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Orange County: More E-Ballots Cast Than Voters
from the perfectly-normal-orange-county dept.
"David Hart, chairman of Texas-based Hart InterCivic, which manufactured Orange County's voting system, said it would be impossible to identify which voters cast ballots in the wrong precincts because of steps the company had taken to ensure voter secrecy. For this reason, an exact account of miscast ballots is impossible. The good news, if the folks there can be believed, is that there is no evidence yet that any result is in jeopardy. In a masterpiece of understatement, elections system analyst Kim Alexander is quoted as saying, "Certainly this kind of problem that's occurred in Orange County doesn't do anything to contribute to greater confidence in electronic voting systems." Steve Rodermund, Orange County's registrar of voters, is quoted as saying that despite the problems, he is satisfied with the performance of Orange County's new electronic voting system."
I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
Before now, you stamped your card, and put it in a sealed ballot-box. Nothing could change your vote, nor could they be tallied for the wrong district. Now, you hit a button and can only hope that your vote is going to the right district, that the machine is reporting what you actually voted, and not what some poll-worker wanted, or even that your vote is cast at all, rather than ignored.
If you live in CA, support Barbra Boxer. She appears to be the only politican around here who is calling for a paper-trail requirement for electronic voting machines. That way, if there was any doubt about the result, the paper ballots could be recounted to verify the result was legitimate, instead of requiring a re-vote which (as this article explains) is the only real option with the current system of electronic voting.
All we need is one serious fuck-up, like California (the most liberal state around) being won by Bush, and you'll see voter riots. Which, incidentally, is how the rebellion in Haiti began.
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Paper Ballots (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:I don't get it (Score:3, Funny)
Did anyone else see this and go "Barbra Boxer Barbra Boxer Barbra Boxer Barbra Boxer Barbra Boxer MUSHROOM MUSHROOM"?
No? Must be just me then. I'll be off to my Badgers Anonymous meeting now.
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:I don't get it (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think it is too far-fetched to see Bush win California. California elected a Republican for Governor, and he's doing a good job. California is made up of a huge latino population, and believe it or not, the Bush family is fairly popular amongst latinos (thanks to W's connection to Texas, and his brother Jeb's hispanic connections via his wife). Why do you think Bush mad
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
Why repeat it if you are not sure. Before our Democratic Governor was recalled, Pete Wilson was the Governor of California, a republican.
California has a very liberal state assembly because of how the districts are laid out, however Californians tend to vote conservative. In recent years we passed propositions to get rid of bilingual education, stop illegals from getting government assistance, only recognize a marriage between a man and a woman, and recall our Democratic governor.
The idea of a Republican taking California in a presidential election is not far fetched at all.
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Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
OK, let's look:
(source: Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections [uselectionatlas.org]
Year Candidate who got CA electors
2000 Al Gore (D)
1996 Bill Clinton (D)
1992 Bill Clinton (D)
1988 George Bush, Sr (R)
1984 Ronald Reagan (R)
1980 Ronald Reagan (R)
1976 Gerald Ford (R)
1972 Richard Nixon (R)
1968 Richard Nixon (R)
1964 Lyndon Johnson (D)
I think 40 years is far enough for now. Anyone who's interested go back further on their own.
Now, what do we learn from this, kids? That California is just as likely to vote for a Republican as a Democrat. To state otherwise is foolish.
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Re:I don't get it (Score:3, Interesting)
Off-hand I might say Republicans, but that's really not true.
If you've ever been to CA (a strongly democratic state), you know all about the crime rate. There are gang members galore. Not to mention that I believe we are the only state where bank robers have ever been covered in body armor, and carrying assault rifles.
If you were a criminal who carries assault rifles, are you going to support th
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
Unfortunately people having the odd assault rifle lying around does not a successful armed revolution make - not in this day and age anyway. I applaud the intent, but I suspect you'd find that any attempted revolt would quickly find itself labelled "terrorists" and have the full force of the US military brought to bear if necessary.
Which is to say, in this day and age, unless you have a lot of high powered armaments to threaten with, the only thing a standing army is good for is making large red smears when the cruise missles and fuel air explosives arrive.
By all means, defend your right to bear arms - but if you want to stage any form of revolution in the US you're better of forgetting your hoarded assault rifles, and start getting a decent chunk of the US military on your side first.
Jedidiah.
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Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
Spare me the open source mantra of it's "The only way to know your vote is counted". As big of a fan of OSS as I am open source would do nothing to make sure my vote is properly counted.
