I was having a bit of an argument recently with a fervent Bushie, about many things but partly the nature of electronic voting that doesn't leave any kind of verifiable audit trail, but I was unable to convince him that voting machinery which cannot be checked is *NOT* a party political issue, but part of the very fundament of democracy: put simply, it is *impossible* to prove that the results in places like Ohio in '04 were accurate, even ignoring the unprecedented inaccuracy of the exit polls.

In my opinion, this is completely non-partisan: whoever wins when these black-box voting booths are used simply cannot have the same legitimacy 'cause the results are so easily changed with no way of checking to see whether they're accurate or not...

What I find very hard to understand is the lack of peturbation over there: ignoring whether you wanted Bush to win or not, surely the simple fact that a huge number of votes are completely uncheckable is simply unacceptable?  After all, why should any true democrat (with a small 'D', that is) want to buy voting kit which could quite easily turn out any result you wanted simply by typing in a few numbers?

I think it is an utter disgrace. Whether it be Republican or Democrat, voting fraud is voting fraud. I am appalled that it was NOT looked into.  There are many in California who do not want those machines.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060321/us_nm/california_diebold_dc_3


We don't use them here.



Cat

Fraud is fraud, however I do think Bush won '04 fair and square.

Although of course, since he didn't win '00 fair and square his '04 victory is thus not valid also.

I notice that the people who voted the last of the above options haven't had the courage to argue their viewpoint: but it is *exactly* the sort of view that is going to kill off democracy over there unless something is done.  Hats off to those bods in California, and good luck to them.


Fraud is fraud, however I do think Bush won '04 fair and square.

Thing is, Donnie, you can't *prove* it: there is no recount for the electronic votes.

Which is criminally stupid, IMO: technically we're not talking rocket science, here.  Nor a huge amount of money - so why do Diebold insist on producing amateur, hackable, audit-free software when it would be perfectly within the capability of any decent software house to produce something that was inarguable?

As with other polls in here, I am not voting in this one.  I simply refuse to participate in a "poll" which is blatently antagonistic.

Myself, I think that for the moment, "Electronic Polling" should be kept to smaller, local elections.

I believe it is the way of the future, and that someday they will become the standard.  However, that time is not yet.  There are still far to many bugs that need to be worked out of the system.

Myself, I would like to see some form of unified system.  Where all state drivers licenses use a standard magnetic strip on the back.  And when you show up to vote, you have to "swipe" your Drivers License or State ID (not a "voting ID" or some form of national card, I will not even go there).  When your card is swiped, your name is checked off against registered voters, and is then marked as you having voted, to help prevent voter fraud.

However, both the hardware and software need more work before I am comfortable with their use in State or Federal elections.  However, the only way to work out the bugs is to be to use them.  And by having them used in local elections, that is the only way that they will discover how to prevent fraud and other problems.

Consider this a "Not Ready For Prime-Time" technology.

Blatantly antagonistic?  Yes, it *is* antagonistic, and intended to be so: there is absolutely no excuse for accepting the sort of software Diebold have put together - when you consider the levels of security which are taken for granted these days with on-line transactions, voting is trivial in comparison: it's one huge counting machine, and the only thing it has to do apart from count is make sure that everything being counted is secure.

But Diebold only get away with it because true security isn't part of the spec: either it's been left out because the people commissioning the voting systems don't know what they should be asking for; or those people actually want their voting records to be cheatable... as is often the case, the answer is either incompetence or criminal intention.  So, which do you reckon it is, then?


Consider this a "Not Ready For Prime-Time" technology.

Give me six months, and on my own I could write a completely secure voting system: not unhackable, but one where any hacks are immediately apparent as soon as the votes are counted and has audit checking back to each machine on which the votes were tallied.  Technically, it's not a problem.  There is more than enough programming brain around to make a worthwhile solution... there ain't the political will to make it happen at the moment, though.

I think it is an utter disgrace. Whether it be Republican or Democrat, voting fraud is voting fraud. I am appalled that it was NOT looked into.  There are many in California who do not want those machines.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060321/us_nm/california_diebold_dc_3


We don't use them here.



