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California to Start Review of Voting Machines 154

An anonymous reader writes "California Secretary of State Debra Bowen just announced details about the previously discussed 'top-to-bottom review' of almost all voting and counting systems used in the state. The team features big names in e-voting security: David Wagner, Matt Bishop, Ed Felten, Matt Blaze, and Harri Hursti, among others. Vendors have time to submit their machines including documentation and source code until July 1st or face severe restrictions, including decertification, for the 2008 elections. Scheduled to start next week, the review will include a red-team attack and going through the source code."
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California to Start Review of Voting Machines

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  • ...But it's about time that electronic voting machines were beta-tested!
    • by king-manic ( 409855 ) on Wednesday May 09, 2007 @05:18PM (#19059367)
      The last 2 elections were the beta.
    • by Marcion ( 876801 ) on Wednesday May 09, 2007 @05:37PM (#19059587) Homepage Journal
      Anyone know what the rules for freedom of information apply here? Could these rules be used to examine the source code for flaws?
      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Touvan ( 868256 )
        Even if you could review the source code, there would still be no way for you to validate that the machines running on election day, are running code that was compiled from the source code you reviewed.

        In other words, you can't look in the machine as see what it's doing.

        Paper trails are useless, since you can't invoke them unless there is a good enough reason to do so (close enough election usually 1% or so - not a big deal really, just set your machines to steal more than 3%).

        At the end of the day, the onl
      • FOIA requires access to public records. It's possible that source code could be defined as a public "record," though it might be stretching the definition. "Records" are defined as tangible documents, which could certainly include computer files, but it seems to me that the govt would argue that voting documents and results are "records," but source code is part of the process by which the records were created rather than the records themselves. Besides, wouldn't this open up all source code used by fede
        • Even the state vs. federal thing aside (as I suspect these machines are used in states that have similar laws to the FOIA), they are made by contractors, not the government itself, so that's a big sticking point. And then of course you'll have them claiming trade secrets etc etc and everything under the sun they can thing of to avoid opening the code, and it's in no way painless or quick any way you look at it.
        • sorry to respond to my own comment, but I remembered something else. FOIA contains exemptions for trade secrets, which generally applies to confidential financial or commercial information, but there is no doubt that it could apply to source code as well. State FOI laws also most likely contain a similar exemption. You actually want this exemption, of course, so that records related to government contracts or agency oversight are not available to the public (you want business confidence, for example, tha
  • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 09, 2007 @05:27PM (#19059441)
    Ballot materials are "delivered" without proof. Even the moment to cast a ballot should be a postal duty. So-far, they can't say if mail was delivered or not when using the non-stamped commercial mail-meter rate. Every certified mail delivery of a vote from a person should be counted once by the postal Clerk in Record of the Direct Treasury Account. A network would facilitate a real-time audit of the vote; emphasizing between the debt to cast a vote in one's favor in valuation of their debt: a citizen-subject as opposed to a Citizen, not confused with a denizen or a national.
  • by infestedsenses ( 699259 ) on Wednesday May 09, 2007 @05:28PM (#19059455) Homepage

    Vendors have time to submit their machines including documentation and source code until July 1st or face severe restrictions, including decertification, for the 2008 elections.

    How will the state ensure that these machines will be identical to those used on election day? Will random voting machines be checked with similar precision during the elections, or what guarantee do we have that these machines will not have been tampered with through "enhanced" source code? I had a glimpse at the FAQ but could not find any information on this, perhaps someone has some pointers?

    For this same reason, Consumer Reports and other reviewers buy products anonymously from stores instead of receiving them from vendors, due to previous cases in which the process (such as that intended with the voting machine review) has been taken advantage of.

    • How will the state ensure that these machines will be identical to those used on election day?

      AFAIK, States with electronic voting already have procedures in place to check the integrity of the voting machine software. Though some of these checks happen after the election.

