E-voting to be a 'Train Wreck'? 501
An anonymous reader writes "The Seattle PI has published an AP story about the problems with E-Voting.
Her conclusion is that there will be so many problems with the more than 100,000 paperless voting terminals to be used in the November presidential election that the fiasco will dwarf Florida's hanging chad debacle of 2000."
First vote! (Score:5, Funny)
Politics (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally I would like to see qualified people certifying that the solution is valid and actually has the power and willingness to throw out the solution.
This could also be achieved by, instead of hiring someone to build it, make it an open contract and let the companies compete to win the contract.
They have also talked about a paper-trail but personally I would prefer to see a PGP trail, that shows conclusively it was sent from X machine and not created in the database.
Agreed (Score:2, Insightful)
I say go back to good ol paper based methods. And if there is a dispute, keep the supreme court and congressmans' underlings away from the recount area.
Re:Politics (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep, as I understand it, this was the fumble with our proposed system (Ireland) and it wasn't the engineers that were at fault. It was the same thing that is always at fault. Non technicaly educated / uncapable people want to dictate the engineering of something they cannot conceive. When it finally dawns on them, it is too late. The system is ready and the "requirements" have changed.
I imagine a whole new Software Engineering model is needed for E-voting. - The same model as before, only with a million extra iterations of "Are you sure about this? The system will not provide this. We need this.."
non technical people? (Score:3, Insightful)
Big fat hairy lie. A complete falsehood, a fabrication. Technical people foisted this abomination on us. Bad people
Re:non technical people? (Score:4, Interesting)
Here in California... the Democrat party and the ACLU FOISTED this up our collective asses. There was not a single Republican in charge of even the smallest dog pound out here when not 5 minutes after the 2000 vote, every Democrat went screaming into the streets - "We must have e-voting or else the poor minorities will get disenfranchised!"
and thus it happened - and they bought Diebold.
It is NOT a Republican conspiracy - as much as some would like to believe it.
and don't even get me on how useless your vote is in California. [thedesertsun.com]
Re:non technical people? (Score:4, Interesting)
The real world hates such classifications, of any type, you can find crooked people anywhere, and everywhere. What is important to remember is that e-voting is a chain of people, who must all perform honestly, and verifiably, for a trustable result. Any crooked people in the process throws the whole verifiably/trustworthiness aspect out of the window. That means we must have more stringent control and verification procedures than for say, money-printing(the mint) or Narcotics manufacturing(pharmaceutical companies, the high-security types, like Morphine Sulfate). Right now we don't have that, e-voting is done by a single company because we barely have a proper security model of the threats facing them, and very few suppliers. Perhaps one way to get trustable e-voting would be to have TWO machines record each vote, through two different computer systems, linked through two mediums(one fiberoptic, the other wireless to off-premise, for example) to two different tallying centers. Two seperate, double-blind tallies should be used, using the double blind method whenever possible. If anything, the only problem is that unlike paper vote, with its paper trail and such, where attempted fraud is perceived as likely, unless proven otherwise, we have an e-voting method, which is intended to save money, where as long as we can run a few cursory checks, and save that money, we are content. E-voting should also consider prime facie each vote to be a fraud, and include tally marks from each person from the two booth election officers who noted that the vote was valid, and where it was taken, down to all the relay points where the vote was passed. TCP/IP(even with IPSEC) is a bad choice for the network, as it is meant to route around failures, whereas an e-voting network should consider a network failure a breach of trust with a remote site, requiring to reestablish trust explicitely.
We would be better advised not to try to do e-voting on the cheap, e-voting can work, provided we treat each vote like an anonymized, but valid command to launch a nuclear warhead. It has practically the same importance that we validate where it's from, and who it is, except we don't know who it is, that information is only allowed to the voter who voted himself.
The problem with PGP/GPG voting (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Politics (Score:5, Insightful)
How are you going to ensure that the PGP key on the machine isn't known to the central office, who is probably who created it in the first place?
I have a hard time imagining who has access to the database but not the PGP keys the machines have.
Remember, there are three basic threats here: Tampering by voters at the machines, tampering of the data en route to the final tally, and tampering of the data by the final counters, which always includes the manufacturors of the system. The third is the most dangerous, as it is the hardest to prevent and too many politicians have mere blind trust in the accountants. Your system seems to stop the second... or at least make a good try at it... but neither the first nor the third.
Moral of the story: Securing E-voting is hard work; if your solution is one sentence long, it probably isn't a solution.
