[jashobeam]

I saw many people wearing buttons that said "I voted by touchscreen" instead of simply "I voted".

Was this supposed to mean that the voter endorses or advocates the touchscreen? As touchscreen voting was the subject of some controversy in the Presidential election of 2004, I view these buttons as a means of conditioning the masses toward acceptance of the touchscreen. Why else would it be necessary to advertise the method or equipment used to cast ballots, if not for the purpose of promoting its trustworthiness? That type of effort to draw my attention, draws my suspicion. The fact that someone has taken the time to make an issue of it by printing thousands of buttons, does indeed make it an issue. If that particular type of ballot box is all that is offered to a voter, then it's not like the voter had much choice in the matter. To afterward place a sticker or button that implies a conscious decision was involved to use an electronic ballot box is misleading.

Whether or not you think the electronic touchscreen ballot boxes are more or less likely to be tampered with or are more or less accurate isn't really my point, though I would like to know what you all think about them. My point is that I dislike feeling like I'm being conditioned.

[Fu-man Shoe]

I'd have to agree with you, except that I would say you are not just "feeling"
like you're being conditioned, you *are* being carefully conditioned.

It's a process.

Fu-Man Shoe

[Omni04]

maybe we should experiment with higher level conditioning and see if we can condition people to react when they see the button. Perhaps a remake of godzilla with a button superimposed on his head.

[Andrew Rothman]

This is what it ought to say:

http://storetn.cafepress.com/nocache/8/36998098_F_store.jpg

[LAR-15]

I voted by electronic ballot everytime I vote.

I like it.

No darn papers.

:)

[Standing Wolf]

I voted on paper. Here in the non-Denver part of Colorado, there wasn't much doubt my vote was counted fairly and squarely.

[antarti]

We voted via touchscreen in the last Presidential election.

They didn't make allowances for "write in" candidates at many polling places.

[LAR-15]

If someone is hellbent on making your vote not count, they will.

Electroinic, papyrus, paper or not.

[wingnutx]

paper trail good.

no trail, ungood.

[Joejojoba111]

But with paper, there's a paper-trail. There's evidence. When you mark a solid object that object exists, and will have to be destroyed or counted.

Electronic voting has none of these qualities. There is no way to even know that the voting machines work. For all you know you could be pushing a button and it does absolutely nothing except thank you for pushing it. The numbers could be input into the hard disks before the 'voting' ever begins.

And the electronic voting companies have taken heat already because their software isn't completely secure. And even if it is 'secure' they could tell someone how to gain access, on the sly. And to complicate matters, none of these companies are completely a-political.

The only touch-screen voting should be if it prints your vote out.

[LAR-15]

A Zippo can take out your paper trail

[Desertdog]

I voted by absentee ballot. If the mail got through, I left a paper trail.

[jsalcedo]

All we have is touch screen.

It would be better if voting was done over the net like banking transactions with routing numbers, electronic receipts and secure email confirmations.

Voter turn-out would increase dramatically and I wouldn't have to walk unarmed into a polling place.

[Zundfolge]

A Zippo can take out your paper trail
Yes, but then the absence of paper trail that should be there makes the tampering obvious.

[falconer]

And the electronic voting companies have taken heat already because their software isn't completely secure. And even if it is 'secure' they could tell someone how to gain access, on the sly. And to complicate matters, none of these companies are completely a-political.

The only touch-screen voting should be if it prints your vote out.


Just for the record, Diebold's source code is independantly reviewed and audited at compile time. They also print out a record of the vote.

The biggest problem with those machines is that plugging the power in, putting in the paper, and turning them on is WAY too complicated for the blue haired old ladies working the polls.

[Jim March]

Right. I'm going to respond in more detail to this tomorrow. I'm kinda wiped right now.

For the moment, I'll give y'all some things to chew on:

http://www.equalccw.com/sscomments1.pdf

http://www.equalccw.com/sscomments2.pdf

Those represent what we knew about Diebold systems as of late 2003. Both point to massive incompetence (at best) on the part of the "Independent Testing Authorities" that are *supposed* to be checking code.

