Voting Isn't Easy, Even if Cheating Is 260
Diebold also builds automated teller machines (ATM), the definitive model for reliability and accountability.
The AccuVote machines are what they are, not due to poor design or unintentional mistake. They are the result of a deliberate intent to enable fraud on a massive scale. Viewed from this perspective, the AccuVote design is very good. The real problem comes when Diebold realizes that it needs to become better at obfuscation and makes it harder to detect the fraud.
"Electronic voting machines with no paper trail are an insult to democracy," writes pieterh. "That they come with switches to bypass even the dubious 'safeguards' provided is hardly a surprise."
Paper trails, of course, are only as good as the people guarding the paper; readers familar with more recent allegations of vote manipulation may be interested in the 1946 confrontation in Athens, Tennessee (pointed out by reader William J. Poser) between WWII veterans and the election officials.
Reader Soong, though, provides a conspiracy-free explanation for the presence of such a switch:
Several readers pointed out that voters might better trust the machines as well as the process of electronic voting if regulation were more rigorous; as reader Animats puts it, "slot machine standards are much tighter":The ability to boot from different sources is a normal debugging feature, not in itself sinister. Should they have cleaned that up on the production model? Yeah, sure. But verifiability is ultimately a human concern anyway, not a tech one.
It all comes down to who you trust.
If you don't trust the polling place, make the voting machine tamper proof. But then you have to trust the guy who built the voting machine. You have to trust the guy who loaded the software on it at the factory or the elections office. You have to trust the guy who wrote the code. Even if you inspected the code, you have to trust him to give you a binary based on that and not pull a fast one. You have to trust his compiler to give him a binary without compiled in back doors. I feel like I probably haven't listed all the points where this voting machine chain of trust can break down.
Even if e-voting machines had a spec list that would pass at the Gaming Commission, Midnight Thunder is puzzled that tamper-proofing techniques aren't more evident on the Diebold machines:The Nevada Gaming Control Board has technical standards for slot machines. They've had enough fraud over the years that they know what has to be done. Some highlights:
- ... must resist forced illegal entry and must retain evidence of any entry until properly cleared or until a new play is initiated. A gaming device must have a protective cover over the circuit boards that contain programs and circuitry used in the random selection process and control of the gaming device, including any electrically alterable program storage media. The cover must be designed to permit installation of a security locking mechanism by the manufacturer or end user of the gaming device.
- ... must exhibit total immunity to human body electrostatic discharges on all player-exposed areas. ...
- A gaming device may exhibit temporary disruption when subjected to electrostatic discharges of 20,000 to 27,000 volts DC ... but must exhibit a capacity to recover and complete an interrupted play without loss or corruption of any stored or displayed information and without component failure. ...
- Gaming device power supply filtering must be sufficient to prevent disruption of the device by repeated switching on and off of the AC power. ... must be impervious to influences from outside the device, including, but not limited to, electro-magnetic interference, electro-static interference, and radio frequency interference.
- All gaming devices which have control programs residing in one or more Conventional ROM Devices must employ a mechanism approved by the chairman to verify control programs and data. The mechanism used must detect at least 99.99 percent of all possible media failures. If these programs and data are to operate out of volatile RAM, the program that loads the RAM must reside on and operate from a Conventional ROM Device.
- All gaming devices having control programs or data stored on memory devices other than Conventional ROM Devices must:
- Employ a mechanism approved by the chairman which verifies that all control program components, including data and graphic information, are authentic copies of the approved components. The chairman may require tests to verify that components used by Nevada licensees are approved components. The verification mechanism must have an error rate of less than 1 in 10 to the 38th power and must prevent the execution of any control program component if any component is determined to be invalid. Any program component of the verification or initialization mechanism must be stored on a Conventional ROM Device that must be capable of being authenticated using a method approved by the chairman.
- Employ a mechanism approved by the chairman which tests unused or unallocated areas of any alterable media for unintended programs or data and tests the structure of the storage media for integrity. The mechanism must prevent further play of the gaming device if unexpected data or structural inconsistencies are found.
- Provide a mechanism for keeping a record, in a form approved by the chairman, anytime a control program component is added, removed, or altered on any alterable media. The record must contain a minimum of the last 10 modifications to the media and each record must contain the date and time of the action, identification of the component affected, the reason for the modification and any pertinent validation information.
- Provide, as a minimum, a two-stage mechanism for validating all program components on demand via a communication port and protocol approved by the chairman. The first stage of this mechanism must verify all control components. The second stage must be capable of completely authenticating all program components, including graphics and data components in a maximum of 20 minutes. The mechanism for extracting the authentication information must be stored on a Conventional ROM Device that must be capable of being authenticated by a method approved by the chairman.
Those standards cover the possibility of an "alternate program" in a slot machine, and provide a way to check for it, with logs and an external program check capability.
The Gaming Control Board of Nevada was asked to take a look at Diebold, and Nevada rejected Diebold equipment as a result.
Voting machines need tough standards like that. They don't have them.
