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United States Technology

The State of Electronic Voting in Georgia 231

Posted by michael from the vote-early-and-often dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The AJC is reporting on the current state of electronic voting in Georgia. The article discusses both sides of the debate and mentions Bev Harris and her work at Black Box Voting. Is touch screen voting the best solution available or is a conspiracy afoot?"
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The State of Electronic Voting in Georgia More

The State of Electronic Voting in Georgia

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  • It's clearly a conspiracy (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 15, 2004 @03:34PM (#8287762)
    When there's a choice between conspiracy or no conspiracy, always go with conspiracy. If it's true, you'll be right and prepared to overthrow the government. If you're wrong, oh well, no big deal, at least there wasn't a conspiracy.

    • Re:It's clearly a conspiracy (Score:5, Insightful)

      by TyrranzzX ( 617713 ) on Monday February 16, 2004 @05:53AM (#8292313) Journal
      Choose conspiracy, and everyone denies what you just said on the grounds it's looney because they've been programmed by television and movies not to believe the whacko person spouting truth, instead of using their brains. Heck, even in school they teach you to use CNN or Reuters, BBC and other sources instead of the internet. Don't listen to the people with good information and proof that can be copied the world around kids, Fox is spouting about how some kid got killed tonight in a horrible way, and then there's commercials about RFID tags to keep the kids safe! Talk about a pide piper.

      Tell me this, 2 identical counties, in 2 different states. Both with records of voting unanimously democratic for a number of decades, all of a sudden one votes unanimously republican. The difference? The voting machines. When you trace back the money, the republicans have themselves knee deep in the whole mess. The democrats aren't much better.

      Paranoia is one thing, Mr Funny, the scientific process is another. What I think is that our representitives have forgotten one thing; they're here to serve us, they are here for us, not for themselves. This is a republic of the people and for the people, and while many are asleep at the wheel so to speak, americans aren't dumb, just slow to anger. Everyone speaks of our political times as "interesting", in the tense of how a bull fighter with a .50 cal hidden behind the red carpet tempts a bull.

      Sometimes I think a constitutional amendment stating that all voting mechanisms must be open to all to see, a paper ballot alternative must be available and counted, a paper reciept must be issued with every vote, and if 5% or 10% of the people want a recount or revote (via signed petition), one happens would be a good idea. But I understand it's our responsability to stop these freaks of nature from destroying our republic.

      There's a lot of damned fine red blood on those red stripes, gallons of sweat on the white stripes, and billions of tears for stars with a dark backround on the American flag. I'd die before I'd let tyrrany be instituted in this country.

  • Coincidentally (Score:5, Interesting)

    by GoneGaryT ( 637267 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @03:35PM (#8287772) Journal
    See today's BBC article:

    here [bbc.co.uk]

    Some profs doubt the reliability of the proposed voting equipment (!)

    • regd privacy etc (Score:5, Informative)

      by abhisarda ( 638576 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @04:47PM (#8288302) Journal
      Read this article from the NYT [nytimes.com].

      There are many on slashdot who won't even register for nyt. Just read this and it will make you privacy panaroids cringe.

      "This is a complicated business. Each party's databank has the name of every one of the 168 million or so registered voters in the country, cross-indexed with phone numbers, addresses, voting history, income range and so on -- up to as many as several hundred points of data on each voter. The information has been acquired from state voter-registration rolls, census reports, consumer data-mining companies and direct marketing vendors. The parties have also amassed detailed information about the political and social beliefs that you might have shared with canvassers who have phoned or knocked on the door over the past few years. While specifics vary, a typical voter profile like my own, for instance, would show my age, address, phone numbers; which elections I've voted in over the past 10 or 15 years and whether I've ever voted on an absentee ballot; and my e-mail address. It would include my New Jersey party registration (Democrat), whether I've ever made a political donation (none that I recall), my approximate income, my ethnicity, my marital status and the number of children living in my house. Thanks to the ready availability of subscriber lists, mortgage data and product warranty information, the parties might use records of the newspapers I read (this one), the computer I work on (a Macintosh), the men's-wear catalogs I receive (Brooks Brothers, Land's End) and the loan-to-value ratio of my home."

      And you guys spew vitriol over website registrations? That's the least of your worries...

    • Re:Coincidentally (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Shakrai ( 717556 ) * on Sunday February 15, 2004 @05:06PM (#8288419) Journal
      Mark Fiore has an interesting animation [markfiore.com] about e-voting -- funny yet accurate enough to be scary.

  • Touchscreens can be useful (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 15, 2004 @03:35PM (#8287777)
    I believe there has to be some secure way of implementing touchscreens. Just because we use technology it doesn't mean we have to be stepping into unknown territory. Someone needs to sit down and think up a better way of counting votes but still have it be electronic. Some of you may cringe at the thought of your vote being counted as a bit but I cringe at the thought of a human counting votes in his head.
    • Basically you keep the same system but it also prints a running tally that can be human read and audited later. This also gives you a chance to look (but not keep) what your vote went down as. IOW, if you voted for bush, there will be a paper that scrolls through a window that says "BUSH".

