Witness to Diebold's Disgrace

Brian Doherty | January 24, 2006

From Counterpunch, an eyewitness account, not too tech-heavy (good for readability, not so great for thoroughness) from Susan Pynchon of what has come to be known as the "Harri Hursti Hack" after the Finnish programmer who pulled it off--showing, in Leon County, Florida, on Dec. 13, 2005, that you can completely alter the election results on a paperless Diebold machine merely by screwing with its memory card--something Diebold used to deny.

Just the day before, Diebold CEO and chairman Walden O'Dell got out while the gettin' might still be good.

Comments

|1.24.06 @ 8:07PM|#

Well then. I wondered how Kerry pulled off California and now I know.

|1.24.06 @ 8:20PM|#

I suspect the real reason these machines are getting pushed on us is financial. With scanners, there is one machine at every polling station. With touch-screen voting, there is one machine for every voting booth. That's pretty good deal for the vendor, and a pretty bad deal for taxpayers.

|1.24.06 @ 9:00PM|#

Bush is Evil. Bush is Dumb. Cheney, Diebold, Halli-bur-ton!!

Before Diebold, there was never any such thing as cheating in elections. Nope. All that good old-fashioned ward politics was as Americana as Mom and Apple Pie. What ever did happen to it?

|1.24.06 @ 9:28PM|#

liberaltarian-

Nobody is claiming that the security flaws in Diebold's machines are part of some brand new problem. Precisely the opposite, an awareness of the long history of election fraud motivates vigilance against machines with obvious security defects.

DaveInBigD|1.24.06 @ 9:29PM|#

Wait, can we 'taint' elections? Don't tell Julian, I'd hate to give him hilarity-cramps.

So, ah, anybody else thinking OSS? Great for transparency in government.

|1.24.06 @ 10:07PM|#

Thoreau,

There are plenty of people around these days who extend the whole "worst administration in human history" line to something approaching "first evil president to steal an election" - you watch - Joe will be here in 5 minutes to tell us that either the Democrats never cheated or that it was somehow much better when they did.

In any case, there cannot exist an election machine without "obvious security flaws" - certainly not one based on a computer (will someone please tell Microsoft?)

Jesse Walker|1.24.06 @ 10:21PM|#

There are plenty of people around these days who extend the whole "worst administration in human history" line to something approaching "first evil president to steal an election"

Just not the person who wrote the blog post, the person who wrote the article he linked to, or any of the people commenting in this thread. Or, possibly, anyone else at all.

|1.24.06 @ 10:21PM|#

liberaltarian-

There is certainly no such thing as a fraud-proof voting machine, but some machines are more vulnerable than others. I've worked as a precinct officer, and I can tell you that my trust in a procedure, while never 100%, is proportional to the degree of transparency and redundancy. Any all-electronic device with no paper backup is lacking in both transparency and redundancy. Toss in the large documented holes in Diebold machines, and I think they are very deserving target for scorn.

Yes, some of those criticisms would apply to any company that makes paperless machines. Show me another company that's pushing some bad voting machines and I'll gladly criticize their machines as well.

|1.24.06 @ 10:38PM|#

How about just having people fill out punchcards or mark checks on a written ballot? Oh, I forgot Democratic voters and only Democratic voters are too stupid for those methods and will be disinfranchised without computer assisted voting. I suspect that these machines probably do make vote fraud easier, which is of course exactly what the Democratic Party wants.

|1.24.06 @ 10:45PM|#

My preferences in voting machines:

If you want to go for the Rolls Royce of voting machines, go for the Nevada system: Touch screen machine with printer attached. The touch screen makes it easy to correct errors before printing out the ballot. The voter then prints out a ballot, verifies that the printed ballot is correct, and deposits it in a ballot box. You have a count kept by the touchscreen machine, a count kept by the scantron device that receives the printed ballot, and the ballots themselves as backups.

