Voting Machine Glitches Already Being Reported 742
Neovanglist writes "CNN, FOX, and MSNBC are reporting that voting machines in three states (Ohio, Indiana, and Florida) have already been showing issues, both in the machines themselves and in the training of poll attendants, causing many districts to switch to paper ballots." From the article: "Voters put the Republican congressional majority and a multitude of new voting equipment to the test Tuesday in an election that defined the balance of power for the rest of George W. Bush's presidency. Both parties hustled to get their supporters out in high-stakes contests across the country, Democrats appealing one more time for change, and appearing confident the mood was on their side. Republicans conceded nothing as their vaunted get-out-the-vote machine swung into motion." If you're in the U.S., and you haven't voted already, go do it!
Paper ballots (Score:5, Insightful)
I was out this morning at 7:00am voting and predictably, two of the ten voting machines (20% folks!) at our location would not take their programs...... Take their programs! And how many times do we have to be shown how easy it is to hack the system? When I left after voting, we were still looking at machines that were not working.
Again, paper ballots folks. It's a simple, cost effective solution that is easier to secure than electronic voting. I have yet to see a valid statistical study that demonstrates that electronic voting is inherently more reliable/statistically valid than paper ballot voting. How much is this move towards electronic voting costing the US taxpayer? Was this a favor for political contributors? I think that the evidence is pretty strong for it which might give even more credibility to the FBI in their new focus on corruption in Washington DC politics.
Vote because some of us cant.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Paper ballots (Score:4, Insightful)
They can get confusing, especially in major cities where you have dozens of things to vote on. With millions of potential voters. Electronic voting is a good thing, unfortunately it's been horribly implemented. There's no need to be a Luddite on this topic, just the opposite in fact. However, given the current state of things.... paper all the way for 2006!
cam i underline that comment? (Score:4, Insightful)
if you do not vote, you forfeit all right to complain about anything your government does until november 2008 (by which time, you will have learned your lesson and will vote, right?)
the gore bush fiasco back in 2000 should have finally once and for all taught everyone how much their vote really does matter
imagine the state of the world today had the vote tally been slightly different back in 2000
if the government does something you don't like from 2007-2008, and you do not vote today, then go find a mirror, and look at yourself for blame
Testing time? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:cam i underline that comment? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Vote because some of us cant.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:You've done it (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Paper ballots (Score:5, Insightful)
Again, that's a problem with voting machines, not paper ballots. Why do machines have to tally the votes? Don't give the bull about them being more efficient, cause they aren't. This has been proven by manual recounts taking less time than the machine ones, and the undeniable fact that other countries that do it the old fashioned way manage to have their results out quicker than the US.
It's really simple: You take a ballot. You mark it with an X inside the box for who you're going to vote for, either at home or in the voting booth. If you don't trust their pens, bring your own. It's up to you to make the [X] readable to the poll worker who tallies the votes. Not a machine. You put the ballot in an envelope inside a curtained-off area (so no-one can see who you vote for), and walk up with the envelope to the supervised poll urn, and drop it there. When the box is emptied, the ballots are taken out of the envelopes, and two people look at each ballot. If they agree, they both note down a valid vote for your [X] (or for blank, if you exercised your democratic right to vote blank). If one of them thinks the vote is invalid, or there's any disagreement, the vote is put aside for review by overseers. It's very easy. Millions do it every year. No machinery involved, except for an incoming-only telephone to report the tally upstreams.
Re:Paper ballots (Score:4, Insightful)
Some A are B does not imply all A are B. There are many good books on elementary logic that can help you out if you do not understand this.
What you are pointing out is that it is possible to have badly-implemented paper-based voting systems.
What you need to prove is that it is possible to have electronic systems that are not subject to absolutely trivial tampering.
Personally, I'd like to see a touch-screen voting system that prints a completed ballot after the user has made their selection and that the voter then looks at to verify, and then walks over to a reader which reads the ballot and records the result. Election law should specify the standard form of the ballot, and should mandate that different companies make the touch-screen system and the ballot reading system used at each polling station. Both the touch-screen system and the ballot counting system would maintain independent totals, and of course the paper ballot would be preserved for hand recounts, which would take place automatically if the touch-screen system and the ballot reading system differed by more than one vote.
The first purpose of electronic voting systems should be the use of technology to introduce more redundancy into the system to create more tamper-proof ballots. Any use of an electronic vote-counter that does not have a paper trail means that simply flipping a few bits can change the outcome of an election, and it is all happening inside a single black box where no one can see or verify what is happening. That's not democracy.
