Florida to scrap touchscreens; convictions in Ohio recount-rigging

Florida will allegedly announce plans to scrap touchscreens. Also, two Cuyahoga County officials are convicted for rigging a recount of the 2004 presidential election.<BR><BR> Story

 

[sorhed]

Now I know this wouldn't have changed the results of the 2004 election but in other Western democracies, such a disregard for due democratic process would provoke a mass public outcry, a national-level inquiry and dramatic reforms in the electoral process.<BR><BR>If the Jan. 2006 elections in Canada were found to be compromised this way, a non-confidence vote in Parliament would almost certainly happen and we'd hold new elections within the month.<BR><BR>In America, it's business as usual.

 

[Alfonse]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">If the Jan. 2006 elections in Canada were found to be compromised this way, a non-confidence vote in Parliament would almost certainly happen and we'd hold new elections within the month.<BR><BR>In America, it's business as usual. </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>We have no provisions for non-confidence votes, or any other means for provoking an election. We have elections every 2 years, and that's all.<BR><BR>Besides, we have enough inquiries and so forth going on right now. Fixing the electoral process is important, but it's not the most important thing we can be doing.

 

[Fiendish]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Alfonse:<BR>Fixing the electoral process is important, but it's not the most important thing we can be doing. </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR>You are so very wrong.

 

[Zamyatin]

Alfonse, I disagree wholeheartedly. The election process is perhaps *the* most important institutional process in any popular democracy. Corruption in elections means a failure of the election to properly represent the majority, which, in a single-member plurality such as the United States has, in which the majority takes the win (and the seat in government) and the minority must deal with its loss, proper election outcomes are very, <I>very</I> very important.

 

[tinycritterfromthesea]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Besides, we have enough inquiries and so forth going on right now. Fixing the electoral process is important, but it's not the most important thing we can be doing. </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>errrr.... are you serious?

 

[alaric520]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Now I know this wouldn't have changed the results of the 2004 election but . </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>Just how do you know that? Why were the election officials doing that if not to hide discrepancies between the tally and the stated results? Just how many "alterations" were there? Do you know. Have you looked. <BR><BR>Under ohio law, if the sample does not match the reported results a wider examination is conducted. It looks like those election officials sought to avoid that and you have to ask why? <BR><BR>In fact, it suggests that the election results would have been changed.

 

[Gaming-Module]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Alfonse:<BR><BR>Besides, we have enough inquiries and so forth going on right now. Fixing the electoral process is important, but it's not the most important thing we can be doing. </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>Yeah, those oversight guys already have their heads up too many rectums. Why ask them to bother with the basis of our sovereign government?!?!<BR><BR>On a more serious note, I was outraged at the two individuals who will be seeing prison time, as I read through the article.<BR><BR>They should receive as much scorn as a convicted rapist, as far as I'm concerned. Who are you to tamper with the will of a Democratic society?

 

[Zamyatin]

Gaming-Module - well put. Idealically, all sides of the democratic society should be this outraged, not just the side who lost. Of course, this isn't the way Americans think until the tables have turned and finger-pointing abounds.

 

[Sulla]

Democracy in action!

 

