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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

#651

Post by stinky613 »

tokenadult wrote: post #189

The system here in Minnesota works much better. All ballots are paper ballots that are indelibly marked by voters. My wife and I voted this morning in our busy precinct in Minnesota, where there are some tight statewide contests about constitutional amendments and perhaps the most contested race for our state's House of Representatives of any electoral district in our state. As usual, we voted by marking bubble-shape…

Electronic voting machines are stupid, but I don't believe that's an inherent quality. Seemingly whenever electronic voting machines make the news the underlying problem is one of gross laziness or incompetence on the part of the manufacturer. It took me hours to clean my brain off the walls when I heard about the Diebold / McAfee mashup. [1]

Las Vegas slot machines seem like a perfect archetype (to me, anyway). In trying to look up the security measures I remember from an episode of Modern Marvels I instead ended up with an NY Times opinion piece from 2004 [2] drawing the same conclusion as I. Probably (based on admittedly nothing) the measures cited have become more sophisticated and rigorous in the past 8 years.

Here are some highlights on slot machine security (as of June 2004):

* All machine software past and present are kept on file by the state

* Spot checks, spot checks, spot checks. Random and often.

* State gaming commissions are constantly looking for new ways to manipulate their machines; the article mentions firing a stun gun at a slot machine (best job ever?)

* Six month vetting process for companies and employees wanting produce gambling hardware/software

* User disputing the machine's actions has the right to an immediate investigation

Note: I am absolutely in favor of maintaining a paper trail for decades regardless of the state of digital solutions.

[1]http://xkcd.com/463/

[2]http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/13/opinion/gambling-on-voting...

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

#652

Post by api »

dignan wrote: post #412
api wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans tend to have this unbelievably naive idea that there's no high-level organized or institutional crime in their country.

How many Americans do you know?

Lots. I am one.

What I've found is that it roughly correlates with education, and not in the inverse sense. More educated and accomplished Americans usually scoff at any and all hint of real not-an-isolated-incident systemic corruption as "conspiracy theory," grouping it in the same category as David Icke's tales of shape-shifting reptiles. There is no organized crime in America, no systemic corruption. Everyone is just doing their job.

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

#653

Post by pulplobster »

refurb wrote: post #493
pulplobster wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The population density of Sweden is lower than the US and it has excellent roads.

It has less to do with population density and more to do with population clusters. The people in Sweden aren't even distributed across the entire country.

Neither is the US population. Let's compare apples to apples for a minute. WA + OR ~= Sweden: WA+OR population: 10.6 m, size: 170,000 sq mi Sweden population: 9.5 m, size: 173,860 sq mi

Now, I think that's a pretty fair comparison. The roads can be pretty terrible in Washington and Oregon from my experience. That may be because federal money for roads goes to other less dense states, but these proportions hold up fairly well nationwide too. I think it's just a matter of less public funding, it's that simple.

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

#654

Post by xxpor »

chimeracoder wrote: post #644
xxpor wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how Washington works. The primary system is mail in, but walk in voting is also available.

I'm pretty sure most Washington counties voted to do away with walk-in voting. Counties have the option to allow it, but most don't, so most individuals don't have this option. Not that they seem to mind, though - I haven't heard of any complaints, anecdotally.

Ah, I thought that's the whole state worked. I didn't realize it was up to the county (I'm only familiar with King).

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

#655

Post by tjgq »

h1srf wrote: post #564
tjgq wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key observation is that, since counting votes is an inherently distributed problem (with a comparatively simple centralized step at the end), you can always deal with it by adjusting the number of polling stations. I can speak for what happens in Portugal. We use the d'Hondt system with paper ballots, and it is not uncommon to have around 15 candidates on a ballot in certain elections, though we have no write-ins…

It's not that simple. In the US, I think most places let you write in whoever you want. If they get enough votes, they win. Google "Lisa Murkowski". The other problem is that unlike parliamentary systems, in the US we vote for multiple things and not which party/who your MP is. These are some of the things on the ballot: 1. President & VP 2. Senator 3. Congress Representative 4. Judges 5. Ballot measures Unless each…

> In the US, I think most places let you write in whoever you want. If they get enough votes, they win. Google "Lisa Murkowski".

Yes, I would imagine write-ins could complicate the situation considerably (thanks for the link, btw!) - though, if the proportion of write-ins is small, it probably won't matter much.

> The other problem is that unlike parliamentary systems, in the US we vote for multiple things and not which party/who your MP is.

This also happens in Portugal; we do use different pieces of paper (and different ballot boxes) for each of the positions we are voting for.

> I think that we should be using paper ballots. What does it matter if it takes 2 days instead of 1 to figure out who won.

Yes, I totally agree with you. There are more important things than a speedy count, and resilience to fraud is certainly one of them. And as far as costs go, they are probably dwarfed by the amount spent on the campaign. I really don't understand why anyone would be so eager to speed up the process, except for shady motives.

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

#656

Post by juiceandjuice »

trhtrsh wrote: post #510
juiceandjuice wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right. But for 3,000,000 votes cast, the margin of error is about 6 hundredths of one percent. At the 99% confidence level, it's .074% variance.

What are you defining as "the" margin of error?

The margin of error of a poll is the margin of error at the 95% confidence level (two sigma). The standard "margin of error" when you are talking about polls.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margin_of_error#Different_confi...

In reality, you should apply a finite population correction, which would make the "margin of error" a bit smaller if you get a substantial percentage of the population voting:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite_population_correction#Co...

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

#657

Post by kybernetikos »

trhtrsh wrote: post #516
kybernetikos wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From reading the wiki article it seems that Punchscan allows the voter to prove which way they voted.

That is incorrect. Why do you think so? Are you thinking of this: ". The voter can look up her ballot by typing in the serial number and she can check that information held by the election authority matches her ballot. " The voter must retain her vote (A or B) in human memory, which cannot be externally verified, except by brain scan, etc... but that detail is rather unsolvable. Punchscan is a bit impractical for ver…

You're right, only the piece you've already kept, which by itself is not enough to prove which way you voted is kept. I was confused because it said that it showed you something which could prove that a vote was 'counted as cast', and I don't see how you can prove that without the system proving to you that it knew how you cast your vote.

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

#658

Post by thomasz »

finnw wrote: post #639
thomasz wrote: post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to make it clear: This was sarcasm. I never have dealt with armed libertarians beating somebody up because he supported unionization. The point is: Neither has he encountered union thugs beating somebody up because he was against unionization. It's a ridiculous myth.

> This was sarcasm No, it was irony.

mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa

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

#659

Post by esrauch »

gordonguthrie wrote: post #541
danielweber wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't get rid of edge cases by moving the edge.

Yes you can. If there is a tie in the UK the result is chosen on a cut of the cards. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/england... The candidates agree, and the winner and loser both accept the outcome, works for me.

I'm confused by your reply. The grandparent comment was saying "You should never flip a coin", the person you replied to said (roughly) "It's impossible to avoid all situations where you can't measure the winner, you have to either flip a coin or just take the person who happened to come out ahead in the vote count".

Your link to a place where they used a coin flip isn't disagreeing with him (nor really the grandparent, who wasn't claiming that you can't use a coinflip, but rather that you shouldn't use a coinflip).

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