Evidence Of Tremendous Fraud Found In Brazilian E-Voting System
from the no-major-problems,-huh? dept
Just as we point to claims from some think tanks that e-voting works great as is, and things like verifiable paper trails aren't needed, there are reports coming out suggesting that there was a massive amount of fraud in the latest Brazilian elections, which made extensive use of e-voting machines. The reports claim that more than one-third of the e-voting machines used in the state of Alagoas show signs of manipulation. The number of ballots stored by the machines is less than the number of voters. Some of the votes apparently come from e-voting machines that don't exist, and some machines appear not to have registered a single vote. Are those think tanks going to explain this away as "user error" as well?
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Don't let them beat you
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I'm with MH on this one
no election could ever be won or lost by 33%. its CLEARLY an insignificant amount of votes.
(Yes, I went to the George W. Bush school of advanced toe counting)
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Re: I'm with MH on this one
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Beanocracy
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What is the point?
In manual voting, many kinds of frauds may occour. There where many many cases of disapearance of voting bags, in past (manual) elections. In many other cases, if just one citizen puts any other piece of paper into the bag, instead of his vote, and the voting count will not close - and the entire section (all the votes in that bag) will be nullified. Is this democratic? - no. So it IS a security flaw.
Here is my point: Yes, the manual voting process is auditable, because all the votings can be recounted, whenever necessary. It is very good, but this does make the process more secure, because there are many ways in which _external_ and _internal_ agents can attack the system, changing the final result, either by nullifying some sections, or directly changing votes in the handling of counting process.
The electronic voting machine used in Brazil (I don't know details of any other) has the BIG problem of not being auditable. Printing the votes in paper, in some machines (to allow audit by sample), is not sufficient. So, our voting system IS vulnerable to _inside_ attacks. People who have access to the system internals can manipulate the results - that is a fact - but still, I think there are less vulnerabilities in this electronic process, than we had in the past.
Isn't it what really matter?
Anyone can sugest a better process?
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Re: What is the point?
Fabio has a point. To quote the article linked to:
Suppose it were:
These sorts of things happen all the time in some parts of the world, but there is no huge movement to ban paper voting for bad security, because you can see where the real problem is.
I'm not saying there isn't something wrong with this particular voting machine. I'm just not willing to take it as an indictment of e-voting in general. The real issues here are testing, procedures, internal controls. It's how you use the level of technology you have that counts.
Full disclosure: I have a relative who works for an e-voting company which will not be named. (Well, okay, it's not Diebold, and it's not involved in this story.)
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a better process...
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How about?
*runs off to hug the nearest tree*
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Re: How about?
Politicians don't represent themselves, they don't promote their beliefs, they are a drain on the country as they take corporate money and trample on their constituency in a desperate effort to promote themselves.
If you want a good results from an election, then there is really only one way to do it. Individuals in a community have a democratic election to choose ther person they feel best qualified to represent them. This person then meets with other representatives and discuss/debate the issues important to the region, and elect one person to continue on to something like the electoral college, where they once again discuss and debate all the issues that are relevant, and elect, probably from inside that group, the next president, or senator, or whatever office is in contention. This would allow politicians to escape the corporations, and possibly represent their entire constituentcy as they couldn't proceed unless they are acceptable to the majority of the informed public. Now in no way do I think this woudl solve the worlds problems, nor do i think it could ever happen in america. After all the founders of the country tried it with the electoral college, but that only took 8 years to become a pointless body where the electors were only there to cast their vote for a particular person rather than to decide amongst themselves who the best person for the job is.
Just my thoughts, feel free to trash them now
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Re: Re: How about?
"America is inhabited by the tired, the broken, the beaten, the ignorant, the corrupt, the selfish, and the foolish. Do you want them deciding who runs the most powerful nation on the planet?
Yes. Because the alternative is much worse. A government of the people for the people may not be optimal, but it beats an elitist totalitarian regime. People who think they know best are usually wrong, they generally lack the empathy and open mindedness necessary for a job as dynamic and complex as that of government.
Politicians don't represent themselves, they don't promote their beliefs, they are a drain on the country as they take corporate money and trample on their constituency in a desperate effort to promote themselves.
Yes, corruption is a problem in all polical systems, and one that is extremely bad in the present government of the USA. But bad governments can be replaced in a functioning democracy. Whether the USA is still a functioning democracy is debatable. Your current government has not just let the people down, it has attacked the Constitution and the political system that could remove it. It may require quite drastic measures to correct this.
Individuals in a community have a democratic election to choose ther person they feel best qualified to represent them. This person then meets with other representatives and discuss/debate the issues important to the region, and elect one person to continue on
That sounds like a Parliamentry Democracy, such as we have in England. It is a compromise between the extremes of a political elite and mob rule that works rather well. Or has done for several centuries. It encourages career politicians who are in touch with their communities (constituents). The biggest difference we have in Europe is that commercial interests are barred. We don't have the same "lobbying" as the USA, which is basically legalised corruption that enables corporations to influence politicians. I think in Europe we understand much better the process of fascism, or as Eisenhower called it in an American context the "military indutrial complex". It begins the moment you allow business to be represented in government disproportionately to the ordinay people.
