Chimp Can Hack Diebold Electronic Voting System 402
rbuysse writes "A million monkeys can write Shakespeare, but it only takes one to mess up an election. Scoop here." Blackboxvoting is behind this demonstration; there's also a lengthy thread on the Bugtraq mailing list.
Nuff Said (Score:5, Funny)
Your first clue (Score:5, Funny)
Hey, at least its accurate advertising
Monkeys (Score:5, Funny)
Elections administrator Linda Lamone said" that monkeys will be prevented from accessing the machines during the elections.....
Re:Monkeys (Score:5, Funny)
Which is un-constutional: Our president has the right to vote too!
Re:Monkeys (Score:5, Funny)
So, does this mean that Florida won't be allowed to vote in the coming elections?
Re:Monkeys (Score:5, Funny)
for-profit voting systems (Score:5, Insightful)
At the government's disposal are hundreds of public universities with some of the brightest minds in the country, many of whom would gladly work on implementing the great american open-source voting system. Even if these graduate students and professors were paid market rates for their work, it would still be much cheaper than what Diebold systems are costing the US. There is also no competitive advantate go keeping the system closed-source... so what if Austrailia decides they want to run their elections on our software? We've proud of other countries copying our constitution and systems of government, why not our systems of elections too? Especially if they improve it, and give those improvements back to us? What, are we suddenly going to be exporting less consumables to them because they have more legitimate elected officials?
Re:for-profit voting systems (Score:5, Insightful)
This is already the case today. Do you think the current voting booths or the printed ballots are manufactured by the Salvation Army? Why should it be a surprise that when the government moves from lower to higher tech forms of voting it continues to buy from private industries? I agree that buying from a corrupt and/ or incompetent company is reprehensible. I also agree that everything should be accountable to the voters and the software, security mechanisms, etc., should not be kept secret. But I don't like the idea that the government should be unable to give a contract to any private company to manufacture any of the tools used to run the election. That is neither workable nor desirable.
Re:for-profit voting systems (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:for-profit voting systems (Score:5, Informative)
Exactly. Please visit http://www.openvotingconsortion.org/. We're a consortium dedicated to creating an open source voting system. The idea, exactly as you propose, is that many commercial vendors can take the open source platform and package it with hardware, training, and so on. Or a particularly motivated (or cheap) organization could run their own election system using internal technical resources.
Re:for-profit voting systems (Score:5, Interesting)
To change the subject slightly, at what point does sabotage become a morally acceptable alternative? I'm assuming that a knife dragged across the touch-screen would ruin the machine, but I won't assume that ruining a voting booth for others would help... any thoughts?
"Hell, I'll piss on the spark plugs if that'll help"
Re:for-profit voting systems (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And it's working out so well? (Score:5, Interesting)
Say what you will about the relative scale of the elections in the two countries, one thing is certain - the elections work here. The results are in very quickly, the security protocols surrounding voting and counting are simple enough to be comprehensible and auditable by just about anyone, and the whole thing is done with exemplary transparency.
Re:for-profit voting systems (Score:4, Funny)
Re:for-profit voting systems (Score:3, Interesting)
You only need X% of the population that count the ballots and (X/10)% of the population that received and tally the votes from the differents ballots...
At 3 person per ballot and 200 ballots for 'voting aera' of 40000, you would only need 1.5% to 2% of the population...
Of course, this is all theory... such a system would never be accepted by americans: it would be perceived as archaic
Certainly explains how Bush got elected (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Nuff Said (Score:3, Informative)
You're the one who needs to start using your brain.
So, uh (Score:5, Funny)
Re:So, uh (Score:5, Funny)
Re:So, uh (Score:5, Funny)
Re:So, uh (Score:3, Funny)
( To those who are confused, please referrence "Jay and Silent Bob Strike back" )
Hmm (Score:3, Funny)
In other news (Score:5, Funny)
hey now... (Score:3, Funny)
Hey now, is that any way to talk about our beloved president? Besides, we won't know until election day whether that's true.
