Paper Ballots Will Return In MD and VA

cheezitmike writes "According to a story in the Washington Post, 'Maryland and Virginia are going old school after Tuesday's election. Maryland will scrap its $65 million electronic system and go back to paper ballots in time for the 2010 midterm elections. In Virginia, localities are moving to paper after the General Assembly voted last year to phase out electronic voting machines as they wear out. "The battle for the hearts and minds of voters on whether electronic systems are good or bad has been lost," Brace said. The academics and computer scientists who said they were unreliable "have won that battle."'"

Comments

suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[seanadams.com]

Every time you get the urge to use that tag, think of all the idiocy in the world - Sarah Palin might become president, damages for copying a CD are in the $100Ks, the patent system, the supreme court, credit default swaps, bankers not in jail, etc.

This story is nothing more than an "isolatedpocketofcommonsense"

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[poetmatt]

Whenever America is at the forefront of a change, people tend to either look on from our example or get badgered into trade agreements to force our backwards rulings onto them. So what's your point? Idiocy in America reflects on idiocy everywhere, because lots of people are idiots.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[Deflagro]

I think "Common sense" is inherently wrong though. If it were so common, wouldn't we see it more?
I think we need more "Uncommon sense", as the norm seems to be something I try to avoid.

I'm in Texas and apparently 23% of Texans believe Obama is a Muslim.

Common sense? Not likely...

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

Every time you get the urge to use that tag, think of all the idiocy in the world - Sarah Palin might become president, damages for copying a CD are in the $100Ks, the patent system, the supreme court, credit default swaps, bankers not in jail, etc.

This story is nothing more than an "isolatedpocketofcommonsense"

While it's good they'll have paper again in 2010, what about this election? Are they going to just let ACORN and BHO steal this election?

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[fiannaFailMan]

How can ACORN steal an election? By getting low income people to fill voter registration forms? By handing them in (as required to do by law) and find that some people decided to write 'Mickey Mouse' on the form? And then have the form rejected or the voter turned away at the polls for failing to produce the mouse's ID? Not much of a thievery plan, is it?

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[erroneus]

I am also in Texas and I don't know about the "believes he's a Muslim" rate, but I know I just voted and there is no paper trail or anything indicating on paper that my vote was recorded properly.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[tbannist]

According to Rene Descartes:

"Nothing is more fairly distributed than common sense: no one thinks he needs more of it than he already has"

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

your pedantry is most welcome! Please continue thinking about language as literally as possible and make sure you share any groundbreaking realizations with the entire community.

For example: "Personal computer? That's a oxymoron! They are cold and heartless machines..."

Also welcome are replies ignoring the Parent post's point and focusing instead on spelling, grammar, or punctuation.

Of course, you could choose to specialize in euphemisms and catch phrases.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[Nutria]

And then have the form rejected or the voter turned away at the polls for failing to produce the mouse's ID

Sadly, most states do not require a Government picture ID.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[Qzukk]

This story is nothing more than an "isolatedpocketofcommonsense"

I'd save your complaints until people start using the "suddenpandemicofcommonsense" tag.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[El Royo]

I find your claim that Sarah Palin might become President is a sign of idiocy laughable on its face. Aren't the dems the ones who keep saying that no experience can prepare you for president (since Obama has no experience)? And yet, they keep saying that Palin is inexperienced? Pot? Kettle?

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[Misch]

Actually, not "sadly" really. In Indiana, the state with the most stringent ID requirements, only 85.9% of 2006 voters had an ID that exactly matched their voter registration.

When broken down by categories, the percentages were disproportionate for minority (84.2% for white 78.2% for black voters), low income (78.9% income under $40K vs. 89.3% for income from $40K to $80K), very young/very old (78.0% 18-34 years old 80.6% for 70 years and up, 83.8 35-54 years and 85.9 55-69 years old), and lower education (HS grad 79% vs 88.9% for college grads), and by political party (86.2% for Republicans, 81.7% for Democrats.)

The study concludes:

While the ability of rigid voting requirements to achieve the goal of reducing voter fraud is debatable at best, our results from four separate locations clearly indicate that these requirements have significant electoral implications. Not only does the Indiana law disproportionately impact the communities most vulnerable to changes in the electoral process, there is also a clear partisan bias associated with these laws as well.

Our data suggests that a greater number of Democrats than Republicans or Independents are excluded from voting under Indianaâ(TM)s voter identification laws. This is particularly concerning given the very narrow vote margins associated with several federal, state, and local races in recent memory. While the state interest of preventing voting fraud is an important one, our results here question whether this interest should be advanced despite apparent evidence that this ostensible method of fraud prevention disproportionately impacts specific segments of the electorate.

.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[snspdaarf]

In politics, experience is not necessary in the first person, such as "our candidate." It is only in the third person, "their candidate", that experience is a requirement.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[ShieldW0lf]

I have a plan for a new government system. I'm still working out the particulars of how it can be implemented, but this is how it would operate:

Every person in the country has the right to introduce a bill, or a plan, or a budget.

Every person in the country has the right to vote on every individual bill, plan or budget.

Every person in the country has the right to choose a representative to speak for them. Not just from a list of politicians on a piece of paper. They have the right to choose any citizen they wish to speak for them.

Every person in the country has the right to revoke their choice of representative at any time. Not just at a regular interval measured in years, but instantly, the very moment they realize that this person does not share their vision of how the system should operate.

Every vote, by every person, is public information. No secret ballot. It's just as public as if you were a Roman citizen, raising your hand to vote in the Colosseum in full sight of your peers.

This system will allow us to recreate the current conditions if we wish. We can choose to assemble ourselves into rigid vertically managed hierarchical structures if we see the justification, such as if we are under threat.

However, it would also allow us to gracefully decentralize our decision making without the need for revolution.

Power could flow in to the middle or out to the edges as the population saw fit, rather than our current structure, which ensures that there is an absolute authority running the show, even if we don't want or agree with such a hierarchy.

Now, the Islamic people, they have a system for creating government within territory claimed by an existing government. They set up a system of courts, and when someone has a grievance, they don't go to the government authorities, they go to the Islamic court, and abide by its decisions.

This is a suitable model for recreating our government.

Thing to do is figure out how to build the infrastructure to support what I have described above. Once that's figured out, we all start building that infrastructure as fast as we can, together with anyone who will help.

It will be a joke at first, like if they had an election in World of Warcraft. Meaningless.

It will be meaningless right up until the moment that more of the country is participating than not.

At which point, the citizenry can together declare that this system IS the new government, and it will be our social responsibility to ignore the old government and be bound by the new one.

I believe the answer to making this practical lies in creating systems where an individual can verify that the public records of their vote reflect the reality of their vote, and ensuring that the system by nature of its operation leaves too large an amount of forensic evidence to make tampering
without a trace possible.

I envision a scenario where people carry a device on their person, a write-once data recorder that will keep a copy of their vote as they cast it as evidence, and automatically replicate that information across multiple physically separated nodes in a citizen run mesh network in addition to submitting the data to a central point for tabulation.

The way the electronic voting is done these days, it's all about maintaining the status quo. Either we embrace it, they corrupt it and there's no evidence, or we reject it, the vision I've described becomes impossible, and they stuff the ballot boxes the old fashioned way, business as usual. Win-Win if you're already in power.

Electronic voting has the power to liberate the human race. It just needs to be done properly. But it will never be built by those who achieve power from the current system, any more than you would expect a company like Microsoft to be the pioneer behind the GPL. When it's done right, it will be some crazy unlikeable radical like RMS who will do it, and it will take on a life of its own that leaves its founder behind and marches forward as the new normal.

If someone more clever than I wants to steal this idea, please do.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[Artifakt]

Bankers not in jail definitely applies as well to Great Britain, Germany, and Italy, at the very least. I can also think of other examples - just for starters, Somali piracy is increasing. It's exactly the sort of thing that needs 'nipped in the bud', and it's mostly the European states that are affected, and are responsible for not having the will to do something about it - When the Russians have a boatload of tanks stolen, it's much more a specifically Russian problem than when those same pirates hijack a normal cargo ship that only peripherally affects the US. Or take the many kidnappings for ransom in Mexico by drug gangs. Somebody in the USA is doing something right, since there's been only one attempt to spread that north of the border, and that quickly collapsed with the hostage released unharmed. Maybe somebody there got the memo in time.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[seanadams.com]

And yet, they keep saying that Palin is inexperienced?

Actually I didn't say that, but now that you mention it... even if she were "merely inexperienced", the fact remains she's an utter nincompoop.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahahaha. If you're going to post things that don't worship obama as a sun god, you should probably go elsewhere.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[steelfood]

No, there's been an outbreak of common sense lately. It still hasn't become ubiquitous, but it's a serious improvement over two years ago.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[RiotingPacifist]

yeah but she doesn't believe in dinosaurs! I mean wtf, anybody that doesn't fear a sudden velocoraptor attack just ain't right in the head!

Also relevent may be
the report outlining her abuse of power which she "hasn't had time to read yet" but some how "cleard her"
she has only left the us once
shes a creationist
she cant name any papers she reads
she cant name any supreme court rullings except roe vs wade
she thinks taking 14 g hrs between waters breaking and going to hospital with a downs syndrome child (already a heightened chance of miscarriage) is a good idea
she thinks shes in charge of the senate

but nah its mainly the dinosour stuff.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[thedonger]

Your system is entirely based upon the notion that people are reasonable. That is not the case. A person - singular - is reasonable. When we get together in large groups we become much more stupiderer.

As the good book says, "None of us is as dumb as all of us."

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[HTH NE1]

Indeed, there should be a comparison video of Sarah Palin talking around what periodicals she reads vs. Miss Teen USA talking about the global map shortage.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[fm6]

You mean you actually pay attention to those tags? Most of them are even more lame.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

He never gave his reasons for the possibility of Palin becoming PotUS being a sign of idiocy :P. Sure, he could be a Democrat and all, and he could subscribe to the party line, but the reason you gave might not be his reason for saying that.

Unless he uses the experience argument, then there are no pots or kettles involved.

You could say not giving any reason(s) to back up such a strong statement is a bigger sign of idiocy, though.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[Schadrach]

I'm not afraid of Palin becoming president due to inexperience, I'm afraid of Palin becoming president due to her seeming to have trouble with laws pertaining to ethics and public accountability, her views disturb me at a minimum, and quite frankly I think McCain only chose her because she's a woman without a significant national political record, making it hard to make an "issues" attack on her, trying to use the media frenzy to try to cover her as much as the others have been to try to play the "victim" card, and trying to sway some Democrats who would vote for Hillary by giving them a woman alternative to the black guy.

Personally, I hope that if Palin becomes president, that we keep going down the line of succession till we hit someone less insane. Heck if someone would just perform 4 or so assassinations, a senator from my home state would be president (one who has the *most* experience, holding a national record for both length of senate term and age to be a senator).

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

I find your claim that Sarah Palin might become President is a sign of idiocy laughable on its face. Aren't the dems the ones who keep saying that no experience can prepare you for president (since Obama has no experience)? And yet, they keep saying that Palin is inexperienced? Pot? Kettle?

I think the difference here is that Obama comes off as professional and competent. Palin comes off as "Lol, wasn't that cute?" Blonde and Ditzy. Also, Obama has infinitely more experience than Palin, for Palin has zero experience in areas, such as foreign policy.

Initially, I thought Palin was a good move for the GOP but now I'm not very happy with her. I think both presidents have a "good chance" of dieing in office, and I think both VPs are something to be feared. So, just so you know what my slant is, I am still undecided.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[ozamosi]

Being someone from the side of the Atlantic where half the population doesn't consist of idiots stupid enough to consider voting for the side that supports Palin, let me enlighten you on the topic.

The problem isn't that Palin is inexperienced. The problem is that she's batshit insane.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[Nutria]

only 85.9%

That's better than 5/6th of voters.

Our data suggests that a greater number of Democrats than Republicans or Independents are excluded from voting under Indianaâ(TM)s voter identification laws.

Democrats and Independents are less competent at proving that they are who they say they are? Do we really want such people voting?

Bottom line: "one person, one vote" must mean exactly that; otherwise, elections can't be trusted.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[thedonger]

Our data suggests that a greater number of Democrats than Republicans or Independents are excluded from voting under Indiana's voter identification laws.

But if a larger percentage of Democratic and poorer voters aren't working within the rules, then I don't see a problem. Either the rules don't work and need to be changed or the people aren't following them.

This is very similar to the hot-button topic of alleged racial inequality in prison. Without trying to come down on one side or another, if a certain group of people commits crime in a larger proportion than another, it stands to reason that a larger percentage of that group will be in jail.

Be careful to separate how people came to the point of committing crime and the actual commission of said crime. We cloud the issue by not clearly defining the two parts. Same with voter exclusion: look at the reasons why individuals are excluded, not the group which they represent.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[demonlapin]

Yes, sadly. People who lack the basic intelligence and wherewithal to make sure that their information matches aren't likely to be good voters, so forgive me if I'm unconcerned that these people tend to vote for a party you appear to prefer. Snafus *do* occur - once happened to me! - but you'll have to be a lot more convincing than the above is to make me think that the snafus aren't random.

Incidentally, how do you get an ID that doesn't match your voter registration? I registered - every time I've done it - in person, at the courthouse, on a day off dedicated to just such random crap. I showed them my license (for ID) and a copy of a recent utility bill or lease (for location). No mismatch, although one time they didn't have me on the list in the new precinct by the time the first election - a primary - came around. Next time, it was there.

Of course, I live in Mississippi, where there is no ID requirement *at all*. You walk up, state your (supposed) name, and vote.

In addition to paper ballots, why don't we just use the simplest technique to rein in corrupt voting: staining of the fingernails with a dye. (Silver nitrate, e.g., would do the job in spades.)

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

I think "batshit insane" is a bit too mild a term.

Yeah, European here.

The European view of the US election, in Star Wars characters:

Obama: Luke. Young and inexperienced, but a candidate for hope.
Biden: Han Solo. Technically on the side of good, but a mercenary at heart.
McCain: Palpatine. Aged, evil politician, with undoubted experience but doubtfully the people's good at heart.
Palin: Jar-Jar Binks. Irritating as all heck.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[ShieldW0lf]

Not at all. My system is the democratic system, with some holes patched.

Look at current democracies, they have two huge problems. One, the person you elect to represent you can talk out of one corner of his mouth when he's campaigning and then engage in behavior that is totally contrary to what you elected him to do, and you're stuck with it for years to come. And two, you can never elect the person you trust most to lead you, but only one of a short list of people.

This system would fix both of those failings. It's not like we're all just going to fall to pieces, people naturally self-organize themselves by their very nature. Most of our problems arise when we hand a small group of people absolute power because it's necessary, and then can't take it back when it's unnecessary without destroying and replacing the system.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[seizurebattlerobot]

I'll take someone who was a state senator [1], a United States senator [2], taught constitutional law at Harvard [3], and speaks intelligently about United States foreign policy [4] over someone who has abused power granted to her in the past [5], lies about her past policy positions [6] [7] [8], and who refuses to be interviewed except under the most controlled circumstances [9].

Honestly, I'm a big fan of impartiality and avoiding political contreversy by pointing out the flaws in both sides of the aisle, but at some point, you just have to scratch your head and say "Gee, it sure is funny that one side seems to be completely full of shit."

[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois_Senate_career_of_Barack_Obama
[2] - http://obama.senate.gov/
[3] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_life_and_career_of_Barack_Obama#Career_1992-1996
[4] - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9cGu1aiDks
[5] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Public_Safety_Commissioner_dismissal
[6] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governorship_of_Sarah_Palin#.22Bridge_to_Nowhere.22
[7] - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ttqv_0y0R4
[8] - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LojJ9b43ZGg
[9] - http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2008/09/23/politics/fromtheroad/entry4470968.shtml

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[geobeck]

She doesn't believe in dinosaurs?! Even with her running mate's first-hand accounts?

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[AK Marc]

I find your claim that Sarah Palin might become President is a sign of idiocy laughable on its face.

Ah yes, I laugh. At least until I cry.

Aren't the dems the ones who keep saying that no experience can prepare you for president (since Obama has no experience)?

There's a difference between much travel abroad no international relations experience, and never had a passport no international relations experience. There's a difference between not knowing any supreme court decisions other than Roe/Wade and knowing a number of other notable decisions. It's not that she's inexperienced. It's that she's too dumb to be president. I know that when you hold her up in comparison to the current one, she looks presidential, but Bush Jr. shouldn't be the standard we all aim for. Hot that Obama has experience that exceeds Palin, but he does have a competency that does.

And yet, they keep saying that Palin is inexperienced? Pot? Kettle?

He said she wasn't presidential material. You are the only one that brought up experience. There's more to being presidential than being a mayor/governor/senator.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[Misch]

You get married. You update your drivers license with a new last name. You move. Your address is now different. You go by Larry, but your drivers license says Lawrence. A board of elections data entry clerk enters "Larwence"

All of these things qualified as "not matching" in the Indiana study.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

Once again you get the choice between turd sandwich or giant douch. The neocon puppet or the big-government socialist. Have fun choosing

Or just do everyone a favour and dont' vote for either (or at all).

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[geobeck]

...one who has the *most* experience, holding a national record for both length of senate term and age to be a senator...

Would he also happen to be the most recent senator to be convicted of accepting and not reporting 'gifts'?

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[geobeck]

She's not insane. She just comes off that way because she's so exhausted from reading every newspaper on Earth every day.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[roguetrick]

While I agree with that, a government elected by a process I'm not a part of is invalid in my eyes. I'd imagine that the amount of people voting more than once would be a very tiny minority compared to the amount of valid voters with flawed paperwork. This is due to the driving around involved, and the logistics of moving around large amounts of people and keeping it secret.

Its all a balancing game really, I just wish more people saw both sides. A poser below mentioned staining of fingers, which might be the best idea.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[Misch]

PS: In-person voter fraud doesn't happen in statistically significant numbers. Despite a five year crackdown by the Department of Justice, there were a whopping 120 prosecutions nationwide resulting in 86 convictions. (Sorry, registration required. Try news.google.com search for "In 5-Year Effort, Scant Evidence of Voter Fraud")

Only a handful of these were for double voting. A large chunk involved vote-buying in down-ticket races. Many were for illegal registration (legal resident non-citizens registering to vote), often filling out a "motor voter" section on a drivers licesnse application.

Remember, this big push to prosecute the non-existant voter fraud led to the firing of US attornies by the Bush administration.

Voter fraud is just a strawman argument rasied by Republicans to disenfranchise voters.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[El Royo]

... would advocate ... I are good grammar using.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[AK Marc]

Bottom line: "one person, one vote" must mean exactly that; otherwise, elections can't be trusted.

I agree. But you don't seem to. You seem to be stating that one-person no-vote is desierable over one-person two-votes. Neither state is one-person one-vote. To achieve that, you should have flexible laws that accommodate changes in names for marriage, address changes, and such that get people excluded. Get them to vote on a contested ballot and verify it later, but don't just turn them away because of a typo on a form or a recent marriage that didn't get name changes synchronized on all the databases. But from what you say, you'd rather have many people unable to vote than let one vote twice.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[El Royo]

That's an extremely good point. I was just extrapolating based on what I've read. You can take my response as a response to people who say it's an experience issue and move on.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[Cornflake917]

Who the hell modded you informative? Palin hasn't had a US passport until 2006. Obama has little experience but at least he is very educated and has lived outside of a bumblefuck little town for more than a few years. Seriously, I can't even believe you are comparing a person who's jumped between a few community colleges to Obama, who has got his professional law doctorate from Harvard. Who the fuck do you think has more knowledge of the US government!?

What's laughable is Palin's inability to explain the job of a vice president to a third grader, the inability to name a popular magazine, and severe misunderstanding of US geography. If this doesn't scare the hell out of you, you are bat shit crazy.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[605dave]

I voted today here and Texas, and had the same strange feeling. There is absolutely no way to verify my vote. I punched some buttons, and hit enter. God only knows if there is any integrity to the system.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[lgw]

Popular democracy has been tried before. Athens functioned, but barely, and was only strong when they had a charismatic leader (and they made some enourmous gaffes where decisions with far-reaching consquences were reversed on the spur of the moment). There's a reason Aristotle called democracy the corrupt form of a republic.

Also, Athens knew it could not defend itself as a democracy, so when a war started going badly they would become a dictatorship by appointing an Archon (the periods of actual democracy were quite literally anarchy). This *never* ended well. Our current system works *much* better: in war time we pass laws violating all sorts of constitutional rights, which gives the leader a bit of extra power for just long enough for those laws to make it to the Supreme Court and get tossed out.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[AK Marc]

This is very similar to the hot-button topic of alleged racial inequality in prison. Without trying to come down on one side or another, if a certain group of people commits crime in a larger proportion than another, it stands to reason that a larger percentage of that group will be in jail.

But the statistics show that (when corrected for prior history and socio-economic status) blacks commit crimes about as often as whites, yet spend about twice as much time in jail for the crime (and because more are sent to prison, there are more repeat offenders, as prisons create criminals). Yes, more blacks commit crimes than whites. That's because blacks are more likely to have been in prison. Why are they more likely to have been in prison? Because they are black. It's a viscious circle. And when you eliminate the recidivism from it, the only plausable factor left is that the system is more likely to put a black man away than a white man for the same crime.

Same with voter exclusion: look at the reasons why individuals are excluded, not the group which they represent.

But, just like Gerrymandering, it isn't how the other side is playing. They look at what they can do to dilute/eliminate your voters. They are purposefully working to subvert the democratic system. You have two choices, play the game with the same rules, or lose. You are suggesting that when someone else targets "your" voters with a trick they have reasearched that appears neutral but isn't, that you aren't allowed to claim it isn't neutral. You must pretend it is even when it is proven to not be neutral. That just seems silly. Many of these laws, like poll taxes, were put there to harm specific classes of voters in a manner that one could claim wasn't intended to do that. To pretend that doesn't happen is going to result in people having their rights stripped from them. Note, this is a non-partisan commentary. Both sides have done it, and both sides continue to do it.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[Misch]

But if a larger percentage of Democratic and poorer voters aren't working within the rules, then I don't see a problem.

It's not that they're not working in the rules, the rules were changed and had a disparate effect on them.

This is very similar to the hot-button topic of alleged racial inequality in prison. Without trying to come down on one side or another, if a certain group of people commits crime in a larger proportion than another, it stands to reason that a larger percentage of that group will be in jail.

Actually, no. I don't know if it's "error" or "freudian slip" on your part, but the number of that group in jail would be larger, not the percentage. If it's the percentage, then there is a possibility of selective prosecution, or disparate application of sentencing for that crime.

One would hope that the percentages would be comparable across the two groups.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[Shining Celebi]

I've not seen any proof of problems with ethics and accountability. There may be some questions but the e-mail hack put some of those questions to bed (though that didn't stop people from claiming it confirmed them). The biggest issue I see is that she's a woman who's attained a relatively high office and isn't beholden to the Feminist movement. They -can't- allow her to succeed. She's not cut from the right mold.

The bipartisan Alaska Legislative Council found that she abused her power and violated ethics laws in the so-called "Troopergate" scandal. Palin has been going around claiming that it clears her of any wrongdoing, but the report itself says:

For the reasons explained in section IV of this report, I find that Governor Sarah Palin abused her power by violating Alaska Statute 2952.110(a) of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act.

You can read the full report here. Also, the email hack did not put any questions to bed. Some of them in the hacked account do appear to have been illegally conducting government business, but either way, we haven't seen all of the emails in that account, and that specific account was not even the one she was accused of using to conduct government activity with. She had two Yahoo accounts, kind of like she's under multiple investigations.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[thedonger]

But we've created this system. We keep voting the same idiots to their near-lifetime congressional seats. Our lack of thorough history education has us repeating it over and over. Any time I hear such arguments I immediately think of the Wal-Mart South Park episode. Tear it down and we'll erect another monolith to replace it. Why? Because the collective "we" are, in fact, stupid. We're nervous, twitchy, and we operate poorly out of routine.

