Along with the madness of Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) and Vote-by-Mail, Internet Voting is the other scheme/virus that makes my head explode — as if the existing e-voting system we already use in the U.S. isn’t unverifiable, unoverseeable and susceptible enough to malfeasance and malfunction as is.
So with the little patience I can muster to even mention this latest particular nightmare at all today, I’ll defer to Washington Post’s coverage yesterday — sure to be ignored until it’s too late (“Who could have foreseen it?!“) — of the experts’ latest warnings against D.C.’s planned live democracy experiment of using an untested and unverifiable Internet Voting scheme on real voters, in a real election, beginning in just a few weeks.
The WaPo column includes this explanation of two letters sent to D.C. officials this week, urging them to take a different path…
The second letter [PDF] raises sharp concerns over the vulnerability to infiltration by hackers, calling the new system a “poorly conceived experiment” that “imperils the overall accuracy of every election on the ballot.”
The letter continues: “Return of marked ballots over the Internet is something we simply don’t know how to do safely. Exercises such as this are counterproductive, because they will provide a false sense of security to the [D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics], while the real problems lie undetected.”
Four advil and three shots of vodka please.
UPDATE 10/4/10: Aaaaand…whaddaya know, D.C. Internet Vote scheme — the one experts above were warning about — gets hacked. Who could have forseen it?! Details here…
Thank you for calling it what it is.
and thats two tylenol and 2 shots of rum to you, sir!
Absolutely fearful thing to consider internet voting! Do not do it!
My county uses paper ballots, hand-marked by the voters. And a Citizens’ Observer group is established, who can enter the offices and watch everything that is going on, including selection of ballot batches for triple-checking of the counts (Once by OpScan equipment, and twice by hand-counting in public.)
There can be no Observation of internet voting – and just consider the number of virus and hacking incidents in the internet. Internet voting cannot be trusted, and
“If you cannot trust the way your votes are counted, nothing much else in politics matters!”
– Marian Beddill, 2003
http://NoLeakyBuckets.org
Brad, on the subject of planned and insane schemes, you’ll like this: http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/09/2...ex.html?hpt=T2
Amazingly, CNN even almost gets the facts of the ACORN story right.
Brad,
I understand your concerns about the absolute integrity of an election; however I am much more concerned with any system that can be manipulated to actually CHANGE the voter intent. Up here in lil ole Orygun our vote by mail has proven to be very reliable and there have not been instances of “errors” flipping elections!
Yes we still count the ballots with opti scan machines but in the largest counties those machines are not connected to the net.
Clerks are also required to perform manual audits of a random sample of precincts to verify the machine count.
Not as good as an old fashioned manual count but OUR results have not sent the wrong person to office or a nation to war!
Rvrctyrdnck said:
And you know that how exactly?
Or is it that you just have faith that that’s most likely the case?
As a person who is convinced there is not one iota of difference between the Republocrats and Demublicans, I was under the impression that IRV was a step in the right direction.
Why is IRV “madness”? I usually vote green. My goal is to outlaw to two partys for their many and continuing crimes. That and hand counted paper ballots.
Can someone explain to me exactly why the political parties that have recently been victimized by these seriously flawed elections (e.g., the Democrats) have failed to take the matters to court or to have undertaken even the most basic legislative steps to correct the obvious and identified problems with unverifiable voting systems after all of these years?
9-28-10 Submission for Interview.
I agree with Biden spoke about all the whining. When it comes to Obama, Liberals/Progressives feel cheated or disrespected. I don’t allow myself to fall into this trap”¦ but it does enter my mind. Hey if anyone, I could spend my political life whining about how I didn’t get my due. Obama was right here in ABQ, just a few miles away from me and I didn’t even get an invite. After all I’ve done for the President.
lol
How many Progressives volunteered most of their free time, shoe leather and cell phone minutes for Obama during the 2007-08 election season? In New Mexico I almost single-handedly strong-armed the Liberal Independent, 3rd Party voters and black shirt anarchists to support Obama/Biden. I used talk radio, the internet, Cable Access TV and attending their events/protest/fund raisers. In 2008, there were enough hard working Democrats in the “Land of Enchantment” to organize a stunning Democratic sweep of this former Bush Red State (Obama/Biden, 1 senate, 3 representatives).
And how did the Obama/Biden Administration repay me? By going Center Right in a fools quest to work with Republicans. In the process Obama alienated most of the Independent voter, concerned citizens like me worked so hard to get into the fight.
Out here on the Liberal side of America I’m hearing a lot of that destructive loser talk about not voting or letting the Republicans win this November. Their reasoning being that if the Conservative wackos take over the US government they’ll eventually implode and DESTROY the whole corrupt system.
I say that’s HOOEY, isn’t THAT a good reason to join the FIGHT? It’s just Liberals taking the cowards way out. They’d rather walk away like a jilted lover whining about how they’ll NEVER vote for Democrats again. Without even considering the possibilities of putting that final nail in the bloodsucking Republican Party coffin”¦ BEFORE THEY DESTROY the USA!
This isn’t about Progressives being upset with Obama/Biden. Whether the President wants to be our friend or not. I say, WHO cares if Obama disrespected Liberals and Progressives. This election isn’t about Obama”¦ THIS ELECTION is about getting revenge on Republicans for the last 30 years of low grade thought processes.
The next election is about DEMANDING ETHICS, RESPONSIBILITY, ACCOUNTABILITY from a bunch of vain, scandalous, self-serving, power mad, greed stricken silver spoon con artists and K-Street Ho’s.
MY PLAN is to make Liberals, Progressives and 3rd Party Independents grow some ciones”¦ come back to reality and work together to get rid of the Republican Party as it exists today. The problem is many people on the LEFT are so upset with Obama they don’t realize our President left us with one of the greatest organizing networks in the history of the USA. If people need direction, there’s an office of “Organizing for America” in every city in America and on the www.