Re:hey now... (Score:2, Funny)
Hey now, let's not cast aspersions until after the next election. After all, it will only take 60 million chimps to elect him fair and square this time.
KFG
Video Mirror (Score:5, Informative)
No kiddin' (Score:5, Funny)
I'm a proud Bush voter, You insensitive clod!
Re:No kiddin' - FOR REAL... (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps you'd like to visit The Monkey Shakespeare Simulator [tninet.se], which randomly attempts to duplicate Shakespeare's work (don't worry about legal aspects, you can generally assume it's out of copyright).
The current record is 20 letters from "Coriolanus" after 462,060,000,000 billion billion monkey-years. Sent in by Jens Ulrik Jacobsen from Denmark on 31 Aug 2004.
"1. Citizen. Before w ZgJ 8GPxwFnwvG&iX4tKfo("2ny!3Pp..."
matched
"1. Citizen. Before w e proceed any further, heare me speake All. Speake, speake 1.Cit. You are all resolu'd rather to dy then to famish? All. Resolu'd, resolu'd..."
Re:No kiddin' - FOR REAL... (Score:5, Funny)
I bet the rest of that is just Danish l33t speak or something...
Attention Script Kiddies.... (Score:5, Funny)
Look for this attatchment on the Electoral College's Outlook Express inbox.
Coral Cache of video (Score:4, Informative)
Although it's pretty weak... just a bunch of cuts of a monkey and a computer.
It's all a liberal conspiracy (Score:5, Funny)
Adequate Punishment? (Score:3, Interesting)
This Has Got To Stop!
(Yes... been sitting on the sidelines, but I am about fed up)
Go Getem Ahnold!
What's the big deal? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:What's the big deal? (Score:3, Funny)
Chimp (Score:3, Funny)
Here is an action photo of the actual hack. [staticfiends.com]
I love this quote... (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow. That's so..... scaremongering.....
Look on the Bright Side (Score:2)
Look on the bright side, at least... (Score:2)
And The Monkey Presses The Button! (Score:2, Insightful)
When pressing the touchpad I guess his trainer must have said something like:
NO! Bad monkey, BAD monkey, BAD MONKEY!!!! NO!!!!!....... ARGH! Dam Hackers!
I'm european, you know... in this side of the Atlantic we mark a piece of paper with an X on who we vote. And yes, a monkey can also do it, but at least we don't spend billions in tech just to keep all the monkeys voting...
Re:here, I'll explain it (Score:3, Interesting)
What I don't understand is why... (Score:5, Interesting)
- the voter comes to the poll, is identified and is given a paper token with a barcode that contains the polling ID station ID and a sequential number (note that the ID is not humanly readable, important for privacy)
- the voter goes in the box, which has a touch screen and an 'easy' UI, voter inserts the paper token in the box which scans it
- voter votes on the touch screen (make it really easy, BIG buttons, BIG text, whatever)
- machine prints out a ballot with the voter's vote in humanly readable form (say, prints out a 'real' ballot with blackened out rectangles on the relevant candidate(s)) and a 2D barcode at the bottom with the vote in machine readable form including the ID on the 'paper token'
- voter looks at the ballot to make sure it's ok, folds it, comes out, puts the ballot in one box and the paper token in the other. If the ballot is not ok there is a shredder right there inside the poll station and the voter votes again.
========= election over ===========
the paper token are shipped to the central office, scanned (should be very fast via the 2d barcodes) and votes tabulated accordingly; for an additional level of security you can always count the votes via the 'human readable' part of the ballot before shipping them.
If a recount or anything is necessary there are several safeguards with this system:
- you can't have ballot box stuffing, because 1 'token' = 1 vote and if those ID are generated 'well' you could even double check that all IDs make sense, sort of like a 'there are only so many valid serial numbers' there. Multiple votes with the same 'ID' will be discarded.