Do I think the current system is broken? In a way, but it is more misused than broken. Our politicians are too comfortable, and we are too stuck in our ways and blinded by ignorance. We have the power to change. Constitutional congresses, initiative and referendum, just plain voting. How about term limits on senators and congressman? How about we remind all four hundred something of them that they work for us and we vote the whole lot out this Nov. 4! It's my birthday on election day. What a present that would be!

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[thedonger]

You sound like a conspiracy theorist.

when corrected for prior history and socio-economic status

What does that mean? Is there a discrete theory which neatly fulfills that statement? Does it have any bias in it? Did you ever wonder why Pat Robertson thinks 2% of the population is gay and the GLBT crowd say 15% (or something like that)? Because stats are easily manipulated, and people very seldom fall into discrete, predictable categories.

Why are they more likely to have been in prison? Because they are black.

Your conclusion is also your starting premise. Take a logic class.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[Nutria]

I agree. But you don't seem to. You seem to be stating that one-person no-vote is desierable over one-person two-votes. Neither state is one-person one-vote. To achieve that, you should have flexible laws that accommodate changes in names for marriage, address changes, and such that get people excluded.

You do realize that it's possible to change/update a driver's license, right? (It didn't take my wife that much effort to go to the DMV and get her name/address changed.)

Along with the right to vote comes with it the responsibility to do all in your power to keep the vote fair.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[thedonger]

It wasn't freudian. I like my mom, but not in that way. Submitting without proof reading is bad.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[lgw]

Wow, that's very convincing! Obama clearly went to a school Democrats approve of, holds views that Democrats approve of, and in general is part of the culture that Democrats approve of. As you point out, none of these things are true of Palin. It's quite clear: a Democrat would have to be a total idiot to vote Palin for President!

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[SlashJoel]

You seem to be taking this idea seriously, so I'm going to seriously discourage you from implementing it. It's noble to have faith that if each citizen is given a blank slate and the power to shape a governing structure for themselves, something wholly democratic and wonderful will come out of it. But it's also hopelessly wrong. Someone on Slashdot has a sig that I really like that says "Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner." I wouldn't trust the average citizen with filing my taxes, let along determining my country's monetary policy.

Now, you sound like a smart person. And you seem to be fed up with the current electoral/legislative/governmental processes. I can understand that. But please don't put your energies into fashioning a way for every citizen to come together and instantly form some new system of government that could be anything from direct democracy to elected dictator and somehow have the flexibility to become the very opposite on a whim. This will never happen. And if it did happen, it wouldn't work out like you hope. You don't have a plan for a new government system. You have a plan for allowing other people to figure out a new government system. Pardon my harshness, but that's intellectually lazy. Instead trying to figure out how to create an infrastructure that would allow everyone to create a new governing structure, I encourage you to come up with your own idea for a new electoral/legislative/governing structure. Think you know the perfect system that can satisfy Libertarians and Socialists, Centralists and Decentralists, Rich and Poor, Rural and Urban? Please, for the love of god, tell us! But if you think that getting all those people together in a virtual room is going to spontaneously generate the perfect system of government, you're fucking crazy.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[AK Marc]

If you don't care enough about voting to have valid ID to vote, you don't care enough about voting to really know what/who you are voting for.

So if you got married and chanegd your name on your ID, but forgot to change it with voter registration (or here, where you don't have to notify anyone, but it can show up under the old name sometimes), you should be barred from voting for not caring enough? Should there be a "caring" test at the polls? Isn't having ID a poll tax anyway? You must present ID, and there are no free forms of ID available. If you can't pay, you can't play. At least they let the blacks vote now, that's good enough right, so poll taxes are fine?

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

But if a larger percentage of Democratic and poorer voters aren't working within the rules, then I don't see a problem. Either the rules don't work and need to be changed or the people aren't following them.

Um, voting is a right of citizens who aren't disqualified by very specific criteria (too young, court declaration of mental incompetence, or the utterly repugnant, common practice of denying the vote to felons). The right follows from the fact that the person is a citizen; it's not a privilege that's gained by adhering to certain rules.

The only valid arguments for disenfranchising somebody have to do with whether allowing them to vote violates somebody else's right to vote. The reason we have rules for voting is that if we didn't have them, then somebody could cheat at the polls, and violate everybody else's right to vote. But other than that, the government should really make a good-faith effort not to disenfranchise anybody who's entitled to cast a vote.

There are simple things that can be done for that--if somebody shows up at the polls and there's a doubt whether they're allowed to vote, then you can have them cast a provisional ballot. (But of course, you have to process these ballots fairly, and there are serious questions whether various states have been doing so.)

The USA has a serious problem in that in many states, the people who run the election occupy partisan posts. The federal government should mandate that the states create neutral election departments, headed by a officers subject to approval by a supermajority of the state legislatures.

This is very similar to the hot-button topic of alleged racial inequality in prison. Without trying to come down on one side or another, if a certain group of people commits crime in a larger proportion than another, it stands to reason that a larger percentage of that group will be in jail.

But here you're completely, absolutely missing the point. The problem is that there is bias across multiple levels, after you control for the variables:

1. Racial profiling: police are more likely to intervene with minorities than with white people in similar situations. They're also more likely to get searched.
2. When the police intervene in an incident, minority members are more likely to get arrested, after controlling for other factors.
3. The prosecutors are more likely to bring charges, than when dealing with an equivalent white suspect.
4. The attorneys are less willing to defend than an equivalent white defendant, and more likely to recommend plea bargains.
5. The courts are more likely to find them guilty than a comparable white defendant, and to give them longer sentences for the same crimes.
6. Parole boards treat them less leniently than comparable white felons.

Just as a simple example, a lot of people smoke pot. When cops stop somebody in the street, however, they're less likely to perform a search on a white guy than on a black guy. So in the aggregate, white pot smokers get found out by the cops less often than black ones.

Multiply similar effects across the whole criminal justice system, and you'll understand what the problem is with racial inequality in the system, and how it's got relatively little to do with the base rate at which minority members commit crimes.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[Cassius Corodes]

The biggest issue I see is that she's a woman who's attained a relatively high office and isn't beholden to the Feminist movement. They -can't- allow her to succeed. She's not cut from the right mold.

WTF? Are you telling me you seriously believe this??

I just don't know what to say to such delusions...

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[Garse Janacek]

People who lack the basic intelligence and wherewithal to make sure that their information matches aren't likely to be good voters

Screw you. When I registered to vote in my current state, the person who copied my name off the form left an 'r' out of my last name. I've tried to correct this through two primary and election cycles now, and I believe they still have it wrong. I've still been able to vote, because the name is almost the same and I can show them that I correctly received my polling information under the not-quite-right name. But according to you I lack the basic intelligence to vote?

Citizens get to vote, that's how democracy works, and you don't get to decide who is qualified based on, for example, how likely some data entry temp was to mistype their crazy islamist-ferner-sounding name with all the consonants. Screw you.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

I know. I know. My name is Shamiquiwa Geraldine Jones, but every time I register to vote everybody keeps misspelling it "Shammyqwa" or "Shamyquwa" or "Shamiqua" or "Shamiquia" or "Shawmykwa" or "Shuhmiqkwa" or "Shimwekwa" or "Shummeequa" or "Shawmeekwah" or "Shamikuwa" or "Shemiqkwa".

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[AK Marc]

You do realize that it's possible to change/update a driver's license, right? (It didn't take my wife that much effort to go to the DMV and get her name/address changed.)

Yeah, and the driver's license system is linked to the voter registration database. But what happens if you get married less than 30 days before an election? Delay getting your data updated? Or go with the new ID that will not match the voter registration info? What if you get your ID updated and don't think about the fact that the voter registration is frozen 30 days before (for printing and such) and you show up with a new ID and an old entry in the registration rolls, and you left your marriage certificate at home?

So many here, like you, have the attitude that "if you did it wrong, you are too stupid/lazy/apathetic/irresponsible to vote anyway." Why is excluding 100 people to guarantee no double votes any better than allowing everyone to vote who is properly registered, and having the inclusive system end up with 100 double votes? You denied 100 people their right to vote. That's despicable. If someone else games the system to slip in 100 extra votes, that's their despicable action. I'm not a fan of taking a "bad" action to stop something that's not shown to be a problem and if it were a problem may not be any worse than what I'd have to do to stop it.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[wkk2]

Stringent ID checks are long overdue. While voting, 10 years after purchasing my house, by chance I noticed the voter registration book still listed the seller at my address. I told the clerk that nobody with that name lived at my address. They told me I wasn't allowed to look at other names. Also, I believe that the seller died shortly after I purchased the house.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[zippthorne]

Poll tests, when administered corruptly (as during Jim Crow), are unquestioningly immoral. But I've yet to see a cogent argument as to why they're immoral if the idea is to weed out the disinterested or incompetent.

The idea that certain minorities would naturally be excluded by a fair test always seemed extremely racist to me.

But I'll go on the record as saying that yes, if you change your name on your ID, and it doesn't ever occur to you to correct the voting record (not including the edge case where you change your name after deadlines for correcting the record have passed) that yes, you don't actually care enough about the election. If you'd cared, you'd have made time for it.

And that's fine. You can be a good citizen without seeking to affect public policy. But please, ask yourself, do you care about the outcome of the election, or do you just care about pulling a lever.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[AK Marc]

when corrected for prior history and socio-economic status

What does that mean?

That means you look at a bunch of black people that live in the same area as a bunch of white people and both groups make about the same, and you exclude all repeat offenders. I guess I sound like a nut because you don't know what a statistical study is or how to understand it when someone does one.

Your conclusion is also your starting premise. Take a logic class.

That's science. You observe. You create a hypothesis. You test the hypothesis. It tests good and you declare the test supported it, or it tests bad and you say the test refuted it. In both cases, the conclusion and the starting premise are either the same or opposites. Again, you speak like you are trying to teach me something I have a degree in and you've never heard of. Every study done shows that a black man and a white man that are otherwise equal are equally likely to commit a crime, and that those that do commit crimes, the punishment for the black man is about twice as bad as for the white man. Sure, you can attack me, you can call me names. You can assert I'm stupid, but what you can't do is present facts that disagree with what I've stated. I'm an idiot. I'm a dunderhead. But still, blacks are no more likely to commit crimes than whites, but are more punished when they do.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate to break it to you, but I highly doubt that would work as well as you want.

One of the reasons our government was laid out this way initially rather than being more strictly democratic is because the founding fathers believed the masses were too temperamental and unreasonable.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[msromike]

Maybe because his parents said he was.

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=72656

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[AK Marc]

But I've yet to see a cogent argument as to why they're immoral if the idea is to weed out the disinterested or incompetent.

Because everyone has the right to vote, even the disinterested and incompetent.

The idea that certain minorities would naturally be excluded by a fair test always seemed extremely racist to me.

Ok, and if I find the cracks in a sidewalk to be racist doesn't make it true. If you were to state that people with debilitating diseases can't vote either, because they can't have the best interests of the long term in mind isn't racist (ignoring whether it's a good idea or not). But then, make sure that HIV positive/AIDS, sickle cell anemia, and such fall under that definition. You come up with a "reasonable" goal, and I'm sure I could make it racist. The idea of a reasonable test is fine. But the requirements for ID knowing full well that black people are less likely to have an up to date and valid government ID is racist. Complaining that they should live up to the white standard of having a valid government ID doesn't make it any less racist, even if true. Just because it is a just cause and backed by true statements does not mean it isn't also racist.

You can be a good citizen without seeking to affect public policy. But please, ask yourself, do you care about the outcome of the election, or do you just care about pulling a lever.

I will ask myself that, as long as you ask yourself why you are so interested in exlcuding voters from their right to vote because you want to protect the "integrity" of the election (which I would assert is jeapordized by turning away even a single properly registered voter, with or without ID).

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[Nutria]

Yeah, and the driver's license system is linked to the voter registration database. But what happens if you get married less than 30 days before an election?

Intelligent people should be able to solve such a problem.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[theheadlessrabbit]

...since Obama has no experience...

this really bugs me, how people keep on saying "Obama has no experience."

The job they are applying for is 'President of the United States." That is a position that neither man has held before, so they are both inexperienced.

In fact, every president in US history has been inexperienced during their first term.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[Phroggy]

I'm in Texas and apparently 23% of Texans believe Obama is a Muslim.

On the other hand, that means 77% of Texans believe he isn't. That should count for something!

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[demonlapin]

Have you gone to the courthouse? When they screwed up my registration, that's what I did. With documents. And I asked the clerk to print a copy of the registration - which she did. And now, having missed one primary election due to a mistake at the courthouse, everything is right.

Or do you just let people vote without any identity check at all? Because that's how my state does it, and if there is a more open invitation to voter fraud, I don't know what it is. See, if you went to my polling place, and said you were Demon P. Lapin, they would let you vote - and I wouldn't be able to when I showed up later. Where's the justice in that?

I never pretended the current system is perfect; I'm very conscientious about this sort of thing, and even I got screwed once. But I don't see any evidence that this is anything more than random chance; I'm a Republican voter in a Democratic city. The clerk that registered me is working for a Democratic elected official, and probably is a Democrat herself. I don't think I was intentionally disenfranchised. It was bad luck, and given the fallibility of humans, it happens.

Further down the thread, I mentioned one fairly simple defense against fraud - dyeing fingers - that could easily be implemented without requiring stringent ID requirements, although it does not work against non-citizen voting.

Citizens get to vote, that's how democracy works

Ah, but you don't seem to like the easiest verification that they are citizens. Let me step back and not be obstreperous, because I really do want a reliable and bipartisan approach to this - I think that trustable election results are critical to the functioning of a democracy, and if the people I like get wiped out at the election, so be it. What would you suggest we do to prevent multiple-voting and non-citizen voting? I'll stipulate that - as someone noted - not many people have been successfully prosecuted for voter fraud. (I'm not sure that means it's rare, but that's not important to this part of the discussion.) To be fair, this has to be something that is black-letter law - no human judgment allowed. Either the proof is, or is not, acceptable. What do you suggest?

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[Murple the Purple]

| What does that mean?

This question indicates that you should be thoroughly disqualified from voting. QED

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

Plan your damned wedding with a little more thought!

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[ScrewMaster]

Not that I disagree that there's a lot of stupidity in the world over, but, to me it's interesting to note that all your examples are idiocy in America.

So, let me get this straight. Your complaint is that the largely American visitors to a pre-eminent American tech news Web site in a discussion revolving around voting procedures in the United States aren't concerning themselves with the price of hashish in Istanbul?

{sigh} well, don't concern yourself about it ... we'll get around to your particular brand of idiocy soon enough.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[noidentity]

Same here, Texas. But the paper isn't there to verify that your vote was recorded, since it could just print that and not record it; it's there to be held in a ballot box so that a recount can be done with the paper printouts. But electronic voting is total fucking bullshit. Electronic devices to help people fill out the physical paper forms, fine. Electronic devices to then count said forms, fine. But not to do it all.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[noidentity]

Er and of course as you said, there is no fucking paper in Texas, so it's all a moot point. "Thank you for wasting your time with my stupid UI. Your vote will not be counted."

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[BZ]

Anyone running for president nowadays is pretty much batshit insane by definition (at best they're a power-hungry sociopath).

The thing we should try to make sure of is that the same party never controls both congress and the white house. That was the real problem with most of Bush's presidency, in my opinion, just like it was a problem at the beginning of Clinton's. The fewer laws Washington can add, the better.

It would be even better if they'd start to repeal some laws (I'm looking at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guano_Islands_Act as a good place to start here), but there's slim hope of that. Heck, the US tax code grew by something like 50% in the last 20 years... as if it had not been complex enough in 1988.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

I think "batshit insane" is a bit too mild a term.

Yeah, European here.

The European view of the US election, in Star Wars characters:

Obama: Luke. Young and inexperienced, but a candidate for hope. Biden: Han Solo. Technically on the side of good, but a mercenary at heart. McCain: Palpatine. Aged, evil politician, with undoubted experience but doubtfully the people's good at heart. Palin: Jar-Jar Binks. Irritating as all heck.

Palin could be queen amidala... in that i'd like to see her naked (with hot grits....)

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[daem0n1x]

In Portuguese, my native language, "senso comum"/"common sense" means something that is widely accepted but not accurate, like a superstition.

On the other way "bom senso"/"good sense" means the right conclusion that you should come to if you use your intelligence.

Why you use "common sense" to mean the same as our "good sense" escapes me. Maybe it has to do with the democratic/parliamentary tradition in England, where it is assumed that something was good if the majority approves it.

I'm not sure what "good sense" in English means.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[DrLang21]

I am not a Democrat, and I do find experience to be at least somewhat important here. Namely that Obama has worldly experience, and Palin has experience appointing old high school chums to state government positions. I find it laughable that Republicans point to Obama's supposed lack of experience all the while raving about Palin. I think state governments should also be outraged that Republicans are saying that elected state government positions are not quality governmental experience.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[DrLang21]

How do they keep on saying Obama has no experience when he served as an Illinois State Senator for six years before serving as a US Senator? That's at least eight years of experience. That's more experience than many of our first Presidents had.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[Shotgun]

Our biggest problem is that we keep hearing "the voice of experience" as if that is some sort of qualification.

The original intent, and the only sensible approach, is that the House of Representatives be "the voice of alternate experience". The terms for the House of Representatives were designed to be short. This would be so that the sucker could be turned over on a regular basis and constantly represent the people that elected them. There'd be a LOT of them, so that they could be closer to the people they represent.

Senators would have longer terms, and would be appointed by the state legislatures. They would represent the states, and be insulated but not shielded from the ebb and flow of public opinion.

The President was to be elected by an electoral college that would insure that the interest of rural and urban voters could be balanced.

What we have now is a cluster-fuck for vote buying and influence peddling. The masses have come to understand that the federal piggybank needs raiding before someone else gets it. "Representing your constituents" has devolved into "bring home the bacon." And it ain't just earmarks, either. The Congress had to consider a bill to keep the nation's banks liquid, and thus the economy afloat. It's arguable if it was anything other than a bailout, but that is what they were discussing. But that airhead, Nancy Pellosi, starts going on about needing to "add something in for the poor". The translation from politico-speak, "This bill is a must pass. Let's do some poverty pimping, and buy some votes while we're at it."

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[Shotgun]

Wow, SlashJoel. I don't have mod point, but you hit that nail, square and HARD.

Bravo, sir. Simply, BRA-VO.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[Shotgun]

I have a poll test in mind that I think would be fair across the board.

Leave off the names. All of them. Just a form that lists the contended offices.

If you don't care enough about a race to even know how to spell the name of the person who is running, how could any reasonable person expect you to now ANYTHING about ANY of the issues.

Down with the government "of the apethetic, by the oportunistic, for all of us".

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[Shotgun]

Yeah, and the driver's license system is linked to the voter registration database. But what happens if you get married less than 30 days before an election? Delay getting your data updated? Or go with the new ID that will not match the voter registration info? What if you get your ID updated and don't think about the fact that the voter registration is frozen 30 days before (for printing and such) and you show up with a new ID and an old entry in the registration rolls, and you left your marriage certificate at home?

You hold on to your old ID for 30 days?

Nawh! That'd be to easy.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[ShieldW0lf]

Well, we're going to find out, because I'm going to build it regardless.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[demonlapin]

Federal conviction numbers don't impress me much on this. Would you send someone to jail for 5 years for voting twice? I'd find it pretty damned hard to do so, and I think most people would.

Voter fraud is a real concern because the integrity of the election process has a lot of knock-on effects in people's trust in government - as evidenced by the reaction of virtually every Democrat in the country to George W Bush in 2000. It didn't make you think that the government was corrupt?

And PS: US Attorney is a political appointee and patronage spot. Do you get upset when the former president's chief of staff loses his job? I don't care much for what Bush did in the Presidency, but I can't see how that wasn't entirely within his power.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[Shotgun]

How in the world is the parent a troll?

You may not like El Royo's opinion...you may think he has his facts wrong...but it is a well stated opinion and is not an attempt to incite a flamewar.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[demonlapin]

Oh, I know about those. I re-registered every time I moved, and even made sure that the clerk entered my name correctly. I am not making light of the difficulties you may face; I'm just saying that nobody else is going to fix those problems for you, and if you care enough to do it in person, you'll be covered.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[Shotgun]

The bipartisan Alaska Legislative Council found that she abused her power and violated ethics laws in the so-called "Troopergate" scandal.

How was the ethics violated? Todd Palin was using the wrong telephone.

There's a reason that Obama's campaign hasn't tried to play this one up. It would be a very strong club to use, if it weren't completely and craptastically silly, and at least Obama is smart enough to see that.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[rgviza]

I find your claim that Sarah Palin might become President is a sign of idiocy laughable on its face. Aren't the dems the ones who keep saying that no experience can prepare you for president (since Obama has no experience)? And yet, they keep saying that Palin is inexperienced? Pot? Kettle?

I think you are missing the larger stupidity.

You have to consider that Palin is not running for prez, it's Obama vs. McCain. That makes this argument (and campaign tactic) even more stupid (or shrewd?) than it appears on the surface. It's a classic fallacious red herring argument.

About the OP:
>The academics and computer scientists who said they were unreliable "have won that battle."'"

No they have not won the battle. They believe that electronic voting can work, but it needs to be done right. Here's a great link to Avi Rubin's (who more or less started the whole voting machine security/traceability debate) site that explains what the academics want and how Diebold etc can fix their machines.

http://avirubin.com/vote/

None want paper, they want the electronic systems to be designed and implemented properly. Paper voting is a PITA and also inaccurate. Avi etc have told Diebold etc how to fix their machines, til they were blue in the face, and were categorically ignored.

This development in MD and VA is a step backwards. What we (I'm a MD resident) should do is let Avi and Accurate( http://accurate-voting.org/ ) write the requirements for the machines and put the contract up for bid to have them built properly to spec.

-Viz

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[Shotgun]

I would like to thank you for insulting my country and half it's population. This being /., I've come to appreciate the awesome intelligence of all the great Europeans that are so much smarter than us, with your great, world dominating economies. Thank you for granting us a small glimpse of your great wisdom.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

I sure as hell don't want you on any juries near me. The jury decides guilt, the judge decides the sentence.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand why the registration lists aren't purged more often. Just completely wipe them every 2 years and require everyone to register again.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[Cowmonaut]

Take a look at the US Constitution. It's actually pretty solid, and they tried very hard to make it so that if you get a jackass going for RAW (Rules As Written) and trying to game the system he won't get far/last long.

Overtime, people have forgotten just how much power they wield. They can write in whomever they want to be anything, even President.

But they let people tell them they can't. They listen to people tell them stories of the boogey man and say only they can save them, rather than the truth that each person can save themselves.

The original intent of the Constitution is noble, and is the only thing that makes America even worth a damn. People need to take their powers back.

We need to fix our education system and get out of this 'daddy will save me' attitude that has been turning our nation slowly into a police state (sadly, that's the path our on no matter how far from it we are compared to other nations).

We got a lot of work ahead of us, but we can still fix this. The only problem is that we need to find people to vote in to Congress that will actually be able to make the changes required.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[TheRealZero]

+1, enough said.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[kalirion]

Come on, McCain is obviously Darth Vader. Used to be a Knight, got corrupted by the Dark Side.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[porpnorber]

How is it not an attack on the election when voters are getting turned away because of it? It's like when protests against (e.g.) warfare "turn violent"—you have to ask yourself who benefits before you get a clue as to who is responsible. Dirty tricks are far from unheard of in this world, and I suspect there are more agents provocateurs out there than most of us would care to imagine. All it takes is (parties changed to protect the innocent) one crypto-Pucite to walk around saying, "hey, your Mauveite prospects aren't around? Why not fill their forms in for them, you'll be doing them a favour. Nah, don't worry about the details, they'll figure it out on election day," and that's a fifty vote differential in the bag.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[demonlapin]

So? You can usually predict what the result of a guilty verdict will be. I'm sorry that my elision there upset you. I know that the ability to think two steps ahead is missing in the average AC post, but I figured most people could jump the gap.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[porpnorber]

What an interesting idea. So you're working on getting US votes for the rest of the world, too?

