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Diebold Threatens Wary Voting Clerk
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Wed Mar 29, 2006 11:20 AM
from the stuff-to-read dept.
from the stuff-to-read dept.
An anonymous reader writes "From the Salt Lake Tribune: a wary county clerk called in BlackBoxVoting.org to test the integrity of Diebold voting fraud machines, part of a recent $27 million statewide purchase (to make sure that only the "Right" candidates win). Diebold goon says machines are now jinxed and it may cost up to $40,000 to fly in a company witch-doctor to make sure there were no warranty violations. Since EVERY SINGLE VOTER who uses these machines is a potential hacker looking to alter election results, why is Diebold so concerned? "
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tommcb writes "The State of Alaska Division of Elections has denied a request by the Alaska Democratic Party for the raw file format used to tabulate voting results by citing that the data is in a proprietary format that is owned by Diebold. The ADP says 'The official vote results from the last general election are riddled with discrepancies and impossible for the public to make sense of'. The article contains some good quotes from Jim March of Black Box Voting: 'Copies of these kinds of files have been sitting on the Internet for over two years, with Diebold's knowledge.'"
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Your Rights Online: Diebold Whistle-Blower Charged With Felony Access 585 comments
Vicissidude writes "An employee of law firm Jones Day found legal memos showing that their client, Diebold Election Systems, had used uncertified voting systems in Alameda County elections beginning in 2002 - violating California election law. The whistle-blower turned over the memos to the Oakland Tribune, which published the legal memos on its website in April 2004. The company's AccuVote-TSx model was subsequently banned in May 2004. Now, the whistle-blower, Stephen Heller, has been charged in L.A. Superior Court with felony access to computer data, commercial burglary, and receiving stolen property. If convicted on all three counts, Heller could face up to three years and eight months in state prison. Blair Berk, Heller's attorney state, "Certainly, someone who saw those documents could have reasonably believed that thousands of voters were going to be potentially disenfranchised in upcoming elections." Sandi Gibbons, spokeswoman for the L.A. County district attorney's office rebuts, "He's accused of breaking the law... If we feel that the evidence shows beyond a reasonable doubt in our minds that a crime has been committed, it's our job as a criminal prosecutor to file a case.""
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Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Funny)
Next time, maybe he should try just pasting the first paragraph of the article like everyone else does.
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Re:Huh? (Score:4, Funny)
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What the hell Taco?!?! (Score:4, Funny)
I just picture Taco in a bathrobe and slippers shuffling into "Slashdot Central" when Zonk and the others are out of the room and sitting down and submitting articles until they come back in, slap his hand and lead him back to his room to up his medications.
Put down the submit key! PUT IT DOWN!
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Re:Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
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County Clerk != Voting Clerk (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Huh? (Score:4, Funny)
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obvious problem here (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:obvious problem here (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, this raises the question: if the machine could be compromised in a few hours of hacking, are all the other machines stored securely enough that this couldn't have happened to them, too?
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Re:obvious problem here (Score:5, Insightful)
But they should be given that much access. An attacker is unlikely to just be "A Voter". These sorts of things are often, if not usually, inside jobs. An attacker should be assumed to have volunteered to manage the vote (which I gather is easy to do since few people want to do it) and should be assumed to be able to spend hours with a machine, probably in the comfort of their own home, and with access to any number of helpful resources, including the full resources of the local political party apparatus or the mafia. That last one's no joke, either.
I'm not very worried about "A Voter", I'm worried about the entire system.
In Diebold's defense, any machine handed over to an investigator should not be trusted again, for the very same reasons. However, Diebold should allow any customer to randomly select a voting system to subject to any arbitrary analysis, and replace it at no (extra) charge.
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Re:obvious problem here (Score:4, Insightful)
In Diebold's defense, Black Box Voting should have videotaped their investigation of the machine including keeping logs of every keystroke the entered into any interface. At a minimum, it would have shown their belief that everything relating to voting should be handled with no possible deception, but it also would have allowed Diebold to verify the integrity of the machines remotely and would give them important information about how someone determined to compromise the security of a voting machine would go about doing so.