Several readers are for canning electronic voting for U.S. elections completely. Reader Iamthefallen wants to knowGiven taxi meters and electricity meters both have tamper seals, you would have thought that these would have visible tamper seals as well. If in doubt you could even have two tamper seals: one from Diebold and another from the voting commission, in order to ensure that both parties are satisfied with the state of the machine.
Similarly, slofstra writesHas anyone answered the question regarding need for automated vote counting in a satisfactory way?
Seems to me that manual counting of votes would be vastly more secure as it would take a huge conspiracy to affect the result either way.
Counting a hundred million votes is hard, counting a thousand votes in a hundred thousand locations is easy.
Sorry, I have never seen the point of these machines. Paper ballots are auditable, user friendly, and if electronics is put into the reporting system, can be counted in a few minutes and submitted. Voting machine are a perfect example of a technology fetish at work. It would make an interesting case study to examine the economic and sociological reasons why we sometimes buy technology that we don't need, don't want and further, serves no useful purpose.
(Augmenting electronic voting machines with a paper record is a frequently raised idea; reader megaditto, for one, asks "Is it that hard to put a thermal printer behind a glass shield?" A similar system is required in Nevada voting machines already.)
Paper ballots and electronic ones aren't the only options, though; lever-based voting machines have dominated recent American national elections. Mark Walling writesReader WillAffleckUW suggests skipping in-person voting completely; absentee voting is a good idea, he argues, not only in light of the flaws (demonstrated or alleged) in electronic voting methods, but becauseMy district switched to electronic- from lever-based. in 2004, at 7:15 when I voted on lever machines, there was no line, and just about as many signatures in the book. In 2005, the line was out the door and around the corner at the same time. The person in front of me took 5 minutes to use the electronic machine. People knew how to use the old machines, and they were reliable. These new things take the old people forever to use, and then they complain that they were hard to read ...
Not so fast, says reader JDAustin:absentee voters get a paper ballot that is not only delivered by a trusted source (the U.S. Post Office) who have a verified date/time stamp — and that the ballots can be audited, traced, and verified — now that is a reason to register permanent absentee.
I suggest you take a look at the research into the recent Washington state elections done by SoundPolitics.com. They verified close to a 20% error rate in absentee balloting. The signature verification on absentee balloting is no verification at all due to non-verification being done by those who count the ballots. Additionally, the USPS is not a trusted source, they are just another government bureaucracy. The ballots themselves cannot necessarily be traced nor verified — and even when the signatures are completely different, they are still counted. Due to the nature of voter rolls, duplicate ballots are sent out all the time due to slight variation in a person's name, and the duplicate ballots counts are not caught until after the final tally has been done and the election finished. Finally, mischievous government officials can always delay sending the military their ballots so those serving overseas do not have time to get their vote in on time. This actually happened in 2004 in Washington state.
Permanent absentee is not the solution. Neither is electronic voting.
The true solution takes elements of the recent Mexican election to prevent fraud (voter ID cards, thumb inking, precinct-based monitoring and tallying) and combine them with the best paper-based voting machine.
Many thanks to the readers (especially those quoted above) whose comments informed this discussion.
Diebold lobbied slashdot... (Score:4, Funny)
Nothing for you to see here. Please move along
That's exactly what Diebold wants you to think...
[/backslash]
So which party/candidate would take advantage of this exploit first - the Democrats [uglydemocrats.com] or the Republicans [uglyrepublicans] - both are ugly!
Re:Diebold lobbied slashdot... (Score:5, Insightful)
Every non-partisan issue, mostly those concerning government contracts, business/industry legislation, and the budget rarely fall on party lines. The lines they do fall on are unseen and concern large sums of money and lobbying groups.
Let me put it into the simplest terms: Washington is the evolutionary product of a pool of sharks that use camouflage and obfuscation as chief predatory tactics. Most everyone aside from those with political science majors and those who are very good with them will not have the slightest fucking clue as to 90% of what transpires on the grounds of the capitol. There is simply too much going on too often that is far too subtle for any investigative journalist to know what the fuck.
Diebold machines are kept with those flaws, I suspect, so that both parties can weed out anyone seen as too keenly idealistic, anyone that might upset the corruption so deeply in place that keeps so many people so wealthy, so happy.
On the other hand, one party might've been a bit to bold when they sensed they were losing power, and possibly overstepped the unspoken agreement of how far that fraud would go when during a certain election(s) for the highest office. Of course, the other party is left rather speechless and with no end to turn to, as it would mean a political suicide for all involved.
Just some creative articulation... of course.
Re:Diebold lobbied slashdot... (Score:3, Funny)
case 1:
case 2:
party[vote]++;
break;
default:
if( sum_losers < DEF_LOSERS*( party[1] + party[2] + sum_losers ) ){
party[vote]++; sum_losers++;
} else {
if(rand<0.5) {
party[1]++;
Re:Diebold lobbied slashdot... (Score:4, Interesting)
- We have the republicans gerrymandering (of course, the democrats invented this back east).
