bratgitarre writes "A comprehensive study of electronic voting systems (PDF) by vendors ES&S, Hart InterCivic and Premier (formerly Diebold) found that 'all of the studied systems possess critical security failures that render their technical controls insufficient to guarantee a trustworthy election'. In particular, they note all systems provide insufficiently protection against threats from election insiders, do not follow well-known security practices, and have 'deeply flawed software maintenance' practices." Some of these machines are the ones California testers found fault with last week.
I think we've seen sufficient evidence that Diebold has been inhaling deeply, if you will. And we, as a relatively technology-savvy audience, are acutely aware of the potential for disaster -- just imagine, if you will, a virus that infects just voting machines. Personally, while it pains me to say it, I think we should stick with the solution we use here in New Hampshire: good ol' SAT-like ballots. Darken the oval next to the candidate's name, and you're done. The Machine will either accept it, or reject it (in which case you do a new ballot, and the old one gets destroyed). Simple, easy, accountable. Yes, being able to use a computerized voting machine for tabulation is incredibly seductive, but voting is already something inherently prone to attempts at manipulation. Let's not introduce yet more potential, shall we?
The other thing you have in NH (where I used to live and my mother used to practice law) is a highly respected and quite non-partisan Secretary of State, Bill Gardner, who has kept his office throughout both Republican and Democratic state administrations. He's demonstrated time and again that his number 1 goal as far as his duties as an election official are concerned is to get the correct results (meaning the results accurately reflecting the will of the people). He's about as far from Ohio or Florida Secretaries of State when the electronic voting was put in place (Katherine Harris and Ken Blackwell) as you can get.
In other words, there's a reason why NH's system is so good. Heck, I love a state government where a man I'd gotten to know as an elevator operator was elected to the state House.
While I am unfamiliar with the hack you mention, I still stand by my guns: easy to do, easy to verify. ALL voting systems have some hole or flaw; a fully-computerized one is, almost by definition, Swiss cheese compared to the more rudimentary mechanisms. (At least, until such time as a 100% secure OS AND application software, are created. *dies of old age several times over*)
Whilst I have no faith in electronic systems, I do know about pencil-and-paper elections, having taken part in several in the UK and been on UN election monitoring missions in Kosovo and Ukraine.
It is perfectly possible to make pencil-and-paper elections secure against the malpractices you suggest, as well as many others that you haven't thought of but the election designers certainly have!
Even if the entire system were corrupt, in terms of every single person involved in running the election being involved in a conspiracy, there's no way they could hide what they're doing from observers.
Now, in civilised parts of the world people don't always make use of all their observation opportunities. For example, in the UK the candidate can watch the ballot box being sealed, make a note of the number on the seal, and check that the same seal is still on the box when it is opened later at the counting hall. But we don't bother - we trust the officials, and we've been working for something like 17 hours with another 4 or 5 to go so we take the opportunity to have something to eat whilst the ballot boxes are being shifted around. But, if there were any suspicion that the election officials tampered with the boxes in their cars, we could do this check.
Oh, and as we all said goodbye to each other when leaving Kosovo the first time we were all calling out "bye, see you in Florida!", including the Americans.
What would the impact be of a carbomb going off in one of the vehicles transporting the ballots? If a district were known to be heavily in favor of a certain candidate, wouldn't the destruction of those ballots negate their votes?
Let's say there is an accident, not a bomb. The car catches fire, the votes are destroyed. How many votes are in this car? 500? 5.000? I suppose there won't be 50.000 votes in it. Let's say 5.000 votes are destroyed. I think that's a high number (but I may be wrong). You could simply calculate if this would change any of the results. Probably it won't matter if all those votes of this one accident went to candidate A or B. And not all those votes will be for one candidate alone. So if those votes couldn't
Or if we have a company of 10,000 employees who were all pretty underpaid and "encourage" them to vote a certain way, with informants watching the polls, haven't we silenced their individual voices?
This is the exact reason that a take-home election reciept is a bad idea. Which is why most voting systems don't have it... not just the tyranny of the employer, but also the undue influence from peers & family. (Can you imagine how long I'd be sleeping on the couch if the wife knew who I voted for la
What would the impact be of a carbomb going off in one of the vehicles transporting the ballots? If a district were known to be heavily in favor of a certain candidate, wouldn't the destruction of those ballots negate their votes?
