Voting Machines Wreak Havoc in Maryland Elections 463
An anonymous reader writes, "Voting machines are wreaking havoc in Maryland elections today. From the article:
'Election Day in Montgomery County and parts of Prince George's opened in chaos and frustration this morning, as a series of problems and missteps left thousands of citizens unable to vote or forced to cast provisional ballots... Montgomery County's Board of Elections held an emergency meeting and agreed to petition the Circuit Court to extend voting times until 9 p.m.' It's simply shameful."
If it isn't broken... (Score:2, Insightful)
I read alot of horror stories about the insecurities of 'modern' voting machines, and i ask myself 'what's the point?'
I live in Toronto, and the elections held in Canada use paper. Why? Becasuse there's an audit trail if a recount is needed, and it's simple. No duplicated effort. The system isn't broken, and it _just works_
Technology for it's own sake is fun, but in critical applications such as voting, I ask: "is it really necessary?"
Re:(sigh) (Score:2, Insightful)
If you know the politicians and beaurocrats? Some know and care, some know and delight. Any randomness is going to increase the chance of a slightly losing candidate to actually win.
Possibly (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:If it isn't broken... (Score:2, Insightful)
Depends on your point of view. If you are a citizen who wants to have their vote counted and counted correctly then no, nothing is wrong with paper. If you are a corrupt politico who want's to continue to abuse your position of power the people's will be damned, then paper is a flawed system that must be done away with.
Guess which of the two makes the rules.
Re:User Error (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The people that RUN them are the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Parties are full of people...some people will do anything to win.
The right thing to do would have been a revote.
Re:(sigh) (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Take a piece of paper.
2. Mark an X in a big box CLEARLY beside the candidate you want.
3. Put it in the ballot box.
Can it really be that simple? Yes!
As a software developer, I have to ask:
WHY IS ANYONE IN THEIR RIGHT MINDS USING A BLOODY COMPUTER TO DO THIS? I don't care if it's open source or closed source software on it, running on Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, whatever. All of these are harder to verify (if not impossible) that no tampering was done than SIMPLE PIECES OF PAPER.
Here, I'll link to Cringely, that way you'll know it's true
I actually RTFA... (Score:5, Insightful)
Based on how the equipment in Arizona works, I suggest the following: If one has a voter registration card then the voter should be able in this technological era to go to any balloting site and with the card have the appropriate PAPER ballot generated on the spot. If they're not at the normal for that precinct then their ballot, after being optically scanned is fed into a seperately collated output bin so that it can be sent to the proper storage bin later. This allows people to vote for their district regardless of where they happen to physically go to cast. I also suggest that anyone over hte age of 18 who is a citizen be able to vote so long as they can get to a polling place, and that everyone that has any kind of government-issued ID is automatically registered simply by obtaining that ID. This eliminates people being disenfranchised on account of name confusion with convicted felons, which was a documented problem in Florida in 2000. It also ensures that every American Gets The Right To Vote and doesn't infringe on anyone. Yeah, some won't like convicted felons voting, but if they've been released from prison and are part of the civilian population then they've been released back to society and therefore should be let to vote, in my humble opinion.
The more complex the voting system gets the worse the process gets. Yeah, it's labor-intensive to physically count ballots, but we must maintain a paper record of all voting activities in case the electronic count doesn't work. The optical-scan ballots allow for that, and still give us the near-instant return that we like without compromising the ability to audit or recount.
Re:If it isn't broken... (Score:4, Insightful)
Paper does not ensure that the counters will count accurately. Paper does not ensure that the counters are not subject to a poltical bias or bribes. Only a well-defined process with proper auditing, traceability, etc. regardless of the actual method used to poll the constituents, is the method that will be accurate.
And remember kids... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:(sigh) (Score:5, Insightful)
Because somebody, somewhere is getting a cut of the contract costs...
Re:(sigh) (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:If it isn't broken... (Score:2, Insightful)
Now what were you saying again? Paper ballots work well for small numbers of people. The mechaincal ones NY had were great for us and reliable literally for decades. The New and Improved Diebold electronic ones running Windows XP are nothing but a diaster in need of an event.
bring back the solid mechanical machines and all will be well.
