could document the loss of a single vote.
Not that it would ever be encountered in real use.
But now we all have to acknowledge that we "can't rule out" the loss of a vote! So Democrat demagoguery LIVES!
Bow down to the party that just dienfranchised two entire *states*, and did a back-handed smoke filled room to force out the choice of the majority of Democrats, Hillary Clinton.
"But Premier spokesman Chris Riggall said the programming problem had gone undetected after years of use and both federal and state testing. He stressed that the systems are secure in conjunction with other election safeguards in place."
You gotta love it. Problem went undetected. But the system is safe and secure, 'cause we can't find any security problems...
You canNOT make this stuff up.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
obligatory reply: c# code not sound.
Consider that a number of elections have been decided by less than a thousand votes in various states last election.
100 people placing 10 extra votes can throw the election that way.
Yes, I'd say it's an issue.
But your system will prevent many people from voting. Tens of thousands of people don't drive and don't have passsports -- why should you make them jump through lots of (expensive) hoops?
You mean free? About an hour of their time? Most/all people who don't have a driver's license qualify for a free picture ID today. You get it from the same office that issues driver's licenses.
It depends on the area - but I figure that in the worst states, yes, it'd reduce the fraudulent vote more than it denies legitimate voters.
I don't read AC A human right
and then wand scanned by hand.
This is the only WTF I have from reading about the system. I'm sorry, but I believe that an automated scanner is much better, with *random* samples pulled and counted, using an independent system to tally the votes. IE the bulk scanner gives you the results for that pile, it goes into another system for totaling.
I don't read AC A human right
Playing Devil's Advocate here, but wouldn't a voting machine be a perfect example for a possible race condition?
How about we have each machine count individually, then add each one up afterwords. We can even give them databases of unique voter ID's to make sure there are no duplicates.
I've had a year of computer science education and it took me three seconds to come up with a solution. So, to answer your question, no.
In Soviet Russia the joke is on C#!
THE SOFTWARE, IT NO WORKY!!!
You Americans allways complaining - you have the best voting system money can buy and your still not happy.
As it's been proved to loose votes only for the Democrats, I wouldn't call it a bug but a hidden feature. Not that it would be any better if turned the other side, point is the system looks directable and election are always on a close margin.
(BTW: I'm not trolling, I leave in an other country and I'm just watching...)
Irony!
))))
fixed it
this just in... John McCain wins Ohio.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
no democratic country, that deserves this tag, would under ANY circumstances use a votingmachine, that has a known bug... especially when it's known that the bug can cause loss of votes...
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
I'll just link to the last time I addressed this issue.
Executive summary: yes, I checked, but I already knew I didn't need to: Thompson's hack won't work any more.
Of course they can be patched. If Diebold's Board of Directors' children were taken hostage until the patches tested OK, they'd be fixed by next week at the latest.
But I don't want it to come to that. I want Ohio to throw those rigged machines into the recycler, and get some machines that test good from a competitor. If it costs $10 BILLION to do it by Election Day, that's OK. Because Diebold should pay the entire bill. And then, if anything's left of Diebold after that, send its executives and directors all to jail. If they don't go quietly, then kidnap their children until they surrender.
These Diebold execs have stolen the future from most of America's children, and gotten paid a lot to do so. Let them fell the slap of a ton of steel in the face for a change.
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make install -not war
if the effect is ramdom and enough votes lost, statistics say it's not likely to make much difference in the outcome of the election.
"Voting Machine Manufacturers" is right up there with "poll workers" for demographics critical to the success of any campaign.
No official seeking reelection is going to risk upsetting them.
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
An armed revolt of thousands just means the gatling gun in the front of the AH-64 Apache gunship fires for a few seconds longer.
Have you forgotten there is no Posse Comitatus act anymore? What are you going to do with your hunting rifle and your Glock when a detatchment of Rangers drops on your head, dumbass?
Better learn some non-violent resistance tactics, because the chance of armed resistance succeeding is now ZERO.
When I first saw the xkcd comic about diebold and anti-virus software, I Googled the topic to find the news source, but instead found nothing but links back to xkcd!
Does anyone have a real link to a story about Diebold blaming voting machine problems on McAfee anti-virus?
If not, try this one: http://xkcd.com/285/
You have absolutely nothing you can say to defend the actions of right wingers on this, so you go back to old standby tactics... distract the conversation and/or change the subject.
Did you know Scalia's father was an active member of the Italian-American fascist movement and a great admirer of Mussolini?
Oh, you missed that one in H.S government class, huh?
I may be mistaken, but I was under the strong impression that such high crimes and misdemeanors as out-and-out treason were punishable by death in front of a firing squad.
I'm generally not a bloodthirsty person, but somehow I think this might be warranted here. Similar measures in Vietnam sure seem to have done a lot to discourage corruption among government officials.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Never voted Bush is right on his facts.
