California Panel Recommends Dumping Diebold 526
sdw3u writes "Wired reports that a voting panel urged California officials to stop using a voting machine made by Diebold Election Systems, and recommends that the state consider filing civil and criminal charges against the company." There's also an AP story. We covered the hearing yesterday, with Diebold admitting that their machines had numerous problems.
Online Banking Model (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Good! (Score:4, Interesting)
Does it matter? As RIAA has proven (and SCO might yet prove) you don't need a case to win a lawsuit. You only need more money and better lawyers. However good Diebold's lawyers are I doubt they have the budget that the State of California has.
Re:Diebold voting machines (Score:4, Interesting)
Diebold election machines are a menace. Demand paper ballots. Even punch cards are more accurate __ AND SECURE __ than electronic voting.
About time... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Online Banking Model (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem I see with electronic voting is the lack of evidence. The good thing about online banking is the audit trail.
For example, a while ago I was charged six times for the same item due to a webserver problem. Obviously I noticed the discrepancy on my credit card bill and it was quickly rectified.
I'm not sure I would trust a company such as Diebold to correctly accumulate votes. How do I know whether my vote was counted?
https (Score:3, Interesting)
The only other arguments against voting over the net is that, (1) it's defacto gerrymandering because poor people don't have computers and tend to vote for democratic candidates over Republicans; and (2) There's no independently audit-able paper trail. I'm sure (2) could be solved with some thought.
This is why you set up stations at public libraries and other government funded institutions open to the public. You can vote in public, or you can vote for home
Re:Online Banking Model (Score:5, Interesting)
Why (Score:5, Interesting)
Micro-auditing is possible if you check your account after voting to make sure the vote you placed was the vote you wanted. Each user can remember who they voted for, and they could easily call out if their account was violated in any way. Any database can tally up votes if they are micro-audited internally, and cross-referenced. Very standard secure database design will always be able to print a receipt. They could mail you a receipt too.
>Or mechanical voting systems that don't rely on software that we can't see or understand?
Mechanical voting systems are a thing of the past. I really believe that society is ready for online voting.
> Why the heck do we need touchscreen voting?
I'm with you on this one. To me, it's wasteful and really difficult for people to use. What if the person has Parkinson's and touches the wrong button? Better let people use their own systems, and provide systems for those who need them.
> Why are the companies so afraid of putting an auditable paper trail in it?
I agree. Paper is just as important as anything, and the Diebold systems should have printed receipts, and master files that could be audited. Any online system could be printed at a micro-level. Bottom line: you'll know if your vote was compromised. Plus, with online voting, you'll have more control over your vote after it's created, and that truly counts for something. Imagine a nice record of your voting history? That would seriously rock.
The fear is that some people think that allowing users access to their vote history would compromise the secrecy involved in voting, and cause problems, but I truly think that with all the right people involved in such a project, one system could be created that was truly for the people and by the people.
Vote-From-Home is NOT a good idea! (Score:5, Interesting)
I disagree. Vehemently.
Voting is somewhat of a ritual in many countries, especially the US. People will gladly talk about their politics, but ask them who they voted for and you usually get the cold shoulder. It's a private matter. You'd have better luck asking them how their bowels are doing. The polls themselves are nice and curtained or secluded, so no one can see. People bring their kids and let them watch, even let them do the final act of pressing the lever or button. There aren't many companies that aren't willing to let their people take a long lunch in order to go vote, and those that don't are not looked upon highly.
When it is your civic duty to periodically go to your official polling station, when you have to go to a specific place that you probably never go for any other reason, where you're around a large spectrum of people of all types that you might not otherwise be exposed to, and go specifically to cast your vote... it means a little more than simply hitting a website and picking the guy who you'd like to have lead.
The percentage of people who vote is truly sad, but it's not a good idea to fix it by making it TOO easy to vote. There must be at least a minimum of effort involved - a place to go, as long as it's reasonably easy to get to. The same place as all your neighbors. When you have to make an event of it, it tends to focus you more on what you're doing, and I've found that people become far less extreme in their politics when faced with this fact.
If you could vote from home, you'd put less thought into it. It would be one step closer to a news site poll, except THIS poll would make our final official selections. People wouldn't take it seriously enough. More people would vote, but the quality of those votes would not carry the same weight.
If the Primaries had been run over the web, I'm willing to bet Dean would have outdone his competition. But people were at an event, a political ritual, and that sobered them into making a more mature choice (though I think there were better people they could have chosen).
Voting should be readily available to the masses. It should be quick, efficient, and as infallible as we can safely make it. But it should also be an official civic act not taken lightly, and deffinitely never done from home.
