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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."
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.
--
make install -not war
I can see why the powers that be like the efficiency of a modern electronic voting system.
Clearly we humans don't have to do anything at all. The machines can read our minds and we get 100% voter turnout with guaranteed accurate results ;-)
That's pretty much what they did according to their own constitution. Unfortunately the rest of the world is getting Chavez's spin on the matter. -J
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.
They did exactly what their constitution called for and removed him from office after their Supreme Court decided he had violated their constitution. That should have been the end of the story but everyone wants to call it a coup which it wasn't. The leader of his own party called for his ouster.
Good luck taking the government by force with your handguns versus their stealth bombers.
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
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.
Which is why it becomes so very important for a would-be revolution to have the support of stealth bomber pilots.
They did impeach him. Their Congress and Supreme Court both voted to oust him. Further their constitution says that if a President tries to extend his term (which is what he did) he immediately stops being President.
You're right about the pajamas thing. They should have shot him and saved themselves the trouble.
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.
Once they have been granted suffrage and not before.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
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.
It doesn't matter what Zelaya's politics were, if this is true then he clearly had no problem with electoral fraud. People on both sides of the political spectrum, from the extremists to the moderates, have shown time & time again that they will do whatever they can to stay in power. It is not limited to only the left or only the right, and making silly jabs at the "other" side like that is not only distasteful but juvenile as well.
...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.
Whoever violates this law or proposes its reform, as well as those that support such violation directly or indirectly, will immediately cease in their functions and will be unable to hold any public office for a period of 10 years.
He proposed its reform, which means there WAS a basis for removing him.
Yes he did. If you read their constitution, you'll see that there's a section that cannot be changed or amended about the president serving only one term (too many dictator presidents clinging to power) and that it's even illegal for a government official to talk about changing it. According to the constitution, that person would lose his position and be barred from the government altogether for a period of 10 years.
Therefore, he did break the constitution and the moment he did so, wasn't president anymore.
Slashdot anagrams to "Sad Sloth"
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
AIUI, their constitution not only forbids removing the term limits, it specifies that any elected official who submits a bill to chage the constitution in that way be removed from office. If so, Zelaya had, in fact, violated their constitution and was properly removed from office.
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This smoking gun says that the endless political correctnes that is the USA, today, managed to get a simple issue __wrong__ again, Manuel Zelaya was democratically elected but as with many other countries and leaders, he was in the middle of destroying his country's democracy when ousted. That the undemocratic shills at the UN would oppose was expected, see what they have done about Kaunda, but that the US and Europe would follow is amazing.
... and now Honduras.
What is needed is Congressional term limits in the USA, not their abolition in Honduras.
Now that Chavez has got his way in Venezuela he will be a pain for generations just as Castro was. Every time
This must be the makings of a world record for wrongheadedness and stupidity by both parties in the US, Iraq, Afganistan, Pakistan
There must be a very strong case for retiring entirely all staff at Foggy Bottom and Langly and starting again, Wild Bill anyone?, since they always pick the wrong side. Now we risk forcing the population of yet another mid-american country the delights of a corrupt socialist government paradise run by an idiot.
> 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
The ~referendum that Zelaya was planning might well have been unconstitutionnal, but he didn't get to do it. Hence he did not break the constitution.
The Honduran Constitution prohibits the consideration of any amendments aimed at changing terms or eliminating term limits. In effect, by advocating and campaigning on that topic, Zelaya was violating the constitution in his capacity as president.
Not to mention that Zelaya sacked the head of the military for refusing to carry out his illegal referendum, and then tried to have his supporters carry it out on their own contrary to the declarations of Hondura's congress and supreme court, leading a mob to break in and steal the necessary ballots which he had had sent by none other than Hugo Chavez.
And now we see why he was eager to carry it out despite its illegality and his having become rather unpopular--it was always going to be cooked in his favor.
Personally, I don't see how the removal of the president by the congress and the supreme court for his illegal actions and temporary replacement by an elected official from the same party, with no alteration to plans to hold the upcoming election, can be considered a "coup." It didn't change the political landscape at all. It just kept one power hungry president from fraudulently creating a permanent throne for himself.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
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
If the Civilization series has taught me anything, it is that even a Warrior or Militia unit is sometimes a match for a Stealth Bomber.