We know quite a bit more now. For instance, there's a monster of a security hole in the Diebold optical scan system...yeah, there's a paper trail but it isn't referenced after most elections:

http://www.blackboxvoting.org/BBVreport.pdf

The "extreme Reader's Digest short form" is that from a single keyboard, program code could be entered that would then be copied up to each precinct's optical scan machine. Once uploaded, it could act as an "electronic ballot box stuffer" AND tamper with the end-of-day printouts that show a record of votes taken in for each candidate/issue and form a critical audit trail. Only a total hand-recount would catch the fraud and in six states, that's illegal and uncommon in most others.

--------

One other tidbit on the "certified code issue": in November of 2003 Diebold software was audited across all 17 county customers of theirs in California. All 17 were found to be running at least some UNcertified, illegal code, installed by Diebold. A citizen lawsuit on the matter eventually netted California a refund from Diebold of $2.6mil. I'm familiar with it because I was one of the two lead plaintiffs along with Bev Harris; we each collected a "bounty" from Diebold of $76,000.

So...yeah, I think there's cause for concern. Not just on Diebold: if the ITAs are as big a failure as the Diebold episode points out, we have to question ALL the vendors.

[Jim March]

Oh yeah. One more detail. When you look at who founded Global Election Systems (bought by Diebold in 2002 and renamed Diebold Election Systems), you'll really get scared:

http://www.equalccw.com/tmoef.pdf

[Jim March]

Forgot to add: for full disclosure, I'm now a paid staff/researcher/activist for Black Box Voting, the 501(c)(3) activism/educational non-profit Bev Harris founded, and have been for almost a month. I was a volunteer for the org since...well, back to about July 2003 but we weren't organized until '04...

http://www.blackboxvoting.org

[f4t9r]

Most important thing
I Voted
Do not know if it would have mattered if I complained or if there was another option. They handed me a card that looked like a credit card , put it in the machine and did touch button. It was the first time I had seen such a thing , we always did the punch the card before.

[spartacus2002]

I voted once where we filled in bubbles on a scan-in piece of paper, the machine sucked the paper in and recorded the vote, depositing the paper into a locked hamper in the machine. At the end of the night, they hooked each machine to a landline and it dialed in and reported the votes.

Quick tabulation, paper trail.

[Wags]

Touch screen, first time in my area. I hope my vote was counted.....

[Jim March]

Spartacus: you're describing "precinct optical scan". Sounds great, but:

http://www.blackboxvoting.org/BBVreport.pdf

[Joejojoba111]

Jesus Jim, I knew there were issues, but :eek:

It's just too easy, it's way too easy. It has always been expected that people would try to cheat in elections, that's why the system needs to be as robust and redundant as possible.

And did you hear about the hard drives that were simply 'too full' to take move votes in the presidential election? Don't even remember which state it was in, don't care either.

[Jim March]

Here's one of our collections of trouble reports on E-voting:

http://www.bbvforums.org/forums/messages/8/114.html?1131601396

Note the ones covering Arnold's vote getting hosed by LA County :D.

Smooooth PR move THAT is.

[c_yeager]

We should go back to the good 'ole days when voter fraud was impossible due to not having computers...


wait a minute :uhoh:


People were just wearing the buttons so you would know not to shake their hands.

[Jim March]

Folks, vote fraud has been around forever.

But...there's a difference between the sort of "retail fraud" Chicago was (and often is) famous for and the "wholesale fraud" possible with electronic voting machines.

In "retail fraud" you need a whole lot of conspirators, something the size of Tammany Hall in NYC or the Chicago Democratic ward boss system. Each fraudster is rigging a limited number of votes.

With electronic "wholesale" fraud, it's very possible to rig an entire county with just one person guilty of fraud. THAT is new, folks. It raises the danger significantly.

That's not to say retail fraud doesn't need controlling - it does. And for that matter, there's yet a third type of fraud, what I call "disenfranchisement fraud" where people are screwed out of voting completely via doctored registration lists and a new twist, the ol' "not enough voting machines in some areas" game leaving "the wrong sort of people" (by geographic area) in line for six, seven, eight hours to vote. In the rain, in the case of Ohio '04...yeah, that really happened.

A widespread perception of vote fraud is enough to trigger something extremely unAmerican: election violence. This last election we had party HQs on both sides raided, vandalized, stolen from...more than any previous election at least since the '60s.