      That's how they've caught Diebold (I don't recall if other companies did the same)doing last minute software updates to correct functionality issues.

      The biggest stick that the States have is that if they catch a company cheating, there are

    • Once the source had been approved once, wouldnt they simply be able to generate a hash out of the entire set of source, AND of the binaries themselves, and simply compare the machines hashes to the evaluated ones periodically?
      • Once the source had been approved once, wouldnt they simply be able to generate a hash out of the entire set of source, AND of the binaries themselves, and simply compare the machines hashes to the evaluated ones periodically?

        How? Is the hash-generation functionality built into the software? If so, the tampered version can just always return the expected hash.

        The general problem here is that these "voting machines" are general purpose computers, and so you get into the same "can't ever truly know if the m

        • This isn't an intractable problem, much as might seem to be. The way it works should be this: the voting machine has no long-term storage except for a mask rom chip that can be verified with a JTAG. The machine should have 2 slots for flash cards. One card should hold the operating system, and that card can be verified by any standard pc with a pcmcia/cf/etc. slot, and the other card will store the votes and can be wiped before the election. To make things even safer, the cards should have hardware write-pr
  • Chuck the Lot (Score:3, Insightful)

    by glomph ( 2644 ) on Wednesday May 09, 2007 @05:28PM (#19059459) Homepage Journal
    Voting machines provide no advantage, other than obfuscation of possible/probable tampering and errors. Code reviews are a waste of time. Bring back paper. Non-tangible bit-flipping to register votes will never be sufficiently accountable.

    At VERY minimum, institute scantron (filled in boxes on paper) voting.
    • Uh, no. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by raehl ( 609729 ) <raehl311@NoSpam.yahoo.com> on Wednesday May 09, 2007 @05:37PM (#19059583) Homepage
      Voting machines provide no advantage

      Electronic voting machines are in virtually every way superior to paper voting machines.

      They prevent you from accidentally submitting an invalid ballot.

      They can be updated with a correct ballot much easier than actually printing ballots.

      They can more easily accommodate voting by the disabled.

      They can randomly display the list of candidates, eliminating the 'first ballot position' advantage.

      What does NOT have many advantages, and has several disadvantages, is electronic vote-STORING machines. We definitely don't want any of those. But as long as the voting machine kicks out a voter-readable paper ballot, we don't really even need to know the software it's running. Anything nefarious will be obvious on the ballots.
      • by glomph ( 2644 )
        Great. get a SuperMario voting machine, that faithfully spits out the choices you beep-clicked into the blinkie-box. SO WHAT? What actually happens during the aggregation of the voting has no relation to the printout, and cannot be traced. Unless the machine holds an identical, machine-readable printout that you can see, internally. Not bloody likely.

        Too bad for the trees, how about staying away from McDonald's on election day... there's a lot more environmental damage in a meal there, than a sing
        • It's the paper output that is counted.

          If you are willing to accept a scantron with votes as a ballot, there's no logical reason not to accept a sheet printed by an electronic voting machine as a ballot. The only difference is that one is filled out with a pen and one is filled out with a fancy typewriter.
          • by glomph ( 2644 )
            Thanks for the clarification.

            Yeah, that's better.

            But I don't see that this is any better than a well-designed Scantron (darken-the-box) paper ballot.

            Just seems like a way to waste money. And I'm sure that visually-impaired types would rather
            handle paper than look at a screen and use a touch screen, or whatever.
            • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

              by mOdQuArK! ( 87332 )
              You can make a very nice vote-printing machine (rather than a vote-counting) machine, with all kinds of standards to make sure the questions are easy to read (or hear), that the answer that you put down is actually associated with the question that is on the screen, and that you can only put down ONE answer per voting question.

              The resultant ballot sheet should contain a list of the items that you voted on, with your answer easily readable next to each item (using a machine AND voter-readable font, since hav
              • by Chandon Seldon ( 43083 ) on Wednesday May 09, 2007 @08:30PM (#19061353) Homepage

                using a machine AND voter-readable font

                Machine counting of votes is also sketchy. The big controversies in the 2004 election weren't about direct-recording machines, they were about the automated ballot counting machines. Unless you have a policy in place to require that the paper ballots be retained after scanning (rather than being destroyed) and a way to force a manual recount if *anyone* suspects machine tampering, you really haven't gained anything.

                Someone on Slashdot once suggested separating ballot sorting from ballot counting. Put the ballots in a sorting machine and then use a dumb counting machine to count the sorted stacks. That's a much better plan (as long as the counter checks the stack to verify that it's sorted).

        • the obvious solution to me is to use a voting machine to generate the voting record, which is then used to count votes.

          basically, you go in, make your selections on the machine, then when you're done, hit print. out comes 2 copies of your votes, which you can check against what is on screen, then drop one of them in the ballot box and take one home with you. the vote paper would be machine-and-human-readable (ala scantron), allowing for quick tabulation (not as fast as pure electronic voting, but fast eno
          • Re:Uh, no. (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Kandenshi ( 832555 ) on Wednesday May 09, 2007 @06:10PM (#19059901)
            "The day after the election, you best have a paper record saying you voted for my man Mr. McFakename.
            It wouldd be most ... unfortunate if you were to fall down a flight of stairs repeatedly."

            What I'm subtly alluding to is vote buying/intimidation being possible if you take an official record of your voting behaviours home with you.
            • What I'm subtly alluding to is vote buying/intimidation being possible if you take an official record of your voting behaviours home with you.

              scratch that part of the plan then. it doesn't exist with current paper ballots, which i have reasonable confidance in, so i don't feel it is absolutely nessesary for it.
          • In Canada we use hand counted pen and paper ballots and the results make the 11 o'clock news. I don't see why the US can't do the same. It's not like vote counting is a serial process. It can be parallelized extremely well.
            • In Canada we use hand counted pen and paper ballots and the results make the 11 o'clock news. I don't see why the US can't do the same. It's not like vote counting is a serial process. It can be parallelized extremely well.

              Um, how would we divert millions of dollars in taxpayer money to our cronies in the electronic-voting industry under this plan?

              Unless those are special, patented, electronic pens, which only write in invisible ink that can only be displayed with a special reader, I don't think that plan w
        • by AK Marc ( 707885 )
          What actually happens during the aggregation of the voting has no relation to the printout, and cannot be traced.

          Everything you complain about is exactly the same as it is now with regular paper machines. Electronic machines that print but do not store are superior to mechanical systems (when done right) and have fewer concerns. Going to a well-designed print-only electronic voting system is an improvement over the best mechanical systems available.
      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        As someone who's done some academic research on voting technology, I'd like to respond.

        Electronic voting machines are in virtually every way superior to paper voting machines.

        Um...

        They prevent you from accidentally submitting an invalid ballot.

        So do precinct count optical scan ballots (i.e. scantron). The way it goes is that you fill out your ballot and then a poll worker scans it through the machine to make sure you have no overvotes or doodles outside of the designated boxes. If you screwed up, your ballot is destroyed and you get a new one and re-vote. This doesn't happen for central count optical scan ballots (where they box them all up and take t

        • by AK Marc ( 707885 )
          So do precinct count optical scan ballots (i.e. scantron).

          When I was in junior high, I had a teacher that hated technology. She thought Scantron was the devil's tool. When we took such tests and she ran them through the reader, she would run everything through twice. The way it marked errors, you could see where it marked ones right once and wrong once. I can't recall a single time where there wasn't an error. Who is to say that the calibration in the local devices is the same as the ones doing the o
        • Your response looks poor to me. You are suggesting heavy additional work loads (scanning machines, used to check the scantron ballot, and someoen to process them)

          You totally failed to understand his "update with a correct ballot comment". And brought in side issues that are not required at all as part of his idea. Yeah, in the CURRENT system they require pre-printed ballots - if they were implement his concept that would not be a requirement. His concept is basically that the 'election' machines would

      • They can be updated with a correct ballot much easier than actually printing ballots.
        Exactly. The ballot you submit can be updated with the "correct" candidate choices right there at the polling place!
      • They can be updated with a correct ballot much easier than actually printing ballots.
        They can randomly display the list of candidates, eliminating the 'first ballot position' advantage.


