Early Voting

[Fireball1244]

Well between the IRS and Ed Snowden, I think trusting the federal government one day is a stretch, and more than that, forget it.

The Federal government doesn't administer elections.

 

[NightHawkeye]

The Federal government doesn't administer elections.

LOL ... you should ask the Southern states how little involvement the federal government has in their elections.

 

[stamperben]

LOL ... you should ask the Southern states how little involvement the federal government has in their elections.

With reason!

 

[ThatRobGuy]

Actually, it's disturbing how little involvement the state or federal government has in elections.

In many areas, full faith is put into man-made software to tally elections. Diebold had more of a say in the elections than the State or Federal government had.

I watched an HBO special where they hired independent IT consultants to review Diebold's (as well as a few other companies) systems and show just how easy they were to hack/misuse/abuse.

Everything from it being easy for an outside user to go in and tinker with results over the web all the way up to cases where the programmers themselves had little "easter eggs" in the code that would shift votes from one person to another based on their personal preference was discovered when the architecture was reviewed...scary stuff.

As a programmer, I can verify that what they found in the code would be easy for your average programmer to do. They found that in a particular state level election, there was a hidden place in the code where it was taking every 20th vote for candidate A, and giving it to Candidate B.

1/20 sounds like a small number, however, if you look at it like this...

If the actual results were

Candidate A) 30,000
Candidate B) 28,000

This little easter egg would change that to...

Candidate A) 28,500
Candidate B) 29,500

It wouldn't change the results for a candidate who's way out in front, however, if the results are close, that little gem could change the outcome.

All of this was discovered in addition to finding simply bad code that caused accuracy issues that should have been caught in QA.

The sad part is how little accountability is expected of these voting software companies.

When confronted with the findings, the software companies simply said "oh, well, we'll make sure it doesn't happen again next year", and surprisingly, the states must have accepted that lousy apology because the same companies are still producing the hardware/software for voting in many states to this day.

I think that using technology is good, well-written code is going to be more accurate than someone trying to count by hand, however, I think a little code separation & abstraction would be good in terms of having different companies handle different elements of the software rather than having all of your eggs in one basket.

For example, instead of Diebold writing the software from start to finish. Maybe have Diebold design the user interface, and have other companies write API's for them to use to handle behind the scenes workings, and maybe send the data out to multiple API's that perform the same function so that the data can be cross referenced for verification purposes.

 

[iluvatar5150]

It wouldn't change the results for a candidate who's way out in front, however, if the results are close, that little gem could change the outcome.

Lots of races are decided by less than 5%. :-\

For example, instead of Diebold writing the software from start to finish. Maybe have Diebold design the user interface, and have other companies write API's for them to use to handle behind the scenes workings, and maybe send the data out to multiple API's that perform the same function so that the data can be cross referenced for verification purposes.

I don't even have a problem with Diebold (or whomever) handling the project from start to finish, as long as we had some serious QC being done by the customers (in this case, the government). A voting booth isn't much different from a bank ATM in its general function - Diebold makes most of the ATM machines I see every day, and you can bet your back side that the software in those is tight, because if it weren't, people would be losing money and SCREAMING.

 

[ThatRobGuy]

I don't even have a problem with Diebold (or whomever) handling the project from start to finish, as long as we had some serious QC being done by the customers (in this case, the government). A voting booth isn't much different from a bank ATM in its general function - Diebold makes most of the ATM machines I see every day, and you can bet your back side that the software in those is tight, because if it weren't, people would be losing money and SCREAMING.

Correct, but losing money is something that's much more visible to the end user...if I take out $20 from an ATM, then check my balance and it showed I took out $200...yeah, that's going to cause some screaming.

However, if I vote for a candidate, and then get home and check the news and see that my guy didn't win and look at precinct voting counts and see 24,235 to 22,199...how the heck would I ever know if that was right or not?

 

[iluvatar5150]

Correct, but losing money is something that's much more visible to the end user...if I take out $20 from an ATM, then check my balance and it showed I took out $200...yeah, that's going to cause some screaming.

However, if I vote for a candidate, and then get home and check the news and see that my guy didn't win and look at precinct voting counts and see 24,235 to 22,199...how the heck would I ever know if that was right or not?

Right, which is why they need a better QA/QC process up front and why their code ought to be reviewable by the customer.

You can avoid easter eggs if you have a corporate culture that frowns on them and a qc process that checks for them. On my last project, we were told in no uncertain terms that easter eggs had to be approved in writing by senior management, and any that weren't would result in termination. We were told about another company that recently had to pull all of their products from the shelves because an easter egg wound up invalidating their ESRB rating. To my knowledge, no easter eggs have been found.

