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Computerized Election Results With No Election
_Sharp'r_ writes "In Honduras, according to breaking Catalan newspaper reports (translations available, USA Today mention), authorities have seized 45 computers containing certified election results for a constitutional election that never happened. The election had been scheduled for June 28, but on that day the president, Manuel Zelaya, was ousted. The 'certified' and detailed electronic records of the non-existent election show Zelaya's side having won overwhelmingly."
There's a lot of reason to believe Zelaya is corrupt, and shouldn't be Honduras' president. But that means Honduras should impeach him, or convict and imprison him, removing him from office, if that's how their constitution works (which is what appears to to be the case).
Any government process that features the army forcing a president out on a plane in his pajamas is at least as unacceptable as a crooked election keeping one in power.
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make install -not war
Yea, because they totally couldn't have stuffed boxes full of fake paper ballots.
Nobody's saying electronic records can't be faked through physical access to the machines. You're the only one who seems surprised at that, in order to deny it should be surprising. Which is a straw man argument.
This story is important because it crossed the line from possible, to (evidently) actual. Which has consequences. Not the expected consequences of helping keep a president in power, but (even more notably) in helping to keep one ousted by a coup this past week out of power, boosting arguments of his corruption.
Next you'll be sarcastically moaning "oh, noes, presidents are corrupt". FYI: Yes, and when they are, the people need to be outraged about it, and get rid of them.
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make install -not war
and the industry shills who have sold their conscience:
you can screw with paper ballots. but a lot less easily and a lot less slower and with a lot more effort and a lot easier to trace than the effort required to mess with electronic voting
simply for the sake of the integrity of democracy, electronic voting should NEVER happen, in ANY country
do you really need any convincing about what can happen to a country if a vote is put in doubt considering recent events?
not that iran used electronic voting, but imagine how much LESS forensic evidence there would be if iran ever lets anyone independently monitor the results
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Its far easier for a 3rd party overwatching election committee to verify that the box is empty before the election, than to verify that the electronic election is actually reset, and the machines aren't tampered, and have no back doors, and so forth.
You may not have noticed this, but paper ballots are ... made of paper. And lots of ballots take up lots of space. They're heavy. They have to be disposed of. This takes time. People notice. There are witnesses. The amount of effort involved in altering or covering up the results of a fully computerized election is so much less than the amount of effort involved in altering or covering up the results of an election that uses paper ballots that the two aren't really comparable.
Of course paper ballots are no guarantee of an honest election. Nor is there any guarantee that locking your door will keep your house from being broken into. But an all-electronic election is like leaving your front door hanging wide open and putting a sign in your yard that says, "Come take stuff."
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
They avoided more serious bloodshed the way they did it. If this is a true fact, and he had remained "in power", he would have beern still able to order around a lot of the military forces who were loyal to him, plus cause mass demonstrations, etc and be able to coordinate it better. Because there is no way he would have gone along with getting impeached.
Even on the surface it was a blatant power grab by him, the entire issue was designed to turn him into el presidente for life. The congress there and the judges ALREADY had told him this wasn't proper nor legal, but he was going aherad with this "vote" scam regardless. So what makes you think he would have gone along with an impeachment? They were under the gun of making a time critical decision, and didn't off the guy or anything, just got him out before the situation got worse. If they hadn't already warned him about it that would be different, but they did warn him before the fact.
Ya, two sucky choices, but I think they chose the lesser of two suckages there.
But all of this is based on "if" and we just don't know the veracity of this latest revelation, but we do know about the power grab he was attempting, sort of like chavez making himself the president (basically and practically)for life "legally".
Term limits are a dang spiffy idea when it comes to politicians, no matter how popular they are, and changing the rules, like he wanted to do with this plebiscite, at the last second, is a serious mistake and transparently was just an effort to accrue more power under some umbrella of it legally happening. The people there had a right wing dictatorship like forever, and a lot of them could plainly see a left wing version now happening, and they just went "no you don't!".
That's how I have read these ongoing events anyway.
The main benefit of paper ballots are the many eyes and hands that the ballots and ballot boxes go through.
Think of it this way: the trademark images of the Iraqi elections a few years back were the inked thumb and the translucent ballot box. Neither are inherently secure, but the inked thumb made it more difficult for people to vote early and vote often without the risk of someone noticing it. Likewise, the translucent ballot boxes made it more difficult for the bins to be stuffed before hand without the risk of someone noticing it. Computers are so incredibly opaque that it is nearly impossible for someone to notice discreprancies without direct and intensive observations as well as a great deal of technical knowledge.
Now we all know that elections are fixed, even with pen and paper ballots. It is possible to pay off the right people so that they conveniently don't notice anything. Almost everyone else can be intimidated into not noticing anything. But, either way, more people will notice the discreprancies and people tend to have long memories about such things. So there is still a potential for them to remedy it.
Elections don't just have to be fair, they have to be seen as fair (or at least fair enough). Otherwise they increase the odds of massive riots even if the result was correct.
