Right. These quotes below are not examples of “unfortunate phrasing.” They’re examples of politicizing the issue. As are all your other remarks disparaging Bush and the republicans.
program as narrow a victory as they like for the Commander in Thief
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GWB will be handed the next election on the same silver platter that was used to deliver everything else he has been given
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Alessan, what makes you think a bunch of people counting paper ballots in the gymnasium of every podunk church and school building is inherently more accurate and secure than a computer count?
rjung, it’s shocking I know, but I agree with you completely.
Yes, I was a little on the fence about that one, even as I posted it. Still, I thought it would make for interesting discussion.
I agree with you that “security by obfuscation” is a bad idea here. It might be a good thing if everyone can see the source code. On the other hand, everyone can see the source code. Know what I mean?
I’m not sure what the best answer is for that point. I guess the main thrust of my argument is that this aspect, too, adds doubt into the system. If the source code is posted publicly, it means that everyone had access to it, and everyone had an opportunity to exploit it. Makes people think twice about the results.
Avalonian has expressed my concerns in a much more thorough and professional manner than I have. He or she has extracted my political bias and hyperbole and focussed the issue on that which my rhetoric prevented me from making clear. That is, regardless of political beliefs, can we really trust macines to count our votes? Granted any system is subject to manipulation, but I would rather trust in the honesty and decency of human pollworkers as a group, than a system where a single milignant person can hack the result.
That being said, can I relinquish the floor to Avalonian, who has demonstrated a much greater ability to frame the issue than I have?
First, I do not trust poll workers one whit. That’s why I want a paper trail. What I see these computers most likely doing is what computers always do–they intensify any problems already extant in the system. For example, computers did not invent fraud–they made the risk greater.
However, I’m of the opinion that in states with a big Democrat machine, the voteputers will end up producing surprising and suspicious landslides for Democrats. Texas, Georgia, Florida–these states are hardly adequate test cases for the hypothesis that voteputers will only help out Republicans. All that has happened is that the previously extant corruption has been rendered more intense.
Thus, in California and New York, I see corrupt results going the other direction. The party in power in any given state ultimately becomes the party of greatest corruption in that state, simply because it is the party with greatest access to the people’s money.
As you say, there are some people I would just as soon not have access to the source. On the other hand, who would we allow to determine that? I believe that simplicity is more important than secrecy but I really don’t trust data-processing equipment with the vote in any event. Even if the souce was verified pristine by checksum or other method, there are still the “side-channel” attacks that could conceivably occur.
In any event, what would be wrong with simply refining the existing machines to eliminate the problems demonstrated in FLorida? If the objective is to make a system whereby no one can ever fail to vote or vote erroneously then the closest approach would be human supewrvision instead of relying on technology. Just my two cents worth on this.
As another software engineer I want to strongly second this. Even if we ignore intentional manipulation of the vote, I don’t trust a system this complicated that doesn’t have a “spare tire” paper trail. And along with the paper trail we need clearly defined procedures for handling the situation where a voter says something like “Hey! this paper doesn’t match what I entered.”
We need a paper trail, and detailed procedures for handling discrepancies.
Even with all that, if it was up to me, we’d do away with the machines and have a simple hand-counted paper ballot.
I agree with you on the need for a paper trail regardless of the system used. Having said that, why does this system need to be terribly complicated? We’ve done reasonably well with older technology so far, why not refine it and keep going?
Why not stick with what works? That’s simple: Technocrats are too stupid to do that. They have this dogma that “new stuff is best way”. Sometimes, the old ways are best, but try telling that to a technocrat.
Askeptic,
I wish that you would either start a thread bashing President for winning the election in what you perceive as an illegal fashion, or, start a thread discussing how to better cast and count votes. Ax grinding and in depth, quality discussions are rarely compatible.
Depending on what you mean by “technocrat”, I think you may be blaming the wrong people here. I think a lot of people would consider me to be a “technocrat” and I’ve already posted my opinion on this as has rjung. And we’re both skeptical of these machines. We’re not as stupid as you think; some of the loudest voices warning about these machines are computer people. It seems to me that it’s the non-technical people, who don’t really understand computers, who are pushing for these things. (I’m not ignoring the people who actually manufacture and program the things, but I don’t think they’re representative of “technocrats” as a whole.)
There is quite the difference between a technocrat (throw more technology at it, technology will solve everything) and a technophile. Technophiles take the time to understand the limitations of technology. Technocrats, on the other hand, see technology as a cure-all. Technocrats, by and large, have little actual understanding of a technology beyond “gee-whiz”. They aren’t concerned with messy little details, they’ve got something to rule/run (-crat/-cracy) and have decided that the latest doo-dads (techno-) are the only way to do it.
In essence, they are politicians who “throw gizmos at a problem” the same way that politicians “throw money at a problem”.
Well, if one who throws money at a problem is a politician, wouldn’t that suggest that one who throws gizmos at a problem should be called a gizmotician? For the sake of consistancy, if nothing else.
Actually I guess one who throws money at problems should be called a monetician.
For those freaked out by the idea of Diebold’s closed-source voting machines, the Open Voting Consortium has developed a free, open-source, paper-trail voting system. It uses computers for folks to make their choices, then prints out an electronic ballot with a bar code that can be scanned for ballot verification and rapidly counted. The printout also includes a human-readable confirmation of the results, and a mathematical checksum to ensure ballot integrity.
The OVC plans to demonstrate this system at the Santa Clara County government office on April 1, 2004 (PDF file) (but it’s not a joke). You can take a web-based demo of their system here.
Now this is an e-voting system I can trust. Any chance we’ll have this in place for the November elections?
rjung That sounds acceptable. But I’m extremely skeptical that it could be in place everywhere by November. There’s too many hurdles to overcome in that amount of time.
You would have to convince every precinct in the country to invest money in a new system (something many have already done recently and wouldn’t want to do again). It would have to meet numerous different local and state legal requirements and pass whatever tests are required. It could, and probably would, face legal challenges by one or more groups around the country. And it would have to be installed and tested in every precinct in the country. I just can’t see all of this being finished up in time for November.
I also wonder whether it’s even legally possible to require everyone everywhere in the country to use exactly the same system. Maybe some of the legal experts on this board can chime in, but my guess is that there would be some kind of constitutional problem.
Exit polls? In 2000, didn’t the initial news reports say, on the basis of the exit polls, that Gore had won Florida? But it turned out that some of those who believed they had voted for Gore had not been sucessful in doing so. No state official in Florida initiated any lawsuit, did they? And whatever lawsuits may have been started by other organizations were not sucessful in overturning the official results.
I cut the quote to mention something about touch-screen. It seems so nice and friendly. You use your finger to point to what you wish to select. But, the screen has distortion…so things line up funny depending on your height. And, some machines have the selections so close together, you can fight with the machine for days to pick-up the choice you meant for it to sense! (I have experience from Amtrak’s auotmated ticket vending machines with touch-screens, for one.)
Touch screen alone is not the answer. We need cursor keys to assist when the screen is so crowded, selections are less than a finger width apart, I WAG. We might also need dialog boxes like: “You have selected Bugs Bunny for Pres. Is this correct? (Y/N)”
Just something to consider about touch-screen menus…
