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| | | | | 'Uh, We Won. Honest.' — Touch-Screen Voting Machines An Invitation To Fraud? | | | | | found on Salon
written by phenry, edited by Nick (Plastic) [ read unedited ]
posted Tue 5 Nov 12:56pm | | | | |
 | "After the 2000 election debacle, state and local governments rushed to update their voting equipment, often spending millions of dollars to move to modern touch-screen voting machines. Instead of solving the problems involved in counting votes, though, these machines have the potential to make the situation much worse. Many touch-screen machines do not produce paper ballots, meaning that any recount is impossible: 'you can't recount a database,' as one computer scientists who's worked on voting technology observes. This makes it very difficult for election supervisors to ensure the integrity of the vote in case of errors or mistakes--and mistakes do get made, as evidenced by September's primary election in Florida, in which operator error initially caused some precincts to report no votes cast in the governor's race.
"Voting machines have multiple safeguards that are intended to prevent votes from being irretrievably lost. A potentially bigger problem is that the tabulating software used by these machines is proprietary, which essentially means that election supervisors must trust the machines' manufacturers to correctly report the results of close races: which, considering the cozy lobbying arrangement that led to the purchase of Florida's controversial machines in the first place, does not seem likely to boost public confidence in their legitimacy.
"How important is it that voting machines, touch screen or otherwise, produce a paper trail? And what does this mean for potential future 'improvements' in election technology, like voting over the Internet? Does the act of voting present problems that technology just can't solve?"
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[ more plastic... ] |
| | | | | | | | | 3. How hard is this? | | | | by itf |  | | | at Tue 5 Nov 1:19pm | score of 1.5 helpful | | | | | | |
1) You have a fancy voting machine, if you must.
2) Fancy voting machine accepts your votes via touchscreen, then spits out a paper ballot.
3) You examine ballot, checking to make sure the names printed on the ballot match the choices you made.
4) If they do not, push a Cancel button on the big fancy voting machine. If they do, push an Approve button.
5) If you pushed Cancel, toss the paper ballot in the garbage and start over. If you pushed Approve, your vote is recorded in the database. Then you walk out of the booth and drop your paper ballot in a box. Election officials watch to make sure you only drop one ballot in the box, same as now.
6) The vote is instantly tabulated using the database; if there are questions later, you can compare the paper ballots in the box to the database tally.
What's so difficult about this process that we can't implement it?
"Hey, Sam - mind if I drive?" "Not if you don't mind me clawing at the dashboard and shrieking like a cheerleader."
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| | | | | | 5. Re: How hard is this? | | | | by alaffin | | | | at Tue 5 Nov 1:31pm | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 3 | | | | | |
You'd have to have a shredder for the paper ballot that was going to be cancelled but otherwise I don't get why that wouldn't work just fine. You could even have the machine produce a scannable ballott which could be cross checked with the stuff entered on the screen when the paper ballot was put into the ballott box.
Overall this sounds remarkably like a big deal being made over nothing at all.
satire
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| | | | | 7. Re: How hard is this? | | | | by phigga | | | | at Tue 5 Nov 1:43pm | score of 1 irrelevant | | in reply to comment 3 | | | | | |
What's so difficult about this process that we can't implement it?
Probably the fact that there's more than 3 steps...
(sorry if this is a double...standby for technical difficulty)
"Just once, I'd like someone to call me sir without adding 'you're making a scene'."
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| | | | | 8. Re: How hard is this? | | | | by Jelly | | | | at Tue 5 Nov 1:53pm | score of 1.5 compelling | | in reply to comment 3 | | | | | |
The problem isn't that its technically difficult. The problem is that this isn't being done.
The article didn't say that electronic voting was bad and that we should all go back to poking out chads with the end of a paper clip. It said that the way electronic voting is being implemented in many places is bad.
For example, when I went to vote this morning, I got this really cool, easy to use machine, with a bunch of buttons and green lights that made it super easy for me to see exactly who or what I was voting for. Then when I was done, I pressed the "Cast Vote" button a cool video game noise was made and the whole thing got cleared for the next voter. No paper anywhere. Very easy. Very efficient.
Unless when they go to tally up the votes tonight they find zero votes for any candidate...
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| | | | | 15. Re: How hard is this? - Doesnt address problem | | | | by Philosawyer | | | | at Tue 5 Nov 2:23pm | score of 1.5 scholarly | | in reply to comment 3 | | | | | |
This plan does not necessarily address the problems presented by electronic voting machines. The main problem raised by this submission is not errors in voting (like the butterfly ballot), but rather the inability to recount or be sure your vote actually went into the database.
I voted on a touch screen voting machine today and I am sure that I made no mistakes. However, what if someone if there was an electrical surge that fried the circuits? The vote would be lost with no record of its existence. How would you know if there was a bug in the program that left your vote unreadable in the database?
The "diabolical plan" would to have some form of anti-electonics device and strike those polling places where voters were likely to vote against your candiate or some form of computer virus. I don't know if a giant electo magnet put inside a truck would work or whether it would require something akin to the trick in the movie Ocean's 11. Of course there is always the problem of Gremlins and snafus.
The marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation defines a robot as "Your plastic pal who's fun to be with."
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| | | | | 25. Re: How hard is this? - Doesnt address problem | | | | by Thalia | | | | at Tue 5 Nov 3:01pm | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 15 | | | | | |
Ah, but if you have a count of the paper printouts, then you can find out whether any ballots were lost by the machine. Since the machines will not be connected to a network, actually changing results would be tricking... losing results would be much easier. But that's easily detected.
In general, redundancy is a good thing, especially in an environment were cheating/hacking/messing with results is incredibly profitable. Actually the ideal system would probably actually print out a barcoded version of the voting, so that the paper printouts could be easily tallied by a machine.
Thalia
Judeo-Christianity: just like regular Christianity, only insincerely 5% more inclusive! -- MC Nally
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| | | | | 86. Put on Your Conspiracy Hats | | | | by crowley | | | | at Fri 8 Nov 11:06am | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 15 | | | | | |
The voting machines would be a great conspiracy theory. Several of the companies making the machines are based outside of the U.S. (so you don't know who really is running it), they will rely on programs that will be very similar, to enable standardization (so all a programmer has to do is rewrite some code, and then conveniently die), make sure the results aren't too perfect, and your party wins. Libertarians and Green Party member could actually win for once, which is frightening enough.
Of course, this is incredibly unlikely, because this would require competence, intelligence, and the politicans having to actually understand technology instead of just making laws about it.
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| | | | | 24. Retraction - Doh | | | | by Philosawyer | | | | at Tue 5 Nov 3:00pm | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 22 | | | | | |
I misread one of the steps - somehow I read that "trash" part as applicable to all ballots. Doh.
