In a nutshell, it seems some technical experts are questioning the coding and security procedures for the new voting machines that are scheduled to go online for 50 million voters in a couple of weeks.
The worst part of this article is that all the people with a vested interest in there not being any problem are basically saying "trust us, everything is OK" without actually addressing the issues, or even acknowledging there are issues in the first place.
To me this seems like it is going to be a major fiasco. In a race this close, where litigation is extremely possible after the results are tallied, a huge number of the votes will be unverifiable (no recount possible).
Posts: 6394 | Registered: Dec 1999
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posted
I suspect if there is litigation in any of the swing states this election, all the e-votes will have to be thrown out because it will be impossible to verify their authenticity or to perform a recount.
Posts: 6394 | Registered: Dec 1999
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I guess it would have been good to have a year where we use the old method as well as the new method. :sigh:
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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I have been very concerned about this since I first heard about it. It seems only logical to me to expect that this will have major problems. I hope I am wrong.
posted
I wonder if they will have any problems with people who are deeply allergic to technology. You know, like people who can't wear watches? It's really more like technology is allergic to them.
When we first had intimations of this kind of problem, why didn't we request absentee ballots? Aren't those generally all written? I don't mean to put my head in the sand, but worrying about this now is just going to stress me out.
posted
What gets me -- what really gets me -- is that everyone I know who knows about this issue is deeply concerned about it, and almost everyone I know knows about it. But despite this, there's been no serious effort among politicians to respond to that concern.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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What have various people done? Written their reps? Hunger strike? It's too late to even do that effectively.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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Agreed, Tom. I think the reason is that this is really a difficult problem, beyond the technical ken of nearly every politician who might have the means to effect changes in this area. The fact is, there is provably no way to design an election system that
has a secret ballot and
allows for accurate auditing of the results.
If you want a proof, I'll be happy to oblige. Therefore there must be some trust within the system. Putting such trust into the hands of a company that has shown its partisan leanings as well as its general incompetance is probably a bad idea. This problem of trust is nothing new, by the way. The new part is that the system is becoming more homogeneous, so is more susceptible to a single attack.
Posts: 1810 | Registered: Jan 1999
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