Flaw in Florida E-Voting Machines 438
An anonymous reader writes "Looks like there are more problems with the new e-voting machines. How will they ever be ready in time for the November elections?"
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Flaw in Florida E-Voting Machines
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Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. -- Arthur C. Clarke
Democracy? (Score:5, Insightful)
By silencing anyone who talks about the flaws, of course! Do what I'm gonna do, bet money on bush being reelected. That way, if he is, at least it wasn't a total disaster.
Re:Democracy? (Score:5, Interesting)
His assignment editor, and more troubling, the News Director [Hi, Forrest!] have routinely ignored the story. If the story isn't about The Spiderman burglar, or some Old Lady being ripped off by a roofing company, this 'news' channel doesn't want anything to do with it.
Re:Democracy? (Score:5, Insightful)
His assignment editor, and more troubling, the News Director [Hi, Forrest!] have routinely ignored the story.
Well, then since you have a connection AND an interest, do what's necessary to bring the two together and find a way to make the voting machine problems interesting to the general public. They ARE interesting to the general public, so this should be an easy task, you just have to show them where the attention-getting drama is.
3 movies and 34 books say: CORRUPTION. (Score:4, Interesting)
Okay, trying again. The other link is slashdotted?
There's so much material about conflict of interest in the Bush administration that it's difficult to make even a summary: Unprecedented Corruption: A guide to conflict of interest in the U.S. government [hevanet.com].
Three movies and 34 recently published books should be news.
Re:3 movies and 34 books say: CORRUPTION. (Score:5, Insightful)
I read a little bit further and it seems that the site is mildly informative, but still falls to the same pits of idiocy that always keep me from supporting the Democratic party. That pit is the belief that I'm some uneducated moron eager to be stuffed full with half-assed propaganda.
Micheal Moore is a crackpot - I don't care what he has to say. Maybe he's right - but he's still a crackpot. He invalidates his message with his angle. He is the Democrat's Jerry Falwell. Falwell insists the world is 4000 years old, Moore insists that America is the great white satan. Pick your poison.
The Democratic party will be in serious trouble over the next couple of years, I think. They aren't winning votes as much as they're picking up the votes that the Republicans lose. I'll be voting against Bush (ie for Kerry) rather than honestly choosing Kerry for president. I only hope that McCain will run in 2008 - that is the guy I want as a leader. The Democratic party really needs to work at winning votes from people who aren't swayed by radical tripe that Moore spits out - and realize that Moore just reinforces the Loser's Party mindset. That is to say that Micheal Moore is the epitome of preaching to the choir. Anyone who gives him any credit couldn't possibly be lost to the Republican party, meanwhile anyone with any sense sees him for what he is. When I read some "informative" stuff about the corruption in the Bush administration - and I'm sure there is a lot of it - I always find this half-assed conspiracy shit that belongs on some schizophrenic's homepage, and if that's how the party tries to win votes, God help them.
And yeah, I know that these websites don't reflect the Democratic Party officially, but (to beat a dead horse) where is the leadership? Can't anybody publish a legitimate site without the propaganda targeted at highschool dropouts to provide some information? Micheal Moore is not information. Gossip columns about Bush meeting with people who openly and publicly disown Osama bin Laden is not information. John Stewart is roughly 1200% more effective at getting Kerry into the White House than ANYTHING I've seen the Democrats do in the last 18 months.
Oh well, off-topic rant disengage!
Re:3 movies and 34 books say: CORRUPTION. (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not sure there was a meeting on the day of 9/11 but George H.W. Bush does work for the Carlyle group so its plausible. He gets paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for making short speeches for them, or more likely to use his influence to steer business their way. The Carlyle group is one of Saudi Arabia's largest defense contractors. The Bin Laden family is one of the Saudi Arabia's wealthier and more powerful families. Osama is the black sheep of the family, and they publicly disowned him, but Saudi Arabians deny a lot of ties to terrorism though they are the world's biggest supporters and funders of most of it. The Bin Laden family had to disown Osama or it would hammer their multibillion dollar business in the U.S. and the rest of the world. They run a big construction conglomerate if I recall. Whether they really disowned him is anybody's guess.
George W. Bush did allow a special flight right after 9/11, when no American's were flying, in which all the Bin Laden relatives and numerous other Saudi's were spirited out of the country.
Halliburton for Cheney and Carlysle for the Bush family are two of the many incestuous relationships in the current government which make it look very corrupt, whether it really is or not.
Re:3 movies and 34 books say: CORRUPTION. (Score:5, Interesting)
Not saying its true but what you describe is quite plausible. George W. is not one of the brightest President's we've had. He has always been a C student at best. His academic credentials, Yale and Harvard MBA are more thanks to his families power and connections than his intellectual ability. He joked recently in a commencement speech about being a C student and how far he'd gone, well most C students don't have his family connections.
Though George W. isn't very bright he does have extremely bright people pulling the strings for him which is why what you say isn't possible is. Karl Rove is the brains in the White House, he is extremely bright and ruthless. Dick Cheney is the neferious and somewhat paranoid one. It is, according to Woodward his job to think of every possible bad thing that could happen and make sure the Bush administration plans for it.
Cheney did rewrite the rules for contracting when he was defense secretary and reopened the revolving door where you work in government, where you give lucrative contracts to big companies, and then make millions when you retire from the government and go to work for the same company as he did with Halliburton. Dick Cheney was the mastermind who hollowed out the military and made it completely dependent on contractors for basic things like cooks, and then his company Halliburton has been getting all those contracts.
