News The Unexplained Exit Poll Discrepancy

[GENIERE]

No, we have people wishing there was a broken system. There is no evidence that there is anything wrong with electronic voting machines other than minor glitches. Again, there is no evidence there is anything wrong with the electronic voting system.

Hmmm, I’m not sure about that.

All in quotes from: http://cnnstudentnews.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/28/florida.voting.ap/

“The Miami Herald review goes against Internet-fed rumors questioning whether there was a conspiracy against Sen. John Kerry in those counties…”

“Reporters for the newspaper went over more than 17,000 optical scan ballots cast in three rural counties mentioned by doubters: Suwannee, Lafayette and Union. All three are overwhelmingly Democratic in registration, but chose President Bush.”

But suspiciously!

“Kerry won in much of South Florida, where voters vote on touch-screen machines that can't be checked.”

And by manual re-count!

“The Herald counted just under 60 percent of the votes in Suwannee County, where nearly 64 percent of the voters are registered Democrats. The newspaper's total from those precincts essentially matched the county's official total: 6,140 votes for Bush and 2,984 for Kerry.”

“In Lafayette County, 83 percent of voters are registered Democrats. But voters there, too, tend to be conservative and religious. There, the paper found 2,452 votes for Bush and 848 for Kerry, with 20 that couldn't be clearly counted.”

It seems to me that the Democrats rigged the machines in those areas of Florida that cannot be re-counted.

Hey! My conspiracy theory has at least some supporting evidence.

...

 

[russ_watters]

OUCH! Got me there russ! Hey what does iirc mean? So answer these questions:
Who owns the code?
Who owns the data?
Who actually owns the machine? Local, state, federal?
Where do we find the sources for these answers because I for one want clarity. Proof!

IIRC means if I remember correctly.

That statement is classic conspiracy theory mindset: No evidence of a conspiracy? No problem! Just assume there is one until someone proves (with absolutely perfect evidence) that there isn't one.

Well, I'll give it to you even though you don't deserve it (and could find it easily enough if you wanted to): HERE is a link that says the state of Nevada buys voting machines (meaning the State owns them). http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,595048494,00.html is one that says Utah buys them. http://www.fairvotemn.org/articles/archives/machines_03012002.html is one that says in Minnesota, local governments buy them. http://www.monroecounty.gov/documentView.asp?docID=3254 is one that says Monroe County, New York owns, maintains, and programs its machines.

Now obviously you don't seem to think that there is any vulnerabilities to the electronic voting process hence why you have insistantly deferred to the myth/conspiracy angle.

I don't think I ever said there are no vulnerabilities. Every system has flaws. What I said was that the flaws of paper/mechanical systems far exceed the flaws in electronic ones.

I for one do not trust them because I DO UNDERSTAND technology well enough to also know that they are vulnerable to manipulation without a vast majority of people being able to understand how it would even happen!

I appreciate your honesty - that was my perception. Let me ask you this, though: do you trust your ATM? Do you do internet banking?

This is why I have posted this thread, unfortunately you just make assertions that they work and dismiss anyone by saying they do not understand. Your bias is showing!

? You just said you don't understand! I am saying that there is no evidence of a conspiracy here. This is fact. Bias doesn't come into the equation on my end. But because your opinion is based on the possibility of fraud, with no evidence to support it, your opinion is based on your bias - or worse, based on your willingess to accept conspiracy theory.

So here is a real quest: How can you assure a tech savvy person that these systems are not vulnerable as well as the "common joe" out there who does not have the slightest clue!

I, quite frankly, don't care what "the common joe" thinks because the guy you are labeling "the common joe" isn't really the common joe. He's the very small minority of people who want to find a conspiracy. For these people, nothing anyone can say will be able to convince them there is no conspiracy. But the real common joe doesn't understand how to program his VCR, but is not afraid that his ATM is going to steal money from him.

As far as your hypothetical choices go and your dismissive attitude: GROW UP! Vote rigging has a long history and this is the newest version of it. Politicians have manipulated the votes for a long time and truthfully this is nothing new. Ever heard about dead people voting? How about good o'l boys violently threatening colored people? How about calls telling democrats that they have to vote on Wednesday because there are so many people voting(that is a testimonial from Ohio, apparently)?

? Have we flipped sides? I know votor fraud has existed in the past. I'm the one who is arguing that! That's the whole reason we need more secure voting methods in the first place!

If you think about russ, if Kerry had not concede on Wednesday and insisted on doing a recount just because, what do you suppose would have happened? I suspect 2000 would have looked like a field day compared to the civil unrest that could have been seen. I doubt you considered that.

No, I have considered that. It seems in this election even more than the last one, there is a significant fraction of people looking for a fight. Fortunately, this election was won more decisively, and Kerry had no reasonable basis to challenge it. I'll also give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he has a little class.

The neo-hippies that seem to be on the rise disturb me and scare me a little though. I fear we're in for a rise in domestic terrorism from people who would rather destroy this country than see it move in a direction they don't like.

One more thing, tell me why the polls were right on the "morals" issue but wrong on the candidate?

We've been over that. First, the purpose of the exit poll is to find out why people voted. Using it to check the outcome itself is misusing it. But setting that aside, the exit polls, once they had their sample bias removed did accurately reflect the outcome of the election.