If you absolutely insist on touchscreens and no paper, then the machine should not have any sort of internal calendar. You can test the machine a million times in the elections office before deploying it on election day, but if there's a calendar there's always the possibility that the machine will execute a different code on election day. The internal clock should only be used to time stamp records of operation on election day, but should not be date sensitive. Or, if it keeps track of a date, the people who test it at the elections office should be able to reset the date so that they can test it when the machine thinks it's election day.

Finally, if you want relative simplicity, it's hard to beat paper ballots with an electronic reader. The ballots are collected and retained, and always kept under the supervision of multiple independent watchers. The machine at the polling place reads them as they're deposited and keeps a count. That count is printed out at the end of the day, and also transmitted to the downtown office over a phone line (the modem jack can be put in a location that can't be physically accessed while the machine is configured to accept ballots). You have 4 separate records: The hard drive of the machine, the data transmitted immediately after the polls close, the printout generated by the machine as soon as the polls close, and the paper ballots. Sure, any of those things can be compromised by a schemer, so the key is to separate those 4 records and store them in 4 separate, secure locations as soon as possible after the polls close. That means a conspiracy will face 4x as much work to avoid anybody noticing a discrepancy. And until the items are separated, keep them under the supervision of multiple poll workers, preferably people who are randomly assigned.

That's the system I used as a precinct supervisor.


And it should go without saying that any sort of electronic voting machine, be it a touch screen or a ballot reader, should not be accessible by any sort of wireless network, and while it's in use it should be under the constant scrutiny of multiple precinct workers and any interested citizen who wants to observe the polling place without disrupting the voters. And the software source code should be posted on the web for public scrutiny. Of course, web posting carries the danger that somebody might figure out how to tamper, but you can only tamper if you have access to the machine. No wireless access, and no physical access without witnesses, and you substantially reduce dangers while retaining the advantages of transparency.

|1.24.06 @ 10:51PM|#

Reminder: Do not feed the troll!

|1.24.06 @ 11:09PM|#

Captain Renault: I'm shocked, shocked to find that Deibold's system is hackable!

[a croupier hands Renault election returns and a hackable key card]
Croupier: Your winnings, sir.

Captain Renault: Oh, thank you very much.
[aloud]Everybody out at once!

Bush is Evil. Bush is Dumb. Cheney, Diebold, Halli-bur-ton!! Before Diebold, there was never any such thing as cheating in elections. Nope. All that good old-fashioned ward politics was as Americana as Mom and Apple Pie. What ever did happen to it?

liberaltarian,

People like you really don't get it, do you?

It's one thing to ballot stuff, extort, sign up dead people and maybe tilt an election in your favor...the whole while leaving a trail of evidence that can convict you.

It's another thing entirely to make our election system dependent on a system that numerous experts on hacking, systems and computer security have deemed hopelessly flawed to the extreme where by 1 guy with a hacked card can change not only the output, but the whole record of the election.

|1.24.06 @ 11:14PM|#

thoreau -- you want a pipe dream. Your ideal system has so much complexity and so many security requirements that they would never be satisfied. Not even close.

Election officials, from the highest levels on down to the lowly poll worker, are technically incompetent. I don't mean this pejoratively -- but it's a fact that they just don't have the training to handle complex systems and procedures, and never will. Hell, lots of precincts send the voting machines home with their poll workers the day before the election! Precincts are administered locally with whatever civic-minded, (hopefully) well-intentioned, but still untrained and technically unsophisticated workers they can scrap together.

When you think of a workable election system, you have to think of something your grandma could oversee and administer. Anything more complex just won't do.

|1.24.06 @ 11:17PM|#

You make a great point madpad, which is why they should have stayed with manuel technology like punchcards. Let's see who threw a fit about punchcards? Would that be the Democrats? See my comment above. It wasn't a perfect system but no system was. We are going to be paying a long time for the disgraceful things the Dems did in 2000.

|1.24.06 @ 11:19PM|#

To put it another way, liberaltarian, I supose what you're saying is that since some people have committed election fraud in the past, we should just accept that the system is corrupt and lie down and take it?

