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.
Treason (Score:5, Insightful)
Elected officials subverted the voice of the people for personal profit. Execute them. I am serious. There needs to be an example made, quickly and decisively.
Re:Treason (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Treason (Score:4, Insightful)
Even though I do not agree with a death sentence, I agree with the acting decisively part. Our countries are there for the people. The people IS the country, so to speak.
And since this directly went behind the backs of the people, treason is the proper definition here. Imagine what shenanigans will happen, if this kind of behaviour is not come down upon hard.
Life inprisonment (Score:5, Insightful)
Death would be better, but sometimes we get the wrong guy and at least with inprisonment we can let them out of jail and make sure they live well with a fat stack of cash for the rest of their life.
Re:Uh, not exactly a voting machine security flaw (Score:3, Insightful)
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").
In what way is that not a security flaw? If an ATM were to fail to log me out for several minutes after returning my card and money and receipt unless I know to hit a specific button, it is a problem with the ATM.
jamie (Score:1, Insightful)
new methods for perennial problems (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Uh, not exactly a voting machine security flaw (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Election Fraud (Score:4, Insightful)
Apologize Now (Score:4, Insightful)
I want everyone who sneered at me in 2000 and 2004, saying "changing those electronic machine votes would require a conspiracy so vast, with nobody ever leaking, that it's impossible, you're crazy, just get over it" to apologize now.
Not just to me, though I want that now. But also to the entire country, for standing in the way of fixing this basic corruption that destroys democracy that should be ancient history by now.
Apologize. Preferably door to door. But a reply here would start to count.
Re:Election Fraud (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps this AC is under the impression that the Slashdot demographic is primarily democratic? I observe that we have quite a mix here and if there is anything disproportionate from the general public, it would be a larger than normal portion of Libertarians and other alternatives.
Democrats and Republicans are both evil in their own ways. They both serve the interests of business and heavy contributors. Their games are very well established and you can't get elected through any of those parties unless you play their games and participate most fully. (Gotta get dirty with them to keep the political career going.)
(What we need is a "judge dread" to clean the system out... the system will not clean itself out.)
Re:Uh, not exactly a voting machine security flaw (Score:5, Insightful)
Badly designed GUI + social engineering != security flaw.
It most certainly does! We've held MS to that standard for years with such things as "nakedgirl.gif.exe" tricking users into running unknown binaries, and rightfully so. Social engineering alone doesn't indicate a problem, as con men have been around since roughly the beginning of time. Software misfeatures (such as a button labeled "Vote" that doesn't actually cast your vote) that make fraud trivially easy absolutely are vulnerabilities.
Re:Election Fraud (Score:3, Insightful)
...and a receipt would also mean that people in positions of authority could force you to vote a certain way. "Vote for Joe Schmoe and bring me the receipt to prove you did it or you'll lose your job", that type of thing. People could also buy and sell votes, because there would be a a way that the buyer could know for certain whether or not the voter voted the buyer wanted him to (and of course refuse payment until the seller brings proof to the buyer).
Re:Election Fraud (Score:5, Insightful)
While some sort of verification would seem necessary, there is a rather significant problem created if anyone can "leave [with] it".
If you can walk away with proof of "what" you voted, you can prove it to anyone willing to buy your vote. Or to Guido who is threatening to beat up your little ones if you don't vote a specific way.
This is a rather serious problem all the world over. So whatever we do to verify or to authenticate, it cannot involve the voter walking out with the means to show anyone how they voted.
Re:Election Fraud (Score:5, Insightful)
Quite so.
But it should be pointed out that /. tends to mention the Party of a wrongdoer if the wrongdoer is Republican, and omit it if he's a Democrat.
Sorry, treason is explicitly defined in the Constitution. I doubt seriously the definition can be stretched to fit this.
Re:Uh, not exactly a voting machine security flaw (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the point your respondents are missing is that -- while the machines are clearly flawed -- the electronic voting machines didn't greatly magnify the officials' ability to corrupt the vote. Had one of them altered hundreds of votes using a USB stick and three minutes of "alone time" with the machines, this story would have a completely different flavor for me.
IOW, Kentucky electoral officials can't hack. What scares me is that this is probably why they got caught; there must have been a dozen people involved. I'm sure the more tech-savvy vote riggers are just getting away with it.
