What makes you believe that that particular license modification is allowed? Generally, modified versions of the GNU GPL are forbidden to reduce the ridiculous proliferation of just-different-enough-to-be-incompatible licenses.
"In randomly selected polling places, the paper receipts get counted manually."
What, randomly like in Ohio?
If we actually count the ballots, the count should be legit. If we rely electronic counts and statistical sampling, everyone will assume things are fine even when they're completely fraudulent because "math is hard".
It's probably not a 'perfect' system, but what really is?
Perfect is hard, but we can do better than straight optical scan. For example, the separation of sorting and counting machines described here is pretty good (although I'm not convinced that marking machines are a good idea compared to sharpies).
Make the hardware as hard-wired as possible. Utilize ROM-only memory. No memory cards, no FPGAs, no flashable BIOS, but straight up hard-coded hardware. This will greatly reduce the ability to tamper with the system before an election.
This just makes the hack more expensive, and harder to detect if it's accomplished. Have you ever tried to "audit" an IC?
There is one essential property of a voting system that no purely electronic system can have: A 83 year old retired painter needs to be able to understand why they should trust that their vote was properly counted. With a ballot box, they can understand and even act as an election observer. With a purely electronic system, even an expert in the field can't know that a vote got counted unless he audited each voting machine with a million dollar budget and an electron microscope - and even that won't help if it has writable code memory *anywhere*.
- you get a receipt how you voted
- you check and fold the receipt and drop it into a sealed box.
If you mean "ballot", say "ballot". Voting receipts are a bad idea.
You might be trying to imply that the paper ballots are just for a recount, but that's a bad idea too - it's too easy to block a recount like they did in Ohio, even when the presidential candidates in positions #3 and #4 both demanded a full recount.
Here's the thing: When there's human error in vote counting, you get a vote wrong. Maybe you get a couple votes wrong. Probably each incorrect vote was an independent mistake, so the errors tend to be random - and random errors will tend to average out.
On the other hand, when an electronic system makes a mistake it's usually because of a programming or configuration error. This will be the same mistake every time, so the error will tend to accumulate in one direction - meaning that it will give some candidate an advanatage.
That's completely ignoring the potential for fraud. A single line of code change by one person could get distributed to 1000 voting machines and influence 100,000 votes - no problem. Try to influence that many votes with paper ballots and you'd need a conspiracy of hundreds of people.
Well, except for the fact that you've just replaced a $0.25 pen or $1.29 sharpie marker with a $600 electronic voting machine for a somewhat marginal benefit. There's a good argument for having one electronic voting interface that prints out pre-filled paper ballot for the disabled, but buying a significant number of electronic voting machines is simply a waste of taxpayer money.
98% of people being able to cast a reliable vote is much more useful than 100% of people being able to cast an untrustworthy vote.
Letting blind people vote is absolutely an interesting problem, but spending a hundred thousand dollars per polling station to require everyone to use untrustworthy electronic voting machines is an absurd solution. That's like requiring that everyone run the Boston Marathon in a wheelchair.
People that don't read english have no business voting in America.
That's a valid argument, but there's no reason to get separate political issues mixed up with each other.
It's possible to support multi-lingual paper ballots, and it's possible to have mono-lingual electronic voting. Voting fraud is too important an issue to let people get distracted by "they should learn english" vs. "that's racist".
Which elections? If every election day was a holiday...
One day a year becomes "Election Day", a day off. This will occasionally require emergency elections off-schedule, but it should be possible to schedule most elections into one day a year.
Of course, making election day a holiday would help nobody in the states that do voting via mail now.
Voting is pretty important. I think that any potential downside of giving people the whole day off, even every year for local elections, is a risk I'm willing to take.
I think we've reached the point where for the majority of users there really is no point in getting a faster machine - back in the 486 era practically *everyone* would benefit from the fastest machine they could get, but now we have far more CPU power and memory than most people are going to need for quite a long time.