Do you wish to actually see the evidence. I've got the links. Are you going to have the courage to look at concrete evidence? ...or...
Are you going to refuse to look at real concrete evidence based on nothing but your faith that "thinks like that can't happen in America?"
Do you have the courage to open your eyes and look at that evidence?
http://www.ae911truth.org/
Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth
On the left hand side of the page, you'll see a column that says media and technical resources. the 3rd panel down is a video of a presentation called...
How the Towers Fell
(9/11: Blueprint for Truth:
The Architecture of Destruction)
Richard Gage, AIA
Why would they need anti-virus software?
Well, if libertarian is right-winger, then I proudly plead guilty as charged. Overall, I find the views and political actions of most federal level officeholders, both Democrats and Republicans, distasteful.
One perhaps subtle point you might have missed is that the recent elections were not very close in popular vote as compared to Kennedy-Nixon. Bush-Kerry spread was 2.4% (50.7% vs. 48.3%), Bush-Gore spread was 0.5% (47.9% vs 48.4%) or 5x that of Kennedy-Nixon.
The other perhaps subtle point is that election manipulation claims are not new with Diebold.
Personally I prefer electronic voting if it's done right (voter verified paper audit trail being but one essential component).
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
Good luck with that. At least in the corner I escaped from (southeast, almost close enough to see West Virginia).
According to a spokesman for Premier Election Systems (which is Diebold's new name), the machines used in Utah have a similar bug.
AFAIK, it's got to do with the software used to upload results from individual machines to the tabulation servers; votes can be randomly dropped "in districts with several voters."
Guess that means, if you live in a district all by yourself, your vote is safe.
OK, if you'll make it hanging, I'll help you kill the bastards. Texas style.
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make install -not war
What sort of morons must diebold be hiring to write the voting machine code? I mean seriously, isn't that like comp-sci 101: day 1, book 1, chapter 1, section 1, page 1, example 1?
Jamey
Jamey Kirby
Yeah, but it usually falls flat.
... and then they built the supercollider.
The idea that one's boss could grant or deny another person the right to vote is disturbing. It goes along with:
Did you vote at the right precinct?
Do you register to vote on the new 80-pound paper?
I'm rather fond of New Zealand's convention of voting on a Saturday, being assured of time off work even on a Saturday, and using fool-proof (and presumably machine-readable) ballot papers like this.
We don't need no steenking voting machines!
Blancmange
You win one (1) internet for best pun I've heard in a long time.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
It's a voting machine, not the next Windows OS! How the hell can you screw that up? intCandidateOne ++. Ooh look I just wrote the main code. Seriously, it's not that complicated to add one to a number and not somehow forget to add one. That is just unbelievable. They must have some really, really, really stupid programmers writing those things.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
Hello folks, pray tell, why has the parent post been modded "Troll"? While further research has shown that I was wrong, and that electoral fraud constitutes neither treason nor sedition, it is still a grave crime against the very heart of the state. Ranking electoral fraud as egregious a crime as treason, with similar consequences, certainly seems fitting.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Nobody wants anybody here to know they program C# apparently, but that code won't even compile because an integer is not automatically casted to a bool in c#.
Well - there are other ways, remember Portugal 1974? A hint : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnation_Revolution. Who knows - army is not always your enemy!
OK, so I followed the link, went into the Ohio Poll workers online training guide and received training in how to set up and operate the electronic voting machines.
Now I'm terrified.
No way this is going to work. Really confusing. Strange user interface. Lots and lots of instructions on how to cancel a vote, vote after hours and manipulate the PEB block.?!?
Hold the (mislabeled) button for 30sec to cancel the vote.
Very insightful!
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
That will count 0 democratic votes, since the modulus condition is never fulfilled at all.
Maybe that is the point, but I get the feeling you wanted to count every third vote, which is totally not what this does. :P
Their system has 16 buttons. That wouldn't even have been enough for two of the 14 measures I voted on in last election.
You guys simply have no clue about how much we vote on.
Then dont vote on so much stuff at the same time!
How hard can it be?
Or do as we do in Denmark: one paper ballot for government, one ballot for city stuff, and so on.
I know we are only 5.5 million here, but i am sure the system can be upscaled.
I would rather fill out 10 paper ballots than trust some machine which no one but the manufactor has access to.
"I find your lack of faith disturbing"
You are actually correct. See http://www.sos.state.oh.us/SOS/Upload/elections/advisories/2008/Adv2008-13.pdf
You are correct, but only as of August 4, when the advisory was put out. I was not aware of this information at the time. This is a departure from what information I had been given previously.
And for what its worth, when I called my county board of elections, they didn't seem too excited about my interest in helping with the election. By the tone of the lady's voice, they only use independents as a stop-gap measure.
Ah, discrimination!