I know that this will remain at the bottom of this thread, because it doesn't have enough conspiracy theory in it, but does anyone really think that this is actual vote tampering?
I mean, why on earth would you tamper with a voting machine so that it stuffs the ballot, but have it update the UI so that the user can see and report the error? This should fall to the way side of failing basic logic, but it doesn't because people want a sensationalist article to argue over. Changing votes would be much easier to do on the back end, and would have the additional benefit of never being detected by the user
This is just the tip of the iceberg, folks. If you're in the U.S. I highly reccomend being a poll worker in a contentious district in a swing state if you ever get the chance. I was in a suburb of Denver last election and saw all kinds of shenanigans, from people pulling fire alarms to clear out the polling places to people walking aaround with laptops "checking voter registration" (actually just lying to people to get them to go home).
The fact is that there is a concerted, coordinated effort to tamper with the vote every single election. I have no way of knowing whether this specific incident was malicious, but I sure wouldn't be surprised if it was.
If there were one aspect of electronic voting I could change it would be the following: allow electronic votes to be reviewed by each individual at a later date, from two independent organizations. Each vote gets sent to two independent electronic counting organizations, and each let you verify your vote after the election, with an (anonymous) confirmation number issued at voting time.
If enough people cry foul to rule out a large group collectively lying or forgetting their confirmation numbers, fraud would be much easier to establish and localize. Moreover, requiring each independent database of votes to match to within some margin would also decrease the likelihood of fraud by requiring collusion between both organizations.
EDIT: Note that the confirmation number would be issued to you anonymously and sans receipt - there would be no way to prove your vote - you could have found some random confirmation number, and no recourse for a single citizen crying foul. The point, rather, is that if several hundred or thousand individuals noticed that their vote seemed to have changed, the likelihood that they were all making it up or forgetting their confirmation numbers would decrease substantially.
I think all the electronic machines should print a recepit, deposit the receipt on a box, and at the end of the day, count all physical votes. If they don't match the electronic machine, then audit them.
You could give voters a receipt with the time, machine, and candidate they voted for. Checking for voter fraud would be as simple as comparing some receipts against the voter logs.
Or just let anyone grab a copy of the database so that any independent organization can host a lookup service so you can verify that your vote went through correctly.
The shenanigans you seem to tolerate during elections are just incomprehensible to us foreigners. The number of horror stories I've heard in the last couple of weeks regarding everything from just weirdness of the system to blatant manipulation is farcical.
It's possible that I'm getting a bleaker picture than reality, I suppose, since I only read about the broken stuff and not the instances where everything just works.
Well to inject a bit of optimism here let me tell how of how it "just works" in the second largest city in New Hampshire.
There are several "wards" in the city, and each contains a school that is the voting location. Outside of each location will be people holding signs of all candidates, but all they said this morning are things like "Happy voting" and "Thank you for voting."
Inside the location there will be about 8 lines with last name letters. A-D and E-H, I-M, etc. If your last name was Dorette you would get into the A-D line. This is one bottleneck, but it resolves very quickly. You say your name, they find your name and cross it off, and you are handed a paper ballot.
With the paper ballot you then wait in a second line until a booth (containing nothing but a marker pen and writing surface) is free. There are about 16 of these booths, with privacy screens behind them.
If all the booths are filled you will have to wait, BUT if you do not mind people being able to possibly see your vote you are welcome to go to a temporary booth, that is just a series of lunch tables with cardboard dividers. Less privacy, far more seats. Maybe 30-40 people can fill out ballots at once at the ward I was in.
You fill out your ballot with a black marker and bring it to the end of the room where there is a single machine. This machine does nothing but take your ballot and scan it, so the line here processes near instantly. The ballots are kept to be recounted by hand if need be, and most importantly, the machine portion of voting is not a bottleneck.
It's possible that I'm getting a bleaker picture than reality, I suppose, since I only read about the broken stuff and not the instances where everything just works.
You only hear about the ballots that crash, not the millions that land safely every election.
In the state of Washington (not to be confused with the city of Washington; our largest city is Seattle), everyone gets the chance to vote in the privacy of their own home even weeks before the election and mail in their ballot, or drop it in a drop box. There is an outer envelope one signs and an inner privacy envelope which is left unopened until the count starts. It's possible that there are hidden shenanigans, but if there are observers for the vote-counting process I can't imagine any problems.