Electronic voting systems are still opaque to the average person even if they happen to be fair.
In contrast when paper voting is done properly, the various parties can have their representatives observe the whole process of the voting, storage and counting. This is in fact done in many countries. It is not some "theory".
In "notorious" countries typically the "counting" is done behind closed doors, or observers aren't allowed to keep an eye over the ballot boxes. The more a country/gov hides the whole process, the more suspicious it will seem.
With electronic voting systems the counting is effectively done behind closed doors. And if you set things up so that independent and party representatives can observe the counting, the system ends up about as slow as paper voting, just more complex and expensive.
Electronic voting systems are only useful for the wrong reasons.
I have to admit that paper based voting fails if too many of the citizens in your country can't count properly. But by that time you probably have an idiocracy anyway.
...when the populace was armed with muskets, and the government was armed with muskets.
Now the populace is armed with, at best, assault rifles, and the government is armed with tanks.
What really keeps the government in check is the right to join the military.
paintball
Is it? Why?
If I'm capable of rigging an election electronically, I could be capable of covering my tracks.
The congress and the supreme court tossed him from office when he violated the constitution. The Army just fulfilled their constitutional duty.
It would be no different than the US Senate convicting a President at trial, and the President refusing to leave office. At that point what the rest of the government is supposed to do is toss him, forcefully, if need be, although in the US it would probably be the Secret Service that did it.
paintball
Uh, to rig a paper election you will have to hide something. The more hiding you do the more suspicious it is. The more open the process is, the harder it is to cheat. With people watching each step e.g. checking that the boxes are empty, observing the voting, the storing and opening of the boxes, and the counting, it gets very hard to cheat on a massive enough scale.
Go see how paper voting is done in various countries and you can see it's really hard to rig in some countries, and easier in other countries (ballot boxes are moved, counting is done in secret by one organization).
Sure you can bribe people. But if so many are bribable, the country is screwed up so badly it hardly matters what system you use.
In contrast an electronic election is mostly _hidden_ to observers. So it should be suspicious by default.
If you set it up so that people can observe the storage and counting of the electronic votes, it's going to be as slow as paper voting, but more expensive and complicated.
The easiest way you can rig paper elections that are done openly and properly is with postal votes. However electronic voting systems are just as vulnerable to this problem - if not more so.
Having shot people suspended liberties, imposed curfews and deposed an elected president, they couldn't possibly be lying -- really they would lie? And why would someone want to rig an election that was announced as not having the force of anything but advice? It was a vote about a "recommendation." Not a referendum that has the force of law like California. Of course, making talking about changing the law illegal surely doesn't say anything about the level of democracy allowed by the elites. Sorry this sounds like justification after the fact, for world denounced anti-democrats staging a military coup. Honduras =Iran
Unfortunately, so can their abusive spouse ("vote like this or I will beat you black and blue"), their abusive boss ("vote like this or I will sack you"), their local mafia boss ("vote like this or you will be wearing concrete shoes") and the local freemasons lodge ("vote like this or we will ruin your business")
apart from that though, I find your ideas intriguing.. do you have a newsletter?
a military coup unofficially supported by the US,
US manufactured, voting machines
Interesting how you state two things here with no proof. Nor are either of these in any of the articles and the only one who has said it was "unofficially supported by the US" has been Hugo Chavez. Further, US President Obama has condemned the coup. Oh, and it didn't say that they were voting machines, either.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
> eVoting CAN and WILL happen.
It may come, but it will come over my cold dead body.
> ..every voter must have its own private key... [lots of useless tech details clipped]
The problem is with the tech. You, me and at least 10% of the nerds here on Slashdot could design an evoting system that would be technically perfect. And still spell the final death of our Republic because of the non-technical flaws that can't be fixed with tech.
Problem one. Take away the secret ballot (i.e. the voting booth) and it is 100% certain that vote buying, voter intimidation and many other evils will follow. No ballot cast over the Internet can be proven to be secret. Note that this defect exists with absentee and general mail in balloting as well. Mailed in absentee ballots generally don't decide elections and can be accepted as a compromise. General mail in elections are inherently corrupt.
Problem two. You will never design an electronic system that is 100% proof against fraud. It is doubtful one can be designed as resistant to fraud as paper ballot counted in the open with observers from all camps present.
> Voting could then be extended to government actions that currently skip the peoples' opinion.
You are describing Democracy. And the Founders were aware of this system of government and rightly rejected it as proven by history to be madness. We were instead given a Constitutional Republic. I have seen nothing to indicate the current government educated masses possess such an advanced level of civic virtue as to justify a reevaluation of their verdict on the subject.
Democrat delenda est
Term limits for the country's leader are not rare. He attempted to call a referendum directly, when it is stated that he does not have the power to do that in the local constitution; the courts and the legislature refused to have such a referendum when asked. This is what makes it illegal - he does not legally have the power to call such a referendum.
Is it any surprise that he was ousted? And is it any surprise that the referendum never happened and yet the results are sitting on the servers?
The election was rigged per se.
