beadfulthings writes "After eight years and some $65 million, the state of Maryland is taking its first steps to return to an accountable, paper-ballot based voting system. Governor Martin O'Malley has announced an initial outlay of $6.5 million towards the $20 million cost of an optical system which will scan and tally the votes while the paper ballots are retained as a backup. The new (or old) system is expected to be in place by 2010 — or four years before the state finishes paying off the bill for the touch-screen system."
I'm sure many of us are aware... but let us not forget who Premier Election Solutions, really are. They are Diebold.
Changing the name was a sneaky move.
Strange that while they offer flawed election 'solutions', they also make ATMs and cash deposit machines. HSBC banks here in the Free World use Diebold-badged machines, into which shopkeepers deposit their money every Friday. I dread to think what that may implicate if the ATMs are running similar software.
The difference is that both Diebold and their clients (the banks) have a vested interest in making sure ATMs *DO* record every transaction accurately.
Unlike state government agencies, the banks, especially many of the ones in Chicago, NYC and up and down the east coast of the US, are run by the kind of folks who might be inclined to provide a set of concrete sneakers to anyone who sells them untrustworthy ATM machines. And the ATM makers know this.
And why oh why is your country not populated by people who might be inclined to provide a set of concrete sneakers to anyone who sells them untrustworthy elections?
Well, I assume by your tone you are talking about the US. Here is my anecdote for the day:
On a recent gameshow (1 vs. 100), first question was who was so and so's step son. Some actress got married and by the marriage the stepson is like 5 yeas younger than the dad. Whatever, I can't remember the question or answer, that is completely useless knowledge (unless you are an agent or something). Out of 100, only 3 people got it wrong. Not bad. 97% of the people in that set knew the answer.
Next Question: What is the third highest rank in the Senate called? Out of 97 people, a third got it wrong.
Now these are people who were screened for a TV gameshow. They should be smarter than the average bear. A third got it wrong.
These and people less intelligent (than gameshow contestants) are the voters. What do you think they care about more? What do you think they spend more time exposing themselves to, politics or OJ and Britney? That is the true hopelessness of our situation. If you know of a way to get 200 million people to stop paying attention to a drug-addicted talentless dead-beat mom or other Hollywood scuttlebutt, I would love to hear it. You want us to run a marathon to stop election fraud when most of the public barely knows how to crawl. Nevermind the 100 yard dash to comprehend why our economy and world reputation are crumbling to dust. IMHO, that is the answer to your question.
Other answers may vary. This answer does not constitute the opinion of my employer or my land lord or my cat. This answer may become invalid in the future and no guarantees are made, either thusly, thisly, or implied. This answer may be copied if it contains this disclaimer. Due to quantum fluctuations, this answer may cease to exit at any time. This answer may cease to have been written in the first place if an unforseen time warp should occur. Do not submerge this answer in water.
This isn't an obvious question, so I too am surprised that that many people got it right. From This Chart [senate.gov], it would appear that the 3rd ranking member is the Majority Leader, behind the Vice President (1st), and the President Pro Tempore (2nd).
I bet there will be some nasty digital skeletons in the closet.
Absolutely.
The more I learn about this Diebold outfit, the more I think they should be kept far away from any part of our electoral system. Just yesterday, I read an interesting story about a county clerk in some rural Nevada county who looked the machines over carefully and, not being a techie, called in a few trusted computer people to check out one of the systems. Naturally, Diebold's machines are closed source, so they say this County Clerk violated their EULA. The worst part of this is that Diebold put pressure on the County Board until this clerk was forced to resign. They've got that much power.
Just the idea that our elections would run on a closed-source, impossible-to-audit system is unbelievable to me. Especially after the rate of undervoting (ballots that were completely filled out, except the Diebold machines say there was no vote cast for President that only seemed to occur in heavily Democratic precincts in Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Ohio. In some minority districts, the rate of undervoting was EIGHTY PERCENT in 2004. That means, in a heavily contest year, in an area that has a high turnout rate, voters went in and filled out their computer ballot for all the local races, all the judgeships, county board, etc., but for some reason did not cast a vote for President. It's absolutely ridiculous. Problem is, since there are no paper ballots, it's impossible to audit. Diebold sends in the count and that's it, jack. Four more years of a jug-eared dry drunk in the White House.
