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Feds reverse course, approve somewhat better e-voting regulations
We had thought that the whole e-voting thing was wrapped up at the federal level, but apparently everyone (including us) spoke too soon, again. The Technical Guidelines Development Committee apparently has met once more, and now unanimously says that it will start drafting regulations mandating that the "next generation" of voting machines be "software independent." In other words, one that can't be hacked via software. However, old machines that don't meet the new standard will not have to be upgraded or replaced, for whatever reason. "The Technical Guidelines Development Committee (TGDC) has considered current threats to voting systems and, at this time, finds that security concerns do not warrant replacing deployed voting systems," the resolution said. The committee's new resolution, however, did include language that recommends "usability and accessibility requirements to ensure that all voters can verify the independent voting record," which means we may see some paper trail after all. We're still not sure how well such a confused resolution will hold up once it gets out of committee, but we never understood how DC worked anyway. [Via Techdirt]
Feds eschew e-voting paper trail for the status quo
Remember that recommendation that we expected to see come out of the National Institute of Standards and Technology pretty soon -- you know, the one that would de-certify all those fundamentally flawed direct record electronic voting machines? Well, we apparently spoke too soon, as The Washington Post now reports that the recommendation didn't even make it out of committee. The Technical Guidelines Development Committee, a section within NIST that advises the US Election Assistance Committee, failed to reach the 8 votes necessary to pass the decertification measure. Seriously. Why didn't this blindingly obvious recommendation pass? Well, it's not entirely clear, but committee member Brit Williams, a computer scientist who certified Georgia's electronic voting system (we all know how well that went), said "You are talking about basically a re-installation of the entire voting system hardware." Um, dude, last we checked, if something's broke, you gotta fix it. Seriously, when was the last time you heard about a computer scientist that went out of his or her way to avoid fixing a system they installed? Don't answer that.[Via Techdirt]
Insanely Great Tees announces 6 new shirts to vote on
Insanely Great Tees, the clever new Mac-centric shirt shop, has announced 6 new t-shirts - but not all of them are going to see the light of day. Apparently the insanely great crew are having a tough time deciding which ones they like most, so they've put it to a vote for the rest of us. Head over to Insanely Great News (their blog) to see all shirts laid out, each with their own voting options ranging from "I'd wear it!" to "Eh..." and even "It's the worst."If you have a minute, head over and get to voting. I'm in the market for some new threads and I'd wear almost every one of these (sans the Camera Icons shirt), especially since there aren't nearly enough shirts about type in the world.
NIST to recommend decertifying direct record electronic voting
We weren't sure that our government would ever actually, you know, listen to the people that it apparently serves -- at least so far as electronic voting goes. That may soon change, given that internetnews.com is reporting that the National Institute of Standards and Technology will recommend "the 2007 version of the Voluntary Voting Systems Guidelines (VVSG) decertify direct record electronic (DRE) machines." (Those would be the non-"software independent" boxes whose votes cannot be audited and certified, yet which are used in 30% of jurisdictions.) Why the sudden change of heart? Well, apparently all of the attention that's been put on the lack of a paper trail or some kind of verified voting system has actually made a difference -- huh, fancy that. Of course, predictably, there remains a naysayer in the midst, an election expert named Roy Saltman, who told internetnews.com: "If you insist on paper you're tying elections to an old technology." Um, Mr. Saltman, that may be true, but until we can get our new tech to work as well as our old tech, then the new tech is sorta useless, isn't it?[Via Techdirt]
Texas e-voting machines count votes three times for good measure
If you thought that November 7th was the final day that you'd hear about e-voting zaniness, you'd be incorrect. While a myriad of states (and foreign locales) have had their bouts with Diebold and other electronic voting machines, the internet hunting state is now reporting an oddity of its own. Apparently, voters using machines built by Election Systems and Software in Williamson County, Texas showed up three separate times to legally cast their votes for the same candidate, or performed some sort of "human malfunction" in order to make the machines think so, anyway. While we're inclined to think that the actual machines were the culprit, the company still insists that some form of "user error" caused each vote placed to be counted three times. Although the triplicates did not skew the percentages of votes cast for each candidate, it still seemingly signifies an apparent flaw in the e-voting system, yet election officials were quoted as saying that they'd "review their training procedures" -- you know, so we can all work together to circumvent the problem.[Via TechDirt]
