Move along, nothing to see here.
The only thing to do at this point is to throw every vote in the next election to the Natural Law Party.
Black Box voting's report. It sounds bad.
(You know, in the back of my mind I've often thought -- I don't know who Black Box Voting is. Maybe they're just cranks and elections won't be as easy to steal as they say. This seems to scotch it completely; lots of knowledgeable folks are crapping their pants over this result. Damn.
And Diebold, it sure looks like they're being deliberately corrupt. They wouldn't take this approach to any other product, would they?)
Why would you want an ATM receipt? You'd have think that there were evil people waiting to steal your money at the bank....
You know, I'm totally understanding totalitarian impulses this morning. I figure if I were allowed to hit people for being idiots, I wouldn't get it wrong more than one out of two times.
Look on the bright side: if the Republicans win again in November at least you won't have to sit around wondering "how can the American people possibly be so stupid?"
And you can always be hopeful that maybe they really have been stealing elections for the last few cycles. Honestly, I feel better about my fellow citizens already.
3: Thanks for the link -- I added it as a footnote.
A lot of people act like you're a crank if you talk about this precisely because they assume that election-stealing is just something that happens in one of those crazy little banana republics. Which is why I seriously, no joke, think that some heroic hacker should throw a primary to Lyndon LaRouche. Until it's obviously happened, nobody who counts is going to take this seriously.
Yeah, I heard someone say somewhere that Americans have this weird hangup about being suspicious about the elections process. They want to believe that it's infallible. Sort of a national blind spot.
In times like these, I sure as hell am glad I don't smoke pot anymore. I have enough reason to be paranoid as it is, thank you.
"Surprising results in the OH-184 precinct's Senatorial primary election! It appears that %99 of the electorate has written in to vote for 'The Zombie J. Edgar Hoover.' Some elections experts are concerned that the election may have been flawed, even the result of deliberate tampering. Are they right, or do they have an ax to grind against the undead? Stay tuned."
%99 of the electorate has written in to vote for 'The Zombie J. Edgar Hoover'
'J. Edgar Hoover' s/b 'Joseph Beuys'
Well, it's a huge blow to our national identity.
I remember having this horrible feeling when I first saw the film JFK, realizing that rogue U.S. military officials might have actually carried out a coup in our country, complete with assassination, and no one said anything.
12: That's fantastic, SB. I've found a leader I believe in!
9: These days, that's the only thing that keeps me from buying a gun and heading for the water tower. Sometimes that lack of motivation plays to everybody's advantage.
when Zombie Joseph Beuys is president, he will appoint Zombie Coyotes to the supreme court and the fill reflecting pool on the mall with fat! Vote Zombie Joseph Beuys!
Why pot is not yet legal: "Hey, man, do you remember where we put all those petitions?"
17: "Yesterday was Election Day? DAMMIT! Every year..."
That Diebold quote is the most depressingly stupid/evil thing I've heard in a while.
As has been remarked here and elsewhere, repeatedly, there's no possible explanation for the behaviour of Diebold other than that they actively want election results to be corrupted and elections stolen.
Now might be a good time to revisit some of the Ohio controversy of a few years back...
Since LB and apostropher seem to be distracted by memories of their disolute pasts, here's a story about security to distract you and to make the point that even well meaning and honest efforts to provide security can go wrong (on, no, no, no, I am not saying that I do not care about security of electronic voting, this is just the lead in to a story).
When I was last in the nuclear weapons security business, the military conceived and installed a whole new level of security for the kinds of storage sites in which I was involved (they are long gone, which is why I think it is OK to tell a story that was, for obvious reasons, highly classified at the time).
The system included a number of features designed to delay an attacker from entering a weapons storage structure or, if he or she got in, from getting a weapon out. One of the improvements were new, heavy duty locks which, unlike the locks we had been using, did not use standard keys, and instead used special rectangular keys with holes drilled in them that looked kind of like the key you get in a modern hotel room. In this case, each of the two team members required to access the storage structure had to insert their keys and then press a button, which forced compressed air through the locking mechanish. If the holes drilled in the keys matched the holes drilled in the keys installed in the locking mechanism inside the storage structure, the lock would open. However, without the matching key, it was almost impossible to defeat the lock because there was nothing to manipulate--it was just compressed air.
As GI's will do, someone messed with the system and found that if you replaced the keys inside the structure with a piece of paper folded to match the size of the key, you could stick a similar piece of paer in the outside of the mechanism and get in.
