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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.
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.
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!”
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.
Let's not try to automate voting beyond OCR scanners until we can secure it. We can't now. No. We cannot.
Thanks.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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
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...
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?