NY Rejects E-Voting, DOJ Trying to Force the Issue 228
CompaniaHill writes "Hastily passed in the wake of the 2000 election mess, the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) supposedly offered funding to help states update their voting systems. In reality, the short deadlines have been used to push the sale of untested and uncertified new e-voting systems. Many states continue to demonstrate that the new e-voting machines are not reliable. The New York State Board of Elections (NYSBOE) took the time to pass their own voting legislation with additional testing and certification standards which far exceed the HAVA standards. As a result, they missed the HAVA deadlines. In March 2006, the Department of Justice (DOJ) sued New York to comply with HAVA. Now, the DOJ is serving a motion to try to take away New York's right to select and acquire their own voting machine systems — in effect, to force e-voting machines on New York anyway. At the moment it's too soon to say how the NYSBOE will respond."
Electric voting machines not reliable? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Electric voting machines not reliable? (Score:5, Insightful)
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In Soviet America... (Score:2, Funny)
since we're rolling w/ old memes (Score:2, Funny)
I don't have a face, you insensitive clod!
Re:Electric voting machines not reliable? (Score:5, Insightful)
In short, They Work.
Tell me why we need to change from a tested, reliable, working system to a new-fangled system with huge concerns as to the accuracy and security?
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In the case of the former, all machines run the risk of breaking down, be they mechanical, electronic or even pencil and paper (run out of ballots, pencils, etc)... as long as there is some type of backup system (perhaps an absen
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The New York State Election Law mandates that there be at least one poll worker from each major party present at the polling place. Typically there's two Republicans and two Democrats. We schedule our breaks around this -- both Republicans don't go to lunch at the same time for example. Furthermore, if a voter requires assistance and we have to go into the machine with them, at least TWO inspectors have to go into the machine, one from each party. The Election Law defines the two major parties as the parties that had the highest and second highest vote counts in the last Governor's election. So in theory it need not even be the Democrats and Republicans.
It doesn't always quite work out that way in practice though. There are usually 3-4 people working when I go to the polls, so I haven't seen it personally, but I've had friends go vote and find only one person staffing the poll at that time (I don't know where the others were, out to lunch, bathroom, whatever).
The biggest problem we face is the fact that nobody young bothers to volunteer to work as an Election Inspector. The overwhelming majority of us are old retirees.
I will also attest to that. In the 12 years that I've been voting, I've never seen a poll worker under 50. Maybe 25% of the time, there will be someone who is of non-retirement age.
I've seen districts fall apart during primary elections with depressingly low turnout
Primaries and sc
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In Canada... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Since you've offered to answer questions, I'll offer a couple. I'm registered as an independent, I typically lean Democrat on most issues, but prefer not to "belong" to anyone's party. Would I still be useful as an independent, as most things seem to req
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Amen, Brother (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyway, I am so scar
Re:Electric voting machines not reliable? (Score:4, Insightful)
How is this related to interstate commerce? If not, the Feds shouldn't have squat to say in all this....if not, where am I mistaken?
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The State received the HAVA-allocated money, but failed to deliver the improvements, that the money was supposed to pay for.
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The ruling was that because if he hadn't grown the wheat he would of had to buy it, therefore it was interstate commerce - even though the excess wheat never left the farm, much less the state.
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That is, of course, assuming that the machine is working correctly and hasn't been tampered with, or that election workers aren't deliberately reporting false numbers.
I find it amusing that opponents of e-voting are so skeptical of the system's integrity, yet seem to have no similar concerns about the old methods.
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I'm an EE. I've written some life-critical code. (As in, code failure could potentially lead to human death.) Can you promise that the code in the voting mac
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I'm not totally sure, but I know it has something to do with elves...
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Possible spelling error detected. Did you mean "Elvis"?
Your vote has left the building....
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You either decrease the resistance or increase the capacitance (or in some cases, disrupt an actual standing ultrasonic "sound" wave) between two fine meshes of wires running through the touchscreen. The touchscreen controller debounces this and reports it (either as serial input or by keystroke emulation) to the host device. The host device runs an OS (most likely QNX or PSOS or VX - Or yes, even Linux) that polls the inpu
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Re:Electric voting machines not reliable? (Score:4, Informative)
It works like this.
You have members of different parties right there with the ballots. They police each other.
Likewise at the counting station. They don't just had the ballots to a room full of republicans or democrats except in some fairly corrupt locations.
e-machines on the other hand can be silently corrupted. There is no human counterbalance. There is no way to prove that a particular vote was indeed the vote the machine records.
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When paper ballots are used, the centuries-old system of having judges from both parties overseeing the physical handling and counting of the votes can be relied upon to give us at least an approximation of fairness, if not fairness itself. I've been an election judge in some local races, and I was impressed by how open and fair the system seemed, and with the good faith that resulted on both sides from this system.
With these new electronic voti
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Mechanical counts are easirer to tanper with than electronic counts, given reasonable preventive measures in both cases. It's just easier for your average
Have a compuet ass
First Post (Score:4, Funny)
Re:First Post (Score:5, Funny)
Wow, that is a misleading title. (Score:2)
Please, oh please, sue... (Score:3, Insightful)
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We will be reaping the results of Bush's presidency for the next twenty years.