Now, they fixed the problem and there were other locks and security measures which meant that there was no particular danger that anyone was going to walk away with a weapon, but even in the most serious of circumstances and when everyone is working hard to make things work right, problems arise.
I guess the point of the story is that while I agree that one hears about an inordinate number of security problems with these Diebold machines, and I wish they would figure out how to restore public confidence in them before using them any more, all this talk about how Diebold is evil and all this is a plot to overthrow the government and steal elections is a bit overwrought, in my view. Even when you take things seriously and are trying hard, perfection is a bit hard to acheive. There is a lot to talk about with this story--how good must the security be, how long do you delay implementing a flawed system if the system you are replacing is much more seriously flawed (I am pretty sure that it is much easier to cheat with the ancient voting machines we use here in New York that anything I have heard about the Diebold machines). Wouldn't it make sense to talk about those things? I guess it is less fun, though. Oh well, back to work . . .
I wish they would figure out how to restore public confidence in them before using them any more, all this talk about how Diebold is evil and all this is a plot to overthrow the government and steal elections is a bit overwrought, in my view.
I say this with the utmost of friendly affection, but go soak your head. We are complaining here that a company intimately involved in providing election security is making statements denying that such security is necessary at all. You want to call me overwrought, for thinking that's a problem, go wild.
That's a load of disingenuous crap, Idealist.
No personal offence intended but the Diebold stupidity and their persistent attempts to i) deny problems that have been pointed out to them directly by people who know what they are talking about, ii) obfuscate any attempt at producing a verifiable audit trail, and so on, goes a lot further than unforeseen flaws occuring after the fact.
The point, though, is that these aren't particularly difficult-to-solve security problems and, in fact, are the very sorts of things you don't see on, say, the ubiquitous ATM machines. While it may be easier to cheat with the old machines (though I wouldn't be sure of that), they also make it much, much, much more difficult to hide the tracks of shenanigans.
By now, the security issues demonstrated are so egregious and so numerous that NOBODY should be using Diebold machines for an election, any more than you'd run your critical work network on Windows 98.
Ideal-
It's not really just "Diebold is evil," but that if they're really that naive about election fraud, it's actually more reassuring for me to assume that they're evil. Evil I can deal with- people hate evil. But there's an assumption that government is inevitably incompetant that lets this sort of thing slip under the radar.
And your story, while, y'know, cool, doesn't really compare- when in that were people in charge denying that no one would possibly want to break in? Placing too much faith in a technological solution is somehow better, I suppose- once it actually breaks, you can fix it. But putting too much faith in the human element verifying the results is just dumb- they're just going to say "working as intented," and you'll never be the wiser.
soak your head. We are complaining here that a company intimately involved in providing election security is making statements denying that such security is necessary at all. You want to call me overwrought, for thinking that's a problem, go wild
Before I run off and soak my head and spare you further wingnut rantings, consider, LB, that my comment might not have been all about you, but rather (and I think this is obvious from it) about:
And Diebold, it sure looks like they're being deliberately corrupt.
And you can always be hopeful that maybe they really have been stealing elections for the last few cycles.
I remember having this horrible feeling when I first saw the film JFK, realizing that rogue U.S. military officials might have actually carried out a coup in our country, complete with assassination, and no one said anything.
That Diebold quote is the most depressingly stupid/evil thing I've heard in a while.
As has been remarked here and elsewhere, repeatedly, there's no possible explanation for the behaviour of Diebold other than that they actively want election results to be corrupted and elections stolen.
Idealist: there comes a point where 'stupid' doesn't cut it and 'deliberate' becomes the best explanation. The whole voting machines debacle has passed from 'stupid' to 'deliberate' -- there's nothing irrational or paranoid about believing that to be the case.
There's a point where continuing to believe that something is a matter of innocent incompetence is itself an irrational position to take.
26-
Well I can't speak for everyone but my 5 was a joke. It wouldn't honestly make me happy to learn that the last few elections have been stolen. I actually thought that would have been obvious.
The 'go soak your head' was addressed more to this line:
Even when you take things seriously and are trying hard, perfection is a bit hard to acheive.
which, while uncontroversially true, really hasn't got a lot of applicability to the facts at hand.
When there is a genuine problem, making fun of the people concerned about it is, perhaps, not the best way of addressing solutions.
