Diebold Fails Again in San Diego 333
ptudor writes "An article in today's San Diego Union Tribune reveals nearly 3000 absentee ballots in the San Diego primary one month ago were miscounted. 'The miscounts occurred because multiple scanners simultaneously fed the absentee ballot data into the computer tabulation system. The large number of ballots and candidates on them overwhelmed the system. Diebold spokesman David Bear said the company has provided a software fix to the county for the new problem.' The irregularities were found in a routine post-election review." You can also read more about the problems on election day.
The Bug Revealed! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:The Bug Revealed! (Score:5, Funny)
Just 3000? (Score:5, Funny)
Great! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Great! (Score:2, Funny)
Sign on the door to California:
Fully Tested... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fully Tested... (Score:2, Interesting)
Wait untill your company gets as big as liebold......
Re:Fully Tested... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fully Tested... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fully Tested... (Score:3, Insightful)
Well that's good news! Incompetent evildoers are better than competent ones.
ramifications... (Score:5, Insightful)
coincidence?
The ramifications are, they can be programmed to give any results they want, and you can't tell. They can be reprogrammed on the spot with a card, or done over a modem. You tell me if you think they are secure, accurate and unbiased, because there's no way anyone who doesn't work for diebold can tell. Before, we had paper ballots, you could eyeball the results, anyone who could see and count could verify a result at the end of the day, now... the machine spits out whatever, there is zero, repeat zero way to verify what the real numbers are. And tell ya, it only takes alteration of a few numbers to REALLY change things.
but it's NEW and SHINY, so it must be better, right?
Tell me, what is the worth, in dollars, a guess, of CONTROLLING a state office like a governorship or a national office like a Rep, Senator or a Presidency? Really, what's the worth, then think on what people do for much, much, much less potential "reward", how far human beings will go for just a few thou? Criminals do a very poor risk/reward ratio when they do a crime. But, what are the risks of getting caught if BY LAW AND DESIGN only a few people really know what's going on with some black box, when your naked eyeballs aren't enough to verify a tally, when no paper trail exists, when the black box has several ways to access it, and when the potential rewards for any criminality can run into sums of figures that are planet earth mind boggling large? When the power that can be accrued by skewing a tally includes literally the getting handed the power of life or death over entire other nations? What is the risk/potential reward ratio then?
Lotta questions, so far the only answers we have point to A-serious incompetence or delibarate malfeasance with voting computers, and B the people involved are connected to extremely radical elements in the political military industrial complex within a single political party, an extreme faction of that party.
I know what my analysis of that tells me
Re:Fully Tested... (Score:5, Insightful)
If he creates a corporate culture where a Republican ideology is prevalent, it's entirely possible that some low-level Diebold executive decides that the people in his jurisdiction wouldn't have really voted for that commie pinko hippie if they really knew about him, so why not change a few hundred votes here and implement the real will of the people...
Or are you just saying that Diebold got the contract because their president is a Republican? If so, that's funny. Every administration plays favorites... not just Republicans. Not to say that it's right, but I'd say it's the product of an election system that requires vast amounts of money.
And when the Democrats do it they deserve criticism too. I just don't think "well they all do it" invalidates criticism, and I certainly don't think the president of a prominent voting machine company should claim publicly that he is "committed to help Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."
I Wonder... (Score:2, Funny)
Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, there are sites on the net that conduct thousands of transactions in very short periods of time. It doesn't seem like this is really that hard.
How can a company like diebold still be in business if they can't take data from some form fields, and put it into a database?
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Funny)
But they don't always do it well (164 %) [slashdot.org]
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
I wrote the core code that Diebold needs.... (Score:4, Funny)
while (ballots > 0) {
if (vote == republican)
republicanCount++;
else if (vote == democrat)
democratCount++
else
cout "Threw his vote away" endl;
}
Re:I wrote the core code that Diebold needs.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
I once did a university project that was an election system prototype. We had to write the whole thing in C++ (Qt), and it had to count votes Australian style, both Senate and House of Reps.