I now support the ITF plan. I should have kept my comments to the problems with electronic ballots.
Please read comment 15 as not having the words "Doesnt address problem" and completely ignore the first sentence.
The marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation defines a robot as "Your plastic pal who's fun to be with."
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| | | | | 36. Re: How hard is this? | | | | by Mad Ogger | | | | at Tue 5 Nov 4:25pm | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 3 | | | | | |
Good, but not perfect. You still might be able to pop two ballots into the box. Or you might mistakenly put your cancelled ballot into the box instead of the correct one. And if the machine records your vote incorrectly, you'll never know unless there's a recount. Maybe they should print a unique voter ID on the ballot, and use an optical ballot reader instead of a box. Then you'd have two electronic counts and as long as the optical ballot reader worked properly, there would be no way to vote twice. And you'd still have the paper.
Also, pushing Approve and getting an official paper ballot printed ideally should be an atomic operation. Either both happen, or neither. Maybe it prints all of the ballot except for the voter ID, then you check it, put it back in the machine, push Approve, and only then does it finish printing the ballot.
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| | | | | 47. Re: How hard is this? | | | | by TheMCP | | | | at Tue 5 Nov 10:32pm | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 36 | | | | | |
Maybe they should print a unique voter ID on the ballot, and use an optical ballot reader instead of a box. I guarantee that if you put a unique id on each ballot, somebody will come up with a way to tie the individual ballot back to the person who filled it out... in other words, your votes will no longer be necessarily secret.
End of line.
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| | | | | 38. Canadian voting scanners... | | | | by GodSpiral | | | | at Tue 5 Nov 4:42pm | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 3 | | | | | |
...Work a little like your plan, I think.
You get a paper ballot that you pencil in (Like SAT/GMAT), bring ballot to poll worker, who scans it in. If there's a problem with the ballot, the scanner says so, and you can then fix it. I think the machines also have a modem connection to a central office too.
Basically, there is a paper trail that ensures an auditable result, and less total machines ($) are needed, and maybe voter technophobia is less of an issue as well.
All Calculating American Satanists are Evangelical Christians
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| | | | | 49. Re: Canadian voting scanners... | | | | by TheMCP | | | | at Tue 5 Nov 10:35pm | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 38 | | | | | |
I vote like that, with a pen on paper, which is fed into a machine which scans it optically, here in Massachusetts. I find it reassuring to know that the machine will spit it back to me if I screw up and that my ballot can be examined in a recount if necessary.
End of line.
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| | | | | 44. That's the way it's done, when it's done right | | | | by bitter_engineer | | | | at Tue 5 Nov 5:46pm | score of 1.5 helpful | | in reply to comment 3 | | | | | |
Rebecca Mercuri, the e-voting skeptic mentioned in the Salon article, has developed a machine that does almost exactly what you have mentioned, except the paper ballot is printed out behind a glass screen for user inspection, and shredded by an election official if printed out wrong.
Brazil implemented Mercuri's method nationwide in october, and reported great success.
In my spare time, I'm developing my own twist on Mercuri's method that will run on a Palm Pilot connected to a printer:
--Your ballot is printed on perforated card stamped with a ID number you pull from a shuffled deck. It is printed twice, once on each side of the perforation.
--When you are satisfied with your vote, the election official puts on a stamp straddling the perforation, tears it in half, then hands you one half and drops the other half in the box.
--When the election is closed, you can log on and verify that the votes under the electronic ballot you cast were actually counted the way you voted, and call the papers if they aren't.
--Since your ballot's ID number is not assigned to your name by the election officials, you can verify representation without the vote being traced back to you--all the government knows is that you showed up at the precinct, which is what they know already.
--This is still not tamper-proof, but it makes tampering with the vote even more inconvenient, which is really all one can hope for.
Non estat prandium gratuitum
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| | | | | 50. Re: That's the way it's done, when it's done right | | | | by TheMCP | | | | at Tue 5 Nov 10:49pm | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 44 | | | | | |
If the election official has a photographic memory, they can memorize the names and id numbers of everyone who votes and then later tie individual voters to their votes. Don't laugh, there are people with memories like that, and people sometimes employ them to do interesting things.
You'd want the voter to be able to pull out their ballot number in private, so nobody can see what number they got, and then ensure that nobody can see their ballot at any time, such as by keeping it in an envelope. (The voting machines I use accept a paper ballot. The ballot sticks out of the end of a big envelope. I hold onto the envelope, stick the end of the ballot into the machine, and the machine sucks the ballot out of the envelope without anyone ever seeing it but me.) Alternatively, the voter could enter their own pass phrase, which could be printed on the ballot in a non-human-readable format. Then nobody would be able to view their "id number" at any time.
The machine or ballot box would have to store the ballots in random order too, or someone could memorize the order of the voters who inserted ballots and then correlate ballots to voters. If the machine simply had a big drum that rotates to shuffle the cast ballots regularly, that problem should be eliminated. The machine should also randomize the order of the votes cast before presenting the data, or provide only a tally.
End of line.
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| | | | | 63. Re: That's the way it's done, when it's done right | | | | by electroboy | | | | at Wed 6 Nov 8:41am | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 50 | | | | | |
Sounds a little too Heinlein-y for my tastes. Memory is so subjective and malleable, relying on it for anything truly, truly important is generally not a good idea. Besides, I imagine the temptation to lie if one of the uber-pollsters forgot a bunch of information would be nigh irresistable.
Besides, haven't you seen that commercial where the guy hits his head on the filing cabinet?
Keep your eyes open and your wallet in your front pocket --Raekwon the Chef
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| | | | | 79. Re: That's the way it's done, when it's done right | | | | by swalve | | | | at Thu 7 Nov 1:02am | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 50 | | | | | |
Easy solution. Optical-scan ballot has the detachable receipt thing. On the ballot half, there's a bar code. On the receipt half, your number is hidden by a lottery-style scratch off. Or (seriously, it could work) one of those cereal-box decoder things where you have to look at it through a red tinted piece of plastic. Look to your junk mail senders- every one of those has some hidden number gimmick in them.
That way, the election judges don't have to worry about stamping random/unique numbers on ballots and you have your accountability and privacy.
The question is, what happens when I go home to check my ballot and it's gone? How does anyone fix that?
"If silence is golden, you couldn't raise a dime!"
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| | | | | | 6. A simple solution | | | | by Djerrid | | | | at Tue 5 Nov 1:35pm | score of 1.5 brilliant | | | | | | |
After someone finishes voting via touch screen, two printouts of who they voted for should be provided; one goes to the election official as a permanent record, the other to the voter for personal reference.