That's not the America I want to live in.

[Joejojoba111]

I think the black neighborhoods with long line-ups had 2 explanations, one was that it was to reduce their votes. The other was that based on past turnouts they didn't expect many people.

The truth is probably, as usual, somewhere in between.


But you summed up the Evote problem succintly, it's just too easy to cheat now.

I think that everone should be scared, because you have to assume it won't work to your benefit. You have to assume that your team will play fair, and the other team will cheat.

[roo_ster]

Yeah, paper ballots, in and of themselves, will not prevent fraud. But, as JM stated, it is a retail thing requiring many fraudsters.

Jumping to today, many folks are hugely more productive with the aid of PCs, networks, etc. This can be used for good (routing materials to disaster areas, disseminating needed info via email, etc) or it can be used for ill (hacking Choicepoint & stealing credit card nums, rigging an election, etc.).

How does one prevent the ill while maximizing the good? Well, companies need to get their accounting machines OFF the net. Most businesses have no good reason not to run them standalone or on a closed network. In the arena of elections, PCs need to be avoided as a tool as much as possible, especially for official reporting and tabulation. Paper ballots with easy-to-understand operating procedures need to be kept for auditability.

It is my opinion that the integrity of our election system is important enough to forego the convenience of PC & software (especially if it is not open source). I want more people involved. I want it to require more people to count & account for ballots. The more people involved, the more likely that any fraud is to be noticed and reported.

To sum up, shine as much light on the process and maximize the number of observers. The use of those magic boxes under our desks are at odds with that.

[Jim March]

In Ohio, the "long lines to vote" thing happened primarily in two areas: college town precincts with lots of students and high-minority-population areas.

The only real connection between the two is: they both tend to vote Democrat.

:scrutiny:

When you combine those games with funky voter registration issues AND electronic vote fraud, I get this horrid suspicion Kerry won Ohio. And I'm saying that as somebody that hates Kerry's guts, the words stick in my throat.

[HankB]

It doesn't matter how you vote.

It doesn't really matter WHO you vote for.

The only thing that matters is who's counting the ballots.

(Note to Jim March: Maybe the lines were long in democRATic areas because a lot of the people who vote for democRATS aren't, shall we say, the sharpest knives in the drawer? Remember how many were "confused" by the infamous butterfly ballots in Florida? Note that nobody from predominantly GOP areas had trouble figuring them out, and in their classes elementary teachers gave similar ballots to 3rd and 4th graders who had no problem, either. Yet some insist they were still "too hard" for people who wanted to vote democRAT.)

[Can'thavenuthingood]

Note that nobody from predominantly GOP areas had trouble figuring them out, and in their classes elementary teachers gave similar ballots to 3rd and 4th graders who had no problem, either. Yet some insist they were still "too hard" for people who wanted to vote democRAT.)


Some people are predisposed to victimhood.

Vick

[Jim March]

HankB: I've seen the videos and talked to people that observed those monster lines in the rain. The people WERE voting at the correct precincts.

[Jim March]

For some reason I can't edit that last post - I was going to add:

(This is specifically in reference to Ohio, Nov. of '04. Penny Little's documentary "Electile Dysfunction" (:rolleyes: at the title!) covered the situation VERY well. I've spoken to her and her cameraman about what they saw. Full disclosure yet again: there's a couple of "talking head clips" of me in ED but I wasn't paid or anything...)

[Henry Bowman]

Jim, re: Ohio in '04,

There were long lines everywhere. Record turnout. In my 99.9% white republican suburban precinct, I waited almost an hour, my wife about 2 hours. Sure, that's not the 6-8 hours seen in areas where the turnout had traditionally been extremely low. Despite the HUGE drive to register 1st time Dem voters and to get them to the polls, despite thousands of college students who usually would have voted in their home, non-swing state unexpectedly registering and voting Dem in Ohio, Kerry still lost - fair and square. The only -- ONLY -- evidence the moveon.org moonbat kool-aid drinkers had to argue was that exit polling did not match actual polling.

Very few in Ohio used the touch screen voting. Most of us used the tried and true punch cards and have never had a problem doing so.

I hate to see you expressing doubt about Ohio.