[Michaelz]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by alaric520:<BR>Just how do you know that? Why were the election officials doing that if not to hide discrepancies between the tally and the stated results? Just how many "alterations" were there? Do you know. Have you looked. <BR><BR>Under ohio law, if the sample does not match the reported results a wider examination is conducted. It looks like those election officials sought to avoid that and you have to ask why? <BR><BR>In fact, it suggests that the election results would have been changed. </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>There's no evidence that this would have changed the results in any determinable way.<BR><BR>The criteria of matching 3% of the precints determines whether the official recount will be by hand or by machine.<BR><BR>These two figures may well be different, but the only way it will be predictably different would be if someone took the paper ballots and modified them so that the machine would record them differently than a person would. (I imagine there's something more sophisticated than white out and a marker, but this line of analysis doesn't depend on the specific implementation.)<BR><BR>This would affect the recount and not the original count unless someone could make this change election night before the ballots are fed into the machine, which I imagine is harder than changing them after election night.<BR><BR>Assuming this happened, why were the ballots separated into bush/kerry stacks? The person making this change would have known about the 3% rule and wouldn't have changed the results for all precincts, but only some precincts. Hence if the officials were involved they wouldn't have to count any precincts by hand, but merely pick "at random" the ones that were intentionally left unmodified.<BR><BR>In other words the scenario laid out above requires:<BR>-ballots were modified so that hand counting and machine counting will vary<BR>-some set of precincts were changed and others not<BR>-the officials knew this had happened and were in collusion<BR>-but the officials didn't know which precincts were kept pristine as part of the effort to cover up the election tampering<BR><BR><BR>Keeping the stacks sorted and admitting they weren't random is further evidence that the election officials weren't intentionally doing something fraudulent. Otherwise we have to assume the officials were pretty clever most of the time and then boneheadedly stupid while the tape was rolling. ooops! (At least they didn't record themselves doing it and then post the video to youtube!)<BR><BR>It seems like this was just a misguided attempt to save the county some money.<BR><BR>Michael

 

[Razorback2006]

I completely agree with sorhed this would cause rioting in other countries. What will we do? Probably nothing. Aside from jailing the only two idiots that admit it.

 

[DebtAngel]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by sorhed:<BR>Now I know this wouldn't have changed the results of the 2004 election but in other Western democracies, such a disregard for due democratic process would provoke a mass public outcry, a national-level inquiry and dramatic reforms in the electoral process.<BR><BR>If the Jan. 2006 elections in Canada were found to be compromised this way, a non-confidence vote in Parliament would almost certainly happen and we'd hold new elections within the month.<BR><BR>In America, it's business as usual. </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>So used to the minority government already? Under a more normal majority government, a non-confidence vote occurs approximately never.<BR><BR>Having said that, if such tomfoolery were to occur at a national level in Canada, all sorts of other political pressure would result in, at the very least, a voluntary bi-election in the affected riding(s). If nothing else, the MP would be under immense pressure to give up their seat to force a re-vote to win the seat "cleanly".

 

[Gaming-Module]

Yeah, partisan voters will pretty much turn a blind eye when the errors and/or corruption go in their favor, which is probably only slightly less disgusting than the Kitty Genovese rape that continued, despite the victim's screams for help, within earshot of hundreds of amibivalent New Yorkers.<BR><BR>Is this sort of thing considered treason? If not, it should be ... the government being of the people, by the people and for the people, and all that. These guys will probably just plea down to some minor time in a slap-on-the-wrist, minimum-security resort prison.<BR><BR>It's actually kind of surprising that this has my panties in such a wad as it does, considering how close I live to Detroit: The Corruption Capitol (labor unions, corrupt city politics and a school system crippled by graft!).

 

[Bad Monkey!]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by alaric520:<BR><BR>Under ohio law, if the sample does not match the reported results a wider examination is conducted. It looks like those election officials sought to avoid that and you have to ask why? <BR><BR>In fact, it suggests that the election results would have been changed. </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>It suggests no such thing. A county-wide recount is conducted regardless of how the 3% audit turns out. If you had <I>read the article</I>, you would have seen that what they were trying to do was avoid an extended and laborious hand recount, instead of a machine recount. Now, you argue that those 3% were throwing the election for Bush, but the fact that Bush took Ohio by 118,000 votes, and the fact that the Cuyahoga (a heavily Democratic county) recount only shifted the numbers in Kerry's favor by 26 votes, seems to suggest otherwise.

 

[CMalFet]

If you ask me we're a bit too Democratic. If we leaned a little more towards the original Republic setup maybe we wouldn't keep electing these retards. Our candidates don't even carry the pretense of a driving passion for a particular cause (except maybe Gore, but he lets his passions get in the way of good sense more often than not), they are admittedly career politicians, gaming the system for as much power as they can get.<BR><BR>I'm all in favor of TV cameras like those they put at intersections so you can check the traffic to watch over the ballots once they are collected. That way, even if any funny business does occur, everyone, essentially, has the ability to watch it happen and you get more of these cases where people forget about the cameras and do stupid things.