      If there is any question / call for a recount, the recount is done by the VERY CLEAR and very EASY TO READ paper trail.

      How hard is that?

      PS - The software should be open sourced for peer review.
      • Here in Ireland, as I mentioned last time this subject came up, we are due to be subjected to country-wide electronic voting. This will happen for the upcoming Presidential and European Parliament elections.

        The suggestions made by the parent poster, re: a paper audit trail/receipts is exactly what the opposition political parties and campaigners are asking for. It's essential for an e-voting system. Not only can you manually count from actual ballot boxes in case of close result, suspiscion of tampering or

    • Re:Touchscreens can be useful (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Cyno01 ( 573917 ) <Cyno01@hotmail.com> on Sunday February 15, 2004 @06:00PM (#8288801) Homepage
      The problem with touchscreens isn't security. This happened in florida i think, world capitol of screwing up elections. Older voters with poor eyesite would slide their finger along underneath the text when reading candidates names.

      "whupps, oh no what did i touch, "are you sure" *read with finger* ah, no, thats not what i meant, wheres the nearest country kitchen buffet?"

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Why electronic voting? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Stugots ( 601806 ) <johnderosa.me@com> on Sunday February 15, 2004 @03:38PM (#8287797) Homepage
    I've yet to hear a cogent statement of the problem that electronic voting will fix.

    Many of the statements sound similar to the first comments about office automation. Computing was introduced into the office "just because", without a lot of thought going into which procedures should be automated vs. eliminated entirely vs. left alone.

    A paper ballot (be it punch card, pencil fill in, or what have you) can't crash, is a permanent record (yeah yeah, they can be destroyed, but so can anything made up of atoms. I'll drop a stack of paper from 5' and you drop a touch screen from 5', we'll see which one survives), and can't be easily intercepted or altered without evidence of tampering.

    What problem are electronic voting advocates trying to solve?

    • The two advantages of e-Voting that I can see are: votes can be counted more quickly and e-voting systems don't involve humans at the counting stage so in a perfect system errors can't be introduced deliberately or accidently.

      The first advantage is pretty irrelevant, as I think most of us can wait overnight for something as important as democratic elections to be counted properly. And as for the second one, we all know that a perfect system doesn't and never will exist. Also, so many people are involved i

      • Re:Why electronic voting? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by nlinecomputers ( 602059 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @04:56PM (#8288357)
        The two advantages of e-Voting that I can see are: votes can be counted more quickly and
        e-voting systems don't involve humans at the counting stage(Emphasis added) so in a perfect system errors can't be introduced deliberately or accidentally.


        That is the great misconception that the pro voting machine crowd would like the public to think. But who programmed and designed them, GOD? Humans are in the process still. It is just that there efforts are more closely hidden then ever before. Any kind of mechanical counting is BY DESIGN an effort to hide vote counting from the public. It is a deliberate effort to rig the vote(or at least put the mechanism in place to easily rig it.) Even now in most states votes are not counted in public view but at the court house and anybody can tamper with the ballot box(or even outright replace it) before it reaches the court house to be counted.

        Most people would be unable to check the accuracy of the programming and thus could be fooled into thinking the vote is safe. I'm not a programmer so I would have to rely on others to check on the vote and there are only so many programmers. Also would they allow me to spot check on demand? How do I know that the machine I'm using is running the same program as what was certified. If sheriff deputies can play musical ballot boxes on election day what is stopping them from playing musical hard drives or ROM chips?

        Sorry give me human counters that count paper ballots AT THE POLL. Otherwise why bother to vote?

        • I agree with what you're saying, But I was talking about a perfect system (i.e. it has been programmed correctly, and hasn't be tampered with). I am aware that humans are still involved in the process when e-voting is used.

          Fortunately, I live in Britain were people still trust the pencil and paper, cross in a box approach to voting

      • Re:Why electronic voting? (Score:5, Informative)

        by alfredw ( 318652 ) <alf@[ ]ealf.com ['fre' in gap]> on Sunday February 15, 2004 @05:12PM (#8288458) Homepage
        The two advantages of e-Voting that I can see are: votes can be counted more quickly and e-voting systems don't involve humans at the counting stage so in a perfect system errors can't be introduced deliberately or accidently.

        Ok, I'll grant those as two advantages. So why not have machine-readable paper ballots? We used them in the Toronto municipal election. Fill in the bubble for your candidate (with a Sharpie), feed into the optical scanner and watch your ballot drop into the big, transparent plexiglass box behind it. You get all of the advantages of the touch screen machines, and all of the auditability and trust of paper.

