New Jersey E-Voting Problems Worse Than Originally Suspected 118
TechDirt is reporting that the New Jersey e-voting troubles are even worse than originally thought. Apparently the "minor bug" which was supposed to be fixed is still not corrected, suggesting that Sequoia still doesn't know what is going on. "Ed Felten has received a bunch of 'summary tapes' from the last election in New Jersey, and while many of them do have the vote totals matching up correctly at the end at least two of the summary tapes simply don't add up, meaning that Sequoia's explanation of what went wrong is incorrect. Given how often the company has denied or hidden errors in its machines, despite a ton of evidence, we shouldn't be surprised that it was inaccurate in explaining away this latest problem as well. However, we should be outraged that the company refuses to allow third party researchers to investigate these machines. It's a travesty that any government would use them when they've been shown to have so many problems and the company is unwilling to allow an independent investigation."
Here's the link that should have been in summary (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Is +1 really that hard for a computer to do? (Score:3, Informative)
Ah that's the great thing. It's not "my" fault for not participating in a system that is clearly rigged to favor particular groups and particular parties. In fact, the opposite would be true... if I were to feed the corrupt system with my participation, the notion that I think it works would be indicated. It *is* some multi-headed hydra of wealth and political power running the show.
Which shows your complete ignorance of how the U.S. Republic was designed. It's a two-party system!!! If you want multi-party elections try Italy and see how they are doing.
"...ignorance..." right back atcha pal. It's not a two-party system. It's a non-party system dominated by two parties. Officially, the government isn't supposed to recognize any particular party or affiliation... and yet it does. There are other parties [Green and Libertarian] in existence and some are growing in ways that make the two controlling parties a bit uneasy. And prior to the Republicans and Democrats, there were other parties... do you know what the Whig party was? The whole idea of parties and affiliations is largely what is responsible for the state we're in. Political parties and revolving doors have effectively disenfranchised the common citizen from actively participating in government.
No! They would participate in their Republic by ridding their local municipality of electronic voting and the elected officials backing electronic voting. It's how the system works. No bloodshed. No violence.
Either way, it's not happening. I feel lucky to have heard of these problems at all... the "free press" is the only form of democracy this nation still enjoys and even that has been limited, controlled and watered down quite a bit.
Re:I'm a little surprised... (Score:2, Informative)
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/02/03/173241&from=rss
http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2004/01/61968
http://openvotingsolutions.net/
Re:Here's the link that should have been in summar (Score:3, Informative)
From the post you replied to, "the summary print outs are 'nice' for instant access to the results". Basically, the summary voting gives a sense of instant gratification that let's the voting public know who "won" the election the day after it is held. Computers can aggregate and publish the sum votes of millions of voters at the instant polls close and provide a result that meets the anticipated "instant-gratification" needs expected by the population.
Now, I think each polling place has an order of magnitude within 1,000 voters... so if the 10-20 workers open up the box with the votes at the close of the polls, it is reasonable for them to spend 2-3 hours doing a double and triple check count before actually "validating" what the machine summary said.
Trouble arises when the a human count differs from another human count or from the machine count. When this happens, obviously the data cannot be immediately validated and "official" results cannot be made available.
However, as long as "vote receipts" that have been checked over by the pair of eyes who cast that vote exist, then I think using a machine to vote is fine.
So - the first advantage of running an election with a computer voting system is instant gratification.
I am sure there are other advantages, too. Because computers have the ability to provide easier-to-use interfaces to complex systems than old-fashion analog machines. Not that voting for an individual office is a complex system... but imagine (god forbid) John McCain dying two days before election day and the complete mess it would be to retool 50,000 voting machines to have some other guy's name in it. In an analog world, that is impossible. In a digital world, the change can be managed from a central server and pushed down to the client machines.
Re:I'm a little surprised... (Score:4, Informative)
You mean, like the Electronic Voting Machine Project [sourceforge.net] and OpenSTV [sourceforge.net] and the Voting Software Project [sourceforge.net] and the Open Voting Consortium [openvotingconsortium.org] and Blue Screen Democracy [sourceforge.net] and probably a dozen other projects?
One problem is that voting software/hardware has to be certified by the state. A ponderous, time-consuming, and expensive bureaucratic nightmare not particularly friendly to amateurs (or even corporations, unless there's a good prospect for vast sales).