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EFF Sues NC Election Board 247

Posted by CowboyNeal from the rocking-the-vote dept.
Kludge writes "The EFF is suing the NC elections board. The board certified several voting machine manufacturers although none of the manufacturers would comply with the state law (passed unanimously) that the machine code be kept in escrow."
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EFF Sues NC Election Board More

EFF Sues NC Election Board

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  • cool (Score:2, Funny)

    by Neotrantor ( 597070 )
    now can we look at the ones in ohio and flordia?

  • democracy? no... (Score:5, Funny)

    by joe 155 ( 937621 ) on Saturday December 10, 2005 @12:31PM (#14228842) Journal
    Will this stop my dead cat from voting 43 times in the election again?... I know it has rights but it keeps voting republican...
    • That explains a lot, how many dead cats are there in america?

  • "even though", not "because" (Score:5, Informative)

    by Shelled ( 81123 ) on Saturday December 10, 2005 @12:32PM (#14228850)
    The board certified several voting machine manufacturers even though none of the manufacturers would comply with the state law (passed unanimously) that the machine code be kept in escrow. Not because.

    • No Because (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Read the guys explanation as to why he was certifying them, it was because none of them were prepared to meet the escrow requirement that he certified them.

      If one of them had broken ranks and put their code in Escrow, he would have certified just that one.

      My gast was totally flabbered by the explanation, and you don't like to say such things, but I recall Diebold and the American association for the blind, suddenly demanding electronic voting, while at the same time getting a new $17 million equipment centr
    • because may also be right in this case. If several of the companies were willing to place code in escrow, the board probably would have certified only those companies. Because none of the companies were willing to do this, the board felt they needed these new machines enough to override state law.

      Personally, I feel they should have kept the old machines until someone was able to comply with the law (at least escrowing their old code). No, they don't need to escrow Microsoft Windows, which was part of D

      • [T]he board felt they needed these new machines enough to override state law.


        Where does this board get the authority (or the stones) to "override" state law?

        -Peter

      • No, they don't need to escrow Microsoft Windows

        They bloody should do. Who knows what is in there and whether it is secure. On principle, any person in the country should be able to have a look at how the voting process works, if they care to. Or more likely, get opinions from those who are able to look at it closely.

        Besides - these are machines to count how many times a candidate is selected and print out a paper receipt. Do they really need an OS as complicated and bulky as Windows to implement this

    • Re:"even though", not "because" (Score:5, Insightful)

      by megabunny ( 710331 ) on Saturday December 10, 2005 @03:52PM (#14229811)
      This whole voting machine issue is so lame.

      We just had municipal elections here in British Columbia and I used a 'voting machine'. You mark off your votes on a letter size piece of paper by darkening the circles. Then you feed it face down into a scanner, which deposits the page in the ballot box after tallying it.

      Election results are available quickly from the machine.

      Hand recounts are perfectly possible because of the hard copy record.

      What is so difficult about requiring hard copy records? Votes are worth one sheet of paper.

      Chuck

  • Summary? (Score:2, Informative)

    by YrWrstNtmr ( 564987 )
    "The board certified several voting machine manufacturers because none of the manufacturers would comply with the state law (passed unanimously) that the machine code be kept in escrow."

    "The board certified several voting machine manufacturers even though none of the manufacturers would comply with the state law (passed unanimously) that the machine code be kept in escrow."

  • I'd like to see this taken farther (Score:4, Interesting)

    by dada21 ( 163177 ) * <adam.dada@gmail.com> on Saturday December 10, 2005 @12:32PM (#14228856) Homepage Journal


    The EFF is worried about e-voting based on the likely possibility of vote manipulations. Those in power of the election boards have an incredible amount of power in abusing the democratic process.

    I'm no fan of democracy as all I see in democracy is the ability to manipulate the vote to further the interests of the elite. Democracy is merely a shroud fooling the voting citizens into thinking they don't live in an authoritarian and favoritist regime.

    Votes are manipulated in more ways than just electronically:

    1. The FEC sets federal campaign finance guidelines. Any restriction in how you spend your money is unconstitutionally limiting your freedom of expression. The primary goal of campaign finance reform is to give the authoritarian political parties great power over non-authoritarian parties. What democracy needs is Real Campaign Finance Reform [realcampaignreform.org] (group is gone) that gives everyone back their ability to express their beliefs politically. Even if you want to give money to a third party, they can't do much with it and you can't give as much as you want.

    2. The FEC gives voters the idea that money corrupts government. Government corrupts due to unlimited power to control, not because of voter donations. If our federal government ran beneath their constitutional boundaries, no amount of bribery or donations would make one difference. Russian could give every Congressman a billion dollars a piece, but the Constitutional would not allow any Congressman to give Russia (or any group or individual) preferential treatment.