        This one REALLY seems like a no-brainer.

    • Blind people, better faster cheaper? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by skyfaller ( 624053 ) * on Sunday February 15, 2004 @04:16PM (#8288073) Homepage
      I made a post about this [livejournal.com] in the SCDC livejournal community, which I'll quote here:

      Q: So why do people want electronic voting? What are the perceived benefits?

      A: Electronic voting is largely popular because of the perception that it will fix problems like those experienced in Florida in the 2000 presidential election. The Help America Vote Act made tons and tons of federal money available for voting technology, and companies like Diebold rushed into production with shoddy products in order to capture marketshare.

      Of course, the irony is that with paperless (read: un-auditable) machines, there is both an increased risk of vote-counting problems (as the Diebold e-mail archive demonstrates) and NO MECHANISM to recount the votes. In other words, if another Florida happens, we'll basically just have to flip a coin.

      One of the most important arguments in favor of electronic voting machines is that they will enable the disabled to vote unassisted. For instance, DRE's can tell blind people the options through headphones. This is a noble goal, and it is a valid reason to want to have electronic voting machines. The thing is, why is it not sufficient to make an electronic ballot-printing machine, which then could be verified by a blind person using a simple barcode scanner, or which could be printed with raised letters? Why must the voting be completely electronic (i.e. Direct Recording Electronic)? Is it right to say that just because a blind person may not be able to verify a printed paper ballot on their own, that nobody else should be allowed to verify their votes either? There are certainly ways that ballots could be designed that would allow blind people to verify their votes without assistance, but even if this were impossible, that wouldn't be a good reason to eliminate paper ballots, it is merely an argument for machines that aid in filling out and verifying the ballots.

      Finally, there are the arguments that electronic voting allows us to tally votes cheaper and quicker. My response is that we should take the time and money to get our elections right. Also, DRE's aren't more efficient at tallying our votes if they don't record our votes at all.

      Unless we can build an electronic voting system that can meet these specifications before the 2004 election, I have little confidence in any vote cast using DRE's, and I recommend at least a temporary return to old-fashioned hand-written and hand-counted paper ballots.

    • This is offtopic, but I'm asking a lot of the same questions about RFID. How much less is Wal-Mart going to price a chipped bottle of shampoo than what they're charging me now? Because if it's, like, ten cents I think I can splurge.

      I don't expect any good answers, but Stugots is DEAD-ON when he sez that we should at least be asking the right frickin' questions.
    • What problem are electronic voting advocates trying to solve?

      You can make ballots much easier to read with touch-screen voting. The ballot for my last local election had a few dozen questions including mayor, city council and a few referedum questions. Even with a very small font the ballot was the size of a newspaper page. This not only annoying; it makes it more likely that someone will make a mistake, reducing the legitimacy of the election.

      With touch-screen voting you can dedicate a separate screen t
    • The problem that electronic voting will fix is that it will be easier to fix an election.

  • Once Again... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by instantkarma1 ( 234104 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @03:38PM (#8287799)
    We need transparency in the voting process if we are going to move to electronic voting. The current proposed system is simply unacceptable. Bev Harris is doing a wonderful job bringing attention to this train-wreck waiting to happen.

    Currently, we have companies making the voting software which is not transparant, which have ties to political parties (from the top of the company, no less), and to top it off apparently can't design a decent, reliable application to save their very lives.

    As I said before, THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE

    • The solution to Electronic Voting (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Jonah Hex ( 651948 ) <hexdotms AT gmail DOT com> on Sunday February 15, 2004 @06:51PM (#8289127) Homepage Journal
      While I really appreciate the work Bev and many others have done to bring this to the public's attention, I know in my heart it is not the fastest solution.

      An act of civil disobediance is needed by MANY people across the US. Simply disseminate via internet simple instructions for how to adjust the votes on various types of electronic machines, and use them to cast an enourmous amount of votes for the least likely canidate in every single election. If this happened in even a few cases around the country the news and governement would have no choice but to take electronic tampering completely seriously. If it happened thousands of times in the next election I think Diebold, et al, would most likely backpedal to an open source and completely transparent system so fast it'd set their boardroom carpets afire.

      Would I myself chance jail in order to commit an act of civil disobediance which could forever ensure the future of voting is fair and trustworthy for ordinary citizens? Just show me the simple instructions on how to get the job done...

      Jonah Hex

  • I'd rather not vote on a touch-screen. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RyanFenton ( 230700 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @03:38PM (#8287807)

    I'm not worried about germs or anything... but seeing a bunch of finger-print crud on one place on the screen when you're about to place your vote might have some impact, not even considering the basic security concerns.

