Electronic Voting: Your Worst Nightmares are True 904
jfreon writes "On Democracy Now Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting fame, disclosed (near the end of the transcript) that in the compromised 1.8Gigs off Diebold's FTP site they uncovered "an actual election file containing actual votes on election day from San Luis Obispo County, California". Problem is, the date stamp was 3:31pm - during voting hours! The Diebold system uses a wireless network card. Worse: "So that means if they can pull the information in, they can also send information back into those machines. ""
Slashdot is a small portion of the public (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Slashdot is a small portion of the public (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Slashdot is a small portion of the public (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Slashdot is a small portion of the public (Score:5, Informative)
Yep. And guess what party that woud be?
From the article:
According to Harris, a study of the campaign contributions made by Diebold and its employees revealed an unusual pattern: Hundreds of thousands of dollars were being funneled to a few Republican candidates with very little to any other party.
Re:Slashdot is a small portion of the public (Score:5, Interesting)
From today's Ohio Beacon Journal [ohio.com]"
MSFT and Republicans dead in one global blow (Score:5, Interesting)
All things being equal (they aren't), Bush has done enough damage and the press is bold enough with him that he cannot win relection without: it being handed to him by a blunder of an idiot opponent, or if he steals it through fraud.
We are going into the economic winter of an inevitable Kondratieff Cycle [gold-eagle.com]delayed by massive deficit spending. Whatever party wins the next election will take the blame for this.
Based on the momentem of electronic voter machine replacment and the detailed widespread press coverage of the hanging/dimpled chad recount process, if the presidential election is in within 0-5% there will be great hubbub and sevral recounts.
Bush will become president again after recounts play out. The media will be forced to cover the advantages of open source vs proprietary software. It's to short a logical leap for the press not to take.
Durring the mayhem and finger pointing US companies that make software will become the biggest boogie men in the questionable election. Rigged or not, the mistrust of the govt will be enourmous. The stigma will linger and people will understand the software/IP alternitive en-masse for the first time.
When the market/housing/bonds/currency all crash, because the chinese unpeg the yuan from the dollar as late as possible (2007 3/4 as per the WTO) and the yuan springs back hard destablizing everything. (they will do this as sabotage or an economic nuke.) Republicans will take all the blame for the following depresion and the corruption that caused it. (Nothing sucks like a Hoover)
The Republican party will be dispanded, and perhaps a world war (over intelectual property) will occour. Laws on software will radically change for the better in 2012-2015 bringing the US inline with less recent but still new international IP law.
As crazy as it seems, the scarriest thing to me right now is a Democrat winning. Most of these things will still happen but the Democrats will take the blame. Democrats are way to weak to survive a disasterous presidency and will dispand.
Obviously whatever party is dispanded will be replaced, but the populist replacment will take time to accumulate power and the country will swing hard to the left or the right.
Somebody please laugh at me.
Re:MSFT and Republicans dead in one global blow (Score:4, Funny)
Furthermore, a Cabal of Masons and Catholics will deploy mind control lasers to manipulate the dollar, crash the stock market and prepare the way for Jehova-1 and the Yeti's impending invasion.
Only "Bob" [subgenius.org] can save us now.
Re:Slashdot is a small portion of the public (Score:5, Insightful)
But seriously, all politicians are evil, and substantial campaign contributions (especially from companies or special interest groups) should be illegal. Dammit!
Sure, say what you want, but I can't believe you really think the manufactures of our voting systems should fall within the same rules as normal companies.
We have special restrictions for all sorts of vendors to the US Gov. For instance most military contractors need to certify that none of their employees are non-citizens.
Saying that voting machine manufacturers should be as impartial as possible is hardly a radical idea.
Re:Slashdot is a small portion of the public (Score:4, Insightful)
I would disagree and say it is fairly radical. First of all, you are saying lets judge someone for what they think, not what they do. Beyond that, you are saying lets judge them for political thought/speech. (Giving money to compaigns is considered a free speech issue currently by the courts.)
You are telling these companies (and by companies, you of course mean the employees of these companies) that they have no right to political discourse in the United States if they are in this industry.
I can see the interview for a job in this new market segment.
