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Paper Ballots Will Return In MD and VA
Posted by
timothy
on Thu Oct 30, 2008 03:21 PM
from the but-this-baby-is-soaked-in-bathwater dept.
from the but-this-baby-is-soaked-in-bathwater dept.
cheezitmike writes "According to a story in the Washington Post, 'Maryland and Virginia are going old school after Tuesday's election. Maryland will scrap its $65 million electronic system and go back to paper ballots in time for the 2010 midterm elections. In Virginia, localities are moving to paper after the General Assembly voted last year to phase out electronic voting machines as they wear out. "The battle for the hearts and minds of voters on whether electronic systems are good or bad has been lost," Brace said. The academics and computer scientists who said they were unreliable "have won that battle."'"
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suddenoutbreakofcommonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
Every time you get the urge to use that tag, think of all the idiocy in the world - Sarah Palin might become president, damages for copying a CD are in the $100Ks, the patent system, the supreme court, credit default swaps, bankers not in jail, etc.
This story is nothing more than an "isolatedpocketofcommonsense"
Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
I think "Common sense" is inherently wrong though. If it were so common, wouldn't we see it more?
I think we need more "Uncommon sense", as the norm seems to be something I try to avoid.
I'm in Texas and apparently 23% of Texans believe Obama is a Muslim.
Common sense? Not likely...
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Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense (Score:4, Insightful)
I am also in Texas and I don't know about the "believes he's a Muslim" rate, but I know I just voted and there is no paper trail or anything indicating on paper that my vote was recorded properly.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
According to Rene Descartes:
"Nothing is more fairly distributed than common sense: no one thinks he needs more of it than he already has"
Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense (Score:5, Funny)
This story is nothing more than an "isolatedpocketofcommonsense"
I'd save your complaints until people start using the "suddenpandemicofcommonsense" tag.
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Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense (Score:5, Informative)
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense (Score:5, Interesting)
yeah but she doesn't believe in dinosaurs! I mean wtf, anybody that doesn't fear a sudden velocoraptor attack just ain't right in the head!
Also relevent may be
the report outlining her abuse of power which she "hasn't had time to read yet" but some how "cleard her"
she has only left the us once
shes a creationist
she cant name any papers she reads
she cant name any supreme court rullings except roe vs wade
she thinks taking 14 g hrs between waters breaking and going to hospital with a downs syndrome child (already a heightened chance of miscarriage) is a good idea
she thinks shes in charge of the senate
but nah its mainly the dinosour stuff.
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Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense (Score:5, Funny)
She doesn't believe in dinosaurs?! Even with her running mate's first-hand accounts?
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Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
Being someone from the side of the Atlantic where half the population doesn't consist of idiots stupid enough to consider voting for the side that supports Palin, let me enlighten you on the topic.
The problem isn't that Palin is inexperienced. The problem is that she's batshit insane.
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Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense (Score:5, Funny)
I think "batshit insane" is a bit too mild a term.
Yeah, European here.
The European view of the US election, in Star Wars characters:
Obama: Luke. Young and inexperienced, but a candidate for hope.
Biden: Han Solo. Technically on the side of good, but a mercenary at heart.
McCain: Palpatine. Aged, evil politician, with undoubted experience but doubtfully the people's good at heart.
Palin: Jar-Jar Binks. Irritating as all heck.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No, there's been an outbreak of common sense lately. It still hasn't become ubiquitous, but it's a serious improvement over two years ago.
Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense (Score:5, Informative)
How can ACORN steal an election? By getting low income people to fill voter registration forms? By handing them in (as required to do by law) and find that some people decided to write 'Mickey Mouse' on the form? And then have the form rejected or the voter turned away at the polls for failing to produce the mouse's ID? Not much of a thievery plan, is it?
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Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, not "sadly" really. In Indiana, the state with the most stringent ID requirements, only 85.9% of 2006 voters had an ID that exactly matched their voter registration. [washington.edu]
When broken down by categories, the percentages were disproportionate for minority (84.2% for white 78.2% for black voters), low income (78.9% income under $40K vs. 89.3% for income from $40K to $80K), very young/very old (78.0% 18-34 years old 80.6% for 70 years and up, 83.8 35-54 years and 85.9 55-69 years old), and lower education (HS grad 79% vs 88.9% for college grads), and by political party (86.2% for Republicans, 81.7% for Democrats.)
