Slashdot Mirror
Green Party Calls For Recount, Wants To Push For Open-Source Voting Machines (nbcnewyork.com)
The Green party candidate in the U.S. presidential election, Jill Stein, has raised over $5 million in donations to fund a recount in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, which are the states key to Hillary Clinton's loss on November 8th. She is seeking a recount in these three states after computer scientists discovered Clinton averaged 7% worse in counties with e-voting machines vs. counties with only paper or optical scan ballots. An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: On November 23, the Stein/Baraka Green Party Campaign launched an effort to ensure the integrity of our elections," calling for "publicly-owned, open source voting equipment." In approximately 48 hours (as of 1:20pm EST (GMT-5) on Nov-25-2016) $5,026,516.15 has been raised to pay for a recount in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and [they are] currently collecting towards a recount in Michigan. The Green party also states: "The Green Party Platform calls for 'publicly-owned, open source voting equipment and deploy it across the nation to ensure high national standards, performance, transparency and accountability; use verifiable paper ballots; and institute mandatory automatic random precinct recounts to ensure a high level of accuracy in election results.'" More details can be read on MSNBC news. The Washington Post asks: Why are people giving Jill Stein millions of dollars for an election recount? UPDATE 11/25/16: Washington Examiner is reporting that Green Party officials have filed for a presidential vote recount in Wisconsin.
UPDATE 11/26/16: Hillary Clinton's campaign said Saturday that it will take part in the recount in Wisconsin.
UPDATE 11/26/16: Hillary Clinton's campaign said Saturday that it will take part in the recount in Wisconsin.
My god people! The election is over. Trump won fair and square!
1) Liberals are refusing to accept the outcome of the election. They complained loudly when Trump said he might contest the election and not accept the outcome. Now they're doing precisely the same thing they complained about. As usual, liberals are being hypocrites.
2) Open source voting machines mean that anyone can inspect the hardware and software to find bugs. That makes it far easier for criminals to discover vulnerabilities and tamper with elections. Having open source voting machines virtually guarantees that criminals will be able to exploit vulnerabilities and have a much easier time rigging elections.
It appears to me that DNC can't stand losing. If Stein wasn't "helping Clinton" she would have picked a state that Clinton had won, or not picked the 3 most likely states to overturn and give Clinton the win. Make no mistake, the DNC is behind it.
2000 - Gore sues to recount Florida county by county until he wins, never asked to recount state
2008- Franken sues to recount until he goes from losing to winning, takes 8 months
The GOP doesn't have to just win, they have to win beyond legal challenge. Now legal challenge involved 60 Electoral College votes over 3 states.
DNC is not interested in voter fraud until they lose. There is not a single case of proven voter fraud EVER according to Clinton and Obama the week before the vote. Resist voter ID at every possible case because there is no voter fraud. They lose, suddenly voter fraud by the tens of thousands across 3 states.
The DNC is bullshit, period.
And an entirely different campaign will be accused of being a bad loser...
Still, if it's paid for, then it'll be worthwhile: It'll either increase confidence in the results (and maybe get some to accept their candidate lost), or it'll identify weakness that can be fixed.
I don't really expect it to change the results of the election - I'd bet faithless electors in the Electoral College is more likely to change the result than this.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
There is no way to verify the integrity of the machines on voting day, nor to safeguard the integrity of the polling data between the voting machine and the final tally. Open source means nothing here.
Electronic voting as a whole is a gigantic boondoggle. There are only three reasons for it to exist: People who are too impatient to wait for manual counting, people who are looking to make a tidy profit selling a broken solution to a problem that doesn't need solving, and people who are interested in a way to fuck with the polls without getting caught.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with a slip of paper and a pen. Or have people dip their finger in ink like we've all seen done...
=Smidge=
Remember, most IoT devices run Linux, which is open source. They're also a huge source of vulnerabilities and responsible for a lot of recent massive DDoS attacks. If open source isn't secure in IoT devices, why would we ever expect open source voting machines to be secure? Open source voting machines are the last thing we need if we want security.