Wait, I got a great idea, all companies should be forced to be politically "diverse" -- we should force companies to hire people based on thier political beliefs... Also, while we are at it, companies should also be religously "diverse" as well... screw standards, screw who does the best work, as long as you get a high enough "diversity" rating, maybe the government will give you corporate wellfare!
*sigh* -- I don't like these stupid, un-secure, un-open, non-standard voting machines anymore than the next guy, but when the political party of the company owner/employees starts to be picked at as the primary way to attack it, I start to worry deeply about political freedom in the United States.
Pass a law that states all voting systems must be open-source and reviewed by at least 5 state colleges or some such, and you will get a decent system (or you will at least know that you can't get one) -- but attacking the political beliefs of the owner/employees of a company is pathetic and sad.
Re:Slashdot is a small portion of the public (Score:5, Insightful)
Defense contractors screen their employees all the time, because security is important there. Is the security of our elections any less important?
Re:Slashdot is a small portion of the public (Score:5, Insightful)
However, the fact that the company is run by republicans isn't relevant. Both parties are corrupt. They're both bought, there are conflicts of interest with both, etc. Bush and Haliburton, the Clinton's and their scandal, etc. I wouldn't trust either of them and until people realize that they're simply two sides of a plutocracy we're going to be screwed.
To use these machines from an obviously biased company is tantamount to election fraud. Saying otherwise, pretending that everyone looks past their personal preferences to provide a fair playing field, is just ridiculous and goes against all of recorded history. The *only* way we'll get a fair result is if people who hate each other watch every step of this together, both watching for the other to screw up, and both afraid to cheat for fear of being watched.
It's not a question of if this particular company is crooked. That's a given. The question is how to keep everyone honest.
Re:Let's not neglect the donkeys (Score:5, Informative)
The 17 counts he went to jail on were for mail fraud and paying people to do nothing.
Maybe there is a better example? Say in Chicago
Re:Slashdot is a small portion of the public (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Slashdot is a small portion of the public (Score:5, Funny)
We Do (The Stonecutter's Song)
2F09 - 8th January 1995
Who controls the British crown?
Who keeps the metric system down?
We do! We do!
Who keeps Atlantis off the maps?
Who keeps the Martians under wraps?
We do! We do!
Who holds back the electric car?
Who makes Steve Guttenberg a star?
We do! We do!
Who robs the cave fish of their site?
Who rigs every Oscar night?
We do! We do!
Re:Slashdot is a small portion of the public (Score:4, Interesting)
Frankly, either way it's scary.
But the rampant security issues, rather than one carefully managed secret hole, indicate that the first option is much more likely.
Re:Slashdot is a small portion of the public (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Slashdot is a small portion of the public (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Slashdot is a small portion of the public (Score:4, Funny)
Why bother? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Why bother? (Score:5, Interesting)
Honestly, it would be good to have hackers...and I mean real good hackers, not script kiddies, change the results of a large election to a party like one of the above just to show the real danger to having machines like this wide open.
While I don't normally advocate the breaking of laws (and I love white hat hacking), something dramatic does need to happen to wake some ordinary people up. Of course, this isn't really all that different from the 100,000 dead people who voted for JFK in 1960, but who is counting.
Re:Why bother? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Why bother? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ironically, the "neo-conservative" tradition he and his cabinet (except Colin Powel) espouse, was, in fact, founded by a former Trotskyite and Communist. See the History of Irving Kristol [mediatransparency.org], father of William Kristol [weeklystandard.com]. So, we are in fact led by those who espouse an ideology closely crafted and derived by former Communists and Communist ideology. Former Communists running the GOP - go figure! --M
Re:Why bother? (Score:4, Interesting)
In case anyone is interested, a more academic (footnoted, reseached by an actual historian) account and analysis of American Fascism is available http://www.cursor.org/stories/fascismintroduction
Please read this article and tell others about it if you care at all about where this country is headed.
Re:That's a good one (Score:5, Informative)
For example:
"Voter puched the 'Al Gore' punch. Voter emphasized the vote by CIRCLING the punch. Voter further empasized their intention by writing AL GORE on the ballot.
Cannot count as Al Gore because we're not counting."
The Miami Herald did a similar study that actually COUNTED the ballots and found Al Gore the winner.
The true story of the election can be found at www.gregpalast.com. Yes, Greg Palast DOES have an axe to grind. He hates liars and hypocrites. The first two chapters of "The Best Democracy Money" is available their.
