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."
I've actually programmed slot machines (Score:4, Interesting)
Heh... (Score:5, Interesting)
Good luck putting cameras in every voting booth. People won't mind, right??
Sigh, Poor Programmer - Rich Casino (Score:4, Interesting)
Sometimes, I think justice in the US may be too harsh. It's a bit out of place when you repent, and obviously don't have a record to show you'll continue with crime, but are still left to rot in a prison where raw grunts rape people. Oh well.
Well, at least he made the casino industry quite rich. They must've been happy.
it's a matter of who gets cheated (Score:5, Interesting)
While it's worth noting because it shows the potential to cheat even in a closely watched industry (which the voting machine racket clearly isn't), one should note that programmer or engineer (who) goes to jail for exploiting slot machines is trying to cheat the casino. When the casino uses the software to cheat the player ist's a completely different issue.
Re:Audit trail (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Heh... (Score:5, Interesting)
If someone has enough interest they will break it. I supose thats really the morla of the story. And if you do come up with a way to make the voting booth secure... well then they will just run candidates in the two most major parties that are each kind of non-offensive in their own ways but when you boiul them down are basically exactly the same....
Oh wait... they have been doing that for years.
Anyone else tired of haviong to choose between the idiot sons of the rich?
-Steve
Gaming Control Board: Corrupt? (Score:5, Interesting)
The Nevada Gaming Control Board audits everything about them, both physical and soft, for unintentional and intentional security holes.
And further:
A funny/sad sideline is that in Nevada, every year or two a programmer or engineer goes to jail for exploiting slot machines."
The sideline article [reviewjournal.com] notes that convicted slot-hacker Ron Harris was a gaming board official for several years, and that he provided "more than nine hours of videotaped statements concerning questionable activities in the control board and the gaming industry."
Maybe Harris is covering his tracks by spreading dirt. Then again, maybe the Gaming Control Board is dirty. In any case, comparing voting with gambling makes me fear for my country.
-kgj
Money IS more important than votes (Score:5, Interesting)
Consider first the probability that one vote will actually change the outcome of an election: it's nearly impossible. Odds of 1/10e7 are typical. Mathmatically, a vote is just as bad an investment as a lottery ticket. (Which are, as they say, a "Tax on people who can't do math")
Then consider the real difference choosing a different president or governor will make to your life: not much, really. The two dominant political parties have grown very similar to each other. They'll rarely try to make a significant change (and most changes they attempt will be cancelled out by the other party in the next election). So not only is a vote unlikely to pay off, but that payoff isn't likely to change very much.
Thus, looking at all the possibilities, a rationally self-interested person will not waste his time voting. The hour+ it takes out of your day is actually much more valuable than the tiny chance that the vote you cast actually has a benefit to your life.
This is why explicit selling of votes was criminalized: because if it were legal, the free-market would reveal how cheap each vote really is!
PS. Having computed that voting is a waste of time, why do people still vote? Altruism. They vote not only for themselves, but also to share their wisdom with the rest of the country. And for more selfish reasons- like the feeling of success when your guy wins.
PPS. Several mathmaticians have created alternative voting schemes (different from simple majority) which boost the chance that any single vote will change the outcome of an election. But the public, so far, has rarely been interested.
Re:Heh... (Score:2, Interesting)
I was mistaken on the term. Its 'light wand'. I should have mentioned Tommy Carmichael in my first post. He's the guy that developed almost all the slot cheats there were.
BTW, I recently voted in Virginia.... (Score:5, Interesting)
My experience went as follows. I stepped in the voting booth. It was a very nice touch screen layout.
1/2 way through making my selections.. Up popped a message that my laptop battery was about to die, and that I'd better plug the machine in, etc. Well, I looked, and it was plugged in.
It turned out that these were not very secure systems at all. The basic platform was Windows on a laptop running non-networked. Storing the data on each machine, to later be combined / counted.
We're a long way from having anything better than punching a card, and eating chads. A hacker could easily do way more damage.