It was easy. The hardest part was working out what the election rules actually are (for special cases). One prof at the university was a government appointee to interpret the rules in the case of a dispute at election time. We visited him to clarify certain things, such as
computer programmer: Who wins if two candidates have exactly the same number of votes in the final count?
prof: You do a recount
computer programmer: And if they still have the same number of votes?
prof: That will never happen
Mmmm... not good enough if you're writing a counting algorithm. (We added a new condition into the results, which was "no result")
Our system printed receipts for votes, had internationalization, allowed for various layouts of the ballot on screen, and made no assumptions as to how many candidates and parties there were. The ballot was configurable from a text file, and the computer could be switched off at any point during the voting process, and you could tell if the vote was counted or not... well there was an infinitesimally small chance that the power could go at just the right time... and the vote was counted before it was logged on the local machine. You'd probably have about a 1ms window to hit the power if you were trying to sabotage the system.
The only trick (other than a smooth UI) is to get the user program to send the votes to a central location. The must have been a thousand programmers in Brisbane alone who would have had the skill to do that.
These systems aren't rocket science, they're student projects. If I had to do it again, I'd implement the whole thing in Java with a SQL backend. The java could be compiled on a single system, and then downloaded by the client voting systems on startup. Thus the police only need to audit one machine. With a team of 10 people, the whole thing could be designed, implemented, tested and documented in 6 months. If you add in an engineering team to make beautiful custom boxes (running *NIX), with nothing but a monitor, ethernet port and power switch, it could be shipped as one purpose built product.
Brazil has been using electronic voting for years. Diebold are obviously incompetent, and perhaps worse. The US boasts many technological breakthroughs, and many famous programers live and were educated there. What's going on?
The Diebold machines are funked... (Score:5, Informative)
Pen and paper: the only way to vote. Say no to machines.
Re:The Diebold machines are funked... (Score:2)
Re:The Diebold machines are funked... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:The Diebold machines are funked... (Score:5, Insightful)
I know it's all the rage on slashdot to rattle your sabots, so I really hate to break it to you -- machines are already used to count votes made with pen and paper, all over the country. You complete the arrows with a pen, and then feed your card into a computer that reads and tabulates your vote.
So instead of saying "no to machines," why don't we say "yes" to fixing the problems? #1 we need some redundancy built into these systems in case of problems. #2 we clearly need a better group of engineers working on the problem than those at Diebold.
Re:The Diebold machines are funked... (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes but at least you can verify the results by having a human recount the ballot papers. If you replace the physical ballot papers with electronic voting you have to trust the voting system.
Re:The Diebold machines are funked... (Score:5, Interesting)
bingo! the real problem with electronic voting is:
if you developed a data centre with no backups and 777 perms on everything, no one would trust you.
Re:The Diebold machines are funked... (Score:4, Interesting)
A "sabot" is a shoe, which is why the bullets and other projectile weapons have them.
The sabot reference in the grandparent post is to "sabotage," where workers angry over automation replacing their jobs threw their wooden shoes into the machinery to destroy it.
Re:The Diebold machines are funked... (Score:4, Insightful)
I guess what I really like about paper voting is not only the paper trail but the fact that the whole process is viewable and hard-tooled.
"Soft" ware is too changable to quickly. If there was a hardware only voting system (tres expensive!) with no firm or software I'd be all for it. It should not be changable except in very transparent ways.
Re:The Diebold machines are funked... (Score:2)
That needs to be televised (Score:4, Insightful)
What would it take to get that clip televised?
Well (Score:5, Interesting)
I didn't vote in San Diego, but I am close by and did vote on a Die-Bold system. I have to admit I was tempted to go to the registrars office and vote manually or pick up an absentee ballot. Just so I could have a verifyable paper trail. Its interesting to learn that the absentee's could get messed over just as well.
I was suprised though while standing in line that the two people in front of me had absentee ballots and chose to vote via touch screen anyway.