Little buyers remorse, what?? Stein and the other "independent" idiots made Trump president, now live in the world you made and STFU!
...does something useful for a change.
The real motivation here is that any criminal can examine the open source code, find vulnerabilities, and exploit them. The Democrats had farore money to spend during the election than the Republicans did, as proved by how much Hillary outspent Trump. The liberals have more than enough money to pay criminals, who can find and exploit vulnerabilities to ensure that Democrat candidates win.
Jill Stein is calling for recounts in three states where Hillary lost and not calling for recounts in New Hampshire, Minnesota & Nevada, three states where the results were even closer but in those states Hillary "won". Somehow Stein has gained more money for recounts ($4.7 m) than she managed to raise in her entire campaign ($3 m), even though clearly no Stein supporter believes that she will pick up enough votes to win any state. Gee Hillary, we wonder where all that money is coming from.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
yeah... its "over"... but they have the right to request the recount, so they are taking them up on that option.
And... it's not the dems requesting it, which is surprising.
Oh well, if the Greens want to waste their money, let them.
To the ACs whining about "They can't accept the outcome"... they are using legal avenues to make sure its right. It's not like the Greens are asking for special consideration because "AWMG RIGGED!!!"
Trump was crying like a 2 year old about everything (CROOKED, RIGGED, WAHH) was so unfair and as soon as he got his way, he smiled and sat contently in the corner. Just like a two year old that got his way.
Let them, they are allowed to request it and they did.
Great idea! Let's give the Russians access to the source code of our voting machines. We can certainly trust they'll never look for vulnerabilities and hack our voting machines. Putin would never use our source code against us, now would he?
Look at the Russian hacks, they were targeting the vote registration data. From that data you get the list of absentee voters and the list of habitual non-voters. When Florida is busy receiving all those faxed votes, it has no way of telling they come from a US military base in Afghanistan or a Russian propaganda base in Moscow. They simply don't validate the origin of absentee votes sent by post or fax.
Ohio didn't send out 1 million absentee ballots (the Republican governor withheld absentee ballots from people who moved within Ohio, i.e. renters not home owners), yet Ohio had a record year for absentee ballot voting.
And it was Russia:
http://time.com/4472169/russian-hackers-arizona-voter-registration/
"Russians Hacked Arizona Voter Registration Database -Official...Russians were responsible for the recent breach of Arizona’s voter registration system, the FBI told state officials in June. He said hackers gained access after stealing the username and password of an election official in Gila County, rather than compromising the state or county system."
This is Illinois's hack:
http://time.com/4471042/fbi-voter-database-breach-arizona-illinois/
Florida was also hit, and likely many more too.
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/10/12/politics/florida-election-hack/
"Feds believe Russians hacked Florida election-systems vendor"
Proof:
http://imgur.com/a/n75Hv
which shows my vote hasn't counted since at least five elections ago. I vote by mail here in Seattle, and the county admits to thrown 7% of the votes into the trash. We all know it's much higher.
And... it's not the dems requesting it, which is surprising.
Fool. Stein has supposedly raised more money for this bogus recount which she can't win than she raised on her entire campaign. Only states that Trump won are being contested, not states that were even closer but Hillary supposedly won. Of course it is the Democrats (and Soros) behind this, Stein is just a shill because Hillary made such an issue of contesting an election not being "Presidential".
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
You really do just make shit up, don't you?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The electronic count is fine for election night quick estimates, but the official/certified tally should always have be done from the paper trail. The existence of the paper trail shows a lack of faith in the electronic total, so obviously there is more trust in the paper and a desire to use the paper to verify results.
There's no actual promise by the Green Party to actually spend that money on the recount effort.
For that matter, they shouldn't need to spend much money at all on it. So why is Stein asking for even more cash?
Oh, yeah. Graft. So, Jill, who gave you all of that money? Since it's a political campaign donation, I'm sure you kept track of the names of all of those donors, right? And you'll give it back if the recount fails?
What? No? What a shock...
