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Sequoia Disclosing Voting System Source To DC
buzzinglikeafridge writes "After Sequoia voting machines registered more votes than there were voters in DC's primaries last September, and the city threatened a lawsuit as a result, the company agreed to disclose technical details of the system (including source code) to the city. Although this isn't the first time the company has disclosed the source code of its machines, it is the first time the machines' blueprints will be handed over as well."
About fucking time.
if(candidate == "Bush") { castVote(candidate); castVote(candidate); } else { castVote(candidate); }
You want me to use your machine for my elections? Hand it all over. All. Source, blueprints, all. I want to audit it. For as long as I want and by whomever I please. Yes, of course you will get my signatures that your code will not be given to anyone (except for audits, but not to keep) and it will be only used to audit your machines. No problem.
You don't let me? Ok.
NEXT OFFER!
Frankly, it's a HUGE biz. Once you have the foot in the door, do you think they'll audit your competitor or will they order their next machines with you again because they've been audited already? YOU want to sell ME your machines. YOU are about to earn a ton of money, enough that you'll never have to create any other product anymore. You're selling to the government, not some beancounting company, they won't question if your software costs a million despite costing you 10k.
Do you think I'll find some company willing to comply with my requirements if you don't bend over?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Surely with something as important as a voting system, any private supplier should have to submit the blueprints & code to some kind of independent panel for approval / verification as a matter of course?
Who the fuck trusts a corporation to implement a something that is fair, correct and well engineered, without any oversight?
I don't understand how voting machines can be so complicated that such gross errors occur. Surely it can't be much more than a glorified counting program that also keeps some sort of log about what it's done. I'm making the presumption that these programs are for some reason very complicated, and that's why errors like this are more frequent than they should be. Can anyone either explain why they're so complicated or give another reason why they seem to spew out so many errors?
(Aside from the witty "they're all programmed to vote for candidate X!" responses.)
The machines that protect democracy include jet fighters, naval warcraft, guns, rockets, bombs ---- and voting machines.
The US Government wouldn't buy a any of those other things without a massive effort to make sure they were secure, why not voting machines as well? If you can compromise those, the rest are easy.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
If it was actually being taken seriously it would be done by hand counted paper ballots.
There are already good paper voting systems in use that meet important criteria such as:
1) Being easy for most people to understand how their vote is counted and the effort it takes to cheat the system.
2) Allowing the different political parties and independent bodies have their observers present to observe the votes as they are being counted.
Because, I suggest that: elections don't just have to be fair. They have to be _seen_ as fair.
Otherwise if there's a "surprise" result, there may be too many people on the streets for the police to quieten down. And that is a bad thing. If an election is seen as fair, while there may still be sore losers on the streets, the rest will be drowning their sorrows/disgust/disappointment in less troublesome ways.
Electronic voting fails that way.
It's a black box that the average voter does not understand. And worse, an expert in the field will tell you that it's a black box that makes cheating easier. How can you prove that the source code you see, is the one that was actually running during the election? You can't! If an ATM makes an error, someone in ops, accounts or audit might notice the creation or destruction of money. But the creation and destruction of votes is hard to detect and prove unless it gets to a ridiculous state (like now).
I've been in the IT line for years and I see no good reason to have electronic voting systems in a Democracy.
The more voters you have, the more counters and observers you can have. Hand counting scales fine.
I find it darkly amusing that the most powerful country in the world spends hundreds of billions to choose governments oops "establish democracy" in other countries, and can't even spend a much lower amount to do things properly at home.
Sequoia voting machines are secure, unless someone clicks here:
http://www.google.com/search?q=sequoia+yellow+button&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=com.ubuntu:en-US:unofficial&client=firefox-a
I used to work for a state division of elections certifying voting equipment. I wound up getting canned. I think one of the rationale was that I raised an eyebrow at problems like this.
I'd love to know what American attitudes are towards open-source. I've known plenty of people who consider open-source inherently insecure, since the public can see how it works. American idio--er, voters, probably think a super-duper secret voting system is more secure than one that's open for public inspection. :-/
Actually, that might make coding it easier.
Then you just have a hash:
vote{SSN} = candidate
No one is getting executed or persecuted based on their vote.
You think maybe that's because the vote is secret?