Re:Paper ballots (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Paper ballots (Score:4, Insightful)
I mean, obviously that can be accomplished quicker via electronic means.
But the point remains, it's not the machine itself that is responsible for the fraud per se, it's the people who have access to the machines after the polling stations close. Paper ballots have the exact same problem.
Re:Vote because some of us cant.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:cam i underline that comment? (Score:2, Insightful)
If you don't vote, you have no right to complain about the results of the elections. It's like blaming the mechanic for your car breaking down because "you just didn't have the time" to see to the proper maintenance of your car.
Your 1st Amendment rights are still intact though. You can still whine about the state of the Nation. Your fellow citizens who did vote can also tell you to "STFU you apathetic hypocrite. You had your chance and did nothing."
A wild guess (Score:4, Insightful)
My guess is that, to the world's (and US ?) surprise, republicans will win by a small margin, explaining it by the last day of campaign.
And now the scary part : people will buy it.
I Voted... 3 Weeks Ago! (Score:3, Insightful)
I already voted Absentee, and probably will do so from now on, every chance I get.
Absentee Ballots are the way to go:
* No campaginer gauntlet outside the polling place.
* No long lines at the polls.
* No clueless or senile volunteer workers that have to be shown where you are on the Registered Voter Roster, even when you fill out your "application to vote form" legibly. (God Bless the elderly, but please, keep them away from being a polling place volunteer. It's frustrating, every time I have voted in person.)
* No clueless or senile volunteer workers that have to be shown the VOTING PROCEDURES, because you know what they are and THEY DON'T. (That's also maddening.)
* No touch screens.
* No hacker-inviting electronic voting machines.
* No harassment from "election monitors".
* No screaming, colicky brat kids that were dragged there by their parents. (God Bless the children, but please... stay out of the damn polling place until of legal voting age!)
My voting experience was much nicer this time. Ten minutes of marking a paper ballot, stuffing an envelope, and off to turn the thing in.
Now if only there were technology to filter out political ads for those of us who already cast our ballots...
The day off! (Score:3, Insightful)
As for paper ballots I think we should stick with them until we get a system ironed out. At the same time they are not perfect either. Remember the Buccanon debacle in the Florida 00 election.
I'd like to see each voter get a random "card" with a bar code on it. This would be unique for everyone and handed out randomly at the polling station. Then you would stick that card into a machine which would record your vote and the bar code. Then later you could go online and scan it in...or some office...and "verify" your vote. Furthermore I think we should use two different system from two different vendors. Even better to have the Republicans choose one and the Democrats the other. Then when the country goes to verify the vote they can make sure that both machines match up.
When you walk away from the machine(s) you should get a paper copy that you can use to double verify. If we can spend 100's of billions on war, I think we can spend some cash on our election systems.
Re:You've done it (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm awfully sure that some script kiddie moron can't alter tens of thousands of paper ballots instantly with a fucking Excel hack.
Re:Paper ballots (Score:3, Insightful)
Where I live, we have had electronic vote tabulation from paper ballots: the same technology they use in the college boards. This system can tabulate just as quickly as a pure electronic system, has a voter confirmable paper trail, and is completely glitch proof as far as the process of recording each vote: there's no machine to be "down". If the tabulators ever were down (which they never are), we could just count them by inspection, like we'd do in a recount.
I have voted on this system for over twenty five years. It's old technology, but it is superior to the new machines in nearly every possible respect. It provides every benefit that electronic voting machines are supposed to, other than anonymous access for the blind. The system has no security vulnerabilities other than those that affect every voting system.
The fact that SOME electronic voting machines are down should worry us a great deal. It suggests that the machines are not all the same. The sameness of the machines is very important -- it is the only guarantee that every vote is treated the same.
In this crowd, we might not like a "blue screen" or a "core dump", but we also know that in many cases obvious total failure is better than "appearing to work". If the machines are shown to be of such low quality that they simply don't work, how do we know they aren't failing in other ways, say losing votes?
Re:cam i underline that comment? (Score:4, Insightful)
It is true that the third parties don't win, but this does two things:
Re:Paper ballots (Score:5, Insightful)
Then you can take your printout to your boss at work and show him you voted the way he told you to so he won't fire you. Threw your printout away? Fired. Voted wrong? Fired.
There's a reason that there's no record of who you personally voted for. A long as it's possible, there exists the potential for voter coercion.
Re:Paper ballots (Score:2, Insightful)
Immediate gratification (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, that's a new low.
