Diebold (again)

[The Dowager Mod]

http://www.abcnews.go.com/WNT/print?id=2596705

Cheryl Kagan was shocked when she opened her mail Wednesday morning.
Inside, she discovered three computer discs. With them was an anonymous letter saying the discs
contained the secret source code for vote-counting that could be used to alter the votes cast
through Maryland's new electronic voting machines.

[MODU]

Why were the disks sent to her?

[WMS]

Let's just move along to paper ballots and then focus on voting registration reform, shall we?

[Colin]

Well we'll see how everything goes this election.

[jerusalemcar5]

There need to be paper receipts where people sign their name approving their vote.  Only election workers would see these.  The ballot doesn't need to be more secret than that.

[Bdub]

Although I favor the move to electronic machines, there needs to be a paper trail that comes with them also.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Just use the Minnesota system. Paper ballots, machine counted. A handful of precincts are selected for a random hand recount to verify accuracy. If there are errors, there's a full hand recount. Works much better than this paperless nonsense.

[bullmoose88]

Although I favor the move to electronic machines, there needs to be a paper trail that comes with them also.

bada bing

[Nym90]

Although I favor the move to electronic machines, there needs to be a paper trail that comes with them also.

Exactly. In theory electronic voting is clearly the best way to go, but there needs to be a safeguard to ensure that programmers don't rig the votes. The source code should absolutely have to be made public, which right now it isn't.

[Alcon]

Voting machines and mail balloting both make me very uncomfortable.  If we don't have poll voting by the time I can qualify, or if it's all-electronic, I'm going to take my ballot personally down to the county auditor's office on foot.

Although I favor the move to electronic machines, there needs to be a paper trail that comes with them also.

Exactly. In theory electronic voting is clearly the best way to go, but there needs to be a safeguard to ensure that programmers don't rig the votes. The source code should absolutely have to be made public, which right now it isn't.

Potentially a double-edged sword.

[Gabu]

Although I favor the move to electronic machines, there needs to be a paper trail that comes with them also.

Exactly. In theory electronic voting is clearly the best way to go, but there needs to be a safeguard to ensure that programmers don't rig the votes. The source code should absolutely have to be made public, which right now it isn't.

As was demonstrated in this video, it is quite easy to install an undetectable virus into an electronic voting machine.  If this was done, you would have source code which worked perfectly fine, but this would not be the source code running on the machine, and it would be extremely difficult to detect this fact if not impossible.  Source code can also be very hard to read; just going through it does not guarantee that you'll find something amiss.

Personally, speaking as someone in fourth-year computer science, I do not think that electronic voting is at all a good idea.

[Alcon]

As I've mentioned before, I have a position of some respect in the computer industry field that I'm not going to talk about much...but the basic mantra is once you have access to a machine, you have the machine.

I do not like electronic voting either.

[Platypus]

Pen and paper. Would you sign a cheque with a SIM-card?

[Nym90]

Although I favor the move to electronic machines, there needs to be a paper trail that comes with them also.

Exactly. In theory electronic voting is clearly the best way to go, but there needs to be a safeguard to ensure that programmers don't rig the votes. The source code should absolutely have to be made public, which right now it isn't.

As was demonstrated in this video, it is quite easy to install an undetectable virus into an electronic voting machine.  If this was done, you would have source code which worked perfectly fine, but this would not be the source code running on the machine, and it would be extremely difficult to detect this fact if not impossible.  Source code can also be very hard to read; just going through it does not guarantee that you'll find something amiss.

Personally, speaking as someone in fourth-year computer science, I do not think that electronic voting is at all a good idea.

Good point, that definitely makes the need for a receipt important. But yeah, there are a lot of problems with it; it'll probably never be foolproof. In theory it's the best system, but quite probably not in practice.

[NewFederalist]

I know I have said this before but... since we have to put up with campaigns which last years (in some cases) why do we need to know the result just a few hours after the polls close? Paper ballots are time consuming to count and all that but when you are done you have a good source document to recount. Paper ballots also can accommodate as many candidates and parties as qualify so there is no argument about getting tough on minor parties and independents to save space on a voting machine. We have to listen to candidates for weeks, months and years so why can't they wait hours or even days to obtain a fair result?

[WAlib]

Voting machines and mail balloting both make me very uncomfortable.  If we don't have poll voting by the time I can qualify, or if it's all-electronic, I'm going to take my ballot personally down to the county auditor's office on foot.

I always vote absentee ballot, but hand carry it to the auditor's office.
It's easier for me, I vote at home and when I have time and at least I know it got as far as the ballot box.

I'd be for electronic voting if it were, at least, as dependable as an ATM ... With (paper trail) reciept.

[WMS]

I voted with a paper ballot for the first time yesterday and it's a perfectly good system. So you spend a little bit longer filling out ovals. Big deal.

[John Dibble]

Election fraud is going to happen in any system. Electronic voting should be fine so long as proper precautions are taken - paper receipts printed upon vote completion, then read by the voter and turned into the election officials would be one step. Open sourcing the code would also be helpful to prevent hacking.