Re:Politics (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember, there are three basic threats here: Tampering by voters at the machines, tampering of the data en route to the final tally, and tampering of the data by the final counters
You forgot an important fourth threat (which may be the same as your second threat, but is worth pointing out separately): Alteration of the data by the machines.
This is why the paper trail is so crucial: We need something that the voter can look at to make sure that his/her vote was cast the way he/she wanted it.
And, really, given paper ballots, we *know* how to secure the transport and counting processes. You put the ballots in locked steel boxes, with representatives of all the major parties standing around watching whenever the boxes are transported or opened. Whenever the boxes are stored, they're guarded, again with oversight by the major political parties. Done!
Paper ballots too slow to count? Count 'em with machines! OCRable fonts can be used and/or a machine-readable barcode. If someone thinks the machines aren't counting right, let 'em recount by hand.
Moral of the story: Securing E-voting is hard work
Depending on your definitions, secure e-voting is either really easy or impossibly hard, because purely electronic voting is just a bad idea. Pretty, easy-to-use touchscreen voting machines make sense, high-speed automated vote counters make sense. But paper, human-readable paper, is what we know how to secure and manage, and what the voters will trust.
What is with this mechanized/electronic voting? (Score:5, Insightful)
You get a slip of paper with the candidates for your riding listed in alphabetical order. You write an X in pencil in the circle next to your chosen candidate's name. You fold the paper and slip it into the ballot box. Done. Never have had any issues with this system.
Is this somehow too complex for the US to use? I don't see the reason behind the technological fetish and all the issues it causes there.
modeling complexity (Score:3, Insightful)
Canada has 1/10th the number of people as the USA. Not only is the scale of votes greater, but consequently the complexity of relationships among the people, therefore the political groupings and representations. As well as the laws in proposition ballots. Part of the American complexity is the difference in ballot styles and subjects in different jurisdictions, like different states, as well as the deeper hierarchy for intergovernance.
Re:modeling complexity (Score:3, Informative)
Re:modeling complexity (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What is with this mechanized/electronic voting? (Score:4, Interesting)
1) Accuracy. I secure evoting system should be 100% accurate. Unless you happen to have more than 2^32-1 voters in your district all voting for the same person. Now look at Canada. Count the votes 5 times. Do you think you'll get one result, or five? I'm betting on the five. Humans make mistakes. Granted, they will probably be close, but there have been elections in the US (not presidential, but the point stands) decided by literally 12 votes in a large populated area. A couple states in the US in 2000 were, IIRC, decided by under 100 votes.
2) Along with that idea: judgement calls. Maybe the person made a stray mark and didn't notice; was it intended as a vote? You have to decide. With electronic voting, the system says "ok, here's who you voted for" and you can rest assured that the machine recorded it correctly. (We're talking a good system here, not a Diebold system.)
3) Speed. We're an impatient country. If we can be told the vote totals right after elections close, we're happier.
Re:What is with this mechanized/electronic voting? (Score:3, Insightful)
What, a few hours is too long to wait? Impatience is not a virtue; elections are one case where you want to do things right the first time, even if it takes a little longer.
Hey, why not have the vote totals before the election! That would save everybody the trouble of taking time to vote!
Re:What is with this mechanized/electronic voting? (Score:3, Insightful)
It is not realistic to expect to achieve 100% accuracy when counting millions of votes, regardless of the method used. Random factors will *always* decrease the accuracy, even with 'e-voting.'
For example, some fraction of the machines will fail on election day due to hardware failure, power failure, software failure, operator error, or something else. Some percentage of the ballots will be incorrectly entered into the machines due to operat
Re:What is with this mechanized/electronic voting? (Score:3, Insightful)
In the recent Canadian election, vote counts started appearing almost immediately after the close of polls on the east coast. With the exception of a few extremely close rates, the winner in each district was decided within an hour. How impatient do you want to be?
Now look at Canada. Count the votes 5 times. Do you think you'll get one result, or five? I'm betting on the five.
On the other
Re:What is with this mechanized/electronic voting? (Score:3, Insightful)
Except that you have a degree of uncertainty with any measurement system; at least with paper ballots you have an opportunity to recount.
Outside of fraud, I think that you can rest assured that the vote would be recorded correctly, especially if the code was audited by professors and other
Re:What is with this mechanized/electronic voting? (Score:3, Interesting)
Again, do five recounts. Are you gonna have one result, or five?
As i said in another response: "I still think being able to say 'So-and-so got *exactly* 8,192 votes' is much better than 'So-and-so got 8,200 votes with a 95% confidance interval with a radius of 10', even if the next runner up is obviously behind."