 

[Smurf]

I may have missed this earlier, but what exactly makes voting fraud less likely with computers?

 

[plover]

I may have missed this earlier, but what exactly makes voting fraud less likely with computers?

You didn't miss anything. I include some links in post #48 on what the issues are though.

 

[russ_watters]

I may have missed this earlier, but what exactly makes voting fraud less likely with computers?

Encryption and lack of human intervention. As even plover's link acknowledged, the biggest avenues for fraud are ballot-box stuffing and deliberate miscounting (in fact, his main problem with electronic machines appears to be quality control isues, ie bugs). But it isn't just fraud that's the issue - the biggest problem with the Florida situation in 2000 was that the paper ballots are simply inaccurate: a siginificant fraction of the votes were uncountable.

What's more, electronic voting, if governments choose to expand the technology, could eliminate voter identity issues (the second leading means of fraud): dead democrats could only vote if they show up at the polling place to be fingerprinted, for example.

Oh, and where do hacking and easter-egging rank in terms of commonality? They don't: neither have ever happened. Remember, all these flaws in e-voting are just potential. Speculation.

 

[plover]

By "accountability," I assume you mean the ability to do a recount: since the ballots are electronic, recounts are irrelevant.

Bad choice of words perhaps. "Integrity" might have been better. The issue for a purely electronic system is not "recounting" but the "audit trail". From Douglas Jones' letter to Kevin Shelley:

It is important to understand that, while the NASED/FEC standards have long required that all DRE systems maintain something called an audit trail, this audit trail does not record the one thing that a bank examiner, for example, would expect to find there: a record of the votes. As a result, unlike the audit trails represented by the paper receipts and internal cash register tape maintained by an ATM, the audit trails of all but a few DRE machines on the market today offer no assurance that the votes were recorded as intended by the voter, and offer no possibility of a meaningful challenge to the honesty of the machine in the event that fraud may be suspected. This is unconscionable!
​

Transparency? Since when is transparency even desirable? Its a secret ballot.

I'm referring to procedural transparency, i.e. the ability to confirm what happens at each stage of the procedure.

How do you ensure the data is safe? Encrypt it and make it secret.

It's more complicated than that, but Jones thinks that secure electronic systems are most likely possible, they're just not what we have.

Do you have a poll of computer security experts that supports that?

I've been following this stuff for a few months now, if there's anyone credible who's arguing for a different point of view they're not doing it very loudly. But my floundering about on the web is only worth so much of course. Bruce Schneier is one of the most respected figures in the computer security world, and undoubtedly has a good sense of what his peers are thinking. He puts it this way:

Computer security experts are unanimous on what to do. (Some voting experts disagree, but I think we’re all much better off listening to the computer security experts. The problems here are with the computer, not with the fact that the computer is being used in a voting application.) And they have two recommendations:

1. DRE machines must have a voter-verifiable paper audit trails (sometimes called a voter-verified paper ballot). This is a paper ballot printed out by the voting machine, which the voter is allowed to look at and verify. He doesn’t take it home with him. Either he looks at it on the machine behind a glass screen, or he takes the paper and puts it into a ballot box. The point of this is twofold. One, it allows the voter to confirm that his vote was recorded in the manner he intended. And two, it provides the mechanism for a recount if there are problems with the machine.
   
2. Software used on DRE machines must be open to public scrutiny. This also has two functions. One, it allows any interested party to examine the software and find bugs, which can then be corrected. This public analysis improves security. And two, it increases public confidence in the voting process. If the software is public, no one can insinuate that the voting system has unfairness built into the code. (Companies that make these machines regularly argue that they need to keep their software secret for security reasons. Don’t believe them. In this instance, secrecy has nothing to do with security.)

Your post mostly proves you know little of the technical issues involved here. You seem to have picked up the reasons why electronic balloting could work better, without any of the details of why it currently does not. (And treating the issue as a partisan conspiracy rather than a technical problem is pure foolishness.)

 

[Burnsys]

"that Diebold Election Systems had been storing 40,000 of its files on an open web site, an obscure site, never revealed to public interest groups, but generally known among election industry insiders, and available to any hacker with a laptop, I looked at the files. Having a so-called security-conscious voting machine manufacturer store sensitive files on an unprotected public web site, allowing anonymous access, was bad enough, but when I saw what was in the files my hair turned gray. Really. It did. "

"They contained diagrams of remote communications setups, passwords, encryption keys, source code, user manuals, testing protocols, and simulators, as well as files loaded with votes and voting machine software. "

CAN THE PASSWORD BE BYPASSED?
Yes

CAN THE VOTES BE CHANGED?
Yes

In this site: http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0307/S00065.htm

you can find all the steps to tamper the system. step by step. also you can find all the dataset files dieblod left unsecured in their web site..

Need more proof?

