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NYU Study: America's Voting Machines Are Rapidly Aging Out
Presto Vivace passes on a link to a report at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU's law school which says that many of the vote-counting machines set to be used in the 2016 U.S. general election will be past their prime by the time of the election, if not long before. From the report:
Technology has changed dramatically in the last decade, but America's voting machines are rapidly aging out. In 2016, for example, 43 states will use electronic voting machines that are at least 10 years old, perilously close to the end of most systems' expected lifespan. Old voting equipment increases the risk of failures and crashes — which can lead to long lines and lost votes on Election Day — and problems only get worse the longer we wait.
The first person at each machine at the next election will take some time, because he will be asked to update to Windows 10 first.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Let's purchase one less F-35 fighter and instead replace every voting machine in America. If people get butthurt, we can make the first vote on the new machines whether or not to purchase that single fighter plane or not.
I don't understand why you think we can have an anonymous online vote. Online banking is 100% about de-anonymizing the person doing the transaction. Show me a formally demonstrated system for an auditable, anonymous vote and then let's entertain the notion.
In Canada our voting systems have a design lifespan of one day, because they are made out of paper and cardboard. Still a lot more secure and reliable then the US system.
If it's somehow racist to suggest folks show up at the polls with a photo ID and given the partisan arguments that follow such statements, It's pretty clear to me why "online" voting is not likely to happen any time soon.
Can you imagine the rancor that would ensue over how to register people to vote online? How that disenfranchised voters who didn't have or couldn't afford an internet connection or where unable to follow even the simplest of instructions about how to vote? Lord help us trying to sort all that out where the various parties would be vying to protect some real or imaginary edge in how voters where registered and how they cast their votes. It's bad enough trying to deal with the gerrymandering and voter ID laws now, I cannot imagine how much fun it would be to do all this online too...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Because it's hard and expensive. Anonymous paper / scanner systems have been around ... since at least 2006 or so, and shown to work.
Really, the entire premise of this article is foolish. Just because the tech hasn't been replaced in 7 years doesn't mean it's going to fall apart. In backwards Alaska (according to this, and many other maps), we have mark / sense systems. Like I was using in elementary school for standardized tests. Tech is simple, robust, paid for. Likely not perfect, but certainly workable.
It doesn't have to be hard unless you 1) want instant results and 2) want perfection. Lighten up Francis.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
And let's not forget fraud...The black boxes are not trustworthy. I find it hard to believe that some of these crackpots are actually winning the vote. We need to go back to paper. It's easier to verify and very low maintenance.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The elections are rigged, anyway. The preponderance of the masses are too busy, sick, or lazy (or all of the above) to vote, and those who do are told who to vote for by the mass media. Even if an unprecedentedly huge 5% of the population were actually informed on the issues and voted for a candidate who'd actually make things better (or die trying), it wouldn't make enough of a difference in the election to tip the scales.
We don't like to admit it because we think we're "freer" than other countries that run faux democracies like Russia and India, but in reality, we're no freer than they are, and our elections are just as rigged, if not moreso.
When we arrive to vote there are at least three volunteers there to manage everything. They first validate our voter registration card sent to us in the mail or government issued ID against a list of registered voters for that polling station. Next they cross us off the list and hand us a paper ballot and some other piece of paper with our name and other information on it.
We then go to a private booth which has pens and instructions that clearly show how to mark the ballot and how not to mark it. When finished we return to the desk of volunteers and clearly show them that we are placing only one ballot in the box. They control access to the slot. Finally we give them the other piece of paper that they gave us earlier and they pass it through a machine that looks like a shredder but it has digital counters on it. I guess it is counting the number of votes and might even be recording who voted. I'm not sure about the who part or if that information is shared across all polling stations to ensure you only vote once. Regardless, it is separate from the paper ballot. The machine looks like it could last decades because it's not a Windows computer with a spinning disk etc.
At the end of the night the three volunteers count the ballots and report the results. We have three major political parties in Canada and I wonder if the volunteers represent each of the parties to ensure no cheating. I'll ask at our next election in October.
Going alone into a physical voting booth provides a better protection against selling your vote to someone else, as you still can secretly vote the person that you actually want to. With online voting the other guy might want to look over your shoulder to confirm that the sold vote goes to the person chosen by him.