    What's wrong with paper & pencil? Countries all over the world count those in remarkably small ammounts of time - do we HAVE to have an instant ballot in exchange for a loss of a paper trail and many layers of security concerns? This part is already redundant... but it NEEDS to be redundantly said to as many people as possible.

    Ryan Fenton

  • Here's what we nedd... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jjh37997 ( 456473 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @03:42PM (#8287832) Homepage
    Here's what we need...

    A touch screen voting booth that lets voters select the canidates they want.

    After the voter casts their vote the booth prints out a ballot that's a machine readable.

    The voter checks to make sure that the canidates they selected are recorded on the ballot and feeds it into a optical reader. It's this machine that actually records the voter's vote.

    The touch screen machines and the optical reader should be produced by two seprate companies and operate on different networks and they should both keep a tally. If the two systems ever get out of synch we will automatically know that a problem has occured. If such cases we can fall back on the paper ballet. Since it was laser printed it will avoid all the problems Florida judges had with hanging chads and strange marks left by stupid voters.

    This way not only do we get the benifit of a machine count but a paper trail to boot.

    • Re:Here's what we nedd... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Mateorabi ( 108522 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @04:10PM (#8288029) Homepage
      This has been my exact idea too. The problem is we are asking the computer voting machines to do too much. The whole rationale behind touch screens was to simplify the creation of the ballot: many mechanical systems were too difficult, too error prone, or available in only one language. The whole Florida debackle was due to a mechanical punch that failed to properly mark the ballot.

      The solution? "Lets use computers." Yet some how the assumption leaked in that the computers used to do the balloting had to be the same machines that tallied the votes as well. This is a paradigm that should be abollished as soon as possible. While we fix one problem (ballots not reflecting voter preferences properly), we introduce another (allowing increased access to the device doing the tallying).

      The solution as the original comment said is to split the process. Use computers to create 'standardized' ballots, and to simplify/error check each voters choice making. And let the voter see a human readable ballot that they can confirm and turn in at a different part of the polling station.

      Tallying can be done in a sepparate process, much the way scan-tron type ballots are counted today quickly and accurately.

      Some thoughts / added benefits:

      1. The paper trail. Voters see their votes correctly printed on paper. And the ballot machines can be used as a double check to make sure no ballots were destroyed. (added reassurance against tampering, since now it requires a coordinated attack both physical and electronic).

      2. If you make the ballot human & computer readable (just like your account number on checks) you can verrify the ballot and not have to assume that the bar code the ballot machine produces matches the text.

      3. If the ballot form is standardized then the voting equipment becomes commoditized. States / localities can choose the balloting and tallying equipment manufacturers to buy from independently and no one is tied to a given manufacturer for either device. They can even purchace from more than one vendor for the balloting devices. This will drive down prices, as well as letting the govornment take trustworthiness into account when purchacing equipment.

      It would be great if legislatures could demand this type of system instead of letting each district try to 'roll your own' and get unknown results in terms of reliability / trustworthiness. It would also mean we wouldn't have to put anywhere near as much trust in the makers of the machines.

    • This is exactly how the open source voting system being implemented by the Open Voting Consortium [openvotingconsortium.com] with the development going on Source Forge [sf.net].

  • Is this really necessary? (Score:5, Funny)

    by GonzoDave ( 743486 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @03:43PM (#8287839)
    Our country is doing quite well as it is, so why do we need this "voting" business? That sort of thing can only harm our unity and national security

  • hmm (Score:2, Funny)

    by skillio ( 594945 )
    well, the obvious argument for it is that its just the next step in the natural evolution of the voting process. oh, woops, cant say "evolution" in georgia.

  • Electronic voting is bad news right now (Score:5, Insightful)

    by skyfaller ( 624053 ) * on Sunday February 15, 2004 @03:47PM (#8287871) Homepage
    This is truly horrible [miami.com]... apparently Florida has decided that since it is not possible to do a recount for electronic voting machines, it is not necessary to attempt anything of the sort. Realize that the next election might be hacked [why-war.com], support Rush Holt's Voter Confidence bill [house.gov], and don't forget to get the Diebold memos from the SCDC.

  • I live in GA (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dancingmad ( 128588 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @03:49PM (#8287884)
    And I actually helped the local district preview the new touch screen machines at my college. The damn things are frightening - they don't look well built and the lack of a paper trail is scary. There is some murmur down here that Max Cleland lost his race (despite giving three limbs for his nation) because of "voting irregularities."

    I hope the Republicans don't use these machines to pull a fast one - if we find out after the fact, we won't get to change Presidents, as happened in 2000.

    • Re:I live in GA (Score:4, Informative)

      by Master Bait ( 115103 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @04:42PM (#8288260) Homepage Journal
      Seems like vote fraud really worked well in Georgia. "Republican Rep. Saxby Chambliss defeated incumbent Democratic Sen. Max Cleland by a margin of 53 to 46 percent. The Hotline, a political news service, recalled a series of polls Wednesday showing that Chambliss had been ahead in none of them. The closest was the most recent Zogby International poll that had showed Cleland leading 46 to 44 percent, within the plus or minus 4 point margin of error."