- The republicans pushed through that Colorado will be electronic, but then limited it to just 4 companies (all who push paperless, but support a paper; amazing since a company would make more profit off the paper than the machine).
- Of course, Owens is good friends with O'Dell and a number of the districts elected to go with Diebold.
And now the democrats are in control of 2 of 3 parts of Colorado congress and likely to get the gov as well. So, will they take advantage of all the openings that the republicans have created (i.e. re=district to kill tancredo's joke of a district (my old one) and create their version of it)? Or will they do the right thing and create laws to avoid these set-ups. Perhaps re-do the constitition to say that a neutral group will suggest the map and congres will do an up-down vote; turn over to judge after 3 plans.It will be interesting to see what happens.
Re:Diebold lobbied slashdot... (Score:2)
Given the choice... (Score:5, Funny)
...I'd rather scratch me 'X' on a piece of pay-pur!! Yaaaaarrrrrhhhhh!!!!
This message brough to you by the Pirate Party!
Re:Given the choice... (Score:3, Interesting)
We don't talk like pirates in Canada eh...
That's all we do. X on a piece of paper. Simple. Even the old people can understand it. Call me a bit conservative, but unless there's a paper backup of my electronic vote, I want no part of it.
Re:Given the choice... (Score:3, Funny)
I thought the Pirate Party was against pay-per play.
Deja vu, the feeling that computers shouldn't vote (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Deja vu, the feeling that computers shouldn't v (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Deja vu, the feeling that computers shouldn't v (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Deja vu, the feeling that computers shouldn't v (Score:2, Funny)
Lever machines have been hacked, too. (Score:4, Interesting)
And have been hacked for much of that time.
One hack consists of the election officials that set up the machine presetting the wheels for the guy you want to win to some additional number, and (if you think there will be a lot of votes) the guy you want to lose to the nines compliment of the number, then weakly gluing stickers with zeros on them over the counter wheels and locking the inner door.
The poll watchers see the zeros and lock the outer door. First vote for each candidate knocks the stickers off, and they fall to the bottom of the machine. (If no votes for the candidate, the sticker remains visible saying "0000".) You send one of your own guys in to make sure your guy gets at least one vote if necessary.
The outer door is unlocked and the numbers read. The inner door remains locked until opportunity for recount is over. The inner door is only unsealed and opened (probably by your guy WITHOUT poll watchers) when it's time to do maintainence and set it up for the next election, at which point he can sweep out the stickers.
Downside: If your guy dies, is fired, or moves on, or misses a sticker that gets caught in the guts of the machine, the fact that the scam had been used might be discovered by some opposition functionary (or honest worker) at a later time. Such stickers HAVE been discovered in lever-type voting machines.
Don't answer with "use paper ballots"! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Don't answer with "use paper ballots"! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Don't answer with "use paper ballots"! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Don't answer with "use paper ballots"! (Score:2)
Please please please, no more half bubbles, or partial bubbles or era
Canada does it better (again.) (Score:2)
ADD:
Exit polling for pointing out problems
Uniform National Ballot (locals print in the names)
Special Paper (like currency) with a serial number and barcode (or simply print digital signatures on normal paper)
Account for where series of ballots are shipped (4 tracking problems at polling places)
Each area's ballots are shuffled
Re:Don't answer with "use paper ballots"! (Score:2)
Re:Don't answer with "use paper ballots"! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Don't answer with "use paper ballots"! (Score:3, Insightful)
80% of the vote being counted electronically on insecure machines by Republican-supporting corporations with no paper trail... now THAT is dangerous, on a national scale.
Open Source (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Open Source (Score:4, Insightful)
But how will you know, the actual machine in front of you is running the software examined?
Come on, people get fooled by spyware and "phishing" e-mails every day — at their own computer. You expect anyone to detect a problem on a system, they see for a minute or two once in two years?
I really don't care, what kind of systems are used, as long as it is not the same system. And if it happens to be the same, I hope, there is not "central repository" of its results or anything. Because everything, that is centralized, also has a single "total failure" point...
Re:Open Source (Score:5, Funny)
Of course it will have a sha1 signature (eg, d46b82a7f4dad427760124c777c0b56fe642afbc) of the binary similar to a BSOD error message so that every grandmother will clearly know that the same code was used.
What did you think?!?
Sarcasm aside, I'm a fan of either paper or lever systems. Simple, reliable, accountable, proven, inexpensive, and hard to hack.
Re:Open Source (Score:3, Interesting)
I used to grapple with how you could 'prove' that a machine was running the 'right' code, and displaying some sort of signature was the obvious solution.