Voter smashes Diebold machine as e-voting problems crop up nationwide
With this being the first major election to see a significant portion of the population casting their ballots on electronic voting machines, you might expect some problems to arise with the notoriously buggy and untested technology -- and you'd be right. The New York Times is reporting that polling places across the country are experiencing difficulties with their voting equipment, and while we'd love to place the blame squarely on shady manufacturers like Diebold, Sequoia, and friends, it seems that the complications are actually due to human error as much as faulty hardware. According to The Times, Indiana appears to be the state having the most trouble today, with 75 precincts using incorrectly programmed smart cards and nearly half of Marion County's 914 precincts having trouble getting their machines to boot up in the first place. In New Jersey, meanwhile, Republican officials are claiming that Democratic Senator Robert Menendez's name was already lit up when some voters entered the booth, causing them to accidentally choose the wrong candidate. Other areas such as Cleveland, Ohio and Hartford, Connecticut were either unable to start their machines or found the touchscreens to be improperly displaying candidates' names, forcing election workers to move back to old-fashioned paper ballots. The highlight of the day, though, has nothing to do with shoddy equipment and everything to do with a crazy voter who attacked a Diebold-brand machine in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Forty-three-year-old Robert Young, a registered independent, apparently believed that the e-voting machines had been deployed in a wild conspiracy by Republicans, and decided to make a statement by smashing the $5,000 device with a metal cat paperweight. A remorseful Young was quickly arrested by local police, and although the votes on the destroyed machine can still be saved, the feline paperweight did not fare nearly as well: officials have said that it will likely be impounded before being forcibly euthanized. Read- Voting problemsRead- Cat-bearing voter
Punchscan incorporates cryptography into e-voting
Considering the disaster that has been e-voting, we're not surprised to see another firm stepping forward with a slightly less complex alternative to confidently casting your ballot. Reverting back to the less problematic methods of paper-and-pencil voting, yet offering up a way to electronically store and track each vote, David Chaum and his research team have unveiled the Punchscan system to hopefully solve the world's e-voting woes. The cryptographic solution involves a double-sided ballot which is split into two halves using a hole punch, giving you one side to take home. The "receipt" reportedly doesn't disclose which candidate you voted for, and allows you to logon once home to verify that your vote was indeed cast, and cast for the intended party. So if you're worried that your hard-earned vote may be heading to File 13 rather than being counted, maybe you should start politicking to get Punchscan going in your neck of the woods, and if you're still confused about how this two-faced encryption dealio works, just peep the video, yeah?[Via Slashdot]
Florida Diebold machines help you pick the right candidate
Apparently Diebold's problems aren't limited to Maryland, Georgia or Alaska -- what a shocker. Down in the Sunshine State, during a week of early voting before next week's nationwide midterm election, certain Diebold machines have been registering some votes for Democrats as selections for the Republican candidate. For instance, Gary Rudolf, a voter at a polling site near Ft. Lauderdale, tried to vote for gubernatorial candidate Jim Davis (D); however, when the Diebold machine gave him the final review screen, it showed his vote was about to be cast for Charlie Crist (R). The problem took three tries to get resolved with the help of a local poll worker. Mary Cooney, a Broward County Supervisor of Elections spokeswoman, informed The Miami Herald that it's "not uncommon for screens on heavily used machines to slip out of sync, making votes register incorrectly. Poll workers are trained to recalibrate them on the spot -- essentially, to realign the video screen with the electronics inside. The 15-step process is outlined in the poll-workers manual." Huh? How exactly does a computer -- one that is being used heavily for one day a year, and not a $100 PDA -- "slip out of sync" ? Further, no one in Broward County is even sure how large of a problem this is "because there's no process for poll workers to quickly report minor issues, and no central database of machine problems." Is it any wonder that major candidates are urging voters to vote the analog old-fashioned way?[Via digg]
Diebold secretly "fixed" glitches in 2005, yet problems persist