Judgement: again, the legislation is well developed. Do some reading on the Canadian
"Is this somehow too complex for the US to use?" (Score:2)
Paper trails tend to do that.
Re:What is with this mechanized/electronic voting? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What is with this mechanized/electronic voting? (Score:3, Insightful)
Ah yes, but then this creates a self administered stupidity bar.
If you are too stupid to put an X in a black bordered circle, then maybe you should not be voting?
I STILL think that there should be some sort of additional requirement to vote. Something which tests knowledge of issues would be good, so that not just charisma and sound bites are important....
Re:What is with this mechanized/electronic voting? (Score:3, Interesting)
The one good argument for electronic voting is simply that it makes it easier for people who have real physical difficulty filling out other ballots. Apparently the electronic voting machines have been quite successful in this regard.
Overall, though, I agree with you. Especially sinc
poor balloting (Score:3, Insightful)
consent of the governed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What is with this mechanized/electronic voting? (Score:2)
Robert Heinlein tests another approach in Starship Troopers (the book not the movie), where military service is a prerequisite for attaining citizenship--and the right to vote and run for office. I guess the idea is that the only people who can make good decisions about running a country are the ones who have put their lives on the line in its defense (i.e., they have a personal investment
Re:What is with this mechanized/electronic voting? (Score:5, Informative)
> where military service is a prerequisite for attaining citizenship--and the right to vote and
> run for office. I guess the idea is that the only people who can make good decisions about running a country are the ones who have put
> their lives on the line in its defense (i.e., they have a personal investment in its success).
Wrong. In several places.
What is it about Starship Troopers? Nobody seems to be able to read what Heinlein actually wrote in that book. I'm not sure I agree with it all myself, but at least read what the man wrote.
You did *not* have *military* service to vote. You simply had to have served. This could turn out to be military service, as it did for most of the characters we see in the book. But it could also turn out to be digging ditches somewhere. Heinlein specifically says that most of those who sign up for service to get the vote do *not* wind up in the military.
Heinlein also gives his idea of *why* this would work right there in black and white. Put simply, people who have signed up for service have demonstrated their ability to put the needs of the community before their own needs.
I should also add that the system is *not* exclusive. Anyone, *anyone* can sign up. They will find *something* for you to do, and give you the vote. No one is turned away. The only way to not get the vote is by quitting or by malfeasance (if you're court-martialled out of the military, for example).
Chris Mattern
Re:What is with this mechanized/electronic voting? (Score:5, Insightful)
And then whoever is in power will change the requirements so that only his supporters are allowed to vote. For example, you are only allowed to vote if you are a landowner, or are only allowed to vote if your income is over a certain limit, or are only allowed to vote if you have been educated to a certain level, or are only allowed to vote if you have proven to be "patriotic" - and of course, if you have criticized your countrys current administration, then you are criticizing your country, and are thus "unpatriotic" and not allowed to vote. And of course, if your views of "issues" differ from the official truth, then you must be ignorant and thus are not allowed to vote.
Besides, why should the stupid people have no say in the laws they must obey ? Does inability to put an X in a black bordered circle mean that you shouldn't be a citizen but just a subject ? Is a high degree of intelligence some kind of requirement to being considered a human being, fully deserving a right to have a say in matters that concern you ? If you are stupid, should someone else be able to dictate what you can and cannot and must and must not do, and how the taxes you've paid are spent, without you having any way to retaliate against them, now matter how unjust you think they are ? In short, should the stupid people be nothing more than labor and military reserve for those above them, with no say in what is being done to them ?
And if you answered yes, then think again. Because, I assure you, once you've pushed those you consider stupid out of the seat of power, someone else will push you out. And why not ? After all, the odds are that there are smarter people than you, so obviously removing you from those who can vote can only improve the end result, no ? Well, maybe not for you... But, whoever will ultimately take the reins, will certainly benefit. And remember, it was you who wanted those you considered inferior to have no power; you just didn't quite realize that you, too, are considered inferior by some.
Before you start removing rights from people, please take a moment to ask yourself: What if it was me who this was being done ? And if you don't like the answer, then don't remove the right; because sooner or later, you will be the one being disempowered.
Re:What is with this mechanized/electronic voting? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What is with this mechanized/electronic voting? (Score:5, Insightful)
On the contrary, I think it already has. Thousands of Black voters were illegally and intentionally disenfranchised in Florida in the 2000 presidential election, and the illegality of felons voting was the means by which they carried it out and made it look like an accident. As a result, the candidate who would have won, lost. I submit that any adverse impact of allowing felons to vote would be dwarfed by the damage caused by the illegal purging of legal voters from the registration rolls on the grounds of preventing felon-voting.