 

[russ_watters]

Bad choice of words perhaps. "Integrity" might have been better. The issue for a purely electronic system is not "recounting" but the "audit trail". From Douglas Jones' letter to Kevin Shelley:

It is important to understand that, while the NASED/FEC standards have long required that all DRE systems maintain something called an audit trail, this audit trail does not record the one thing that a bank examiner, for example, would expect to find there: a record of the votes. As a result, unlike the audit trails represented by the paper receipts and internal cash register tape maintained by an ATM, the audit trails of all but a few DRE machines on the market today offer no assurance that the votes were recorded as intended by the voter, and offer no possibility of a meaningful challenge to the honesty of the machine in the event that fraud may be suspected. This is unconscionable!​

Yes, I read that part: how is that any different from a paper ballot or a punch-card? They don't have a back-up copy either.

I'm referring to procedural transparency, i.e. the ability to confirm what happens at each stage of the procedure.

How is that desirable? Human confirmation adds error and enables fraud.

I've been following this stuff for a few months now, if there's anyone credible who's arguing for a different point of view they're not doing it very loudly.

That's the "squeaky wheel" effect: people don't complain if they don't think anything is wrong. Thats rather obvious from the abortion debate.

And frankly, I think much of this is motivated by "computer security experts" raising a controversy because its good for business.

Your post mostly proves you know little of the technical issues involved here.

You just listed two issues with electronic voting machines: neither issue is technical. The issues are human trust issues. Humans trust paper more than they trust a computer screen.

You seem to have picked up the reasons why electronic balloting could work better, without any of the details of why it currently does not. (And treating the issue as a partisan conspiracy rather than a technical problem is pure foolishness.)

Once more with feeling: no voter fraud via electronic voting has ever occurred. Saying it "currently does not" work better is factually wrong.

I asked a question before that wasn't answered: do you trust your ATM to not steal money from you? Why or why not? What recourse do you have if it does steal money from you (ie, how can you prove it)?​

 

[russ_watters]

Need more proof?

...more proof? How about some proof. Any proof. That link contained no proof that machines have been tampered with.

 

[Burnsys]

...more proof? How about some proof. Any proof. That link contained no proof that machines have been tampered with.

It show proof that the machines can be tampered

 

[loseyourname]

I think Russ' point is that there is more than ample proof that paper voting was tampered with at many points in our history. While it may be possible to tamper with electronic votes, there is no evidence that any tampering has taken place, and the ways in which tampering can take place are far fewer than the ways in which tampering with paper votes can take place. The current system isn't perfect and needs to be improved, but it is better than the system we had before.

Furthermore, much of this thread has been devoted to an attempt to show that Kerry should have won the election, an assertion with absolutely no evidence behind it and an assertion that is clearly false at this point.

 

[plover]

Human confirmation adds error and enables fraud.

Not when the confirmation is done by the voter themself of the content of their own ballot in the physical format of the record that is kept.

That's the "squeaky wheel" effect: people don't complain if they don't think anything is wrong.

If someone in the field thought these people were full of it, that person would be squawking—that's how academia works. You seem to be imagining these concerns as something which sprung up in the past year or two for partisan reasons—a picture entirely divorced from reality.

And frankly, I think much of this is motivated by "computer security experts" raising a controversy because its good for business.

Whose business? Jones has been working for the state of Iowa on these issues for at least a decade. Whether there were problems with the current voting machines or not, standards need to be evaluated and enforced. This argument is just more conspiracy crap.

You just listed two issues with electronic voting machines: neither issue is technical.

I responded to the bits of your post that I thought resulted from ambiguity in what I had said. You may choose to educate yourself on the technical issues or not, I'm not going to do it for you. (And in the overall field of election technology, human factors are a technical issue.)

no voter fraud via electronic voting has ever occurred.

I didn't say it had. Jones says in several places that it hasn't. That's not the point. This again just indicates your unwillingness to treat this as technical problem. Your simultaneous insistence on your objectivity while applying a partisan framework is quite striking. (And by the way, I know nothing about the politics of any of the four computer security people I mentioned and neither do you.)

Saying it "currently does not" work better is factually wrong.

And I'm going take your ignorant, partisan opinion over the assessments of people who have been studying the problem for years?

I asked a question before that wasn't answered: do you trust your ATM to not steal money from you? Why or why not? What recourse do you have if it does steal money from you (ie, how can you prove it)?

The best proof yet you don't know what you are talking about. The difference between how this works in ATMs and in voting machines is one of the common themes used in explaining these issues. (In fact, it was used by Jones in the paragraph I quoted earlier.)

 

[plover]

I think Russ' point is that there is more than ample proof that paper voting was tampered with at many points in our history.

No one has denied this.

While it may be possible to tamper with electronic votes, there is no evidence that any tampering has taken place

AFAIK, this is true.

and the ways in which tampering can take place are far fewer than the ways in which tampering with paper votes can take place.

This is not true. They are different. Some of the old scams don't work, but other ones based on the technology become possible. As with any computer security problem, the more widely adopted the technology becomes, the more incentive there is to exploit vulnerabilities. This is becoming an issue now precisely because these machines are becoming widely used.

The current system isn't perfect and needs to be improved, but it is better than the system we had before.