'In cases of major discrepancy, it's always reality that's got it wrong.' -Douglas Adams
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| | | | | | 10. Re: A simple solution | | | | by itf | | | | at Tue 5 Nov 2:06pm | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 6 | | | | | |
After someone finishes voting via touch screen, two printouts of who they voted for should be provided; one goes to the election official as a permanent record, the other to the voter for personal reference.
Here's the reason we don't do that: then it's no longer a secret ballot.
Back in the bad old days of the party machines, before the secret ballot, the parties used to round up the poor and homeless and give them a sandwich or a quarter or whatever to vote for their candidates. Since the ballot wasn't secret, they could verify this and - effectively - buy a vote.
If the voter can prove who he voted for, we'd be right back to that.
"Hey, Sam - mind if I drive?" "Not if you don't mind me clawing at the dashboard and shrieking like a cheerleader."
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| | | | | 17. Re: A simple solution | | | | by Djerrid | | | | at Tue 5 Nov 2:33pm | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 10 | | | | | |
Thanks for your comment.
In that case, have a printer spit out hard copies into a locked container and screw "personal reference".
'In cases of major discrepancy, it's always reality that's got it wrong.' -Douglas Adams
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| | | | | | 9. Technology and voting | | | | by rombuu | | | | at Tue 5 Nov 2:01pm | score of 1.5 informative | | | | | | |
Does the act of voting present problems that technology just can't solve?
You know, Athens used to have a sort of election where they tossed one person out of the polis for 10 years. They did this by writing the person's name on pottery shards (ostrakon) and placing the shard face down in the Agora. (This is the origin of the word ostracize.)
Of course there aren't any records of any recount fights over this practice, but it seems like it worked out pretty well for the Athenians. I'd like to think that we could do better.
Now I can't speak for how they are doing it in Florida, but when I signed in I got a "voting receipt" that was a 2 part form. This had a code that I imagine identified me somehow. When I voted on a touch screen machine I placed the bottom copy of this form in a bag on the machine. Also when you signed in you presented this receipt to a voting official who entered your information into a computer and then gave you a smart card. You then inserted the smart card into the voting machine so that it pulled up the proper ballot for your address. I imagine at the end of the day they go through and count votes cast on the machine with the receipts and then can work out the descrepecies from there based on the registration information from the registration process.
All I know is that as a programmer this is not a difficult problem. Designing an order fulfillment process is much more difficult than a voting system. If you log enough things, I find it hard to belive that anyone could get away with much.
http://drlunch.com The site that helps you decide where to go to lunch!
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| | | | | | 12. Re: Technology and voting | | | | by richlove | | | | at Tue 5 Nov 2:13pm | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 9 | | | | | |
All I know is that as a programmer this is not a difficult problem. Designing an order fulfillment process is much more difficult than a voting system. If you log enough things, I find it hard to belive that anyone could get away with much.
I agree w/ you in principle. I can think of a few 'gotchas' easily enough:
- Designing software for the government is harder than doing it for the private sector.
- The voting system has to be bulletproof (i.e., no crashes, no lost votes, quick to boot up, secure, anonymous).
- It has to be simple enough for even the most slack-jawed of the yokels out there.
Not necessarily a Simple Matter of Programming, these.
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| | | | | 18. Re: Technology and voting | | | | by alaffin | | | | at Tue 5 Nov 2:34pm | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 12 | | | | | |
Having worked in the government sector writing software for submarines I have to say that you're wrong there.
First off writing software for the government is no more or less difficult than doing it in the commercial world. The documentation that they require should be there in any reasonable software process anyhow. I mean assuming you can get the Ada exemption . . .
Second, there is a whole world of applications which have to be 100% fault tolerant. Yeah, you read about the failures in the paper but (a) these are systems that would be very hard to test because they operate in, say, Martian orbit and (b) they're VASTLY more complicated than a voting booth.
Third, simple interface design is not that daunting a task. One screen per question, multiple choice touchscreen, verification on each one, done. It's really not that hard. I promise.
Honestly, speaking as a software engineer, these are not daunting tasks. You're counting. It's really no big deal.
satire
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| | | | | 31. Re: Technology and voting | | | | by phenry |  | | | at Tue 5 Nov 3:54pm | score of 3.5 brilliant | | in reply to comment 18 | | | | | |
Honestly, speaking as a software engineer, these are not daunting tasks. You're counting. It's really no big deal.
sub yourvote {
print "Welcome to TechVote \n";
print "Enter A for Buchanan, B for Bush, C for Gore \n";
$vote = (STDIN);
chomp($vote);
if ($vote == "A") {
++$buchanan;
print "You voted for Buchanan!" }
elseif ($vote == "B") {
++$bush;
print "You voted for Bush!" }
elseif ($vote == "C") {
++$buchanan;
print "You voted for Buchanan! SUCKA!!" } }
phh | Away for 3 years and still in the karma top 50! Woo hoo!
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| | | | | 34. Re: Technology and voting | | | | by Mad Ogger | | | | at Tue 5 Nov 4:15pm | score of 1.5 intriguing | | in reply to comment 18 | | | | | |
It sounds daunting to me, because I've never written a 100% fault-tolerant program. I know that they work, but I don't know how the programmers do it. Actually, aren't many of these fault-tolerant control systems actually transient programs that mainly need to be restartable in a certain time frame? That would be different from a voting machine. I agree that a voting program is pretty simple and it would be relatively but not ridiculously expensive to write.
In your opinion, are the paper copies people keep talking about necessary? I don't see them as more reliable than a highly reliable electronic device.
I voted on a touchscreen device today. It was pretty easy to use. (None of these issues occurred to me at the time. I guess I'm too used to trusting ATMs, even though on any given day you could get an Evil Fake ATM that steals your PIN.) I think the real UI challenge is idiot-proofing the tabulation process. I'm not calling election officials idiots, btw. If I were in their place, I would want the machine to have a big green light come on saying "Yes, you correctly counted and recorded the votes. Really. Stop worrying now" after I did it.
Interestingly, I provided no ID or documentation of any kind both when registering and at the poll. Maybe the voting machine doesn't need to be any more reliable than that weak point of the system?
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| | | | | 52. Why paper ballots are necessary | | | | by TheMCP |  | | | at Tue 5 Nov 11:10pm | score of 2 intriguing | | in reply to comment 34 | | | | | |
In your opinion, are the paper copies people keep talking about necessary? I don't see them as more reliable than a highly reliable electronic device. Speaking as a programmer and technology consultant, yes, paper ballots are absolutely necessary under the circumstances.
The problem is, you're assuming that we have a way of determining whether or not the electronic device is reliable. We don't. The devices in use are proprietary, and the manufacturers do not reveal the source code that runs them. So, we really have no idea what they do with our votes after we walk away from the pretty screen.