- you can't have doubts on the voter intent, they'll vote on the screen *AND* look at the paper copy before putting it in the ballot box later on
- if there is really no trust in the computers no problem, you can just look at the 'human readable' portion of the ballot as many times as you want: no nonsense about hanging chads or anything.
this (or something like it) would cover all the bases in terms of fast results (via scanning ballots, ship them all to a central location and do it), paper trail and so on. I really can't understand who in their right mind would consider putting the fate of the election in the hands of MS Access, for crying out loud!
Re:What I don't understand is why... (Score:3, Interesting)
There's a good ar
Re:What I don't understand is why... (Score:5, Insightful)
3: Scantrons are ancient, and work well, with a very low error rate, at least, lower than hanging chads when you've got machines to properly mark the cards in the first place.
4: He walks out of the booth with it, and right up to the ballot box, just like we do currently. No big deal, and after that, he can have proof he voted, but the card with the actual votes on it is in the box.
=====
I wouldn't be amiss to a mis-vote called whenever the election was indeterminate with a known (low) level of error. Like, 0.01% or less (or some other number, that one was pulled out of thin air). To cover error in the system.
Automatic revote.
Re:What I don't understand is why... (Score:3, Informative)
I dunno about you, but I've often seen sales clerks spending a lot of time refilling the paper rolls, dealing with ink outages, paper jams, "Sorry, but do you mind if I don't give you a receipt, it's not working," "Sorry, but the ink is really faint."
: Scantrons are ancient, and work well, with a very low error rate, at least, lower than hanging chads when you've got machines to p
Comment removed (Score:3, Funny)
Spin Spin Spin (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure we trust the election officials, but do we trust every contractor or tech who might work on those systems? Especially as Diebold seems so lax in checking backgrounds that people with convictions for fraud, blackmail, and embezzlement have access to their code. I'd bet that their contractors are even less subject to appropriate background checks.
Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
The US (not to mention many other countries) have a long and rich history of election officials tampering with the results. What says that that has suddenly ended in 2004?
A different way than "election officials are corrupt" of framing the issue is to point out that corrupt people who want to influence results will want to become election officials. Especially if there are no checks on their power.
Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
Chimps can write News Articles, too... (Score:5, Informative)
But for the inveitable slashdotting it'll receive, I'll summerize: Makers say Diebold works, opponents say it doesn't, que poorly edited movie of monkey sitting by computer hitting stuff, analogous to the new "Baby hitting mouse" AOL 9.0 commercial. The End.
Thank me, beecause I just saved you 5-10 minutes of your life. Use it to get a free ipod or something.
Thankfully... (Score:5, Funny)
Really, no disrespect...but (Score:5, Interesting)
Judging by the fact that most people with the time to volunteer for poll work are our 'seasoned citizens' who, let's be honest, aren't, as a group, too computer savvy, I'd be more worried about the scrupulous people with no computer skills whatsoever messing things up.
I know this makes me an ageist asshat, but how in the heck are all these people going to get up to speed on computers enough to ensure a little 'whoops' doesn't toss a whole county or something?
Re:Really, no disrespect...but (Score:4, Insightful)
You only need to take one day off work to do it.
What's your real excuse? It's not your age, it's the fact that you really aren't interested.
Insulting to officials? (Score:5, Insightful)
I say "Quite honestly, it's somewhat insulting to the voters," to the idea that the voting public should naively disregard the human factor and that temptation/corruption/bribery "just don't happen."
Never underestimate the power of money, especially in large, unmarked bundles.
Re:Insulting to officials? (Score:4, Interesting)
It would be very interesting to have insight in to the machinations in Iowa and New Hampshire that destroyed Dean's candidacy. Did Al Gore and Jimmy Carter endorse him, because they knew it would make him look like an establishment man and hence a hypocrite. About a dozen rich democrats from the DNC and DLC inner circle funded attack ads in Iowa that equated him to Osamm bin Laden, coupled with a couple dumb remarks insured his fall in Iowa. When the media started piling in the race was decided though a tiny fraction of Democrats had actually voted. When Dean was destroyed, that was the point when the American people were actually denied any real choice. Its kind of wasting your time to steal the presidential election with electronic voting since it's already been stolen.
