Diebold Insider Comments on Voting System Flaw 466
Call Me Black Cloud writes "A Diebold insider is blowing the whistle on the company's continued lack of concern about security holes in its voting software. The insider wrote to Brad Friedman, a somewhat shrill political blogger, claiming the company is instructing technicians to keep quiet about the security flaws. This is despite the vulnerability being listed on the US-CERT website for the last year. A Diebold company rep admits the software can be remotely accessed via modem, but states, "it's up to a jurisdiction whether they wish to use it or not...I don't know of any jurisdiction that does that." The insider disputes that, claiming several counties in Maryland made use of the feature in 2004." This in addition to the fact that Blackboxvoting already hacked the system using a chimp last year.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It had to be said. (Score:3, Funny)
Oh God, we are soooo screwed.
Re:It had to be said. (Score:3, Insightful)
There is another election in 2006. This one is Congressional. Depending on the outcome of that one, Dubya may not have another two years.
There is plenty of evidence for impeachment, but only a few Congress-critters who don't have their own asses also hanging in the wind of corruption.
Re:It had to be said. (Score:3)
I've got ten bucks says it's a Republican majority. Any takers?
Re:It had to be said. (Score:3, Insightful)
You're on. [pollingreport.com]
Folks are tired of all the bullshit that's been going on the past 5 years. There is nobody to blame except the party which has made a big deal about how they are in complete control. All of the spin trying to place blame elsewhere merely gets them in deeper. It's political quicksand, and nobody is interested in throwing a rope.
Re:It had to be said. (Score:3, Interesting)
It's been going on longer than that, far longer than ol' shrub's been in office. Viewing politics through a big blurry W lens only hurts you.
There is nobody to blame
There's always somebody to blame. Hell, they don't even have to be a Democrat or a liberal, just painted that way.
All of the spin trying to place blame elsewhere merely gets them in deeper
The situation fell of the edge of cliff ages ago, and you think a few
Re:It had to be said. (Score:3)
Wow.. have you always been such a nihilist?
I kind of agree with you regarding worse-before-better. However, I don't see how things can get much worse without some long-lasting harm coming to the nation.
What I foresee is a repeat of the late 70s, where a national hangover from an unpopular elective war and the implosion of a thoroughly corrupt administration drains the national morale. I only hope that the American voters don't get further lulled into seeing some insane nationalist as a savior again,
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It had to be said. (Score:5, Funny)
"Garbage In / Garbage Out"
I'm not surprised that the Diebold model number of the voting machines last election were GIGO 5000s.
Blackboxvoting hacked the Diebold optical scanners (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/BBVreport.pdf [blackboxvoting.org]
Re:It had to be said. (Score:4, Interesting)
Given that humans are 98.5% chimp anyway, there's not much of a choice.
As the anarchists says, "No matter who gets elected, the government gets into office."
We Transhumans modify that to: "No matter who gets elected, an alpha chimp gets into office."
Re:It had to be said. (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually that is why it appeared that so many people voted for John Kerry, I mean cmon, I know that alot of people said they were going to vote for, but when push came shove, no one in their right mind voted for him.
I'm a real Republican (not a neocon) who voted for Kerry. Being a choice of lesser evils, it wasn't an easy decision, but I believe events have shown that I was in my right mind. If we get Hillary in '08, it will be due to Bush in '04.
Scary (Score:5, Insightful)
The CEO of North Canton, Ohio-based Diebold, Inc., Walden O'Dell has been oft-quoted for his 2003 Republican fund-raiser promise to help "Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." O'Dell himself was a high-level contributor to the Bush/Cheney '04 campaign as well as many other Republican causes.
Is this not a conflict of interest?Re:Scary (Score:5, Insightful)
No, but it's fucking shady as hell -- that's for sure. What's even worse is that they know about flaws and not only do THEY not care but both the government (duh) and the PUBLIC don't care either.
We have hashed out what needs to be done to make this a secure system [slashdot.org] and one is to allow all the code and hardware to be opened to the public that will be using it.
Of course that will never happen and I will continue to use paper ballots like every other sane American should.
Re:Scary (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Scary (Score:5, Interesting)
Canada's system works quite well, and it would scale to work in American consituancies quite well, since we have the same system in Toronto, as we do in Nunavut with no complaints that I'm aware of in either location.
Re:Scary (Score:5, Insightful)
Worse than scary (Score:5, Insightful)
Then, within that one state you just have to swing enough votes to tip the scales.