But all these upset Liberals/Progressives won’t use this tool the moment they hear it’s Obama’s organization. They actually think if Republicans take back the government THEN Liberals will start a revolution. Bull***, you motha#*~/ers ain’t got the courage or stamina for SERIOUS insurrection!
I so sick of these whiny Independents on both sides of the political spectrum, “Obama this, Obama that”. What’d you think, the rookie was going to come in the game and win it for all of us? Politics is a team sport as much as the coming football season. The other team is formidable so Obama needs us as much as we need him. Only a LOSER would give up now, RIGHT?
It’s late in the second quarter, it’s a tie game and half time is the November elections. So you’re gonna have some time to think about the mistakes you made in the past.
It’s so simple”¦ the LEFT has two choices at this time”¦ revolution or politics. And I don’t think you people have the BALLS for revolution, so you better get busy in the next month. Are Liberals and Progressives going to allow a bunch of clueless Glenn Beck/Sarah Palin groupies destroy the USA? The Tea Party wins this November then we’ll all be stuck with these fools for decades. Democrats win and the Conservative wackos shut up and go away.
You Lefties need to TOUGHEN UP! It’s like Democrats/Liberals/Progressives have never been in a street fight. You people have got to learn how to kick your adversary while they’re down or they could very well get up and hurt you bad. After the Bush/Cheney disaster we had the Republicans up against the wall and then Obama/Democrats started talking crazy about working with right wing nutcases. How’s that been working for you?
I don’t know why the Conservatives get to express their HATE but all of us Democrats, Liberal and Progressives always have to be so reasonable, non-confrontational, high and mighty. Why do we always volunteer to stand up for Conservative wacko freedom of speech rights. I say screw that, these traitorous morons don’t deserve the rights and freedoms of a nation they’ve spent the last 30 years trying to destroy.
I got to give props for the speech CA Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger made about Oil Companies coming to CA to push Prop 23. Better late than never, right? I can’t help but think Obama and the Democrats should have made this speech months ago. What a crazy political world we live in”¦ Gov. Arnold, a Republican speaking against big oil and Senator Ben Nelson, a Democrat, going to the Heritage Foundation to take his pants down and bend over for the trust fund babies and foreign special interests”¦ lol
cyberbitchslap2.blogspot.com
Brad,
I do not “know with 100% certinty” that a volume of errors have flipped an election but I do know that we have not had any “strange” results that ran counter to the pre election polling. I also know that in all of the close elections there are actual paper ballots to recount and that the contestenat in those recounts have acces to the proceedure and alos have not screamed “fix” to date.
So yes it is possible to have an inside person rig the central tabulator BUT we have random audits to catch changes that take the results outside the norm.
I’m not saying its perfect but I know that it is 100% better than ANY election run on DRE machines without an actual ballot completed by an actual voter!
I also know that voters trust the system and therefore expanding that to other states can be accomplished with far, far more confidence than any other automated system.
camusrebel, the problem with using computers to count votes is computers can be hacked; sometimes pretty easily. The problem with “internet voting” is that those systems may become hacked, and you could elect Daffy Duck to office.
In fact, I hope like hell that some of those 10s of thousands of brilliant hackers out there do just that.. put some cartoon character in office. It would show once and for all that we should not be leaving our Democracy in the hands of easily abused technology.
And Rvrctyrdnck, “So yes it is possible to have an inside person rig the central tabulator BUT we have random audits to catch changes that take the results outside the norm.”
those “discoveries” ONLY matter if the general public is told about them, LOUD and OFTEN. The fact that you don’t know of the MANY documented cases of “random audits” proving something was remiss (yet nothing was done about it, time and time again) proves my point.
The rest of your post is pure nonsense. DREs are very bad, but hooking all the DREs up to the internet? which is the equivalent of what you’re suggesting? millions of times worse. And the confidence you’re talking about comes from an electorate that, on average, knows exactly NOTHING about computers or how they work. Hell, more than 50% of this country doesn’t know how many STATES we have in this country.. MOST people driving a car have NO CLUE how to change the oil, or how their car even works. Who gives a shit if THEIR “confidence” is high? They’re MORONS!
As a point of reference, I’m a Software Engineer/System Analyst/System Admin with a degree in Computer Science. In my PROFESSIONAL opinion, putting our democracy in the bowels of computers is insanity. Period.
Savantster you missed my point by 180 degrees. I am AGAINST all DRE’s and object to any counting device connected to the net.
I am confident that we in Oregon have the VBM down and we do have random audits in every election in every jurisdiction. Maybe because we are only 7 electoral votes and an extremely BLUE state the Rovian’s have decided to leave us alone.
Hmmm…This is an awesome story. Just one damning fact after another.
Brad, would you ever consider putting together an internet ‘dream team’ made up of forensic auditors, computer scientists, lawyers with knowledge of election law design, voting machine experts, experienced election workers who understand practical aspects, concerned citizens, who would review citizen or election official requests and complaints about how their system operates and advise what needs to be fixed, select a few to examine further, and report back right here?
Ask election reform advocates and readers to submit their suggestions for potential election situations to review. Officials could submit as well.
One of the biggest issues is that citizens can find a lot on their own, but some of what they find really benefits from professional knowledge on the subject at hand and the credibility of professionals’ opinions.
I can almost guarantee that even the most well designed election protocols have loopholes, and in my state there are many places where election related processes are either not well regulated, designed or if they do exist, are not well executed.
The area of election integrity is an underfunded, underexamined but fundamental underpinning of our society. As go our elections, so goes our self-governance.
We need a “State of the Union” on how our elections are run. This could be a start.