Electronic Voting Researcher Arrested In India 188
whatajoke writes "Hari Prasad, a security researcher in India who had demonstrated the vulnerability of electronic voting machines used in all elections in India, was arrested by the police on charges of stealing an electronic voting machine. The election commission of India has maintained that EVM are non-hackable. The election commission had previously provided access to the device to the security researchers for a day and asked for a hack in only that time."
governments (Score:3, Insightful)
It doesn't matter where you are, there is a government there, some are worse than others, but all of them have evolved into similar structures with the relationship between a citizen and government of a country is very abusive, and the government is the one doing the abuse.
Name a country, any country, there are people there abused their governments, it is what it is. Feels like terrorism against governments is the only meaningful life pursuit at this point.
Re:governments (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, or maybe he really stole a voting machine. Shouldn't people usually be arrested for doing that?
Re:governments (Score:4, Informative)
According to http://www.indiaevm.org/ [indiaevm.org], the voting machine studied was "provided by an anonymous source". So it may have been stolen, though apparently by someone else. He might be guilty of something, but it would be receiving stolen property, not theft. Or maybe the source had legitimate access to the machine. It is also not clear whether the machine was returned.
Re: according to the article (Score:5, Informative)
"The arrest was made on the flimsy charge of 'theft of EVM' used for vulnerability demonstration by Hari Prasad and a team of security researchers that included Alex Halderman, professor of computer science, University of Michigan and Rop Gonggrijp, a security researcher from Netherlands along with a team of their colleagues".
For more info see http://www.youtube.com/user/ropgonggrijp [youtube.com]
Hack-tic times.
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Repeating that paragraph doesn't contribute anything as far as I can tell to the details of how they obtained the machine. What's your point?
Re: according to the article (Score:5, Informative)
The answer to your question lies on page two of your own link.
http://www.indiaevm.org/qa.html [indiaevm.org]
Q: How did you get the EVM you studied?
A: It was provided by a source who has asked to remain anonymous.
My point was that he had been charged with theft for refusing to reveal a source.
If you click the link I provided you'll hear an interview with the scientist in question, by telephone, after his arrest.
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Ah yes, the old "Guilty until proven Innocent beyond any reasonable doubt" aka "Shut up, Peasant".
You wouldn't happen to be in Law Enforcement?
What part of "Provided by an anonymous source for scientific purposes" equates to "No officer, I didn't steal it, I was just holding it for a friend"?
As an aside, governments don't own anything, they're just taking care of stuff for the real owners, their bosses. Which would be "We, The People" (hypothetically anyway ; ).
Re: according to the article (Score:4, Insightful)
While you're correct as a matter of principle, the legal theory of "innocent until proven guilty" (while self-evident) is only valid (again, from a legal point of view) in the United States (which is why I'm glad I live here now - the justice system sucks balls in India). I assure you that things are quite excellent in the US when you compare it to the rest of the world.
A blanket shout-out to everyone in this thread - this is a different country we're talking about. Check your US-centric legal opinions at the door before posting ;)
Re: according to the article (Score:5, Informative)
No, the legal theory of "innocent until proven guilty" stems from ancient (pre-Roman) times, and is in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (article 11).
If you're interested http://www.talkleft.com/story/2003/01/12/153/23800 [talkleft.com]
ps I'm Dutch ; ).
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Thanks for your comments... they are appreciated. There is a lot of room for improvement in the ole USA but having lived all over the world from China to Australia... I agree with you... there is a lot right with the USA too when compared to most other systems around the world.
Re: according to the article (Score:4, Funny)
Of course when you say only in the US you do in in fact mean only in the Western World as most of Europe has had this principle enshrined in law for the past thousand years. In fact we are where your ancestors got the basic idea from.
Still, the irony of an American trying to tell other American's that there is a world outside of America but getting the important details wrong is not lost on me.