It is better in some ways, but there are new vulnerabilities, and new sources of error. The biggest problems so far have been the bugs in the software, and these are more prevalent than they should be because the FEC/NASED standards haven't adapted to the changing technology yet. The security gaps are glaring however, e.g. the independent company which tested the Diebold equipment for the state of Maryland found that fake voting cards were quite easy to create and program using off-the-shelf components, and there is also the problem that results can be tampered with at the central vote counting servers, many of which are attached to modems and phone lines, and just use a Windows operating system, and are thus just as vulnerable to hacking as any other Windows server (i.e. very).

Furthermore, much of this thread has been devoted to an attempt to show that Kerry should have won the election, an assertion with absolutely no evidence behind it and an assertion that is clearly false at this point.

There have been some tangible problems found, but there has, of yet, been no way to attach a clear meaning to any of them, and it is unlikely they will affect any of the national results. But the integrity of the voting system, which is what many of the recent posts have been about, is far more important than the results of any given election and should be pursued with all diligence.

 

[polyb]

Well I seriously doubt this will change your mind russ but I have found an incident where the e-machines were not behaving correctly. Click http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/margie_boule/index.ssf?/base/living/1101215142230890.xml (you may have to give zip code, etc. to get to it)to read a report about a poll observer and some of the "glitches" observed. Though it is not direct proof but more or less circumstantial, it brings a lot into question, ie cockroach theory applies: if you see one you know there is more.

HERE is the link to the reports of voting problems as being recorded by votersunite.org. BTW, as an aside from you aspersions of conspiracy theory, the GAO has launched an investigation concerning the irregularities. Click HERE

Now this is what verifiedvoting.org is saying about the problems that are part of the e-voting method: Click http://www.verifiedvoting.org/article.php?id=997

Now to sum up some of my concerns as well as why I think a more old fashioned approach is more practical, click http://www.theledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041128/ZNYT01/411280425/1001/BUSINESS . Enjoy.

 

[russ_watters]

I think Russ' point is that there is more than ample proof that paper voting was tampered with at many points in our history. While it may be possible to tamper with electronic votes, there is no evidence that any tampering has taken place, and the ways in which tampering can take place are far fewer than the ways in which tampering with paper votes can take place. The current system isn't perfect and needs to be improved, but it is better than the system we had before.

Furthermore, much of this thread has been devoted to an attempt to show that Kerry should have won the election, an assertion with absolutely no evidence behind it and an assertion that is clearly false at this point.

Yes, you have my position in the two parts of this discussion exactly correct.

Not when the confirmation is done by the voter themself of the content of their own ballot in the physical format of the record that is kept.

omg, are you serious!?? Fraud occurs most commonly (again, your link says it) at the ballot box and by local officials. Additional confirmation at the ballot box can reduce voter error, but that's a secondary consideration to counting error. And it increases the chance for fraud and counting error.

This should be obvious: Being able to "confirm" your vote means you have the ability to change your vote after it is cast (otherwise, there is no point in confirming it). The potential for fraud and error is self-evident: the voting officials now have expanded control over the voting process and can purposely or through error effect the result by manually changing votes - a power no voting official has ever had in any democracy I've ever heard of, nor should ever have.

You seem to be imagining these concerns as something which sprung up in the past year or two for partisan reasons—a picture entirely divorced from reality.

Uh huh - remind me again what the precipitating event was that caused the shift to electronic voting...

The best proof yet you don't know what you are talking about. The difference between how this works in ATMs and in voting machines is one of the common themes used in explaining these issues. (In fact, it was used by Jones in the paragraph I quoted earlier.)

There's a reason I picked that example - its because he uses it, but he gets it wrong.

He cites the reciept you get at an atm as being equivalent to what should be done with voting machines. I suspect you see the flaw I'm getting at and that's why you didn't answer the question. So I'll answer it for you: The answer is that if your ATM steals money from you (meaning it says it gives you $100 and actally only gives you $80), you have no way to prove it and your receipt does nothing to help you. Your only possible hope is that the transaction was somehow recorded correctly inside the machine, ie that its internal balance sheet comes up $20 off at the end of the day.

This is exactly the same as any other counting error - in fact just last week I was at a Subway sandwich shop and a guy, after getting his change and receipt said - 'wait, you gave me change for a $10 and I gave you at $20.' This sort of error is utterly unresolvable (I should know - I waited 5 minutes for my sandwich while they argued without resolution).

And as I showed above, besides not making any improvement, such an unprecidented change in the voting process would open the door for massive fraud.

I didn't say it had. Jones says in several places that it hasn't. That's not the point. This again just indicates your unwillingness to treat this as technical problem.

Actually, it is the point. Its the point of this thread, the point of the study linked in the first post. Its the point of all the conspiracy theories about the election being fixed. With that, I'll stop there. You are obfuscating the point - changing the subject - too much for this conversation to go anywhere useful.

 

[russ_watters]

Well I seriously doubt this will change your mind russ but I have found an incident where the e-machines were not behaving correctly.

As loseyourname picked up on, I know electronic machines are not perfect - in fact, no system is, and I never said otherwise. I am well aware of the problems (like the machine that counted backwards). But the point of this thread was that they are more open to error/fraud and that error/fraud has likely occurred. That point is wrong. Media reports after the election said this election was characterized by unusually low reports of voting problems.

 

[selfAdjoint]

Russ, the points have been made that the current electronic machines, in particular the Diebold ones are
- Not transparent
- Do not provide a paper trail
and
- Their data is easily hacked.

