Company to Pay for Election Problems 135
technoid_ writes to tell us the Indiana Star reports that Election Systems & Software has agreed to pay the Indiana State Government $245,000 in addition to extra hand-on and technical support in response to problems during the May primary. From the article: "The company, which has faced similar complaints in other states, reached a settlement with Arkansas officials Monday. In that deal, ES&S pledged services, training materials and technical support but offered no payment. Jackson, the Johnson County clerk, said the company "has done a 360" since the primary. ES&S officials have been more assertive in preparing for the fall elections. The instructional materials, she said, also will help."
Headline too long? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Headline too long? (Score:4, Funny)
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But if I had mod points, I would also give you some +insightful/informative mods to apply to karma here, 'cause it's not only funny, but true!
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Slackers (Score:5, Funny)
Translation: We've done nothing but play Xbox since the primary.
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° doesn't seem to work here
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If this statement is any indication of his communications skills I can't wait to see his report on the voting machines!
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I wish they'd done a 540. I've always wanted to see a company do a 540.
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If so, AM540 WFLA [540wfla.com] is the one for you.
If not, well, I tried.
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(not a skaterpunk, but still impressed!)
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9lDh8Bckl8&mode=
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Yeah, but this is an entire company. Baby steps, dude. Baby steps.
Re:Just a 360, in a continious loop - OKA - spinni (Score:2)
CIA, mayhem, crisis, horrible!
Inflation,
Military threat,
The flaming debris,
Fatal heart attack,
Stress injuries,
Prison disaster,
Economic collapse,
Dangerous radiation.
A tide of violence and human misery,
A liar and an unremorseful killer,
Communist international smuggling pipeline,
Starving victims and how they died.
Chemical weapons,
Carpet bombing deaths,
Top FBI killed and injured children,
Police conspiracy, negative attacks,
Discipline, sex, and drinking binges.
Dying of a heart attack,
D
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So only $245,000? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:So only $245,000? (Score:4, Informative)
Not as red as you might think. But we do observe Daylight Saving Time (finally).
This is the first time there's been a Republican Indiana governor in a very long time.
Lest anyone think this is a one-time thing for ES&S or Diebold, do some research. Googling ES&S will bring back enough hits it reminds me of a practice on the farm used to happen: back up the manure spreader and fill it up. Unfortunately, the only way to get it from one farm to the other was on the streets. Flashing lights and red triangles in a rural area still wasn't good enough for people and decided to show everyone their horn worked. For a long period of time. Oops! I hit the wrong lever. "Sorry, sir. I didn't mean for a layer of sh%t to cover your windshield and related areas. No, I didn't do it because it was a nice day out and your windows were open."
One of the things ES&S is notorious for is sneaking untested software onto the machines and by the time TPTB (The Powers That Be), it's too late to change the election. ES&S did that in '02 (for certain and practically any election which has been checked after the fact) and someone blew the whistle. She was fired on the spot for disclosing the company's trade secrets. She was elected by the city or state by lunch the next day as a watchdog.
Disclosing The Fact Untested Software Was Installed Without Telling Anyone" is a trade secret (not to mention illegal)?
There have been any number of discussions in Congress regarding methods of elections: OSS vs. proprietary, etc. The argument is OSS might make it possible for someone to study it and find exploits which could be used to maninulate election results.
What I have done through research is whilst the the penalties are paid to the upper echelons, what machines are used is at the precinct level. That means just under two years to find a way to make one precinct or one or two voting booths in a particular precinct work, then branch out.
We won't talk about the BMV. I was lucky to have received a new registration sticker after 7-10 days. Everyone else has been told 2-3 weeks minimum
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Re:So only $245,000? (Score:4, Funny)
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That's because you looked it up in your gut. Next time, try looking it up in a book, preferably one written by scientists. There is absolutely no doubt humans have caused a greenhouse effect that in turn will cause global warming. Who you going to listen to, science or Bush? Oh wait, I alreay know your a
Re:So only $245,000? (Score:5, Funny)
a "360", eh? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:a "360", eh? (Score:4, Funny)
dang. you beat me to it :)
they agree... (Score:4, Funny)
So, in his opinion, they haven't made any change at all. They should be fined, then.
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Didn't Cheney just make a speech last week claiming that the American electorate sent the WRONG message to the "terrorists" by NOT electing Lieberman??
So now we're supposed to ONLY elect Jewish guys to office? I'm sure that will go over peachy with all those Islamic fundamentalists....(Are we missing something here, or are all these clowns criminal AND nuts????)
Translation (Score:1)
"Ok, you're right, we messed up. We shouild have been on sight to make sure that everything goes according to plan, and so that those nice spiffy 'errors' aren't seen by the staff to raise integrity questions later. How silly of us."