Re: according to the article (Score:4, Insightful)
So their "friend" provided them with something they had no legal right/reason to have and they were holding it when the officer arrested them.
Seems like a pretty accurate example of "I was just holding it" to me.
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You're not understanding. "Innocent until proven Guilty," implies that its the prosecutor's job to prove that Mr. Prasad actually stole the voting machine. He or she can do this via direct evidence (showing video footage or securing eyewitness testimony) or via circumstantial evidence (fingerprints and the like). The one thing he or she cannot do is just say, "Well, obviously he's lying. Look at the flimsiness of his alibi!"
The fact that he had no legal right or reason to hold the property does not mean
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Um, if there is no legal way to get something, then, yes, it was ipso facto stolen by someone if someone ends up with it. And if the person possessing it knows there's no legal way to get it, they are knowingly in possession of stolen property.
Don't go inventing a lack of crime because you approve of the crime. I think electronic voting machines are profoundly undemocratic, and everyone who has ever promoted them or sold them in, any way, should be charged with treason. (Although those charges would be har
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The fact remains that the government has presented no evidence that he, himself stole the voting machine. It could be as others have stated - Mr. Prasad is guilty of receiving stolen property, but not stealing the property itself.
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Re:governments (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, or maybe he really stole a voting machine.
The article says it was given to a group of researchers for a day, who found nasty defects
and the politicians did not like that. Nothing suggests the machine was not
returned after a day. Retroactively the grant of the machine is now
considered theft. One suspects the intent is to discredit the research.
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Pontifications...
Dude, he STOLE the machine.
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</BSGreference>
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Re:governments (Score:5, Insightful)
So those few who do, are easy to eliminate.
Take your own country USA for example, as an Indian, I can't help but laugh when I see people being used as mere pawns in the bi-partisanship circus. The right and the left both are equally suckered in to believing that the other side is evil, and will be the end of your country if given a chance to govern. Very few realize that both are sides of the same coin. Same BS sold in different flavor.
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I am not an American and never lived in the US though I have visited a few places there, just saying.
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Officials in most parts of Asia are prepared to hire a killer to murder the one that make them lose face, that is what is going on here, he is lucky to be alive today.
Losing face is the thing that provokes most anger in especially Asian countries.
Oh yes... I do agree with your insight regarding the US.
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It is obvious to us that these statements from both parties about the other being evil, and will destroy the country if allowed to govern, is about the only real truth we get from either one of them. That's why we have to keep them carefully balanced against each other to keep them both from being able to govern.
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You only think it's a "bi-partisanship circus" because you don't understand how the US political system works.
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So true, we just had a federal election here in Australia and both parties campaigned in such a similar way (both using bean counter spin doctors) that they "pretty much got the same amount of votes" from the Australian people as we couldn't really decide on who to vote for (no clear out standing leader). So now we have a hung parliament with both parties now sucking up to the far right and left independents who took o
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Yeah well maybe now they will pull their heads out of their asses and start finding out what people really want. Getting a Hung parliament should send the message people are getting fed up with the bullshit, lies and spin.
Re:governments (Score:5, Insightful)
As for having no government... I can't really grasp what that would mean. Government is the entity with the power to make others bend to its will. I have a hard time seeing a group of people of any appreciable size where such an entity does not arise.
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Re:governments (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, but have you ever heard of any government just giving up its powers? That is completely unheard of, that's the trillion dollar reason why there were so many revolutions all over the world, civil wars, so called 'terrorists' etc., understand, they all were fighting the machine one way or another.
Lately the masses have been brainwashed so much, they completely don't understand this, but think back through some of the revolutions and civil wars... you know, many kings had their heads chopped off...
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Yes, but have you ever heard of any government just giving up its powers? That is completely unheard of, that's the trillion dollar reason why there were so many revolutions all over the world, civil wars, so called 'terrorists' etc., understand, they all were fighting the machine one way or another.
Turkey had a military coup in 1980 and the ruling junta put out a Constitution for public referendum.