 

[sorhed]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by alaric520:<BR><BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Now I know this wouldn't have changed the results of the 2004 election but . </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>Just how do you know that? Why were the election officials doing that if not to hide discrepancies between the tally and the stated results? Just how many "alterations" were there? Do you know. Have you looked. <BR><BR>Under ohio law, if the sample does not match the reported results a wider examination is conducted. It looks like those election officials sought to avoid that and you have to ask why? <BR><BR>In fact, it suggests that the election results would have been changed. </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>I meant to say, "I dont know if this would have change the election results but..." <BR><BR>- in the process of carefully choosing my preamble, I accidentally wrote too careful of a response.<BR><BR>Debtangel:<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Having said that, if such tomfoolery were to occur at a national level in Canada, all sorts of other political pressure would result in, at the very least, a voluntary bi-election in the affected riding(s). If nothing else, the MP would be under immense pressure to give up their seat to force a re-vote to win the seat "cleanly". </div></BLOCKQUOTE> <BR><BR>*sigh* I *heart* good governance.

 

[elvisizer]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Michaelz:<BR>It seems like this was just a misguided attempt to save the county some money.<BR><BR>Michael </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR>Yeah, good for them, right? Hey, you know what would save even MORE money? Not having these pesky elections at ALL! Hereditary rule is the only fiscally rational choice!<BR><BR><BR>How can you possibly rationalize this as simply being slightly 'misguided'? These people's jobs are to follow and enforce the election laws of their state/county/whatever. Any acts taken to willfully subvert those laws are freaking criminal, end of story. yeesh. <I>misguided</I>

 

[jjankechu]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">It suggests no such thing. A county-wide recount is conducted regardless of how the 3% audit turns out. If you had read the article, you would have seen that what they were trying to do was avoid an extended and laborious hand recount, instead of a machine recount. Now, you argue that those 3% were throwing the election for Bush, but the fact that Bush took Ohio by 118,000 votes, and the fact that the Cuyahoga (a heavily Democratic county) recount only shifted the numbers in Kerry's favor by 26 votes, seems to suggest otherwise. </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>Yup, it's always good to take what you read as gospel and not do any thinking for yourself. But since you like to read, try this on for size (from the link to blackboxvoting.org)<BR><BR><BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">HACK AND STACK <BR><BR>The illegal techniques used in the Cuyahoga County recount do enable jurisdictions to rig elections, through a tactic called "hack and stack." Citizen election watchdogs in Arizona report catching election workers stacking the deck this way. <BR><BR>Hack and stack works like this: Some recounts and audits rely on so-called "random" manual counts of a small percentage of the ballots, which are then compared against the voting computer counts for those precincts. The safeguard can be defeated by manipulating the precinct selection process, or by manipulating the ballots in the selected precincts to make sure they match before counting them. This "stacks" the recount or audit so that only subsets of data that match machine counts are examined. <BR><BR>In Cuyahoga County, citizens noticed that the ballots arrived for the public recount already sorted into sets for Bush and sets for Kerry. Kathleen Wynne videotaped the sorted piles and videotaped as she asked Kathleen Dreamer and Jacqui Maiden to explain the sorting and pre-selected piles. She captured them on videotape admitting that they had not chosen randomly. <BR><BR><B>Stacking the deck by manipulating the selection of so-called "random" recount or audit precincts will allow hacking the election in the other precincts to succeed. </B><BR><BR>When alert citizens in Arizona caught election workers in a similar kind of clandestine "stack" activity in a recent election, the prosecutor did not file charges. One possible reason: Without videotape, it's very difficult to make charges stick. </div></BLOCKQUOTE> <BR><BR>There's no definitive proof either way but how can you be so quick to discount the possibility of further malfeasance? <BR><BR>What really disturbs me is that if the ballots were arriving in presorted stacks, then you might infer that the entirety of the "offical" recount team was aware that the outcome was fixed.

