What I want matters not at all. What does matter is the law governing the current contract. I’d like the whole process to be as open as possible, too, just like you. But right now we gotta work with what’s in place. Other than that, the rest of your statement is just speculation.
Diebold now makes voting machines in which a paper trail is integral; paper trails were required as part the implementation of HAVA. These new Diebold machines were used in Ohio recently and the first generation machines (which didn’t have a paper trail) have been decertified here. One would also assume the Secretary of State has implemented a certification plan which would eliminate most avenues open to fraud and abuse.
What is speculation? That they’d open up if Soros’ machines started showing up everywhere? I guess that’s speculative, but I’m pretty confident that it would happen. Note that I don’t consider that a bad thing.
If this is a “Voter-verified” paper trail, then I’m a lot happier with it. If it’s not that kind, then I’d like to know more about it.
I guess I don’t really have too much of an issue with your opinion. But if were gonna speculate, we might also reasonably believe that Soros would put up the same fight that Diebold is having before releasing his data.
Indeed it is. And hard copies of every screen can be printed by election officials to help with their audits.
And looking at the Diebold website, it seems to indicate that ballots are encrypted immediately on submission. Perhaps this encryption process would be exposed if raw data is released. Again, I’m not necessarily comfortable with that, but this might be a legitimate trade secret Diebold wishes to protect.
Are you sure? I don’t thing HAVA requires that. (Or are you referring to Alaska’s implementation legislation?) There is a bill (the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2003 – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_Confidence_and_Increased_Accessibility_Act_of_2003) which has been proposed by Congressman Rush Holt (D-NJ) and Senator Bob Graham (D-FL), which would require paper trails, but Congress has not yet passed it.
I did some checking and there is no requirement in HAVA that this be voter-verified. Having some printer in some back room spitting out numbers isn’t going to do anything to eliminate the possibility of fraud.
I don’t think he would, but if he did I’d be here saying that he’s dead wrong and that we need to fight him to open it up. This isn’t a partisan issue. I want all votes to be counted and accurate, no matter who wins. It’s quite easy to find many posts in my history here where I make the statement that I’d much rather lose elections than be wrong.
That’s not what we mean by voter-verified. A voter needs to get a printout that details every single one of his votes, as well as some method of verfiying that the system and his receipt do in fact synch up. It should also have some form of unique identifier so that it could be validated against the tallied data in case of a recount. Having an election official be able to capture a screen shot when requested doesn’t really cut it, as it has no identifying information to tie it back to the actual data itself.
They use DES encryption, which is publicly documented, and was actually broken a long time ago. The only secretive part of it is the key code used, and as noted, that is attainable for those with the knowledge to do so. On a side note, Diebold uses the exact same code in all machines, and it’s embedded in the source code. Heck, I have the key itself, and will happily post it here if the mods allow.
See page 25 of this .pdf. It’s the Ohio Sec State’s plan for implementing HAVA. HAVA required the Sec State to submit a plan for approval to the federal authorities.
Those are two different things. It does look like Ohio is requiring a voter-verified trail, but the second quote bubble in your post doesn’t make the same requirement. HAVA doesn’t require a voter-verified paper trail, but I am glad that Ohio is going to start requiring one going forward.
What the hell is wrong with just using paper ballots? I’m totally baffled by the complex array of punch cards, electronic voting machines, and all the other Rube Goldberg ways of voting you Americans seem to have.
Here in Canada, we get a card. It has candidates names on it, with a big circle or square beside each name. The instructions says, “Put an X in the box beside the person you wish to vote for”. We do so. We take it up to the counter, and they run the card into a computer tabulator. If it can’t read the card, it rejects it on the spot and you are sent back to fill out another one. If it accepts the card, a worker checks your name off the voters list, and you leave.
No hanging chads, no butterfly ballots, no Diebold machines, NO COMPLAINTS. My technophobe mother can figure out how to fill out the ballot. The electronic tabulation is instant, and vote counts are sent in minutes after the polls close. And we have paper ballots as backup to check the electronic totals. What is so hard about that?
If you must use the Diebold machines, how hard would it be for the machine to spit out a paper slip at the end, so there’s an instant record? Let the voter review it to verify that it recorded his vote correctly.
This isn’t rocket science. It baffles me that you guys have so much trouble coming up with workable voting systems.
But technology is cool!
I remember from several Thomas Nast cartoons – in the late 19th Century, apparently a “ballot box” was a glass globe in a wooden frame. So everyone could watch every ballot as it was dropped in the slot. Any pre-election stuffing would be obvious, and you had to break the globe to count the votes. I wonder why we dropped that?
To be fair, in this particular instance the problem is that the government contracted out certain public functions to a private corporation.
Which only means they are lousy at outsourcing, too. Was there no oversight? Couldn’t the government have hired, say, a 3rd year computing science student to help decide if the private company was totally nuts?
No, and the reason was probably because Diebold got the contract due to some backroom deal between a couple of senators trading favors. Like everything else in the government is done. Like those 16,000 plus ‘earmarks’ that get added to the budget.
Government is incompetent. It should do as little as possible.