It's going to take a while, and maybe a few election cycles, but if we can't get honest paper ballots in every single precinct in the USA, there needs to be some serious shit a-flyin'.
I love computers, but I think they have no place in the electoral process. Transparency should be the order of the day. Computers will always tend to obfuscate things for the common man, because as far as he is concerned, anything that happens inside a computer system may as well be a form of arcane magic. There are a far higher number of people who understand the principles of "counting", given you a far greater pool of competent election officials to draw from.
Yes, I am sorry to interrupt your Bush-bashing "discourse" with the facts.
My "Bush-bashing discourse?" Check again, dipshit -- I'm not the same guy you were blabbering to. You're just making such an ass of yourself that even otherwise-disinterested third parties like myself feel the need to point out how much of a fuck-up you are!
That's the problem with giving people like you a voice...
"Like me?" You don't know anything about me, Mr. I'm-Too-Stupid-To-Check-The-Name-Of-The-Guy-I'm-Replying-To, except for the fact that I think you're a flaming douchebag!
Now, seriously. Are you even even aware that you completely ignored every piece of meaningful content of PopeRatzo's post, and instead flew off the handle over a random meaningless remark? You're acting like you're a spoiled four-year-old who was insulted personally, and that's just stupid. Grow a thicker skin, and stop deluding yourself that you're G. W. Bush! Unless you are Bush, in which case your whining represents whole new orders of magnitude of patheticness...
Diebold are going to have real trouble building their reputation back up after this; even though other machines may be vulnerable, the fact that this case has been so well publicised is seriously going to damage Diebold's public image.
Actually, they could have scored a huge boost in credibility *IF* they had said, wait! We'll pay for the NH recounts because we are certain our machines are good, and if anything is found to be wrong, we'll fix it before the next primary or caucus.
But that is not what they did... instead, there was a conversation in a darkened back room somewhere that went something like this:
Politician: I thought you said it would be undetectable? Company Rep: I thought you said we'd not be prosecuted? Politician: You didn't say you'd fsck it up this badly. Company Rep: I did what you told me you wanted, give or take a couple of votes.
Politician: This is not going to be good, you had better hide the evidence now, bury it deeply. Company Rep: No problem, we just paid Britney another $2 Million to pee on the courthouse steps.
I read somewhere that Deibold wants out of the business because it is like 10% of their revenue and 90% of their PR headaches. I love optical scanners. They are so easy to do, quick to report, and easy to check if there is a problem.
What a lot of people don't realize is that on election day those boxes are carted around escorted by agents from both parties. There is no funny business to be done because it is being watched the entire election with lawyers for both parties parked around the area ready to respo
What about the other 10 political parties in this country? Where are their representatives? It's not a two-party system despite what the media has led you to believe.
Because the other parties around here can't muster enough people to vote at every polling place, much less provide a volunteer to staff each one and assist in carrying the ballots around.
Neither the Republicrats nor the Demopublicans currently feels threatened enough by a third party to risk charges of rigging an election. Think about the
Diebold are going to have real trouble building their reputation back up after this; even though other machines may be vulnerable, the fact that this case has been so well publicised is seriously going to damage Diebold's public image.
And pigs are certain to fly anytime now. Some states appear to question their machines. Others don't. But I don't see anything about
states demanding their money back for the scrapped equipment. And therefore I don't think Diebold is too concerned! They already
sold the f
Thanks for the info. Nice to see that my home state scores as highly as I would have thought, and that FL was apparently sufficiently embarassed by screwing up the 2000 election to get its act together.
I do have to say that I find it troubling that so many states don't require either a paper trail or proper auditing of elections. Seems to me that democracies work far better when there's somebody keeping an eye on things to make sure that partisans don't cheat the masses.
Perhaps the state could sell some of the Diebold devices to help pay the bill that they're stuck with. They may garner a cult following(like the iPhone) of hackers and tinkerers. The devices are worthless as voting machines but they may be coaxed into second lives as kiosk-style internet machines, etc.
At some point someone probably signed off that the deliverable had been met. Once you agree that the product meets your needs it's kind of hard to go back on it.