Depends.
Round here, in a local election there are three ballot boxes for my ward, and they are probably transported to the count in two cars. The loss of any one of those boxes would clearly invalidate the election. Whether the election would have be run again in the entire ward, or just in the area(s) for the lost box(es) I don't know, but I think "the entire ward" would be a good guess.
For a parliamentary election, there are around forty ballot boxes for this constituency. If one box were lost, and that box held, say, 1,500 ballots, and the count of the remaining boxes gave someone a majority of, say, 4,000, then the result would be clear without that box. Otherwise I expect that again the entire election would be re-run.
(A car transporting me to a polling station, of which I was in charge, in Kosovo broke down. I finished the journey sitting in the back of the van that our armed guard was driving. A novel experience for a Brit - most of us can go through life never seeing a real live gun, and having one a few way away from you is a bit weird.)
Publicity for false election day
Dunno about the American South, but round here that's something I'm pretty sure would go through the courts, with a re-run of the election a possible outcome.
Company pressure
There's no way you can have an "informant watching the polls" in a propery run election. Everybody in the polling station needs to have a good excuse... and being the candidate's officially appointed observer is a good excuse, so each candidate can have someone watching inside each polling station for any bad goings-on. Your putative "informant" might be able to gain entry to the polling station but wouldn't be able to watch people marking their ballots, as there would be too many other people watching them in turn.
Now, this sort of buying / forcing votes is possible with postal votes - your crooked employer could lean on his employees to request postal votes and then hand over the ballot papers. There isn't an answer to this, which is why we (my party) really don't like postal votes very much, other than for the traditional good reasons (housebound etc).
(This sort of employer pressure was thought to be widespread in the Ukraine election that was re-run because of the various complaints. I went to the Boxing Day re-run (a novel way to spend Christmas away from my family) and we were told that the employers hadn't applied any pressure the second time round, basically everybody involved had decided to stop trying to cheat and to hold a clean election.)
if we can't actually verify that each vote is registered
Do you mean voters who don't make it onto the electoral register? Yes, that's part of the wider system rather than polling day security. There's two theories about natural safeguards here:
(a) candidates will make efforts to get everybody onto the register (b) actually it probably doesn't matter that much, as someone who can't be bothered to get onto the register is quite likely also somebody who can't be bothered to vote, so who cares.
And there are plenty more ways of gaming elections you haven't thought up yet... and the system has thought them up, and has safeguards in place...
But Venezuela is not Pakistan. In fact, it's not Florida or Ohio either. One reason that Chavez could be confident of the vote count is that Venezuela has a very secure voting system. This is very different from the United States, where millions of citizens cast electronic votes with no paper record. Venezuelan voters mark their choice on a touch-screen machine, which then records the vote and prints out a paper receipt for the voter. The voter then deposits the vote in a ballot box. An extremely large random sample - about 54 percent - of the paper ballots are counted and compared with the electronic tally.
The important thing isn't whether Chavez could be confident of the vote count handed to him, but whether Venezuelans could be confident of the vote count handed to them by Chavez. I've heard that Venezuela's military commanders promised a coup d'etat if Chavez tried to ramrod his wildly unpopular socialist reforms down the nation's throat, but you'll notice that the vote count released to the public indicated that the margin of defeat was under 1%. That's what's called in the political industry "saving face
I read the Newsweek article but is difficult to believe what "mainstream" media like Newsweek write. Too often they are very wrong and just spout out state propaganda justifying whatever upcoming war.
... or do you not trust ATM machines? Trillions of dollars are transfered via electronic means, perhaps even more than that if you define a time line.
The only difference here is the anonymity of the voter, who they voted for. Where security dealing with verifying a qualified voter before they vote and that they only vote once, should be no more an issue as when it was when it was all paper.
The fact that this electronic voting problem exist at all, but also full scope across all machines tested really does id
I don't have to trust ATM machines. I have a full paper trail from the moment I get my money to the moment I get my statement. I punch in my desired amount, I get money. I can count that money and verify that it is as much as I wanted. I get a recept, stating the same. And a day later I can see on my account info that the amount was deducted from my account. And I can verify every single step thereof, and should there be the slightest discrepancy, I can immediately notice that.
Now, how should I notice whether my vote has been counted correctly or whether it has been twisted around?
