![United States United States](http://a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/usa_64.png)
![Technology Technology](http://a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/technology_64.png)
![Your Rights Online Your Rights Online](http://a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/yro_64.png)
Doubting Electronic Voting 485
twitter writes "The NYT is raising the alarm on electronic voting. After citing expert opinion on the need for a paper trail, they then quote election officials and vendors who dismiss that opinion as the ignorant work of dreamers. The reporter titles his article, 'To Register Doubts, Press Here' and seems less than convinced."
Free mirror (Score:5, Informative)
The article [nytimes.com]
Bon appetit.
Re:Free mirror (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.ge.ch/chancellerie/e-government/e-vo
You will discover, that in some less meticulous countries, e-voting has already been a reality.
Thanks also to HP, which has earned a lot of taxpayers money for developing a closed-source voting system never to be used at a larger scale than a 1'000 soul commune....
Re:Free mirror (Score:2)
Re:Free mirror (Score:4, Funny)
s/French/freedom/g
IE: Do you speak freedom?
I took freedom in high school.
Would you like some freedom toast?
Right..... and all financial transactions online.. (Score:2, Insightful)
My bank doesn't seem to have a problem with me transferring thousands of dollars electronically, but this reporter is nervous about voting?
Re:Right..... and all financial transactions onlin (Score:5, Funny)
He's nervous, beause with electronic voting, a paranoid, warmongering lunatic may be able to fix an election, get himself voted in, and start an aggressive campaign of pre-emptive...oh wait.
Re:Right..... and all financial transactions onlin (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Right..... and all financial transactions onlin (Score:4, Interesting)
And when 50,000 largely black, largely Democrat voters are denied their legal right to vote because they were falsely accused of being felons by a computerized list that was inaccurate to begin with and encouraged to be more so by the Florida government, then saying an election was stolen isn't flamebait.
Well, it is, but who said the truth can't be flamebait [gregpalast.com]?
Re:Right..... and all financial transactions onlin (Score:5, Interesting)
As long as you're willing to say the same for 50,000 immigrant (legal or otherwise) non-citizen voters, also largely Democrat, who cannot vote, but sometimes do vote, then we're cool.
(Clarification: Even if I take your 50,000 figure at face value, I don't think the inaccuracies in the list were deliberately engineered. Likewise, neither do I think the problem of aliens voting is deliberately engineered on any widespread scale. I consider both of these to be "error", not "corruption".)
Both parties practice various forms of swinging elections. Some are legal ("gerrymandering"). Others (deliberately disenfranchising legal voters, or designing systems that can be circumvented to allow illegal voters to cast votes) are not.
The goal of any electoral process is to prevent the latter, or at least to ensure that the "noise" introduced by corrupt officials is swamped by the "signal" of the legitimate votes.
In the case of Floriduh, the signal was so close to 50/50 that it was lost in the noise of both manual counting error, mechanical vote-recording error, human voter error in not verifying that their vote was correctly punched and/or in not following instructions on the ballot, legal "error" in that efforts to recount changed the result through mechanical ballot mishandling and the fact that human beings had to rule on whether hanging chads ought to be counted as votes or not, and corruption. Given the large sources of error in any vote, even in Floriduh, error introduced by means of corruption was probably the smallest error factor of the bunch.
Yeah right (Score:5, Interesting)
Unfortunately, the US government runs its own elections, rather than a truely impartial third party.
Politics are a dangerous thing in America.
Re:Yeah right (Score:5, Insightful)
If you think politics in the United States is dangerous, check out the political situations in places like Ivory Coast. At least American citizens survive the voting process.
Re:Yeah right (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Get real (Score:3, Funny)
I'm sorry, did you really mean cynical and fat? He certainly is NOT rich and powerful. Why else would he have hijacked the Oscars?
Re:Get real (Score:2)
Anyone that I have talked to about Moore thinks he is a knucklehead, much less power to sway American opinion.
Re:Get real (Score:2, Insightful)
He's not the best comedian and his funny skits often are a little retarded, but the spirit of the skit is dead on.
How about we get informed before passing judgement.
Re:Yeah right (Score:5, Insightful)
"a truely impartial third party"? Like who? What organization is responsible enough to oversee the elections of the most powerful nation on Earth and yet has no opinion one way or another on how they should go.