I like to say "It's OK! This is how we LEARN!" but unless the responsible parties are actually held accountable for their decisions they won't learn either. While in a perfect world this would lead to some people losing jobs or offices, I find that it's quite rare that people pay attention to huge wastes of taxpayer dollars. Putting it in terms th
This is just stupid. Wasting $65M to $90M is pointless, but they deserve it. Moving backwards isn't the answer, and neither is moving only slightly backwards. There's no way that for that kind of money, they couldn't have gotten a series of machines that actually works. I don't want to spit the same old Diebold sucks, yay linux/open source/etc. vitriol but there are a lot of options available to a small business, not to mention a bloody STATE. The instant these things weren't working properly eight years ago, they should've given Diebold an ultimatum and then gone elsewhere.
Maryland expects to be back on the paper trail, following states such as Florida and California, which have also decided that all-electronic systems make it too easy to compromise elections.
Hmm... an all-electronic system doesn't work, and neither does all-paper. Gee, I wonder if there's someway to combine the two and maybe get some sort of hybrid, combining the best of both worlds...
Hmm... an all-electronic system doesn't work, and neither does all-paper. Gee, I wonder if there's someway to combine the two and maybe get some sort of hybrid, combining the best of both worlds...
TFA does describe a method of combining electronic and paper, the optical scanners. A person votes on a paper ballot which is then fed into a scanner. The scanner allows for quick tabulation of votes but if there's any questions about the votes the paper ballots are still available. And there's no reason tou
Here is question... Before touchscreen voting, our area in Maryland had an optical paper system, which resembled some sort of Star Wars fan video version of R2D2. Why didn't they hold onto these machines, just in case the touchscreen voting devices didn't work out?
Before touchscreen voting, our area in Maryland had an optical paper system, which resembled some sort of Star Wars fan video version of R2D2. Why didn't they hold onto these machines, just in case the touchscreen voting devices didn't work out?
I don't know if this is common knowledge to informed Americans (I only know of it because it is part of my family lore), but in the 1970s there was another voting machine company, named after its founder, Shoup. They made the voting booths with the pulldown lever, and though I doubt they're still around today, some of you older/.ers may remember them. Anyhow, this company was plagued by scandal. One of the Shoup family, Ransom Shoup was actually convicted of conspiracy to throw an election. The company was also involved in bribing florida politicians. And this was in the era of paper ballots, too. Fast-forward to today: nobody knows if Diebold is up to no good, but that's kind of the point. Without a paper trail, it will be hard to convict anyone of anything, and I think Diebold knows this.
Except Shoup is now calling itself, "Advanced Voting Solutions [advancedvoting.com]" (AVS). You've probably heard of them. --The most astonishing part is that Diebold's, Howard Van Pelt and Larry Ensminger left Diebold and were hired by AVS in late 2004. --And not just a small hire either. Van Pelt and Ensminger are now AVS's President and Vice President!
What they should do is use this [punchscan.org]. It seems to address all of the problems with machine votes, AND all of the problems of the traditional system.
Separating the human readable and machine readable ballot, and then shredding the human readable one, keeps the door open for tampering with the counting software (you might have marked choice A for your candidate on the human readable ballot but what if the counting software counts choice A as a different candidate). How do you then prove how it was supposed to be counted? If you're going to in some way securely preserve the human readable portion, why bother separating them in the first place? Also if you
Optical scan ballots really aren't a dramatic improvement in reliability. In fact, the touchscreen systems replaced optical scan ballots in many locations.
Designing a reliable balloting system is really quite easy. The UN nailed it down decades ago:
1. Printed paper ballots wherein each ballot is marked by grease pencil or felt marker.
2. Ballots are folded and placed into a slot on top of a locked clear plastic box.
3. The boxes are guarded, transported to a central location, and then opened and the ballots are all hand-counted by volunteers in front of observers from all parties.
What is wrong with using an optical scanning device to assist the hand-count? So long as a statistically relevant percentage of random ballots are hand-counted to confirm it, I have no problem with those optical systems. Heck -- I don't think most Slashdotters would mind a computerized system so long as it was done properly. The real issue is that none of the closed-source systems proposed today are even close.
What is wrong with using an optical scanning device to assist the hand-count? So long as a statistically relevant percentage of random ballots are hand-counted to confirm it
That's the problem. Almost no voting processes in ANY STATE implement random hand-counted audits. I think many people would be happier if your "so long as" was actually the way it worked.
