quote:Voting measure may appear on ballot By Rick Barry
Concerned voters in 15 Florida counties are closely watching Sarasota’s paper ballot referendum this fall before considering similar initiatives.
Volunteers for SAFE – the Sarasota Alliance for Fair Elections – gathered 2,000 more signatures than the required 12,030 well before the July 7 deadline, and Elections Supervisor Kathy Dent has certified the signatures as valid.
The final ballot language and title were submitted to the county commission this week by lawyers for SAFE.
The proposal would require independent, voter-verified paper ballots and random audits of voting machines in selected precincts across the county immediately following an election, by 2008.
Does anyone know a single compelling reason to use these machines, except for that the Republican party seems to feel they're good luck charms?
Arstechnica proposed writing a book titled "How To Steal An Election," with detailed instructions on how to hack a Diebold machine and suggestions to carry out these performances on election night for a third party. Lord, I wish I had the technical knowledge to contribute to the project.
Posts: 3293 | Registered: Jul 2002
| IP: Logged |
Has anyone read this article? It's very long, and very alarming, and... wow. The further you get into it, the worse it becomes.
I'd be really interested to hear thoughts on this.
quote:Was the 2004 Election Stolen? Republicans prevented more than 350,000 voters in Ohio from casting ballots or having their votes counted -- enough to have put John Kerry in the White House. BY ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.
Like many Americans, I spent the evening of the 2004 election watching the returns on television and wondering how the exit polls, which predicted an overwhelming victory for John Kerry, had gotten it so wrong. By midnight, the official tallies showed a decisive lead for George Bush -- and the next day, lacking enough legal evidence to contest the results, Kerry conceded. Republicans derided anyone who expressed doubts about Bush's victory as nut cases in ''tinfoil hats,'' while the national media, with few exceptions, did little to question the validity of the election. The Washington Post immediately dismissed allegations of fraud as ''conspiracy theories,''(1) and The New York Times declared that ''there is no evidence of vote theft or errors on a large scale.''(2)
But despite the media blackout, indications continued to emerge that something deeply troubling had taken place in 2004. Nearly half of the 6 million American voters living abroad(3) never received their ballots -- or received them too late to vote(4) -- after the Pentagon unaccountably shut down a state-of-the-art Web site used to file overseas registrations.(5) A consulting firm called Sproul & Associates, which was hired by the Republican National Committee to register voters in six battleground states,(6) was discovered shredding Democratic registrations.(7) In New Mexico, which was decided by 5,988 votes,(8) malfunctioning machines mysteriously failed to properly register a presidential vote on more than 20,000 ballots.(9) Nationwide, according to the federal commission charged with implementing election reforms, as many as 1 million ballots were spoiled by faulty voting equipment -- roughly one for every 100 cast.(10)
posted
America needs a better election system, I won't debate that issue. Starting with a unified ballot system, IMHO. Of course, such a system would inevitably fall to pieces in our bureaucratic jungle.
By the way, thanks for reminding me to register for an advance (paper) ballot. My county uses those Diebold machines, and after everything I've read about them on the news, I don't trust them. There's no paper trail generated, and I feel my vote falls into the hands of technically inept poll workers once I press the buttons. I'm not intending any personal offense to those kind workers, either.
Not that it matters, living in Kansas. Posts: 1813 | Registered: Apr 2001
| IP: Logged |
quote:That report does indeed point out that many people -- 26 percent -- who first registered in 2004 did not find their names on the voter rolls at polling places. What Kennedy doesn't say, though, is that the same study found no significant difference in the share of Kerry voters and Bush voters who came to the polls and didn't find their names listed. The Democrats' report says that 4.2 percent of Kerry voters were forced to cast a "provisional" ballot and that 4.1 percent of Bush voters were made to do the same -- a stat that lowers the heat on Kennedy's claim of "astounding" partisanship.