There is no "impartial third party". The U.S. electoral process isn't perfect but handing it over to Deloitte and Touche, or the U.N. or any other supposedly 'impartial' body is just going to make it worse. The best way to keep it legit is just to make the counters accountable.
Re:Yeah right (Score:3, Funny)
The Stonecutters? Uh, wait, never mind...
Re:Yeah right (Score:5, Funny)
Microsoft.
They would be truly impartial.
They would also be truly secure and trustworthy.
(Don't believe me, just read their latest press releases! So there.)
Re:Yeah right (Score:2, Informative)
The US government does NOT run elections (Score:5, Informative)
An important point, though: the Federal government does NOT run any elections, period. Elections are the responsibility of the states. This was done on purpose so that the federal government could not rig elections for itself. Of course, as we've seen in practice, federal intrusion in state business has become so commonplace that federal action frequently affects state elections, from Federal voting rights acts to the 2000 presidential election. Of course, the ends could be said to justify the means for much of this federal interference. But there is a legitimate states' rights/federalism argument to be made against any federal interference in state elections.
Re: Yeah right (Score:3, Interesting)
> We all saw what good a paper trail did in Florida in the 2000 USA presidential campaign.
The sad thing about the 2000 Florida vote is that the problem was thoroughly preventable. The same problem showed up in the previous election and an investigative commission determined that the way to fix it was to switch to a different kind of voting machine without the established history of problems.
Unfortunately, public officials didn't think getting those people's votes was important enough for the money it
Yea, our "horrible system"..... (Score:2, Interesting)
This horrible system helped my father escape a terrible life in a foreign land. This horrible system helped my father later fr
Re:Yea, our "horrible system"..... (Score:4, Interesting)
Without the frontier, you can't run away from an intolerable situation. (The frontier was hostile and difficult, so the only people who went there were those who found the system where they lived intolerable..for one reason or another.)
Without accountability, one can't keep corruption in check. Without a check on corruption, trust rapidly falls. Without trust, economic growth first stagnates and then crumbles. (Well, technology is a strong preventative to that last...perhaps strong enough. Unfortunately, we'll see.)
Re:Yea, our "horrible system"..... (Score:4, Interesting)
You know, it's very hard to tell whether you're being sarcastic, satirical, or serious. I hope you're not being serious.
I don't know what it looks like from the inside, but those of us who don't live in the US look across the Atlantic and see a country where the head of state got in as a result of a fraudulent election run by his own brother; where civil rights are being progressively torn up and destroyed; which breaks solemn international treaties as if they didn't matter.
Wake up and smell the coffee! It looks to the rest of us asi if a tyrant has very successfully seized power over you, as a result of a minority riding roughshod over the interests of the majority.
As President Mugabe of Zimbabwe said, no foreign observer could possibly have found the last presidential election in the United States 'Free and Fair'. And he's a man who knows a lot about how to 'run' a democracy.
Re:Yeah right (Score:5, Interesting)
The paper trail in Florida DID help. The issue there was what standard you would recount by. Obviously republicans wanted a strict standard, since they were ahead. Dems wanted a loose standard, since they were behind and controlled the most populous counties.
The roadblocks story was shown to be baseless - the same with stories about police attacking people with dogs, etc.
Explain about the ballots being thrown away - never heard about that. Unless you mean the 'lost' ballot box from an overwhelmingly republican district in New Mexico. Or maybe you meant the military ballots that were thrown out.
Ballots arranged in a confusing way? Oh you mean the ones that the Democratic election officials designed in Palm Beach, that 10% of the retards making up the democratic voting block couldn't use properly.
And actually, most of the time the elections work fine because both parties are involved. Polling stations are staffed by volunteers from both parties. It's only when the government doesn't give proper oversite, like letting the redneck assholes run polling sites in Mississipi - where blacks really are still kept from voting in some areas. Or letting the unions run the polling sites in Chicago where the Democrat gets 100% of all ballots cast, or California districts where more ballots are cast than there are registered voters.
Ever seen the log book at an LA polling site - they let you walk in with no ID and simply sign a book saying you are an eligible voter. Most books will have at least one person named God, along with an assortment of John Does and various celebrity names.