After it was ratified, the Generals organized a general election and stepped aside.
Of course, the Generals pretty much got to dictate who was allowed to run for office,
which makes it a shitty example of a government giving up its powers, but it's an example nonetheless.
Dutch... (Score:4, Interesting)
In 2002 Dutch government resigned as they have accepted partial responsibility for Srebrenica Massacre. [wikipedia.org]
Mind you, this was a government resigning over something that happened long before they were in office [wikipedia.org] and over an act that they did not instigate.
So not only did the government step down, it took on their shoulders what they felt was NATIONAL shame.
Sort of like what should the current US government resign over the My Lai Massacre. [wikipedia.org]
Except US soldiers actually massacred the civilians there, while Dutch soldiers only failed to protect the civilians.
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Except... (Score:2)
That means not only do you permanently have inexperienced people running everything, you also never get to do anything.
Most country- or state-wide projects take decades to develop and bring to fruition. And the bigger the project, the longer it takes. [wikipedia.org]
And lets not even start with international agreements and treaties once you decide to DROP TABLE on the government every 20 years.
The constant system change (I assume you mean something like replacing republic with democracy, democracy with feudalism, feudalism
Lack of education will only get you so far... (Score:2)
He probably read V for Vendetta [wikipedia.org] once.
So naturally, now he thinks he understands and knows EVERYTHING.
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Thanks, I'll be waiting for them here.
Re:governments (Score:4, Insightful)
Flamebait? Come on, mods. You can find very similar statements in the writings of Thomas Jefferson. Like this one: "The tree of liberty must from time to time be refreshed with the blood of tyrants."
Re:governments (Score:5, Insightful)
You think Jefferson would be electable in the USA today? I think not.
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Everyone's jumping on the fact that the GP seems to be advocating terrorism. But though he didn't express himself well, I don't think for a moment he actually wants to commit or even encourage terrorist acts. He's simply observing, as indeed Jefferson did, that concentrations of power tend toward tyranny. That's why we have the Constitutional separation of powers: to put bounds on each branch of government so that it can't take over.
I'm not advocating terrorism either; and I'd go so far as to suggest t
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It is amazing what ppl can get away with when they own the legal system.
Most of the governments on earth have become horribly corrupt.
Re:Disgusting Moderation (Score:4, Insightful)
One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.
AFAIC fighting governments in any way is fighting against oppression for freedom.
Re:Disgusting Moderation (Score:4, Insightful)
Fighting governments in any way is beneficial for freedom? That's terribly simplistic and downright false.
Would you consider fighting a democratically elected, egalitarian government, in order to replace it with a tribalistic theocracy, to be fighting for freedom??
Would you consider working to bring down a government, which then gets replaced by a multitude of corrupt fiefdoms with the local rulers deciding the fate of anyone they don't like, to be fighting for freedom??
The world is not black and white, it's not ones and zeroes and short boolean expressions. Every action has consequences that even the smartest of us cannot predict.
Hell, I'm the first guy to follow the entire Bill Of Rights to the letter, and I'm not even American, but you have to realize that the only thing more oppressive than an oppressive government, is a complete lack of government, when the powerful are given complete free reign over the rest.
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If history teaches anything is that all governments eventually become unbearable and then they are replaced by a violent event of some sort. This has happened enough time for us to draw the correct conclusion, which is that people cannot set up a good government that will remain good forever.
I bet on eons of history being more right than you are.
HEY! It works for other things too... (Score:2)
If history teaches anything is that all governments eventually become unbearable and then they are replaced by a violent event of some sort. This has happened enough time for us to draw the correct conclusion, which is that people cannot set up a good government that will remain good forever.
I bet on eons of history being more right than you are.
If history teaches anything is that all food once eaten eventually becomes unbearable and then it is thrown out by a violent event of some sort.
