Reddit user captures video of 2012 voting machines altering votes • Hacker News Board

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

#151

Post by yesbabyyes » Tue, Nov 06, 2012, 7:15 PM UTC

ars wrote: post #40

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…

Actually it's quite the opposite: People get so worked up about these things because they don't tolerate it. If you never hear about these things in your own country that means that apparently no one there cares.

If OP comes from a democracy, I highly doubt they do things like:

- Voter ID to discourage minorities, students, elderly [1]

- "True the Vote", invoking a problem that doesn't exist [2]

- Another article on "True the Vote" [3]

- Blocking voting on the weekend before election [4]

- You don't see lines like this in other developed countries. It's not that they're not reported on because "no one cares", they're not reported on because there aren't any lines. [5]

- Again, you don't see stuff like this on election day outside of the US: [6]

- Thankfully, there are honorable republicans who also call this out, like Conor Friedersdorf: [7]

- And this, it's just... Baffling to people in the rest of the world. [8]

Again, this is unheard of where I live, not because people don't care but because we're not (completely) bamboozled!

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuOT1bRYdK8

[2] http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/10/the-ball...

[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/17/us/politics/groups-like-tr...

[4] http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/sep/21/voting-wron...

[5] http://news.yahoo.com/voting-already-mess-florida-041641182....

[6] http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/11/no-one-i...

[7] http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/11/shame-on...

[8] http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/doral-florida-early-vo...

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

#152

Post by grecy » Tue, Nov 06, 2012, 7:15 PM UTC

gavinlynch wrote: post #134

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…

@daneilrhodes: you took the words right out of my mouth. I had no idea scaling was so simple. OP: When has this been used as an excuse for anything that you are apparently deeming as 'sub-standard' here in America? Cite a source please? Gotta be honest, I've never heard that excuse once. I also had no idea the rest of the world had solved the problem of civics and effective government. Why are you guys keeping it a s…

It's being used as an excuse right now for the voting...

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

#153

Post by DirtyCalvinist » Tue, Nov 06, 2012, 7:16 PM UTC

wbrendel wrote: post #65

What's wrong with paper ballots again? Serious question. In my area (northern MA), voters are given a ballot with a bubble next to each of the candidates' names. You use a marker to fill in the bubble next to the candidate you want to vote for, like 6-year-olds manage to do all the time on multiple choice tests in school. Then it gets read in by a machine, leaving a paper trail just in case. How are these electronic…

Electronic voting machines allow for easier customization of text for edge cases, like a need for higher contrast, larger print or another language. A good compromise, I think, would be to have the electronic machines print out a human-readable paper ballot, and that would be counted as ballots used to be. The security/checkability of the old system with the convenience of the electronic interface.

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

#154

Post by goostavos » Tue, Nov 06, 2012, 7:16 PM UTC

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.

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 ).

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

#155

Post by danielweber » Tue, Nov 06, 2012, 7:16 PM UTC

genwin wrote: post #104

danielweber wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 It's absolutely not proof. It's, at the least, evidence. Exit polls are statistical -- in my dozens of times voting, I've never hit an exit pollster. But if you say "the exit polls disagree with the official numbers, so let's go with the exit polls" you have…

Statistics tells you the odds that the exit poll would disagree by some degree with the actual result. If the odds show, for example, only a 1 in a 100 million chance of it happening, an investigation should take place. That you've never hit an exit pollster doesn't say much, because the odds can be computed with high confidence by polling only a tiny fraction of the voters. Statistics is highly valuable despite not…

And who regulates the exit pollsters?

Normally I wouldn't worry about this, but if you want to give them power to invalidate an election (or force an "investigation," whatever that means), then you shouldn't just let them run around doing whatever they think is best.

but the odds of him losing are nil, the stats show.

I don't even know what mindset produces this thought. While Nate Silver doesn't think Romney will win, he gives changes that are a hell of a lot bigger than "nil."

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

#156

Post by anonymouz » Tue, Nov 06, 2012, 7:16 PM UTC

ricardobeat wrote: post #112

anonymouz wrote: post #87

Even if this is just accidental or some weird calibration issue (weird, because it only seems to affect one button according to the report), it just goes to show how little confidence one can have in these machines. Does anyone think if they can't get the touchscreen right, the remaining parts of the system can be expected to work correctly? The only positive thing is that such an easy to demonstrate failure might op…

The fact that the current implementation is not reliable doesn't make the whole idea of electronic voting bad. We've had electronic voting for general elections in Brazil since 2000, with very few accusations of fraud.

But there are very significant issues with the principle of electronic voting:

Ideally, every voter would be able to verify their own vote after the fact via some cryptographic mechanism. But on the other hand, this mechanism should be such that the government (or another individual trying to coerce our voter) would not be able to verify the vote -- an almost contradictory, difficult requirement. I am not aware of such a method being employed in any large-scale election.

In the absence of such a method, you have a heap of problems:

1) How do you make it verifiable for the general public? Even if you accept that the general public will not be able to verify it (bad!), how would you make it verifiable even for experts? It's almost impossible to ensure that the code being run is the one you verified beforehand, especially on such a large scale, so this way is out of the question. (Remember, this is a high-stakes game, so you'd better know that your CPU in fact executes your opcodes correctly...)

2) Electronic voting & tallying opens the door for large-scale manipulation without leaving traces. If you want to remove 10000 paper ballots, you have to somehow get rid of them (with people watching). 10000 votes vanishing in a computer? No problem, just a memory operation, a bystander would never notice it.

Some of this can be dealt with by having the machine print out a paper ballot immediately after voting, and keeping those ballots. Then you're in fact using the relative safety of paper ballot voting to double check the electronic record.

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

#157

Post by darien » Tue, Nov 06, 2012, 7:17 PM UTC

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.

Federal District Judge Christine Arguello denied the existence of a constitutional right to a secret ballot. http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_21601455/federal-j...

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

#158

Post by sek » Tue, Nov 06, 2012, 7:17 PM UTC

ars wrote: post #86

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...

> Or that they don't happen... Yah, somehow I doubt that, unless you managed to hire god to run your elections. Humans make mistakes, and machines and systems that humans build mess up. If you never hear about problems that's quite worrying - that means no one is even checking.

We don't have voting machines exactly for that reason (Germany). There have been cases with voter fraud, but they got solved with recounts.

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

#159

Post by wpietri » Tue, Nov 06, 2012, 7:17 PM UTC

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.

Yes. Proof of who you voted for is an invitation to vote-buying.

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

#160

Post by njs12345 » Tue, Nov 06, 2012, 7:17 PM UTC

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…

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punchscan for an example of one such system which preserves the secret ballot property.