You want to see what is wrong with elections here? Try going as a monitor to an urban election site in Chicago or Houston or Boston? I have been physically threatened more than once acting as an official observer. For some reason, local political bosses did not like me objecting to them walking into the voting booth with everyone who came in. And they really didn't like me pointing out that the person trying to get a ballot had already voted an hour earlier. Even had him on video tape. But since they bussed him and and were paying him for each receipt he had, he was determined to vote early and often. But apparently my pointing that out was racist. Ahh, good times, good times.
Re:Yeah right (Score:4, Interesting)
The illegal requirement by the Govenor of Florida that those non-felons had to ask him for clemency to return their voting rights (that they already had) despite being barred from doing so, and the cover-up of this, afterward?
What of the voting machines being tampered with so that in black regions, spoiled ballots were swallowed by the machine, without the voter being informed of the errors, while in white areas, they were returned for re-checking/submission? [see your retard accusation]
Here's to the UN overseeing all future US elections!
Re:Yeah right (Score:5, Insightful)
We all saw what good a paper trail did in Florida in the 2000 USA presidential campaign.
Think that's bad? Imagine being pissed off at the results, absolutely certain you got rooked, but not even having a way to TEST whether the results are valid. At least in FL2000 there was a paper trail to argue about. Don't think there's any possible way 63% of your town voted for Mickey Mouse for Mayor? Sorry, Chuck, but the 'puter got that same exact answer 327 times in complete recounts conducted over the last 6 seconds. What are you going to do: go door-to-door and ask everyone to tell you honestly how they voted?
My biggest fear with electronic voting systems, however, is the ease with which their automation can be made universal.
If you assume that everyone gets their voting systems from the same 2 or 3 vendors, you can rig an election if you figure out how to electronically compromise 2 or 3 systems, and you can do it with much smaller numbers of tampered votes in each district because the software only needs to tamper where the voting is tight. A few here, a few there and BAM, Dennis Kucinich is your president.
(*shudder*)
It's much, much more difficult to do that sort of thing without e-voting because each voting district makes its own rules, and implements its own counting system. You'd need to plant spies in each district you thought MIGHT be candidates for tampering, and even if you guessed right, you'd have to hoodwink Ethel in each one (she's been counting votes in this district as a volunteer since the 60's and has breakfast with the City Council every Tuesday as a concerned citizen.) You'd need to study and compromise **MANY** districts to significantly rig an election in this way.
Don't get me wrong, it can be done, but it is difficult to inflict damage beyond a few isolated districts because the voting systems themselves aren't universal. Compromising a vote tally in Florida cannot automatically compromise a tally in California - they are separate systems, even if they use the same equipment. IMHO, Some things NEED to be slow and sloppy and messy. Proponents of electronic voting are ignorant of the capabilities and limitations of technology, and **grossly** **negligent** in their lack of understanding of the fundamentals of system design.
That or they're "gettin' paid".
US Commision on Civil RIghts begs to differ (Score:3, Informative)
Here's the top of their site [usccr.gov]. Here's their table of contents for the 2000 election [usccr.gov]. Here's their report on voting irregularities [usccr.gov].
This might be the best report [usccr.gov] because it was written shortly after the election when the outrage was still fresh. Their later reports try to use language as neutral as pos
Re:No roadblocks, no votes thrown away. (Score:5, Interesting)
If it happened, then there will be proof of it. Even the CIA couldn't cover up a roadblock of that magnitude; there will be thousands of witnesses. A handful of witnesses is easy to fake, or to silence, but you can't do that in the numbers that such a "voter roadblock" would produce.
Show me anything more than a hanfdul, and I might be convinced. But the previous poster was correct: if these roadblocks had really occurred, there would have been more than enough evidence for Gore -or, if not him personally, any number of voter groups- to sue. He has not done so. That, I think, is the most telling thing about this.
Just because we don't accept accusations without proof doesn't make us blind followers of The Establishment. "Innocent until proven guilty" is the cornerstone of our legal system. So prove them guilty.
The roadblocks weren't physical (Score:3, Informative)
The list was determined in this manner:
Re:No roadblocks, no votes thrown away. (Score:3, Interesting)
Now newspaper reports aren't exactly known as a source of real truth, so I don't put much credence in them. OTOH, in the absence of other acceptable evidence (which doesn't include the sworn word of apparently complicit officials)...
Still, the public word of the Supreme Court was:
1) You can't count t
At least there's no chad ... (Score:4, Insightful)
A.M.