I personally have no means to verify that the piece of paper I submitted has been counted correctly, or if my vote was altered in any way.
Not true.
If you really want to, you can stick around and watch the ballot box, see when it is sealed, watch when it is opened and observe the counting process. Note that you'll probably have to make arrangements in advance for the latter steps, but you can do it. In fact, it's normal procedure for representatives of parties and/or candidates to observe in this way.
In practice it's not so important that individual citizens observe the election process, because the political parties and the candidates do. They're mostly watching to see that nothing is done that damages their chances at winning, rather than being focused on the fairness of the election, but if all of them do it the effect is the same.
You don't trust the system to count your vote correctly and want a way to check, but you trust it to tell you that it counted it correctly? Interesting.
When you undertake a transaction with an ATM machine, the machine is just the conduit to the bank. You're trusting in the bank's paranoia about money to keep everything square. And the bank provides sufficient paperwork and even a dispute resolution process in case of a discrepancy. The ATM does not balance your account nor even decide if you have enough money to withdraw, the bank does. Before Diebold set about fixing^H^H^H^Hmaking voting machines, they made ATMs.
ATM machines are very reliable, but nevertheless they malfunction all the time. That is why they have electronic or sometimes even paper journals. If an ATM gives you to little money your bank can check your receipt, the journal and the amount of money still in the machine. In most cases you should get your missing money.
I don't think ATMs are a useful comparison for electronic voting machines, mostly due to the anonymity requirements.
I do trust the very sophisticated checks and cross-checks that are built into the banking industry that would prevent any systematic corruption of ATM machines. So I'm comfortable using them, and I do so a few times each month.
Voting machines are just a pretty face. There are none of the kinds of checks and cross-checks behind them that make the banking industry work. Companies like Premier (aka Diebold) have shown deliberate resistance to incorporating any of those kinds of m
I don't see what all the fuss is about. When your only choice is between the Democrats and the Republicans, who gives a crap whether the machine you vote on is rigged? It's like being offered a choice of getting thrown in a shark tank or a piranha tank.
The fact that the US cannot come up with a definitive "voting tabulation method" tells you that the whole thing is crooked from the git-go. And even if we did, we'd still have (at least) fifty different electoral commissions for national elections. Why is it so difficult to comprehend a system that tabulates votes and leaves an audit trail? But what's even more reprehensible is that the majority of Americans don't even consider the integrity of our elections when voting - or do they? The US has one of the lowest turnouts in the Western world (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout [wikipedia.org]). Democracy at its best.
i think it's pretty clear that american manufacturers of e-voting devices are either unforgiveably incompetent or deliberately introducing devices with obvious non-security. i'm not sure which prospect i find more troubling, but to be honest, what i find even more troubling is the fact that the media largely appears to be ignoring the
Why is it so difficult to comprehend a system that tabulates votes and leaves an audit trail?
Actually, that's one of the major difficulties. With an election, an audit trail must have an important property that isn't required by a financial system's audit trail: The audit trail must not expose a voter's actual votes.
With financial systems, there's no serious problem if the auditing system allows the bank employees to see the numbers in a customer's records. There are even situations where it's considered
Aside from the myriad problems with any electronic voting system, the real issue that everyone misses is that the entire voting practice is fundamentally flawed at the roots.
The concept of a "winner takes all" system is that the losers must suffer the tyrrany of the winners. How is that so much different from a dictatorship? You are still under tyrrany, and in some ways it's worse -- it's the tyrrany of the majority, which means of course it's much harder to effect changes since you'll have the majority a
Sorry, you obviously are a product of the modern educational system. The Founding Fathers actually thought this through, that is why the Constitution is written the way it is, with the various provisions and the Bill of Rights. Or as Winston Churchill once said, "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the other ways that have been tried."
I can't really see where this matters. Two groups of lying thieves, take your pick. It's kind of like George Carlin says, "It's their club, and you ain't in it. It's the same club they beat you over the head with."
In a two-party system, what's the point of voting at all?
Wait,... you're saying that there are more than two types of people in America? The walls of this binary paradise are crumbling! And outside is a disturbing ternary landscape, where "dunno" is a valid opinion, and you always have exact change. WHAT THE HELL IS THIS PLACE!