'addressed more to' s/b 'motivated additionally by'.
When it was revealed (and broadcasted via the Internet) that a certain line of Kryptonite locks could be picked using a Bic pen, the company reorganized, redesigned the lock from the drawing board up (damn quickly, too), and offered a worldwide free exchange program. They had no choice: Bicyclists being smarter than the politicians implementing touchscreen voting, Kryptonite either had to make a public, goodfaith effort at doing the company's job or else immediately go out of business.
News like Diebold's should gravely imperil a security company of its prominence, and the fact that it does nto—and that the execs could care less—shows something deeply wrong with the arrangement between them and our municipalities.
Damn you, Jackmormon, I almost lost my coffee over that one..
Every couple weeks I hear a story on the local news saying "New York is lagging behind the rest of the nation in adopting touch screen voting" and asking "How are we going to get our incompetent state government to catch up with everyone else comply with the Help America Vote Act" and "When are we going to get rid of these antiquated lever machines."
I am overjoyed that we are not in compliance with Help America Vote. I like the lever machines. I hope we are out of compliance with No Child Left Behind, too.
Then, of course, there is the statement from the Diebold CEO while trying to sell machines to Ohio that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." I mean, sure, it might just have been a poor choice of words, but if the head of the NBA referee's union said that he was committed to getting LeBron James a championship ring, people would freak and he'd be canned before the next morning. That completely pales next to the importance of the integrity of our electoral process.
It just smells, no matter how much cologne you spray on it.
Yeah. At some point 'appearance of impropriety' has to kick in. And that point is when the guy running your elections says that he's committed to delivering them for one side. I simply don't care if anything's been proven, the statement alone is enough.
I guess the point of the story is that while I agree that one hears about an inordinate number of security problems with these Diebold machines, and I wish they would figure out how to restore public confidence in them before using them any more, all this talk about how Diebold is evil and all this is a plot to overthrow the government and steal elections is a bit overwrought, in my view. [Formatting tidied. LB]
Look, Idealist, I'd agree with you (except that I don't see anyone seriously postulating that this is an evil plot) except when the problems were brought to their attention, they weren't dismissed as something only paranoid lunatics would worry about.
Public confidence is worth a lot in determining the appearance of fair elections, and that's not something you just take someone's word for.
I think that when the dust settles years from now, histsorians are likely going to look at the piles of circumstantial evidence and dispassionately conclude that there was a hell of a lot of fraud in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, most on behalf of the winner.
Funny thing is that I thought that couldn't happen. Don't we have some setting that stops italics at the end of every paragraph?
And yes to the substance. I just haven't got a lot of patience for hearing people who are upset about election security called overwrought. We've been complaining about this for years and years -- it's not getting fixed. It's time to get overwrought.
Referent of 'that' in my first sentence above was 'runaway italics,' not 'election fraud'.
re: 38
Yes, I think that's right.
However, that may be wishful thinking. I may just not want to accept that 50% or more of our friends across the Atlantic are bad and/or stupid.
Remember, most of us don't vote. So Bush's winning an election only implies anything bad about a small fraction of the population. (I'm going to start drinking heavily now.)
41: I think it's wishful thinking. I'm sure that there was fraud in 2000, and I think we should have won in any case. I'm willing to believe that there was fraud in Ohio (and other places) in 2004. But the deep truth is that either a majority or a near majority of Americans don't think very much like a majority or a near majority of other Americans.
The best thing we could do is to become federalists. I wish the various big blue states would start adding bits to their constitutions that would at least serve as notice about the rights we consider most important. And then maybe take some decided-before-they-were-started losses in court to clarify the issues.
41- didn't I already make this joke? I think according to the rules of the internets I'm now supposed to say "pwned!", or something like that.
Who says it's a joke? Those rules only apply here, btw.
all this talk about how Diebold is evil and all this is a plot to overthrow the government and steal elections is a bit overwrought
You know, I'm so glad Idealist said this b/c it's a good lead for what I was thinking, reading that post. It seems that somehow our entire national political discourse has gotten to the point where it's no longer about ideas or concepts or laws; it's all about personal relationships. Therefore, it's mean and rude to worry about election-stealing because by doing so, you're implicitly accusing people of being Bad! It's a neat little rhetorical strategy designed to preemptively dismiss an opponent's arguments to ad hominems.