You might say "Sure we can view the source" but how can you A) Make sure that's the source running on the machine; B) Make sure the results aren't edited after the election (vi results anyone?).
The only way for e-voting to be secure (open source or closed) is with a paper audit trail. Print me out a paper ballot based on my voting selections and let me drop it into a drop box. Until that happens I won't trust any e-voting system (closed or open source | copyleft or copyright). Anything else has the potential of being fucked with. I don't trust any balloting scheme that can't be recounted by my 85 year old Grandmother who volunteers for election day -- and neither should you.
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WTF? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:WTF? (Score:5, Funny)
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Two replies? (Score:4, Funny)
Why can't America get this right? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why can't the torch-bearer of democracy even remotely get this right? Is it because there is no federal standard, or do Amercians really not care that much?
Re:Why can't America get this right? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Why can't America get this right? (Score:3, Insightful)
How do either of you know? (Score:3, Interesting)
Obviously, the problem *in this case* is twofold:
1. They didn't test these systems enough.
2. They have no way of fixing the problem, since they have no audit trail.
Another point is that the problem that arose is not a technological one per se. They could have made the same mist
Re:How do either of you know? (Score:3, Informative)
In terms of how the votes are counted, I think that if you marked your ballot incorrectly, it's just counted as spoiled (so no vote for any candidate, nor do they try to figure out who you voted for). Quite frankly, I like this system, if you can't properly fill
Re:How do either of you know? (Score:3, Interesting)
Lower House - up to about 12 candidates. Number each one in order of preference, 1 to your favourite, 2 to the next etc
Upper House - up to about 200 candidates. Either mark 1 in a box above the line (just the party name) or number every box below the line in order of preference. Now this sheet is about A1
Re:How do either of you know? (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember that you don't have to vote, you just have to turn up. The nice thing about compulsory voting is that if you want to exercise your democratic right not to vote, you have to make an effort. Which is as it should be.
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Re:Why can't America get this right? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Why can't America get this right? (Score:5, Funny)
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We were getting it right (Score:4, Informative)
We were getting it right before this. We had minor problems here and there, but nothing that drastic. Then, Florida. Because it was the deciding state, the vote was extremely close, and it had no uniform standards for what counted as a 'vote,' it became a battle to the death that had to be settled by the courts finally. And because of inherent "flaws" that hadn't caused any big problems up to then, the ACLU sued everyone who was using the punch bllot and forced them to go to new methods which produced (surprise) chaos the first time out. My city had clueless poll workers who couldn't even boot their machines for hours at the beginning, turning away hundreds or thousands (no one is sure even now) of voters. Even scarier, the poll workers were getting assisted by walk-in voters who had technical knowledge and were helping them to fix the problems. I heard one guy on the radio talking about how he'd poked around in the OS (WIndows CE, no less) on the Diebold machine, looking for the missing application. A number of poll workers took the manines home after they were trained and stored them in their garages until voting day. The 'seal' was a sticker that could be easily removed and reapplied without detection. Not exactly what you'd call secure. Tell me this is better than what we had, I dare you. Thanks, ACLU!
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Actually, we were not getting it right (Score:5, Informative)
This is bullshit. The ACLU and NAACP wanted shorter lines [63.135.96.161] and a felon list that included only, you know, felons.
In fact the debacle in Florida showed us we WEREN'T getting it right and we needed a federal standard, like most western nations, but the states were sold on the 'digital voting' snake-oil and here we are. And make no mistake about it, they were sold on this knowing full well how easily these machines can be manipulated.
'Tis politics as usual.
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Re:We were getting it right (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean, an organization that has pledged to defend civil rights shouldn't use the legal tools at their disposal to fight defective voting systems...because the system that comes next might be worse?
That's a great democracy we've got here.
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Re:We were getting it right (Score:5, Insightful)
The ACLU is supposed to be looking out for our voting rights. They didn't CAUSE the problems in Florida, or elsewhere, they just pointed them out. Hell, I've been downright disgusted with how poorly run our polls are here in Massachusetts - imagine my surprise when I voted for the first time at the age of 20 only to discover that you walk up to a table manned by two half-blind 70 year olds who have all the names of residents in the district here taped out onto the table, sorted by address. And they ask you "What's your address?" whereupon they find it listed and then ask you "what's your name?" and then they check you off on the list.
You could literally come in at the end of the day and claim to be fucking anybody. No ID required, no nothing. I mean, I know my vote for president (and in the democratic primaries this year) doesn't count for shit thanks to the electoral college system, but couldn't we at least pretend that it does?
