IEEE Standards For Voting Machines

kgeiger writes "Voting machine designs and data formats are a free-for-all. The result is poor validation and hence opportunity for fraud. An IEEE standards group wants all election computer systems to speak the same language. From the article: 'IEEE Standards Project 1622 is working on electronic data interchange for voting systems. The plan is to create a common format, based on the Election Markup Language (EML) already recommended for use in Europe. This is a subset of the popular XML (eXtensible Markup Language) that specifies particular fields and data structures for use in voting.'"

Comments

IEEE Standards For Voting Machines?

[Anonymous Coward]

So it has come to this.

Re:IEEE Standards For Voting Machines?

[symbolset]

We should allow machines to count votes someday. And that day is the day we have found machines responsible enough to become full citizens and themselves vote. But even then it must not be an exclusive privilege reserved to the machines, or they will quickly become our overlords.

Yeah... no.

[Anonymous Coward]

None of that will ever happen.
If it did... How can these voting machine companies deliver the vote to the guy who paid them lots of money?

Shit they don't even try to hide it anymore. lol

If such a standard ever did get put in place... it would go thru politics and end up with so many holes the standard would be just as useless as what we have now.

Re:Yeah... no.

[Samantha Wright]

It doesn't matter whether or not it happens. They're creating a fucking file format. That hardly protects against (a) fraudulent data input or (b) fraudulent reporting of results. Time to upgrade to dead trees, guys.

Re:Yeah... no.

[Anonymous Coward]

voting should never be replaced by electronic means...... else numbers could be made up. It is the one thing we need to be tedious about.

Re:Yeah... no.

[Rob Riggs]

c.f. Lehmann Bros, AIG, Countrywide Financial, Washington Mutual, ... the list goes on. You can still have fraud (or incompetence as in AIG), just not at such a massive scale.

There is a more immediate problem

[betterunixthanunix]

I understand how a hand count works. I have no idea how most voting machines work, because their designs are secret. We can talk about standards after we get access to source code and design documents.

Re:There is a more immediate problem

[hutsell]

Even at the likely risk of being considered a tin foil luddite, this is the one technology I wish would never be made, even if there is a "100% assuredness" in both accountability and transparency people can feel comfortable about, even when it is something done in autonomous isolation.

The political system of representative government is about people interacting with one another; voting should reflect that process. Regrettably, since the time and energy to write a compelling argument here is way beyond my present capabilities, I've resigned myself to being on the losing end on a personal viewpoint about the philosophy of politics.

Re:There is a more immediate problem

[WillAdams]

Given that some polling locations are likely to not have power on election day:

http://www.salon.com/2012/11/01/power_loss_threatens_vote_in_6_plus_states/

the problems w/ unnecessarily using machines is obvious.

Use a paper ballot. Use machines to count them. Have standards for how said machines communicate the totals.

Above all, have a physical paper trail for the inevitable recounts.

Re:There is a more immediate problem

[DNS-and-BIND]

Everyone says this. It gets old. The PRI in Mexico rigged elections for 80 years using nothing but paper ballots.

Re:There is a more immediate problem

[viperidaenz]

And how is ticking a box on a piece of paper any different or more "people interacting" than pushing a button?

It's not like the person counting the votes even knows who's vote they're counting. The only thing they vote counters bring to the table is human error.

Re:There is a more immediate problem

[perpenso]

The PRI in Mexico rigged elections for 80 years using nothing but paper ballots.

OK, but as we all know automating/digitizing a process will often make it faster and more efficient. In this case the process of election rigging. :-)

Re:There is a more immediate problem

[Gerzel]

Actually the US vote is about people NOT, very specifically NOT, interfacing with one another when the ballot is cast. The secret ballot where a ballot cannot be attached to a specific person after it has been cast is a fundamental part of our electoral system. It is put in there to prevent intimidation and calls to "prove" ones allegiance to a political faction by those who hold power over a vote, such as an employer.

There are examples today which show why the secret ballot is important. I recall a recent news article on an employer sending out an email to their employees that if Obama wins and taxes go up the employees will lose their jobs.

Machines if done right can make ballot stuffing and tampering much more difficult. The paper ballot is something I still agree with. I as a voter can see how I physically marked it and there is a physical artifact that must be replicated, tampered with or disposed of in order to change my vote. However not all voters are as able as I. Some lack sight and cannot see how they marked a paper ballot, and not everyone who is blind knows braille. The requirement for secret ballot means that not even a poll worker can read the ballot to someone, that person HAS to be able to interpret the ballot themselves and mark the ballot themselves, and ideally verify the ballot themselves.

Paper just doesn't meet all those requirements for all people.

Re:There is a more immediate problem

[Anonymous Coward]

The one thing that upsets me about this approach is that requiring voting to be "hands-on" and "in-person" has a vast impact on efficiency which robs the voters of their power. A system which dramatically increases the efficiency of voting naturally enables more opportunities to vote, increasing the power of the voter (whether more opportunities will be presented is another matter).

The root problem preventing this voting efficiency explosion is an effective way of allowing a citizen to verify their identity electronically. This needs to be practically solved before we can even begin to entertain the notion of electronic voting. If it were solved then a completely open system based on cryptography would be possible, preserving an individual voters privacy while enabling independent organisations (even individals) to verify that there has been no foul play (or more accurately that if there has been foul play then someone's broken an important encryption standard.)

For the identity problem, massive bonus points for enabling people to identify themselves in the comfort of their home. I'm certain this will require a dedicated device but if that device were maximally open, simple in design, and cheap, I expect a workable solution could be found.

Re:There is a more immediate problem

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Just no.

How do we know that the hardware on the floor is the exact same hardware as that which has been audited by experts?

How do we know that the software running on that hardware is the exact same software as that which has been audited by experts?

How do we know that there isn't some obscure hole that the experts failed to detect?

How do we know that the experts aren't in fact in on the nefarious scheme (or schemes!) to steal the elections?

How do we know that the data that is being tabulated at the main data centre is in fact the data that was collected at the polling booths?

Sure, hand counted paper ballots have similar issues. But you can overcome those issues with paper ballots, in a transparent and obvious manner, by letting anybody who wants to watch the whole process from start to finish. You can't do that with electronics; it's just too complex, and there are too many ways to be sneaky about it to be certain that there are no problems.

I remember scrutineering ballots in the state of Victoria (Australia) some years ago. Anybody could rock up and do it. I picked up on a few mistakes, too. The fact that anybody can do this gives me much more assurance about the results that are published. Of course, you could have the issue of citizen apathy, but if that's an issue, well, the elections are moot anyway.

Re:There is a more immediate problem

[Anonymous Coward]

The political system of representative government is about people interacting with one another; voting should reflect that process.

So how would you change the system? Note that the non-electronic version of voting does not include people interacting with one another. I've toyed with the idea of suggesting that representatives be drafted (like juries) rather than elected. That would replace politicians with ordinary people. We'd need a bunch of people to get a representative sampling. My thought was to draft five thousand people a year for three year terms. In the first year, they'd just meet with others. They could discuss the issues but wouldn't get a vote. In the second year, they'd be able to vote. In the third year, they'd be able to vote and to run for leadership positions (speaker of the house, majority leader, minority whip, committee chair, etc.).

The advantages of that method are: that it takes politics out of the representative selection process; unlike direct voting, it retains the idea that it is helpful for people to take the time to understand the issues (most direct voters don't have time to do things like read the actual budget); and that it makes our representatives more like us (the majority of current Representatives are lawyers, who make up a small minority of the population). The disadvantages are: that it takes away the idea of personal representation (I currently have a very specific person who is my Representative and can go to him with government problems); that it reduces representative experience (three years maximum; one year maximum for leaders); and that it could be expensive (it replaces 435 people with 15,000).

Re:There is a more immediate problem

[kenorland]

The secret ballot where a ballot cannot be attached to a specific person after it has been cast is a fundamental part of our electoral system

Only since around the late 19th century, a little after the UK, and even today, many people vote by mail.

Secret ballots are a good idea, but I think people attach way too much importance to them. Once you get fraud down to within a few percentage points, it makes little difference, and the US is way below that.

Re:There is a more immediate problem

[shentino]

They also bring transparency.

The fact that we CAN audit people after the fact and at least in theory burn anyone for cheating is itself a deterrent.

Voting machine tampering is harder to detect.

Re:There is a more immediate problem

[amorsen]

It is fine to have machines counting the hand-marked slips of paper, so you can announce a preliminary result on election night -- although many places manage that perfectly well by hand.

The vote counters bring accountability to the table. You can never be truly sure that a machine is not compromised. If humans are compromised, we catch them and prosecute them, and a conspiracy needs to involve at least hundreds of people. With machines, a few people can compromise an entire election.

If you allow the machines into the voting booth, anonymous voting is in danger and voter mistakes become impossible to detect. If you allow them to actually record votes, the whole process becomes a joke.

Re:There is a more immediate problem

[symbolset]

A human who is caught cheating a vote count faces 20 years in federal prison. If a machine was faced with similar penalty, will it care? What if we make it a capital offense?

Re:There is a more immediate problem

[symbolset]

Do you know how I know you're not a computer programmer, systems analyst or software engineer?

Re:There is a more immediate problem

[Seeteufel]

The article sdays "based on the Election Markup Language (EML) already recommended for use in Europe." In fact in most European nations the voting machines got sacked and Dutch hackers trolled the machine manufacturers by runniong chess on the machines. The bare minimum is full disclosure of source code but in reality no one uses these machines anymore for security reasons. Newertheless it seems useful for remote nations with bad political systems because it raises the costs of forgery.

Re:There is a more immediate problem

[gatzke]

I do know how printers work. I don't understand why they can't have a hard copy paper trail.

You use the machine to cast your vote, you get a hard copy to review and put in a pile.

Audit a given number of sites to see that the machine count and paper count match.

You get the benefits of the automated system that can be reviewed by a human.

Re:There is a more immediate problem

[LordLimecat]

If ONLY people could come up with methods for non-repudiation on a computer! What an exotic concept.

There are difficulties in digitizing the process, and many of them will almost certainly be in a flawed implementation, but its not impossible to make it accountable.

Re:There is a more immediate problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Even at the likely risk of being considered a tin foil luddite, this is the one technology I wish would never be made, even if there is a "100% assuredness" in both accountability and transparency people can feel comfortable about, even when it is something done in autonomous isolation.

The thing is, in most other countries, when people go to the polls they only have to vote in one election. It's either their federal, regional (state/province), or municipal. I doubt that most places have you vote for more than six people (municipal: councillor, mayor, school trustee, county rep, and a referendum/proposition say).

In the US, every single election occurs on the same day. So not only do people have to vote for president, Congress, senate, governor, state rep, state senator, mayor, councillor, etc., in the US, they also often have to vote for a dozen or two judges, sheriffs, criminal prosecutors, dog catchers, etc. Plus often a whole bunch of propositions/referendums which the politicians don't have the balls to decide on their own. All this on the same day.

Perhaps if you want simpler vote recording systems, you should start with simpler elections.

Re:There is a more immediate problem

[dinfinity]

We should have distributed vote administration.

We shouldn't have to rely on government issued machines or corruptible humans counting bits of paper. We should strive for a system in which everybody can count and verify the votes of an election, if they so please.

I'm no distributed computing expert, but my gut feeling is that it is not beyond the realms of possibility to create a secure system that allows everybody to submit their vote from their home (using some kind of token) and have their machine be a peer of a network that continuously propagates the (anonimized) voting results throughout.

Re:There is a more immediate problem

[Geirzinho]

But voters could see this (for all good it did them). With a closed computer system recognizing fraud is much more difficult.

Re:There is a more immediate problem

[Anonymous Coward]

"I understand how a hand count works. I have no idea how most voting machines work"

More importantly: you can't observe the process of computer counting even if you do know how it works.
Being able to observe/verify the actual counting process used to be a requirement according to election law.

Re:There is a more immediate problem

[TERdON]

Mail votes can be secret to. The Swedish vote system uses the same voting envelopes as for normal voting, but then you need to send them in packaged in a special outer envelope (and with a few exception, this is done at special stations at that, not in private). These are opened under the same scrutiny and together with the voting boxes, unless there are voters who voted both by mail and at the station to (e.g. for changing their mind). Then the mail vote is discarded.

Re:There is a more immediate problem

[arth1]

The main problem with remote voting is this:

"Bitch, I'm going to stand over your shoulder and make sure you vote for Goldwater"

Solve that problem first, and then we can get back to the technical issues.

Re:There is a more immediate problem

[arth1]

I'm no distributed computing expert, but my gut feeling is that it is not beyond the realms of possibility to create a secure system that allows everybody to submit their vote from their home (using some kind of token) and have their machine be a peer of a network that continuously propagates the (anonimized) voting results throughout.

And how do you prevent coercion, which the cubicle system does quite well?

Re:There is a more immediate problem

[arth1]

And how is ticking a box on a piece of paper any different or more "people interacting" than pushing a button?