With electronics, there will always be problems (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:With electronics, there will always be problems (Score:2)
I don't know that the different companies are neccisary, just the paper trail.
One more thing about a paper trail is that it needs to be one-way. In other words they shouldn't be able to determine how you voted, but you should be able to verify your vote was counted correctly. I wonder how absentee ballots do that.
Re:With electronics, there will always be problems (Score:2)
Re:With electronics, there will always be problems (Score:4, Interesting)
with two different companies, while this is still possible, it is much more difficult.
I was thinking about this when I was reading Federalist #51 (I've written on this in my journal which is linked in my sig). There Madison speculates that certain combinations of cause by motivations other than community threaten the rebublic more than everyone keeping after their own cause and establishing distinctive communities.
Immediately the Cola Wars come to mind, and our hopelessly two party system (read Pudge's journal about how the two party system locks out third parties). I'm not sure any number of companies can really guarantee that they don't combine against some weaker entity.
That said, more companies would probably provide more security. But probably not as much as a truely transparent and hard-tooled voting mechanism.
Problems with receipts. (Score:5, Insightful)
If a voter can walk off with a receipt, that means that their vote can be verified to outside parties. This means that votes can be bought, which is definitely a bad thing. I assume you meant that the paper receipt would be "eaten" by the scanning machine, but it's an important distinction.
Re:Problems with receipts. (Score:5, Informative)
Run the printout under a plexiglass window and have the voter look at it and verify that the information is correct. Then run it through a second printer that gives it a confirmation or rejection code depending on how the voter responded to the "is this right?" querry. After that, it gets run into the takeup reel. The entire printing mechanism can be sealed in a tamper-proof box that can't be opened by anyone on the premesis, reducing the chance of tampering at the polling place by volunteers.
That takeup reel can even be OCR'd for 100% verification checks by a third party. None of this "spot checking" crap. Again, this reader can be built into the printing mechanism. If everything passes, toss the recipts in a cave somewhere for long-term storage. If they don't match then it's time to crack the seal and check by hand.
3000? (Score:5, Informative)
Of course, there were only around 6000 votes in the first place..
Slashdot readers, examine carefully that article (Score:5, Funny)
election to inauguration : 2.5 months (Score:4, Insightful)
Bettern punch cards.
Bettern electronic.
Cheaper too.
The real problem with elections is voter apathy and the influence of big bucks. Making incumbents spend all their money and re-raise for the next election would help more than buying expensive, insecure voting machines. Letting people deduct $50 bucks from the top of their 1040 for contributions to legal candidates would help too.
Voter fraud... (Score:5, Funny)
"The irregularities were found in a routine post-election review."
Oh, so that's what they're calling it...
What? $32 Million and No Checks? (Score:5, Insightful)
If California government spent $32 million on this system that has been so controversial, I have just one question:
Why wasn't there more quality assurance involved?
Stupid people piss me off, stupid bureaucrats piss me off even more
Re:What? $32 Million and No Checks? (Score:5, Interesting)
Or tech support. Many machines were stuck in a wierd default state, having their firmware batteries run out for being so long in storage.
There was not adequate tech support, and many districts had techie, unauthorized voters pitching in to help get the machines up. While I'm glad for their service (they could have just walked away) I worry about how problematic that could be in the future.
Re:What? $32 Million and No Checks? (Score:2)
Yep, they found a race condition (Score:5, Funny)
discard(vote);
Paper. (Score:5, Insightful)
My area usues well labled and hard to screw up fill in the circle sheets that you feed into the scanner yourself. It's reliable paper and offers very quick counting.
Usually I'm all for using technology to make life easier, but this is one area where I think reliable is more important than easy.
Yup.
Re:Paper. (Score:2)
= => Mr. Person
= => Mrs. Person
And all you do is fill in the arrow line next to the people you want to vote for to make a solid arrow. Easy and I can see where it would be very simple for the scanners to read it, too.