Call me old-fashioned, but I think elections should be:
(1) held using pen and paper only (no electronic voting, no mail voting)
(2) on a Sunday (no conflict with work)
(3) require a photo ID
(4) stain people's right thumb to indicate that they have voted
Two other reforms:
(a) only citizens should count in the allocation of seats and electors
(b) congressional districts should be created algorithmically and have an upper limit on the ratio of the square of the boundary size of the district to the area of the district
People just shaved off their beards and went to vote for trump again.
Why are people giving Jill Stein millions of dollars for an election recount?
Because orange isn't green.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Not that guy, but people noticed early on that the money being donated was coming in at a consistent $160,000 per hour which is very fishy
That's around the clock, midnight through morning, all through the day. Same rate, no matter the time.
Some people are going to donate who are real, and the more publicity it gets the more legit donations she is going to get, but there is obviously a source that is astroturfing this.
When you allow ballots to be mailed in, who is going to audit that real people registered .. and voted? I mean it's auditable but in real life not practically.
And then there is the electronic ballot .. they need to give you a paper receipt so you can check how you own vote was counted.
Nah GOPAC is a Republican election PAC, it had only the course voter data per zone. So it sent identical letters to neighborhoods that would vote likely Republican but had a low vote turnout shaming them on their low voting record.
You were supposed to respond by going out and voting, and being Republican demographic on their election data probability chart, they would get a vote.
who stand to lose a lot from a Trump presidency. My interests here align with them. The Enemy of my Enemy and what have you.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
So, maybe I'll do a blog post about this, but the data is surprisingly easy to find. Buffalo county, which uses exclusively e-voting touchscreen machines, and voted for Obama in 2012, ended up voting for Trump by a huge percentage in '16. La-fayette county, Obama '12, Trump '16, all e-voting machines, huge discrepancy in vote. Door County, Obama '12, Trump '16, but much much closer in vote count; optical scanning of paper ballots and not a touchscreen machine.
This is literally the first 3 counties that voted Obama in '12, Trump in '16 that I selected pretty much at random. It does nothing to dispel the claims of potential fraud, nor do the many demonstrations of e-voting machines being easy to hack. That a bunch of experts have claimed it would be hard to do so because the machines aren't on the internet only shows that the only expertise they have is manipulating things on the internet. There are plenty of actual, physical manipulations of vote counts in US election voting history, New York in the 19th century was rife with it for some time periods. Not everything, surprisingly, has to be done through the internet.
There's nothing wrong with seeking not just a re-count, but in checking the machines used for signs of tampering which is an incredibly necessary idea. Secure elections are a cornerstone of democracy, and double checking one already rife with hacking and blatant media manipulation is an obvious idea.
What do you claim that I made up? Or are you just unable to comprehend the facts?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
There's so much hypocrisy in this. On the one hand they don't really give a shit about election integrity and very important things to ensure that our elections really are meaningful and accurate. They don't support biometric voter registration which is standard in many countries now. They don't give a shit about vote weight disparity (in Japan some elections have actually been invalidated in their highest court because of such disparity). They don't really give a shit about meaningful election forensics.
Basically this is just more bullshit from people who engage in nothing but bullshit.
Except its not whether they were close, its whether they were hacked.
We had large-scale Russian hacking in this election, mostly registration data being targeted and one voting machine maker. Sometimes using the stolen credentials of the state's voting administrator, which suggests wider election tampering powers.
When you KNOW your election was hacked, it makes sense to at least check.
You really do just make shit up, don't you?
Which statements do you dispute?
It's true that her "recount" fundraising has raised more than twice as much as she raised throughout her entire campaign.
It's true that she is only asking for recounts in States that Trump won, even though several States had even tighter margins, but were carried by Clinton. She isn't asking for recounts in any of those states.
The concluding statement is entirely reasonable, given the facts.
You really do just make up accusations, don't you?
Of course it is the Democrats (and Soros) behind this, Stein is just a shill because Hillary made such an issue of contesting an election not being "Presidential".