You see, there isn't a dimes worth of difference between Bush and Kerry on the stuff that matters, Iraq, the patriot act, homeland security, the war on islamic terrorism. They are both going to spend the U.S. in to bankruptcy and line the pockets of big corporations and their wealthy shareholders at the expense of working people.
Most telling, they are both Yale grads and Skull and Bones men. You know democracy is dead in America when a secret fraternity of the elite of the elite, which has 800 living members, can count BOTH presidential candidates as members. What are the odds on that unless the whole process is rigged.
Maybe Kerry was maneuvered into the Democratic nomination by the ruling elite to take a fall, or maybe they knew he was such a pathetic candidate that running him insured Bush would be reelected, or maybe they will be happy whichever one wins though I wager Bush is their favorite. The new Forbes billionaire's list is out and Forbes says they overwhelmingly support Bush. Why shouldn't they, he's given them unprecedented windfalls.
Running a shill is about the only way Bush could get reelected, after the deceit and insanity his administration perpetrated in Iraq. If people were to actually stop and look at how pathetic his record has really been over the last 4 years he would be rode back to Texas on a rail. Fortunately people don't have to think about it, they just have to see that loser John Kerry "reporting for duty" and all of sudden Bush doesn't seem so bad. We'll he really is bad but there isn't anything you can do about it so they just resign themselves to it and pretend it doesn't matter.
Maybe riggable electronic voting machines, and the Pentagon's plan to gain control over the military's vote, were insurance to make sure Bush wins but I doubt that will be necessary at this point. The media feeding frenzy has already started and that will insure Kerry will be doomed before the people even weigh in on the subject, the same kind of frenzy that devoured Dean.
If electronic voting machines are going to be used to rig an election the most likely races they will be used on are the Senate races. The Republicans are desperate to get 60 seats in the Senate because at that point they would have a democratically elected and constitutional dictatorship, especially after a few more years of stacking the courts. When that happens the U.S. is going to be a good country to get out of, and the rest of the world really needs to start working on a global alliance to prevent this group of extremist Christians from dominating the entire planet.
The next four years are going to be a dark period for the U.S. no matter what.
As an example, I heard today on CNN and its on
Re:Insulting to officials? (Score:3, Insightful)
The guy is unfortunately a loser, no one in their right mind actually likes him. Most of the people voting for him are voting against Bush and not for Kerry.
I think you've forgotten the politics electing the democratic nominee. We decided that we needed someone moderate because of how far right the country has shifted. So, we get rid of Dean and go with Kerry. Then again, "loser" isn't what I'd call a thoughtful critique.
You see, there isn't a dimes worth of difference between Bush and Kerry on the s
Re:Insulting to officials? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd be cool with Christian's in power if they actually adhered to the teachings of Christ. Unfortunately I don't think rampant greed and bloodthirsty militarism are Christian values, and those are the two basic tenants of the so called "Christians" taking over America and the Republican party. Just as extremist Muslims are an abomination to Islam, extremist Christians are an abomination to Christianity. If there was a second coming and Christ appeared in America did the things he did, and said things he said 2000 years ago, he'd be locked up or killed by the "Christians" running the U.S.
I'm working hard to line up a country where I can go and stay, and renounce my citizenship. No point in moving out of the U.S. and keep the passport and keep paying taxes to support the current madness. Its not easy. It takes a lot of work to find a country that will be a good place to live and that isn't completely under the thumb of the U.S. America's shadow has become so long there really aren't many places left in the world where you can escape it. I lost track but I think the U.S. has troops in something like 135 countries and I imagine the FBI and CIA are meddling in the same number or more.
I tried to read your link. It was pretty dumb. Its just further proof of how far off the deep end the right wing fringe in the U.S. has gone. I'm really sure there is a left wing conspiracy to use schools to convert everyone to Islam.