      "In Georgia, an Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll shows Democratic Sen. Max Cleland with a 49%-to-44% lead over Republican Rep. Saxby Chambliss."

      Final Result
      53 to 46 percent Chambliss

      HOW ACCURATE?
      Polls had Cleland winning by 2 and 5 points, he lost by 7

      POST POLL SWING:
      9 to 12 points towards Republican Party

      ThHis is from an article [scoop.co.nz] on Scoop.

      • Zogby for whatever reason underpolls Republicans. Zogby consistently reports lower approval ratings for President Bush than the other major poll agencies.

        The only reason you think this election was "fixed" is because your side didn't win.

      • Re:I live in GA (Score:3, Interesting)

        by bergeron76 ( 176351 ) *
        I also live in GA (Buckhead area of Atlanta to be exact).

        In 2000, I voted for a Democratic President (Al Gore) using a paper ballot. Everyone that I talked to did as well. That night I fell asleep to the news that Al Gore was declared the new president. I woke up around 2AM to the television blaring that Bush had taken Florida, and thus the election. I was living in Tallahassee at the time - attending the Florida State University.

        I went down to the Capitol at about 3AM and I was arrested for Civil Dis

  • A great argument (Score:5, Insightful)

    by philthedrill ( 690129 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @04:03PM (#8287979)

    One of the best arguments in the article is this:

    "What we do know is that every condition needed for fraud did exist. The question is not whether it has happened. The question is whether it can happen."

    Granted, there's no perfect security. But electronic voting companies seem to have a problem at least making an attempt to fix any possible vulnerabilities. When the Patriot Act passed 98-1 in the Senate, the lone dissenter (Russ Feingold of WI) said that it's not whether or not people have abused the law... it's that the potential exists. Sometimes it's really hard to teach someone the value of security until they've been victimized/directly affected by it. The problem, unfortunately, is proving that it happened.

    With regard to Cox's response on a paper trail:

    "It really adds nothing to the system, [and] the people who think it will don't understand the history of voter fraud we've had with paper."

    Personally, I don't think removing one potential of fraud and replacing it with another really solves any problem. And suppose something does go wrong (massive failure, serious bug, fraud)? Is there anything to fall back on? And at least if you want to fix the elections, it makes it a bit more difficult.

  • Talking with your representives *does* help (Score:5, Informative)

    by clenhart ( 452716 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @04:04PM (#8287992) Homepage
    Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) counts himself among the suspicious. The civil rights veteran is the co-sponsor of a bill to require the machines to verify voters' choices on paper.

    I spoke to Rep. Lewis about this issue at one of his "Meet and Greet" sessions several months ago. Contacting your representative *does* have an impact.

  • That is the point of electronic voiting (Score:3, Insightful)

    by pben ( 22734 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @04:08PM (#8288017)
    The whole point of electronic voting is to get around the recount mess. The election officials don't want to wind up on TV like they did in Florida in 2000. So they devise a system that can't be recounted. They get the people that sells it to clam it is perfect, why would anybody need to recount?

    They will not wind up on TV and the same people who have faked votes over history (LBJ in Texas, Daily in Chicago, etc.) can keep doing their thing. There is a long history of vote fraud in the USA. Those in charge just don't want it to wind up on TV and embarrassing themselfs.

  • Patching and Code Oversight (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 15, 2004 @04:09PM (#8288024)
    Supposedly there have been a lot of "patches" installed right before election day here in Georgia. There is no source code overview that I can tell. They keep telling us the machines are perfect, but they don't tell you what deficiencies are being "patched" with all these "patches."

    As far as I'm concerned, these "patches" are "patching" the election results, not the voting equipment.

  • needless complexity (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rakerman ( 409507 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @04:13PM (#8288053) Homepage Journal
    My vote is for hand-counted, paper ballots. Even if electronic voting is extremely well done, there are concerns with it. And I have yet to see any indications that companies are doing anything other than a shoddy job.

    I have a blog about the issue in Canada: Paper Vote Canada [papervotecanada.ca].

  • Why electronic voting (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    People keep asking why we should move to electronic voting. While I think the whole thing is being mishandled, here are some of the supposed problems with voting that they are hoping to solve:
    • Florida ballots in the 2000 election supposedly confused some people. The electronic system (assuming no version upgrades) would have a more standardized format that didn't have to worry about getting all the issues and candidates on one ballot card.
    • Some dorks cast weird ballots with more than one choice, etc. T

  • Additional Point (Score:2, Interesting)

    by thebes ( 663586 )
    I seem to recall a while ago one of the major reasons for going with an electronic (or further, Internet) voting system was to accomodate those who are out of the country on business, be it military, professional, and what not, are still citizens. An internet voting system would allow that group of people to be properly represented in a democratic society. Should businessmen be penalized and disallowed to vote simply because they were out of the country at the time? What about the military?