Still Problematic (Score:3, Interesting)
I remember during some of the analysis of the 2000 Florida election disaster that one of the recount counties gave facts about the number of ballots that had multiple votes. IIRC, dozens had at least 2 votes, many had 3, some had 4, and a couple even had 11. This means some voters are either completely hopelessly confused, or they're screwing around.
Also, remember the election officials in each county have great capacity to screw things up.
As with most problems, the
Re:Paper. (Score:3, Insightful)
AFAIK, that error is primarily because of user error -- i.e., improper marks, not properly filled in bubbles (or whatever), etc. Although you may get into "hanging chad" territory, inconclusive/inaccurate counting can be redone by hand, whereas it cannot be with voting machines such as these. Any security or hardware stability concerns with computerized voting could be simply eliminated, even with the buggy Diebold machines, by providing that hard copy f
I Vote NO on e-Voting. (Score:5, Insightful)
"These performance failures are unacceptable," Ekard wrote. "Having a reliable and trouble-free voting system is absolutely essential to the county. Your failure to provide such a system in the March election was extremely troubling and any issues that remain must be fully resolved long before the November election."
Problem is, it is no longer "long before the November election."
I have commented on this subject before [slashdot.org], and see nothing that changes my view; rather, it reinforces it.
From the Daily Show last night (Score:5, Funny)
Some security researcher: "We broke into the board of elections and completely changed the result, erasing all of our traces and got back out"
Stewart: "...um, but sure, you give a guy a day and..."
S.S.R.: "We did it in 5 minutes."
[Paraphrased, but the idea is here... Also, it's possible that the last statement by the SSR was not referring to the entire operation; the Daily Show appearso to have a habit of making deceptive cuts. But who knows...]
Re:From the Daily Show last night (Score:3, Insightful)
What do you expect from A FAKE NEWS SHOW?
Not saying the story isn't partially based on fact, but the intention is to be funny (and damn funny it is)
Re:From the Daily Show last night (Score:3, Insightful)
I guess what I'm trying to say is that even though they are not a serious news
Re:From the Daily Show last night (Score:5, Informative)
People who use a Comedy Central as a new source are not qualified to comment on the news!
I love the Daily Show and I must admit that I use it as a news source. Therefore I am not qualified to comment on today's issues. Thank you.
Re:From the Daily Show last night (Score:5, Funny)
Why, it's more accurate than FOX...
Re:From the Daily Show last night (Score:4, Funny)
"Our show is obviously at a disadvantage with any of the other news shows we're competing against, For one thing, we are fake. They are not. So in terms of credibility, we are ... well, oddly enough we're about even."
overloaded by 3000 votes? (Score:5, Interesting)
Table locking anyone? (Score:2)
You have multiple entries coming into the same table. Wouldn't it stand to reason that the database would lock that table upon a write request thus allowing only 1 write at a time? Wouldn't that keep things running more smoothly?
Or, was this a case of table locking causing a deadlock as all the other threads got stuck waiting for the table to unlock again?
Either way, it seems that you don't run into these problems with a paper ballot. After all, if the box is getting too full, someone can put a new box ou
Re:Table locking anyone? (Score:2)
Most programmers are incompetent nitwits.
Re:Table locking anyone? (Score:3, Insightful)
Diebold... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Diebold... (Score:3, Interesting)
Technically, that could just be political corruption to ensure that they got the (extremely lucrative) e-voting machine contracts.
Re:Diebold... (Score:2)
Day old shit tends to actually smell less than a fresh pile.
Why are voting machines so complicated? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why are voting machines so complicated? (Score:2)
I bet it'd be cheaper cost per unit to.
There is ALOT to this (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Why are voting machines so complicated? (Score:2)
So, get used to electronic election result failures because Active-X is updated improperly, or the soundcard has a conflict.
Slashdot the most damning on e-voting (Score:3, Insightful)
Most Slashdotters are geeks, many hard-core computer geeks. They use computers far more than the typical person, to handle many, many aspects of their lives. Most of them were using email and IMing systems well before the general populace. Slashdot is almost universally enthusiastic about new technological advances (humanoid robots, organic computing, OLEDs, new storage technologies, mp3/ogg players, new operating systems, etc). And yet, standing WAY out among all this is e-voting, which Slashdot is overwhelmingly negative on.