    3. The school system is unbalanced in teach the Constitution, leaving the majority of the population unsure of the real power of the Constitution -- leaving people free to use the rights they are born with, and preventing any government from walking over those rights.

    4. Voters are given completely biased ballots. Proper ballots should force the voter to know who they are voting for and write in the candidate. Offering ballots showing the current office holder or party affiliation provides more power to the two authoritarian parties.

    5. Voters are only allowed to see commercials from major parties as they are offered (illegal) campaign matching funds in addition to virtually unlimited campaign budgets. Third parties can not raise the necessary funds as they are limited by finance reform guidelnies.

    6. Voters never get to see every candidate in the debates as the debate committees are run by authoritarian parties unwilling to give up their powers.

    7. Voters are confused by the colluding media that wants them to vote in order to give the authoritarian candidates the mandates needed to expand the power of government. Voters rarely hear that voting is wrong and that the process setting up the vote is a collusion between the authoritarian parties.

    I hope that the EFF can see how short they come when they prosecute only the voting machines, rather than the voting system.

    Do what I do. Don't vote for any candidate -- write yourself in for every position.

    • 4. Voters are given completely biased ballots. Proper ballots should force the voter to know who they are voting for and write in the candidate. Offering ballots showing the current office holder or party affiliation provides more power to the two authoritarian parties.

      If the ballots forced you to write in the name of the candidate you were voting for, the two main parties would get even more of the vote than the currently do, because of their enormous advantage in advertising. Candidates from the two

      • If the ballots forced you to write in the name of the candidate you were voting for, the two main parties would get even more of the vote than the currently do, because of their enormous advantage in advertising. Candidates from the two main parties have a huge advantage in name recognition compared to candidates from lesser parties.

        I disagree. Right now, we have people going to the voting booth picking names because of the group next to it, with no knowledge of who the candidate really is. I'd rather see

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday December 10, 2005 @12:44PM (#14228913)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Right now, the Libertarian Party is also suing the NC State Election Board [lpnc.org] because the Election Board is only allowing residents to register as "Democrat", "Republican", or "Independent". More importantly, they're also suing because NC has taken all alternative parties off of all ballots. I can't even vote for a Libertarian or Green or Reform Party candidate in the state of NC. The gizmo they use to count the ballots is just red herring. That debate is fabricated to keep people's wheels spinning about
      • The details of that letter are somewhat sparce.

        In taking "all other parties off the ballots", doesn't that just mean taking them off the straight-ticket vote? I don't think it makes sense to straight-ticket vote Libertarian, Green or whatever simply because not all offices have canidates in that party, I think one is better off going line-by-line for that, otherwise, if you don't have a canidate for an office in that party, then the vote goes to noone.
    • I'm no fan of democracy as all I see in democracy is the ability to manipulate the vote to further the interests of the elite. Democracy is merely a shroud fooling the voting citizens into thinking they don't live in an authoritarian and favoritist regime.
      Karl? Is that you?

      "Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the other forms that have been tried." - Winston Churchill


    • 6. Voters never get to see every candidate in the debates as the debate committees are run by authoritarian parties unwilling to give up their powers.

      I'm amazed out how many people don't realize that, in the last presidential election, two minority candidates who were on the ballot were arrested because they were trying to participate in the "non-partisan" debates (they'd gotten as far as getting a court order before they were stopped).

      --MarkusQ

    • Any restriction in how you spend your money is unconstitutionally limiting your freedom of expression.

      Says you. Got a court case to cite in support of your position? Didn't think so. It's just your opinion versus 200+ years of jurisprudence. First of all, money is not speech. Second of all:

      What democracy needs...

      You said democracy was a sham to provide cover for authoritatarian and favoritist regimes. Who is favored? The people with money. So you want to "reform democracy" by entirely removing the m
      • Says you. Got a court case to cite in support of your position? Didn't think so. It's just your opinion versus 200+ years of jurisprudence. First of all, money is not speech. Second of all:

        Money isn't speech, money is expression. What you buy expresses what you need. This is how life operates. Everything we do is a form of expression, including working, speaking, writing, singing, and spending money. Here [google.com] are some links.

        So you want to "reform democracy" by entirely removing the meager limitations on how
        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
          • The idea of having a federal Congress was to limit the position to very VERY strict, enumerated powers. The system we see today is outrageous and will fail by itself, as a true patriot I'd like to save this country from the socialist and fascist sides that are currently running it.