To summarize:
DBT Online/ChoicePoint was selected as a high-ball at $2.3 million dollars. The company who had previously did the job charged $5700.
They were supposed to record cross-checking against public databases and verification phone calls. They did none of this. They were instructed NOT TO.
ChoicePoint was instructed to search for similar names and reduced Jack to John etc... It was supposed to create the maximum number of matches provided the individuals.
The County offices were ORDERED to scrub everyone on the list without doing verification because ChoicePoint was SUPPOSED to have done that verification.
" The State of Florida was content with a partial match of four: names( the first four letters were good enough), ate of birth, gender and race. Not even the address or state mattered in the mad dash to maximize the number of citizens stripped of their civil rights."
- The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, p56
Of course you probably listen to Rush. AS if he hastened spent 6 hours a day grinding axes for the last 15 years.
Re:Slashdot is a small portion of the public (Score:3, Funny)
More headlines... (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh wait...
Re:More headlines... (Score:5, Informative)
Look around the web on site:
here [thenation.com],
here [washingtonpost.com],
here [guardian.co.uk],
here [commondreams.org], and lots more places.
It is clear that the majority intent of Florida's voters was to send Gore to the White House. Furthermore, it is clear that Florida's voting process was seriously biased against minorities, who predominantly vote Democratic.
The only reason why this wasn't discovered during the recount was because the Bush family managed to cut the recount short as long as it was still favorable for Bush.
Or we need to add a new mod of "+1 strong opinion of of a bitter loser."
With Bush as president, we all are losing: we are getting wars, economic problems, huge budget deficits, a failing educational system, rollback of civil rights protections, deterioration of international relations, etc.
It is pretty depressing that Republicans care more about who the President had sex with than about how the country is doing.
Re:Slashdot is a small portion of the public (Score:4, Insightful)
Definitely. Now, how do we accomplish that? I don't have contacts with the press. I've got contacts on at least one dem campaign team (surprisingly, not Dean!), even contacts in the defense industry, but the press? Nothing. Who does? How do we get this in front of them?
Re:Slashdot is a small portion of the public (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would it be "bitter liberal types" who should be worried about voting machines that cannot be audited?
Why shouldn't right wingers also be concerned about voting machines that give you no way to verify who voted for what?
Why is it a "liberal" issues? And why do the right wingers instinctively want these machines?
Curiouser and curiouser!
Re:Slashdot is a small portion of the public (Score:3, Funny)
*dims lights, turns on overhead projector*
Voice-over: "This is a picture of Al Gore inventing the Internet (badly altered photo of Gore standing next to a VAX)."
VO: This is a picture of Al Gore beating up the pope (bad cut and paste of Al's head on Muhammad Ali's body, hovering over the pope in a boxing ring).
VO: This is a picture of Al Gore on vacation (picture of Cheney in wo
Re:Slashdot is a small portion of the public (Score:5, Insightful)
1) God's will should be fundamentally irrelevant in the U.S. government (First Amendment).
2) The USA isn't "better" than other countries from a humanistic standpoint. There isn't anything super-special about the US that God would put it up on a pedestal over anyone else.
People who try to inject God's will into the US government are most often arrogant, naive, and ignorant Christians who think their rules are superior to any others (again violating the First Amendment).
The US is a country ruled by the People, all inclusive, regardless of faith.
Re:Slashdot is a small portion of the public (Score:4, Informative)
This clause, however, does:
Clause 2: This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.
Note also that it does not restrict state governments in this area at all.
Again, the above clause does. Any law based on religion passed by a state government must be consistent and not conflict with the Constitution, including the Bill of Rights. You cannot, therefore, pass a law that says, for example, that you cannot take the Lord's name in vain, as that violates the First Amendment.
This should be obvious but your comments force me to point it out once again. Most laws I could think of based on religion that aren't also based on common morality (ie. "thou shalt not kill") would conflict with the Constitution in some way. You couldn't say the Pope is the ultimate judge of whether a convicted killer lives or dies, for example - that's up to the Supreme Court, according to the Constitution. This clause was partly (or possibly mainly) intended to promote separation of church and state.
Re:Slashdot is a small portion of the public (Score:4, Funny)
I'm a bitter liberal type now? Damn damn damn! I always thought I was a conservative, but because this scares the piss right out of me, and you said that that makes me a bitter liberal type, I guess I must be.