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I took apart an ES&S touchscreen voting machi (Score:4, Informative)
Not making this up.
I noticed that the next time they cam to town thie newer model which has a paper logger attached no longer fit in the voting carol, So it was mounted on a stand and this would have been slightly harder to flip upside down. On the otherhand if I were a poll worker this would not have been a problem. The places where the tags and seals attach is easily defeated since you can snap out the plastic hinges.
The point here is not that you fould not make one with a better design but that they chose not to. Just as diebold chose to use interpreted code on the ballot configuration cards that has the authority to re-write the vote files.
SO it's not that you cannot make a secure system--eventually--but that there isn't even the slightest effort to attend to some mac-truck size holes. they know they are their and they prefer to hide them in propriatary obfuscation not secure them. These are not people we can just trust because they seem nice. You have every right to be 100% skeptical because every time someone looks hard we find they are not fixed right.
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Re:obvious problem here (Score:5, Insightful)
In my opinion, at least as important is the belief that the proper group to see if the machines are compromised is the manufacturer.
If the machines can't be verified as uncompromised on voting day by an election staffer at a voting location multiple times throughout the day, that's a huge problem. For the voting commission to accept Diebold's line that "That's the way it is." is simply unconscionable.
Slot machines in Nevada can be checked against any number of parameters to make sure that 1) hardware has not been added or replaced, 2) the software has not been altered (from the registered version on file with the NGC) and 3) the settings for the software match the casino's payout statements. The casino can do these checks, the NGC can do these checks, interested public parties can do these checks (with the cooperation of either the casino or the NGC).
Shouldn't we expect at least as much from the recordkeepers of democracy as we expect from a gambling house?
Regards,
Ross
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Answer (Score:3, Informative)
Because EVERY SINGLE VOTER isn't allowed a level of access to the machines to presumably perform an audit or otherwise tamper with and/or view the inner workings of the machines.
The solution is quite simple:
- Have a permanent, voter verifiable, auditable, and recountable paper trail (a feature Diebold and ES&S both offer)
- Have an open source system (which actually isn't at all required if the above condition is met)
At least you're not showing an bias. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:At least you're not showing an bias. (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:At least you're not showing an bias. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Are you aware of the test in Florida? (Score:4, Informative)
I would say even the submitter's point of view is not biased enough - Diebold should get a corporation death penalty [corpwatch.org] for even agreeing to provide voting machines without paper trail. This is such no-brainer, that no amount of outrage is sufficient.
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Re:At least you're not showing an bias. (Score:4, Funny)
Is...that dry?
I mean, don't crabs live underwater? I suppose, technically, dead crabs don't live underwater. But they do sit there, you know, underwater.
Which is wet.
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Re:Diebold earned bias, but it's partly ATM protoc (Score:5, Insightful)
When was the last time your bank "forgot" that you took money from an ATM? Do you ever hear of problems like that? No? Why does it happen with a vote?
I've become far more cynical about the process as every recount that's happened has had discrepancies. New, uncertified code is loaded on the machines the day before the election. The code is not available for examination by third parties (yet, a slot machine is.)
Why were exit polls so much more accurate in the days of paper ballots? I find it unlikely that the methodology has gotten that much worse, especially considering that similar districts in the same election have varying margins of error that correlate to the voting system in use at the polling location.
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What I would like to know... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What I would like to know... (Score:4, Insightful)
Why hasn't Diebold designed a hardwired electronic circuit or a mechanical system with failsafes such that the machine can't be hacked, and the wrong candidate will not be selected if the machine fails?
Even better, use whatever kind of unsecure computer platform you want for the voting system, but have it print out a piece of paper with the voter's choices.
That way the voter can see how they voted, and it's not necessary for them even to trust a simple hardwired system which, obviously, is still beyond the understanding of most of the population. Most people aren't EEs.
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Re:What I would like to know... (Score:5, Insightful)
Diebold shouldn't be worried about voters. They should be worried about volunteers who have access to the system. In that case, it's just as trivial for one of the volunteers to hack the system, and also print out fake paper trails as well.