All technical questions of security and validation aside, the concept of a quick and easy home solution for choosing our national leaders is not a good idea.
It is our fault. (Score:4, Interesting)
What they don't get is that, is that if the code was not posted publically, the public wouldn't know about the security holes, but it would have been known to the people at the Bush campaign who arranged for Bush to be elected this time.
Parent is the funniest post in a long time. (Score:4, Interesting)
From here [fool.com]:
Diebold controls roughly two-thirds of the North American ATM market, and trails only rival NCR (NYSE: NCR) in global sales.
Ireland: indemnity for e-voting commission (Score:1, Interesting)
Make's you wonder what's in the code.
Re:Figures... (Score:5, Interesting)
"Never ascribe to malice, what can adequately be explained by incompetence."
Re:Online Banking Model (Score:5, Interesting)
The main reason the public thinks that online banking is secure is because banks don't reveal the security incidents. What bank wants to tell it's customers that fees are going up because a couple million was stolen over the internet?
Re:Online Banking Model (Score:5, Interesting)
Combine the two systems.
Use a touchscreen to vote. A paper receipt is printed with a barcode. Take the paper to the counting machine. Insert. Put the paper into a ballot box for possible auditing.
Add encryption to the process for the barcode, and that should be enough.
They did this with Good Reason (Score:5, Interesting)
I heard an interview on NPR today where the chief of marketing participated in the on air talk-show (InfOhio after 9) review of this protest and Diebold's activities with regard to electronic voting. He basically said California's Voting Laws were so complex and constantly changing that they were not upset at having to leave the CA e-voting machine market.
Sounds like the pot calling the Kettle Black to me.
Diebold's CEO and President Walden O'Dell promised to deliver Ohio (which makes me angry to have them here in my state) to Bush in November, donated to the Bush campaign and worked to organize re-election effrts to do the same. Since this time he has publicy apoligized for his public support of the Bush campaign (one would guess because of the obvious suspicions of impartiality and conflict-of-interest, wether founded or not) and vowed to keep out in the future. IMO, the damadge of his public display of support has already been done. He hasn't asked for the money back. I don't think its unreasonable to hope that the CEO and President of a company hawking a product that manages/administers/records voting would treat voting what it is, THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT FOUNDATION OF DEMOCRACY. He and his company are not trustworthy to me.
.
Ohio (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Online Banking Model (Score:5, Interesting)
Now of course government 'by the people' isn't trivial to set up. In modern countries with millions of inhabitants, automation will be necessary. That includes having 'voting' computers accessible to all, including those without computers, however remote, and a ton of other security measures. As another poster mentioned, online banks have such measures, so it should be doable with current technology. Of course, those in power don't have any reason to want to do this; they have a vested interest in the current system.
The system I am suggesting would still rely strongly on representation: if you don't want to vote every week, you can give your proxy to someone else with similar views. This person will have made themselves available, will have had training, and be responsible to their 'constituency'.
Such a system could be extended to allow people to vote for issues more important to them; for example people with children could have more say on education, or those living in a certain area have say on local issues.
Not that it will happen in my lifetime, but I can imagine.
This is not the problem... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:View of a Pollworker (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,60563
Why do you need voting machines? (Score:4, Interesting)
Please note, this is not meant as a flame to you Americans - I would *really* like to know why you need these machines.
California gets it right (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Good! (Score:3, Interesting)
Urk? How could SCO possibly prove that?
SCO's money : $$$
SCO's lawyers: ``
IBM's money : $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
IBM's lawyers: @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
IBM's lawyers: @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
-
Re:Figures... (Score:4, Interesting)
This is a very important point. While election fraud of various types has been around sa long as there have been elections, the computerized voting machines automate it.
You no longer have to steal votes one by one (or precinct by precinct), you just control the code in the voting machines and you can slant the election results however you want. And, unless you're really clumsy, there's no way the tampering can be detected.
Remember, the voting process has to be able to convince the sorest loser that the tally is correct. There's no way to do this unless the whole process is out in the open.
Use best of both worlds... electronic/paper (Score:1, Interesting)
If possible, give a unique code on each recipt copy of the ballot. have all ballots posted on the intranet (those without internet can use the library), indexed/sorted by that unique code, so each voter knows their vote was counted.
For the truly paraniod, there can be a reader add each voting location to test the paper bubble ballot pringted before casting it into the box.
Another thing, there should be an oval to be filled in a column next to each voters signature. That oval gets filled in with each signature. At the end of that day, a scanner runs down that column on each page and counts the number of voters, this needs to be compared to the number of ballots present.