That means flipping half the difference. Using a made-up example, if the state of Bushsylvania has 10 million likely voters and polls show they'll vote 49% D and 47% R, you have to reverse just over 1% of the votes to push it to the R column. That's only 100,000 fraudulent vote reversals, or 110,000 if you include a 10% safety factor. Hell, it wouldn't even take much money to outright BUY that many votes, much less rig the voting machines. (Note that "ballot box stuffing" is less efficient than "flipping" -- to win Bushsylvania, for example, would require 220,000 phony ballots to be added, which is a much bigger task.)
And you might not even have to spend that much. If there are (say) four undecided states with the power to affect the outcome, go to the two with the narrowest margins, and twiddle theirs.
Remember to limit your exposure as much as possible. Restrict tampering to as few districts as you can. Prefer those with the highest numbers of voters, but with historically low turnouts. (Poverty stricken areas are ideal for this kind of tampering.) You don't even have to make every tampered-with district put in "wins" for your candidate -- you just have to reverse a total of 110,000 votes.
You want to keep it local as much as possible. Run it like a terrorist cell -- tiny groups of insiders who each know very little about the overall plan or about other people. Choose your fall-guys in advance, maybe plant some evidence 'in reserve'; in case someone turns coat you can blame a few overzealous campaign workers, and cut them loose before they start reporting further up the chain.
Only problem is you named the wrong party (Score:5, Insightful)
The bottom line is that both parties will do anything they can to either get or stay in power. It's shameful on both sides. Anyone claiming that cheating is only occurring on one side or the other is a partisan hack.
(similar to how anyone that claims their party is 100% moral while the other is 0% moral is a partisan hack)
Re:Scary (Score:4, Interesting)
Keep this in mind. Many would say it is much easier to tamper with a paper ballot election. Ballots dissapear, ballots materialize out of nowhere etc. Burning boxes of ballots in fields is nothing new. One could postulate that tampering with computer ballots leave much more of a trail than traditional tampering.
Re:Scary (Score:5, Informative)
Perhaps you are unfamiliar with the law of conservation of energy?
Physical ballots do not spontaneously materialize and disappear. Electronic ballots, on the other hand, can do just that.
Burning boxes of ballots in fields is nothing new. One could postulate that tampering with computer ballots leave much more of a trail than traditional tampering.
The difference is that if you want to burn ballots in the field, you have to physically go get the ballots, physically transport them, and physically destroy them. All of which carries some amount of risk of being caught by widely-understood, traditional methods of security.
Electronic voting systems are pure voodoo to 99.99% of the population. Remotely tampering with them, especially when the security on them is made of swiss cheese, involves much less risk of being caught and can be done on a muchc broader scale -- one person can only haul of and destroy so many physical ballots, but one professional electronic vote-rigger can conceivably modify every single ballot cast.
Re:Scary (Score:4, Informative)
The difference is that if you want to burn ballots in the field, you have to physically go get the ballots, physically transport them, and physically destroy them. All of which carries some amount of risk of being caught by widely-understood, traditional methods of security.
Vote tampering is almost an institution in the US. From the very dawn of America. I really don't want to get into giving a history lesson, but I suggest doing a google search for vote tampering and only clicking on the
I know that your points are great in theory, but unfortunately history disproves you.
Re:Scary (Score:5, Insightful)
Never said it wasn't - just that electronic tampering has the potential to be even easier to pull off than the physical kind. On the other hand - well designed and implemented electronic voting systems can greatly assist in preventing the physical tampering you are talking about.
It is basically a situation where if you implement electronic balloting poorly, then you greately increase the risks compared to paper balloting. But implement it robustly and you greatly decrease the risks instead.
So far, we've had way too much of the poor implementations.
And who is going to rig an election? (Score:3, Informative)
Most cases of election fraud aren't "rogue anarchists," its the local political machine. Generally, it is done by the police, the Sheriff's office, or someone else in the local political establishment.
Online
Re:Scary (Score:5, Insightful)
One could postulate that the sun will rise in the East. If you postulated that "that tampering with computer ballots could leave much more of a trail than traditional tampering.", you would have an argument (a weak one but something). The facts are:
1) At least one existing system (the Diebold system in the FA) is not only not tamper evident, it appears to have features specifically designed to conceal tampering (a timestamp mod utility, separate DBs and functionality for voting and auditing and no tx sequencing spring to mind).
