Voting machines inherently flawed

[Elfer]

During official counting following the election, Butler County Board of Elections staff found 2 inconsistencies in the count (which didn't affect the outcome of the election), which they reported to the Ohio Secretary of State.

Diebold/Premier provides its voting machines. Diebold/Premier's report on the cause was that it was human error and McAfee's anti-virus used by the Butler County Board of Elections.

The miscount is something to be concerned about, but I think that the real issue here is why there's antivirus software on voting machines? Shouldn't they be, you know, NOT connected to the internet at all?

When you look at this one top of other blatant and embarrassing design problems, it really looks like you guys should be using a different company to produce your electronic voting machines, if you're going to use them at all.

[Al6200]

I have trouble understanding the logic behind electronic voting machines in the first place. A paper ballot seems far safer and more secure. Or, perhaps a machine, not connected to the internet, that simply prints a paper trail and sends an electronic tally out. In the end the two trails can be checked against each other to prevent against tampering.

And there should probably be a single embedded computer designed with a unique architecture for each election so that it would be harder for someone to learn about the voting machines and tamper with them.

Although to be fair I think we would get a good idea if vote tampering was occurring based on the polls we already have. I mean, if Obama was leading by 5 points in Ohio, we'd know tampering occurred if McCain won by 2 points in the actual election.

[aviewaskewed]

At 8/15/08 11:25 AM, Al6200 wrote: I have trouble understanding the logic behind electronic voting machines in the first place.

Seems to me that probably a lot of it is people on the Board of Elections and what not would rather work less. Which I can understand, but voting machines being faulty has screwed with the last two major presidential elections, and I've read many many stories of INTENTIONAL programming flaws designed to allow one candidate to beat the other. Unless there is a major overhaul of the electronic system, I think we should go back to the paper ballot system then.

[Al6200]

At 8/15/08 03:27 PM, aviewaskewed wrote:

At 8/15/08 11:25 AM, Al6200 wrote: I have trouble understanding the logic behind electronic voting machines in the first place.

Seems to me that probably a lot of it is people on the Board of Elections and what not would rather work less. Which I can understand, but voting machines being faulty has screwed with the last two major presidential elections, and I've read many many stories of INTENTIONAL programming flaws designed to allow one candidate to beat the other. Unless there is a major overhaul of the electronic system, I think we should go back to the paper ballot system then.

That's what I'm afraid of. But I think that we can try to get around some of those issues by inviting international observers to observe our elections.

[Gunter45]

At 8/15/08 03:33 PM, Al6200 wrote: That's what I'm afraid of. But I think that we can try to get around some of those issues by inviting international observers to observe our elections.

International doesn't mean unbiased. If anything, I dislike the idea of our sovereignty being threatened by international tampering with the voting machines more than the idea of one party gaining the edge over the other. At least that's merely a domestic concern instead of domestic AND international.

[Al6200]

At 8/15/08 03:51 PM, Gunter45 wrote:

International doesn't mean unbiased. If anything, I dislike the idea of our sovereignty being threatened by international tampering with the voting machines more than the idea of one party gaining the edge over the other. At least that's merely a domestic concern instead of domestic AND international.

It doesn't mean that we'd have someone from overseas tampering with the voting machines, it just means that we'd have a more diverse pool of people watching to make sure nothing happens.

[Gunter45]

At 8/15/08 04:03 PM, Al6200 wrote: It doesn't mean that we'd have someone from overseas tampering with the voting machines, it just means that we'd have a more diverse pool of people watching to make sure nothing happens.

I'm not implying that anybody near the thing is going to tamper with it no matter what. Just saying that it's risky to involve foreign interests in such a domestic matter. Besides, it seems like anyone close to the damn thing is pretty much accused of tampering with it. How much more so if we involve foreign nationals?

It just seems like it'd cause a lot of uneasiness at best.

[Evark]

Yea, today's xkcd brings this up. The analogy is hilarious.