No, the old ways are the best ways here, and they're adequate. A locked metal box with a slot in the top, where voters drop their ballots under the watchful eyes of multiple volunteers who are not only dedicated to the integrity of the process, but represent different political parties as well, is almost foolproof. In my area, when the polls close, the volunteers (all four of them) seal the box with tamper-evident tape and then sign their names over it. Then the box is transported by guards, accompanied by party reps and stored securely until the counting.
You don't want a paper trail. You want an auditable system. Your instincts tell you that paper is auditable. I don't agree.
I'm a professional security architect; I design and build high-security systems for a living, including designing and implement cryptographic protocols for all sorts of high-security systems. Regardless of what my instincts may or may not tell me, my experience and expertise tells me that bits are not trustworthy. I know just how hard it is to build an electronic system that is truly tight. All electronic security must build, in theory, on some known-good starting point, but with an election system there really isn't any such place to begin.
Actually, there is almost never any such place to begin. The real world doesn't provide those sorts of certainties. In security system design the way we address that issue is by spreading the risk; ensuring that the only way the system could be compromised is through the collusion of multiple parties who have good reasons not to collude. This applies to the designers of the system as well as its owners, operators and users.
Whether with paper in boxes or bits in whatever medium, to secure an election you *have* to provide detailed oversight by all interested parties at every stage. Using complex technology serves no purpose other than to artificially limit the number of people who are capable of understanding and verifying the steps. In contrast, given a paper solution, anyone who wants to can understand each step of the process by which ballots make it from voter to counter.
The safer thing to do is reassure the public by explaining the process.
Absolutely. And the safest thing to do is reassure the public by designing a process they can all understand, and then explaining that.
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Re:What I would like to know... (Score:4, Insightful)
What's "adequate"? Only "minor" voter fraud? Once every few elections? It's not like paper ballots haven't been forged before. They have. It's happened.
Sure. On a small scale, it will probably always happen. But that's better than making it possible for one person to modify *all* the votes. Much, much better.
Banks don't rely on four guys carrying a locked box of money when they transfer money.
Nope. They rely on 3DES encryption using a ZMK (zone master key) which was exchanged cryptographically separated into three pieces and delivered via three separate couriers to three separate executives at the remote bank, who assembled it in a key ceremony into a crypto box.
Which means, if you didn't catch it, that the three execs can collude, obtain the key and compromise all subsequent transfers. Or, alternatively, the three people on the sending end who obtained the key parts and mailed them.
*Every* real-world security system relies ultimately on people, and people are the weak link. The only protection you have is to spread the risk. Paper ballots allow the risk to be spread more easily and more widely than purely electronic systems.
Don't get me wrong: I love cryptography. I think it's so cool that I've spent a good chunk of my life working with it. But electronic security is really hard because you have so little to count on, and elections are even worse. The stakes are much higher than just about anything in the commercial world, and no one is truly neutral.
But the biggest reason that the techniques applied to banking and other commercial systems don't work is that elections simply cannot be fully auditable. If the three execs above colluded, compromised the key and then started performing fraudulent transactions it would be caught because bank transactions are fully auditable. The origin and destination of every transaction is traceable, and is verified by both sender and recipient (well, some people are lazy, but that's the theory). That sort of auditability is impossible with election systems because of the requirement that votes be anonymous. Since the ultimate originator of the vote *MUST* have no way to verify that his or her individual vote was properly traced throughout the system, we can't apply the same auditing techniques.
Votes have to be aggregated into anonymous lots, then collected together and tallied. With electronic vote represntations, all of that must, perforce, happen invisibly. Sure, we can try applying digital signatures, but those are only as strong as the signing process, the key management process and the systems that apply the signing. There are holes there you can drive a 747 through given people in the right place. And there are *lots* of "right" places.