Maybe you should ask black america (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What is with this mechanized/electronic voting? (Score:2, Insightful)
Please explain how and why.
KFG
Re:What is with this mechanized/electronic voting? (Score:3, Insightful)
Except it is, because ATMs have paper trails.
- A.P.
Re:What is with this mechanized/electronic voting? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What is with this mechanized/electronic voting? (Score:5, Informative)
Every time this issue comes up, someone points out that the Canadian system works perfectly (Elections Canada runs elections in many foreign countries which lack the infrastructure). Then someone claims that it won't scale. Ridiculous.
There are a bunch of polling stations for each riding. After the polls close, people at each polling station manually count the collected paper slips. These small numbers are then sent to a central point, summed, and the winner is determined.
It's distributed. If a riding had ten times as many voters, it would have ten times as many polling stations, and ten times as many people counting votes. It scales perfectly. As long as X% of the population is involved in ballot counting, the size of the population is irrelevant.
Re:What is with this mechanized/electronic voting? (Score:2)
Re:What is with this mechanized/electronic voting? (Score:4, Informative)
I just worked for the federal elections last week as a poll clerk. (I'm the one who crosses-out the name of the voters as they came to vote).
Each poll had about 500 electors - more than half of those showed-up in my poll.
The system scales pretty well, and the paper-trail is there: we're having an automatic recount [elections.ca], as there was only 35 votes [elections.ca] difference out of 45,566 (less than 0.1%). No diddling about hanging chads, each one of every actual hand-marked ballot is physically looked-up by a human-being and counted.
Indian vote hardly comparable (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Americans can't spell "X" (Score:2)
No, the problem is a ballot that is confusing and easy to screw up. [ton.tut.fi] And once you do punch the wrong candidate, election officials would not allow you to caast it correctly. Furthermore, Hanging chads [umich.edu] were a problem because some election machines didn't totally punch out the paper -- leaving a small scrap hanging on 1, 2 or 3 sides, or sometimes even just an indentation! Which of the a
Re:What is with this mechanized/electronic voting? (Score:3)
Of course it happens. They don't get counted. Spoiled ballots are, by definition, invalid.
Voters have a simple opportunity to make their choice clear. The counters should not have to inte
Re:What is with this mechanized/electronic voting? (Score:3, Insightful)
So the w
Re:Oh shut up. (Score:3, Informative)
Each person is handed a ballot. They go to their booth, where the official election literature is posted, along with an ink pen. Fill in the bubble by your candidate's name. Couldn't be simpler.
Next, you take your completed ballot up to the machine. You place it face down in the scanner and it sucks it in. If the ballot is valid, the light turns green, your ballot is dropped in the ballot box and y
Confidence (Score:3, Insightful)
Unvoting?? (Score:2)
Votes were not changed. The past was changed.
Once the vote is altered there is no record of the vote being altered. It is as if the vote always had been altered.
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
If all else fails we can just blame Emanual Goldstien
confidence guy (Score:2)
A 'Train Wreck' you say? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not the media, that's for damn sure...
They'll be pressed to find a more enthralling debacle than what happend with Bush and Floridia last election - maybe this foreseen disaster will give them just what they need to keep everyone hooked.
Re:A 'Train Wreck' you say? (Score:2)
MoveOn.org also pushing for paper trail... (Score:5, Insightful)
They have a petition to sign... it would be nice to see a corresponding Republican site do their own petition, since I doubt any Republicans would sign a petition on MoveOn.org but at the same time I imagine there are plenty of Republicans who also see the dangers of closed-source, paperless e-voting.
There are a lot of conflict of interest issues here (as mentioned in the article) but I think these would actually be lessened if there were grassroots pressure from both major parties to use more secure and auditable voting systems.
More Problems (Score:5, Informative)
"Somehow, some way, people have always found a way to get into computer systems," said Kim Parrish, a 46-year-old insurance company worker who voted in Brooklyn Park, Md.
In California, new security measures range from random tests of touch-screen machines by independent experts to a recommendation that poll workers prevent voters from carrying cell phones or other wireless devices into booths.
The problems reported in California, though, were more basic.
When some San Diego poll workers plugged in machines, a screen for the Windows operating system and not the voting program appeared. Officials spent more than two hours getting all machines operating.
The problem, which apparently was triggered by a power fluctuation, affected between 10 percent and 15 percent of the county's 1,611 precincts, said Mike Workman, a San Diego County spokesman.
Officials said they were unsure how many voters had to leave for work before the problem was fixed.