The study concludes:
.
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Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense (Score:5, Informative)
You get married. You update your drivers license with a new last name. You move. Your address is now different. You go by Larry, but your drivers license says Lawrence. A board of elections data entry clerk enters "Larwence"
All of these things qualified as "not matching" in the Indiana study.
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Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
PS: In-person voter fraud doesn't happen in statistically significant numbers. Despite a five year crackdown by the Department of Justice, there were a whopping 120 prosecutions nationwide resulting in 86 convictions. [nytimes.com] (Sorry, registration required. Try news.google.com search for "In 5-Year Effort, Scant Evidence of Voter Fraud")
Only a handful of these were for double voting. A large chunk involved vote-buying in down-ticket races. Many were for illegal registration (legal resident non-citizens registering to vote), often filling out a "motor voter" section on a drivers licesnse application.
Remember, this big push to prosecute the non-existant voter fraud led to the firing of US attornies by the Bush administration.
Voter fraud is just a strawman argument rasied by Republicans [slate.com] to disenfranchise voters.
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Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
While I agree with that, a government elected by a process I'm not a part of is invalid in my eyes. I'd imagine that the amount of people voting more than once would be a very tiny minority compared to the amount of valid voters with flawed paperwork. This is due to the driving around involved, and the logistics of moving around large amounts of people and keeping it secret.
Its all a balancing game really, I just wish more people saw both sides. A poser below mentioned staining of fingers, which might be the best idea.
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Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree. But you don't seem to. You seem to be stating that one-person no-vote is desierable over one-person two-votes. Neither state is one-person one-vote. To achieve that, you should have flexible laws that accommodate changes in names for marriage, address changes, and such that get people excluded. Get them to vote on a contested ballot and verify it later, but don't just turn them away because of a typo on a form or a recent marriage that didn't get name changes synchronized on all the databases. But from what you say, you'd rather have many people unable to vote than let one vote twice.
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Re:suddenoutbreakofcommonsense (Score:4, Interesting)
So if you got married and chanegd your name on your ID, but forgot to change it with voter registration (or here, where you don't have to notify anyone, but it can show up under the old name sometimes), you should be barred from voting for not caring enough? Should there be a "caring" test at the polls? Isn't having ID a poll tax anyway? You must present ID, and there are no free forms of ID available. If you can't pay, you can't play. At least they let the blacks vote now, that's good enough right, so poll taxes are fine?
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Say what??? (Score:5, Funny)
There are other countries in the world? When did that happen?
Next you're going to be telling me they all don't speak English as a native language. Everyone can understand English if you say it loud enough.
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Welcome to your local polling place... (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The woman had no clue what he was going for. I nearly lost hope right then and there, and I hadn't even got to the voting booth yet...
No Barr in CT (Score:5, Informative)
Too bad CT won't do it in time to put Bob Barr on the ballot, since the state and court claimed that it would take too long to reprint paper ballots and reprogram electronic voting machines with his name, even though he met all requirements on time.
Re:No Barr in CT (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I will go you one further: we should do away w/primaries as well.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
There should be a simple legal remedy for this. If they can't get all legitimate candidates onto the ballot, they should lose their electoral votes.
Makes it sound bad? (Score:5, Funny)
The academics and computer scientists who said they were unreliable "have won that battle."'
Damn those stupid, fearful academics and computer scientists! Always standing in the way of progress!
Seriously, though, what's the tone they're going for there?
Re:Makes it sound bad? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Makes it sound bad? (Score:5, Informative)
I used to live in Maryland. The paper ballots are anything but 1800s. They are an extremely-simple system where the voter draws a line next to this candidate. An electronic machine then reads that line and automatically tallies the vote. Later those same paper ballots can be reused for hand-counting if someone challenges the result.
We Republicans protested for a long-time that the double-verification of both paper & electronic counts was superior to the e-voting machines, but the Democrats rammed through the machines anyway. I'm glad to see that we were proven correct, and now they're going back to the paper/electronic system.