Crap.
Voting machine manufacturer wants votes for Bush (Score:5, Flamebait)
"The head of a company vying to sell voting machines in Ohio told Republicans in a recent fund-raising letter that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."
Yes. Your votes are being scammed to keep the neocon scum in power.
Re:Voting machine manufacturer wants votes for Bus (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe fewer people will be able to form their opinions on freely available information that way. That's what you neocon/conservatives would like, after all. Just like Britney Spears says [drudgereportarchives.com]:
Don't question the authority. That's the way to go.
Re:Voting machine manufacturer wants votes for Bus (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Voting machine manufacturer wants votes for Bus (Score:5, Interesting)
And if the company - even though it would MAKE MORE MONEY - refused to make an add-on printer so a ballot could be printed, examined by the voter, and put in a separate ballot box for counting to verify that the machine correctly reported the totals...
Well, I might not be convinced he was going to cheat, but I sure wouldn't want to trust an election to his machines.
Remember, with these machines there is NO WAY to know if the machine correctly reported the vote.
SOME of us here work with computers, so we know that sometimes the computers make mistakes. So wouldn't it be a good thing if we had a way to verify what a machine reported?
What if a machine just broke down? Do we hold the election over again, or do we throw out all the votes from that precinct?
Re:Voting machine manufacturer wants votes for Bus (Score:5, Interesting)
Additional revenue from add-on sales like this - and the service contracts that would go with it - are immensely profitable.
So what is going on here?
Also, they insult and ridicule anyone who tries to point out that electronic voting machines that cannot be audited are a problem! Even the hundreds of computer scientists who have spoken out are told they don't know what they are talking about. What IS going on here?
What would be so difficult about adding a printer, and having the voter look over the printout and then deposit it into a separate ballot box? Why are they so dead-set against doing this, even when it would make them tons more money? Are these Republican-owned "businesses" after something besides money?
Re:Voting machine manufacturer wants votes for Bus (Score:5, Interesting)
Diebold's SEC filings [sec.gov] show their Chairman / President / CEO to be Mr. Walden W. O'Dell, who has donated [opensecrets.org] $2000 this summer to Senator George V. Voinovich [senate.gov], Republican from Ohio (Diebold's home state). Diebold Inc.'s soft money donations [opensecrets.org] also go to Republicans.
This does not demonstrate to me much evidence that Diebold is "after something other than money", it looks like routine political activity to me. But, while my quick research has neither managed to refute nor confirm your conspiracy theory, I'll pass it along anyway for whoever might be curious.
Re:Voting machine manufacturer wants votes for Bus (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Voting machine manufacturer wants votes for Bus (Score:4, Interesting)
The $300 million dollar campaign of George Bush was about SOMETHING. They didn't make that cash by having $10 per plate barbecues. They got that money from coporate fat cats.
By the way, you don't get to be a super-corporate fat cat by being fair to your fellow employee and fellow citizen. You get to those positions by well placed daggers (proverbial) in the backs of your peers and the occasional supervisor (when you can manage it). You get to that place by selling as much as you can for as much as you can for the smallest cost (which means it's often shit). You get to that position by laying of workers, slashing benefits, importing foreign identured servants, busting unions and all around just being plain evil.
After a full day of wholesale theft, who do you turn to protect your bounty. Do you turn to Democrats who (used to) believe in a fair society by which you pay for public services according to your means. Those same democrats often provide low-cost or no-charge services that compete with your schemes to fleece every dime possible. Those damn democrats and progressives try very hard to keep large corporations from selling $1,000 toilet seats to the Pentagon.
Or do I give money to Republicans. Not honest ones (though there are few remaining). Rather, do they give money to the neo-cons who have now publicly stated their goal to merge large corporate America and government. Corporate governance (formerly called Facism). If I give them lots of money, they will slash those pesky environmental laws that stop us from dumping toxic waste in rivers. They will allow us to rape the landspace AND WORKERS. They will turn aside when we fleece Americans. They will overturn liability and tort laws by which consumers sue us for selling them faulty dangerous products.
Hmmm... if I'm a greedy evil rat bastard with a contempt for humanity, who do I choose to donate to. Well at $300 million to $30 million, I dare-say that the evil rat bastards have chosen the neo-cons.
