A Florida appeals court has upheld a lower court decision that denies requests for an independent source code audit of voting machines used by Florida’s 13th district, which suffered election irregularities in a highly controversial congressional race. The appeals court has chosen to support a lower court decision which asserts that forcing voting machine maker Election Systems and Software (ES&S) to provide source code access to independent security auditors would amount to “gutting the protections afforded those who own trade secrets.”
What a scam. You can’t have a closed system for voting! They should scrap the entire electronic voting machine system. You should be able to vote online with your social security number. At least you would find out if someone is using your SSN that way when they tell you that way.
Don
Hey, great! After the Indiana scandal, the Arkansas scandal, the Chuck Hagel scandal, an God knows how many other scandals, ES&S can have a new scandal in the Seat of Election Scandals, Florida.
Jeez. If these guys are allowed to proceed unfetter, Dumbya will probably win the ’08 election, even though he can’t run.
When I was a youngster, they used to say “cheaters never prosper”. I guess that didn’t apply to REPUBLICAN cheaters. With the war, the elections, and the kickbacks, they’ve been making out like bandits for the past six years.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!
No sense taking it to the Supreme Court. They’ll just rule that the possibility of reversal upon audit would place an unconstitution burden on the Republicans, like they did in 2000. But it won’t be a precedent of course, in case the Democrats win someday despite all the fraud. Then watch how fast the Supremes reverse course.
Three branches of government. Right. Wait – if you bundle the Supreme Court in with the Executive, and then let Cheney be his own damn branch like he wants… Yeah, that’ll keep those grade school textbooks correct about three branches. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.
I’d like to see the source code of those keno machines in Reno…
They are kind of like voting machines that have a pay out…
8^)
Isn’t there an easy way to solve this one? Can’t they say: “Yes, no one can force a company to reveal their trade secrets.” Then say, “By the way, no voting machine that has not passed an independent audit can be used in a public election.”
Let the companies if giving up their “trade secrets” is worth it for winning the business.
#0 –
“…forcing voting machine maker Election Systems and Software (ES&S) to provide source code access to independent security auditors would amount to “gutting the protections afforded those who own trade secrets.””
Ya. Let them sneaky-ass auditors peek at the source code, they’re apt to run off and start rigged-voting-machine companies with the knowledge.
GOP election fixersDiebold wouldn’t like that a bit.#2 – M.M.
“With the war, the elections, and the kickbacks, they’ve been making out like bandits for the past six years.”
You can’t’ve forgotten the Gipper and Bush 41 already… How about “for 18 of the last 26 years.”? Welcome to the GOUSA, now O&O by the Republican Party.
. . . . . .
Don’cha love all this ‘there’s no difference between the two parties’ crapola that’s rapidly becoming part of the conventional wisdom? Funny, you’d think the energy, pharna, insurance and finserv industries would’ve gotten the memo. As it is, they foolishly keep giving most of their money to Republicans and their causes. Go figure…
I am going to have to side with the Court here. I don’t think the solution is in bashing the Court. I argue they really did the right thing. The solution is in the legislature hands.
It really is simple. Put it in law that voting districts can’t use a closed, non-independently auditable or traceable system for voting, regardless of the technology.
If companies want to sell their wares, then they have to comply. Why is that so difficult?
The court ruled the district can’t compel companies to share their code, fine. The district aren’t compelled either (indeed, can be prohibited by law) to use or buy more systems that don’t comply with simple open system requirement.
Where is the conundrum?
#4: you might be amazed, but the leading manufacturer of voting machines in Europe is a company called “Nedap” who otherwise mainly produces gambling machines.
They also claim their machines are secure, however the German Chaos Computer Club, together with Dutch hackers, has shown that a) you can easily manipulate the count by replacing the easily accessible cf-cards used to record the votes with ones that you have manipulated and b) you can use the voting machine to play chess (this has been done to disprove the claim by Nedap that their systems were specially designed for the purpose and by no way general purpose computers).
But in the end, voting machines are just one step towads free, equal and secret elections: They’re free to record whatever result is desired, money buys equal access to them and the whole process is a secret. What more do you want? Aren’t those the very principles the fathers of democracy had in mind?
pj
As usual the government is execising a double standard. The executive branch tells us that it has to be able to monitor all our phone calls and emails, for national security. Essentially, to be able to violate our privacy to protect us. But then the government can’t violate the private information of business. Not even those doing work for the government. Which is a major crock! The government should have full disclosure of anything it contracts out for. And voting machines should definately qualify. But in this case, the government doesn’t want to know. Possibly because the voting machine maker has already made a deal, to keep whatever it’s up from being discovered. Perhaps rigging elections for the Republicians is also considered vital for national security.
If everyone opened their OS/programs Dont you think it would be easier to Keep copyright?
Also it would advance faster..
#11,
Screw electronic voting!!! It cant be done. I want a paper ballot, if the counters want to user some sort of optical scan to help em count that is fine. But I will not settle for anything less than a paper ballot, that can be hand counted if need be.
After the Florida fiasco, many states rushed into ‘high tech’ solutions that were proposed by the voting machine companies. The problem is that the investments were made, but the technology sold did not provide a complete solution to the problem. So the states have spend billions on new voting systems, and darn it, they are going to use them.