    On a similar no

    • Online voting systems are possible, and will eventually be developed. They will make a world of difference in promoting a truly democratic society. Electronic voting systems have huge potential benefits, and should be pursued.

      That's a major leap of faith. There's a gaping down-side in that you cannot guarantee privacy of a home ballot. What's to stop a someone from overseeing their spouse's vote, or groups from holding "voting parties"? Or voters collective auctioning blocks of PIN numbers on eBay?

      Xix.

  • Bah! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Cody Hatch ( 136430 ) <cody&chaos,net,nz> on Sunday February 15, 2004 @04:28PM (#8288156) Homepage
    "Is touch screen voting the best solution available or is a conspiracy afoot?"

    What sort of stupid question is that? Next up on Slashdot! Clothing! Does it cure cancer, or will it cause the downfall of civilization as we know it?

    Correct voting answer - it fixes some serious problems with current systems, introduces some potentially serious problems, and is being pushed not as part of an Evil Conspiracy, but by well-meaning but niave people who seek a technological panacea despite not really understanding the concepts involved. It's cargo cult security - "these systems are secure, and they're electronic, so lets if we need security, we just need to make everything electronic!". Morons.

  • Florida Judge denies suit requiring paper trail (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @04:47PM (#8288298) Homepage Journal
    Florida's enlightened judiciary has found a Catch-22 way out [firstcoastnews.com] of a state congressman's lawsuit to require auditable paper trails in voting machines there.
  • As the inventors of "democracy", voting machines, and electronic vote fraud, we Americans deserve the best voting system we can get. We should have both electronic reporting and an official paper tally. Fast results, reported immediately upon the last poll closing, will satisfy American expectations of immediacy and interactivity. But the official tally should be the paper count, probably through overseen optical scanning. How to get there from here? Test the electronic voting in the next few elections (the

  • Not the point... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Cleon ( 471197 ) <cleon42 AT yahoo DOT com> on Sunday February 15, 2004 @05:05PM (#8288417) Homepage
    Is touch screen voting the best solution available or is a conspiracy afoot?

    This totally misses the point. The point is not whether voter fraud has been committed, the point is that there's no way to tell if it was or wasn't.

    Diebold's system is completely proprietary; we can't examine it to see if there are any "loopholes" or not, and we can't check its security. We can't go back and audit to make sure nothing funny happened. Adding icing to the cake, the Diebold leadership is openly pro-Republican.

    To summarize; by adopting Diebold's system here in GA, we've privatized the election by giving complete control over it to a private corporation that's biased in favor of a particular outcome. To say it smells fishy would be an understatement of monumental proportions.

    Instead of focusing on whether fraud occurred or not, we need to be demanding an election system that is auditable and verifiable to the people. Open elections are key to democracy; Diebold's system is anything but open.
    • And the theory afoot amongst fellow Republicans who understand the issue is that electronic voting is a conspiracy by the Democrats to rig elections.

      Unfortunately, after a fruitless argument with a Democrat Virginia election official at the Fairfax Fair in October, I suspect the problem is massive ignorance. He assured me condescendingly that he could get a printout of local Vote totals any time he wanted, so what was the point of a paper trail.

      Unfortunately, such massive ignorance leaves the system op

  • Why doesn't anybody get it? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by copponex ( 13876 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @05:07PM (#8288425) Homepage
    The reason voting should always have a paper trail is because no one can make changes to 100,000 pieces of paper in three hundred different locations without some major difficulty. It would require massive manpower and a lot of time. Changing 100,000 lines in a database can be accomplished by one person in less than five minutes.

    I don't trust anyone that governs me to sit the right way on a toilet seat, much less control an easily tampered file that keeps them in power.

    (Apologies to Rowan Atkinson.)
    • Changing 100,000 lines in a database can be accomplished by one person in less than five minutes.

      Not to mention that the votes aren't kept during tabulation, rather the subtotals are sent in. Even easier to abuse or fail.

  • It's not that bad really... (Score:4, Informative)

    by jhtrih ( 218203 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @05:20PM (#8288512) Homepage
    I am an election judge for the upcoming primary in MD, and we had to take a class on our new electronic voting machines, made by Diebold. Unlike the system described in the article, the ballots themselves are not encoded with the ballots, simply the party of the person voting. If your card has bits set the certain way, your ballot will pop-up for which ever party is encoded on the card. The only problems are when the card operator punches in the wrong party, then I would have to go over to the machine and cancel the ballot.