Re:The people that RUN them are the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Electronic voting machines just add another big layer of complexity to a process that really doesn't need to be so hard. A paper ballot has just two parts, the ballot sheet and a pen. If the ballot sheet breaks, the voter can just grab a new one, and the whole process gets held up for a minute, instead of hours or more. If someone forgets the pens, you can run to corner store and grab a box, or chances are enough of the first batch of voters will happen to have pens with them that they don't mind leaving behind.
Instead we have computerized machines that require specialized knowledge to set up and service, and which can break in a huge number of ways.
Even a secure, tamperproof, open-sourced electronic voting machine is a waste of money. The only problem it solves is speeding up the tallying of votes. And all that is really good for is letting the media report on partial results before half the people out there have even had a chance to vote. That benefit hardly seems worth the extra complexity or cost.
Re:(sigh) (Score:5, Insightful)
"Forever" is perhaps more precisely stated as "several hours for initial results, a few days for the recounts".
Re:(sigh) (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason that argument doesn't work is simple: the ballots don't go to some central location for say, the entire province or anything like that. There are people in each riding doing the counting (and in fact, multiple locations within one riding). That way, you just need enough volunteers from within an area to cover that area. In other words, the number of voting stations and people counting scales with the population.
But you know, everyone loves to solve non-existent problems with computers.
Re:(sigh) (Score:5, Insightful)
As a fellow Canadian, I believe I can tell you the answer is "not always that simple" in the case of US elections.
People could be electing their Sherrif, councilmen, or a state refferendum on the same ballot as they also vote for either their state or federal representatives. It's my understanding that some ballots can have over a dozen issues on them. (Anyone who has better first hand knowledge of this feel to correct me if this is an inaccurate summation.)
I guess there is the perception that electronic voting is better, or less error prone, or people can understand what they are doing better. Or, that due to low voter turn out, get them to answer as many questions as you can so people get to voice their opinions on as many things as possible as once.
I do believe that a typical visit to the polls for our American cousins involves more than the greatly simplified answering of exactly one question we do here ("which candidate do you like for the job you're voting on")
Cheers (eh)
Re:(sigh) (Score:3, Insightful)
Canada has several official languages and handicapped people.
Their paper doesn't seem to have "interpretation" problems.
Everyone I know who makes computers do things knows that computers are the wrong tool for voting. Their flexibility makes it easir to commit fraud, and much more easy to leave no evidence, especially coordinated in complex ways over distant areas - perfect for voting fraud.
Computers aren't just overkill. Their risks so outweigh their benefits in voting that they are the wrong tool. As has now been proven over and over for years. Including today in Maryland. How much more demonstration do you need that just paper ballots are better?
Re:(sigh) (Score:4, Insightful)
These arguments are simply not valid, for one very good reason: The rest of the democratic world does just fine with manual voting. When was the last time you heard that there were problems counting votes in Germany, or France, or the UK, or Norway, or ancient Greece, or whatever.
First off, why you people even need to make an X on a long list of candidates is beyond me. Here in Sweden (where there'll be an election on Sunday) each party has its own ballot, you simply stick that in an envelope, give it to a voting-official which checks your identity and suffrage, that voting offical puts the envelope in a box, and you're done! No confusion over votes, no-one can vote twice, no arguments over which candidates are first on the list (you can get ballots from all the parties in the parliament right there, and there are usually people handing out ballots for the other parties at the voting station). I repeat, for the rest of the world, this is not a problem,
As a plus, if it is desired, this can easily be counted by machine. Since each ballot is unique, you could easily have a machine recognize from what party it comes from. Not that you'd have too, it shouldn't take more than, say, 6-12 hours after the polls have closed to have a result counted by hand. In the last few years, I've never heard of any democratic and free country, that doesn't have wide-spread voter fraud (ie. psuedo-democracies, that deliberatly tamper with elections) messing up an election. Except for America.