I got your chad right here
Re:At least there's no chad ... (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem wasn't paper voting. It was using another computer technology: punched cards. Punched cards are designed for a machine to read and write. The last election demonstrated that they are not good for humans to write (uncleanly punched holes) or read (no visual feedback).
I see no reason to use any method other than marking a box with a pencil on a piece of paper. Use the KISS principle.
Re:At least there's no chad ... (Score:2)
I see no reason to use any method other than marking a box with a pencil on a piece of paper. Use the KISS principle.
That's what Canada does [elections.ca], and it seems to work well for them. They even count their paper ballots surprisingly quickly [commondreams.org]. Granted, the US has different voting requirements than Canada, but it seems to me that having fast and reliable pencil and paper ballot counting is a "simple" matter of having a well designed procedure in place and a good management system to ensure i
Re:At least there's no chad ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Lets take a hypothetical situation: A new computer voting system is implemented. However, one of the towns in which it is set up configures the equipment improperly, the result being that the votes are recorded incorrectly. With a paper ballot, it is easy to see, just by looking at the ballot, whether the equipment is operating correctly. If a computer is used, you only see what the computer recorded, whether it is right or wrong. The problem I see is that you could have thousands of votes tallied incorrectly with noone ever finding out about it.
I do, however, see a computer solution that would be a hybrid of computer and paper ballots:
you walk up to the voting booth and vote on a screen. The results of your vote is printed on a thermal paper ballot. The ballot has a barcode that a computer can tally, as well as a human readable area stating who and what you voted for. you put this into a box, where the barcode is scanned and the ballot stored. The results of the scan are displayed so that you can see that the scan was correct. This system would allow you to tally votes by computer, but the ballots would be stored, so that they could be computer or hand tallyed later. Also, verification would be provided to the voter that his vote had been tallyed.
It's not about electronic vote casting. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you wanted to avoid confusing the easily confusable, you could have a touch-screen system that prints a paper ballot, with the blanks ideally positioned for the electronic counters. Efficiency and a paper trail.
Re:It's not about electronic vote casting. (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, you could always have a human backup for those ones.
Re:It's not about electronic vote casting. (Score:2)
Re:It's not about electronic vote casting. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:It's not about electronic vote casting. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's rather simple. Well-to-do areas tend to have voting methods with less % of error than more poor-class areas. Why is this I do not know, although I suspect it has to do with local property value rates, similar to education.
There was a substantial difference in the methods of voting. What needs to be done, is that there needs to be one standard, that is both simple and reasonably verifiable. I go for the pen and paper ballot myself.
Re:It's not about electronic vote casting. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It's not about electronic vote casting. (Score:2)
Re:It's not about electronic vote casting. (Score:3, Interesting)
And what exactly is the scientific unit of measure for "X voting method is more accurate than Y"? Or is your statement based on the relative error rates of well-to-do vs. poor areas?
If this is the case, then how do you know that it is the voting methods that are causing the error. Isn't it just as likely that a college educated "well-to-do" person is better equipped to understand the voting procedure than a high s
Re:It's not about electronic vote casting. (Score:4, Interesting)
If there's an undervote, it assumes you don't care about that contest.
Re:It's not about electronic vote casting. (Score:2)
Why is _paper_ necessary? (Score:2)
Re:Why is _paper_ necessary? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It's not about electronic vote casting. (Score:3, Insightful)
When we did it... (Score:3, Interesting)
Me, I think it was because the ads teaching people how to vote in the old machines were displayed nation-wide, *including* the places where the new system was used.
Whatever (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree we need to take some precautions to safegaurd the electorial process...but that dosnt mean we cant use electronic means to poll. Just like there were concerns about the inital voting schemes, there are concerns about this one, but that dosnt mean we cant simply make desgin changes to ensure the integrety of the data. And since when has the government been MORE credible than the private sector? They have had just as many scandals, if not more.
In any event, the answer is to simply design in safegaurds....not go back to older ways just because your scared of technology...please
bound for corruption (Score:4, Informative)
Top 5 reasons for Electronic Voting (Score:4, Funny)
4. Chicago motto: "Log in early, and vote often"
3. In the Mayor Daley election, even dead OS's like BSD can vote.
2. You can now use Grokster and Kazaa to steal votes.
1. "I'm from Chicago. Give me two public keys".
Paper, what paper? (Score:3, Insightful)
Bottom line (Score:2, Interesting)
B) Software is even less reliable. Bug-free software is a near impossibility.