 

[William Munny]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Speaking of Cuyahoga County, home of notorious levels of touchscreen-related trouble in both the primaries and the May 7 general elections last year, two election officials have been convicted of rigging a recount of ballots cast in the <B>May 2004</B> presidential election. Here's a bit of background on the convictions and a short recap of what happened. </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>November 2004, surely?

 

[AndersDK]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by William "Bill" Munny:<BR><BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Speaking of Cuyahoga County, home of notorious levels of touchscreen-related trouble in both the primaries and the May 7 general elections last year, two election officials have been convicted of rigging a recount of ballots cast in the <B>May 2004</B> presidential election. Here's a bit of background on the convictions and a short recap of what happened. </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>November 2004, surely? </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>No. They did them early so they could be sure of the result when the real election came up. Nothing is more stressing than rigging an election on the actual day of the election.

 

[Different Point of View]

After reading the article posted on Ars twice this really seems like much ado about nothing (in other words a wild eyed conspiracy theory). No where is there any indication that the votes were changed, or that the election would have turned out differently, or that the people doing the recount were aligned with one party, or any other indication that there was fraud. Based upon the information in the article I would guess that the thought process went something like this:<BR><BR>Poll worker 1: What! The f*!@ing Green and Libertarian parties are demanding a recount when both the Republicans and Democrats had 1,000's of lawyers monitoring the polling places! This isn't going to change anything it is just two minor parties trying to get news coverage any way they can. Well I didn't sign up to waste the next 3 weeks of my life doing pointless manual recounts of all the ballots just because they want to be on TV.<BR><BR>Poll worker 2: Well, you know, if we handle this right and find precincts that match between a manual hand count and the original machine counts then we can wrap this up in the next day or so.<BR><BR>Poll worker 1: Wow, really! Let's do that then! Anything to not have to work overtime over the next 3 weeks!<BR><BR>At least this seems pretty plausible to me. If there really were issues either the D's or the R's would have been protesting and neither did. I'm not trying to say that what happened was right, just that it seems more like laziness based upon not wanting to work a lot of hours just because two minor political parties want to whine. I don't see any indication of election rigging based upon the information posted on Ars.

 

[Bad Monkey!]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">There's no definitive proof either way but how can you be so quick to discount the possibility of further malfeasance? </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>Sure, it can't be proven either way, and that's why election workers shouldn't do such things. But circumstances very strongly indicate that further malfeasance was neither accomplished or intended.

 

[Stupendous Man]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Different Point of View:<BR>After reading the article posted on Ars twice this really seems like much ado about nothing (in other words a wild eyed conspiracy theory). No where is there any indication that the votes were changed, or that the election would have turned out differently, or that the people doing the recount were aligned with one party, or any other indication that there was fraud. Based upon the information in the article I would guess that the thought process went something like this:<BR><BR>Poll worker 1: What! The f*!@ing Green and Libertarian parties are demanding a recount when both the Republicans and Democrats had 1,000's of lawyers monitoring the polling places! This isn't going to change anything it is just two minor parties trying to get news coverage any way they can. Well I didn't sign up to waste the next 3 weeks of my life doing pointless manual recounts of all the ballots just because they want to be on TV.<BR><BR>Poll worker 2: Well, you know, if we handle this right and find precincts that match between a manual hand count and the original machine counts then we can wrap this up in the next day or so.<BR><BR>Poll worker 1: Wow, really! Let's do that then! Anything to not have to work overtime over the next 3 weeks!<BR><BR>At least this seems pretty plausible to me. If there were really issues either the D's or the R's would have been protesting and neither did. </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>They didn't, presumably (if it is that simple), sign up to break the law either. Sucks for them that they didn't think about that before deciding to be so selfish and rigging the procedure.<BR><BR>If such things aren't a big deal, while we're at it we could save a lot of people's time by removing election oversight altogether.

 

[jjankechu]

I'm not sure which circumstances are being referred to, but what is clear is that the people in charge of the election process are not made of the highest moral fiber. As Hannibal detailed in a previous article, there are a whole mess of people with the means to throw an election. <BR><BR>If the machine votes in selected counties were tampered with, I'd guess that the only way to catch that would be by a manual recount (if an audit trail exists). Intentionally skipping the manual recount raises my suspicious.

