Question number 1 about e-voting machines is: "Why?". Is there a need for speed ? Not really. It doesn't matter whether you get the result in an hour or a day as long as it's right. Any other needs that computers might fill don't seem to exist here. There are some nice reliable technologies like paper scanning that did well in, yes, Florida in 2000. You can't help feeling that what's really going on is that certain people in top positions have let themselves be influenced by salesmen to buy what they don't need and what can't really do the election process any good.

Question number 1 about e-voting machines is: "Why?". Is there a need for speed ? Not really. It doesn't matter whether you get the result in an hour or a day as long as it's right. Any other needs that computers might fill don't seem to exist here. There are some nice reliable technologies like paper scanning that did well in, yes, Florida in 2000. You can't help feeling that what's really going on is that certain people in top positions have let themselves be influenced by salesmen to buy what they don't need and what can't really do the election process any good.

Where are Judicial Watch when you actually need them?

"Fair and open elections demand fair and open voting machines. ... Maybe one day the people responsible for running our democracy will realize that...."

Get real. Elected officials' First Principle is always "getting (re)elected is Job One." It's elected officials that run the elections, who buy the machines, and who ultimately are influenced by, or in the hip pocket of, the party in power. They have no interest in fair & open voting, and sometimes not even in the appearance of fair or open. Katherine Harris is only the best known and most egregious example, but hardly unique.

I don't understand. The stock market works great with billions of transactions per day.

A voting machine with a simplified proprietary software interface misses votes occassionally.

How can ANYONE make a system that miscounts votes? The process is brain-dead simple. A person goes into vote, the machine displays the choices, the person confirms by clinking big buttons, and then reviews and confirms their vote at the end and the voting machines still screw up?

Wow. In a world where World of Warcraft is played simultaneously by tens of thousands of people, we can simulate nuclear explosions, and the space shuttle flies into space using systems that were designed 40+ years ago, I can see no excuse. No excuse whatsoever for any vote to be calcualted incorrectly. Absolute incompetence with our tax dollars and our rights.

they are still finding piles of uncounted ballots in landfills in Fla when the current president stole the election from the true winner Al Gore. I don't pretend to think my paper ballot or electronic ballot is worth the media it was stored on. The Electoral College selects the next president and they can vote anyway they feel like. Wake up America your vote is useless. the next president was selected years ago and nothing we do will change that. Dismantle the Electoral College then we may have a fair election (if all the votes can be found) but dont hold your breathe

Um, why can't we all admit that Australia got it right back in 2001?!?!? We have groups who would comb it over time and time again

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2003/11/61045

Kwaidan's Gibbons is a piece of work:

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5839

On his MySpace, he previously boasted of wanting most to meet "A well endowed blonde nymphomaniac (half my age or take the difference of her bustline and waistline added to her current age) that likes to be under the influence of Jim Beam whiskey in a dimly lit room at least 3 times a week."

Democracy is safe.

"The stock market works great with billions of transactions per day."

Apples and oranges. Presumably, those who initiate transactions in the stock market *want* their name tied to their activity. In US elections, the intention is quite the opposite.

"How can ANYONE make a system that miscounts votes?"

Oh, the silly, silly mistakes I have seen (and made!) in my 22 years in the software biz! Just counting the votes is easy. Wrapping that vote counter in a nationally-deliverable package that deals with the gloriously unpredictable nature of millions of untrained, non-technical end-users (voters) and dealing with the paranoia of people like Chip, who feel vaguely disenfranchised when a close race doesn't go the way he thought it should is much more complex.

Read the Wired article, though. Sounds like the Aussies have a pretty good start on the solution. There are still a few things in there that bear further scrutiny. For example, the bar code that allows an individual to cast a vote, but doesn't uniquely identify the individual voter...as far as we know. :) And the need for a human-readable record of the individual's vote to be verified by the voter and deposited in a lockbox for recount purposes. (Hey, what if the machine used a two-ply carbonless receipt roll? Would that allow the voter to retain his receipt, and decrease the expense of the separate lockbox and the staffing to make sure the voters actually deposit the receipt?)

How proprietary can the code be:

IF BOX1 = CHECKED THEN

ADD 1 TO BOX1TOTAL
ADD 1 TO TOTAL

ENDIF

....

This isn't advanced math, is it??

Point #1:

Any non-trivial computer system has bugs. That includes those big, high volume, stock market trading programs. You must learn to accept this.

Point #2:

The rules of audit trails are well-known, and apply equally to computerized and non-computerized systems. Accounting firms everywhere are 100% OK with computerized accounting systems, in spite of Point #1. Why? They apply GAAP and audit trails, and know that a computerized accounting system is almost always better than the manual alternative.

Point #3:

Voting itself has always been vulnerable to manipulation. This is entirely apart from the issue of being computerized.

Point #4:

Add all the above points together, and you might just come to the conclusion that computerized vote tallying systems are better than the manual alternative. Whatever their weaknesses, over the long run they will probably be adopted wholesale. Just monitor, audit, and run quality improvement cycles over and over again.

None of this is to excuse certain poor quality systems currently on the market, of course. The best cure there is to just keep talking about their shortcomings. Eventually the truth will force those systems to improve, or their market share will dwindle to the point of irrelevant.

"they are still finding piles of uncounted ballots in landfills in Fla when the current president stole the election from the true winner Al Gore."

Really? If you're from the Miami area, Chip, you should read your own (democratically-leaning) newspaper from time to time. They researched the 2000 election thoroughly and, yes, Bush won the election. I'm sure your "theory" of ballots clogging the landfills down there is like so much other garbage.

And, Chip, if you want to get rid of the Electoral College, would you agree also with getting rid of the Superdelegates that may give the nomination to Hillary even though Obama has won more elections? Will you be screaming that Hillary stole the nomination from Barack?

Get the foil skull cap ready, Chip. You conspiracy nut cases will have a heyday shortly at the DNC convention.

Watch the movie "Hacking Democracy" - very interesting.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0808532/

Claims that the voting machine problems are "technical" are balderdash. The phrase "plausible deniability" leaps to mind.

Diebold claimed it would be "technically difficult" to attach a receipt printer to a computer.

Apparently, point-of-sale developers are a miraculous breed of super-programmers. We can add one to a number, and get one more than the number before, *and* use touchscreens and receipt printers without breaking a sweat.

The reek of election fraud around Diebold & Sequoia is so foul, anyone analyzing their code should probably wear a hazmat suit.

To Johann - amen and preach it, brother. Sometimes I wonder how the idiots that are apparently running these companies ever made it to their positions. Boggles the mind.

http://www.tc.umn.edu/~hause011/artcle/Vote3.html

How to hack optical scan voting with POST ELECTION Audit.