It's incomprehensible to me as an American how so many citizens of the country I live in are so fundamentally ignorant, but that doesn't change anything. I voted, but I honestly doubt my vote even gets counted. I wouldn't even be surprised if eventually it becomes public knowledge that the entire election process has been a complete sham and the totals mostly made up for the past few decades at least.
In any case, what am I supposed to do besides vote (at the polls - I'm all but convinced this is pointless), spend my money wisely (this is the best method I've come up with to enact some kind of change, but it's hardly effective since I'm not a billionaire), and write my "representatives" (who invariably respond with some boilerplate bullshit and go on doing whatever the folks paying for them (global business) want)?
For the most part, things aren't as bad as they seem. It's a huge country and any oddities gain a great deal of traction. Most votes go simply and smoothly.
That being said, I'm taking a two hour drive later today to vote because my vote-by-mail ballot never arrived, so...
I don't understand why isn't there a national council responsible for maintaining consistent and well run elections.
To me it would seem like an easy win to push for it and push it through. "We need to preserve our democracy!" "Any one who doesn't vote for this bill, is unamerican!" "We cannot let our ability to vote be assaulted!" etc.
Voting machines need to be a lot better than this or not exist at all, but does anyone actually think that IF this machine was altering votes, it would alter it in this fashion with a UI element tied to the alteration? Seems more like a crappy touch screen.
This was my thought exactly. If someone was going through the trouble of altering votes, it would make no sense to make note of this within UI elements, it could just as easily "secretly" change the votes for 1/8 (just my theoretical magical number) voters and alter the results just enough without being noticeable.
I've used that exact type of machine to vote in North Carolina (but this ballot is not from North Carolina). You have all sorts of people pounding on the screen all day.
Remember the reason we all wanted electronic voting after the year 2000: because it gives absolutely clear answers, not necessarily better answers. (Even the best systems have errors because there are humans involved.) You don't have to debate whether that smudge counts or does not count as a vote.
Yep. That's clearly what's happening, and given that there's instant feedback, the user would know there's a problem, and either ask for a different machine or adjust until the system represents their actual intent.
> does anyone actually think that IF this machine was altering votes, it would alter it in this fashion with a UI element tied to the alteration
I think you mean if the machine was intentionally designed to alter votes, it wouldn't do it in this fashion. The article doesn't even hint that this might be done on purpose.
But maybe the programmer didn't do this. Maybe it's something under the election worker's control like calibration settings on only part of the screen, or the spacing of the ballot, or something else user-configurable. Just a thought?
What I've read[1][2] in regard to this incident is that it is most likely a calibration issue: i.e. the touch screen is improperly calibrated and as a result is not selecting the proper region of the screen. Now this is concerning because it likely means other machines could be or are miscalibrated. However the important takeaway here is that this is not some malicious attempt to rig the vote. If that were the case the likely method would be completely invisible from the UI; why would an attacker bother to actually show a user they were being manipulated? Of course, they wouldn't.
Unfortunately no, if you read what he wrote in the comments of that submission:
Being a software developer, I immediately went into troubleshoot mode. I first thought the calibration was off and tried selecting Jill Stein to actually highlight Obama. Nope. Jill Stein was selected just fine. Next I deselected her and started at the top of Romney's name and started tapping very closely together to find the 'active areas'. From the top of Romney's button down to the bottom of the black checkbox beside Obama's name was all active for Romney. From the bottom of that same checkbox to the bottom of the Obama button (basically a small white sliver) is what let me choose Obama. Stein's button was fine. All other buttons worked fine.
The consumer electronics industry has shipped hundreds of millions of touch screens in the last few years and i've not seen a single article complaining that they opened up their new tablet/phone to find it mis-calibrated and that their touches were off my such a huge margin. Why are voting machines apparently subject to calibration problems that other touch screen devices are not?
Yes, very likely a calibration issue. There was a similar instance occurring here in Colorado [1], but in the opposite direction (a vote for Romney went in as Obama). The machines definitely need to get better, but it is probably not fraud or a hack of any sort.
> why would an attacker bother to actually show a user they were being manipulated?
Because the person who wishes to tamper with the outcome of the election only has access to (or, very likely, skillz to modify) the calibration template (which has to be reconfigured each election, hence is modified by more people), not to the entire source code and tool chain of the voting machine. Most attacks are not gigantic conspiracies with unlimited resources.