WhileI obviously think your soft pedalling this in a most disengenuous fashion, you do make some good points on your second post. To all those folk (on BOTH sides) who proclaim the 2000 and 2004 elections as "the most venomous" or the "most (pick and adjective" should go back and read about the Madison/Jefferson square off some 200 years ago.

Makes Bush/Kerry look like a square dance.

|1.24.06 @ 11:22PM|#

John,

I Don't disagree. Democrats do their fair share of ass-showing. That doesn't make this bit of business right. And Republican have shown themselves to be little better in recent times.

|1.24.06 @ 11:27PM|#

Sorry.that was Adams/Jefferson..not Madison/Jefferson.

|1.24.06 @ 11:45PM|#

cjp-

I agree that the Rolls Royce of voting machines, used in Nevada, would probably pose some problems.

However, I used a machine that read paper ballots, similar to the scantron tests that students take.

And I actually took the voting machine and blank ballots home with me. I know that sounds really, really bad, but there were some key checks to prevent mischief. Just hear me out:

When I showed up the morning of the election, the first thing that we did was take the stuff out of my bag, and the other election workers inspected it. They verified that the seals weren't broken on the ballot pads. And to make sure that I didn't tamper and then re-seal, they inspected each ballot before handing it to a voter.

We plugged in the machine, and it had to print out a count of votes cast thus far. Everybody inspected it to verify that all counts were zero, and signed the tape.

After that, nobody, myself included, was alone with the machine for the rest of the day. There were always at least 6 people watching the machine. At the end of the day, the machine printed out a count of votes. Everybody signed it. Then two of us connected the machine to a phone line and transmitted the results.

After that, we took the machine, the tape, and the ballots in my car. Another poll worker rode with me. If an interested citizen had asked to follow me I would have gladly complied. So we had one of the 4 records already transmitted, and the other 3 records transported by two people. The time of my arrival was noted. The equipment was taken into custody with more than a dozen witnesses present. After that, I don't know the specifics of how those 3 records (hard drive, print out, and completed ballots) were handled, but I understand that there were a lot of observers, written documents to verify chain of custody, locks, surveillance cameras, etc.

Is it perfect? Of course not. But nothing was put in motion until the supplies had been inspected by several witnesses, and as soon as the process began nobody was alone with the equipment, and the information was stored in two very different media (paper and hard drive).

I would put more trust in that system than a touchscreen machine where everything is on a single hard drive.

|1.25.06 @ 12:09AM|#

In another life, I was an IT guy and MIS guru. I still do some database consulting.

In my book, every system is hackable until proven otherwise. I have to look no further than the Google News to hear about the latest bug or virus attacking Windows. Now that Firefox has gained market share, that's being plundered as well. A recent big story reported that most companies have been hacked. My experience tells me that is probably accurate.

I know some good IT guys and a lot of mediocre ones. I also know exactly 3 computer security people worth a damn and only one of them is remotely trustworthy.

Most programmers, in my experience are not good at designing secure systems. One of the chief compaints about the Diebold system is that it lacks even the most basic systemic protections.

I cut my teeth on mortgage banking systems which were designed to make sure an army of processors in various locations and varying derees of skill met federal guidlines. The sytems included all sorts of verification schemes, identity flags, procedure flags and a host of reports to identify exceptions and missed steps.

Making it hum took constant communication, training and 'tweaking'. It also took years of programmers and users going back and forth.

When cjp says, When you think of a workable election system, you have to think of something your grandma could oversee and administer. Anything more complex just won't do. I agree.

I also think that that type of system is not possible given the poor levels of training, communication and accountability as well as the short duration in which the staff have to be trained and up to speed.

I mean no disrespect to the people who serve. But many are short-time folks, often elderly and many with little computer skills.

Even folks who are very comfortable with computers will not have the experience or training in dealing with - much less spotting - any suspicious activity as regards the system.