Here are some differences between ballot counting and banking transactions:
1. Votes are supposed to be anonymous so voters can not normally confirm their transactions are posted accurately. There are various complex schemes to provide voter verification but none of them IMHO are especially simple or transparent. Banking transactions are traceable and verifiable.
2. Voters are not supposed to provide proof of how they voted presumably as a deterrence to voter buying.
3. Votes are not transferable among individuals. Mail ballots typically require signatures which is while forgeable are a long accepted legal authentication method. Banking transactions typically use transferable passwords.
4. Erroneous or fraudulent banking transactions can be reversed or corrected relatively easily with the costs born by the banks as business overhead. Major irregularities in elections are typically settled by court cases where the outcome may bear little relationship to the actual votes.
We have seen for some time now that the more affluent your voting district, the better chances are of having well-maintained, functional, and plentiful voting machines. Yeah there are lots of ageing voting machines, but they likely don't reside in areas that elected politicians and their cronies are concerned about.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
What's racist is the intentions of those who demand the photo ID, as their own admissions show that they know that the possession of such ID is unbalanced, and they refuse to address the problem as evidenced by their refusal to make the provision of that ID a state mandate.
That's all they have to do. Make it a burden on the state, and they can satisfy everyone. But no, we get pretend measures like alleged "free" ID that the citizen still needs to document, and they may even need to travel far outside of their area to get one.
But hey, feel free to put the ID measure online, I won't mind being able to send the state a request for ID and an agent show up and find out what it will take to satisfy them.
Home delivery is fine.
you said it, brother!
Face it, our voting machines are all rigged now.
How else can NOBODY vote for THAT GUY, but he keeps getting elected year-in and year-out?
Can't have the wrong lizard get elected, now can we?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Related is the voting revolution happening in the western US -- vote by mail, with scanned paper ballots. Colorado, Oregon, and Washington already send a mail-in ballot to every registered voter. Arizona and California are clearly heading in that direction. Once those "big five" western states have adopted, the smaller ones -- some of which already have permanent no-excuse absentee ballots -- are likely to follow along. I admit to being biased; I love that my polling place is my kitchen table.
One of the interesting things I've noticed is when I raise the subject with friends, the ones who are opposed almost always grew up east of the Mississippi, and are terrified that large-scale fraud will occur. There's a PhD dissertation for a sociologist or political scientist in there somewhere.
I worked designing ballot reading machines back in the late 80's. I enjoyed the work and we made some great equipment. Then the "hanging chad" incident came along and the Federal Elections Commission issued strict certification standards for ballot counting equipment. Once my company certified the machines that they sold, they ended all R&D and new product development. It was not possible to make incremental improvements without a massive retest and recertification, and the company (correctly) surmised that the certification costs would limit the playing field to the existing players. So, no incentive to build better machines.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Voting really hasn't changed in thousands of years, so I'm not really sure why the voting machines can be 'past their prime'.
What exactly do you upgrade on a voting machine? Its electronic or its not. If its electronic, you're already fucking stupid so I'm going to ignore you. If its not electronic, then just put a new sticker on the faceplate and move on because functionally theres no reason what so ever to upgrade, use it until it breaks, THEN upgrade.
If its electronic, and you need to update it, then you do, but you update it with another company that can make voting machines that don't suck ass instead of continuing to pay the company that sold you broken machines and can't be bothered to write software properly. You don't need a new voting machine because theres a new version of windows, you don't need a new version of windows, you don't need a new 'theme' for your voting machine.
There are pretty much zero reasons to upgrade a voting machine that isn't broken.
You don't have to upgrade just because there is a new version, and its really fucking stupid to do so if you do. When a machine is performing properly, use it until it doesn't.
If you have to 'upgrade' to get a functioning machine because the company refuses to fix its existing one, you just ban that company from doing any government business and you ban every single person above middle management from ever doing any business with the government or any business they work for from doing any business with the government. You make it impossible for those greedy manipulative pricks to ever be involved with tax payer money again. If that means they can't find a job and starve to death ... well, its good to throw some chlorine in the gene pool regularly, maybe they type of person will become a little less common.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
I think we should go back to pen-and-paper voting, with ballot boxes and manual counting. No practical purpose is served by introducing technology into the process of voting.