This has happened enough time for us to draw the correct conclusion, which is that people can never be fed. Ergo, food and eating is utterly meaningless and without merit. UTTERLY!!!
I too bet on eons of history being more right than you are.
It also works with breathing, wearing clothes, sleeping, fucking...
Shit, you can replace ANY action in your statement and it wo
Re:Disgusting Moderation (Score:4, Insightful)
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You're living in the waning times of the US government, it has been going down hill ever since it was founded.
Wait a second. Maybe there were some good moments and some bad ones, in the last two centuries.
But in many key dimensions it has indeed become a more perfect Union over time.
(Unless of course you consider a "white males club" to be your ideal government, I believe you don't.)
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I dunno, I think we had a second peak after Reconstruction, although, in a very real sense the "Civil War" was itself a revolution...
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I would say the the fall of the USSR in 1991 makes a decent example. It was a good revolution - for the people, by the people, and the first elected government was 'good'. Sadly the worst parts of democracy seem to have taken over (greed, corruption, etc). Regardless of how bad the current government is, the revolution itself stands independently as a very good thing not only for the then Soviet citizens, but for the world.
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If anything, US and Europe is showing the signs of the once OK governments becoming unbearable. Sure, revolutions change government and rarely set up ones that are better, the reason is that revolutionaries themselves make for terrible peace time governments, the revolutionaries should take down one government and replace it with a new one that is NOT part of the revolutionaries. Of-course this is a rarity.
However, all the governments that exist today are all going to be replace probably within the next 50
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Oh, so when John Wilkes Booth decided to shoot Lincoln, it was to fight the oppression of emancipation, for the freedom to own slaves? Do you have any idea how dangerously stupid you sound?
Get a grip. (Score:5, Insightful)
Its beyond offensive and disgusting that any post that defends and advocates terrorism like the above does is moderated insightful.
The moderators should be ashamed of themselves here.
Who's advocating terrorism?
This is what was said:
Feels like terrorism against governments is the only meaningful life pursuit at this point.
Notice the "Feels" part? The poster was expressing feelings of outrage and his frustration with his inability to stop Governments from abusing their power. He was expressing the frustration that Democracies or Republics still do not prevent a Government from abusing its citizens. No matter how we vote or who we vote for, what letters we write that fall on deaf ears, or protest and get our asses kicked by the cops, it seems as though, we the little people get shit on. People who are trying to show how possible finagling of the voting process gets done and hopefully prevent some of those injustices end up being victims of the powers that be.
I'm sure with events in the present and past, many of us had fantasies of disintegrating Congress (See "Mars Attacks!"). Would we do it? No. The only thing we can do is express our outrage and impotence with regards to controlling a government.
The rich and powerful have been doing this since time began. They manipulate the populace with jingoism, bogus issues to distract us, and in the background, they're taking their power to boost their own pathetic (much wealthier) little life.
Re:Get a grip. (Score:4, Interesting)
Its beyond offensive and disgusting that any post that defends and advocates terrorism like the above does is moderated insightful.
The moderators should be ashamed of themselves here.
Who's advocating terrorism?
The founding fathers for one:
"Occasionally the tree of Liberty must be watered with the blood of Patriots and Tyrants."
— Thomas Jefferson
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"Occasionally the tree of Liberty must be watered with the blood of Patriots and Tyrants."
— Thomas Jefferson
It's a popular sport to pull the Founding Fathers out of context, to prove a point.
King George could not be voted out of his seat. I dare say that Thomas Jefferson, if he were to live today, would advocate peaceful means to oust anyone from power in the US.
To be sure: I am not saying that Parent is saying otherwise, I know he is just offering a quote.
However, the general mood of this thread is something like "tyranny demands exceptional means to be used". Which is fine, but if you live anywhere in the Weste
Security Theater, Act 230982394 (Score:5, Funny)
Surely this will increase the security of electronic voting in India.