"If it ain't broke, don't fix it" is the motto that applies here. There was nothing wrong with the old system; it was proven and worked.
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Re:Makes it sound bad? (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember that from the Sixties and Seventies? Do you see any sign of it today? No? Why not?
Well, maybe because paper is light-weight, foldable, and will last beyond your lifespan with minimal care.
Let's try an experiment. I solved the secrets of the Universe and wrote them on ordinary paper with an ordinary ball-point pen back in the 1970s. I also wrote those same secrets on an Apple ][. The paper was shoved into my copy of Encyclopaedia Brittanica and put back on the shelf. The Apple ][ copy was manually copied onto an IBM PC circa 1982, using a 3.5" floppy where it sits to this day. Which copy of the SECRETS OF THE UNIVERSE! would you like: paper or electronic?
Oh, just for fun, let's say I copied the floppy onto a CD back in 1997. Then I copied that onto a USB stick in 2002. OH, almost forgot to mention that the file format is the same Apple ][ format from the 1970s. :)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
OH, almost forgot to mention that the file format is the same Apple ][ format from the 1970s. :)
That would be a file of type T, which is just a flat text file with line (or paragraph) ends delimited with Carriage Return (CR) instead of any of Line Feed (LF), CRLF, or LFCR and no other special formatting.
Simple file formats last longest.
Moving to paper is a GOOD MOVE (Score:5, Informative)
The DRE equipment was NEVER appropriate for voting. Those kinds of things are just a magician's prop, and completely untrustworthy for voting purposes. If you want to make it easy for ONE person to steal an entire election, they're perfect. If your purpose is an honestly-counted election, such machines cannot be trusted. "There's nothing up this sleeve... nothing up the other sleeve... oh look, here's a fixed election!! Betcha can't tell how I did it!"
They're not IGNORING computer technology; they'll use computers to tally up the votes. The difference is, the information will be on a permanent record (paper) so that recounts and cross-checks can be done easily. You can use a computer well, or foolishly. The old systems used computers in a foolish way; now they're trying to fix that.
I think that the states should get their money back for many of the voting machines. Practically ALL computer-knowledgeable people understand that computers are easily rigged, and thus many of the existing systems are fundamentally untrustworthy. Quoting John Willis is unconvincing; he may say he's an "elections expert", but it's clear that he does not understand the fundamentals of these new voting systems.
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Re:Makes it sound bad? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well I could see a more valid complaint about, "Damn those intellectuals and computer scientists. They pushed us into electronic voting against common sense!" I mean were that the case, I could understand the complaint.
But you have *computer scientists* telling people, "Don't use computers for this purpose. It's a very bad idea because there are inherent security problems. Either address all those security problems in a reasonable way, or stick to a low-tech solution." Those are the people who know what they're talking about, and they're also the people who would generally want to push you towards high-tech solutions-- you know the whole, "to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail" thing.
So why the hell shouldn't we listen to those people in this case?
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This just in, we'll no longer be doing e-voting (Score:3, Funny)
I want my money back! (Score:5, Funny)
I paid Diebold good money for thousands of votes in those districts in that election.
If they don't deliver I expect my money back!
Listening to the experts (Score:5, Insightful)
If the guy with his pilot's license says that his Cessna can't fly a tank, listen to him. If the majority of computer professionals say using a computer to replace paper ballots is a stupid idea, listen to them.
People who can't program their VCRs (how long before people stare at me when I mention "VCR"?) shouldn't make decisions about the suitability of high technology for mission critical tasks.
Re: (Score:3)
If the guy with his pilot's license says that his Cessna can't fly a tank, listen to him. If the majority of computer professionals say using a computer to replace paper ballots is a stupid idea, listen to them.
Electronic voting is not a stupid idea.
Several countries have done it successfully.
India & Brazil being the two largest (AFAIK)
The problem is the USA's implementation.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The majority of computer professionals think using a computer to replace/augment paper ballots is just fine. The experts also agreed that these particular computers and the software they ran were improperly designed for the job.
Electronic voting done properly should result in fewer errors and less fraud than paper ballots and human counting.