If you don't think the Republican party is massively corrupt you should have watched the passage of the Medicare "reform" bill. Billy Tauzin (R) rammed it through Congress and last I heard was going to work for the drug lobby who are going to get a windfall profit from it. The Medicare administrator was drawing up the cost estimates for it at the same time he was negotiating his own private sector job with the companies who were going to make out like bandits when it passed. He had the permission of the White House to job shop though it was massively corrupt to allow it. The administrator then intentionally underestimated the cost of the bill by something like a hundred billion dollars because if the real price tag had been known it never would have passed. He also threatend his subordinates who threatened to reveal the real cost before the bill passed. The Bush administration had to put out the correct numbers right after the bill had passed to everyone's dismay. That guy cost taxpayers a hundred billion dollars in exchange for a sweet multimillion dollar career/payoff. Even then the bill barely passed, lobbyists for the drug and healthcare industry were circling like sharks in the lobby of the Capitol while the debate was going on openly bribing and intimidating Congressmen to get it passed. The payoff to the drug industry was hundreds of billions in tax dollars to pay for drugs and the Medicare administration is precluded by law from negotiating fair prices. The drug companies can charge as much as they think they can get away with.
Don't get me wrong, the Democrats are almost as corrupt as the Republican's, they just send their pork in different places, but for you to stick your head in the sand and pretend like the Bush administration isn't massively corrupt is naive.
Its also basically true that the Bush administration is making one foreign relations gaffe after another. I'm pretty sure the U.S. has never been more hated and feared around the world than it is today. International polls certainly suggest this. Why is that a contradiction to the fact that the Republican's are also in the midst of one of the biggest domestic power grabs ever at home. American's seem to be a lot more gullible than most people around the world so they are falling for the Bush Administration BS while most of the rest of the world isn't.
Re:3 movies and 34 books say: CORRUPTION. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Democracy? (Score:3, Funny)
How can he be RE-elected when he wasn't elected the first time?
Re:Democracy? (Score:3, Insightful)
How can he be RE-elected when he wasn't elected the first time?
Don't be silly. He was most definitely elected. The Electoral College voted, and he got a clear majority.
Now, you can argue about whether or not Florida's electors cast their votes properly in accordance with Florida state law, but it's simply untrue to say Bush wasn't elected president of the USA. He was.
Re:Democracy? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, I have some, namely the fact that the supposed supporters of states rights won't let a state decide how to run it's election. The fact that the supreme court ruled on that at all is probably the grossest violation of the constitution I have ever seen. If you are going to support the electoral college, then at least allow the states the right to choose their electors.
I guess ignoring the constitution before he took office was just a sign of things to come.
Re:Democracy? (Score:3, Interesting)
I thought the fact that executions clearly gave him considerable pleasure when he was Texas governor revealled an unpleasant character. It seemed to be something of a power trip for him. The other cause for concern was the fact that Bush was completely untroubled by the idea that an innocent person might be executed. Perhaps these were also signs of things to come.
There seems to be a lot of denial about Bush. Afte
Re:Democracy? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Democracy? (Score:4, Informative)
{I am related to an appellate lawyer, so I have some clue as to what I'm talking about in the following.} That is simply an incorrect reading of the Supreme Court's ruling (available here [cornell.edu]). The way the relationship goes between state and federal courts is that the state's highest court (in this case, the Florida Supreme Court) is the final authority on the interpretation of state law, for which federal courts have no jurisdiction. SCOTUS can intervene only when, by the Supremacy Clause, federal law or the US Constitution contradicts the state court's decision.
The justification for the SCOTUS decision of Bush vs Gore in Bush's favor was on the theory that since there was no universal standard of counting votes, voters in Florida were not recieving equal protection under the law, violating the 14th Amendment. The Supreme Court never contradicted the Florida Supreme Court's interpretation of Florida law, because they have no power to do so.
Re:Democracy? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Democracy? (Score:3, Insightful)
With unverified electronic balloting, the mess and risk is gone. Deposit the right amount in the correct Diebold swiss bank account, and any election is yours.
Re:Democracy? (Score:3, Insightful)
How about foreign media? I haven't been looking, but if enough foreign media publically ridiculed the US electronic voting machines, maybe something would filter back over here? Imagine reporters from The Times (London, not New York) and the BBC askng pointed questions during Whitehouse press conferences...
Re:Democracy? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Democracy? (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh, they are ready...to steal the election for the Republicans this Fall. Its pretty obvious Jeb Bush wants to make sure there is no doubt Florida goes to his brother this time around, so he is dead set against making sure all the new electronic voting machines in his state are verifiable.
The Bush administration has a really strong, or actually overwhelming, incentive to make sure they win. They have to white wash the investigation of who really authorized the use of torture in Iraq. All indications are that it was George W. Bush, General Myers, Rumsfeld and his deputy for military intelligence Steve Cambone under the top secret Copper Green [newsday.com] program. They might have got away with it for Al Qaeda since they are in a legal gray area and may not be under Geneva protections but authorizing torture in Iraq was a war crime under the Geneva conventions and the U.S. laws that enforce the Geneva rules. Its pretty obvious now it wasn't just a bunch of out of control reserve privates doing it on their own.
