If it's about voting and it's almost funny, you're in Florida.

[shereads]

Florida voters spent months trying to prevent the use of paperless voting machines provided by Diebold, Inc., whose CEO had written a Republican fundraising letter in which he promsied to do everything possible to reelect President Bush.

It turns out that our public servants were listening, after all! This week the election commission of Miami-Dade County said they will dump the $25 million paperless machines and spend another $10 million on optical scanning machines that provide a paper trail. As much as they regret having to write off the loss of $25 million, the optical scanning equipment is cheaper to transport and operate and will probably pay for itself in a few years.

(Apparently no one did the math before. Go figure.)

Most important, say my elected representatives, is the need to regain voter confidence. "People didn't trust the touch-screen machines because there was no paper record in the event that a recount had been needed. People need to believe that their votes are counted."

Not so much. Not anymore.

I don't give a damn about paperless balloting anymore. I cared on November 2 and for months before, and I cared when two hotly disputed states that used Diebold equipment - Ohio and Florida - turned out to be the two states with the largest discrepencies between exit polling (which predicated a Kerry win) and the official vote count.

Now I'd just as soon save the $10 million and pretend I don't know what happened.

 

[Virtual_Burlesque]

True.

Ignorance is bliss, and by now, everybody is blissed out, blissed up, and blissed off!

 

[rgraham666]

What's the use of being rich if you can't buy an election?

 

[dr_mabeuse]

The idea of paperless voting machines is in itself such a jaw-droppingly stupid and outrageous idea that I think it caught everyone by surprise. We just couldn't believe that paperless really meant no record. I mean, it's right down there with the idea of making parachutes out of toilet paper.

But they went and did it, didn't they? I remember them talking on the news acting as if the idea of giving voters a receipt was up there with perpetual motion: technologically impossible. The software and hardware just didn't exist.

What a crock.

 

[Virtual_Burlesque]

Unless I was dreaming, I seem to remember one of our more credulous commentators sitting through an interview, with jaw slack and every orifice wide open, nodding its head in agreement as an administration mouthpiece explained that computer technology isn't able to handle both a foolproof method of recording votes, while at the same time, printing some sort of paper document to pacify paranoid voters.

If they could, the mouthpiece went on, the price would be prohibitive. Nobody could afford to own of operate it.

Dennis Miller — yeah, it was his show — then made some feeble joke about how he thought liberals wanted to save trees.

Before I could switch the program off, they cut away to a commercial message from MasterCard.

 

[BlackShanglan]

Just to reference precedents - I was tuned in to NPR and they did point out that at least one other country - I'm thinking in South America, but I could be wrong - did actually run an election using electronic voting machines that printed paper receipts. And they did actually have serious, wide-scale problems with printers breaking down and polling areas being overrun because the machines were non-funtional. I'm not saying that one cannot create a machine that reliably and quickly prints voting receipts - only pointing out they have, in fact, tried and failed.

Shanglan

 

[shereads]

The idea of paperless voting machines is in itself such a jaw-droppingly stupid and outrageous idea that I think it caught everyone by surprise. We just couldn't believe that paperless really meant no record. I mean, it's right down there with the idea of making parachutes out of toilet paper.

But they went and did it, didn't they? I remember them talking on the news acting as if the idea of giving voters a receipt was up there with perpetual motion: technologically impossible. The software and hardware just didn't exist.

What a crock.

The problem wasn't so much that it didn't exist, but that it would have cost less.

 

[shereads]

Just to reference precedents - I was tuned in to NPR and they did point out that at least one other country - I'm thinking in South America, but I could be wrong - did actually run an election using electronic voting machines that printed paper receipts. And they did actually have serious, wide-scale problems with printers breaking down and polling areas being overrun because the machines were non-funtional. I'm not saying that one cannot create a machine that reliably and quickly prints voting receipts - only pointing out they have, in fact, tried and failed.

Shanglan

The Diebold machines were problematic, too, during trial runs and at polling places where spot checks were done. Fortunately, there was no way to document the number of mis-counted votes. By eliminating a paper trail, we were spared a divisive post-election controversy that might have led to another embarrassing intervention by Bush and Reagan appointees on the Supreme Court. Nobody wanted to see that again!

Thank you, CEO of Diebold. Thank you, Governor Jeb Bush.


Edited to add: What about ATM machines? And what about the optical scanners used at supermarkets that produce receipts from the cash register? How does that work? Is it really really complicated, like landing on the moon? Is that why the price of cereal is so high at Publix?

Would anyone deposit a check in a bank that claims it's unable to provide a receipt because the technology hasn't been perfected?