You can't untick a box on a piece of paper.
Bits can be flipped.

Re:There is a more immediate problem

[Jonathan A]

The secret ballot where a ballot cannot be attached to a specific person after it has been cast is a fundamental part of our electoral system.

I always thought that the secret ballot was a legal requirement in the US. Then I saw this article, which prompted me to look into it. Apparently, it's more of a convention.

Re:There is a more immediate problem

[slashmydots]

I understand how a hand count works. I have no idea how most voting machines work, because their designs are secret. We can talk about standards after we get access to source code and design documents.

I can explain it to you. They only have to do vote +1 with some kind of log and event trail. Apparently that means they load an entire OS which is used in millions of other machines, add USB ports, basically turn it into a computer, load antivirus software on it, make it capable of running pac man (true story), and wonder why they don't work. My free calculator I got at my bank for opening a checking account is more secure and capable at adding sum +1 than a voting machine.

Re:There is a more immediate problem

[arth1]

Mail votes can be secret to. The Swedish vote system uses the same voting envelopes as for normal voting, but then you need to send them in packaged in a special outer envelope (and with a few exception, this is done at special stations at that, not in private). These are opened under the same scrutiny and together with the voting boxes, unless there are voters who voted both by mail and at the station to (e.g. for changing their mind). Then the mail vote is discarded.

It still carries with it the risk of coercion. How do you know that it was the right person voting, and not someone else in the household?

It's safer for the integrity of the votes to have a system where voting ahead of time can only be done at consulates, embassies and post offices who have a regular voting booth.

Or a special notary function, where the voter presents a blank ballot (or envelope) which gets notarized as being empty, then gets privacy to fill it out and fold the top half of the ballot (or stuff a ballot into the envelope and seal it), and it gets notarized again.

Re:There is a more immediate problem

[Rob the Bold]

How do we know that the software running on that hardware is the exact same software as that which has been audited by experts?

Answer: you don't. (I know you were being rhetorical, and that was the answer you had in mind, too . . . but it seems you gotta say that on /. these days.)

Example. Voting machine company needs to have its code audited to comply with election standards. Company software guys realize that current code isn't auditible since it doesn't meet auditor's coding standards. (Meaningful names, no procedure side-effects, standardized procedure header comments, and other general code-readability stuff.) Company has software contractor "clean up" the code. Contractor lacks manpower and gets software temps to help, too.

This is all done on a pretty tight schedule. Audit has a deadline, and it's coming up soon. So the code was considered audit-ready when met the standards (in the opinions of the various programmers and engineers working on the units they were assigned) and it compiled with no errors. Company submits this code for audit.

So was this code the same as ran on the machines? Well, considering that the documenting/refactoring/cleaning process only just got done in time for the audit and no one had time to test that it even ran, let alone ran correctly, the answer is obvious. "No."

Could this cleaned-up code have eventually gotten back upstream, regression tested and merged with the changes the company programmers were making to the original branch while the cleanup was going on? And could this code have eventually gotten re-audited and put into production, finally actually complying with the requirements later? Maybe. Not in this temp's tenure, it wasn't. And considering that the company had a "home-grown" software version control system, not too likely for a long, long time.

Re:There is a more immediate problem

[readin]

They also bring transparency.

The fact that we CAN audit people after the fact and at least in theory burn anyone for cheating is itself a deterrent.

Voting machine tampering is harder to detect.

Which is why so many people recommend that the voting machine spit out a piece of paper that the voter can verify has his vote recorded correctly, and drop that piece of paper into a separate box. In most cases the voting can be tallied efficiently electronically, but in a disputed election the paper ballots can be counted by hand.

Re:There is a more immediate problem

[readin]

Once you get fraud down to within a few percentage points, it makes little difference, and the US is way below that.

How do you know we're way below that? Laws that would make voter fraud detectable, such as requiring voters to show a picture ID, are facing court battles and have been prevented from going into effect (at least for this election). It's a bit like the old argument that "no one who has been given the death penalty in America has ever been later proven to be innocent". Of course not, once the person was executed people stopped investigating. The same logic applies here. We're being told not to check for voter fraud because levels of voter fraud are so low.

Re:There is a more immediate problem

[readin]

Given that Goldwater was pretty libertarian, such a scenario is hard to imagine.

Re:There is a more immediate problem

[readin]

This sounds like a good idea for the House of Representatives, but we also need to have people who have demonstrated some real intelligence and ability (getting elected doesn't require a strong knowledge of math and science, but it does require a lot of intelligence of various kinds to beat out your competitors), and we even need some people with experience. We should keep the Presidential election the way it is, and either leave the Senate alone or make it appointed by the state government again (which would largely fix the broken federalism we currently have).

Re:There is a more immediate problem

[readin]

I do know how printers work. I don't understand why they can't have a hard copy paper trail.

You use the machine to cast your vote, you get a hard copy to review and put in a pile.

Audit a given number of sites to see that the machine count and paper count match.

You get the benefits of the automated system that can be reviewed by a human.

Captain Obvious strikes again and once again is ignored by the people in charge. How many election cycles have we gone through where this solution is suggested and ignored?

Re:There is a more immediate problem

[dkleinsc]

corruptible humans counting bits of paper

... with representatives of the candidates, and frequently anyone else who wants to, watching them do it. At least, that's typically how it's done: a counter counting, campaigns watching for votes they want to challenge, and election judges looking over the challenged votes to decide who the voter intended to vote for.

beyond the realms of possibility to create a secure system that allows everybody to submit their vote from their home (using some kind of token)

That's not possible: If you can vote from your home, you can also vote from, say, your workplace, with your boss standing over you helpfully telling you that if you don't vote for Smith (rather than Jones) you'll be fired. And if you think that wouldn't happen, consider that several CEOs have sent out mailings to their workers telling them that if Romney doesn't win, there will be layoffs.

Re:There is a more immediate problem

[Kurrel]

I understand how a popular vote works, but not how an Elector's mind works. Maybe we should talk about vote fraud/tabulation being a problem after we actually get access to influence the election.

Re:There is a more immediate problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, hand counted paper ballots have similar issues. But you can overcome those issues with paper ballots, in a transparent and obvious manner, by letting anybody who wants to watch the whole process from start to finish. You can't do that with electronics; it's just too complex, and there are too many ways to be sneaky about it to be certain that there are no problems.

Have the machine print a paper ballot. Use the machine's electronic report for "real time status" and initial counting and the paper ballots for verification and dispute resolution as needed.

That way you only have to bother counting the paper in districts where there is a dispute, and any attempt at fraud will be at least as difficult as it is now (you'll need to fake both digital and physical ballots or risk being caught in a recount).

Re:There is a more immediate problem

[Burz]

Everyone who objects to an inappropriate use of Technology (a holy word that can be used to candy-coat or lionize virtually any profit scheme or power grab) by bigwigs gets marked as a Luddite these days.

Luddite is often used in the same contexts as conspiracy theorist to deride people who express suspicion about the dealings of the inner circles or finance and power, particularly when the military-industrial complex is involved (by contrast, people who accuse most climate scientists of coordinating a massive fraud are usually referred to as "skeptics").

This at the same time that government and the private sector team up for a massive project that expands incarceration to encompass 1% of the adult population, involving seemingly endless counts of "conspiracy". And there are ever more ways to generate suspicion against little people thanks to Technology, operated by Those-Who-Insist-The-Cameras-Point-Away-From-Them-Or-Else-Get-Confiscated. These people and their toadies are never called Luddites or conspiracy theorists -- it just wouldn't be proper.

Re:There is a more immediate problem

[Shagg]

Machines if done right can make ballot stuffing and tampering much more difficult.

You can also say, machines if done right can make ballot stuffing and tampering much easier. Both are true.

Having voting machines help people cast their vote is a great idea. Having voting machines count the vote is idiotic.

Re:There is a more immediate problem

[Shagg]

You use the machine to cast your vote, you get a hard copy to review and put in a pile.

Great idea up until this point. Now turn off the computer and count the votes in the pile.

Re:There is a more immediate problem

[Anonymous Coward]

So obviously we just need to have a solution where everyone signs a file containing their vote information (in whatever format, even godforsaken XML) with a private key that can be traced to a unique identity.

Making this a secret ballot would take quite a bit more work, but isn't this sort of thing (easy to create, hard to change/reverse) exactly what cryptographic signing was intended for?

Re:There is a more immediate problem

[arth1]

So obviously we just need to have a solution where everyone signs a file containing their vote information (in whatever format, even godforsaken XML) with a private key that can be traced to a unique identity.

Making this a secret ballot would take quite a bit more work, but isn't this sort of thing (easy to create, hard to change/reverse) exactly what cryptographic signing was intended for?

No, you're just shifting the problem. How do you know that the key wasn't signed under duress?

Unless the significant action (whether voting, key signing, or other) can be taken while a person has privacy, it opens up for abuse.

Re:There is a more immediate problem

[dinfinity]

Good point. Again, I'm not an expert on this subject, but it seems that such concerns have been looked into scientifically:
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=coercion+voting

I haven't read any of the papers concerning this matter, so in that sense I am not adding a lot to this discussion. I just believe that at some point in our future it ought to be possible to move away from colored pencils and pieces of paper as a means of voting.

Re:There is a more immediate problem

[kenorland]

How do you know we're way below that?

Because voter fraud bigger than a few percent leads to obvious statistical inconsistencies with voter registration, exit polls, etc.

Furthermore, it doesn't matter anyway. The election is already over because the election system has produced what it is meant to produce: two interchangeable middle-of-the-road compromise candidates. You don't have to go to the ballot box anymore.

Laws that would make voter fraud detectable, such as requiring voters to show a picture ID, are facing court battles and have been prevented from going into effect (at least for this election).

I'm for voter ID laws. But they aren't going to make a difference in terms of outcomes.

Re:There is a more immediate problem

[kenorland]

It still carries with it the risk of coercion. How do you know that it was the right person voting, and not someone else in the household?

We didn't worry about that until the late 19th century.

It's safer for the integrity of the votes to have a system where voting ahead of time can only be done at consulates, embassies and post offices who have a regular voting booth.

Talk about "voter disenfranchisement"!

Re:There is a more immediate problem

[arth1]

It still carries with it the risk of coercion. How do you know that it was the right person voting, and not someone else in the household?

We didn't worry about that until the late 19th century.

Well, before the late 19th century, most people in the household didn't have votes. When the country was founded, only male white landowners would have a vote.

Even today, in 2012, USA has one of the (if not the) lowest percentage of the adult population being allowed to vote of all western countries. Perhaps one day we'll have a system with everyone having an inalienable right to vote, but we're not there yet.

Re:There is a more immediate problem

[readin]

How do you know we're way below that?

Because voter fraud bigger than a few percent leads to obvious statistical inconsistencies with voter registration, exit polls, etc.

Furthermore, it doesn't matter anyway. The election is already over because the election system has produced what it is meant to produce: two interchangeable middle-of-the-road compromise candidates. You don't have to go to the ballot box anymore.

That's a good thing. High voter turnouts usually occur in places with real social problems and threats to democracy. The fact that people feel pretty complacent indicates we're doing something right.

Getting two middle of the road candidates is good two. We don't want to have to choose between two extremists. When your competitions start producing the best, the differences become tiny.

Actually, I don't agree with you that we have two "middle of the road" candidates. We have two liberal candidates both promising to spend more money than we have in the past and to continue to spend more money than we collect (thus continuing to increase the debt). We don't have two middle-of-the-road candidates, we have two candidates who perfectly reflect the spendaholic nature of today's American people.

Re:There is a more immediate problem

[Gerzel]

I said computers can make it harder. I never said it would be easy for them to do so. I have some programming but my main career focus in Networking and IT.

Re:There is a more immediate problem

[Anonymous Coward]

http://dl.acm.org/ft_gateway.cfm?id=358210

Any stats experts want to weigh in on this

[Jon_S]

I am definitely not the conspiracy expert type of person, but it seems like the authors did a pretty thorough analysis of possible voting machine tampering during the primary here:

http://www.themoneyparty.org/main/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/2008_2012_ElectionsResultsAnomaliesAndAnalysis_V1.51.pdf

I don't know enough stats to really delve into possible biases, and also who knows if they are starting from the right data. But I'd be curious about what others thought of this. If it is true, it is scary.

The ony possible flaw I saw from looking at the results is the anomalous results always came at the expense of Santorum, so perhaps there was some correlation between precinct size and vote patterns specifically for Santorum's policies that the authors couldn't tease out of the data.

Re:Any stats experts want to weigh in on this

[Jon_S]

Actually, this was the paper I was looking for:

http://www.themoneyparty.org/main/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Republican-Primary-Election-Results-Amazing-Statistical-Anomalies_V2.0.pdf

Same authors and analysis. But much more in depth treatment of the data and analysis of alternate explanations.