If the Democrats were to win the White House or Congress and were to really pursue the investigation, which I'm not sure they would, you could see impeachment and senior members of the Bush administration and the military on trial for war crimes. If the Republicans win they can try to stop the blame and the damage at General Sanchez, and if they continue to control both houses of Congress, and they keep their party members in line they will probably succeed. I wager they are already engaged in massive paper shredding and deletion of top secret documents, especially after the leak of the Pentagon and DOJ memo's last week where it became clear the White House was trying, in vain, to establish a legal basis for the use of torture.
If you saw Ashcroft's testimony before Congress last week, a rare event, it became pretty clear the Bush administration has decided they are at war and they can do pretty much anything they please, and unfortunately the "War on Terror" is unlikely to ever end.
Re:Democracy? (Score:3, Interesting)
As for 2000 the election for all practical purposes was a toss up so both parties were trying to steal it. The Republican's were just much better at it, and it didn't hurt that
Election Systems and Software (Score:5, Interesting)
ES&S is also excessively close to the Republicans. An excerpt from Mother Jones on them:
"While Diebold has received the most attention, it actually isn't the biggest maker of computerized election machines. That honor goes to Omaha-based ES&S, and its Republican roots may be even stronger than Diebold's. "
"The firm, which is privately held, began as a company called Data Mark, which was founded in the early 1980s by Bob and Todd Urosevich. In 1984, brothers William and Robert Ahmanson bought a 68 percent stake in Data Mark, and changed the company's name to American Information Services (AIS). Then, in 1987, McCarthy & Co, an Omaha investment group, acquired a minority share in AIS."
"In 1992, investment banker Chuck Hagel, president of McCarthy & Co, became chairman of AIS. Hagel, who had been touted as a possible Senate candidate in 1993, was again on the list of likely GOP contenders heading into the 1996 contest. In January of 1995, while still chairman of ES&S, Hagel told the Omaha World-Herald that he would likely make a decision by mid-March of 1995. On March 15, according to a letter provided by Hagel's Senate staff, he resigned from the AIS board, noting that he intended to announce his candidacy. A few days later, he did just that. "
"A little less than eight months after stepping down as director of AIS, Hagel surprised national pundits and defied early polls by defeating Benjamin Nelson, the state's popular former governor. It was Hagel's first try for public office. Nebraska elections officials told The Hill that machines made by AIS probably tallied 85 percent of the votes cast in the 1996 vote, although Nelson never drew attention to the connection. Hagel won again in 2002, by a far healthier margin. That vote is still angrily disputed by Hagel's Democratic opponent, Charlie Matulka, who did try to make Hagel's ties to ES&S an issue in the race and who asked that state elections officials conduct a hand recount of the vote. That request was rebuffed, because Hagel's margin of victory was so large."
"As might be expected, Hagel has been generously supported by his investment partners at McCarthy & Co. -- since he first ran, Hagel has received about $15,000 in campaign contributions from McCarthy & Co. executives. And Hagel still owns more than $1 million in stock in McCarthy & Co., which still owns a quarter of ES&S."
Re:Democracy? (Score:2)
"I'm a war criminal and I approved this message."
Now is that mockery or passive admiration?
E-Voting safe ever? (Score:5, Interesting)
Didn't they let some hackers lose on that Diebold machine and find 30k fake votes changed in a matter of minutes? Honestly, I don't think they're ready for this, if they ever will be. My grandfather can't even operate his DVD player.
In the gubernatorial election here in Cali (when Arnold got elected), they replaced the chad system with essentially the same design, but instead of punching holes, it left a really dark ink mark on the circle, which seems a lot safer to me. And this thing really flooded the ink, i touched it to my thumb just for fun and it left a pool in my fingertip. To me it really seems like a smart and simple alternative.
Though of course I expect some replies on the contrary
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:E-Voting safe ever? (Score:2)
I don't think that would work though. Every single time I take a test on one at school, there's always someone in my class who totally screws up and marks each answer one column lower than he's supposed to, ruining his score.
On a national scale, allowing for the guarantee that the people of Florida will have a particularly high percentage of making these mistakes, I'd est
Re:E-Voting safe ever? (Score:2)
Re:E-Voting safe ever? (Score:2)
All you had to do was put two crosses for *different* candidates (first+second preference), and still 500,000 people can't cope with it.
Re:E-Voting safe ever? (Score:5, Insightful)
But this is voting.. arguably more important
And neither human counters, much less automatic counters, know what the voter actually intended to do.
This as opposed to an electronic voting machine, where you
- must make a vote (even if it's an abstain vote)
- can only vote once
- get a clear and concise "did you really mean to vote for X ?" option to change your vote before actually submitting it.
Which makes it very easy to
- count the vote
And that's all the machines really have to do!
Writing a voting system that does this is stupendously trivial as far as the code goes. Which leaves me only baffled as to why there appear to be so many bugs with these voting machines to begin with.
The only problem an electronic voting machine should have to face are human interface design issues, hardware issues, and the well-known papertrail issue.
The first is the hardest, the second is trivial (backup machine, backup drive), and the third has been discussed to death on Slashdot and some good ideas were written down.
Re:E-Voting safe ever? (Score:2)
They also have to:
- offer multiple language support, and give the voter the choice of language
- offer assisted voting (text-to-speech or super-size font).
- Be physically and logically secure from local and remote tampering with the votes.
- Include auditable trails for all actions taken by the application.