Re:Treason (Score:3, Insightful)
Founding Fathers were very reluctant to label as treason anything that could be used by a tyrant to strike down on legitimate internal opposition.
That was good and wise and as it should be. You don't want the ruling party to define treason to include "speeding, if my opponent is doing it".
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them
I'm willing to accept that they staged direct attacks on their political enemies. Our own government doesn't hold that warfare must include physical action; ref.: the new Cyber Command.
Re:Election Fraud (Score:0, Insightful)
Re:Life inprisonment (Score:3, Insightful)
Wanna bet they were changing the votes to favour the GOP?
One million dollars please? We already know they were Democrats. But who cares? I tend to vote Republican but I'm more than ready to throw a Republican politician to the dogs for committing this crime. I trust that honest Democrats will feel the same way about these particular cretins.
Re:Election Fraud (Score:4, Insightful)
Well - I'd agree with you but how many people feel that way about religion and politics? Most of them. So I'd say FOSS/Closed is controversial because there are a number of people on both sides of the issue. Head on over to somewhere like stack overflow and see if you can drum up some controversy - bet you can.
Re:Standards of democracy? (Score:0, Insightful)
Re:Election Fraud (Score:5, Insightful)
Voting machines can work .... but ....
Press the button on the the screen marked "Obama" the machine prints out your vote...you check it says you have voted for Obama , you put this in the ballot box
What you put in the ballot box is not kept by you ...
It is easily machine readable so is quick to count ...
The voting machine does not need to remember who voted, how many votes etc ...it cannot be gamed
The paper voting slip is as anonymous and as verifiable as the old "place cross here" system ...
Re:Treason (Score:3, Insightful)
So now I'm thinking of the Battlestar Galactica in which Roslyn rigged the election. How many people who cheer her on as a strong leader are calling for charges of treason here?
Just a thought from my sociological mind. Personally, I think they should all swing.
Re:Election Fraud (Score:5, Insightful)
Alas, it doesn't really matter what /. is "full of". But it is true that the Party of a Republican in the news tends to be mentioned in the summary, while the Party of a Democrat in the news tends to be quietly ignored in the summary.
Note this case as an example. Nowhere does it mention that the people doing this were Democrats, though it wasn't terribly hard to determine.
Re:Treason (Score:1, Insightful)
Put up or shut up (Score:4, Insightful)
But it is true that the Party of a Republican in the news tends to be mentioned in the summary, while the Party of a Democrat in the news tends to be quietly ignored in the summary.
This makes two times you have said this in this thread. Instead of asserting it for a third why not prove what you claim? Or is this just another Republican "the media is liberal and always against us" whine?
Re:Election Fraud (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Election Fraud (Score:5, Insightful)
Vote for Joe Schmoe and bring me the receipt to prove you did it or you'll lose your job", that type of thing.
No, it's not a lottery ticket that you take home. The voter checks the receipt and immediately puts it in a box or something. It is an audit trail that election officials can check against the electronic count.
Re:Election Fraud (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not sure how doing away with secret ballot would help, really. You'd still have to trust somebody to audit the millions of datapoints to validate the result.
But ok... the first legitimate purpose of the secret ballot is to make it harder to sell votes. (I won't buy your vote if I can't prove you voted as instructed.) These... er... gentlemen have demonstrated that if you're close enough to the process, you can still buy and sell votes; but I, for example, cannot sell my vote to the coworker across the aisle, because I could never prove to him that I'd deliver on my end of the bargain.
A closely related problem is extortion or intimidation of voters. If a gang in an area wants a particular candidate in power (because, say, he/she is easy on their brand of crime), and the gang can see who voted for which candidate, then those in the area might just feel pressumre to vote for the candidate of their choosing.
You cannot mitigate these problems without controlling the information of who voted for whom. You could make it known to some people but not others, but that tends to invite bribery and also still leaves the information in the hands of someone with power over the voter.
So then you could try a solution where the person who cast a vote can verify how that particular vote was counted. Maybe you could build that up into a fraud-proof system... Except now I'm back in a position to sell my vote, because I have a way to prove to the buyer how I voted. (If I can't prove it to someone else, then me seeing how my vote was counted is useless, because any accusation of fraud I would make would be unprovable as well.) And extortionists are back to having a way to control my vote ("That's a nice house you have there. It'd be a shame if anything happens to it. You should consider voting for Candidate X and proving to me that you did so.")
