California Sues E-Voting Vendor ES&S 185
Gustoman writes with news that the California Secretary of State has sued ES&S, a vendor of e-voting machines, for selling machines that were modifications of the model that has been certified. Apparently ES&S relocated two circuit boards, rerouted several internal cables, and changed some mounting bracket supports in their AutoMark A100 devices, named the modified version AutoMark A200, and sold 972 of them to five California counties. The changes sound somewhat trivial, but the certification contract specified that no "substitution or modification of the voting systems shall be made with respect to any component of the voting systems... until the secretary of state has been notified in writing and has determined that the proposed change or modification does not impair the accuracy and efficiency of the voting systems sufficient to require a reexamination and approval." The state is seeking a penalty of $10,000 per machine sold, plus the cost of the machines to the counties — almost $15 million in all.
Any hope? (Score:2)
Re:Any hope? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Any hope? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it's always better to do it the traditional way, you go there with your ballot and put it on a clear box, after somebody has checked that you are who you say you are, and that you are supposed to vote. Painfully simple, completely fool-proof. It takes a bit more people to do it, but it's just as being in a jury.
I see absolutely no downside about doing it the traditional way. Is there any reason to do it with machines in america, or you do it that way just because it's cooler?
Re:Any hope? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's true that voting is simple process. Rigging a vote, however, is not as simple; and printing ballots does not have as high a profit margin as selling a voting machine.
The reasons for the machines and the reasons for the non-traditional way are: to make more money for friends (and campaign contributors) of politicians and to facilitate getting the desired (and paid for) result from an election.
It has nothing to do with the intelligence or lack thereof in the American voting populace.
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Voting machines do not exist for people to buy elections. They exist because it monetizes the election process, allowing people to get wealthy by controlling a process that is required in a democracy.
The problem is that it's potentially so lucrative, that these guys are rushing into the process, talking up security, trustworthiness and stability, whilst simultaneously ignoring those same things in the interest of gaining the mighty buck, and the mighti
Re:Any hope? (Score:4, Insightful)
Think about it.
stolen elections and proof (Score:3, Insightful)
Listen: have you looked into this at all? Why is it the problem of some-guy-on-slashdot to bring you up to speed on what ought to be common knowledge at this point? In summary, there have been three different styles of attack in play in US elections (1) denial of the right to vote for people likely to vote against you; (2) shorting key districts of voting machines; (3) falsify the vote itself, via e
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To quote Aladdin in the Disney movie, "You're only in trouble if you get caught". Like most criminals, they don't expect to get caught.
I think you're wrong. (Score:2)
Printing has a real margin, and the revenue keeps recurring.
The most profitable thing IBM ever made, up until the IBM PC, was their PUNCH CARD.
I think support for the machines might generate enough recurring revenue to beat the paper, but the machines themselves are probably not as good a way of taking money from a governme
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-corruption/subversion trivial
-counting error prone
-counting OFTEN up to human judgement, which is never unbiased (hanging chad, etc)
Great one, there.
Quite right. (Score:2)
Or you could have been following the discussion and reading up on the reality of voting and how that works without machines, you would have known that it isn't all as easy and trivial as you like.
Just a couple of pointers to help you on your way: paper trail, possibility of recount, multiple p
Re:Quite right. (Score:4, Informative)
In the US just a few thousand votes in a key are brings your party from a lot of control (president) to very little (Democrats in the Senate and House can't get shit done).
With razor thin margins and 49% of the vote counting for nothing it is possible to subtly change the votes and drastically alter the political landscape.
In 2000 Florida was withing 1/100th of 1% (0.01%) and would have made Gore the president. I doubt there is many places in the rest of the world where so few people in such a small area could cause such a dramatic shift. This makes the risk/reward analysis in the US much different than other places with your minority reresentation and 3+ parties.
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As a U.S. citizen, I'd be happy with more than zero credible parties.
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The rest of the democratic world doesn't have chads. We don't punch cards.