So you're saying Stein cannot possibly consider Hillary to be the lesser evil and couldn't possibly decide to verify that Hillary lost on her own. As for the funding it cannot possibly be the over 50% of Americans who voted for Hillary either. For you it really has to be some conspiracy. Just because... ???
Green party. For showing me who and whom i should never vote for. And to think I would have voted for Stein.
There is no way to verify the integrity of the machines on voting day
Sure there is! The proper application of cryptography will solve these issues. Only allow signed firmware to run and have each machine have it's own key (stored in an MCU). On voting day after all the machines are put out, you use a simple NFC device to do an authentication exchange. If the authentication fails, then the machine has been compromised. It requires plenty of time and money to bypass the security of one device, much less thousands.
nor to safeguard the integrity of the polling data between the voting machine and the final tally.
Sure there is! You print the voter selection onto a card with some additional blockchain data. If the blockchain is broken upon tallying, you are missing votes or if some don't fit in the blockchain, you have fraudulent votes.
Open source means nothing here.
Sure it does! The idea seems to be to have Open Hardware and Open Software that can be publicly audited by anyone wishing to do so.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with a slip of paper and a pen.
Sure there is! It's called ballot box stuffing. All you need to do is write a bunch of votes and silly humans can't tell a real vote from a fraudulent vote!
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
So what you're so saying is Soros is a moron
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It's your conclusion that's the problem.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The actual voting machine can be proprietary as fuck, and I don't care. What would make the election far less prone to tampering is if I could take my voting receipt, enter the number, and verify the vote. This could be done without compromising the secret ballot. You cast your vote and get a number which has several properties: 1. It's not known that it's your number, only that it's the number of a vote. 2. You're the only human being who knows it's associated with you. 3. You can submit that number anonymously online and check that the vote matches up with the vote you cast. 4. If you registered but didn't vote, you can look that up too, to make sure that nobody voted your ballot. 5. The full range of possible numbers is know, so a 3rd party could look up all the registration numbers (once again, not being able to associate them with a voter) and verify that no fictitious registrations were created and voted.
I may be leaving out some details, but the basic idea is verification after the fact, and the ability to contest your vote before the election is certified. A contested vote can't simply by "I changed my mind", although it could be if you're an early voter, and some states are already doing that.
Anyway, the machine itself is a red herring. An Open Source machine that lies is no better than a Closed Source machine that lies, and if there's no verification, no audit path available to individual voters, then it's far too easy to lie.
With a voting machine that runs on free software, counties can hire whom they wish to reprogram the machines to conform to new voting laws yet to be passed into law, counties can make changes to their voting paper layouts that the current voting machine software can't parse (perhaps changes needed in order to accommodate more candidates as a result of more people taking an interest in setting policy), counties become less beholden to whatever limitations the proprietors put into current software and more in control of their elections. Those who champion competition and user choice should join the Green Party's push here.
Voter-verified paper ballots are critical to recountable, verifiable elections, but there's nothing wrong with having a machine read or print a voter-verified paper ballot. There's value to the blind and illiterate voter in being able to vote without having to bring a trusted friend into the booth and divulging (what should be) a private matter.
I have no objections to manual vote counts based entirely on voter-verified paper ballots, I think that's an important part of how elections should be run. But I don't see a free software-driven voting machines any voter can optionally use as either pointless or bad. The Green Party is shaming the Democratic Party here both on principle and in practical terms.
Digital Citizen
I'm amazed that people who file for a recount have to pay for it.
IMHO it should be paid by taxpayer money.
Not rhetorical.... serious question here. Have recounts like this, this long after the election, ever made a difference to the results?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
> You really do just make shit up, don't you?
I just love these post-fact "refutations" where you don't actually bother to cite sources or anything, even though this information is stupidly easy to find online.
Let's look at the important factual claims here, shall we? There are basically two: that she raised more here than in her presidential campaign and that the vote totals were closer in other states that Hillary won and that she's challenging states that would help Hillary win. This leads people to form the opinion that it's Hillary & co. funding this because it benefits Hillary more than Jill Stein. If we just want more confidence in the final results, then all the close states should be recounted, not just those which benefit Hillary.