This is no more than one data point, but it's a very strong, influential, and *negative* data point against e-voting. A lot of people with interests in computer security read Slashdot -- if they feel that it isn't worth trying to trust e-voting, isn't it worth listening to them?
Re:Slashdot the most damning on e-voting (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think that the problem is that /.ers are against e-voting. It is that the companies that are involved have been unable to produce accurate results and don't have any accountability for their actions. The whole point of e-voting was increased accuracy and get rid of stuff like the 'hanging chad.' Not technology for technologies sake.
Re:Slashdot the most damning on e-voting (Score:5, Insightful)
If the Libertarians are opposed to your "deregulation," maybe you need to take a few big steps back.
software has no place in voting (Score:5, Interesting)
One idea I had would be as follows:
In an election with 4 candidates there would be 4 transparent tubes, each coated with an opaque wrapper. Voters would insert a coin-shaped plastic token into the cylinder representing their favourite candidate, and when the votes need to be counted the opaque wrapper would be removed to simply show which candidate had won. It's obvious, completely transparent and recounts are unnecessary because the winner should be obvious to all.
Unacceptable. (Score:5, Informative)
I used to write mission critical software (as in, you-screw-up-and-your-user-can-die) for the US Army (Artillery Control). We had to pass internal unit test, integration test, system test, FQT, fielded IOT&E. At each point (past developer level integration), if an anomaly occurred, a trouble report was generated. All priority 1 and 2 reports HAD to be addressed and resolved. Priority 3 needed to be resolved or have a formal waiver.
1 - Failure to perform, user at risk
2 - Failure to perform, no workaround
3 - Failure to perform, workaround available
4 - Irritating/annoyance
5 - other
In the voting arena, I would say that problems with inaccurate counts would be priority 2 (since nobody dies directly). There should be NO WAY any fielded system should have those sorts of trouble.
Two Things (Score:5, Insightful)
Secondly, just use paper ballots and be done with it. If you need to see how it's done, come to Canada.
Ha! - I reviewed their stuff (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Ha! - I reviewed their stuff (Score:3, Interesting)
At least they used MS SQL, Diebold uses Access and VB.
parallelism (Score:2)
Software quality assurance usually involves load testing, apparently something they neglected. Looks like the guy who hacked the whole thing in BASIC was also the QA engineer.
When is civil disobedience justified? (Score:3, Interesting)
Remember, Americans: Bring your voter registration card, and a sledgehammer for Diebold. They are stealing our freedom to vote, the very democracy over which so much blood has been spilled, and the corrupted political process is encouraging it via awarded contracts and almost silent acquiescence.
This crosses political affiliations and affects all Americans. I strongly believe that this must be stopped it by all means necessary or we will lose the ability to collectively affect the policies of our country, no matter how small your individual voice might be. This is zealous, without a doubt, but not all zealotry is bad. "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice."
Live free or die.
Worst Software, Evar. (Score:3, Insightful)
The Computer Ate My Vote (Score:3, Informative)
Another article on problems with Diebold systems (Score:3, Informative)
Scantron? (Score:5, Insightful)
We put enough faith in it to tally the aptitude and academic future of our youth it should be good enough to tally the leaders of tomorrow.
Fix the real problems (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Fix the real problems (Score:3, Interesting)
IRV should never be used and is worse than plurality. It violates the all important monotonicity principle. That means if you vote for someone they could lose. Approval
Its all so clear (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Demand that all Diebold voting machines are recalled immeadiately and that Diebold refunds all states in full.
2. As a temporary measure, reinstall the previous voting machines/methods or simple cards in all states.
3. Assign a task force made up of experts in a wide variety of fields, ensuring that the group isnt biased towards any corporate or political parties. The general rule should be that the system is as simple as possible, only uses computers if it will actually provide an advantage, is open!
