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Public Clearinghouse Proposed For Evoting Failures
Hugh Pickens writes "Alice Lipowicz writes in Federal Computer Week that Lawrence Norden, senior counsel to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, has reviewed hundreds of reports of problems with electronic voting systems during the last eight years. He is recommending a new regulatory system with a national database, accessible by election officials and others, that identifies voting system malfunctions reported by vendors or election officials and new legislation that requires vendors report evoting failures to the clearinghouse. 'We need a new and better regulatory structure to ensure that voting system defects are caught early, officials in affected jurisdictions are notified immediately, and action is taken to make certain that they will be corrected for all such systems, wherever they are used in the United States,' writes Norden. Adding that election officials rely on vendors to keep them aware of potential problems with voting machines, which is often done voluntarily and that voting system failures in one jurisdiction tend to be repeated in other areas, resulting in reduced public confidence and lost votes."
They don't get to vote in America, and we shouldn't let them count the votes either.
Look, I'm an IT guy. I completely get the labor savings, the fallibility of humans, the difference in cost. We ought to be willing to pay the cost for humans to count our votes - if it costs more, maybe we'll let less stupid stuff on the ballot, or vote less than every few months. I get that when people want to cheat, a way can often be found - though most vote-counting setups have multiple interested parties to limit the cheating. I get that the average American voter is mindless cattle whose vote can be bought with sufficient advertising. But still, I'd rather that people tried to get their cheating past other suspicious-minded people than that machines introduced the opportunity to rig elections wholesale in advance and without a trace.
In the mean time until the machines are granted the right to vote, they've got no business counting the vote.
As for the rest of it, well I believe it's been described as the worst system for managing society - except for all the others that have been tried. It's mostly working.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
"Personally, I believe we should have a national holiday for big vote days so we can celebrate the most important function of a citizen in a democracy."
You mean, paying for corporate welfare? That's done every April 15th. Oh, you meant in ACTUAL democracies, huh?
with the fill in the oval, scan it system. it worked ok. at least it has a paper trail, and that's all you can ask for
it is superior in that respect to the mechanical voting machines they replaced: mechanical black box has less attack vectors that electronic black box, yes, but mechanical black box has more attack vectors than paper trail. yes, you can cheat in any voting system, but a massive conspiracy of ballot stuffers, drivers losing boxes of ballots, etc.: this can be replaced with a much smaller group of well-placed corrupt bureaucrats to manipulate mechanical voting, and with electronic, one well-placed hacker and a few milliseconds can alter the vote in ways that even statistical analysis can't reveal the manipulations
the lesson being: if your voting system is a black box: votes in, elected representative sausage out, people won't trust the vote. they need something tangible, something they can trust and understand, in their hands, which only a paper ballot is. the most advanced technophilic society 100 years form now should still be using paper, for the sake of legitimacy of the government in the eyes of its people
it's just too easy to hack a machine, and once you place doubt in the legitimacy of your elected officials, democracy itself is in trouble. we have enough angry idiots running around the usa today in the form of the tea party mumbling about "secret muslims." all we need is even the slightest perception of election machine untrustability, and the social unrest will be considerable. the reality or lack thereof of genuine hacking events isn't even the issue: PERCEPTION is the issue. enough people don't have faith in their government as it is, don't give them more reason to spin their paranoid schizophrenic fantasies and rabble rousing hysteria. because they will do it. and idiots will believe it
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It seems to me that the organizers of such a system could look for precedent in the medical device industry. There is a central repository for medical device problems, the MAUDE database, that keeps track of adverse events, and is searchable by anyone. Any respectable medical device manufacturer will consult that database to make sure that their new wiz-bang product isn't susceptible to the same failings as existing products, and you can bet the FDA will do the same before approving a new device. Practitioners and users can search the database to see if there are issues with a particular device (or class of devices).
It doesn't mean that problems with medical devices don't still exist, but at least there is mandated uniform reporting.
Another key issue here is that the FDA is empowered to take devices off the market if enough serious problems come up. As far as I know, there is nothing like that in voting systems (but damn well should be).
No it doesn't Electronic Voting with out a paper trail does. In my district we have electronic voting machines that spit out a paper ballet you then verify your vote and then walk over to the ballot box and place your paper trail ballet box. If it fails you contact one of the people that assist and start the process of finding out what is wrong.
open source sub sim. I might start coding again for this. http://dangerdeep.sourceforge.net/contribute/
I'd like to see a true representative democracy. The Senate and House votes a bill up and the President signs it, but it doesn't become law without referendum. Laws would be voted on annually by the people, and would take a 2/3rds majority to pass. Laws against activities like murder, rape, robbery, etc. would have no trouble passing, while they'd have a harder time passing laws against things like smoking pot and playing poker at home with your friends.
As to "(b) a dictator with the power to veto the will of the people," that's not accurate. The veto can be overridden.
For (c) A third of the government (the supreme court) isn't elected, but appointed." But they have no power to pass laws, only to judge the legality of those laws. Many if not most local judges, where the majority of suspects are tried, are elected.
The "two party system" is a myth (call it a conspiracy if you like) perpetrated by the corporate media and the Democrats and Republicans they own. There were six candidates for President on my ballot in the last election, and all were on the ballot in enough states to have a mathematical chance of winning, had anyone heard of them. The corporate media won't cover them and perpetrates the lie that a vote for a "third party candidate" is a wasted vote.
"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."
Free Martian Whores!