Re:Any stats experts want to weigh in on this

[Anonymous Coward]

They need to run similar analyses on smaller elections in what they are confident are honest counties. If patterns like that show up, then this is merely the result of how/order votes are counted and polling versus voting. If small counties tend to get their results first (fewer ballots), then they will show up more in the early counts while larger ones are still checking signatures (or any sort of checking that need to be done). There could also be the inverse, larger precincts are setup to handle massive numbers of ballots and have lots of people to handle operations, so they get everything done faster. Far more significant, people may claim they voted for the candidate they really want to win, but they vote for their fallback who they know has a far better chance.

Re:Any stats experts want to weigh in on this

[DeadCatX2]

I'm not a conspiracy guy either but I must admit that is pretty compelling. I would like to see those graphs, minus precincts that used electronic voting machines. If they show the expected "ringing" oscillations when removing the influence of voting machines, then that's pretty damning...

Re:Any stats experts want to weigh in on this

[kryzx]

Agreed. I'd also like to see this same analysis applied to actual presidential elections of the past, not just primaries. Especially a close one like 2000. It's great work that should be continued. Basically a Freakonomics approach to elections.

Re:Any stats experts want to weigh in on this

[wildsurf]

As a career mathematician / software developer, NOT prone to conspiracy theories, this study nevertheless got my statistical Spidey sense tingling. If I were determined to rig an election, particularly through electronic voting/tallying, this is EXACTLY how I would do it; selectively target larger precincts, because the vote flipping is less likely to be noticed there. (And more importantly, because spot-tests of the system are unlikely to cast enough votes to trigger the mechanism.)

That said, the study is sloppily done, not peer-reviewed, and prone to accusations of cherry-picking. They claim to have replicated their results all across the country, but provide no data to back this up. (E.g. they should show a scatterplot showing voting mechanism vs. "anomaly" strength, for a large number of states or counties.) And their shining example, the 2012 Iowa Primaries (actually Caucuses), DID use paper ballots and precinct-level tallying, yet still showed the anomaly. I'd like to hear their explanation for how they think the fraud could have crept in here. They also use Duval County, FL 2012 Primaries as another example of the anomaly, but paper ballots were used there as well. I don't know if the tallying was per-precinct or centralized for that election; if it were centralized, the fraud could easily happen there because it's a single point of failure.

More than anything, I would LOVE to get Nate Silver's take on this study. Perhaps he would have some intuition for how the precinct size / vote correlation might have arisen "naturally," and presumably he has access to the databases required to re-run the study on a larger scale. Either way, it's absolutely clear that paper ballots and transparent precinct-level tallying are essential to ensure fair elections. They can pry my cold, dead trees from my cold, dead hands! ;-)

Re:Any stats experts want to weigh in on this

[Anonymous Coward]

If this is an unbiased (non-peer reviewed) analysis, the results would appear to be damning to Romney's campaign. However, what if the result were intended to be biased against Romney? As ./ is wont to do, consider if the authors have anything to gain by this... (In other words, "follow the money.")

Not sure about Francois Choquette as he appears to be a Canadian politician (according to Google) so it is harder to see what he would get out of a biased report. Any potential benefit is more indirect than I can easily put a finger on. So what about James Johnson? Too common of name to have a single hit. Ah, but there is someone who (or whose party) may directly benefit from being biased: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_A._Johnson_(politics). Someone with more information about the paper will have to chime in here but it does look like typical, sleezy, last minute, mud slinging American politics. (Fortunately the rest of the world is immune from such infantile tactics right?)

Too bad they authors didn't also analyze the Democratic primaries. Having analyzed both would have been more even handed and less obvious.

Re:Any stats experts want to weigh in on this

[Anonymous Coward]

Basically same information was posted here last week, but didn't get accepted.

Re:Any stats experts want to weigh in on this

[DeadCatX2]

Someone with more information about the paper will have to chime in here but it does look like typical, sleezy, last minute, mud slinging American politics.

Not to throw a monkey wrench into your partisan analysis, but there is nothing "last minute" about this. The Ron Paul folks noticed this about eight months ago.

http://www.dailypaul.com/220841/proof-of-election-fraud-algorithm-discovered

Re:Any stats experts want to weigh in on this

[DeadCatX2]

Not quite what you were asking for, but this shorter google doc - https://docs.google.com/file/d/0ByJAC-sfXwumZzI2bVlON2VTMnFyYVZZSnpDYnNyQQ/edit?pli=1 - on page 5 shows the results of the last four GOP primaries, and only the one in 2012 displays the unusual behavior. If this were really a demographics thing I would expect to see such unusual behavior from the same county in previous years, especially since Mr. Romney was involved in the 2008 primary.

And while it's a little harder to tease out, this post - http://www.ukprogressive.co.uk/breaking-retired-nsa-analyst-proves-gop-is-stealing-elections/article20598.html - which has been reposted in a lot of places, alleges that the same effect has been seen in non-primaries, specifically the Barber vs. Kelly special election to replace Mrs. Giffords.

The current counter-hypothesis is that urban areas are more likely to vote for Romney and urban precincts are more likely to have more people, but if this were the case I would expect to see this phenomenon favor Democrats since their strongholds are typically urban areas.

I, too, would like to see something like the 2000 general election in some of these contested counties, and more general election results overall. Especially because there were no electronic voting machines or central tabulators during that election, which are the hypothesized methods for committing this type of fraud. This kind of information is supposed to be publicly available. Feeling ambitious, mate?

Re:Any stats experts want to weigh in on this

[Anonymous Coward]

I, too, would like to see something like the 2000 general election in some of these contested counties, and more general election results overall. Especially because there were no electronic voting machines or central tabulators during that election, which are the hypothesized methods for committing this type of fraud. This kind of information is supposed to be publicly available. Feeling ambitious, mate?

BZZZZZT!!!! Electronic ballot counting systems started being deployed in the 1980s. Touch screen voting systems were first coming out in the 1990s. You may need to search a bit to confirm this, but the systems have been around that long. Effectively the entire electronic ballot counting industry is controlled one company, Computer Election Systems. While they no longer exist, all of the major companies now in the business have multiple people who were first involved with CES.

Re:Any stats experts want to weigh in on this

[DeadCatX2]

Thanks for the correction. But, how widespread were electronic voting machines prior to the 2000 election, though? I could have swore that the whole Florida fiasco was one of the primary reasons e-voting became so prominent.

Shortest Standard Ever

[Anonymous Coward]

Proposal for New IEEE 1622 Standard:

1.1 DON'T

1.1.1 Voting should be done on paper.

1.2 WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU

1.2.1 See 1.1 and appropriate sub-sections.

Re:Shortest Standard Ever

[MightyMartian]

You forgot 1.1.1.1 "Format like Word 97"

Re:Shortest Standard Ever

[b4dc0d3r]

There are ways to improve voting. This is a short step, to ensure compatibility between voting systems and those systems which report the results.

There are also good ways to implement electronic voting. This does not address those. Only the interchange.

I appreciate that paper should be involved. I also appreciate that open-source, or at least visible-source, methods can allow e-voting without tampering, and without producing a paper trail that someone who can influence your employment status can read.

Rejecting this accomplishes nothing. Accepting it accomplishes a step towards the right thing.

Would you reject a step in the right direction?

Re:Shortest Standard Ever

[redneckmother]

You forgot 1.1.1.1 "Format like Word 97"

You owe me a keyboard!

Re:Shortest Standard Ever

[Anonymous Coward]

Well we aren't going to vote that part in until we get our cut from Microsoft.

Re:Shortest Standard Ever

[Anonymous Coward]

1.1.1.1 "Tally like Diebold"

Why bother?

[Kenja]

When Texas and Iowa are threatening to arrest election monitors, standards are not the issue.

Re:Why bother?

[DNS-and-BIND]

An excellent example of "spin". A world in which people are not expected to follow state and local laws, simply because they are "international" and above such petty annoyances. Crazy, but here we are, eh?

Re:Why bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

The local should allow it. The states should pass laws allowing them, rather than threatening to arrest them. What part of expecting election monitors to be allowed is crazy? Even the most backward 3rd world countries allow independent and foreign election monitors to monitor their elections (well atleast the ones that dont try too hard to rig elections).

Re:Why bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

The states should pass laws allowing them ...

They are allowed. They can speak to anyone they want to. They just have to stay 100 feet away from the polling place like *everyone else* who is *not* a voter.

Re:Why bother?

[Bremic]

The Republicans would never allow it anyway. Republicans own the companies making the machines now, so they know how to rig the votes and no one else does. An open standard would level the playing field, or potentially eliminate corruption; and that would never be supported.

Re:Why bother?

[QQBoss]

Texas, at least, is not threatening to arrest election monitors. It is threatening to arrest election monitors who don't follow Texas law regulating election monitors. There are (for early voting) and will be (for election day) LOTS of election monitors in probably every voting location in Texas within the 100 foot limit: the only ones who would be arrested will be those not following the law, and certainly not before they receive a warning to follow the law (though anyone from the U.N. should probably consider themselves already warned). If the U.N. wants to monitor Texas elections, they can- just follow the law. If they don't know the law and can't be bothered to read it for themselves, I am sure they can find a lawyer who will be happy to advise them for a reasonable fee (but only one and his number is unlisted, the rest of them will charge outrageous fees commensurate with their belief that laws should be written so confusingly that only an ordained lawyer can decipher them).

Agreements between the US government and non-US entities are just that- agreements between them at that level. They do not affect the 50 states unless those states also sign on to the agreement or otherwise pass/change laws to achieve compliance with the agreement, particularly with regards to voting which is a state level activity- the federal government only has a say as to when the vote is made, not how (unless the how falls afoul of federal law that the Supremacy Clause is in effect for). If the US government believes that this is so important that state law should be subsumed, the executive branch should elevate the agreement to a treaty and get it passed through the Senate to be ratified so that the Supremacy Clause can take effect. Until then, state law trumps international hand waving 'agreements' at the state level within the USA.

Now personally, I have no problems with international observers as long as the only thing they do is observe and don't interfere in any way, shape, or form. I think the USA should be setting a good example- demonstrating by example how to peacefully change government and prosecuting fully anyone attempting to interfere with that capability. But it is up to the federal government to persuade the states to achieve this, not to violate the Constitution and enforce it by fiat.

Re:Why bother?

[DeadCatX2]

Not because they're international, but because they're election monitors. Not generally the types of people that we would expect to attempt to influence elections. After all, if you heard that Syria was barring international election monitors within 100 feet of polling places, would you give them the same benefit of the doubt?

Re:Why bother?

[slacka]

"It's not the people who vote that count. It's the people who count the votes."
-Josef Stalin
With the election this close, I really hope it's the voters, not fraud, that decides the next president..

Re:Why bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

If all of the machines are rigged by Republicans, why do Democrats have the presidency and a majority of the senate?

Re:Why bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

uhh ... no, state laws do not trump treaties; You should read that constitution thing again.

Re:Why bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

An excellent example of "spin". A world in which people are not expected to follow state and local laws, simply because they are "international" and above such petty annoyances. Crazy, but here we are, eh?

It's not because they are international. There is a difference between legal and moral and it is the obligation of every good person to make that distinction and do what is right.
You just have to look at places like North Korea or even relatively nice places like China and Russia to see that following the law isn't always the right thing to do.

This doesn't mean that it is a good thing if people break the law but following a bad law is not the correct solution, the law should be changed.

Re:Why bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

They are allowed. They can speak to anyone they want to. They just have to stay 100 feet away from the polling place like *everyone else* who is *not* a voter.

You sound a lot like this:

"But the plans were on display . . ."
"On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them."
"That's the display department."
"With a torch."
"Ah, well the lights had probably gone."
"So had the stairs."
"But look, you found the notice, didn't you?"
"Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying Beware of the Leopard."

This is pretty much the same problem that election observers face in dictatorships. Why do Texas feel the need to apply the same restrictions as some less nice countries?

Re:Why bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not the UN, it's the OSCE, of which the US is a founding member. The Texas law is not aimed at election monitors at all (but rather at people "who shouldn't be there", which should not include election monitors for obvious reasons).

Treaties are the supreme law of the land, it says so in the constitution. ("This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the land....") Treaties trump state law and even, unbelievably, HOA regulations.

And anyway, not allowing election monitors in polling places is asinine. You invite election monitors. If you don't want them to see your precious polling places, don't invite them and have secret elections. Either way their report will say "we weren't able to witness the election, so we can't rule out fraud".

Re:Why bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

The debate is about OSCE observers, not U.N. observers. The two organizations are quite different. How can you feel qualified for judging whether Texas is right or wrong about admitting OSCE observers if you can't even tell the difference?

For the record, the US is member in the OSCE since 1973 when it was founded in Europe at the height of the Cold War. The U.N., on the other hand, is much older, it was funded in 1945 with a new structure after the "League of Nations" had failed, and the US was intimately involved and a driving force in its funding. (The term "United Nations" was coined by Franklin D. Roosevelt.) I'm looking these facts up for you on wikipedia, just so you can get a clue and perhaps realize that neither the OSCE nor the U.N. is an enemy of Texas. Anyway, OSCE != U.N.

Re:Why bother?