With paper, on the other hand, lots of independent eyes can be applied at each step. With enough of them, the process is easy to make foolproof. The first, most dangerous, aggregation step is from the voter to the first collection receptacle. If it's done electronically, you have to ensure that the voting machine is guaranteed to be untamperable by anyone. That's VERY, VERY hard. With a paper ballot, on the other hand, the voter him/herself solves that problem, and watchers ensure that the voter doesn't stuff any extra votes in.
I'll put it this way: If you really think you can design an electronic voting system that is secure in the sense of making large-scale manipulations impossible, write up a detailed design and publish it. If you really do it, you'll immediately build yourself a reputation in the security industry because you'll have proven wrong, for example, the members of the National Committee for Voting Integrity, an organization of computer security experts including such people as David Chaum, Avi Rubin, Bruce Schneier, etc. Plus lots of others. In fact, pretty much every serious computer security expert on the planet has come out against pure electronic voting schemes, so you'll have raised yourself in
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Re:What I would like to know... (Score:4, Insightful)
No amount of tweaking will make the system secure. There is always a weak link. Even if the company had the best intentions in the world, how can they be certain that a lone partisan coder wouldn't sneak a line of code within what I'm sure are millions of lines? This could be done at any point in the chain of programs that handle the votes; from the user interface, to the final tally, through the individual machine databases, the talying computer, the flash memory files etc. etc. etc. I have plenty programming experience and I can tell you that it would be very easy to implement this "bug" so that it happened ONLY on the day of the election so that previous and following tests would show no bias.
Consider,
If you were a company and you were designing a voting machine you would have two options:
1)Hire an expensive team of developers responsible for surveying all the code components of your system to make sure each and everyone one of them are 100% secure and bug free. A feat that no leading software company (say MS) has succeeded in doing for their own software even after decades and millions of man-hours of debugging and re-engineering.
Or, 2) add a small printer similar or identical to the ones used for printing lotto tickets or even those good old receipt printers that are part of *every* cash register. These receips would then be hand veryfied by each voter and then put in a ballot box for future verification and recounts.
Which option do you think is less expensive? What rational is there for a company to chose option one?
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Why are they concerned? (Score:5, Funny)
Because if every single voter gets to hack the election results, then it's be a fair election. Duh!
January 20, 2009: President Stallman took the oath of office today, after the GNU/ESR ticket (GNU's Not United-states!) narrowly beat the Gates/Ballmer team campaign in an election that stunned the ruling Demopublican coalition...
Troubling, indeed (Score:5, Insightful)
On the one hand - what if Diebold is purely running a bluff? Then the election board is going to have to pay $40,000 for Diebold to send in someone who will attach some alligator clips somewhere, run something that flashes lights, and generally run some dog and pony show before deciding whether its in their interest to declare the polling machines as sabotaged, just damaged, or just fine.
On the other hand - what if Diebold is honest? Then the election board is going to have to pay $40,000 for Deibold to send in someone who will attach some alligator clips somewhere run something that flashes lights, and generally run some dog and pony show before deciding whether the machines are in fact sabotaged, just damaged, or just fine.
Whether Diebold is bona fide or not, they are likely to claim trade secret privilege to hide the actual workings of their machine or their testing mechanisms... and again, if they're telling the truth, then they would claim that, and if they're not, then their claim would be hard to challenge.
So the fundamental question is this: do you trust Diebold?
Here's the right answer (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's where this particular lie is exposed:
1) How can a single voting machine even cost $40K? I want to see the parts breakdown on *that*.
2) Wouldn't you want all the machines recertified before each election? I mean, if they're sitting in warehouse someplace between elections, who knows who poked at them? So each machine costs $40K to use every election?
3) And if this is all T&M, lets assume a generous hourly rate of $250/hour and the guy is staying in a $500 a night hotel. That means this takes about 3 full weeks to certify a machine!
Does anybody understand the implications of Diebold claiming $40K worth of damages here?
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It's NEVADA! (Score:4, Funny)
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It's also a CONFESSION (Score:5, Insightful)
On the third hand, it is a clear confession from Diebold that third parties can't accurately verify their voting machines and that their voting machines can be rigged.
So any county that thinks it is verifying that the machine isn't rigged by runnig pre-ballot checks is wrong.
