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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

#171

Post by grecy »

danielrhodes wrote: post #127
grecy wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (1) We have > 300 M people. That's a huge population. It's hilarious when Americans use that as an excuse for things being sub-par in their country. I see it all the time for health care, roads, schools etc. Yes, your country has lots of people in it, but it also takes in an enormous amount of tax, and has enormous government agencies to organize this kind of thing. Everything should scale up appropriately, but you…

You are right. Countries scale up linearly just like websites do. How stupid of us to think otherwise.

I did not use the word linear.

Obviously scaling is hard, but I would expect that's one of the things a well functioning, well funded government should take care of, much like how Facebook and Google manage to scale well.

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

#172

Post by Emouri »

orenmazor wrote: post #83
jarek wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you never hear about these things in your own country that means that apparently no one there cares. Or that they don't happen...

what is this fantastic place?

Denmark? I've never heard of these sort of things happening around here.

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

#173

Post by tobias3 »

goostavos wrote: post #154
eli wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely not! It's a secret ballot -- you cannot have any way to prove which candidates you voted for.

I was not the best civics student.. What is the significance of it being secret ? Being able to verify your vote seems like a pretty simple, good thing ( I would think ).

Someone can give you money to vote for a specific candidate and verify that you voted correctly via the confirmation code.

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

#174

Post by matthewowen »

pnathan wrote: post #34
morsch wrote: 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…

(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? :)

300m people is a complete red herring. That also means you have many more people available to process ballots / provide infrastructure.

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

#175

Post by mkhpalm »

Jeez, I thought HN people were sharper than this about modern technology. I'm not a Romney supporter but these voting machines are basic single touch interfaces with standard fat-finger algorithms. Lets have him pull back on the camera and show the rest of the screen. Specifically, where his other finger is at the time it selects Romney. His video is highly suspect to me.

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

#176

Post by ry0ohki »

goostavos wrote: post #154
eli wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely not! It's a secret ballot -- you cannot have any way to prove which candidates you voted for.

I was not the best civics student.. What is the significance of it being secret ? Being able to verify your vote seems like a pretty simple, good thing ( I would think ).

So say if some party were to gain power and start harassing people that voted for the other party...

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

#177

Post by Jach »

eli wrote: post #147
kevinalexbrown wrote: post #140

If there were one aspect of electronic voting I could change it would be the following: allow electronic votes to be reviewed by each individual at a later date, from two independent organizations. Each vote gets sent to two independent electronic counting organizations, and each let you verify your vote after the election, with an (anonymous) confirmation number issued at voting time. If enough people cry foul to ru…

Definitely not! It's a secret ballot -- you cannot have any way to prove which candidates you voted for.

You don't need to compromise secrecy. Are we ever going to stop complaining and call for using 3ballot or one of the any other methods? http://rangevoting.org/Rivest3B.html

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

#178

Post by amalcon »

jarek wrote: post #35
morsch wrote: 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 had a similar reaction. The regulations on what is required to vote differ between states?! Cities run polling stations?! David Frum weighing in: http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/05/opinion/frum-election-chaos/in...

That's a side effect of the way we've suborned the electoral college. When an individual in the U.S. "votes for a Presidential candidate", they are actually voting in a state-wide election (to determine who the state's electors vote for). The election isn't national, so there's usually no need for the Federal government to be involved.

That's also one reason we're so hesitant to get rid of the thing: at the same time, we'd need to nationalize election administration. If we didn't, it would be much easier for states to "cheat" and exaggerate their voting power by claiming higher voter turnout than what actually happened.

Think of it like a badly-designed old dataflow that you would love fix, but there are so many dependencies now that it's become a major project.

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

#179

Post by danielweber »

jivatmanx wrote: post #138
citricsquid wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But it's very strange that it was "miscalibrated" to not select one particular candidate, no? :) The internet loves Obama. There are many stories of people that support Obama cheating the system (right now there's a popular story of someone admitting on Facebook to voting for Obama 4 times...) and that isn't on the front page of HN, when that is absolutely confirmed to be a misuse of the system. Everything that is…

The CEO's of the companies making these voting machines are all die hard Republican supporters, especially Diebold. Being that none of these machines are open-source, that's really the important factor, the political persuasion of the companies manufacturing the machines. The essence of democracy is an essential distrust of power, so yes, I'm concerned.

The machine in the video was made by iVotronic, not Diebold.

none of these machines are open-source, that's really the important factor

This is the least important factor.

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

#180

Post by azharcs »

param wrote: post #71
mindstab wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I would like to disagree with Mr.Param who is either being a cynic or trying to be "me-too". India is aggressively moving away from paper-ballot voting to EVM's. In our last general elections, a million electronic voting machines (EVM's) were used which reduces vote-rigging, ballot capture etc. In maybe 5 years, we will be completely rid of paper-ballots.

For further read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_voting_machines

India also has option called "None of the Above" as a voting option, which is extremely democratic.

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