[Seeteufel]

So you regard your province Texas supreme to international law? Nice try. That is how rednecks greet high level OECD diplomats, by presenting their state as a banana republic.

Re:Why bother?

[DNS-and-BIND]

Then the citizens of Texas need to pass a law, using the usual techniques, allowing international monitors special privileges during election time. Problem solved. If Texas wanted to be an asshole, they'd just make arrests during election day instead of issuing a warning beforehand.

Syria and Texas ain't even in the same ballpark, son. The issue is "internationals" barging into someone's house and expecting the same deferential treatment they get everywhere. Texans are fairly Lawful Neutral when it comes to laws. Good or bad, obey the law, don't give a shit who you are. I live abroad and I'm expected to not only know but follow all local laws.

Re:Why bother?

[QQBoss]

That point that you and the other ACs (or maybe the same AC) keep missing is that the AGREEMENT that the USA is a party to with the OSCE is NOT a TREATY. Until such time as it IS a treaty, state law trumps this agreement. Clear enough?

Then, reread what I wrote, AC. Specifically the part where I wrote:
"If the US government believes that this is so important that state law should be subsumed, the executive branch should elevate the agreement to a treaty and get it passed through the Senate to be ratified so that the Supremacy Clause can take effect. Until then, state law trumps international hand waving 'agreements' at the state level within the USA."

Re:Why bother?

[QQBoss]

Texas supreme to international law?
There is an apocryphal (probably) story about a British lord who visited a ranch out in Texas. Looking for the owner of the ranch, he walked up to one of the ranch hands and asked,"My dear chap, could you tell me where I could find your master?" The response was,"That man ain't been born yet."

What does that have to do with this situation? Nothing, I just love that story.

The agreement with the OSCE (what is the OECD? The Old English Commonwealth Dictionary?) is not a law, international or otherwise. The USA, and by extension, the states of the USA, are not bound to it by treaty. As such, I do consider the rule of law in Texas to be supreme to the rule of non-law that is the OSCE. And I consider the rules that permit them in other states to be supreme for them, as well. However, if you had actually read my posting instead of getting all knee jerk about it:
"Now personally, I have no problems with international observers as long as the only thing they do is observe and don't interfere in any way, shape, or form. I think the USA should be setting a good example- demonstrating by example how to peacefully change government and prosecuting fully anyone attempting to interfere with that capability. But it is up to the federal government to persuade the states to achieve this, not to violate the Constitution and enforce it by fiat."

Oh, and by the way, I live in the province of Beijing, not Texas, though I was lucky enough to get to spend a lot of time in Texas during my life.

Re:Why bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

When Syria and Texas are batting the same game, they are in the same ballpark.

America signed the treaty, and the treaty supersedes your state laws.

Re:Why bother?

[QQBoss]

When Syria and Texas are batting the same game, they are in the same ballpark.

America signed the treaty, and the treaty supersedes your state laws.

The only treaty signed was the one in your mind.

Re:Why bother?

[Jon_S]

If the U.N. wants to monitor Texas elections

The UN has no interest in monitoring the US elections. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) has indicated their intention to but the OSCE is not affiliated with the UN.
 
I think the UN has been brought into that because they are seen as the boogeyman among certain groups of people.
 
Not saying they shouldn't stay 100 feet from the poling places like everyone else, but just trying to clear up that confusion.

Re:Why bother?

[QQBoss]

I am actually aware that the U.N. and OSCE are separate entities, and conflating the two was inappropriate, but doesn't change the point. I will give a mea culpa, all the misinformed AC's can replace all instances of U.N. with OSCE, and state law will still trump a federal agreement (non-treaty obligation).

As I said before, I think international observers SHOULD be allowed in to observe elections at polling places across the country, and if I were in a position to vote for a law to permit it in Texas I would.

If the international observers are unable to go within 100 feet of a Texas polling place, though, following your suggestion I happen to know a poling place that will allow people (men, actually, women with a male escort) within about 6 feet of the poles- the Yellow Rose on North Lamar Avenue in Austin, TX will be happy receive them. I am sure the girls there won't even mind being tipped in Euros!

Re:Why bother?

[Rockoon]

if you heard that Syria was barring international election monitors within 100 feet of polling places, would you give them the same benefit of the doubt?

I would if they barred all reasonable forms of election monitoring. Texas doesnt do that. Texas allows any eligible voter to register to monitor the elections, and many shall.

Nice try ignoring reality though. What is so unreasonable about only letting the people who are voting monitor the vote? Nothing. The person being unreasonable is you.

Re:Why bother?

[readin]

An excellent example of "spin". A world in which people are not expected to follow state and local laws, simply because they are "international" and above such petty annoyances. Crazy, but here we are, eh?

Yep, here we are. Given that the international observers from the UN, the chance of the observers detecting corruption might be outweighed by the chance of the observers causing corruption.

Re:Why bother?

[readin]

Even the most backward 3rd world countries allow independent and foreign election monitors to monitor their elections (well atleast the ones that dont try too hard to rig elections).

But are these monitors "independent"? They were invited by the ACLU and NAACP and sponsored by the UN. I wouldn't trust any of those groups.

Re:Why bother?

[readin]

Not because they're international, but because they're election monitors. Not generally the types of people that we would expect to attempt to influence elections. After all, if you heard that Syria was barring international election monitors within 100 feet of polling places, would you give them the same benefit of the doubt?

No, I wouldn't. But Syria isn't Texas. A person and/or country's history plays a role in how much benefit of doubt you give them. Texas doesn't have the history of human rights violations that Syria does. A UN election monitor in Texas is about as likely to introduce voter fraud as to detect it. But a UN election monitor in Syria is more likely to detect voter fraud than to introduce it.

Re:Why bother?

[readin]

If all of the machines are rigged by Republicans, why do Democrats have the presidency and a majority of the senate?

Obviously because Republicans aren't as good at rigging elections as Democrats.

Re:Why bother?

[readin]

So you regard your province Texas supreme to international law?

Yes. Yes! A thousand times YES!

When you live in Texas you get to vote for your state legislators, your state governor, and quite a few other state government positions. When was the last time you voted for Secetary General?

America is part of the UN you say and America gets to vote for Secretary General. How is that different from being a citizen of Texas and Texas voting for the President? The difference is that America is made up of 50 democratic states. The UN is made up of a huge number of organized criminal gangs (really, what is the government in a place like Zimbabwe? it's the most successful organized crime group).


So yes yes yes, Texas is superior to "international law" and to the UN and to most national governments around the world.

Re:Why bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

Me too, but with all of the intimidation, electioneering, dead folks voting, and MTV voters who brought us the current moron in chief I'm not sure I have high hopes for this go round. Fraud manifests itself in a number of different ways. Some of them are even legal. 90 yo grandmothers threatening to burn the country down if their guy doesn't win? Seems like intimidation to me, but what do I know? Sending out mass mailings in florida (to republican districs only mind you) telling voters that they must have an ID to vote (when they don't)? Hmm, sure sounds like fraud. Granted they'd like to prosecute those that did it if they can find them. And don't forget that ACORN may have left the building, but in reality they just came back under a different name. They're actually funded in part with taxpayer dollars.

Re:Why bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

Texas, at least, is not threatening to arrest election monitors. It is threatening to arrest election monitors who don't follow Texas law regulating election monitors so that they can't effectively do their job because they are stuck 100ft away.

FTFY

Re:Why bother?

[QQBoss]

Texas, at least, is not threatening to arrest election monitors. It is threatening to arrest election monitors who don't follow Texas law regulating election monitors so that they can't effectively do their job because they are stuck 100ft away.

FTFY

You fixed nothing except to demonstrate you not only have no knowledge of Texas electioneering laws, you also have a complete unwillingness to learn enough to follow the discussion even at the level of a USA Today article. Texas law does permit election monitors within 100 feet as long as they follow all the regulations. One of the regulations is that the monitors must be from the area where the poll is. If the OSCE wants to have monitors who won't be in violation of the law, they can- just like any other group, find someone who lives in the area and sign them up to be a monitor.

Now, do I AGREE with that law? Well, I can say I believe I understand the history behind why it exists.
Do I think that exceptions should be built into the law for this situation? Yes, but only by modifying the structure of the law to permit it, not by violating the law as written. Until the law gets changed (or overridden via treaty, which the agreement between the federal government and OSCE is not), follow the rules or get outside the 100 foot perimeter. If it is too difficult to follow the rules and you insist on being inside the 100 foot perimeter, plan to discuss your plight with the local magistrate.

Re:Why bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you'd read the law in question, you'd know that this only applies to monitors who are not native to the area in which the polling takes place. So OSCE could round up a bunch of normal citizens, arrange for them to be monitors, and have no problems at all.

Re:Why bother?

[Seeteufel]

The UN is the smallest common denominator between sovereign states! The base of international laws is that all nations agree and later ratify. Texas is not a sovereign nation. The United States is.

Re:Why bother?

[Seeteufel]

The OECD is not the UN, it is an international body http://www.oecd.org/about/membersandpartners/ The situation is that the OECD monitors elections all over the world, now they come to the US, a nation which set it up with the Europeans and tasked the OECD to monitor third world elections, and uneducated rednecks bully the diplomates and damage the international reputation of the United States, undermine their credibility and diplomatic weight. That is quite embarassing for the US.

Re:Why bother?

[readin]

The UN is the smallest common denominator between sovereign states! The base of international laws is that all nations agree and later ratify. Texas is not a sovereign nation. The United States is.

The UN doesn't even let all sovereign states join, so I'm not sure how you call it "the smallest common denominator between sovereign states". As for international law, the extent to which it even exists is not dependent on the UN but rather on the customs and treaties of civilized nations.

Re:Why bother?

[Seeteufel]

Exactly. What is laid down in international law is what sovereign nations agree to sign. The Un as a body is just diplomats.

Re:Why bother?

[readin]

Which is why it makes so little sense to refer to international "law". Law implies enforcement. Law implies rules that apply to everyone (though the law itself may exclude certain people) . If some nation refuses to sign an agreement, or is not allowed to sign as agreement, then that law doesn't apply to them, that is unless there is some enforcement mechanism that the nation is unable to avoid.

It makes sense to refer to particular treaties and agreements to say what particular nations have agreed to. To say that America agreed to handled animals a certain way when it signed Convention on the International Trade of Endangered Species (CITES) is correct. To say that Taiwan must follow the same procedures makes no sense because the treaty was never presented to Taiwan for a signature. Taiwan is not part of the treaty, so the rules don't apply. And in fact Taiwan was able to take some Pandas from China despite CITES's rules against the giving (as opposed to lending) of endangered species.

To say that America agreed to handle nuclear materials a certain way when it joined the IAEA makes sense. To say, for example, that Taiwan has to handle nuclear materials the same way under "international law" makes sense because even though the countries that created the organization do not allow Taiwan to join the group, Taiwan has been forced to comply. About a decade ago Taiwan was shipping nuclear waste to N. Korea (basically paying N. Korea to dispose of the waste). There was a quite a bit of protest and America was able to use its pull as Taiwan's closest ally to end practice. So one could say that IAEA rules are actually laws and that America fills the role of law enforcement.

Re:Why bother?

[Seeteufel]

Look, in the present case "OECD observers", that means dedicated Members of Parliament from other nations. A sort of pan-democratic international peer review of the elections process. There were recently elections in the Ukraine. Of course you have international observers who draft a report if they found irregularities. In these Eastern European nations the vote was often disputed by the opposition parties. For the US elections the German OECD observer reports an outrageous situation. According to him the government designated them which election offices they were permitted to visit, they were not allowed to speak with voters, within the building advertisements for the President were found, he further criticised that elections took place during a work day and certain voters had to wait for one hour(!!) to case their ballot. Such conditions would be unthinkable in Germany and remind you of a banana state. Peer review of the electoral process by unattached external persons is helpful.

If you're going to standardize this...

[Anonymous Coward]

Please for the love of God, don't make first past the post the one and only supported voting algorithm. I'm secretly hoping some day we'll be using something sane, and I don't want anything like this IPv6 transition all over again.

Re:If you're going to standardize this...

[norpy]

Preferential voting is way better, it allows you to vote for your preferred minor party rep without missing out on your descision in the Red vs Blue battle.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting

Although there are some downsides, such as in the Australian senate where there are around 50 cadidates for each state in a half-senate election. Compared to the house of reps, where there are generally 4-8 candiates per electorate.
I don't think our solution to the "number all boxes from 1-50" problem is perfect, but most people would refuse to vote if they had to do that.

Re:If you're going to standardize this...

[azalin]

One could limit preferential voting to three (or five) levels without reducing the benefits it has over first past the post.

Re:If you're going to standardize this...

[azalin]

While they are at it, why not introduce a direct popular vote for presidential elections? The current system put a very unhealthy focus on swing states' issues and ignores the problems of large parts of the country because they'll won't/will vote for the candidate anyway.

Re:If you're going to standardize this...

[Anonymous Coward]

Preferential voting is way better, it allows you to vote for your preferred minor party rep without missing out on your descision in the Red vs Blue battle.