I am a red-blooded technologist, but I think voting should be done on paper ballots. Call me a luddite, but it's just too easy to manipulate votes--either at the time of voting or in post-processing--with an electronic voting machine.
That being said, the only conceivable way to have a secure electronic voting process is to use a completely open source system. Open source hardware and software, with publicly viewable results.
If your plan to secure the machines is to have the source be open, you have already failed. You need a system that works well even if the source has been altered.
Paper ballots have issues, too. They are different issues, and largely unseen by the general public until you have a really close election and have to use human judgment to decide whether that mark counts as a vote or not.
What problem do electronic voting machines actually solve? The US didn't seem to have problems counting millions of paper ballots (save for some hanging chads) until the "solution" of electronic voting machines appeared.
I wouldn't attribute to malice what can be explained by a faulty touch screen. These incidents hurt the trust on the election process, though.
The machines used on Brazillian elections are simpler but much better thought out, since it's impossible to input the wrong candidate. You have to input the number of the candidate, review his information and photo, then press "confirm" button. It doesn't present a list of candidates to choose from, so there are no biases. The US should adopt a similar machine. [1]
I can't fathom why would you even choose touchscreens for voting machines. It's a simple interface, mechanical buttons are much better. They are more durable, offer tactile feedback and can be used by people with visual impairment.
Looks like a calibration issue. They should have included selecting other candidates in the list. While not good enough (voting machines should be "perfect") calling it "altering votes" is a little much. It shows you that it has registered the wrong candidate, I would call this incorrectly registering input.
The system here in Minnesota works much better. All ballots are paper ballots that are indelibly marked by voters. My wife and I voted this morning in our busy precinct in Minnesota, where there are some tight statewide contests about constitutional amendments and perhaps the most contested race for our state's House of Representatives of any electoral district in our state. As usual, we voted by marking bubble-shaped spaces on a paper ballot with a black pen. That provides an excellent audit trail for the voting. Machines can count such paper ballots very rapidly, and they are user-friendly for voters, and there is little ambiguity about how to vote. Minnesota has had ballots like this for at least a decade.
But even at that, when a state has a razor-thin margin in an election, it can be maddening to figure out what happened.
The election to the United States Senate from Minnesota in 2008 was too close to call before the election, and even after millions of Minnesotans voted for one of three major party candidates, the margin between the top two candidates, Democrat Al Franken and Republican Norm Coleman, was so close that the margin was only one-hundredth of 1 percent of the votes cast in the election. That election really underscored the slogan "every vote counts."
It's quite indefensible to use a voting system that doesn't leave a literal paper trail. The technology is well proven. But what really gives most election results legitimacy and staying power is a wide enough margin among votes cast by people who show up to vote that the old saying "Vox populi, vox Dei" can apply to the result. The people speak, and even the voters who didn't agree with the plurality have to listen. It's appalling that any state would have a voting system that could obscure what the consensus of the voters is.
AFTER EDIT: Thanks for the several replies to this comment. Reading other replies posted to this thread since I first wrote this comment, I see several mentions of the systems in the Pacific Northwest states of having mail ballots mailed to voters. When I lived in Taiwan, more than a decade ago, I had a post office box there. Sometimes I would receive postal mail from the United States for the previous holders of that post office box, including State of Oregon ballots for two different Oregon voters (who were presumably each other's roommates while living in Taiwan). I always wondered, without giving into the temptation, whether I could have successfully filled out one (or both?) of those ballots and mailed them back from Taiwan to cast votes in an Oregon election. By contrast, I was never able to cast a Minnesota absentee ballot from Taiwan, even the time when I should have been regarded as having a stable permanent residence address here in the United States. So I missed out on voting in both the 1984 election and the ever-so-controversial election of 2000. I have no clear awareness of how mail ballots are authenticated as having been mailed by the voter to whom they belong (a signature on the envelope?) and hope that someone is checking to prevent those ballots from being misused.
What's wrong with paper ballots again? Serious question.
In my area (northern MA), voters are given a ballot with a bubble next to each of the candidates' names. You use a marker to fill in the bubble next to the candidate you want to vote for, like 6-year-olds manage to do all the time on multiple choice tests in school. Then it gets read in by a machine, leaving a paper trail just in case.