Now whether or not any actual skullduggery took place, wouldn't you agree that it's scandalous to have such a system evaluating our most important election? Or are you going to continue to hide behind the generic "no system is perfect"?

 

[ray b]

Russ, the points have been made that the current electronic machines, in particular the Diebold ones are
- Not transparent
- Do not provide a paper trail
and
- Their data is easily hacked.

Now whether or not any actual skullduggery took place, wouldn't you agree that it's scandalous to have such a system evaluating our most important election? Or are you going to continue to hide behind the generic "no system is perfect"?

then add in the FACT that the PEOPLE who own/control Diebold
promise a BuSh2 win months before the election
so the bias is not supposed but is a real proven fact

just as the 1960 DEAD voters in cook county fixed that election
I think Diebold hacked this one
Ukraine voters willnot let their government be stolen
and are taking to the streets to protest their vote fraud
but we in the so called land of the free are not doing anything

 

[russ_watters]

Russ, the points have been made that the current electronic machines, in particular the Diebold ones are
- Not transparent
- Do not provide a paper trail
and
- Their data is easily hacked.

The first two are certainly true (though "transparent" is a little vague), the 3rd is too vague (what most people are calling hacking is actually user fraud - election officials changing the results from the computer they are charged with operating), but anyway...

Now whether or not any actual skullduggery took place, wouldn't you agree that it's scandalous to have such a system evaluating our most important election?

No, I would not - while the first two are true, I have argued that neither are desirable or necessary (if you disagree, tell me why - everyone keeps repeating those two words without explanation). I discussed the paper trail issue above, for the other, we had a thread not long ago that asked whether we should abandon the secret ballot system - that would be the ultimate in transparency. The verdict was a near-unanamous no.

Or are you going to continue to hide behind the generic "no system is perfect"?

Hide? Its true that no system is perfect and it is true that the flaws in older systems are worse than the flaws in newer ones. Florida, 2000 was an electoral disaster such as this country has never seen. The fact that there hasn't (yet) been any fraud with electronic ballots and the complaints/errors this time around were relatively minor is a testament to their acutal security/accuracy/reliability (though if you want to argue luck, I won't split that hair - you can have it).

The reason "black box balloting" is so popular with conspiracy theorists is the "black box" concept itself: it is impossible to disprove a negative. Its the fundamental property of free energy claims: 'I have in this box [in one particular claim, it actually is a black box] a free energy device - it works, but I won't show you how.' But democracies all have secret ballots and its impossible and undesirable to eliminate it.

 

[russ_watters]

then add in the FACT that the PEOPLE who own/control Diebold
promise a BuSh2 win months before the election
so the bias is not supposed but is a real proven fact

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0828-08.htm is the actual quote (though still clipped to reduce the context...):

The head of a company vying to sell voting machines in Ohio told Republicans in a recent fund-raising letter that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

So first, its not the "people" its a single person. Second, the quote is more than a year old. Third, while it certainly tells you his bias (and stupidity), it does not constitute evidence of fraud.

just as the 1960 DEAD voters in cook county fixed that election I think Diebold hacked this one

Well technically, its not hacking if its by the company who wrote the software. It would be an easter-egg or a backdoor. But again, a poorly phrased quote from someone trying to sell something is not evidence of fraud. As with all great conspiracies, this one would have to be pretty big to be true (at least a hundred people). And as with all great conspiracies, if more than 2 people know it, its not a secret anymore.

In any case, I appreciate your honesty - and this gets the thread back on point: this thread is about allegations of actual fraud, none of which have any actual evidence to support them. The rest of this stuff about potential flaws and security issues is all a smokescreen for that real issue (conspiracy theory).

 

[plover]

This should be obvious: Being able to "confirm" your vote means you have the ability to change your vote after it is cast (otherwise, there is no point in confirming it).

This is a misreading. By confirming the vote, I mean the voter has some way to tell that the choices made are what become the permanent record. Systems as they stand are not secure enough for sufficient confidence in that without a paper record. I have no idea where the idea of the voter changing something after the vote is cast came from.

Uh huh - remind me again what the precipitating event was that caused the shift to electronic voting...

In the most meaningful sense, it was the invention of electronic voting machines 30 years ago or whenever it was. Recent events have caused widespread adoption of still flawed systems which brings the problems to the fore. Computer security risks always increase with market penetration.

This is why what you're saying keeps sounding like conspiracy garbage. The problems were there before recent elections, and they were being solved. They became urgent problems when events caused an acceleration of adoption of these machines before satisfactory solutions were implemented.

There's a reason I picked that example - its because he uses it, but he gets it wrong.

He cites the reciept you get at an atm as being equivalent to what should be done with voting machines.

No, you misunderstand his point. The records kept by an ATM, the customer receipt and, more importantly, the internal audit record, are entirely different than for a voting machine because the transaction is not anonymous for an ATM. This is one source of the technical difficulty in producing a secure electronic voting system.

As Jones said, providing the equivalent of a receipt is just the simplest technical solution to the problem for the moment. No one has said it is ideal.