I first heard that comment in 1996. It's as flawed now as it was then. People still want up to date computers for a variety of reasons, some of them even involving applications that require the processing power that only a new computer will provide. The most relevant thing here is simply that application developers assume that users have reasonably modern computers - It's actually surprising how many apps will run on a really old computer, but the few that don't are annoying enough to make the upgrade seem worthwhile.
Quite the contrary. It's just they're more informed about the _business_ than the _technology_.
Which doesn't mean that they will make correct business decisions that involve technology choices. Given the cost and productivity differences between different technologies, and the extent to which a typical business relies on their IT assets, making a correct decision can make or break a business.
I was specific in my other reply, but I'll be a little bit more general just to clarify.
Both the 9th and 10th amendments are basically ignored and not enforced. The 9th amendment is ignored based on the excuse that it's too vague. The 10th amendment is ignored based on a broad interpretation of the commerce clause. These are amendments to our constitution, that the founders explicitly included at the same time and with the same importance as freedom of speech, and yet they are not enforced because judges have intentionally decided to ignore them.
The established church thing seems to largely be OK, but "congress shall make no law... infringing the freedom of speech or of the press" is pretty strict. I'm pretty sure that the FCC draws its authority from a law passed by congress, and they infringe on the freedom of speech all the time. There are anti-obscenity laws. Copyright restricts freedom of speech (an amendment trumps the copyright clause in the body). This amendment clearly isn't being strictly enforced.
"the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" is pretty damn simple. If the various federal gun control laws don't "infringe" the right to bear arms, then I'm not sure what would.
You know what, you're right. The third amendment is doing just fine.
Various anti-drug laws violate this all day long, and you may have heard of the recent "warantless wiretapping" scandal. The founders may not have known about electronic communications, but when they say "papers", "correspondences" was obviously one of the things they were talking about.
You're right, I would argue that this one is being bent, and not just for non-citizens. Due process is just as bad off as probable cause is when it comes to drug laws.
You may have heard of Kevin Mitnick. There are a couple of other less-well publicized cases that haven't been resolved too. I don't think that a wait of 5 years is what the founders meant by "speedy trial". I'm not sure about how much suspects have gotten to confront their witnesses in recent terror trials either.
I can't think of any major issues here.
Nore here.
This is our right to privacy, right here. And our right to build rockets or automatic weapons as a hobby. And our right to have children (you know, why the USA can't institute a 1 child per family policy like China). All here, in the 9th amendment. But no-one seems to bother trying to enforce this amendment, because it's not clear enough. Seems pretty clear to me.
This one is even clearer, and even less respected. This gets into the whole commerce clause argument, but the fact that the commerce clause has been ruled to say that "the Federal government can regulate any item that could be involved in a financial transaction simply because the economy is interlinked across state lines" is absurd, and a clear indication that we can't just assume that judges will get it right.
Thusly, the rights guaranteed in the Constitution are valid. Any lawyer or judge with any sense of decency shouldn't have trouble upholding basic Constitutional rights.
That's true. Unfortunately, "shouldn't" doesn't have anything to do with "won't".
If you go down the list of items in the Bill of Rights, it's pretty obvious that *none* of those restrictions on government power is strictly enforced - and that the enforcement has gotten worse over time rather than better. If Congress and the fedral courts can't even manage to keep to the rule of law in obvious cases, what makes you think that anything will hold them back from continuing to ignore more and more of our basic rights.
That's the thing about freedom. People do what they want to do, not necessarily what someone else wants them to do. If they didn't, they wouldn't be free.
Right. But if the service quality of the sole provider is so utterly horrid that anything would be better, it shouldn't be that hard to start a competitor. In some of the sketchier parts of the world it could be hard, but if their service is that bad it shouldn't be impossible to argue your way through bureaucrats or whatever.
