Democracy in action? Or inaction?

[EddyTeddyFreddy]

Are the latest computerized voting machines an improvement in assuring honest elections? Or a threat to the democracy they supposedly promote? In this article, originally published on Monday, October 13, 2003 by the lndependent/UK, there are allegations that, if true, scare the crap out of me.

Something very odd happened in the mid-term elections in Georgia last November. On the eve of the vote, opinion polls showed Roy Barnes, the incumbent Democratic governor, leading by between nine and 11 points. In a somewhat closer, keenly watched Senate race, polls indicated that Max Cleland, the popular Democrat up for re-election, was ahead by two to five points against his Republican challenger, Saxby Chambliss.

Those figures were more or less what political experts would have expected in state with a long tradition of electing Democrats to statewide office. But then the results came in, and all of Georgia appeared to have been turned upside down. Barnes lost the governorship to the Republican, Sonny Perdue, 46 per cent to 51 per cent, a swing of as much as 16 percentage points from the last opinion polls. Cleland lost to Chambliss 46 per cent to 53, a last-minute swing of 9 to 12 points.

Red-faced opinion pollsters suddenly had a lot of explaining to do and launched internal investigations. Political analysts credited the upset - part of a pattern of Republican successes around the country - to a huge campaigning push by President Bush in the final days of the race. They also said that Roy Barnes had lost because of a surge of “angry white men” punishing him for eradicating all but a vestige of the old confederate symbol from the state flag.

But something about these explanations did not make sense, and they have made even less sense over time. When the Georgia secretary of state’s office published its demographic breakdown of the election earlier this year, it turned out there was no surge of angry white men; in fact, the only subgroup showing even a modest increase in turnout was black women.

<snip>

Strangely, however, the pollsters made no comparable howlers in lower-key races whose outcome was not seriously contested. Another anomaly, perhaps. What, then, is one to make of the fact that the owners of the three major computer voting machines are all prominent Republican Party donors? Or of a recent political fund-raising letter written to Ohio Republicans by Walden O’Dell, Diebold’s chief executive, in which he said he was “committed to helping Ohio to deliver its electoral votes to the president next year” - even as his company was bidding for the contract on the state’s new voting machinery?

Alarmed and suspicious, a group of Georgia citizens began to look into last November’s election to see whether there was any chance the results might have been deliberately or accidentally manipulated. Their research proved unexpectedly, and disturbingly, fruitful.

There’s a great deal more to the article, describing in detail possible vote manipulations. If – I say, if it’s all true, it’s a dumbfounding threat to the foundations of American representative government.

I put this thread in the Pit because I expect the partisan elements in this story to provoke some heated replies. I would welcome assessment of the credibility of the author and his cited sources, also of the validity of the allegations themselves. Mods/admins, if you believe another forum is more appropriate, I would be grateful if you would move it there.

Oh, and if anyone else has beaten me to raising this story on the SDMB, I humbly apologize for the duplication.

[kp_72110]

Well the simple fact is, it would be no harder to make these computerized voting machines act sort of like an ATM and actually have a print out of what you voted for so you could vote in the booth and deposit the paper transaction in a box in case of a recount.

The fact that the makers of these machines refuse to do this is at the very least suspect. At most perhaps fraudulant.

[Lynn_Bodoni]

I’m moving this sucker to Great Debates, where I feel it belongs.

Lynn

[the_first_supraliminal]

I would never trust any poll to be within 16 points no matter what they claim for margin of error.
The error may be done in the selection of people who are “likely to vote”, based on wrong information. People who voted in the last election may not vote now if there is a feeling of complacency this time, for example. Or a last minute slur can sour the entire middle of the electorate, such as nearly happened with the Arnold groping accusations.

[tomndebb]

Until I see actual evidence or testimony that Dieboldt actually skewed the elections, I am not about to jump on any conclusions regarding the Georgia votes.

As a programmer, however, I have been resolutley opposed to any and all hare-brained schemes to turn the vote into a “paperless” activity (or its cousin in madness, the “vote from your own home on your own 'puter” schtick).