I say this only half in jest. From the foreign perspective, (a) the US asserts itself way too much in our territory for us not to be represented too, and (b) its government, no, doesn't seem so exceptionally valid lately.

So, sure! Votes for all, I say!

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[Xoc-S]

Bottom line: "one person, one vote" must mean exactly that; otherwise, elections can't be trusted.

That's not the way that the U.S. electoral process works. People from Wyoming get more of a vote than anyone else, since the state has more electoral votes per population than anywhere else. Now ultimately it is one person, one vote, but only when we are talking about the electors from each state that vote on December 15th.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not that voting machines re unreliable. They're f*cken rigged for god's sakes. just kil yourself if you can't see that. Is your entire country a bunch of utterly complete infantile morons?? My computer's hardware doesn't break down like that and it can do a hell of a lot more than count by 1 number. It's f*cken RIGGED! the first letter is R. the second.... like is that what we have to do here? hmm.. they wont let anyone see the code.. you know what just kill yourselves.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[Shotgun]

We got a lot of work ahead of us, but we can still fix this. The only problem is that we need to find people to vote in to Congress that will actually be able to make the changes required.

I agree Cowmonaut, unfortunately, the Federal Treasury is now seen as a giant piggybank that we get to steal from. Each member of Congress is judged by his constituents on how much he was able to get out of the Great Piggybank in the Sky. The longer a Congressman hangs around, the more powerful committees he gets to sit on, the more powerful his position becomes, the more cash he is able to bring back home. Several long-time, powerful incumbents have used that argument as a campaign platform.

My solution for fixing Congress: Randomize committee selections, including chairmanships. A freshman Congresswoman from North Carolina should be no less powerful than an old pervert from Massachusetts. If he is such a great speaker, full of eloquence and persuasion, then he should be able to convince the electorate of that. If he can, he should be able to stay as long as the electorate believes in him/her.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

Common sense is 14c., originally the power of uniting mentally the impressions conveyed by the five physical senses, thus "ordinary understanding, without which one is foolish or insane" (L. sensus communis, Gk. koine aisthesis); meaning "good sense" is from 1726. Common pleas is 13c., from Anglo-Fr. communs plets, hearing civil actions by one subject against another as opposed to pleas of the crown. Common prayer is contrasted with private prayer.

from http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=common+sense&searchmode=none

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

Acorn is accused of:

* registering false names
* registering people (like the starting lineup of the dallas cowboys) in multiple places
* voter fraud in florida

CNN has covered this multiple times, in allegaionst about fraud in pennsylvania and nevada, and admissions about fraud in ohio

And since you don't seem to understand how voter fraud works: People are supposed to get exactly one vote. Only living, real people, who (to simplify) are citizens of the location in which they live are supposed to vote, and only in the place where they live. Dead people are not allowed to vote. Imaginary people are not allowed to vote. People are not allowed to vote multiple times. You can only vote (in many places) if you register to vote, some time in advance of the election.

Now, imagine that some organization, we'll call them WALNUT, comes along, and registers lots of dead people, and lots of imaginary people, and lots of living real people in multiple places (such as registering Bob Barker in Las Vegas, Boston, and Las Angeles). Come election day, this same organization (or a conspiratorial organization) uses these false registrations to enter votes. This allows the organization's members to vote once for themselves, and once for each additional registration. If enough false votes are submitted, this can tip an election. When an election is close (As some polls indicate that this one will be) a smaller number of fraudulent votes can tip the election. This can cause the person who was not the choice of the electorate (as determined per the election process, according to the rules) to become the elected.

Of course, you could be just a little shite who doesn't care about free, valid elections, and would rather minimize a very real issue, than to fix whatever problems that occur. If that's the case, then you can go suck it.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[mdalal97]

Please get your facts straight because they are off base.

Voter fraud is a real concern because the integrity of the election process has a lot of knock-on effects in people's trust in government - as evidenced by the reaction of virtually every Democrat in the country to George W Bush in 2000. It didn't make you think that the government was corrupt?

Of course it did. However, this has nothing to do with individuals committing voter fraud. As at least one academic study concluded (I don't have the link), voter suppression is a far greater concern and actually has an impact on the results of elections.

And PS: US Attorney is a political appointee and patronage spot. Do you get upset when the former president's chief of staff loses his job? I don't care much for what Bush did in the Presidency, but I can't see how that wasn't entirely within his power.

While a US Attorney is appointed by the executive branch, until this administration's firing, the position of US Attorney was _NOT_ considered political. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dismissal_of_U.S._attorneys_controversy for details of the controversy. I'm sure there are better links on this as well. In general, the Justice Department under this administration went from being apolitical to being highly politicized. There was also a recent report on this and the hiring process being politicized at all levels... very damaging to the both President and the appointed leaders of the Justice Department. I guess I should say, it should have been very damaging to the President and his administration. And by that, I mean it should have led to more than just the firing of Alberto Gonzales.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[mdalal97]

don't forget that she didn't know what the Bush doctrine was in an interview. Seems like anyone vying for a position one heartbeat away from the presidency should at least know the doctrine which has put us in debt up to our eyeballs and led to a needless war.

Maybe I'm asking too much when I hope for leaders who at least come off as being smart and competent.

Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense

[Schadrach]

I figured the reason Obama's campaign hadn't used it was because Obama's campaign was, on the whole, relatively light on character assassination attempts. McCain's campaign seeming to be composed entirely of "look what preacher he goes to, and he's sat on a committee with a guy that did *bad* things when Obama was eight years old! How can someone like that be President? Besides he lacks experience (although this one died out when he chose the one person with less national-level political experience than Obama to be his running mate)! I'm a Maverick! Maverick! MAVERICK!"

Welcome to your local polling place...

[timpintsch]

Will that be paper or plastic?

Re:Welcome to your local polling place...

[orthancstone]

Heard a guy answer "plastic" when asked whether or not he wanted to vote electronically or with a paper ballot.

The woman had no clue what he was going for. I nearly lost hope right then and there, and I hadn't even got to the voting booth yet...

Re:Welcome to your local polling place...

[amRadioHed]

The guy sounds like a Florida voter to me. Why shouldn't she have been confused when he responds with a non-sequitor.

Re:Welcome to your local polling place...

[orthancstone]

Not quite. I live in one of those states where the outcome is predetermined.

I for one

[Cornwallis]

welcome the return or our hanging-chad overlords.

Re:I for one

[mcgrew]

I mentioned in another comment below that Sangamon County, IL is also using paper ballots, but ours have no chads. You fill an oval with an ik pen and an OCR device counts the votes. If somebody contests the election or its machines, they can be counted by hand.

Re:I for one

[Jim_Maryland]

I'm in Howard County Maryland and prior to switching to the electronic voting machines, we used a similar optical mark system. The cards would list the position being voted for and the list of candidates. Each position also list the number of candidates that you could vote for. Each candidate had a broken arrow (pointing to the candidate) that you would complete with the pen. The ballet would be electronically scanned, but at least the paper card would still exist for recount if needed.

Re:I for one

[lgw]

The "broken arrow" ballots are by far the best! Scantron still leaves room for debate if there's arguably a mark in a bubble. The broken arror is just as easy to optically scan, and there's far less room to argue about voter intention.

Re:I for one

[Cornwallis]

What I will never understand is how the MD legislators so cavalierly (SP?) dismissed Avi Rubin's work on this issuse at Johns Hopkins!

No Barr in CT

[Rinisari]

Too bad CT won't do it in time to put Bob Barr on the ballot, since the state and court claimed that it would take too long to reprint paper ballots and reprogram electronic voting machines with his name, even though he met all requirements on time.

Re:No Barr in CT

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it's nice to see the Dems and Reps act like they're two different parties but the truth is that they're the same power system with some internal struggles. What's even more rich is that the idiots on the street are still buying into this lie.

Re:No Barr in CT

[robinsonne]

This to me is the one of the saddest things about voting in America today, that legitimate candidates aren't even included on the ballot simply because they're not Republocrats.

Re:No Barr in CT

[poetmatt]

I've heard many people say that if we form a third party, the two are so in-line with eachother that they'd try to absorb it. /still wants to start a new party someday

Re:No Barr in CT

[ivan256]

There should be a simple legal remedy for this. If they can't get all legitimate candidates onto the ballot, they should lose their electoral votes.

Re:No Barr in CT

[hax4bux]

I will go you one further: we should do away w/primaries as well.

Re:No Barr in CT

[OctaviusIII]

Well, next time they'll just have to change the deadline. Someone at the CT State Department's office screwed that one up.

Re:No Barr in CT

[HTH NE1]

Well, next time they'll just have to change the deadline.

Like Texas?

Re:No Barr in CT

[hey!]

Oh, that's a simple ... but it's not a remedy.

It's not clear that Barr would prevail in a challenge, but he waited three weeks to contest the invalidation of five thousand signatures.

There have to be rules, and there has to be somebody judging whether the rules have been followed, and it ought to be possible to contest that ruling. At some point, however, you lose your right to challenge the ruling. The Barr campaign waited until the last minute to submit the petition, and after the signatures were invalidated they did nothing for three weeks.

Normally, I'm sympathetic to third party candidates, but Barr's CT operation screwed this up. Barr had no chance of affecting the outcome, so getting on the ballot is a name recognition and party building exercise. From a practical standpoint, nobody has been disenfrachied, Barr has got his name in the news, and the party has learned an important lesson: don't leave things to the last minute.

Re:No Barr in CT

[ClioCJS]

Bob Barr doesn't deserve to be on the ballet. When Washington D.C. had a referendum on medical marijuana, and the voters overwhelmingly voted for it, guess what happened? Bob Barr, whose constituents were GEROGIA not WASHINGTON D.C., blocked the vote by refusing to allow D.C. to have the federal funding necessary to count the votes. (Which was later found to be less than $2.)

Yeah. This guy blocked democracy, and now he's going to whine about not being on the ballot? What a snake. He did a 180 because he's a chameleon. He deserves nothing, and the Libertarians have lost me. Looks like I'll be voting for Nader. Ugh.

Re:No Barr in CT

[ClioCJS]

Bob Barr doesn't deserve to be on the ballet. When Washington D.C. had a referendum on medical marijuana, and the voters overwhelmingly voted for it, guess what happened?

Bob Barr, whose constituents were GEROGIA not WASHINGTON D.C., blocked the vote by refusing to allow D.C. to have the federal funding necessary to count the votes.
(Which was later found to be less than $2.)

Yeah. This guy blocked democracy, and now he's going to whine about not being on the ballot? What a snake. He did a 180 because he's a chameleon. He deserves nothing, and the Libertarians have lost me. Looks like I'll be voting for Nader. Ugh.

Re:No Barr in CT

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't know that Bob Barr was a character in Chrono Trigger!!

Re:No Barr in CT

[Anonymous Coward]

So, deadlines and rules shouldn't be binding but just guidelines that don't need to be met and can be overruled arbitrarily?

Re:No Barr in CT

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're willing to vote for Nader, you weren't a Libertarian to start with.

Ron Paul write-in works.

Re:No Barr in CT

[hey!]

No, just the opposite. If you wait until the last minute, your options become limited. That's what makes it the last minute.

Makes it sound bad?

[nine-times]

The academics and computer scientists who said they were unreliable "have won that battle."'

Damn those stupid, fearful academics and computer scientists! Always standing in the way of progress!

Seriously, though, what's the tone they're going for there?

Re:Makes it sound bad?

[Col. Klink (retired)]

To be fair, the people supporting the machines have done a pretty good job of showing how bad they are. Here's a guy "debunking" the myth that the machines are nefariously changing your vote. He shows that it's just miscalibrated, shows how easy it is to recalibrate, then shows how well it works after that (except that selecting "Republican Ticket" selects Ralph Nader).

Re:Makes it sound bad?

[bbernard]

That's the idea! Computers are bad, go back to the abacus! From the article...

"'We're going to discard tens of millions of dollars to go to a system that is less accurate and secure,' said John Willis, an elections expert who was secretary of state under former Maryland governor Parris N. Glendening (D). 'The proper question is security and safeguards. It's not to go backwards into the 19th century with paper."

While I applaud these states for identifying that they're using a sloppy e-voting solution, is the right solution really to go back to the equivalent of the steam engine? While I agree you can tamper with most (all?) of the e-voting machines out there plenty of them provide a paper audit record that the voter can validate. Don't through the baby out with the bathwater on this.

Re:Makes it sound bad?

[theaveng]

I used to live in Maryland. The paper ballots are anything but 1800s. They are an extremely-simple system where the voter draws a line next to this candidate. An electronic machine then reads that line and automatically tallies the vote. Later those same paper ballots can be reused for hand-counting if someone challenges the result.

We Republicans protested for a long-time that the double-verification of both paper & electronic counts was superior to the e-voting machines, but the Democrats rammed through the machines anyway. I'm glad to see that we were proven correct, and now they're going back to the paper/electronic system.

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it" is the motto that applies here. There was nothing wrong with the old system; it was proven and worked.

Re:Makes it sound bad?

[CyberLord Seven]

"Welcome to the paper-less office."

Remember that from the Sixties and Seventies? Do you see any sign of it today? No? Why not?

Well, maybe because paper is light-weight, foldable, and will last beyond your lifespan with minimal care.

Let's try an experiment. I solved the secrets of the Universe and wrote them on ordinary paper with an ordinary ball-point pen back in the 1970s. I also wrote those same secrets on an Apple ][. The paper was shoved into my copy of Encyclopaedia Brittanica and put back on the shelf. The Apple ][ copy was manually copied onto an IBM PC circa 1982, using a 3.5" floppy where it sits to this day. Which copy of the SECRETS OF THE UNIVERSE! would you like: paper or electronic?

Oh, just for fun, let's say I copied the floppy onto a CD back in 1997. Then I copied that onto a USB stick in 2002. OH, almost forgot to mention that the file format is the same Apple ][ format from the 1970s. :)

Re:Makes it sound bad?

[Jim_Maryland]

I'm a current Maryland resident and I agree that the old system worked just fine. It had just the right amount of tech (scan) and accountability (paper source).

Re:Makes it sound bad?

[nine-times]

"'We're going to discard tens of millions of dollars to go to a system that is less accurate and secure,' said John Willis

The problem is, they already discarded tens of millions of dollars buying a system that isn't secure, and continuing to use that system isn't going to give us that money back. There's nothing wrong with electronic voting per se, but you have to make the operation of the software open, secure, and verifiable. So if electronic voting is completely insecure, that means you have to change to something else quickly.

'The proper question is security and safeguards. It's not to go backwards into the 19th century with paper."

Why is paper a 19th century solution? It was invented before the 19th century, and it continues to be used in the 21st century. There's nothing wrong with it. What, are we going to start complaining that wheels are technology from the 16th century?

No electronic voting machines should be used unless the source code is available for review, and unless they also create a paper trail that can be used to verify the results. And the paper needs trail needs to be visible to the voter at the time of voting to ensure that his/her vote was counted properly. The money spent on machines that don't do those things was wasted when it was spent, not when those machines were decommissioned.

Re:Makes it sound bad?

[Kemanorel]

Damn, you beat me to it...

My first thought was, "Those academics and computer scientists finally got something right... Oh... Wait."

Now if only we could reverse the cultural trend that being dumb is cool.

Re:Makes it sound bad?

[HTH NE1]

The academics and computer scientists who said they were unreliable "have won that battle."'

Damn those stupid, fearful academics and computer scientists! Always standing in the way of progress!

Seriously, though, what's the tone they're going for there?

That the war over electronic voting machines is not yet over and they (Election Data Systems, nee Diebold) will continue to push for victory for their side regardless?

(EDS: Enter your vote for President of the United States! You have 30 seconds to comply!)

Re:Makes it sound bad?

[nine-times]

Well I could see a more valid complaint about, "Damn those intellectuals and computer scientists. They pushed us into electronic voting against common sense!" I mean were that the case, I could understand the complaint.

But you have *computer scientists* telling people, "Don't use computers for this purpose. It's a very bad idea because there are inherent security problems. Either address all those security problems in a reasonable way, or stick to a low-tech solution." Those are the people who know what they're talking about, and they're also the people who would generally want to push you towards high-tech solutions-- you know the whole, "to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail" thing.

So why the hell shouldn't we listen to those people in this case?

Re:Makes it sound bad?

[HTH NE1]

OH, almost forgot to mention that the file format is the same Apple ][ format from the 1970s. :)

That would be a file of type T, which is just a flat text file with line (or paragraph) ends delimited with Carriage Return (CR) instead of any of Line Feed (LF), CRLF, or LFCR and no other special formatting.

Simple file formats last longest.

Re:Makes it sound bad?

[theaveng]

>>>the Democrats rammed through

The reason I use that phrase is because the Democrats control approximately 75% of the Maryland Legislature, so they pretty much do whatever the feel like doing, ignoring the Republicans completely. I liked living in Maryland but I didn't enjoy feeling like an ignored third party.

Re:Makes it sound bad?

[RiotingPacifist]

how is that more secure than say an electronic count with a paper trail?

Re:Makes it sound bad?

[budcub]

I grew up in Maryland and moved to VA in 2002. Up until then we had machines where you'd pull a lever next to the candidate of your choice. So they've gone to electronic, and then to paper in 6 years?

Re:Makes it sound bad?

[JCSoRocks]

That was my thought as well. A more apt description of the situation would have been, "were proven right". This isn't like the DRM / RIAA vs Joe battle. This isn't even a battle of opinion over what's right and wrong. This is intelligent people pointing out that these machines clearly don't work and absolutely should not be used. The only battle here is the battle to pull every politician's head out of the deep dark place it resides so that they can see the obvious truth.

Re:Makes it sound bad?

[modmans2ndcoming]

Try that as "We Democrats" and Republicans Rammed.." and you have it right.

Re:Makes it sound bad?

[demonlapin]

If you're going to the trouble of a paper audit record that is really voter-verifiable, why don't you just do the damned thing on paper to begin with? It's the only way to be totally anonymous while voting, as e-voting machines will timestamp - making it possible to figure out just what order votes were cast in, and then to reconstruct (from the sign-in sheet) the approximate voting record.

The problem with electronic voting is that it can be either secure or anonymous, but not both - at least in any system I've seen.

Re:Makes it sound bad?

[PitaBred]

Hunting and gathering also "worked". Why change it?

There's no reason to not use electronic voting machines that are properly designed and verified. There is a very good reason to not use BAD electronic voting machines.

Re:Makes it sound bad?

[cptgrudge]

how is that more secure than say an electronic count with a paper trail?

Because if the electronic machine you use thinks that you voted for the wrong person, it can "correct it", along with the "paper trail" you generate for you. Or even if it's a simple miscalibration, the "paper trail" still shows that I voted for an incorrect candidate.

If I'm the one filling out the ABSURDLY SIMPLE paper form, which gets scanned, I know that the "paper trail" is less easily tampered with.

Electronic scanning of filled in analog bubbles is vastly superior to ANY touchscreen solution. I don't understand how more people can't grasp this concept.

Re:Makes it sound bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll take the electronic copy please. My Apple ][ emulator works fine.

Re:Makes it sound bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bush and the justice department actually started fining states that wouldn't adopt electronic systems. You need to get your head out of your ass and realize that it was the republicans who pushed for those machines and not the democrats.

Re:Makes it sound bad?

[VGPowerlord]

According to Snopes (The Urban Legends website), some states do not include certain elections in the Straight Ticket selection.

Re:Makes it sound bad?

[Col. Klink (retired)]

In the video, he selects "straight Republican" and Nader's name gets highlighted. It would be one thing if no presidential candidate got selected, but don't you think it a little odd to have a third party candidate selected. It's really funny. He first shows how a miscalibrated machine will pick the wrong candidate and then shows how easy it is to fix. He fixes it. To prove it was just miscalibrated, he then selects "straight Republican" on the just calibrated machine. It picks Nader. He says "Oh, that machine is miscalibrated" (as if he hadn't just "fixed" it).

Re:Makes it sound bad?

[CyberLord Seven]

Simple file formats last longest.

I agree. That's why ink on paper is best!

People can still read stuff from when papyrus was all the rage. The great thing about papyrus and paper is that it that it can be rolled up and doesn't break like those clay tablets.

Re:Makes it sound bad?

[roguetrick]

Might I also add that the machine must dispense hookers and jet

Re:Makes it sound bad?

[nine-times]

Yes, I don't think this is an issue of eggheads vs. common sense. When you have closed-source electronic voting without any kind of verification or paper trail, I don't see how you can be in favor of it unless: (a) you don't believe in democracy and want to see it subverted; (b) you don't understand how computers work; -and/or- (c) you're naive enough to believe that no one would ever seek to improperly influence the election.

And that's not even covering the issue of bugs in the software. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

Re:Makes it sound bad?

[vivek7006]

Which copy of the SECRETS OF THE UNIVERSE! would you like: paper or electronic?

Is the electronic copy open-source? I refuse to touch it unless it was released under GPL3 license and works with my new shiny gentoo box

Re:Makes it sound bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

An electronic machine then reads that line and automatically tallies the vote. Later those same paper ballots can be reused for hand-counting if someone challenges the result.

I hope that happens in every election, but I'm not holding my breath.
Any sort of optical scan system is bound to make mistakes, whether intentional or not. IMO, the only form of vote-counting that should count is a manual one, under the supervision of the public and the involved parties. Preferably it should counted again by a different people just to make sure every vote is counted properly. If even the tally is even one vote off, it should be counted again and again by different people until all counts agree.

Re:Makes it sound bad?

[Kemanorel]

Aye, that was pretty much my point, albeit in a much more sarcastic light. I should have closed that with, "Oh... Wait, they usually do more often than not, and when they don't, they at least spur new avenues of investigation."

That's what I get for posting while my students were working on their classwork.

We absolutely should listen to these people. That's why I followed up with my comment about dumb being cool.

Re:Makes it sound bad?

[jonaskoelker]

I'm speechless.

lets go of a deep sigh

Explain to me, very slowly and carefully please, why there are still people not out on the street renewing the tree of liberty with their own blood and that of dictators?

At the very least someone is guilty of high treason.

Right? Right?

Re:Makes it sound bad?

[jonaskoelker]

I'm glad to see that we were proven correct, and now they're going back to the paper/electronic system.

I'm glad they're going to do what the evidence suggests is the best thing, and I don't care about the party I would've voted for [!citizen] being wrong.

I'm also glad that voting that includes paper was shown to work best. That means the temptation to switch to e-voting is smaller, which is good because e-voting is not transparent to the common citizen. Had e-voting demonstrated to work best [in terms of functional characteristics], that problem would still be there, and would still be important.

I'm not so glad that a party was proven correct, in the way you describe it. It seems very clear that
- Both parties made up their mind based on ideology or personal values rather than evidence.
- The party in power implemented a policy, still not based on any evidence.
- That policy turned out to be pot. That evidence was used to inform policy.

I'd love to see cities built by civil engineers who learn from many iterations of trial and error. Apparently it's a fine way to build democracies and economies.

For crying out loud, they could have tested e-voting machines in a small county, hand-counted the paper trails and kept the machine output only for the purpose of the study, and let people who were uncomfortable with the machine hand in only a paper ballot. That study took me the whole of 28 seconds to design. Was it not run? Was the result disregarded?

What the hell is going on in this world?

Re:Makes it sound bad?

[Phroggy]

There's no reason to not use electronic voting machines that are properly designed and verified.

Sorry, but if you're referring to the type of electronic voting machines that do not use a paper ballot as the official record, then you're wrong. Even if the machine uses open-source software, even if it is tested and verified to work. Computers can break, and they break a lot. It's my job to fix them, so I see them break more often than most people do, and I don't want to rely on them for something as important as voting.

However, I'm a huge fan of optical scan machines. They're proven, they're reliable, and there's no reason not to use a machine to scan paper ballots. Also, there's no reason not to use a computer with a well-designed UI to prepare and print paper ballots, which can be verified by the voter before being cast. But whatever technology is used, I think we need physical human-readable ballots. There's just no good reason not to.