But really, how would I know whether the machine was running...
echo(sha1($system_rom));
or
echo("d46b82a7f4dad427760124c777c0b56fe642afbc");
I can't think of a way to allow a potentially compromised machine to prove that it's running the 'right' software, unless I'm allowed to analyze the ROM/disk in m
Re:Open Source (Score:2)
There were massive voting "irregularities" in the past (such as the fraud in Chicago). Whatever the system, with high enough corruption of local authorities it can be "hacked". If, however, the systems are all different and different people are supposed to oversee the elections and certify the results (such as with Presidential elections in USA), then the level of corruption, required to significantly alter the results, has to be so eno
Wouldn't solve the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
In a democracy, the perception of vote fraud is almost as dangerous as the actuality of vote fraud. If we all go into the booth and we all come out convinced that we've had our say and that it counted for something, then even when we lose, we can feel we were a part of the system. If we go into a booth and don't even have that basic reassurance, why go into the booth at all? Why work to change the system if you have reasonable suspicion that the system has been rigged against you in the first place? People in that mindset will either drop out of the system entirely, or seek to voice their feelings through alternative means (violence, etc).
We've had two national elections in a row that were close and had an air of suspicion about them. There are countless anecdotes of votes getting switched on the computers, voting machines dissapearing overnight, etc. Even if there's not actual fraud going on, all of that adds up to a suspicion of the system itself. We can't afford to have that suspicion if we want to remain a democracy.
Re:Wouldn't solve the problem (Score:2)
Too many hoops... (Score:5, Insightful)
Good old-fashioned paper is the solution. It's cheap, it ensures a paper audit trail, and it's counted in public by thousands of real people who witness the count.
Of course you knew that.
Paper is king (Score:3, Insightful)
We use paper.
We could have gone to electronic forms with laptops, but there are a number of reasons we don't.
The primary one is user-readability, and verification of intent.
The second one is programming limitations on error checking - what is a permissable response? When dealing with human subjects - and likewise, human voters, one notices they don't always do what you want, but what they want.
Should we have electronic voting machines? Yes. For handicapped people, de
Re:Paper is king (Score:2, Funny)
We use paper.
We could have gone to electronic forms with laptops, but there are a number of reasons we don't."
I have a question.
Don't take it wrong.
Are disease research people also required to write very short paragraphs?
Thanks.
Re:Too many hoops... (Score:2)
They could even have a sound effect from the old game show [wikipedia.org]: "joker, Joker... JOKER!"
Re:Too many hoops... (Score:2)
Electronic tallying is useful because it can determine results fast. Very fast.
So you apply some basic measures so that it would actually take a seasoned hacker or someone on the inside to make changes. Next, add a basic printer. Something that uses ink, and is only black and white. Once a person is done voting, the machine prints a page for the voter to look over. If the
Re:Too many hoops... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd much rather have confidence in the results than a fast turnaround.
Besides, hand counts don't take that much longer. Canada gets their results overnight.
Re:Too many hoops... (Score:2)
I don't know what the turnouts are for Canada's elections, but assuming that the percentages are roughly the same between the two countries (quick googling puts both at about 60%), I'm not surprised that Canada can get comparatively fast results. Not that the U.S. can't get fast results if votes are tallied as they come in, but, all other things equal, human tallying is more error prone than computer tallying.
Re:Too many hoops... (Score:2)
Sure we have more people... but we would also have more people counting. If the same percentage of citizens count the ballots, the results come in at the same rate for both countries, regardless of population.
human tallying is more error prone than computer tallying.
Not necessarily. One error in a computer tally can lose thousands of votes. In addition, one corrupt person with access to a tabulator can change the results of an entire e
Re:Too many hoops... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Too many hoops... (Score:2)
Re:Too many hoops... (Score:2)
Re:Too many hoops... (Score:2)
Why is that important? Seriously. What horrible things happen to our country even if it takes days or weeks to tally votes in an election for which none of the officeholders take office for several months anyway?
This obsessive-compulsive need for us to know the election results IMMEDIATELY NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW 24 HOUR NEWS COVERAGE OF HOUR THREE OF NOT KNOWING is somewhat disturbing.
Re:Too many hoops... (Score:4, Informative)
can you prove to me the 2004 election was fraud free? can you even support the statement that it was fraud free? Of course fucking not, even a cursory glance at Ohio will tell anyone who has a brain that we can never know if bush really was the honest winner of that state (not to mention several others) or not.
Why did they make up a fake terrorist threat claim on the last county to count it's votes (which prevented all observers from seeing the count)? We know it wasn't a real threat, and we know counting votes in secret like that is one of the fundmantal signs of a flawed election.
How about the ESS tech who, without authorization, accessed on of the voting machines used in voting between the voting and the "recount" (retabulating insecurable inauditable unreliable data tables doesn't constitute a recount).
Insecure elections is NOT a partisan issue, just like jerrymandering ISN'T a partisan issue. The last two national election cycles the insecurities in the voting system have merely happen to have been taken advantage by the republicans - there Is no gaurantee that the democrats wouldn't do that same thing, and I have no illusions that they are immune to the temptation.