Oops... (Score:4, Insightful)
Who's making these hackable machines? (Score:5, Insightful)
I just don't understand, it's like building a car that explodes at the slightest impact [wikipedia.org] and then arresting people that expose it. Wouldn't it be easier just to make a better voting machine?
Re:Who's making these hackable machines? (Score:5, Interesting)
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He thinks George Bush is responsible for 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina too!
;
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I just don't understand, it's like building a car that explodes at the slightest impact and then arresting people that expose it. Wouldn't it be easier just to make a better voting machine?
I dunno.. they already have all the infrastructure in place to arrest people.
They don't seem like they are very set up to make secure voting machines.
Even if they were, I don't see any reason to believe that is one of their stated goals anyway.
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Allowing secret ballots (No one except you knows who you voted for) and ballots that can't be cheated on is nigh impossible. It can't be done even for paper ballots, so why should a machine with thousands of parts involved be able to do it? The only difference with electronic ballots is because people can not see and understand the processes that go on inside them, it is easier for a smaller group of people to alter them without being caught. If someone is molesting paper ballots in some way, it is obvio
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> Allowing secret ballots (No one except you knows who you voted for) and ballots that can't be cheated on is nigh impossible
Watch this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=ZDnShu5V99s [youtube.com]
So it is possible.
To me paper ballots are good enough though, and especially when there are masses of uneducated people. It is easier for them to understand how the paper ballots work and how they are secured and counted (assuming you have a good system for all that).
There is a very important requirement for voting systems t
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1) Government contracts go to the lowest bidder, or to the company of a friend of someone high up in the government. Neither means security.
2) Election fraud has been happening for a couple thousand years now. No reason to expect it to stop with electronic voting. In fact, it most likely goes up. That requires insecure machin
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I don't think that 50 years of maturity will make a difference. If the same sorts of idiots are in charge of setting the voting system up, it will be just as problematic.
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Yeah, and why do operating systems have exploits in them? People who write operating systems should contact security researchers and tell them to work for free and find all the exploits.
Re:Who's making these hackable machines? (Score:4, Insightful)
Wouldn't it be easier just to make a better voting machine?
Why would they need a voting machine ?
There are several major problems with voting machines in India:
1) you cannot double-check the vote, thus cheating is easy, even if you have secure machines.
2) a lot of people in India don't know how to read, and simple tasks like voting with a computer is impossible for them.
3) machines need electricity. In India, there can be an outage at any time of the day.
Before using expensive voting machines, India's governement should concentrate on improving the infrastructures, like water, electricity and roads.
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I salute your logic dude :)
>> 1) you cannot double-check the vote, thus cheating is easy, even if you have secure machines.
Yes, you can double check. Infact check it thrice, four times, N times...
>> 2) a lot of people in India don't know how to read, and simple tasks like voting with a computer is impossible for them.
People don't read, they do see party symbols, and they press the vote for the symbols. And surprise - surprise, statistically it is the illiterates who vote the most. The middle cla
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Thank you !
This is a very interesting link.
However, it does not address the problem that the votes can be tampered, and there is no physical trace except the EVM's memory, which is not really a physical proof.
BTW, I'm from France, and here, we use paper ballots.
Of course, there are ways to cheat the paper system, but it's easier to catch the cheaters than with electronic devices, and electronic devices are easier to hack massively (for example, by providing hacked systems before the vote).
For me, electronic
They can make slot games that can't be hacked that (Score:2)
They can make slot games that can't be hacked that easy and why can't they use the guys who code them to make voteing systems?
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Slot games *can* be hacked, which is why there are multiple levels of brutes, pit bosses, etc. watching to make sure you don't have the opportunity to.
The thing that makes slot machines secure is the layers and layers of people watching the process.
But even all that only protects the owners of the machines from hacking by you. It doesn't go the other way around. Now, how do you suggest building the analogous into the voting system while still keeping voting anonymous?
the nv gaming control board does the other way par (Score:2)
the nv gaming control board does the other way part. Why can't they do the same with voteing systems.