            The Constitution was unique in that it allowed for a tiny federal government to strictly defend the States from each other and from outsiders. Instead of being one country where everyone is equally taxes and trampled on, we were
        • I notice you keep coming back to the fact that if congress had no real power, bribes would be useless, which is true. What you don't take into account is that the people are the last true defense of the Constitution. If the government up and decided tomorrow that there is no guarantee to free speech in the Constitution, there is no one who can stop them, save the people.

          The founders thought that seperation of powers would keep the government in check, but they did this without knowing the power of party p
    • 1. The FEC sets federal campaign finance guidelines. Any restriction in how you spend your money is unconstitutionally limiting your freedom of expression.

      I ABSOLUTELY disagree with this. Without rules, there is still no fair election, because all it means is that people with money will buy political influence. It's like having special shares of stock in a corporation where your vote counts as two, but everyone else's counts as one. Give every one ONE and ONLY ONE vote, and an equal opportunity to make an i
      • Without rules, there is still no fair election, because all it means is that people with money will buy political influence

        You're equating money with power. This is wrong. The power comes from the governed giving the politician that power. Take away the power and the money disappears. Corporations and individuals want to spend money to influence politicians but not you. Why? Because the politicians have a monopoly on power. The Constitution was to restrict these powers, but you, the voters, decided t
    • 1. I agree with the basic premiss but there are extenuating issues. Most people don't have a few million dollars to throw at politicians every election season. Business backed PACS and lobbying organizations do. What gives these guys the right to have a louder voice in the process than I do? Just because they have more money than I do is not sufficient justification.

      I understand where you are coming from, and I don't really like the message that restrictions send, but the effect without them is that pe

    • I think its good that the EFF is doing something.

      Going up against an authoritarian system controlled by 2 authoritarian parties unwilling to give up their power is a tough fight. Perhaps the EFF could blow their entire budget trying to bring a lawsuit to change the entire government, but that's a longshot.

      This voting machine BS is a blatant violation of a state law by the state election committee. Its pretty cut-and-dry.

      Bogus election machines would give that authoritarian system unlimited control over th

  • How Is This Possible? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by quanticle ( 843097 ) on Saturday December 10, 2005 @12:33PM (#14228860) Homepage

    From the article, it seems like the elections commission certified all voting machine manufacturers despite the fact that none of them were in compliance with the law. How was the elections commission allowed to do this? Wouldn't the logical solution have been to certify none of the voting machine manufacturers until they came into compliance with the law?

    Am I missing something here (e.g. time limit)?

    • The key word there is logical. The electronic voting machine makers could very well have known that if none would provide the code, the state would have to do an all-or-nothing approach, and they wouldn;t like the nothing option.

      But that's just idle speculation.

    • Re:How Is This Possible? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by D.A. Zollinger ( 549301 ) on Saturday December 10, 2005 @12:53PM (#14228955) Homepage Journal
      Most people are not logical. As an example, math is logical, and the majority of people suck at math. But I digress...

      I believe what you are missing is politics. The director of the elections comission wanted to show to his superiors that he is doing something useful and tangible. Was the director/members aware of the state law? I am sure they were. Do they have the power to force vendors to open their code? Not really. All they can do is tell the vendors, "We're not going to certify you until we can review your code."

      My guess is that they were put under pressure to get some sort of electronic voting system in place for the 2006 elections, and instead of doing what would be right for the people (follow the law, protect the voters, etc), they did what would be better for someone else's political career ("See what wonderful things we are doing with state money?" and "No more antiquated voting methods for our citizens!").

      I'm glad the EFF called them to task on this one.
    • The actions of the election commission to appear to be illegal, but it's not quite so bad as suggested in the summary--the commission told Diebold et al. that they can begin selling if they are able to place all code in escrow by December 22, while the law appears to require that all code be in escrow and have been reviewed before the commission can give approval.

      Anyway, I'm cheering for the EFF.

    • I live in NC (Score:4, Insightful)

      by 77Punker ( 673758 ) <(spencr04) (at) (highpoint.edu)> on Saturday December 10, 2005 @02:37PM (#14229421)
      The election commission does whatever it wants. Their only interest is to make sure only the big two parties stand a chance at any election. My state is the hardest state to get a party onto the ballot, and because of this there's only two choices on any state or federal level ballot in NC.

  • Are you familiar with the old robot saying? (Score:3, Informative)

    by karmaflux ( 148909 ) on Saturday December 10, 2005 @12:34PM (#14228865)
    "DOES NOT COMPUTE" The Slashdot summary claims the board certified the manufacturers because they wouldn't put their code in escrow. It's more likely the EFF is suing the board for certifying the manufacturers despite their refusal to place their code in escrow. First dupes, then ads, now stories that don't even make sense.
    • It's more likely the EFF is suing the board for certifying the manufacturers despite their refusal

      Likely does not always mean true. Especialy not in connection with electronic voting.