C) No system, hardware or software, is 100% secure. People could probably figure out ways to change votes remotely via electromagnetic pulses if they had to.
D) The human factor isn't completely eliminated. As long as humans have some role in the vote takin process, the results can fixed. Whether it be from software and hardware d
Mechanical machines had problems also (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Mechanical machines had problems also (Score:2)
Paper trail: the solution (Score:4, Insightful)
The two main points in electronic voting are:
The vendor's point of view (unsurprisingly) is that "bugginess" is only a hypothetical threat, and that it in real-life situations no glitches will occur.
This is very clearly horseshit. Every IT-implementation has bugs. Repeat: Every. The question is: how many of them can we tolerate ? If it comes down to a word-processor, or a webserver, or even telecom infrastructure: we can afford quite some. If it comes to medical facilities, nuclear plants, or, as in this case, political decisions, the threshold has to be a lot lower. You wouldn't want George W. Bush to have been elected by a bug, would you ?
The (currently feasible safeguard) solution of the paper trail sounds like an excellent solution:
a) the voter can immediately control if her vote was cast correctly
b) the same rule applies as with financial and legal records (where a paper trail has to be conserved)
c) the "black box" problem that is mentioned in the article is circumvented: the citizen doesn't have to understand how the e-voting booth works, but (see a) can control if her intentions match the outcome.
Re:Paper trail: the solution (Score:2)
But the Supreme Court is okay?
Burn!
An obvious candidate for required open source (Score:2)
historical info (Score:2)
Use electronics only to prevent errors (Score:2)
So... (Score:2)
Opening Arguments Please! *Ding ding ding* (Score:4, Interesting)
VS.
"When you're dealing with computer scientists, they deal in a world of theoretics, and under that scenario anything is possible," Ms. Bonsall said. "If you probe a little further, the chance of these failures, the risk of that happening wide-scale in a national election is almost nil."
Paul Terwilliger, director of product development at Sequoia Voting Systems, one of the largest manufacturers of electronic systems, said that while no one disputes the need for safeguards, complaints about machines like his company's were uninformed. "I think the concerns being raised are 100 percent valid," Mr. Terwilliger said. "However, they're being raised by people who have little idea about what actually goes on."
I think I'm going with the doubters on this one, not with the people selling it. I also like the quote(s) that question the fact of "how can we verify there's been no tampering? And "if its so secure why can't we look in it?"
And in regard to Ms. Bosnall's quote, we're not so much worried about wide-scale national failure as we are with tampering .....big difference.
America gets scarier by the day.
Re:Opening Arguments Please! *Ding ding ding* (Score:2)
Will anyone outside Fort Slashdot notice?
Misgivings (Score:4, Informative)
A bunch of my concerns that haven't been addressed in the media:
* The hardware and software are proprietary and not open to public review. My paper has a full page copy of the ballots before every election so the public can review it.
* Not accessible. How do people missing vision or limbs use them?
* How are the results audited? Do the electronic logs go into the public domain?
* Is the incredible expense and TCO of these machines justified? Paper ballots are practically free by comparison.
* What about absentee voting? What wacky "voting method of the future" can we come for that?
Brazil (Score:5, Informative)
I fail to see how having a paper trail with electronic voting is "dreaming", it strikes me more as "required", particularly if we want to consider our government democratic.
Re:Brazil (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Brazil (Score:3, Interesting)
No, the original machines were made by Procomp. Please check your facts.
No, the original machine had. In the last election only a small percentage of the machines had the paper trail. Please double-check all your facts.
I am not. Source
Touch screens with printouts (Score:5, Interesting)
When one goes to the polls, you do the signup sheet thing. They hand you a card with a barcode on it. The barcode is not tied to the voter in any way. Only the voter knows their number.
Of course some algorithm would be used to generate the numbers and they would have large gaps. A good algorithm should prevent people bringing their own cards and hiding them in their pants, right? Smart chips could be used if people want to be paranoid (that would get expensive).
You go to a machine, insert the card. You place your votes on a touch screen. The software confirms your votes. Then it prints the results onto the card.
If you look at the card and see a mistake or for whatever reason, you go back to the main desk. They swipe the barcode, which cancels the vote and hand you a new card. If someone starts swiping invalid numbers the front desk is notified.