Company did a 360 (Score:1, Redundant)
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No, it means they were about as successful as the Xbox 360.
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It's the... (Score:1)
More assertive? (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, they need to make sure the 'right' candidate is elected.
There is a court case in PA which is trying to force the 57 counties which currently use electronic voting machines to use paper ballots [constitutioncenter.org].
Obviously this will never happen because having paper ballots would mean having a physical record of a vote if there was a need to do a recount. And we wouldn't want to have a physical trail of votes, now would we?
Paper Records. (Score:4, Interesting)
At the risk of nagging people, this info doesn't belong just on
Some choice morsels of info can be found Here [votersunite.org], here [votetrustusa.org], here [votepa.us], here [washburnresearch.org] and here [truevotemd.org]
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Really incorrect. There's a considerable amount of progressives in the ownership as well - in fact, in Omaha (which is a pretty balanced city with a slight conservative feel, though we have a Democratic mayor and keep re-electing Ben Nelson for Senate who will almost certainly be re-elected again) some of these folks are very visible supporters of our Democratic candidates.
Actually most of ES&S's problems are due to incompetence, not politics
A 360?! (Score:4, Informative)
What's with the misunderstood metaphors? Here's a helpful chart:
Doing a 180 = taking an opposing position to that previously taken.
Doing a 360 = doing donuts in a parking lot.
Doing a 720 = you're drunk and the room is spinning many, many times.
--Rob
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doing a 90 = taking the first reaction to any situation, be it the best or worst reaction
doing a 270 = taking the last reaction to any situation, be it the best or worst reaction
doing a 540 (thats 360+180;) = taking the opposite position after first taking the same stupid position a second time
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Well, TWICE anyway.
Re:A 360?! (Score:4, Funny)
"The company has done a pi since the primary" has a much better sound to it.
American Pi (Score:2)
Jason Biggs called. He says he wants his joke back.
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Ironically, it was Indiana that proposed (but thankfully never passed) a law redefining pi to be 3.2 back in 1897. http://www.answers.com/topic/indiana-pi-bill [answers.com]. I guess it's no surprise that they're still having some trouble with the concept.
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Ironically, it was Indiana that proposed (but thankfully never passed) a law redefining pi to be 3.2 back in 1897. http://www.answers.com/topic/indiana-pi-bill [answers.com]. I guess it's no surprise that they're still having some trouble with the concept.
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Doing a 360 = doing donuts in a parking lot.
Doing a 720 = you're drunk and the room is spinning many, many times."
Doing a 69 = nothing the judge wants to admit to
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720 (Score:2)
I am suprised that no one replied with this yet.
No, 720 [klov.com] means you are playing a classic video game.
Slam Dunk! (Score:1, Redundant)
By the sound of it, the company is performing a 360 helicopter jam with our voting rights.
Explanation for "doing a 360" (Score:1)
Whew... (Score:1)
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On top of that, it's the greatest buy-one-get-six-million-free special of all time.
Anyone know WHY? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Anyone know WHY? (Score:5, Funny)
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Can't we just run a poll on MySpace? That would be so, like, cool.
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I'm not sure if that should go in the "pro" column or the "con" column.
(OffTopic) Re:Anyone know WHY? (Score:2)
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Seriously, though, there are a couple of motivations.
a) Since we've long ago given up on actually counting ballots by hand, we need some sort of mechanized process to do so. Most current mechanized processes involve a person indicating a choice on a piece of paper (punching a hole, filling an oval, pulling a lever which punches a hole, etc.). As the 2000 elections in Florida showed, there are a great many ways for the act of indicating a choice on a piece of paper to obscure the
Newspaper (Score:4, Informative)
I didn't realize the publisher of the The Indianapolis Star had changed the name of the newspaper.
Misleading Title (Score:4, Funny)
Anybody else read the title Company to Pay for Erection Problems ?
-Those bastards, they're just trying to get free Viagra for top management...
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No, just you.
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The Wrong Guys (Score:2)
So what happened, did the wrong guys win the primary?
Remeber Charles Ponzi (Score:2)
He gave his victims their money back.
A few even got more than they put in. What they didn't realize was that they weren't investing in him, he was investing in them, buying the con-man's most powerful productive asset: trust.
Trust has no place in the election process. Voters may choose to trust candidates. But the mechanisms by which voting takes place must should be trusted. Every part of
Bill of Goods (Score:4, Insightful)
Having ordered more software titles then I can count (with accompanying hardware) for student information tracking, transcripts, test-scoring, etc, it's an all too common occurance for a company to deliver and install the software and leave the ultimate setup and performance up to in-house staff.
It would seem that this system was 1) rushed into production, 2) the victim of mainstaying (the state won't change their process to accomodate the software, they want the software to accommodate the state's past methods), and 3) the company was completely ill-equipped to handle support in cruch-time.
