http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/ Engadget Comments for German court finds 2005 e-voting was unconstitutional, uncool 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/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/Mar 4th 2009 1:11PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/
]]>Mar 4th 2009 1:17PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/Mar 4th 2009 1:17PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/
BOOM!


yea it was kinda like that ^^ ]]>Mar 4th 2009 1:18PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/
Oh and shouldn't be Batman president and Robin the vp? Why would batman be superman's vp???]]>Mar 4th 2009 1:28PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/http://www.welt.de/politik/article3307640/Einsatz-von-Wahlcomputern-war-verfassungswidrig.html]]>Mar 4th 2009 1:30PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/
Yeah, this is exactly like it happened in Star Wars!

History repeating...]]>Mar 4th 2009 1:54PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/Mar 4th 2009 1:56PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/
Also, Germany doesn't have a constitution. It has a 'base law' (Grundgesetz).

And yes, voting in Germany (and much of Europe) is by party, not by person. There are typically 3 or more parties represented in parliament. It's rare to find a two party parliament in Europe.]]>Mar 4th 2009 2:44PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/
Magallanes said it right]]>Mar 4th 2009 4:48PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/1) Create or take advantage of major domestic security incident to whip up a frenzy:
= Reichstag Fire / Sept 11

2) Use frenzied mix of fear and patriotism to create broad and unprecendented new legal powers of the state to "protect the citizens" that abolish the concept of freedom and individual liberty. Encourage the idea that dissent is unpatriotic and characteristic of "sympathizing with the enemy".
= Enabling Act of 1933 / Patriot Act and Military Commissions Act

3) Replace key positions in the local and federal government with sympathizers of the movement/government entity -- particularly those that involve creating, maintaining, and defending the powers of the central government.

= 1934 Germany - 2005 USA .. Take a look at this week's released documents

---- luckily Bush only got this far ---

4) Ban all political parties and trade unions and setup secret police

5) declare yourself leader for life]]>Mar 4th 2009 6:52PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/
1) Create or take advantage of major domestic security incident to whip up a frenzy:
= Reichstag Fire / Sept 11

2) Use frenzied mix of fear and patriotism to create broad and unprecendented new legal powers of the state to "protect the citizens" that abolish the concept of freedom and individual liberty. Encourage the idea that dissent is unpatriotic and characteristic of "sympathizing with the enemy".
= Enabling Act of 1933 / Patriot Act and Military Commissions Act

3) Replace key positions in the local and federal government with sympathizers of the movement/government entity -- particularly those that involve creating, maintaining, and defending the powers of the central government.

= 1934 Germany - 2005 USA .. Take a look at this week's released documents

---- luckily Bush only got this far ---

4) Ban all political parties and trade unions and setup secret police

5) declare yourself leader for life
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________
So what is Obama's role in this "theory"?]]>Mar 4th 2009 7:01PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/
In 2000, there were no electronic voting machines. It was all paper. Don't you remember your CHADs? ]]>Mar 6th 2009 12:48AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/Mar 4th 2009 1:11PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/Brazil has been using them for a decade now, and it's been working great down there.

Likelihood of human error is orders of magnitude higher than machine error.]]>Mar 4th 2009 1:15PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/Mar 4th 2009 1:16PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/Programmers are not.



]]>Mar 4th 2009 1:18PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/
I am personally for the new machines that use paper and also electronically track votes. This is a fail safe. If the electronics are lost there is a paper trail. Accountability is the goal, it just makes sense no matter who you vote for.

]]>Mar 4th 2009 1:24PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/Mar 4th 2009 1:29PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtiqwAWu-DU), e) the seals verifying the machines had not been manipulated were standard paper stickers with the word "seal" written on them in some cases, f) the security procedures around checking the seals and verifying the software were not kept, g) there was no examination of any actual voting machines just sample machines that the manufacturer NEDAP submitted for testing, testing was done behind closed doors with no public access to testing procedures let alone devices

The whole electronic system is prone for manipulation and in case there is actually fraud going on NO ONE can ever prove it with such a system since you can't do a re-count. You can push the button on the manipulated machine again and re-read the manipulated EEPROM but does that count as a transparent verifiable voting process for you? To me it doesn't and I'm really glad that after all that struggle they finally got rid of these silly machines. Honestly, what do we need the "speed" benefits for anyway? I'd rather get a verifiable vote result the next day then something black-boxish the same night. If you think the democratic process is compatible with black boxes you should check your priorities.

The only way you can devise a safe system is an electronic one that spits out a paper trail for every voter and every voter needs to be able to verify both the digital and the paper vote. No use if the computer shows Kang and the paper says Kodos or the other way around.]]>Mar 4th 2009 1:49PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/http://www.blackboxvoting.org/]]>Mar 4th 2009 1:58PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/
I love when the left is usually more corporate that right wing.]]>Mar 4th 2009 2:24PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/Mar 4th 2009 3:49PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/
The german electoral law was completely newly designed after WWII as a direct consequence of the nazi takeover. It tries to even out imbalances between different regions and is explicitly designed to mitigate winner-takes-it-all effects (as in US electoral college system) and reduce the possibility of absolute majorities of one party.]]>Mar 4th 2009 5:40PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/Mar 4th 2009 1:18PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/Mar 4th 2009 1:25PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/Mar 4th 2009 1:20PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/Mar 4th 2009 1:47PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/Mar 4th 2009 3:51PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/Mar 4th 2009 1:31PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/Mar 4th 2009 1:32PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/What the heck does a political scientist knows about electric engineering and computer science?