It's not just academics who are saying. . . (Score:5, Insightful)
electronic voting machines are unreliable. It is the evidence itself which shows they are unreliable and prone to losing/changing votes.
Do a search and you will find issues from the current early voting process where machines aren't recording votes correctly. Add in the documented cases from around the country where votes were simply "lost", and you don't need an academic to tell you you need a verifiable paper trail, not the assurance of a company, that votes will be recorded correctly.
It's funny how you get a paper trail to prove your purchases at the grocery/drug/clothes/whatever store, but people are fighting tooth-and-nail NOT to have a paper trail when it comes to recording votes.
The simplest solution is to use an electronic machine for people to select their choices but at the end, provide a sheet with all their votes recorded which they deposit in a box. The machine votes are recorded but you have a paper trail in case electronic votes are "lost".
E-Voting has its advantages (Score:4, Interesting)
The biggest problem with "e-Voting" is they tried to make it "all E."
Computer-assisted voting for the blind and physically disabled is a must.
A computer that takes the voter's choice and spits out a computer-AND human-readable ballot, plus a separate machine for blind people to use to read back their ballot to them, plus a separate machine to count the votes, would meet the requirements of allowing the blind and disabled to vote as much as the current high-tech systems do while providing the paper trail the old systems do.
As a bonus, non-disabled voters and voters comfortable with human assistance do not require the use of any technology at the time they cast their votes. If the power goes out, the polls can remain open. This means polling stations can scale to more voting booths very cheaply.
Mathematical Guarantees Of Correctness fo E-Vote (Score:3, Interesting)
One day we will have mathematical assurances that our votes are being counted properly by electronic voting machines. Cryptographers have been working on mathematically proven cryptographically safe voting schemes for years [springerlink.com]. (See also Bruce Schneier's Applied Cryptography [amazon.com].) Secure algorithms already exist, although they are not yet fully practical.
I repeat myself for emphasis: there are methods to produce a secret, secure, election that is verifiably correct to an arbitrary degree of certainty. If you do
Just add printers! (Score:5, Insightful)
I've used the machines in MD, and I like them. They're pretty clear and easy to use. What I really don't like, however, is the lack of a paper backup. It's such a simple thing, just add a printout which can be easily read and, if needed, optically scanned. That way you can verify the vote totals if there are any questions, and you get the advantages of the machines. I'd much rather they spent the money to add the printers, if possible, than scrap the whole system. If printers can't be added, then ok, get rid of them because there's too much uncertainty over results.
It wasn't us! Do your job properly. (Score:3, Insightful)
Voters don't care how they vote, as long as it's easy and they can have confidence that their vote will be counted.
Considering that these states implemented relatively untested systems in a slap-dash manner that showed no regard for the integrity of the vote, I don't think it's fair to blame this on "academics and computer scientists".
Done properly (as in, with a physical record), electronic voting is a good alternative to our increasingly antiquated voting systems. However, the combination of unscrupulous businessmen and ethically/intellectually-challenged election officials led these states to spend oodles of money on sub-standard products.
The predictable (and predicted) end result was a process built more around satisfying the vendors desire to push units than satisfying the public's need for a reliable vote. Then the manure hit the wind-blowing machine and vote tallies came out screwy. People started to notice this particular gov't boondoggle and what we're seeing is elected officials starting to sweat.
Unfortunately it appears the lesson they took from this was that e-voting is bad bad bad (look away and never mention it again) and they're going Luddite.
Maybe in 10 years they'll get the nerve to try again, this time with an open, verifiable system that we can trust. Or, more likely. some other snake-oil salesman will take the opportunity to bilk the public trust for more millions of dollars.
MD politics is dominated by the Democrats (Score:4, Insightful)
The same Democrat-controlled state legislature originally blocked our previous (Republican) governor's efforts to get rid of these machines. Now that we have a Democrat governor, they're getting rid of the machines so as to take credit for it. They're doing the same thing with slot machines -- the previous governor tried to get slot machines legalized, and the state legislature blocked him. Now, slots are up for referendum with the support of our current (Democrat) governor and the Legislature who had previously opposed them.