Even "system" is a funny word in this context. A system has a degree or "normality" to it. One day is too short a duration for the users to determine what's normal for a system.

At least with an effective manual system, a recount and/or review of the 'original documentation' is possible.

|1.25.06 @ 12:26AM|#

madpad-

I agree. Hardware can be hacked by somebody who's sufficiently clever. Paper ballots can be altered by somebody who's sufficiently devious. Combine the two and your system isn't perfect, but it is more redundant and a fraudster must corrupt two very different systems.

The nice thing about electronic tabulation is that it can be done before the ballots are removed from the publicly visible polling place, and the count taken at the polling place can later be compared with an audit of the paper ballots. The paper ballots, in turn, can be used to audit the results of the electronic tabulation. Each method can be used to scrutinize the other. It's still possible that a corrupt official might hack both at once, but nothing is perfect. It's still a hell of a lot better than just having one or the other.

What's sad is that a couple months ago I had a conversation with a volunteer poll worker who uses the touchscreen machines. There's no paper ballot for the voter to verify, everything is on the hard drive. Of course, there's a tape that prints at the end of the day. She seemed to think that the tape is enough. I agreed that the tape is better than nothing (you can use it to verify that the hard drive wasn't tampered with after it left the polling place). But I tried to explain that the tape can't be used to check the machine itself, and rule out tampering before the machine arrives at the polling place. She just didn't get it. She thought I was crazy.

|1.25.06 @ 12:52AM|#

thoreau,

Always good to see your posts. Few lay down as thorough or patient a complex (or simple) point as you do.

You're right of course. The advantages of a double system are worth considering.

Your anecdote about the poll worker is a great example. Used to be a computer geek was a computer geek. It conoted a particular set of skills with a technology offering a finite set of possibilities.

The geek was the jack-of-all-trades and most of us could be found tearing apart our PC/ATs at 10 p.m., BBSing at 2 a.m., fiddling with phone gear on the weekends and working on a database for a project to help automate the school's grading system. Writing in BASIC, no less. And most of us weren't getting paid to do it.

Now the field is much wider. A person who is comfortable surfing the web is not automatically someone who can tear apart (and put back together) a computer. A programmer may be great at developing fast, error-free code, but the byzantine world of a database administrator would drive them crazy. Systems analysts are completely different than system administrators. And the CIO at one company may be a tech god while the CIO at another may be just another wanker with an MSCE and no chops.

I knew folks who had been working on mortgage banking systems for 10 years and couldn't write a file to a floppy disk.

What I'm saying is computer prowess, for most people, is a rote exercise. The only thing systemic is the narrow number of choice most folks encounter on any given day. Understanding a "System" requires a depth of knowledge and understanding that most people - even many so-called power users - don't possess.

Rick Gaber|1.25.06 @ 2:08AM|#

FWIW in 2004 the 2 Ohio counties which used paperless Diebold touch-screen machines showed roughly the same or larger vote percentages for Kerry than for the Democrat in each of the previous 5 presidential elections. Check it out here (scroll down a little). This does NOT mean I like paperless machines. I believe a paper trail is necessary, but having poll watchers baby sitting ALL the equipment ALL the time is what's most crucial.

|1.25.06 @ 3:02AM|#

"Brian Doherty"? Talk about a blast from the past. Does this mean the quest to sell actual books about "Burning Man" has been mercifully terminated?

|1.25.06 @ 3:54AM|#

You make a great point madpad, which is why they should have stayed with manuel technology like punchcards.

I see a commercial forming in my head ....

I see a swarthy man in a suit and a sombrero ...

Manuel Technology

"Manuel Technology ... provideeng technology soluciones ... to an ever-demandeeng world.

"Gardeneeng.

"Effruit peekeeng.

"Harvesteeng the coffee beans. They are mountain grown -- the reechest kind.

"When you need an affordable, labor-eentensive solucion for your home or beezness ...