Or you don't buy the "A vote for a minor party is a wasted vote" BS.
A vote for something you don't really believe in is a wasted vote. As long as people keep voting for the lesser evil both sides will think that they are doing everything right and keep copying each others politics.
What we need is for a third party to get enough votes to be the difference between the winner/loser of the Red vs Blue battle. Then they might realize that they can win votes by not being evil.

You don't win just because the one you voted for won the election so stop voting for someone who doesn't represent you.

Re:If you're going to standardize this...

[Anonymous Coward]

IRV sounds good, but it's actually rather bad in some non-obvious ways.

(I apologize in advance for the wall o' text, but I don't like linking to things without explaining them. There are explanations on the linked pages, so if you want to just click the links in order, you'll figure it out. I just like my explanations better...)

Yee diagrams are the simplest way to see this. They work by modeling a population of voters and candidates as occupying a two-dimensional issue space, say from -1 to +1 in each direction. (Of course higher and lower dimensions are possible, but 2D makes nice graphics that can easily be comprehended, and is high enough to demonstrate the pathologies and good behavior that apply in general.) Let N candidates occupy discrete points in the issue space, and are identified by unique colors; the voters are assumed to be distributed in a gaussian distribution about some point X in the issue space. (Yes, that's an unrealistic assumption -- voters are likely to be clumped in more interesting distributions. But if a voting system behaves for a simple gaussian distribution of voters about some middle position, it might work well for more complex cases -- if it breaks down into a pathological mess in the simple case, you know it's worthless for the complicated case.) Finally, assume each voter prefers candidates in order of their distance from his position -- and for voting methods involving strength of preferences in addition to ordering, preferences are a decreasing function of distance.

Now you run a simulated election for some large number of voters for each possible X -- that is, for every point in the rectangle from (-1,-1) to (+1,+1), at some discrete interval of your choosing. Each election is simulated, and the pixel at X is colored with the winning candidate's color. The candidate closest to X should win. (Obvious, right?) So the resulting diagram, for a good election method, should be composed of one contiguous, convex region around each candidate, matching the color of that candidate. (For the most extreme candidate in any direction, the region will extend to the edge of the diagram). AKA a Voronoi diagram, if you know what that is.

You can select the candidates' positions carefully to make a point (e.g. a simple case of 3 or 4 equidistant candidates, where one can intuitively predict the exact regions of an ideal election), or randomly. Yee's site has some of both, and I think you'll be surprised how IRV compares.

More at rangevoting.org for several methods and particularly for IRV. Note that the ones at rangevoting.org use fewer voters than Yee's simulations, thus resulting in more close-call elections going "the wrong way" compared to the limit with infinite voters following the same Gaussian distribution. While this may seem like a bug, it's actually a feature, as you can still mostly see the effects for large populations, but the stippled regions where some elections going either way reveal the relative sensitivity of voting methods, and thus which ones behave worse in real-life elections with small numbers of voters (e.g. county or town elections). While misbehaving for 5000-voter elections doesn't disqualify a method for federal or state-wide elections, all else being equal we'd certainly like to be able to use the same system for local, state and federal elections.

More relevant to reality, we can model more complex, and more realistic, voter populations, but since they can no longer be represented by a single coordinate pair, we can't just run it out into a intuitively readable diagram. But we can tally up the aggregate cost to society of each election result -- each voter suffers proportionately to the distance between the elected candidate's position and his own (or according to some other function than a n-dimensional isssue space -- e.g. some voters might

Re:If you're going to standardize this...

[readin]

While they are at it, why not introduce a direct popular vote for presidential elections? The current system put a very unhealthy focus on swing states' issues and ignores the problems of large parts of the country because they'll won't/will vote for the candidate anyway.

In 2000 remember all the trouble when we had to recount Florida. Now imagine having to recount the entire country!

Standard for Vote Theft

[Mr Bubble]

Awesome, now we have a standard format to send the fraudulent vote tallies to the server.

Re:Standard for Vote Theft

[Black Parrot]

Awesome, now we have a standard format to send the fraudulent vote tallies to the server.

Spot on. Not speaking the common language is hardly the worst problem with electronic voting machines in the USA.

Re:Standard for Vote Theft

[Anonymous Coward]

Spot on. Not speaking the common language is hardly the worst problem with electronic voting machines in the USA.

I don't think the goal with this standard is to solve the problems in the U.S.
More likely it is made to allow multiple vendors to compete in smaller countries in Europe since the buyer then can combine several different brands without having trouble converting the data.

Re:Standard for Vote Theft

[Seeteufel]

In particular you want voting machines to talk with each other.

Re:Standard for Vote Theft

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought that we all ready had a standard.
All voting machines have to be a black box.
but I think that it is good to send all the voting results to a
Central location like the FBI or CIA or maby even the incumbents home.
for talley.
verifyourvote

Just say no ...

[riverat1]

Just say no to all electronic voting. I don't care if it's open source or not, how can you ever be sure about the software loaded on a voting machine unless you do it personally. And then how can anyone else who uses the machine trust you. I don't have a problem with machine counting of paper ballots because you always have a hand count to fall back on if necessary but I'll never trust pure electronic voting.

Re:Just say no ...

[Anonymous Coward]

And paper ballots, which can be burned, shredded, or thrown into a river by the truckload, are better? Oh please.

Re:Just say no ...

[kagaku]

How do you trust the officials counting the paper ballots? How can you know if your vote is REALLY being counted unless you count it yourself? And then how can anyone else be sure their vote was counted?

Your logic doesn't just apply to machine voting, it applies to voting in general. We don't need to stick to old fashion methods, we need to stick to open standards and 3rd party independent oversight. There is no reason why we can't have a third party international oversight group with the full rights to walk into any polling location, open the box and download the software and validate off site. I'm sure there are many other checks and balances that folks can think up, but the basic idea is that the technology is not the problem. The implementation and lack of oversight are.

Re:Just say no ...

[Anonymous Coward]

And paper ballots, which can be burned, shredded, or thrown into a river by the truckload, are better? Oh please.

Yes they are. Digitizing the process just make the ballots far easier to lose.

Re:Just say no ...

[GoodNewsJimDotCom]

Agreed. I voted "protest evote" in 2008, and I plan on voting it again. These things can be hacked. There are trials where people testify they were asked to hack them for a 51% vote. There was an event I suspect it was used in the primaries because the voting results were "lost" for hours in some old lady's house and came back 51% win. I just suspect as a hunch, but I'm just baseless guessing. To me, the electronic voting is just a way of trying to get voting out of the system. I show up to vote every time just for the very point I don't want anyone going,"The numbers are low, we can get rid of voting, no one cares anyway." The only way I'd accept electronic voting if there was a paper trail alongside it that can be confirmed after the fact.

Re:Just say no ...

[Darinbob]

You can't trust it. But that's ok for the most part as long as most people trust it. Elections work when they're trusted, not because they're 100% accurate. You can have a very accurate election but when the populace distrusts it then civil order starts to break down. Democracy really only works because of the shared delusion that it works.

For instance, the butterfly ballots in Florida really only have some minor problems, the whole mess is because statistically it was a tie. Because the counts could not definitely say who won the trust started to wear away almost immediately. Then some politics came in and both sides were essentially fighting about how to determine who won the tie. The coin landed on its side and the two candidates were huffing and puffing and try to blow the coin over.

In response to the eroded trust we now have these electronic machines. All black boxes, few voters understand them at all, they're probably easier to rig an election with, but they have the amazing advantage that you don't get a tie very easily. If you run a recount based on numbers already read and tabulated (ie, you're hitting refresh on the spread sheet) then you get the same result. It's completely bogus but people are mollified by the fact that you get the same numbers the second time. So the trust is back and the masses accept the person that the machine says won, even if they didn't vote for that person.

Except that there are the few people who understand technology who don't trust it, because they understand technology. The solution here is to have the electronic voting in a way that lets the techies trust it as well (and a common data interchange format is not the answer here).

Re:Just say no ...

[GoodNewsJimDotCom]

Just as an edit, I'm not certain the votes came back 51% win from the lost votes. I heard that, but I can't confirm it.

Re:Just say no ...

[plalonde2]

You don't have to trust, you just have to make corruption too expensive. Count in small batches, on site, at close of voting, with volunteer observers from every person on the ballot. It works, it scales, and it limits the effectiveness of co-opting a few individuals, unlike *anything* to do with electronic voting.

Re:Just say no ...

[Black Parrot]

Just as an edit, I'm not certain the votes came back 51% win from the lost votes. I heard that, but I can't confirm it.

We're such amateurs. Hated dictators usually get 100% of the vote.

Re:Just say no ...

[thegarbz]

It's actually quite comical that in this debate we put trust in an easily corruptible person over a computer.

I'm against what currently passes for electronic voting, but in no way do I think that relying on humans is more certain than doing it properly on a machine. Machines don't have bias and don't favour a political party so providing we can somehow assure the open programming of the machine then there's no reason not to progress with electronic voting.

Re:Just say no ...

[riverat1]

If you can't trust them counting paper ballots how could you ever trust them to run an electronic voting machine? Heck, the people running the machines are barely competent and have to call in a tech if something goes sideways. If you really want an electronic interface I'd be okay with one that you record your votes on then it prints out your ballot so you can verify it's correct before you turn it in for counting. But the voting machine itself shouldn't keep an internal record of the vote.

Fortunately in my state we have vote by mail which requires a paper ballot. Any registered voter can observe the vote counting if they want to (limited by elections office space). It's my understanding that there are always observers, at least in my county. They do have an electronic machine or two in the county elections office for ADA reasons, so disabled people can use them if they desire. I'm okay with that.

I've been doing computer work, mostly systems and database admin with some programming thrown in, for over 30 years now. I know well the strengths and weaknesses of computers. It's too easy to blow them up either accidentally (guilty!) or on purpose with malicious intent. The vote is one of the fundamental rights in the US and I don't want it subject to those weaknesses. A hardcopy ballot that the voter can personally verify is the most trustworthy way we have of recording votes even though it's not perfect.

Yeah, I'm pretty cynical about what voting accomplishes right now especially at the national level but if enough people get exercised about something it can make a difference.

Re:Just say no ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because you can't trust computers. But more importantly, it doesn't matter if you can make the perfect electronic voting system and convince every computer scientist alive that it works completely correctly. The other 99.99% of the population still has no reason to believe the system says what you say it does. Simplicity itself is a major selling point for voting systems.

Hand-counted elections have observers. At the very least, all paper counted ballots are counted by at least two people: at the very least, one member of both major parties. Others are allowed to observe.

Re:Just say no ...

[azalin]

Just as an edit, I'm not certain the votes came back 51% win from the lost votes. I heard that, but I can't confirm it.

We're such amateurs. Hated dictators usually get 100% of the vote.

You meant "loved leader" didn't you? Because otherwise these gentleman in dark trench-coats would like to have a little conversation with you.

Re:Just say no ...

[azalin]

We don't trust "a person", we trust several representatives from different parties/candidates/groups to watch over each other. And because we don't trust them completely we keep the original ballots after counting, so we can recount them. For paper ballots it is rather complicated to mess with them on a grand scale without raising suspicion.
With computers/voting machines it takes only one person to change the data and no one will be able to prove foul play.

Re:Just say no ...

[thegarbz]

With computers/voting machines it takes only one person to change the data and no one will be able to prove foul play.

You say that as if it's an absolute. As if you can't have the same kind of oversights / representation from multiple interested parties for a digital system.

I agree with you that e-voting in it's current form is not trustworthy, but that doesn't need to be the case. Here on slashdot there have been many answers to the accountability problems, and the auditing problems the current e-voting system has.

Re:Just say no ...

[s0litaire]

As an IT guy yourself you do remember what November 8th 2016 will be?

yup it's "Bring your super-electromagnet to work day"

Re:Just say no ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. With a purely-digital process, the ballots which are "burned, shredded, or thrown into a river by the truckload" are instantaneously replaced with new, falsified, ballots which are completely indistinguishable from real ballots.

Re:Just say no ...

[swillden]

What we really need is a formal standard based on end-to-end auditable voting. Some really outstanding work has been done in this space in the last couple of decades, applying the principles of cryptographic security to design and implement voting schemes that are provably secure and still provably anonymous while still eminently practical. These schemes, like Punchscan, Scantegrity and Scantegrity II allow voters to prove to themselves that their ballot was not only not modified or lost, but even that it was counted correctly -- but without giving them the ability to prove that to anyone else (to avoid vote coercion/buying). The systems can be automated for efficiency without losing their fundamental character and are designed to be 100% auditable and verifiable. Well, to be precise, they can be audited and verified to any desired degree.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_auditable_voting_systems

http://static.usenix.org/event/evt08/tech/full_papers/chaum/chaum.pdf

http://www.economist.com/node/12455414?story_id=12455414

Great theory... like Communism

[Sarten-X]

The problem is that secure computerized voting is like cryptography (and not just because the two are related)... Straightforward in theory, but every manufacturer thinks they've got to make their own implementation of the encryption/signing/validation algorithms, and every ignorant administrator is swayed by the marketing to think that "proprietary" means "secure".