Cat


Looks like you're not the only ones, either:

http://www.computerworld.com/governmenttopics/government/legislation/story/0,10801,109436,00.html

...at least some politicos are waking up :)

As with other polls in here, I am not voting in this one.  I simply refuse to participate in a "poll" which is blatently antagonistic.

Myself, I think that for the moment, "Electronic Polling" should be kept to smaller, local elections.

I believe it is the way of the future, and that someday they will become the standard.  However, that time is not yet.  There are still far to many bugs that need to be worked out of the system.

Myself, I would like to see some form of unified system.  Where all state drivers licenses use a standard magnetic strip on the back.  And when you show up to vote, you have to "swipe" your Drivers License or State ID (not a "voting ID" or some form of national card, I will not even go there).  When your card is swiped, your name is checked off against registered voters, and is then marked as you having voted, to help prevent voter fraud.

However, both the hardware and software need more work before I am comfortable with their use in State or Federal elections.  However, the only way to work out the bugs is to be to use them.  And by having them used in local elections, that is the only way that they will discover how to prevent fraud and other problems.

Consider this a "Not Ready For Prime-Time" technology.



I applauded you for this post because I think you brought up a great idea to help fix the system.  Something needs to be done to prevent voter fraud and to ensure that our elections are scandal-free and that people are elected properly, and not because votes had to be thrown out or because votes were switched over.....it's too much.

Something needs to be done to prevent voter fraud and to ensure that our elections are scandal-free and that people are elected properly, and not because votes had to be thrown out or because votes were switched over.....it's too much.

So you think that there's a greater chance of voter fraud from lots of the little voters trying to cheat things than there is from the companies who control the voting?  Keep those rose-tinted specs on, sister, if it helps you...

WEll, I guess there are whinning Democrates and whinning democrates., and I guess there those who want to protect our democratic republic and those 2 Republicans who wouldn't mind a "people's republic" - as long as their party was "the people".

WEll, I guess there are whinning Democrates and whinning democrates., and I guess there those who want to protect our democratic republic and those 2 Republicans who wouldn't mind a "people's republic" - as long as their party was "the people".


Don, don't forget that I myself have great misgivings about the technology at the moment.  Probably my biggest problem is the lack of a "paper trail", which would make it easire for anybody to manipulate the results.

I simply do not see this as a "Republican Vs. Democrat" issue.  It is important to everybody, and everybody should have misgivings at the moment.  But I still assert that someday it will become the standard.  And every voting system has problems.  Butterfly Ballots have been used for decades, and nobody had any serious issues with them until 2004.

I may not always agree with "the people", but that is the way our country is run.  I make no claims to be omnipresent.  I simply go along with the wishes of the majority.  I may speak out against it, but that is what was decided so I accept it and move along with my life.

And if you have a problem with Diebold, then who else is going to do it?  It is kinda like saying you do not like Boeing.  You may not like them, but who else is going to build your jumbo jets?  Of course, we can always talk to IBM, and see if they want to get into the voting machine business again.

I simply do not see this as a "Republican Vs. Democrat" issue.  It is important to everybody, and everybody should have misgivings at the moment.  But I still assert that someday it will become the standard.  And every voting system has problems. 
Couldn't agree more.. but the problems *can* be ironed out.


And if you have a problem with Diebold, then who else is going to do it?  It is kinda like saying you do not like Boeing.  You may not like them, but who else is going to build your jumbo jets?

Who else?  Anybody - the amount Diebold have been paid for their kit would be adequate for a complete from-the-ground-up investment in new hardware/software over the next couple of years.  Split the hardware and software sides, and use industry standard technology and you could get a far better system at a fraction of the price.

And I don't accept your analogy: Boeing have an extremely good record for building planes that don't fall out of the sky... Diebold, OTOH, have been proven to be ridiculously amateurish in their software construction (which isn't that surprising from a company that started out in basically hardware-only voting machinery), and combined it with a partisan CEO (remember that promise to "deliver" Ohio to GWB?) ... if a newbie company were to turn up with such a crap product, there ain't no way it would have been accepted.

Who else?  Anybody - the amount Diebold have been paid for their kit would be adequate for a complete from-the-ground-up investment in new hardware/software over the next couple of years.  Split the hardware and software sides, and use industry standard technology and you could get a far better system at a fraction of the price.