That said, feel free to suggest improvements to how we vote for the future. We really should prevent vote fraud of every kind. I still remember just a few months back when Tim Kaine was saying stuff like this:
Source: http://www.npr.org/2016/10/20/498676187/vp-candidate-kaine-trump-is-attacking-central-pillar-of-our-democracy
Claim 1 - Jill Stein got more money for a recount than her campaign:
Here's an image for easy comparison, but $5M > $3M. How do we know she got over $5M for this campaign?
"Green Party Candidate Jill Stein Files for Recount in Wisconsin, Raises More Than $5M for Recounts in Michigan and Pennsylvania"
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/politics/Green-Party-Candidate-Jill-Stein-to-Seek-Recount-in-Battleground-States-402731286.html
Now, how much did her presidential campaign raise? The FEC has that info here:
http://www.fec.gov/fecviewer/CandidateCommitteeDetail.do?candidateCommitteeId=P20003984&tabIndex=1
This currently gives us about $3 million dollars ('net contributions') as can be seen below:
Claim 2 - The challenges are in favor of Hillary
States where we need recounts: WI, MI, and PA - source was quoted above. States NOT on the recount list NV, CO, MN, or NH - I can find no reports of recount requests here. Feel free to give sources if someone is recounting any of those.
NV is closer than PA & WI. MN is closer than PA. NH was won by just 2,732 votes - far less than any state on this list. CO had a pretty small margin too, but it was slightly larger than the three recount states.
I will also leave this here, because of all the #fakenews about "hacking" the election... never mind that MI (one of the recount states!) uses only paper ballots:
He doesn't have any facts to work with, what else can he do except wonder why people don't listen to them when they call BS and have to run off with their tail between their legs when someone posts facts?
Speaking of which, you can find exact vote totals and sources above. FWIW, the donation total going up regularly might just be an ordinary dark pattern from someone too lazy/incompetent to make a real funding total. It still makes them look incompetent, though.
Oh, we believe she prefers Hillary over Trump, no question about that. But that preference is the real motive for doing it, or she'd want an audit in states like NH, as well, which was won by just 2,732 votes. Of course, Hillary won that state, so we don't care if that result was fair or not, right? And MI that was recounted? They use nothing but paper ballots.
We know why she lost and it wasn't "hacking" as some of the #fakenews has been pushing lately -
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/demographics-not-hacking-explain-the-election-results/
Supposedly there is a 7% difference between the machine tally and the paper tally. They ascribe this to voting machines being hacked. I suggest it might as well be thought that the machines are correct and that the traditional ways of "hacking" paper ballot totals are responsible for the difference.
E Proelio Veritas.
Are we talking about the Jill Stein who:
-Graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard
-Earned her M.D. from Harvard
-Protested with the Sioux tribe against the pipeline in North Dakota (and was charged with criminal trespassing and mischief)
There are very valid reasons to question the vote in Michigan. Realistically, Jill Stein is the only presidential candidate that has consistently demonstrated integrity. Second guessing her motives at this point just proves that the United States is unworthy of honest leadership.
Vote for the lesser of two evils, and evil will win every time.
trump is an ass. all slashdotters agree. he is by far the least qualified buttwipe to be tentatively named a 'president elect'; yet you shit on stein for wanting to absolutely make sure he is the legitimate winner of the election... holy fuck. let this happen. IT MUST HAPPEN.
The concluding statement isn't really reasonable given the facts. The simple fact is that Trump is the most hated presidential elect in at least a half century. Plenty of people have reasons to want him to not win, even if it means Clinton winning.
MightyMartian rarely posts anything of substance. Here's the last few posts, good luck identifying any kind of a fact-based claim beyond snark:
I guess on Mars you don't need to make actual, verifiable factual claims to rebut things any more. Who knew?
No fair using common sense against unarmed Liberals.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
how the folks who know how vulnerable e-voting machines are have been ignored for YEARS. . . . until the Chosen One doesn't win her promised position.