...But the source states it was actually 129,543 voters, and that those votes would have split evenly between Kerry and Bush. And that same source -- the Democratic Party's report once again -- notes conclusively: "Despite the problems on Election Day, there is no evidence from our survey that John Kerry won the state of Ohio." But Kennedy doesn't tell you that.
He goes through Kennedy's article claim by claim and refutes each one.
So my thoughts are simple: RFK Jr. has once again shown himself to be willing to distort and misrepresent data to further an agenda.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
I don't know anything about the articles cited, so I won't address them.
I will address the fact that, as someone who has worked as a precinct officer and even as precinct inspector (the officer in charge of running a polling place), I have worked elections that used butterfly ballots (the kind the caused so much trouble in Florida in 2000) and fill-in-the-dot ballots that are then scanned by an electronic vote counting machine for over 20 years. I've thought a lot about the security of ballots and the ease of jiggering results, even before the problems in 2000, and I've come to the conclusion that I would be much, much happier with paper ballots that have to be counted by hand.
The butterfly ballots, which use a punch card to record the votes that are then counted by a computer at the end of the day, have a number of problems. Hanging and pregnant chads (remember them from Florida) are one problem. Machine alignment are another problem - I've had to have voting machines in my precincts replaced before because the machines were out of alignment so that punching the hole for one candidate resulted in recording a vote for another candidate - as precinct inspector, one of my duties was to punch each hole on each machine on a practice ballot to check for that. Another problem is that it would be all too easy to program the vote counters to, say register every fifth vote for the Democratic candidate in an election as a vote for the Republican candidate instead.
The fill-in-the bubble ballots present a whole separate set of problems. If the voter does not fill in the bubble for each vote correctly, the vote will not be recorded. This is especially a problem for older voters, who may not necessarily have a steady hand. In addition, the scanning machines sometimes just don't record a ballot, even when it is filled out correctly. I've seen that happen personally, so it isn't just a rumor I've heard. Also, the vote count mechanism in those machines are probably even easier to hack than those for the butterfly ballots.
As far as I am concerned, we really don't need to know the winners of elections within three or four hours after the polls close. So I don't see any problem with paper ballots that are marked in ink and counted by hand. Sure, there can be mistakes by the vote counters, but in such cases, the errors are much more easily tracked down and corrected, simply because they are more visible.
Edited to fix grammar error.
Posts: 2454 | Registered: Jan 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
I find it absolutely mind boggling that we can't design a computer system that does a better job than paper ballots counted by hand.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
And, I'm not sure if this has been done or not, but can't we run a few pricincts with both types of ballots -- everyone fill out the thing on computer and on paper -- and compare the final tallies? Presumably, we would have to decide in advance which one is the official ballot for use in talllies and any recount, but other than that, shouldn't this work and give us exactly the information we need in order to evaluate voting machines?
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
| IP: Logged |
posted
There are many ways voting machines (even non-computer ones, though computer ones would be far easier) could be rigged while still passing such tests Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
| IP: Logged |
quote:I find it absolutely mind boggling that we can't design a computer system that does a better job than paper ballots counted by hand.
Diebold makes the majority of ATM machines in existence. If anyone can make an accurate computer voting system, it's them. ATMs don't make mistakes, and they give you a paper printout when you're done.
The fact that Diebold chooses not to make a secure election system is more indicative of willful malice than incompetence, especially given the CEO's promise to deliver Ohio's electoral votes to the president.
On the other hand, I find it rather ironic that a RFK, Jr. is writing for Rolling Stone about this. First of all, his uncle knew quite a bit about stolen elections. Second, citing Rolling Stone is a lot like citing Fox News. They lost me entirely when they hinted that the New York Times and the Washington Post have a conservative bias. RS should stick to entertainment.
Posts: 87 | Registered: Apr 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
ATM machines operate under rather different conditions than voting machines, notably that they more represent dumb terminals with a certain amount of central transaction verification and a reasonable amount of acceptable downtime, while voting machines are extremely independent and require a certain period of near-perfect uptime. Also, I frequently see ATM machines with various errors on their screens, so I'm not sure how making ATM machines is a vote of confidence. Banks are willing to accept extensive ATM machines problems, provided they don't cause irreversible errors (most of which would be caught centrally rather than at the ATM machine anyways).