Re:Makes it sound bad?

[PitaBred]

I think there's room for an electronic and a paper record that mirror each other, and use the paper record as the official one in case of discrepancy. There are too many benefits to having an electronic copy of the record immediately to ignore the possibility of using electronic entry and tallying, with a physical "backup".

There are actually machines like that which exist... a paper tape under a window that will show the voter what they voted, so they can match it with the display.

The main issue is that the software is all closed source, as is the process. In an open, properly functioning Democracy, anyone can have a view into the process of how it works. We need to enable that.

Re:Makes it sound bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps the candidates should put forward their stance on the important issues to some web survey. Then separatly, without knowing who the candidate is, the people vote on where they stand on those same issues and ideals (like the survey here).
I'd be some crazy surprise when you get someone like dennis kusinich as pres. (with bonus of a hot first lady)

Re:Makes it sound bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

We Republicans protested for a long-time that the double-verification of both paper & electronic counts was superior to the e-voting machines, but the Democrats rammed through the machines anyway. I'm glad to see that we were proven correct, and now they're going back to the paper/electronic system.

The Republicans have been largely behind the move to electronic voting machines, and in opposition to the Democratic efforts, led in the Senate by Russ Feingold, to correct the situation. You either don't know what the fuck you're talking about, or are an inveterate liar.

Re:Makes it sound bad?

[DrLang21]

I don't see your face on the streets either buddy. The fact is, things need to get a LOT worse before people are going to be willing to revolt. In general, everyone still lives comfortably (even low-income households when compared to much of the rest of the world), so why would they want to risk their lives? The government knows this and for a long time to come will make sure that we live in general comfort despite any freedoms they take away. It's not like the American Revolutionary War rebels were all that popular among the other colonists even when the government WASNT ensuring the general comfort of the people.

Re:Makes it sound bad?

[theaveng]

>>>Try that as "We Democrats" and Republicans Rammed.." and you have it right.

The Republicans only control ~25% of the Maryland Legislature. They can't ram-throuh legislation; in fact most of the time the Republicans are completely ignored, and the Democrats just run the whole show.

Re:Makes it sound bad?

[Phroggy]

I think there's room for an electronic and a paper record that mirror each other, and use the paper record as the official one in case of discrepancy. There are too many benefits to having an electronic copy of the record immediately to ignore the possibility of using electronic entry and tallying, with a physical "backup".

I disagree about the benefits, but if you really need a real-time count, use a second machine with an optical scanner, which voter-verified paper ballots are fed into. This machine counts the votes and stores the paper ballots; there only needs to be one per polling place even though there may be a dozen of the user input/ballot printing machines. Each polling place should also have a supply of blank ballots on hand, which voters can fill out with a #2 pencil just like standardized tests in school; these would be used in case the user input/ballot printing machines break, or there aren't enough of them for the number of voters, or a voter simply prefers not to use the machines. If the counting machine fails, you simply bypass the scanner (I envision removing the scanning/counting module which would break tamper-evident tape, so election officials know the electronic count is invalid) and drop ballots into a slot in the locked ballot box.

This just in, we'll no longer be doing e-voting

[CrazyJim1]

And due to low voter turnout, we figure no one cares if we phase out paper voting too.

Re:This just in, we'll no longer be doing e-voting

[Anonymous Coward]

Future presidential elections will be done by a show of hands.

Re:This just in, we'll no longer be doing e-voting

[Anonymous Coward]

Until we phase out hands.

nothing new

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm from VA and I've been voting on paper ballots since the 2000 election. We use an optical scan system that is fairly foolproof. It counts but there's a basket of paper ballots underneath it.

Re:nothing new

[megamerican]

Optical scan is NOT "fairly foolproof."

Just look at the votes in the New Hampshire primary. The places that did hand counting (about 15%) in NH had Barack Obama winning. The places that did optical scan had Hillary Clinton winning.

You can go to blackboxvoting or bradblog to find a lot of good articles during that time period.

There is still the possibility of vote switching with the software and the use of memory cards. It is pretty easy to do with just a few corrupt individuals.

Yes, there is a paper trail which makes it better. However, if you don't follow the chain of custody of the paper trail it makes it easy to rig a recount. Blackboxvoting had some great articles showing the boxes they used to "secure" the paper votes (giant holes in the boxes) and the "seals" which were nothing but fancy post-it notes.

The only way to know if an election is rigged or not is to have a hand counted paper ballot with plenty of people volunteering to make sure it is fair.

The price of liberty is constant vigilance.

Ballot access for independent candidates would still be a problem. Many third party candidates have to spend half of their money raised to get ballot access.

What is wrong with just giving out pieces of paper with the elections you are voting on and make people write in the candidate they want? If you don't know the name of the person you are voting on for a position, don't vote!

Re:nothing new

[CyberLord Seven]

What is wrong with just giving out pieces of paper with the elections you are voting on and make people write in the candidate they want?

Nice idea in theory, but, ummmmm, have you ever looked at people's writing?

Oh, yeah, it won't work in places where people are voting on candidates and state and county measures.

Oh, yeah, one more thing. If you have more than a few thousand people voting it can take an extememly long time to count the ballots. The Electoral College must meet and vote in early December. If we tried your process we might not have a count by then.

Re:nothing new

[Chandon Seldon]

We use an optical scan system that is fairly foolproof.

What makes you think it's foolproof. If it decided to count every 3rd McCain vote for Obama, how would you know?

Re:nothing new

[amorsen]

If you have more than a few thousand people voting it can take an extememly long time to count the ballots.

"Extremely long" being about 4 hours for first count, and a few days for final results.

Re:nothing new

[spitzak]

We use an optical scan system that is fairly foolproof.

What makes you think it's foolproof. If it decided to count every 3rd McCain vote for Obama, how would you know?

Because the machine count would not match the collected paper ballots.

Only a small number of districts need a hand count to check this, as long as which districts was unknown before the election. This would make it far too risky to tamper with the software in the optical scan machine.

Re:nothing new

[CyberLord Seven]

"Extremely long" being about 4 hours for first count, and a few days for final results.

NOT if you are trying to read someone else's writing for a national office, several State and county offices, and a good selection of State and county measures.

And I haven't even talked about vote order. For instance most people will put their Presidential choice at the top of the ticket followed by State then County officers. But who knows what order people might choose to put State and county measures!

I think this would take a LOT longer than you suppose.

Re:nothing new

[m.ducharme]

Except none of this is true (except maybe the handwriting bit). Other countries, particularly your neighbour to the north,manage just fine with paper/pencil ballots, and guess what, you can even use them for measures, you just have to write out the whole measure on a ballot and give the voter yes and no boxes to check. If the ballot gets too big, make more than one ballot for each voter. If there are too many people at one station, set up another station. It should be fairly easy to determine in advance how many voters there are in a given area and plan accordingly. The system here scales from rural areas where your nearest neighbour is a mile away to urban centres with high population density. All you need are sufficient volunteers to supervise the counting, with representatives from all parties looking on. Leave it up to the parties to get their own scrutineers out.

Paper and pencil works just fine.

Re:nothing new

[Chandon Seldon]

Because the machine count would not match the collected paper ballots.

If you're going to count the paper ballots, there's no need to have an electronic count.

Only a small number of districts need a hand count to check this, as long as which districts was unknown before the election. This would make it far too risky to tamper with the software in the optical scan machine.

Statistical sampling works great in theory, but it's far too easy to game in practice. Minor modifications to make the process "more convenient" can completely remove the intended statistical properties - see the Ohio 2004 recount.

Re:nothing new

[spitzak]

The idea is that you don't have to count *all* the paper ballots. Only a small subset until you are confident that the electronic total has not been tampered with.

You are right about gaming in practice. If somebody wants to tamper with the software and has any way to predict enough machines that will not be subject to hand counts then they can fix the election. This could be done by messing with the software that "randomly" chooses what districts to recount.

Re:nothing new

[Chandon Seldon]

This could be done by messing with the software that "randomly" chooses what districts to recount.

Or just by not using any software.

I want my money back!

[Subm]

I paid Diebold good money for thousands of votes in those districts in that election.

If they don't deliver I expect my money back!

Re:I want my money back!

[Anonymous Coward]

We should make that a class action lawsuit!

Re:I want my money back!

[invalid_account]

Hehe. http://xkcd.com/463/

Listening to the experts

[autocracy]

If the guy with his pilot's license says that his Cessna can't fly a tank, listen to him. If the majority of computer professionals say using a computer to replace paper ballots is a stupid idea, listen to them.

People who can't program their VCRs (how long before people stare at me when I mention "VCR"?) shouldn't make decisions about the suitability of high technology for mission critical tasks.

Re:Listening to the experts

[TubeSteak]

If the guy with his pilot's license says that his Cessna can't fly a tank, listen to him. If the majority of computer professionals say using a computer to replace paper ballots is a stupid idea, listen to them.

Electronic voting is not a stupid idea.
Several countries have done it successfully.
India & Brazil being the two largest (AFAIK)

The problem is the USA's implementation.

Re:Listening to the experts

[db32]

Go program your VCR.

Re:Listening to the experts

[Cormacus]

You must be new here?

Finnish E-Voting System Loses 2% of Votes

Re:Listening to the experts

[Chandon Seldon]

Several countries have done it successfully.

Or, more accurately, several countries spent a bunch of money, ignored the problems, and declared victory. Sort of like Bush and "Mission Accomplished".

As far as I know - and I've been paying pretty careful attention - there are no designs for electronic ballot submission or ballot tallying that meet the requirements for a democratic election with voters who are not experts in mathematics and/or computer security.

Re:Listening to the experts

[Mr. Slippery]

Electronic voting is not a stupid idea.

An optically scanned paper ballot is electronic voting.

Re:Listening to the experts

[ivan256]

The majority of computer professionals think using a computer to replace/augment paper ballots is just fine. The experts also agreed that these particular computers and the software they ran were improperly designed for the job.

Electronic voting done properly should result in fewer errors and less fraud than paper ballots and human counting.

Re:Listening to the experts

[Chirs]

I thought that at least a few countries had fairly simple systems with voter-verifiable paper trails...was I mistaken?

Re:Listening to the experts

[MrNiceguy_KS]

The problem is the USA's implementation.

No kidding. It's pathetic that the restrictions for Vegas slot machines are stricter, and more strictly enforced, than electronic voting restrictions. Maybe we should put the Nevada Gaming Commission in charge of designing a system. But even I can think of a few basic suggestions.

Every machine has a paper tape that records all votes. Next to the main screen, there is a little window that the tape scrolls past. Part of the vote process includes "Look at the paper in the window next to the screen. Does the candidate shown match your selection? Press 'Yes' or 'No' to continue." Once they confirm their vote, the paper scrolls on and is saved in case of recount.

Tamper resistant hardware and cryptographically signed firmware. There has to be a way to verify that the software on the machine is what it should be. This means being able to read the firmware with an external device, as obviously you can't simply trust any internally-run checksumming.

Store the votes in a secure fashion - no freakin' Access Databases on a CF card, in other words.

While I'm ranting on the subject of honest elections, it's time to require a photo ID for voting. You can't enter a Federal building, board a plane, or buy a beer without a photo ID, you shouldn't be able to help decide the future of the country unless you can prove you have the right to do so.

Also, just before you enter the voting booth, you dip your index finger in dye. I got this idea from a news story about the first free election in Afghanistan - it mentioned women proudly showing their stained finger in defiance of Taliban threats against any woman who dared to vote. If Afghanistan can come up with a way to make sure nobody votes twice, surely the US can make a few steps to ensure fair elections.

Re:Listening to the experts

[CyberLord Seven]

Every machine has a paper tape that records all votes. Next to the main screen, there is a little window that the tape scrolls past. Part of the vote process includes "Look at the paper in the window next to the screen. Does the candidate shown match your selection? Press 'Yes' or 'No' to continue." Once they confirm their vote, the paper scrolls on and is saved in case of recount.

WOW! I like your idea.

I'm running for office in a few years so I think I will have one of my friends work this idea into a business we can sell to the county. Then I will have my friend program some selection of machines to vote for me when someone votes for me and to take one-third of my opponents votes. My friend will rig his machine to show the voter the correct name, but my name will be recorded in the memory of the machine. Voters will be reassured that the system is secure because they will see the name of the person they voted for and will NOT raise the alarm. In fact, because I'm not greedy, no one will raise the alarm.

Thank you for the marvelous idea.

Re:Listening to the experts

[Yvanhoe]

When I did some activism against electronic voting, I was called a technophobic. I used to reply that I condone the replacement of some part of the brain by electronic circuits, that I hail the coming of automated cars, that I know the working of a computer fully and that no, this is not hysteria, electronic voting is the worst idea that came out of democracy in this young century.

Re:Listening to the experts

[Stan Vassilev]

If the guy with his pilot's license says that his Cessna can't fly a tank, listen to him. If the majority of computer professionals say using a computer to replace paper ballots is a stupid idea, listen to them.

I find it sad we can produce pocket calculators with 100% accuracy for 50 cents the piece, but hundreds of millions of dollars are not enough to produce simple machine with visible, human and machine readable paper trail, that lets you pick one of about 20 options and count them.

Honestly how complex it is: the machine has a big fixed board with candidates. Below each candidate is a big button. When you press the button, that piece of the board lights up with couple of cheap LEDs. So do two buttons: CONFIRM, and CANCEL. When you press CONFIRM, a little glass protected hole to the paper trail shows you the paper trail advancing and displaying your choice: MCCAIN, OBAMA, BARR or whatever.

The fault isn't with the technology but the people, and the process of selecting the companies to produce those machines, and their motivation and qualification to do a good job.

Re:Listening to the experts

[Chandon Seldon]

I thought that at least a few countries had fairly simple systems with voter-verifiable paper trails...was I mistaken?

Just adding a VVPT is insufficient to provide the properties necessary for a democratic voting system. If there is some specific system you have in mind, post a link so I can take a look. Every system I've looked at so far has had major problems.

Re:Listening to the experts

[Misch]

My friend will rig his machine to show the voter the correct name, but my name will be recorded in the memory of the machine. Voters will be reassured that the system is secure because they will see the name of the person they voted for and will NOT raise the alarm. In fact, because I'm not greedy, no one will raise the alarm.

That's why Voter Verified Paper Trail systems need to be paired with randomly selected hand recounts of a significant percentage of precincts.

Re:Listening to the experts

[RiotingPacifist]

the indian voting system seams to cope well and in many ways surpasses a paper based system.

Re:Listening to the experts

[cowscows]

Possibly, but the thing is, electronic voting doesn't magically solve any of the potential problems with paper/hand count voting. It potentially has all the same problems. And most of these problems aren't very hard to solve for paper/hand counts. It's not hard to make hand counting error free, just have a representative from each party witness each vote as it's recorded.

The biggest source of difficulty with voting in general seems to me to be poorly designed interfaces, whether it's on paper or a computer screen. Either one can be good, and either one can be bad.

Voter verification happens as a separate step from the actual vote collection, so a large portion of the potential voter fraud issues are irrelevant in this conversation.

Point is, there are only two real benefits that I see that electronic voting can have over paper ballots. First, you don't have to worry about figuring out how many ballots need to be printed or running out. But that's not really that hard of a problem to solve, just print significantly more than you could ever need. Second, electronic voting can make tallying up the vote totals faster, but that's really not that important (and potentially a bad thing, seeing results from the east coast while voting is still going on in the west coast seems problematic to me).

In my opinion, those benefits do not come near outweighing the added complexity and costs of electronic voting. If we had some sort of democracy where everyone voted on big issues once a week or something like that, then taking big steps to streamline it might make sense. But as it is, it's just not worth the trouble.

Re:Listening to the experts

[YXdr]

Here on /. we have endlessly re-hashed this, and the only way I've seen that a system based on computers and software can be improved is by adding a voter-verified paper trail. Everything else is just "lipstick on a pig", and the even voter-verified paper trail is unnecessarily clunky.

I'd be really interested what these "experts" that you speak of have to say, and what you would do to have "electronic voting done properly" ...

Re:Listening to the experts

[RiotingPacifist]

and when the paper based recount of random samples shows discrepancies (birthday problem maths and all that) then what?

Re:Listening to the experts

[amorsen]

Several countries have done it successfully.
India & Brazil being the two largest (AFAIK)

Success being defined here as "most of the population believed the results".

Re:Listening to the experts

[amorsen]

Just recount them all. It isn't hard, and it is an embarassingly parallel problem.

Re:Listening to the experts

[rsborg]

The majority of computer professionals think using a computer to replace/augment paper ballots is just fine. The experts also agreed that these particular computers and the software they ran were improperly designed for the job.

Cite Needed.

I sure as hell would be more comfortable with paper&pen.

Re:Listening to the experts

[amorsen]

The majority of computer professionals think using a computer to replace/augment paper ballots is just fine.

"Replace" and "augment" don't belong in the same sentence. Augmenting is fine, as long as the voter gets to approve the paper ballot, and all votes are recounted by hand. Why settle for less, when perfection is so cheap?

Re:Listening to the experts

[topham]

Bahahah.

The United States has the most corrupt voting system in the world. The only reason it is even functional is that BOTH sides corrupt it.
If you used a finger / dye system to prevent multiple votes the Republicans would drive busses into minority communities, round up the locals to bus them to vote and have them dye their fingers to get on the bus. Thereby preventing them from actually voting when they got to the voting station.

The Democrats would round up a bunch of (other) people with dye on their fingers, parade them in front of the press and declare that these people didn't actually vote yet but were somehow coerced into dying their fingers. It wouldn't matter to them if they actually had voted or not.

It isn't necessary to actually corrupt a vote in the United States, it is only necessary to raise the perception that the vote has been corrupted.

 

Re:Listening to the experts

[Anonymous Coward]

Electronic voting is not a stupid idea.

Yes, it is. The whole point is that the implementation problems are inherent to application. The requirements for a truly democratic election make it impossible to use something which the majority of the population can not observe and verify.

You should not have to and do not have to trust an expert or a politician: You yourself can verify that a normal, hand-counted paper ballot election is executed properly. No technical solution can achieve that level of transparency. All other arguments aside, this alone should be reason enough to scrap voting machines.

Re:Listening to the experts

[AK Marc]

Every system I've looked at so far has had major problems.

That includes all paper systems as well, so the question isn't which has problems, but which works the best now, and which, if implemented properly, has the capability of working the best (and how do we get there). Most anti-e-voting nutjobs list the problems with one and only one system (usually picking the worst one) and claim victory, as if there are no such things as hanging chads and all that.

Re:Listening to the experts

[AK Marc]

Success being defined here as "most of the population believed the results".

As opposed to the US system, where most people don't believe the results? Tell me again how much faith both sides had in Florida's paper ballots in 2000?

Re:Listening to the experts

[he-sk]

Because counting is not the issue (we all agree that computers are good at counting), but trusting the result is.

The key ingredient that gives confidence to paper-and-pencil ballots is the PUBLIC counting of the ballots. Every citizen can watch that process and compare the tally to the results published in the local paper. At the end of the day, he can be confident that there were no shenanigans under his watch.

You can't watch a computer counting. Well you can, but then the one reason why officials are pushing voting machines -- a speedy count -- is gone.

It boils down to the question: Can you trust a computer? That you have no control over?

Re:Listening to the experts

[Chandon Seldon]

The town I live in has voted with paper and pencil, a ballot box with a crank, and a public hand counting of ballots for decades (at least). This system works very well, and scales with n*log n volunteers (with a tree of intermediate tabulation locations).

This system has a key security property: Voting, collection, and counting are all observable by a non-expert. I have seen no electronic system described that has this property. The only properties it doesn't have compared to a "perfect" electronic system are: zero counting time (which is not a requirement for a fair democratic voting system) and perfect counting accuracy (which is irrelevant if there are larger sources of error in a system).

Re:Listening to the experts

[Chandon Seldon]

If Wikipedia is correct, this system has the basic problems of any DRE voting system:
- There is no guarantee that the voting machines have the "secure" chips in them.
- There is no guarantee that the software in the "secure" chips don't have cracks built in.
- There is no guarantee that a machine that's being used is an "official" machine.
- The votes are stored in solid state memory, and every instruction executed on the chip could change the vote count arbitrarily and unobserved.

The Wikipedia article makes it sound like the main perceived benifit to the Indian system is tamper resistance ("if the voting system is high tech, people won't be able to figure out how to attack it"). Security through obscurity is great if there's no attacker, but as soon as someone attacks this system all it will do is make it harder to detect the attack.

Re:Listening to the experts

[slashtivus]

You are intentionally confusing optical scanning (the main topic in this thread) with punch voting. That is fairly disingenuous of you.

Re:Listening to the experts

[Phroggy]

People who can't program their VCRs (how long before people stare at me when I mention "VCR"?)

New analogy: people who can't set the correct aspect ratio on their widescreen TV.

Re:Listening to the experts

[MrNiceguy_KS]

There is already a system for dealing with that - the Provisional Ballot. IIRC, it was set up after the mess with the 2000 election and could easily be adapted to my system.

Anyone showing up to vote with a finger already dyed will be handed a provisional ballot. Poll workers take the provisional ballot and record the description of why their finger is already dyed, and the info from their drivers license. (or other government-issued photo ID) When the provisional ballots are evaluated, the ID will be compared with voter rolls to see if they were recorded as voting elsewhere. Stories such as, "They told us we had to dye our fingers to get on the bus," will be investigated, as will anyone found trying to vote more than once. Fake IDs would still be a problem, of course. I know some cities ban alcohol sales on election day - maybe draft the bartenders and bouncers to check IDs.

Anyone showing up without a valid ID will be turned away. I'm sorry, but if you can't prove you are who you say you are, than you can't vote. We're talking about the integrity of an election, here.

Re:Listening to the experts

[MobyDisk]

For now, physical security is the best security.

There is a problem in computer science referred to as the "digital cash problem" which deals with how to create an anonymous, disconnected, auditable, guaranteed, atomic token exchange system. Elections basically amount to this. Although there are solutions, they are very complex and involve lots of encryption, hashing, and key management.

Because it is so difficult to copy/modify physical objects, and so easy to do the same with bits, paper-based systems will remain at the forefront of solutions to this class of problems. This will change if/when we have miniature devices that can fabricate paper and ink.

Re:Listening to the experts

[AK Marc]

I have seen no electronic system described that has this property.

I have. They print out the official ballot.

Re:Listening to the experts

[AK Marc]

I'm not intentionally doing that. I'm intentionally pointing out that "electronic voting" can be done *better* than any paper and pen system in existence. That it isn't is not a flaw of electronic voting, but the implementations selected so far. For everyone that picks an electronic system they know to be flawed, I can point to a paper one with a similar or worse problems. When people stop talking about "electonic this" or "paper that" then we can have a discussion. I read a post in the middle of the thread that didn't mention optical scanning at all, and thus couldn't have confused it with anything else. Is electronic voting paper and pen voting with electronic tabulating for quick but unofficial results? Is it printing out a paper ballot that's human readable and the electronic tally is a quick unofficial result? Or is it a computer with an Access database that wasn't clear at the start of the election storing everything on a removable memory card that any voter could remove and change all the votes before him or stuff with more or fewer votes and no one would ever know? Some systems are good, some are bad, and to presume I know which you are talking about when you don't say is disingenious of you.

Re:Listening to the experts

[Chandon Seldon]

I have. They print out the official ballot.

How do they count the votes? By hand?

Even if all the machine is doing is replacing the pencil, there's still at least one issue left: What's to say that the machine isn't remembering the votes with timestamps, allowing the votes to be matched with voters, thus compromising the secret ballot?

Re:Listening to the experts

[slashtivus]

Sorry if you took my comment as a flame, that is not my intention. I have only lived in states that have optical scanning. It is a great way to have anonymous voting (essential) as well as fast digital results (e-voting), while also providing a mechanism for hand counting. It really is the best of both worlds.