In the above case.... I was at the voting place early. I was #14 in my precinct to vote.
Re:Audit trail (Score:5, Interesting)
A public key cryptosystem and a signature scheme based on di.. (context) - ElGamal - 1985
Receipt-free secret-ballot elections (context) - Benaloh, Tuinstra - 1994
A practical secret voting scheme for large scale election (context) - Fujioka, Okamoto et al. - 1992
Multi-authority secret ballot elections with linear work - Cramer, Franklin et al. - 1996
Verifiable secret-ballot elections (context) - Benaloh - 1987
Universally verifiable mix-net with verification work indepe.. (context) - Abe - 1998
Designated verifier proofs and their applications - Jakobsson, Sako et al. - 1996
Elections with unconditionally- secret ballots and disruptio.. (context) - Chaum - 1988
How to prevent buying of votes in computer elections (context) - Niemi, Rendall - 1994
Public-key cryptosystems based on discrete logarithms residu.. (context) - Paillier - 1999
Some remarks on a receipt-free and universally verifiable mi.. - Michels, Horster - 1996
Receipt-free electronic voting schemes for large scale elect.. - Okamoto - 1997
A secure an optimally efficient multi-authority election sch.. (context) - Cramer, Gennaro et al. - 1997
Receipt-freeness in largescale elections without untappable
An Improvement on a practical secret voting scheme (context) - Ohkubo, Miura et al. - 1999
I use to work for a casino company (Score:1, Interesting)
The strictest of reviews are applied at both the hardware and software levels.
We dealt with finite based slot machines (like an electronic scratch-n-win ticket; all of the winners/losers are precomputed instead of relying on normal distribution). All of these winners/losers were stored in a database for later retrieval. The w/l lists are entirely randomly generated based on the number of w/l (essentially the payout) that the client desires.
One of our win/loss lists was rejected because it wasn't "random enough".
Re:Heh... (Score:5, Interesting)
A good example is a beach, X units long, with two snack carts on it. Assume one is at .25X and one is at .75X -- they each have access to .5X and will get half the consumers on the beach who want snacks (assuming people walk to the nearst carts, prices, selection and service are the same, etc.). Now say the first guy moves to .33X. He still gets everyone from 0 - .33X coming to him, but now gets half the people from .33X - .75X, stealing business from guy 2, who promptly moves to .66X to make up for it. Eventually they end up at .49X and .51X (or both at .50X if you want), glaring at each other, each still getting 50% of the business, any intermediate gains lost.
And of course, the people at the ends of the beach get screwed. Now think of the snack shops as Republicans and Democrats. There ya go.
Re:Think Lotto machine (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Audit trail (Score:2, Interesting)
It doesn't end here (Score:2, Interesting)
Think about electronic breathalizers, for example.
At least for the State of North Carolina, all the elements of an exploit are present:
It would be trivial for an insider to rig the machine such that if the name of the person to be tested matched some internal structure, the readout would always be two tenths below whatever the calibration sample read.
And with that kind of exculpatory evidence on your side, one could drink and drive to one's heart's content and never have to worry about a drunk-driving conviction: just demand a breathalizer test to "prove" your innocence and the case would never make it to court for a closer examination.
That's not sad, its disgusting (Score:4, Interesting)
Keno, as a refresher (and correct me if I'm wrong) is similar to the lottery, except that you have to choose eleven numbers, and in order to be a big winner, your numbers must match the ordering of the pulled numbers.
In fact, it is so unlikely that anyone would match all 11 numbers in order that no one has done it in the history of the game. (Except this guy, who rigged the game).
*ANY* other person who has the same amount of greed and exploits his position to gain his means deserves the same punishment.
Electronic Voting (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Heh... (Score:2, Interesting)
Moron.
Re:Never happen (Score:1, Interesting)
Re: putting off an election (Score:3, Interesting)
This is to me the scary side of the recent voting shennanigans.
