Electronic Voting Machines — A National Disgrace

Perhaps… BUT, they worked as they were intended to work in the last two elections. Kudo’s to the Diebold..

These idiots are using Windows? Microsoft Windows?

That’s got to be incorrect, right? I didn’t think there’d be a computer literate person on the face of the earth who would use Windows for something that so obviously needs airtight security. Windows?

My God!!!! Talk about morons…..

The biggest disgrace is the fact that other countries can get this right. Why can’t we?

Pedro

Please do not include Canada. We are stuck in the 20th century. We actually use paper and pencil. So unless someones rigging the supplied pencils. Oh and by the way, amazingly it works extremely well.

And the solution is so simple:
A) Vote on an electronic machine that prints out your vote as a readable receipt, much like a lottery ticket.
B) Insert the receipt in a separate machine on the way out that is used for tabulating the votes.
This way you have a printed list of what you selected before it is counted, it is counted quickly, and the receipts that were inserted into the counter can be directly read in case that a recount or verification is needed.
Why is this made so complicated?

#3 – you may be confusing credit management, mortgage sales – with for-real banking. At least in the States, there is nothing more over-scrutinized than banking.

It was banking IT that sorted out millenium problems so well that people joke about it as a non-event – without knowing a jot about what the banking industry did to sort the whole thing out in advance – in triplicate. Which is “how” it became a non-event.

The same goes for real online security systems. Sure, human/social engineering will happen. That’s still in the hands of dodo consumers. But, the banking end – with banks that actually live up to the regs – is solid.

Banks that don’t? Well, then, you’re back to administrative and social questions – not design.

Any machine can hacked if you allow unfettered and freedom of time contraints to the hackers. The part of this report that seems not to have made the news is that is exactly how the Secretary of States office did this study.
She hints at it in her statement…..

*****It did not deal with any physical security measures that counties might take and “made no assumptions about constraints on the attackers,’’ Secretary of State Debra Bowen said in a telephone news conference Friday.********

>>>>>>but thats all she said publicly.
I have worked the polls here in California the last 3 elections, and the biggest problem we had was the paper ballot rolls would run out to soon and poll workers who slept through the classes on how to run the machines, screwed them up….causing machines to be turned off until fixed or replaced. Alameda county, a solid Democratic county choose to buy Diebold machines and had many problems, but in the end, not a single lost vote(that i heard of).
The Sec. of State is new this year, it will be her first election and she was a party hack before becoming Sec. of State….I honestly don’t think she would know an honest election if it kicked her in the ass…..but that my opinion.

I think Saturday voting would lower the turnout even more. It should be a 2 day process, east of the Mississippi on 1 day, west of the Mississippi the next. No projected winners allowed from exit polling. All votes have a paper back up….ID required to vote….paid for by the state if needed…..polls open from 6a.m. to 12 a.m…..poll workers paid by experience as well as a decent wage for being there.

That photo, are you certain those aren’t urnals?

#10, Awake,

Very sensible idea.

19,
LARGE??
you should look at the past…They Bought and PAID for them.
MORE expensive, yes…But we are talking about a group of folks that DONT care about YOUR money, because

In the photo it looks like they are lined up at the urinals.

Was that intentional, meaning the US voting system is being pissed away?

#4 If the voting machines are made by Diebold then yes, they are using a modded up version of Windows XP. They wanted to use a Mac but they are too expensive for what you get.

#6 “The biggest disgrace is the fact that other countries can get this right. Why can’t we?”

I was working in Jakarta, Indonesia at the time Indonesians were preparing for their first free election after Suharto. About the same time America had the Bush election Florida re-count and the fiasco that followed.

To the Indonesians this was the funniest thing ever!!! They had the same fiascos with Suharto and his “free” elections. I don’t know how many times I was asked “Are Americans THAT stupid?” and I had to agree.

I guess its the same old story “Those who can do, do and those who can’t point the way”

This Florida re-count fiasco proved to the Indonesians that they were correct on how the viewed America. And that is here is America always sticking its nose into everyone’s business, telling them how wrong they are, and how its supposed to be done when America itself can’t even do it and get it right.

What a hoot!!!

Cheers

1st people bitch because they can’t figure out how to punch a hole next to the right name. Now, we want these same idiots to use a computer system? I don’t care what system is used, stupid people will always screw it up.

# 24 parick “…I don’t care what system is used, stupid people will always screw it up.”

Which is one of the reasons China hasn’t moved over to free elections yet.

America proves time and time again that free elections are still in beta after all this time with its two party system. Add more parties and you get Britian, Italy etc.

People really need to get involved with their country in as much as they do with sports. If they don’t well as Thomas Jefferson said “People get the government they deserve.” So stop whining and complaining and do something about it!

Cheers