[Jim March]

*I* hate expressing doubt about Ohio. But yeah, I am.

I'll get some more hard data for you. There were just a LOT of hinky things going on, it's hard to count them all...

[roo_ster]

Who runs Ohio elections at the local level? Is it a bunch of (Republican) appointees, or are local election officials elected?

If the latter, how in the world can an election-day polling place SNAFU in majority Democrat districts be laid at the feet of the Bu????ler Brigade?

You can't blame Bushco when local Democrats elect incompetent officials.

[Gifted]

Something to be more worried about-Diebold also makes ATM machines:what:
Seriously. Next time(or next couple of times, I've only seen a few marked), look over the machine and find who manufactured it. I wonder if thier electino machine troubles spill over...

[setxcypress]

I have walked up to an ATM before and seen a windows error before, had the diebold mark on it. Made me want to and I did go to another ATM.

[Jim March]

Gifted:

Diebold has been making "bank supplies" since the 1850s - the oldest products being safes, and later bank security systems in general such as alarms, vaults and the like, and then ATMs.

It wasn't until 2002 that they bought Global Election Systems and it's voting machines and restructured Global as a Diebold division (Diebold Election Systems Inc. or "DESI"). We have some indications that the DESI unit is somewhat "rogue" within Diebold corporation (based in Canton OH). DESI is still run out of Vancouver BC with offices in McKinney TX.

So, the linkage to the ATMs is kinda indirect.

However.

Getting involved in Global in the first place was sloppy. Doubly so - not only did the products suck (see the "sscommentsX.pdf" files previously referenced, esp. the first) but the Global officers and key employees were beyond "problematic" - see also the "tmoef.pdf" file previously linked in this thread.

For the Diebold Canton office to have missed EITHER of these factors would be really bad. They appear to have missed both? That kind of sloppiness could indicate a general problem with the corporate culture and yes, they ARE having problems in the ATM division, although how much of that is technical and how much is due to competition with debit-card readers at gas stations, eateries, grocery stores and the like is open to question.

Check out Diebold's stock chart over the last 3 months:

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=DBD&t=3m

They're fluttering upwards a bit now but it isn't that strong a rally and they crashed hard not long ago. The "Diebold" brand name is now *trashed* so far as a lot of the general public is concerned. That could easily affect sales of bank-related *anything* - both ATMs and security/alarms. Would you want to be a bank whose customer's money is "protected by Diebold security", when Diebold voting machines can literally be hacked by a Chimpanzee?!

Yeah, a genuine Chimp name of Baxter:

http://www.bbvdocs.org/videos/baxterVPR.mov

[c_yeager]

Something to be more worried about-Diebold also makes ATM machines

They make a *lot* of ATM machines. The odd thing about this is that the ATM machines conduct significantly more complex tasks that a voting booth, and they do so flawlessly time and time again all day, every day. You see, when your customers are banks and consumers you are held to pretty high standards, when you serve the government, not so much.

[No_Brakes23]

This is what it ought to say:

http://storetn.cafepress.com/nocache/8/36998098_F_store.jpg


God, where can I get one of those. San Diego is all computerized up with its voting...

[k_dawg]

I live in south florida.. the chances of problems with hte touchscreen is insignificant compared to the tens of thousands dead people voting...

[Joejojoba111]

Exactly! You accept that there is going to be graft.

Therefore it is imperative to make it as difficult as possible to cheat!

'Digitizing' the whole works makes it very easy to cheat.

[Desertdog]

Therefore it is imperative to make it as difficult as possible to cheat!

I agree. I do wonder if voting by absentee ballot makes more difficult or less difficult to cheat. I do know that they do not send an acknownedgement that your vote was received, much less counted.

[jashobeam]

Hey JM,

Thank you for all of the information you provided here on THR. When I started this thread I felt certain that at least one member would have some evidence against Diebold's touchscreen blackbox, but I didn't expect anyone to be so thoroughly knowledgeable on the subject. So, again, thank you for responding and sharing.

[ctdonath]

the chances of problems with hte touchscreen is insignificantWhat problem? Your vote was recorded exactly as Deibold wanted it recorded. 10,000 voting corpses is nothing compared to those of live voters being counted the way the counters want them counted.