2) Physical tampering does not scale. In order to affect the presidential outcome, one would need to have a number of people in each of 10000+ locations involved. A single skilled individual can achieve the same effect with electronic voting.
3) Virtually all methods of tampering with physical ballots still work on electronic systems! In light of the fact that in the last election an apparently malfunctioning balloting machine was removed to a private warehouse and returned to service while the polls were open, I'd like to see you justify your implication that somehow e- machines are harder to tamper with than plain ballot boxes.
To give a real world example, there is very strong statistical evidence that Ohio's results were tampered with and in a way that could not be done with physical ballots.
Re:Scary (Score:3, Insightful)
It depends largely on his intent. His full quote was "I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." Was then emphasis on "I" (as I took them to be) or was the emphasis on "to the president" (presumably meaning the current president, then running for re-election).
Yes, the guy's a Bush contributor, but that doesn't mean he's a perpetrator of fraud.
FWIW, I'm a registered Republican, and I am as paranoid as anybody else about thi
Re:Scary (Score:3, Informative)
Ha! I knew it! (Score:5, Funny)
To the plank with the Diebold Scaliwags! Arr!
I have a question. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not taking issue with the submitter because I hear the term applied to liberals alot -- but I wonder when the alternative of stubborn complacency and "going along to get along" became ideals in our democracy.
Because you don't get things fixed thinking like that.
Re:I have a question. (Score:5, Insightful)
Because of the method and tone of the discussion. Shrill, in this usage, means "betraying some strong emotion or attitude in an exaggerated manner." Obviously, shrill is generally a subjective descriptor.
Many pundits and bloggers use a shrill manner to draw attention to themselves and their arguments -- Limbaugh, Coulter, Franken, etc.
The reason being shrill is looked down upon by a lot of serious politicos is that the message can be overwhelmed by the tone -- if the argument needs to be shrill to get attention, how valid can the argument be?
"Because you don't get things fixed thinking like that." [re: 'going along to get along']
Although shrillness can draw attention to an issue, it won't get anything solved either. The ideal is that we can all pay attention to issues and work on resolution, without resorting to exaggeration.
Re:I have a question. (Score:5, Insightful)
You say this as if arguments or ideas gain attention in our society on the merits of their content alone. This is plainly absurd, as anyone with any familiarity with politics, media, or marketing knows far too well. Sometimes screaming is the only way to be heard.
Re:I have a question. (Score:4, Funny)
Because they have animated of gifs of rotating police lights on their websites? I dunno.
Re:I have a question. (Score:4, Insightful)
Even in this particular instance, the topic was written up in a rather sensationalistic manner (complete with an annoying animated GIF of an emergency vehicle light at the top). That doesn't mean the information is incorrect or not worthy of consideration, but it does make it more difficult to take it seriously as unadulterated fact when it comes from an obvious partisan with a penchant for sensationalism.
One's 'shrillness' is an entirely nonpartisan attribute, easily applied to liberals, conservatives, and those that belong to sundry other groups. Personally, I think we'd all be much better off without it.
Re:I have a question. (Score:5, Insightful)
Hi. I'm the submitter. The reason I wrote "shrill" is because when I read through his site the image came to mind of my wife berating me. If that's not shrill, I don't know what is (and I can safely write this non-anonymously because she's probably never even heard of slashdot.)
I wasn't referencing his point of view or that he isn't "going along to get along." I applaud his efforts at bringing this issue to light and I'm very happy the article was accepted for the front page. I'd hate for this to fall off the radar, especially since I live in MD. It's just that I found the tone of his writing a bit grating...
Depressing (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, as geeks know better than journalists, there is no sane, moral, or legal reason for paperless touchscreen voting machines to even exist. Almost everyone who is knowledgable in this discipline gets it pretty quickly - because it's extremely obvious, and also because paper is integral to secure systems everywhere, from secure logging on printers in machine rooms to ATMs and even slot machines... You just don't store things like votes on non-user-verified, let alone rewriteable, media.
In fact, if I recall, the state of Nevada was a little while ago in the awkward position of having vastly superior standards enforced for gambling devices than they had for voting machines... although I think now they are one of many states that has put this craziness under some scrutiny...
Yet there really are a few people out there (I've met some on slashdot for instance) who argue to defend this practice anyway. These days, ignorance and stupidity is no longer funny. It's becoming terrifying.