 

[rgraham666]

Edited to add: What about ATM machines? And cash register? How does that work?

Would anyone deposit a check in a bank that claims it's unable to provide a receipt because the technology hasn't been perfected?

Shush. Stop bringing real world experience into it. Where would we end up then?

With Kerry as President, that's what! Oh, the horror, the horror.

 

[shereads]

Unless I was dreaming, I seem to remember one of our more credulous commentators sitting through an interview, with jaw slack and every orifice wide open, nodding its head in agreement as an administration mouthpiece explained that computer technology isn't able to handle both a foolproof method of recording votes, while at the same time, printing some sort of paper document to pacify paranoid voters.

If they could, the mouthpiece went on, the price would be prohibitive. Nobody could afford to own of operate it.

Dennis Miller — yeah, it was his show — then made some feeble joke about how he thought liberals wanted to save trees.

Before I could switch the program off, they cut away to a commercial message from MasterCard.

Remember when Dennis Miller was Dennis Miller? What did they do to him? Is the man who said he had no problem with John Ashcroft monitoring his life "as long as he does it without me knowing" the same man who once said that Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No To Drugs" campaign encouraged kids to be rude? ("What's wrong with, 'Just Say No, Thank You.'")

Ever since he tried being a football announcer and found out that real men thought he was a fancy boy, Dennis has been trying to reinvent himself as Amicus. I miss the old Dennis. Who's willing to try an intervention? I was thinking we might hire some of those kidnapper-deprogrammers that parents used to use to rescue their kids from the Moonies.

 

[shereads]

The Almost-Funny But-Unfortunately-Too-Close-To-Home Florida Voting Video

http://politicalhumor.about.com/gi/...go.nl/Section/Videos/BoomChicagoVotingMachine

 

[BlackShanglan]

Edited to add: What about ATM machines? And what about the optical scanners used at supermarkets that produce receipts from the cash register? How does that work? Is it really really complicated, like landing on the moon? Is that why the price of cereal is so high at Publix?

No idea. I only know that it was tried in a country-wide election, and it did fail. I'm not even sure whose machines they were.

If I had to hazard a guess, I would speculate that it would have something to do with trying to make them portable and having them have to be used many times in rapid succession without a break - but that's a total shot in the dark. As someone whose work computer comes a standstill every damned time I print so much as a half-page note, I'm willing to believe nearly anything about printers. There's a reason why, when one buys a printer, one is typically offered a warranty that costs at remarkable percentage of the value of the printer itself. They're really not at a very reliable state of functioning as a whole. Given the number of full-size printers that have died on me, not to mention the grief most of them give before dying, I'm actually not surprised or suspicious at the theory that it's difficult to produce reliable, miniaturized versions that unskilled people can use once every four or five years with perfect functionality. The full-sized one on my desk that was installed by professionals and gets used every day is hardly a model for the march of industrial progress.

Shanglan

 

[shereads]

No idea. I only know that it was tried in a country-wide election, and it did fail. I'm not even sure whose machines they were.

If I had to hazard a guess, I would speculate that it would have something to do with trying to make them portable and having them have to be used many times in rapid succession without a break - but that's a total shot in the dark. As someone whose work computer comes a standstill every damned time I print so much as a half-page note, I'm willing to believe nearly anything about printers. There's a reason why, when one buys a printer, one is typically offered a warranty that costs at remarkable percentage of the value of the printer itself. They're really not at a very reliable state of functioning as a whole. Given the number of full-size printers that have died on me, not to mention the grief most of them give before dying, I'm actually not surprised or suspicious at the theory that it's difficult to produce reliable, miniaturized versions that unskilled people can use once every four or five years with perfect functionality. The full-sized one on my desk that was installed by professionals and gets used every day is hardly a model for the march of industrial progress.

Shanglan

The frailty of computers is the second reason the paperless machines were a bad idea.

The third reason, as it now turns out, is that they were far more cumbersome and expensive to transport than the optical scanners that are now being touted as the better choice.

The fourth reason is that the paperless machines not only cost more to operate, but cost more than twice as much to purchase. $25 million for Miami-Dade County, compared to $10 million for the optical scanners.

The first reason goes without saying.

But damn, if they didn't get away with it. The beauty of it is, this was a much less controversial way to steal an election than by having White House legal counsel on the phone with Katherine Harris on Nov. 3, 2000, saying, "It's up to you to bring this election in for a landing," after which, she did.