"Manuel Technology."

|1.25.06 @ 8:41AM|#

I live in Florida, and one funny thing that you noticed in the articles concerning the problems with the touchscreen voting issue was that in the correlation between the counties that use touchscreen vs those that use pencil and paper optical scan correlates almost perfectly to Democratic Counties vs Republican Counties (few excpetions, but that's basically how it broke down). Each county had a choice, and those run by the Democrats all went for the suspect (and far more expensive) option. Now those same people are complaining because they didn't listen to the warnings that savy tech people were making from the begining, and they've somehow turned it around to making it part of the Bush/Cheney conspiracy to destroy the world.

|1.25.06 @ 8:49AM|#

The only people in this thread suggesting a Bush-Cheney conspiracy are the ones denouncing the notion and using it to dismiss everybody else's concerns.

If you want to argue with somebody who embraces that theory, go to Democratic Underground.

|1.25.06 @ 9:00AM|#

thoreau has forgotten a primary principle in such things: KISS.

|1.25.06 @ 9:53AM|#

Understanding a "System" requires a depth of knowledge and understanding that most people - even many so-called power users - don't possess.

Keep in mind that this is true of all systems, computer or otherwise. Making systems confusing is what makes them less prone to being "gamed" by a lot of people, but it also makes them less understandable which makes it easier for the few who DO understand to corrupt the system. Which only leads to more mistrust. I've been in IT for twenty years - most system requests fall into 2 categories: more exposure to data and results and making the "hows and whys" harder to figure out. But the "hows and whys" are where the trust is built. The data becomes more transparent but less trustworthy.

|1.25.06 @ 10:13AM|#

thoreau --

you paint a good picture of what's good about the "paper op-scan" way of doing things. I highlight two interesting points about your tale:

They verified that the seals weren't broken on the ballot pads. And to make sure that I didn't tamper and then re-seal, they inspected each ballot before handing it to a voter.

Good stuff. Everybody can see whether a ballot has been marked or not. However, I also understand that there are (sometimes) seals on the scanning machine. It turns out that in some precincts, they give poll workers extra seals "in case" they accidentally break the ones on the machines (while the machines are in their homes) -- the BBV forums have actual poll workers who were provided extra seals. Why is this relevant? Read below:


We plugged in the machine, and it had to print out a count of votes cast thus far. Everybody inspected it to verify that all counts were zero, and signed the tape.

The exact hack described in the above article shows how useless the "zero counts" are. The guy took the memory card out of the scanner, reprogrammed it, and put it back in (trivial if you have access to a card, an unsealed machine, or a machine and extra seals). People inserted their paper ballots as normal.

Then, the machine spit out the wrong tally! Why? Because the memory card contains not only data (the number of votes for each candidate), but also code. The card was preloaded with "negative" votes for a candidate, and also with code that lied about the "zero count."

It is absolutely, positively, screamingly, idiotically unacceptable for security-critical executable code to be stored on a mutable media that dozens of people have access to, and without checking the integrity of the code when it is used. And yet, that's exactly what the Diebold scantron readers do.

And that's how the simple, "good" Diebold machines work!! Imagine what they've got going on in the general-purpose Windows PCs that serve as DRE touchscreen devices. The level of complexity of these machines is orders of magnitude higher, and the level of transparency is many times lower. And the procedures for setting up, using, and collecting data from the machines are significantly more complicated too.

Nobody, nobody understands this complexity, so nobody can understand the security ramifications of it.

As this attack shows, people don't even understand counting paper ballots by scantron. People understand counting paper ballots by hand. Too bad there's no money in it.

|1.25.06 @ 10:28AM|#

People understand counting paper ballots by hand. Too bad there's no money in it.

In a healthy democracy or democratic republic, there are a few things that should not be done for the purpose of making money. I'd say voting is one of them.

|1.25.06 @ 10:36AM|#

The only people in this thread suggesting a Bush-Cheney conspiracy are the ones denouncing the notion and using it to dismiss everybody else's concerns.

