States Using Cloud Based Voting System For Overseas Citizens

gManZboy writes "If a ballot was lost in the cloud, would anyone know? Several states are using an online balloting website based on Microsoft's Azure cloud-computing platform to allow U.S. voters living overseas to cast their votes via the Web in 2012 primary elections. In addition to a now complete Florida primary, Virginia and California will use the system for their primaries, and Washington state will use it for its caucus. To ensure the ballots are from legitimate voters, people use unique identifying information to access their ballots online, according to Microsoft. Once received, the signature on the ballot is matched with registration records to further verify identity."

Comments

Why?

[Dexter Herbivore]

Why do electoral commissions, or the local alternative, keep attempting to bring in voting systems that have been proven to be vulnerable? (Conspiracy theories aside).

Re:Why?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Because 1). People treat voting counting as a basic data collection and management problem, rather than something with particular significance.

2). Because of 1) they go shopping for a commodity "IT Solution". Unfortunately, humans (on average) are barely better than insentient objects at choosing a "Solution" that isn't a raging clusterfuck(even in those situations where there is such a solution).

3). Because of 2), somebody is left with an onrushing deadline and a pile of shit, and has to make everything appear to go more or less smoothly on time, working with whatever they have.

There certainly is reason to be substantially more suspicious of electoral matters, given what's at stake; but organizations of all types routinely build horribly maladjusted systems for all sorts of purposes, so it isn't a huge surprise...

Re:Why?

[TheLink]

In many countries the voters are unhappy when the vote counting is done behind closed doors- they know something fishy is going on (whether they can do anything about it is another matter).

One important requirement for a voting system is convincing enough of the losers that they've lost.
So even if you have an electronic voting system that actually works properly[1], you need to convince the voters that it works properly.

Of course if most of the voters don't care that much then it doesn't matter.

[1] There are some electronic systems which seem like they might work properly and be verifiable: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDnShu5V99s
But can you convince enough voters of that?

That said usually the people running/rigging the elections would prefer to use other methods instead ;).

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Great! In Amerika we've gone the other way so that issue is moot.
You see, we've developed a system where we take two identical candidates and blow them up until every possible microscopic difference is visible and then we convince voters that those differences matter. Then, after the election, we shrink them back down and show everyone how similar they really are. Everyone from the losing 'side' gets to blame the winning 'side' for everything bad until the next 'election'. It's great fun but not much of a way to run a country.

pointless

[vlm]

Peasants, do not revolt. You can select from one 1%er corporate purchased candidate or the other 1%er corporate purchased candidate. They do have slightly different marketing messages/lies and you get to select which identical candidate hired the better PR agency and/or you get to select which lies you prefer to hear.

Election returns prediction

[dkleinsc]

Barack Obama (D) 38%
Mitt Romney (R) 37%
DLL Not Found (I) 15%
Ron Paul (I) 10%

Re:Uhm..

[PPH]

We had a vote ....