Kentucky Officials "Changed Votes At Voting Machines" 494
The indispensible jamie found a report out of Kentucky of exactly the kind of shenanigans that voting-transparency advocates have been warning about: a circuit court judge, a county clerk, and election officials are among eight people indicted for gaming elections in 2002, 2004, and 2006. As described in the indictment (PDF), the election officials divvied up money intended to buy votes and then changed votes on the county's (popular, unverifiable) ES&S touch-screen voting systems, affecting the outcome of elections at the local, state, and federal levels.
Uh, not exactly a voting machine security flaw (Score:5, Informative)
Apparently the people told voters that hitting the "Vote" button would complete their vote, when it actually just brought up a confirmation screen. It was after the voter left that the people charged went and changed the votes, then completed the vote.
So, yeah, that's definite election fraud and those involved should go to jail for a nice long stretch. But the headline leads you to believe this was somehow a voting machine flaw, rather than a social engineering attack based around shitty UI design ("Vote" means vote, not, "Confirm my Choices").
Re:Election Fraud (Score:5, Informative)
From the article:
, the Election Day scheme, carried out in primary and general elections in at least 2004 and 2006, was accomplished by taking advantage of a "feature" on all DRE (usually touch-screen) voting systems and "voter unfamiliarity with new voting machines."
Essentially, they tricked voters into leaving the 'booth' after pressing the "Vote" button on the ES&S iVotronic. That button, does not actually cast the vote, as one might think (and as these voters were told), but instead, it brings up a review screen of the voter's "ballot."
So this looks like basic social engineering, not exploiting any specific flaws of the electronic machine (other than poor UI design).
Re:Treason (Score:5, Informative)
Seriously. How is this not treason?
In the context of the U.S., its Founding Fathers were very reluctant to label as treason anything that could be used by a tyrant to strike down on legitimate internal opposition. Therefore, they were left with only two very specific acts that would be considered treason:
Section 3. Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. (...)"
"Conspiracy to rig an election" is just not on that list.
Re:Treason (Score:5, Informative)
Article III, Section 3 of the US Constitution:
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.
I trust you can demonstrate how this action fits, since you have declared that "treason is the proper definition"?
Re:Standards of democracy? (Score:5, Informative)
Well, it took some googling, but it seems the five involved were Democrats. So it's probably pretty safe to assume the stolen votes were stolen from various Republican candidates and given to various Democrat candidates.
Though why anyone should care about the Party of someone running for the local School Board is beyond me (yes, one of the elections in question was for the local School Board).
Note, by the way, that what happened was good, old-fashioned, vote-buying. With a twist, in that the people actually handed the money to buy votes in the field decided to keep the money and just change a few votes themselves.
Re:Election Fraud (Score:3, Informative)
Right, because this wouldn't confuse the poor bastards in KY who couldn't even follow the directions on the screen after they pushed the "Vote" button that clearly told them that they had to push the "Cast Ballot" button too.
I'm fine with not having a receipt (except for my collection of "I voted" stickers) , but my polling place has ES&S machines with the additional paper trail module, and yes, I do check the paper trail after each selection.
--The FNP
Re:Election Fraud (Score:5, Informative)
I'd trust this story a whole lot more if Slashdot had quoted the actual newspaper article [lex18.com] rather than the frothing partisan political hackblogger's "report."
Re:Apologize Now (Score:3, Informative)
The butterflies at least are paper, so there's physical evidence of both the voter's actions, and of later actions in the paper. The layout of the butterflies printed "GUI" has its own problems, as well as the consistency of mechanically marking them. But at least they are a lot harder to change without notice.
What we need is "voter verified" balloting. We should use the machines only to uniformly mark a physical ballot record. Perhaps a separate machine to read back the marked physical ballot to the voter for confirmation, if that confirmation machine is completely inspectable and testable by both experts and anyone in the public who's interested. Then the voter puts their uniformly marked and personally verified physical ballot into a box. They can mechanically count those ballots for early results, but they should be counted by people for the binding result, even if that takes a few days (distributed among the people in each district).
This stuff isn't hard, it just requires rigor. It's extremely important. We need to do it right, or we won't get much else done right.
Re:Election Fraud (Score:1, Informative)
Listen, I know this entire concept of an entire state, nay, region of the US stuck in the past (not to mention the geeks trapped in said region, trying to flee) is as best a quaint curiosity to Slashdotters, and I know ideas such as "newspapers" and "TV" are just hazy blurs, barely visible in your caffeine-fueled memories due to your desperate lust for something, anything new to displace the ancient knowledge from a year or two ago out of the sheer embarrassment of showing your friends evidence of a connection to something that isn't up-to-the-blogosecond recent, but might I suggest at some point learning the difference between a TV news report, of which LEX18, Lexington's NBC feed, is reporting in this case, and a newspaper article, which, in general, is produced by newspaper publishers, of which LEX18 is most definitely not?
Re:Put up or shut up (Score:3, Informative)
Or maybe the real story here is about the insecurities and perils of current electronic voting machines - the kind of topic slashdotters are interested in - and party affiliation is incidental because readers are smart enough to understand that system can be rigged by any party or any person.
Re:Election Fraud (Score:1, Informative)
As someone who's involved in KY politics, I can speak to something on this with some authority.
REPUBLICANS WERE ARRESTED TOO.
http://www.ballot-access.org/2009/03/19/county-election-officials-in-kentucky-arrested-for-allegedly-fraudulently-changing-votes-on-vote-counting-machine/
Both sides are crooks, vote independent or third party.
Re:Election Fraud (Score:4, Informative)
This may come as a surprise to you... but if you can put the number into a webpage... so can that person in authority. Whether it's a receipt you keep with the vote readable, or a number you put into a webpage.
Any time that you can verify after you leave the polling place which way your vote was recorded ... so can someone else. And that can lead to very serious consequences. Loss of job, family, the stakes are endless.
All that is required for you to verify your vote is a human-readable paper record that will be kept separate from the electronic record, but doesn't leave the polling place. That way you can verify it after you vote electronically, and if a recount is done, the paper trail box can be unlocked and counted.
Re:Election Fraud (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Election Fraud (Score:5, Informative)
The 4 Fascist American Presidents: Wilson, FDR, LBJ, Obama.
I don't think you know what this word [wikipedia.org] means. And your feeble attempt at fear mongering doesn't work particularly well when it is clear that you do not even know what the words you use mean.