The standards that have been established for ATMs are also vastly more stringent and robust than the current FEC/NASED standards for voting machines (and most machines for this election were not even checked against the current 2002 standards but previous 1990 standards).

This sort of error is utterly unresolvable.

Not with sufficiently specified and enforced record keeping—which ATMs have, and cash registers, as a rule (always?), do not.

Its the point of this thread, the point of the study linked in the first post. Its the point of all the conspiracy theories about the election being fixed.

I've been talking about the security of voting systems, not the recent election. Whether or not anything fraudulent happened in the recent election (and I have never argued that it has), this problem still exists and is meaningful. Is this off topic for this thread? I suppose, but in the absence of any compelling evidence of non-negligible software problems or of fraud from the recent election, I do think it is the important issue. Did I become interested in this because I had heard of the possibility of fraud in the recent election? Of course. But the technical issues themselves are entirely separate from what problems they may or may not have caused in a specific circumstance. For purposes of this discussion, it is you who appears obsessed with the recent election. I would suggest reading my comments through a lens other than disdain for those who disagree with you.

You've introduced so many strange assumptions as to my motives, and made so many points based on insufficient knowledge of the actual state of voting technology and of the relevant computer security framework, that I really have no idea what you think I'm arguing. It has seemed pointless to try to construct a technical précis as I have not felt like sorting through these misconceptions thoroughly enough to figure out what exactly you're missing. I have pointed to the assessments of the people whose job it is to deal with these issues. While I have no particular belief that my view of the situation is a complete one, or is accurate in all details, I have no reason to believe my sources unreliable. You have provided no backup to your viewpoint, and the only argument you have made from my sources was based on a misinterpretation. I singled out the documents I did because I thought most people would prefer to read a summary rather than a transcript of FEC testimony or a conference paper, not because they were the best or most detailed.

A lot of the time your responses seem to be directed at arguments that the problems with electronic voting are directly analogous to those with paper voting. (And to the extent that problems arise from election administration, this is true of course, but this is not what you were saying.) The most serious problems with the current electronic systems arise from the nature of computers and software development and have no real analogy to previous problems—the worst being the possiblity of untraceable changes made to the tally database, occurring either in the process of data input or after the event, and being the result of either buggy code (the more probable cause) or malice.

The incident in Ohio where a precinct with ~600 voters recorded ~4000 votes for Bush is a good example. There was no obvious relationship between the votes cast and the recorded tally; there was no reason to believe it was fraud, (and if it was it was stupid anyway since it was so easily detectable). But without the paper record of individual votes, there would probably have been no way to assign results for the precinct. As Schneier points out, an invalid paper ballot effects one vote, and statistically the overall effect of these is generally self-cancelling, but a software malfunction can occur at any place along the chain of data collection, affecting a greater or lesser number of votes depending on the location, and affecting them in an arbitrary, non-statistically neutral fashion.

The most obvious things that comes out of reading about this stuff is that the overall issue of balancing the needs of ballot security and ballot anonymity are complex on all levels, technical and administrative, that people have put a lot of thought into achieving these ends, and that the problems are not always intuitive.

 

[russ_watters]

This is a misreading. By confirming the vote, I mean the voter has some way to tell that the choices made are what become the permanent record.

So c'mon, finish the thought - what happens if what is on the screen is different from what is on the paper printout or either are different from the intent of the voter? No one has addressed it yet.

And maybe this is a nitpick, but a "confirmation" is something that happens after - if the vote has not been recorded yet, there is nothing to confirm. Was not the whole issue confirming what is recorded, not what is on the screen?

...the worst being the possiblity of untraceable changes made to the tally database, occurring either in the process of data input or after the event, and being the result of either buggy code (the more probable cause) or malice.

I still do not accept that such errors would be untraceable or uncorrectable. If the data is stored on the voting machine, you can always go back and recover it. So the maximum possible unrecoverable error would be in a single voting machine.

As Schneier points out, an invalid paper ballot effects one vote, and statistically the overall effect of these is generally self-cancelling, but a software malfunction can occur at any place along the chain of data collection, affecting a greater or lesser number of votes depending on the location, and affecting them in an arbitrary, non-statistically neutral fashion.

And yet, the 2000 electoral crisis was based primarily on thousands of flawed single votes. I would agree that they are (generally) self-cancelling, but that doesn't stop the challenges or the conspiracy theories. People still claim Bush stole the 2000 election based on that. Caveat: there were also some issues with machines that caused large numbers of flawed votes and that does provide an analogy to a failed electronic machine. A lot of the conspiracy theory was based on that, but the cause of the biggest electoral crisis in history was the "chads" and they needed to be eliminated immediately.

edit: I missed something obvious: both 1000 unreadable single votes and 1000 votes lost to a malfunctioning machine should be self-cancelling with the caveat that the rate would reflect the percentages of the votes for each candidate (if candidate A got 60% of the votes in the precinct, of 1000 lost votes, 600 by him - that was part of the issue in election 2000).

The incident in Ohio where a precinct with ~600 voters recorded ~4000 votes for Bush is a good example. There was no obvious relationship between the votes cast and the recorded tally; there was no reason to believe it was fraud, (and if it was it was stupid anyway since it was so easily detectable). But without the paper record of individual votes, there would probably have been no way to assign results for the precinct.