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The November 2006 California Gubernatorial election had seven statewide offices and twelve ballot propositions (Californians can enact laws through ballot propositions). This was just the statewide offices - it doesn't count any local offices, initiatives or municipal boards. And this was a small one. The California Presidential primary election in February, 2008 has seven state-wide propositions, with thirty two more i
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Elections in America are COMPLICATED (Score:5, Informative)
The US, being an enormous country, has a many levels of government. Unlike many other countries, it runs all elections for all levels of government on a fixed date (some Tuesday in November), rather than spreading them around the year. Of course, not every position is up for election every year, but still this means that the "ballot" contains tens if not hundreds of separate elections, ranging all the way from the US President to the county water board and the town mayor, not to mention multiple "ballot initiative" (direct legislation). Each election (especially president, governor etc) can feature tens of candidates (most of them irrelevant). Printed ballots are thick booklets; both filling them correctly and manually reading them is a non-trivial operation. Also, manually tallying the votes in these hundreds of elections takes a lot of time.
This is not to say that this was not done manually in the past, but certainly using computers greatly simplifies the process. I think the best solution is to use computers to generate the ballot, but only use computer counts provisionally. That is, the voter will step up to a computer and will make selections, after which the computer will print a filled ballot that can be optically scanned. The computer will also tally the votes giving a quick result for most of the races. Nevertheless, the printed ballots should be considered the official votes, the ones to be used if a recount is necessary. In important races (President, Governor) it's probably better to automatically count the printed ballots and only use the computer counts for provisional results. Note that this also allows for people to manaually fill their ballots if they feel like it.
What state are YOU from? (Score:2)
I agree with your second paragraph, except I don't want to waste time and money on electronic voting for everybody. It should be a couple of machines for people with special needs. I can wipe a ma
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The posts being voted on don't change for a few weeks after the elections, so its not as if you need an instant tally.
Votes should NOT be counted until the final polling stations have closed, otherwise the results from one station could affect the results in another. This could be a problem with the USA as it has multiple timezones, but they could just do their exit polls and then count the votes the following day and get the results in a reasonable civilised manner
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You see, there is a difference from "I'll vote because I want someone to win even though I am extremely busy and it is inconvenient" and, oh, he has no chance of winning (or losing) so why bother stressing my life to vote for a loser (or someone who already won).
Of course this ties into the entire idea that they don't care about any other measure or candidates on the ballot. And with this seeming to be the popul
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=Smidge=
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We just went through an election, one of the national medias decided to make a prediction using exit polls and first 4000 counted votes (all voting places were closed). "If this holds this will turn out to be a major landslide". I had to find something else to do at that point
(No it didn't end up with any kind of slides, just the slightly above 50% on one side)
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The problem is when you start announcing a "winner" before everyone has voted, which may disenfranchize people who would otherwise have voted for the "losing" candidate.
=Smidge=
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Here in Denmark you get a ballot thats a mile long and you put a mark at the line where you want to vote. (Multiple ballots when voting for more than one thing)
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Paper Ballots != punchcard ballots.
While supporters of paper ballots will probably argue as to the exact details (Pen! Pencil! Marker!), the fact is it's trivial today to print out scannable ballots, anybody who's attended school past elementory should be familiar with them, recounting is easy in multiple fashions, and they're far more cost effective - professionally printed paper ballots should cost less than ten cents each. You'd have to feed five thousan
It's even worse than that... (Score:2)
And in fact, by LAW we're prohibited from even checking to see if you are who you say you are when you go to the
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Voting is an irrational process from a selfish perspective - the sum of the probabilities of me changing an election times the magnitude of the effect each election has on my own life is negligible even compared to the inconvenience of waiting in line to vote.
So when people do vote anyway, it's for some combination of:
a. irrationality,
b. zealotry,
c. entertainment,
d. altruism
People in category d are too rare to decide elections (al
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For all its faults (and there are many), the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) came about because people who are blind or physically unable to mark a ballot had no way of voting independently and privately. To that end, their civil rights were not being addressed by the individual states, and the resulting legislation forced the states to come into compliance (well, everyone except New York).
Prior to the DRE (Direct Recording E
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Some areas do have braille form. And I think it's hard to imagine a worse system for visually impaired voting than touch screen. At least with a keyboard you can have those little ledges to locate your fingers. You'd need a voice system - but then you either need ear
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I'm quite aware that this ain't the only company making voting machines. But if companies notice that they'll be held responsible and monitored tightly for the machines they make, they might consider it not worth the risk.