I know you'll hate it but I think it is a good idea if schools teach courses in all the major religions, from a cultural and historical perspective. It might alleviate a lot of ignorance and promote more understanding and tolerance. It might fix the acute case of tunnel vision infecting most Christians in the U.S. Again they seem to regurgitate the New Testment the same way Madrasas regurgitate the Koran. No one actually listens to whats those books say, or connect that those teachings are pretty much the exact opposite of the things most of their political, economic and religious leaders are actually doing in the names of those great teachings.
You decide (Score:2)
"We probably have the most secure system in the nation," said Lamone
and
according to Associate Director Andy Stephenson, "The entire voting record can be deleted by choosing "reset the election" on a drop-down menu."
Only a fool would pick an otherwise obvious statement...
Well, I mean (Score:2)
Wrong headline (Score:5, Funny)
Has Black Box thought of this? (Score:5, Interesting)
But Maryland election officials agreed with Bear that no hacking can happen unless the hacker is physically at the computer.
How long until somebody writes a virus/worm/trojan that does nothing on most Windows boxes (other than propagate) and on systems where GEMS is detected then around 8:00pm on election day just go wreak havoc with the election results? No physical access to the GEMS systems is needed. If those machines are hooked up to the internet at any time prior to the election (like to get Windoze updates) they could potentially become infected with just such a worm.
Yeah, I know it's a stretch. Just playing devils advocate...
Re:Has Black Box thought of this? (Score:3, Funny)
Is this an election or a slashdot poll? Who cares? We need the "CowboyNeal" option. and since it won't get on the ballot by election time, but we know that everyone would vote for CN, given the chance, let's just reset their votes. CowboyNeal for pres!
Imagine the damage that a...... (Score:5, Funny)
Dacek does not have the right idea here... (Score:5, Insightful)
Does anyone else find it rather strange they are worried about the "critics" and not the ones who seem to be in a big hurry to get these insecure systems in place? In my mind, the critics are the ones trying to stop a possible hi-jacking of democracy.
This reads like a AM radio talk show host comparing protestors at a convention to terrorists.
Re:Dacek does not have the right idea here... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do YOU hate America so much, Citizen?
ASIMO Demo (Score:3, Interesting)
Fight back with your code... (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea that elections can be entrusted to the Diebold corporation is wholly absured when you consider that democracy is an activity of the people, for the people and by the people. Of course the results will be and ***SHOULD*** be questioned; that's the whole point of a democracy. That's why an open source voting system is and should be the only way to do computerized voting; it's open to scrutiny by anyone and everyone, and such it is, eventually and ultimately, beyond scrutiny when the final vote is out.
The open source community should produce as soon as possible an effective, secure, and open source voting system that's ready for reliable usage. It's one thing to criticize Diebold, it's another thing to question an elected official why an open source solution that's proven and secure and anyone can know the ins and outs of is not implemented and another obscure, closed, and highly questionable one is entrusted.
Re:Fight back with your code... (Score:3, Informative)
Reset the Election (Score:5, Funny)
I mean, really. They practically have a button that says "Press to Hack Election."
I can see the defacement notices now (Score:3, Funny)
Bulls**t (Score:5, Interesting)
Even if the system could be hacked, he said, it could only be done by a person with "unfettered access to the system." Bear noted that elections are not just the machines, but also the people who work the elections.
"Quite honestly it's somewhat insulting to elections officials and volunteers," he said to the idea that elections officers would tamper with vote results.
At every election I have voted in, the officials and volunteers are retirees who have VCRs flashing 12:00! They would never know it if some young whipper-snapper was farting aroung with the newfangled high-tech whizbang voting machines, nor will they be able to help anyone if the machines screw up.
This is a democracy... (Score:4, Interesting)
A simple letter (here [verifiedvoting.org] or here [verifiedvoting.org] or here [verifiedvoting.org] or here [verifiedvoting.org]) is one of the easiest ways to inform your elected representative of your stance in regard to certain bills [loc.gov]. If you feel strongly enough about fixing the current state of electronic voting in this country, I highly reccomend writing to your elected [house.gov] representatives [senate.gov] to inform them of your concerns and certain bills [loc.gov] which [loc.gov] they [loc.gov] should [loc.gov] support [loc.gov].