Hey, that's how we're doing so well here in the USA. The international (ITU) standard for broadband is "Faster than a T1 (1.5 Mbps up/down)". Here in the USA, the standard is "200kbps in at least one direction". If you Aussies want to upstage us, just define broadband as "able to receive radio transmissions". You can have 100% coverage and beat everyone!
uhm, because we're very much spread out -- I live in a moderate sized city (some people would argue small city -- mostly people from Chicago would call it small); and I can't even get DSL here... but I can get cable...
That's the common excuse, and (like nlitement said) it's utter bullshit. In Finland, which is less dense per area - they have faster service cheaper. In Canada, with 1/10th the total population density of the US, they have faster service cheaper. In Slovenia, Latvia, Romania, and the Czech Republic - all places where they shouldn't have the budget to compete at all on telecom infrastructure with the richest country in the world - they have faster service cheaper.
DSL with an upload speed of 768kbit (...) Its around 80/mo I think.
That's the service I get, although it only costs me $50/month. It seems almost reasonable, until you compare it to what they get for internet connections in the rest of the world.
In Japan, you can get 100 Meg symmetric connections for $50/month. In South Korea, that costs $30/month. In Sweden, it costs $24/month.
Some random European countries where you can get higher speeds for lower prices than I can here in eastern Massachussetts (one of the higher population density / property value areas of the USA) include Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Latvia, The Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic.
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What makes you believe that that particular license modification is allowed? Generally, modified versions of the GNU GPL are forbidden to reduce the ridiculous proliferation of just-different-enough-to-be-incompatible licenses.
What, randomly like in Ohio?
If we actually count the ballots, the count should be legit. If we rely electronic counts and statistical sampling, everyone will assume things are fine even when they're completely fraudulent because "math is hard".
Perfect is hard, but we can do better than straight optical scan. For example, the separation of sorting and counting machines described here is pretty good (although I'm not convinced that marking machines are a good idea compared to sharpies).
This just makes the hack more expensive, and harder to detect if it's accomplished. Have you ever tried to "audit" an IC?
There is one essential property of a voting system that no purely electronic system can have: A 83 year old retired painter needs to be able to understand why they should trust that their vote was properly counted. With a ballot box, they can understand and even act as an election observer. With a purely electronic system, even an expert in the field can't know that a vote got counted unless he audited each voting machine with a million dollar budget and an electron microscope - and even that won't help if it has writable code memory *anywhere*.
If you mean "ballot", say "ballot". Voting receipts are a bad idea.
You might be trying to imply that the paper ballots are just for a recount, but that's a bad idea too - it's too easy to block a recount like they did in Ohio, even when the presidential candidates in positions #3 and #4 both demanded a full recount.
How can that work in the presence of write-in votes?
Here's the thing: When there's human error in vote counting, you get a vote wrong. Maybe you get a couple votes wrong. Probably each incorrect vote was an independent mistake, so the errors tend to be random - and random errors will tend to average out.
On the other hand, when an electronic system makes a mistake it's usually because of a programming or configuration error. This will be the same mistake every time, so the error will tend to accumulate in one direction - meaning that it will give some candidate an advanatage.
That's completely ignoring the potential for fraud. A single line of code change by one person could get distributed to 1000 voting machines and influence 100,000 votes - no problem. Try to influence that many votes with paper ballots and you'd need a conspiracy of hundreds of people.
Well, except for the fact that you've just replaced a $0.25 pen or $1.29 sharpie marker with a $600 electronic voting machine for a somewhat marginal benefit. There's a good argument for having one electronic voting interface that prints out pre-filled paper ballot for the disabled, but buying a significant number of electronic voting machines is simply a waste of taxpayer money.
98% of people being able to cast a reliable vote is much more useful than 100% of people being able to cast an untrustworthy vote.
Letting blind people vote is absolutely an interesting problem, but spending a hundred thousand dollars per polling station to require everyone to use untrustworthy electronic voting machines is an absurd solution. That's like requiring that everyone run the Boston Marathon in a wheelchair.