Having said that, our present Blair goverment has done a lot to damage the traditional political system and tried, like Bush, to change the rules of the game. That is why he is widely regarded as a wet failure and a traitor to our country, one who will very probably be handed over to the ICC to face war crimes if the people have any say so. Unlike the USA we have checks and balances in place that mean he will get what's coming to him, eventually.
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Re: Re: Re: How about?
Blair might not be perfect, but he is trying to protect his country. Once you realize that things will go a lot better for your lot. Your country has had war declared on it, but you refuse to acknowledge that. The side you are fighting is on a religious war, yet you refuse to see it as such.
Either people like Blair will take care of it for you, or you will die. Your subways were bombed, and you think a bobbie with a nightstick is the answer. What happened to the courage of Sir Winston Churchill, Montgomery and the like? What happened to your country? The will, the pride?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: How about?
Eh? what? which random bit of news did you read? I'm from a town in the UK which at last count had 3 major custom built mosques and long ago lost count of the number of smaller converted buildings
You may mean the Mosque in London which is under discussion at the moment - incidentally there is a fairly large part of the muslim population itself which oppose this from what I gather http://www.islamicpluralism.org/news/2006n/londontablighmosque.htm
I think its true - the UK does have problems with its immigration just like the majority or western countries, but I think that’s off topic (incidentally I'm not a fascist - there are problems there always will be, its how we fix them that’s important)
Either people like Blair will take care of it for you, or you will die. Your subways were bombed, and you think a bobbie with a nightstick is the answer. What happened to the courage of Sir Winston Churchill, Montgomery and the like? What happened to your country? The will, the pride?
[Rant]
Now I am offended - how dare you compare Blair to Winston Churchill? The two-faced bastard (who I unfortunately believed and voted for) is no comparison to one of our greatest leaders
Churchill stood firm and led our country into the dark against one of the most serious threats to it’s sovereignty it has ever known (He even stepped up to become leader AFTER others had started the war). Blair joined in an attack on Afghanistan because a Saudi committed an atrocity on an ally, and then joined in attacking Iraq because of [insert current excuse for invading Iraq here]. Sorry but that’s not even close to being the same and smacks of weakness and pandering, not real courage
Courage is not always looking for the first person to attack regardless of the situation and hiding behind a closed door as soon as something goes wrong. Real courage runs deeper - it is the ability to stand up, say "you will not change us" and go on regardless. The ability to stand firm on the beaches, preserve your freedoms and fight back where appropriate and possible
Removing fundamental freedoms (Patriot act) and joining in attacking someone, anyone (Iraq) is not courage, its manipulating a situation for other gains
[/rant]
Anyway sorry out being completely off topic
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Mandatory Attendence
With electronic machines, if there is any dispariity between the number of votes recorded (including abstinations) and the number of voters in an electorate, the simple solution would be to simply have everyone there vote again.
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Re: Mandatory Attendence
It isn't difficult to think up ways in which one could mess with election results no matter what method is used - it's much more difficult to actually carry out, let alone be successful. Electronic voting just makes it a lot easier to access and corrupt votes, and to do it sitting alone in a dark room. Or from the voting machine manufacturer's CEO's office. (Are all of the products on the market made by openly partisan Republicans? Want to guess why?)
If they want to inject technology into elections, for reasons other than manipulation, how about using RIF to imbed plastic "ballots" connected into sheets, like parts to a model. Slap pictures of the candidates on some jars and let voters file by, dropping a "ballot" into the jar of choice. RIF would stop anyone from voting more than once by identifying "ballot" duplicates within each race. If it was one of those, "Choose two (or however many) of the candidates" - the scanners could be set to only alert when reading more than the number allowed. The scanners ould only be checking for duplicates - the count would be manual, or they could modify either "ballot" or coin counter machines so they worked together.
Sorry for the rambling - it's a thought provoking subject - - -
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Paper Trail
Someone in a previous topic mentioned in their country they have a computerised record but that as the vote was cast it was also printed on a roll of paper under a viewing panel for the voter to witness as well
This seems like the best possible combination to me - I would assume that they would then send the paper and the disk/whatever in separate directions and compare notes
Obviously this would still be alterable by the CIA (Hi Dorpus!) as all things are, and if implemented in the US you could still go with the time honoured tradition of allowing Fox News to pick the winner
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Get a clue
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This is a drop in the Ocean
It's very clear the elections were manipuled on that state, but it's important to note the fraud was detected by a simple audit on the e-voting machines logs. On that sense, this is not a failure on the technology, but on the processes used to audit the elections by not providing enough controls to prevent *internal* frauds. This is the same as saying ATM technology is not secure if fraud is discovered on the ATM os ONE Citibank branch office...
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LEARN TO
LEARN TO BRAZILIANS HOW TO DO A ELECTION.
NORTH-AMERINCANS ARE THE BEST.
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AND GIVE ME
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33%
Again, not to say our voting machines are perfect (far from it) but in any case it is way easier to audit e-voting than paper ballots. And as voting is mandatory in Brazil, I would guess the results kinda even out.
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Seeking for a justification for your incompetence?
Come to visit Brazil, when you want to learn how to do an election with more than 100 million voters and give the results in less than 24 hours, instead of months of paper counting like US did in Bush junior's first election.
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