Optical scan ballots really aren't a dramatic improvement in reliability.
They can be. Have the touchscreen device print the vote onto the paper ballot, and a barcode with a checksum. Scan it optically and verify it against the checksum.
Anyone can verify their ballot - they simply look at what is marked. Misreads simply don't happen - if the two don't match, there is a problem. Give they guy a new ballot (replacing the old one), and have him do it again.
If the hand recount doesn't _exactly_ match the automated totals, it can be scanned in batches (any size). Count X ballots, scan X ballots. If they don't match, there is a problem.
As a nice side effect, machines don't have to be trusted, and don't have to have a network connection either. The machine can't screw up your vote without marking the wrong thing (or the CRC would be wrong), and you can check that yourself before it's counted. Recounts can be done by hand, and in the event of total system failure, you can still mark the silly thing by hand.
As a nice bonus to this, you get the benefits of touchscreen voting - secret ballots for the blind (audio), multiple language support, pictures, the ability to offer more in-depth descriptions of line items, etc.
Hand counting is not quick, and human error can enter into that. Hand counting with lots of observers can be pretty time consuming in terms of man-hours.
This brings up one of the consistently-unasked questions in debates over electronic balloting: what's the hurry? I don't mean "It would be nice if we knew sooner," but what is it about an election requires that this stuff be done quickly?
A second unasked-question would be, "what makes hand-counting errors less desirable than electronic-counting errors?"
The point behind optical scan is that it is quick, low cost and still auditable.
It's quick, but the system I propose is considerably cheaper. I disagree with the third point. Optical scan ballots, in practice, are only "audited" by the same scanning equipment used to count them initially. This does not really translate to "auditable" in my mind since equipment tampering is undetectable. The likelihood of observers being able to certify the reliability of the scanning equipment "on the spot" is very low. Voter suppression is the most serious issue in the USA, and as my system is extrem
I wonder if we'll be seeing a slew of lawsuits against Diebold coming in the next few months/years as the states try to recoup the cost of their investments in the Diebold voting machines. I'd bet that they'd have contracts with Diebold that would hold them responsible for failures in the equipment. Given the reports from NH that seem to indicate discrepancies between what Diebold equipment reported and hand recounts I'd think that's a pretty good indicator that the Diebold equipment is faulty.
If the state buys a touch-screen voting system that is later proven (without a doubt) to be flawed in any of a number of ways, all of which contribute directly to an incorrect tally of the vote (the very reason the machines were procured), why does said state still have to pay for that contract? Are states not naturally covered by the same laws we are? Did they not get a warranty? Did no one even stop to fucking ask?
Unless this thing was negotiated on handshakes and golf games, there should be a good amount of evidence for the state to press for elimination of that debt due to breach.
Let's start holding them accountable for their shenanigans instead of just taking our ball and going home.
I always enjoyed my previous county's voting system.
Here's your paper, here's your marker. Fill in the dot next to who you're voting for. If you make a mistake, please see one of the attendants for a new ballot and we will destroy the old one, and record the action and confirm it with your signature. If you would like to vote and are unable to properly use the marker, please see one of our attendants for assistance. Once you are done, please slip your ballot into the secured box at either end of the room. The "I voted" sticker is optional and will not be forced on you.
I voted in that county for 7 years, and not once did anyone ever question the authenticity of the outcomes, even when outcomes were close.
How could people find this so goddamn difficult to understand?!
No one finds it difficult to understand. They just want to create conditions whereby they can manipulate the vote count or create the impression that the other party is manipulating the vote count. Or both.
Notice I said "...or force them to ask for assistance..." I meant to post sarcastically; obviously the blind and seriously disabled are going to HAVE to ask for assistance no matter what system is used, the brain dead/comatose shouldn't be voting (unless you're a Democrat, in which case you're in favor of ID-free voting, felons voting, so I expect you're in favor of voting for the dead or nearly-so, since it worked so well for Kennedy), and ultimately this whole ISSUE was touched off by a few urban Florida c
Today I am proud to be a Marylander! I would break out singing a round of "Maryland My Maryland" (still Maryland's official song) if it weren't a song written at about the time of the civil war about what a jerk Lincoln is and how we should join the Confederacy.