Now, all of a sudden, it's a big deal and we really need to look into this issue because playing fair ( -cough- DNC Primaries -cough- ) is only important when your team benefits from it.
Also hilarious the limited scope of the recount request. Not going to bother in ALL States where e-voting machines are used, just those States they hope can throw a wrench in the whole thing.
Tells me they're not interested in the problems with the machines at all, but rather a last ditch effort to get Her Majesty installed into her promised position instead.
If you're going to recount anyway , why bother with computer in first place? And how do you trust the hand counters are getting it right ?
The only way to get a result that all sides agree with is to ensure all votes are counted by all parties. More than one way to do it ... Either state owned machine and some crypto , or actually put multiple machines to count it where each party that got on the ballot can provide its own equipment. That would entail standardizing on a best way to count votes, which would be a good first step.
Fuhrer Stein et al. Communists are just puppets in Hillary's and the DNC's proxy war against Trump.
NeeenrrrNeeenrrrrNeee nrrrrrrr.
Sore Losers.
Stein, "What's your name son?"
Son, "Loser!"
Stein, "Where you from son?"
Son, "Loser!"
Stein, "You Pass! Next Station!"
THBBFT
By this action Stein puts the green party on the map of possible parties outside the big two. Make a lot of noise and news - and if the recount actually changes the election people will remember that in the coming election.
It's a strategic choice. Stein can't win the battle this time since it's already lost but by making a heck of a racket she will have one strategical piece in place for the next election. Her plan is probably to be one of the top candidates for the 2020 election.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Meanwhile, you watch from planet dumb fuck, Trump troll.
You can smell the Stumpet fear of the truth coming out, and the orange bufoon being toseed out.
Nationwide newspapers present a conspiracy theory.
Who are the sources? "Computer scientists".
Why not more focus on who these "computer scientists" are? It's a pretty serious accusation.
But hey, let's just run with the conspiracy theory, and remove focus completely from those making the accusation and their credentials.
There is no advantage to putting a CPU in a voting machine.
Every wire or gear in the machine should be visible.
Anyone who can wire a lamp should understand the circuit.
Anyone who can change the air cleaner on their car should understand the mechanics.
But in the end, it's not about simplicity for people who don't know tech, it's about using low tech to thwart tampering.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/...
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
The whole election process IS rigged!
What we have here is a case of the Dems/liberals crying foul that Trump out rigged/de-frauded them. So they are paying off ol' Jill to do their dirty work to try and re-rigg the election for them. That is ALL this is about. We all know the democratic primary was rigged against Bernie. The Dems thought for sure they had the whole presidential election rigged in their favor. But Trump out rigged them and now they are pissed off.
Hey Dem's it's called KARMA - and karma is a bitch and she comes back with a vengeance!
The Truth is a Virus!!!
Of course it is the Democrats (and Soros) behind this,...
...As for the funding it cannot possibly be the over 50% of Americans who voted for Hillary either...
You think the 50% of Americans who voted for Hillary aren't the Democrats?
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
I suggest that if one state is recounted, in fairness they all must be. With each voter being validated during the recount. Slow and would cost but don't you want to get it right?
Hello?? Where'd all the Democrats disappear to??
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
You think the 50% of Americans who voted for Hillary aren't the Democrats?
I don't. To me, and I expect most everyone, the way you used that term referred to the party leaders. Otherwise I don't see why you should be indignant that your fellow compatriots fund initiatives without consulting you first.
Unless Green Party has a chance of winning the election in those states, it cannot win a suit to force a recount. 2 of those states have already certified their vote. So only a law suit can force them to change it. A suit can only be brought to undo harm done to oneself. One cannot sue to fix harm to some other 3rd party (plain English "party" -- not "political party"). There is no way Green Party can convince impartial judges that it had any chance of winning majority of the vote. So it has no standing.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Stein said herself that she believed Hillary was a threat to world peace! A look at her twitter history also reveals a great deal of criticism directed at Hillary. Now the change of heart?
open source machines is just a distraction from the solution