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Voted for the right of the state to take property to give to a private individual: Stevens, Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer.
Voted against the state taking property to give to a private individual: O'Connor, Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas (with additional dissent written by Thomas).
Before you go blaming someone, at least get your facts straight. Also, neither (Alito and Roberts) of Bush 43's appointees heard the cas
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I sit corrected and I'm pretty shocked it was the older hands that did this.
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I think I might just use this as a
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A temporal linguistics quandary, indeed.
SCOTUS for Federalism? GMAFB. (Score:2)
That's the excuse they pull out when they want to deny people's rights.
But otherwise, the SCOTUS majority is perfectly happy to use the club of Federal pre-emption when states want to give additional protection to their citizens and residents. Scalia is an unrepentant nutbag on this. He'll fulminate about Federalism in one decision and then ignore it one week later.
Bluntly, if its good for Republicans, SCOTUS likes it, and if it's bad for Republicans and less powerful people, SCO
Re:SCOTUS for Federalism? GMAFB. (Score:5, Informative)
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They acted wrongly not by the answer they gave, but by considering the question.
Had things gone down in a constitutional manner, we should all be still arguing about how the Florida supreme court and/or legislature ha
Re:Please, oh please, sue... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Amendment XIV, Section 1 (in part). [N]or shall any state ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
That's what Bush v. Gore was about. You can't provide more protection to the people in some counties and precincts in your state without providing that protection to all counties and precincts.
But the New York case we're talking about here is dependent largely upon these parts of the Constitution:
Article I, Section 4 (in part). The times, places and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by law make or alter such regulations, except as to the places of choosing Senators.
Article II, Section 1 (in part). The Congress may determine the time of choosing the electors, and the day on which they shall give their votes; which day shall be the same throughout the United States.
Amendment X. The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
Unfortunately, this case seems even less cut-and-dried than Bush v. Gore. I personally feel that, if it gets that far, the court(s) should examine the motivation behind both HAVA and the New York regulations, u
While you are at it, encourage this (Score:2)
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*To be fair, this is the way t
Game Over NY State (Score:3, Insightful)
That's a clear sign it's out of the voters hands. I would guess that when they roll over, they've got plenty of public service jobs waiting for them.
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Missing the Point (Score:2)
No. They are going to roll over in exchange for something. That something includes their careers.
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Public board always take up lawsuits in closed session; one reason is that part of dealing with lawsuits its receiving, discussing, and making decisions about communications with counsel which could jeopardize the position of the agency in the suit if they were pub
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Thank you.
Good thing the logged the machines first (Score:2)
Constitutional Issue (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems to me that unless Congress mandates e-voting the DOJ has no power to force it upon a state. The HAVA appears to provide funds for but does not mandate electronic voting. Even if it did, a state could mandate voting for Senators at a place with no electrical outlets and Congress could not change that; alternatively, is a voting both a "place?"
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Re:Constitutional Issue (Score:5, Informative)
Of course, the whole point of this legal showdown is that HAVA falls far short of guaranteeing anyone's voting rights, so the DoJ would have to show in court that this particular half-measure they're trying to force is superior to NY state's particular half-measure in guaranteeing voting rights. That is far from a sure thing, since the flaws in electronic voting machines are so easily demonstrable and explainable to even the least technical jurist.
So yes, the DoJ certainly has both the right (and responsibility) to be involved in the voting process, but that doesn't mean they're in control. The courts are the only authority that can say any state's voting equipment is unconstitutional, and I doubt they're going to mandate demonstrably insecure electronic voting if NY state can show them some other means of upholding voter rights.
I like our voting machines here (Score:2)
They have a paper trail, are easy to use, and they're NOT Diebold. The only thing I don't like about them is they use (IINM) Windows; I would FAR prefer them to use an open source OS. Not that my vote really matters much (I split my vote between the Greenies and the Libbies).
-mcgrew
Where's the money behind this? (Score:4, Interesting)
Like others, though, I think that SCOTUS will prevail, because ultimately if the federal government becomes overpoweringly strong, there may be a second secessionary movement where many of the states tell the currently empowered federal government to go to hell and start over.
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Partiality of Mukasey (Score:2)
Violation of the Constitution (Score:2)
i've said this a couple of times (Score:4, Insightful)
the reason is trust. trust in your voting process is extremely important to the confidence and integriy of society. now of course you can fake paper ballots, lose them, etc. it is just that, for every method you find to "hack" paper ballots, there are 10 more ways to hack mechanical voting, and 100 times more ways to attack electronic voting. increased complexity leads to more attack vectors. simple as that
you can scan the paper ballots with optical machines, certainly, but anything more technophilic than that is not necessary, and perhaps dangerous. voting is not a process that needs to be improved. the poorest country in the world and the richest should all vote the simple way
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Hanging Chads... You way back in the year 2000... The cause of the E-Voting Craze...
Paper Has the problems of increased Human Error. The machanical system that NY has now reduces the Human Error Involved, although the interface horible, it has been working for about 100 years now. Flip the switch and Pull the leaver, Crank Click Click Click Click.