Now the rat-bastards are finding ways to dispense with the even more troublesome DEMOCRACY. Voters will get pissed off. After all, once upon a time their was a robber barons paradise that but dangerous chemicals into the milk itself. Then their was a great depression and many of those who counted themselves among the elite few were cannabalized by their superiors. Sent out to the bread lines by the common rabble. But the common rabble could still vote. And they voted for an Roosevelt.
My gosh, didn't that Roosevelt's cousin also pass the first anti-trust legislation. Isn't that they war hero who led a rebellion against the elitist Republican party and subsequently crushed as a progressive. Didn't those victorious Republicans lead us to our paradise of an enslaved population. Damn what will this Roosevelt do????
Of course, Roosevelt brought about the new Deal. Eventually embraced by most (including the Grand Old Party) up and until Eisenhower. The last great Republican warned us upon departure of the Miliatary-Industrial complex and other such corporate mischief. Against he pursuit of war and strife for the benefit of a few fat cats. The same Business-Government environment that brought Adolf Hitler to power and the world to the brink of utter disaster.
Now we sit with a government being literally run by the corporat thiefs. They are governed by a president unelected by the people (like Adolf Hitler). He is determined to de-regulate EVERYTHING. To diminish the people great institution DEMOCRACY to a sham game. Adolf Hitler never stopped elections. And he never stopped winning.
Here and now the Neo-Cons (Facists) are trying to permanently rob America of democracy without robbing us of elections. They fix them through culling voting rolls of so-called "felons" and fix the voting machines to vote a Neo-Con every
Re:Voting machine manufacturer wants votes for Bus (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Voting machine manufacturer wants votes for Bus (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, this is one of the times I'd be LEAST likely to suspect election fraud. You seem to forget that any election more attention-getting than local school board is going to be continuously monitored by opinion polling.
If, as you suggest, the landslide was fraudulent, then the election results would have no relation to either the pre-election polls or the exit polling. This would attract an awful lot of attention in the media, and I believe that any fraud on the scale that you suggest would at least be openly accused.
The only place, in my mind, that election fraud would be useful beyond the threat of detection would be in extremely close races -- those that no one has any idea who will win. In those cases, than altering the votes by 1% would still be within the margin of error on even the exit polling, and so wouldn't be immediately suspicious.
Re:Voting machine manufacturer wants votes for Bus (Score:3, Interesting)
Reason Magazine, by no means a liberal nor hysterical magazine, seems to have no compunctions about identifying this as a problem with roots in the right.
We're trying to spread democrazy? (Score:3, Insightful)
Question (Score:4, Interesting)
Kjella
Re:Question (Score:3, Interesting)
Supposedly the connection is one way, so they cannot "rig" the election, per se. An article I had read earler said that it was only summary information, tallies, of the votes, not each individual vote, that was uploaded. The article posted here isn't clear on the subject.
But either way, it is very illegal to count votes while the poles are still open, regardles of whether or not you can tie each vote to each person.
WS FTP (Score:3, Funny)
Boycott (Score:5, Funny)
i hope we don't over-react (Score:3, Funny)
OSS (Score:3, Interesting)
True, paper and pen ballots are vulnerable to tampering and etc, but at least you can recount the ORIGINAL ballots as the voters filled them out. Electronic ballots lack such a safeguard. Unless of course we print out a paper-copy of the ballots to keep in a lock-box just in case the voting procedures are called into question. But then why not just use paper ballots in the first place??
Re:OSS (Score:4, Interesting)
Because one of the hottest debates in a recount is over disputed ballots. One only had to see the whole hanging chad / pregnant chad bullshit in Florida to grasp this concept.
Imagine this: the voters get clean laser printout with their selections. The voters verify the selections and put them in the box. A week later, a recount is issued, and wow! No disputed ballots! It's all there in plain toner.
Of course, the ballots would probably have a barcode to be used for recount, and some 1337 haxor could alter the barcode while printing out the proper selections, causing the recount to be skewed. But if the recount is thorough, then eventually someone will count the printed-out selections, and spot the discrepancy.
seriously guys... (Score:4, Funny)
Information on Voting Machines Issue (Score:5, Informative)
mod me down (Score:4, Interesting)
Mod me down, because I am obviously too dumb to realize that just because the data from a machine makes it onto a server, does NOT mean that you can push data back.