The solution isn't to get rid of the secret ballot. The solution is to figure out exactly what you think gettnig rid of the secret ballot will do to reduce voter fraud, and find another way to do it.
Re:Election Fraud (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Election Fraud (Score:5, Insightful)
They could have been caught much sooner if the machines had been using a paper trail. My local machines print out each selection as it is made. Then if at the ballot review screen I change a vote, then it prints that on the paper trail. So if even 10% of the paper trails from a single precinct shows significant and consistent changes at the review screen, that's a huge red flag!
If the machine had a paper trail, the 2002 election could have been the only one that was affected. And the 2004 and 2006 elections would have been unaffected. As it is, it took over three election cycles to catch these guys, ***BECAUSE THERE WAS NO PAPER TRAIL***.
As for the question of how did they catch these guys, there are any number of methods, including, the wrong person talking; or an actually smart and observant voter who was waiting in line and noticed that they were given incorrect instructions and the poll workers seemed to be spending a lot of time in the booths after each voter; or a candidate being asked for bribe money; or a poll worker being approached to join the scam; etc, etc, etc, ad nauseam . . .
So the people who say that the voting machines will always reflect the will of the voter are idiots. I don't think that the machines need to be fully open source, but they need to be certifiably as secure as possible and part of that includes independent penetration testing and a paper trail ***AND PAPER TRAILS SHOULD BE REQUIRED BY FEDERAL LAW***
--The FNP
Re:Election Fraud (Score:2, Insightful)
No you don't, you make them Secretary of the Treasury.
Re:Standards of democracy? (Score:2, Insightful)
This is the outcome of a 5 min google search:
UN http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60143-2004Jul18.html [washingtonpost.com]
OSCE http://www.americanpolicy.org/un/election.htm [americanpolicy.org]
General (for links, not opinion) http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/2004/08/foreigners-monitor-us-elections.html [danielpipes.org]
Probably every human rights organization (even some within the US) felt the urge to monitor, please go on searching, but take off these glasses you wear.
I'm sure your government told you its only those evil communists who distrust the great americans people...
Re:Standards of democracy? (Score:3, Insightful)
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).
A lot of politicians got their start in similarly seemingly minor positions. In addition, the school board in many areas (I don't know about the one in question) is in charge of capital projects such as construction and purchase/sale of school real estate. That'd certainly be a good place to be if one were inclined to steal from the public.
Note, I am not suggesting that anything beyond the alleged election fraud occurred. I'm simply pointing out possible reasons (one honest and one dishonest) why a person might want to sit on the school board badly enough to pay for it.
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.
I'm not sure of that. It sounded to me as though the vote buying was involving absentee ballots (also made them commit mail fraud, apparently and allegedly). The vote tampering at the pools themselves didn't involve payouts but instead was just telling voters the "here's your vote" preview screen was final and then changing the votes before actually casting the ballot once the actual voter left the booth.
Re:Election Fraud (Score:5, Insightful)
Easy: If you don't vote, you have no right to bitch about the people you didn't vote for screwing things up :)
If I don't vote (and I didn't, which in Australia is actually punishable, but so be it - I didn't see a candidate I could conscionably vote for) then no-one can blame me for 'choosing' the candidate who's currently fucking our country. And that's the main purpose of democracy; to say to the common man: "You voted for him so it's your fault that he's making fucktarded decisions", or "You voted against him but most people voted for him, so you're wrong".
Re:Election Fraud (Score:5, Insightful)
While I think what he did was wrong, in the scope of things it's not so bad.
Isn't it amazing how Democrats rationalize corruption in the exact same manner as Republicans?
Re:Election Fraud (Score:5, Insightful)
Secret ballot is vital to our system. It allows people to vote without ANY outside influence. People can vote their minds and not their peer pressures. Secret ballot removes outside influence on votes.
That must be why the labor unions want to get rid [wikipedia.org] of them.