Remember, for a democracy to work as intended there needs to be participation by all of its citizens though voting as well as keeping their elected representatives informed of the citizens wishes.
Also remember that when contacting your representatives a signed, mailed letter makes a much bigger impact than an e-mail.
Re:This is a democracy... (Score:4, Insightful)
"Remember, for a democracy to work as intended there needs to be participation by all of its citizens though voting as well as keeping their elected representatives informed of the citizens wishes."
Would you say that democracy works as intended when powerful media corporations use well tested, well developed advertising-like techniques (which border on hypnosis) to sway public opinion and thereby influence voting patterns?
(Because I believe that this is exactly what happens; human beings are, on the whole, remarkably suggestible (otherwise advertising of products or brands wouldn't be worth the billions that get spent on it)).
I thought it was an infinite number of chimps... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I thought it was an infinite number of chimps.. (Score:3, Insightful)
The California Report (Score:4, Interesting)
The report was fairly critical, but balanced.
-molo
Diebold responds (Score:5, Funny)
Missing the point, they don't understand computing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Missing the point, they don't understand comput (Score:3, Insightful)
The classic case of a cashier who trades tickets for money and a ticket taker shows that you can have a trustworthy system even if you don't trust the participants.
Flim-flam. Make it complicated enough and there's plenty of room for skuldudgery. Sure you run checks and ba
"Most secure system in the nation" (Score:3, Insightful)
Am I the only one who started hearing alarms going off in my head when I read this sentence:
"We probably have the most secure system in the nation," said Lamone...
Translation: "We know nothing about security."
And lo and behold, they're using Microsoft Access. I rest my case.
ObSimpsons Quote (Score:3, Funny)
Chimp: No, I don't think we'll be telling them _that_.
[Roller skates away, making monkey noises]
Primate Programming, Inc. (Score:3, Funny)
e-voting machines are horseshit (Score:5, Insightful)
I used to work with county and city elections. No machines were used, just a supervisory staff of elections officials and a horde of volunteers. All voting locations would count each box of ballots twice, each time by a different person, and if the tallies weren't exact they'd go through the whole process again for that ballot box. This would continue until two separate individuals got the same count for the box.
Afterwards, all of the paper ballots would be boxed and stored in a secure location in case it became necessary to do a recount. And again, all recounts were done by box, twice, and any discrepancies meant starting over from scratch for that box.
This wasn't a terribly expensive way of doing things. The primary cost was in printing and mailing the ballots (for mail-ins). The elections sites themselves were run by volunteers, and the supervisory staff was already paid for. Fraud was rather difficult to pull off on the part of the volunteers and the entire process was 'open source'. Individual citizen groups could demand to have a representative sit in on the recounts, as could any political party that was running a candidate.
Why, exactly, are we dumping a system like this for Diebold machines? It makes no sense at all unless someone is specifically looking for a way to fuck up the elections in their favor, or in favor of whomever happens to be paying them off.
And don't tell me that this system can't be scaled; that's bullshit. The system I'm speaking of here was used on the city, county, and state level. If it can be done by one state, it can be scaled for any state, and it's the STATES who run the elections, not the federal government.
Max
My Voting Machine Specification: (Score:3, Insightful)
The hardware design for voting machines must be available for public inspection.
The assembley of voting machines must be available for representitive public inspection.
The voting machines security must be based on cryptographicly secure systems.
The voting machine once put into service must not be openable, the case must be sealed and no software route to controll the unit in place.
The voting machine must produce a full tally of all votes for any election it has ever been used in when requested by an authorised key holder.
The voting machine must log all administrative transactions, and produce this with all vote counts.
--
The electoral volentears know how to handle people voting, a secure system would have to be devised for handling of the votes taken from the machines, possibly a small printer device similarly open to public inspection to convert the data into a human readable form from an early point in the chain.