(obviously any corporate members will point out that its not fair that the system be open. This is one of the most important systems in the country and its vital for democracy that its open to the public to look at, if it isnt there is simply no way you can call the system democratic in anyway)
4. Given that the new system will be designed by geeks, it will require a fraction of the budget of Diebolds spagetti crap, donate the old Diebold machines to schools.
If Bush can go to war on a whim he can do this, and if he doesnt do this right now he is a dictator, its simple.
It was worse than I had expected (Score:5, Informative)
When I went to vote in the morning, at about 8:30 AM (well after the polls were scheduled to open), the machines were still non-functional (you've no doubt already heard the details) and the polling workers couldn't say when the help they requested would arrive. They suggested waiting or going to another polling location to submit a provisional ballot. (At this point, feel free to ponder why these were not tested by the vendor beforehand. Isn't that what YOU would have done?)
Nothing makes democracy feel real to you like being turned away from a voting booth.
When I returned in the evening, the missing cables were provided, instructions corrected and the devices functional. But not well.
In California, each voter receives a balllot information booklet before the election. With the old punch-card paper ballots, the booklet and the ballot were laid out in exactly the same way. You could transfer your decisions from booklet to ballot trivially. The touchscreen display, on the other hand, had the same visual look as the booklet, and the screen was laid out in pages, but page layouts did not correspond to the booklet. Candidates were in different locations on the touchscreen and the booklet. Matching up the two were a pain, and it took a very careful attention to detail to avoid error! Considering that the visual cues implied that that they should correspond, and that they did correspond in the old punchcard system, and I'd be very surprised if it didn't contribute to incorrect selections. (It was at least as bad, probably much worse, than the Florida butterfly ballots.)
Now, if you are replacing an existing system, isn't Rule #1 finding out how the existing system works, so that you know which functionality needs to be replicated?
The last page of the ballot is a vote summary. (Good idea.) It was multi-column on a virtual page that was one screen wide but much, much longer vertically than the physical screen. This is an atrocious user interface. (Imaging reading a PDF of a three-column, 8-1/2" x 11" page on a normal portrait monitor.) Prior to this summary page, the entire previous program was logical page = physical screen, with a horizontal prev page/next page paradigm. So, a bad user interface that's inconsistent with the rest of the application's UI.
Is that how you like to design YOUR software?
Finally, there's the fact that there's no paper record or physical trail of the votes. I can't begin to imagine how this passed Day One of requirements review!
All in all, it did not feel like the polished, professional effort that I want democracy and the control of our nation to depend on.
Must be nice to be friends with a president... (Score:3, Interesting)
So far, all I see is security failures, operational failures, service failures, and a huge progression of operational and technical SNAFUs. I'd prefer not having to stand on my head to vote... (I'd like easy and simple as much as the next person), but if I can't trust the results of the process... then for all intents and purposes, I cease to be participating in a republic. Either we eliminate the faulty process (up to and including the elimination of the offending service provider), or we eliminate the people who won't eliminate the faulty process.
Genda
The biggest problems aren't getting attention (Score:3, Interesting)
It's pretty scary to see how little the local Registrar of Voters cares about having any sort of verifiable voting system. The official FAQ [sdvote.com] even has two entries regarding reliability (how do I know my vote was counted accurately after casting it, what happens if there's a recount) and studiously avoids answering either one - in the first case they simply stop after describing a bunch of irrelevant steps which happen before you cast your vote and in the second they pretend that a generated image file stored on the machine is somehow more valid than the stored vote record on the same machine.
Re:Real counting? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Real counting? (Score:2, Funny)
Bugs with simptons like sneezing cause nunmerous unintended effects like wars and mass unemployment neccesitated this fallback.
Actually I'm a strong supporter of bush, but this was too easy to pass up.
Re:Real counting? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Real counting? (Score:5, Interesting)
I can't remember there ever being the kind of nonsense that Diebold has regularly caused.