Even if we accept the idealistic worldview that the manufacturers want a fair election, there's no commercial sense in making a machine that's 100% open and verifiable, because that means that everybody else can copy the machine easily. We won't see a trustworthy computerized election any time soon.

Re:Great theory... like Communism

[meerling]

They can cheat on paper votes, it's been done for centuries.
Elections aren't about making money, if the government wants the machines, it will get the machines.

Re:Great theory... like Communism

[Burz]

No, the mechanics of voting in a democracy cannot be re-made as a service provided by for-profit corporations.

Elections aren't about making money...

Talk about naive. What do you think corporate PACs and lobbyists are for? They have come to treat politicians as investments that offer a very high ROI.

Now you have two problems

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, yes, if there is one thing that will solve the numerous security and transparency issues that have been demonstrated in the current systems, it's more XML.

International monitors - a non-issue

[Anonymous Coward]

When Texas and Iowa are threatening to arrest election monitors, standards are not the issue.

No, what Texas has said is that international election monitors have to follow the same laws as everyone else and stay 100 feet away from the polling place. They are perfectly free to speak to any voter beyond that 100ft radius.

Also I believe the treaty the US signed regarding election monitoring note that monitors must obey local laws.

Did I miss something? This seems to be a non-issue.

Re:International monitors - a non-issue

[Anonymous Coward]

Also I believe the treaty the US signed regarding election monitoring note that monitors must obey local laws.

1. Sign treaty so others will think you're all about transparency and fair elections.
2. Make local law that says "No election monitors allowed! Anywhere! At all!".
3. ???
4. Profit!!!

Re:International monitors - a non-issue

[firewrought]

Did I miss something? This seems to be a non-issue.

The 100ft restriction means that the observers cannot directly observe. How are ballot boxes locked/guarded/transported/counted? How are registration issues dealt with? How are disabled/non-English voters assisted? There's no point in having them if you don't let them do their job.

Machine voting already working perfectly

[Anonymous Coward]

Look machine voting were perfectly, here's an example of a machine voting:

http://youtu.be/f2O248VaDpA?t=3m11s

No need for any paper and hand counts at all! The possibility of a corrupt rigged vote is completely negated!

Toronto municipal elections

[Anonymous Coward]

Toronto has figured it out for our local municipal elections.

When you vote you are given a scan-tron paper like what schools use for testing. You fill out the form and you get the pleasure of feeding the paper into the machine.

The machine can quickly do totals and it still leaves a hard paper trail.

The best of both worlds.

Not seeing why it's so complicated

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Code for geographic location
2. CandidateName : 1

How much more complicated do you need to make it? Obligatory XKCD http://www.explainxkcd.com/2011/07/20/standards/

A better idea...

[3seas]

Use Banking ATM's as they verify but here you use your tax dollar, deciding where it is to be used. This way the politician who cheat with our taxes won't be able to and the job of politician (fitting the "no taxation without representation") will be required to do the job of doing with our taxes as we instruct. For us that means we have to apply constraints of only taxes used towards the generation of team work benefits we all share in. For the government, they have to become transparent otherwise they don't get funding for what they keep hidden from the taxpayers.

Its really quite simple, even the tax processors are already in place to allocate our taxes was we instruct on our annual returns.

Bottom line.... its business and we who pay get to say where our taxes are used. Me regarding mine and your regarding yours.

Electing a politician to represent us in this republic is no different than hiring someone rto do a given job or set of tasks. May the most qualified.for this set of tasks be hired, instead of the best liar wanting to do with our taxes as they choose.

Will this work? In comparison to the complete failure of budgeting and accounting on the governments part..... Yes it will work, just as open source software does and as Iceland recovering economically because they have. According to the Declaration of Independence, it is our right and duty to put off bad government and replace it with what does provide for our security, now and towards the future.... and that is a hell of a lot more than warfare enemy creation.... I.E. financial retirement.

With ATM technology well established.... Why are there voting machine issues to begin with? There is only one answer.... to provide a way to cheat.

More like government procurement ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... there's no commercial sense in making a machine that's 100% open and verifiable, because that means that everybody else can copy the machine easily ...

It can be 100% open and verifiable and patented and copyrighted.

Or it can be like the many other things the government buys that are 100% open and verifiable. If the government says we want a bunch of these things people will step forward to make them. Whoever gets the contract will win. Its not like they are making the products on speculation and hoping to sell them on the open market.

Paper trail...

[alanshot]

ITs about damn time we started talking standards. We should also talk vote verification too...

  Ive always said the best voting solution, and the only way to guarantee accurate results with electronic ballots is to use a blind serialized receipt system. For example:

When you insert the scantron form into the reader, push the buttons on the fully electronic machine, etc. it should show the votes registered and give you the chance to protest a machine error. (circled the box for Obama but Romney showed on the screen, etc.). You then approve the final and correct ballot to be submitted to the public record and it spits out the unique serial number of your vote on a recept, timestamped with all pertinent info like the machine serial, etc (which is all recorded in the official count log). Days later you would be able to verify what votes were cast (anonymously of course) by serial number. That would prove that your vote was indeed counted.*

You could also possibly look for fraud in the timestamps as well (a sudden flurry of near-simultaneous votes for candidate X within seconds of each other from the same machine, etc.) Statisticians should LOVE that. Imagine being able to get voter stats not only by precinct, but time of day, etc. hell, not that it does any good, but by individual machine too!

In my precincts we use the scantron forms. We fill in the circles and then walk up to a big scanner and feed it to the machine to be counted. The best verification I get as to whether my vote was cast is to watch the simple LCD on the scanner "total ballots cast" display increment by one after I feed the form. I have no idea if my votes were cast as intended, just that it registered my form as being accepted. Not real reassuring overall.

*On a related note, the other day I got a mailer from an obviously strongly Libertarian group... something about being for smaller govt, I dont recall the exact organization name. They showed an audit of sorts of votes in my immediate vicinity. It was the voter name, street address and name, and if they voted in 2008, 2010, and 2012(curiously, since they all said essentially "not yet" for that year... duh.). For 2010 There was my name and address with a "NO" under vote cast. I distinctly recall voting in that election. Hmmmmm... (the 2008 entry was correct)

Not that Im overly concerned since I cant verify it wasnt a ploy of some sort, but it is slightly unnerving since there was nothing on the mailer enticing me to call, email, donate, etc. Just a "FYI, Here's a voting record for your address and several of your neighbors around you for the past several elections. Dont forget to vote. Thank you."

Only if you count the paper trails

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the best of both worlds only if you count a sample of the paper trails and redo the election when they don't match with statistical significance. People do commit voting fraud, and if nobody stops it, and nobody recounts the vote because they control the supreme court, then what use is the paper trail?

FFS, you can even see it right here in front of television cameras AND NOBODY STOPPED IT:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2O248VaDpA&feature=youtu.be&t=3m11s

Romney family meanwhile has been buying Hart Intercivic, an Ohio voting machine maker, via their investment company HIG they have 2 seats on the board. And other board members on that voting machine company contributed to the Romney campaign.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2012/10/20/romney-family-investment-ties-to-voting-machine-company-that-could-decide-the-election-causes-concern/

Making a format for exchanging fraudulent election data doesn't make the data less fraudulent! All it does is put a gloss of engineering over the faked data.

Oblig XKCD

[Mr. Sketch]

http://xkcd.com/927/

Re:Oblig XKCD

[margeman2k3]

Also, http://xkcd.com/927/

Re:Oblig XKCD

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really. There are currently zero competing standards, and now there'll be one. That's kind of the ideal situation.

Unless you count the Diebold standard of "republicans win", which I don't really.

Oblig XKCD

[Anonymous Coward]

xkcd.com/463/

Waste

[Anonymous Coward]

Our county invested millions, I'm sure, on digital voting equipment that worked well and without a hint of fraud locally but trashed it all due to this uproar. So we close fire stations, lay off teachers and cops instead. Nice.

If understand technology you WILL NOT trust it

[bussdriver]

Somebody who understands technology, will not ever trust computer voting. period.

Re:If understand technology you WILL NOT trust it

[DeadCatX2]

You're exactly right.

Even if fraud is not perpetrated using these machines, they are going to fuck up at some statistically significant rate. Think papers jamming, touch screen calibration errors, etc.

And of course there's the eight people in Clay County, Kentucky, who are serving hard time for tricking people with electronic voting machines. One was even a judge!

http://www.kentucky.com/2010/03/26/1197075/jury-convicts-all-8-defendants.html

The county had new voting machines that year that required people to push two buttons after making their choices — one to review choices and the second to record them.

That created opportunity for a scam in which corrupt precinct officers duped people into thinking they had voted after pressing the first button, then switched the votes, according to trial testimony.

Re:If understand technology you WILL NOT trust it

[thegarbz]

Funny you use this "period" as if it's an absolute belief of all people who understand technology. Yet we who understand technology know that a computer does not succumb to bias, misrepresentation, or threats. Corruption technically yes but not in the same sense :-).

You wouldn't trust the current attempts at electronic voting, but to assume a machine is not capable of providing better assurances than a piece of paper that gets ticked, put in a box, and then magically within the ether gets converted to a statistic of who is the least undesirable leader all the while being handled by multiple big fleshy corruptible bags of water is outright delusional.

Bring on the standards.
Bring on a fully auditable process.
Bring on a completely open machine.

Then if you still trust the highly flawed vote counting system which has very often given rise to all sorts of inaccuracies then we'll have the me in white coats waiting for you.

Re:If understand technology you WILL NOT trust it

[Anonymous Coward]

Somebody who understands technology, will not ever trust computer voting. period.

Could same the same about people.

Re:If understand technology you WILL NOT trust it

[lingon]

Even if you did this, how do you know the software that is freely available and audited is really the software running on the machines? Even if you bring on all cryptographic signatures in the world, one exploit or overlooked design flaw is all that is needed.

Paper, while old and cumbersome, cannot be broken in all places at the same time in the same way. It's incredibly more difficult to rig a paper ballot election.

Re:If understand technology you WILL NOT trust it

[Burz]

Malware and backdoors are the equivalent of "bias, misrepresentation, or threats" to computers.

Computers are trusted only insofar as we can tell who asked them to do exactly what because they operate on a multitude of layers of indirection -- Anyone who thinks that what they see on screen is proof of what is recorded inside is beyond naive. As soon a secret anonymous ballot enters the picture, you've got a fundamental incompatibility with the digital world much as maximalist copyright policies are. Casting votes is not like bank transactions, for instance, where opportunity to get receipts abound and the systems in question are in constant use.

Even with open source voting software you still can't properly audit the systems because there's no way to properly inspect the operation of VLSI chips and its ludicrous to expect election commissions to do it even at the software level. If there is even one bit or gate of logic that cannot be examined then its BBV -- black box voting.

Re:If understand technology you WILL NOT trust it

[Dr_Barnowl]

Paper voting is simple enough that any person with a basic education can understand the basic methods of fraud and keep their eye out for them.

Because people are involved in every stage of the process, rather than just vote collection and acting on the tally, there are more opportunities to spot any fraud going on.

Electronic voting is understood by a much smaller fraction of the population, and those people are unlikely to be permitted to be involved in the process to the same level that a ballot counter is. No voting station is going to allow a patriotic engineer the opportunity to rummage around in the innards of the voting machine, for precisely the same reason - they fear that because they don't understand the technology inside, fraud may be perpetrated.

You can talk about open standards all you like - but they are inherently much more closed than a paper ballot by their very nature, because only a small percentage of the population are equipped to audit them.

I myself was quite keen on electronic voting systems for a while, but this was just because I was geeking out over the neat technology, particularly the cryptography. Then I realised that for all the same reasons I keep my job - people rely on me, because I'm "the guy" that understands particular technologies - there is no place for high technology in important, large grained voting.

Re:If understand technology you WILL NOT trust it

[thegarbz]

Yes if you make a system that complicated then sure. But who needs VLSI when you can get off the shelf proven processors and combine it with simple auditable software.

If you have the capabilities to audit it, which mind you is quite reasonable, then why is there any reason to doubt what's on the screen? Why not create a paper backup trail in case anyone wants to count the ballots afterwards, do we suddenly no longer trust what's on paper either? Also why is it ludicrous to expect election commission to be able to audit software? Next you'll be telling me that the tax department doesn't have any accountants on staff. Yes the knowledge needs to change but there are many people capable of auditing software out there, how about giving them a paycheck?

I didn't say it was easy or straight forward, just that things are not as absolute as the GP may think, and pretty much every complaint about e-voting has one or many engineering solutions that all to many people don't even consider because digital = bad.

Re:If understand technology you WILL NOT trust it

[thegarbz]

You can talk about open standards all you like - but they are inherently much more closed than a paper ballot by their very nature, because only a small percentage of the population are equipped to audit them.