If anyone wants to add any more to this, comment on how it can be done feel free. There's no way I can have total trust without proof that the names on the list tally up to what the clicks on the screen mean.
Re:This story could make a liberal's head explode (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This story could make a liberal's head explode (Score:5, Informative)
Try the US Civil Rights Commission. (Their report on the Florida electoral fraud is available here: http://www.usccr.gov/pubs/vote2000/report/main.htm [usccr.gov])
Re:This story could make a liberal's head explode (Score:2)
The variables for Democratic and African American supervisors are negative; the coefficient for Republican supervisor is positive. The only justifiable conclusion from these results is once again that there is no statistically significant relationship between whether election supervisors are Democratic, Republican or African American and either overall ballot rejection rates or racial disparities in ballot rejection rates.
Your source has failed to indicate a Republican conspirac
Re:This story could make a liberal's head explode (Score:2)
"conspiracy theorist) source suggesting that Republicans might abuse
"a security hole.
Try the US Civil Rights Commission. (Their report on the Florida electoral fraud is available here: http://www.usccr.gov/pubs/vote2000/report/main.ht m )
Maybe you should actually read the report.
It doesn't say a thing about Republicans abusing anything.
Try again.
While you're at it, you should also look at this. [nationalreview.com]
We find out, for example, that
"the incontrov
Re:This story could make a liberal's head explode (Score:5, Informative)
"I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President next year."
- Wally O'Dell, CEO Diebold
Re:This story could make a liberal's head explode (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This story could make a liberal's head explode (Score:5, Informative)
Read This [commondreams.org]
COLUMBUS - The head of a company vying to sell voting machines in Ohio told Republicans in a recent fund-raising letter that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."
The Aug. 14 letter from Walden O'Dell, chief executive of Diebold Inc. - who has become active in the re-election effort of President Bush - prompted Democrats this week to question the propriety of allowing O'Dell's company to calculate votes in the 2004 presidential election.
It seems to me that someone who makes voting software shouldn't be promising to deliver votes, but maybe it's just me.
-Dan
Re:This story could make a liberal's head explode (Score:2)
Anyone else notice Air America getting syndicated all over the country via Clear Channel? Perhaps Clear Channel figures they can make Left wing media STFU about media monopolies through syndication. Their opponents end up working for them (for some reason media monopoly is not a popular topic among AA hosts) and they dispel claims of bias in one shot.
Pretty damn smart if you ask me. Guess they didn't wind up owning radio
Re:Fair and balanced?? (Score:3, Insightful)
The Diebold story is interesting because of the computerized voting angle. Not sure where the "news for nerds" aspect is in the "Iraq Diary" story, or the "Quick exit" story.
If I want to read 100 stories about Iraq daily, there's tons of other sites spewing them out by the ton. I come to Slashdot for tech-related stories.
Re:Fair and balanced?? (Score:5, Insightful)
However, most of the rejected stories you listed have nothing to do with technology; they merely describe political news or events. I think the bias Slashdot has toward "news for nerds" is appropriate; we can get our pure political news from other sources.
When I'm reading slashdot, I'm looking for info about tech trends and social impacts therefrom, nothing more.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Fair and balanced?? (Score:3, Informative)
Fair enough, and I agree with you, but take a look at the politics.slashdot.org page and tell me that most of the accepted stories do deal with tech.
I just checked and 5 out of 10 deal with technology in politics. Half. The rest is arguably 100% political news. Granted, I go elsewhere for that too, but the fact is that those rejected stories are nowhere off the norm for the Politics page.
Re:Fair and balanced?? (Score:4, Funny)
I clicked on the monkey story, I wouldn't have clicked on any of the others except for the one that says "Turkey", then I would realize it isn't about the yummy bird and close it.
If I wanted to be up-to-date on the war on terrorism, Irak or whatever I would watch CNN, but I want to know about Monkeys so I read Slashdot.