That's a valid argument, but there's no reason to get separate political issues mixed up with each other.
It's possible to support multi-lingual paper ballots, and it's possible to have mono-lingual electronic voting. Voting fraud is too important an issue to let people get distracted by "they should learn english" vs. "that's racist".
One day a year becomes "Election Day", a day off. This will occasionally require emergency elections off-schedule, but it should be possible to schedule most elections into one day a year.
Voting by mail is pretty sketchy.
Voting is pretty important. I think that any potential downside of giving people the whole day off, even every year for local elections, is a risk I'm willing to take.
That's like saying a charcoal grill is a more efficient and less dangerous way to cook burgers than a liquid gasoline flamethrower.
I first heard that comment in 1996. It's as flawed now as it was then. People still want up to date computers for a variety of reasons, some of them even involving applications that require the processing power that only a new computer will provide. The most relevant thing here is simply that application developers assume that users have reasonably modern computers - It's actually surprising how many apps will run on a really old computer, but the few that don't are annoying enough to make the upgrade seem worthwhile.
Which doesn't mean that they will make correct business decisions that involve technology choices. Given the cost and productivity differences between different technologies, and the extent to which a typical business relies on their IT assets, making a correct decision can make or break a business.
I was specific in my other reply, but I'll be a little bit more general just to clarify.
Both the 9th and 10th amendments are basically ignored and not enforced. The 9th amendment is ignored based on the excuse that it's too vague. The 10th amendment is ignored based on a broad interpretation of the commerce clause. These are amendments to our constitution, that the founders explicitly included at the same time and with the same importance as freedom of speech, and yet they are not enforced because judges have intentionally decided to ignore them.
Let me respond in some more detail.
I love how you sort of brush over the last 2 amendments. They're probably the worst off of all of them.
Why? Such comparisons should only make our government look good, right?
It's much easier to ignore the Constitution (our President has said "it's just a damn piece of paper") than it is to amend it.
That's true. Unfortunately, "shouldn't" doesn't have anything to do with "won't".
If you go down the list of items in the Bill of Rights, it's pretty obvious that *none* of those restrictions on government power is strictly enforced - and that the enforcement has gotten worse over time rather than better. If Congress and the fedral courts can't even manage to keep to the rule of law in obvious cases, what makes you think that anything will hold them back from continuing to ignore more and more of our basic rights.
That's the thing about freedom. People do what they want to do, not necessarily what someone else wants them to do. If they didn't, they wouldn't be free.
Right. But if the service quality of the sole provider is so utterly horrid that anything would be better, it shouldn't be that hard to start a competitor. In some of the sketchier parts of the world it could be hard, but if their service is that bad it shouldn't be impossible to argue your way through bureaucrats or whatever.
Hey, that's how we're doing so well here in the USA. The international (ITU) standard for broadband is "Faster than a T1 (1.5 Mbps up/down)". Here in the USA, the standard is "200kbps in at least one direction". If you Aussies want to upstage us, just define broadband as "able to receive radio transmissions". You can have 100% coverage and beat everyone!
That's the common excuse, and (like nlitement said) it's utter bullshit. In Finland, which is less dense per area - they have faster service cheaper. In Canada, with 1/10th the total population density of the US, they have faster service cheaper. In Slovenia, Latvia, Romania, and the Czech Republic - all places where they shouldn't have the budget to compete at all on telecom infrastructure with the richest country in the world - they have faster service cheaper.
That's the service I get, although it only costs me $50/month. It seems almost reasonable, until you compare it to what they get for internet connections in the rest of the world.
In Japan, you can get 100 Meg symmetric connections for $50/month. In South Korea, that costs $30/month. In Sweden, it costs $24/month.
Some random European countries where you can get higher speeds for lower prices than I can here in eastern Massachussetts (one of the higher population density / property value areas of the USA) include Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Latvia, The Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic.