Voting Machines Vs. Slot Machines 299
dmh20002 writes "Being a Nevada resident and knowing people who write code for slot machines, I was aware of the stringent measures the state of Nevada uses to vet the security of slot machines. The Nevada Gaming Control Board audits everything about them, both physical and soft, for unintentional and intentional security holes. Hearing the hoopla on voting machines, the contrast was obvious. Slot machines are about money, which is more important than votes, apparently. Now the state of Nevada is looking at electronic voting machines and plan to apply some of the same safeguards. Just applying the Nevada technical standards for gaming machines and vendors to voting machines would be a start, since there don't seem to be any standards for voting machines. A funny/sad sideline is that in Nevada, every year or two a programmer or engineer goes to jail for exploiting slot machines."
A "DUH!" moment (Score:5, Insightful)
We should have thought of this a LONG time ago.
What is possibly even more disturbing is the fact that our paid officials, you know, the ones that are supposed to be looking out for our best interests, didn't think of this either. Or, and this is something that must be considered, they did and didn't do anything about it.
Book quote that I think applies here: "If god had wanted me to vote, he would have given me candidates"
Audit trail (Score:5, Insightful)
Similarly, I should know that some standards and enforcement is in place when I vote. Otherwise, I'm putting my trust in someone I don't know and who has interests that are probably different than mine.
Voting should not be about trust, it should be about results. Any third party should be able to verify results, regardless of their interest.
Smart Developers Look for Stuff Like This... (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, the item about slot machine fraud shows that -- no matter how stringent your precautions are -- if the stakes are high enough, people will try to defraud your system. Some will succeed.
The important thing to keep in mind is that this is just as true for our current voting technologies as it will be for electronic voting.
Engineers Exploiting Machines (Score:4, Insightful)
A funny/sad sideline is that in Nevada, every year or two a programmer or engineer goes to jail for exploiting slot machines
Engineers tend not to be highly political, but they certainly are greedy. I think the likelyhood of engineers trying to exploit voting machines is a lot lower than engineers trying to exploit what are essentially money-dispensing machines.
It is true that engineers can be used as tools by those who are more interested in rigging elections, but that's also true with slot-machines. The engineer greed factor is still missing.
Never mind slot machines (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sigh, Poor Programmer - Rich Casino (Score:4, Insightful)
Nevada hookers have better slot security (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sigh, Poor Programmer - Rich Casino (Score:3, Insightful)
He stole the cash by abusing his government job. Everyone knows you only get away with that if you're at the top.
How about bribes? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It's Broke, Buy It Anyway (Score:5, Insightful)
True, but instead people like that have come up with a system where they use our money to buy machines that they can rig and stay in office with. You do understand there's a reason why they knowingly buy defective voting machines, don't you?
Don't trust Diebold? Use absentee ballots. (Score:5, Insightful)
Voting vs. Gambling (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Heh... (Score:2, Insightful)
The 'coin whip' is just what it sounds like. The old fashioned piece of metal just as heavy as a quarter which you could place into a machine, but had a piece of wire or string built into the metal that would allow you to yank it out after the machine counted it.
Re:A "DUH!" moment (Score:4, Insightful)
Nevada can afford to spend the money needed to check the software because they get a ton of money from the casinos in taxes. How much money does your state spend on elections?
But anyway, think what the voter turnout would be if random voters occasionally won a cash jackpot. I'm guessing over 100%.
Think Lotto machine (Score:4, Insightful)
We've already got good voting machines here - they're called Lotto machines. Any wino can walk in with a lotto ticket that he's scribbled on with a piece of road tar, and the machines do a great job of reading the ticket - plus, you get a paper printout for verification - plus, the system knows which ticket went to which store. Audit trails, hardcopy - Hmmm,
But we don't need (or want) all that silly accountability stuff to re-elect Bush do we
Please help, I am sigless - will code for sigs.
It isn't that hard, kids (Score:4, Insightful)
In the weeks after the 2000 Presidential election, I wrote a letter to my congresspeople recommending that the system be rendered electronically by individuals who know about safety-critical, high-availability software. Airplane code, gambling-device code, medical-device code, etc.
This is not by any means new technology or new processes. But because the states see a great need, it has become a new scam for brainless, heartless business jerks to exploit.
Write your state and national legislators. Get the laws changed to ensure that the design and implementation of e-democracy includes the same care that is used when re-counting paper ballots.
Re:Gambling Addicts (Score:3, Insightful)
Barney Frank is the only elected official I've found who talks reasonably about the future of gambling. (Namely, let people do what the hell they want with thier own money) (Funny, you'd think that should be a Republican stance... but it isn't.)
Whatever, troll (Score:3, Insightful)
So lesse, abusing gov't position, and 1/10 the total jail time (2 years out of 20). Sounds about right.
Re:Money IS more important than votes (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not about a single vote, but about the millions of potential votes that don't get cast.
But you're right, this is a "pie in the sky" perspective. From an individual point of view, one or two votes does not make a difference in any election. But what about millions of millions of people ignoring their rights as Americans to vote? Imagine what history would be like if those people voted? I bet, historically, the world would be a different place all together.
-troy
Not a good solution... (Score:2, Insightful)
Either way, once part of the system is electronic, the whole process can be questioned.
Re:Gaming Control Board: Corrupt? (Score:3, Insightful)
The comparing disturbs me less than the fact that gambling comes out looking better.
-- this is not a
Re:Heh... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's Broke, Buy It Anyway (Score:3, Insightful)
You do understand there's a reason why they knowingly buy defective voting machines, don't you?
Yea, they're gubment officials and, therefore, totally incapable of making an intelligent purchase decision, no matter how obvious the decision is.
I guess it's easier to just throw away the taxpayers' money and claim another completed project and this snazzy new upgrade. Most of the voters will say "hey - a computer! Yay!" and think (because they're, technologically speaking, complete slobbering morons) that the computer must be secure and good at counting and all that crap. Never mind that the easiest way to trash accuracy and reliability is to increase complexity which is exactly what this does. There are flaws in paper ballot voting but, so far, there are WAY more problems with electronic voting.
Some of the stuff on Slashdot only riles geeks and really only ever will/should. But, frankly, the number of problems with e-Voting disclosed in stories that have hit Slashdot so far is unbelievable. It sickens me to think the government is so inept and/or crooked to continue with this and the public is so apathetic to not care. I'd also like to know why much of the major media is silent on this. It's all very disturbing. This is one of the few times I wear my tinfoil hat out of fear instead of just for looks...
Re:Money IS more important than votes (Score:3, Insightful)
Consider second: the most powerful political position in the world was decided by a margin [geocities.com] that is substantially smaller than the number of /. lurkers currently nodding and saying "Yeah, Voting SUXX0RS".
A single vote isn't much, but a handful of moderately motivated people rounding up their non-voting friends could have changed history.Exploitation of programmers. (Score:2, Insightful)
"Every year or two a programmer or engineer goes to jail for exploiting slot machines."
It says a lot about wages for programmers.
Re:A "DUH!" moment (Score:3, Insightful)
Funny eh? And still the US picks crappy systems from Diebold.
Despite all the brilliant crypto and security people with decent proposals, the US picks voting machines that can actually produce results of negative votes or far more than the number of total voters. Which is far worse than paper ballots. Or even just a show of hands (or just saying Aye/Nay).
Pity that unlike 3rd world countries, getting UN observers to observe the US elections won't even help coz the machines don't have audit trails, by design.
Given most of the US folk allegedly place such great importance on the US being an alleged democratic (republic) I would think that Diebold producing such low quality software for voting should be considered a treasonable offence.
But no. The US citizens are actually more interested in other things.
Re:Audit trail (Score:5, Insightful)
In a voting system you don't need to trust the participants, you need to trust the process. That's why when you count ballots you have representatives of both parties present so that they can all witness what's going on rather than having to trust a ballot counter. So each ballot counter may have an agenda, but the process prevents abuse by any one participant, so that you can still trust the outcome.
Re:Heh... (Score:3, Insightful)
Now substitue the above with Republican and Democrat...
=Shreak
Re:Money IS more important than votes (Score:3, Insightful)
[Freakin' Preview]
Only if they all voted the same way. If 40% of the people who voted, voted for one candidate, then chances are, 40% of the people who didn't vote also would have voted for that candidate. What I'm trying to say is, if you could get all those non-voters to vote, their votes would likely be split almost identically to the proportions of those who already vote. The end result would be the same.
paper should be easy (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:That's not sad, its disgusting (Score:3, Insightful)
That isn't greed at all. It's just stupid.
Re:Money IS more important than votes (Score:3, Insightful)
You have no proof that what you claim is true. How do you know that the non-voters today would be split 50/50 on all issues? That depends on many factors, not the least of which is the economic and financial conditions of most non-voters.
I would guess (and this is a guess so it's not worth much more than your blind conjecture) that many non-voters are low income to poor. Thus they might be more inclined to vote for democrats. If this were the case, not that many votes would have shoved Gore in the White House (I'm not saying this is good or bad, but that more democrat votes would have had this effect).
So before you go assuming that the non-voting public is split right down the middle, you might want to consider the multitude of factors that make up political differences in America.