We are nowhere near the level of security and audit in the computer buiness to justify trusting our elections to these oversized Gameboys. (Yes, I know that we transfer billions of dollars in funds, electronically, each day. However, there is a significant difference between purchasing things or transferring funds on line and voting: for each financial transaction, there are at least two participants who each want to ensure that they are not being cheated. In an anonymous ballot, the only person who could audit any given vote is prohibited from examining it. The voter pushes the button and the screen displays an image. The voter does not then get to review the line of data that will be tabulated (and the freaking nachine companies have included language in the contracts that prohibits the state(s) from auditing the process).

I suspect that if there were actual voter irregularities in Georgia, they will have been the result of incompetence rather than malice. However, we are idiots if we believe that the malice is not right around the corner, waiting to join the party.

[Boo_Boo_Foo]

I own a software business too. We have 8 employees. We do rather well thank you. And I couldn’t agree more. 100% of the systems we design have self error checking systems built in - that is, someone somewhere will notice they didn’t get paid enough and bring the matter to someone’s attention. Voting, conversely, is simply frought with the potential for fuckups, or worse, rorting.

[EddyTeddyFreddy]

Two thank-yous: To Lynn, for moving this thread where it belongs; and to Boo Boo Foo, for introducing the word “rorting” to my vocabulary.

One thing that bothers me particularly is this:

The vote count was not conducted by state elections officials, but by the private company that sold Georgia the voting machines in the first place, under a strict trade-secrecy contract that made it not only difficult but actually illegal - on pain of stiff criminal penalties - for the state to touch the equipment or examine the proprietary software to ensure the machines worked properly.

Vote collection and counting should be monitored by electoral officials and designated observers from the candidates, IMO. With computerized voting, there’s got to be some kind of outside check, whether the printout that kp_72110 suggests, or some other way. No doubt there would still be opportunities for chicanery, but a wholly unaudited system? Good grief!

I’d much rather stick with the voting machinery my town uses: a fill-in-the-blank-dots card, clearly laid out, which is fed into a vote-reader machine when you emerge from the booth. The votes are tallied electronically by the card scanner, but if there’s any question, the cards remain for confirmation by manual count.

[Debaser]

No entry in dictionary.com for “rorting” ???

I’m on the fence on this issue. Isn’t it just as easy for the vote counters to cheat in a manual system? Especially since it’s been proven that effective ties in a presidential election are in fact possible, every vote really does count. If the margin of error can be large enough to swing the vote due to manual errors isn’t this as much of a problem as potential electronic cheating?

The addition of computers into the voting process can only improve things, right? We don’t have to toss out all manual checks and totally rely on them, instead we just add them to the existing process.

I go into the booth and vote. My vote is printed out so I can see that it is correct. I hand this in to a ballot box. When all the votes are counted they should match up within certain small limits to the counts from the original computer where they are entered. If anything, this would improve the process. We could now tell where there is more and less accuracy in the votes.

[RTA]

The Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2003 seeks to fix this glaringly dangerous situation.

www.theorator.com/bills108/hr2239.htm

It’s my understanding though that this bill has not gone forward, something about Republican objections. Go figure.

[CalMeacham]

The addition of computers into the voting process can only improve things, right? We don’t have to toss out all manual checks and totally rely on them, instead we just add them to the existing process.

I go into the booth and vote. My vote is printed out so I can see that it is correct. I hand this in to a ballot box. When all the votes are counted they should match up within certain small limits to the counts from the original computer where they are entered. If anything, this would improve the process. We could now tell where there is more and less accuracy in the votes.

I think everyone above would agree with you. In fact, this seems to be an idea that has been proposed several times, from what I’ve read. The problems are that:

1. No existing computer voting seems to give you such a printed record

2. There seems to be opposition to this

3. Existing voting software is woefully underprotected, easy to hack, and some of the software is even available online.

[kp_72110]

*Originally posted by CalMeacham *
**1. No existing computer voting seems to give you such a printed record

2. There seems to be opposition to this
   **

Oddly, most of the opposition seems to be coming from the manufacturer(s). I will have to look for the source, but I did see a story on a cable news channel about this very thing not long ago. In particular the main “manufacturer” of this type of equipment. I may be wrong but it seems like these people are also one of the largest ATM producers as well. I’m assuming it’s Diebold, but don’t know for sure.

Things that make ya go “Hmmm”.

[Debaser]

OK. So people aren’t against the idea of electronic improvements to voting. Just the way that it’s being implemented. It just didn’t seem that way to me.