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
| IP: Logged |
Many voting integrity people do NOT want paper "receipts" from voting machines.
It's hardly fair to blame the manufacturer for not providing one when removable proof of whom you voted for is considered an enabler of corruption by many activists.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
I can think of one voting system that would be absolutely fool proof.
Use push-pin through a piece of paper (like the punchouts on the infamous butterfly ballot).
Have a circuit close only if the stylus punches all the way through the paper to a metal contact below the paper.
The machine records where the stylus punched. That corresponds is a known position on the paper ballot. So, the machine records the vote. It displays on the screen in front of the voter as "You have just voted for candidate _________" If this is in error, please start over with a fresh ballot.
If the person says they want a new ballot, the machine shreds that ballot and puts a new one in the slot. And the record of their votes up to that point is erased.
When the person signals they are finished voting, the paper ballot is sucked into a secure holding bin. At the same time, the electronic record is finalized and stored.
In precincts that want a printed record to go to the voter, that spits out of a special slot. If they don't want that, then it doesn't. If they want a code to spit out (e.g., proof of having voted and your vote is registered under XXXYYYXXQCASD -- something like that).
At the end of the voting period, the paper ballots are secured by the local board of elections (or suitable elected officials). The electronic counts are tallied from what's in the machine.
If there's a recount, they go grab the paper ballots out of storage and run them through a machine reader (the wholes are punched, so this could be automated).
If they have to do a manual inspection (a la FL), they can do that as well.
This way:
the companies don't have to turn over proprietary software (as they would have to now if an election was contested, because the software IS the genesis of the official database...)
the election is auditable
we can be sure (within reason) that people's votes were correctly recorded.
the system is just a slight change from that which is already familiar in most jurisdictions.
no fancy new technology is really needed for the basic functions of voting.
posted
Bob, that's not bad, though it could be refined, and there are so many races that completely invalidating the ballot is problematic.
My preferred method: fill out electronic votes using some reasonably clear method, but the machine doesn't make any official count of the vote (likely no count at all). It prints out a ballot with very clear, black, filled in circles next to the candidates the person voted for, which the person can then check over before depositing in the voting box.
Those ballots are then run through a scanning machine that displays the current total. At randomly selected points, the people feeding the machine examine the ballot before putting it in the machine, note what the correct totals should be after it has been processed, then process it. If there is ever a discrepancy in the count increment, all the ballots from that machine are hand counted. If there is every any other sort of discrepancy, the same.
This wholly separates voting machines and vote counting machines. There is no way for one person to, in one entry to the voting booth, interfere with the totals. Voting system decisions can still be made fairly independently by districts, provided the machine produces a printed ballot as described.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
Doesn't fix some of the problems though. The machine could still be programmed to deliberately mis-mark votes, and most people wouldn't be able to tell just by looking at the colored in circles.
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
Hmm...maybe. but it'd be at least better than the machine being the ONLY record.
There's only so much the government can do to protect people from their own stupidity too. If you get a nag screen saying "confirm this is correct" and you just hit YES without looking, is it the programmer's fault?
(Actually, some human factors texts say yes it is, but that's only in specific circumstances -- like there are so many flippin' nag screens that people learn to ignore them, or become automatons themselves just hitting the YES response time after time that they miss the rare instance where they should've said NO).
posted
If someone can't notice which names have circles next to them and which don't, there's no capability to correct the issue. (Note that there would obviously be somewhat different accomodations depending on any disability a person might have). Also, all it takes is enough people checking for no fraudulently marking machine to be able to go unnoticed.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
How ironic if someone were to hack the system and make sure they WEREN'T adopted as the only system, huh?
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
A danger in any system. However, given the extreme cluelessness shown about Diebold's security flaws, and the often extreme errors that have already been caught in electronic voting machines of all brands, I don't foresee that happening .
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
.
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