Different Enough (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Different Enough (Score:5, Interesting)
Even as an e-voting opponent, this seems harsh. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Even as an e-voting opponent, this seems harsh. (Score:5, Informative)
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The contract didn't say "penalties only if re-flashed", instea
Re:Even as an e-voting opponent, this seems harsh. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Even as an e-voting opponent, this seems harsh. (Score:5, Insightful)
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With that kind of history from some of the vendors (that was not an ES&S product), it's easy to see why the legislation would get nit-picky.
Tim
Re:Even as an e-voting opponent, this seems harsh. (Score:5, Interesting)
This case also serves as a warning that California will not take any crap from the vendors. It may prevent any further 'mistakes.'
Don't be silly... (Score:2)
Don't be silly! The don't have to know how to count. They only need to write code.
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So all they had to do was write to the secretary of state, explain that they had just moved a few things around, and wait for confirmation that the secretary agrees that the changes don't require reexamination. That's a pret
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Presumably to allow a non engineer to check using a photograph.
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More than that. Military hardware is frequently built to survive conditions not experienced by consumer machines. Something as 'simple' as moving a cable could be the difference between the part survive an EMP blast and still be operational and frying instantly.
Rather than assuming an operating temperature range of 40-100F, it might have to survive -30 to 190F.
Substituting a non-shielded cable for a shielded cable, even where civilian specs ca
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A good example might be the infamous Van Halen incident where the band did thousands of dollars to a venue after they were given brown M&Ms. The band's rider stated that M&Ms were to be provided but buried deep withing the technical paragraphs was a line stipulating that brown coloured M&Ms were to be removed. Obviously t
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How much could it have cost you if you had messed up, been taken to court and the judge had taken the position "If the defendent can't even get that simple thing right what else mig
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I'd say it serves as a warning that the only way California can detect vendors' crap is by noticing new model numbers and obvious visible physical changes to certified software. The only way they can even hope to detect invisible changes to certified software is with a chain of trust which has again been proven to be missing most of its links.
It may prevent any further 'mistakes.'
It may discourage any further mistake
It may be more serious than obvious (Score:2, Interesting)
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Re:Even as an e-voting opponent, this seems harsh. (Score:5, Insightful)
There is surely enough electronics in these machines that it would be trivial to conceal a circuit that changes its behavior depending on how various circuit boards are physically mounted in a chassis, even when all the connections appear visually equivalent.
Without visibility of the source code, we have no idea what it's doing under normal circumstances, much less when bits inside of it as physically rearranged. Hell, even with full schematics and source code, things could be easily hidden in production units. No matter what we do, we're taking their word for it.
Get rid of the machines.
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Once my vote is posted by my name, I can verify it. I can also vote from my laptop - or better yet, my cellphone.
So what if I can sell my vote? I've got no issue with that. Legalize and formalize the process.
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Perhaps. However, when the issue is something as sensitive as voting machines, with all of the distrust of them we've seen and experienced (for good reason), it is imperative that everyone follow the letter of the contract and the law. As others have pointed out, with closed source software, it would be trivial to encode a backdoor or cheat function which would be enabled by
I know what I would do... (Score:3, Interesting)
Welcome to the world of high assurance (Score:2)
There are lots of ways a seemingly ineffectual change can cause unforeseen consequences, so it's not up to the person making the changes to decide what is and isn't a 'trivial' change. Even if the changes can now be proven to be trivial and no danger to proper operation, this is still the right
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In which case the onus is on the supplier to prove that there has been no change, regardless of the model number being changed. Even if the difference indicates some trivial change, e.g. colour of the casing, then it's up to the supplier to explain this and get the customer's approval for the subsitution.
This particular error on the part
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ES&S thought the changes were substantial enough to give the resulting device a new name (A200 instead of A100). Did they give it a new price, too? Plus, they didn't go through the motions to have someone verify that the same code was, in fact, used. Despite their claims, without having an independent tester do that verification, who knows what they flashed on there.
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Goddammit. I can't believe I'm defending an e-voting company. I'm in absolute agreement that new and relevant revisions should be re-certified, but I believe that the penalties in this particular case are harsh. I
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When the military orders hammers they order an EXACT hammer, down to what color and finish... it's all very important to somebody so the specs have to be followed exactly, even if the hammer is functionally identical, that's not good enough. It's high time that computer and softw
One of two things happened (Score:4, Insightful)
b) They forgot.
The actual error isn't terribly worrying, but the process failure that led to the breach of their contract, especially for something that could have been complied with quite easily, is not the sort of thing you want to see going on at a company that makes closed source voting machines.