Re:Real counting? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Real counting? (Score:4, Interesting)
Digital doesn't mean bad, they just have a stupid buggy system. How do the SATs and other standardized testing services handle millions of those scantron sheets without problems? Instead of poking holes in a piece of paper and leaving hanging chads, have people use a friggin pencil and bubble in a box. If you don't follow the instructions and the computer can't read your bubble for whatever reason then your vote simply is discarded. Humans should not be involved in deciding who the vote was "supposed" to go to because they can be influenced.
Re:Real counting? (Score:4, Insightful)
No, I disagree. The system may be buggy, but the concept of a digital computer counting votes is unfixable.
You don't know what code is running. If you magically do know, you certainly won't grok it all, especially as they patch constantly even during elections. And although you may have some certain knowledge of the boxen in front of you, you've no idea what the other ten thousand machines across the country are doing.You don't know if the computer is working properly. You don't know if the data is being altered enroute to a central counting machine. You don't know if the code or the data is being modified from second to second. The process is pretty much a setup to cheat, and I've no doubt plenty of people are lining up to alter future elections. And we'll never know about it -- the ultimate fault. They is no ability to detect fraud. No trail. Nothing but bits.
The paper and pencil and human counter is flawless. A neutral counter. Monitors appointed by each candidate watch the count. And if there is dispute, it is settled firstly at the counting table, and in extremis the entire vote can be recounted until every vote card is vetted and agreed on.
This very process was occuring in Florida when the Supreme Court Five shut it down. And they were getting it done in days . No problems -- all the whining was being settled at the tables. It was working, and working perfectly, and would have given Gore the win had they been given more than 30 minutes before the "deadline" to restart the recount.
Re:Real counting? (Score:3, Insightful)
By not letting you check the results?
rj
Re:Real counting? (Score:3, Informative)
Do you expect Diebold to do that?
Re:Real counting? (Score:4, Insightful)
The point is, if you only have to count one vote per ballot it's easy to do by hand, if you have to count 10 or 20 votes per ballot, things get more complicated.
Complex? Maybe, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
The big advantage is that it's totally secure. Sure it's a bit more complicated than marking X in the box for a single candidate like in the British system [wikipedia.org], but it sh
Re:Real counting? (Score:5, Interesting)
No - the UK has almost exactly the same system as Canada (where do you think they got it from?) and likewise has seen no problems with it over the last century or so. However the UK has about twice the population density of the US (~60 million people in less than 10% of the area) and it still works (well, it did elect Blair but that can't really be blamed on the system :-)
So no excuses - you could fix it with a system that works if you wanted to!
Vancouver uses computers for multi-votes (Score:4, Informative)
Here in Vancouver, BC (Canada, again) our civic elections are reasonably complicated. It is a true multi-party system with independants allowed. We normally vote for 7 parks board trustees, 9 school board trustees, 12 city councillors (=~trustees), 1 mayor and a handfull of referendum questions.. Thing to note here is that for the 7, 9 and 12 seat positions, each voter gets to cast (up to) 7 9 and 12 votes out of all the candidates. Each of the parties (there are usually 3 or 4 parties running) usually fields a full set of candidates, and there are often independants, so it's not at all uncommon to be voting for 12 out of 50-60 (4*12+N) alderman candidates (as an example). It's not uncommon to also have between half a dozen (and up to 20) mayoral candidates. Then there are the referendums.
Voting is currently done on OCR... They are originally counted by computer, but if there are any questions, it's always possible to recount the paper ballots by hand (and it is done, from time to time). It's pretty easy to audit the computer results by picking a random polling station or two and comparing the computer reported count to the manual count. The system could easily handle a single-transferable vote system (like in Ireland) and have the machine counted results out before morning.
Much like in federal and provincial elections, candidates and/or parties can have scritineers at the ballot locations to ensure that everything goes as it should.
Because the system has a human-readable paper trail, I've never had any real quams about letting computers do the initial count. The technology is trivial (by today's standards) and well understood. None of this whiz-bang
bullshit.Re:Real counting? (Score:2)