Now, now. Let me put the very idea of a voting 'conspiracy' to rest. Such a conspiracy would mean some direct involvement by the Bush-Cheney cabal directly or indirectly witn Deibold.

Everyone knows that the very beauty of the much larger Vast Right Wing Conspiracy (VRWC) is that decades of fundamentalist philosphical focus around a single-minded idealogical goal has led to a number of smaller independent groups able to operate without explicit communication with or direction from a leadership entity.

Reminds me of some other group. Now who was that?...Oh it'll come to me.

|1.25.06 @ 10:43AM|#

Anyody else smell bullshit in the author's tearstained accusation that Diebold explicitly designed the machine to be hackable? She offers no evidence to support the charge of malignancy, particularly when simple incompetence is an adequate explanation (note that I'm not addressing Diebold's testing or subsequent assertions that the machines were secure).

|1.25.06 @ 10:50AM|#

cjp-

I agree, there are potential problems with the machines. I'm not a fan of letting the poll workers take the machines home. I'd prefer if they were kept in a secure building under constant video surveillance, and then delivered in cop cars or other vehicles with video cameras.

I think we can all agree that the paper ballot is a crucial safeguard. Sure, paper ballots can be tampered with, just as the machines can. It's happened numerous times. But the idea is to have at least two very different systems in place, so that a conspirator has to meddle with both in order to avoid anybody discovering the problem. And both systems should be as transparent as possible.

I also think that voting machine designs and source code should be posted on the web. Sure, it makes it easier to discover flaws, but that's sort of the point. Publicize the flaws as quickly as possible. And limit access to the machines themselves, while keeping the machines under video surveillance. (I'd also be in favor of letting any and all interested citizens stand watch around the room where the machines are stored, with windows and video monitors visible to the public.)

|1.25.06 @ 11:22AM|#

John,
I have to take issue with your comment that it was the Democrats who did something wrong in 2000. I am over it, but lets not forget that A) a proper hand counting of the votes in Florida that included over-votes( votes where voters checked a candidate AND also wrote in the same candidate's name) gave the vote to Al Gore, B) that Gore won the National vote (not important, but a fact I imagine would be brought up if it were the other way around), C) Bush went to court stop the recounts.

Historically, it should be pretty established that on election day in 2000, more valid voters in the country went to the polls to vote for Al Gore, and more valid voters in Florida went to the polls to vote for Al Gore. You can make of what happened what you will, but to suggest that Bush and the Republicans took a higher road because they are more committed to principle in 2000 is, I think, laughable.

tomWright|1.25.06 @ 11:59AM|#

Madpad has the best points so far.
I am programmer/geek as well, of the mainframe variety, with experience in unix systems and SAP as well.

Every system can be hacked, and not always intentionally. If you ever saw what I have seen deep in the code for SAP, you would understand that. Fat fingers can do a lot of damage. Much of programming any user interactive system is checking for bad input. Alpha characters in a monetary amount field as a very basic example.

Grummun has has a point about smelling BS in the accusation that the machine was designed to be hackable. Never assign to malicious intent what can be explained by incompetance, without evidence.

But there seems to be some evidence when O'Dell, (I think, was it him?), essentially told Bush that he would deliver the elction to him. That stinks of premeditation.


In my opinion, the simpler the method the better. As mentioned, your grandparents need to be able to do it, without any knowledge not possesed by the average retiree, and with little hands on training.

I do not even want electro-mechanical counters, let alone computerized ones. Possibly some sort of device to create the ballot, so that it is legible enough to be counted accurately, but there would need to be a way to garantee that discarded ballots are destroyed completely.

Simple ballots in a glass box that is kept in view during the entire voting process.

Have the box opened in public, counted in public and the results annouced in public, right at the polling place, without having the box disappear while being transported to a central location.

I would have a separate ballot for every office, to make sorting and counting easier. Yes, that is more ballots, but it would be more accurate and simmpler in the end.