Insecure balloting techniques, jerrymandering, etc should ALL be illegal. Jerrymandering is impossible in exactly ONE state in the nation: Iowa, where I happen to live. One state with only 5 house reps is the only state where you cannot jerrymander
Unjerrymandered:
Iowa http://www.legis.state.ia.us/GA/77GA/Congressiona
Hawaii http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/32/HI-
(probably) Idaho http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b3/ID-
NH http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/2c/NH-
Jerrymandered:
Texas http://z.about.com/d/uspolitics/1/0/w/texas_congr
California http://www.senate.ca.gov/ftp/SEN/cngplan/CNGMAPS/
Florida http://www.democracyinaction.com/dia/organization
Illinois http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b8/IL-
see the difference? Jerrymandering leads to complex districts most of the time, unjerrymandered districts are as geographically simple as possible.
rather obvious are they not? Jerrymandering is just another form of election fraud and both parties engage in it.
Couldn't the FOSS community (Score:5, Interesting)
- A private, confidential paper receipt, for each vote, that has:
- a voter-legible ballot that the voter verifies before leaving the vote,
-
a bar-code computer scannable version of the vote, and
- some kind of code or a non-serial 'serial' number that will indicate any missing paper receipt, or blocks of paper reciepts. We don't want a true serial number so that the vote remains secret and no one can tell who voted for whom by the serial number. Perhaps hashes of hashes?
- A secure, electronic, computer version of this receipt that has some kind of data integrity -- not just a tally of bits, but some binary sequence that has some kind of verifiable, tamper-evident integrity. Perhaps this digital ballot would have a hash stored in a seperate log.
This is just a preliminary brainstorm. Perhaps encoded into each vote's serial number would be a running tally? That would be one method of tamper-evidence -- by going through the votes, we should be able to tell where and when exactly the fraud happened. The tally should be consistent all the way through, and by the time the polls are closed, we have tallies for each booth.Re:Couldn't the FOSS community (Score:2)
Secret Ballot Receipts:
http://crypto.csail.mit.edu/~rivest/voting/papers
Really, really brilliant idea.
Re:Couldn't the FOSS community (Score:2)
* A private, confidential paper receipt, for each vote
* A secure, electronic, computer version of this receipt that has some kind of data integrity
All you need is the human readable paper reciept. You just make THAT the official ballot. (You also have the machine produce a hardcopy of its count, or at least one of the total of the machine counts at the precinct.)
Then the machines can count as insecurely
Solution v1.0 (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Solution v1.1 (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Couldn't the FOSS community (Score:2)
IIRC, these voting machines with stubs were recently used in the recent special general election for the congressional rep in California's district 50. I heard stories that there were reports of printer malfunctions during the election. Since Buby only lost by 7,195 votes, you don't need very many printers going offline in order to hide malfeseance. Also the results were announc
My plan for secure voting, and improving democracy (Score:5, Insightful)
So we know that Diebold is capable of producing secure ATM systems, and that money is the root of all evil in politics, and that we have insufficient voter turnout. So here's my plan for a foolproof voting system. :)
Each polling station will consist of one (1) secure Diebold ATM system, which is capable of accessing the bank accounts of the Republican and Democratic parties. Voters will walk into the voting booth, and withdraw $20 from the bank account of their favourite party. At the end of the election, the party that has received the most votes/withdrawals from their account wins. To cap it off, voters have a new incentive to participate in "the process."
Alternately, the system can be turned upside-down, and people remove money from the account of their least favourite party. Not only does one side win, but the other side is bankrupt!
Re:My plan for secure voting, and improving democr (Score:2)
Re:My plan for secure voting, and improving democr (Score:2, Informative)
Uh.. As much as I dislike Ted Stevens, he did not demand "Katrina relief funds", and the "bridge to nowhere" actually is the only thing connecting a tribal land to the 21st century (it being "nowhere" is a matter of opinion.)
Re:My plan for secure voting, and improving democr (Score:2)
It may have been Rep. Don Young who got the funding for the bridge in the first place, but according to the Washington Post [washingtonpost.com] Stevens blocked the proposal to cancel the bridge and use the money for reconstruction after Hurricane Katrina. And why exactly is this bridge needed? There is already a ferry service that takes only 15 minutes for a crossing.
nitpic (Score:2)
Re:nitpic (Score:2)
Re:My plan for secure voting, and improving democr (Score:2)
Why not make it so that you remove money from the party you don't want to win, and the last party with money in the account gets the seat?
That way, you have the advantage that the party can spend as much money on advertising as they wish, with the result that they have less "votes against" before they lose.
Re:My plan for secure voting, and improving democr (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a claim, incidentally, that has been made many times, but not substantiated. The banking industry is surprisingly clueless when it comes to security issues, and I don't think it's a safe assumption that Diebold makes ATMs which are significantly more secure.
I suspect that ATMs simply haven't undergone the level of attention that voting machines have.
I love rules like these (Score:5, Funny)
10^38?
Because requiring an error rate of less than 1 in 10^39 is simply unreasonable to ask.
Re:I love rules like these (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's just part of the bigger picture (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't care if they are a felon, or a muderer, or a kiddnapper or anything else. They can be in jail on death row for all I care. They still get to vote, as long as they are an adult.