Funny in 140 years or so Maryland has gone from that to being one of the more progressive states in the union. Seriously, don't let our past fool you Maryland is a great place to live -- and for the record we never did leave the union. Now let's not get into what the states official motto translates to.
While I don't give a hoot about how americans do the physical act of voting, as an electrical engineer I'm appalled about using something like Windows CE to implement a god-darn voting system!
If the voting system is more complicated than a basic 4-function calculator, you're doing something waaaaaaay wrong. Maybe you should just licence the system Brazil uses? Or India? That's where your hi-tech comes from theses days anyhow.
But what I want to know - (Score:5, Funny)
Re:But what I want to know - (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Diebold = Premier Election Solutions. (Score:5, Informative)
Changing the name was a sneaky move.
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Changing the name was a sneaky move.
Re:Diebold = Premier Election Solutions. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Especially in Chicago, NYC and the East Coast. (Score:3, Interesting)
Unlike state government agencies, the banks, especially many of the ones in Chicago, NYC and up and down the east coast of the US, are run by the kind of folks who might be inclined to provide a set of concrete sneakers to anyone who sells them untrustworthy ATM machines. And the ATM makers know this.
Re:Especially in Chicago, NYC and the East Coast. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Especially in Chicago, NYC and the East Coast. (Score:4, Interesting)
On a recent gameshow (1 vs. 100), first question was who was so and so's step son. Some actress got married and by the marriage the stepson is like 5 yeas younger than the dad. Whatever, I can't remember the question or answer, that is completely useless knowledge (unless you are an agent or something). Out of 100, only 3 people got it wrong. Not bad. 97% of the people in that set knew the answer.
Next Question: What is the third highest rank in the Senate called?
Out of 97 people, a third got it wrong.
Now these are people who were screened for a TV gameshow. They should be smarter than the average bear. A third got it wrong.
These and people less intelligent (than gameshow contestants) are the voters. What do you think they care about more? What do you think they spend more time exposing themselves to, politics or OJ and Britney? That is the true hopelessness of our situation. If you know of a way to get 200 million people to stop paying attention to a drug-addicted talentless dead-beat mom or other Hollywood scuttlebutt, I would love to hear it. You want us to run a marathon to stop election fraud when most of the public barely knows how to crawl. Nevermind the 100 yard dash to comprehend why our economy and world reputation are crumbling to dust. IMHO, that is the answer to your question.
Other answers may vary. This answer does not constitute the opinion of my employer or my land lord or my cat. This answer may become invalid in the future and no guarantees are made, either thusly, thisly, or implied. This answer may be copied if it contains this disclaimer. Due to quantum fluctuations, this answer may cease to exit at any time. This answer may cease to have been written in the first place if an unforseen time warp should occur. Do not submerge this answer in water.
Parent
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Christ, only a third? I am abd on a Ph.D. in history and even I don't know that off the top of my head (minority whip maybe?).
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Re:Diebold = Premier Election Solutions. (Score:5, Insightful)
The more I learn about this Diebold outfit, the more I think they should be kept far away from any part of our electoral system. Just yesterday, I read an interesting story about a county clerk in some rural Nevada county who looked the machines over carefully and, not being a techie, called in a few trusted computer people to check out one of the systems. Naturally, Diebold's machines are closed source, so they say this County Clerk violated their EULA. The worst part of this is that Diebold put pressure on the County Board until this clerk was forced to resign. They've got that much power.
Just the idea that our elections would run on a closed-source, impossible-to-audit system is unbelievable to me. Especially after the rate of undervoting (ballots that were completely filled out, except the Diebold machines say there was no vote cast for President that only seemed to occur in heavily Democratic precincts in Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Ohio. In some minority districts, the rate of undervoting was EIGHTY PERCENT in 2004. That means, in a heavily contest year, in an area that has a high turnout rate, voters went in and filled out their computer ballot for all the local races, all the judgeships, county board, etc., but for some reason did not cast a vote for President. It's absolutely ridiculous. Problem is, since there are no paper ballots, it's impossible to audit. Diebold sends in the count and that's it, jack. Four more years of a jug-eared dry drunk in the White House.
It's going to take a while, and maybe a few election cycles, but if we can't get honest paper ballots in every single precinct in the USA, there needs to be some serious shit a-flyin'.