My humble suggestion, stop submitting political stories and start looking for monkey stories. A turkey story would be nice too.
Obligatory monkey story:
I like Monkeys
The pet store was selling them for five cents a piece.
I thought this was odd since they were normally a couple thousand. I decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth so I bought 200 of them. I like monkeys.
I took my 200 monkeys home. I have a big car. I let one of them drive. His name was Sigmund. He was retarded. In fact, none of them were really bright. They kept punching themselves in the genitals. I laughed. They punched me in the genitals. I stopped laughing.
I herded them into my room. They didn't adapt very well to their new environment. They would screech and hurl themselves off the couch at high speeds and slam into the wall. Although humorous at first, the spectacle lost its novelty halfway into it's third hour. Two hours later I found out why all the monkeys were so inexpensive; they all died. No apparent reason. They all just sort of dropped dead. Kinda like when you buy a goldfish and it dies five hours later. God damn cheap monkeys.
I didn't know what to do. There were 200 dead monkeys lying all over my room; on the bed, in the dresser, hanging from my bookcase. It looked like I had 200 throw rugs. I tried to flush one down the toilet. It didn't work. It got stuck. Then I had one dead, wet monkey and one hundred ninety-nine dead, dry monkeys.
I tried to pretend that they were just stuffed animals. That worked for a while, that is until they began to decompose. It started to smell real bad. I had to pee but there was a dead monkey in my toilet and I didn't want to call a plumber. I was embarrassed. I tried to slow down the decomposition by freezing them. Unfortuantely there was only enough room for two at a time, so I had to change them every 30 seconds. I also had to eat all the food in the freezer so it didn't go bad.
I tried to burn them, but little did I know that my bed was flammable. I had to extinguish the fire. Then I had one dead, wet monkey in my toilet, two dead, frozen monkeys in my freezer, and one hundred ninety-seven dead, charred monkeys in a pile on my bed.
The odor wasn't improving. I became agitated at my inability to dispose of the dead monkeys and I really had to use the bathroom. So I went and severely beat one of the monkeys. I felt better.
I tried throwing them away but the garbage man said the city was not allowed to dispose of charred primates. I told him I had a wet one. He couldn't take it either. I didn't bother asking about the frozen ones.
I finally arrived at a solution. I gave them out as Christmas gifts. My friends didn't quite know what to say. They pretended to like them, but I could tell they were lying. Ingrates. So I punched them in the genitals.
I like monkeys.
(DISCLAIMER: I am not the author of this story.)
Re:physical access (Score:2, Insightful)
"Did windows just eat the votes, or was it malicious?"
Just what I want to deal with. There are MANY security schemes that could make this bullet-proof, but it's obvious that Diebold should have stuck to ATMs. (Actually, makes me wonder what software THEY run inside... But then, the finance industry is
Re:Fox News (Score:4, Insightful)
(a) By "terrorists", I assume you're talking about al Qaeda. How does al Qaeda gain from the presidential election? Neither Bush nor Kerry is likely to stop hunting them down.
(b) There are lots of groups with more stake in who becomes president and who are better equipped to screw with the election -- either political party, for instance. An activist programmer. A state official involved in the machines. I'm worried about *them* mucking with the election, not with terrorism.
(c) It'd hardly be terrorism to hack a system (producing political influence by inflicting terror on a populace), so from a simple, stupid, logical standpoint, unless someone had already engaged in terrorism, they wouldn't be a terrorist.
Why is this a FOX News issue when all they state the obvious?
Because they're being deliberately misleading. Terrorists "hacking the election" is just not a big concern, but they keep trying to keep terrrorism in people's heads. Terrorism has never been a real top national problem, not on 9/11 and certainly not now. Smoking, car crashes, alcohol -- all of these kill more people and cause vastly more economic damage, and do so on a recurring basis. The only reason people care so much about 9/11 is because of the steady and constant media coverage.
I, for one, would like to hear not at all about Bush and Kerry's war records, little about their stupid "war on terror" initiatives, and more about issues that actually affect American citizens.