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Kentucky Officials "Changed Votes At Voting Machines"
The indispensible jamie found a report out of Kentucky of exactly the kind of shenanigans that voting-transparency advocates have been warning about: a circuit court judge, a county clerk, and election officials are among eight people indicted for gaming elections in 2002, 2004, and 2006. As described in the indictment (PDF), the election officials divvied up money intended to buy votes and then changed votes on the county's (popular, unverifiable) ES&S touch-screen voting systems, affecting the outcome of elections at the local, state, and federal levels.
Elected officials subverted the voice of the people for personal profit. Execute them. I am serious. There needs to be an example made, quickly and decisively.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Conviction for tampering with election results should be met with life inprisonment. The scope of things affected by gaming elections warrents nothing less.
Death would be better, but sometimes we get the wrong guy and at least with inprisonment we can let them out of jail and make sure they live well with a fat stack of cash for the rest of their life.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Which is interesting, because it contradicts the image many of us have of the average end user. Personally I believed that they would be programmed by now to automatically click OK on any popup without reading it.
Feeling particularly trollish? It doesn't matter what party does the fraud (I say this as someone who voted Democrat in the last election); these people should be tried and hung for treason. This cuts into the very fabric of what our country is suppose to be.
Perhaps this AC is under the impression that the Slashdot demographic is primarily democratic? I observe that we have quite a mix here and if there is anything disproportionate from the general public, it would be a larger than normal portion of Libertarians and other alternatives.
Democrats and Republicans are both evil in their own ways. They both serve the interests of business and heavy contributors. Their games are very well established and you can't get elected through any of those parties unless you play their games and participate most fully. (Gotta get dirty with them to keep the political career going.)
(What we need is a "judge dread" to clean the system out... the system will not clean itself out.)
Badly designed GUI + social engineering != security flaw.
It most certainly does! We've held MS to that standard for years with such things as "nakedgirl.gif.exe" tricking users into running unknown binaries, and rightfully so. Social engineering alone doesn't indicate a problem, as con men have been around since roughly the beginning of time. Software misfeatures (such as a button labeled "Vote" that doesn't actually cast your vote) that make fraud trivially easy absolutely are vulnerabilities.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
While some sort of verification would seem necessary, there is a rather significant problem created if anyone can "leave [with] it".
If you can walk away with proof of "what" you voted, you can prove it to anyone willing to buy your vote. Or to Guido who is threatening to beat up your little ones if you don't vote a specific way.
This is a rather serious problem all the world over. So whatever we do to verify or to authenticate, it cannot involve the voter walking out with the means to show anyone how they voted.
Quite so.
But it should be pointed out that /. tends to mention the Party of a wrongdoer if the wrongdoer is Republican, and omit it if he's a Democrat.
Sorry, treason is explicitly defined in the Constitution. I doubt seriously the definition can be stretched to fit this.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
I think the point your respondents are missing is that -- while the machines are clearly flawed -- the electronic voting machines didn't greatly magnify the officials' ability to corrupt the vote. Had one of them altered hundreds of votes using a USB stick and three minutes of "alone time" with the machines, this story would have a completely different flavor for me.
IOW, Kentucky electoral officials can't hack. What scares me is that this is probably why they got caught; there must have been a dozen people involved. I'm sure the more tech-savvy vote riggers are just getting away with it.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
Voting machines can work .... but ....
Press the button on the the screen marked "Obama" the machine prints out your vote...you check it says you have voted for Obama , you put this in the ballot box
What you put in the ballot box is not kept by you ...
It is easily machine readable so is quick to count ...
The voting machine does not need to remember who voted, how many votes etc ...it cannot be gamed
The paper voting slip is as anonymous and as verifiable as the old "place cross here" system ...
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
Alas, it doesn't really matter what /. is "full of". But it is true that the Party of a Republican in the news tends to be mentioned in the summary, while the Party of a Democrat in the news tends to be quietly ignored in the summary.
Note this case as an example. Nowhere does it mention that the people doing this were Democrats, though it wasn't terribly hard to determine.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
But it is true that the Party of a Republican in the news tends to be mentioned in the summary, while the Party of a Democrat in the news tends to be quietly ignored in the summary.
This makes two times you have said this in this thread. Instead of asserting it for a third why not prove what you claim? Or is this just another Republican "the media is liberal and always against us" whine?
No way. Absolutely not. Secret ballot is vital to our system. It allows people to vote without ANY outside influence. People can vote their minds and not their peer pressures. Secret ballot removes outside influence on votes. There is no other way around that.
Vote for Joe Schmoe and bring me the receipt to prove you did it or you'll lose your job", that type of thing.