Aah, you think, but we can just test the machine in advance for its honesty, right? Wrong. The machine could be programmed to do something complicated and untestable, like to have a 25% chance that a voter who voted for the democrat for their senator will have a republican vote recorded instead, but only between the hours of 10am and 3pm and only on election day. So, if you tested the machine the day before, or in the evening, or the next day, it would be fine. It would only act screwy during actual voting.
You could even install a GPS receiver and set the machine so it won't do anything funny unless it's at least 10 miles from the state capital, so it would always check out fine in the state's offices.
In order to have a computerized voting system that the public can trust, first of all the software has to be open source - it has to be published well in advance of the election and qualified programmers must be able to examine it to determine that it records votes honestly and accurately. Next, the software must be publically compiled, after members of the public have been able to examine it on screen to determine that the source code being compiled is the same as the source published. Then, the public must be able to monitor the installation of the software onto the voting machines, and then must be able to monitor the voting machines at all times to ensure that nobody changes the software before voting occurs or afterward until each voting machine has given up its verifiably accurate data.
That's a pretty icky process, but at least it would all be provably legitimate. With the proprietary voting machines people are using now, without a paper ballot, you have no idea what that machine does when you push things on the screen. Only the manufacturer knows.
So yes, the paper copies are really necessary.
End of line.
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| | | | | 67. Re: Technology and voting | | | | by phenry | | | | at Wed 6 Nov 9:09am | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 37 | | | | | |
I think you need a new modem. There was a lot of line noise on that last post. I could just barely tell it was originally a snippet of Python code.
Heh. Perl, actually, though I had to munge it considerably to get the Plastic parser to accept it--apparently it doesn't care for tabs, blank lines, or pointy brackets.
I probably also got some of the syntax wrong; it's been a while since I used Perl. Never ask a journalism school graduate to write code.
phh | Away for 3 years and still in the karma top 50! Woo hoo!
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| | | | | 74. Re: Why paper ballots are necessary | | | | by NasalGoat | | | | at Wed 6 Nov 12:05pm | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 52 | | | | | |
Try asking a slot machine programmer about the detail to which their code is examined for loopholes, backdoors and other naughty bits. There are people in government whose job is to examine every single byte of compiled code. Only after this exhaustive audit are machines allowed out on the floor.
I imagine voting machines are no different.
On a side note, we had electronic voting in the form of a ballot being marked, then scanned by a machine, so there was both an electronic record and a paper record. Seemed the smartest method to me.
--- I like pinball, you should too.
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| | | | | 82. Re: Why paper ballots are necessary | | | | by TheMCP | | | | at Thu 7 Nov 10:20am | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 74 | | | | | |
Try asking a slot machine programmer about the detail to which their code is examined for loopholes, backdoors and other naughty bits. There are people in government whose job is to examine every single byte of compiled code. Only after this exhaustive audit are machines allowed out on the floor. You're absolutely right, and the reason is that when they used to just do pure testing of behavior of the machine, a couple of backdoors slipped through.
I imagine voting machines are no different. Sadly, you imagine incorrectly. The currently utilized computerized voting machines are all made my companies which refuse to allow examination of their software. That's why I'm upset about this.
End of line.
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| | | | | 19. Re: Technology and voting | | | | by MissAimee | | | | at Tue 5 Nov 2:46pm | score of 2 clever | | in reply to comment 9 | | | | | |
Touch screen? Smart Card? Jeebus, all I got was a scantron form and a friggin' sharpie. It's really hard to fill in those little circles correctly before my morning coffee.
The real problem, though, is that almost half of the races on my ballot this morning involved uncontested republicans. If one candidate is good enough for Iraq, I guess it's good enough for DuPage county, Illinois....
www.hell-vetica.com
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| | | | | 29. Re: Technology and voting | | | | by JET24 | | | | at Tue 5 Nov 3:35pm | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 19 | | | | | |
I'm right there with you on the scantron form and the friggin' sharpie. We get to draw straight lines instead of circles, but I would love to vote using a touch-screen.
Then again, here in Arizona, you can't even get the retirees to use the ATM. You think they're going to be comfortable using computerized voting machines?
Religion don't mean a thing; it's just another way to be right. - Spoon
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| | | | | 48. Re: Technology and voting | | | | by stet | | | | at Tue 5 Nov 10:34pm | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 19 | | | | | |
The real problem, though, is that almost half of the races on my ballot this morning involved uncontested republicans.
If it makes you feel any better, I spent my morning writing in my friends, acquaintances, and Plastic Pals in order to prevent about a half-dozen Democrats from being elected unopposed in my district.
No candidate--not even God/Elvis/Matt Groening/whomever hisself--should be elected unopposed.
"All of the juice had been sucked out/ Before Mel Bay taught us children to play"
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| | | | | 64. Re: Technology and voting | | | | by curve06 | | | | at Wed 6 Nov 8:45am | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 19 | | | | | |
The real problem, though, is that almost half of the races on my ballot this morning involved uncontested republicans
I noticed a lot of this also. It disturbs me that the stupid democrats couldn't find people to fill these spots. I even saw a few Senate races that involved uncontested republicans. What exactly were the democrats doing?
If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind. - Kurt Vonnegut
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| | | | | 51. That's not a secret ballot. | | | | by TheMCP | | | | at Tue 5 Nov 10:54pm | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 9 | | | | | |
when I signed in I got a "voting receipt" that was a 2 part form. This had a code that I imagine identified me somehow. [snip] Also when you signed in you presented this receipt to a voting official who entered your information into a computer and then gave you a smart card. You then inserted the smart card into the voting machine so that it pulled up the proper ballot for your address. You realize, I hope, that under the circumstances you did not have a secret ballot? You identified yourself to the people, who gave you a card that identified you, and you presented that to the voting machine. Therefore, your votes can be directly tied to you personally.
I hope nobody you voted against is a mobster.
End of line.
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| | | | | 56. Re: That's not a secret ballot. | | | | by rombuu | | | | at Wed 6 Nov 1:06am | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 51 | | | | | |
That really doesn't bother me that much...
Futhermore, I disagree with all those people who suggest that a voting machines software has to be open sourced of "free" or whatever the kids are calling it these days.
If you have an application, its relatively easy to test a "black box" and tell if it is doing what it is supposed to do, reguardless if you have the source code for an application or not. No company where I've ever done development for has ever let the QA people look at the source code. If you have a good set of test scripts, you can tell if something meets requirements or not.
