In comp.os.linux.advocacy, dapunka
<dapunka@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote
on Tue, 12 Jun 2007 18:56:23 -0000
<1181674583.547457.309050@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
>
> Dr. Pain wrote:
> a load of crap.
>
> http://www.verifiedvotingfoundation.org/article.php?id=6257by the
> This is the link posted by Roy that mentions MSFT and Windows
>
Pedant Point: as written, that link is broken; did you mean
http://www.verifiedvotingfoundation.org/article.php?id=6257
?
Diebold's Problems Worse Than Reported, Tests Find
System Crashes, Paper Jams Prove Widespread in
California Counties by Ian Hoffman, Daily Review August
3rd, 2005
Diebold's latest electronic voting machine, desired
by dozens of counties nationwide, fared worse in the
nation's first mass testing than previously disclosed,
with almost 20 percent of the touch-screen machines
crashing.
Those software failures are likely to send Diebold
programmers back to work and may force the firm into
weeks of independent laboratory testing.
Of particular note is the very last paragraph:
"Especially with this blue-screen problem, you don't
know whether it's the printer drivers, you don't
know whether it's Diebold's own code or whether it's
Windows, or where the problem is," [Douglas Jones,
a computer science professor at the University of
Iowa and an expert on computerized voting systems]
said. "It brings into question the entire system."
Ick. Of course there's a fundamental problem with
e-voting anyway; how does one know that the vote is
properly counted? For all I know, the system displays
Democratic but registers Republican [*]; the display screen is
nowhere near the tally chip (which in the system we use
here -- Sequoia -- one inserts into a slot in the device
prior to voting, then takes the card back to the voting
officer who sticks it in a small tally box).
Even were Sequoia or Diebold or any such device working
perfectly, there's some interesting questions as to how
one verifies the vote tally later. Ideally I'd have
my own reader.
I rather liked our old punch-card system; a cheap plastic
holder with flip-bits (these were numbered, with the numbers
corresponding to voting propositions and candidates; one
had to bring one's ballot along, or the voting officer
would hand you one) was punched with an awl (it was a small
awl, chained to the holder, with a curved head suitable
for applying pressure with one's thumb); the cards were
then dumped into a ballot box and later counted presumably
via optomechanical or electromechanical card readers.
There are some questions in punched card systems regarding
reliability ("dimpled chads" and "pregnant chads" were
an issue in the Florida election in 2000, and might have
been an issue here, were the national election close
enough), but apart from going with Canada's system, which
is more or less "fill in the bubble" and then hand-tally,
it wasn't too bad for us younger folk, and the cards could
be recounted without too much difficulty, or even hand-counted
in a pinch.
Of course the older ones might have trouble punching out
the card with the awl.
Nowadays, it appears we have more absentee ballots than
actual users of the new Sequoia system; we might be
therefore solving a non-problem here.
[*] the other way around was apparently far less frequent,
at least in certain elections such as Ohio.
--
#191, ewill3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Useless C++ Programming Idea #992381111:
while(bit&BITMASK) ;
--
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