If we lived in a sane country, the people who made these machines would be prosecuted, since their level of negligence certainly rises to the level of criminal even if they have no intent of their own to rig elections, and all of the politicians and bureaucrats who ordered, "evaluated," "tested," and approved these systems should follow not long after. We would know all this, prima-facie, even if Diebold hadn't had a pants-down security incident and exposed their internal emails to the world, showing us their gaffes in first-person detail. We would know even if direct results of their incompetence weren't widely documented [blackboxvoting.com]
The simple, bedrock need for secure voting systems, and the absolutely impeccable engineering doctrines involving voter-verified paper, are almost universally accepted among credible experts. All explained many times before, better than I could anyway. It's inconceivable there is any debate at this point. Why would we have a voting machine that was deliberately made insecure?
The most credible argument I've ever heard (relatively speaking) is, "Who would cheat anyway? You're just being paranoid."
But you all know the answer to the question of who would cheat at election time: probably, the first person who thought they could get away with it. [blackboxvoting.com]
Re:Depressing (Score:5, Insightful)
It's very sad that this is such a commonly repeated phrase. I really want to know why people think it's *so* horrifying to be labelled "paranoid" -- especially when it comes to the state of our nation.
I realize that paranoia is looked down upon, especially in a time where everyone is more interested in the voting results of Survivor, American Idol, or (ironically) Big Brother, but it saddens me deeply when I am looked down upon for being behind our country's values.
PARANOIA IS WHAT WE NEED! Especially when people just have NO DESIRE to understand the goings on behind political power.
"Seacrest out!"
Re:Depressing (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps one of the scariest moments imagineable is when paranoia and common sense intersect. That's when you know something obviously isn't right, and there's nothing you can do to reverse the situation since any notion of your dissent will automatically label you paranoid.
The sad thing is that all of this should be redundant, but only a small few realize.
Re:Depressing (Score:4, Insightful)
The quality control on gaming machines is crazy high. You know why? If there was any faintest whisper that the gaming corporations were not playing a fair game with the suckers, I mean gamblers, people would play less.
But voting? Nevada cares far more about the bottom line than it does about the politician of the week.
Re:Depressing (Score:3)
If they don't defend it they have to admit the election was rigged. What's really frightening is the right wing has no moral problem rigging elections.
Not quite so shrill, (Score:3, Informative)
But when all the other "dirty tricks" are factored in, the electronic voting machine fraud that occurred in many other states besides Ohio, begin to look like a coordinated and concerted effort to effect the outcome of national elections by illegal means. The number of states employing fraudulent lists of felons to be barred from voting increased considerably from the 2000 election fiasco in Florida and Georgia -- the same company's database was employed in a dozen states in the
Re:Depressing (Score:5, Insightful)
You take your paper ballot, after you touched the screen, and put it in a box. Unless ALL vote counters from ALL parties are compromised (a definite possibility) then you have a backup way to manually count the votes.
When you JUST have a machine that's storing the votes (which are easily modifiable and untraceable) there's no way to manually count the votes that the VOTER verified were the same.
That's how.
Re:Depressing (Score:3)
Re:Depressing (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Depressing (Score:3)
Becasue ballots and rules are kept as simple as possible to minimize the risk of confusion and the need for interpretation after the fact when there's a close call?
Or maby, just maby it's because the participating parties all have observers at each stage in the process to make sure there's no cheating?
Ofcourse, in a country where's there only 2 parties, collusion among the observers would
Re:Depressing (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Depressing (Score:3, Informative)
The only way to invalidate paper ballots is by tampering with them to create overvotes or "spoiled" ballots. This can't be done on a large scale without being detected by simply comparing the numbers of invalid ballots to thos
Re:Depressing (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Depressing (Score:3, Insightful)
This is why the lever pulls are stil
Credibility (Score:3, Insightful)
Where is the outrage? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, I'd agree with that. But good luck with a congressional investigation, they probably won't even be able to get a real room to have meeting about it. Just like Downing Street [inthesetimes.com]. Karl Rove is a genius.
What butthole did the democrats have there heads up when let this scam be part of the 2004 election? They had 4 years! How you can have a company with the contract to build paperless voting machines being run by a loyalist to the incumbant party and not have the opposition do anything about it - IS RIDICULOUS!
I hope there is an upset in 2006, or it is going to be another 2 years of a radical Whitehouse running around unchecked, digging the US into deeper holes at every turn.
But really, were is the outrage? I mean this is your democracy?!