Re:The day off! (Score:2, Insightful)
Because business interests have a large influence on our democracy. Civics aside, they don't want to give people the day off for voting because they never want to give them the day off. Secondarily, it's a generally held belief that lower income people are more likely to vote Democrat. This may or may not be true, but the fact that a lot of people believe it still drives their strategy. If you are voting Republican, you are more likely (though not guaranteed) to be in the group that can take a few hours off of work. So according to this belief, the Republicans have nothing to gain by making it easier to vote and tend to block it (sometimes to the point of absurdity by making statements about people who can't do this or that as not "deserving" the vote). And according to this belief, the Democrats have everything to gain and try to make it easier to vote (sometimes to the point of absurdity by making voter fraud easier).
Re:Vote because some of us cant.. (Score:3, Insightful)
As opposed to what? The alternative is that someone who knows nothing about a candidate, an issue, or whatever is going to make an uneducated guess as to what they should do.
Is that somehow better? You would rather have an uninformed voter basically fill in dots (pull levers/push buttons/touch a screen) at random? That's not a democracy, that's chaos. That's why candidates fight over who gets listed first on the ballot because it can give up to a 5% boost in the vote because people are too lazy to know who they're voting for. That's why the Missouri measure to legalize human cloning is called the "Stem Cell Research Amendment". If all you see is the title it sure looks like a good idea. You'd have to actually read the bill (something Michael J. Fox should have done before making commercials for it) to know what it says.
As far as I'm concerned, uninformed voters represent a larger problem than any hacking, fraud, or other issue. If you don't know what you're voting for, then for [insert preferred deity here]'s sake, DON'T VOTE
Re:Paper ballots (Score:5, Insightful)
Indiana info misleading - voting mostly going ok. (Score:3, Insightful)
Gilmore fans who object to showing ID without a warrant are offered provisional ballots, which then don't get counted. My lawsuit about that continues: joellpalmer.blogspot.com [blogspot.com]
In Delaware County, home of Ball state, polling hours have been extended to 8:30 pm because MicroVote machines weren't working at first.
Electionlawblog.org [electionlawblog.org]is one place to follow glitch reports during the day.
+2 informative insightful
Re:Paper ballots (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Paper ballots (Score:5, Insightful)
What a great idea! Why stop there? Let's issue IQ tests too...perhaps require a short essay. If you commit any grammatical errors, then you're not allowed to vote!
That is, unless you is too stupid.
Seriously though, the laws enacted by our government affect everyone, even the stupid. If idiots are having problems voting, maybe it's not their fault. Maybe the voting system should be idiot-proof. Now...IQ tests for the candidates, that's another story. ;-)
Re:Paper ballots (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you have a newsletter? (Score:4, Insightful)
I am interested in these idiot-proof voting machines of which you speak. Please send me your catalog for your full line of idiot-proof products. I am particularly interested in idiot-proof power tools and nuclear weapons, and any other products which allow stupid people to do important things with complete safety and security.
The foxnews.com story has the expected spin... (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's Fox News' roundup [foxnews.com] on the voting shenanigans.
It leads with coverage of the voter intimidation in the Virgina Allen/Web race (in which registered democrats are receiving calls informing them, incorrectly, that their polling place has changed), but does not list the candidates or parties involved. And the description of the incidents was written to make them sound vague:
Note the "use" of "quotes" around "single" words when they're really not "necessary."
Okay, so they're not naming names, right? But the second report in the Fox News article gets right to the point:
<Borat>very nice.</Borat>
And then Fox News found it necessary to report some graffiti with a Republican's name in it:
...but no mention whatsoever that Colorado Democrat candidate Jay Fawcett's HQ was also vandalized overnight.
And more naming names:
Compare this to Fox News' coverage of the incidents reported last week in Florida and Texas, in which people who tried to vote Democrat had their votes changed to Republican. Oh yeah, there wasn't any (please post a link if I'm wrong).
And then back to giving vague details that don't mention party affiliation:
Ideal vs. Real isn't a fair comparison. (Score:5, Insightful)
However, the real question is, would a direct democratic system be inferior to the reality of our current representative system, which functions nothing at all like how you describe?
Having every citizen decide based on a 5-sentence position statement, seems like it might be better than letting a handful of citizens decide based on that same 5-sentence position statement and a large wad of cash.
Re:Paper ballots (Score:1, Insightful)
And if the paper ballots are never audited against the machine count you never will. Paper ballots alone are not enough if they're not used for something. Auditing the paper ballots from randomly selected precincts and comparing them against the machine count is neccessary to have any confidence in the machine count.