What I find most bothersome is that there are so many people (mainly on the right wing) that actively fight AGAINST improving the voting system and making it fully accountable. They specifically oppose a system that can be audited and trusted, a system that will give the citizens of this country a sense of trust in our government.
12,
Yea, Believe that.
Lets see…
1. If they use Tic ballots they can still pay someone to REPORGRAM the counter.
2. Even if they Use PERSONS, they can pay 10 people in certain areas(the ones to vote the OTHER way) to count FOR THEM, and pay abit of money.
14,
BOTH sides dont want accountability…
they want it COMPLICATED….And someone INSIDE can be paid to Screw it up.
Straight forward, and SIMPLE….is the best way…
I dont care if you use a checksum system to verify the programming…
I Just want it HONEST….I want people to KNOW that THEIR vote WIl be counted, and affect something.
[Duplicate post. – ed.]
3–So rediculous, you still find that post worthy? ((ie==That decision is so rediculous that you remember it (as well as I do for the same reason) and it bugs you enough to post it here. Its worth posting everytime a “political question” arises.
Me too. Doctors bury their mistakes, Courts publish theirs.
No doubt the decision is absolutely correct. Error is with the legislature who took bribes from those companies so they could swing close districts when requested and money received.
#2, Mustard:
The Chuck Hagel scandal? What was that? I’m no fan of the guy, but scandal isn’t a word he would seem to be associated with…
This is what happens when we give the elections to Big Business to monitor.
As long as these corporations own the voting machines, they will own the elections.
Lauren – pharna???? finserv???? You’ve gotta help me here.
Here’s my ideas for voting reform:
1. Paperless electronic voting should be illegal nationwide. No paper trail, no eletion.
2. Before an election can be certified, a randomly selected 1% of the precincts must hand count at least two of the close or important races. If one of the races are off by more than an acceptable margin of error, more precincts and races will be added.
3. If a state wants to require ID at the poling place, they must provide at least one acceptable form of ID completely free of charge (otherwise it is considered a poll tax which is unconstitutional)
#2 – When I was a youngster, they used to say “cheaters never prosper”.
I’ve lived my whole life so far, playing by the rules (within reason).
I regret having done that.
#18 – That’s MISTER Mustard to you.
Chuck Hagel was Chairman of one of the companies that merged to become ES&S. He then went on to become the first Republican Senator from Nebraska in 24 years, in what was described as a “stunning upset”.
And guess what? 80% of the his winning votes were counted by ES&S (http://tinyurl.com/2p6hg). Sur-PRISE!
Electronic gambling machines have to register their software in Nevada.
I guess that legitimate gambling is far more important than legitimate
voting.
This country sucks.
I still like the old mechanical voting machines they have here in NYC. It punches a paper ballot that can be easily recounted.
24,
DITTO..
We can make this as complicated as Needed.
a little tech goes along way.
Thumb print, varification that the person, is ALIVE, and ID’d…
Store it with Each recorded Voting.
#2 mistermustard
How in the heck is the Indiana scandal a republican caused problem. I voted Demo to do my small part to fix these real or imagined problems, and then guess what, the friggin’ DEMO clerk couldn’t get all the polling places open. My vote wasted again……..who’s next?
Yeah a thumb print, that won’t bring the ACLU howling. Don’t you know Democrats want criminals voting?
What’s the point when the legislators you vote for can’t get there votes heard either? How many times does Congress have to produce bills that are too big to read, and then have immediate votes, like they’re doing with immigration right now(and to boot, a liberal immigrant rights group gets to see the bill ahead of the senators)?
The entire concept of auditing the code is meaningless anyway. You think they’ll actually hand over the givebushthewin.exe source code they actually used instead of a clean version? And how on earth do you know what code was running on which machine in real time during the election? You can’t. The code can be modified before, during, and after the election. It’s a lump of bits. You can never have a secure voting system. You can have clean code running, open sourced and shiny, on all your systems and then — whee! — in Dayton or Buffalo a new binary is slipped in, changes the voter totals on that segment only, and then replaces its own code with the clean version. In and out, ten seconds or less. I used to dream up code that did that as an exercise back when my bosses were instructing me to change price phase-in dates to make them some more money by altering the data on the fly. Only manual audits could catch them — and did.
Do what Canada and other countries do. Paper ballots, simple choices, big pencil marks. Counting is done with one member from each contesting party present and watching. Totals are sent up the line and verified in a similar fashion. And they finish up national elections in three hours or so, as manual counting scales with the population size. And they can recount using the same method, so playing games by corrupting lone officials is difficult.
oh a thought on all that hysterical posing by the pubs about voter fraud. first, they can’t find any. second, simple solution: hand stamp voters with some indelible ink after they vote. make it so that the ink can’t even be scrubbed off for days or weeks. check the hands of voters for telltale abrasives if they try to vote twice.
as for people illegally registering to vote, really. the problem is to get anyone to vote at all, not to keep them out.
as the DOJ scandal shows, the big “fraud” scare was empty and used to cage poor democratic and mostly black voters, with the full cooperation of the DOJ to the point they canned USAs who refused to indict on no evidence, or to file charges close to an election. enough of this “voter fraud” nonsense.
Except the same guy ran again 4 years later and just barely won. It was a stunning upset because Hagel’s opponent was the governor who was popular.