 

[bjp2592]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Florida governor Charlie Crist </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>The last time I checked the governor of Florida was Jeb Bush...

 

[rdw]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by bjp2592:<BR><BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Florida governor Charlie Crist </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>The last time I checked the governor of Florida was Jeb Bush... </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR>Then you haven't checked very recently.<BR><BR>Also, welcome to Ars.

 

[werepossum]

I like the optically read paper ballots myself, easy to manually recount and high confidence level. If there's no paper stub you can see when you're voting, that's just asking to have an election stolen without the good ol' American tradition of going through the lists of dead people. <BR><BR>Funny note - here in Chattanooga in 2000 a local news nymph was doing a live spot of some new voting machines in an adjoining county. Explaining how simple the machine was (which produced no paper stub), she voted twice for Gore and twice for Bush. Only when she went to show how easily the votes could be tallied and the man summed the votes, it was three-one for Gore. She became pretty flustered, as the bit was live and somehow screwed up. The studio-bound talking heads thought it was pretty funny though.

 

[zakath]

<blockquote class="ip-ubbcode-quote">
<div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div>
<div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by rdw:<br><blockquote class="ip-ubbcode-quote">
<div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div>
<div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by bjp2592:<br><blockquote class="ip-ubbcode-quote">
<div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div>
<div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Florida governor Charlie Crist </div>
</blockquote>
<br><br>The last time I checked the governor of Florida was Jeb Bush... </div>
</blockquote>
<br>Then you haven't checked very recently.<br><br>Also, welcome to Ars. </div>
</blockquote>
<br><br>-- View image here: https://cdn.arstechnica.net/forum/smilies/gavel.gif --

 

[crosslink]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Besides, we have enough inquiries and so forth going on right now. Fixing the electoral process is important, but it's not the most important thing we can be doing. </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR><BR>Why? Because your candidate won?

 

[Different Point of View]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by sorhed<BR>Now I know this wouldn't have changed the results of the 2004 election but in other Western democracies, such a disregard for due democratic process would provoke a mass public outcry, a national-level inquiry and dramatic reforms in the electoral process.<BR><BR>If the Jan. 2006 elections in Canada were found to be compromised this way, a non-confidence vote in Parliament would almost certainly happen and we'd hold new elections within the month.<BR><BR>In America, it's business as usual. </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>I don't know about Canada, but some of the stuff that goes on in Europe makes the worst things in America look like nothing. Of course the Europeans have had a lot more time to come up with imaginative ways to "rig" the government to their advantage. Look up some of the French and Italian governmental scandals of the last 5 or so years for some good examples.

 

[Tweeker]

Whens the last time the EU got someone to sign off on an audit of their finances? <BR><BR>Trying to get software patents in at the fishery council did says it all.<BR><BR>But at least they didnt try to have their yellow cake and eat it too.

 

[GrumpySmurf]

I'm pretty constantly amazed by the whole perceived complexity of a electronic voting system. I mean, this is straightforward Systems Development 201, to create a distributed transactional process that simply increments numbers. By one. At a time.<BR><BR>The inability to get this right (like the above example of 3-1 vs the actual 2-2 effort) says that they either have some of the most inept programmers on the planet or there is downright corruption.<BR><BR>Wasn't the Australian's open source voting system able to fit on a floppy?

 

[hudson1]

Guys, I live in Ohio and I can tell you that thing has been investigated extensively from every possible angle. Nothing has turned up that suggests that the recount fraud was intended for any purpose other than to avoid the mountain of work involved with doing the recount manually. I don't think anyone responsibly thinks that there was an election rigging that was attempted.