Merely *holding* the election was illegal and in violation of the law. This was settled by law, and in courts.
This was not a "coup" by the lawful government, but rather the lawful government thwarting a coup by the president . . .
hawk
One should of course take such breaking news reports with a grain of salt till confirmed, one could imagine this being some sort of misinterpretation of the observations (e.g. maybe those were early voting ballots??), Moreover this is hondouras.....as I'm sure other posters will talk about.
IN any case assuming the report is correct, it's critical contextual significance is thus:
One of the big strawmen often raised by folks in favor of electronic voting is that there is this supposed panacea called "parallel testing" that is touted as being an invincible process of detecting rigged machines. The idea is that at random a machine will be chosen before the elections begin and pulled out of service, then the election workers will cast pretend votes on it all day long. then it's output checked for accuracy. This is called "parallel" testing because it's done in a time period parallel to a real election, supposedly to "fool" any date dependent software. It's not an awful idea and would indeed detect some kinds of naive electronic fraud. But the idea that this is remotely a solution is even more naive.
Moreover, said proponents don't actually ever do this--- it's just a thought experiment. The real reason for that strawman argument is not that people would actually would do it, it's that since you could in principle do it, this keeps that bad guys at bay. Ha Ha Ha.
So it's such a terrible irony then that the very first time in history that, effectively a different kind of parallel test did occur, that yep massive machine rigging is found!
the parallel test in this case is: call an election. cancel it unexpectedly at the last possible second and impound the machines, test them for rigging.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Fuck Zelaya, and all the leftist leaders upset by this, including Obama, Chavez, and Castro.
Honduras proved they have a set of balls and aren't going to get pushed around by communists. More power to them.
They did the right thing, just wish they had thrown Zelaya in jail for the rest of his life rather than exile him.
Or, as Churchill put it quite succinctly: "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."
In the real world we have to deal with imperfections. We can't have perfect efficiency in anything, including government. You have to find the balance that works the best. You can't demand perfection because you won't get it and refusing any solution less than perfect means you get NO solution.
I have seen no proof of voting fraud to elect G.W. Bush. Several newspapers (that overwhelmingly supported Al Gore) did recounts of the Florida 2000 ballots and found that G.W. Bush won the Florida election by any reasonable method of recounting (the only method of recounting that gave Florida to Gore was if one gave him the votes from every ballot that was less than perfectly clear as to who was intended--even when there was no indication that they intended to vote for Gore).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
And it was a good rationale...when the populace was armed with muskets, and the government was armed with muskets.
Actually, at the time the population was armed with accurate-at-a-distance RIFLES (compared to the Brits' smoothbores), cannon, warships (merchant ships often carried cannon to fend off pirates and military ships of other countries).
Which doesn't really matter. Because you can't stop a bullet with a bigger bullet.
The "liberator" pistol was a one-shot (and unscrew parts to reload) "zip gun". Made mostly of cheap stamped parts at a cost of under $10 it was air dropped by the thousands into German occupied areas in WW II. It came with a handgrip full of extra rounds and an instruction manual in comic book form:
- Here's how to load and fire it.
- Sneak up on the German soldier.
- Shoot him point-blank.
- Take HIS rifle and ammo.
- Give the Liberator and the remaining rounds to another resistance fighter who doesn't have a gun yet.
Now the populace is armed with, at best, assault rifles, and the government is armed with tanks.
Tanks without infantry support are cans of soldiers waiting to be cooked. Tanks WITH infantry support are crowds of soldiers waiting to be shot, blown up, burned, gassed, ...
A good varmint gun qualifies as an exceptional sniper rifle. A shotgun at appropriate ranges is more firepower against advancing troops - though for a shorter time - than a machine gun.
But if the US government came against its own people you can bet that a bunch of 'em will honor their oaths to the constitution over orders. Think large-scale desertion and coat-turning WITH equipment. Opening of the armories for the population. Lots of ex-military, reserve, and state militia types (with THEIR armories full of stuff - including the tanks you're so concerned about) will be out on a constitutional side, too.
A determined population armed with a few guns can eventually prevail. (Even with a VERY few VERY low power guns they can do quite well. The starving denizens of the Warsaw Ghetto held off the bulk of the German Army for better than a week starting with a dozen handguns and sporting rifles.)
As to capabilities: The typical private gun owner who practices occasionally can shoot rings around the typical non-SWAT policeman.
The Second Amendment isn't just about making it possible for the people to resist the tyranny that the founders thought any government would gravitate toward. It's to make the population's advantage SO OVERWHELMING that no government official could delude himself that he might be able to win.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
... peculiarly, the Honduran Constitution does not include an impeachment procedure
But it does specify that anyone who advocates or takes steps to modify the portion of the constitution immediately loses any government office he holds and is banned from holding a government office for ten years.
This is what Zelaya did. The head of his party called for his ouster and the Supreme Court ruled that he was in violation of this section and no longer the President.
Even if the steps weren't explicitly laid out in advance this sounds like a constitutional impeachment procedure to me.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way