Most Americans continued to have faith that their government would never use something as sneaky - albeit simple - as a programming trick to steal and election and leave no evidence. So only us liberals questioned it. And question it, we did. For months after the contract was awarded to Diebold, Inc., Carl Hiassen of the Miami Herald led the charge and we wrote letters and sent e-mails until we were blue, objecting to both the conflict of interest and the impossibility of a recount.

Think of it: the impossibility of a recount. In Florida. After all the talk about making every vote count and regaining the confidence of voters, they solved the problem of hanging chads in the one way that was guaranteed not to promote voter confidence.
I'll never forget how it felt to cast the most important vote of my life, and then just stand there staring at the monitor wondering if something should happen. Was that it? Had I voted? Had I clicked "submit" and somehow crashed the program? I asked one of the poll workers if anything had gone wrong and she just shrugged and shook her head, then reset the system for the next voter.

For all I know, I didn't vote at all. Just as likely is that the program converted every Xth Kerry vote to a Bush vote. Somewhere, there's a programmer who knows, but if he did help hijack a presidential election, he's not coming forward.

 

[LadyJeanne]

This paper trail capability was already available and used in November 2004 in Nevada (see below).

Diebold to Market Paper-Trail E-Voting System

Company designs new machines with printers for voter-verified paper trail.

Grant Gross, IDG News Service
Thursday, January 27, 2005

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Diebold Election Systems, a target of many electronic-voting critics during the 2004 U.S. election, announced Thursday it has completed the design for a printer that would give its e-voting machines a paper trail.

Diebold's printer, submitted for federal government approval several weeks ago, would create a so-called voter-verified paper trail, a function that many critics have demanded of e-voting machine manufacturers.

A machine with a printer that creates a voter-verified paper trail permits voters to review their selections on a printout after using an electronic ballot. Advocates of such printers say the functionality allows voters to be confident that e-voting machines recorded their votes as intended, and provides paper evidence for a recount.

The company's decision comes in large part because of state requirements for paper-trail ballots, says David Bear, a Diebold spokesperson. Nevada used e-voting machines with paper-trail capabilities in the November U.S. election, and California and Ohio have joined Nevada in requiring e-voting machine printers in future elections.

Voter-verified paper trails would virtually eliminate machine error in which votes aren't counted, says Will Doherty, executive director of the Verified Voting Foundation. In the November 2004 election, one county in North Carolina lost more than 4500 votes when a misunderstanding occurred over the capacity of the e-voting machines used there.

The Verified Voting Foundation advocates that the printed ballots be the official record when e-voting machines with voter-verified paper trails are used.

"It's about time," Doherty says of Diebold's decision. "We're very glad some vendors are starting to offer the paper-trail option."

Cost Not Determined

The Information Technology Association of America, which has defended e-voting machines as accurate and safe, says Diebold's move appears to be focused on the demand for paper-trail ballots. "It's a situation where companies are going to provide what their customers want," says Bob Cohen, executive vice president of the ITAA, which counts e-voting machine makers among its members.

ITAA officials have questioned if voter-verified paper trails will provide a significant benefit while adding costs to e-voting machines. Though the ITAA maintains that widespread attacks on e-voting machines are unlikely, officials there suggest that programmers smart enough to change ballots inside e-voting machines could also manipulate the printouts.

"Our point all along is that paper-based solutions are one alternative," Cohen says. "It gets to be as much an issue of peace of mind for the voters as anything else."

Diebold has not yet determined a cost for the printers, Bear says, and he wouldn't predict when the new printer would be approved by the federal government.

The AccuView Printer Module will be an optional component to any new or existing Diebold AccuVote TSx touch-screen voting station, and it can also be designed to fit existing AccuVote-TS machines. The AccuView displays printed selections under a transparent surface, enabling the voter to privately view and verify selections against those simultaneously displayed on the e-voting system's summary screen.

Voters will be able to view their selections but will not be able to remove the audit printout from the machines.

PC World

 

[Weird Harold]

The AccuView Printer Module will be an optional component to any new or existing Diebold AccuVote TSx touch-screen voting station, and it can also be designed to fit existing AccuVote-TS machines. The AccuView displays printed selections under a transparent surface, enabling the voter to privately view and verify selections against those simultaneously displayed on the e-voting system's summary screen.

Note also, that even the Diebold machines have always HAD the capability to produce a paper-trail. As far as I know, ALL TS Voting machines have the capability of printing a hard-copy of the Ballot through a standard printer interface.

Nevada was the only state to go completely touch screen voting (with VVPT printers) in 2004, and I do not know of anyone here that was unsatisfied with the process.

An intersting Local news story revealed that the Nevada Gaming Comission provided specialists in combating computer fraud in computerized slot machines to evaluate the various options for electronic voting machines -- who dis-recommended optical scanners as too error-prone and hackable.