In Maryland and Georgia, voters were able to use paper ballots on the spot while the machine encoders were fixed. Early voters in an Atlanta precinct also were given paper ballots because of machine malfunctions.
Re:More Problems (Score:3, Insightful)
For example, how many of those people were middle-class workers who really had only two hours to go vote and get back to work, and how many of those people were white-collar workers who could pretty much take the whole day off and do the work later?
This is potentially a huge side-effect of technology in voting. 15% downtime for voting machines really can effectively disenfranchise people, but in very subtl
there's already been a successful precedent... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:there's already been a successful precedent... (Score:2)
Re:there's already been a successful precedent... (Score:3, Interesting)
Talk to just about any Indian, and they'll confess that their government is corrupt.
If more Americans didn't have a knee-jerk reaction to the mere suggestion that some of their elected officials were corrupt; if such suggestions weren't met by derisive comments about "conspiracy theories", I would be inclined to agree.
But as long as the naive and/or the corrupt design a system, you can't expect it
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
You have to trust the people working at the election districts who handle the ballots. I don't. Do you?
No you don't. By law any citizen can watch the count - including you - if they so wish. And in any swing district you can be sure there is both a republican party official and democrat party official there to make sure it is "fair" (read: they contest every vote they can).
Now, how are you as an independant citizen going to audit the voting machines? The only relevant way would be independant auditing of the source code. However, since it is closed source this is not possible, thus you get some machine counting god knows what. And most of the time you don't even have a paper trail.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:I disagree with the entire premise (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I disagree with the entire premise (Score:2)
Yet another Bev Harris story (Score:2, Interesting)
After all, this article is more about her running around with a tinfoil hat than it is about problems with voting software.
Re:Yet another Bev Harris story (Score:2)
Where *are* the journalists? (Score:3, Insightful)
Link to book site (Score:5, Informative)
The book discussed in the article has its own site, which might as well get its own slashdotting:
http://www.blackboxvoting.com/ [blackboxvoting.com]
There is a free online edition, which is cool. But it would probably be considered a political act to link directly to the PDF's
In case you want to buy the dead-tree edition, the site's "Order Now" link didn't work for me. There's always Amazon [amazon.com] which should also stay up in case the main site goes down.
I'd just like to point out (Score:5, Insightful)
While it's true that the USA has 10 times our population, I still don't understand why so much money, time, and stress is being spent on electronic voting machines. Technology is NOT a solution to every problem, and in many cases it overcomplicates a classic, tried and tested method.
How would you feel if you spent hundreds of dollars on a robot that buttered your toast, only to find that it took more time to fill up the butter reservoir and clean the machine than it did to butter your toast in the first place?
Question for a Canadian... (Score:2)
Re:I'd just like to point out (Score:5, Interesting)
Product development and marketing is designed to make potential customers not think about this. For example, those self-contained iced tea making machines are actually no faster than simply boiling the water in a microwave, brewing the tea, and dumping it over ice, but that doesn't stop millions of people from spending $20 on the machine. Effectively, electronic voting is riding on the tremendous marketing behind technology over the last two decades, and it appears tons of people got hooked and are now being reeled in.
This whole E-Voting thing is bullshit. (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, because we voted by drawing the black line, the ballots could very easily be scanned in and accurately tallied.
Nothing for nothing...this touchscreen stuff is a solution looking for a problem.
Re:This whole E-Voting thing is bullshit. (Score:2)
When you're done making your selection, you take the ballot over to the machine that is similar to a bubblesheet reader, put it in, and it scans it and drops it into a sealed bin. If there's an error it doesn't make it that far, and it spits it back out, if I remember correctly.
They get the precincts' tabulation machines together and get the data off of them, and occasionally spot-check the paper ballots for accuracy, and you
Elections, don't count on it. (Score:4, Interesting)
The "precedent" is already set for suspension of elections. The bombing in Madrid, days before the pro-Iraq-war Anzar government got a swift kick out of office, shows how "Terror Sways Elections."
Nevermind that 90% of the Spanish people opposed Spain's entry into the Iraq war, or that the Nationalists suppressed evidence and blamed the bombing on ETA.
But that "liberal" New York Times bravely parroted the party line that Terror Sways Elections, so when ours are suspended, Cheney can say "Look, it's not just me, it's in the New York Times!"
Regardless of how you feel about the "Black Tuesday" scenario outlined above, the important point is this:
If you're going with the opinion that Terror Sways Elections, you're basically stating that terror is an effective political tool. Is that the precedent you want to set?
Re:Elections, don't count on it. (Score:3, Interesting)
What's disturbing is those in power who would suspend elections in the event of a terror attack, as though that's an appropriate response.