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Transparency should be the order of the day. Computers will always tend to obfuscate things for the common man, because as far as he is concerned, anything that happens inside a computer system may as well be a form of arcane magic. There are a far higher number of people who understand the principles of "counting", given you a far greater pool of competent election officials to draw from.
Understanding cryptographic signatures and ens
Re:Diebold = Premier Election Solutions. (Score:4, Funny)
My "Bush-bashing discourse?" Check again, dipshit -- I'm not the same guy you were blabbering to. You're just making such an ass of yourself that even otherwise-disinterested third parties like myself feel the need to point out how much of a fuck-up you are!
"Like me?" You don't know anything about me, Mr. I'm-Too-Stupid-To-Check-The-Name-Of-The-Guy-I'm-Replying-To, except for the fact that I think you're a flaming douchebag!
Now, seriously. Are you even even aware that you completely ignored every piece of meaningful content of PopeRatzo's post, and instead flew off the handle over a random meaningless remark? You're acting like you're a spoiled four-year-old who was insulted personally, and that's just stupid. Grow a thicker skin, and stop deluding yourself that you're G. W. Bush! Unless you are Bush, in which case your whining represents whole new orders of magnitude of patheticness...
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Where can Diebold hide now? (Score:3, Insightful)
Diebold are going to have real trouble building their reputation back up after this; even though other machines may be vulnerable, the fact that this case has been so well publicised is seriously going to damage Diebold's public image.
Re:Where can Diebold hide now? (Score:4, Interesting)
But that is not what they did... instead, there was a conversation in a darkened back room somewhere that went something like this:
Politician: I thought you said it would be undetectable?
Company Rep: I thought you said we'd not be prosecuted?
Politician: You didn't say you'd fsck it up this badly.
Company Rep: I did what you told me you wanted, give or take a couple of votes.
Politician: This is not going to be good, you had better hide the evidence now, bury it deeply.
Company Rep: No problem, we just paid Britney another $2 Million to pee on the courthouse steps.
profit!
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I love optical scanners. They are so easy to do, quick to report, and easy to check if there is a problem.
What a lot of people don't realize is that on election day those boxes are carted around escorted by agents from both parties. There is no funny business to be done because it is being watched the entire election with lawyers for both parties parked around the area ready to respo
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Because the other parties around here can't muster enough people to vote at every polling place, much less provide a volunteer to staff each one and assist in carrying the ballots around.
Neither the Republicrats nor the Demopublicans currently feels threatened enough by a third party to risk charges of rigging an election. Think about the
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
And pigs are certain to fly anytime now.
Some states appear to question their machines. Others don't. But I don't see anything about states demanding their money back for the scrapped equipment. And therefore I don't think Diebold is too concerned! They already sold the f
Verified Voting (Score:4, Informative)
Thought others might find it interesting.
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I do have to say that I find it troubling that so many states don't require either a paper trail or proper auditing of elections. Seems to me that democracies work far better when there's somebody keeping an eye on things to make sure that partisans don't cheat the masses.
Stuck with the bill. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Stuck with the bill. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
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I like to say "It's OK! This is how we LEARN!" but unless the responsible parties are actually held accountable for their decisions they won't learn either. While in a perfect world this would lead to some people losing jobs or offices, I find that it's quite rare that people pay attention to huge wastes of taxpayer dollars. Putting it in terms th
Re:Stuck with the bill. (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
voting (Score:3, Insightful)
Hmm... an all-electronic system doesn't work, and neither does all-paper. Gee, I wonder if there's someway to combine the two and maybe get some sort of hybrid, combining the best of both worlds...
TFA does describe a method of combining electronic and paper, the optical scanners. A person votes on a paper ballot which is then fed into a scanner. The scanner allows for quick tabulation of votes but if there's any questions about the votes the paper ballots are still available. And there's no reason tou
What about the old machines? (Score:4, Informative)
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I think they tried, but the Jawas stole them.
Election fraud (Score:5, Informative)
Heck, Shoup is still in the game today! (Score:5, Informative)
Here's a little of Shoup's history. [sptimes.com]
It's a big, hairball of a mess and none of the right people are in jail.
-FL
Parent
" ... impossible to imagine ..." (Score:4, Insightful)
That's true, as far as it goes.
But voting systems can -- and have been -- imagined that make it much more difficult to get away with such an attack.
