Posted on 04/05/2011 11:59:30 AM PDT by pinochet
I recently heard someone mention that it is possible for computer hackers to get access to the electronic voting machines, and tamper with the results.
The only voting process that I trust, is one that involves a paper ballot, with the voter making a "X" mark on his paper ballot with a pen/pencil. That is how American democracy worked for 200 years.
With paper ballots, you can count actual paper votes, during recounts. But under the electronic voting system, you cannot have credible recounts, because it is so easy to hack into the computer system.
I believe Reid is still a Senator due to fraud with these machines in Nevada . . .
Reliability of electronic machines questioned? Surely you jest. Of course paper ballots remain the best possible answer—that’s why they are eschewed. (Not PC enough.)
No. But is interesting that the voting machines for Harris County Texas were all stored together and destroyed by fire right before the 2010 elections. Maybe someone was worried that the machines are hared to fix than paper ballots. After all we have a tradition of fixing paper ballots going all the way back to the infamous ballot box number 13 that won Lying Lyndon Johnson his senate seat.
When Bush won, the left was all up in arms about a grand conspiracy involving voting machines.
Now that 0bama won, it is the right concerned about voting machines?
It's not only about the presidency. It's about every elected position from dog catcher to the presidency. And if someone doesn't think an election can be stolen more easily with electronic voting machines than with paper ballots, then they don't know anything about either elections or computers.
The units are stand alone and not connected to an external network of any kind. AFAIK, the results of each machine is tallied at the voting site and the transmitted via voice over a telephone line.
The problem is with the programming. If there is no printed record of each vote, then the “total” is subject to whatever whims the programmer puts in the program. Many states are requiring that the machines keep a printed record of all votes.
I have long championed a system where you cast your vote on the electronic screens and then push a button that says “Verify printed ballot” where you review your votes on a screeen and then the machine prints a hard copy of all your ballots for you to view through a little window. If it is correct, then you hit “Correct - Cast Votes now” and the printed slip goes into the machine. If it is wrong, then you call over a judge who has a key to the ballot window only. You open the ballot window, remove the ballot, both of you initial it and it is preserved in a “ruined ballot” container. You then back up to see where you messed up and correct it.
Using this method, the number of electronic votes should always equal the printed votes.
It is far easier to stuff the ballot box with fraudulent paper ballots than it is to hack into a computer. It is very easy to simply throw away paper votes for your opponent and replace them with votes for your party.
Any type of voting system is capable of being used for voter fraud. Honest elections depend on the workers at the polling places. Most of them are volunteers or are paid a nominal amount but they are what keeps American elections honest. If they are dishonest, it doesn't matter what kind of voting system you have.
In Nevada, the machines make a paper that shows you all of your votes. You have to view it before final accept. You cannot physically touch it, and it gets stored in the machime allowing for a hand recount.
When boxes full of paper ballots can be “found” up in Washington State, I think the paper shufflers have to tighten up their own act significantly before I get too down on the electron wranglers.
No.
The machines we use in New Jersey automatically print out a zero proof tape as soon as they are turned on. If there were any votes pre-entered they would show up. The number of voter authority slips issued also will match the number of votes cast on the machines, another check. What concerns me more is multiple votes under different names in various districts by union thugs.
And it is much easier to "find" boxes of paper ballots than it is to break into the chain of custody of the machine votes. With a minimum of two machines per district, the hacking would have be a full time job carried out in the storage warehouses, under the noses of the board of Elections.
You make a great point. It doesn't matter if we have electronic, paper, or both without an accountability system.
Votes show up from no where without any chain of custody and are accepted by judges as actual votes. These same judges would then never allow evidence into a trial without the chain of custody. I don't think any vote should count without a verifiable chain of custody. Also, I don't think anyone should cast a vote without proper ID.
Finally, absentee balloting should be outlawed. I'm sorry if you can't make it, but I would rather disallow legal voters than allow one illegal voter.
when they go liberal Democrat, they’re trustworthy.
Otherwise no.
We vote by coloring in the ovals on a paper form similar to this
and then we feed it into an electronic vote counting machine similar to this
The votes are counted rapidly and there's a paper trail, without the hanging chads, available for a recount.
How true AbeLincoln. In most states the count is tabulated by SEIU employees, not that it means anything, since there is no transparency to the data acquisition process. Only paper ballots where the first count is performed at the local precinct with representatives of each party present retains any protection from fraud. Then, if the published tabulations don't agree with the local count the ballots can be retrieved from secure storage for a recount. Without that, or some similar very expensive alternative to protect the secrecy of ballots is expensive because issuing intelligent receipts is complex. Counting a thousand or so ballots by hand will hardly slow the reporting of decisions. Computerized counting was once said to have been for the convenience of the major media. Media was once claimed to actually own the agency, a private corporation, which did the counting - Voter News Service, if I recall correctly.
California will probably have a referendum based entirely upon mail=in ballots. With the jobs and retirement of SEIU employees at stake, and SEIU counting the ballots how trustworthy do we think that vote will be. It is blatant theft. They will steal the productivity of the working class until there is no productivity left, destroying their host.
California and Nevada have had enormous numbers of people all voting from the same house, all of whose ballots were in the same hand. They have decided election after election. It is part of how Harry Reid got elected, the comedian in Minnesota, the Governor of Washington State.
As Limbaugh pointed out there are now about 15 million government employees and 7 million in the manufacturing and farming sector. With the government counting votes we are losing our productivity and our freedoms. We are no longer a representative republic.
I haven’t worked at the polls in NJ in years. We used to open the back of the machine to be sure it said zero........
And when it didn’t.....no problem. Some districts had no problem with machines starting out with votes.
Here, each voter is issued a voter authority slip when signing in. He hands that to the machine operator, who activates the machine. The number of slips issued will match the number of votes cast. The stubs of the slips have the voter's signature and the voting authority number is recorded in the poll book, also signed by the voter.
I'm still doing it, don't remember how long, but at least 15 years. I just attended the every-two-years refresher class last night.
No. I deal extensively in computers and their security, and I’ve read the various independent reports on these systems. They were for the most part not seriously designed with security in mind. They fail on every front from physical security (standard office keys open them) to software security (easily hacked) and auditing (easily hacked without leaving a trail).
A good system COULD be designed by any reasonably talented team. The problem is that the industry players who have a lock on the market (partially due to their lobbying money) don’t care. With some seed cash I could assemble such a team and we could make a practically unbreakable system (rather, one that can’t be broken into without the audit showing it was) that’s still usable, but good luck selling even one to a government entity.
Okay, but what if the programmer is smart and tells the machine the total number of votes and just assigns a portion to Candidate A and a portion to Candidate B, depending on which candidate he likes?
The tallying algorithms are NOT open for public scrutiny.
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