Voting machines shouldn't even be exposed to the vulnerabilities that anti-virus software protects against in the first place. The programming for the machines should be committed to ROM, and the counting should be written to disc, saved on the hard drive, and backed up for review. Votes are far too important to be treated any other way.

I mean, the people who should have the biggest problem with this are the voters within the precincts that use the voting machines. I would be absolutely outraged if I thought that I was being further shortchanged my already near meaningless vote simply because the entire goal of "easier, more accurate, more secure" wasn't accomplished in the transition from handwritten balloting.

[Ravariel]

My take on it is thus:

Individual voting machines don't store their own data... or rather if they do they eventually upload it to another computer for tallying. If they're exposed to another computer that isn't quarantined from viruses (or just isn't secure in other ways), then that could open them up to trojans and tampering without the existence of an antivirus software. Basically, unless you can garauntee that the entire network is quarantined, then not being protected is stupid. Because if your unprotected computers then become exposed to something through a vector that's not quarantined, then they will have nothing to protect them from being infected themselves.

Of course, the assumption that McAffee could stop such an attack itself is debatable. But then again, who the fuck these days writes software that is incomatible with McAffee!? That's like making something incompatible with Excel.

[Saruman200]

I don't see what's wrong with a old-fashioned paper ballet. Seriously, it's not hard to mark an X in a box.

[tritiumnitrate]

At 8/15/08 09:01 PM, Saruman200 wrote: I don't see what's wrong with a old-fashioned paper ballet. Seriously, it's not hard to mark an X in a box.

Yea, unless you're a thousand and Pat Buchanan is a centimetre away from Al Gore and you haven't gotten your prescription changed since your IRA started running low and you got a tax hike.

[Al6200]

Okay, how about we use an electronic voting machine that immediately prints out marked paper ballots based on the voter's decision. The voter can review the paper print-outs, and then take them to different committees for counting ballots (which all work independently).

Then the electronic voting machine puts the voter's data into a USB thumb drive. The committees take the thumb drives and hook them up to a machine that connects to the internet and sends the votes to a counting computer.

At the end all of the committees come together and if any of the people's votes don't agree then the vote is thrown out.

[Saruman200]

At 8/15/08 09:33 PM, tritiumnitrate wrote:

At 8/15/08 09:01 PM, Saruman200 wrote: I don't see what's wrong with a old-fashioned paper ballet. Seriously, it's not hard to mark an X in a box.

Yea, unless you're a thousand and Pat Buchanan is a centimetre away from Al Gore and you haven't gotten your prescription changed since your IRA started running low and you got a tax hike.

I'm assuming your refering to the 2000 Election Controversy, those where butterfly ballets, not traditional X in the box style ballets. The hole you had to punch was basically on the line between two candiates, no one knew which of the two they were casting their vote for. Watch the HBO movie Recount, it explains it quite well. The problem wasn't with standard paper ballets.

[Al6200]

At 8/16/08 02:11 PM, Saruman200 wrote:

I'm assuming your refering to the 2000 Election Controversy, those where butterfly ballets, not traditional X in the box style ballets. The hole you had to punch was basically on the line between two candiates, no one knew which of the two they were casting their vote for. Watch the HBO movie Recount, it explains it quite well. The problem wasn't with standard paper ballets.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/co mmons/6/66/Butterfly_large.jpg

They don't look that difficult to me...

[Saruman200]

At 8/16/08 03:37 PM, Al6200 wrote:

::

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/co mmons/6/66/Butterfly_large.jpg

They don't look that difficult to me...

If your 80 years old and pratically blind it is.

[Al6200]

At 8/16/08 03:40 PM, Saruman200 wrote:

At 8/16/08 03:37 PM, Al6200 wrote:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/co mmons/6/66/Butterfly_large.jpg

They don't look that difficult to me...

If your 80 years old and pratically blind it is.

Yes, I agree that they could be better (i,e. all on one side).

[Coherent]

Haha, xkcd did a comic strip on this.

[Coherent]

Here, I grabbed it in case anyone was interested. Got a chuckle out of me.