The comment about disingenious was only referring to the dumb Florida punch card stuff that you mentioned in response to the OP. Optical scanning is the only method I am familiar with, and the multiple states I have used it in have not been so embarrassed with looking like fools.

Re:Listening to the experts

[Cochonou]

Every machine has a paper tape that records all votes. Next to the main screen, there is a little window that the tape scrolls past. Part of the vote process includes "Look at the paper in the window next to the screen. Does the candidate shown match your selection? Press 'Yes' or 'No' to continue." Once they confirm their vote, the paper scrolls on and is saved in case of recount.

Be careful, while this would make the voting system more resilient to tampering, this would weaken the anonymity of the vote - because you indeed have an ordered trail of what has been voted on a particular machine. Both resilience to tampering and anonymity are required in an election, and you must not trade one for another.

Re:Listening to the experts

[RiotingPacifist]

The system is physically secured, the same way that a box full of ballots being moved around is secured. Meaning the system offers the same security as the previous paperbased system only its easier to use.

Re:Listening to the experts

[ivan256]

Because recounting by hand defeats the purpose of electronic voting in the first place, negates the benefits, and should be astronomically less accurate.

And they do fine in the same sentence. It just depends on what input method you use for your electronic voting computers.... They might have a touch screen, or buttons, or be optical-scan style equipment.

Re:Listening to the experts

[amorsen]

Because recounting by hand defeats the purpose of electronic voting in the first place, negates the benefits, and should be astronomically less accurate.

Well, bye bye electronic voting then. How can you trust a number that a machine gives you? There are a million ways to hide malicious code in a computer.

Re:Listening to the experts

[MrNiceguy_KS]

Good point - I hadn't thought of that. I suppose the best way to deal with that would be to have the paper be cut off and dropped into a bin - maybe one that rotates bingo-cage style to make sure they are randomized. The machines could even be designed so that 2 or more are placed back-to-back and all feed into the same bin.

It's a shame I didn't consider the anonymity aspect. Rolls of paper would be so much easier to deal with than bins full of little scraps.

***New Idea as I'm typing***
The paper is still scrolled on 2 rolls, but after each vote, the paper is scrolled a random number of "pages" in one direction or the other. (A page defined as the amount of paper needed to hold 1 person's vote) That way, the votes are still recorded on paper, but in a random order. During the scrolling, the paper-viewing window is obscured so the person can't see the votes of others.

Re:Listening to the experts

[AK Marc]

Even if all the machine is doing is replacing the pencil, there's still at least one issue left: What's to say that the machine isn't remembering the votes with timestamps, allowing the votes to be matched with voters, thus compromising the secret ballot?

I'm curious about this "secret ballot" of which you speak. Are you talking about the current system where people are recorded when they enter in a large voter roll, then vote, and votes are placed in order received in a box? Someone that wanted to could already capture every vote of every person at every voting booth, it would just be expensive. No one does it now. If I wanted to record the vote of any one person I'm buying a vote off of, I could and have photographic proof. That's easy and not expensive. The electronic system you complain about is no more or less "aonymous" than the current system.

If vote buying happened now, I'd be concerned. It doesn't happen (there are easier ways to cheat) and it isn't any easier with electronic voting.

Re:Listening to the experts

[ivan256]

How can you trust a number a human counter gives you? Humans make mistakes, have bias, devise schemes...

People just have a harder time trusting things they don't understand.

Re:Listening to the experts

[amorsen]

I trust the number a human counter gives me because I can watch him count. Sure I can only watch in one location, but luckily I'm not the only paranoid person in the world.

With machines I can't do my part.

Re:Listening to the experts

[ivan256]

As I said. People just have a harder time trusting things they don't understand.

Now... Since you can watch somebody count without missing any funny business, I have some questions for you. I've always wanted to know how people cheat at cards... And there's this magician I saw the other day... I'd really like to know how he did this trick... And you're not glancing away at all, right?

And we haven't even gotten to the fact that manually counting tens of millions of votes by hand is massively labor intensive... And people aren't exactly lining up to volunteer. And even if they did, other people have a very large interest in who is chosen to do the counting...

Re:Listening to the experts

[Chandon Seldon]

The system is physically secured, the same way that a box full of ballots being moved around is secured. Meaning the system offers the same security as the previous paperbased system only its easier to use.

That's absolutely false.

A traditional ballot box needs to be secured from just before the first ballot is put in it until it's dumped out on the counting table - so all day on election day. Further, the security required is straightforward and any non-expert can do it. You check to make sure it's a legit ballot box, it starts empty, and no one messes with it during the day.

An electronic system requires constant security - 24/7/365 - because there's no straightforward way to check if "it's a legit electronic voting device" or "it's empty". And there is no practical way to get security on the same level as a ballot box at a polling place every single day for a pile of electronics.

Re:Listening to the experts

[Chandon Seldon]

Are you talking about the current system where people are recorded when they enter in a large voter roll, then vote, and votes are placed in order received in a box?

A voter roll where voting times are not recorded? A box which is carefully guarded by multiple volunteers until it's opened and dumped out, destroying the order? Yes. That's the system I'm talking about. The "destroy the order" step is part of the procedure -

If I wanted to record the vote of any one person I'm buying a vote off of, I could and have photographic proof. That's easy and not expensive. The electronic system you complain about is no more or less "aonymous" than the current system.

What are you going to do, rig every voting booth at their polling place with hidden cameras? That's certainly harder than rigging voting machines beforehand would be.

If vote buying happened now, I'd be concerned. It doesn't happen (there are easier ways to cheat) and it isn't any easier with electronic voting.

Vote buying and (more importantly) vote coercion has happened numerous times in the past. The secret ballot is an essential part of a democratic voting system not for when everyone is playing nice, but for those times when people are playing dirty - just like all the other security properties of such a system.

Re:Listening to the experts

[amorsen]

How many magicians does it take to change an election? How many engineers?

Besides, a magician can generally figure out how another magician did a trick. The same isn't true of engineers, unless you provide them with electron microscopes and allow them to destroy the voting machines. Even then, you could only prove that there was fraud, not what the correct result is.

If you think manually counting votes is hard, you haven't tried reverse engineering a computer chip.

Re:Listening to the experts

[AK Marc]

A voter roll where voting times are not recorded?

Anyone could sit outside and record every person as they go in and out. So they are as "unrecorded" as any electronic system.

A box which is carefully guarded by multiple volunteers until it's opened and dumped out, destroying the order?

Because no one cares who voted for whom, I've not seen the paranoid actions you describe. And even if it is done that way, it would take a conspiracy to get timestamps into and out of the computer voting of no smaller a scale than getting all the "guards" to be in on the vote ordering. Again, nothing there that can't already be done as easily or more easily with paper methods.

What are you going to do, rig every voting booth at their polling place with hidden cameras?

Well, you are going to rig every voting booth with a counter that matches a voter to a vote that can't be done currently with any voting system I've ever heard of being used in the US, yet somehow a camera is absurd?

Vote buying and (more importantly) vote coercion has happened numerous times in the past.

Bullshit. "The past" being when exactly? Name a *verified* vote buying scheme that has happened in the last 10 years that had any influence on an election.

The secret ballot is an essential part of a democratic voting system not for when everyone is playing nice, but for those times when people are playing dirty - just like all the other security properties of such a system.

The secret ballot means you can't ever know how your vote was counted. You can only know what you intended. Because of that, the secret ballot system encourages playing dirty. They can never be caught. Another 10,000 votes show up in a box? Well, we can't tell where they came from, so we count them or throw out the whole box, either way, the vote is destroyed. If you could verify them, you could make sure to only count that which should be counted. Verification would greatly lower fraud, not increase it.

Re:Listening to the experts

[Chandon Seldon]

Because no one cares who voted for whom, I've not seen the paranoid actions you describe. And even if it is done that way, it would take a conspiracy to get timestamps into and out of the computer voting of no smaller a scale than getting all the "guards" to be in on the vote ordering. Again, nothing there that can't already be done as easily or more easily with paper methods.

The "guards" are anyone who volunteers to observe the election. You can't get all of them in on a fraud attempt unless you exclude people who volunteer, which is an obvious fraud attempt itself.

With an all-paper system it is sufficient to secure the polling location, the ballot box, and the counting location on election day. With any electronic components, you would have to ensure that those components haven't been tampered with *ever*, which is impossible in practice.

Re:Listening to the experts

[AK Marc]

The "guards" are anyone who volunteers to observe the election. You can't get all of them in on a fraud attempt unless you exclude people who volunteer, which is an obvious fraud attempt itself.

So there exists no possible way to get volunteers in on a conspiracy? If that's your stance, I declare you win. In your nutjob or a world, no one is corruptable and there will always be billions of honest people out there making sure the dishonest ones keep in line. We don't have things like Enron happen where piles and piles of people were in on it, including Anderson, their outside auditors and others. They'd all have to be in on it, and that was impossible.

At least we can rest safe with you in charge that you know there was never any voter fraud in Chicago where more people voted in some precincts than lived there, and all the other multitudes of problems that have occurred with paper ballots. Can't happen. But if you have anything that plugs in the wall, then Democracy is instantly impossible.

Re:Listening to the experts

[Chandon Seldon]

Different attacks have different difficulties and different impacts.

If the best attack available is to corrupt every election volunteer at each polling place, then the system is pretty solid. In the worst case, a voter suspecting fraud can simply volunteer personally.

In contrast, if all you have to do is corrupt one or two voting machines (as is typical of DRE voting systems) then the system is useless. Other electronic systems allow for different attacks with different impacts, but those attacks all have the unacceptable properties that they can be executed before election day and they can't be detected by a non-expert observer (and usually not even by an expert observer).

As for the horror stories you mention from Chicago, that's a different class of problem. The best the voting system can do is detect fraud, once that's happened it's up to the courts and the rule of law. If the rule of law isn't working, you have bigger problems then voting fraud.

Re:Listening to the experts

[Stan Vassilev]

You can't watch a computer counting. Well you can, but then the one reason why officials are pushing voting machines -- a speedy count -- is gone.

It boils down to the question: Can you trust a computer? That you have no control over?

With a visible, inspectable paper trail, I can. It's not worse than full ballots, but saves resources.

Electronic counting can be used to assist early preliminary results, with OCR software producing the final official results from the paper trails. The motivation to cheat on the electronics side disappears when the verified paper trails need to match the electronic counts.

Another way to do this is have each party have voting servers. Open source software submits authenticated votes (using public key cryptography with certificates signed by the government). Then each party gets to do their very own electronic voting, and with multiple agents in the system, falsification becomes unfeasible if not impossible.

Plenty of ways you know, there's just too much greed and not enough will to do it.

Re:Listening to the experts

[ivan256]

Except that the makers of the computer chips shouldn't even know that the chips they're making are to be used in a voting machine, much less how they would be used in a voting machine.

With open software sufficiently abstracted from the hardware, hacking an election by compromising the chips themselves would be so difficult that it is orders of magnitude harder than what our current technology is capable of. Your electron microscope theory is just plain bogus.

Electronic voting could produce paper records that could be verified and left behind by the voter anyway. Nobody should ever have to physically count them unless there is reason to suspect a problem though.

How many magicians does it take to change an election? If the margin is a few hundred or a few thousand votes (happens all the time in congressional seats), all you would have to do is make one box full of ballots disappear. Or successfully mis-count/lose/destroy 1 in 200 ballots. How hard are you watching that counter? There's a reason why recounts of paper ballots typically don't result in the same tally twice.

Re:Listening to the experts

[amorsen]

Except that the makers of the computer chips shouldn't even know that the chips they're making are to be used in a voting machine, much less how they would be used in a voting machine.

Ok, you want generic chips. Welcome to Systems Management Mode, the perfect backdoor.

Re:Listening to the experts

[ivan256]

Like I said. It's hard for people to trust things they don't understand. It's pretty clear at this point that you have no idea what you're talking about.

Random thoughts.

[Anonymous Coward]

FTFA:

"We couldn't go back and do a manual recount now. We don't have the tools to do that."

Oh oh! This will be like 9/11 times 2000. That's right, 1,822,000!

You know that there are going to be districts that will be contested. Can you say, "ACORN" and Republicans?

Very good!

Now, can you say "Polls are horribly inaccurate"?

Awesome!

Saturday Night Live is going to have it's best year ever!

Re:Random thoughts.

[east coast]

Oh oh! This will be like 9/11 times 2000. That's right, 1,822,000!

Actually, 9/11 * 2000 = 1636.3636363636

Re:Random thoughts.

[Anonymous Coward]

Could also be:

9-11 * 2000 = -4000

Re:Random thoughts.

[onkelonkel]

um no 9-11*2000=-21991 (see arithmetic precedence)

Re:Random thoughts.

[steelfood]

That's because you didn't use an electronic voting machine to do the calculations.

Re:Random thoughts.

[RiotingPacifist]

Giuliani'd already?

Re:Random thoughts.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, 9/11 * 2000 = 0

Integers ftw

Re:Random thoughts.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, 9/11 * 2000 = 1636.3636363636

Aha! Just more evidence that 9/11 was an inside job! The plot was hatched in the year 2000. Notice that 16 is the exact number of seconds in which JFK is seen in the Zapruder film (subtracting the extra frames inserted post-production). And 36, I hardly need say, is the square of the number of men on the US Joint Chiefs of Staff. Man cannot escape numerological proof of his actions!

It's not just academics who are saying. . .

[smooth wombat]

electronic voting machines are unreliable. It is the evidence itself which shows they are unreliable and prone to losing/changing votes.

Do a search and you will find issues from the current early voting process where machines aren't recording votes correctly. Add in the documented cases from around the country where votes were simply "lost", and you don't need an academic to tell you you need a verifiable paper trail, not the assurance of a company, that votes will be recorded correctly.

It's funny how you get a paper trail to prove your purchases at the grocery/drug/clothes/whatever store, but people are fighting tooth-and-nail NOT to have a paper trail when it comes to recording votes.

The simplest solution is to use an electronic machine for people to select their choices but at the end, provide a sheet with all their votes recorded which they deposit in a box. The machine votes are recorded but you have a paper trail in case electronic votes are "lost".

Re:It's not just academics who are saying. . .

[rocketman768]

The solution may not be simple, but I believe it should start like this: When someone registers to vote, give them a usb key with pgp or gpg software on it (with a nice & easy GUI specialized for this application). They go home (or to a library) to create their secret and public keys on the usb key. They then return to their voter registration office and give the office their public key. After verifying the voter's credentials, the office signs the voter's public key. Now, any voting machine can verify this signature using the office's public key.

Here's the good part. After the voter completes a ballot, he sticks his usb key in and signs his ballot. He also encrypts his ballot using the office's public key. He saves the encrypted and signed ballot as a receipt (somewhere in the ballot should be a value that only the voting machine can generate). So, if the ballot somehow gets lost, the voting office can now decrypt and verify the ballot that got saved onto the usb key. Does it cost more? Yes. Does it require infrastructure? Yes. Is it more secure than paper or the current system? LOADS.

Re:It's not just academics who are saying. . .

[mvdwege]

Both you and parent fail, epically.

One of the primary requirements for a democratic voting process is anonymity.

Mart

Re:It's not just academics who are saying. . .

[rocketman768]

At least I tried to make a solution. Stop complaining and propose a solution.

Re:It's not just academics who are saying. . .

[Chandon Seldon]

Dear non-expert, thank you for trying to design a secure voting system. Your proposal fails one or more of the basic requirements nessisary for practical democratic voting:
[X] It assumes that every voter can operate a computer.
[ ] It assumes that every voter is a computer security expert.
[ ] It assumes that every voter is a mathematician.
[X] It doesn't preserve the secret ballot, allowing coersion and buying of votes.
[ ] It assumes that government is trustworthy.
[ ] It assumes that the volunteer poll workers are trustworthy.
[ ] It assumes that the creation of tamper-proof hardware is possible.
[ ] It ignores the massive monetary value of a stolen election.
Therefore, I suggest the following:
[ ] You should revise your proposal, it looks pretty solid.
[X] You should probably leave secure protocal design to experts.
[ ] You are clearly trying to set things up so you can commit election fraud.

Re:It's not just academics who are saying. . .

[rocketman768]

By the way, something you could use for anonymity is blind signature whereby the office would sign your key without even seeing your key.

Re:It's not just academics who are saying. . .

[Chirs]

How exactly does having the machine print a paper ballot (which goes into a separate box at the polling station) fail to provide anonymity?

Re:It's not just academics who are saying. . .

[Anonymous Coward]

The folks who have sold voting machines even MADE a solution! Stop complaining and... uh, no, they're way off base too.

Also, to avoid replying to you twice in the same depth:

By the way, something you could use for anonymity is blind signature whereby the office would sign your key without even seeing your key.

Get back to me on that when you know howthey'll do that. Given I've been condescending, but at this point, you're just being cocky and equally condescending without thinking things through.

Re:It's not just academics who are saying. . .

[mvdwege]

Yes, there is also a perfecly fine solution for the Iraq mess: the U.S. withdraws and then fires off a few H-bombs to turn the entire Mesopotamian plain into a glass parking lot.

You will agree, I hope, that this is a moronic solution. Therefore crying 'at least I proposed it', doesn't make the proposer any less of a moron.

Mart

Re:It's not just academics who are saying. . .

[mvdwege]

Because the O.P. compared it with a receipt at a retail store. Which shows sloppy thinking that doesn't consider why a paper trail in voting is different.

Mart

Re:It's not just academics who are saying. . .

[frieko]

Ughh, it's like hurding cats! All the experts said, "It's broken, and here's how you fix it". So they scrap the whole thing? I don't get it.

Re:It's not just academics who are saying. . .

[OctaviusIII]

Even this isn't a solution, though. To trigger a recount, the results have to be suitably close. If you're going to spoof the results in a relatively close area, just make sure you balance the results so that your guy wins with enough margin to not trigger a recount. All those printouts saying how the people actually voted are safely stored in a box somewhere, never to be touched again.

Re:It's not just academics who are saying. . .

[Anonymous Coward]

How does it not preserve secrecy? No one is saying the person's name will be printed on the receipt.

The anonymous paper receipts are deposited in a box. If you want a recount, you can count the receipts. Or you can accept the machine's first count.

And your form needs a revision. "You should revise your proposal, it looks pretty solid." Is a run-on sentence. It should be "You should revise your proposal. It looks pretty solid."

Re:It's not just academics who are saying. . .

[amorsen]

I like it...

Except this one:

[ ] It assumes that the volunteer poll workers are trustworthy.

You have to trust that the volunteer poll workers are reasonably trustworthy, at least as a group. (Or that the volunteers who watch the volunteers are trustworthy...) If you design correctly, they can only mess up their own counts, of course, and not everone elses.

Re:It's not just academics who are saying. . .

[amorsen]

Always recount! Why would you ever want to not recount?

Re:It's not just academics who are saying. . .

[HTH NE1]

Each voter gets two little black-box chips in which their vote is stored in a quantum bit, entangled between the chips. The voter keeps one chip and turns over the other. When the vote is tallied and the bit read, this trips a state in both chips indicating that this vote was accessed. If the voter wishes he can have his vote verified in a private booth where his copy revealed to him and a panel consisting of representatives of the candidates' interests and a neutral party for contesting the record. The voter knows how he voted and can verify if his chip and thus his counted vote was correct.

The voter knows how he voted. If his chip doesn't match how he knows he voted, the count is corrected. The verification step is in isolation to prevent sale of the vote. Premature access of the chip in the voter's possession invalidates the other chip. If the chip was not accessed at all, the vote wasn't counted and the voter's chip can correct the omitted vote.

The chips of course are certified tamper-proof and forgery-proof.

Best if the "tally" is a system governed by wholly natural forces where the quantum states combine to form a superstate revealing the count.

Can entangled quantum bits do this?

Re:It's not just academics who are saying. . .

[he-sk]

How is that for a solution: Paper-and-pencil ballots with a full manual count.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Re:It's not just academics who are saying. . .

[Chandon Seldon]

Yea, I guess that one isn't entirely clear. What I meant is that each individual participant in the system is a potential attacker, so the system really wants to have the properties that:
- If all but one poll worker at a location attempt an attack, the attack is caught by the one trustworthy one.
- if all poll workers at a location are untrustworthy, they can effect, at most, that one location.

Re:It's not just academics who are saying. . .

[bill_beeman]

But a lot of the academics are affiliated with one political persuasion.

And paper ballots are also unreliable. Stuffing the ballot box and failing to count votes from areas with the 'wrong' kind of voters has been developed to a fine art.

Look at the chronic fraud in Chicago and St. Louis. Look at the ballot boxes found floating in San Francisco Bay after the 2004 election...the ballots never found. We don't have a perfect system, but those who profit from the well known ways to game paper ballots are pushing for the status quo.

My county has used the AVC Edge system, with recording printers for several years. They have run a full audit, comparing the machine totals with the votes recorded by the printers and verified by the voters, with 100% match.

And the paper systems depend on scanner/computer systems to totalize the vote. Get to that and you control the election.

Bottom line: No perfect election, as we're dependent on people. But a lot less real-world opportunity for fraud with a correctly implemented e-vote system.

Re:It's not just academics who are saying. . .

[Phroggy]

The simplest solution is to use an electronic machine for people to select their choices but at the end, provide a sheet with all their votes recorded which they deposit in a box. The machine votes are recorded but you have a paper trail in case electronic votes are "lost".

One slight modification of your idea: the electronic machine people use to select their choices, which prints their selections on a sheet of paper, does not count the votes. The sheet of paper is the actual ballot, and it gets counted by an optical scan machine AFTER the voter has looked at it and dropped it into a box. The optical scanner could be inside the box where ballots are stored in each polling place, or the box full of ballots could be taken to election headquarters and fed into a scanner there; either way, the paper ballot is what gets counted (and recounted if necessary).

E-Voting has its advantages

[davidwr]

The biggest problem with "e-Voting" is they tried to make it "all E."

Computer-assisted voting for the blind and physically disabled is a must.

A computer that takes the voter's choice and spits out a computer-AND human-readable ballot, plus a separate machine for blind people to use to read back their ballot to them, plus a separate machine to count the votes, would meet the requirements of allowing the blind and disabled to vote as much as the current high-tech systems do while providing the paper trail the old systems do.

As a bonus, non-disabled voters and voters comfortable with human assistance do not require the use of any technology at the time they cast their votes. If the power goes out, the polls can remain open. This means polling stations can scale to more voting booths very cheaply.

Re:E-Voting has its advantages

[TWX]

There are potential problems in computer-assisted voting systems too, especially touch screen systems, when the input sensors aren't calibrated right. We've already seen a lot of that with current touch screen systems where the vote tallies as being for the wrong candidate, and probably out of calibration errors.

We use optical scan ballots here, and other than there being some news stories of IDIOTS who can't friggin' connect two lines with a pen, they seem to be working well.

I could see how computer-assisted voting might work, if you start with ready-to-use, human-readable ballot scan sheets and have the terminal print the information on the sheet in the same manner that a human would fill out the form, such that the human who votes can take his ballot and review it. If you can't do that, though, a simple pen and paper system with optical scan makes a lot more sense.

I partly don't understand how Diebold could fail so badly at making voting machines unless they're actively trying to fail this badly, based on the performanace of their ATMs...

Re:E-Voting has its advantages

[Chandon Seldon]

while providing the paper trail the old systems do.

Whoever started this "paper trail" meme was well intentioned, but foolish. A paper trail that is never consulted is exactly the same as no paper trail. Even statistical sampling - an excellent solution theoretically - turns out to not work in practice, as demonstrated by the Ohio 2004 recount debacle.

Re:E-Voting has its advantages

[Anonymous Coward]

That sounds a lot like what New York state is using.

Re:E-Voting has its advantages

[RiotingPacifist]

There are potential problems in computer-assisted voting systems too, especially touch screen systems, when the input sensors aren't calibrated right. We've already seen a lot of that with current touch screen systems where the vote tallies as being for the wrong candidate, and probably out of calibration errors.

That's why they look at the print out and ask for the system to be recalibrated.

