Electronic Voting

BBC News reports more than 140,000 ballots were rejected in May.

Tens of thousands of votes in the Holyrood election were rejected by the counting machines without any human adjudication, BBC Scotland has learned.
An investigation has established that the machines were programmed to reject some of the new style ballot papers automatically. They never appeared on the screens to be challenged by the parties or adjudicated by returning officers.

The Scotland Office said there was no evidence it added to voter confusion. It added that, in the instance of auto-adjudication for the 3 May election, the decision was taken between returning officers and the e-counting provider.

However, First Minister Alex Salmond described the development as "astonishing" and deeply disturbing. "I was under the impression - until this revelation - that the ballots that were rejected were actually seen by the election agents as part of the process," he said.

Excuse me, "the decision was taken between returning officers and the e-counting provider"? These people took it upon themselves to arbitrarily reject 140,00 ballots?
Something is rotten in Scotland.

I'm blue-in-the-face (no pun intended) describing, in pain-staking detail, how outisde database contractors systematically cooked the books, based on the specific instructions given them, in the ... can you guess what comes next? ... in the Florida "election" circa 2000. After the "success" of this endeavor, many have been eager to jump on the "electronic voting" bandwagon.

There's a way to hijack any election. How about dead people voting? How about one county with an unusually high discard rate? I don't think electronic voting is anymore dangerous than paper ballots. On the contrary, they're both systems that need constant oversight.

queequeger;382067 wrote:

There's a way to hijack any election. How about dead people voting? How about one county with an unusually high discard rate?

Electronic voting has all that and more.

I don't think electronic voting is anymore dangerous than paper ballots. On the contrary, they're both systems that need constant oversight.

How do you provide constant oversight on a closed-source computer system? It may be theoretically possible to make an electronic voting sistem that is at least as secure as paper, but nobody has done it, and it seems as if the big players would rather die than do so.

Who needs dead people? Philadelphia apparently allows up to some silly number (100?) of homeless people to register to vote at any address in the city ... so for the price of a few bottles of cheap vodka you can swing a ward ... and, you don't even have to have the homeless people you registered be the ones who show up to vote.

wolf;382099 wrote:

and, you don't even have to have the homeless people you registered be the ones who show up to vote.

Here in Virginia, you have to show ID, and they compare it to the list, and they make you recite your address. They don't have those checks in Penna?

Happy Monkey;382094 wrote:

It may be theoretically possible to make an electronic voting sistem that is at least as secure as paper, but nobody has done it, and it seems as if the big players would rather die than do so.

I agree with this as forcefully as I disagree on the other thread.

glatt;382104 wrote:

Here in Virginia, you have to show ID, and they compare it to the list, and they make you recite your address. They don't have those checks in Penna?

The problem is what happens to your vote after you make it. If and how it's credited, for whom it's credited, how the vote can be audited and recounted if necessary.

Hardcopy backups at the time of voting so every vote DOES have a reference, maybe. Honestly, I don't care either way, there will always be ways to defraud the vote, and they will always be used. It would just be nice to not waste all that paper.

Flint;382055 wrote:

pain-staking detail

pains taking, dumbass.

Dude, staking hurts.

Electronic voting machines and the illegal alien/dead person voting are both problems. Whatever you may think of each, the reality is that a large and growing number of Americans have less or no confidence in the outcome of elections because of perceived problems in these areas. Lack of confidence in the outcome of elections is bad for democracy. There's legislation pending on part of the problem, but it seems to me that a constitutional amendment might be a good idea--one that deals with both issues. Any thoughts?

A constitutional amendment to do what, exactly? Make voting mandatory?

Or to forbid voting after you're dead?

Welcome to the Cellar Sigwrite:D

What legislation are you talking about?

Sigwrite;382302 wrote:

There's legislation pending on part of the problem, but it seems to me that a constitutional amendment might be a good idea--one that deals with both issues. Any thoughts?

Legislation was passed years ago. But it required actions by our current leader. That is did not happen. Search the Cellar for discussions involving the word HAVA to better appreciate the problem including:
Easy Voting Fraud Machines and
Letting the Voter Count

As orthodoc notes, what good is bombing when you don't have a target; when you don't even know who the enemy is. That bombing is the Constitutional Amendment solution. The legislation was passed many years ago.

Dead people voting? It is a popular myth. Even Federal prosecuters were fired because these dead people voting could not be found. But the myth continues. These electronic voting machines are the hurricane threat to elections. Dead people voting - a sun shower.

I hate the idea of e-voting. I like going to the ballot box and placing my cross on the paper. I think it gives it more of a sense of occassion. I really hate the way the 'theatre' of elections has been watered down. I don't mean the lying (sorry acting) of politicians...that's alive and well:P But the whole business of balloons and badges and people with loudspeakers driving round towns playing music and generating excitement. We're in danger of over sanitizing elections in my country, I think. There's room for excitment and tradition.

We have had E-voting in Georgia for a number of elections now. There were few problems. It seemed to work. I think they are going to begin to mandate a paper back up now but I can't remember if it passed or not.

All this conspiracy bull shit about purposefully fixed voting machines in the US I believe is crap. Errors? sure, quite possible. Some kind of grand conspiracy to defraud the US public, unlikely.