Voting official seeks process for canceling Election Day over terrorism [nctimes.com]
Simple: Humans take a while to get things right! (Score:5, Interesting)
Why? Humans are slow, and they don't think ahead. It takes a long time for people to figure out what's wrong with their methods, and they're slow to adopt changes to correct their problems.
Taking this into consideration, why should we be surprised that electronic voting doesn't work yet? OF COURSE they're going to screw it up! Even Diebold and their unethical behavior is par for the course.
You know how a lot of different kinds of software don't become "feature complete" until they've been around for about 10 years? I once read that in an article linked by slashdot (so it must be true *g*). Voting software isn't going to be any exception.
But feature completeness is only one part of the problem, especially when you have a system that (nearly) EVERYONE wants to hack. Computer security has been a problem for a very long time, and it doesn't look like it's going to get solved any time soon. We probably need another 50 years before things get figured out. Buffer overflows are only the focus of THIS decade -- once that's dealt with, who knows what's next.
So don't sweat it. The simple fact is that we'll be lucky if our grand children (if we're in our 20's) see reasonably good electronic voting machines. That's just the result of the way technology moves when humans are involved.
Re:Simple: Humans take a while to get things right (Score:2)
Technology is not the issue here (Score:2, Interesting)
Incumbants should be at greater risk for error (Score:2)
It falls to the party in power when this is all put together to take the greatest risk. If they are sure this is going to work they should be inviting criticism and showing how they are addressing problems.
I may be wrong but I don't see much time devoted to reassurances with pro-active action.
Someone should ask Bush now if he will accept a 'tainted' victory should one occur. Get a clear point at which recount
Well India managed to do it (Score:2)
Where's the right? (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't anyone on the right concerned about e-voting and what it could mean for election integrity? Is it just that the left is more concious of bad elections because of the 2000 elections? Or are conservatives just automatically pro-corporate? I would think that anyone who calls themselves 'conservative' would be against meddling with the voting process without good reason...
Re:Where's the right? (Score:3, Interesting)
They know that out-sourcing and the redistribution of poverty, not to mention the federalization of protection, not for me and thee, but for some 'influential' people, is a sell; so hard that they aren't even trying.
That would be like trying to rally people around a battle cry of "Rape Nuns!"
Nobody's going to go for it any more than they went for the almost total absence of safety features in the Corvair.
Re:Where's the right? (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps I don't count for much in the grand scheme of things, but I'm of the breed of conservative that believes the word implies smaller government. My philosophy is that the government should get the hell out of my life as much as possible, and let me live it for myself. So, I disagree with Medicare, Social security, etc -- but am a very strong advocate of individual rights and the inalienability of said rights. That includes the right to my (and *every* citizen's) say in the running of the c
Re:Where's the right? (Score:3, Interesting)
I am adding my voice from the "Right" that feels that e-voting machines as currently designed (by Diebold and the few others) are a fraud of collasial proportions.
I also think that Democrats, as well as Republicans, are just as guilty of trying to cause this train wreck, and any voter fraud will be an equal opportunity exersize done by both parties.
While I don't think we can resonably expect to reduce the size of the American government to pre-Hoover Administration levels, it wo
Re:Where's the right? (Score:5, Informative)
Here [americanether.net] is his contact info especially if he is your congressman and you want to adjust his attitude.
Here [house.gov] is his statement on why he opposes the bill and is apparently going to be able to kill it. Its signed by Mitch McConnell, another Republican I wouldn't trust democracy to, but there are two Dem's as well Christopher Dodd and Steny Hoyer.
It contains some disturbing statements, this one in particular:
"Most importantly, the proposals requiring a voter-verified paper record would force voters with disabilities to go back to using ballots that provide neither privacy nor independence, thereby subverting a hallmark of the HAVA legislation. There must be voter confidence in the accuracy of an electronic tally. However, the current proposals would do nothing to ensure greater trust in vote tabulations"
Not sure how they can claim a recountable paper trail, "would do nothing to ensure greater trust in vote tabulations".
They also want the same agency that is apparently responsible for the current mess to have plenty of time to create a new one so they want no audit trail in time for this election:
"Questions regarding voting systems security, as well as many others, need to be examined by the entity responsible for doing so under existing law, the Election Assistance Commission, before Congress begins imposing new requirements, just months before the 2004 presidential and congressional elections, that have not been fully considered. The security of voting technology is a non-partisan issue. We encourage you to allow HAVA to be implemented as enacted and provide those who are charged with ensuring the security of voting systems the time and flexibility needed to get the job done effectively. "
Re:Where's the right? (Score:3, Informative)
There are already immense voting problems (Score:3, Interesting)
Say you have some number of feeders into 1 machine that reads punchcard ballots. The feeders end up feeding faster than the machine can handle so after some period of time, the machine gets jammed. Voter personnel then remove all ballots that were in the machine to be counted and some that "might have been counted" (since they don't know exactly on which ballot the machine jammed), and then they insert a control card which essentially tells the machine "don't count ballots who's numbers you've already seen, etc.."