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Re:Electoral College (Score:4, Insightful)
Ah yes, I remember the first
First, it assumes that having the chance for one vote to sway the entire election is a positive thing, or the best measure of the importance of your vote. I don't really want my vote to be the one that decides the election; I want it to be the votes of myself and everyone who has similar views, wherever they may be.
Second, as you said: your vote can only turn the election if the race is very close in your county/state. Thus only votes in contested districts are theoretically more important. Votes in uncontested districts are instead nullified. They are less important. In fact they are completely irrelevant. So to give individual voters in highly contested districts more power, you remove power from individuals in uncontested districts entriely.
This is not a good tradeoff. You disenfranchise political minorities so that a voting machine... er, I mean voter in Florida can turn the entire election.
Let me put it this way: I live in Texas. I'm not going to vote for Bush. Tell me again how the Electoral College makes my vote more important?
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Voter Secrecy (Score:5, Insightful)
This seems to be, though the very idea may anger many on Slashdot, a situation where the application of technology is bad because we are trying to fix something that is not broken. Regardless of your personal party affiliation, what happened in Florida was at least mitigated by the availability of some kind of paper trail for the votes - once the electrons flow from the voting machine switch, there is no positive record that they ever existed. Also, it is important to remember the fact that people too stupid to manipulate a paper ballot probably will also have trouble with E-voting (reference recent Slashdot story "Fixing your parents PC").
Re:Voter Secrecy (Score:5, Insightful)
We'd have saved ourselves a lot of agony if we'd just had the states create uniform standards for recounts instead of thinking magic voting machines would fix our problems.
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So, why doesn't a losing candidate sue? (Score:3, Funny)
Maybe they can call in some UN observers (or Haitian officials) to supervise the next round of elections.
Post misrepresents story (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Post misrepresents story (Score:4, Insightful)
Remember, it should be simple enough for a person with a 6th grade eduaction or disabilities or computer illiterate or a non-native English speaker to use. A tall order for any software.
My $.02
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Not a problem with electronic voting... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not a problem with electronic voting... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Not a problem with electronic voting... (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, the natural response to this is to simply USE PAPER BALLOTS. Any form of electronic record stored in RAM or on magnetic media can be tampered with. And any two CD-Rs look alike... It's a hell of a lot harder to swap two big boxes full of ballots than a single CD...
The two major objections that are usually posted here are that paper ballots take too long to count, and that paper ballots are a real bitch to deal with when you're voting for lots of things at once (California, anyone?). There's nothing wronge with machine-readable paper ballots (like the ubiquitous Scantron) for speed. As for multiple issues, it'd be easy to issue multiple pieces of paper. Vote for governor on the red one, proposition X on the blue one, etc. Then sort by colour and count by hand (or machine).
The only reason to implement wholly-electronic elections is to fix the results. Nothing else that is of any use to anyone can come from it.
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Do-over! (Score:3, Insightful)
Why does this have to be up to the candidates? Clearly by the mere fact that incorrect ballots were being shown, the people were not properly given the ability to vote for the candidate of their choice. Their choice may have not even been on the ballot, since many people were shown ballots for other precincts. Shouldn't this automatically trigger a "do-over"?
speaks for itself. [ACK!] (Score:3, Redundant)
"David Hart, chairman of Texas-based Hart InterCivic, which manufactured Orange County's voting system, said it would be impossible to identify which voters cast ballots in the wrong precincts because of steps the company had taken to ensure voter secrecy. For this reason, an exact account of miscast ballots is impossible."
cleetus
lack of insecurity, (Score:4, Informative)
(besides seeing that it was manned by a bunch of old ladies who wouldn't know how to operate the machines themselves)
The machines use no internet connection, in fact the number of cards, steps, and the size of the voting system makes it "almost" impossible to hack.
Brief description for those of you who have not come into contact or heard of the system yet:
You walk in and provide them with your name, they hand you a card with a smart chip (flash memory) and you walk over to the tablet-computer-like voting machines to cast your vote. At this point your name is on the flash memory, and when you insert the card you can begin the voting process. the only cord leading away from the unit was a power cord and I didn't pick up any WiFi signals with my ears.
You continue your voting, and the selections you made on the screen are put onto the card when you finish. Then your card is ejected back into your sweaty little palms.
you hand said unmarked card to the attendant and she puts it safely with the others. I've also heard the cards are kept for a manual tally back at the voting offices.