Not that it makes a damn bit of difference (we're fucked anyway), but I just wanted folks to know all the facts before they start rambling about the evils of the Republican party here in MD. Maryland is about as solidly Democrat as you can get -- the huge black majorities in Baltimore City and Prince Georges County have ensured that for decades.
Re:Random thoughts. (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, 9/11 * 2000 = 1636.3636363636
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Why I like the Electoral College (Score:5, Interesting)
The Electoral College system has been losing popularity in recent years (notably among Democrats, for some odd reason *grin*), but I actually think it's a good thing, and here's why: No election is ever going to be perfect. In order to declare a winner with certainty, you need a very certain tally of the votes. I think we should be able to get the counted results for an election to be *very* reliable, in terms of errors, but I don't think you can ever achieve *perfection*.
When you have extremely close elections, like in the 2000 USA election between Bush and Gore, (witness how much havoc was wreaked by "Hanging Chads" and other problems), it's almost impossible to get a nationwide total that people will agree is valid, particularly if the difference between the candidates is less than 1/10 of 1 percent. You get trapped in 'recount' limbo, and 'rules lawyer' hell (where advocates for either side try to argue why certain ballots should be counted one way or another, trying to guess the intent of a vote with a hanging chad, or trying to figure out if some votes were made by people illegally voting multiple times with the names and addresses of dead people, or the same person voting multiple times under different addresses in different precincts.
The electoral college system helps 'smooth out' our inability to get *perfect exact totals*, by making the election be a district-by-district contest, where it's usually easier to decide which candidate got more votes in an individual district or state, than it is to determine the exact national total of votes. It's sort of like analog vs. digital recording of data: theoretically, analogue would be an exact represention, perfect, but we find in reality that analog recordings suffer from imperfections which distort them; digital, on the other hand, while never a truly exact/perfect representation of the data, gives us a way to record the data in such a way that we can compensate for later distortions which are introduced during transmission or duplication, and usually get much closer to perfection than analog allows.
(I would like to note that, technically, right now, the 'districts' are entire states; I do think we should break it down into smaller districts, like congressional districts or something - I don't like winner-takes-all delegate allocations at the state level, because that's too 'low resolution').
With the electoral college, if there is a problem with voting in one state or district, you can at least narrow down the 'fight' over recounts, etc, to the state or district where there is a problem or extremely close contest and don't have to worry about any other states/districts. If we went to a popular national vote, if you have a close election, recounts and rules lawyering will have to go on in every single district in the nation. That sounds ugly, and expensive to me, and more susceptible to fraud/manipulation, because the nations attention will be spread out over every state/district, instead of just worrying if the votes in say, Florida, or Ohio, or New Mexico, are accurate, and if there was fraud in those individual areas. It allows us to focus on specific places, instead of *everywhere*.
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Re:I'm not convinced (Score:4, Insightful)
Generally, the same candidate appeals to the metro areas of NYC/Chicago/LA. That's who we would have, the rest of the country be damned.
Always.
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Re: (Score:3)
Nice idea in theory, but, ummmmm, have you ever looked at people's writing?
Oh, yeah, it won't work in places where people are voting on candidates and state and county measures.
Oh, yeah, one more thing. If you have more than a few thousand people voting it can take an extememly long time to count the ballots. The Electoral College must meet and vote in early December.
Re:An alternative (Score:5, Insightful)
"Hi! If you vote for me, I'll pay you $20. If you pose as several other people, I'll pay $20 each. Just hand over your receipts when you're done, and once I've confirmed that you voted 'correctly', you get your $20".
This is one of the reasons why voting systems are harder to build than ATMs. With ATMs, you record who does what with a camera, and keep a strict log of every transaction. If there's funny business, you have a chance of convicting the user. In a voting system, you MUST NOT record who made which vote, and you MUST NOT give the voter any way to prove who they voted for. Voting systems are trickier than they appear, because they have really unusual security requirements... and because power is at stake, so people really DO attack security weak points.
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Re:An alternative (Score:4, Insightful)
You know how to deal with that "problem"? Print-out occurs behind a glass plate. Voter can confirm vote on print-out, and push a button that says "Confirm". No take-home, no problem.
The problem is not with the recording. The problem is what a voter is allowed to take home. Which, as you said, should be nothing.
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