And I don't accept your analogy: Boeing have an extremely good record for building planes that don't fall out of the sky... Diebold, OTOH, have been proven to be ridiculously amateurish in their software construction (which isn't that surprising from a company that started out in basically hardware-only voting machinery).


My analogy is that who else is building this kind of equipment?  And are there any other companies that are interested in entering the market?

Remember, I fully support free enterprise.  But unless some competitor steps up, we are more or less stuck with them.

Myself, I would like to see some form of hybred system for the short term.  Have a computer interface, but have the actual votes printed out with magnet ink on a piece of paper.  This way the voter can verify that it is accurate before they deposit it in the ballot box.  That is one of the problems with the butterfly ballot, because once you remove it from the machine, the punchouts mean nothing.

Myself, I expect it will probably be from 15-20 years before any form of "Electronic Ballot" comes even close to standardized enough for a federal ellection.  But at the same time, you have people screaming to remove the butterfly system.  And that is fine, but what do you replace it with?

President Bush (and a lot of others) came under fire because of the mess in 2000.  This caused a lot of people to scream for an Electronic system, and caused it to be rushed out before it was ready.  Then a lot of the same people started to scream that the electronic system did not work right.  What a shock.  Rarely does a rushed solution work very well.

My analogy is that who else is building this kind of equipment?  And are there any other companies that are interested in entering the market?

I agree with you most of the time, but in this case Phil is correct that your analogy is flawed because Boeing makes a good aircraft.  In addition, Airbus, Lockheed Martin, Douglas and other companies also make commercial aircraft, to answer your question.

President Bush (and a lot of others) came under fire because of the mess in 2000.  This caused a lot of people to scream for an Electronic system, and caused it to be rushed out before it was ready.  Then a lot of the same people started to scream that the electronic system did not work right.  What a shock.  Rarely does a rushed solution work very well.


I agree that the mess was partly because of the way voting is set up.  You either have the "connect-the-arrow" ballot, the punch-card ballot, or the bubble ballot, and we need a more uniform system to decrease the criticisms.  I have heard talk about some states cranking out a hybrid-type system where the voter will enter their vote electronically, but at the same time, the computer will print a hard-copy on a register that is unseen by the voter.  This would allow for both electronic and physical vote counts.

but at the same time, the computer will print a hard-copy on a register that is unseen by the voter.  This would allow for both electronic and physical vote counts.

The hard copy should be seen by the voter, who can confirm that is how they wanted to vote.  Otherwise you'd get the same arguments all over.

The hard copy should be seen by the voter, who can confirm that is how they wanted to vote.  Otherwise you'd get the same arguments all over.


Well, that would require a lot more control because you'd have to design a system where the vote register would only be revealed after the vote was cast, and only show THAT vote as opposed to the vote or two before his vote.  It might work though, just needs more finagling :D

The way I see it would be the system prints out a voting slip rather like a receipt with the choice marked on, which is then placed in a ballot box... a random selection of these ballot boxes can be counted to check the tallies.  If there are no complaints or challenges, the ballots can be archived or disposed of after some delay.

If you want *real* belt-and-braces, then have a secondary optical scan through a different supplier's kit (but that's basically doubling your cost, so I can see that this might not go down too well)

The way I see it would be the system prints out a voting slip rather like a receipt with the choice marked on, which is then placed in a ballot box... a random selection of these ballot boxes can be counted to check the tallies.  If there are no complaints or challenges, the ballots can be archived or disposed of after some delay.

If you want *real* belt-and-braces, then have a secondary optical scan through a different supplier's kit (but that's basically doubling your cost, so I can see that this might not go down too well)


If you do the voting slip thing, that might invite another layer of tampering.  The computer is already hackable (theoretically) and the voting slips could be doctored as well.  It's too bad that you can't really trust people, but if you want near-airtight security you will have to up the costs to provide that security  :-\\

The hard copy should be seen by the voter, who can confirm that is how they wanted to vote.  Otherwise you'd get the same arguments all over.


I agree, and that is why I proposed the system that I described.  With magnetic ink, the voter can verify their choice.  And the Computer can scan it quickly.  This is the same system that is used on checks.  The technology is prooven, and has been in use for decades.