- permit a voter to only vote once (which you mentioned), but not allow vote counters to determine how a given voter cast their ballot.
There are others, but that's the
Re:E-Voting safe ever? (Score:3, Informative)
- multiple languages
See : Human interface design issues
- offer assisted voting
See : Human interface design issues
- Be physically and logically secure from local and remote tampering with the votes
See : hardware issues
One note : An e-voting machine should never be capable of remote access, period. As for local security, it's a machine. If somebody starts prying at the thing with a screwdriver or somesuch, somebody had better notice. Please do take note that this has nothing to
Re:E-Voting safe ever? (Score:5, Insightful)
The one exception is I think at least one electronic voting machine, with paper trail, should be at each poll to allow the disabled to vote without assistance.
"Which makes it very easy to- count the vote"
Making it "easy" to count the vote doesn't count for anything if it also makes it "easy" to rig the vote. I really like the fact that paper ballots allow a lot of little old ladies and gents to be involved in the process and make sure its on the up and up. You switch to computers and there is no one that can keep an eye on things except hackers.
Re:E-Voting safe ever? (Score:4, Insightful)
No, stupid people should be allowed to vote as long as they learn to to do it correctly. Sample ballots are usually widely available before the election in newspapers and the like so you can walk through it with help if necessary.
Bringing the Palm Beach ballot in to this is a red herring. Those ballots were in a machine too, albeit a simple one, but it was badly designed too. The original suggestion was a simple piece of paper, where you put an X next to the name which is what Canada, Britain and lots of other places do. You can't get any simpler and the KISS principal applies here. If you screw up and mis-vote then yes, you get disenfranchised but its YOUR FAULT. This is where personal responsibility comes in which the modern world seems loathe to require of people any more.
I don't care how many ways you try to justify it. If you are relying on complex hardware and software to count your votes its always going to be easy for someone to screw with it. Again the only people who will even have a chance to keep an eye on it are us hackers and we know we aren't to be trusted.
Anyone can audit an election with paper ballots and I like that, so do all the little old ladies and gents who like to work at polling stations. Yes there will be counting errors but anytime you have an election that is close enough for the margin of error to matter you can count the ballots until you are sure you have it right.
Re:E-Voting safe ever? (Score:2)
you can find what is avilable only.
Remember people are not trying to 'find', just it is happening.
see, how fundamental things are broken.
Re:E-Voting safe ever? (Score:2)
Why is this so hard?! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why is this so hard?! (Score:5, Funny)
{
int candidate1 = 0;
int candidate2 = 0;
ing tmpCan = 0;
while(electionon == true)
{
cout << "Press the red button for candidate1" << endl;
cout << "Press the blue button for candidate2" << endl;
cin >> tmpCan;
if( if tmpCan == RED)
{
candidate1++;
}
else
{
candidate2++;
}
}
cout >> "Candidate1 got " >> candidate1 >> " votes" >> endl;
cout >> "Candidate2 got " >> candidate2 >> " votes" >> endl;
return 0;
}
Obviously not THAT simple, but come on.
Re:Why is this so hard?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why is this so hard?! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Why is this so hard?! (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, right. I'm sure that Diebold told themselves the exact same thing, and look what happened.
The first thing to do would be to collect the requirements, which I
Re:Why is this so hard?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why is this so hard?! (Score:3, Insightful)
1. A software company tries to push a solution to the government. (this could possibly be a good solution)...."
Thank you. I can attest that this is exactly how government works, particularly at the federal leve
How will they? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's asking the wrong question! it's "How will the voters handle this?". Well, most will ignore it. They'll vote, and votes will be miscounted. Then someone will become president (exactly who doesn't matter). Then there'll be a small investigation into the voting failure, perhaps a story or two on slashdot, and then the country will keep on using them.
People just aren't interested in a system that works any more. If they have something to complain about and go "oh did you hear the voting in florida was rigged!" it gives them 10 minutes of conversation around the watercooler, then they go ahead with their lives.
Scuse the cynicism, but I suspect it's the most likely outcome
Re:How will they? (Score:3, Insightful)
True. I believe the problem is that people always seem to believe that the <irony>perfect democratic system</irony> they live in guarantees that someone above them (in the ladder of power) will fix any issue that may arise.
Blind tru
Not Exactly (Score:3, Insightful)
I think that votes get miscounted when parties use malicious practice by disqualifying entire races from voting just because their last name is the same as someone with a criminal record. This is what Dubya did to get elected, plus he used a lot of other crazy tactics to sway the vote.
Voting machines could be a factor, but I think that the social engineering from parties needs to be quelled fa
History (Score:2)
Definitely a problem (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Definitely a problem (Score:4, Funny)
"I couldn't decide between Bush or Kerry so I decided to vote for the Independent "Insensitive Clod".
Re:Definitely a problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't complain about lack of options. You've got to pick a couple when you have a two party system. Those are the breaks.
Feel free to waste your vote on third party candidates if you're feeling idealistic. I'd strongly suggest reading the history books first.
This whole thing is wildly inaccurate. Rounding errors, ballot stuffers, corrupt elections officials, incestuous links with corporate cronies. If you're using these numbers to run your country, you're fucked.
How ready do they need to be? (Score:2, Insightful)
Given the fiasco of the 2000 US presidential elections, I'd guess that it's possible for the machines to be both buggy and better than the alternatives.