If you ask me the only, solution is open-source voting machines so any company can provide support, documentation is available nationally, and voters can have confidence not only in the process, but also in what's happening "under the hood" as well.
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Rigging can be controlled a lot more easily if the system is open source then it can be in it's
A piece of paper and a crayon? (Score:2)
INDIANAPOLIS Star! (Score:3)
Re:INDIANAPOLIS Star! (Score:4, Funny)
What do you mean, 'replaced'?
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He means that they've "done a complete 360"
wtf mate. (Score:2)
Reliability #1 (Score:5, Insightful)
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Anyway, back when we used to use paper and pencil, it worked great until some crazy kids came up with something they called an
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You're dismissing all that as "nothing new", as if you know what you're talking about. I'm the tech advisor
For accuracy, reliability... (Score:2)
Time to go back to paper (Score:3, Insightful)
-ccm
There Is A Problem With Your Comment. (Score:1)
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The voting machine prints out paper ballot with marks made next to the candidate of choice for each office. This can be easily verified by the voter that the print out matches their vote made on the machine. That paper is the record of the vote, not some jumble of electricity or magnetized plate inside the machine. The machine can also be responsible for input validation (no more overvotes!).
Preliminary totals (the mess of electricty) along with exit polls can give semi-accurate results a few hours
A 360? I'd prefer a 180 (Score:1, Redundant)
=MikeT
Elections (Score:4, Insightful)
There is a better solution than the current methods, in my opinion. Part of the solution is good training. Perhaps when the voter registration and voter cards go out, a mini-DVD could come with it, so people can watch a video of how the voting process works. There would also be written material. Furthermore, the voting machines themselves would talk interactively, with written instructions as well, to make the system as foolproof as possible.
It would work like this: You go into the voting booth. Each candidate or proposition that you vote for would appear one at a time on a display screen. As you vote for each item, it will tell you to confirm that this is the vote you intended to make. At the end of this process, a screen containing all your votes would appear, giving you a final chance to validate everything or go back to fix a mistake. Then, as you accept the vote, a printed paper ballot would be printed with the appropriate vote information, and you would be able to view it through a thick glass window, to make sure that what's printed on the paper matches what you voted for on the screen. This is the final time to make changes - choose to make a change and the ballot is visibly shredded and you get to try again. Choose to accept and the ballot is visibly inserted into a voting box.
The computer system would keep track of all the votes, with results available immediately. The ballots would be counted by hand in the following days or weeks, as before, so as to verify the system's results. This would be foolproof.
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This is the final time to make changes - choose to make a change and the ballot is visibly shredded and you get to try again. Choose to accept and the ballot is visibly inserted into a voting box.
[...] This would be foolproof.
And if you see a playing card or a dollar bill torn up before your eyes, it's gone forever; and if you see a lady visibly cut in two, she's got to be daid, right?
You can't trust your eyes. The system you describe might have two printers, the fake one of which shows its output
ES&S (Score:5, Informative)
This is the same ES&S who's chairman got into trouble with the Senate Ethics Committee [hillnews.com] because he failed to disclose his involvement with the company when he, as virtual an unknown in his first bid for public office, ran for and won a Senate seat against two well known and popular opponents [cnn.com] in what was widely called "a surprise upset" -- in an election which was counted exclusively on machines manufactured by ES&S [motherjones.com]. Subsequently, the law in his state was changed to prohibit election workers from looking at the ballots, and outlaw hand recounts. The only recounts permitted by law are on machines manufactured by ES&S. [scoop.co.nz]
In case that helps put this in perspective.
--MarkusQ
Simple test (Score:2)
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They're black boxes. Anyone who can reprogram them to produce corrupted output in the first place can program them to produce uncorrupted output when it's not election day.
The best you can do with that sort of testing is to build more voting machines than you need, then on election day randomly pick some of them out to be the "control group" to count known dummy votes - and even that assumes that there aren't any corruptable machines (like the central tabulators) outside the testers' contro
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I see two problems with this right off the bat. First, as I noted on the thread next door, there are already known ways to hack the vote on "good" machines, on election day, either as an official with access to the machines or as an unofficial "super-voter" who has practiced the necessary steps.
And secondly, the whole concept of "random samples" is subject to abuse, not only in theory someday but in practice now [newstandardnews.net]:
Its been done (Score:2)
It's been done, more or less [bbvforums.org]. The reason it can't be done the way you describe is that at least one o
Election (Score:1)
Is this a first? (Score:3, Insightful)
Then there would be no Amtrak (Score:2)
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Wow! (Score:4, Insightful)
Come to think of it, that's the difference between Democrats and Republicans: Republicans outsource their failures.
360 != AboutFace (Score:1)
A 360, eh? As in: "Let's do a 360 and get the f*** out of here"?
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