One can then bring the card home. After the election you can enter the barcode and check to make sure the database matches what is printed on the card.
This last one is important to me, because I feel it adds some accountability. If someone can get enough people to hand over their cards after an election an audit should be possible.
I've been up all night so this probably has holes in it, but what do you think of the overall process?
One could take the barcode thing a little farther and when the voter pamphlets are handed out there is a barcode printed on them that one can bring to the polls to make it easier for them to find the voter's name. One would still be required to sign (this isn't really any security, I assume it is allows some legal protection). If the voter does not have the barcode they would be required to provide some form of identification. I don't flat out like requiring identification, but this provides a way out.
Re:Touch screens with printouts (Score:3, Insightful)
And how do you ensure that your vote for Joe actually went to Joe? The printed card? Or the code redirection, which sent your vote to Mary instead.
You end up with 2 'votes'. The one printed on the card, and the one actually recorded. With no real way to ensure that they are the same. Even if you can check later. It's only a program telling you what it
Re:Touch screens with printouts (Score:3, Insightful)
One can then bring the card home. After the election you can enter the barcode and check to make sure the database matches what is printed on the card.
Any system which allows the voter to verify that their vote has been recorded correctly also allows someone else to coerce the voter into voting a particular way.
I'd like to see this statement disproven, but I don't think it's possible.
Re:Touch screens with printouts (Score:3, Insightful)
FWIW, I agree with you--I think your solution (which is almost identical to one I've thought about in the past) is probably the best solution to a real problem.
I think the biggest hole in it though is the number you take home. We have a secret ballot for a reason--someone can put pressure on you to vote a certain way, but only YOU know how you actually voted. With a receipt that has a RECORD of your v
Re:Touch screens with printouts (Score:3, Interesting)
The system we use in my county is to get a sheet of paper with the candidates listed and you circle the dots next to the names. Then you take your paper over to an optical reader and it sucks it in, even supposedly makes sure the ballot is accurately filled in.
Ok, I think that system works.
So now just put a touch screen like your suggesting... you put your paper in, and it fills it in with the results from the touch screen. This helps making voting easy, because the screen wou
Casting of Risk (Score:4, Insightful)
The threat model that the voting machine manufacturers want to work with is: "Given a particular system, how likely is it that it will get hacked?".
The real threat model is substantially different: "Given a particular system, how likely is it that it will be accused of having been hacked, and how damaging will that accusation be?" Much different scenario. Accusations, and the credibility they carry, are directly rebutted by evidence to the contrary. The simple availability of an irrevocable audit trail prevents challenges -- "they might be able to prove us wrong, so we better not challenge the results of the election."
No evidence, no risk of accusation, no credibility for the election.
None deserved, too.
Disclaimer: I _am_ a security engineer. This isn't a technical problem, it's a sociological one. Counting is easy.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
If Lady, If (Score:2)
<rant>
I think that this, like many other issues, is something that we at
The fact that people feel more confident about them says nothing about how tamper-proof or accurate they re
Poor article... (Score:5, Insightful)
The key points that opponents of electronic voting make are that a) there might be flaws in the system either by error or by design, b) that the machines cannot be easily inspected to check their operations, and c) that without a paper trail there is no way to check after the fact whether the votes were correctly counted or not.
The response from a voting machine manufacturer, however, is classic obfuscation:
At this point, the question arises - why are these critics wrong? What are they not understanding about the system? Rather than following up on this point, though, the reporter takes a completely different, and totally irrelevant tack, discussing public confidence in the machines. So what? Lots of people probably think that Microsoft invented the Internet. It doesn't make it true. The only conclusion I can come to is that the journalist did not take the time to understand the issue properly, and just got quotes from "both sides" and that was good enough.
Do experts in other fields (if I may be so bold as to count myself an "expert" in it) get as frustrated with journalists, or is it just a particular problem with science and tech journalism?
Re:Poor article... (Score:2)
You are not alone. If you are still in college (or still facing starting it) by any chance, take a journalism course as a general ed elective. I did because I like writing and wanted to try something other than short stories. It was an eye opener about the sorts of people who major in journalism (by the end of the seme
I read it a little differnt than you did. (Score:3, Insightful)
I dissagree, the article was beautifully constructed to alarm the reader:
Using the FOIA to view code? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd like to see someone file a Freedom of Information Act [epic.org] request to see the code. The FOIA applies to the following documents:
I know there are arguments against this, specifically that the code is the intellectual property of a private business, and that it is protected by both US Copyright laws and the Berne Convention, but I'd like to see the courts wrestle with this one just the same. Knowing how our votes are counted is one of the sacred founding principles of democracy, and personally, I think it trumps any other interests in this case.