And then they start feeding the ballots again.
Now imagine that this happens every 15 minutes on average. The amount of error that accumulates is phenominal.
They continue this process until they get some number of runs that agree, and then publish the result.
A friend of mine who has done extensive research into this at grad school, once requested the datapoints for all ballots tabulated in prior elections.
In a sample of 150,000 ballots, she received around 760,000 data points, which equates to 5 runs of the ballots though the machine....but where did the extra 10,000 come from?
I believe in her research she determined that there already was a 5-10% error in current voting tabulations.
Fraud (Score:5, Interesting)
There's going to be voter fraud BIG TIME this election, and paperless voting will only help that happening.
I seriously think we're going to end up with precincts that people not eligible to vote voting anyway, people voting multiple times, people buying votes, polls being left open HOURS longer than they were supposed to (judge in the pocket, get him to rule for you... Hey! Throw an election your way!)
OK, that's not much of a stretch. Those things happened in Florida, Missouri and Wisconsin last national election.
How many convictions did you hear about because those things? None.
This is gonna get a lot worse before it gets better, and there had better be some serious jail time for the people who are doing this stuff or it'll be impossible to hold an election.
I seriously think we're going to hear about precincts that end up with more votes than actual registered voters.
Vote fraud... (Score:2)
What we need... (Score:2)
Hey, Arnold!
Re:What we need... (Score:2)
Detection is an assumed premise (Score:2)
Also, fiasco to whom? We know the either Bush or Kerry will win, and it doesn't matter which one. The election of 2004 will be about ballot access for 2008 -- which minor parties will get at least 5%, and which minor parties, if any, will get a large enough percentage to create a psychological mandate to snowball to displace one of the two major parties in the future. Remember, Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican, was a minor party candidate.
Regar
"Take away oversight - someone will steal." (Score:3, Insightful)
"You take away oversight - someone will steal. I guarantee it."
That makes sense to me. It seems to me that it ought to make sense to anyone, at any wavelength on the political spectrum.
Predicted outcome (Score:2)
Yeah, I'm a troll. Use your mod points to punish me accordingly.
I'm happy I moved to Canada (Score:4, Insightful)
I feel very fortunate not to be living in the US anymore. I didn't feel safe. For example, I've received some threatening email from people who didn't like what I wrote on this page [goingware.com].
You can immigrate to Canada too. The most permanent way is to marry a Canadian citizen or permanent resident.
You can live and work here for a year if you get a TN-1 visa, which you can qualify for if you have a bachelor's degree and a written job offer, for a job that's on a certain list specified by the NAFTA agreement. Any qualifying citizen of the U.S., Mexico or Canada can work in either of the other NAFTA countries with a TN-1. The procedure for getting a TN-1 is very simple and inexpensive, and can be renewed each year if you continue to qualify.
During the dot-com boom, Canada established a special visa just for computer programmers. There was a shortage here, because all the Canadian programmers were going to the US to work. You'll need to find a Canadian company to hire you as a programmer and sponsor you for the visa.
Programmers don't make as much in Canada as they do in the US, but then the cost of living is much lower here (in Nova Scotia anyway) than anywhere I've lived in the US.
Best of both worlds (Score:5, Informative)
Pros:
Quick ballots counts. Since every vote is in a machine readable format every vote is electronically scanned and tallied.
Paper trail of every ballot. Since every ballot starts out on paper ...
Lower cost per seat than proposed evoting systems. One or two bubble sheet scanners would be enough to handle even the largest voting sites and for a fraction of the cost of proposed touch screen systems. Assuming that bubble sheet systems are of equal price as touch screen systems (IMO a scanner/counter might cost less than a touch screen system) compare buying two scanner/counters or 20 to 30 touch screen systems. The bubble sheet readers win that one hands down.
Easier to setup. Bubble sheet scanners can be previously setup so that on site workers only have to plug it in to an electrical outlet and go. Add in a cell phone connection for remote monitoring. I guess you could even build in a DC power unit with a battery. IMO overkill but in case AC power is not readily available. The setup per unit should be equal or a bit less than touch screen systems, but since many more touch screen systems need to be set up per site the bubble sheet wins. It's a minor win over touch screen systems but is compounded since much fewer bubble sheet scanners need setting up.