However, the BIG difference in Nevada's change to all-electronic voting had nothing to do with the hardware, it had to do with the training of Election workers -- Nevada spent nearly as much on training election workers as they spent on the hardware, so we not only had the most secure systems on the market but people properly trained to set them up and monitor them.

 

[shereads]

Note also, that even the Diebold machines have always HAD the capability to produce a paper-trail. As far as I know, ALL TS Voting machines have the capability of printing a hard-copy of the Ballot through a standard printer interface.

Nevada was the only state to go completely touch screen voting (with VVPT printers) in 2004, and I do not know of anyone here that was unsatisfied with the process.

An intersting Local news story revealed that the Nevada Gaming Comission provided specialists in combating computer fraud in computerized slot machines to evaluate the various options for electronic voting machines -- who dis-recommended optical scanners as too error-prone and hackable.

However, the BIG difference in Nevada's change to all-electronic voting had nothing to do with the hardware, it had to do with the training of Election workers -- Nevada spent nearly as much on training election workers as they spent on the hardware, so we not only had the most secure systems on the market but people properly trained to set them up and monitor them.

I wouldn't have cared if we'd been told to vote by selecting a hamster of a certain color and depositing it in one of two cages labeled "Bush (Brown Hamsters)" or "Kerry (Albino Hamsters)." As long as there was a way to verify the number of hamsters. Seems like something you'd want in a hotly contested state.

 

[shereads]

Recently in Fort Lauderdale, FL, this news tidbit was leaked to the press and was not disputed by the election commission: one polling place's machines registered 450 fewer votes than the number of voters who passed through the line.

Spot-checks of the machines were supposed to discover under-counts, mis-recorded votes and other problems with a particular machine. Nothing was said about the fact that a certain number of votes could be assumed, at that point, to either have been unrecorded or recorded for the wrong candidate. What difference could a few hundred votes make, anyway, right?

 

[Boxlicker101]

Note also, that even the Diebold machines have always HAD the capability to produce a paper-trail. As far as I know, ALL TS Voting machines have the capability of printing a hard-copy of the Ballot through a standard printer interface.

Nevada was the only state to go completely touch screen voting (with VVPT printers) in 2004, and I do not know of anyone here that was unsatisfied with the process.

An intersting Local news story revealed that the Nevada Gaming Comission provided specialists in combating computer fraud in computerized slot machines to evaluate the various options for electronic voting machines -- who dis-recommended optical scanners as too error-prone and hackable.

However, the BIG difference in Nevada's change to all-electronic voting had nothing to do with the hardware, it had to do with the training of Election workers -- Nevada spent nearly as much on training election workers as they spent on the hardware, so we not only had the most secure systems on the market but people properly trained to set them up and monitor them.

A paper receipt is nice but it wouldn't do all that much good. I have no doubt that the computer behind the touch screen could be programmed to allocate every tenth vote for candidate A to somebody else. If it was also set up to print and issue a receipt for the way the vote was actually cast, it could still make the misallocation.

I don't know about the validity of exit polls. Kerry was the more PC way to vote and I would bet that some of those polled actually voted for W but said they voted for Kerry so they woldn't have to explain themselves.

I still think "None of the Above" would have been a winner if that had been an option.

 

[BlackShanglan]

I still think "None of the Above" would have been a winner if that had been an option.

Heavens yes. When will we get that as an option?

 

[Awful Arthur]

Receipt?

Hell, it's just a vote. It's not like you are buying gasoline or something.

AA

 

[minsue]

Receipt?

Hell, it's just a vote. It's not like you are buying gasoline or something.

AA

 

[BlackShanglan]

[threadjack]

I love the Goosey Goddess of Thunder.

[/threadjack]

 

[minsue]

[threadjack]

I love the Goosey Goddess of Thunder.

[/threadjack]

for you, too

It was a special request. I'm ok until A/J sees it, then I'll likely get an earful. She was none too happy last time I had a storm AV. Damn picky people. No storms, no clowns...

 

[BlackShanglan]

for you, too

It was a special request. I'm ok until A/J sees it, then I'll likely get an earful. She was none too happy last time I had a storm AV. Damn picky people. No storms, no clowns...

*burdened sigh*

Oh dear. We'll be stuck with bosoms again. How will we get on?

 

[minsue]

*burdened sigh*

Oh dear. We'll be stuck with bosoms again. How will we get on?

You'll muddle through somehow, I'm sure. Until I get another complaint for not having a goose in my AV, of course.