More Information (Score:5, Informative)
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I've put a link to the same (via Rop's youtube-account) an hour ago somewhere higher-up in the thread.
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Wouldn't it be easier just to make a better voting machine?
But that's not profitable unless the government is willing to pay extra for that. And clearly, they aren't.
OT: How to build an trustable voting machine (Score:5, Interesting)
1) The voter gets to see the vote being cast.
2) Auditors and manual re-counters get to see the exact same thing the voter saw. This means it must be a tangible artifact.
3a) Audit all elections "to 5%" or "to the margin of victory" whichever is less. This provides a very high confidence any fraud wasn't enough to sway the elections nor was it enough to sway more than 5% of the tally. Do the same if any candidate is "close" to a significant threshold number, such as the number of votes needed to avoid a runoff.
3b) Random audits "to 0.5%" or some other high confidence interval sufficient to expose and deter general game-playing by a candidate who lost so bad that the cheating didn't help him. If a losing candidates know they have a 1 in 10 chance of getting a "very close audit" they won't try to play games.
4) Automatic recounts using different equipment PLUS a more thorough audit on any close election.
5a) Manual recounts on any close election on the request of the candidate who is within the "margin of possible error/fraud" that the audits show could exist.
5b) Manual recounts on any election where any candidate is very close to a significant threshold number.
It's not hard folks. Machine-readable paper ballots typically meet 1 & 2. The rest is a matter of spending money after the votes are initially tallied, not a function of the voting machines.
Auditing an election of, say, 3M voters where one candidate allegedly beat the other 50.5% to 46.5% to 3% for minor candidates need only determine that there's less than a 5% chance that the true election result had the winning candidate with 50%+1 votes to avoid a runoff. With a paper ballot satisfying #1 and #2 and generally accepted statistical analysis, this won't require a recount of nearly the entire pool of votes, only a random sample from each ballot box sufficiently large to rule out the need for a runoff.
If on the other hand the alleged winning amount was exactly 1,500,001 out of 3M votes, or if it was 1,499,499 and the winner wanted a recount to avoid a runoff, a full manual recount would likely be necessary.
Re:OT: How to build an trustable voting machine (Score:5, Insightful)
There are two contradictory things which must happen for machine voting.
1. Each person must be identifiable as having voted and see the result of the vote.
2. Each vote must be anonymous.
Machine readable ballots make sense, but they still leave the possibility of simple fraud. Take a stack of ballots and replace them with your own skewed ballots. This means that each ballot must have a unique identification, while at the same time have no way of revealing the name of the voter. I've heard of states allowing mail in ballots, this makes some sense although things do get lost in the mail. The best solution I can come up with is a ballot that you have to pick up in person from the DMV possibly. It has its own serial number and when you pick it up it is entered into the system, not as a vote from you, but simply as a vote. Your information is also entered into the system. Neither is time/date stamped and both are randomized as much as possible to hide voter identity.When you have made your educated vote you return the ballot to the polling station. If there is any doubt then the number of people who voted can be checked against the number of ballots. Also it seems logical that an individual can check to see if he/she voted, for example if I voted in the last presidential election, but I didn't actually vote it would be a sign of fraud.
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There are two contradictory things which must happen for machine voting.
1. Each person must be identifiable as having voted and see the result of the vote.
2. Each vote must be anonymous.
No. That is classic, "the enemy of good is perfect" thinking.
Voting fraud is as old as voting. The only thing that must happen is for the new voting system to be better than whatever it replaces. It doesn't even have to be significantly better at preventing fraud if it has other beneficial characteristics like making it possible for people to vote who couldn't easily vote before (people living way out in the boonies, those who can't read because they are illiterate or blind, etc).