Actually, voting has changed. It used to be done by tokens placed into urns or people raising their hands in a town square. Then by marks made on paper.
Only fairly recently has it started being done by "machine" (punch cards, levers, or digital computers), and it's unclear why a "machine" is needed: it's expensive, difficult to audit, and easy to manipulate.
Whenever a machine fails there's a risk of lost votes. More importantly these machines are just insecure. We need voting machines with open source hardware, open source software, and encrypted, hashed, anonymous publicly available vote records. Ask for a password. Hash the password, the vote, the polling booth's number, and the time (in 15 minute increments) and make that immediately publicly available.
Each voter can then go to a publicly accessible website and enter where and when he voted and what password he used, and be told how he voted. If that bothers you add a unique password inside each booth the person can alternatively use to be told he voted differently, or allow entry of an alternate password to be answered a user-selectable vote.
The hashed verifiable votes will be proof against election fraud.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Sure it is, I am given a blank ballot, there is no identifier on it that links back to me, I mark it with a marker and send it through the scanner. My vote is counted, I have been marked as voted in the polls, but no one can tell which ballot is mine. Sounds pretty anonymous to me.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
My voting precincts use scantron sheets for all elections. Simple, anonymous, secure. I mark my ballot, walk to the scantron machine and enter my ballot. If there's a problem with my ballot there's an error message. If the sheet is destroyed by the scanner I can fill out another sheet.
Why is this so hard for everyone else? I don't want online voting. It complicates a very easy task.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
You need an ID to get a job, cash a check, buy beer and ciggs, use a credit card, drive, etc. You need an ID for life nowadays, and passing a voter ID law that includes free IDs for all who can prove who they are (a requirement to register to vote!) is somehow racist?
Grow up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Auditable, anonymous, and transparent to / understandable by to a layman. A paper ballot system has the advnatgae that pretty much everyone can understand how it works, what the conditions for a fair vote are, and if those conditions are met at least in their local area. It is very hard to do any large-scale rigging in a properly conducted ballot, and people understand why it is so. You may be able to implement electronic voting that offers audits as well as anonymity, mathematically proven, and well-secured, but only a few people in this world will have the knowledge to actually verify the system, and it may be impossible for them to do so nationwide, before and on the day of voting. It's important that people know they can trust the outcome.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
there is no link to ballot 376 run through the scanner and your signature in the polling record book. the monitors are not allowed to bring in invisible ink or anything.
your having voted, period, no other information becomes public information and ends up on poll records for all political parties and independents that are willing to pay the fee and put the .csv file into a spreadsheet. nobody knows how you voted unless you tell people.
that's how it works in Minnesota, and anybody who does it differently becomes a drone test area. four quarters to control a drone at better bars everywhere.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Except that non citizens are prevented by the law from voting. Illegals cannot legally vote, no racism there, they choose not to become citizens.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Misleading nonsense. For one thing, not "almost every other state" requires photo ID. In fact, 33 of 50 states do not require photo ID.
Of the 17 states which do require photo ID, 59% of them (10 states; Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Lousiana, Mississippi, South Dakota, Tennessee,Texas) voted Republican in the last election and 41% of them (seven states; Hawaii, Florida, Michigan, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Virginia, Wisconsin) voted Democrat.
Of the 24 states that voted Republican in the last election, 42% required photo ID. Of the 27 which voted Democrat in the last election (counting DC, which technically isn't a state), just 26% required photo ID.
Seven of the 10 Republican photo ID states (70%) give no provision for casting a provisional vote or signing an affadavit if you lack photo ID. Four of the seven Democrat photo ID states (57%) do the same.
In other words, this is clearly and primarily a Republican thing. If you are in a Republican-leaning state, you are much more likely to need photo ID. And supposedly "free" photo ID (which most photo ID states DON'T provide) isn't much use if you're poor and yet somehow have to take time off work and jump through hoops obtaining documentation to get it.
