http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/ Engadget Comments for Diebold sez "glitch-free," just don't touch those touchscreens http://www.engadget.com/media/feedlogo.gif http://www.engadget.com en-us Copyright 2012 Weblogs, Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only. Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/Oct 5th 2006 10:58AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/Oct 5th 2006 11:03AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/Oct 5th 2006 11:25AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/Oct 5th 2006 11:17AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/Oct 5th 2006 11:33AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/
My guess would be that powerful behind-the-scenes forces DO NOT want a stable, reliable, and secure voting machine. They like the corruption just the way it is.]]>Oct 5th 2006 11:47AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/
It's like the government is saying "it's okay, if at first you don't succeed, try try again."]]>Oct 5th 2006 11:37AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/Oct 5th 2006 11:45AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/Oct 5th 2006 11:46AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/
And not just Diebold's incompetence. The incompetence of the legislators who legislate electronic voting machines without setting some basic standards. Also the incompetence of county election officials who buy these machines en masse without testing them.

Do you honestly think all these screwups could pull off a huge secret conspiracy?]]>Oct 5th 2006 12:05PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/11717105/robert_f_kennedy_jr__will_the_next_election_be_hacked

read this and you'll really be disgusted about the ineptitude and lack of security around these machines.]]>Oct 5th 2006 8:25PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/
And I ask you, what is more likely, that almost all of the "mistakes" that this administration has made have been beneficial to it, or that this is a vast national conspiracy?]]>Oct 5th 2006 1:31PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/
You wouldn't need a huge conspiracy; just a select few in positions of oversight to move things in the right direction.

]]>Oct 5th 2006 2:26PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/
and blackboxvoting.org has shown more than once that mass amounts of votes could be changed undetectably by one person. merry christmas.

and don't talk about occams razor to a philosophy major, you totally FUBARED this one.]]>Oct 8th 2006 10:27AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/
and another thing, how come all the ATM machines and cash registers Diebold makes provide paper reciepts but the voting machines do not?]]>Oct 5th 2006 12:06PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/
The differences with ATMs are:
- money is involved;
- it's not anonymous (i.e. "secret ballot")

The problems with secure e-voting have less, IMO, to do with paper records (I think receipts are kind of a red herring) and more to do with inherent design problem in building a massive, scalable, secret and anonymous, yet verifiably reliable, voting system. Closed-source, proprietary software that centralizes counting is perhaps the worst way to achieve this, and it's predictable that, much as easy lossless digital copying makes "piracy" of music easier, this kind of setup makes vote-jacking easier -- no heavy ballot boxes to steal, stuff, hide or otherwise tamper with -- just a few engineers adding "patches" at the last minute. Centralized counting becomes a force multiplier to any hackery.

Steps toward secure, verifiable, anonymous e-voting could include:
1. requirements that voting software be open-source and spot auditable at any time;
2. decentralization of counting and public announcement of returns to as many "nodes" as possible -- the less centralized the counting, the harder it is for a single effort to undermine it.

None of this will happen, of course, until we stop letting voting machine companies give money to candidates, municipalities, etc. If there's one thing that should be completely above any outside influence, it's the creation and management of the voting process.

How many engineers out there would be willing to volunteer for an open-source voting software initiative?]]>Oct 5th 2006 12:19PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/
That said, I've been in contact with the democratic party in MD, and for the first time in state history they are allowing absentee ballots to be cast with no stated reason for needing the absentee ballot. The democrats are trying to get all their registered voters to participate in the Vote-By-Mail system, where you actually cast a paper ballot. If you live in maryland, i would definitely implore you to use the vote by mail system, as its the only guarenteed way your ballot is being counted. They ran the mock election the article speaks of at BWI Airport yesterday, and from all i've heard, it was a nightmare all around.

And i'll say this, I'm attending college in Maryland, and Diebold runs the campus card system here (you can put money on your card to be spent within the college), and even that system is nightmarish. The machines are finicky and are often screwing up on a grand scale. If they can't be trusted to not screw up a $5 transaction, I sure as hell will never trust them with my vote.]]>Oct 5th 2006 12:10PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/
Ya know what? QUIT HELPIN!]]>Oct 5th 2006 12:30PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/]]>Oct 5th 2006 12:34PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/Oct 5th 2006 12:54PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/Oct 5th 2006 1:03PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/Oct 5th 2006 1:12PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/Oct 5th 2006 2:11PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/America is HILARIOUS!]]>Oct 5th 2006 5:44PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/The only reasons i can see for this to not work is bad will, not incompetence. Especially when you think of all the irregularities that happened with the last couple of presidential elections. ]]>Oct 5th 2006 2:18PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/ You wouldn't need a huge conspiracy; just a
> select few in positions of oversight to move
> things in the right direction.

Agreed. I mean, how hard would it be to buy off the systems architect and insert some malicious code in the firmware? You wouldn't need to have a huge conspiracy with the whole company, just those at the top.]]>Oct 5th 2006 2:47PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/
A couple people perhaps *could* alter the vote count, but the papertrail-less machines would have to be distributed far and wide first.]]>Oct 8th 2006 12:12PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/
Also, we need to use Iraq's method of inking the thumb once you've voted to make it virtually impossible to vote twice.]]>Oct 5th 2006 3:23PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/
That said, I still support paper ballots because I know that even if they "accidentally" lose my ballot so that it can be "found" later for a recount, at least there's a hardcopy of my ballot to be found.]]>Oct 5th 2006 3:53PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/
The reason Diebold can't get this right, is they don't want to. Conspiracy? Well, not really. Just a little favoritism...remember the CEO of Diebold said at a Bush fundraiser in 2004..."We'll do whatever is necessary to insure a Bush victory!" And this man is making the voting machines?

Anyway, the solution is simple.

Many of you out there are probably familiar with ScanTron or other optically read forms. Why not just have people darken in the circle next to the candidate of their choice; then they feed the sheet into the machine. It reads the choices and shows on a screen who you've voted for. If all is good, you press an "accept " button and you get a receipt showing who you've voted for. At the end of the evening, the election official go to each machine to get the totals. There should be no networking needed.

The original scan sheet is kept and just in case there's a need for a recount, they are available to be looked at.

Simple and cheap.]]>Oct 5th 2006 5:03PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/Diebold with the trifecta]]>Oct 5th 2006 4:18PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/Oct 5th 2006 9:29PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/05/diebold-sez-glitch-free-just-dont-touch-those-touchscreens/Oct 6th 2006 1:08AM