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Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes

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Re: Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes

#71
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(1) We have > 300 M people. That's a huge population. (2) We are OK publicizing it. (3) Probability would indicate that we'll have a certain error, and it'll be shouted about. --- But it's very strange that it was "miscalibrated" to not select one particular candidate, no? :)

> We have > 300 M people. That's a huge population Um, unless you're talking to India which manages to pull off votes with 1.2 Billion People. You are like 25% their population.

Dear Sir, As an Indian I can testify that we actually have far more election abuse - people being blocked from entering a voting booth, vote boxes(still vote on paper) being stolen, voting booths set on fire...

Of course, again, there is media acting as a watchdog, and a hope that the manipulation is statistically insignificant.

Re: Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sure looks exactly that way from the video. I've used that exact type of machine to vote in North Carolina (but this ballot is not from North Carolina). You have all sorts of people pounding on the screen all day. Remember the reason we all wanted electronic voting after the year 2000: because it gives absolutely clear answers, not necessarily better answers. (Even the best systems have errors because there are hu…

Electronic voting should be allowed but not unless it prints out a ballot with all your selections on it so you can verify and have a real paper trail; not some bit in a database that can be changed and most likely has been changed in the past based on grand jury testimony from one of the diebold programmers. As a programmer knowing how insecure programs are I want paper for something like this.

[deleted]

Re: Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes

#73
post #4

The shenanigans you seem to tolerate during elections are just incomprehensible to us foreigners. The number of horror stories I've heard in the last couple of weeks regarding everything from just weirdness of the system to blatant manipulation is farcical. It's possible that I'm getting a bleaker picture than reality, I suppose, since I only read about the broken stuff and not the instances where everything just wor…

I don't understand why isn't there a national council responsible for maintaining consistent and well run elections. To me it would seem like an easy win to push for it and push it through. "We need to preserve our democracy!" "Any one who doesn't vote for this bill, is unamerican!" "We cannot let our ability to vote be assaulted!" etc.

Our government is structured in such a way that elections are run at the local level, which can be seen as a strength. Imagine how dangerous it could be if one company manufactured every single voting machine used in every single polling place.

Re: Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes

#75
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(1) We have > 300 M people. That's a huge population. (2) We are OK publicizing it. (3) Probability would indicate that we'll have a certain error, and it'll be shouted about. --- But it's very strange that it was "miscalibrated" to not select one particular candidate, no? :)

> We have > 300 M people. That's a huge population Um, unless you're talking to India which manages to pull off votes with 1.2 Billion People. You are like 25% their population.

> http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=countries%20by%20popula...

this is a lot of people. I am sure that if we investigate the details of elections in India, Indonesia, and Brazil, we will find an array of fudged votes and issues.

In other words, I am pretty sure that the error rate for the mix of remote/paper/electronic voting will hold pretty constant regardless of population size.

Re: Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes

#76

Everyone's been spoiled by iPads etc., I guess. Old touch screens used to do this all the time. My Palm Pilot had a calibration app I'd have to run every few days/weeks. If he'd hit Mitt Romney, it probably wouldn't have selected Romney but the blank region above his name.

It's so funny to see that hardly anyone actually did anything more than just watch the video. The same "oh it must have been miscalibrated" is repeated up and down the comment page.

Let's hope whomever gets elected spends money on education so that people start reading again and not just consuming the 5 second Reader's Digest version.

Re: Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes

#77
There have been problems like this in every election with these machines.

More troubling, exit polls and voting results have routinely disagreed with each other since 2000. In most countries that would be taken as proof that the election was not fair. But not in the USA!

http://www.ukprogressive.co.uk/breaking-retired-nsa-analyst-... claims evidence of systemic manipulation of the vote, with the trend strongly being in the GOP's favor. I have not personally verified, but it would not surprise me.

Anyone who has been paying attention this election cycle knows about the attempts by both sides to manipulate rules about who can vote, when, in ways that advantage themselves and disadvantage each other. That happens in a lot of elections but not to the extent of this one. With weird results such as, because of a recent law in Ohio, polling workers have to ASK for ID, but due to a court decision, they can't stop you from voting if you DON'T have that ID. (Confused polling workers are sure to get this wrong.)

The general trend is that Republicans want as many barriers to voting in person as possible, while Democrats want as many to be able to vote as possible. That is because more marginal voters are much more likely to be Democrat than the general population. The stated reason is "to prevent fraud" even though there is very little evidence of such fraud in practice. On mail-in ballots this reverses, since the GOP expects a large portion of mail-in ballots to be from military people who are likely to vote Republican. Fraud has been more of an issue with mail-in ballots, but obviously people are not as worried about that.

Laws get broken as well. For instance the 2000 election was decided in Florida, in part due to a voter purge that the courts decided was illegal. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_Central_Voter_File for verification of that. The lesson learned is that voter purges work, which is why Florida was trying to do a purge this year at the last minute despite being warned that it was illegal. Because flipping the choice for President was easily worth the slap on the wrist they got afterwards.

There already have been laws broken this year (see http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57535950/man-charged-aft... and http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/national/fbi-launches-... for example), and everyone expects the lawyers to be gainfully employed as a result.

In short, get out your popcorn. When we exercise our right to vote, the vested interests exercise what they see as their right to manipulate the vote, and this time there is a decent chance of fireworks.

Re: Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes

#78
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(1) We have > 300 M people. That's a huge population. (2) We are OK publicizing it. (3) Probability would indicate that we'll have a certain error, and it'll be shouted about. --- But it's very strange that it was "miscalibrated" to not select one particular candidate, no? :)

Note the video didn't show him trying to select other candidates.

This. There have been similar reports of those trying to select Obama.

Re: Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes

#79
post #4

The shenanigans you seem to tolerate during elections are just incomprehensible to us foreigners. The number of horror stories I've heard in the last couple of weeks regarding everything from just weirdness of the system to blatant manipulation is farcical. It's possible that I'm getting a bleaker picture than reality, I suppose, since I only read about the broken stuff and not the instances where everything just wor…

I don't understand why isn't there a national council responsible for maintaining consistent and well run elections. To me it would seem like an easy win to push for it and push it through. "We need to preserve our democracy!" "Any one who doesn't vote for this bill, is unamerican!" "We cannot let our ability to vote be assaulted!" etc.

There's an interesting line of thought that a fragmented and diverse set of technologies and policies is more robust than a consolidated 'council'. You might be able to mess up any given district - but if you corrupt the council then you straight up win.

This makes a bit less sense when you look at how it ends up that a very few districts end up deciding the race - but I think the idea itself is sound. Those battlegrounds will shift, likely more rapidly than endemic corruption can take hold.

Re: Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes

#80
I am a red-blooded technologist, but I think voting should be done on paper ballots. Call me a luddite, but it's just too easy to manipulate votes--either at the time of voting or in post-processing--with an electronic voting machine.

That being said, the only conceivable way to have a secure electronic voting process is to use a completely open source system. Open source hardware and software, with publicly viewable results.

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