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.
I have found an article where a constitutional lawyer, who hails from Honduras, explains what happened and why it happened. My best guess analysis mirrors just about exactly what he is saying. There is fault on both sides, but their constitution clearly states not only is it illegal to try and change the one term limit, but it is a crime to even propose it! I didn't know that part.
His own political party, who control the legislature there, voted overwhelmingly for his ouster. Their attorney general ordered the referendum halted, but he was trying to go ahead with it anyway, just by calling it "an opinion poll", just some weasel words. By their law, he shouldn't have been deported (that's the only thing they did technically illegal), but immediately should have been jailed, but they decided it was better to break that one law to avoid mass bloodshed. They estimated if he was still in-country, there just would have been a big bloody mess, and they didn't want that, the rock and the hard place scenario, or what I called picking the lesser of two suckages.
Here is the article Miguel Estrada: 'Honduran Ouster of Zelaya was Constitutional'
I see you missed the part were he was found guilty by the supreme court of Honduras.
to get Jimmy Carter to certify the results. Whether the election actually took place is irrelevant.
I agree with the post "Opposition Faked it to ciminalize [sic] him", the coup plotters are doing what the can to discredit the Zelaya administration. In the two weeks that they have taken control of the executive branch of the government (they already had control of the legislature and judicial system) they are finding out all kinds of things that the Zelaya government supposedly did. None of these things are being done in a transparent or internationally valid manner. What those in power are trying to do is to obfuscate any possibility of a negotiated solution. While it is mentioned that all this was precipitated by a survey to see if a question could be included in the general election ballot regarding the creation of a constitutional assembly sometime in 2010 (there was no possibility of modifying the constitution prior to the end of Zelaya's term since the elections for president would have taken place well before the constitutional assembly).
What many of us who study Central America suspect (and with good information from many of the principal players on the ground) is that this was an excuse for the ruling elites of Honduras to allow the military to deport the president and many around him, including the minister of foreign affairs, Patricia Rodas who might very soon be a presidential contender, and more importantly, has openly advocated for a weakened military that at the moment operates largely as an autonomous institution. The military has been in the business of running Honduras for decades after deposing the Liberal government of Villeda Morales sending him into exile along with the president of the congress Modesto Rodas, father of Patricia Rodas (Mr. Rodas occupied the same position Mitcheletti held until a few days ago, except that the military did not see him as an ally and sent him to Costa Rica, much in the same way they sent Mr. Zelaya. btw. the "hat" Mr. Zelaya wears is a symbol that represents Modesto Rodas, who died in 1979, but is still a strong presence in Honduran politics).
But how does the military operate with the elite families? Who is in control? The military high command is in tight association with the elite families that have the greatest share of the economic interests in the country (and plenty of bank accounts and investments overseas). These families and the military have business relationships in common--in fact they are undistinguishable since not only are they linked through economic interests, they are tightly integrated through family ties that overlap different sectors (public, private and military). And who are these families?
From what I can discern they are: Canahuati Larach: textiles, pharmaceuticals, banking, soft drinks and media [La Prensa, El Nuevo Dia, El Heraldo]. Facusse: textiles, pharmaceuticals, agro, telecom, banking, construction, media [La Tribuna]. Nasser: telecom. Kafati: agro, pharmaceuticals, coffee and casinos. CarriÃn, commerce (shopping malls). Ferrar: media. Agurcia: hotels, telecom and shipping. Faraj: banking, television, and commerce. Arévalo: electricity. Kafie: milk products and electricity. Rosenthal (who are pro-Zelaya): airlines, banking, media [Tiempo]. Goldstein banking. Kawas Sikafie: construction, cement, media, commerce. Andonie FernÃndez: real estate, pharmaceuticals.
The above list is only a very partial listing of their holdings. Also one has to keep in mind that the coup was leadered by a number of individuals with quite checkered pasts, including Billy Joya, who is now a security advisor to Mitcheletti, but in the 1980s was a founding member of the 3-16 battalion, a death squad, responsible for the disappearances of over 184 individuals. He has also been rumored to be connected to the Cali cartel (though this last allegation is a bit hard to prove since they don't leave much of a paper trial).
This is just a small bit of the story, it gets really strange as one finds out more about the details.
... 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