I think we should focus on getting something that works well. If we wait for it to be perfect, it's going to be an awfull long wait.
Re:How ready do they need to be? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's called pen and paper.
It works. It leaves a paper trail for later recounts.
It can be observed by everyone who is interested in the whole process, from printing the ballots to handing out the ballots, from getting the ballots back and counting them, from sealing the voting box to bringing it at the central voting office for recount, thus minimizing the possibility of rigging the election.
It keeps the single vote anonymous while at the same moment make every vote count. It keeps the voting and counting process at a speed a human eye can watch it and thus it's the most secure thing against voting fraud.
There is nothing wrong with voting per paper and pen. People not able to handle paper and pen have to get special support with all the other voting systems too. And you can easily design a voting machine that just pens the right point on the ballot for them. It's as complicated than a stancing machine with levers, a touchscreen or a device for people who can't see or read the ballot (noting wrong with Braille script on the voting ballot at all).
Re:How ready do they need to be? (Score:2, Insightful)
I haven't checked the numbers, but I'd guess that's more people than in an american presidential election.
I'm just back from my "put an X in the box in front of the person you want to vote for" myself
Re:How ready do they need to be? (Score:2)
The number I've heard is 350 million. I guess that is the total number of people within the EU and not the number of eligible voters. Still, you are right, since it is larger that the US population.
Re:How ready do they need to be? (Score:2)
Re:How ready do they need to be? (Score:2)
why not ask the Indians? (Score:3, Insightful)
Minor technical hiccup, indeed (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering that an electronic voting system is specifically designed to record and report voting activity, I'd say that a failure to do so consistently is more than a "minor technical hiccup" (as indicated by a spokeswoman for the secretary of state). An intermittent failure of a primary function is worse than an outright failure, as any programmer can tell you. Consider an intermittent failure of the brake system in your car....
In a strange way, I almost welcome all this attention focused on electronic voting systems. After all, the companies building them are pretty much doing what most other software companies do: Throw it all together as quickly as possible and let marketing and sales push it out the door. These are simply "average" software products coming under greater scrutiny. Maybe by pushing better quality here, we can force improved quality in other products (great leap of the imagination, I know).
modify the page headers (Score:5, Funny)
So let me get this straight (Score:5, Insightful)
Voter Purge (Score:5, Informative)
What really amazes me though is that it's happening again [independent.co.uk] and no-one is doing a thing! Why in god's name doesnt the media in your country do it's job? I'm absolutely amazed that you're allowing this to happen again.
Re:Voter Purge (Score:2)
Re:Voter Purge (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, what's really surprising is that the media is doing its job! CNN's sued for access to the rolls of purged voters, which Jeb claimed that no one had the right to look at. A number of other parties have also filed suit for the right to double-check the rolls of felons and ensure that there are no eligible voters on them.
Even worse is that they outsourced the compilation of the list to a private company...
Re:Voter Purge (Score:2)
Even worse is that they outsourced the compilation of the list to a private company...
Who then purged all former felons from the rolls, even those who have the right to vote (i.e. felons in new york). After this came to light, Jeb demanded that they petition their original state to have their right restored, and new york said that they hadn't lost the right in the first place, so they couldn't restore it. It reads like something Kafka deammt up.
Re:Voter Purge (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you saying this didn't happen in 2000? I said that the database company in charge of the purge, Choicepoint, has admitted to Congress that they did this. It was an open session so you it'll be pretty easy for you to walk into you local library and request a copy of the transcript. It occured on April 17th 2001.
"What about all the democrat lawmakers trying to deflect all the overseas absenty ballots by the soldiers in foreign c
Re:Voter Purge (Score:4, Interesting)
The disenfranchisement of convicted felons runs quite counter to that ideal, but what the above poster was referring to was the gross disenfranchisement of people who had names similar to felons, though who weren't felons themselves. For example, if a "Terry Jones" was convicted of something in Texas, then "Tim Jones" in Florida wouldn't be allowed to vote.
On the other hand, why would a convicted felon suddenly be incapable of making a rational voting decision? This essentially means that anyone engaging in activities counter to the law will not have a chance to make those activities legal. During prohibition, those people convicted of engaging in a weekend sherry lost the right to influence the law. People convicted of traveling to Cuba cannot influence the policymaker's decisions. Tommy Chong will never again vote for a presidential candidate with a more realistic view of drug use in this country. The disenfranchisement of people who do things contrary to popular opinion is inherently wrong in a democracy, and it should stop. And yes, this does mean that Bobby who shot a man at a truck stop will be allowed his
Re:Voter Purge (Score:2)
Uh, hello... exactly what do you think democracy is, other than majority rule? Any pretence at the constitution limiting government was ended by Lincoln.
Supporting democracy and complaining when 51% of the population control the other 49% is madness.
Falls asleep.. (Score:5, Funny)
They said it couldnt happen..
"She's the fastest voting machine in the fleet"
But as the electronic voting system made her maiden election..
[Insert dramatic music]
"ACCESS DATABASE CORRUPTION - RIGHT A HEAD"
Disaster struck..
"Full reverse transactions on the data base! Switch to MySQL!"
"Its too late, we cant migrate in time!"
"But these machines.. they cant fail, they are un-breakable!"
[Music gets more dramatic]
"Captin! we have lost 12 states, this system had only enough redundancy for 14."
"What are you saying sir!?"