It's not "dunno". It's "I don't agree with either of the two positions offered". Which isn't so far fetched. The two parties become more and more similar with every election, to the point that I slowly have difficulties noticing the difference. Which in turn makes sense, from their point of view.
Imagine you have a liberal and a conservative party (for the sake of an argument, since I don't want to start a discussion whether X is a Rep or Dem issue. As I stated above, I somehow don't really see a difference i
Neither the deomcrats nor the republicans represnts my political views -- Libertarian. Besides, there are other political parites -- they simply don't get any coverage, because the Democrats and the Republicans conspire to keep all other parties shut out of the political process. Not to mention the media itself, which also is part of that conspiracy.
If it is actually a two party system, it makes sense. You can pick the party that supports your ideals better. What the US suffers from, though, is having two parties that are almost indistinguishable from each other. And there I have to agree, it doesn't matter which one you pick. It reminds me of the old Hungarian joke from the times of Communism. Back then, Hungary brought up something stunningly progressive for elections: Two candidates. Sure, both from the communist party, but there were actually two ca
In a two-party system, what's the point of voting at all?
Well Voting for a third party is almost certainly not going to get the third party candidate elected. However the two main parties tend to be fairly evenly matched and the third party vote going to either of the other two parties could swing it either way. using some random numbers say 45,000 vote for party A and 40,000 vote for party B and 8,000 vote for party C. Party B could win this seat if the Voters for party C would vote for party B instead.
In other words both Party A and Party B have to take into a
Vote for your third party candidate as #1 then you can avoid "wasting" your vote by ranking the others. If your #1 choice doesn't make it, then at least you still have a say in the remaining candidates.
Most importantly, everyone can see how many people voted for your third party, since nobody will vote for a more popular party as #1 thinking it would be wasted. =Smidge=
First of all, if you think the people managing the booth aren't trustworthy, offer to do it yourself. I honestly see no reason why you shouldn't be able to do it.
And second, yes, a meteor striking or a truck crashing the voting site would certainly crush a voting booth. But since it's as likely as me getting abducted by aliens, I'm actually willing to take that risk.
I'm honestly amazed how people keep using incredible horror scenarios as an excuse for something not working (or, in case of terrorism, being necessary), without even considering that it's so unlikely that it doesn't matter at all. There is a minuscle chance that you die in the shower from lightning or some other freak accident, does that mean you don't shower anymore now?
So if there is a miniscule chance of these horror scenarios occuring, then what's to say that your (meaning "security experts") horror stories regarding voting booth irregularities aren't just another bunch of horror stories to be tossed aside as statistical anomolies? If we are going to say that deliberate tampering is a big problem with electronic voting booths, then how can we overlook the deliberate tampering with non-electronic systems? We've been blessed with a populace who is generally honest enough t
then what's to say that your (meaning "security experts") horror stories regarding voting booth irregularities aren't just another bunch of horror stories to be tossed aside as statistical anomolies?
because it is already happening in other countries and chances are that it is and has been occuring here too.
If we are going to say that deliberate tampering is a big problem with electronic voting booths, then how can we overlook the deliberate tampering with non-electronic systems?
First of all, if you think the people managing the booth aren't trustworthy, offer to do it yourself. I honestly see no reason why you shouldn't be able to do it.
Last I checked, you have to be a registered Democrat or Republican in order to work the polls. At the very least, there have to be equal numbers of both parties working a precinct.
Whether you set up the process with electronic voting or you use old fashioned paper slips, someone somewhere can either cause votes to disappear or have extra votes sent to a certain candidate. It doesn't matter what system is in place.
Yes, it does matter what system is in place. Namely, the system where elections are handled by volunteers, and you never leave any part of the process in the hand of a single person, nor do you let people pick their own tasks. You just make sure that chances are that there is always one honest person in place at each step.
And you have routines in place for dealing with what happens if votes are lost in an accident, such as re-doing the election.
This isn't difficult stuff, it's been worked out centuries ago.
The way these literally corrupt machines are going, I think citizens in states where they are the only option should call for a VERY public boycott. Get several hundred people picketing outside, signing petitions to vow not to vote unless they have PROVEN methods. Sure the county/state/whatever will come back saying they're "secure". In the scheme of things a few hundred voters not voting because of bad voting may give enough bad press that it would give the officials enough concern to maybe at least listen
"In the scheme of things a few hundred voters not voting because of bad voting may give enough bad press that it would give the officials enough concern to maybe at least listen to the issue." -> In the scheme of things, a few hundred voters not voting from bad practices may give officials enough bad pres that they may listen.