Unfortunately, this has little to no chance of succeeding while Ashcroft is Attorney General, since he's declared an effective moratorium [alternet.org] on FOIA requests while he is in office.
NYT? (Score:4, Interesting)
Troll? No, legitimate comment on the credibility of a "source" of information.
Bartcop (Score:4, Informative)
WARNING: This is really unsettling stuff and may cause you to lose (more) faith in the U.S. election system.
The off by one error that ruled the world (Score:2)
I don't mind using scanners to count faster, but the day I have to vote online is the day I move to Canada.
Has been like that in Belgium for years. (Score:2, Informative)
They even have a flash example of the electronic vote, and organise tryout sessions for the elderly people who fear everything that has a screen connected to it
Electronic voting and air gaps (Score:5, Insightful)
The only way you can possibly make electronic voting machines acceptably secure is to not network them at all. This isn't so much a measure to prevent hacking as it is a measure to control the amount of damage a hacker can do; if only one machine at a time can be hacked, then damage remains localized. Here's my idea for such a system:
The advantages to this system are many:
And one final note, particular to US elections: poll results should be considered classified information until the polls are closed in all fifty states. Timezones being what they are, this exit-poll crap is causing election results in East Cost states to affect West Coast states, however slightly, and that needs to be dealt with. Each state's results must be completely independent of the results of any other state, and measures need to be taken to ensure that.
Re:Electronic voting and air gaps (Score:3, Insightful)
And everyone in the voting station will know who that person voted for becuase the machine just read the names of the selected candates out loud.
Votes are suppost to be private. There should be no way that even someone standing outside the voting booth can tell who you just voted for.
It needs to be open (Score:5, Interesting)
1996: Chuck Hagel wins "stunning upsets" in both primaries and the general election in Nebraska.
2002: Chuck Hagel gets reelected in a landslide, with 83% of the vote.
A single company programmed, installed and largely operated the machines that counted about 80 percent of those votes.
This company used to be headed by, and is still part-owned by, you guessed it, Chuck Hagel.
Coincidence, yeah right.
Oh, one more thing. Charlie Matulka, who lost the 2002 election, requested a hand count of the vote. His request was denied because Nebraska has a just-passed law that prohibits government-employee election workers from looking at the ballots, even in a recount. The only machines permitted to count votes in Nebraska are those made and programmed by the corporation formerly run by Hagel. Hmm, wonder who pushed that one through!
Matulka's comment:"If you want to win the election, just control the machines." [commondreams.org]
(most of the above info shamelessly plagiarised from that last link).
Now, this doesn't mean that you can't use electronic voting, just that the whole process needs to be completely open and exposed. The source code needs to be open, the hardware design needs to be open, you need independant and unbiased people to check that the open source code is actually what is running on the open hardware, the whole thing needs an open audit trail in the event that a recount is required etc. The whole process is a helluvalot more complicated than just a machine that counts votes. So people need to be given proof that their votes are not corrupted in any step of that process.
Why reliable electronic voting will not happen (Score:5, Insightful)
Obviously this is something that today's rich and powerful would never want to happen, and they would fight long and hard before giving any of this power up.
Re:Why reliable electronic voting will not happen (Score:3, Insightful)
And less democratic and trustworthy. Personally, I like the fact that the polls are run by ordinary citizens, not by the state's IT department. There's a whole level of abuse that this system makes difficult. The more centralized the voting process becomes the easier it is to corrupt.
As a result it would become possible to have people vote for many more issues than just who is going to be a president
I'm for t
Wisconsin Election Board decertified Touchscreens (Score:4, Interesting)
In January, 2002 the State Elections Board approved two touch screen voting systems, the ES&S Votronic
DRE and the GBS Accu-Touch EBS 100 DRE.
This spring I raised the system integrity issues with the Board, and persuaded them to revoke the certifications [state.wi.us].
It helped that after garnering over 10% in the last race for Governor, the Wisconsin Libertarian Party was able to place a representative on the Board, the only 3d Party State Elections Official in the US.