The reason the ballot is a secret is to be certain that no one can leverage your vote against you. A secret ballot is critical for the safety of the voters. Just imagine that your boss knows who you're voting for.
"No one is getting executed or persecuted based on their vote."
Not in the US, where voting is fairly free and safe. In other places not so much (Kenya).
Well if anyone is getting persecuted for their vote isn't it time for a revolution? If your gov is so evil that they persecute you for voting for the other guy they don't deserve to / can't be trusted to run the country.
Are you sure that not just an excuse so the evil dictators can cheat at the election? If people are going to persecute based on others voting they should be harshly dealt with and that will be the end of that.
You can't discriminate against homos or minorities because its a crime. Why would discriminating based on voting be allowed or any different?
You had a pet Unicorn as a child, didn't you?
I won't object to communities getting source code to voting machines under free software licenses, but when voting machines are used only to prepare voter-verified paper ballots never to count ballots (as they should be), security concerns for these machines drop dramatically. I shouldn't have to use such a machine in the first place, but if I choose to use a machine to prepare my voter-verified paper ballot source code concerns drop to making sure that bugs in the program won't stop me from using the program under unforseen conditions. Communities deserve software freedom, and that is sufficient justification for communities to run their own voting systems completely.
Digital Citizen
There is an old saying about how those who don't read history are doomed to repeat it.
I have no idea why that thought sprang to mind just now. None whatsoever.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
Because you can discriminate against homos and minorities. You just have to be subtle when you do (and avoid false appearances of descrimination), doesn't mean it doesn't happen.
Same reason as always. If they know how you voted, they come and break your kneecaps. Secret prevents real mayhem, shame has nothing to do with it.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
Yes, I am sure that secret ballots are essential. Not only can an open ballot leave you open to retaliation (an extremist group says "Anyone who votes for Candidate X is going to be on our hit list") but it also lets them buy votes a la "$50 for anyone who votes for Candidate Y" (by the way, at $50 for each voter takes about $3.5 billion if you want the same popular vote that Obama got last year. Obama spent around $0.6 billion, think any corporations would be willing to fund a candidate?)
If everyones name was attached to their vote there would be a way to verify the election outcome. Are people really that ashamed of who they vote for? No one is getting executed or persecuted based on their vote.
Follow history much? How about your up for a promotion and your boss doesn't like the person you voted for so he gives the promotion to somebody else. How about the mob threatens to harass/beat up/kill your family if you don't vote for the right person. There's a reason voting is secret and that secrecy is essential to democracy. Without secrecy intimidation and coercion has, can and will occur in voting.
"Educate the mind but never at the expense of the soul."~Blessed Basil Moreau
You can't discriminate against homos or minorities because its a crime. Why would discriminating based on voting be allowed or any different?
And that stops it from happening? Just because something's illegal doesn't mean it won't happen.
"Educate the mind but never at the expense of the soul."~Blessed Basil Moreau
I don't understand what this accomplishes. What are they going to do? Look for bugs? They already know there are bugs. If it was sabotaged, they're not going to get the code that was used and will only find bugs.
This is like calling the fire department after the barn has already burned to the ground, except that the fire will likely be allowed to continue.
Can your boss look at your vehicle registration? Vehicle registration should be secrete so your boss doesn't know you have a second vehicle and are working at a second job for the competition to pay for that vehicle and fire you. Can any random asshole look up your SNN? You people are a bunch of stupid assholes that try and protect everything wrong with the system rather than fix it.
Who are they and why will they break your kneecaps? Also why should we hide so the evil they who apparently control everything don't come after you? Shouldn't we be going after them. Who are the real terrorists in this country? Or are you one of thos conspiracy wackos?
No but where is the penalty?
Are you saying that our currant gov is an extremist group?
what hater of democracy modded me troll stand up or are you an anonymous coward to ashamed to take responsibility for your actions?
No we don't need a violent revolution. Saying such things, just get's you tagged by the corrupt DHS. (Unless of course your an agent provocateur.)
It's called "Transparency." It goes back to the days, where voting the wrong way and your enemy finds out they kill you. Which is why it had to be a secret vote with public oversight.
Now while I don't claim to know your motivations, the fact our vote has to have transparency, should be a clear message to the people there are internal threats to our constitution, and our very existence.