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Do you really want illiterate people voting? What makes you believe they would be informed about the issues and candidates, especially when you consider that the literate have a huge advantage in this area and still remain so ignorant? If you agree that they are likely to be uninformed about those things, what makes you desire that people who are uninformed about their system of government and the issues of their time should vote?
If it were up to me you'
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A friend of mine was illiterate for several years (Score:2, Insightful)
She became blind as an adult.
It took her several years to learn to read Braille.
In the meantime, she was illiterate.
Before becoming blind she earned a 4-year college degree.
The late CEO of Wendy's Restaurants, Dave Thomas, was illiterate until well into adulthood.
By the way, we had literacy tests in America for decades. They were fraudulently used to keep non-whites and other "undesirables" from voting. Even if they had been used in an objectively fair manner, they would've had the effect of keeping the u
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That's the point. To remove those uneducated people, because often they are easy manipulated.
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Do you really want illiterate people voting?
Yes. Poor people have just as much right to self-determination as anyone else. Especially in countries like India where a large number of people don't need to read or write to live their daily lives and presuming that not knowing something they don't necessarily need should disqualify them from having a valid opinion is the kind of elitism that rationalizes a dictatorship.
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That's your opinion. It's not a bad one, not at all. In fact I am *this close* to agreeing with you.
What you're attempting to do is devise a system whereby the voters make the best choice. Ignoring the fact that that's one of the questions voting is meant to answer, that's a perfectly valid approach. After all, even if our candi
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If the a test were to be applied, it should rather be to votees, so they actually have notions of economy, science, history, etc. That would keep people like G.W. Bush out of the office.
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When you have made your educated vote you return the ballot to the polling station.
Well there's your fatal flaw in an otherwise good plan.
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Machine-ASSISTED voting (Score:5, Insightful)
Machine-readable paper ballots have three major flaws:
1) cost and bulk
2) not usable without assistance by blind and those who can't use a marking pen
3) High waste or too costly with multi-precinct ballots or multi-language ballots, where a single voting station may have hundreds of different ballots and keeping a sufficient supply of each is difficult.
To help with #2 and #3, you can use a machine that prints the ballot "on-demand," either blank or, if the voter wants to use the touch-screen or other machine-input to indicate his vote, filled out.
The voter fills out the ballot if he didn't have the machine do it for him, examines it for correctness, and puts it in the ballot box as you would with a machine-readable paper ballot today. From here on out the system is identical to today's machine-readable paper ballot system.
This would allow those who cannot mark a ballot but who can read the filled-in ballot the ability to cast their vote unassisted.
Blind people could use on-site "reading" machines to verify the ballot unassisted or, if they didn't trust the government, they could bring their own document-reading hardware, or bring a trusted sighted friend to verify the ballot is accurate.
By printing non-common languages or outlying precinct ballots only "on demand" or only as needed to have a small supply of each at any given time, it would save paper.
What a great idea! (Score:2)
the Indian governments appreciates your suggestion
English only is a GREAT idea!
Anybody who claims "unhackable" (Score:5, Insightful)
I heard an interview with an enthusiastic Indian programmer/marketer (sorry, I don't recall if I heard his exact job description), in which he claimed that very soon Indians would be vote via mobile phones. What a recipe for disaster. It's difficult to think of a less reliable and verifiable voting mechanism-- though it would certainly destroy anonymity for honest voters. It's not impossible that someday an open source, mobile voting platform will be more secure than existing mechanisms. But that will be many years in the future, and not developed quickly and cheaply in a nation overrun with corruption (so our best bet is somewhere in Scandinavia).
Where there is a large incentive to cheat (to gain money, power, women), many people will try to cheat. Especially in societies with more habitual defectors than habitual cooperators (such as the US and India). Anybody who says otherwise is trying to cheat you.
Life imitates art? (Score:2)
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Dude, really?
Was that worth the effort? To link to a SPORTS PAGE in a script that most of us won't even be able to identify on a NERDY NEWS PAGE?
Must have failed that state-run university marketing course.