"Captin, im saying that if we loose 3 more megabytes of data.. then this election will be null"
[Music gets even more dramatic crescendo fff]
"Jack! Jack! there are only enough paper ballots for half the population of Texas!"
"You take one, your vote is more important! I was only going to throw it away on a 3rd candidate anyway"
Coming soon, from the directors of Florida 2000, Election Systems & Software of Omaha, Diebold, Microsoft.
[Music reaches climax]
ELECTION: 2004
They said it couldnt happen.
In related news... (Score:5, Informative)
Gambling on Voting (NY Times Op-Ed today) [nytimes.com]
I don't understand this run on machines anyway, don't paper ballots scale perfectly? Counting votes can be arbitrarily parallelized after all.
I just voted. (Score:5, Insightful)
For the EU parliament. I went in, took a paper ballot, showed my voting card, recieved a small envelope, went behind the screen, used the pen there to check the box across my candidate on the ballot, put the ballot in the envelope, handed voting card and ballot in. Done.
How the fuck could e-voting make this any faster/simpler? After all, counting the votes is a highly parallelizable task, so the fact that you have 10x or even 100x as many voters shouldn't matter in the least.
All in all it took me ten minutes. No more, no less.
PBC Board of Elections (Score:3, Interesting)
Obviously, you can still call up and order an absentee ballot, but most people order theirs over the web now. Not to be a conspiracy theorist or anything, but in Palm Beach County most of the "get out the vote" campaigns in urban/impoverished/highly democrat areas encourage voters to apply for absentee ballots, hmm. PBC Elections Link [pbcelections.org] That sure gives me more faith in the system, TdC
Source Code (Score:5, Insightful)
lff
Re:Source Code (Score:2)
Even if it was, we still wouldn't have the source code to some of the underlying components, such as Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Access.
I really don't have a whole lot of faith that my vote will be counted properly this election. Closed voting system, no verifiable voting trail, our governor is the president's brother, tons of shady stories from the last presidential election, little news coverage a
How hard does it GET? (Score:2)
#define _GNU_SOURCE
#include
int main(void) {
char* c = NULL;
FILE* votes;
size_t len = 0;
size_t readb = 0;
if((votes = fopen("votes_nov_2004", "a")) == NULL) {
perror("votes_nov_2004");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
puts("Enter your vote>");
while((readb=getline(&c, &len, stdin))>0) {
fputs(c, votes);
putc('\n', votes);
puts("Enter your vote>");
}
fclose(votes);
Re:How hard does it GET? (Score:2)
#!/bin/bash
# vote.sh (C) 2004 us govt.
ELECTION = 2004_election
read vote
echo vote >> $ELECTION
# end of vote.sh
create 2004_election, chown it to root, and set permissions to 660, and set setgid the vote.sh program =P
Why all the voting problems (Score:5, Insightful)
The Banana Republic of Florida will "do" -- what? (Score:2)
Vinnie says: Day sounds about perfect ta me.
Yoos gots problems wid dat, maybe we come over ta ur place and talk about it?
Questions (Score:2)
Answer: They won't. Until the world realizes that they need a truily open standard for electronic voting no "solution" will ever be ready to impliment.
Here's an idea for a voting machine (Score:5, Interesting)
Voter goes into keypunch booth, looks at wall with each candidate assigned a number, voter types in numbers, extracts card, and (new part), sticks card into reader which displays their choices on a screen. (Doesn't like what she sees, goes back in line to punch out another card.) Voter hands in card.
You have anonymity, a paper trail, no concerns about hanging chads or mispunches, minimal maintenance, and almost no high tech specialist requirements. I wouldn't be shocked if most of this type of equipment is still manufactured and maintained.
E-vote is no good (Score:5, Insightful)
that -actually know- how machines really work would rather work manually then let a machine decide the outcome
of an election. I certainly do and I'm no luddite, on the contrary I call myself a computer geek
The facts are simple and important: computers can count very quickly, but they can be instructed to MIS-count exactly
as fast. Computers can even be instructed to turn your YES into a NO and your NO into a YES. It requires only a click
to turn 10 million votes from one candidate to another, regardless of what some self-declared "security expert" say about
the security of well maintained and programmed computers.
Hand counting of paper votes cannot as easily be corrupted. While with just one click you can tell computers to do anything
but you can't corrupt a thousand people without having some of them understand that corruption in voting process is against
democracry ; some will refuse to be corrupted, others will go to media and denounce the corruption..maybe nothing happens
and the election is rigged...but some people still know and can still talk, and paper votes remain to be counted a dozen
times if necessary (with and expecially without the help of a counting machine)
It is also important to check that each and every voter is given his/her voting rights. One can't just trust computers
to tell if a voter still have his/her rights or have lost it. With a simple click one could trick a computer into reporting
that 10000 ex-inmates are still in prison, or that 100000 people are alive and should have voted, while in reality they're
DEAD so they shouldn't be counted as voters to begin with.
Here is an example with CASH MONEY. Do you like your dollar bills ? Do you like to hold your money in your hands, knowing that your
money isn't going anywhere unless YOU decide to do something with it ? Indeed it's only a piece of paper, but a very
important one. Imagine a world in which paper or metal money doesn't exist anymore
to have all your money in their hands, stored as numbers in their computers ? What if a black-hat hacker attacks their computers ?