Sideshow who? (Score:4, Funny)
Somehow I just don't trust a man named 'Terwilliger' to *not* rig an election. He'd probably have our dead pets voting him in as mayor...
99% (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't that the same percentage of people who "voted" for Saddam Hussein in the last Iraq "election". I wonder if the "feedback" was tallied on a Diebold machine.
I work in market research and I have never, ever seen 99% of people polled agree on anything. This 99% of the vote statement should give anyone considering e-lections the willies.
Stalin Said it best (Score:4, Insightful)
-- Stalin (Former leader of the USSR)
So the voting machine manufacturers are now the ones who really run the country.
Great.
Voter Verified! (Score:3, Interesting)
After discussing with Dr. Dill for a presentation, the meaning of voter verifiable is very specific. It means that the voter can look at their ballot, and verify that their vote reflects their intention before they hand it in. Nobody I know can inspect the electrical charges to determine whether their vote was recorded correctly or not (or even at all!).
I happen to live in Johnson County, Kansas, one of the sites mentioned. There's two things to keep in mind there. 1. Its an off year so turnout is usually very low. 2. The feedback card is optional, so unless you have something specific to say, you're not likely to fill it out. 3. Its difficult to evaluate the system as a whole until the vote is canvassed. Even fraud can be user friendly.
The independent testers aren't exactly trustworthy either. There's only 3 nationwide. VoteHere machines were verified from these ITAs (VoteHere is currently facing a wrongful termination suit for firing a QA Engineer who put too many bugs on the 'Critical' list.)
Re:Saddam didn't use electronic voting (Score:2)
Check No: Mad at you for voting against him Saddam
Remember, armed guards stood over them as they voted.
Re:Saddam didn't use electronic voting (Score:2)
Re:The mark of the beast is upon us! (Score:3, Interesting)
The same argument could be made for the status quo of voting. The only way to make manual voting secure is to register every citizen, tatoo them and require a drop of blood for DNA testing before they enter the voting booth.
Except that this doesn't really address security and neither does your rant. This assumes that the voters themselves will be trying to commit fraud. This happens. It's still nothing compared to the problems that happen when the government co
Re:Greatest scam in history. (Score:2)
Obviously you're not familiar with the history of democracy.
Democracy can survive corruption, fraud, graft, etc--hell, it seems to thrive on it, actually--
No, wait. Maybe you do know that, and "one voter one vote" and "everyone vote" count as subversions of democracy... yeah, that must be it...
Maybe. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's difficult to overstate the importance of having a fully auditable voting process. That's the main advantage of paper ballots, be they punch cards, "check the box," whatever: you can recount them. Someone else can recount them. We can disagree on the interpretations of those recounts, but we can at least observe the "primary source" and make a call one way or another.
Now, electronic voting would certainly have advantages. If people could walk through a "voting app" where they could see all of the choices for each office, and do a confirmation step before "submitting" their vote, that would be awesome, and way more accurate than what we do now. However, think of the system which will be used to achieve this: if it's good, the designing company will want to sell it everywhere. So the application will become one hell of a valuable peice of "intellectual property." Do you think we'll be allowed to see the code for it? No way! So no error checking that way; we just have to trust that every vote counted was processed correctly. That's a lot of trust. I don't suspect that any voting-machine-manufacurer would insert deliberate bias, but the lack of ability to examine the process for correctness is just unacceptable. It's too important to just trust some private company, whose interest isn't necessarily coincident with accuracy.
An open-source voting app would be somewhat better; any independent person could audit the code for correctness, but to verify its performance on an actual dataset would require re-establishing the same exact platform later, and of course maintaining a digital copy of the inputs.
In either of these scenarios, it seems outright necessary that there be a physical record of votes cast using the system that independent, non-computer-expert people could examine. Ideally, the machine would print a small "receipt" for each vote cast which could be collected and, if necessary, recounted and compared against the digital tally.
Paper is more tamper resistant.... the "chad" (Score:3, Informative)
Womever you wanted to win or thought should win, the recount was unconstitutional in the way it was ordered. It was also unfairly counted because anything that had an "improperly" punched chad was disgarded, which tended be more Bush votes discarded. (Not that I wanted either side to become victorious down to such an infantile issue.)
The real reliability = "Integrity and Honesty of the Sy
Re:Doubts? (Score:3, Interesting)