And to be fair, I think one of the results of that is that one ends up arguing over the implied ad hominem (well, Diebold may be saying no one would want to steal an election, but that's ridiculous; there really are people out there who would) rather than pointing out that the issue isn't about intentions in the first place: it's about security, verifiability, and documentation. All very important to the fundamental concept of a government based on laws.
That said, the desire to borrow the calabat and start bashing people's heads is pretty strong.
re: 46.
Yes, definitely. That seems right both on the rhetorical strategy of reducing everything to an ad hominem and on the fundamental role of various legal and procedural norms in the foundation of civil government.
"For there to be a problem here, you're basically assuming a premise where you have some evil and nefarious election officials who would sneak in and introduce a piece of software," he said. "I don't believe these evil elections people exist."
I'm willing to accept nominations for adjectives other than "stupid" and "evil" to describe this quote, Idealist.
"Breathakingly naive"? "Disingenuous"? "Flabbergasting"? "Mendacious"? "Bumsquizzling"? "Nefarious"? "Utterly fucking ridiculous"?
Further on to 46:
Right -- the quote itself sets up the personalization. "For there to be a problem" we must be assuming the existence of "evil" people. The attempt is to laugh the idea of a "problem" out of court, because we all know that only crazy people (well, and the President, but that's different) refer to other people as "evil". Then, when critics respond, as we did in this thread: "Yes, there is a problem, and there is a problem because there are "evil" people (by your definition) out there," we can be mocked because we've gotten overwrought and are talking about "evil."
My blanket response to anyone calling a political discussion 'overwrought' is the one I gave Ideal: go soak your head. Anyone who wants to talk about why something said is wrong is welcome and interesting. Anyone who wants to talk about the overemotionalism of the discussion (barring direct personal abuse) is confused about what's important: it's the issues, not the emotional states of the speakers.
re: 46 and 50
Much longer, more agressive and substantive comment drafted and deleted. In its place I would say only:
And on and on it goes. I'm going to go soak my head some more. Enjoy yourselves. Later.
Having read their tech-lite overview, I am burningly curious to read the specifics. Suffice to say, there are serious, serious concerns raised by everything they describe.
In an earlier comment in an earlier thread, I noted that anyone who tells you paper trails are unnecessary is trying to sell you a stolen election. I'll expand that: they're trying to protect their bottom line, whether or not that includes a stolen election or merely not having to bother slapping a grocery-store receipt printer onto their crappy little WinCE box. For gods' sakes, everything I needed to know to start freaking out was that they're running Windows CE, and yes, all the 'WinCE = wince' jokes have already been made by the nerds of the world.
The problem may be that Diebold wants to steal elections, or enable the stealing of elections, because of its upper management's political leanings. You hear all kinds of things on the interwebs, including rumors that programmers for Diebold get pressured to rush their code, to skip a lot of QA testing, to leave in back-doors in order to "make it easier to upgrade later," all kinds of things. But let's sweep all of those aside for a moment and take the "evil" thing right out of the picture. What does that leave us? A law - HAVA - which requires touch-screen voting, a technology for which there are a tiny handful of approved vendors. That law has effectively created a trust between just two or three companies whose products are the only choices, the purchase of one or another of which is required by law, and who have absolutely zero incentive, therefore, to improve their products. After all, why should they? Their profits are guaranteed and anyone who criticizes them must surely be just another conspiracy theory crackpot.
Even if I were willing to trust that no one is sufficiently motivated, interested and technologically savvy to try to take advantage of these concerns - that, in other words, horses really do stay in the barn if you leave all the doors open* - I would have to object to the whole kit 'n kaboodle on principle. It is an insult to the importance of fair, accountable, accurate elections, and the role we should be playing in demonstrating the sanctity of same when we are watched by the rest of the world, to use what should be an opportunity to improve voting practices as an excuse to write a big, fat, blank check to two or three voting-machine manufacturers.
----
* I grew up around horses. They don't.
Horses: the childhood obsession of girls and gay men everywhere.
Idealist,
And on and on it goes.
Good thing you can ignore it while soaking your head!
But I can explain all the "overwrought" stuff. See, these other people are all posting from a topsy-turvy Bizarro America whose ruling party has revealed itself over the past six years to be corrupt, incompetent, greedy and power-hungry on a truly epic scale -- almost a live parody of the crypto-fascistic conservative stereotypes that were once thought of as Leftist hyperbole. In that alternate universe, the revelation of Diebold's apparently cavalier attitude to the security of its machines might just seem a wee bit suspicious.