Considering how important elections are, and how willing the R/D parties are to spend our money, paying some extra temp workers and supplying coffee and doughnuts to volunteers for a few extra days seems a small cost. We may need to have fewer polling places, but considering the low turnout most elections, I doubt there would be a big deal.

I also think that tampering with an election, since it is equivelent to a coup, should be considered treasonable on the part of both those that planned and physically did it, but also on the part of the one that benefits from it. Punishable by death, or at least life imprisonment in a hole in the ground.

|1.25.06 @ 2:03PM|#

Apparently, being concerned about the electoral machinery working properly, and the vote count being accurate, is strictly a liberal issue, because the conservatarians consistently declare any discussion of the matter beyond the pale, the feverish fantasies of sick minds, whenever anyone raises the issue.

The interesting question is, to what degree is the result of right wing opportunism, what with the flaws in our vote monitoring systems tending to favor their candidates, and to what degree does this represent a genuine hostility to a voting system that makes an effort to confirm that poorer people and minorities are treated equally?

Gotta love that first comment, though. Yes, we finally know why a Democrat won the state represented by Barbara Boxer and Diane Feinstein. Idiot.

|1.25.06 @ 2:11PM|#

I think the best method of voting is what was used circa 1900: you check the box next to the name of the candidate you want, and stick your ballot in a box with a hole in it. At the end of the day, a group of people look at the ballots one and by, and tabulate the results. As long as this process is being watched, and the people counting the ballots are from all parties and thus motivated to stop each other from cheating, there is very little possibility of tampering.

This process wasn't dismissed because of accuracy problems, but for efficiency. You know what? Fuck efficiency. It doesn't matter if it takes three days to count all the ballots. It doesn't matter if the budget for the election office ends up being higher. The only thing that matters is getting the count right.

|1.25.06 @ 2:33PM|#

Also, "Manuel Technology" would make a great name for a Spanish guitar/electronica-fusion band.

|1.25.06 @ 2:59PM|#

joe-

If you want to do the counting right then and there in the polling place by hand, that's fine with me.

But you might want to let somebody other than the poll workers do it. They got there at 6am to set up, and they spent the whole day dealing with people who say "Hey, man, like, I moved, but I don't think I registered in my new place. But maybe I did. I dunno. Anyway, I'm, like, registered somewhere, I think. Can I just vote here?" They were patient with him, they helped him fill out his provisional ballot, and they did all the paperwork. And now it's 8pm and they're tired as all hell and they don't give a damn who wins at this point and all they want to do is go to Expedia.com and plan a vacation to some place with no elections.

These might not be the people that you want counting ballots all night.

|1.25.06 @ 4:01PM|#

What cjp said, mostly. Diebold's design is a steaming pile of crap.I would disagree that "nobody understands this complexity", however. The security issues are complex, but there is a lot of expertise in this area.

This will never happen, but I think the design of electronic voting machines should be an open source internet project. Put a panel of experts together to pick (from submissions) an initial implementation, and then vet changes. The design would quickly become secure enough that "gaming" the system would be the expensive way to influence an election.

|1.25.06 @ 5:48PM|#

"Apparently, being concerned about the electoral machinery working properly, and the vote count being accurate, is strictly a liberal issue, because the conservatarians consistently declare any discussion of the matter beyond the pale, the feverish fantasies of sick minds, whenever anyone raises the issue." - joe

Maybe both sides have an inherent desire to make the system cheatable to better their own chances. That I'm willing to believe. But to claim that only one side of the political spectrum has an interest in cleaning the system up is just beyond ludicrous. It takes high-quality partisan blinders to believe that only your side is capable of virtue and that only the other side is capable of nefarious action.

This strikes me as being about along the lines of what thoreau called out FatDrunk&Stupid for:

"The only people in this thread suggesting a Bush-Cheney conspiracy are the ones denouncing the notion and using it to dismiss everybody else's concerns." - thoreau

I suppose this just falls into the category of compelling evidence that there are plenty of people on both ends of the political spectrum willing to argue points that neither side is actually making... You know, that whole "arguing with the -fill in the blank of the opposing viewpoint- in your head" tactic that some HNR posters greatly enjoy.

|1.25.06 @ 6:30PM|#

So, ah, anybody else thinking OSS?