Otherwise we have created a way to create classes, 'true citizens' and 'partial citizens.' Which is an enabler of discrimination.
There is no good reason to deny votes to any possible voter. No matter what.
Re:It's just part of the bigger picture (Score:4, Insightful)
I do agree with you 100%.
Now, if companies caught in voter fraud could no longer donate to campaigns, we might be onto something!
Re:It's just part of the bigger picture (Score:2)
I think it is a shame... (And why should only companies caught in voter fraud be disallowed from donating? One of the purposes of government in my view is to be the voice of people to companies.)
Re:It's just part of the bigger picture (Score:2)
It varies state to state; some states you can vote as soon as you are released from prison and re-register. Others, you can't vote until you are off supervised release. Others, it's a permanent lifetime ban. I'm not aware of any that allow voting from in prison for felons, but I don't know for sure.
Many felons have their "rights fully restored" upon completion of their sentences.
Re:It's just part of the bigger picture (Score:3, Informative)
I always found the differences to be amusing. Convicted felon in state A, lifetime loss of voting. Until you move ten miles to state B, all voting rights restored. Only three states -- Florida, Virginia, and Kentucky -- have a lifetime ban. In Florida, thi
The rule of rapists and murders? (Score:3, Interesting)
This has the possibility of making certain districts in the US top heavy with incarcerated voters. A lot of prisons (federal, state and local) are grouped together in close proximity such as near
Re:The rule of rapists and murders? (Score:2, Insightful)
One of the classic techniques for a minority to gain control over the law-making system
is to pass laws that prevent criminals from voting (why should criminals get to vote?),
then turn around and pass laws which they can use to disenfranchise the parts of the
society that might not go along with their legislative agenda.
Think about it: if your legal system basically seems common-sensical to the general
populace, then y
Re:The rule of rapists and murders? (Score:2)
Re:It's just part of the bigger picture (Score:5, Informative)
(Disclaimer: I'm a long-time libertarian candidate. You've never heard of me, but then neither has anybody else.)
First of all, regarding your statement, The Democrats in particular are quick to scream about voter fraud, voter disenfranchisement whenever an ID-less black person blah blah blah, the Democrats have long been the party to defend minority rights. If they weren't quick to scream about voter disenfranchisement they wouldn't be sticking to their platform. It's true that they have a personal interest for doing so, but you can't separate the fact into two separate agendas and treat the Democrats as though they're just scrounging for votes.
Second of all, Rep John Conyers (D-MI) wrote What Went Wrong In Ohio, describing mountains of evidence for vote tampering and voter disenfranchisement within the Ohio election system by ES&S, Diebold, and Secretary of the State of Ohio Kenneth Blackwell (election supervisor, who will be supervising his own election for governor this year; he was also the chair of Ohio's re-election campaign for GWB). Thousands of complaints were filed by Ohioans (Ohioese?) for the difficulty they'd found in trying to vote.
To say that both parties are guilty is a serious mistake. I really don't think there is a 'conspiracy' leading up to the Bush administration, but the Republicans, lets face it, have had a culture of corruption leading at least as far back as Eisenhower, McCarthy & J Edgar Hoover. Read the history books, or the nightly news.
Of course, that's not your entire point. How do you expect to get the government to produce and enforce a law regulating itself? As someone else had said, with an incumbancy rate so high (80-95%?), congress likes things just the way they are. And given the amount of well-documented evidence of vote tampering in Ohio in '04, the federal election officials obviously aren't going to lift a finger to investigate anything. Unless more people start asking questions instead of mockingly crying 'sure, a conspiracy! right!' everytime somebody criticises the gov't, there's not going to be a change. Corruption starts from money, the Republicans have the vast majority of corporate support, the corporations don't care about *you* only your money, yet these cowards, willfully standing up for the power to get robbed by corporate america, still stand up for the republicans when there's evidence of tampering with the election system.
How about a trade? (Score:3, Interesting)
Republicans especially are worried about votes by ineligible voters (such as illegal immigrants and felons), multiple voting, and fake voters.
Of course if there IS such corruption, neither side wants to unilaterally disarm. But perhaps a simultaneous disarmament would work.
Would you support a compromise bill like this?
For all federal elections:
1: Electronic voting machines must produce a paper trail, printing a voted bal
I'm from Chicago (Score:5, Funny)
How to fix this (Score:2)
Go forth with the electronic machines, they're fine and we need to move forward eventually. However, there needs to be a paper trail. It's important enough that each vote be represented with an anonymous piece of paper that spits out of the back of each voting machine after each vote is counted.
Then, count the votes efficiently by downloading the results from each of the electronic machines. But make it easy for anyone to calculate a checksum from the stack of ballots by visually inspecting them, to
Re:How to fix this (Score:2)
Secondly, if the paper coming out the back does not match what is in the machine which do you believe? They both came out of the same machine. Did the machine count wrong in the first place or did it just print wrong? How do we know the machine didn't print wrong numbers AND count wrong numbers?