There is nothing "blind" about digital systems. People bitching and moan about electronic ballots but I bet they all have and rely on electronics (cell phone, computer, car, everything f**** thing) for their daily lives.
]]>Mar 4th 2009 1:39PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/If you have a problem with that (the common hardworking honest man/woman will not), then I smell some kind of bullshit here.]]>Mar 4th 2009 2:35PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/
OR he might just be a guy (or girl) with a different opinion than you.

Surprisingly (to you), that doesn't make them a shill, or mean that they work for Diebold or Halliburton or whichever is your favorite evil corporation.

It means they have a different opinion. Stop attacking the person and address the issue, which you managed to do after your little "shill" dig.

I do agree that we need to have more open and accountable elections, because I'm pretty sure there have been exactly none in American history up to this point.]]>Mar 4th 2009 4:06PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/
My point of saying electronics are part of our daily lives is, if they are so unreliable, why bother using them. Go back to stone age. There is always people who go against the flow of progress.

Paper ballots are just as easy, if not easier, to be manipulated. Throw in a whole bunch of "votes" for candidate A and then how are you going to prove it? If the count is wrong, will anyone bother to recount them? Isn't it much easier for a human to "misread" the vote for candidate A and give it to candidate B? What if there is ambiguity, as in, the whole is punched not exactly where it should have been? What if whole boxes containing boxes are swapped?

You need to realize that any person with an IQ above room temperature can manipulate paper ballots. A digital voting system will have cryptography, which will require a lot more effort to crack. And that's the whole point of not disclosing the source code. If they did, it would be easy to generate fake vote counts and swap the memory. ]]>Mar 4th 2009 4:07PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/]]>Mar 4th 2009 4:30PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/Mar 4th 2009 1:46PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/
When you have large companies (like these e-voting machines) whose entire existence depends on someone winning the election who favors your industry, it's not hard to imagine that greed or self-survival can make someone do things they shouldn't.

It's not like they haven't already been caught doing so in several elections.

Even with paper trails present, it has been shown that what is printed for the voter's view is not necessarily what was actually recorded to the disk.

The only way to have true transparency is to have open-source software on these machines where the code can be verified and vetted. Or at least some form of secure access to verify the code.

Before we go chastising other countries for their problems, let's clean up our own back yard.]]>Mar 4th 2009 1:57PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/Mar 4th 2009 2:41PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/
Yes, i know, an obscure allusion to an obscure film.]]>Mar 4th 2009 3:18PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/Mar 4th 2009 7:04PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/Mar 4th 2009 8:29PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/
Also, an argument that is often overlooked: Even if an electronic voting machine actually prints a receipt for every vote, which could THEORETICALLY be recounted - why would it ever be done in reality? Because it is possible to manipulate the voting machines in ways that are impossible to notice without REALLY close inspection, noone will ever see the need for a recount. The only secure system is one where recounting of the paper receipts is mandatory. But then the advantages of electronic voting disappear.

Another advantage of paper voting: You could theoretically bribe some election tabulators. But there are hundreds of them throughout the country. It would be difficult to have impact on a federal election that way. On the other hand, in the case of electronic voting, you only have to manipulate the software once. Much easier.]]>Mar 5th 2009 5:20AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/It could be done like it is in Brazil, where each candidate has a unique number. Then you input his/her number.]]>Mar 4th 2009 4:09PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/Mar 5th 2009 8:22AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/
Could there be problems with that? Sure. But all voting sections have people from the many, many parties (too many IMHO) we have involved in our government, so I'm sure if anything looked even slighly fishy, there would be many crying foul.

With the frequency we hear the media and politicians complaining about corruption in Brazil, I don't believe any problems with our voting system would go unoticed. The silence is quite reassuring in this case.]]>Mar 5th 2009 10:02AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/
In fact normally there are no(!) lines whatsoever.

Then you might like or dislike the electronic process but it remains a fact (for the German system) that paper based votes are cheaper and more efficiently implemented (yea hard to believe but that's what independent studies found out). In the end the question remains: why change a perfectly working system, for something that is more expensive and can't be independently validated by experts, let alone the concerned voter?

I'm a quite a geek in my life but I like the decision because it is not a "ah, its new and electronic thus it is better" reflex but as a matter of fact a well founded, well thought through decision. ]]>Mar 4th 2009 5:08PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/
This sentence, perhaps accidentally, sums up everything that's wrong about the evoting debate. There's no proof any mistakes were made - yet because it is *possible* some have, they're bad. Meanwhile, no one seems to wonder why the mistakes in all of the other technologies are overlooked, *even when proven to have errors*.

Hand count you say? Guess what - we have really simple paper ballots in our federal elections up here in Canada - the kind that should be brain dead simple to count and get right - and you know what, when there's a recount, every time they recount the same ballots - *they get a different number*, sometimes by quite a bit.

Yet, I don't hear anyone calling for the elimination of this provably unreliable technology...

But paper ballots are hard to hack.

Uh.. they're written on with a pencil. If I worked as an elections tabulator, I could *easily* change them, or insert new ones in the system.

And so on.. and so on.

This is the danger of 'crusading'.. you only see the one thing in front of you want to see.

Then again, it does make it easier for the real cheats who know what to avoid.

Thanks guys.]]>Mar 4th 2009 5:08PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/04/german-court-finds-2005-e-voting-was-unconstitutional-uncool/
something that is as important as elections must be VERIFIABLE. that's pretty much it. if you guys would like to put your future in the hands of some closed "da vinci" proprietary code, which is unaccessible to the public, that's a matter of taste.

and you know what? paper elections at least CAN be verified. ]]>Mar 4th 2009 5:56PM