 

[bjp2592]

Dang!! - Just goes to show you that you can't trust the Internet: http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&aq=t&ie...4&q=florida+governor

 

[minnmass]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by GrumpySmurf:<BR>I'm pretty constantly amazed by the whole perceived complexity of a electronic voting system. I mean, this is straightforward Systems Development 201, to create a distributed transactional process that simply increments numbers. By one. At a time.<BR><BR>The inability to get this right (like the above example of 3-1 vs the actual 2-2 effort) says that they either have some of the most inept programmers on the planet or there is downright corruption.<BR><BR>Wasn't the Australian's open source voting system able to fit on a floppy? </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>Given the obvious simplicity of creating an electronic voting system, I think we can safely lean away from "inept programmers". We don't even need a distributed system. Each machine should have a CD-ROM and a dot-matrix printer. Before the election, insert a CD with the names of the candidates, and any other ballot questions. The machine reads the CD, and spits it out. The machine should then enter "election" mode. For each voter, display each question, and track internally the responses. Display a summary at the end, allow the voter to approve the summary or make changes. When the voter has approved everything, print out a human-readable line (or two or 10; whatever's needed) to the dot-matrix printer, which has a continuous feed (yay, perforated pages). Bam! Voter-verified paper trail, no missing ballots (print a "begin" and "end" message with a count for that block of paper), and human recounts are possible. If you want a computer recount, I'm sure OCR could read the computer-generated block letters, too. At the end, spit out a total for the machine, and, possibly, each block of paper it printed onto.<BR><BR>Gah! It's so easy, so obvious.

 

[Enron]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by elvisizer:<BR><BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Michaelz:<BR>It seems like this was just a misguided attempt to save the county some money.<BR><BR>Michael </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR>Yeah, good for them, right? Hey, you know what would save even MORE money? Not having these pesky elections at ALL! Hereditary rule is the only fiscally rational choice!<BR><BR><BR>How can you possibly rationalize this as simply being slightly 'misguided'? These people's jobs are to follow and enforce the election laws of their state/county/whatever. Any acts taken to willfully subvert those laws are freaking criminal, end of story. yeesh. <I>misguided</I> </div></BLOCKQUOTE><BR><BR>Oh please. Shelve the partisanship for 2 minutes and think about this. IF these people WERE IN FACT trying to secretly throw the presidential election, why would they 1. have all the ballots sorted out in clearly marked "BUSH" and "KERRY" boxes for everyone around them to see and 2. Why would they ADMIT to such ON CAMERA!<BR><BR>It's fairly obvious to me that they were cutting corners to do things 1. the quick way and 2. the cheap way<BR><BR>Not some MASTER PLOT to undermine the electoral process.

 

[t_newt]

The two people who admitted it on camera are going to jail.<BR><BR>Those two fools almost blew it for everyone and so will be severely punished! Everyone knows that it is against the law to be honest in Ohio.

 

[Deleted member 1]

You guys saying electronic voting is so easy to implement are missing the point.<BR><BR>Even if you create a paper trail, how is anyone to know that whatever is reflected in the electronic tallies actually reflect the paper trail that the voters are holding? Other than manually comparing the electronic tally to the paper trail, how can anyone verify that the tally is accurate? Because everything is stored electronically, there is always a risk that somebody can break into the system and fiddle with the tally. AND NO ONE WILL EVER FIND OUT!<BR><BR>We need to enshrine the following principle into electoral law:<BR><BR>1. Paper ballots record the individual votes.<BR><BR>2. Machines can be used to count the votes recorded in the paper ballots.<BR><BR>3. Machines should be dumb enough so that it cannot distinguish between the actual ballots, and a stack of pre-counted dummy ballots that are used to test the accuracy of the machines. (This way, at any time, anyone can step up to the machine and count a stack of dummy ballots to check for accuracy.)<BR><BR>The current optical scanners work perfectly fine. Electronic voting is a case where too much technology is actually bad because it reduces transparency and trustworthiness.

 

[t_newt]

To add to your principles:<BR>4. Not just the scanners, but voting machines should also be dumb. All their code can be in ROM. The only thing entered is a list of the candidates and voting initiatives. The dumb machine reads the list, puts it into its menu, then takes the voting results and prints the ballots.<BR><BR>This way there is <B>no</B> way to rig the voting machine. <BR><BR>Any machine that can execute externally entered code can be rigged. <BR><BR>Another advantage to this is that the machine would be much cheaper to build.