Certifiability (Score:2)
OR
We need hand counted paper ballots.
Let's vote on it.
Re:Certifiability (Score:3, Funny)
(later...)
It just came out 51% in favour of keeping the diebold machines. Looks like we're not changing.
Canada uses a manual method with 10% of voters (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Canada uses a manual method with 10% of voters (Score:2)
There is no machine invisibly doing things. Instead the polling official (someone from the local area hired just for the election) counts, while a representative of each party (that cares enough to send a rep.) counts along with them. The official must show each ballot to the reps, and if there's any question the ballot is set aside and examined at the end, the official deciding ultimately if its spoiled or not.
This way there's none of this "countin
Re:Canada uses a manual method with 10% of voters (Score:2)
Now, I've never experienced an American election at a ballot station, so I can't say from first hand experience. However, you'd have to think that if there was a way to use a superior counting system, t
Re:Canada uses a manual method with 10% of voters (Score:2)
Take a lesson from the casino industry (Score:2, Interesting)
Follow the money (Score:2)
The most vtelling point by far is that standards for electronic slot machines are so much more stringant. The message waiting just below the surface is that the many various election commissions who should have the deepest possible respect for democracy place a much lower value on it than Vegas puts on a few thousand dollars.
Would you want to continue employing a night watchman who said (of your property) "It's just a bunch of crap, who cares?"
Considering the cost of these machines, I find it hard to be
I dont see the problem (Score:2)
And building physically tamper-proof packages is relatively easy.
Why not dual-count? (Score:4, Interesting)
- One company develops the casing and only uses old fashioned electronic push buttons.
- The other two other company's each develop a counter module which are both connected to the same buttons.
This way, the final results should match.
If they do not match, the device is broken, or one of the two company's are attempting fraud.
By keeping the push button system simple, the connections to the counter modules can easily be veryfied by looking at them.
If the whole thing would be sealed and shielded by a glass plate and the wires would be clearly marked, everyone could in theory check the correctness of the machine.
This way, for fraud to be commited, the three company's would have to work together which is more unlikely.
Also, it is possible to prevent the company's from getting in touch with eachother.
A very important point here is: Keep it stupid simple.
Paper Ballots (Score:4, Interesting)
On the paper, they have a nice 2D barcode that has all of the votes encoded within it. However, it has a plain English description of those votes as well. Boxes can be opened after the election and very easily (and foolproofly) scanned, incredibly quickly. Some small percentage of them are also hand-counted (there shouldn't be much disagreement in reading the English printout) and the totals compared to the scan-counted totals. Any discrepency forces a full recount.
So its the best of both worlds. Fast scoring, full paper trail, and no significant chance of fraud. Where's the catch?
Re:Paper Ballots (Score:2)
There really isn't any. The only one Diebold &co have come up with is "The printers aren't reliable enough.". My answer to that is "When was the last time you saw an ATM that couldn't print a receipt? ATMs have to operate 24x365 with irregular maintenance and every random passer-by banging on them. Voting machines only have to operate for 12 hours at a time 4-5 times a year max, with somewhat-trained people right there to feed them paper and ribbons and other consumables and make sure nobody beats on th
Re:Paper Ballots (Score:2, Insightful)
OCR has gotten good enough, especially when reading computer-printed output, that the counting machine could read the text part of the ballot without needing some sort of encoding.
No simple solution (Score:3, Interesting)
The best solution I can think of with electronic votes is to use some form of public key encryption with an authenticating block encryption mode. One half of the keys would be provided on a TOTALLY random basis along with the voter card. The decrypting keys would be kept in a tamper-proof computer that is designed to be write-only with the sole exception of the count at the end.
The voter comes along and enters their vote. The vote is encrypted with their key. As nobody (at this point) has the decryption key, or another copy of the encryption key, it is impossible for the vote to be altered. A copy could then be printed out for backup purposes and placed in a regular ballot box.
So far, doesn't sound much different from anyone else's electronic system, right? Except that we're not tallying yet. Well, read on. The votes are collected in their encrypted form and kept in some secure system OTHER than the one doing the counting. They are then fed into the counting machine. The counting machine knows what keys are allocated to a given precinct, so tests each potential key against each vote from that precinct. Once a key is used, it is deleted.
If a vote has no valid decryption key, the vote is invalid and is rejected. This will include duplicate votes (the key has been deleted) as well as votes for which no key has ever existed. The (still encrypted) vote would then be output as a reject.
The votes are kept seperate and tallied. The output will be the tallies, the votes that comprise that tally, and the grand totals involved. The grand totals should be the same, provided the counters are working correctly.
Now, what basic checks can we perform, using this sort of system? First, let us say there is a recount. The recount would be of the votes placed into the ballot box. There should be exactly one such ballot box vote that is not spoiled or a duplicate for each and every valid vote printed by the tallying machine and the totals should match exactly. There should ALSO be exactly one spoiled or bogus ballot paper for every rejected vote, although further comparison would be impossible as the rejects are encrypted and the spoiled ballots aren't.