These things are made from heavy metal, hacking would require err umm hacking at it. Causing a lot of noise and making those people who sit right ne
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The same thing that 99% of the rest of the world uses.
You use a PENCIL to put a big X in the box next to the name of the person you are voting for.
Now I know that the Democratic party* claims that a large number of their supporters don't know which end of a pencil to use, but we can fix that by sharpening both ends (presumably, the Democrats will then claim its a Republican trick to get their supporters to poke themselves in the eye and blind them!)
* - Dems. in Florida. The ones aroun
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but the parent talks about paper and optical scan, which don't have chads, much less hanging ones.
If I were to talk about the systems that produce chads, I'd talk about punchcard voting systems.
Paper Has the problems of increased Human Error. The machanical system that NY has now reduces the Human Error Involved, although the interface horible, it has been working for about 100 years now
Hanging chads are not a problem. (Score:2)
Hanging chads were not the problem. The problem was the "instant results" mania. There's absolutely no reason it should matter if an election held in November for a President to take office the following year isn't certified by the end of November or even December... let alone the same night.
Preventing people from forging ballots is hardly rocket science... scanners to verify a bar or dot code are cheap enough that people ha
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Or don't you think there are that many people out there who would risk significant jail time to rig an election in their favor?
No problem (Score:2)
Oh wait...
Diabold No parties listed. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Diabold No parties listed. (Score:4, Insightful)
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United STATES of America (Score:2)
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How sure are you?
US Constitution, Article 1, section 4, Paragraph 1:
"The times, places and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by law make or alter such regulations, except as to the places of choosing Senators."
The Constitution is not all that long nor hard to understand, and is reasonabl
I hope Spitzer kicks butt (Score:2)
The gold standard for ballot-counting is paper (Score:2, Informative)
From a vote-casting perspective the ballot would be legibly markable by any eligible voter without assist
NYC doesn't use paper ballots OR evoting. (Score:2, Informative)
At least, that was how they are supposed to work.
As
This is news? (Score:2)
Time for an open source initiative (Score:4, Interesting)
I mean open hardware, open software, open everything.
I am pretty certain that the open community could devise something that would be nearly tamper proof... probably using two devices. One, managed by the voting officials in the district that actually records the votes, the second is managed by a 3rd party and is used to verify the results.
For example I vote on one machine, which prints a verification slip that is scanned into the second which display and records my votes. At the end of the day, both machines should have the same count... otherwise one of the two was tampered with. At which point they turn to the verification slips for a manual count.
its unbelievable to me.. (Score:2)
accurately.
How about demVote++, repVote++?
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short demv(short cur_v) {
float InvSqrt (float x){
float xhalf = 0.5f*x;
int i = *(int*)
i = 0x5f3759df - (i>>1);
x = *(float*)
x = x*(1.5f - xhalf*x*x);
return x;
}
cur_v += sqrt((float)cur_v) * InvSqrt((float)cur_v);
retur
HAVA... (Score:2)
scam (Score:2)
It is used as a tool to enforce the wishes of those in power; nothing more, nothing less. When the federal government is corrupt (as they have been for many terms to varying degrees, but never to the degree we see currently) then the DOJ is part of that.
It's not a democrat or republican or conservative or liberal thing; those who think it is are falling prey to a scheme to control how they think ab
Re:The Basis ... (Score:4, Funny)
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--
If the above post made you angry, many apologies. Send $1 and a SASE for a written apology.
No, the feds don't have any "rights" at all (Score:3, Insightful)
Not to nitpick (don't you love how people say not to _____ when they're just about to _____) but the feds don't have ANY rights.
They have powers, which are based on the rights of the people. So, the better way to say this is "the feds are empowered to protect the rights of citizens by ensuring fair voting".
Please be careful, because the distinction is not trivial, especially in the current political climate.
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If youre a neo-conservative you tag the 10th with: "except anything that benefits business"
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Just look at the Democrats and people who vote for them. You'd think they would take a quick look at the disaster that is the Bush Administration for the past 7 years, which is a model for a huge, overgrown, intrusive Federal government, and say to themselves, "big government isn't working too well wit
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Well, if the Dems would put out a really decent candidate that a majority of states could rally behind, you'd not have to worry about this much, but, it appears so far, that they are gonna put Hillary as their candidate, and there are people, a large number of people in the US that would vote for a melting Popsicles rather than for her.
Why can't they put out someone that is a bit more believable, re
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Giuliani is Hillary's only threat (and a pro-choice, proven small-spender Republican would be a *very* strong candidate in the general election), but seems to have no chance in the primary right now.
The Dem
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The best candidate on the Republican side is Ron Paul, who's really a Libertarian calling himself Republican for the most part.
But the problem with the whole system, and the reason Hillary will get elected, is because of the way the primaries and caucuses work; in these elections, only registered Party members are allowed to vote for the candi
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In addition:
New York delayed writing a HAVA compliant state law longer than any other state.
Is this a problem with New York or a problem with HAVA's deadlines? Did they de
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