Plus Magnetic Ink has the advantage of being scanned both optically andmagnetically.  This way, they can run the same ballot through both systems, and give a basic verification during the initial vote count.  And even if they come up different, they can be verified visually by a human.

Don, don't forget that I myself have great misgivings about the technology at the moment.  Probably my biggest problem is the lack of a "paper trail", which would make it easire for anybody to manipulate the results.

I simply do not see this as a "Republican Vs. Democrat" issue.  It is important to everybody, and everybody should have misgivings at the moment.  But I still assert that someday it will become the standard.  And every voting system has problems.  Butterfly Ballots have been used for decades, and nobody had any serious issues with them until 2004.

I may not always agree with "the people", but that is the way our country is run.  I make no claims to be omnipresent.  I simply go along with the wishes of the majority.  I may speak out against it, but that is what was decided so I accept it and move along with my life.

And if you have a problem with Diebold, then who else is going to do it?  It is kinda like saying you do not like Boeing.  You may not like them, but who else is going to build your jumbo jets?  Of course, we can always talk to IBM, and see if they want to get into the voting machine business again.


I think you misunderstood my attempt at sarasm.  I was aiimg it at the 2 voters here who voted the 3rd choice.  I agree that it is not a partisan issue but a security issue.

If you do the voting slip thing, that might invite another layer of tampering.  The computer is already hackable (theoretically) and the voting slips could be doctored as well.

But it would be damn near impossible to tamper with voting slips polling booth by polling booth on the sort of scale that would be required to affect the result of an election. And the software doesn't *have* to be hackable: I tend to favour the idea of polling booths that fire off their ballot results to multiple and independent destinations, each getting their own copy of the results - that would make central monkeying with the data (as the current Diebold system is ridiculously open to) completely impossible.  With each booth having its own independent public/private key encryption, anybody could collate and view the results without being able to generate false data.  That would mean that hacks would have to come from individual polling booths, and within those booths the results could be verified by recount of the voting slips.  It's a very secure concept, IMO.

But it would be damn near impossible to tamper with voting slips polling booth by polling booth on the sort of scale that would be required to affect the result of an election. And the software doesn't *have* to be hackable: I tend to favour the idea of polling booths that fire off their ballot results to multiple and independent destinations, each getting their own copy of the results - that would make central monkeying with the data (as the current Diebold system is ridiculously open to) completely impossible.  With each booth having its own independent public/private key encryption, anybody could collate and view the results without being able to generate false data.  That would mean that hacks would have to come from individual polling booths, and within those booths the results could be verified by recount of the voting slips.  It's a very secure concept, IMO.


Ah, that actually makes sense.  Safety in redundancy.

But it would be damn near impossible to tamper with voting slips polling booth by polling booth on the sort of scale that would be required to affect the result of an election. And the software doesn't *have* to be hackable: I tend to favour the idea of polling booths that fire off their ballot results to multiple and independent destinations, each getting their own copy of the results


But then you increase the problem of server side security.  Why hack into a single booth, when you can hack into the server(s) that they report to?  And one of the easiest ways to do this is a simple DDoS attack.  You can even bring down the booths with a DDoS attack on them.  Even if it does not crash the system, a large number of votes could be lost, having been discarded as part of the attack.  You will even have hackers use IP Sniffer type tools, then spoof the individual machines, skewing the server with fraudulent votes.

Part of the problem is that a large number of hackers are the anarchist type personality.  They love seeing chaos in any form, the more chaos the better.  They would love nothing more then to gridlock the voting process and bring it all to a crashing halt.  These people hate democracy, and want to see the world run by some form of perverted mob rule.

If you really think a network couldn't be set up to cope with a denial of service attack.. generally forewarned is forearmed, though.  However, you're right in that this would probably be seen as a challenge by some of the more anarchic types.

OK, then: rather than using TCP/IP and the internet for fear of hackers, use SMS to send the results: you'd need to get a serious mass movement amongst the teenagers to try a DoS on a major SMS server.  I've done a bit of playing with GPRS modems, and it would be perfectly feasable to do your dat transfer handshaking by text message: it's only counts that matter from the polling booths, at the end of the (polling) day.  Getting public key encryption to work over SMS would be an interesting intellectual exercise, though not an insurmountable problem, methinks.  And you could still set the booths up with multiple servers to which to send their data.