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It's not the sort of thing you want to see going on with ANY company which provides closed-source solutions - either software, hardware or a combination of the two.
Now what would happen if a medical equipment manufacturer trie
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Indeed. Changing the position of a bracket and whatnot is a pretty minor design tweak. OTOH, this is a voting machine, and it seems so fundamentally obvious that every employee at every level should have been indoctrinated w
Checks and balances (Score:4, Insightful)
Does relocating two circuit boards, rerouting several internal cables and changing some mounting bracket supports mean an e-voting device must be recertified to meet state e-voting requirements?
The company also contended that the changes to the AutoMark A100 were so minor that ES&S was not required to submit them for review.
The only changes made to the devices were minor engineering modifications, according to ES&S.
Let me answer the question at the beginning of the article with a resounding YES!!!!!!!!!! YES YES YES! What if the software was written to act differently (cheat) if a bolt was in a certain place, if the color of some paint was different, or if something else was a cetain height? A company can just say "these are just minor changes that has nothing to do with the operation". You see, the contract was written to cover things like this. I am not saying the company had ill-intentions, but if they did violate the contract it's just stupid and - i guess if I can stretch it - a bit suspicious.
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If they were minor enough to not be worth re-certification, the changes shouldn't have been made. When you're dealing with software that must be secure or is used in life-critical situations, you simply don't make minor modifications in the first place. Unless you're a company selling voting machines to the US.
Not modified but upgraded (Score:5, Funny)
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(*deep breath*... haaayyyy....)
What the hell (Score:5, Insightful)
It is this simple.
The law REQUIRES Cerification of the Voting Machine to be used/sold. ESS had the A100 certified. They are allowed to sell the A100 in CA
ESS made a newer model the A200 and sold them uncertified to districts.
I don't care what the changes were, You put a sticker on it that wasn't there during certification its uncertified. PERIOD. Finish engineering the damn thing before submitting it for certification.
Let this be a lesson to the makers of these types of machines. ONLY CERTIFIED VOTING MACHINES are legal.
Frankly, I'm disappointed with you guys for your wishy washy interpretation just because we are a bunch of engineers doesn't mean we don't have to take their side when they violate the law. Especially wjen it comes to something so vitally important to our democracy.
I couldn't agree more with this comment from the Sec of State.
"ES&S ignored the law over and over and over again, and it got caught," Bowen said in a statement. "California law is very clear on this issue. I am not going to stand on the sidelines and watch a voting system vendor come into this state, ignore the laws and make millions of dollars from California's taxpayers in the process."
Thank You, that is all.
Re:What the hell (Score:5, Insightful)
No, let this be a lesson for the voters: if something as obvious as a modell with physical alterations and - for crying out loud! - a different type designation could be sold to the districts bypassing all the security measres that should have been in place preventing this, then how do you trust these exact same security procedures to catch subtle modifications of the software?
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(d)The districts approached the vendor to purchase a certified machine. ESS is listed as a vendor with certified equipment. District donot have the responsibility to know the mode
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What it shows is the utter stupidity of the management at ES&S that made them think they could alter the machine because the Engineering team said "In order for production of this to go forward we need to move a few things around" and management said well, we'll send it for federal testing, but not State. Thus breaking the Law.
This machine has features for the disabled/blind, Anybody know if the Audio feedback is through headphones or a speaker? Just wondering.
States that bought them may be also at fault (Score:2)
- there were two types
- one was certified
- the other was sold
So the states bought knowingly an uncertified machine?
Look at their track record. (Score:5, Informative)
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Considering their track record, why are they even buying additional machines from them to begin with?
It IS a big deal (Score:5, Insightful)
An election doesn't just have to work right, it has to be SEEN to be working right - that is PART of the "deliverables". Otherwise people may rightfully get pissed off.
Say in an "old school voting system" you had a company in charge of transporting ballot boxes from the booths to the counting stations, and one of the trucks took a "minor detour" on the way, maybe for the convenience of the company or the employees (take a leak or buy a drink etc).
Sure, nobody might have tampered with the stuff, but the elections get "damaged".
How damaged who knows. The eventual losers could kick up a big fuss. You might piss off millions of voters.
The company obviously doesn't deserve to be in the election system business.