I partly don't understand how Diebold could fail so badly at making voting machines unless they're actively trying to fail this badly, based on the performance of their ATMs...

I do find it puzelling as you could pretty much use an ATM that prints out your choice and sends off the vote to a central 'bank' of votes, and it would work much better than hier current system.

Re:E-Voting has its advantages

[amorsen]

computer-AND human-readable ballot

Make sure the stuff that the computer reads is the same stuff the human reads. No bar codes.

Re:E-Voting has its advantages

[amorsen]

Just recount everything, all the time. A paper trail by itself is only necessary for a secure election, not sufficient.

I'm not convinced

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm still not convinced that electronic voting is a bad thing. I certainly agree that the current implementations are very poor but I think we should work on them rather than writing off electronic voting completely.

Elections should be based on the popular vote, not the outdated electoral college system and electronic voting is really the only way to make it happen.

The technology for making such a system already exits. I think the best approach would be an open source approach where the design of the entire voting system is available to any and everyone. Everyone from security experts to laymen could understand how the system works and help to improve it.

Re:I'm not convinced

[esocid]

I agree. I don't think they are unreliable in general, just that the way they've been implemented so far. I even requested an absentee ballot this year so I can not only avoid the lines, but so I can have a hard copy to "prove" how I voted rather than trusting proprietary electronic voting machines which have been proven flawed.

Re:I'm not convinced

[Zordak]

Elections should be based on the popular vote, not the outdated electoral college system and electronic voting is really the only way to make it happen.

Why? You say this as though it's a given in no need of support or reasoning.

Re:I'm not convinced

[Anonymous Coward]

"Elections should be based on the popular vote, not the outdated electoral college system and electronic voting is really the only way to make it happen."

WTH? First of all, there is nothing technical stopping that shift right now. We already know the popular vote count; it's how the college electors know how they are expected to vote, and it's how you are able to know that electoral votes sometimes come apart from popular votes. Going electronic brings no new capabilities to the table.

As for getting rid of the electoral system, that is a terrible idea. First because it is what balances the sovereign power of the 50 states as independent governments in their own right with the sovereign powers of the individuals within the states. The states, as states, get a say in who will lead and represent them in the person of the President. Individuals are not the only entity with weight at the Federal level. This is what gives states like Rhode Island 3 electoral votes instead of just 1, and what keeps states like California and New York from wielding even more power than they already do.

Of course, you could do that with simple math as well, you don't need to do it with people (electors) that must be counted on to vote a certain way. But currently they are the only thing serving out that numerical function.

Second, the electoral system protects against massive and rapid shifts in the status quo. The electors are selected by a less-than-entirely-democratic system, which means they are agents of status-quo protection. This was an intentional design, to temper the tendency of the people to be easily swayed by charismatic leaders or trying circumstances (think Hitler in an economically-depressed Germany). This is one of the checks and balances in the system. In this case, it is an intentional check on pure democracy. Our founder wanted nothing to do with a pure democracy, and I don't either. The majority should not rule; reason and equality should rule. We are not a democracy in form, we are a constitutional republic. The Constitution is what rules, and there are many egalitarian obstacles intentionally placed in the path of any who would alter it.

Re:I'm not convinced

[amRadioHed]

Why is electronic voting required for using the popular vote? It seems to me just about every election in the world other than the US Presidential election would say otherwise.

Re:I'm not convinced

[YrWrstNtmr]

Elections should be based on the popular vote, not the outdated electoral college system and electronic voting is really the only way to make it happen.

Generally, the same candidate appeals to the metro areas of NYC/Chicago/LA. That's who we would have, the rest of the country be damned.
Always.

Re:I'm not convinced

[Chandon Seldon]

Everyone from security experts to laymen could understand how the system works and help to improve it.

Every programmer at least. Normally, I would think that was fine, but in the case of a democratic voting system *every* voter needs to be able to understand the system.

Elections should be based on the popular vote, not the outdated electoral college system and electronic voting is really the only way to make it happen.

Completely unrelated issue. The current tallying system produces vote totals a the state level. The "popular vote" could be calculated using an advanced mathematical technique called "adding". Some organizations, like TV news stations, already do this.

The problem with electronic voting systems isn't with casting votes, and the legitimate complaints against paper systems aren't with summing totals above the county level. The relevent argument here is about vote submission and tallying - which electronic systems do quickly, but not in a manner that can be trusted to produce valid results.

Open source vs. proprietary code isn't relevant here either. The problem is with observability of vote collection and counting procedures - and "we still can't watch it, but we're hoping that every single machine is running some code that is known to be good" isn't good enough.

Re:I'm not convinced

[Misch]

Elections should be based on the popular vote, not the outdated electoral college system and electronic voting is really the only way to make it happen

I disagree. In a national popular election, a recount would involve every precinct in every place in America. Some backwater polling station in Podunk, Nowhere could potentially tamper with the results of the vote on a national level. I don't think the electoral college is outdated. It effectively compartmentalizes the voting off state by state.

If there is that big a question about the results in a state, any house member is free to raise an objection to the counting of the Electoral College votes.

Re:I'm not convinced

[Artifakt]

A third thing the electoral college does is it supports the use of early voting. It serves as a safety net. In the (unlikely) event that something changes significantly within the last few weeks leading up to an election, the electors can generally change their votes. If you vote early, and your candidate gets caught, three days before the election, "with a live boy or a dead girl"*, the college could very well end up doing what you would really want them to, based on the news. 21 states don't have specific laws against what are sometimes called faithless electors, and most of the others have only small penalties, or allow it in specific circumstances. There have been, from the 2004 election back to the founding, only 156 electors who have cast their votes differently than they promised. 71 of these did so because the candidate they were pledged to died before the electoral college met, which actually makes sense.

*that's a common shorthand phrase for anything scandalous or criminal enough that most voters would wish they had voted for just about anyone else. It doesn't mean people who feel that way are right to equate the two, just that the candidate would have to do something the public at large was really opposed to, not something they would let slide.

Re:I'm not convinced

[rickb928]

When we cease to be the 'United STATES of America', and become something like 'America', then the Electoral college is no longer required.

But we are the United STATES of America, and Article 10 of the Constitution is very much diminished and overlooked. States elect presidents, and if we went to a more federal form of government, it would change our nation in ways I'm not in favor of.

And the traditional explanations for the Electoral College, such as solving the problems of accurate results 'back then', or amplifying the results of the popular vote, my high school American history teacher pretty much debunked. He kept flogging Article 10 at us. And I still accept states as useful.

Having states as useful political entities is valuable in ways most people don't consider. The Electoral College was, and is, not a dumb idea. It's just inconvenient to some people.

Re:I'm not convinced

[Anonymous Coward]

Generally, the same candidate appeals to the metro areas of NYC/Chicago/LA. That's who we would have, the rest of the country be damned. Always.

We've tried electing the Redneck President over and over for the last few decades. Didn't work. Let's try electing the Brooklyn President for a while. At least he or she will be able to pronounce "nuclear."

Re:I'm not convinced

[MisterTeabag]

You mean, a candidate that appeals to people, and not swing states? Sign me up.

Re:I'm not convinced

[mathmathrevolution]

the greater NYC/Chicago/LA metro areas do not constitute the majority of the US population.

Re:I'm not convinced

[Anonymous Coward]

Only if you think the r is silent.

Re:I'm not convinced

[YrWrstNtmr]

No, but it is enough of a block that would seriously sway things in one direction. If the rest of the country were 50-50, even 55-45...that block would rule.
40 million people, mostly going the same way, is a hell of a persuader.

Re:I'm not convinced

[mathmathrevolution]

What's your point? You could have a city with only 5 people that vote the same way and if the rest of the country was 50-50 then it would rule. Not very convincing.

I think the real problem you have is that the current system disenfranchises people in heavily populated states and you happen to reallly like it that way.

Traditionally, cities are places with diverse political opinions -- much more diverse than small towns. The reason that one party, the Democratic party, gets so much support from urban areas is the other party, the Republican party, routinely trashes city-dwellers as out-of-touch, decadent, godless elitists. It's the same reason Republicans don't have support from gays, blacks, single women, muslims, atheists, Latinos, and people with advanced degrees. If the Republicans would just stop waging a culture war against urban Americans and started appealing to urban Americans with policies that work better than the Democratic policies, then urban-dwellers would vote Republican. Look at Mayor Bloomberg: He's not a Democrat but he's exceptionally popular in New York simply because he fixes problems, he runs a clean ship, and he doesn't spit on the electorate.

The Republicans need to stop using people as punching bags to rile up the base and start listening to their problems. But the only thing Republicans know how to do anymore is cut taxes, fearmonger, and appeal to bigotry.

I think it would be a huge boon for our democracy if the Republican party actually had to appeal to an honest majority of Americans for its political survival.

Just add printers!

[b0bby]

I've used the machines in MD, and I like them. They're pretty clear and easy to use. What I really don't like, however, is the lack of a paper backup. It's such a simple thing, just add a printout which can be easily read and, if needed, optically scanned. That way you can verify the vote totals if there are any questions, and you get the advantages of the machines. I'd much rather they spent the money to add the printers, if possible, than scrap the whole system. If printers can't be added, then ok, get rid of them because there's too much uncertainty over results.

Re:Just add printers!

[Crazy Man on Fire]

It really isn't as simple as "just add printers" unfortunately. Any time that the voting and vote tabulating is done by the same machine, there is a higher risk of a problem.

To have secure and reliable electronic voting, you have to do think separation of concerns. At a high levels, there's two important use cases activities from the perspective of the voter (we'll ignore the administrative activities of creating the ballots for now):

1) Casting a vote
2) Counting votes

Therefore, there should be two machines. One machine allows the voter to cast their vote and marks it on an optical scan ballot. The second machine reads the ballot and tabulates the votes. The voter manually takes the completed ballot from the voting machine, verifies that the selections have been recorded correctly, and deposits the ballot in the counting machine.

This works just like many of us are used to. In fact, it would allow for the use of the same optical scan ballots in use today. Only people with special needs have to use the electronic voting machines. Voters with the ability to vote without assistance would have the option of manually marking their optical scan ballots with a pen or pencil.

Not only does this save money (less electronic voting machines required, most ballots are counted by optical scan machines today and these machines could be reused in the new system), but it also gives you all the security that we enjoy today. We have a paper trail, each ballot cast on an electronic voting machine is verified by the voter, the counting is done on a simple tabulating machine, and recounts are possible.

Re:Just add printers!

[wfstanle]

There also is another advantage... The voters do not get the opportunity to mess with the vote counting machine. You could also enforce valid input i.e. valid ballots only.

Re:Just add printers!

[Chandon Seldon]

That way you can verify the vote totals if there are any questions, and you get the advantages of the machines.

There will always be questions, and the votes will rarely be recounted. See the Ohio 2004 recount for an example. If the paper ballots are "better" than an electronic count, they should always be used so there can be no argument about when to use them.

Re:Just add printers!

[gclef]

Actually, I'm signed up to be an election judge in MD this cycle (I'm still a standby), and there's an interesting twist here:

The Maryland machines (Diebold) already have printers.

The printers are used to print out vote totals before polling place opens (they should all be zero) and after polling closes (the number of voters pointed to that machine should match the number of votes it has).

I suspect part of why Diebold/Premier Election Systems didn't want to add user-accessible printers was the complication of guaranteeing that voter's paper record went to one printer while the vote totals went to the other one. For the extra degree of difficulty, add in that they'd be trying to do that with the pared-down version of Windows that the voting machines run.

Re:Just add printers!

[slashtivus]

Ohio did not have much of a recount since they were using Diebold machines in many districts. When asked for a recount it was more or less a matter of seeing counties pull out empty pockets and saying "it is what it is".

The way you phrased your post it is difficult to determine if you are for or against paper. You are using an example of why paper ballots are good to argue against them the way I read it. Hybrid systems are great since you get 2 methods of verification instead of one.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Illinois, too (at least Sangamon County)

[mcgrew]

From Springfield's local paper:

Sangamon County officials purchased touch-screen voting machines from an Illinois company called Populex and used them starting in 2006. After this year's primary election, however, the State Board of Elections disallowed those machines because they hadn't been tested as the federal government requires.

As a result, Sangamon County this election is using equipment leased from Election Systems & Software Inc. of Omaha, Neb.

Under the new system, voters are given paper ballots and fill in ovals next to their choices using pens provided by election officials.

Each voting location will also include a machine, called an AutoMARK, which can be used by people who have disabilities. AutoMARK, for instance, can magnify the ballot, offers Braille markings and provides headphones, if necessary.

[WTF??? I put a "snit" in brackets here and it isn't showing]

Most polling places will have a single optical-scan machine, though Kern said some multiple-precinct polling places will have two. An election judge will be nearby to help, but not so close as to affect the privacy of the ballot, she said.

The county is renting the ES&S machinery on a yearlong contract that began Aug. 14 and extends through the 2009 spring elections. The cost is $423,000, Aiello said, though he expects the county to recoup $85,000 in federal grant money to pay for the machines to help voters with accessibility challenges. The Populex machinery cost $2.7 million, Aiello said.

State's Attorney John Schmidt said the financial health of Populex is being monitored, but it appears "they have no money," so it wouldn't do any good to sue Populex now. The county has several years to take legal action to get money from the company if it appears Populex ever regains the ability to pay, he said.

Thank God

[skintigh2]

Finally some rationality is returning to the electoral system. Maybe someday we can move to a fairer system of voting, like approval voting or rank voting. One can dream...

It wasn't us! Do your job properly.

[sweatyboatman]

Voters don't care how they vote, as long as it's easy and they can have confidence that their vote will be counted.

Considering that these states implemented relatively untested systems in a slap-dash manner that showed no regard for the integrity of the vote, I don't think it's fair to blame this on "academics and computer scientists".

Done properly (as in, with a physical record), electronic voting is a good alternative to our increasingly antiquated voting systems. However, the combination of unscrupulous businessmen and ethically/intellectually-challenged election officials led these states to spend oodles of money on sub-standard products.

The predictable (and predicted) end result was a process built more around satisfying the vendors desire to push units than satisfying the public's need for a reliable vote. Then the manure hit the wind-blowing machine and vote tallies came out screwy. People started to notice this particular gov't boondoggle and what we're seeing is elected officials starting to sweat.

Unfortunately it appears the lesson they took from this was that e-voting is bad bad bad (look away and never mention it again) and they're going Luddite.

Maybe in 10 years they'll get the nerve to try again, this time with an open, verifiable system that we can trust. Or, more likely. some other snake-oil salesman will take the opportunity to bilk the public trust for more millions of dollars.

too little, too late

[Anonymous Coward]

actual news would be that they're going back to paper ballots for TUESDAY.

MD politics is dominated by the Democrats

[PeeAitchPee]

The same Democrat-controlled state legislature originally blocked our previous (Republican) governor's efforts to get rid of these machines. Now that we have a Democrat governor, they're getting rid of the machines so as to take credit for it. They're doing the same thing with slot machines -- the previous governor tried to get slot machines legalized, and the state legislature blocked him. Now, slots are up for referendum with the support of our current (Democrat) governor and the Legislature who had previously opposed them.

Not that it makes a damn bit of difference (we're fucked anyway), but I just wanted folks to know all the facts before they start rambling about the evils of the Republican party here in MD. Maryland is about as solidly Democrat as you can get -- the huge black majorities in Baltimore City and Prince Georges County have ensured that for decades.

Re:MD politics is dominated by the Democrats

[b0bby]

Maryland is about as solidly Democrat as you can get -- the huge black majorities in Baltimore City and Prince Georges County have ensured that for decades.

Umm, what? Maryland is 30% African-American. I always understood that the reason we're solidly democratic is because of the highly educated population. For example, Montgomery County has almost 30% of residents over 25 with an advanced degree, 15% African American (since you seem hung up on that), solidly democratic. I'm an independent, btw.

Re:MD politics is dominated by the Democrats

[PeeAitchPee]

Umm, what? Maryland is 30% African-American. I always understood that the reason we're solidly democratic is because of the highly educated population.

Your arrogance is shocking. Not everyone with an advanced degree thinks like the liberal-minded folks in MC. Some of us favor less government instead of the incessant spending which has been the trademark of a legislature that has brought us BGE deregulation from their Enron buddies and a sham of a "structural deficit" used to justify unnecessary tax hikes.

For example, Montgomery County has almost 30% of residents over 25 with an advanced degree, 15% African American (since you seem hung up on that), solidly democratic. I'm an independent, btw.

You do realize that the 30% black population is two and a half times the national average, don't you? That makes a huge difference (since I'm so hung up on that), and is clearly reflected in how people vote.

Re:MD politics is dominated by the Democrats

[BZ]

This is the slot machines that they're going to put at tracks and such, so as to try to target people who already have gambling problems?

Re:MD politics is dominated by the Democrats

[b0bby]

I also am in favor of less government, which is why I'm an independent. I pointed out that you seem hung up on the black population since you also mentioned it in a post back on October 8th; I think that a cosmopolitan, educated electorate is a better explanation. I also don't like the coded race baiting that I've seen during this election cycle, so maybe I overreacted. Reasonable people can disagree on such things.

test msg

[Anonymous Coward]

this is an off topic test message
mod down if you like, i won't be offended

Yes it is

[Joce640k]

The only reason they're doing it is because people don't have attention spans long enough to wait 'til morning to know the result.

Paper more reliable than Electronic? Malarkey!

[FireStormZ]

Look at FLA in 2,000 *no* system is without serious problems electronic voting can and should be done but with the following requirements:

1) No network!
2) Two receipts are printed one for the voter and one into a lock box a voter can always challenge their vote if they think things got messed up.

http://www.transparentvoting.org/

[Anonymous Coward]

There are petition drives in place to do this in other states as well. Transparent Voting is a nascent group that wants to require paper ballots in Missouri as well.

Pencil and paper here in Colorado.

[HiVizDiver]

They have the option to vote with machines, but the vast majority of balloting is old-school paper ballots (the "connect the head and tail of the arrow with a line" method).

Curses

[Anonymous Coward]

Being a MD resident myself this is just frustrating. Wasting $65 Million on electronic machines that don't have any paper trail is absurd! Projects that fail this bad is what puts people in such debt!

Mathematical Guarantees Of Correctness fo E-Vote

[mathmathrevolution]

One day we will have mathematical assurances that our votes are being counted properly by electronic voting machines. Cryptographers have been working on mathematically proven cryptographically safe voting schemes for years. (See also Bruce Schneier's Applied Cryptography.) Secure algorithms already exist, although they are not yet fully practical.

I repeat myself for emphasis: there are methods to produce a secret, secure, election that is verifiably correct to an arbitrary degree of certainty. If you don't understand how, do everyone a favor and follow the links and read the material.

We need to consider voting a cryptographic problem and a research area of critical interest. A CERN-like multi-national government funding agency should work to develop a practical, economical, open-source technological solution with mathematically proven security. Once it is developed we can distribute it globally for free.

Electronic Voting can be much better than paper ballots. We just need to stop being stupid about it.

Computer Scientists have Failed?

[Anonymous Coward]

"The academics and computer scientists who said they were unreliable "have won that battle.""
    To me Computer Scientists have lost the battle to come up with a reliable way for people to cast their votes. Imagine a democratic society where for every important matter people can be asked to vote electronically. But it appears that democratic society is too far from Electronic Voting.

         

Re:Computer Scientists have Failed?

[mevets]

Imagine a democratic society where for every important matter people can be asked to vote electronically..

Dystopia springs to mind. A quagmire of indecision, scored with a barrage of special interests vying for your vote on the issue of the day. Eventually only the people with nothing better to do will end up making the decisions, perhaps during commercial breaks on daytime television.

Why I like the Electoral College

[JSBiff]

The Electoral College system has been losing popularity in recent years (notably among Democrats, for some odd reason *grin*), but I actually think it's a good thing, and here's why: No election is ever going to be perfect. In order to declare a winner with certainty, you need a very certain tally of the votes. I think we should be able to get the counted results for an election to be *very* reliable, in terms of errors, but I don't think you can ever achieve *perfection*.

      When you have extremely close elections, like in the 2000 USA election between Bush and Gore, (witness how much havoc was wreaked by "Hanging Chads" and other problems), it's almost impossible to get a nationwide total that people will agree is valid, particularly if the difference between the candidates is less than 1/10 of 1 percent. You get trapped in 'recount' limbo, and 'rules lawyer' hell (where advocates for either side try to argue why certain ballots should be counted one way or another, trying to guess the intent of a vote with a hanging chad, or trying to figure out if some votes were made by people illegally voting multiple times with the names and addresses of dead people, or the same person voting multiple times under different addresses in different precincts.

      The electoral college system helps 'smooth out' our inability to get *perfect exact totals*, by making the election be a district-by-district contest, where it's usually easier to decide which candidate got more votes in an individual district or state, than it is to determine the exact national total of votes. It's sort of like analog vs. digital recording of data: theoretically, analogue would be an exact represention, perfect, but we find in reality that analog recordings suffer from imperfections which distort them; digital, on the other hand, while never a truly exact/perfect representation of the data, gives us a way to record the data in such a way that we can compensate for later distortions which are introduced during transmission or duplication, and usually get much closer to perfection than analog allows.

      (I would like to note that, technically, right now, the 'districts' are entire states; I do think we should break it down into smaller districts, like congressional districts or something - I don't like winner-takes-all delegate allocations at the state level, because that's too 'low resolution').

      With the electoral college, if there is a problem with voting in one state or district, you can at least narrow down the 'fight' over recounts, etc, to the state or district where there is a problem or extremely close contest and don't have to worry about any other states/districts. If we went to a popular national vote, if you have a close election, recounts and rules lawyering will have to go on in every single district in the nation. That sounds ugly, and expensive to me, and more susceptible to fraud/manipulation, because the nations attention will be spread out over every state/district, instead of just worrying if the votes in say, Florida, or Ohio, or New Mexico, are accurate, and if there was fraud in those individual areas. It allows us to focus on specific places, instead of *everywhere*.

Re:Why I like the Electoral College

[Anonymous Coward]

Very insightful. I wish I had mod points.

Re:Why I like the Electoral College

[spitzak]

Unfortunately your analysis is completely backwards.

In the last two presidential elections the popular vote was clearly in favor of one candidate (Gore in the first one and Bush in the second one). A popular vote would have to be far closer than either of these to be contested. The electoral collage was why a small area with a close tie was amplified so that it made a difference.

Your idea of having a district per vote would help. An easier idea would be to have the electoral votes for each state divided fractionally by the vote in the state (this would preserve the greater weight for a voter in a small state). Unfortunatly the constitution says a state can decide how to assign their electoral votes and almost all of them say "they all go to the winning candidate" because this gives them more power in getting influence from the elected politicians.

Re:Why I like the Electoral College

[NeutronCowboy]

With the electoral college, if there is a problem with voting in one state or district, you can at least narrow down the 'fight' over recounts, etc, to the state or district where there is a problem or extremely close contest and don't have to worry about any other states/districts. If we went to a popular national vote, if you have a close election, recounts and rules lawyering will have to go on in every single district in the nation.

I don't know if I agree. The symptom of narrow fights simply indicates that some votes count more than others under the electoral college system. I have a fundamental problem with that, and would take the drawback of more spread-out lawyer fights. After all, the electoral college is unique to the US, yet other democracies manage elections just fine (actually better than the US, if I dare say so). This tells me that the problem isn't the system, but something specific to the US. I'd point to the problem of changing voting system at every election, but that's just me.

Re:Why I like the Electoral College

[ScrewMaster]

(witness how much havoc was wreaked by "Hanging Chads" and other problems)

Yeah, I'm pretty sure I've seen that guy hanging out here on Slashdot. I think he's hiding somewhere in this thread.

Re:Why I like the Electoral College

[Anonymous Coward]

As I understand it, many states are pushing legislation to allocate their electoral votes based on popular vote. That way a constitutional amendment isn't required and you are still left with the best of both worlds.

Re:Why I like the Electoral College

[skrolle2]

But having a popular vote doesn't mean you would have to have a national recount, simply changing the presidential election so that each state casts their electoral votes proportionally to the votes cast by their voters would be enough.