Ok, how do we know the software is valid? Well, we know that the vote that the user put in the ballot box matched the one they entered in the computer, and we know that there's a 1:1 between the results in the box and the results in the computer, so we know that the computer has to be producing valid data.
Then what happens when there is a discrepency? With two sources, how do we know which is the one that has the valid data and which does not? The votes are encrypted in a way that is essentially tamper-proof, the ballot boxes are not. The only way to resolve this is to make the ballot boxes reasonably tamper-proof. I'd suggest a wooden or metallic ballot box that has a lid that can be attached with spring-loaded bolts, where the only way to open the box is to cut it open. You want unique non-sequential numbers on RFID tags, to ensure that boxes don't go missing anyway.
After all that, you will have a more honest system than you do at the moment. You might even discourage those who would cheat the system from even being a part of it. However, ultimately, politicians are professional liars and the extremely rich will always be power brokers. The best system in the world can't clean up the human race, it can only clean up one very small part of the feedback loop. Which is better than nothing, but should not be assumed to be everything.
Why not have verifiable internet voting? (Score:2)
Every time there is an election, a computer uses a randon number generator and some cryptographic one way cipher along with a individual's SSID to generate a unique voting 'key' - this key is then sent out to the voter with a computer readable and human readable (OCE) number.
Internet voting and voting at a polling station are no different, except that at a polling station, there is
Re:Why not have verifiable internet voting? (Score:2)
Double-blind exit polling (Score:2)
It would seem that you could have a Web site, or a third party at the exit that could scan your receipt and have you validate your choices. It should be implemented by another vendor than Diebold (due to it being an open standard) and work like a Credit Card machine. The print-out could be in three pieces (cut 99% of the way allowing you to tear off the fina
Fatally Flawed (Score:3, Insightful)
This same system allows anyone else to, from anywhere, force me to verify my vote to them. Your system is open to a different and entirely easier form of voting fraud -- paying off or otherwise coercing voters. Imagine if I offer to give you money if you come back with your barcode, and I can verify you voted for Bush III. Or, I threaten to break your knees if you *don't* come back with said proof.
That's illegal. Vote buying. (Score:2)
If you could use it to prove to YOURSELF that your vote was counted as cast in a particular way, you could use it to prove to SOMEONE ELSE that your vote was cast in a particular way.
This enables vote-buying schemes.
As a result, such reciepts are generally banned by law.
Technical Dream Solution Still Wouldn't Solve it (Score:4, Insightful)
You can't trust a citizen to be non-political completely if the vote will affect them in any way. So, essentially you need to pay someone to be your referee. And it would have to be someone who wouldn't be affected at all by the result of the vote.
So by those qualifiers we can't guarantee, ever, that every element of the existing paper vote is secure.
Two copies of your vote, one right after the other, printed and spewed into two different physical ballot boxes. The second box would contain tamper proof seals and would only be opened in the case of a full manual recount by a third party. As well as two digital copies, signed with a hash which was printed on a receipt (and mailed to an email if you like) you could verify against the other copy sent to the national voting database. Might be marginally better.
That way you can count all the votes all night and as the final results are tallied any innacuracies between the national and local databases would have to be rectified before any results were accepted from the precinct with invalid data.
Screw the old people... (Score:2)
Let's move on to a system of voting that the majority of American's can understand...
To vote for candidate #1 call 1-900-ILIKE01 or send the text message "VOTE" to 9901 on your Cingular phone. Phone lines are open now...
My Armchair Solution (Score:2)
As I see it, the system needs to provide these features:
Sorry to reply to myself...re: the "secret number" (Score:2)
If an attacker alters a record, he can -- knowing the hash algorithm -- accurately calculate a new hash. Even if the next record's hash is based on the current record's h
Re:Ken Thompson for President (Score:4, Funny)
Mod that FUNNY! (Score:4, Informative)
I'd bet he would get plenty of votes!
ROTFL!
For those who aren't aware, Ken Thompson admitted to actually writing and installing a back door [jargon.net] in the unix login program and the associated C compiler, as described in his 1983 Turing Award lecture.
This worked by having the compiler recognize what it's compiling and:
- If compiling login, insert the back door.
- If compiling a later version of itself, insert the compiler patch.
This has the advantage that, once you get it working, you can throw out the source code and it still propagates.
Re:Mod that FUNNY! (Score:2)
I checked it; fortunately the book with the Award Lectures from 1966 to 1985 is on my bookshelf, and the lecture in question, titled "Reflections on Trusting Trust" contains the code
compile(s)
char* s;
{
if (match (s, "pattern1")) {
Re:Mod that FUNNY! (Score:2)
You didn't prove what you thought you did. (Score:5, Interesting)
Since there is no way to check that the Diebold machines are counting corretly - or even that they're not making up votes on the fly to be a close match to the number of voters using them - all you've proven is that now that youv'e switched to Diebold machines you no longer can FIND fraud.