        Both of these could be cheaply achieved by using a computer and printer to print the ballots on the spot at the polling station.
      • They prevent you from accidentally submitting an invalid ballot.

        We spend enough time teaching every US citizen to fill out standardized tests in school that we should be able to expect them to handle a multiple choice ballot. One thing that might help the "multiple mark" problem would be moving to Approval Voting, which also has other advantages.

        They can be updated with a correct ballot much easier than actually printing ballots.
        They can randomly display the list of candidates, eliminating the 'first ba

      • by putaro ( 235078 )
        Electronic voting machines are in virtually every way superior to paper voting machines.

        They prevent you from accidentally submitting an invalid ballot.


        Damn straight! You can do it so easily with some code like this:

        public boolean isBallotValid()
        {
        if (ballot.isRepublicanStraightTicket())
        return true;
        if (ballot.hasDemocratSelected())
        return
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      Paper ballots can be manipulated easily as well. It's just a different set of problems.

      I don't want to waste my time writing down possibilities that are going to be ignored, so anybody who's curious can just use their imagination on how to defraud a paper ballot based system.

      Electronic voting can be secured as much as modern paper ballots - it's not inherently impossible.
      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        Electronic voting can be secured as much as modern paper ballots - it's not inherently impossible.

        Actually, it is inherently impossible for the security properties that matter most for a voting system. Specifically, every voter needs to be able to understand the security of voting process well enough that they can recognize attempts at voting fraud. That's a property that paper ballots that go in ballot boxes can easily have, but is strictly impossible for software installed on a computer.

        Consider a 62 y

    • the problem with paper ballots is the way the US system works and how many choices are made in the voting booth.

      with canadian voting, it works quite fine, as you're only deciding on one person (your MP or MLA, for federal and provincial elections respectively), but when you're deciding on the presidant, the judges, the schoolboard, etc. it gets more than slightly confusing and becomes difficult to keep the ballot to a reasonable size and have it remain usable by the visually impaired.

      though scantron would b
      • I've always wondered why they voted for so many different positions in the United states. What is the point of voting for somebody if you can't delegate some of the decision making to them? Should I really have to vote for the school board? Shouldn't that be handled by someone else. I don't think that anybody has the time to familiarize themselves with hundreds of candidates to make the choices they make actually meaningful. Or do people just scan down the list of ballots, and choose democrat/republica
  • When they are used in the 2008 election, will the code they are running match the audited source code?
  • I don't see anything in the reiew draft or FAQ about voter-confirmable human-readable records [scarydevil.com] (paper ballots, tapes, or other human-readable media). If there is a printed human-countable ballot that the voter can visually confirm was correct and saved then the possibility of electronic fraud is minimized.
  • Voting is fun again (Score:4, Informative)

    by Original Replica ( 908688 ) on Wednesday May 09, 2007 @05:33PM (#19059525) Journal
    Now if we have secure, trustworthy voting (electronic or not) and Maryland's governor gets his way, people might actually feel like their vote means something again.

    Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley signed off on legislation [SB 634 materials] Tuesday that will award Maryland's ten votes in the US Electoral College [NARA materials] to the national popular vote winner in presidential elections, instead of the recipient of the most votes in Maryland. The legislation will only take effect, however, if a majority of the states representing the total 538 electoral votes adopt similar laws. The bill's sponsor, state Senator Jamie Raskin, told AP that the move to a popular vote system "will reawaken politics in every part of the country," even Maryland, a state presidential candidates usually sidestep because of the belief that it will always vote for the Democratic candidate.http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/20 07/04/maryland-governor-signs-law-changing.php [pitt.edu]
    • by nebaz ( 453974 ) *
      Ok, this is idiotic. Why should a state's electoral vote determination have anything at all to do with voters in other states? This really dilutes Maryland voter's individual input. If this were enacted by everyone, the electoral college would be a unanimous vote. "Winner take all" in a state is better than this, though proportional electoral vote on a per state level is best, IMHO.
      • If this were enacted by everyone, the electoral college would be a unanimous vote that always matched the national popular vote, and would thus not even matter.
      • All they need is the majority of the electoral votes and suddenly everyone in the country has a vote that counts. The only reason we are seeing this kind of vote reform is because it isn't being done by the Federal Government. This is a wonderful example of states being a balance to the federal gov. It's a correction that is long overdue, but our national government was never going to make the necessary reforms, so it's being made for them at the state level.
      • by sconeu ( 64226 )
        Exactly.

        Instead of "Winner Take All", since electoral votes are allocated on the basis of House and Senate representation, I propose:

        The winner in each Congressional district receives one electoral vote. The overall winner in each state receives the two votes allocated due to Senate representation.

  • They won't submit their source code. They've been down that road before, and pulled out of North Carolina.

    Link [eff.org]

    • by koreth ( 409849 ) * on Wednesday May 09, 2007 @05:43PM (#19059655)

      If they pull out of California because of that, they may as well just quit the election systems game altogether. It's the largest market, and more importantly, when California does significant things, other states very often follow its lead, for better or worse.

      Not, mind you, that I'm saying it's a bad thing for Diebold to get out of the market. (Which it's been reported they're considering doing anyway.) Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out, I say to them.

      • by zCyl ( 14362 )

        If they pull out of California because of that, they may as well just quit the election systems game altogether.

        Diebold was already decertified in California and sued by the state on charges of fraud. I have heard nothing about recertification since then.

        And yes, they might as well pull out of the election market. Just today I saw "Diebold" written on an ATM, and couldn't help but lose faith in the ATM.
      • by griffjon ( 14945 )
        Hold on, don't let them leave yet, I still am installing electro-shock spikes on the door to hit 'em on their way out.
    • by OWJones ( 11633 ) on Wednesday May 09, 2007 @06:27PM (#19060097)

      As one of the people involved in the crafting of the North Carolina law and supporting Joyce's lawsuit, I can clarify a bit. We suspect Diebold pulled out of North Carolina not because of the source code escrow issues (which they claim to have complied with in Georgia) but because the CEO of each voting company had to sign a legally binding document saying that the source code his company installed on our machines was the same code that would be placed in escrow and provided to the examiners. On the day this document was due Diebold pulled out of the state, sending a "helpful" letter to the State Board of Elections offering to help "reform" our newly-passed law.

      -jdm

    • How much source code could there possibly be to count votes? Seriously. It's not like they'd be giving away any trade secrets. votes[candidateIndex] += 1. Yeah, better not let that leak.
  • I appreciate California's effort to verify that their electronic voting machines work. I have developed an economic process for certifying electronic voting machines.

    1) Determine if the voting machine produces a voter-readable, paper ballot.
    2) Determine if this ballot is the OFFICIAL voting record.
    3) If 1 and 2 are true, then the machine is good. If not, it's not.

    There you go. Why do people insist on making easy problems hard?
    • by Nursie ( 632944 ) on Wednesday May 09, 2007 @06:43PM (#19060285)
      Hmm. One could almost do this with a piece of paper!

      If only there was a way to mark a piece of paper with the candidate's names and then have a box next to each!

      And perhaps some sort of paper marking implement to be given to the voter such that they may indicate their choice...

      I fear such technology may be beyond us.
      • by cdrguru ( 88047 )
        Why would you assume that qualfied voters are capable of making proper, verifiable marks on said piece of paper?

        What if they are blind or without hands? Are such voters to be disenfranchised or reliant on helpers?

        What if they are of such limited capabilities that they cannot understand the instructions, such as the Florida November 2000 voters could not understand how to punch out cards to vote? Are such people to be disenfranchised?

        All a paper ballot is is a test for the voter and we threw out poll tests
        • by Nursie ( 632944 )
          So all the machines cater for the blind too?

          And are able to be operated by people with no hands?

          Yah, right. If there are specialised machines for that now then keep 'em, everyone else can put a tick in a box. It's even simpler than punch cards. You use a pen and put a tick in the big black box.

          If you can't put a tick in a box because you're too dumb then you shouldn't be breathing, let alone voting.
          • by raehl ( 609729 )
            If you can't put a tick in a box because you're too dumb then you shouldn't be breathing, let alone voting.

            You don't understand the problem.

            The problem isn't the voters. If all we had to do was throw out the ballots of people who couldn't check boxes correctly, we'd be in good shape. But that's not the case.

            The problem is the counters.

            Who decides what counts as a ticked box and what doesn't?

            Scantrons, checked boxes, punch cards, etc, are not yes/no mediums. They are open to INTERPRETATION. And when you
        • What if they are blind or without hands? Are such voters to be reliant on helpers?

          Sure. It's far better to force a small percentage of the population to rely on a person of their choice that they trust than it is to require everyone to rely on machines that are inherently untrustworthy.

          You may not understand how to put marks on a ballot so it can be unambigously counted, but you can vote.

          If people are that incompetent, why would you expect them to be able to operate a computerized voting machine? Not th

      • by Belial6 ( 794905 )
        Personally, I could not care less whether the voting happens on paper or a computer. I just want the data to be entered into the machine before I leave, and I want a piece of paper in a box that is both human and machine readable. I then want anyone who wants to audit the election to be able to go to the paper vote's storage location to run the paper through their own machine. Heck, people should be able to sign up to run the human-machine readable paper immediately after the polls close. Then their sho
    • Actually we do this in LA. (I can't vouch for other counties.) Though we don't wholesale use TEVs for the general election (Imagine putting TEVs in 5,000 precincts.) we do have roughly 12 locations for early and same day voting using the TEV machines. Yes, they're supplied by Diebold and run the sucky WinCE OS.

      In any case: As part of the process, each TEV has a printer. At the beginning of the voting period, the election official has to run a "zero-report" showing the machine has zero votes cast. The offi
      • And if you have any responsibility for the election process, you should be fired.

        Guaranteeing that the number of votes cast matches the number of votes in the machine DOES NOT GUARANTEE THAT THE NUMBER OF VOTES CAST FOR EACH CANDIDATE MATCH THE NUMBER OF VOTES RECORDED!

        Putting yellow tape around a machine does not do a damn thing to guarantee that the software running in the machine is legitimate.

        That machine could have software in it that worked fine during any testing phase, then on election day took vote
        • Sigh...
          ...yet another consipiricy theorist. You know, I feel proud that blackbox kicked me off their site and banned me because they couldn't handle what I was saying. Sadly, common sense doesn't seem to work with you people. Instead you resort to all caps and attempted insults. In any case...

          And if you have any responsibility for the election process, you should be fired.

          Well, fortunately, I don't have any responsibility for elections. I just happen to know some of the people who do and am an advocate for ensuring every person gets their vote counted.

          Guaranteeing that the number of votes cast matches the number of votes in the machine DOES NOT GUARANTEE THAT THE NUMBER OF VOTES CAST FOR EACH CANDIDATE MATCH THE NUMBER OF VOTES RECORDED!

          Um, no. You are correct. How

  • stupid... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by j0nb0y ( 107699 ) <jonboy300.yahoo@com> on Wednesday May 09, 2007 @05:56PM (#19059769) Homepage
    There is no need to see the source code for this software.