No, it's not a lottery ticket that you take home. The voter checks the receipt and immediately puts it in a box or something. It is an audit trail that election officials can check against the electronic count.
Really...How is the ejection going on all those tax cheats like Rangel?
Virginia is for lovers. EVE is for griefers.
They could have been caught much sooner if the machines had been using a paper trail. My local machines print out each selection as it is made. Then if at the ballot review screen I change a vote, then it prints that on the paper trail. So if even 10% of the paper trails from a single precinct shows significant and consistent changes at the review screen, that's a huge red flag!
If the machine had a paper trail, the 2002 election could have been the only one that was affected. And the 2004 and 2006 elections would have been unaffected. As it is, it took over three election cycles to catch these guys, ***BECAUSE THERE WAS NO PAPER TRAIL***.
As for the question of how did they catch these guys, there are any number of methods, including, the wrong person talking; or an actually smart and observant voter who was waiting in line and noticed that they were given incorrect instructions and the poll workers seemed to be spending a lot of time in the booths after each voter; or a candidate being asked for bribe money; or a poll worker being approached to join the scam; etc, etc, etc, ad nauseam . . .
So the people who say that the voting machines will always reflect the will of the voter are idiots. I don't think that the machines need to be fully open source, but they need to be certifiably as secure as possible and part of that includes independent penetration testing and a paper trail ***AND PAPER TRAILS SHOULD BE REQUIRED BY FEDERAL LAW***
--The FNP
Easy: If you don't vote, you have no right to bitch about the people you didn't vote for screwing things up :)
If I don't vote (and I didn't, which in Australia is actually punishable, but so be it - I didn't see a candidate I could conscionably vote for) then no-one can blame me for 'choosing' the candidate who's currently fucking our country. And that's the main purpose of democracy; to say to the common man: "You voted for him so it's your fault that he's making fucktarded decisions", or "You voted against him but most people voted for him, so you're wrong".
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
While I think what he did was wrong, in the scope of things it's not so bad.
Isn't it amazing how Democrats rationalize corruption in the exact same manner as Republicans?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Secret ballot is vital to our system. It allows people to vote without ANY outside influence. People can vote their minds and not their peer pressures. Secret ballot removes outside influence on votes.
That must be why the labor unions want to get rid of them.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
It's funny that you call it a 'frothing partisan political hackblogger'...
My guess is that M1rth took exception to the following paragraph in the blog post (emphasis added):
The fact is, those who know anything about computer security understand that it is the insiders who are, by far, the greatest threat to security on such systems, as even the phony, GOP-operative-created Baker/Carter National Election Reform Commission determined in its final report: "There is no reason to trust insiders in the election industry any more than in other industries."
The blogger does, upon further investigation, seem to have a tendency to... well... froth. However, we should not let this detract from the core issue here: Voting without transparency and verifiability cannot be trusted to return accurate results.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Yes, but as my boys who will soon be turning 18 and despite my protests have made it damned clear they have no intention of ever voting said to me, when all you are given is the lesser of two evils you are still choosing to side with evil. And sadly I have to agree they have a point. Both the Ds and Rs have gotten so blatantly corrupt you might as well just put "corporate ass kissing corrupt lying scumbag" A or B on the ballot.
When BOTH sides are for big government, more power for the fed, blowing cash like a gambling addict in Vegas, and passing any laws that a corporation buys....err lobbies for, no matter how badly they screw the people(see DMCA, Sonny Bono, current bailouts, two unpopular wars draining cash, pointless weapons systems that enrich defense contractors, etc for examples)
When you have that from BOTH sides, and their greed and blatant corruption is so damned obvious that even my 15 and 16 year old smells the bullshit from a mile away, who the hell ARE you going to vote for? Kodos? Hell, when I turned to my 67 year old mother for backup, who has voted in every election since she was 18, she said "Why bother? After seeing how corrupt they both have become and how Obama lied through his teeth and how McCain didn't mind earmarks as long as they were his, seriously why bother? It's pointless now."
And sadly if we don't get a real third party I think she is right. This last election I was practically holding my nose because the stench of corruption was all over all the choices. I think that is why nobody has pride in America anymore. You might as well grab everything that isn't nailed down for yourself before the entire Ponzi scheme collapses, because no matter which side you pick they are going to screw you and enrich themselves and their rich corporate buddies. Depressing? Yes, but as I sat there trying to think of a logical, legitimate argument for voting I frankly couldn't think of one. The MSM owns the gates of advertising and they are only going to push D or R, and frankly I would not pee on either side if they were on fire right now. The era of having "Trust Busters" like Teddy Roosevelt are apparently over for good and never to return. Just too much greed and whoring by the two sides to ever let anyone with integrity ever make it into a position of power.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.