    The only problems with the system that I can see are human. If you work with another election judge and, for instance, encode the wrong cards repeatedly for the other party and don't cancel the ballots, but submit them, then you can tamper the vote. The same thing could happen with a paper system, but admittedly it is harder and slower to cast lots of fake ballots.

    In the end, it's up to the election judges and the local board of elections to make sure every vote counts, just as it would be with a paper system.

    • I am an election judge for the upcoming primary in MD, and we had to take a class on our new electronic voting machines, made by Diebold.

      Out of curiosity, was the class also taught by Diebold folks? I think you are missing the point most people here are making. You are assuming that everything will work just the way they told you it will work. But they will not let anyone examine the source code, they will not allow a paper trail, etc. So how do you know that you are not being lied to?

      I commend yo

  • Links (Score:3, Informative)

    by enbody ( 472304 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @05:21PM (#8288517) Homepage
    Two places which have details on arguments against the current state-of-the-art of electronic voting are verifiedvoting.org [verifiedvoting.org] and Electronic Frontier Foundation [eef.org].

  • Is it the best solution or is a conspiracy afoot? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by qtp ( 461286 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @05:25PM (#8288542) Journal
    yes.

    Touch screen voting is the best solution as long as votes are recorded in an auditable manner (paper record), but there is a conspiracy afoot to prevent autiting of the voting process and to eliminate any possibility of investigation if it is beleived that the process was corrupted in any way.

    If they can't sort it out, I'd rather they required the old-fasioned, manually recorded, paper ballot. I see no reason for the results to be tabulated on that evening after the vote took place (except for possibly increased advertising revenues for the networks, but BOO fscking HOO!).

  • Voting should be free (Score:3, Insightful)

    by octal666 ( 668007 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @06:01PM (#8288802)
    It can sound zealot, but I mean it. How can you accept a voting booth if you can't count the votes. Same in the code. If you can't see the code, it the source isn't open for every citizen to look at it, how can it be call democracy?
  • I don't understand the big push for electronic voting. What exactly are we fixing? So it takes a couple more days to count all the votes... it's not like the political system grinds to a halt during those precious hours while votes are tallied. Strange that our country has for centuries done perfectly well with the traditional method, yet all of a sudden it's such an important issue that requires technological intervention.
    • I don't understand the big push for electronic voting. What exactly are we fixing?

      They're fixing the election, of course. Sheesh, you must be new here. :)

  • Open Voting Consortium (Score:3, Informative)

    by karl.auerbach ( 157250 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @07:08PM (#8289247) Homepage
    Take a look at http://www.openvotingconsortium.org [openvotingconsortium.org]

    The first line says most of the story:

    We are currently developing a prototype version of free voting software to run on very inexpensive PC hardware. OVC voting systems will accommodate different languages and scoring methods, as well as voters with special needs. The prototype software development effort is housed at SourceForge.net.

    The other part of the story is that the software produces a paper ballot that can be read by both the voters and by machine.

    The ballot-producing machine itself can be touch screen - or something else for use by physically impaired voters.

    The system is a) inexpensive, b) voter verifiable, c) adaptable to the needs of voters with physical impairments and d) open source.

  • Is There A Conspiracy Afoot, He Asks? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Master of Transhuman ( 597628 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @07:48PM (#8289499) Homepage
    Where have you been?

    The CEO of Diebold promises to deliver his state to George Bush in 2004.

    Another voting machine company is a front for the
    CIA.

    And none of the machines by anybody can be audited, despite the fact that every other financial industry machine made by the same companies is auditable.

    You think?

  • Bring Back Ostraca (Score:3, Funny)

    by BigBadBri ( 595126 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @09:23PM (#8290022)
    I'd favour the reintroduction of ostraca - the small pot shards used for ostracism [csun.edu] in Ancient Greece.

    Not only could we count these now - but any historical dispute arising up to 2500 years later as to the result of an election would be easily settled - pot shards from 500BC and earlier have been found, and with a bit of care we could even stretch the traceability to 35,000 years (the oldest known ceramics date from around this age).

    OK - people have to mark their own pot shard, and it relies on the probity of the counting officials, but it's still a damn sight better than relying on dodgy software and potentially biased private vote counting.

    Besides, the thought of the Supreme Court being deluged with shards of pottery in case of dispute is a nice image.

  • Too bad the source code leaks of these machines... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bergeron76 ( 176351 ) * on Sunday February 15, 2004 @10:40PM (#8290447) Homepage
    ...occurred last week [taipeitimes.com]!

    I hope that none of the technologists / scientists and "hax0rs" are tainted by this dubious code being available.

    Afterall, if there is ANYTHING questionable about the UPCOMING Nov. 2004 election, it's not which canditate was voted for - it's WHO to blame for HACKING things.