How are these electronic voting machines any better than that? With all the technical/fraud issues surrounding them, wouldn't it make sense to just use paper?
I wish they had also taken video of them selecting Jill Stein to see if the entire machine was calibrated incorrectly or just the Romney/Obama section.
I saw this earlier and I noted that news agencies seemed to be reluctant to post it. CNN has been on this from the jump. I think people are afraid of it being revealed as a fake. There is some serious validation that needs to occur if this is the case.
Citing felipeko:
Brazil actually has a very organized election. Aside from bad politicians we have to chose from, the election does not have many problems. We have a judicial system just for election (with judges and clear laws) ready to take actions (and they do take) when something goes wrong. All election occurs in one day, a sunday so everyone can vote, and the results usually come in less than 4 hours, because all vote is electronic.
I think a system of repeatability for voting is important. Once a voter has casted a vote, his vote should be able to be repeated without change in different systems at will to verify that his vote has not been tampered.
The system can work like this:
- Voter is assigned a unique ID, on his voting card issued upon verifying his identity. He can pick a security pin for added security.
- Voter is given a device thumb drive, RFID with some RAM, whatever storage device.
- Voter goes to a machine to vote. The machine cryptographically signs the voting result with his id. The machine writes the result to his storage device, emails him a copy, and/or puts the result on a public website. The machine also sends the result to a central server for compilation.
- Voter can go to any other machine on any other sites, plug in his result, his id, and his pin to see the voting result for verification. Voter can confirm by sending the result to central server. Or submit the signed result to third party website to display it for verification.
- If there's any mismatch, voter raises hell and demands to invalidate old vote (after verifying his identity, id, and pin), revote, and burn the tampering machine.
Edit: Id obviously means a public/private key pair.
This happened earlier as well during the early voting period (though Romney votes were being switched for Obama -- funny how one got coverage whilst the other didn't).
It's not some conspiracy, just a calibration error.
There have been problems like this in every election with these machines.
More troubling, exit polls and voting results have routinely disagreed with each other since 2000. In most countries that would be taken as proof that the election was not fair. But not in the USA!
Anyone who has been paying attention this election cycle knows about the attempts by both sides to manipulate rules about who can vote, when, in ways that advantage themselves and disadvantage each other. That happens in a lot of elections but not to the extent of this one. With weird results such as, because of a recent law in Ohio, polling workers have to ASK for ID, but due to a court decision, they can't stop you from voting if you DON'T have that ID. (Confused polling workers are sure to get this wrong.)
The general trend is that Republicans want as many barriers to voting in person as possible, while Democrats want as many to be able to vote as possible. That is because more marginal voters are much more likely to be Democrat than the general population. The stated reason is "to prevent fraud" even though there is very little evidence of such fraud in practice. On mail-in ballots this reverses, since the GOP expects a large portion of mail-in ballots to be from military people who are likely to vote Republican. Fraud has been more of an issue with mail-in ballots, but obviously people are not as worried about that.
Laws get broken as well. For instance the 2000 election was decided in Florida, in part due to a voter purge that the courts decided was illegal. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_Central_Voter_File for verification of that. The lesson learned is that voter purges work, which is why Florida was trying to do a purge this year at the last minute despite being warned that it was illegal. Because flipping the choice for President was easily worth the slap on the wrist they got afterwards.
In short, get out your popcorn. When we exercise our right to vote, the vested interests exercise what they see as their right to manipulate the vote, and this time there is a decent chance of fireworks.
Even if this is just accidental or some weird calibration issue (weird, because it only seems to affect one button according to the report), it just goes to show how little confidence one can have in these machines. Does anyone think if they can't get the touchscreen right, the remaining parts of the system can be expected to work correctly?
The only positive thing is that such an easy to demonstrate failure might open the eyes of the less technically educated parts of the public to how bad an idea it is to use electronic voting machines.
Any suggested replacement of paper ballots comes with such a huge bag of problems (sometimes inherent in the method, and not merely problems of the implementation), and so few advantages that it puzzles me why anyone would want to introduce them.