There are a lot of slightly different systems for assigning mandates to multiple winners, most European countries have systems like this for their parliamentary elections, I'm sure you could learn a thing or two there. :-)

The benefits of removing the winner takes all system is that suddenly every state would count, and some votes would be more likely to affect the outcome than today. If you are a republican in California, you're screwed. Your vote "counts", but since the majority of the state always votes democrat, your vote won't affect the outcome. Same if you are a democrat in Texas, and if you vote for a candidate other than a republican or a democrat, you're vote will never affect the outcome, since no "alternative" candidate ever has a chance of winning an entire state.

However, if the electoral votes are assigned proportionally, it would be possible for an alternative candidate to secure maybe one or two votes, which would show the people in other states that there actually is an alternative to the duopoly that you have.

As for recounts, you would still have the electoral votes assigned by state, and you could subdivide some big states into smaller voting districts if you wanted to, so if someone disputes the result, they would still have to dispute it per state or per district, which is no change compared to the current system. You would only get nationwide recounts if you made one big voting district of the entire nation, but there's no reason to do that.

Re:Why I like the Electoral College

[fgouget]

Having two rounds would help avoid that duopoly too. In the first round you vote for the candidate you really support, and in the second one you vote for the lesser of two evils. Switching to approval voting would be even better (but seems even more unlikely to ever happen).

Re:Why I like the Electoral College

[Anonymous Coward]

How does the electoral college help us when the SCOTUS determines who the Pres. is?

Say what???

[HangingChad]

...to me it's interesting to note that all your examples are idiocy in America.

There are other countries in the world? When did that happen?

Next you're going to be telling me they all don't speak English as a native language. Everyone can understand English if you say it loud enough.

Re:Say what???

[snspdaarf]

JUST TYPE IT ALL IN CAPS!

Re:Say what???

[JCSoRocks]

Sometimes it helps if you slow down as well. I. DON'T. UNDERSTAND. YOU. Is always easier for a foreign person to understand.

Re:Say what???

[Anonymous Coward]

> I. DON'T. UNDERSTAND. YOU. Is always easier for a foreign person to understand.

I! AM! AMERICAN! is even better, because it's shorter and it also tells the foreigner you don't understand.

An alternative

[moteyalpha]

I suggested to a friend that when a ballot was filed that the voter get a receipt with a UID , a Unique Identification number that could be used to check against the tallied votes which would be published with the UID and no personal information to determine if their vote was assigned properly. I don't trust the electronic or paper ballots, because the process is unnecessarily obscure with the stated attempt to protect the voter. Clearly there is corruption and if there is a CREEP, then there will be a way. I don't know how the systems are implemented, but I have never been given a way to verify that my votes were applied in the way I intended.

Re:An alternative

[dwheeler]

You don't get receipts, because that would invite fraud.

"Hi! If you vote for me, I'll pay you $20. If you pose as several other people, I'll pay $20 each. Just hand over your receipts when you're done, and once I've confirmed that you voted 'correctly', you get your $20".

This is one of the reasons why voting systems are harder to build than ATMs. With ATMs, you record who does what with a camera, and keep a strict log of every transaction. If there's funny business, you have a chance of convicting the user. In a voting system, you MUST NOT record who made which vote, and you MUST NOT give the voter any way to prove who they voted for. Voting systems are trickier than they appear, because they have really unusual security requirements... and because power is at stake, so people really DO attack security weak points.

Re:An alternative

[NeutronCowboy]

You know how to deal with that "problem"? Print-out occurs behind a glass plate. Voter can confirm vote on print-out, and push a button that says "Confirm". No take-home, no problem.

The problem is not with the recording. The problem is what a voter is allowed to take home. Which, as you said, should be nothing.

Re:An alternative

[moteyalpha]

It seems that fraud is invited the other way also. I would say that alcohol is banned to avoid people buying votes with alcohol, but is meth or heroine banned as inducements? I will read you book on secure Linux as that seems very interesting. As I say, IANAE ( I am not an expert ). You are probably right, but I personally trust the people who have an economic stake in the election less than I do the people who vote. Voter fraud seems to happen in many odd ways that are not addressed by secure ballots. Manipulation is inherent in politics at so many levels. I suppose it serves as an approximation of reasonable, much like the moderation system at /.

Re:An alternative

[Wannabe Code Monkey]

You know how to deal with that "problem"? Print-out occurs behind a glass plate. Voter can confirm vote on print-out, and push a button that says "Confirm". No take-home, no problem.

It's even simpler than this. You don't need a glass plate separating the voter from the printed out ballot. The machine spits out the ballot with the user's choices and the voter brings it over to a ballot box or scantron or something where they deposit it and leave. There's still no way for vote buying to occur because if the voter brings their ballot to the big boss, then it means they *didn't* vote. The counting system should be completely separate from the interactive voting machine. Ideally they should be made by different manufacturers, or should just be completely different kinds of systems ie. electronic voting machine for voter to use to make selections, it prints out a ballot and the ballots are hand counted.

Re:An alternative

[Anonymous Coward]

It's even simpler than this. You don't need a glass plate separating the voter from the printed out ballot. The machine spits out the ballot with the user's choices and the voter brings it over to a ballot box or scantron or something where they deposit it and leave.

There's an even simpler way. You could print out the ballot beforehand without marking the selections, then feed completed ballots into an electronic scanner. This method guarantees that the printed ballot matches what the voter selected because the voter made selections directly on the ballot and not through some expensive gizmo. It also has the added benefit of keeping the total number of ballots constant, which is a nice quick check for lazy forms of fraud. But nobody would get rich squeezing money out of taxpayers with this kind of system, so it will never catch on...

Re:An alternative

[Anonymous Coward]

If someone decided to sell his/her vote it is his/her choice. I see no problem with that.

What bothers me is:
1) was my vote counted properly
2) has not someone else voted for me or someone else if i/he chosen not to vote
3) has not someone voted more than once

Elections are about trust and the only persons i trust are:
me
the person i vote for or
his representative he trusts

Re:I'm am convinced

[natoochtoniket]

There certainly is no technical reason why computer voting machines cannot be made reliable and robust.

But, there are several compelling social, political, legal, and technical reasons why such machines are a profoundly bad idea.

Computer hardware and software is created by people. The people who create the technology can, either unintentionally or intentionally, introduce "bugs" into the implementation. Those bugs can be undetectable by any possible amount of examination, verification, or testing. Those "bugs" can change the election results.

Second, some people have huge incentives to change the election results. A programmer who is in a position to introduce a "bug" into the software might be tempted by a bribe of several million (or billion) dollars. What some people call a "bug", other people call a "feature". The ability to make the machinery report the desired election results instead of the real election results would be quite a "feature" indeed. In fact, there is ample evidence that exactly that has happened, in several different models and brands of voting machinery.

Third, in order to convince ordinary people that their votes have been counted correctly, you have to prove to their satisfaction that the votes are counted correctly. Proof of correctness of any computer software is basically impossible. There are two basic problems: First, the number of logic combinations is too astronomical to actually verify all of them; Second, even if a proof could be written, ordinary people cannot understand it.

Finally, it is not enough for the machines to be merely reliable and robust. To be used for voting, where many trillions of dollars are at stake and could be decided by as little as one vote, they must be absolutely correct, absolutely reliable, and absolutely secure. Any one of those is an impossible requirement. Attempting to meet all three is just ludicrous.

Re:It wasn't us! Do your job properly.

[fiannaFailMan]

My solution:

Voter places X on a piece of paper in a box beside the candidate's name.

Voter places paper in a steel box.

Box is taken to a location where it's counted along with all the other votes in that area by hand, under the watchful eye of party representatives and other observers.

TV channels are told to wait until the morning and be patient because making sure the right man is elected is a bit more important than the ratings of their election TV show or the impatience of the audience. This campaign has been going for a year, I for one would be willing to wait a day longer.

It works all over the world and there's never a word about doubts about whether or not the vote was counted correctly.

Hell, the hand counting in Ireland goes on for several days thanks to the Single Transferable Voting system, and goodness knows how long to decide which parties are going to get together and form a government.

I agree that it's a shame we have to go 'luddite' and go back to something as primitive as pencil and paper, but at the end of the day it's the best way to ensure that democracy's integrity is upheld. As long as there a voter's intention is translated into something as delicate as a magnetic charge on a disk, there's potential for abuse.

I dont get this

[moniker127]

why does voting have to be so complex? Just make a basic electric logic system with buttons for obama, mccain, and various state/country props. It should not be normal computers, it should not be paper, because either are easily corrupted.
I'm not saying the system would be foolproof, but I am saying that simplicity is stability.

Re:I dont get this

[NoisySplatter]

When I was a kid in Louisiana i remember seeing mechanical voting machines with a big lever you pulled. What ever happened to those and why isn't that an option anyone is considering?

To Bad

[twotailakitsune]

I liked the electronic voting. Not having the simple touch screen will turn off some younger voters, and make voting take longer. All we needed was a paper printout backup. Also, in Maryland I thank you could already fill out on paper if you did not like the electronic voting.

Re:It wasn't us! Do your job properly.

[wfstanle]

"Voters don't care how they vote, as long as it's easy and they can have confidence that their vote will be counted."

You missed something. It doesn't matter if they are counted but are counted incorrectly. Stalin said it best. It goes something like this... He who votes decides nothing, He that counts the votes decides everything.

Key Phrase: As They Wear Out

[STrinity]

My district in Northern Virginia only got its first electronic voting machine in '04, and didn't make the complete switch until '06. If they're going to wait for the machines to wear out, it'll be decades.

And too, prior to the electronic machines, we used mechanical booths not paper, which worked perfectly fine, so I doubt they're actually going back to the equally problematic paper (punch card, scantron, or other) ballot.

Moving to paper is a GOOD MOVE

[dwheeler]

We still use the wheel, and that's a pretty old invention. "Old" is not necessarily "bad", or "good". The question is, "is this the most appropriate way to solve the problem"?

The DRE equipment was NEVER appropriate for voting. Those kinds of things are just a magician's prop, and completely untrustworthy for voting purposes. If you want to make it easy for ONE person to steal an entire election, they're perfect. If your purpose is an honestly-counted election, such machines cannot be trusted. "There's nothing up this sleeve... nothing up the other sleeve... oh look, here's a fixed election!! Betcha can't tell how I did it!"

They're not IGNORING computer technology; they'll use computers to tally up the votes. The difference is, the information will be on a permanent record (paper) so that recounts and cross-checks can be done easily. You can use a computer well, or foolishly. The old systems used computers in a foolish way; now they're trying to fix that.

I think that the states should get their money back for many of the voting machines. Practically ALL computer-knowledgeable people understand that computers are easily rigged, and thus many of the existing systems are fundamentally untrustworthy. Quoting John Willis is unconvincing; he may say he's an "elections expert", but it's clear that he does not understand the fundamentals of these new voting systems.

Re:Moving to paper is a GOOD MOVE

[cecille]

I'm not sure I agree that they should get the money back. Depending on how they set the requirements for these machines, the companies may have delivered exactly what was paid for. Not that it wouldn't have been nice of these companies to think a little and make some suggestions, but I'm not sure that entitles them to their money back. Just imagine if every customer who came to you with some ridiculous set of requirements and no desire to change was entitled to get their money back when they realized that what they ordered wasn't ever going to work.

Why not before?

[PhotoGuy]

Why scrap them *after* the Presidendial election?

If I were a conspiracy theorist, who believed that the results of the elections were rigged or riggable through electronic voting machines, I might believe that the delay in replacing them is to get one last election through before scrapping them, since they know the jig is up on that scam.

It's not as though coming up with, and deploying a paper-based system is anything new, or requires any special rocket science...

Re:Why not before?

[DigitalSorceress]

Yeah, I had that passing thought too... Oh goodie, we get rid of the electronic voting machines AFTER McCain steals the election.

But I'm not biased or anything :)

Re:Why not before?

[Anonymous Coward]

He's definitely going to steal this election since he's got Acorn doing so much good work for him. Oh wait...

watch out whiteman

[Anonymous Coward]

obama is coming to fuck your wife while his henchmen fuck you in the ass.

Go back to paper is stupidity

[rbnunes]

Paper is even worst then electronic. It's easy to tamper and easy to change. All countries that move to electronic voting got a lower fraud rate. Why american think that different? why you thrust paper so much? you can write anything, erase, make copies,...

Re:Go back to paper is stupidity

[laron]

You can tamper with paper easily, that's why everything except the marking of the ballot has to happen in public (checking that the ballot box is empty in the morning, locked and sealed during the day and that nobody except legitimate voters throw anything into it. The counting also happens in public under the eyes of representatives of all parties. Thus it would be easy to manipulate the election, but it would be just as easy to spot the fraud happening.

But how do you know just what happens inside a computer? Can a voter really be sure that the results where not pre-programmed?

Re:Go back to paper is stupidity

[OctaviusIII]

Because every thing you can do to tamper with a paper ballot will leaves a physical artifact. Americans don't trust computers because tampering with them requires a level of skill most people don't have, can be done on a massive scale with relative ease, and when it is done doesn't leave a physical trail. The only trace may be in the source code but, even then, if the computers were networked it would be possible to implant a virus to tell them all to vote a certain way, then have the virus self-destruct. Paper, at least, leaves a trace.

Re:Go back to paper is stupidity

[rbnunes]

There is a lot of solutions to that (Open Source, Digital Signatures, NO network, ...). You are been driving by fear. We had a real case here were drug dealers are giving pre-build votes to the population and making treats to make them enter the voting section with a vote already filled up and they must give the empty cell back to the dealers. Thus they are tampering the election with paper from a safe distance. Electronic voting can solve that.

Re:Go back to paper is stupidity

[rbnunes]

Open Source can solve that. How you can solve this: 1. Get a emtpy ballot (stell, leave the cabin with an empty one, many way to get that,...) 2. Mark the ballot with you candidate. 3. Go to a some community and start threating people to got you ballot, they must enter the cabin with your in the pocket exchange for the new empty one. Put the filled in the box and give you the new empty one. 4. do this again and again. Kill everyone that does not give you an empty ballot and anyone who tries to talk about your plan You have tampered the election. This is a real case.

Purpose of a paper trail: deterrence, recount

[davidwr]

A paper trail is a must in a recount:
It is the paper ballots that will be recounted, and if necessary, recounted by hand.

Also, a paper trail deters gaming the system because it becomes only a matter of time before someone does a random audit and the cheaters get caught. Sure, people may cheat the system in low-profile elections or change the votes for purposes other than affecting the outcome of the race, such as winning a bet or making a non-close race appear close or a close race appear like a landslide, but getting away with cheating in a big-name close race will be much harder than if there is no paper ballot to manually recount.

A good statistical sampling can work but only up to a point. If someone rigs the counting-computers to bump Candidate A's totals up 0.1 percentage point, it will be a lot harder to detect than if he rigs it to raise the candidate's votes by 10 percentage points.

A good statistical sampling can say "Joe Candidate got 54,232 votes +/- 543 votes with a confidence interval of 95%, candidate B got 53,602 votes +/- 472 votes with a confidence interval of 95%" that's a good indication that a full recount is needed. If either of the samples is significantly different than the reported totals then it's a good indication the counting-program is broken or compromised and the ballots all need to be recounted by another method, possibly by hand.

Re:Purpose of a paper trail: deterrence, recount

[Ambiguous Puzuma]

Why can't the paper trail be the official vote of record, with any electronic counting serving as the equivalent of an exit poll? You get a mostly accurate tally instantly, yet retain the security of a paper ballot system.

Here's my system: Each voter gets a paper ballot that is both human- and machine-readable. This ballot may be filled in either by a computer printer (with suitable accessibility features) or by hand. Either way, the voter then goes to a verification station, where the ballot can be fed through an optical reader. The scanned choices are displayed on a screen (with a privacy curtain around it). Earphones could be available for the blind to hear the scanned results. If the results match what the voter intended, the voter proceeds to the box to deposit the ballot. If not, the voter inserts the ballot into an incinerator and is given another ballot to try again. The verification stations send unofficial vote counts to a central location for tallying, but the paper ballots are hand-counted over a period of several days to produce the official result.

It wouldn't be foolproof, but it should combine most of the benefits of both paper-based and electronic voting. Because the votes should in most cases be confirmed machine readable by an optical scanner before being deposited in the box, very few votes should be ambiguous to a human vote counter.

Re:Purpose of a paper trail: deterrence, recount

[Chandon Seldon]

Also, a paper trail deters gaming the system because it becomes only a matter of time before someone does a random audit and the cheaters get caught.

If elections occurred every day and going 10 elections before catching anyone was good enough, that'd be great. As it is, a single election is worth billions of dollars. Attackers will sure as hell take even a 50% chance of "getting caught" if winning an election would guarantee their company a major government contract, especially if they can claim that the attack was a mistake and no-one will understand the situation well enough to actually punish them for voting fraud.

Look at what happened with the 2004 Ohio recount if you want to see how statistical sampling gets gamed in practice.

Approval voting!

[dwheeler]

It wouldn't solve all ills, but I think it'd be valuable to encourage "Approval Voting". Third parties have basically no chance to get any traction under the current voting system. In approval voting, you can "vote for more than one candidate if you so choose. The winner is the candidate that collects the most votes."

It's not perfect, but it has lots of advantages. Existing voting equipment can be used (including paper counted by machine), and it's easy to understand. I think it's much better than our current system, while still being simple to understand and apply.

Citizens for Approval Voting and Americans for Approval Voting have more info, if you're curious.

Re:It wasn't us! Do your job properly.

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe I haven't been reading the comments closely enough- but has anyone else brought up the fact that physical records of your vote would only complicate the system more?

Wouldn't having a receipt of your vote make it easier for people to "buy your vote" with "show your receipt for X Candidate" promotions? I thought that was why the receipt thing was never implemented. We don't want people/corporations to gain the ability to buy votes.

Muslims and Texans

[fm6]

I'm in Texas and apparently 23% of Texans believe Obama is a Muslim.

Well, 75% of Muslims probably believe that all Texans are oil barons (excluding these guys of course), so that's only fair.

The above statement is actually less bigoted than it sounds. I had a co-worker once who was an immigrant from Belgium. His biggest problem with living in America was persuading his parents that the America he lived in bore no resemblance to the America they saw on their favorite TV shows, Dallas and Miami Vice.

Good sense

[pjt33]

The phrase I prefer to use is "good sense".

Well, don't leave us in suspense

[davidwr]

What is New York State using?

every corner shop has the hardware...

[laron]

Seriously, how about voting on modified Point of Sales systems? You press a button (no fancy touchscreens, real buttons with labels next to them), the machine spits out a slip of paper with your vote on it. You check the vote, if there should be an error, the friendly shop assistant uses her key to cancel your vote. If everything is OK, you drop the slip of paper (let's call it "ballot") into the usual sealed box.

Once the election is over, the machine spits out the tally.

In a random 10% sample of all voting places, the paper ballots are counted manually. For every polling station where there is a discrepancy between the electronic tally and the manual recount, recounts will be performed in two more polling stations. In cases of doubt, the paper ballot counts overules the electronic tally.

If anybody feels the need, they can organize a manual recount in specific places. Either they count themselves (under supervision) or they pay to have the ballots counted manually.

Re:Mathematical Guarantees Of Correctness fo E-Vot

[amorsen]

Electronic Voting can be much better than paper ballots. We just need to stop being stupid about it.

"Much"? Anyway, it doesn't help that mathematicians can prove it is secure, if I can't.

Re:Mathematical Guarantees Of Correctness fo E-Vot

[azgard]

I agree with that there exist (though still in theory) such methods. But: Most people will have trouble understanding them. How can you believe results of elections if you don't understand that the result is correct? And also, how can you be sure that politicians implemented the correct procedure, if you don't understand it? Compared to these methods, the paper ballot method is very simple and not much less secure.

So, until there are nanoreplicators that can change existing ballots in a closed box, I don't think these methods will be necessary. I still find them intriguing, though.

eventualoutbreakofcommonsense

[russlar]

It's an eventual outbreak of common sense: they're not doing it for another two years!

Re:eventualoutbreakofcommonsense

[jonaskoelker]

2010: the year of common sense on the desktop.

Re:Mathematical Guarantees Of Correctness fo E-Vot

[WinPimp2K]

If your proof of security can not be easily understood by a person with an IQ of 80 upon the first time you demonstrate that proof in 30 seconds or less then your proof is not valid.

Period.

But since you are sure (and maybe you can derive said proof yourself), you will want to argu about it.

You lose the argument.

Period.

If you still want to argue and demand my reasoning you still fail and your much vaunted proof is not even good for toilet paper.

Because, much as you believe that e-voting is the way to go, you are missing the point.

It isn't about proof, It isn't about "mathematical guarantees". It is all about perception. If a significant protion of people have no faith in the system, then the system will fail. I picked IQ 80 as a cut off point, but there is no minimum IQ to cast a ballot, there is not even a literacy requirement that people be able to read the darn thing.

No matter how much you polish up your whiz-bang e-vote machine with "mathematical proofs", you are still polishing a stinking, steaming pile of dung. In addition, there is the little matter of "proving" that the "secure system" you have "mathematically guaranteed" is the actual system in use.

Paper ballots (regardless of the method of production) that allow for human recounts are far more trustworthy than anything that has a "mathematical guarantee". If you don't understand that , just go ahead and console yourself with the following:

"Half of all people have a below average intellect" (translated for the "smart folks" - every other person in the world is STUPID)

500 winners

[Anonymous Coward]

with a 65MM$ price tag for a heap of sh!t no one won.

Laughable? Palin is the joke here...

[Anonymous Coward]

> Aren't the dems the ones who keep saying that no experience can prepare you for president (since Obama has no experience)?

Obama didn't crumple in the face of "gotcha journalism" with it's harsh questions like "What magazines do you read?" ("All of them" ... right). Also, Obama built his campaign himself. Palin was merely selected to close the enthusiasm gap.

Finally, for all your talk about pots & kettles, it was McCain who made experience his central argument, talked about how he didn't understand the economy (and might have to rely on his VP for that), only to prove that he didn't believe a word of it when he selected Palin. A lady who hired an administrator to run Wasillia (pop. ~8,000) because she couldn't handle it.

Look, we're not the ones who changed our story. We didn't say "experience isn't important" we said "Obama has good judgement to make up for whatever he lacks." McCain is the one who went from saying that experience was his #1 priority in a VP to nominating Palin, then trying to defend her "experience" which lead to disaster. Who can forget Tucker Bounds getting eaten alive on CNN because he couldn't come up with even one single example of something Palin had done? He's a lying, weasel of a douchebag, but he's a better liar than that. If he had anything to work with, he'd have come out with it. But he had nowhere to go and anyone who has followed the news very carefully hates his guts by now.

But what do I know? It's not like I knew who Sarah Palin was before she was VP. Or like I've extensively researched the candidates or anything. I mean, I've only been a Republican my whole life and have voted for McCain every past election. Clearly I'm biased against the Republicans and just one of those entranced sheeple who read something other than Fox News!

I don't take well to being lied to. And I know that McCain wasn't Bush, but he toadied up to Bush as hard as he could back in 2005 or so, when he started seeking the election. I guess he decided that, after his loss in 2000, the only way to win was an ugly campaign like Bush's. So he hired the very same Bush guy who started the rumors that he's racist, mentally unstable and has a black love child (that kid was adopted, he has a temper but it can get overblown, and he apologized for opposing the MLK holiday and the confederate flag issue).

McCain isn't Bush, but he's adopted some of Bush's worst traits and hired some of Bush's worst staff in order to win. I will NEVER give him my vote again.

In any Russia...

[Anonymous Coward]

we calling "Common sense" as "Sane reasoning".
"Common sense" looks more like "Animal instincts" from here.

Um.