More durable than proposed evoting systems. Touch screens can get ruined very quickly. Also the average user tends to be rougher on touch screens when they are starting to fail. Harder screen faces are more durable but can crack from abuse, like poor shipping or dropped during setup.
Easier to train poll workers than proposed evoting systems. The only thing the poll worker needs to know is how to tell the voter how to insert to ballot. No navigation questions or use issues. Most everyone here has had the misfortune of working with the most clueless user that would easily get confused on the simplest touch screen system. Considering that most poll workers are of an age where computer use is not second nature and this problem is compound.
Cons:
It's electronic and is bound to fail sometime. While IMO bubble sheet readers are more durable than mechanical voting booths the scanner/counter is bound to fail. The ballots would need to be rescanned. A serial number (tied to the ballot and not the voter) could check for incomplete electronic counts.
No instant native language support. The touch screen wins here. The bubble sheet method requires a poll worker to help the voter choose a ballot from ballots in different languages. IMO a minor issue.
Think of it like a paperback book. It's a format that's been around for hundreds of years because it's the best thing we have. While electronic books have been around for a few years and have some advantages, paperbooks are still better and, in turn, will still rule until something better comes along. As Chris Rock would say: "Just because you can do something doesn't make it a good idea." Just because we can vote on touch screens w/o a paper trail doesn't make it a good idea.
I'll go back to my cave now. =)
code to voting machines, how hard? (Score:5, Funny)
Screwed either way (Score:3, Insightful)
There is no voting technology that can be used that would prevent such accusations if he won.
Paper Voting is a Racket (Score:3, Interesting)
Both political parties have been playing games with the vote, there's been an understood rule that some cheating was expected ever since the end of a very bloody civil war.
Today, any decent political machine will put its partisans into the counting of paper votes. You don't even have to tell your partisans to cheat to swing an election. You can just tell them how to do it fairly and evenly and there will be enough with a desire to win that they will figure out how to cheat to manufacture ballots.
For example you could say, be careful holding the vote this way or your thumb might cause a chad to get knocked out, disqualifying the vote. But, the election workers, partisan, would start doing exactly that if they were counting a vote that went against their man.
Or, you might have accidently ripped ballots, a stray pen market that accidently blots a second vote, invalidating the ballot (ala the chad), a different mark, an extra hole, a rip, a tear, a piece of dirt. In close elections, a staf that counts 100,000 ballots and invalidates 1% of them just bought you 1000 votes.
"Letting the people count the votes" is really American slang for "let my partisans have a whack at them." It sounds good on the surface, but in reality it just means a brilliant machine is just working the votes, touching the paper, working it, changing it. That's not to say that Democrats are the only party that cheats just because things didn't work out for them in 2000. After all, Republicans used to do there sneaky things like have voters have to take tests to vote. To pass, white people know that 2+2=4 to white people, and black people to produce PI to 100 digits. Every now and then you get elections where it turned out that dead people voted.
The issue with electronic voting, thus, is not the "real" argument of security or ownership of the voting company, it's that, Democrats have for some reason has decided that the loss of their ability to work the paper ballot is not worth the gain. With a Republican owning the voting machine company, this is understandable. There's things he could do to swing a few votes his way, nothing really illegal, either. For example, he might say that screens with one font might wind up with 0.1% more republican votes, and that's enough to swing a close election.
Re:GIGO (Score:5, Informative)
RTFA. (Score:5, Insightful)
Again, "While security is an important issue
Security is NOT "an important issue".
Security is THE issue.
If it is not secure, then we should go back to paper ballots which are trackable.
Re:GIGO (Score:2)
a baseless comment (Score:2)
Re:Does she even have an actual argument? (Score:3, Insightful)
Which is sort of why it's vital that outsiders can keep an eye on them. Which is the point. E-voting is not the problem, no paper trail is the problem and it would be regardless of the electronics.
nowadays massive fraud is relatively rare
And why do you think that is? Because modern people are just naturally upstanding citizens?
TWW
Re:No trail, no knowledge (Score:3, Interesting)
1) Record your check-in time in the registrar's rolls as you sign your name. Check your watch and confirm the time you wrote matches your watch.
2) Take your sample ballot and a pen with you as you enter the "booth"
3) RECORD THE MACHINE ID AND THE TIME on your sample ballot. Hopefully, the current date/time is displayed prominently on your terminal - enter TERMINAL AND WATCH TIMES. If Machine ID is not visible, step out of