The USA spends so much money in Iraq on "regime change" AKA picking the leaders there, but when it comes to picking the leaders back home - "it's only a minor modification" or we'll let Diebold's rejects who wouldn't be able to make ATM machines build voting machines for us.
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It would be "settled".
The company would pay a visible compensation and an invisible large contribution to campaign funds and the matter would be closed; without the company ever admitting it did wrong.
During 1800s many local counties had laws which prevented convicted companies from doing/establishing business in that locality.
But then now convicted companies like Deibold http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20031217/APN/312170634 [heraldtribune.com] and Microso
Don't forget.... (Score:3, Insightful)
A court may find that the damages are too great, who cares... he brought the suit and is now off the hook for anything that may or may not have happened come election time.
Engineering controls (Score:2)
Simply relocating boards and wiring would constitute a simple modification submission to the right authorities with proof that it would NOT affect system performance in any way, shape or form. Sure, it's lot of paperwork, but consider the consequences.
This reeks of their marketing pulling a stunt to make more money for the company.
10k penalty plus cost of the machines? (Score:2)
See the magic machine, and why it will never work (Score:3, Insightful)
Paper trails are useless in the usual conception as well. A voter votes, and a little piece of paper comes out telling him that he voted thusly. Oh, PLEASE. Unless the paper is a card and can be manually recounted and the totals compared to the computer tally, the paper trail is worthless. Anything can be recorded, and anything can be printed. Now, if instead for security purposes the paper card receipt is kept archivally, then why the HELL have a PC acting as an agent in the first place, and simply count the paper cards? Canada uses a number 2 pencil and paper ballet, and they count the votes manually, with a rep from both or more parties observing the count-- you know, the thing that the Supreme Court here said didn't work. And they finish national elections in hours after the polls close. Faster than we do. Their method scales, you see.
There is no reason to computerize the voting process other than cheating. None. All else is sophistry. We had working systems; they were abused by injecting doubt in Florida in 2000. The recounts work fine if the lawyers and the Supremes stay the hell out of things. None of you may recall, but in 2000, at the same time Florida was being sued and stayed to death and back, two more recounts were happening out in the western states -- manually -- and no one said a thing. Florida was made a carnival by Republicans because they wanted to instill the idea in a fantastically compliant media that recounts didn't work, that chads made things uncountable somehow, that NO RECOUNT WAS NECESSARY by any means possible. It took faked up riots in Dade by republican staffers pretending to be random thugs demanding a shutdown and a crooked Supreme Court majority -- all rightist Republicans, and I include Kennedy as he has shown his new colors since then -- to order the shutdown of the democracy hours before the recount was supposed to end. Never has the US seen a group of election officials and volunteers work so hard and so quickly to beat a crooked shutdown and what was frankly a putsch by the Republican party.
How different the world would be now if Gore had been allowed to win. The worst. Day. Ever. In American history.
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It looks like that's exactly what California is trying to do. Plus, it also costs the counties and state money on top of the original price to replace these machines. It seems reasonable.
Amazing, how can you be this stupid (Score:5, Interesting)
This is EXACTLY what happened with all those chinese product safety scandals. A safe 'certified' product gets produced in China, someone there decides to change something, and BAM the product turns out to be unsafe.
Certification is meant to be "I seen this product, I tested it, it is safe". If you then CHANGE that product, that means the test is no longer valid.
And yes, that is down to the size of the screws. In this case that would matter a great deal, voting machines are supposed to be tamper proof. Change the screws and it might be a lot easier to open all of a sudden.
If you work with products that are certified, then you must keep the product the same. Those are the rules, it is in the contract.
Really, with the recent stories from China I would think nobody would be stupid enough to think it a good idea when products are changed on the production line.
It don't matter that the changes may not have an impact, HOW ARE WE SUPPOSED TO KNOW.
The deal with this kind of situations is, you produce a product in X form. That is form is tested and gets certified. If you then change it, it has to be retested and recertified because without it that product has suddenly become untested and your word isn't good enough or we would have gone through the first testing and certfication in the first place.
Do you trust voting machine companies? You must be a diebold stockholder.
Retarded Hamsters (Score:2)
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What if they have some solid state gyros, that act differently based on said boards' positions. Or if that is so complex to accomplish for some idiots, who cannot fill in some papers; What if the PCB is designed in such a way that, when you use a one size bigger than standard nut, it acts as a jumper and changes results...
Re:Further proof... (Score:5, Informative)
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