Re:Where is the outrage? (Score:5, Insightful)
Meanwhile, right-wing organisations are oppressed by the liberal media monopoly and must struggle to get their messages out. After all, white folks are oppressed by affirmative action and political correctness, Christians are oppressed by the secular school system and the activist judges, and the right-wingers are oppressed by the liberal media. As such, it's only appropriate that they can be voluminous and angry.
So of course, any outrage from the left wing is absolutlely preposterous. Don't suggest something so insultingly unamerican.
Re:Where is the outrage? (Score:4, Insightful)
Whereas those on the right spend all their time complaining about the directions America is taking, which is proud patriotism.
See the difference?
KFG
Are you sure it's an insider? (Score:5, Insightful)
Keeping Vulnerabilities Quiet (Score:4, Insightful)
However, keeping it quiet because they think that will improve security rather than fixing the problem is NOT reasonable. That's why we have whistleblower protections. A company that has this much of a role in our country - by way of their products - should be held to the highest standards. And from what it sounds like, they are not.
Which Diebold exec was the roommate of which politician?
Re:Keeping Vulnerabilities Quiet (Score:3, Interesting)
I disagree with your assertion that voter fraud is "merely" a criminal act - I think the current U.S. administration has already demonstrated how voter fraud can result in compromised national security.
Kerry Won Maryland by 9% (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Kerry Won Maryland by 9% (Score:5, Interesting)
A good vote-rigger would only swing the votes a few percentage points. Not enough that the 'actual' votes are extremely different from the 'expected' votes. So, you don't win every race and district. You just have to win enough...
If you want to talk conspiracy theory, you could point out that the exit polls were unusually innacurate in the last election. Not quite out of possiblity, but definately out of the ordinary.
Which would be the only sign of a wide-spread, intelegent, vote-fixing scheme.
Somebody please tell me (Score:5, Insightful)
Putting on my tin foil hat, I don't think they are idiots at all. I think it was done on purpose. The bigger question is, why aren't WE doing more about this? The integrity of our democracy is at stake. How can shit like this be allowed to happen? How can we 'help' Iraq setup their new democracy when we are so utterly fucked up?
Yes, I'm mad. Mad at this happening, mad at this not getting more attention, mad at people who think I'm crazy for bringing it up. This is unacceptable.
Re:Somebody please tell me (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Somebody please tell me (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Somebody please tell me (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Somebody please tell me (Score:3, Insightful)
Based on what I've seen, most local voting districts don't care about security. They're i
Because it's a very different kind of security (Score:5, Insightful)
So ATMs actually have essentially.no protection against the bank being fraudlant They contact the bank (via an encrypted channel, using IBM crypto cards) and ask how much money you have. If you have enough, they dispense it. The bank could easily lie to them, they'd never know. But that's not in the bank's intrest to do so, and banks are watched by eachother, the feds, etc, etc.
In essance, with an ATM, you can trust the operator.
Voting machines are different. You CANNOT trust the operator. It may well be in their intrest to alter the voting records. Perhaps they have been bought off, perhaps they have very strong feelings towards a party, etc. Point is you have to assume that the person who operates the machine ants to tamper with it.
Well that's a whole different problem. Now you have to design a system that is capable of not only keeping users (who only have access to a limited UI) from messing with it, but operators as well (who have access to the internals). That's a much tougher design spec.
If you give me a computer and tell me someone will only have screen, keyboard and mouse access, and ask me to secure it, I'll whip something up in a couple days and pretty confidently say there's nothing they can do to break in. If you tell me they'll have physical hardware access, I'm sorry, I'm afraid that's out of my league.
Re:Huh? (Score:3, Insightful)
I want my fucking piece of paper (Score:5, Interesting)
Bullshit. I'm sorry, but no - voting is not about how to do it the cheapest and most convienient for the government employees. The John Hummel Voting Ranking System goes:
1. Accuracy
2. Speed/Efficiency
3. Cost
So with that, my dream for the Ultimate Voting System goes like this.
1. Person shows up at the voting center with their ID. They are authenticated (whether this be by picture, or some sort of card reader, not important). If they can not be authenticated, then they get a physical slip of paper to vote with with the mark "Verify ID" and a number. If the ID is later verified, then the vote is counted. If not, then it can be placed in the "not counted" bin. (Not destroyed until 60 months after the election - this is to prevent too many "Whoops - we couldn't authenticate anybody"!) Granted, this ties into the problem with the "secret ballot" idea, but if you can't authenticate the user before voting, this is the next best thing. I'm sure someone could suggest a better method.