And there has never been any demonstration that they do anything to counteract voter fraud, because it is has been proven to be miniscule for in-person voting anyway. However, absentee voter fraud is known to be a much broader problem in the real world, and yet these same states which supposedly believe so strongly in the sanctity of the vote that they must protect themselves by requiring photo ID are largely doing nothing at all about the actual, real problem of absentee ballot fraud. (Why is that, you ask? Well, it's because absentee voter fraud -- like absentee votes in general -- typically favors the Republicans.)
This has nothing to do with the sanctity of the vote, and everything to do with disenfranchising poor, minority voters -- who, not coincidentally, are most likely to vote with the Democrats.
Oh, and as for having Carson polling in second place, the chances of his being nominated are nil, just like the moron currently polling in first place. Here's Electoral-Vote.com's summary of him:
"Carson is not a viable candidate because he is running against Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) for the same slice of the electorate. Carson has never run for public office before. Cruz is an extremely smart guy (with degrees from Princeton and Harvard) who defeated the entire Texas Republican establishment in his longshot 2012 Senate primary race against the sitting lieutenant governor of Texas. Cruz has also raised more money than anyone else in the presidential campaign except Jeb Bush. He is also very well organized in the South, which will play a huge role on Super Tuesday (March 1). Sooner or later, Carson's supporters will realize that Cruz stands for the same things Carson does, with the added bonus of being nominatable and possibly even electable (not likely, but a lot more chance than Carson). We are still in the love-fest stage of the campaign but that will be over long before the voting starts."
The same site also pointed out recently that one of Carson's few advantages for Republicans is the fact that his presence in the list allows racists to pretend they're not racist. You know, the very same thing you just did.
In other words, this is clearly and primarily a Republican thing. If you are in a Republican-leaning state, you are much more likely to need photo ID.
That is exactly the opposite of what your stats say, and what I was saying. I was pointing out that it is not solely a Republican thing, and you just confirmed exactly what I said.
Also, I DID NOT state photo IDs, that was your invention. Only 17 states require no identification, and even that is changing.
There is no way to determine without requiring photo IDs the scale of voter fraud. Every article I have read has shown that fraud is pretty rapant, and photo IDs prevent people from voting who aren't eligible, how is this a bad thing? You need to prove you are a US citizen to register to vote (it is after all a requirement), how does it change anything to then get a free ID at the same time?
Carson is currently polling as number 2 behind Trump. Together they have 48% of the polls: https://www.google.com/search?...
So why would I care one whit about Cruz who seems to have 7% of the polls:
http://www.pollingreport.com/w...
How is pointing out facts racist? The guy is huge right now, and I have real hopes of him taking the nomination. He is a damn site better than Hillary. If a guy polling at 33% or 20% has no chance of nomination in your mind, I would love to see how you feel about Hillary's chances.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
There's not much point for online voting anyway. If someone is too lazy to get ouf of mom's basement and go vote, we don't really want their vote to count anyway. If they really can't go to a polling place then get an absentee ballot and fill it out at home.
For some evidence of the Gerrymandering, take a look at this page:
http://pjmedia.com/zombie/2010...
I went through that list, and was amazed at how bad Florida is...a state that voted for Obama. But I totaled up all the states based on which way they went in 2012, though I could have just as easily done 2014, I think a presidential election makes the most sense. I came up with 25 D, and 8 R.
The law I was trying to come up with is mentioned in the article, it is the voters rights act, it is mentioned under FL-3 as the reason given for the crazy border there. This made a requirement for gerrymandering in the form of packing of minorities so that there would be more minority representation in congress. This directly led to many of the "Gerrymandered" districts as in order to pack all the minorities, you have to do some crazy districting. But, this is a federal law that was supposed to help minorities, so I am sure you are all for it.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
they choose not to become citizens
HAHAHAHAHA. One does not choose to become a citizen. You pretty much have to have family in the US or have a company sponsor you, and then the backlog can take decades.
Florida is a perfect example of Republican gerrymandering, they vote almost exactly 50/50 in national elections but 2/3rds (actually 17/27) of their representatives are Republican and it's similar at the state level (80/120 state house seats held by republicans). It's pretty obvious from those numbers that folks who vote in national elections aren't being equally represented in either the state or national houses of representatives.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.