Re:Good! (Score:4, Interesting)
A while ago, some internal Diebold memos were leaked showing that their practices were (to put it mildly) very shoddy. At least one generation of machines were horribly insecure, making it trivial to untracably stuff the ballot box.
They should never have been allowed to sell their machines after this [scoop.co.nz] came out.
Winning a court case should be pretty easy, given the problematic design of Diebold systems. They look as though they were designed to help vote fraud (though the reality is probably that they were designed to allow Diebold to cover up software problems).Oregon gets it right again! (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course, none of this has the gee whiz, gosh golly technology crap that this crowd loves so much, but it works well, is inexpensive, and the process can be easily adapted for in situ voting as well. So why the hell do you need touch screens when Scantron works just as well AND you can get lazy voters to vote by mail, too?
And then... (Score:4, Interesting)
And then you get arrested, because the NSA can track any DDOS attacks without much trouble. Oh, now if you could get your rivals to do it, they would hang themselves and you could point at them saying how evil they are (and mop up all the votes). That happened in Ontario recently when the Liberals used a Buffy quote against themselves, suggesting a Tory (PC) said it; somebody called Dalton McGuinty a kitten eater. Then, in a Wag the Dog scene from hell, Dalton posed with a cute little kitten, and won the election. But the Liberals planned the whole thing.
Re:Vote-From-Home is NOT a good idea! (Score:2, Interesting)
You must be joking. With the people in office today, I don't see how you could make the above statement with a straight face. For the sake of argument though, lets say you're right. Even with our supposed "serious consideration" of the candidates, it hasn't helped us to get better candidates or better elected officials. It's just more PAC money-hungry assholes replacing the previous PAC money-hungry assholes.
You are way off base (Score:3, Interesting)
Secondly, when I was referring to "democrats" and "republicans" I was referring to the currently elected members of those parties in the state of Florida. If you know of any elected member of either party in Florida that isn't polarized on the issue in the way I stated, it's news to me. Also, I wasn't attempting to insinuate anything--the implications are there, but it's not my fault that the whole thing appears so shady.
Maybe you can explain to us why having a paper trail would be such a bad idea.
As someone else mentioned, I should be upset that this isn't being covered at all by the local news (as far as I know.) He/she most likely lives in FL as well because he's correct about that. I only heard about it because I was listening to NPR in the car when they happened to be talking to someone from Diebold, one of the state reps, and a couple other people about the issue.
The guy from Diebold actually came off pretty well. When asked about installing printers for a paper trail his reponse was basically that printers weren't part of the spec that they were provided when they designed the system. He added that they would gladly install printers if asked to do so.
Re:Online Banking Model (Score:3, Interesting)
This argument is getting old. Paper ballot systems are full of problems themselves. Any system that requires humans to read and count the ballots is error prone. Humans are error prone, and tend to be more error prone when performing boring tasks like counting votes. Anybody who's done an inventory in a warehouse can attest to this. Humans are also inconsistent. Paper ballot systems require humans to interpret the intent of the voter and the interpretations can vary. Think hanging chads.
At best they are a political ploy to score cheap points for looking like we are "doing something" about the mess in Florida.
They are an attempt to remove the human error from the process. This is not a bad thing.
What the heck is wrong with paper ballots that are actually auditable?
Any voting system should have human readable paper receipts for auditing. The people who are genuinely interested in getting electronic voting to work understand this.
Or mechanical voting systems that don't rely on software that we can't see or understand?
Paper ballots and mechanical voting systems are no less a black box system than an electronic system with no receipt. When you put your ballot into the box or press the lever, you have no idea whether or not your vote will actually be counted. It's a problem inherent in anonymous voting, not just electronic systems.
Why the heck do we need touchscreen voting?
Because, oddly enough, this is something computers are really good at, counting things. They do it consistently without getting bored and are not subject to interpretation. Two identical machines will count the same input the same way everytime. They can also do it much faster.
Electronic systems can be as secure as, or even more secure, than paper ballots or mechanical systems with the right procedures. Keep in mind, it's the procedures that make paper ballots secure, not the ballots themselves. There are numerous checks which help prevent tampering and make it very difficult to coerce or bribe the people responsible for counting the votes. And many of the problems that electronic voting can suffer from are also applicable to paper.
How about choosing by electronic lottery (Score:4, Interesting)
It is not a new idea, but it seems like the best-suited ones for the jobs are clearly not the corrupt, power hungry politicians able to run for the position.
Any citizen, chosen at random, might well make a better candidate than those who can head up the political machines required to get elected.
"Congratulations, you have been chosen to be the next President of the United States. The secret service will arive sometime today."
Also give out random cash prizes to make sure that those who would not normally aspire to hold office will show up at the polls.