Luckily, you apparently don't live in that Bizarro America. So it's all good.
Holy crap, Diebold uses WinCE? I knew it was bad, but somehow that fact had eluded me.
*Shudder*
Hey, mrh, you may know more about WinCE than I do, being that my career requires me to know a little of everything and not a lot of anything: does WinCE require ROM as the storage facility for the OS? Or is it merely encouraged (or assumed due to it being designed for portable devices)?
Horses: the childhood obsession of girls and gay men everywhere.
We're not really obsessed, just inspired.
I'm not sure, RMcMP. I've always been insulated from the systems configuration side of things. I just know that, back when I was at a company that wrote software for embedded platforms the end of every feature cycle was, "Sigh. Now let's try to get it to work on &$*ing CE."
It's one of those OSes still gives me the willies, based on the number of intractable hair-pulling bugs we found. like Irix. Or HP/UX.
Note: "may know" s/b "almost certainly know."
Blargh. I'm so glad I'm not a programmer.
Wow. It's that bad? I know it does some things "funny" compared to "normal" Windows, and I know a little about how it handles memory buffers, but I don't really understand the core of how it works.
If I remember correctly, the Dreamcast will run it, though.
Speaking of fraud and conspiracies, I had a dream this morning that apostropher had gotten everyone at the Mineshaft and on apostropher (AND at The Poorman) to secretly boycott a certain thread over at his place, just to taunt me. The Modest Kid was the last holdout, but he woke up on the morning of May 6th with a horse's head in his bed.
It's true, isn't it?
The only way this could really gain traction is if, as with the Bic pen video, someone showed how you, the voter, could vote twice or edit previous people's votes.
If Diebold is smart, there are no bugs like this, at least none that will not get you thrown out of the precinct for tampering with the machine. It's also extraordinarily likely that this is the only kind of bug the elections board really cares about. You can draw your own conclusions about how much backend security Diebold would put in.
Neil has a good point -- the flaws in the Diebold system aren't, so far as I know, sufficient to allow an average voter armed with the equivalent of a Bic pen to commit election fraud. It does take a more sophisticated villain. So, on the one hand, the "outrage threshold" is higher. On the other hand, the amount of damage the hypothetical villain can do is much greater than the equivalent of stealing a bike.
It's also extraordinarily likely that this is the only kind of bug the elections board really cares about.
I really hope that's not true.
But historically, election fraud hasn't been the domain of the ordinary voter deciding to tamper with a machine or stuff in an extra ballot. Isn't the larger -- and realistic -- worry that the election officials will be complicit in or negligent of fraud?
Well, yeah, but gawsh, that means thinking that Big Important People are Criminals. And the only reason to think that is if one has some kind of partisan axe to grind.
Normal, average people, on the other hand, *might* be bad. Like say some poor black person from New Orleans went into the voting booth with a Bic pen. Then maybe they'd cheat. But if that's not possible, then really, there's nothing to worry about.
Yeah, and other kinds of cheating, like for example on welfare by all those cadillac drivers out there, is a much more important and serious problem.
Yeah, and other kinds of cheating, like for example on welfare by all those cadillac drivers out there, is a much more important and serious problem.
Damn. These internal server errors are beginning to erode my faith in democracy.
You do know that the "welfare queen" was a myth dreamed up by Ronald Reagan, don't you?
--R.J.
Don't worry: 66 was sarcastic. M/tch is a good guy.
If Diebold is smart, there are no bugs like this, at least none that will not get you thrown out of the precinct for tampering with the machine. It's also extraordinarily likely that this is the only kind of bug the elections board really cares about. You can draw your own conclusions about how much backend security Diebold would put in.
The fact that a crime would require specialized skill does not count as a proactive security measure. I guarantee you that there will be one smart kid in every sizeable precinct who can hose these machines in a heartbeat. If the biggest obstacle to tampering is that not just anybody can tamper, all that means is that someone who wanted tampering would have to be somewhat selective in choosing operatives.
And mrh in 62 and someone in 63 are quite right: if tampering is harder for the layperson to do, tampering will be harder for the layperson to detect.
In computer security, there's a saying: "there's no such thing as security through obscurity." Hoping no one notices or knows how to manipulate a given vulnerability is begging to have that vulnerability exploited.