They can point to this statement and say "IT ISN'T ENOUGH THAT WE VERIFY IT, BECAUSE DIEBOLD ADMITS THEY CAN BE RIGGED IN WAYS ONLY IT CAN DETECT".
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It's Uncertifiable (Score:5, Insightful)
The claim in previous elections is that it CAN be verified by running a trial ballot on the machines before the election. This is clearly false, since Diebold now asserts that this test will not detect this 'tinkering' you speak of.
Which means that any Diebold 'tinkering' cannot be detected either. Which means the machines can't be certified as accurate.
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Suddenly I don't feel bad my stories are rejected (Score:5, Funny)
Money more important than a fair vote? (Score:5, Insightful)
However, Demma seems more incensed at Funk because he may cost the state $40,000 for Diebold's astronomical recertification fee. He doesn't seem to be worried that people might not trust these machines. He doesn't seem to care that a state officer was worried enough to call in a non-profit third party to verify the integrity of these machines. I mean, these things could possibly affect the outcome of a vote, the foundation for a democratic republic! But instead of worrying about these machines he's clearly more upset about the $40,000 and Funk not talking to him about his concerns regarding the voting machines.
And of COURSE Diebold is going to tell you the machines are fine and fair. Sheesh, they want to make money don't they?
Isn't it great that chief elections officers have their priorities straight?
Give me a ballot sheet and a pencil any day over these closed, proprietary black box machines.
The system is ingenious (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, I think he got it almost right (Score:5, Insightful)
However, it should be a disinterested third party, not an advocacy group. No matter how well meaning and ethical the people in the group are, they can nonetheless be painted as enemies of the vendor.
What should be done is to have a professional firm that specializes in computer security audit the machines and provide a report on whether the machines are secure; if not whether and how they can be suecured. And provided the machines can be secured, what policies and procedures are needed to operate them so that fraud can be discouraged and detected.
This is just like having an independent financial auditor come in and look at your books and your financial control procedures.
From TFA (Score:5, Insightful)
"The problem is that instead of asking us or Diebold, Bruce Funk allowed a third party to put the warranty in jeopardy,"
So let me get this straight.
Election commissioner notices an irregularity in the memory of some voting machines, from whom the owner of the manufacturing company has very clear partisan leanings.
Election commissioner calls in a third party to run testing on the machines.
Now, I do not see a problem with third parties running audits on the machines used to count my votes. In fact, I want as MANY third parties running tests on thes to insure thier accuracy, as the fate of myself, my family, mmy state, and my country will be affected by what this machine spits out.
However, here we have third party verification being spun by Diebold as being a VERY BAD THING.
Whatever happened to transparency in government and in democratic processes? Is it not one of the core values of America?
couple points of info (Score:5, Informative)
Levers of Power (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:how can he possibly win? (Score:4, Interesting)
Any takers?
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Bs with a bit of truth (Score:4, Insightful)
"The problem is that instead of asking us or Diebold, Bruce Funk allowed a third party to put the warranty in jeopardy," Demma said in a telephone interview from Emery County. "If I sound frustrated, it's because I am frustrated. We don't know what they did to the machines. If Bruce would have just asked, we could have saved this forty grand."
First the BS part. If every machine is identical and every machine went through the same testing procedure then there shouldn't be ANY discrepancies in the machines memory. This is presuming that before the elections only that data necessary to perform the tabulation are on the systems. This is total BS to say that the discrepancies are the results of fonts.
As far as the $40,000 to 'fix' whatever is wrong with them, how does anyone know what needs to be fixed if Diebold doesn't allow anyone to test the machines? How does anyone know that Diebold won't surrepticiously make changes which could alter the outcome of an election by performing this fix?
Now for the truth part. By allowing a third party to examine the machines without notifying anyone, Funk did go a bit overboard. This is not to say that he went beyond his mandate to protect the integrity of the voting process. He should be commended for making sure all the i's are dotted and t's crossed before allowing votes to be cast.
