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Another Election, Another Slew of Voting Machine Glitches
An anonymous reader writes: As Election Day in the U.S. starts to wind down, reports from around the country highlight another round of technological failures at the polls. In Virginia, the machines are casting votes for the wrong candidates. In North Carolina, polling sites received the wrong set of thumb drives, delaying voters for hours. In Michigan, software glitches turned voters away in the early morning, including a city mayor. A county in Indiana saw five of its polling sites spend hours trying to get the machines to boot correctly. And in Connecticut, an as-yet-unspecified computer glitch caused a judge to keep the polls open for extra time. When are we going to get this right?
...not a bug.
They've proven elections can be hopelessly unreliable and the electorate still won't care.
Meh. I voted by mail a week ago. Got a paper ballot. Had lots of time to look up details on all the issues, including the judges, some obscure issues, and the people I'd never heard of.
Much better solution. No lines. No scheduling around work. Several weeks to study out everything.
I highly recommend it for everybody.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
a system like Oregon's mail ballot.
Until we do an open federally sponsored voting system, no one is going to engineer a solution properly.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"Your vote for has been recorded"
* added to terror watchlist*
*Candidate Y count +1*
No paper trail, no accountability... No democracy.
Every ballot creates a new Bitcoin address (polling locations keep track of the generated ballot addresses) with a negligible fraction of bitcoins.. Every vote sends a tiny fraction of bitcoin to whatever addresses are represented by candidates. Only transactions from ballot-list addresses are counted. Candidates with the highest amount of bitcoins in their voting addresses from verified ballots win. Any screwups or attempts at fucking with the votes could be seen on the blockchain.
There's probably 1000 different ways voting can be done anonymously while still being verifiable using the blockchain. Don't ask me to solve all the problems - but they are solvable.
I believe the whole point of the 'closed source' ballot bullshit we have now is the same reason we have a ridiculously bloated war on terror. The real purpose is to concentrate power in the hands of the few. They make us believe our votes are counted.. but they haven't been counted right in years.
--- We need more Ron Paul!
There's always something old and archaic that "just works" -- doesn't mean we should stick to it.
Except that marked ballots work *better*. We're all listening if you can tell us specifically in what ways electronic voting works better, and how those advantages (if any) sufficiently offset the myriad of problems.
Marked paper ballots. Done. Braille versions can be made for the blind, different language versions (what, voting based on a person's preferred language, that's just crazy) and so on. Optical scanning is old, tried and very well tested technology, and you can always fall back to hand counts.
Most likely when the electronic machines are sent to a recycling company -- Ireland recently dumped all theirs -- and paper ballots are used. The electronic machines have proven to be way too unreliable and easy to manipulate.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
The ballots are counted when cast, and results reported in the hour after polls close. If there is anything suspicious, the paper is there for a judicial recount. And it's way cheaper than touchscreen PCs.
davecb@spamcop.net
What makes you think they aren't doing exactly what they planned on doing? All of your solutions require that the software not be malicious in the first place. Paper, black pen.
AND, paper ballots allow one to recover from gross errors. Electronic ballots do not.
The only kind of "electronic voting" that I would support would be one that allowed the voter to fill in his ballot on the computer terminal and then PRINT the ballot. The voter then reviews the PRINTED ballot, and then drops it into the ballot box. Immediate results, which is what the BigMediaMoguls want, to do breathless "breaking news" bulletins, AND a scanable paper ballot which would be the OFFICIAL ballot.
I voted today using a real paper ballot which I placed into a real ballot box in the state of TN. Very satisfying. Not easy to do however, the state wants to force voters to use electronic black box voting machines. The precinct worker and the local supervisor tried to tell me that I could not vote using a paper ballot. I told them I had checked with the state election division (which I had done) and an election attorney confirmed that my right to vote using a paper ballot would not be denied. They actually called the secretary of state office on election day to confirm.
It is not possible to verify a vote using an electronic black box voting machine. As Ronald Reagan said "Trust but verify".
I've worked as an election judge in Colorado and in Pennsylvania and in both states I got paid between $100 and $150 a day for election day, and got paid for the training. It's not a bad way to spend a vacation day. Get paid for the vacation day, and the hundred and some bucks from the county, and get that vibe you get being a part of the democratic process. Plus, for places with electronic voting machines, it's good to have a technically oriented person there, because it is, after all, a computer and setting them up is usually not easy for non-techies.
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
When the polls close the printouts go into another locked box and it's all driven over to the counting center under police guard.
This is what I see as a potential problem. I was once an election assistant (in Germany), and I was impressed by how thought out the system was. At all times during the election there is at least on of the two "election leaders" in the room, together with at least two election assistants. One of the assistants makes sure the ballot box is secure at all times, very visible for all others in the room. So to mess with the box at this time requires at least 3 corrupt people, and there is no police involved. At the end of the day, both election leaders and all assistants come together and open the box IN PUBLIC. The ballots are counted right there and then, multiple times, and everyone of the assistants and leaders has to sign off the result. Again, this is in public, anybody can go there and verify nothing is tampered with.
The result is that at least 6 people there (and as many people as were watching) KNOW for a FACT the result of that district. They couldn't be more sure, they COUNTED it themselves. The paper with the results is sent to the election center, together with the ballot box. There the results are aggregated. The official results are later made available for every district, so the people that counted can verify the correct result was used during aggregation.
This is a very secure system, and the biggest weak point is the ballot box itself during the election, where you need three guys to tamper with it. And even then it's dangerous. There is no way to greatly influence the election result using just a few people. The counting happens before the ballots getting into the hands of the few. The people count, not the state.