I always "refuse to put my ballot into the scanner", and force them to open the AUX tray. they empty the tray at the end of the election, (or so they say) and send it to the SOS headquarters to be scanned, I dread this shit. I've seen many things at polling places that are wrong, yet I could be arrested if I took a picture, or video. Somehow corporate media get's access to take photos and video, but they always say, "look how smooth the election is going." When in reality it's completely fucked up.
If you knew how many errors an OCR does, you wouldn't feed your ballot in that piece of shit either scanner.
But still either way, (Scanner or AUX tray) I don't know what truly happens to my vote.
And if you say you do, you lie. I'd like to think my vote counted, but I will never really know as long as these electronic vote tabulation devices exist.
I can just hear the DC election commissioners now, poring over the source code: "What is this? Why can't they write in plain English? What's this 'Studio H' stuff supposed to mean?"
There is an old saying about how those who don't read history are doomed to repeat it.
Secret ballots were a late-comer to the US, and weren't needed or even useful until then. And the reason they were needed was race. Prior to the race issues causing so much trouble in the south around the time of the Civil War, secret ballots were not widely used in the USA, and there was nothing lost. History shows us that, as long as there isn't a very strong case of vote indimidation being caused by a massively huge number of people (often a large majority), then secret votes don't help. So, tell us again which side of this forgot history?
Learn to love Alaska
Just imagine that your boss knows who you're voting for.
He knows. And he knows I always vote the opposite of him. Where's the problem again?
If you are too stupid to figure out how someone could guarantee they know how you voted with the current system, then I can't help you (not that my boss does one, but that we talk politics). There are hundreds of ways that would work, and that you speak as if there are none indicates your inability to think.
Not in the US, where voting is fairly free and safe. In other places not so much (Kenya).
So you are saying that verified voting should not be allowed in the US because there is voter intimidation in Kenya? Again, your logic defies me.
Learn to love Alaska
Follow history much? [...] Without secrecy intimidation and coercion has, can and will occur in voting.
The vote wasn't secret in the USA for a long time. And what you claim would happen didn't. You are wrong, and history proves you are wrong. There was a short period (1860s to 1980 or so) where there was some race tension that resulted in many illegal acts being taken to harm people. One on the long list was voter indimidation. However, even with "secret ballots" being the law, the practice in many places was to force black people to show their ballots, or they were separated and discarded. So even with "secret ballots" being the law, there wasn't much protection in some places. But now, that there are the exciting choices between the Demopublicans and Republicats who happent to be running identical twins against each other, there wouldn't be an issue. We are a country founded on open voting, where voting in a manner where everyone could see (John Hancock) and being willing to give your life for your vote, but not being ashamed of it. I think you forgot that history. There may not be racial equality, but the race wars are over. We can go back to open voting, and indimidation will not be that big of an issue. Why do I say that? Because history is on my side, not yours.
Learn to love Alaska
"And there was nothing lost?"
I believe it was the lack of secret balloting that allowed all manner of vote-buying schemes, including big patronage machines like Tammany Hall.
Public ballots make it harder for people to vote their conscience, and easier for groups with power to intimidate or bribe the people they have power over. But you're right that private ballots give too much leeway to the people we charge with counting the ballots. I don't see a perfect solution. I think that voting machines with open software and a voter-verified paper trail are as close to the ideal as we can get.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
I was actually thinking of Al Quaida making a threat like "if you vote for anyone other than Osama Bin Laden we will come to your house and rape your daughters and then shoot you". I'm sure that would convince some people to stay home.
I can see radical pro-life or radical environmentalists doing the same kind of thing though. The pro-lifers are ironically more likely to shoot you while the environmentalists are ironically more likely to turn you house into green house gas...
Your pro-lifer comment is a troll. Abortion doctors end many more lives than pro-lifers. And Osama doesn't control the government though him and Bush were awful close buddies same with Saddam so you are right that we should be scared of our government.
I'm sorry you feel the pro-lifers are less violent and gun oriented than the environmentalists. Doesn't mean you're right. I'm sure some environmentalists would get their panties in a twist if they heard me claim that they were more likely to be vandals than pro-lifers. I'm picking on both sides of the aisle if you didn't notice (because both liberals and conservatives have crazy wackjobs).