[+] [-] JoeCortopassi|13 years ago|reply
I mean, why on earth would you tamper with a voting machine so that it stuffs the ballot, but have it update the UI so that the user can see and report the error? This should fall to the way side of failing basic logic, but it doesn't because people want a sensationalist article to argue over. Changing votes would be much easier to do on the back end, and would have the additional benefit of never being detected by the user
[+] [-] beatpanda|13 years ago|reply
There was also this, a few weeks ago: http://www.nationalmemo.com/man-connected-to-virginia-gop-ar...
The fact is that there is a concerted, coordinated effort to tamper with the vote every single election. I have no way of knowing whether this specific incident was malicious, but I sure wouldn't be surprised if it was.
[+] [-] kevinalexbrown|13 years ago|reply
If enough people cry foul to rule out a large group collectively lying or forgetting their confirmation numbers, fraud would be much easier to establish and localize. Moreover, requiring each independent database of votes to match to within some margin would also decrease the likelihood of fraud by requiring collusion between both organizations.
EDIT: Note that the confirmation number would be issued to you anonymously and sans receipt - there would be no way to prove your vote - you could have found some random confirmation number, and no recourse for a single citizen crying foul. The point, rather, is that if several hundred or thousand individuals noticed that their vote seemed to have changed, the likelihood that they were all making it up or forgetting their confirmation numbers would decrease substantially.
[+] [-] eli|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] njs12345|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mtgx|13 years ago|reply
http://www.wombat-voting.com
[+] [-] sebastianavina|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pippy|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seanalltogether|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] righteous|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] morsch|13 years ago|reply
It's possible that I'm getting a bleaker picture than reality, I suppose, since I only read about the broken stuff and not the instances where everything just works.
[+] [-] simonsarris|13 years ago|reply
There are several "wards" in the city, and each contains a school that is the voting location. Outside of each location will be people holding signs of all candidates, but all they said this morning are things like "Happy voting" and "Thank you for voting."
Inside the location there will be about 8 lines with last name letters. A-D and E-H, I-M, etc. If your last name was Dorette you would get into the A-D line. This is one bottleneck, but it resolves very quickly. You say your name, they find your name and cross it off, and you are handed a paper ballot.
With the paper ballot you then wait in a second line until a booth (containing nothing but a marker pen and writing surface) is free. There are about 16 of these booths, with privacy screens behind them.
If all the booths are filled you will have to wait, BUT if you do not mind people being able to possibly see your vote you are welcome to go to a temporary booth, that is just a series of lunch tables with cardboard dividers. Less privacy, far more seats. Maybe 30-40 people can fill out ballots at once at the ward I was in.
You fill out your ballot with a black marker and bring it to the end of the room where there is a single machine. This machine does nothing but take your ballot and scan it, so the line here processes near instantly. The ballots are kept to be recounted by hand if need be, and most importantly, the machine portion of voting is not a bottleneck.
It went very smoothly today.
[+] [-] ars|13 years ago|reply
If you never hear about these things in your own country that means that apparently no one there cares.
[+] [-] pnathan|13 years ago|reply
(2) We are OK publicizing it.
(3) Probability would indicate that we'll have a certain error, and it'll be shouted about.
---
But it's very strange that it was "miscalibrated" to not select one particular candidate, no? :)
[+] [-] MartinCron|13 years ago|reply
You only hear about the ballots that crash, not the millions that land safely every election.
[+] [-] philwelch|13 years ago|reply
I have no idea why other states don't do this.
[+] [-] animal|13 years ago|reply
In any case, what am I supposed to do besides vote (at the polls - I'm all but convinced this is pointless), spend my money wisely (this is the best method I've come up with to enact some kind of change, but it's hardly effective since I'm not a billionaire), and write my "representatives" (who invariably respond with some boilerplate bullshit and go on doing whatever the folks paying for them (global business) want)?
[+] [-] jarek|13 years ago|reply
David Frum weighing in: http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/05/opinion/frum-election-chaos/in...
[+] [-] veridies|13 years ago|reply
That being said, I'm taking a two hour drive later today to vote because my vote-by-mail ballot never arrived, so...
[+] [-] api|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eumenides1|13 years ago|reply
To me it would seem like an easy win to push for it and push it through. "We need to preserve our democracy!" "Any one who doesn't vote for this bill, is unamerican!" "We cannot let our ability to vote be assaulted!" etc.
[+] [-] iterationx|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] salman89|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jneal|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danielweber|13 years ago|reply
I've used that exact type of machine to vote in North Carolina (but this ballot is not from North Carolina). You have all sorts of people pounding on the screen all day.