Re:Paper ballots (Score:4, Insightful)
1) Number of candidates and issues on the ballot. In my local election there were 25 races to be decided. In other local elections I heard of as many as 38 ballot issues. That makes for a lot of paper. We did it before, but electronic voting is a huge improvement over carrying the typically 1-3 11"x17" sheets and trying to mark them and maintain any kind of privacy. (Yes, the ballots really were printed on that size sheet in amazingly large type.)
2) Multiple voting locations. Here we have early voting for the two weeks prior to the actual election. On election day everyone has a polling location they must be at to cast their ballot. However, during the early voting period, anyone can go to any of the early polling locations in their county. Thus I was able to cast my early ballot at the polling location that sets up in the lobby where I work, even though I work in a completely different City from where I live. It also meant that I could cast my ballot on my lunch hour at my convenience, rather than having to drive all the way across town during voting hours to vote at the Elementary School location near my house. Having this flexibility, with paper only, used to require that every early voting location had to keep enough ballots on hand for every voting district in the county. This was a huge pile of paper, and many, many "excess" ballots that were never used, but had to be tracked and destroyed to make sure they were not abused.
3) Multiple languages. In many jurisdictions ballots must be provided in the speakers native language, usually Spanish, but just in our local school district there are 21 different languages that they try to integrate. With electronic balloting you can provide all of these, much easier and with much less expense and chance of mis-use of unused ballots.
In short, there are many reasons that electronic voting can be a huge improvement. It just needs to be implemented properly. And the kicker is that implementing it properly is relatively cheap, easy, and fast. Implementing it improperly, like it generally has been, is harder and can only be defended as a means to rig elections.
Re:Do you have a newsletter? (Score:3, Insightful)
Idiot proofing is just a pipe dream. A noble goal, to be sure, but a pipe dream none the less. No matter how well intentioned something is, humans will always find a way to screw it up. We've had how long to perfect the use of fire and yet we still manage to burn down how many buildings/forests/cities?
Absentee ballots (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Ideal vs. Real isn't a fair comparison. (Score:3, Insightful)
For example, there might be a law in place that says the President can use military force for 30 days without congressional approval. After that, congress must approve. Sort of like it is today. Then after a period of 6 months, or perhaps a year depending on the issue, a public vote, much like an election, would be cast on the subject.
The ideal democracy would also allow for changes in its election process that reflect the will of the people.
The ideal democracy would allow the people to impeach its leaders at all levels of the government. Ours only allows this process at certain levels of the government. For higher levels, impeachment must be started and carried about by those in power. A true breach of a government by the people for the people.
The ideal democracy would be composed of people who actually cared. Would be composed of an educated mass of people who were taught to ignore distraction and cheap marketing gimmicks. Who would see guile and sweet talk from miles away.
Clearly we are not the ideal democracy. Or a democracy at all. We are barely a represnted republic. If I asked you to prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that we are a represented repubic and not a comercialized feudal system, you couldn't. No one could.
Re:Paper ballots (Score:5, Insightful)
No one's hiding the fact that the United States is a republic ("the Republic, for which it stands..."). But it's also a democracy. And I would argue that the democracy part is more relevant than the republic aspects.
Re:Paper ballots (Score:2, Insightful)
They even had the gaul to toss out official documents while the investigators were in the building!!
Something has to be done about this.
Re:Absentee ballots (Score:3, Insightful)
Absentee ballots are problematic for this reason, but you can always go to your polling place on election day and vote a completely different ballot. This breaks down if a poll worker or election official is crooked or incompetent and lets anyone other than the people who see you go into the polling place know that you voted at your polling place (and hence overriding the potentially suspect absentee ballot).
Note: If you have ever voted absentee you probably got a set of envelopes and the outermost one had just your name on it, and the innermost one contained no identifying information. The outer envelope allows the vote counters to discard your absenteee ballot if your absentee ballot is invalidated, either because you voted at your polling place or for some other reason, the inner envelope without identifying information allows for an anonymous absentee ballot because it is placed in a ballot box with other ballots and mixed before counting. This is why absentee ballots are always counted after regular votes are counted.
Re:Paper ballots (Score:2, Insightful)
I really don't mean to cause offense -- I know a lot of intelligent Americans -- but the fact that the US may be better off being a representative republic is most likely less due to the fact that a direct democracy is flawed but due to the general level of education and understanding of the world simply being too low.
were screwed. (Score:1, Insightful)
no thanks.. if i could i would vote people out of office.. not in.