Sure, nothing like that has ever happened before.

I am just looking for someone to present concrete evidence of some grand conspiracy. So far no one has been able to do so.

Wouldn't it just be business as usual; but with newer, better tools?

Flint;384896 wrote:

Wouldn't it just be business as usual; but with newer, better tools?

That would be true if you bought the fact that there was widespread fraud in any history of recent elections. I do not.

TheMercenary;384893 wrote:

I am just looking for someone to present concrete evidence of some grand conspiracy. So far no one has been able to do so.

Why do you need concrete evidence that it has happened? Isn't it enough that there is concrete evidence that it is insanely easy to do and therefore, if it hasn't happened already, it eventually will?

I have no idea if this answers your specific question Merc because I haven't read it but this may help you.

Fixing Elections: The Failure of America's Winner Take All Politics - Steven Hill

http://www.amazon.com/Fixing-Elections-Failure-Americas-Politics/dp/0415931940

piercehawkeye45;384982 wrote:

I have no idea if this answers your specific question Merc because I haven't read it but this may help you.

Fixing Elections: The Failure of America's Winner Take All Politics - Steven Hill

http://www.amazon.com/Fixing-Elections-Failure-Americas-Politics/dp/0415931940

No, that is about the electoral vote process and how he thinks the system is broken. As soon as we go to a general vote rural states will lose a voice.

Happy Monkey;384945 wrote:

Why do you need concrete evidence that it has happened? Isn't it enough that there is concrete evidence that it is insanely easy to do and therefore, if it hasn't happened already, it eventually will?

You have to be kidding right? You think just because something can happen it will. We could have a nuclear war but we haven't. Yea, I want concrete proof of widespread voter fraud in US elections. Got any?

TheMercenary;384938 wrote:

That would be true if you bought the fact that there was widespread fraud in any history of recent elections. I do not.

It's called a graveyard mentality. The obvious problem does not exist until hundreds die. TheMercenary is simply using the same logic to prove no voting problems will even exist until fraud elects a president. Graveyard mentality.

TheMercenary;385147 wrote:

You have to be kidding right? You think just because something can happen it will. We could have a nuclear war but we haven't. Yea, I want concrete proof of widespread voter fraud in US elections. Got any?

Oh, it happens.

Flyers have been sent out to misdirect voters on dates and polling places. Official-looking people have been stationed at polling places to intimidiate voters with demands. In Philadelphia, it's been taken a step further with physical violence.

TheMercenary;385147 wrote:

You have to be kidding right? You think just because something can happen it will. We could have a nuclear war but we haven't. Yea, I want concrete proof of widespread voter fraud in US elections. Got any?

We have to remember who is running the elections, partisans of the two major parties. They both try to game the system with varying success. Both groups of partisans are true believers so even cheating is righteous. There is cheating in every election from Lincoln marching Republican boys to the polls to Democratic caskets voting in Philadelphia.

bluecuracao;385198 wrote:

Oh, it happens.

Flyers have been sent out to misdirect voters on dates and polling places. Official-looking people have been stationed at polling places to intimidiate voters with demands. In Philadelphia, it's been taken a step further with physical violence.

Note key word "widespread". None of that has proven to made a difference in the eventual outcome.

Griff;385215 wrote:

We have to remember who is running the elections, partisans of the two major parties. They both try to game the system with varying success. Both groups of partisans are true believers so even cheating is righteous. There is cheating in every election from Lincoln marching Republican boys to the polls to Democratic caskets voting in Philadelphia.

But the bottom line is that it has made little difference in the eventual outcome.

It made a big difference in Florida, in 2000.

TheMercenary;385147 wrote:

You have to be kidding right? You think just because something can happen it will. We could have a nuclear war but we haven't.

I support precautions against nuclear war as well.

Not in Florida. Jigger the ballots one way or another way, the shift totaled maybe fifty ballots. Even with the Democrats making the decisions, each and every reexamination had Bush winning by a greater or lesser margin. And eventually the Supreme Court told the Dem Party it was time to quit their stalling.

Considering that there was no prospect whatsoever of the Democratic candidate competently facing 9-11 -- that is, attempting to win the ensuing war, which in some eyes is George Bush's unforgivable sin (I just can't see it with those eyes) -- I say the Republic was fortunate to have no further continuation of the Clinton legacy.

Urbane Guerrilla;387549 wrote:

Not in Florida. Jigger the ballots one way or another way, the shift totaled maybe fifty ballots. Even with the Democrats making the decisions, each and every reexamination had Bush winning by a greater or lesser margin. And eventually the Supreme Court told the Dem Party it was time to quit their stalling.
*silly part deleted*

Both parties tried to win the election in Florida in ways that had nothing to do with the actual vote. The holes in the system made that possible. That is reason enough for prophlactics.

Urbane Guerrilla;387549 wrote:

I say the Republic was fortunate to have no further continuation of the Clinton legacy.

I say there is no promise we are not about to experience another one.

TheMercenary;387602 wrote:

I say there is no promise we are not about to experience another one.

That is some scarey shit. There'd be gun grabbing at home and continued aggression overseas.