Remember the reason we all wanted electronic voting after the year 2000: because it gives absolutely clear answers, not necessarily better answers. (Even the best systems have errors because there are humans involved.) You don't have to debate whether that smudge counts or does not count as a vote.
[+] [-] polarix|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baddox|13 years ago|reply
I think you mean if the machine was intentionally designed to alter votes, it wouldn't do it in this fashion. The article doesn't even hint that this might be done on purpose.
[+] [-] tocomment|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] llambda|13 years ago|reply
[1] Joseph Hall comments here, also provides a link to further commentary by him: http://gawker.com/5958114/an-expert-weighs-in-on-that-viral-...
[2] http://www.theawl.com/2012/11/the-truth-about-voting-machine...
[+] [-] Anjin|13 years ago|reply
Being a software developer, I immediately went into troubleshoot mode. I first thought the calibration was off and tried selecting Jill Stein to actually highlight Obama. Nope. Jill Stein was selected just fine. Next I deselected her and started at the top of Romney's name and started tapping very closely together to find the 'active areas'. From the top of Romney's button down to the bottom of the black checkbox beside Obama's name was all active for Romney. From the bottom of that same checkbox to the bottom of the Obama button (basically a small white sliver) is what let me choose Obama. Stein's button was fine. All other buttons worked fine.
[+] [-] TwistedWeasel|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ljoshua|13 years ago|reply
[1] http://www.chieftain.com/politics/pueblo-county-voting-machi...
[+] [-] waqf|13 years ago|reply
Because the person who wishes to tamper with the outcome of the election only has access to (or, very likely, skillz to modify) the calibration template (which has to be reconfigured each election, hence is modified by more people), not to the entire source code and tool chain of the voting machine. Most attacks are not gigantic conspiracies with unlimited resources.
[+] [-] cloudwalking|13 years ago|reply
That being said, the only conceivable way to have a secure electronic voting process is to use a completely open source system. Open source hardware and software, with publicly viewable results.
[+] [-] danielweber|13 years ago|reply
Paper ballots have issues, too. They are different issues, and largely unseen by the general public until you have a really close election and have to use human judgment to decide whether that mark counts as a vote or not.
[+] [-] cpeterso|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hcarvalhoalves|13 years ago|reply
The machines used on Brazillian elections are simpler but much better thought out, since it's impossible to input the wrong candidate. You have to input the number of the candidate, review his information and photo, then press "confirm" button. It doesn't present a list of candidates to choose from, so there are no biases. The US should adopt a similar machine. [1]
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Brazil#The_Brazili...
[+] [-] ricardobeat|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ditoa|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cwe|13 years ago|reply
http://tv.msnbc.com/2012/11/06/machine-turns-vote-for-obama-...
[+] [-] tokenadult|13 years ago|reply
But even at that, when a state has a razor-thin margin in an election, it can be maddening to figure out what happened.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/11/franken-c...
http://www.factcheck.org/elections/mining_the_minnesota_reco...
The election to the United States Senate from Minnesota in 2008 was too close to call before the election, and even after millions of Minnesotans voted for one of three major party candidates, the margin between the top two candidates, Democrat Al Franken and Republican Norm Coleman, was so close that the margin was only one-hundredth of 1 percent of the votes cast in the election. That election really underscored the slogan "every vote counts."
It's quite indefensible to use a voting system that doesn't leave a literal paper trail. The technology is well proven. But what really gives most election results legitimacy and staying power is a wide enough margin among votes cast by people who show up to vote that the old saying "Vox populi, vox Dei" can apply to the result. The people speak, and even the voters who didn't agree with the plurality have to listen. It's appalling that any state would have a voting system that could obscure what the consensus of the voters is.
AFTER EDIT: Thanks for the several replies to this comment. Reading other replies posted to this thread since I first wrote this comment, I see several mentions of the systems in the Pacific Northwest states of having mail ballots mailed to voters. When I lived in Taiwan, more than a decade ago, I had a post office box there. Sometimes I would receive postal mail from the United States for the previous holders of that post office box, including State of Oregon ballots for two different Oregon voters (who were presumably each other's roommates while living in Taiwan). I always wondered, without giving into the temptation, whether I could have successfully filled out one (or both?) of those ballots and mailed them back from Taiwan to cast votes in an Oregon election. By contrast, I was never able to cast a Minnesota absentee ballot from Taiwan, even the time when I should have been regarded as having a stable permanent residence address here in the United States. So I missed out on voting in both the 1984 election and the ever-so-controversial election of 2000. I have no clear awareness of how mail ballots are authenticated as having been mailed by the voter to whom they belong (a signature on the envelope?) and hope that someone is checking to prevent those ballots from being misused.