This is different from the above - above we were talking about voter verification - this is an actual backup copy of the votes, to be kept by the electoral comission. I would maybe support a backup paper copy only to be used in case of machine failure or proven fraud. The implications of having two vote tallies that both appear valid, but say two different things is too gruesome to consider - it would be Florida x 10.

The most obvious things that comes out of reading about this stuff is that the overall issue of balancing the needs of ballot security and ballot anonymity are complex on all levels, technical and administrative, that people have put a lot of thought into achieving these ends, and that the problems are not always intuitive.

Fair enough.

And one more thing:

You have provided no backup to your viewpoint...

My viewpoint is based on history, logic, your link, my knowledge of computers, and the lack of evidence provided by others. I'm afraid my knowledge of computers is unverifiable - I am entirely self-taught. My logic, if unsound, should be easy to argue against, but thus far, no one has addressed the big point at the top of this post after several tries by me to get people to explain it. I am operating on the assumption that you know what happened in 2000, but if not, I'll gladly look up and link the problems that were had.

I am in the difficult position of trying to prove a negative - which means it is mostly up to you to prove that there are big flaws, not me to prove that there aren't. All I have to go on is last month's election: which went quite well.

 

[polyb]

Gedankan:[/size]

Suppose you are a savvy poltical operative and you have been given the special task of making sure your candidate wins an election at any cost as long as the candidate is not implicated in any wrong doings. How would you go about it? Suppose you have plenty of funds and resources at your disposal and anything goes as long as you do not get caught. Of course if you are caught any allegations will be denied and you would probably not have many days to live!

 

[loseyourname]

I'd probably financially support the family of some crazed suicide-killer willing to blow himself up while shaking hands with my employer's opponent.

 

[BobG]

Gedankan:[/size]

Suppose you are a savvy poltical operative and you have been given the special task of making sure your candidate wins an election at any cost as long as the candidate is not implicated in any wrong doings. How would you go about it? Suppose you have plenty of funds and resources at your disposal and anything goes as long as you do not get caught. Of course if you are caught any allegations will be denied and you would probably not have many days to live!

I would place more voting machines in precincts likely to support my candidate than I placed in precincts likely to support my opponent.

For example, if there's about 160 voters per machine in my friendly precinct, they won't have to wait in line very long. If long lines aren't the first thing a potential voter sees when they pull into the parking lot, they're more likely to vote.

I'd fix it so there were about 800 or so voters per machine in unfriendly precincts. The lines would extend clear out the door. Many in line might realize they have to be somewhere and decide not to vote. Some might see the line and decide not to vote before they've even gotten out of their car.

If I were a Democrat, I'd make enforcement on provisional ballots as lenient as possible. Renters are most likely to have problems with voter rolls and renters, generally being lower income, are more likley to support Democrats.

If I were a Republican, I'd enforce rules on provisional ballots as strictly as possible. In fact, if possible, I'd put two or three unfriendly precincts in the same building. That way, at least a few votes would get tossed just because, even though the voter went to the right building, he got in the wrong line and therefore voted in the wrong precinct.

What's to get caught. It's all legal and no one has to deny anything.

 

[polyb]

Whacky, violent, and crazy! I like it! If I ever run for office in south america, you're hired!

The only problem though is that the damage control would be hell and you would probably lose your reward as well as your life.

 

[Smurf]

Whacky, violent, and crazy! I like it! If I ever run for office in south america, you're hired!

you don't run for president in South America, you wait for a government to emerge that's unfriendly towards American Big Business and then get appointed by the CIA when they organize a coup... but you'll probably like that better anyway

 

[BobG]

Why South America? Why not the US?

Byron (Low Tax) Looper ran for Georgia's State House as a Democrat and lost.

He moved to Tennessee, legally changed his middle name to "Low Tax", became a Republican, and lost in his 1996 bid for the Tennessee State House of Representatives.

In 1998, he went one better. His opponent for State Senate, Tommy Burks, was murdered two weeks before the election. With no living opponent, Looper was able to win 5% of the vote - a write-in candidate used a hastily organized campaign to get 95% of the vote. The fact that he was under indictment for theft, and that his ex-girlfriend accused him of rape, and that key Republicans campaigned against him probably left him a little bitter.

Despondent, Looper gave up a political career and is now a prison inmate, serving a life sentence for murdering his opponent, Tommy Burks.

Okay, not very successful, I admit.

But how about winning a campaign by dying. That always gets the voters' sympathy. It worked for Mel Carnahan. He was running for Missouri governor in 2000 against incumbent John Ashcroft, died during the election, and rode the wave of sympathy to a narrow victory. (Which is why Ashcroft was available to become US Attorney General).

 

[polyb]

Talk about a ghost candidate, boy you could really pull off some interesting tricks with a dead guy in office. So the startegy of staging your death, winning the seat and still operating behind the scenes does sound great. You could embezzle all sorts of funds a not have to worry about consequences!

Unfortunately it didnt work that way for Paul Wellstone!

Now seriously, the point of the thought experiment is to establish:
a) can the e-vote machines be used for fraud.
b) given the already inherent problems, how e-vote machines puts one more monkey wrench into the system.
c) to bring to light methods that would give the appearence of no vote fraud, ie spreading the vote discrepencies far enough that it looks valid to any casual observer, etc.

