Colorado The Latest To Ditch E-Voting Machines
from the sounds-familiar dept
Just days after Ohio announced problems with all of the e-voting machines used in that state, Colorado has decertified e-voting machines from all four major vendors in the space, noting serious problems with them all, including a 1% error rate in counting ballots (1%!). So at what point do the e-voting companies stop stonewalling and finally just admit that they need to start again from scratch? At this point, it's beyond clear that none of these firms is even the least bit trustworthy -- and yet, they continue to protest these decertifications, despite piles upon piles of evidence that these machines have serious problems.
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Filed Under: colorado, e-voting
Companies: diebold, es&s, hart intercivic, premiere voting, sequoia
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And we wonder...
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Re: And we wonder...
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To put into perspective...
An error of 1% would be about 1000 votes. That would be roughly 100 time the winning margin. Note that we do not use e-voting.
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Its Sad
America really is in a sad state of affairs.
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Re: Its Sad
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Voting irregularities
Here's obsessive reporting on the topic.
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Re: Re:
Is it 2 or is it 10?
How about 1 + 1 + 1?
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Have you ever worked for an election??? Have you ever counted ballots???
Do you even know what the heck you are talking about???
I have many times and you are just passing gas. The voting machines have become for the American Left the equivalent of black helicopters for the Birchers.
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I have never worked for an election. I do know that the electoral role in the seat of McEwan in about 100,000, that 1% of 100,000 is 1000 and that the margin declared was 12 votes.
As I was talking about the magnitude of the quoted numbers rather than their accuracy I am perfectly qualified to talk about them.
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Voting systems redux
The litany of outright failures (as well as the ease with which security breaches are found) with all current electronic voting systems highlights one of the principles of secure software: it's not secure until everyone knows exactly how it works and it's still secure. This principle has been well-known for decades, yet inexperienced people still keep insisting that it doesn't apply to their work.
They're wrong.
If the vendors were truly sincere about trying to craft products free of software defects (likely an unobtainable goal, but certainly one worth striving for) then they would have long since published all the source code for public peer review. It's become clear -- over the past several years -- that (a) they're not going to do that (b) they're still peddling the security-by-obscurity approach, which has a 100% failure rate and (c) the huge number of glaring errors found without the source code strongly suggests that they know publication would be embarrassing -- due to the pitifully low quality of the code.
Of course, maybe I'm wrong about (c). That could easily be proven by any vendor that's willing to put their source code where their PR currently is.
There's a broader perspective on this, though: these systems are expensive, bug-ridden -- and unnecessary. Manual counting procedures (when used properly) are well-understood, accurate, and highly resistant to manipulation. They're also slow -- but as I've said before, there is no need for speed. (Yes, I'm sure this would greatly disappoint TV networks, but that's their problem.) The continued insistence on electronic voting systems (by those who lack basic security knowledge, or by vendors trying to profit) is yet another example of technology misuse. And unlike some of the others, whose effect is, in the long run, negligible, this one undercuts the franchise -- one of the cornerstones of democracy.
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Patent Dispute
You think voter apathy is bad now ........
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Need to read the article
The inaccuracies mentioned refer to optical scanners specifically, some of which were also decertified in Colorado. These inaccurate optical scanners, by the way, are the solution that is now being preferred by many of the same states decertifying the electronic voting machines. In their favor, the paper ballots provide some record of actual votes cast and might possibly make it marginally harder to commit undetectable election fraud.
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OK, what was the error rate for the paper ballots? Is it more than 1%?
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Imagine if you have a calculator and it said on the package 1% error rate. That means that out of every 100 calculations you do it has 1 that's wrong. Would you accept it? I sure as hell wouldn't. A computer is just an advanced calculator. 1 + 1 + 1 always equals 3. There is no other possibility. So if a computer has a 1% error rate that people have noticed, how much error goes unnoticed?
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Are you ignoring why electronic voting became a hot button in the first place? Hanging chad anyone? If there wasn't a problem with paper ballots, electronic voting would never had come into being.
Do you also know that in Arizona that same year, they had counting problems worse than Florida did, but no on cared, because the vote wasn't close. In that same year, Iowa and Oregon also had counting problems, but again the votes were not close.
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Colorado e-voting machines
"Coffman says all of the voting equipment submitted for recertification by Premier passed."
http://www.9news.com/rss/article.aspx?storyid=82946
"The only machines approved are made by Premier Election Solutions, formerly known as Diebold Election Systems."
http://www.politicswest.com/2008_election/15404/coffman_asks_colo_ease_rules_certify_voti ng_machines
But the problems should cause other states to look at their e-voting before the election next year - not after.
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If Diebold et all systems are so easy to hack... I would think that the kiddies would be hacking into the ATM network and spitting $20bills all over. They are not. It is secure. Doh!
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