    There is only one specification for a secure voting machine, and it is easy to test. There is no need to see the source code. If the machine meets the spec, it is a secure voting machine. Otherwise, it is not, and should not be certified.

    Here is the specification:

    1. The voter votes on the machine.
    2. The machine prints out a ballot.
    3. The voter checks the ballot for accuracy, then deposits it in the ballot box.
    4. Ballots in the box are tallied for the official vote count.

    Simple, easy, secure, reliable, and recountable. There is no need to see any source code.

    A voting machine which doesn't meet this spec is not secure. It doesn't matter how many times you check the source, the machine will still not be secure. An "open source" voting machine which does not meet this spec is not secure. /.ers like to equate secure voting machines with open source. I like open source, but trying to inject it in this issue is foolish. It is irrelevant whether the voting machine uses open source software. Either it meets the spec, or it doesn't.
    • You are right, vieweing software is pointless b/c you never know what is on the machine, but your naive strategy is far from secure.

      You forgot a few key bullets to name a few:

      1a) Only a valid voter may vote

      3a) the ballot matches the vote that is recorded internally and wasn't spoofed to the printer

      4a) the storage method, accounting method, global upload, global tally are all secure

      • by j0nb0y ( 107699 )
        1a) Only a valid voter may vote

        This is not checked by machines today in any precinct that I know of. I see no reason to hand this responsibility to a machine.

        3a) the ballot matches the vote that is recorded internally and wasn't spoofed to the printer

        I think you misunderstand the design. There is no vote recorded by the machine. The only tally that counts is the tally of the printed ballots.

        4a) the storage method, accounting method, global upload, global tally are all secure

        Again, this isn't done by loca
    • by zCyl ( 14362 )
      Yes. What you say is correct and should be the ultimate test. But seeing the source code is a useful thing to check too. Sometimes source code is of such poor quality that you wouldn't trust it to count your spare change. If this is the case, then it's good to be able to see.

      Also, you might want to check for security problems in the code. Yes, the printed ballot should be checked by the voter before accepting, but not every voter is perfect. It's nice to have multiple levels of error checking for some
      • If the machine is outputting a paper ballot, how it produces that ballot is completely irrelevant.

        Talking about source code is just a distraction from the important thing: the voter can visually see what vote they're casting.

        • by zCyl ( 14362 )

          If the machine is outputting a paper ballot, how it produces that ballot is completely irrelevant.

          And if you can walk into a voting machine booth, push a magic button combination, and cause it to print 200 paper ballots for your candidate, is it still irrelevant?

          (Remember that many of these machines store the paper ballot internally like a receipt spool, visible through a glass plate, and thus it does not have to be "handed in".)
          • (Remember that many of these machines store the paper ballot internally like a receipt spool, visible through a glass plate, and thus it does not have to be "handed in".)

            That's not acceptable, because it prevents an election observer from detecting fraud.

  • I'm tired of voting machine stories. I don't think anybody is actually doing anything except providing lip service because it's deja vu all over again. I think the term "review" is open to review.
  • I'm not big on voting machines, but if we're going to have them, they should be open.

    This guy [openvotingconsortium.org] (Alan Dechert) is active in CA and needs your help. I've ponied up some dough; please join me.

    He's speaking at the Red Hat Summit [redhat.com] today!

  • Why is it that generally the Dems seem against electronic voting and republicans for it? Or am I wrong in this assumption?

    Is it because the companies that make the current crop of machines are somehow perceived (or in actuality) in the pocket of the Republicans?
  • Hm. If this is real, then it might help the Governator become the guy who finishes the job of the total destruction of human kind.

    If you expose voter fraud, then you become a hero. And everybody wants a hero for president.

    I wonder how this game of Illuminati will play out? I wonder if it even matters at this point, what with the sky starting to fall and all that.


    -FL

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