Posted on 01/26/2007 3:03:07 AM PST by lifelong_republican
"Diebold's AccuVote-TS electronic voting machines have lousy security..."
(Excerpt) Read more at informationweek.com ...
You are right: lever machines could be manipulated, and did not offer any voter-confirmed paper record.
Each one would have to be altered separately, with mechanic's tools and some time, with the possibility of being observed.
Any number of independent qualified mechanics could look at them and discover the tampering.
That being said, I don't support the use of lever machines. Even disabled people can do offical paper ballots themselves. Those physical ballots can be kept under observation. The electronics allow votes to be thrown away, converted to alternative selections, and generated without actual voters. They allow all that with minimal effort over multiple machines and little or no risk of detection. The electronics also simply fail at an unacceptable rate, causing inappropriate wait times for voters. They're costing the taxpayers far more than they are worth for acquisition, maintenance, and operation.
The lever machines were in extensive use in Pennsylvania. I'm not all that familiar with them, but essentially the voter shifted mechanical arms for each issue/candidate and then pulled a larger lever to finalize the selection. The results were recorded onto paper tallies never actually seen by the voters.
I have no experience with that type.
Ideally the resulting ballot should be easily man readable.
I don't care much if it is a machine that generates the paper ballot as long as the voter can check what it has been done and what the voter has verified is the actual ballot that will be counted - and recounted if need be.
We should count every ballot in every election by hand. Each ballot should be counted by at least 2 people (because the people COUNTING the ballots could also be corrupted).
In fact, to minimize that chance, every single ballot in every single election should be paper, and should be counted by a single committee of 5 people appointed for that purpose.
It might take two years to count the votes, but we'd be certain every single vote was counted correctly (assuming we could find 5 people in the world that we would all trust).
For the 5 people , we need to pick them so that for each person in the country, at least THREE of the panelists are trusted.
If we could get the Pope to head up the group, we'd be well on our way, because I think a lot of people would trust him not to lie about an election ballot.
And it is so much easier to "find" a "misplaced" box of them a few days or weeks after the election, if the RATS are behind...
You are, of course, absolutely right about the ballots being readable, and being physically counted and recountable.
There really isn't any good reason to use electronics when a marker will work more rapidly and reliably for the voters at far less cost to the taxpayers.
There really are still times when a cheap pen is better than a computer, especially if that computer is a failure-prone, vulnerable 386 for $4000 ...
Why do you imagine it'd take so long to do the counts? Large voting populations in modern nations enjoy the benefits of direct counting.
You don't need as many observers with video and other forms of security technologies, and it'd benefit Americans very much to offer decent remuneration for local people to do the counts at the individual polling places.
Video security only a little better than that used in convenience stores can allow for observation of paper ballots.
It takes a lot less effort with much less chance of detection to change a lot more votes with the electronics.
How 'bout an electronic vote and a "plain english" receipt that goes into a box.
IF there is a "recount" check the boxes. If the numbers and votes don't match we have an issue.
That's be a failsafe if we needed a recount, but otherwise it does nothing but make the voter feel good. I'm a programmer and I can tell you, it would be trivial to have the machine print out the correct vote but record something different. Or even store things right and then change the data when the results are requested. But then, any vote tabulation method can be messed with, assuming opportunity on the part of people with an agenda. Even hand-counting paper ballots can be falsified, if the counter and the certifier work together.
Of course, the Dems were the ones screeching about obsolete paper ballots after 2000. Now they screech about computerized voting.
You're also screeching about such.
Lifelong_republican? Sounds like a line from a CSpan serial caller. Sniff sniff...
It's not, honestly, about me, though it's a fact that I was raised by a conservative Republican father in a Republican community and my party affiliation and official registration hasn't been in doubt by anyone who actually knows.
Voters who supported Rick Santorum saw their votes switched to his opponent and complained about it.
Now, do you want to try to call that "screeching"? Why?
Thank you for sharing your interesting experiences, and thank you for being so civic-minded.
You obviously know more than I do about the mechanical systems, and you are right that there were no paper ballots the voters could see.
The electronic 'voting' systems involve computers and networks, and there are reliability and security issues with the processors as well as with the direct, wireless, and internet connections used with them.
You're likely using some kind of computer to participate here at Free Republic. Does it have antivirus and firewall software on it? Do those require updates on occasion? Does the operating system itself require periodic updates?
Have you seen in the news where databases get cracked or mismanaged and sensitive data is released or otherwise made vulnerable?
The process of voting should be as simple, convenient, reliable, secure, and observable as possible, but the electronics introduce needless complexity, unreliability, lack of security, and secret processing.
"you are right that there were no paper ballots the voters could see."
I meant to say that I used the same machines through 2004, but since 1974, I have been voting in a rural county, outside of Memphis.
People that whine about the difficulty in using voting machines must be the same ones who take 10 minutes to complete a single ATM transaction.
Our machines did have a paper ticker but I wasn't that bothered.
Thanks for the clarification.
If you don't mind my asking, what is being used where you vote now?
I know of no one complaining of the 'difficulty' with the electronics (though completion of paper ballots is faster and easier for the vast majority of people).
The complaints are with the frequent outright failures, for the most part.
Dems have been cheating for years. They don't need false Diebold keys to do it.
Point taken, but I still saw a lot of head-bobbing as people attempted to peer through their bifocals. Of course, my precinct has more than few senior citizens.............
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