And as far as the whole secret ballot thing goes... I really don't understand a few things... I mean, I showed up at the polling place and said "Hello, I'm rombuu... let me vote". No one checked my driver's license... no one checked, well, pretty much anything. They saw that there was a rombuu in my district and let me go to town. I mean, I guess they check people's IDs when they register.. but that seems like a pretty piss-poor way of making sure that people who should / shouldn't vote do or don't do so.
http://drlunch.com The site that helps you decide where to go to lunch!
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| | | | | 58. Re: That's not a secret ballot. | | | | by TheMCP | | | | at Wed 6 Nov 2:23am | score of 1.5 astute | | in reply to comment 56 | | | | | |
That really doesn't bother me that much... It should. The secret ballot was developed for damn good reasons.
Futhermore, I disagree with all those people who suggest that a voting machines software has to be open sourced of "free" or whatever the kids are calling it these days. They're too separate things and I think the distinction is important. I'm not suggesting that the software of voting machines has to be "free", implying the right to redistribute and reuse, but rather that it should be "open", implying that members of the public can verify that it does what it's supposed to.
If you have an application, its relatively easy to test a "black box" and tell if it is doing what it is supposed to do, reguardless if you have the source code for an application or not. You're assuming it behaves the same way all the time. How do you certify that a computerized voting machine will behave the same way on election day as it does, for example, the day before? Computers generally know the date and time, it would be perfectly simple to program the voting machine to skew the results, but only on voting day. I expounded on this in more detail in another comment.
Remember that we're not talking about those old 50's machines with the big levers that nicely go ka-chunk when you vote. They were pretty straightforward to test and ensure that they recorded votes accurately, and the machines themselves were too stupid to be able to intelligently interfere with the count or attempt to fool their operators. A computer is a different story. It knows what the date and time are and can behave differently on election day, and it can analyze the ballot you've fed it and favor particular parties or people.
No company where I've ever done development for has ever let the QA people look at the source code. If you have a good set of test scripts, you can tell if something meets requirements or not. Presumably no company you've ever done development for has ever written software with the power to decide who controls the most powerful nation on Earth.
I really don't understand a few things... I mean, I showed up at the polling place and said "Hello, I'm rombuu... let me vote". No one checked my driver's license... no one checked, well, pretty much anything. [snip] that seems like a pretty piss-poor way of making sure that people who should / shouldn't vote do or don't do so.
It's designed to be deliberately... well... easy, I guess is the word. The goal is to keep the barriers against voting really low, so as not to discourage potential voters.
Something you should consider is that all of the procedures you seem to think aren't important - use of verifiably accurate voting equipment, secret ballots, minimal screening of voters - were designed in response to specific problems that occurred - people messing with voting equipment, retaliation against voters, use of complex requirements to discourage minority voting. When someone tries to eliminate one of these procedures, even if their intentions are benign, it means that the problem the procedure was created to address can return to haunt us.
End of line.
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| | | | | 69. Re: That's not a secret ballot. | | | | by 74westy | | | | at Wed 6 Nov 9:33am | score of 1.5 interesting | | in reply to comment 58 | | | | | |
They were pretty straightforward to test and ensure that they recorded votes accurately, and the machines themselves were too stupid to be able to intelligently interfere with the count or attempt to fool their operators
I've never used one of these (we know how to mark an 'X' up here) but I would imagine that it's possible to take one apart and examine the mechanism. That means the old lever machines were open source.
The source code for the vote counters should be open and available not only to election officials but to all citizens. Otherwise no one can have confidence in the software even if it is free of both errors and malice.
I am Sparticus!
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| | | | | 73. Re: That's not a secret ballot. | | | | by Blue Dot | | | | at Wed 6 Nov 11:06am | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 58 | | | | | |
It should.
Who are you to tell a grown person what to be bothered by?
First of all, you have no idea what the computer read from the 'smart card'. All that was said was that it pulls up the right ballot for his address. Since people vote by district, I am sure that every home address is not coded into the database for access, just area code or maybe (gasp) district number.
If the machine only reads district number there is no harm whatsoever.
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| | | | | 78. Re: That's not a secret ballot. | | | | by TheMCP | | | | at Wed 6 Nov 8:37pm | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 73 | | | | | |
Who are you to tell a grown person what to be bothered by? Who are you to tell a grown person what not to be bothered by?First of all, you have no idea what the computer read from the 'smart card'. Neither do you. And that's the problem in a nutshell.If the machine only reads district number there is no harm whatsoever. Okay. Prove that the machine only reads the district number.
End of line.
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| | | | | | 11. Why not | | | | by sop4 | | | | at Tue 5 Nov 2:11pm | score of 1 | | | | | | |
voting machines are probably the wave of the future. Not knowing the programming behind it I would be a little worried about it though.
Anyone with hacking knowledge could Hack into the voting system. That would be my only concern.
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| | | | | | 16. Re: Why not | | | | by rombuu | | | | at Tue 5 Nov 2:28pm | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 11 | | | | | |
Anyone with hacking knowledge could Hack into the voting system. That would be my only concern.
Of course, I can't see any reason you'd have voting machines hooked up to a network, so unless you have physical access to a machine that certainly makes it pretty damn tricky.
I personally have a lot more concern about paper punch ballots, where it seems to be it would be pretty easy for someone working a a voting station to grab a bunch of ballots and a nail and really go nuts.
http://drlunch.com The site that helps you decide where to go to lunch!
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| | | | | | 13. Voter chip | | | | by tomc | | | | at Tue 5 Nov 2:21pm | score of 2 intriguing | | | | | | |
Each of us gets a voter chip implanted in our brain, which constantly tracks how we feel about our representatives, and transmits this to a central voter preference bureau.
Once a particular elected candidate falls below a given support value, there is an automatic election in that district for that particular office.
This should keep politicians on their toes.
fruity pebbles
No Pussyfooting
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| | | | | | 72. Re: Voter chip | | | | by Mike1024 | | | | at Wed 6 Nov 11:00am | score of 1.5 intriguing | | in reply to comment 13 | | | | | |
Hey,
Once a particular elected candidate falls below a given support value, there is an automatic election in that district for that particular office.
The problem is, that would make it impossible to take unpopular decisions.
Say, for example, a half-a-percent tax hike, for some reason. Couldn't be done.
Multi-year terms let politicians focus on the long- (or at least medium-) term consequences of thier actions, rather than shortsightedly appeasing the voters at the cost of future benefits.
Just my $0.02,
Michael
Whipped that shit out, and aint no doubt about it; It hit the ground and caused an earthquake and power outage.
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| | | | | | 14. Via paper to the future | | | | by Petronius | | | | at Tue 5 Nov 2:21pm | score of 1.5 interesting | | | | | | |
When I voted this morning in Chicago we are still using the punch-card ballot of "hanging-chad" fame. The booklet that as you turn the pages reveals new rows of punch-holes has been redesigned to have names on only one side of the ballot, a definite improvement. The
"Stop! Wrong Side!" warning is bigger than before, flat plastic magnifiers and oversized punch needles for the elderly were available, and a little video screen was running demonstrating the process in English and Spanish, while the Election Board has commissioned written instruction in more than 15 languages. All this is new since 2000, when more than 5% of Illinois votes were spoiled.