And moreso: You open every step of the election to the public, so everyone can watch the distributing of the ballot sheets, the checking of the voter's paper at the election place, the sealing of the voting boxes, the putting of the ballots in the box after voting, the opening of the boxes, the counting of the votes, the transport of the resealed boxes with the votes and the results to the voting offices and the addition of the single results to the final sums. The only step in the voting process that must n
About one year ago the voting booths where I vote were moved farther into the building and away from the windows. Much harder to crash a truck into them, or into the ballot box (though more likely this was done to make it easier to handle more voters). Then again, we're still using paper ballots and permanent markers. Still, your scenario reminds me of a story my grandfather once told me. He was living in Florida at the time and registered as a Democrat. The person at the poles told him that his name wasn't
[The elderly don't] care who wins the election, so long as their retirement benefits aren't touched.
The elderly are the only people who actually vote in this country! The AARP is a huuuuuuge lobby and anyone who wants to get elected to any position anywhere—particularly the presidency—has to cowtow to them quite a great deal. That group also includes a lot of veterans, which need constant placating as well. Never ever ever underestimate the elderly vote because those people have the highest turnout of any demographic.
With all due respect... this is news? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:With all due respect... this is news? (Score:4, Interesting)
In other words, there's a reason why NH's system is so good. Heck, I love a state government where a man I'd gotten to know as an elevator operator was elected to the state House.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Wrong! (Score:5, Interesting)
It is perfectly possible to make pencil-and-paper elections secure against the malpractices you suggest, as well as many others that you haven't thought of but the election designers certainly have!
Even if the entire system were corrupt, in terms of every single person involved in running the election being involved in a conspiracy, there's no way they could hide what they're doing from observers.
Now, in civilised parts of the world people don't always make use of all their observation opportunities. For example, in the UK the candidate can watch the ballot box being sealed, make a note of the number on the seal, and check that the same seal is still on the box when it is opened later at the counting hall. But we don't bother - we trust the officials, and we've been working for something like 17 hours with another 4 or 5 to go so we take the opportunity to have something to eat whilst the ballot boxes are being shifted around. But, if there were any suspicion that the election officials tampered with the boxes in their cars, we could do this check.
Oh, and as we all said goodbye to each other when leaving Kosovo the first time we were all calling out "bye, see you in Florida!", including the Americans.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What would the impact be of a carbomb going off in one of the vehicles transporting the ballots? If a district were known to be heavily in favor of a certain candidate, wouldn't the destruction of those ballots negate their votes?
Let's say there is an accident, not a bomb. The car catches fire, the votes are destroyed. How many votes are in this car? 500? 5.000? I suppose there won't be 50.000 votes in it. Let's say 5.000 votes are destroyed. I think that's a high number (but I may be wrong). You could simply calculate if this would change any of the results. Probably it won't matter if all those votes of this one accident went to candidate A or B. And not all those votes will be for one candidate alone. So if those votes couldn't
This... (Score:2)
This is the exact reason that a take-home election reciept is a bad idea. Which is why most voting systems don't have it... not just the tyranny of the employer, but also the undue influence from peers & family. (Can you imagine how long I'd be sleeping on the couch if the wife knew who I voted for la
Various frauds ... (Score:4, Interesting)
What would the impact be of a carbomb going off in one of the vehicles transporting the ballots? If a district were known to be heavily in favor of a certain candidate, wouldn't the destruction of those ballots negate their votes?
Depends.
Round here, in a local election there are three ballot boxes for my ward, and they are probably transported to the count in two cars. The loss of any one of those boxes would clearly invalidate the election. Whether the election would have be run again in the entire ward, or just in the area(s) for the lost box(es) I don't know, but I think "the entire ward" would be a good guess.
For a parliamentary election, there are around forty ballot boxes for this constituency. If one box were lost, and that box held, say, 1,500 ballots, and the count of the remaining boxes gave someone a majority of, say, 4,000, then the result would be clear without that box. Otherwise I expect that again the entire election would be re-run.