What is so great about this you ask? Well considering that the machines are not biased and that the people who built or were contracted to build them did not tamper with them, there is very little chance for a misread vote, or a "purposefully changed" vote. On the other hand from the information I've gathered the system is also open to a more wide spread hack or foul play because of it's final form: mass data statistics. one file or even multiple files holding numbers...MUCH easier to change as opposed to 6 million ballots, but at the same time much harder unless you have the knowledge or skill set which is (I suppose) very steep, deep, and wide.
Weighing all of the factors, I believe that the system is just about as secure as before, but it still needs a lot of work. (it could be ten times better, easily .
Re:lack of insecurity, (Score:3, Insightful)
1) BAD: What happens when there's an ordinary, garden variety software bug that drops votes on the floor, or worse yet flips them from one candidate to another? No need to hack anything -- your votes are gone.
2) WORSE: What happens if you have a corrupt programmer at the manufacturer who is introducing backdoored code? No need to hack the system at the polling place -- it's arrives at the door pre-hacked.
--Paul
Re:lack of insecurity, (Score:5, Insightful)
I want to KNOW that my vote is being counted dammit. I want confirmation, and I want an undisputable record that is NOT alterable by the software on the machine. Putting all the trust in one company is BAD, BAD, BAD. There is no other way to put it. There's no way to overstate the danger of allowing the country's vote to be handled by a single company that insists their methods of counting are a trade secret.
If you want electronic voting, fine. But then I insist that we be allowed to see the code, and have a way to guarantee that the code you show me is the same as the code that's on the machine's. This isn't rocket science. It's really quite easy to do. Unfortunately none of the people involved in the decision making process for the adoptation of these machines is actually a computer scientist. The fact that all the complaints are coming FROM the computer science community, and not from any particular party affiliation, should be telling you something.
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Ancillary Problem - No One Noticed The Candidates? (Score:4, Insightful)
Were voters walking into the election so blindly that they didn't even notice THE WRONG PEOPLE on the ballot?!?! I know it's probably on the difference in something like "Sanitation Commisioner" or some crap, but come on! No wonder the school boards here in South Carolina are filled with people who have last names beginning with a letter before M. They're alphabetically the first people on the ballot!
I loved the part (Score:3, Insightful)
Poll worker incompetence aside, the only real alternative to this is to start over. I don't care what they think the margin of error is, due to the number of blatantly screwed up ballots, as soon as there's ANY QUESTION, you THROW THE VOTE OUT AND START OVER. This may not be economically feasable; I'm unfamiliar with the frequency of these kinds of problems.
If you've caught this many misvotes that actually hit the system, how many did you miss?
OC Resident (Score:3, Insightful)
Reality Check Kids.. (Score:3, Interesting)
You don't use untested technology for something this important. The perception is that all the old voting systems are inadaquate. What a load of bunk. In the Twin Cities, we use optical scanners, which are fast, easy to use, and hard to screw up. The scanning machine can even complain instantly if you do something silly like vote for two condidates in the same race. I'll stop rambling now.
Printed receipts would have allowed a recount (Score:4, Interesting)
Here we have an election where the results were obviously wrong, yet no recount is possible.
The fact that the fraud is not alleged and that election was not close enough for the error to matter is irrelevant. What happens when the election is close?
There has to be a way to check the results.
Re:I guess nobody cares.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Politicians know this about us too. They know they can rack up a rediculous deficit without getting thrown out of office, because we don't care. They know they can get away with starting a war on false pretenses if they feel like, because we don't care. I sometimes wonder what an elected official would have to do in order to get thrown out in protest. Is there any limit to what they can just shrug off?
Somewhere along the line, whatever systems we used to have in place that gave some power to individual citizens have failed us or disappeared. There used to be checks and balances in the system to stop governments doing rediculous things. Voters used to think they had some power through the ballot box. Individuals used to be able to run for public office and make a difference.
It's a sad thing indeed when a whole society loses faith in an important part of what makes it a functional community.
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Wrong access code? (Score:5, Funny)
Not neccessarily. I think it may be because they're giving us the wrong access code or something. At least, all of my posts in this thread so far have shown up under an adjacent story which is posted on the same web site.
I swear, these electronic messaging systems are just too unreliable.
-- MarkusQ
P.S. And darn it, why can't I get a simple paper reciept when I post?!
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Re:I guess nobody cares.... (Score:3, Informative)
Glitch in the Matrix?