What if some corrupted individual working at a bank steals money from their computers, or simply -delete- your money from your
account because he doesn't like you ? Why do you think that banks are still using PAPER to keep their records ?
Fire can destroy paper money, you could lose it, anything could happen...so why do we keep money on paper with holograms
and other forms of expensive protection ? Because one could falsify money, one could destroy it accidentally..but you can't
destroy all the paper money with one click, you can't falsify all the money with one click, you can't take money away from
population hands with one click without kick-starting a bloody revolution.
Now back to vote : your vote is not money, but for some people it is more much more important then money. Why ? Because your
vote will direct trillions of dollars and a lot of power to some hands, because your vote will elect a politician, giving
him/her power to WAGE WAR in your name, to decide were tax money is going to be spent, to decide if a law needs to be changed
for better or worse.
Still want your vote and your voting rights to be counted or decided by a stupid computer ? I don't want humans to be taken
away from the voting process in the name of "progress" or in the name of "savings". It's stupid, it's dangerous.
Re:E-vote is no good (Score:2)
And banks take a lot better care of my money than Diebold takes care of the vote. They even give me a paper audit, which the Florida election officials claim isn't necessary because the machines won't let the voter make a mistake.
Re:E-vote is no good (Score:4, Insightful)
Solution? (Score:4, Interesting)
It is ready! (Score:2)
Move along please, nothing to see here.
Alex
What's so wrong with bubble sheets? (Score:2)
People bitch about MS being so evil (which they are) but Diebold doesn't care if they
A wake up call to the technical community. (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's set actual security aside for a minute. And lets set hardware drivers aside for a minute.
How long would it take any child in a high school BASIC class to write a program which can print out selection menus and accept input variables that represent votes. How long to add accurate logging? 30 minutes? an Hour?
Claiming these problems are all accidental might fly with the technically ignorant. But I'd be willing to bet at least 80% of those reading slashdot at this moment could write a program that was more functional without doing anymore debugging than it takes to get it to compile, and do in under an hour. Toss back in the drivers and I'd bet at least 60-70% of us could do it in less than a week, from top to bottom.
I'd also bet with only that level of debugging we'd have it more secure than this is the first time around. And after a month of turning it loose on the open source community have it locked down so tight it would never actually be hack (of course we'd continue finding theoretical holes... there are always theoretically exploitable holes).
The entire effort of commercial voting vendors insults the intelligence of programming everywhere. Diebold yes, but the rest of them as well. For god sakes the php webserver announced last night as simple as it was, was 1000x more complex than the software these guys are claiming they can't get right!!!!
So my friends thats what we have, and we have to let the rest of the world know better. We at least have to try. Go pay a visit to your family, give them a call or what have you. Bring up this subject and explain how trivial and disgusting this is. It's starts there. Let all your friends know. Everyone in the world is supposedly linked by a small association chain, lets prove it.
Don't waste time writting email and letters to bought and paid for congressmen who don't read them and send back cookie cutter responses. Tell the PEOPLE. Get press if you can. Send in letters to editor of the local paper, start with the small ones until it's so public the big ones have to carry it. Forget the government, outrage the PEOPLE.
Now when 200+ million americans are pounding on their doors demanding open source voting software, THEN we'll see how long they throw up red tape.
The USA will be a laughingstock. (Score:3, Insightful)
There are undoubtedly going to be significant voting scandals -- again -- and the USA will become the laughingstock of the world.
And the real shame of it is, it's not that the people of the USA are individually a bunch of buffoons. Given the choice, the individual citizens would love to have a voting system that actually works.
But the US government is determined to prove itself clueless and useless. How frustrating!
Re:More shenanigans (Score:2, Informative)
And thank god! I remember the signs people had after the election that said "Sore Loserman" with a tear instead of the star (in the same motif as the Gore/Lieberman signs). I was never able to get one of those signs.
Re:More shenanigans (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, what pissed me off more about the last elections more than anything else was the whole attention to shut down debate over the process. I mean, here we had a seriously close election whose results turned on exactly who won in Florida, and the entire push was to settle the matter as quickly as possible rather than as accurately as possible.
What was up with the entire "debate" over what kind of chad counted as a valid vote? If it was detached from 3 corners, it counted, but not if it was only detached from 2 corners, even if it was clearly the only candidate punched on the ticket?
More seriously, the decision was made by a Supreme Court containing individuals who - in any other court in the country would have had to abstain from voting due to a conflict of interest. (Some of the Justices were nominateed by G.W.B.'s father, for Pete's sake.) Why wasn't there more attention given to that failure of the process?
And, so, what I hate about the soundbite expression "Get over it, Al Gore lost" (although you did indicate that it was a joke - granted) was that it stopped debate and forced the result through.
Re:More shenanigans (Score:5, Insightful)
Examples include Katherine Harris, Florida's Secretary of State also serving [cbsnews.com] as George W. Bush's Florida Campaign Co-Chair, a bunch of oil industry executives deciding to annex on of the largest oil producing nations in the world, Cheney and Scalia going on hunting trips [cnn.com] while the Supreme Court decides cases involving Cheney, U.S. Senators owning voting machine manufacturers [blackboxvoting.com] and countless other incestuous links that even first year law students in the former Soviet Union would clearly recognize as causing the appearance of impropriety.
I mean c'mon, if you're gonna fuck us, at least *try* to be subtle about it! Is that too much to ask?