(A car transporting me to a polling station, of which I was in charge, in Kosovo broke down. I finished the journey sitting in the back of the van that our armed guard was driving. A novel experience for a Brit - most of us can go through life never seeing a real live gun, and having one a few way away from you is a bit weird.)
Publicity for false election day
Dunno about the American South, but round here that's something I'm pretty sure would go through the courts, with a re-run of the election a possible outcome.
Company pressure
There's no way you can have an "informant watching the polls" in a propery run election. Everybody in the polling station needs to have a good excuse
Now, this sort of buying / forcing votes is possible with postal votes - your crooked employer could lean on his employees to request postal votes and then hand over the ballot papers. There isn't an answer to this, which is why we (my party) really don't like postal votes very much, other than for the traditional good reasons (housebound etc).
(This sort of employer pressure was thought to be widespread in the Ukraine election that was re-run because of the various complaints. I went to the Boxing Day re-run (a novel way to spend Christmas away from my family) and we were told that the employers hadn't applied any pressure the second time round, basically everybody involved had decided to stop trying to cheat and to hold a clean election.)
if we can't actually verify that each vote is registered
Do you mean voters who don't make it onto the electoral register? Yes, that's part of the wider system rather than polling day security. There's two theories about natural safeguards here:
(a) candidates will make efforts to get everybody onto the register
(b) actually it probably doesn't matter that much, as someone who can't be bothered to get onto the register is quite likely also somebody who can't be bothered to vote, so who cares.
And there are plenty more ways of gaming elections you haven't thought up yet
Parent
Could learn from Venezuela (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
I've heard that Venezuela's military commanders promised a coup d'etat if Chavez tried to ramrod his wildly unpopular socialist reforms down the nation's throat, but you'll notice that the vote count released to the public indicated that the margin of defeat was under 1%. That's what's called in the political industry "saving face
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
We have the technology to do this right.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Trillions of dollars are transfered via electronic means, perhaps even more than that if you define a time line.
The only difference here is the anonymity of the voter, who they voted for. Where security dealing with verifying a qualified voter before they vote and that they only vote once, should be no more an issue as when it was when it was all paper.
The fact that this electronic voting problem exist at all, but also full scope across all machines tested really does id
Re:We have the technology to do this right.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, how should I notice whether my vote has been counted correctly or whether it has been twisted around?
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Bingo! But a proper paper trail will make election fraud much more difficult.
Re: (Score:2)
I personally have no means to verify that the piece of paper I submitted has been counted correctly, or if my vote was altered in any way.
Not true.
If you really want to, you can stick around and watch the ballot box, see when it is sealed, watch when it is opened and observe the counting process. Note that you'll probably have to make arrangements in advance for the latter steps, but you can do it. In fact, it's normal procedure for representatives of parties and/or candidates to observe in this way.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
When you undertake a transaction with an ATM machine, the machine is just the conduit to the bank. You're trusting in the bank's paranoia about money to keep everything square. And the bank provides sufficient paperwork and even a dispute resolution process in case of a discrepancy. The ATM does not balance your account nor even decide if you have enough money to withdraw, the bank does. Before Diebold set about fixing^H^H^H^Hmaking voting machines, they made ATMs.
Re: (Score:2)
ATM machines are very reliable, but nevertheless they malfunction all the time. That is why they have electronic or sometimes even paper journals. If an ATM gives you to little money your bank can check your receipt, the journal and the amount of money still in the machine. In most cases you should get your missing money.
I don't think ATMs are a useful comparison for electronic voting machines, mostly due to the anonymity requirements.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't trust ATM machines.
I do trust the very sophisticated checks and cross-checks that are built into the banking industry that would prevent any systematic corruption of ATM machines. So I'm comfortable using them, and I do so a few times each month.
Voting machines are just a pretty face. There are none of the kinds of checks and cross-checks behind them that make the banking industry work. Companies like Premier (aka Diebold) have shown deliberate resistance to incorporating any of those kinds of m
Who cares? (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't see what all the fuss is about. When your only choice is between the Democrats and the Republicans, who gives a crap whether the machine you vote on is rigged? It's like being offered a choice of getting thrown in a shark tank or a piranha tank.
