ES&S To Buy Diebold, Blackbox Voting To Sue 175
Gottesser writes "Long-time election rights activist Bev Harris (she had an HBO special a while back where she hired Hari Hursti to hack an optical scan voting machine) just sent this out: 'Diebold/Premier Election Systems is being purchased by Election Systems & Software (ES&S). According to a Black Box Voting source within the companies, there will be a conference call among key people at the companies within the next couple hours. An ES&S/Diebold-Premier acquisition would consolidate most US voting under one privately held manufacturer. And it's not just the concealed vote-counting; these companies now also produce polling place check-in software (electronic pollbooks), voter registration software, and vote-by-mail authentication software.' Our voting system is heading toward a server-centric model with our vote being delivered to us by computers under lock and key far away from public oversight. Here's ES&S's press release. Wikipedia's got something on the ongoing string of ES&S controversies as well."
While I also dislike electronic voting... (Score:1, Interesting)
I no longer think it would be impossible to implement decently. Google Tech Talk [youtube.com] has an interesting 1.5h video about the subject and Schneier [schneier.com] also has a small blog post, hinting that there could well be some self-enforcing algorithms that let us confirm the system is secure even if we don't know all the details to test it.
Re:What else is left? (Score:3, Interesting)
Democracy (in the U.S.) died some time ago. Gerrymandering [wikipedia.org] killed it. The election is already rigged when the districts are drawn.
Enforce Good Practices (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Doesn't matter now. (Score:5, Interesting)
So, you have evidence that Democrats, as a group, are any less concerned about the inherent dangers of all-electronic voting systems than the population as a whole?
I'm a Democrat. I voted for Obama. I'm glad he's President. (Or rather, I'm glad McCain isn't President; not quite the same thing, but it's what we've got.) And now that we have a Democrat in the White House, I think it is exactly as important that we have a trustworthy election process as it was when had a Republican. I don't want anyone rigging elections, in favor of any candidate of any party.
No matter how bad things get, as long as we have honest elections, we have a chance to fix them. If we lose that ... forget it, it's over. Democrat, Republican, black, white, whatever: if the people in charge have the means to ensure they stay in charge regardless of the will of the people, they will use that power, and we are permanently screwed.
In short, AC, don't assume everyone else shares your level of asshole cynicism. There are a lot of us who still care about the future of our country.
Re:Florida abandoned touchscreen voting in favor.. (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been an Elections Inspector in New York State for the last five years. Every time one of these stories crop up I wrote a detailed summary of the procedures and technology we use. In spite of these procedures including the retention of paper ballots I still can't convince the tinfoil hat crowd that our elections aren't being decided by a shadowy cabal working out of the Diebold offices. I've about given up on trying to convince them otherwise.
There are legitimate concerns surrounding so-called DRE (direct electronic record) systems but why those concerns have morphed into people being suspicious of other technology is beyond me. Some days it seems that nothing will satisfy this crowd short of a system where everybody raises their hand.
I'm glad Florida switched away from a DRE system. Don't be surprised when people crop up and start fretting that the optical scan system is pwned though.
Re:Doesn't matter now. (Score:2, Interesting)
Fuck you sheep who refuse to take up arms and revolt to save this country.
That's hilarious, considering that the extent of your action is to post to slashdot, and maybe complain a bit amongst friends ;) I mean, it's /possible/ you're going to be out there with whatever guns you've acquired, facing down a tank... but it's not very likely.
Re:So now . . . (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Doesn't matter now. (Score:2, Interesting)
unless they are moving state lines, gerrymandering does not seem relevant to presidential elections...
Re:Paper ballots (Score:3, Interesting)
At least then there is evidence of intimidation - you get tons of people with pictures of their ballots.
In practice, this is used far more often to buy votes than to intimidate people into voting the right way. Turns out that votes are real cheap, and when you can verify them, it is very much feasible to alter election results simply by throwing some money at it.
And, of course, a picture of a ballot proves nothing. After all, the alleged victim could easily fake intimidation by taking a photo of his ballot and sending it to someone, even when not actually asked to do so!
It also requires extra steps and effort and you could probably fake it if you wanted (just photoshop your photo).
This is trivially circumvented by putting an observer before the polling station, to make sure the voter actually gets inside and out, and sends the photo while inside. I doubt you'll have much time (or means) to photoshop the photo of your ballot while inside the booth.
For vote buying (which, as I've mentioned above, is far more prevalent) this is even less important, because people who sell their vote are unlikely to go to great lengths to cheat the buyer. Without any means to verify the vote, they are very likely to take the money and then just vote the way they like; but when receiving money requires a verification step, even one that can be circumvented with some effort, it is far more likely that they'll just do what they're asked to get the money - it's far easier for them to do so.