    The solution will be a simple signature on some ambiguous bill (Patriot ][ anyone?) that will make ALL REVERSE ENGINEERING / DISASSEMBLY / and other potentially controversial in-the-name-of-science acts ILLEGAL without government approval.

    Afterall, if the government is the entity in question, they can easily secure their position
    "over" the people by knocking down any non-gov't sanctioned research activity.

  • Management vs Engineers (Score:4, Interesting)

    by tehanu ( 682528 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @10:43PM (#8290464)
    A new technology.

    The scientists don't want it and think it's unsafe. From my readings of major scientific magazines and journals, e-voting as it is being implemented in the US is raising major alarm bells.

    People well-versed in computer technology think it's dangerous and unsafe.

    Management (ie. the electoral officials) want it.
    Companies (who will profit from it) want it.

    Basically those who are usually the most gung-ho about new technology and most technologically literate think the idea needs careful thinking and the technology is flawed. Those who are the most technologically illiterate and those who stand to make money out of it are all for it. This is a case of management over-riding the concerns of the engineers who are waving red flags going "Danger, danger".

    I see a disaster in the making here.
    Oh well, it will all come out in the wash when lawsuits from losing candidates start. Or we have another Florida, except this time as another poster pointed out as there is no audit trail, we'll have to flip a coin to see who is President. Or I guess redo the entire election.

  • War-Voting - Just Do It. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Hektor_Troy ( 262592 ) on Sunday February 15, 2004 @11:14PM (#8290644)
    Wouldn't it be rather fun, if all the conspiracy nuts got together with all the hackers and gave ALL the votes in an election to the politicians who wants to introduce a paper trail in elections? If no such politician can be found, just make them all blank votes/write-in for 'Ficus'.

    I mean, the other politicians can't really cry foul, because they said themselves "paper trails aren't nescesary" and in effect "we trust the effectiveness of the system" ...
  • I have worked on the diebold systems (in texas performed various testing and diagnostics on the units) during our testing process there were so many different steps we had to use to diagnose any problems with the units and had to catagorize very carefully all the unit's odometer readings (yes each unit stores the amount of times it has been used) along with the hardware's condition and to make sure all the hardware worked, as far as security all of the units are perfectly capable of working in standalone mo

  • Analog soothes peoples' psyche - LOTTO 4 example (Score:3, Insightful)

    by bergeron76 ( 176351 ) * on Monday February 16, 2004 @12:24AM (#8290946) Homepage
    Interestingly, the entire US still relies on a very basic and analog[ue] method of chosing 6 numbers for LOTTO (Lottery) numbers.

    Digital technology that can determine 6 random numbers has existed for over 30 years now - So why then, do we still use such a blantantly ANALOG method of determining who will receive Millions of US dollars every week?!

    The answer is simple - those devices are believeable. Ironically, if Diebold and Mrs. Harris^H^H^H^H^H^H Cox really think that unauditable digital voting machines are "the only best solution" they are sorely mistaken.

    With something as significant as electing the MOST POWERFUL MAN IN THE WORLD at stake, why choose an unauditable digital medium? If every night the LOTTO displayed 6 random digits on the screen, people wouldn't buy it! Why should we buy what these machines say about our[US here] Democratic Republic?!?!?

    The city governments that put ELECTORAL power in these machines are exponentially mistaken.

    Diebold claims that NO OTHER VOTING SOLUTION IS AVAILABLE...

    Now, while I can't find the link, a superior method for e-voting machine auditing does exist. It consists of a digital voting machine that provides a perforated ticket than can be separated in two. One half can be deposited into a voting box, and the other can kept by the recipient as verification.

    Can someone please post a link to that article? [I saw it here on /. a few months back, but I can't seem to find it now].

  • Do you mean Georgia as a state in USA or you mean Georgia as one of Caucasian republics? If you mean the latter - they have just direct presidential election and they did not use any electornic kiosks for that. Paper, all the way paper - that the only way to have it properly documented to avoid any conflicts.

    Even with paper last parlament elections in Georgia fired so much conflicts that it led the republic to one more revolution, the president has resigned and they had to re-elect the president.

    If you

  • ... that all of the elections officials answer criticisms of electronic voting with descriptions of how easy it is to hack manual elections.

    Seems to me that they are a little too familiar with the subject. Perhaps reporters should ask some questions here. "That's interesting. Could you give me some details of how a recent Georgia election was 'fixed'? What was your part in that election?"

  • The controversy surrounding the Florida recounts and the 2000 Presidential election still simmers.

    And recently a number of prestigious computer scientists came out on record as cautioning against all of the possible problems with electronic voting.

    And still I hear recently of some effort where electronic voting is being made available to mall shoppers in Orange County.

    But, Georgia?!?

    For those with short memories, Georgia was to the 1800 election [kidsource.com] as Florida was to the 2000 election.

    The current issue of

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