Most interesting was a gadget next to the ballot box itself. When you were finished voting you put either end of the ballot into the slot, and it was scanned for overvotes (ie, more than one vote in any race). If there was an overvote you were offered a new ballot, the original one was destroyed, and you got another chance. If there was no problem your ballot went into the box and you were done. Here we get an electronic check of validity, faster counting tonight, and verifyable hard copies for recounts.
As to an interesting argument for a return to paper ballots, check out Glenn Reynolds, the notorious Instapundit, for his views.
One question; are these problems unique to the USA and our bewildering number of offices and races, or do other nations have a problem? Any non-USA Plasticians care to comment?
What rescues us from insignificance is the courage of our questions and the depth of our answers. Carl Sagan
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| | | | | | 81. Re: Via paper to the future | | | | by swalve | | | | at Thu 7 Nov 9:52am | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 14 | | | | | |
I vote in suburban Cook county [the county Chicago is in for the uninitiated]. I like what they did- they are saying "yeah, this system is flawed, we know it, and here's how we're going to deal with it." I like that they didn't waste millions on some untested system with unknown problems, and spent a few bucks on a workaround. During the primary, I remember that they forced us to "practice vote" on a green ballot and then showed us how to check for the chads.
A friend nearby was telling me about how in his polling place one of the machines was actually producing the dimpled or pregnant chads. Some enterprising election judges opened up the bottom of the voting machine and the thing was FILLED with old chads. So filled that the stylus couldn't push the little chad out of the card because the old ones were blocking the path. So it probably wasn't enfeebled people who couldn't even poke a hole through paper. Think of a three hole paper punch with it's little compartment full- push as hard as you want, the holes won't go in.
"If silence is golden, you couldn't raise a dime!"
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| | | | | | 26. Another random voting question... | | | | by rombuu | | | | at Tue 5 Nov 3:15pm | score of 1.5 novel | | | | | | |
I just got done talking with a friend who just moved back into the area. They mentioned that they were still registered and received materials from their previous 2 addresses. So how do you get unregistered to vote somewhere?
As this person pointed out, no wonder turnout percentages are so lousy. This person in one swoop brought her personal turnout down to 33% by only voting once out of 3 places she was technically still eligable.
http://drlunch.com The site that helps you decide where to go to lunch!
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| | | | | | 39. Re: Another random voting question... | | | | by Kardath | | | | at Tue 5 Nov 4:46pm | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 26 | | | | | |
I'm still registered in Illinois although I haven't lived there for nearly 10 years now. Every year my father is mistaken for me when he signs in to vote. Likewise my mother is mistaken for my sister.
I also imagine that I could still vote in Colorado where I was a resident only five years ago. If I had the money and inclination I could vote three times today!
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| | | | | | 28. Paper is important. | | | | by phenry | | | | at Tue 5 Nov 3:30pm | score of 1.5 interesting | | | | | | |
The first time I voted, in the 1988 election, my county still used those 1940s-vintage lever machines. They were fun to use, because they produce a satisfying ka-chunk when you pull the big red lever which tabulates your vote and whips the curtain open. But in terms of providing me with any concrete evidence that I had actually voted, and voted for the correct candidates, they were about as satisfying as if I'd voted by pulling my car off the road at a highway rest stop and yelling my choice out the window.
Paperless touch-screen voting machines are just updates on the old lever machines, with their advantages (instantaneous tabulation) and disadvantages (recounts are not possible). At least with the lever machines you could open them up and look at the mechanism if something seems to be wrong--with touch screen machine, all you can do is trust the guy who sold you the machine.
The thing that gets me is that it's trivial to design a touch screen voting system that produces paper ballots. You make your choices on the screen, the software preventing you from accidentally overvoting or whatever, and when you signal that you're done it prints out a paper ballot that clearly lists your choices, paired with barcodes (or, if you really want to be safe, lists the choices themselves in OCR characters). You walk the ballot over to a reader and cast it, just like you'd cast an optical-scanner ballot. At the end of the day the pollworkers phone in the figures from the ballot reader. Such a device could be easily built with off-the-shelf parts and open-source software, which should more than offset the additional cost of the printers and optical scanner (honestly, is there anyone here who couldn't throw together a roomful of voting stations for a lot less than $3 grand apiece, just by going to CompUSA and Fry's?).
There's no reason not to do it this way, yet once again South Florida voters are finding that their voting machines are puking all over them, and this time they don't even get to look at Hollerith cards for reassurance before their votes disappear into the ether. (But I'm sure Jeb has their best interests in mind. Really.)
phh | Away for 3 years and still in the karma top 50! Woo hoo!
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| | | | | | 30. multiple-choice bubbles | | | | by dreamer98 | | | | at Tue 5 Nov 3:41pm | score of 1 | | | | | | |
Why not just use good ole bubble sheets? Surely, if someone can buy a lottory ticket, they should be able to vote. And it's no doubt a lot cheaper then fancy touch-screens. I'm sure there's a reasonable explanation for why this isn't so in some places.
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| | | | | | 54. Re: multiple-choice bubbles | | | | by OSULugan | | | | at Tue 5 Nov 11:22pm | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 30 | | | | | |
The thing is, we rarely hear about all of the people being up in arms about the innacurate, but winning, lottery ticket that they got from mis-understanding a very simple form, and filling it out wrong.
The big difference being that I'm sure the Lottery would be more than happy to reclaim the money if you do complain, though.
And God says, "No, that's not right." Yeah. Well. Whatever. You can't teach God anything.
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| | | | | 84. It's been used... | | | | by gonzocanuck | | | | at Thu 7 Nov 11:54am | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 30 | | | | | |
It would be interesting to see all the different voting systems out there.
When I lived in my hometown, we used multiple choice sheets like students use for exams to vote. I don't know if they still use them there. They are automatically scanned by a big blue box that looks like a recycling bin ;-) I think it's a good idea :-)
Otherwise, most of my voting has been done on plain old mark an X paper ballots for municipal, provincial and federal elections.
You've got to coax him slow, that's the only way that he'll confess.
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| | | | | | 33. My Voting Machine | | | | by cloudofdust | | | | at Tue 5 Nov 4:11pm | score of 1 | | | | | | |
I think that paper trails are key to eliminating vote fraud so here's my system:
My voting machine is based on the modern supermarket checkout register.