You think, maybe, the voting machine pushes its data to a repository and defined intervals? Maybe? kinda?
teknopurge
Re:mod me down (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:mod me down (Score:5, Insightful)
The people who built the machine are the same ones running the data stream. They've got ROOT. Having any data access in the middle of the election means that Diebold could write back too, and that simply shouldn't be possible with a well-designed voting system.
Re:mod me down (Score:5, Interesting)
The connection is a plain old modem connection (as mentioned in the article). By its very nature it's able to receive information in addition to sending it. Hopefully the machines won't accept any modifications to the vote record, but this does establish that an previously unknown channel, open during an actual election, is available. It doesn't necessarily mean anything wrong was occurring, but it does mean that it's possible for something wrong to happen. For something as important as our democracy, I demand the highest levels of security. Trusting a private company with strong political ties to do the right thing seems stupid.
Hmmm, I'd really rather not have my voting machine sending its vote information to a private company in the middle of the vote. Again, as mentioned in the article, by law you cannot count the votes until the polls have closed. Making the numbers available to an outside party isn't allowed. (This is, of course, why there are exit polls instead of the networks just hooking up to the poll computers for up to the minute totals.)
Calm down everyone (Score:5, Funny)
Worst nightmare??? (Score:5, Funny)
votedriving? (Score:3, Funny)
Reading doesn't imply writing (Score:5, Funny)
Not necessarily. Just because a resource can be read from doesn't mean it can be written to. With proper design...
Oh -- we're talking about Diebold? Nevermind...
This is why e-voting may never take off (Score:4, Insightful)
Every technological setback may end up as another knife in e-voting's back.
Re:This is why e-voting may never take off (Score:3, Insightful)
The advantages of a system like this:
1) Electronic results for easy/fast counting
2) Original ballots retained for recounts.
3) User interface is familiar to anybody who has ever been to school.
4) No hanging chads.
My complaint with the all-elect
Dammit, (Score:3, Funny)
Thank god the DMCA prohibits the disclosure of this type of info, because if anyone finds out... we'd be screwed.
Re:Dammit, (Score:4, Insightful)
Those were the good ol' days, kid. Small government, wars that ended, and a Commander-in-Chief who kept his trousers on while working.
Come to think of it, the music was a lot better back then too, wasn't it?
Upon Further Examination... (Score:5, Funny)
Edgar Neubauer
Prudence Goodwyfe
Mr. and Mrs. Bananas
Humphrey Boa-Gart
Snowball I
As expected they all voted for Sideshow Bob
Falicious logic in article (Score:5, Funny)
What is wrong with this picture? And if nothing is wrong why can't I edit the Slashdot home page?
Re:Falicious logic in article (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Falicious logic in article (Score:3, Funny)
If there was some kind of "read-only memory," I'm sure they would have given it a name by now.
Re:Falicious logic in article (Score:3, Insightful)
You don't want someone to take the last section as I have and conclude 'scare mongering rubbish'
Perhaps high-tech isn't the answer (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps a few precincts can be corrupted with paper voting, but the whole nation can be corrupted with electronic voting. What moron puts a wireless adapter on a voting machine, anyway?
Voting is a fundamental exercise in any democratic system. I think being very cautious and conservative is justified, here. Chasing electronic voting for its own sake is simply foolish. It almost seems the push for electronic voting is due only to hungry contractors trying to make a dime for themselves. The 2000 Florida vote is merely a red herring in all this.
Just make your X on your ballot (Score:5, Insightful)
Speed in counting? Who needs it? It's not like the offcials take office the day after the election anyway -- hell, the President has to wait two and a half frickin' months. Why the rush to have an instantly-countable system?
Furthermore, in many other large-ish countries (such as France, the UK and Germany), voting is still done by making a big honkin' X on a circle next to the name of the guy you want. And no, it's not a bubble form that has to be filled in just right -- just make your damn X as sloppy as you please. No hanging chads, no network to hack, no problems reading it. And they still have the results in by the morning in time for the early papers.
So why have electronic voting again?
Cheers,
Ethelred
A Slashdot business plan (Score:3, Funny)
2.Change votes
3.??