No.

I'm thinking the same system my area uses - filling in a few boxes on a printed paper ballot, then slipping the paper into a slot on a ballot box.

It's not perfect, but the results sure as hell won't untraceably change with a little discreet fiddling.

|1.25.06 @ 6:33PM|#

Also, "Manuel Technology" would make a great name for a Spanish guitar/electronica-fusion band.

"Manuel labor" is a term someone I knew used for exactly what you'd expect. It always made me bluster in outrage, which was 90% of the reason he ever used it.

Rob McMillin|1.25.06 @ 9:29PM|#

I'm just amazed at how much heat and how little light is being generated here.

The Republicans opened themselves to charges of fixing elections when O'Dell made his comment, to be sure. But does that mean that Republicans are the only ones who want to fix votes, or that they shouldn't be concerned about possible fraud? Hardly. In my district, where they used electronic voting machines, we had an election in which one ballot proposition received more votes than registered voters! This is crazy, and deserves more than partisan blustering.

|1.25.06 @ 9:30PM|#

Well, I've probably danced on the boundaries of offensiveness on this thread myself.

I did think Batmanuel on "The Tick" was cool, though.

|1.25.06 @ 9:56PM|#

...does that mean that Republicans are the only ones who want to fix votes, or that they shouldn't be concerned about possible fraud?

While the sentiment is no doubt accurate as far is it goes, the point raised is mostly academic. It doesn't matter what anyone wants to do. It matter what they actually do.

|1.25.06 @ 10:34PM|#

Apparently, being concerned about the electoral machinery working properly, and the vote count being accurate, is strictly a liberal issue, because the conservatarians consistently declare any discussion of the matter beyond the pale, the feverish fantasies of sick minds, whenever anyone raises the issue.

Oh, lookie, Our Joe found a new word he can fetishize. Maybe it will replace "libertoids" -- which is long, long past its sell-by date -- in his vocabulary.

Meanwhile, on Earth, not only have more than half the people in this thread managed to avoid defending either Diebold or the current system, let alone " declar[ing] any discussion of the matter beyond the pale, the feverish fantasies of sick minds," but dollars to donuts you can't find more than five regular posters here who will defend the outcome of or reasoning behind Bush v. Gore.

|1.26.06 @ 1:56AM|#

I'd actually be willing to defend Bush v. Gore, or at least the 7-2 conclusion that the manipulation of ballot standards in different precincts in an attempt to cook a Gore victory was out of bounds. The 5-4 decision to simply call it for Bush instead of requiring one more uniform recount was a bad idea.

As for the outcome? I know I like the electoral college much better, now. We could have had Florida 2000 in every precinct in the country with a simple majority vote. The thought makes me shudder.

|1.26.06 @ 1:58AM|#

And in the interests of disclosure, I was one of the poor fools who voted for Browne in 2000.

|1.26.06 @ 9:07AM|#

Phil, if you want to freak over a term that clearly doesn't apply to you, that's...well, that's pretty much par for the course, actually.

Eric,

I don't see how we'd get a "Florida in every precinct in the country" with direct elections. If somebody insisted on a precinct-level recount that turned a 4 vote victory for Bush into a 2 vote victory for Gore, for example, the only implication for that would be to change the national vote total by 6 votes. Since even particularly close elections are settled by hundreds of thousands of votes, I don't think there would really be the motivation for protracted recount fights. It was the existence of the Electoral College that made the few hundred vote swing in Florida so important. Absent that, it would have been a

|1.26.06 @ 4:34PM|#

So, joe is arguing that we should abolish the electoral college because Bush won the electoral vote but not the popular vote?

Skipping completely the check and balance reason for the existence of the electoral college, what do you think the odds are that joe would be arguing that the electoral college was the most brilliantly designed part of our election system if his guy had won?