However, by not informing the commissioners of his desire to have a third-party examine the machines for flaws or outright corruption, he has invalidated any findings by Black Box since it is true no one knows what they did or did not do.
The correct process would have been to tell the commissioners of his desire for a third-party review and if they objected or if Diebold objected, he could have explained his reasonings why he wanted another set of eyes to check things out (which is pretty much what was said in the article). If they refused the request he would have a much more firm standing to say whether or not the machines will do what the manufacturer claims they will do since by not allowing the examination it would appear that they, either the commissioners or Dieblod (or both), have something to hide.
As it stands now he's shot himself in the foot because he went behind everyones back and secretly had someone else examine the machines.
What is truly interesting is that the commissioners don't appear to be interested in what Black Box found but are more concerned that they'll have to shell out $40,000. That doesn't sound like the people are too interested in ensuring that the machines will work correctly but are more concerned about bean counting.
If Funk does resign I hope he vehemently and vociferously expresses his doubts as to the capabilities of these machines and insist that people use absentee ballots to vote. He should make the rounds on tv so he can clearly explain why he has his doubts so the people can understand what is going on.
Some more information about the testing... (Score:4, Informative)
Here's the link:
http://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/forums/board-aut
It's on black box voting's website, so obviously it will be biased, but at least it gives more detail than the gloss-over provided by the tribune.
I'll take some of that action! (Score:4, Insightful)
$40K to re-image a drive and maybe poke around to make sure no key logging hardware is in place (although a lot of good that will do with a touch screen)? Sounds like easy money to me.
It is a serious problem. (Score:5, Informative)
The companies have done similar things in other states. In Florida All 3 have refused to sell any systems to Volusia County. The county's Election Director Ion Sancho was the one who allowed his systems to be tested for security and discovered the "Hrusti Hack" namely whereby the machines will load arbitrary code stored on their memory cards and execute them. Such a hack makes it trivial to change ballots, erase totals, etc. It has since been shown that systems by Sequoia Inc. are vulnerable to the same hack.
Volusia county is also the county that caused Al Gore to initially declare defeat in 2000. During election night Al Gore was leading Bush with a comfortable margin. At 10om someone uploaded a card that reported -16,022 votes for Al Gore and 10,000 for some socialist canidate all from a precinct with 600 voters.
This card passed all of Diebold's stringent "safety checks" (whatever the hell they were) and changed the statewide totals putting Gore well behind Bush. Gore declared defeat. After that the county discovered the errors and reset the system claiming that the new totals were correct. Nevertheles the fact remains that the card got in, was loaded, and threw off a U.S. Presidential election.
Now the companys won't sell to Volusia and are telling the state and the feds that it's Sancho's fault because he wants to test the systems for security. Florida's Governor Jeb Bush (brother of shrub) has also personally blamed Sancho for putting the state behind.
Meanwhile the Department of Justice is threatening to sue the state or withold funds because the county has not bought new systems even though noone will sell said systems to them. The idea being, apparently, that he should just sell out the elections.
At the end of the day the collusion and bullying going o by the companies, by the U.S. Government over HAVA (written by Bob Ney former congressmen for Diebold and now a leading figure in the Abramoff corruption investigation) and by frightened state governments is insane. At the end of the day the only losers will be the American People, of all stripes.
Pick the right tool for the job (Score:4, Insightful)
Likewise, computers are probably the wrong tool for voting. Accountability is removed, we've now put elections at risk of hardware crashes, software hacks, network mishaps, and so forth. Not only that, if the system IS hacked, how does one find that vote I cast against Hillary in the 2008 election? Are votes in hacked disgregarded in districts where the system has been tampered with (bad), or is the final result delayed until another election can be scheduled on a brand-new system (not quite as bad, but still bad?), or on paper (which takes us back to where we were in 2004)?
Computers are great tools (I wouldn't be on
- If networked, can be tampered with remotely, so no amount of police officers guarding over the machines can prevent against crackers
- If wireless, can be interfered with very easily
- Unless hardened, a highly-directional antenna with a moderate-power transmitter can interfere with the box's operation
- Where is the paper trail in the event of the above?