1. When a voter finishes entering her votes they are registered in a database and a two part ballot is printed. One part stays on a roll in the machine. One part goes to the voter. The printed ballots have both english and barcoding of the votes on it.
2. The voter takes the printed ballot to a barcode reader which validates the ballot. If the voter has voted twice for president or the ballot can't be read for some other reason it goes in a "rejected" box. Otherwise the voter puts it in the "votes" box.
This way you have an instant electronic count, a paper ballot that can be machine and hand counted, and an audit trail in each machine. As far as replacing paper rolls that run out or jam, if the mouth-breathers who work at my local supermarket can deal with it then the Board of Election employees can deal with it.
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| | | | | | 41. I don't know if this is technologically feasible.. | | | | by deeluxx | | | | at Tue 5 Nov 5:32pm | score of 1.5 brilliant | | | | | | |
but how about a piece of paper where you circle the name of the person you want to vote for? I don't know, maybe that's just too complicated for people these days...
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| | | | | | 43. Look, if you're not going to take this seriously.. | | | | by zyxwvutsr | | | | at Tue 5 Nov 5:45pm | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 41 | | | | | |
You are completely missing the point. Computers make everything better. Doing what you suggest would be like playing solitaire with little pieces of paper marked with numbers and suits. Sheesh..
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| | | | | 45. Re: Look, if you're not going to take this | | | | by Estimator | | | | at Tue 5 Nov 8:49pm | score of 1.5 astute | | in reply to comment 43 | | | | | |
Don't forget that the paper and pen solution provides a completely parallel, scalable architecture. If two voters come in, you just fetch an extra pen out of the backroom and they can vote.
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| | | | | 46. Re: I don't know if this is technologically | | | | by Web Maxtor | | | | at Tue 5 Nov 9:37pm | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 41 | | | | | |
Nice user interface. Very clean design, with fast and accurate feedback.
Unfortunately, I'm guessing some circle counting Floridian fucknozzle is inevitably going to start confusing the circles with zeros.
Can you imagine, "Ok, that's two hundred and one zeros, two hundred and two zeros, two hundred and three zeros... Wow, no one has voted for this guy yet!"?
Ladys and gentlemen, we are doomed.
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| | | | | | 57. Paper and pen for me, thanks. | | | | by Peter Murphy | | | | at Wed 6 Nov 2:01am | score of 1.5 compelling | | | | | | |
All of my life I've used good old paper ballots to vote. It suits me well - retiring into the privacy of the voting booth, scrutinizing the paper for a minute or two, marking the ballot, and dumping it into the box. Paper ballots are indispensable for scrutineering the ballot, and I've done a bit of it. Looking over electoral staff's shoulders as they're counting away may seem pedantic to some, but it adds an extra safeguard to an activity that should be free of corruption. Repeat: free of corruption.
I speak not only as a voter, but as a former electoral officer, working at the University of Queensland Union elections. I handed out the ballot papers, helped people with their questions, kept a watchful eye on the ballot box, and (when voting was through), counted the bloody things. It's a laborious task; you'll be sorting the ballots into piles, and counting them as you go. Since we used a preferential system, one would have to resort those bottom on the list, and redistribute them to those in the running. Finally (after some papers were redistributed five or six times), you could declare a winner. Or winners; some "constituencies" (e.g., Postgrad Rep) were multi-member. And if the race was particularly close (three votes out of two thousand or less), you'd have to recount the bastards again.
But we got there in the end. And once the results were declared, they were challenged by none. Being scrutineered by various party sympathisers helped a lot. They could wander over, check how the ballots were organized on the floor, and how each group of preferences led to another, and satisfy themselves that all was proper. Can you do that with touch-screens? Not easily, from what I gather of the links; too many do not leave paper for people to follow. And even those that do - well, are you certain that the machine is acting with 100% accuracy? At least with the elections we ran, scrutineers could observe the ballot boxes being sealed at the end of a day... and observe them being unsealed once it came to count the buggers.
OK - "that's student elections", one may say - "but what about the big boys?" Well, the AEC, the group that handles the federal elections where I come from - they use paper and pen too. It's the same system as before, except that the sample is a lot larger - about 10 million voters. That's a figure comparable to Florida. And because everyone uses one system to tally up the vote, you don't worry about sub-standard ballots. (Unlike the States, apparently, where you can get any old shit from the commisioners of Hicksville County, Alabama, and places like that.)
The AEC have considered electronic voting, prompted largely by the experience of the US 2000 election. They do not seem impressed by many of the methods. With Touch Ballots, they say:
The cost of the computer hardware necessary to fit out polling places would be considerable. Based on one touch screen computer for each issuing table at a cost of $7,000 per computer, the cost, on a national basis, would be prohibitive. Even for small jurisdictions, the costs would be significant. There would also need to be a service contract for support to computer equipment at polling places on election day. Political, cultural and social acceptance by electors and other stakeholders would need to be considered. There would be no paper trail of the ballots. This may raise unacceptable risks especially if the system was being introduced on a broad scale.
The white paper goes to to suggest a few places where electronic system could be trialed... but ends with the sentence:
This paper does not suggest that Australian electoral authorities should at this stage embark on a program to fully replace the easily understood, publicly and politically accepted efficient, transparent paper ballot system that currently exists.
Nor should they. If the system ain't broke, why fix it?
Peter.
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| | | | | | 70. Re: Paper and pen for me, thanks. | | | | by electroboy | | | | at Wed 6 Nov 9:55am | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 57 | | | | | |
I think the electronic voting machine that prints a scannable paper ballot is the best solution. It provides almost instant results in addition to providing a hand countable alternative.
Much has been made of the costs of machines like these, but I think there would be significant savings by not having to hire ballot counters.
It's interesting that Australia has preference voting. It'd be nice if that caught on here in the states, but I seriously doubt it.
Keep your eyes open and your wallet in your front pocket --Raekwon the Chef
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| | | | | | 59. Technological solutions | | | | by cporter3g | | | | at Wed 6 Nov 7:46am | score of 1 | | | | | | |
There are solutions for electronic voting systems that are secure, anonymous, instantly verifiable, and yet allow monitoring for fraud. Generally these are based on public-key cryptography. Most are complex to implement but would be very easy for voters. They also support voting over the internet or voting by mail. This page at MIT has some info and links to other voting-theory research.
The real issue is the cost of implementing such systems. With most elections at local, state, and federal level being clear-cut victories for one candidate or other, the couple of percentage points that could conceivably be due to fraud or mistakes really aren't worth the cost of fixing.
"He who still sees the stars as 'up' does not perceive with the eye of truth."
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| | | | | | 60. It just moves the error around | | | | by purplebox | | | | at Wed 6 Nov 8:21am | score of 1 | | | | | | |
If you put the votes on computer, the answers are easy to interpret, and quick to count, but the computer can screw up the recording of the data.