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Oh good, so now my neighbor can know who I voted for. So can my boss and my wife.
Nothing like good ol' fashioned voter intimidation.
Paper ballots are pretty horrible, too (Score:3, Interesting)
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Optical scan ballots (Score:5, Insightful)
Designing a reliable balloting system is really quite easy. The UN nailed it down decades ago:
1. Printed paper ballots wherein each ballot is marked by grease pencil or felt marker.
2. Ballots are folded and placed into a slot on top of a locked clear plastic box.
3. The boxes are guarded, transported to a central location, and then opened and the ballots are all hand-counted by volunteers in front of observers from all parties.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Optical scan ballots (Score:5, Interesting)
They can be. Have the touchscreen device print the vote onto the paper ballot, and a barcode with a checksum. Scan it optically and verify it against the checksum.
Anyone can verify their ballot - they simply look at what is marked. Misreads simply don't happen - if the two don't match, there is a problem. Give they guy a new ballot (replacing the old one), and have him do it again.
If the hand recount doesn't _exactly_ match the automated totals, it can be scanned in batches (any size). Count X ballots, scan X ballots. If they don't match, there is a problem.
As a nice side effect, machines don't have to be trusted, and don't have to have a network connection either. The machine can't screw up your vote without marking the wrong thing (or the CRC would be wrong), and you can check that yourself before it's counted. Recounts can be done by hand, and in the event of total system failure, you can still mark the silly thing by hand.
As a nice bonus to this, you get the benefits of touchscreen voting - secret ballots for the blind (audio), multiple language support, pictures, the ability to offer more in-depth descriptions of line items, etc.
It's not exactly rocket science.
Parent
Re:Optical scan ballots (Score:5, Funny)
No, but if you could do it with rockets, that would be awesome.
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Re:Optical scan ballots (Score:5, Insightful)
This brings up one of the consistently-unasked questions in debates over electronic balloting: what's the hurry? I don't mean "It would be nice if we knew sooner," but what is it about an election requires that this stuff be done quickly?
A second unasked-question would be, "what makes hand-counting errors less desirable than electronic-counting errors?"
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The point behind optical scan is that it is quick, low cost and still auditable.
It's quick, but the system I propose is considerably cheaper. I disagree with the third point. Optical scan ballots, in practice, are only "audited" by the same scanning equipment used to count them initially. This does not really translate to "auditable" in my mind since equipment tampering is undetectable. The likelihood of observers being able to certify the reliability of the scanning equipment "on the spot" is very low. Voter suppression is the most serious issue in the USA, and as my system is extrem
Lawsuit time? (Score:4, Interesting)
Who wrote these contracts? (Score:5, Insightful)
Get some balls and sue Diebold (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's start holding them accountable for their shenanigans instead of just taking our ball and going home.
My previous county's voting system (Score:5, Informative)
Here's your paper, here's your marker. Fill in the dot next to who you're voting for. If you make a mistake, please see one of the attendants for a new ballot and we will destroy the old one, and record the action and confirm it with your signature. If you would like to vote and are unable to properly use the marker, please see one of our attendants for assistance. Once you are done, please slip your ballot into the secured box at either end of the room. The "I voted" sticker is optional and will not be forced on you.
I voted in that county for 7 years, and not once did anyone ever question the authenticity of the outcomes, even when outcomes were close.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I meant to post sarcastically; obviously the blind and seriously disabled are going to HAVE to ask for assistance no matter what system is used, the brain dead/comatose shouldn't be voting (unless you're a Democrat, in which case you're in favor of ID-free voting, felons voting, so I expect you're in favor of voting for the dead or nearly-so, since it worked so well for Kennedy), and ultimately this whole ISSUE was touched off by a few urban Florida c
Proud to be a Marylander (Score:4, Interesting)
Funny in 140 years or so Maryland has gone from that to being one of the more progressive states in the union. Seriously, don't let our past fool you Maryland is a great place to live -- and for the record we never did leave the union. Now let's not get into what the states official motto translates to.
Windows CE insanity (Score:3, Interesting)
If the voting system is more complicated than a basic 4-function calculator, you're doing something waaaaaaay wrong. Maybe you should just licence the system Brazil uses? Or India? That's where your hi-tech comes from theses days anyhow.