4.Profit!
Talk to your Congresscritters (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Congressperson?? (Score:3, Informative)
And he's not making it up, that's what it says on the House [house.gov] website.
"Write Your Representative - Contact your Congressperson in the U.S. House of Representatives."
Will anyone do anything about it now? Nah... (Score:3, Interesting)
The only way people are going to get a wakeup call is if a group of people got a database of eligible voters from local precincts complete with whatever data is necessary to fake a ballot, go into said precincts, and make it look like some unknown Non-Democrat/Non-Republican party candidates (who wouldn't have won anyways) won the election.
Alternately, it would humor me if some "terrorist" organization used this hole to severely screw up the vote by mass-wiping voting terminals/databases.
BTW: How would someone catch this before it's too late? Most precinct staff are volunteers, and they definitely can't see who voted what...
And with code like this??? (Score:3, Funny)
// If it is, then dude, it must be valid!
voterIsValid = KindaVerifyVoterValidity(voterID);
// A switch would be better but the way I
// see it, there are only two candidates:
// the one I want to win and "who cares"
if(vote > 1 && voterIsValid == True){
vote_for_my_candidate++;
vote_for_whoever = GenerateRandomNoise();
}
I call shenanigans!!!
(go home and get your brooms!)
Help fix the problem! (Score:5, Informative)
The idea of EVM2003 is to create Free Software voting machine, and to implement machines that also produce voter-verifiable paper trails (i.e. visually readable printed ballots). We will do a number of security things right, where the commercial companies have done them wrong... they have aimed for "security through obscurity" or "just trust us." As well, part of our requirement is to have fully blind-accessible voting that maintains complete anonymity.
Anyway, I (David Mertz [mailto]) have taken over as Developer Lead recently, and am trying to get the development of the demo rolling. Part of that effort is recruiting some more developers, and splitting the project into several only loosely connected parts. Feel free to contact me--the standard ballot system (in the demo version at least) is being done in wxPython; but conceivably we would choose other languages/technologies for bar-code reading, printing, blind-voting, etc. (my preference is to use Python though, for consistency and rapid development).
Re:Help fix the problem! (Score:3, Insightful)
your expectations are too high (Score:4, Insightful)
A paper trail is comparatively expensive, but worth its enduring characteristics in recording a vote.
They don't know how the votes are counted... (Score:4, Funny)
I know! I checked out the souce code from the h4x0r3d FTP site. In fact, I even recognize the hardware it was written for! (Atari 800) It was written in atari basic. The offending code looks like this.
35 if gwb algore then goto 40
37 goto 45
40 gwb=gwb+(algore-gwb)
45 goto 10
You can tell by the line numbering that this was put in as an afterthought. Ya I bet those bastards didn't think anyone could still decipher archaic line numbers and goto statements of atari basic, BUT IM STILL HERE HAHAHA!
How to create honest and fair electronic voting (Score:4, Interesting)
Vague information on encryption (Score:4, Insightful)
And what about their wireless security? You can store votes in a steel box protected by voracious bears, but if they (the votes, not the bears) aren't protected on the way to wherever it is that they count them up, it doesn't make much of a difference. (I'm assuming here that that is what the wireless networking is used for). Is Diebold using WEP, which can be broken in a couple of hours? Unless Diebold has adopted WPA early (which, given their track record on security, I kinda doubt), some schmuck could sit in his car outside the polling place and run a wireless packet sniffer on whatever traffic is being sent.
The way that Diebold seems to be hiding information on its machines' security is disturbing - you'd think that if they had solid software they'd talk a little about it to impress potential customers, rather than just making vague blanket statements. Given everything that's happened, though, that's apparently is not the case.
Scaring voters away from democracy (Score:3, Interesting)
this is so wrong... (Score:5, Insightful)
Better yet, I think the bureau of printing and engraving should make some fancy counterfeit-resistant ballots, each printed/embedded with a unique serial number in a place where everyone can keep an eye on the process.
After the election, any unused/mismarked ballots must be accounted for. The ballots should have a matching stub with the unique number and what they voted for that the they can take home with them and may at any time go to the county clerk's office to verify that their ballot is still recorded as having said what they thought they said.