Give "Government of the People" a new credibility.
It would save us all a lot of grief, and I do not see how it could be fundamentally much worse, unless the beaurocracy had the ability to keep thus-selected leaders under their thumbs.
Full scale test should be required (Score:2, Interesting)
You would be even advised to video their interaction with the machine, for full auditing purposes.
Re:Many many problems (Score:5, Interesting)
Asking for ID is ILLEGAL in CA (Score:4, Interesting)
The excuse is that asking for ID "intimidates" minorities, and thereby violates their civil rights, but the real reason is that it makes it easier for non-citizens and dead people to vote. We rank slightly behind Chicago in our voter turnout from cemetaries.
Of course, I would be much more upset about illegals and dead people voting if I thought that voting could change anything. I still vote; I just feel like Sisyphus when I do it.
-paul
Re:Online Banking Model (Score:1, Interesting)
If you're so lazy that voting from home is the only way you'll vote, I don't want you voting; you don't deserve it.
For an enlightening view on civic responsibility, read Starship Troopers sometime. Every citizen has all rights and privleges except the right to vote (and hold office). Voting is reserved for those who have served in the military. The teacher in History of Moral Philosophy explains it thusly: (paraphrased) this system ensures that every voter has demonstrated, through difficult and dangerous service, that he is willing to place the good of society above his desire for personal gain.
I don't buy into "noble sacrifice of self" for some "greater good," (I tend more towards Ayn Rand), but I think that with the federal government having so much power to intrude into our lives (and pocketbooks), it would be preferrable to have only "self-sacrificing" people voting how much money is stolen from me.
-paul
Re:Many many problems (Score:1, Interesting)
Because you can be coerced ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Word goes around the factory: anyone who "knows what's good for him" needs to take their ballot to their union foreman, vote the union's slate, and seal and sign it right there. Oh, it's never that obvious, and nobody comes right out and says it, but the whispers go around, nudge nudge, wink wink, and a lot of people get the message.
Absentee voting is still necessary, but it must not be the default or, even worse, only choice.
-paul
Re:Good! (Score:1, Interesting)
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8
Bet you didn't know Aaahnold was meeting with Ken Lay before the recall election got started up, did ya?
Re:What are you going to do if they don't? (Score:2, Interesting)
I've already decided to use the early voting procedure. Not only does that offer an alternative, it also makes it more convenient in terms of time.
At this point, I still believe a secret ballot is utterly important, but not as important as flushing the current administration.
It scares me to think that the 2004 presidential election will again be too close to call. As we've seen and could have predicted, a too-close-to-call race will fall on the side of the conservative party.
I have no apologies to the approximately half of my countrymen who continue to support President Bush and the members of his administration.
Diebold is outing themselves... (Score:3, Interesting)
They are nothing but a bunch of criminals and liars that are doing a piss poor job of working to take control of our national elections systems and trying to keep it secret and/or unbiased.
These idiots spend more on lawyers and Public Relations experts than they do on programmers. I hope they rot in hell...
Voting in Mexico (Score:5, Interesting)
No, the process was designed specifically to protect identity of the voter... Thats how we finally got the PRI party out of power in 2000, after they had been the ruling party for 70-something years.
The process goes like this:
1.- After your 18th birthday, you can go to a voter registration place (usually at city hall in small towns, or several places in big cities), with your birth certificate. They register your info, take a pic and take a fingerprint.
2.- Your info makes it into the voters register, and your card is mailed back to the registration place. A notification is mailed to your home stating that you can pick up the card at said place... You get the card after your face is verified.
3.- You can start using this card to get beer, go into nightclubs, cash checks, and other adult activities.
4.- Election day comes. You (a responsible citycen) go into the voting place (usually the same place where you picked up your card).
5.- An electoral volunteer worker checks your face against your card, checks your thumb (see point 8 later) and checks this data against the national voters registry. If everything checks out, you are given paper ballots for each election taking place (usually president, deputys, federal and local congresses take place at the same time).
6.- You take said paper ballots to a privacy booth, use a special crayon thats there to cross the party logos that youre voting for. Afterwards, before leaving the booth, you fold each ballot twice (it wont fit the slot in the box if you dont fold it twice).
7.- You leave the booth and place each ballot into the sealed box with the corresponding color.
8.- Before you can leave, a special chemical is smeared in your thumb, which instantly turns a dark brown... This is not paint, but a chemical that reacts to oxygen and to human skin, the color fades in a few days, but ensures that you cannot vote twice in the same election day.
9.- You check the election preliminar results that night, feeling confident that your vote counts and that this is now a modern democracy (despite our decidedly old-fashioned politicians).