 

[russ_watters]

Now seriously, the point of the thought experiment is to establish:
a) can the e-vote machines be used for fraud.
b) given the already inherent problems, how e-vote machines puts one more monkey wrench into the system.
c) to bring to light methods that would give the appearence of no vote fraud, ie spreading the vote discrepencies far enough that it looks valid to any casual observer, etc.

Well, the nice thing about thought experiments is they don't need to reflect reality: in physics you ignore friction and efficiency losses and with this one you can assume a 100% success rate with no possibility of getting caught! For example:

I would place more voting machines in precincts likely to support my candidate than I placed in precincts likely to support my opponent.

Sure you could - as long as no one asks what you are doing!

 

[BobG]

Did it happen? Sure people complained afterwards, but people always complain after their candidate loses. Being the party in control of a state's elections is always an advantage. And Ohio did have at least 400 provisional ballots tossed in two precincts that shared the same building. The person should have gotten in line 1. Instead they got in line 2 and were given a provisional ballot just in case they really did live in line 2's precinct. Since they didn't live in line 2's precinct, their vote was tossed.

 

[polyb]

Hey I found something relevant while the murmur of this topic is rumbling. The news has dropped it and our politicians are complaining that the Ukranian exit polls don't match the vote tallies. Funny, isn't it. Wait and see I guess.


20 Amazing Facts About Voting in the USA

Did you know...

1. 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S.
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diebold

2. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry.
http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0916-04.htm
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html

3. The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers.
http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/private_company.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html

4. The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/sunday/main632436.shtml
http://www.wishtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1647886

5. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to be chairman of ES&S. He became Senator based on votes counted by ES&S machines.
http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2004/03/03_200.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/031004Fitrakis/031004fitrakis.html

6. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, long-connected with the Bush family, was recently caught lying about his ownership of ES&S by the Senate Ethics Committee.
http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=26
http://www.hillnews.com/news/012903/hagel.aspx
http://www.onlisareinsradar.com/archives/000896.php

7. Senator Chuck Hagel was on a short list of George W. Bush's vice-presidential candidates.
http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_28/b3689130.htm
http://theindependent.com/stories/052700/new_hagel27.html

8. ES&S is the largest voting machine manufacturer in the U.S. and counts almost 60% of all U.S. votes.
http://www.essvote.com/HTML/about/about.html
http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html

9. Diebold's new touch screen voting machines have no paper trail of any votes. In other words, there is no way to verify that the data coming out of the machine is the same as what was legitimately put in by voters.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm
http://www.itworld.com/Tech/2987/041020evotestates/pfindex.html

10. Diebold also makes ATMs, checkout scanners, and ticket machines, all of which log each transaction and can generate a paper trail.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm
http://www.diebold.com/solutions/default.htm

11. Diebold is based in Ohio.
http://www.diebold.com/aboutus/ataglance/default.htm

12. Diebold employed 5 convicted felons as senior managers and developers to help write the central compiler computer code that counted 50% of the votes in 30 states.
http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,61640,00.html
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/10/301469.shtml

13. Jeff Dean, Diebold's Senior Vice-President and senior programmer on Diebold's central compiler code, was convicted of 23 counts of felony theft in the first degree.
http://www.chuckherrin.com/HackthevoteFAQ.htm#how
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-8.pdf

14. Diebold Senior Vice-President Jeff Dean was convicted of planting back doors in his software and using a "high degree of sophistication" to evade detection over a period of 2 years.
http://www.chuckherrin.com/HackthevoteFAQ.htm#how
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/bbv_chapter-8.pdf

15. None of the international election observers were allowed in the polls in Ohio.
http://www.globalexchange.org/update/press/2638.html
http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2004/10/26/loc_elexoh.html

16. California banned the use of Diebold machines because the security was so bad. Despite Diebold's claims that the audit logs could not be hacked, a chimpanzee was able to do it. (See the movie here.)
http://wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,63298,00.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4874190

17. 30% of all U.S. votes are carried out on unverifiable touch screen voting machines with no paper trail.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/sunday/main632436.shtml

18. All - not some - but all the voting machine errors detected and reported in Florida went in favor of Bush or Republican candidates.
http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,65757,00.html
http://www.yuricareport.com/ElectionAftermath04/ThreeResearchStudiesBushIsOut.htm
http://www.rise4news.net/extravotes.html
http://www.ilcaonline.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=950
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0411/S00227.htm

19. The governor of the state of Florida, Jeb Bush, is the President's brother.
http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/tallahassee/news/local/7628725.htm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10544-2004Oct29.html

20. Serious voting anomalies in Florida - again always favoring Bush - have been mathematically demonstrated and experts are recommending further investigation.
http://www.yuricareport.com/ElectionAftermath04/ThreeResearchStudiesBushIsOut.htm
http://www.computerworld.com/governmenttopics/government/policy/story/0,10801,97614,00.html
http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/tens_of_thousands.html
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1106-30.htm
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2004/110904.html

http://uscountvotes.org/


This was found @

http://www.truthout.org/cblog.shtml