Re:Here's a *real* conflict of interest.... (Score:2)
And the wisdom contained in my
Re:More shenanigans (Score:4, Insightful)
And, so, what I hate about the soundbite expression "Get over it, Al Gore lost" was that it stopped debate and forced the result through.
I think you fail to appreciate just how important it was to stop the "debate". Such debates, historically, have a very nasty way of ripping nations in two. In an extremely close election, like we had in 2000, you could spend years finding various inaccuracies and problems -- on both sides, because both sides play that game just as hard as they think they can get away with it.
Think about what might have happened:
Okay, I'll stop there, because I don't really think that scenario is likely. Mainly because people didn't (and don't) really care enought about either Bush or Gore to go to war for them.
HOWEVER, the point is that even if the scenario doesn't seem realistic, things like it have happened many, many times in history, and there's no way to know for CERTAIN that they wouldn't have happened in 2000. From a historical perspective, we probably ought to be holding our breath at every change of administration, waiting to see if power really will be turned over. Back in 1797, most of the world was shocked that George Washington announced, and then followed through on, his intention to step down as president. People don't often voluntarily give up such authority.
No, I think that in the case of a closely contested election the best possible action is to follow the law as closely as possible and as quickly as possible to select and swear in a new leader. That does create a risk of selecting the wrong on
Re:More shenanigans (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not as difficult as you may think: [go.com]
Re:More shenanigans (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's the questions I want answers to, in regard to the last election:
- Were thousands of voters disenfranchised due to improper discounting of their right to vote (based on similar names to criminals)? It appears that we can say pretty definitely that the answer is yes.
- Were there voting improprieties that gave nonsensical answers for final vote tallies? I'd say the -16022 vote count against Gore is a pretty good sign that this is the case.
- Did the Supreme Court illegal (anti-constititionally) step in to make a decision in Florida? Again, the answer appears to be yes, based on the clarity of constitutional law.
Those three are enough for me to wonder why there aren't people screaming in the streets STILL! Can anyone give me a good counter to the above Q&As that has nothing to do with the individual personalities or leadership qualities of Bush or Gore?
Re:More shenanigans (Score:3, Interesting)
'A' human? no, a group of closely monitored people, monitored by both parties with check recounts yes. If the rules say 3 corner chad is a vote but the machine can't register those votes then the machine is wrong.
Don't trust machines too much, the optical scanners in Florida were set to reject the ballot in predominantly Republican districts, (so the voter could try again). Meanwhile in Democrat districts the scanner was set to
Re:More shenanigans (Score:3, Insightful)
The idea has always been that the cheating would generally just even out.
Machines are never going to insure accurate vote counting if the people reading off the numbers are corrupt.
Re:More shenanigans (Score:2)
Re:More shenanigans (Score:4, Insightful)
And there's the rub, isn't it? What's the bi-partisan supervision going to look like with one of these machines? Representatives of both parties stand there looking at the computer while the tech pushes the "count votes" button? Doesn't sound very useful to me.
Here's an observation: We know that in Florida Diebold machines gave Al Gore -15,000 votes. We know they screwed up in the California recall election, disenfranchising voters, and handing unusually high counts to minor candidates in counties far from their homes while the Lietenant Governor had substantially below his average. I'm not sure about the town where the vote totals were many times more than the actual population. We keep hearing about these machines screwing up. We have a company producing unverifiable machines -- and they know they are flawed but don't care -- and this company has close ties to the Republican party. Their machines have "oopsed" several times in favor of Republicans -- have they "oopsed" in favor of Democrats, or is this a one-way street of accidental errors?
Basically, my question is: What, exactly, is supposed to even this out?
Re:Deja vu with Supreme Court? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Deja vu with Supreme Court? (Score:5, Informative)
I remember those recount stories back when they happened in mid-2001. On both CNN and listening the next day on NPR I heard and read that the recount showed Gore won Florida. Oh sure, when they only recounted those counties Gore was asking to be recounted, Bush still was ahead by 300 votes -- and that's what made all the headlines. But when they recounted ALL the counties in Florida, Gore was ahead. For some reason, that didn't make headlines but was buried about 2/3 the way down the CNN story. Yet it was the most significant fact of all: The voters of Florida picked Gore, thereby making him win both the popular vote and the electoral vote.
By then, of course, it was too late to do much, and would be a real mess to try to fix, so that's probably why the news got buried. But many of us noted those facts at the time and we haven't forgotten, no matter how many misinformed people still think Bush won by 300 votes.
Re:Such arrogance (Score:2, Informative)
Statistics based off of the original 1991 Persian Gulf War. To quote "Shortly after the war, the US Defense Intelligence Agency made a very rough estimate of 100,000 Iraqi deaths, and this order of magnitude is widely accepted -- even improved upon: * B&J: 50,000 to 100,000 * Compton's: 150,000 Iraqi soldiers killed * World Political Almanac 3rd: 150,000 incl. civilians. * Our Times: 200,000."
To quote
Now I am convinced there are bad moderators (Score:2, Flamebait)
My post above was a comment about hoping Florida would use different voting machines.
The topic I was posting was AN ARTICLE ABOUT VOTING MACHINE PROBLEMS IN FLORIDA.
I was moderated down as being "off topic".
In other words, someone abused their temporary moderator's privelage to censor an opinion that they didn't like.......not an opinion that was off topic to the thread.
I didn't know that Judge Scalia had time to read slashdot!
I'm impressed