Go back to paper ballots you fucking retards.

>> ^charliem:
Go back to paper ballots you fucking retards.

I'm going to have to disagree with this. The problem is not electronic voting, it's the implementation.

When the army wants a whistle, they submit a 12 page spec with technical drawings, and specifications on materials used etc, if the manufacturer fails to deliver exactly what is in the spec they are in breach of contract with the government and will never get another contract again.

When the gov hands out "kinda like this" corporate welfare funding like they did to diebold, then you get this kind of crap. The government knows how to get what they want at a good price, that was just not the point of the "help america vote act".

Let me be blunt. I could set up a sourceforge project to develop the software/hardware spec for an e-voting system, using existing free software, I could get help from volunteers, and we could have a secure, working system in a couple of months.

In fact anybody worth their salt at programming/crypto could have a proof of concept mocked up in python, or bash shell script by tomorrow.

These people failed for one of three reasons:

1) they are flagrantly incompetent. (their ATM products suggest otherwise)
2) they didn't even try. (seems plausible, just take free money and run)
3) they intentionally made the system weak to allow fraud. (unfortunately also plausible)

Well, Diebold helped put Bush in the White House, as it's president has promised before 2000. Now with Bush unfairly not getting a third term, Diebold can admit that mistakes are possible. And possibly charging for the update/fix/new machine/whatever.

>> ^dgandhi:
>> ^charliem:
Go back to paper ballots you fucking retards.
I'm going to have to disagree with this. The problem is not electronic voting, it's the implementation.


True, BUT until there is a nearly foolproof implementation that has the bugs worked out of its system and has been through an open peer review (including the ENTIRE source code down to the BIOS level), go back to paper ballots. It's a lot harder to manipulate than electronics.

There's also a big, oft unreported difference between now and 2004 as far as Ohio is concerned: Ken Blackwell, architect of the 2004 voter fraud, is now gone.

There's a Democrat (Jennifer Brunner) holding that seat now. Ohio also recently passed a law that allows same-day voter registration, which during the primaries often meant Obama would get an extra 5% above polling expectations, largely due to his aggressive Get Out The Vote (GOTV) operations.

I'm not proud of this, but I think if there's going to be fraud perpetrated in Ohio in 2008, it'll be in favor of the Democrats.

>> ^srd:
True, BUT until there is a nearly foolproof implementation that has the bugs worked out of its system and has been through an open peer review (including the ENTIRE source code down to the BIOS level), go back to paper ballots. It's a lot harder to manipulate than electronics.

The only reason it has not already been done, and fully reviewed, is that everybody knows that the government has no (political) interest in using a good open standard for elections.

The sketchy preliminary '04 re-count held in Ohio was done with paper ballots, if you can't trust the people in charge the method matters very little. The only defense against organizational corruption is third party review, which a good public key based voting system would make possible, in real time, and at absurdly little cost.

We have already reached the point where a well structured (even if imperfectly implemented) e-voting system would be more transparent and fault tolerant then the old standby of paper, the gov just isn't interested in being that transparent.

Politicians will never allow Open Source software in the government.

1. You will never convince them it can be secure, since anybody can find out how it works. To the old-timers, proprietary=secure.

2. There would be no way to funnel taxpayer money to their cronies.

^ Happening in europe all over the place on all levels of government. IIRC it's happening in asia, africa and south america as well. It's more about cost than security at the moment, but I think that will change as well, given a few years. Of course MS is not happy.

>> ^MaxWilder:
Politicians will never allow Open Source software in the government.
1. You will never convince them it can be secure, since anybody can find out how it works. To the old-timers, proprietary=secure.
2. There would be no way to funnel taxpayer money to their cronies.



But then old-timers also think that the internets is just a series of tubes.

*dead

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