      -- --
        War can make the fundamentalists give up like 9/11 could make the US give up.
  • Why doesn't some company start up and open e-voting machine business?

    • Re:open e-voter (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Sr. Pato ( 900333 )
      Why don't you? If you've got a "good" idea, why not make some profit? :-)
    • This strikes me as a golden opportunity to start a company. None of these companies really want to deliver the goods that states are asking for. In fact, this would make a perfect opportunity for Novell/Redhat/Mandrake/etc. to create an open voting system and then push all the states to certify only open systems with print methods.

      The costs of developing the voting software is far less than the costs of the underlieing OS.
      • No, it isn't. In the case of Novell/Redhat/Mandrake writing a open voting software system, the cost of the underlying OS is zero. The already have LOBs working on the underlying OS, the incremental cost of using that in a new LOB is $0
      • One of the restriction NC puts down is that they need a list of developers of **all** of the code on the machine - that would include the Linux kernel. Can you list beyond a shadow of a doubt the name of every developer that has contributed in **any** capacity to the kernel or any related project? dd? g++? X?

        Part of the problem is that the rules are way too overbearing. It would actually be a lot easier to do the job in WindowsCE (the source is available... Microsoft keeps a paper trail of developers)

        -ev
        • Can you list beyond a shadow of a doubt the name of every developer that has contributed in **any** capacity to the kernel or any related project? dd? g++? X?

          In any capacity? Not a chance. But if you remove the code that came from unknown sources, then it is easy enough. I would be willing to hazard a guess that less than 1/1000 of the code was written by unknown individuals.

          It would actually be a lot easier to do the job in WindowsCE (the source is available... Microsoft keeps a paper trail of developer

      • Exactly. It should be possible to throw together inexpensive voting machines, with paper record, using comodity hardware with no design work.

        They can run some sort of Linux (or, perhaps better, the wonderfully paranoid OpenBSD) as the underlying OS. Maybe throw together the voting software in Python (easy to read, less chance of overruns). Give the thing a nice web interface and bam!

        Then wait 36 hours for Diebold to buy through a law baning open source in voting machines. ;)
    • Consider all the lobbyists, state representatives, and state senators you have to buy.

  • Interesting change of pace (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ThatGeek ( 874983 ) on Saturday December 10, 2005 @12:53PM (#14228959) Homepage
    This is an interesting change of pace. Not too long ago, big interests would spend a lot of money buying voters and pressuring them to vote their way.

    Now they just cut out the middleman! Why mess with voters when you can just mess with a couple of voting machines?

    Genius!

  • Not to worry (Score:4, Interesting)

    by QuietLagoon ( 813062 ) on Saturday December 10, 2005 @12:57PM (#14228979)
    There are no problems with electronic voting machince, except maybe for this minor glitch [bradblog.com].
  • The EFF has a lousy litigation track record. This could set back verified voting.

  • Shocked North Carolinian (Score:5, Informative)

    by smelroy ( 40796 ) on Saturday December 10, 2005 @01:21PM (#14229068) Homepage
    As a North Carolinian I was a little shocked to see the EFF was suing the state elections board. Then I read why. Why does the elections board think they can just ignore the law? I am all for having electronic voting and I imagine that it will help out the process considerably but we certainly shouldn't add more risk for fraud and error. Voting accuracy should be priority #1.
  • The Board of Elections certified Diebold despite its admitted inability to comply with the law.

    But I thought people were supposed to obey the rule of law?

  • I wonder (Score:3, Interesting)

    by symbolic ( 11752 ) on Saturday December 10, 2005 @02:16PM (#14229341)

    I wonder what it would cost to put together an open-source consortium to design the thing from the ground up. These things aren't exactly rocket science, and I bet that most of it could be done with off-the-shelf components. As for the software - I don't see that as a terrifically complicated piece, and I'm willing to bet that a few good coders could put the likes of Diebold to shame.

    • Re:I wonder (Score:3, Interesting)

      by legirons ( 809082 )
      "I wonder what it would cost to put together an open-source consortium to design the thing from the ground up."

      It would take open-sourcing all the potential political scandals ("hidden requirements") that are currently just deals between friends, and making them into visible requirements for the software.

      It might also involve setting up an open-source bureaucracy that's rigid enough to do all the certifications (i.e. no more extreme programming, hacking or whatever, but the 2 lines of code per day that you

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