First, implement flawed voting scheme, but do it slowly so as to keep it under the radar. Once enough people accept it, use it for the next BIG election. A short while later (ie: while still in office), notify the public that the vote didn't work, and the system is broken. Of course, it will take months at the very least to figure out what went wrong, some more months to implement a new voting scheme, etc, etc. Sorry, the election can't be counted, and we'll have to keep the current administration around until things get sorted out.
Does the US constitution or law have anything that deals with a situation like this? Sounds like a good way to stay in power a lot longer than you normally would otherwise.
Re:Never mind slot machines (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Sign the petition! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Gaming Control Board: Corrupt? (Score:4, Interesting)
The Ron Harris case was not one of the board being dirty, it was of an individual being dirty. The other side of the coin is that there were few checks for Ron and he had a lot of trust. Shortly after this happened, Sandia National Labs came in and audited the Gamining Control Board for free. Turns out they were interested in the gaming industry since they are the only other place where EPROM use is so critical and they had interest in finding out how the board handled it.
At any rate, Sandia produced a huge report that showed the Board's short comings including being understaffed in the Electronic Services Division. The Board took the report to the legislature and got a budget approved that allowed them to hire more engineers to work in the lab. They also implemented all of the procedural changes that Sandia recommended. So this actually improved the proceedures of the board. Similar to a new exploit found in the kernel, right.
I got a job there shortly after the approval of hiring more engineers. The people that work for the Nevada Gaming Control Board are all honest, hard-working people. I don't work there any more, but I keep in touch with some of them. The consensus of those that knew Ron was that he had worked hard to build cases against slot cheats only to have their wrists slapped. He knew he could do a better job of it than they did. The only problem of course was that he abused the trust of the people because of the position he held. The judge made an example out of him. And rightly so, I think.
Open source voting machine software? (Score:2, Interesting)
Voting is not that hard. A few developers could probably build software that would be useful for 80% of the voting use cases world-wide. And, it would likely be more secure and run on a range of inexpensive hardware.
Such an open source project would be a real social good, a work-around for a part of the software industry that is pretty clearly failing to represent the public interest, and a good demonstration that development of critical systems should happen more in the open.
It would also save money for debt-ridden state and local governments (thanks again, Bush
Re:Audit trail (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Heh... (Score:2, Interesting)
The interesting thing about this economic theory when applied to politics is that it probably leads to a better outcome for society on average.
If you imagine cart A succeeds (i.e wins the election) while cart B goes out of business (loses the election), then all the customers (voters) on cart B's side of the beach are better off because A moved closer to the center.
Sure the outliers on the far side of A might be disappointed with A's move, but the majority of the beach will appreciate a location (political position) closer to the center.
Re:A "DUH!" moment (Score:3, Interesting)
Counting the votes is not the biggest fix in the system, choosing who gets a vote is. Back in the 1950s the southern seggregationist states had 'litteracy tests' which in practice were tests of skin color. A white guy no matter how illiterate always passed, A black guy could be a school teacher and would still be failled.
In Florida the fix was in long before the vote. Most folk know about the 'choicepoint' company that was paid to purge the voter rolls of 'fellons' and did so with an accuracy of less than 15%. Choicepoint were originally contracted to perform extensive cross checking of the scrub list but when Bush and Harris took over someone told choicepoint not to bother with any checking at all. Harris also sent numerous demands to the country returning officers on the implementation of the scrub list even though several districts were reporting astonishingly high error rates.
Click on my sig line to see the details. A postscript here is that when the Republicans had to diss the report on this fiasco they chose the same American Enterprise Institute 'fellow' to do the hatchet job who had previously been found peddling bogus statistics claiming 'More Guns Less Crime'. In fact as several researchers have shown the data Lott produced was fixed and when this spilled over into the blogosphere Lott was found to have been posting articles defending himself under a false name.
If you are worried about Diebold read the Pallast article, then work out how you can help to kick this scum out of office.