I can think of very few things that are more stupid than elecronic voting. The manual system works perfectly, and has done so for a century! Why, ohh, why, mess it up.
Don't move along just yet. (Score:4, Insightful)
So you missed things like this
Louise Bradley said she arrived at her polling station after the electronic cards had been delivered, but her card did not work properly. When she got to the section of the ballot listing candidates for the Democratic central committee, it was already filled out. Bradley said she had to remove the computer's choices and insert her own.
and this
At Luxmanor Elementary School in Rockville, Larry Schleifer cast a provisional ballot, then groused that it would not be counted along with the electronic tallies expected later in the day. He said he was frustrated that no one had crossed his name off the voter registry when he was handed a paper ballot and was concerned that election workers would not keep track of who had done what.
"What's going to stop somebody from voting twice?" he fumed. "I think it's unconscionable that this has happened."
Re:(sigh) (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:(sigh) (Score:3, Insightful)
Exit polls will give a reasonable estimate on the results.
Are these the same exit polls that predicted a win for Gore, then Bush, then Gore, then Bush? No thanks, I'd prefer to wait for the official totals. Some people lie to exit pollers. I'm one of them.
Re:(sigh) (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately, proper design seems to be something of a stumbling block among e-voting manufacturers.
OT: Your .sig (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, not quite so offtopic in this thread I guess.
Re:(sigh) (Score:4, Insightful)
Wrong. 2200 of about 80000 electoral districts used Nedap voting machines in the last Bundestag election. Our German readers might find these articles (2005) [heise.de] informative (2006) [heise.de].
Re:(sigh) (Score:2, Insightful)
I am certain that if resolution of an election in those countries was as big of a circus as the Florida 2000 debacle it would have warranted news coverage.
Complaining that the world watches (and laughs) at our elections is like someone with a bolt through their nose and a "Social Leper" tattoo on their forehead saying "what are you looking at" for staring at them.
Faulty voting destroys democracies and republics. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:(sigh) (Score:3, Insightful)
I would, too. Which is why the exit polls are an estimate. As you know, in 2000, the vote was officially decided by 537 votes -- a statistical dead heat. They didn't do too bad. If I go home and see that candidate X or ballot issue Y is winning by 10% on the exit polls, I can be pretty sure that when the final tallies come out, that candidate will win or issue will pass.
And he wonders why exit polls don't work. What an ass! The only thing lying to pollsters does is increases the suspicion of fraud in elections, something you're ostensibly working against, and perhaps gives you some giddy feeling that you're lying to someone for the sake of lying.
It happened to me (Score:3, Insightful)
I showed up at the polling place, very smallish in a local elementary school. I knew there were problems because the line was out the door, yet none of the voting booths were busy.
By the time it got to me, they inserted, the card into the "activation" station, and then they said something like "Oh, the system has crashed again", and they called over the election official. They timed it until it came up and it seemed to be a few minutes. They inserted my card again. They told me "Oh, the system said you already voted" and they called over the election official.
They ran to the back of the auditorium looking in a big manual. After 10 minutes, they came back and said "The manual is missing the part where it tells us what to do now. You can wait until we get it figured out, fill out a provisional ballet, or come back later". I opted for a provisional ballot which means that your vote is no longer a secret vote, and it takes 5-10 minutes to do, because you have to fill out two forms, and sign in two places.
I checked out the equipment while I was waiting, and sure enough it was Diebold. When I see this equipment in use, I feel like I might was well take my vote and throw it in the trash. Based on the errors that I saw for other people while I was waiting, the chances of a meaningful result in the primary seem somewhat in doubt.
We have a very good punch-card system in Montgomery county (nothing like the chad based system in florida) which produced a nice computer card that was obvious if it was correct when it was done and then you dumped it in a ballot box, ensuring anonymity and also making sure your vote was going to be counted as cast.
This new system did nothing except make a mess.
Re:I actually RTFA... (Score:3, Insightful)
If you replace 'stabbing little old lady' with possessing weed, breaking DRM, or having an abortion?
What if belonging to the opposing political party is a crime?, or being Black?, or Gay?