Diebold's had so many problems recently that we're not even entirely sure which problem this latest "solution" was supposed to fix -- nor if it actually ended up causing even more headaches. It came out earlier this week that Diebold acknowledged quietly "fixing" 4,700 voting machines across four Maryland counties in 2005: Allegany, Dorchester, Montgomery and Prince George's. The problem was that sometimes the voting machines lock up, or as The Washington Post puts it "The screen freezes do not cause votes to be lost, officials said, but they confuse voters and election judges who sometimes wonder whether votes cast on a frozen machine will be counted." The newspaper continues, saying: "Critics said it raises concerns about whether the state and company officials have kept the public adequately informed about problems with a system that cost taxpayers $106 million." Um, yeah. If you're say, a state government and you've just spent over $100 million to buy voting equipment that allegedly improves our previous archaic system of paper voting, you might want to make damn sure that it actually does the job, and that you know what's going on at every step of the way. Now, this new problem/solution apparently is unrelated to that other vexatious problem involving unpredictable reboots. So, despite Diebold's assurances that all problems have been taken care of, the Post adds: "Even so, the two leading candidates for governor -- Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) and Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley (D) -- have called on voters to use absentee ballots in the election, citing uncertainties about the reliability of Maryland's system." That's just great.[Via The Associated Press]
Ex-delegate gets Diebold voting code in mail
With all the recent blunders and whistleblower interviews about the Diebold electronic voting fiasco, it would have been easy to believe that it couldn't get any worse for Diebold Systems. That's probably what Cheryl C. Kagan, an ex-Democratic delegate and an outspoken critic of Maryland's election chief, thought before she received a parcel containing the code that ran Maryland's electronic voting machines in the 2004 election, along with a note calling for her to "alert the media." Although Diebold Election Systems claims that the code is old and does not infringe the security of the current up-to-date system, the fact that it was sent at all exposes a fundamental security flaw in Diebold System's supposed "glitch-free" setup. The only viable solution to all this -- which would make voters happy and give Diebold Systems *some* credibility -- is if the code is released in an open source form. Even though we'd like to believe that the current version of Diebold's voting code (4.6) is more secure that the leaked code (4.3.15c), the litany of security failures on Diebold's part gives us little reason to trust them.
Diebold sez "glitch-free," just don't touch those touchscreens
We're still struggling to see how Diebold can't manage to build a simple bit of voting software that works on their own hardware in this day and age of Doom-running iPods, but it seems they've managed to screw things up again. Apparently Diebold has gotten the machines to work relatively well together, but only when using a mouse. If the touchscreen is tapped, the machine loses contact with its peers. Diebold is touting this mouse thing as a fix, and is offering to provide 5,500 mice for their e-poll books if state officials in Maryland give the go-ahead. Unfortunately, during a recent mock election, a poll-worker tapped the touchscreen despite repeated warnings to the contrary, and screwed up the system, requiring a reboot which took 30 seconds. Critics say this fault could allow some voters to vote twice, because if the machine loses contact with its fellows when the voter checks in, their voting status might not be registered. The use of the machines is still up in the air, with state elections chief Linda H. Lamone stating confusingly yesterday: "I want to wait and rather not say today what we're going to do." Diebold is still trying to fix the touchscreen problem, but we're really not holding our breath.[Via Techdirt]
U. Texas Prof. studies gaming grannies (and grand-dads) [update 1]
Prof. Mihai Nadin is showing old people the light by introducing them to the benefits of video games. The University of Texas at Dallas professor is testing various applications to help the elderly maintain their "cognitive, anticipatory and physical skills."Nadin has been studying the geriatrics for two years now collecting all sorts of sensory date, tracking their cardiac and respiratory rates, and even saliva secretions (there's a lot of info in spit -- seriously). His hope is to create a new category of games for the aging.It's fantastic for old people to play video games, particularly in the U.S. where voting is for old people and the apathy of young voters distorts the political climate. The more elderly people that play games, the more accidental political power will be generated for gamers. Instead of parents being told to play games with their children, young people should play with their elders and encourage dialog to help them better understand all the different types of games out there.[Update 1: Apologies, this is a duplicate, but you should still vote and play with your elders.]