2. Assuming that authencated == true, then they are pointed to the voting machine. Voting machine is simple enough - a touch screen for "pick your candidate" with a picture, name, etc. If you're voting on a bill, then you can push a "detail" button to have a copy of it show up for your reading pleasure. Let it be handicap enabled with enlargeable text, comfortable seats (no forcing people to stand) and adjustable screens so folks sitting in wheelchairs can still access the screen.
3. Upon finishing, you are presented with a table of all of your votes and results, and a message reading "Is this correct?" If you select "No", you can change anything, otherwise "yes" means it's all good.
4. When you select "yes", three things happens. The vote is recorded to a local write once ROM device with a unique ID. This ID and voting information is transferred via an encrypted link back to some central location, so election results can be monitored in real time. The third thing that happens is a piece of paper is printed out with this unique ID and the voting information plainly printed out in the same table format you just read, perhaps with a bar code encoding the same vote results for quick tabulation later. You then drop this piece of paper into the voting box. The unique identifier is not related to the voter - just to the vote, so you can't tie in who voted for what, only that "some authenticated person" voted for something, and the unique ID is what they voted for.
5. Votes are now instantly counted. Upon finishing, all of the ROM media is removed and forwarded to a separate voting office - say, a separate division of the government - for validating. If the central office and separate office validate results, then the election is good. Just for kicks, a random sampling of the paper ballots are removed and compared (using the unique identifier) to the votes. If there's a descrepancy, you can pick it out quickly.
6. ROM and paper is stored for 5 years, then thrown out (by then, it's too late anyway), and available for public access by media groups/indepdant analysis.
7. Said above system should be written with GNU software, with MD5 and SHA1 hashes of compiled code made using standard GCC - version agreed upon by government officials at a specific date. Code is locked well before election date, and a copy of source and compiled code used is stored on the same write once ROM system (CD's should be fine) so anyone can compared and complain if they need to.
Whatever happens, no "proprietary" voting code, no "oh, it's secret to protect you dumb little voters" code - open, clear, and simple to validate and completely open to access. Anything less is asking for abuse, and I don't trust either party in the US not to have less-then-honest individuals hoping the screw things in their favor.
Of course, this is just my opinion. I could be wrong.
Re:I want my fucking piece of paper (Score:4, Insightful)
I know, I'm asking for a lot. I was told by a coworker that it's a stupid request. After all, if I have an electronic voting system, isn't that suppose to eliminate the need for paper?
Want to know how to shut him up? Take his printer access away and when he bitches say "Hey, that's a stupid request after all, you have a computer and weren't computers supposed to eliminate the need for paper and usher in the era of the paperless office?"
Re:I want my fucking piece of paper (Score:4, Insightful)
This will never fly because of #1. And #1 alone would likely eliminate a whole lot of fraud.
I think that Georgia is attempting to require an ID for voting and it is being fought tooth and nail by various public interest groups (or perhaps "public interest" groups).
Re:I want my fucking piece of paper (Score:5, Insightful)
Georgia is attemting to pass a law that requires voters to have an official state ID, namely a driver's license or, barring that, a surrogate state ID available for a fee. People are opposed to it because the effect (if not the intent, but really the intent too) is to disenfranchise the kinds of people who don't have driver's licenses and for whom buying a replacement ID is an onerous burden, namely the poor, which is to say to a great extent, the black residents of the state. In the 19th century this was called a Poll Tax and it served exactly the same purpose, namely to disenfranchise minorities. It was ruled unconstitutional then and hopefully will be again if Georgia insists upn promulgating this 21st century version.
Re:I want my fucking piece of paper (Score:3, Informative)
Here is the Georgia State DMVS fee schedule [ga.gov].
A non-driver ID costs $20 for five years, or $35 for ten. That's $3.50-$4.00 per year. This is NOT an "onerous burden." This is four cans of soda. What's mo
Re:I want my fucking piece of paper (Score:4, Insightful)
It isn't just the cost; Georgia's scheme is seriously flawed in a number of ways. For example, there is currently no place in the city of Atlanta to get one of these cards. They have plans for opening one location in the near future. All told, there are roughly 150 (if memory serves) locations in the entire state where you can get these cards.
Let's say you're 68 years old and you live forty miles from the nearest ID registration area. You have no car, and you're living on a fixed income. There is no mass transit in your area, and to hire a cab would cost you three weeks' worth of "disposable" income. What do you do?