This is slashdot. We here represent the more technically minded, and most importantly open minded subset of the population who would be interested in the inner workings of a system. I guarantee you that the overwhelmingly vast majority of the population couldn't care less about how the voting system works. Hell just looking at your country from the sidelines it's clear that nearly half of your population couldn't even be arsed casting their ballot.

Anyway why not just run a secondary paper trail? Then you have the best of both worlds, a fully auditable process with manual recount capabilities along with instant results and the reduced manual effort that you would expect of a 20th century voting system.

Re:If understand technology you WILL NOT trust it

[bussdriver]

If you think computer voting works then you do not really understand technology.

Is the IEEE the new Freemasons?

[acedotcom]

first off, i am against electronic voting....

so, there was a time when the freemasons were literally the architects of america. their stamp was on everything and their influence can still be seen in many places. so now the IEEE is pretty much everywhere, finalizing most of our technology and communication standards. if you are using a device that is networked in anyway, you are under the IEEE's influence. im not saying they are actively involved in a conspiracy to control an election, but could they?

I guess that if they could, if there was some greater conspiracy, i wouldn't be able to finish this pos

Re:Is the IEEE the new Freemasons?

[SirGarlon]

Yes, electronics make the world go round, but the IEEE is about the most ineffective organization on the planet. If they are plotting a conspiracy, I assure you, you are perfectly safe.

Why improve when we haven't addressed fraud?

[xeno]

When I see this news, all I can think is "Great, now there's an easier way to transmit and receive fraudulent vote tallies." What the USA really needs is a short & sweet federal law that says something like:
"It shall be illegal to certify any public election tallied by methods or mechanisms not available in their entirety for public inspection."

No more of this secret-sauce craziness. If you can't show how you count, you're surely up to no good -- and it's high time for that reality to be codified in law.

Re:Why improve when we haven't addressed fraud?

[mtrachtenberg]

Absolutely. I think your language is perfect, because simple and straightforward.

You should be aware that many people who claim to be election integrity advocates actually oppose allowing citizens to inspect ballots or images of ballots (on the grounds that special squiggling could be used to sell votes). They also actually oppose allowing citizens to inspect "cast vote records" of the ballots (on the grounds that a voter could encode their identity by the pattern of filling out unimportant races, to show how they voted for an important race.) This is all despite the fact that the increasing use of vote-by-mail allows anyone to sell their ballot to anyone else anyway.

The efforts of these so-called election integrity advocates slow the truly important work of ensuring that people can see for themselves the ballots that supposedly show who won the election. It's a national disgrace, on the same level of significance as the disgrace of allowing paperless voting at all.

Re:Why improve when we haven't addressed fraud?

[Anonymous Coward]

100% this. Bingo. Yahtzee.

I'd be comfortable using voting machines to expedite the process, iff paper ballots are printed out, confirmed by the voter, and kept in storage for at least 10 years (I'm willing to negotiate time frame) Any random Joe civilian should be allowed to, under watchful eye, read through every ballot in a given district.

Voting machines are the icing on the cake

[ysth]

Why not 100% vote by mail (in effect, everyone an absentee voter)?

It works here, and I have yet to hear a cogent argument against it.

Re:Voting machines are the icing on the cake

[goodmanj]

It all depends on what happens to the ballots after you mail them. Touchscreen voting machines are a clear assault on democracy, but it's not true that anything else would be better. There are plenty of ways to screw up any given voting system. Touchscreen machines just happen to be impossible to do right.

Re:Voting machines are the icing on the cake

[number11]

Why not 100% vote by mail (in effect, everyone an absentee voter)?

It works here, and I have yet to hear a cogent argument against it.

And where you are, it's 100% impossible for anyone else to watch while you fill out the ballot, and 100% impossible for anyone else to fill it out for you. And your mail is 100% delivered, 100% on time. I bet the trains run on time there, too.

Remember 'default to bush' in 2004?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you remember Diebold's 'Default to Bush' setting on its voting machines. Where voting machines would treat all none votes for president and misvotes (where you fail to press the screen properly or where the screen fails to work), as a vote for George Bush.

http://www.flcv.com/fraudpat.html

Nice huh? Someone in Diebold thought a default vote for the Bush was the right setting and QA in Diebold seem to agree!

Romney family, bought Hart Intervic a voting machine company. And after the RNC stunts: They (party elite) had the results of a vote on the teleprompter because the vote count. They changed the rules to remove 10 Ron Paul votes. They refused to even read out Ron Paul voters from the podium, so Ron Paul gets 48, Romney gets 8, they only read "Romney 8 votes". Incredible. Disgusting.

Looking through that data, particularly the odd result that Romney gains far more in districts that show signs of ballot stuffing (abnormally high turnout in a low number of districts that vote a particular way). Those would be perfect targets for investigation. You could cross correlate those odd results with the voting technology used.

Standards are unnecessary

[techdolphin]

These standards are unnecessary since electronic voting machines (EVMs) should be banned. There is no way to verify or audit the vote with EVMs.

Paper ballots that can be read by humans should be used instead. If there is a problem, the paper ballots can be recounted.

Once, when I took an online course, I printed out my test before I submitted my answers. I missed a question and checked my printout. I had answered the question correctly. So, did I accidentally change the answer, did the answer get flipped in transit or did the answer get flipped by the computer? This is why EVMs scare me. Like my online test, there is no way to verify the result.

Re:Standards are unnecessary

[SuiteSisterMary]

Well, you just hit on the answer. E-voting, which prints out your ballot. You look at the ballot, confirm everything is copacetic, and drop it in a motherfucking ballot box.

The e-vote gives you your quick results, and hand-count gives you the final count a day or two later.

Good standards don't change a bad idea

[goodmanj]

In other news, the Society of Aeronautical Engineers has recently announced a standardized zeppelin docking mechanism, so all hydrogen-filled dirigibles will be able to use the same berthing towers.

Independent Audit

[pt73]

The problem isn't needing to know how the machine works. Even code audits can't confirm that the hardware is rigged to do something strange. You just can't be 100% sure. From what I understand (being outside the USA) is the real problem is no independent audit trail to confirm that machines have correctly capture voter intent..

So a better system is to have two machines. One is used to fill in a vote which is both machine and human readable. Once printed, the voter can confirm the vote by looking at it and then lodge the vote for counting by another machine. OCR could even handle that. An audit can occur by hand counting the printed votes. All other controls that apply to older voting methods can still be applied such as incorrectly filled in votes and controls for fakes.

Re:Independent Audit

[Seeteufel]

Do you consider the US elections process fair?

Re:Independent Audit

[ockegheim]

Having the states responsible for running elections isn’t fair. Partisan state governments seem to think of all sorts of ways to prevent people from voting who are unlikely to vote the way the state government wants. So a poor black person (for example with a name resembling that of a convicted felon) might have a lesser chance of being able to vote in Florida than they would in another state. That’s not fair.

Having a 50.1% majority decide 100% of a state’s votes in the electoral college is not very representative.

Plurality voting is also problematic with more than one candidate.

The US is one of the world’s oldest democracies. If you’re first to get something, say an underground rail network, without a lot of upgrading work you’ll eventually have the world’s oldest and creakiest underground rail network. So I think the US democratic process could do with an overhaul, if only because other, newer, democracies have been able to develop their systems learning from older democracies’ problems.

Re:Independent Audit

[readin]

So a better system is to have two machines. One is used to fill in a vote which is both machine and human readable. Once printed, the voter can confirm the vote by looking at it and then lodge the vote for counting by another machine. OCR could even handle that. An audit can occur by hand counting the printed votes. All other controls that apply to older voting methods can still be applied such as incorrectly filled in votes and controls for fakes.

This is one of those solutions that is so obviously correct that it drives you crazy that it doesn't get talked about more. It's like the people running the elections don't even want a fair election. I'm generally not cynical enough to think they don't, but when a solution like this is never even publicly discussed I really have to wonder. Even the newspapers, on the rare occasion that I see an article on the subject, usually ignore this idea.

Re:Independent Audit

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude you sure like that word democracy, you seem to use it a lot.

The US is not a democracy and we like it that way. Try reading about something next time you feel the need to make your opinion known.

Now sod off.

Re:Independent Audit

[Shagg]

It's like the people running the elections don't even want a fair election.

Of course they don't. Why would they?

Do you believe a third party, even if they managed to gain majority support of the public, will ever win a meaningful election when the electronic voting machines are controlled by the two main parties?

Re:Independent Audit

[Seeteufel]

Maybe the 'US need a software update and get rid off their constitutional legacy.

IEEE Make Money Fast!

[CuteSteveJobs]

Here's the funny thing: Industry develops a standard and the IEEE gets together to approve it, but once they do they own the copyright on the standard and you can only get a copy from them, costing several hundred bucks. Some standards are split up, so instead of one fat book you are buying many small thin ones. Not a problem for big business, but a sizable expense for smaller ones and hardly an 'open' standard we want for voting machines.

Examples: http://www.techstreet.com/cgi-bin/browse?publisher_id=95&subgroup_id=36802
A small number are free, though not many. http://standards.ieee.org/about/get/index.html

The IEEE, just like academic publishers, restricts who papers can be shown too. The IEEE is a professional organization - not a for-profit publisher, but they act just another information monopoly.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100127/0423477913.shtml

Standards?

[Anonymous Coward]

What about standards for voters?

They could standardize

[FithisUX]

GPUs instead. I cannot understand their rush.

Is there a CowboyNeal option?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's a poll without CowboyNeal?

Mod parent as 'Funny'

[Burz]

ATM manufacturers created the computerized voting market. Check out blackboxvoting.org from their early days (Bush-II era) or read their book.

Secret voting is not even remotely like banking or paying taxes because the recipient of the information isn't allowed to know who generated which piece of data.

Paper or similar analog medium is the only correct way to do secret ballot voting. The result is subject to far more robust forensic analysis (should a crime be committed), recounts are straightforward and no one needs a PhD to fully audit the logic behind the process.

Use 2 indenpent vote collecting systems

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Touch screen system to record the votes (supplied by manufacturer 1) - This system spits out a paper record that is human readable (ie you just voted for X)
2. The second system (manufacturer 2) is designed to accept the paper output from the first system (and store the paper document for posterity). It echos back to the voter "you just voted like this".

If entry in to both systems does not occur within say 20 seconds, the voter is audibly warned that they have not voted.

This way you have a triple-check. System 1 count, System 2 count and the physical evidence.

Re:Use 2 indenpent vote collecting systems

[Opportunist]

How about killing part one? People make their cross like they do now, then they drop their paper slip into the "counting machine" which reads it instantly to them and tells them how their vote was counted? If they "agree" with the way it was read the paper falls into the ballot, if not they get their paper slip back.

I'm fairly sure that OCR is good enough to recognize the change on a slip of paper that their mark (be it an X, a point filled, or whatever) makes.

Vote by mail

[shentino]

Just do friggin vote by mail and be done with it.

No lines, no problems with bad weather thanks to the postal oath of rain and snow, and people can vote in the privacy of their own homes.

And since screwing with the mail is a federal offense, you get the USPIS protecting the process.

Re:Vote by mail

[Opportunist]

A horrible, horrible, HORRIBLE idea!

Even aside of the idea that people get to vote at gunpoint, how about the various retirement homes, filled with people who are still technically allowed to vote but, let's put it nicely, rather unfit to. If you can't see how various parties could have an interest to "make" people vote in one way or another (from political parties who simply and bluntly come to the homes and make sure that the geezers vote the way they "should" to the organization running the home doing it for their own gains), you underestimate how "evil" human beings can be.

Not all, only some types of vote counting machines

[Anonymous Coward]

Not all machines or all districts. That is how the anomaly becomes so clear. If you look at the vote flipping and ballot stuffing statistical test for example, these 'dodgy' districts that show clear vote flipping all to Romney:

http://www.themoneyparty.org/main/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Republican-Primary-Election-Results-Amazing-Statistical-Anomalies_V2.0.pdf

Tabulators seem to be easier to rig with tabulators showing a clear rigging for Romney:
http://www.themoneyparty.org/main/stolen-election-2004-plus-the-voter-fraud-scam-series/wisconsin-no-tabulator-versus-tabulator-counties/

Presumably because a room full of people counting in front of witness needs a lot of conspirators, but the tabulator only needs the single engineer who sets up the tabulator to rig it and he can do hundreds of machines across many districts.

If you read the stats test, there was vote flipping (i.e. fraud) from Santorum to Romney in Ohio, and you can see the same thing on the Tabulators test. I don't like Santorum myself, but the numbers don't lie.

I'll copy the conclusion of the stats paper in full here, the numbers are quite damning. The data is there at the bottom, I've played with the Maine data myself to check.