The absolute best way to fight this is; (Score:4, Interesting)
Seriously, I'v had my fill between corperations and the goverment. When I goto vote next election, if they have electronic machines made by any of these fishy companies with no paper trail, I'm getting a chainsaw and spraypainging "democracy" on the sides, throwing on a nasty nasty chain, hiding it in a trombone case, getting in a buisness suit so I look like a hurried musician, and when I get in the building, I'll start the puppy up in the bathroom or some consealed area, run out screaming "You want democracy, I'll give you democracy!!! Lets do this by paper!" and rip the machines to hell.
Do I care about the prison time? The better question is, what jury on earth is going to convict me? >:) Especially if I proove that my motives were justifyable, there's something fishy going on and the goverment is bieng fishy, denied me a printout of my vote and ballot, and make it a point to tell the jury they don't have to convict me. Plus, I'll make national news for sure, a psycho running into a voting area with a chainsaw and ripping all of the boxes to shreds? You'd bet that it'd get all over the god box.
Sure, I'll take it up the ass a few years in jail and have a felony conviction to ensure that the voting system isn't rigged. Besides, I'm sure it'll look GREAT on a resume!
FTP timestamps? (Score:3, Interesting)
this means that whoever put the file there, put it there during the daytime. it doesn't mean the file was transferred off a voting system during the daytime.
that said, i still have concerns about voting machines with a wireless interface.
for your really worst nightmares (Score:3, Insightful)
now let's talk conspiracy theories
The proper way to hack an election.... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:The system is not the biggest problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The system is not the biggest problem (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't understand what PROBLEM these electronic voting systems are intended to solve. Usability? Fraud prevention? Recountability? Non-centralized weakness? For ALL of those supposed problems, these electronic voting systems are WORSE than paper ballots.
The only advantage I see is that the electronic systems can count ballots faster, but we've never had problems with the speed of ballot counting. Ballot counting is easily parallelized across all voting precincts across the nation. In fact, that is a GOOD thing because the counting process is publicly overseen by representatives from all political parties and vote tampering is limited to a smaller set of votes.
Re:The system is not the biggest problem (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The system is not the biggest problem (Score:4, Funny)
</Vonnegut-based sarcasm>
I'd recheck your sources (Score:4, Insightful)
Further, some of the states they cite as "permanently" disenfranchising felons DO have procedures in place to restore civil rights... Florida (where I live) is a good example. Florida is often cited as one of the 10 (some sources cite 14 states) that permanently keep felons from voting... NOT TRUE. Check out this press release from the ACLU [aclu.org]
Some states give voting rights back automatically... some have a few hoops you must jump through. Either way, committing a felony costs you. Now, I'm not aware of a single state that does not have procedures in place for restoration of civil rights. If someone wants to correct me, please do so.
Re:The system is not the biggest problem (Score:3, Insightful)
We have people suing over spilled coffee
To be precise, we have a person suing a restaurant because it sells a product that they intend for you to put in your mouth despite the fact that it is hot enough to cause 3rd degree burns. They do this despite the fact that they KNOW FROM EXPERIENCE that their actions will cause people to be injured. Excusing the restaurant because "people should know coffee is h
Re:The system is not the biggest problem (Score:3, Insightful)
I am completely fucking sick and tired over the way everyone trots this out as an example of how quick people are to sue, when all that person is doing is demonstrating their ignorance. Do you know the facts of the case? Do you know what happened, or are you going off of the fact that you heard someone sued because they spilled coffee on themselves.
The woman spilled a cup of McDonalds coffee on her groin. It didn't just hurt. It didn't just burn a bit.
She ha
Re:The system is not the biggest problem (Score:3, Insightful)
But really, it doesn't require much more than an IQ of 70 to learn how to use a punch-card ballot -- AND make sure the chads are completely removed...
It takes luck to ensure that nothing happens to the card after you punched it. Once it leaves your hand, it is not immediately fed into a card reader in front of your eyes. The chad system is fragile enough that hanging chads, extra punches, and stray chads from neighboring cards can be introduced during shipping and handling.
Do not assume that all foule
Democracy IS over in the USA (Score:3, Interesting)
The end result is that we have a minority group of undereducated voters picking between Candidate Number 1 and Candidate Number 1. Where's the practical democracy there? The Libertarians will argue that its all good because at least we willingly choose to be run by
Re:Is better than... (Score:3, Informative)