Let's say you're a twenty-two year old mother of two; your husband is stationed overseas. You're lucky to have time to brush your teeth in the morning, let alone spend seven hours of buses and queueing to get this ID card you'd only ever use to vote. Is it really worth sacrificing one rare day of vacation in the pursuit of a voter ID card rather than in the company of your kids?
The reality of life for millions upon millions of people in our country is that something that is so seemingly trivial to you or I is actually a fairly significant task. It just so happens that the folks who have the most trouble with this kind of thing tend to be poor, old, overworked and non-white.
I'm all for pulling ones' self up by the bootstraps, but you gotta have the boots in the first place. Go visit at our inner cities. Go visit our rural backwaters. Go speak to these Americans, and witness first hand just how hard life can be for your fellow countrymen. There exist people who, through no fault of their own, simply cannot afford to spend the time or money necessary to jump through hoops that you or I consider mere inconveniences.
Georgia's scheme is disenfranchisement coated in a thin layer of identity verification. Why else would a ten-year ID card ($35) cost significantly more than a five-year card ($20)? [washingtonpost.com] Shouldn't it cost the state less if they only need to process a voter once every 10 years rather than twice?
Lobby Consumer Reports to check this out (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's end the debate once and for all and lobby Consumer Reports to evaluate electronic voting machines. Following is a link to their feedback form.m erreports.cfg/php/enduser/ask.php [consumerreports.org]?
http://custhelp.consumerreports.org/cgi-bin/consu
Why are we accepting this fraggin' mess??? (Score:4, Insightful)
Damn I'm really pissed about this eternal bul...it - counting votes is so important these days and we all are acting like fuc...ing sheep...
Re:Why are we accepting this fraggin' mess??? (Score:3, Insightful)
You know what would be cool? (Score:4, Insightful)
Compromised election systems (Score:3, Interesting)
this says it all.... (Score:3, Informative)
right click and save as.
glad to know there are so many Diebold and ES&S supporters on slashdot...
it's in wmv format but mplayer will play it just fine.
Openvoting.org (Score:5, Informative)
http://openvoting.org/ [openvoting.org]
Not only open voting, but open source for the firmware that takes your vote.
They have been doing good things in California.
It's still getting better (Score:3, Funny)
unfortunately people could care less (Score:5, Insightful)
Hardest comouting task EVER! (Score:3, Funny)
Lets see
if(button==1)
TirdSandwitch++;
else if(button==2)
GiantDouche++;
As you can see, there are millions of bugs that could happen in this scenario.
Hennepin County Minnesota changed procedure (Score:3, Informative)
In Hennepin County the scanner system, not Diebold scanner machines, the precinct results were no longer modemed in to the county office but hand delivered in the September election.
Ramsey County Minnesota uses Diebold scanners with the suspect central counting software. Public Test of Ramsey Voting Systems [umn.edu]
Those who ok the use of such systems.... (Score:3, Informative)
There is no other reason to put in use or allow the use of such a system that can and has been used to misrepresent the public vote.
I'll be the Devil's Advocate.... (Score:4, Funny)
"Diebold threatened violators with immediate dismissal," the insider, who we'll call DIEB-THROAT, explained recently to The BRAD BLOG via email. "In 2005, after one newly hired member of Diebold's technical staff pointed out the security flaw, he was criticized and isolated."
Ok... so this whistle blower who worked for Diebold went to The New York Times? No. Went to The Washington Post? No. Went to a... newspaper? No. This whistleblower went to The Brad Blog. Any questions?
Exact same words... (Score:4, Insightful)
"So what? You voted, you had your chance. *snicker*"
Re:Two words (Score:4, Insightful)
*raises hand* I do. In a non-democratic state, you couldn't even make such accusations without having to fear imprisonment or death.
Re:Two words (Score:5, Insightful)
: *raises hand* I do. In a non-democratic state, you couldn't even make such accusations without having to fear imprisonment or death.
That kind of retaliation would happen only if you pose a real threat or they have nothing to lose by imprisoning/killing you. For the US, the mass media ensures to show criticisms of the government and big corporations (which is becoming more and more the same thing), so you are not a real threat; on the other hand if government acts on you, they may wake some people up who have the illusion of democracy, so they do not. I gues when they really need to act they label you as a terrorist first. There are already many new restrictions on free speech. There are designated free speech zones during meetings etc. in the US! What the fuck does that mean?