My Dream App opens voting, offers free Pzizz licenses
My Dream App, the revolutionary new 'American Idol' of software from Phill Ryu which we've been covering, has officially opened the first elimination round voting to the public. A total of 24 apps are on the chopping block, and it's up to y'all to decide which are voted off the island, and which get to run a health juice shop together, er, something. You can vote for up to 18 contestants, and the big-name judges like Wil Shipley (Delicious Library), Nicholas Jitkoff (Quicksilver), David Watanabe (Acquisition, NewsFire), Allan Odgaard (TextMate), Cabel Sasser (Panic), Brent Simmons (NetNewsWire), Ken Case (OmniGroup) and Gus Mueller (VoodooPad) have added their comments and opinions to each of the apps (you can see all comments by clicking on each of the contestants on the left). Voting closes at 11:59 EDT Friday, September 22nd though, so you'd better run (as opposed to the typical 'walk' or 'mosey') to add your two cents on which apps make the cut.As an added bonus, voters will be offered a free license to Pzizz, the strangely named (but critically acclaimed) app that helps users achieve a heightened state of relaxation through specialized sounds. While we don't recommend using this to fall asleep at work, it is $40 worth of software for free, so what do you have to lose? Go vote on My Dream App and help be a part of innovative software development history.[via MacMegasite]
Study finds e-voting machines short on security
A recent report from the Task Force on Voting System Security, at New York University's rather ominous sounding Brennan Center for Justice has determined that the e-voting machines currently utilized in 26 states have serious security issues. The machines currently use paper receipts to verify a voter's selection, but only regular audits of collected data can ensure that the numbers kept in the machine actually match those printed on the slips. As of right now, many states and counties are not required to perform these audits, leaving plenty of room for malicious misrepresentation. Luckily, the report also claims that other fixes, such as banning electronic devices in booths and eliminating wireless components, are so simple they could easily be implemented for 2006's election season, so you should be able to cast your vote with confidence, at least until the whole world adopts the American Idol-style SMS voting the Swiss have been messing around with.
Cingular's southern base skewing American Idol results?
Market research firm the NPD Group thinks it might have an explanation for American Idol's apparent bias toward contestants from the south, pointing to the show's exclusive arrangement with Cingular for voting via text messaging. You see, Cingular is based in Atlanta, and the majority of the company's customers -- some 20 million -- are also from the south; of the 18 million Cingular customers that use text messaging across the country, more than half are (you guessed it) from the south. So, NPD suggests, since only Cingular users are able to vote by text messaging, it would stand to reason that they'd be more likely to vote for contestants from their own region -- and, wouldn't you know it, all five American Idol winners are indeed southerners (even though Cingular wasn't sponsoring the show during the first two seasons). We hope you'll understand if we don't get too worked up over this.[Via RCRNews]
AOL refreshes Netscape as social news site with a twist
AOL yesterday relaunched the aging Netscape.com as a social news site (yea, like digg) but with a professional journalistic twist. Check it out. Anyone can sign up, submit and vote on interesting stories from across the web in a wide range of categories from politics, money, television, technology, health and even 'do no evil'. Going above and beyond the social news bookmarking concept, however, is a staff of journalists, including TUAW's own C.K. Sample III and Fabienne Serriere, who will follow up on some of the stories and dig deeper by nabbing interviews, posting related links and keeping users informed as the situation develops (on a side note, we finally figured out why C.K. and Fabs gave us that 'we'd tell you what we're working on, but then we'd have to kill you' bit a while ago).Why are we telling you about all this since it isn't specifically Apple-related, you ask? Well, we should probably tell you the project was headed up by Weblogs Inc.'s CEO, Jason Calacanis. Granted, Weblogs Inc., including TUAW, are owned by AOL, but we could still call it crummy if we wanted to - fortunately, that isn't the case. We think it's a great concept that you should go have some fun with. Still, if you're looking for some Apple-specific details before you fire off a flaming comment, how does 'full-Safari compatibility' work for you? In fact, I think the site actually looks surprisingly better in Safari than Firefox.