VII. Conclusions
Slopes on cumulative vote tally charts, which should settle to horizontal lines,
are an amazing statistical anomaly. The hypergeometric distribution chart,
normally produces after a minor initial oscillation, a smooth horizontal line for
the rest of the chart. By applying this distribution to the 2012 Republican
primary election data, we exposed a serious election anomaly, which can be
seen as obvious slopes favoring one candidate. It is an extraordinary
observation and indicates overwhelming evidence of election manipulation. A
massive set of detailed data and analysis for all 50 states, beyond the scope of
this paper, also confirmed these unlikely results. These highly anomalous
election results indicate a widespread, systematic exchange of votes favoring
one candidate.
Statistical analysis of the Republican Primaries results from 2012 in Iowa, New
Hampshire, Arizona, Ohio, Oklahoma, Alabama, Louisiana, Wisconsin, West
Virginia, and Kentucky show strong statistical evidence of election
manipulation15. The anomaly subsides somewhat towards the end of the
election cycle, when completion is weakened by the earlier election results.
Historically, an early vote gain effect snowballs through the various primary
states as it benefits the candidate with momentum as well as additional votes.
Mitt Romney, based on our analysis, should have (statistically) gotten third
rank in Iowa’s election (as opposed to second); second rank in New Hampshire
(as opposed to the first rank), and so on, resulting most likely to a brokered
convention at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, FL.
Some rather large statistical anomalies in states such Ohio have negatively
affected opposing candidates by reducing their momentum and fundraising
power. Ohio’s election (statistically) should have been earned by candidate Rick
Santorum. Rank switching in Oklahoma’s election also affected candidates.
The statistical analysis clearly shows that other candidates were supposed to
get more votes than the official count. Tests were performed on random
samples as well as the entire statistical populations represented by the whole
state in each case. These facts assure us that the tests have high statistical
power, as well as lack of selection bias. Many individual counties (600+) have
been analyzed as well, indicating that this type of election fraud is pervasive.
We urge readers of this paper to reproduce our results and publish their
findings.

Again. The problem runs far deeper

[Opportunist]

Let's even assume they actually made those frickin' useless boxes secure, which they didn't, with this standard.

The main problem is credibility for the common idiot. With pen and paper, all you need to verify the result is being able to see and to count. It is plausible to the average idiot that anyone can do that, any person is able to be a safeguard against fraud. With voting machines, that needs a "computer guy".

That limits the amount of people who can actually safeguard against fraud considerably. And that in turn reduces the faith people put in elections and their legality. Just look around here and how many people distrust those machines and consider them being rigged in favor of some crooked politician. And now ponder how we would actually be "computer guys" who could technically verify whether or not those things are genuine or bogus.

The average voter couldn't even do that.

The main danger is that those machines present the threat that people will think an election could easily be rigged, and that it can easily be told and believed that the other guy "stole the election". Sure, it's not much different today, but people will instantly ridicule you if you say a pen&paper election is rigged. Here's the paper slips, count your heart out if you don't believe me. No such luck with voting machines, you can either believe them or not.

Iowa voter fraud

[Anonymous Coward]

"and prone to accusations of cherry-picking"
1. They took ALL the data from those states, not a subset, and that data shows a statistically impossible voter flipping.
2. The data is in Google tables linked at the bottom of the article there for you to try to pick holes in.

"2012 Iowa Primaries (actually Caucuses), DID use paper ballots and precinct-level tallying"

That's a straw man, the test isn't a test of machine rigging, it's a test of ANY rigging. A quick search tells you what they did and why it flags as election fraud:
http://caucuses.desmoinesregister.com/2012/01/19/register-exclusive-2012-gop-caucus-count-unresolved/

"There are too many holes in the certified totals from the Iowa caucuses to know for certain who won, but Rick Santorum wound up with a 34-vote advantage."

"Results from eight precincts are missing — any of which could hold an advantage for Mitt Romney — and will never be recovered and certified, Republican Party of Iowa officials told The Des Moines Register on Wednesday."

"GOP officials discovered inaccuracies in 131 precincts, although not all the changes affected the two leaders. Changes in one precinct alone shifted the vote by 50 — a margin greater than the certified tally."

Re:Iowa voter fraud

[wildsurf]

Ok, hang on a sec.

Regarding the straw man, the study itself states: "At this point of our analysis, the cause appears to originate with electronic voting equipment; the problem does not exist when manual methods are used." But the Iowa example shown two pages later flatly contradicts this. See p.5 and p.7: Linked Study

Regarding Iowa: "GOP officials discovered inaccuracies in 131 precincts"... Perhaps, but the scope of these inaccuracies were magnitudes different than the purported "vote-flipping" implied by the study. Romney lost less than 50 votes on the statewide recount (relative to Santorum), compared with the study's implied 7850-vote gap. Data from the missing eight precincts couldn't come remotely close to closing this gap. So even correcting for the found inaccuracies, we're left with over 99% of the purported discrepancy unaccounted for. Were the fraudsters simply 99% successful at covering their tracks? If so, wouldn't there be many fewer precincts with discrepancies? The ~50 vote recount correction could easily be due to random human error.

Regarding cherry-picking: there is no question that there is a bulletproof correlation between precinct size and vote ratios, in Iowa in this primary. (The null hypothesis has been proven false, in other words.) The real question is whether that correlation ITSELF correlates strongly with the type of balloting/counting used, and for this there are very few data points shown. Are there counterexamples (places where electronic voting was used but the anomaly is not seen, or vice versa)? How many? What distinguishes the ballot-counting process in the Iowa Caucuses from, say, FL Palm Beach County (where there was no anomaly observed)? What were the correlations, if any, in all these different states and counties, of precinct size vs a priori voter registration (Republican / Democrat ratio)?

Can anything be gleaned from this? Again, it would be nice to see the study peer-reviewed, and to have stronger logic why the correlations COULDN'T be a result of "natural causes", rather than just we can't think of a way. (I agree that there is no other immediately obvious explanation, but that doesn't mean one doesn't exist.)

Another oblig XKCD

[Schmorgluck]

http://xkcd.com/1022/

Laughed out of the room

[TheRealHocusLocus]

When I saw the introduction of electronic voting machines (even early ones that produced an actual printed paper tape for verification) I thought, "This is an idea that should have been laughed out of the room the day it was first proposed."

Then some years after, machines with dongles and flash memory, no paper at all. It was screamingly surreal.

As a computer consultant in 1980 I was approached by a friend on the Board of Elections to review bids for Shouptronics stations and optical readers. We both agreed to reject the idea of standalone machines, KEEPING THE PAPER BALLOT and doing optical counting in batches, with a dice toss for each batch (roll a six, count by hand and check against the machine).

We were overruled by the Board, they went for the machines because they claimed that with whole-machine voting "there are NO spoiled or incorrect ballots."

The surreal aspect to this is, in a situation where the real world yields variable results, some ballots spoiled because some people make dumb mistakes, they have opted to eliminate all the controls -- now you have one aggregate result that cannot be trusted.

Re:Laughed out of the room

[readin]

If there is no paper trail, there is no audit. If there is no audit, there is no provable fraud. If there is no provable fraud, the election board has run a superbly clean election.

You made the mistake of thinking the Board of Elections wanted to prevent voter fraud when perhaps they just wanted to prevent anyone from finding voter fraud.

The Robinson Method fixes all these problems

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.paul-robinson.us/index.php/2008/10/25/the_robinson_method_a_really_simple_way_?blog=5

Hello, FUD machine

[water-and-sewer]

Ask Hugo Chavez about the FUD factor inherent in voting machinery no one trusts. In Venezuela it was popularly thought that the machines could track who voted for whom, and that people that voted against Chavez would suffer reprisals. Whether that was true or not, the very existence of that fear kept people from voting for the opposition. This was particularly effective among populations with less education, worse access to internet, and more undecided about who they preferred. If voting for the opposition means your husband loses his job, your kid gets kicked out of the (better quality) government school, and your uncle gets taken into custody for a lengthy and scary episode of "questioning," you'll probably take the safe route and just vote for the incumbent, even if you don't like him. It's safer.

Naturally the government made no effort to dispel the rumors, so who cares if the FUD was true or not?

There's more about this story at http://www.dictatorshandbook.net/ and similar election tricks make up the bulk of Chapter 11 of the Dictator's Handbook, which Chavez, Lukshenka, Ahmadinejad, Kim, and Many Many Others have all read (and you can too).

Standardization All The Way

[assertation]

Americans voting in the same federal elections get different voting machines and different voting privileges ( early voting, same day voting, or not, etc ... ) simply because they live in a different state.

Federal elections should have federal standards. Same machines, same hours, same processes, same deadlines for all American citizens.

Re:Standardization All The Way

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know too much about the legalities of elections, but it was always my understanding that, while the 'Main Event' of the election is Federal, there are many state-level issues on the ballot, and in fact the election itself (within a state) is governed by that state, due to the Electoral College and all that. So if you live in a state that decides "We will send all of our delegates to vote for the candidate whose name comes first when the ballot is listed in alphabetical order," well, that's just your tough luck for living there. Or if you live in a state that decides "We will hold our election on November 2, classifying every single one of our voters as absentee, then spend every day until the 6th recounting the ballots over and over and over again, when we will send them in" that's their right.

Straw Man

[Anonymous Coward]

"Perhaps, but the scope of these inaccuracies were magnitudes different than the purported "vote-flipping" implied by the study"

I quote Matt Strawn GOP chairman:
So who won the Iowa caucuses?“I can’t speculate without documentation from the missing eight,” Strawn said.

You don't know the extent of the fraud, you're simply hypothesizing it was missing 8+documented errors, but have no basis for that. The GOPs guy won't even speculate who won and he's the guy in charge! So clearly the statistics predicted this was a rigged election, and the secondary evidence backs that.

"At this point of our analysis, the cause appears to originate with electronic voting equipment;"
Yes indeed where “Central Tabulator” machines were used there was clear fraud, where they were not, the expected flat line was observed, like Outagamie County, Wisconsin. If (X causes Y) and I note the causal link, does that means Z can't also cause Y?
i.e. are you saying "miscounting votes and throwing away 8 districts" doesn't cause "voter fraud" because "Central Tabulator" causes "voter fraud" as if there's only one way to rig a vote?? Ludicrous logic.

"Are there counterexamples (places where electronic voting was used but the anomaly is not seen, or vice versa)?"
Knock yourself out, the whole data set was used so any such cases are swamped by the fraudulant cases.

"Can anything be gleaned from this?"
Yes, it predicts a pattern of voting consistent with election fraud, and secondary evidence of fraud WAS FOUND where it was predicted in manual ballots where it is easier to detect fraud. That pattern shows consistent and uniform fraud for Romney.

  "natural causes"
At this point the stats are so clear cut, the FBI should be raiding offices and collecting evidence before they destroy it.

Result?

[Shagg]

The result is poor validation and hence opportunity for fraud.

I thought "opportunity for fraud" was the purpose of voting machines.

Re:

[davide marney]

See page 20 of the report. I think they destroy their own argument there, showing that Romney was a back-bencher in 2008, and his slope was flat (like the others), and his slope isn't consistently flat even in all the 2012 races.

Also, the fact that they chose a primary election instead of a general election is very, very significant. The turnout for primary races is front-runner when turnout is that low. An extra 100 people showing up in a more-populated area would be enough to produce the "suspicious slope" effect is my off-the-cuff guess. I doubt this effect is repeated in a normal election.

Let's have a paper trail for EVERYTHING

[davide marney]

If paper is so great, let's use it for ALL our testing! Want to test that fancy new function you wrote. Here's how QA should really test it:

• Write down a list of known inputs ON PAPER and known outputs ON PAPER
• Run the functions while hand-typing in the parameters. Write down the outputs ON PAPER
• Get our your No. 2 pencils and hand-calculate the correct answers ON PAPER. For every test.
• Now manually compare your QA person's answers to the test results, tracking it ON PAPER, of course

I can't believe that on slashdot, of all places, people don't understand that we invented computing machines explicitly to remove people from doing mundane, repetitive tasks because people suck at it. They make mistakes. They get tired. The paper gets lost, mangled, or stolen.

Using machines isn't the problem. The problem is mis-applying a human-centric testing methodology (hand recounts) to a machine context. The proper way to test a machine IS WITH ANOTHER MACHINE.

You clearly don't know what you're talking about

[Burz]

Off the shelf components are VLSI, have been for decades.

Its amazing what tech fanbois will do to prevent people from entering or viewing information without microprocessors. Feeding a hand-marked ballot into a machine gives us a digital representation while creating the best kind of paper trail. OTOH using a computer to record a vote then make a printout is doing it backwards because the latter invites all sorts of additional fraudulent activity that require a minimum of people and physical effort to execute.

So They Can Hack Them ALL?

[Toad-san]

Same language, same solutions. How clever: now one hack can crack ALL the voting machines. Why, it'll be just like elections back in The Day .. in Communist countries anyway.

Re:Not all, only some types of vote counting machi

[Anonymous Coward]

Legitimate reasons can explain this property. Of note, perhaps precincts further out from elections offices were counted last, and it is people in suburbs that tended to vote for Romney.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

not so fast...

[Anonymous Coward]

Human error is much more easily detected when representatives of all parties are closely watching the count...