[Anonymous Coward]

My driver's license and my electoral registration show my name differently. I was born in Puerto Rico, where they use the Hispanic custom of giving people two last names (your first last name if your father's first last name, and your second last name is your mother's first last name). That's how my name appears in my birth certificate. However, in the USA, this mostly just confuses the hell out of people, so like nearly all Hispanics in the USA, I just use my first last name. My bank accounts, utility bills, etc., are under the American style name. So is my California voter's registration, which I got back in 2000, before I got my driver's license.

However, my parents obtained my first US passport for me when I was 3 years old, and submitted a birth certificate as proof of citizenship. Because of this, my passport has my name in the Hispanic format, with two last names. When I got my California driver's license, which was later than my first voter registration, I showed my passport to the DMV clerk as identification. The clerk put my name down as shown in the passport, despite my protests that I used only my first name in the USA.

So, my name is listed differently in my voter registration and my driver's license. So yeah, I could easily have my vote be challenged on the sorts of grounds that the Indiana stuff shows. (And when a cashier asks for ID to check against my credit card, they usually get confused as hell. Haven't had them reject my purchase yet, but I won't be surprised when it does happen...)

For the record, I am an A.B.D. from Stanford, work as a senior software developer, and have a 6 figure salary. That's not proof of intelligence, but I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

Re:Um.

[demonlapin]

I'm not knocking your intelligence, but if you use two different names in legal documents, you're asking for trouble - as your example clearly demonstrates. Your legal name is just that - your legal name. It does not need to be what you call yourself. And it can be changed - though the process is admittedly a pain in the ass - to rectify the problem. Choose your pain.

My wife, for example, has legally retained her maiden name for professional reasons (she's a doctor). What we go by socially - the Joneses - is different from what is on the title to our house, our mortgage, her driver's license, and so forth. It does cause some odd looks now and again - especially when the poll workers at our precinct are the parents of people I went to high school with, and know both of us from back then - but it beats carrying around a copy of her marriage license every time she does anything official.

Re:Um.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not knocking your intelligence, but if you use two different names in legal documents, you're asking for trouble - as your example clearly demonstrates. Your legal name is just that - your legal name.

So basically, according to you, if I have difficulties in getting allowed to cast my (valid) vote, I deserve it.

Do you seriously believe it's OK to deny people their right to vote because of a problem that they have limited control over (the quality of the records that the state keeps about them), all of this to solve a problem that has no demonstrated statistical significance over the outcome of any electoral race in this country? And a set of requirements that, it just so happens, are aggressively promoted precisely by the party that stands to benefit, precisely because they disenfranchise valid voters that would vote for the other party?

And it can be changed - though the process is admittedly a pain in the ass - to rectify the problem.

Sure, yeah. Good luck trying to get a few dozen bureaucratic organizations (public and private) to change your name to their new name in every record they currently have, and every record they ever keep about you forever after. There will always be some database that has the name that's not supposed to be. Nobody's actually going to go and correct them, you know. Therefore, there will always be mismatches, and if the Republicans have their way, there will always be somebody to impugn my valid vote because the government bureaucracy fails to perform the practically impossible task of changing every record ever made about me to list my name in the exact same way.

Re:Um.

[demonlapin]

So, to follow on here, what's your suggestion for voter verification? Let anyone who shows up vote, without any verification that they are who they say they are? Amuse me by explaining why positively identifying voters is such an evil thing. The county to my north has 25% more registered voters than living people of voting age. How to toss out the bad ones?

Re:Mathematical Guarantees Of Correctness fo E-Vot

[mathmathrevolution]

Anyway, it doesn't help that mathematicians can prove it is secure, if I can't.

Neither of the references I linked to are particularly complicated. They can be digested by reasonably literate people.

alignment with exit polls?

[lawpoop]

Who wants to take bets on how paper votes align with exit polls, while the exit polls somehow turnout wrong where voting machines are used?

A couple of links

[Estanislao Mart�nez]

Secretary of State blocking voter registration in California.

Making Votes Count in Florida

Re:Mathematical Guarantees Of Correctness fo E-Vot

[mathmathrevolution]

If your proof of security can not be easily understood by a person with an IQ of 80 upon the first time you demonstrate that proof in 30 seconds or less then your proof is not valid. Period.

Well, I guess virtually the entire field of mathematics is invalid. Shucks. There was some good stuff in there. I don't know how I'll get by without the Pythagorean theorem. Too bad all those stupid people invalidated all of mathematics by being too dumb to understand it.

Because, much as you believe that e-voting is the way to go, you are missing the point. It isn't about proof, It isn't about "mathematical guarantees". It is all about perception. If a significant protion of people have no faith in the system, then the system will fail.

Here I was thinking that science was the study of reality. Now I see that reality is formed by the perceptions of the most remedial strata of our population. Thanks for the lecture in metaphysics!

Re:Mathematical Guarantees Of Correctness fo E-Vot

[he-sk]

Still doesn't solve the trust issue: As a voter it's no good for me that some mathematician guarantees the integrity of the vote. That's only marginally better than a corperation's guarantee.

And even if I'm in the minority that understands the underlying mathematics, I still have to trust that there are no bugs in the implementation or that nobody has tampered with the hardware.

With paper-and-pencil ballots I can see for myself.

Re:Mathematical Guarantees Of Correctness fo E-Vot

[mathmathrevolution]

People believe in lots of things that they don't understand. For instance, most people have no clue how the banking system works, yet they place all their money in financial institutions. People believe in the constitution, but couldn't accurately describe what is in it. They don't understand regular encryption, but they trust it to send sensitive information online.

The problem with electronic voting is not that people believe it's insecure, the problem is that it is insecure and numerous experts have testified to that fact and problems have cropped up all over the place. If we could produce a system that didn't have problems that experts could verify then we would be set.

You can verify the algorithm has been implemented correctly because it would be standardized and open source. Just like SSL on Firefox.

Also, we don't need nanoreplicators to fraudulently manipulate a ballot box. Ballot boxes have a history of manipulation. The custodian of the box can open the box. Or he can stuff the box with fake votes. Paper ballots can never offer us a mathematical guarantee of correctness.

Electronic voting does offer us this guarantee when done right. You will be able to prove whether or not your vote will be counted.

Re:Mathematical Guarantees Of Correctness fo E-Vot

[mathmathrevolution]

With a paper ballot what you can see is your ballot go into a box. You have no guarantee that your vote is counted or that the ballot box wasn't stuffed with fraudulent ballots. Also, did you even read the references I gave? You seem to be under the impression that what I am proposing is that some smart math guys look at Diebold code and say "yup, looks good to me!". I'm talking about specific practical voting schemes. If somebody has not implemented the algorithm correctly then it won't work and everybody will be able to prove it. That's the whole point of using a proper cryptographic system.

On the same scale?

[JSBiff]

"After all, the electoral college is unique to the US, yet other democracies manage elections just fine (actually better than the US, if I dare say so). This tells me that the problem isn't the system, but something specific to the US."

I'm trying to think if there are any other democratic countries in the world with a population as large or larger than the US? The only ones that come to mind would be India, and maybe Indonesia and/or Pakistan. . . maybe Russia (although, I think, calling Russia a democracy might possibly be pretty generous)? Now let me ask, do any of them have a national popular vote? I'm not exactly sure how those countries select their President or Prime Minister, but in many cases, the Prime Ministers of many democratic countries are not chosen directly by the people, but instead by the Parliament. The MPs are chosen on a district-by-district basis. Does any large population ( > 200 million citizens) democracy have any nationwide, popular-vote elections?

Re:On the same scale?

[mathmathrevolution]

The president of Brazil is elected directly in a country with a population of about 200 Million. There's no reason why a system that works for 200 Million people can't work for 300 Million people. In any case, the entire premise of the question is flawed. The simplicity of localized recounts was the primary criteria the OP gave in favor of the electoral college system and it's not even relevant: A recount doesn't need to be national -- it can be local to the regions that need to be recounted.

Re:Mathematical Guarantees Of Correctness fo E-Vot

[mathmathrevolution]

And also, how can you be sure that politicians implemented the correct procedure, if you don't understand it?

Let me be more specific. The references that I referred to demonstrate a cryptographic algorithm. If the algorithm is implemented incorrectly then it will fail and everyone will be able to prove it independently.

Of course people probably won't work out the math themselves, they'll have a client that implements the algorithm etc. People can use whatever client they wish, an open source or MicroSoft Voter or whatever. But an open source version would no doubt exist and people could feel free to use that.

Hope that clarifies.

Re:Mathematical Guarantees Of Correctness fo E-Vot

[he-sk]

I saved your first link and will read it first thing tomorrow when I'm at the uni. Right now, it's behind a subscription firewall.

Regarding stuffed ballot boxes: At the beginning of the day the box is publicly checked that it is empty and whenever somebody puts his vote into the box, a volunteer marks off an increasing count. When voting is finished, the number of ballots in the box has to match the number that the volunteer is at. This is how we do things in Germany. No ballot-stuffing possible.

Regarding making sure that my vote is counted: After I put my vote in the box, I can stay at the polling place as an observer. I can also observe the actual counting of the vote.

The key point I was trying to make is that with paper-and-pencil voting, everybody can watch the ENTIRE process of voting and judge for himself whether he trusts the results or not.

This is very expensive

[davidwr]

Hand-counting is very expensive and humans are not infallible. Election workers in some states are paid and if they aren't broken, machines can actually count a properly-filled-in ballot more accurately than most people.

Machine vote-tallies with manual recounts for close elections and random full manual recounts and statistical sampling of all elections to deter and catch fraud and catch mis-calibrated equipment is a lot cheaper.

Re:Mathematical Guarantees Of Correctness fo E-Vot

[davidwr]

most people have no clue how the banking system works

The banking system works???

Just get rid of voting

[Anonymous Coward]

How about we stop voting altogether?

Great but do require one thing:

[MtViewGuy]

Ballots must be filled out in permanent-ink pen or marker.

There's good reason for this: pencil marks can be erased or easily smudged, and we'll be right back at the same old "hanging chad" fiasco that nearly ruined the 2000 Presidential elections.

E-Voting.

[IHC Navistar]

Electronic Voting Machines: Because a $.02 Scantron and permanent marker is too cheap, too plain, too simple, too permanent, and just too damn hard to fill out.

Rush to development = total fail

[GlobalMind]

Fact is that after 2000 our governments did what they do best. Have knee-jerk reactions to a problem.

There's nothing wrong with electronic voting systtems if they were to be done properly, which they weren't. Thus we've got nearly zero voter confidence in them ever working.

So, we're going to be stuck with more paper. Lovely. That worked out so well for Florida last time. Nevermind that the "evil technology" is in those optical scanner machines as well.

Blowback? Backfire?

[readin]

I remember earlier articles that gave me the impression that the voting machine manufacturers were resisting paper ballot print-outs for recounts because they didn't want any mistakes being caught that would make them look bad. It seems that strategy may have backfired on them as people won't trust the machines without the print-outs. Good for people. It's not often they have sense. Of course, I suppose the good sense in rejecting these machines will be balanced by the the number of people who vote for Obama Tuesday. We're still trying to recover from the Carter years and we already want to elect another naive liberal socialist with a solid far left congress to back him up. Sigh, I'm going to bed. Wake me up in 20 years if anyone is still alive.

Re:Laughable? Palin is the joke here...

[Shotgun]

Obama didn't crumple in the face of "gotcha journalism" with it's harsh questions like "What magazines do you read?" ("All of them" ... right).

That's because the Obama campaign doesn't play "gotcha journalism". If there is a tough question, they asks if it is really a question, refuse to answer it, and then cancels all interviews with that media outlet. Obama only plays to friendly crowds.

But electronic voting remains

[fgouget]

Paper ballots return but electronic voting remains since the ballots will counted by optical scan machines.

Sure you can recount the ballots... after they've been moved around, taken out of sight from voters for hours, and then only if a candidate manages to get the recount ordered. As for the systematic 3% recounts, there's no way to check it really is randomly selected, and again it happens on ballots after they have been moved around, etc.

Ballot counting should be performed right there on the spot, in the voting station as soon as the election closes. Anything else is madness.

Have you even thought about this for 5 seconds?

[Anonymous Coward]

When you say that the implementation of electoral college is "analog vs. digital" you're basically conceding that the ideal solution is to count all the votes, but you argue that it is just logistically too difficult to count all those pesky little votes. Nonetheless, you argue that states are too "low resolution". You want congressional districts because those are higher resolution.

You know what would be the highest resolution? Counting everyone's vote. This obvious solution is exactly what we do for elections of senators, congressmen, mayors, and every other elected office in the land except the presidency.

In the name of "smoothing things out" you are perfectly willing to introduce a huge amount of error into the vote. Not because it's fairer -- you seem to acknowledge that it's less fair -- but just because it's easier. Dictatorship would be even easier, which is probably why it was so popular back in the day. But there's a reason why have a Democracy and morally we need to count everyone's vote, not count some people's votes and give them all the votes of other people simply because they happen to constitute a majority in an arbitrary geographical region which was gerrymandered by the political class in the first place.

Here's an idea: instead of taking for granted that we have a flawed election system, let's fix it. Let's invest in our election system to make it reliable and secure. There are cryptographic methods to that can verifiably ensure a secure, private, and perfect tally. That would address all your concerns about the integrity of the tally without arbitrarily disenfranchising people.

Re:Mathematical Guarantees Of Correctness fo E-Vot

[WinPimp2K]

"Here I was thinking that science was the study of reality"

Reality check time:
People are real - even the ones that are less intellectually gifted than yourself.
The last time I checked (which I admit was a few years back) smart folks used (and even invented) various forms of mathematics in an attempt to better model and thereby understand reality.

When your ever so elegant (or not as the case may be) mathematical guarantee - which after all is only a model - comes up against the reality you are trying to model differences will appear. Think of another old cliche if you will.

"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice..."

In practice, enough people are evil conniving bastiches that they WILL defeat your e-voting system. And even the folks too stupid to understand the math behind your guarantee do understand "evil conniving bastiches" Now add to that the substantial group of people who must defend their "culture" from intellectuals to the point that even as children they humiliate, harass, and assault those who shows signs of greater intelligence. That group of people also know that your guarantee is nothing (to them) but a damned lie - because you are one of the "evil conniving bastiches".

So, the reason your e-voting plan fails is because too many folks will have no faith in it. Calling them stupid might console you, but why not ask yourself why you are so hung up on replacing paper ballots?

Have you even thought about this for 5 seconds?

[mathmathrevolution]

When you say that the implementation of electoral college is "analog vs. digital" you're basically conceding that the ideal solution is to count all the votes, but you argue that it is just logistically too difficult to count all those pesky little votes. Nonetheless, you argue that states are too "low resolution". You want congressional districts because those are higher resolution.

You know what would be the highest resolution? Counting everyone's vote. This obvious solution is exactly what we do for elections of senators, congressmen, mayors, and every other elected office in the land except the presidency.

In the name of "smoothing things out" you are perfectly willing to introduce a huge amount of error into the vote. Not because it's fairer -- you seem to acknowledge that it's less fair -- but just because it's easier. Dictatorship would be even easier, which is probably why it was so popular back in the day. But there's a reason why have a Democracy and morally we need to count everyone's vote, not count some people's votes and give them all the votes of other people simply because they happen to constitute a majority in an arbitrary geographical region which was gerrymandered by the political class in the first place.

Here's an idea: instead of taking for granted that we have a flawed election system, let's fix it. Let's invest in our election system to make it reliable and secure. There are cryptographic methods to that can verifiably ensure a secure, private, and perfect tally. That would address all your concerns about the integrity of the tally without arbitrarily disenfranchising people.

mod parent up

[mathmathrevolution]

he gets it

Crypto-safe voting is irrelevant

[PeterM from Berkeley]

Because a key issue of voting is that everyone believe that it is fair.

While cryptographic schemes for voting may be 100% effective, most people are not going to understand how they really work.

Everyone understands collecting clearly marked pieces of paper and counting up the results.

*I* don't really understand cryptographically safe voting and I've read Applied Cryptography. And even if I did *fully* understand the cryptosystem, unless I *personally* audited the code in *all* the voting machines, I would not have 100% faith that the crypto system was working properly!

However, I can have 100% faith in the accuracy of a recount of paper ballots where there's a Democrat and a Republican, looking over the shoulder of a nonpartisan primary counter.

Cryptographic schemes *MAY WORK*, but we should NEVER USE THEM--because most people would never really be sure they were honest.

--PeterM

Re:Crypto-safe voting is irrelevant

[mathmathrevolution]

Cryptographic schemes *MAY WORK*, but we should NEVER USE THEM--because most people would never really be sure they were honest.

Do people "understand" any cryptography? Do they understand how SSL works when they bank online? Do they even understand how their bank works?

No, most people don't understand anything about most of the technology and institutions they rely on. And they don't need to understand cryptography; they only need to understand that it's something smart people came up with that works 100% of the time with no errors and is independently verifiable with some math.

And your portrayal of paper ballots as a technology that works 100% perfectly of the time is just laughably false: The number of ballots almost never matches the number of people who voted except in tiny districts. Recounts always yield different results. We know that even in an election without deliberate tampering paper ballots have an error rate of about 1%. Paper ballots aren't a fix. We have the technology to fix the problem. We just need to use it.

No-Brainer

[darkonc]

When a who's who of Computer scientists line up and say "Don't use computers", you know that you've got a Alamo-type stand ahead of you.... Except that people won't be remembering your name fondly.

Remember E-Voting!

Will be a dire warning, not a rallying cry.

Re:Mathematical Guarantees Of Correctness fo E-Vot

[mathmathrevolution]

Why am I so "hung-up" on replacing paper ballots? Wow, that's like asking why I'm so "hung-up" on Democracy. Paper ballots have an error rate of at least 1% even if nobody is deliberately tampering with the election. Cryptosystems have an error of 0% and if somebody does tamper with them it is immediately obvious to all observers because the math would fail.

And a well designed crytosystem would really, honest-to-god, expose tampering regardless of stupid people's opinions on the matter. In Physical Science there is a difference between theory and reality.

Finally, I want to remind you that it wasn't the stupid people that defeated our current iteration of E-Voting (which I oppose since it isn't a cryptosystem). It was smart people that fought long and hard to expose the inherent weaknesses and publicize the scandals due to E-Voting that finally managed to defeat it. The stupid people accepted E-Voting because they were told it was safe. Stupid people accept what they are told because they are too stupid to use critical thinking skills.

This is ridiculous

[acid06]

Seriously.
This should be the first time I'm actually able to conclude that Brazil is better than the US at something.
It's impossible for me to understand how can you *seriously* think that paper ballots are better than electronic voting.

Here in Brazil the whole voting process only happens on a single day and everyone must vote, since voting is mandatory. This should mean about 120 million voters. The whole vote counting process takes only a few hours and that's it. And it only takes that long because there's no networked transmission of the results for security concerns, so the voting machine actually needs to be physically taken somewhere.

Each person votes on a specific, preassigned, voting place and each citizen has a voting card issued by the federal government. Since voting is mandatory, everyone has that card. So voter identification is trivial.

This was done to *avoid* fraud. I mean, it's pretty obvious to me that a bag full of paper is much more easy to tamper with than anything electronic, specially since the voting machines run on open-source software.

Our laws actually *forbid* any kind of paper trail or any other sort of "proof of vote". Voting should be anonymous at all costs. This way, if someone tries to buy votes, they can never know if the person actually voted on them or not.

Redundancy is the solution to the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the solution to all this mess is both simple, and cost effective.

1. Create new electronic voting machines.
2. Keep the old paper punch or whatever your system currently uses.
3. Have voters put their vote into both machines.

This kind of redundancy is good. The "hanging chads" of the 2000 election would be compared to the other machine. Discrepancies in electronic form (deliberate or otherwise) would be validated against the independent copy from the other machine.

People talking about having a printed out receipt from the voting machine have a similar idea, and it's another good one, as it's hard to spoof a paper printout.

The only problem with this is that voters may skip a machine, complain about having to vote twice, etc. But most voters would be reassured that their vote was actually being counted.

Re:Mathematical Guarantees Of Correctness fo E-Vot

[azgard]

But in banking system, you don't have to exactly trust the ATMs and stuff, because you can always check your account balance to see if correct amounts have been transferred.

Ballot boxes can be manipulated on small scale, but it's hard to do it on large scale. I don't know how many people are involved in vote counting in U.S., but here in Czech Republic, I would estimate we have one voting booth and ballot box per 1000-2000 people (there are no queues during the vote), and this place is manned by 3-6 people from different political parties, who also do the manual counting together. So it would mean to manipulate ten thousands of people to alter the results significantly (which I think is impossible to keep in secret). We also have more scalable system than U.S. in that there are no "contested regions" which are enough to manipulate in order to alter the results significantly.

Re:Mathematical Guarantees Of Correctness fo E-Vot

[azgard]

I would like to read that link, but it's paid-for paper. Maybe they should work on that first, if they want to get common people to trust this. :-)

Re:Mathematical Guarantees Of Correctness fo E-Vot

[mathmathrevolution]

Virtually nobody who goes to the bank online knows how SSL works. They just do it and understand that the connection is "encrypted" so people can't "listen in." They have absolutely no idea whether or not the cryptography is working. They would only find out if it failed after their bank account has been emptied. They operate the system on trust.

Despite all these people looking over other people's shoulder, paper ballots aren't even close to perfect. The best paper ballot system still has an error rate of about 1% before deliberate tampering with ballots. With a proper cryptosystem we could get an error rate of exactly zero. And should anything go amiss you will be instantly able to prove it and so will everyone else.

Obviously many people have neither the time nor aptitude to understand basic cryptography. Similarly most people don't have time to sit around in a voting office looking over people's shoulder validating ballot counts. But people believe that there exist people who do count votes and people believe that there are smart people who solve problems in clever ways.

Re:Mathematical Guarantees Of Correctness fo E-Vot

[azgard]

Yes, banking works on trust, but the point is, you will find out that it failed. Not so with election - you won't find out they have been tampered with.

Can you give me a source for that 1% figure? I find it very hard to believe; from my experience, there is at most one (out of several thousands) polling places where the things are contested, but either a recount or another voting will fix this.

Also, I have my doubts about the methods from the paper, though I haven't read it. For example, how resistant is the technique with respect to attacks on votes that have been cast by people who, for some reason (such as low technical skills), cannot check the correctness of the result? If someone else is going to do that for them, won't this compromise anonymity of their vote?

You know, having a theoretically good crypto algorithm is nice, but the correct implementation is in another ballpark.

Re:Mathematical Guarantees Of Correctness fo E-Vot

[mathmathrevolution]

A customer makes a connection to the bank via SSL. How does the customer know whether or not this encryption succeeds or fails? He has no idea and he has no way of finding out.

The 1% error rate of paper ballots can be read here and many other places. Google "paper ballot error rate".

Also, I have my doubts about the methods from the paper, though I haven't read it. For example, how resistant is the technique with respect to attacks on votes that have been cast by people who, for some reason (such as low technical skills), cannot check the correctness of the result? If someone else is going to do that for them, won't this compromise anonymity of their vote?

There are many techniques out there. Some allow for a voter to verify that his own vote has been counted correctly. Universally verifiable systems allow for a voter to verify that everyone's vote has been counted correctly. No, this does not in general compromise the anonymity of the vote.

Also, don't you feel a bit silly arguing against hypothetical weaknesses of cryptosystems when you haven't even bothered to read the basics? Here's another good paper by Microsoft. Here's another good one from Carnegie Mellon.

Please read these papers. You will see they have carefully thought through the issues you are raising.

Most of these systems operate on a server/client basis. The client can use whichever implementation he desires as long as it implements the algorithm. He can use Microsoft Voter or GNU Vote or whatever he wants. You're not forced to sit down at a voting booth with software you don't trust.

Re:Mathematical Guarantees Of Correctness fo E-Vot

[azgard]

Thanks for the links, I will try to read them if I have time (I knew such proposal existed, I just didn't had the papers).

And no, I don't feel silly assuming hypothetical weaknesses in an unknown cryptosystem. Considering how cryptanalysis advanced in the last 20 years, I think it's quite safe to assume that some attacks to these systems will appear.