[+] [-] wbrendel|13 years ago|reply
In my area (northern MA), voters are given a ballot with a bubble next to each of the candidates' names. You use a marker to fill in the bubble next to the candidate you want to vote for, like 6-year-olds manage to do all the time on multiple choice tests in school. Then it gets read in by a machine, leaving a paper trail just in case.
How are these electronic voting machines any better than that? With all the technical/fraud issues surrounding them, wouldn't it make sense to just use paper?
[+] [-] WrkInProgress|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BlackNapoleon|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bratao|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ww520|13 years ago|reply
The system can work like this:
- Voter is assigned a unique ID, on his voting card issued upon verifying his identity. He can pick a security pin for added security.
- Voter is given a device thumb drive, RFID with some RAM, whatever storage device.
- Voter goes to a machine to vote. The machine cryptographically signs the voting result with his id. The machine writes the result to his storage device, emails him a copy, and/or puts the result on a public website. The machine also sends the result to a central server for compilation.
- Voter can go to any other machine on any other sites, plug in his result, his id, and his pin to see the voting result for verification. Voter can confirm by sending the result to central server. Or submit the signed result to third party website to display it for verification.
- If there's any mismatch, voter raises hell and demands to invalidate old vote (after verifying his identity, id, and pin), revote, and burn the tampering machine.
Edit: Id obviously means a public/private key pair.
[+] [-] forgingahead|13 years ago|reply
It's not some conspiracy, just a calibration error.
Source: http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/11/03/Electroni...
[+] [-] btilly|13 years ago|reply
More troubling, exit polls and voting results have routinely disagreed with each other since 2000. In most countries that would be taken as proof that the election was not fair. But not in the USA!
http://www.ukprogressive.co.uk/breaking-retired-nsa-analyst-... claims evidence of systemic manipulation of the vote, with the trend strongly being in the GOP's favor. I have not personally verified, but it would not surprise me.
Anyone who has been paying attention this election cycle knows about the attempts by both sides to manipulate rules about who can vote, when, in ways that advantage themselves and disadvantage each other. That happens in a lot of elections but not to the extent of this one. With weird results such as, because of a recent law in Ohio, polling workers have to ASK for ID, but due to a court decision, they can't stop you from voting if you DON'T have that ID. (Confused polling workers are sure to get this wrong.)
The general trend is that Republicans want as many barriers to voting in person as possible, while Democrats want as many to be able to vote as possible. That is because more marginal voters are much more likely to be Democrat than the general population. The stated reason is "to prevent fraud" even though there is very little evidence of such fraud in practice. On mail-in ballots this reverses, since the GOP expects a large portion of mail-in ballots to be from military people who are likely to vote Republican. Fraud has been more of an issue with mail-in ballots, but obviously people are not as worried about that.
Laws get broken as well. For instance the 2000 election was decided in Florida, in part due to a voter purge that the courts decided was illegal. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_Central_Voter_File for verification of that. The lesson learned is that voter purges work, which is why Florida was trying to do a purge this year at the last minute despite being warned that it was illegal. Because flipping the choice for President was easily worth the slap on the wrist they got afterwards.
There already have been laws broken this year (see http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57535950/man-charged-aft... and http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/national/fbi-launches-... for example), and everyone expects the lawyers to be gainfully employed as a result.
In short, get out your popcorn. When we exercise our right to vote, the vested interests exercise what they see as their right to manipulate the vote, and this time there is a decent chance of fireworks.
[+] [-] anonymouz|13 years ago|reply
The only positive thing is that such an easy to demonstrate failure might open the eyes of the less technically educated parts of the public to how bad an idea it is to use electronic voting machines.
Any suggested replacement of paper ballots comes with such a huge bag of problems (sometimes inherent in the method, and not merely problems of the implementation), and so few advantages that it puzzles me why anyone would want to introduce them.