If you put the votes on paper, they are harder to interpret and the recording instrument (be it human or machine) can still screw up the recording of it.
I don't see how you can make it fool proof in any real sense of the word.
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| | | | | | 66. Electronic voting is hard... | | | | by blather | | | | at Wed 6 Nov 9:03am | score of 1 | | | | | | |
...the Florida systems fail on many important respects. Check out this link for the requirements for an electronic voting system.
The Florida system fails on many respects:
system disclosability, and system accountability being obvious ones, but I'll bet also on operator authentication. The fact that there weren't many complaints etc doesn't mean anything if the system design allows errors to go undetected.
A voting system has much higher requirements than a procurement system, by the way: the stakes are much higher, and there are a number of other differences.
As I wrote in the past,
I don't like any method of elections that removes human oversight, and in particular oversight by a large number of humans.
The price of liberty is eternal vigilance
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| | | | | | 71. Re: Electronic voting is hard... | | | | by blather | | | | at Wed 6 Nov 10:28am | score of 1 | | in reply to comment 68 | | | | | |
While it would be better if we hadn't even noticed that large numbers of Jewish retirees voted for Buchanan, right?
The problem with chads wasn't the human oversight. Regular paper ballots would never have such problems, for example.
The price of liberty is eternal vigilance
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| | | | | | 75. A Voting Machine for the People | | | | by phenry | | | | at Wed 6 Nov 1:41pm | score of 1 | | | | | | |
I mentioned elsewhere that anyone could build, from off-the-shelf components, a touch-screen voting machine that prints to paper for a lot less than the $3000 companies like Sequoia are charging for paperless machines. Here's how: - Touch screen monitors are inexpensive--you can get one for about $500.
- We'd want a good, fast CPU that'll last for several years before becoming obsolete--a 1 GHz Duron or Celeron will do. We don't need a floppy drive or a network card, but we'd want a CD-R drive so the software can periodically write vote totals to nonmagnetic media, so that we can compare them to the totals recorded by the paper ballots. $600 tops, and that's probably a little high.
- Every machine should have its own printer, to maintain the secrecy of the ballot. The printer could be problematic: it would only be used a few times a year, but for big elections it'd have to be able to take a beating, perhaps printing as many as a few thousand pages in a day. Let's say $650, which should buy us a fairly decent SOHO-type laser printer or a really pimpin' thermal receipt printer.
- Others have explained the importance of using open source vote tabulation software, which we would probably have to develop ourselves. Much has been made here of the importance of security, but in a real world situation that would be provided by pollworkers who never leave the machines alone. All we really need the software to do is tabulate votes, so it really kind of has to be simple--complexity would just increase the chances for mischief. This software would take some time and money to develop, obviously, but would be distributed publicly, so there would be no marginal cost involved in distributing it to state and local governments. Slam a copy of Linux on the machine and we're faced with a very reasonable $0 (though ultimately the machines would of course require maintenance, just like any computer).
- A robust hand-fed optical scanner that is capable of scanning a few thousand documents an hour can be had for about $3000-$4000. If we put one into every polling place and spread the cost between, say, five and ten voting stations, that comes out to about $475 per station.
All together, then, that adds up to $2225 for one unit, and that's at retail prices. For this price, state and local governments would get a reasonably heavy-duty setup that can be repaired by any computer technician using off-the-shelf components, and bulletproof vote recording software that's open for inspection and prints clear, human-readable ballots. If we feel like spending more, there are many manufacturers who sell kiosks in which we can install the machines, or we can build our own--or, of course, we can just do without.
Damn. I should start building and selling these things myself.
phh | Away for 3 years and still in the karma top 50! Woo hoo!
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| | | | | | | 83. Complicated is Bad. | | | | by TSM | | | | at Thu 7 Nov 11:18am | score of 1 | | | | | | |
Every ex-military guy I've ever talked to has a mouthful to say about this new generation of smart-guns that's the Big Buzz in the US military these days. They see in the dark, they can tell you how far away your target it and then set an explosive shell to detonate precisely 1.33 inches to the right of his ear. It's got a heads-up display that allows you to stick the thing around a corner and then see what's there via the little camera that's mounted on the muzzle. It'll also tell you how much ammo it's got left, what time it is in four different time zones, it plays little songs, and can tell you the cup size of any woman who was Playmate of The Month between the years 1974 and 2000 (hork).
Not a single solider I've talked to would be caught dead with one of those things. Why? Well, what happens when it gets wet? What happens if it gets shot? If you beat someone over the head with it, will it still fire? How much more does it weigh? The philosophy is that there's nothing wrong with a device that's sole purpose is to put a bullet right over there around 99% of the time, and nothing else.
So apply this to the voting machine quandary.
This new gizmo does X and Y, it lights up when you twist this thing here and then if you push these buttons like this you can play Defender or Joust while you're deciding who to vote for. All the results are recorded to this harddrive here which entirely eliminates the problem of blah-blah, so-and-so and thus-and-such. It doesn't just record votes, it records votes better.
It also requires an entire new set of technicians to operate and maintain these things, on top of the fact that it bears the bleeding veins of the United States' voting process to hackers which is still a problem we do not have a handle on.
The catalyst for all of this is an attempt to devise some method of recording votes that will defy the 100% likelihood of civil service morons everywhere completely fucking everything up without even trying. The government is stupidly flailing about in an attempt to unfuck 40 years of profoundly flawed hiring practices with some ill-conceived notion that would have been hastily shot down by even the most optimistic wunderkind boardrooms of the late nineties.
What happened in Florida is not the fault of old voting machines. The problem is that the average person is an idiot. The average person in Florida is apparently a half-blind 65-70 year old idiot. The average person who works for the government is a severely retarded bucket of attitude problem who could give less of a shit about anything as their entire purpose in life (since they cannot be fired) is to absorb a small portion of the money Uncle Sam steals from my ass twice a freaking month.
You wanna fix the voting process? Use the same machines that have been getting the job done since the 50's and add a blank beside each candidate's name that reads "HANG".
If enough people punch that button. Hang 'em.
Fact: You voting is NOT in the best interest of 90% of the politicians currently holding office.
--TSM "Reserving the right to refuse service to anyone since 1976"
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| | | | | | 85. solution | | | | by daoacid | | | | at Thu 7 Nov 9:16pm | score of 1 | | | | | | |
The only viable way to use touch-screen, embedded computing voting systems would be to open source its software, vis-a-vis GNU/Linux. Even here, however, those in charge of interpreting and databasing the results could easily alter the outcomes. I do not, however, think that the potential and ease of vote manipulation would be any higher than it is now, in its purely participatory state.
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