- Paper ballots can be counted under the supervision of both major parties and independents. Not possible with electronically-cast votes.
- If an exploit at the voting console is discovered, what can prevent ballot stuffing? With paper ballots, it's easy; if you drop more than one ballot in, at minimum you will be disallowed from dropping it in the box. Best scanario, you get arrested and charged with a federal crime for being such a dumbass.
In a republic where the representatives are elected democratically, abandoning the paper ballot is folly. Even with the pain of Florida elections arising because a handful of idiots cannot follow very clear arrows and directions, the paper ballot is the very best tool for electing officials. The election is documented with physical evidence, very easily supervised, and tampering is very easily discovered immediately and the idiots responsible being held responsible with very little investigation required.
Leave electronic voting technology up to surveys, unofficial NON-BINDING referenda (e.g., a referendum put forth for representatives to gather official majority public opinion), and the private sector.
Heck, even in IT, computers are not always the best solution for tracking all data or accomplishing all tasks.
Re:what does it matter? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:what does it matter? (Score:5, Insightful)
Or perhaps you should go back to pecnil, paper and a sealed box, like we still use over here in the UK. I trust that system much more that I'd ever trust a voting machine.
The difference is that in the US we vote on many more offices. My ballot generally includes some forty or fifty choices. It's easy enough to mark such a ballot with a pencil, but it gets difficult to count them, so some automation is useful. Further, a well-designed touch screen user interface is accessible to people with vision and motor skill deficiencies that would exclude them from voting with a paper ballot. Finally, a well-designed touch screen UI is less error-prone.
So, there are good reasons to use machines, but there aren even better reasons *not* to use purely electronic tallies as the final results.
Voting machines should print human-readable paper ballots, verifiable by the voter, that can also be counted by machine, and those ballots should be put in a locked metal box and then counted under supervision of all the major political parties to produce the official tallies.
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Re:what does it matter? (Score:5, Informative)
o you've never heard of having a different voting slip for each actual office position then... and putting the marked slips in the correct boxes makes things easier at the counting places as well
We'd need at least 30 boxes. That's just impractical. Come to that, it's better to put everything on one paper ballot and then figure out how to count (which is what has been done for many, many years).
You have to remember how governments are structured in the US. City, County, State and Federal governments are all separate, and we vote for offices for each. Within each government, executive, legislative and judicial branches are separate, and we vote for people in most of them. On top of that are ballot initiatives at the city, county and state level.
Whether or not having so many choices actually improves democracy is an open question, but this is the system we have, and the voting approach must work with it.
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Class Act (Score:4, Insightful)
There's lots of class war in America, where capitalism is rigged to preserve its best opportunities for rich families. But the president themself is more of a pawn in that war than an emblem of it.
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Re:Shouldn't voting machines be regulated? (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, I understand what you're saying. But they're not Diebold's machines any more than this PC is not Microsoft's PC. That's an important distinction.
"But they can't point to a documented, legitimate qualification process to allay their customer's valid concerns."
Exactly right. Moreover, they have no *re-certification* process. Think about what will happen to these machines. The election is over. They are taken to the county warehouse. You pull them out 1 year later. How do I certify they haven't been tampered with? Some seal on the door??????? Or do you have to pay a special technician to come out for 3-4 weeks per machine to cerify each machine?
"This is lousy engineering of the kind that pervades traditional IT"
Perhaps. But Diebold seems to figure out how to do it right when banks insist they do it right, but here they chose not to do it that way. Curious? Sure seems it.
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Re:What you're missing... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, we're not missing that at all. It seems evident that the Chain of Command was either dazzled, baffled, or bribed into accepting these faulty machines from an ethically deficient corporation, and the only way the integrity of the voting process could be preserved was to solicit an independent examination into the machines' trustworthiness.
That the Chain of Command is now throwing a hissy fit about "warranty violations" serves only to illustrate that they are paying attention to the wrong things. Of course you independently test the machines. When you're dealing with something this important, you never believe the four-color glossies; you acquire your own facts and test stuff.
Schwab
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