Re:Two words (Score:5, Insightful)
For the love of all that is good and holy, will you PLEASE stop confusing concepts like that. "Democratic" is not the anti-thesis of "opressive", etc. It is for the purposes of proganda, but dammit, stop.
Not to mention the complete illogical nature of your statement "In a non-democratic state you couldn't even make the accusation that the state is not democratic". Come on!
If people didn't go all wide-eyed and emotional everytime a politician says "freedom" t them, then you might be able to actually have a functionning democracy, and not a bunch of sheep voting for who they're told to vote.
Re:Two words (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow- not to be an ass- but the US isn't a Democracy. It is a representative republic.
A true Democracy in the US would be sort of scary- Imagine mob rule. Think about it.
A well Written article on Democracy v. Republic
http://www.wallbuilders.com/resources/search/deta i l.php?ResourceID=4 [wallbuilders.com]
Republic v. Democracy
by David Barton
We have grown accustomed to hearing that we are a democracy; such was never the intent. The form of government entrusted to us by
Re:Two words (Score:4, Informative)
Unfortunately, their chances of getting their candidate selected retroactively are quite low. So far, all the evidence seems to point that Bush was, indeed, elected for the second term (suck it up!). As far as I know (I must admit that my knowledge is based on what I've read from the press), there's no real evidence of any vote fraud. Even this 'insider' has no evidence of actual fraud.
Re:Two words (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Two words (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe you forgot about Florida's Kathleen Harris. Harris hired a private company--Voter Identification Services--to purge Florida roles of all the "darkies" because of their tendancy to vote for Democrats. VIS purged some 57,000 voters from the roles claiming they were ex-felons [blogwood.com] [more credible sources available--search left to reader as an exercise] and, therefore, ineligible to vote. Nevermind that their accuracy rate was a dismal 5% because their system passed judgment on name alone. If gross incompetence by the head of Florida Bush/Chenney isn't fraud in your book, I wonder what you require as proof.
Re:Two words (Score:3, Insightful)
Of the 3,258 names on the original list, therefore, the county concluded that more than 15 percent were in error. If that ratio held statewide, no fewer than 7,000 voters were incorrectly targeted for removal from voting rosters.
Bush's margin of victory in Florida in 2004 [uselectionatlas.org] was 380,978 votes.
Re:Two words (Score:5, Insightful)
And this is why Diebold must go. I don't for a minute thnk election fraud in 2004 was any more widespread than any other presidential election, but can anyone *prove* it? OK, admittedly, even with a paper trail you can't prove there was no fraud, as ballot boxes can be swapped out in transit and such, but in practice this can't be done on a large scale without it becoming obvious due to screwups by the fraudsters.
With no paper trail, someone committing vote can have a huge impact with a very small chance of being caughtin the act, and no chance at all of finding the fraud afterwards. We absolutely need a system where intense scrutiny after the fact is likely to turn up evidence of the crime. This will be a much greater deterrant, but more importantly will give us a much higher confidence in the system.
Computer *aided* voting is a great idea. Have a touch-screen with pictues to help roor readers, have adjustable finst to help the vision-impaired, have an interface that allows the blind to vote in private, print a ballot that is guarenteed to be properly marked. But the result needs to be a marked ballot, not a set of bits. A completely seperate process can automate counting the ballots -computer-printed optically-scanned ballots work extremely well, with no sacrifice of a paper trail.
Re:Chimp (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Chimp (Score:4, Insightful)
There are many reasons why places shy from allowing them that have nothing to do with coverups.
Most people just want it to be over with once the election is done. Dragging it out over months while the votes are re-counted and re-re-counted just rubs in the fact that the losers lost and makes the winners feel nervous that their win will be taken away from them. And in most cases, you aren't going to discover anything that would significantly change the outcome.
Re:Chimp (Score:3, Interesting)
Recounts are more accurate than the original count. I know this is hard to accept, especially if you happen to be a resident of the State of Washington, which went through a nightmare in the Governor's contest. But a recount is far more deliberate and transparent than the "election night" count, when election officials
Re:Chimp (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Chimp (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Chimp (Score:3, Interesting)
"We saw the increases in voter registration, but didn't make the connection that we'd need more voting booths."
This, to me, is simply incompetence.
He also told me that if cities need extra equipment, they tend to borrow off of n
Re:Interesting article (Score:5, Funny)