Re: (Score:2)
I'll leave it up to the reader to decide which party is more aptly described by a tank of sharks or a tank of piranha.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Power Corrpution Apathy (Score:3, Insightful)
re:power corruption apathy (Score:3, Insightful)
i think it's pretty clear that american manufacturers of e-voting devices are either unforgiveably incompetent or deliberately introducing devices with obvious non-security. i'm not sure which prospect i find more troubling, but to be honest, what i find even more troubling is the fact that the media largely appears to be ignoring the
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, that's one of the major difficulties. With an election, an audit trail must have an important property that isn't required by a financial system's audit trail: The audit trail must not expose a voter's actual votes.
With financial systems, there's no serious problem if the auditing system allows the bank employees to see the numbers in a customer's records. There are even situations where it's considered
Don't Worry Guys! (Score:3, Funny)
Voting is a joke on basic principles! (Score:2)
The concept of a "winner takes all" system is that the losers must suffer the tyrrany of the winners. How is that so much different from a dictatorship? You are still under tyrrany, and in some ways it's worse -- it's the tyrrany of the majority, which means of course it's much harder to effect changes since you'll have the majority a
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, several your "founding fathers" where slave owners...
Buckeyes are so dumb anyway (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Wait,... you're saying that there are more than two types of people in America? The walls of this binary paradise are crumbling! And outside is a disturbing ternary landscape, where "dunno" is a valid opinion, and you always have exact change. WHAT THE HELL IS THIS PLACE!
Re: (Score:2)
Which isn't so far fetched. The two parties become more and more similar with every election, to the point that I slowly have difficulties noticing the difference. Which in turn makes sense, from their point of view.
Imagine you have a liberal and a conservative party (for the sake of an argument, since I don't want to start a discussion whether X is a Rep or Dem issue. As I stated above, I somehow don't really see a difference i
What about us who aren't represented? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It reminds me of the old Hungarian joke from the times of Communism. Back then, Hungary brought up something stunningly progressive for elections: Two candidates. Sure, both from the communist party, but there were actually two ca
Re: (Score:2)
In a two-party system, what's the point of voting at all?
Well Voting for a third party is almost certainly not going to get the third party candidate elected. However the two main parties tend to be fairly evenly matched and the third party vote going to either of the other two parties could swing it either way. using some random numbers say 45,000 vote for party A and 40,000 vote for party B and 8,000 vote for party C. Party B could win this seat if the Voters for party C would vote for party B instead.
In other words both Party A and Party B have to take into a
Re:Computers just aren't ready (Score:4, Interesting)
Vote for your third party candidate as #1 then you can avoid "wasting" your vote by ranking the others. If your #1 choice doesn't make it, then at least you still have a say in the remaining candidates.
Most importantly, everyone can see how many people voted for your third party, since nobody will vote for a more popular party as #1 thinking it would be wasted.
=Smidge=
Parent
Re:Right... "election insiders"... (Score:4, Insightful)
And second, yes, a meteor striking or a truck crashing the voting site would certainly crush a voting booth. But since it's as likely as me getting abducted by aliens, I'm actually willing to take that risk.
I'm honestly amazed how people keep using incredible horror scenarios as an excuse for something not working (or, in case of terrorism, being necessary), without even considering that it's so unlikely that it doesn't matter at all. There is a minuscle chance that you die in the shower from lightning or some other freak accident, does that mean you don't shower anymore now?
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
We've been blessed with a populace who is generally honest enough t
Re: (Score:2)
because it is already happening in other countries and chances are that it is and has been occuring here too.
we didn't overlook the prob
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Right... "election insiders"... (Score:4, Insightful)
And you have routines in place for dealing with what happens if votes are lost in an accident, such as re-doing the election.
This isn't difficult stuff, it's been worked out centuries ago.
Parent
Vote Boycotts (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Run sentence, run!
Re: (Score:2)
The only step in the voting process that must n
Re: (Score:2)
Still, your scenario reminds me of a story my grandfather once told me. He was living in Florida at the time and registered as a Democrat. The person at the poles told him that his name wasn't
Re: (Score:2)
[The elderly don't] care who wins the election, so long as their retirement benefits aren't touched.
The elderly are the only people who actually vote in this country! The AARP is a huuuuuuge lobby and anyone who wants to get elected to any position anywhere—particularly the presidency—has to cowtow to them quite a great deal. That group also includes a lot of veterans, which need constant placating as well. Never ever ever underestimate the elderly vote because those people have the highest turnout of any demographic.