Re:Election Fraud (Score:4, Insightful)
Only if you could keep the reciept. Which would be the wrong way to do things, both for that reason and for the ability to validate the tabulation of the election results, since then detecting errors would requiring getting all the voters to come and turn in their ballots to compare to the tallied results. What you want to do is have the receipt -- or, more accurately, hardcopy ballot -- printed in the booth, have it reveiwed by the voter, and (assuming it is correct -- exception handling is necessary if it is not) the voter places it in a ballot box before leaving the precinct, just like they would a ballot in a non-machine election.
Then, when the automated count is complete, you do a manual tabulation of the hardcopy ballots from random (actually random, not arbitrarily-chosen by officials) selection of precincts, and if there are substantial discrepancies (an objective standard must exist to judge this), a complete recount is done based on the hardcopy ballots.
Re:Election Fraud (Score:3, Insightful)
He didn't rationalize it in the least - he said it was wrong, but he said compared to other things it's not so bad.
And being a few-thousand-dollar tax cheat is nothing compared to being a war profiteering traitor who selectively censored intelligence information from the president and congress to get a war started, a war said president was all too happy to go along with because "that bad guy attacked my dad." (cheney)
being a few-thousand-dollar tax cheat is nothing compared to intentionally perpetrating a massive misinformation campaign to manipulate the american electorate (fox news)
being a few-thuosand-dollar tax cheat is nothing compared to helping strip consumer protections, banking regulations, redistribute wealth from the poor to the rich, etc all leading to the worst economic collapse since the great depression (rescumlicans as a whole).
No... he didn't rationalize or justify it in the least - he simply put it into persepective. /we still think intentional tax cheats need to get the boot //not all of them were INTENTIONAL, one of them just didn't realize something he was getting qualified as taxable.. he is the one that told everyone about his error... after he paid off the back taxes... but OH GNOES!! ME MADE A TAX ERROR HE'S A CRIMINAL! NOBODY LOOK BEHIND THE CURTAIN AND SEE THAT HE PAID IT OFF SOON AS HE REALIZED IT!
Re:Election Fraud (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah. I can't think of a single defensible reason for such a bizarre, anti-democratic plan.
Re:Election Fraud (Score:4, Insightful)
And being a few-thousand-dollar tax cheat is nothing compared to being a war profiteering traitor who selectively censored intelligence information from the president and congress to get a war started, a war said president was all too happy to go along with because "that bad guy attacked my dad." (cheney)
Ah, rationalization by pointing out how bad the other guy is. Another time-honored tactic from the Republican/Democratic playbook.
Re:Election Fraud (Score:4, Insightful)
Beyond that, it's unrealistic to assume that someone like Rangel even DOES his own taxes. I don't make anywhere near as much as he does and even *I* don't do my own taxes. I get the advice of a tax professional, and if that professional gives me wrong advice, it's difficult for me to know that. All of the recent tax issues faced by public officials have been minor, MINOR, and easily attributable to ignorance rather than malice...as opposed to the actions of those on the other side who are criticizing these mistakes.
Re:Election Fraud (Score:5, Insightful)
It's funny that you call it a 'frothing partisan political hackblogger'...
My guess is that M1rth took exception to the following paragraph in the blog post (emphasis added):
The fact is, those who know anything about computer security understand that it is the insiders who are, by far, the greatest threat to security on such systems, as even the phony, GOP-operative-created Baker/Carter National Election Reform Commission determined in its final report: "There is no reason to trust insiders in the election industry any more than in other industries."
The blogger does, upon further investigation, seem to have a tendency to... well... froth. However, we should not let this detract from the core issue here: Voting without transparency and verifiability cannot be trusted to return accurate results.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Election Fraud (Score:3, Insightful)
google news [google.com]
Re:Election Fraud (Score:1, Insightful)
I see what you're saying, but no, I don't think there's a lot of room for interpretation. It's pretty clear that it's intended to be during wartime (though, apparently, we're at war permanently at this point.) It has more to do with becoming an enemy combatant, spy, or abettor (e.g. the American Taliban kid.)
Don't try too hard to stretch the meaning. We've been getting into a lot of trouble over that already. Breaking any law can be construed as "treason" if you try hard enough, because, generally speaking, breaking the law means you've probably hurt the common good. Think of all the trouble that would be caused by an expanding definition of treason. I don't think you want to go down that road. What you're talking about is a dictator's dream, and is exactly why the Constitution didn't leave a lot of room for interpretation.