(no subject)

[alexr_rwx]

Weird moment: looking at some stuff I wrote a few weeks ago, I had a very vivid sense of sitting in the place where I wrote it, which was the lounge by the lobby in the music building at UGA.

Does this happen for anybody else? Or maybe other people don't do work in as many different places? ...

[Poll #861530]

Also: public service announcement that you should go vote! Tomorrow is election day, but you already knew! Save the world! Unless of course Diebold (major GOP supporter and likely the manufacturer of your electronic voting machine) decides that they don't like your views and chooses to disenfranchise you! I expect that my absentee ballot will likely not get counted, as Florida elections have already been reported Quite Shady! Also! Why did they bother with touchscreens that can get "miscalibrated" when they could have installed Plain Ol' Buttons Like On ATMs? !

Comments

Now see here, my good man,

[sault.livejournal.com]

Yeah, sometimes I have a sense of being in a place when I am reading (or writing), but it is often not associated with what I am reading/writing. The set of places with which this happens is small: the corner of Sixth Street and McMillan (West Campus); Broadway and 4th Street (Columbus, GA); Ethel and McMillan (no surprise there).

You should watch this utterly disheartening video chronicling election fraud in the United States! http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7236791207107726851 It will depress the hizzle out of you!

Re: Now see here, my good man,

[oniugnip.livejournal.com]

Sweet, Creamy Rings of Saturn -- I flipped around that video a little bit, and I saw Howard Dean and Bev Harris messing with The Vote Tabulating Software... using Microsoft Access.

Your vote is stored in an Access database.

See! Satisfaction guaranteed!

[sault.livejournal.com]

Yes, the Howard Dean portion was quite amusing; the pleased look on his face as she demonstrates the wonderful features of Microsoft Office the Diebold GEMS system was kind of sad, too.

Re: Now see here, my good man,

[rusty42.livejournal.com]

yes, it's fairly well accepted that anyone with access to the machine running the GEMS tabulating software can alter the outcome of the election.

does this change if you replace the access "database" with a mysql "database"? not really.

Re: Now see here, my good man,

[schizobovine.livejournal.com]

Well, at least with mysql it would scale up to 2 million votes before it crashed and just started counting votes for The Terminator.

Re: Now see here, my good man,

[rusty42.livejournal.com]

hmm, i see what you're saying. basically, the backing store for any vote tabulating system should allow for the total recall of all the votes cast.

[praetorian42.livejournal.com]

And also why don't the machines print out a receipt of your ballot just like ATM's?

Deibold is also one of the biggest makers of ATM and banking equipment in the U.S. Obviously they are capable of producing equipment that is incredibly secure, but they choose not to do that for election machinery because A) It isn't required by stupid Secretaries of State, and B) It furthers their political goals.

Democracy Go!

[gtv42.livejournal.com]

If you get a receipt, your boss/father/minister/husband/[authority figure] could see who you voted for. This used to happen in the early days of our country, and it wasn't good. Our voting system must be anonymous to avoid this particular evil, but in being anonymous, it is secretive.

There should, by all means, be a paper trail, and this paper trail should be available (in various levels of detail) to all interested parties.

I also think manual recounts should be manditory. Best two out of three, within a certain error range.

[praetorian42.livejournal.com]

I meant that the receipt should not contain any personally identifiable information, should be stuffed into a ballot box, and should not be allowed to be taken with you.

[gtv42.livejournal.com]

Opportunity for stuffing the ballot box. And even the honest members of the general public cannot be trusted to follow simple directions.

There are machines that roll a ticker tape behind glass as you vote, and you get to verify that the tape accurately lists your vote. Best solution I've heard of as of yet.

Alternatively, every registered voter could be issued a debit card. This debit card would come pre-loaded with $1 for every question on the ballot. You are able either use your dollar to vote for a candidate/issue, or buy a cookie. On election night, for each race, we'd get to see how many people voted for one candidate, how many voted for the other candidate, and how many instead opted to buy a cookie. Anyone who loses to a cookie is not allowed to run for office again for a period of 6 years.

[rusty42.livejournal.com]

There are machines that roll a ticker tape behind glass as you vote, and you get to verify that the tape accurately lists your vote. Best solution I've heard of as of yet.

only if the tape is sliced in between votes, and only if the tape is used as the authoritative vote.

[gtv42.livejournal.com]

As I understand Things, the tape is on a continuous roll, with symbolic demarcations between voters.

I'd venture that no one recording method should be The Authoritative Vote, assuming everything is being executed with the greatest intentions of fairness and honesty. Paper is bulky and difficult to copy. The copies are difficult to error check. Three advantages for electronic storage. The authoritative vote is the tally that the electronic and paper recordings agree with--each needs to have veto power over the other. In the event of a true Close Call (election result within discrepancy between electronic and paper tallies), if there can be no reconcilliation, there should be another vote on the issue.

[reality-calls.livejournal.com]

On the Daily Show they made a good point that the software used in voting machines is covered by the same copyright laws as any software, which means nobody can double check it.  For all we know, there could be a whopping big back door built right into the code for the purpose of tampering with votes.  In my opinion, this is definitely not an area where copyright law should apply.

(Also, the results should really be stored in an encrypted file so nobody can tamper with them.)

      Live from the People's Republic"

[reality-calls.livejournal.com]

Now that I've seen the video, I realize that it covered all these points and more quite effectively.  I highly recommend watching it.

      "Live from the People's Republic"