 

[ThatRobGuy]

Right, which is why they need a better QA/QC process up front and why their code ought to be reviewable by the customer.

Correct, but who's going to review that from the customer side? The government is the customer, however, if the government had that kind of development talent that would be able to catch something like that, wouldn't they just be writing the software themselves in the first place?

And keep in mind, since the voting decisions about which software to use are at the state level and not the federal level, we're not talking about federal IT resources, we're talking state level resources and some states aren't going to have the kinds of resources needed to give it the correct attention (thus the reason they're outsourcing this to independent companies in the first place)

 

[stamperben]

How about we go back to the good old fashioned ballot and count them by hand.

 

[iluvatar5150]

Correct, but who's going to review that from the customer side? The government is the customer, however, if the government had that kind of development talent that would be able to catch something like that, wouldn't they just be writing the software themselves in the first place?

Eh, not necessarily, but either way, I was talking about the ideal, not the reality. Ideally, it would be nice if the gov't had the ability to write good specs and properly ensure that they're met.

And keep in mind, since the voting decisions about which software to use are at the state level and not the federal level, we're not talking about federal IT resources, we're talking state level resources and some states aren't going to have the kinds of resources needed to give it the correct attention (thus the reason they're outsourcing this to independent companies in the first place)

Yep. This is why I would like to see the feds have more control over the election process.

 

[NightHawkeye]

How about we go back to the good old fashioned ballot and count them by hand.

I agree with the old fashioned ballot ... as long as it is optically scanned. That way there is a paper trail, the ability to conduct recounts and a highly accurate counting system.

 

[EdwinWillers]

Of course. One shouldn't spend too much time thinking about the candidates backgrounds. The "October surprise" is especially to be avoided because one might change one's vote when one realizes just how absurdly awful one's first choice was.

Myself, I can hardly wait for online voting. There's a system which will really promote election integrity.

LOL

dubyadubyadubya.healthcare.gov/bonusfeatures/onlinevoting/

 

[USincognito]

LOL ... you should ask the Southern states how little involvement the federal government has in their elections.

This response is so pre-Shelby County v. Holder.

 

[TheBear]

Exactly how does voting on election day only, give an advantage to Republicans, or any party? How does that work?

 

[EdwinWillers]

Exactly how does voting on election day only, give an advantage to Republicans, or any party? How does that work?

Conversely, how does being able to vote before Election Day give an advantage (or somehow even out the playing field) for Democrats?

I agree - it makes no sense.

 

[ThatRobGuy]

Exactly how does voting on election day only, give an advantage to Republicans, or any party? How does that work?

Well, if I can play devil's advocate for a moment...
(because I don't necessarily support this theory)

...I've heard some people say that early voting gives the democrats an advantage because typically, more working class people tend to vote democrat and people in that class are more likely to be hourly instead of salaried meaning it's tougher for them to take time off work to go vote.

However, as I said, I don't support that theory, in my experience, I've known well-to-do republicans and democrats as well as poor republican and democrats.

 

[trunks2k]

Exactly how does voting on election day only, give an advantage to Republicans, or any party? How does that work?

Voting demographics. If the people who are going to have a tougher time getting to a voting place on a specific day tend to fit within a certain set of characteristics and people with those characteristics skew towards voting for a particular party, then it is in the opposing party's interest to keep voting on a single day.

For example:

People who have a tough time accessing transportation to go to where they need to vote, and thus on average are less likely to get to where they need to be on election day, are probably older and/or poor. These people likely skew towards voting democrat.

 

[NightHawkeye]

Voting demographics. If the people who are going to have a tougher time getting to a voting place on a specific day tend to fit within a certain set of characteristics and people with those characteristics skew towards voting for a particular party, then it is in the opposing party's interest to keep voting on a single day.

For example:

People who have a tough time accessing transportation to go to where they need to vote, and thus on average are less likely to get to where they need to be on election day, are probably older and/or poor. These people likely skew towards voting democrat.

Really?

 

[HonestTruth]

Exactly how does voting on election day only, give an advantage to Republicans, or any party? How does that work?

I have already answered that question by the examples of Ohio and Florida. The problems were corrected through early voting.

 

[HonestTruth]

Well between the IRS and Ed Snowden, I think trusting the federal government one day is a stretch, and more than that, forget it.

Shhhhhsh ...... the forum right wingers will say you are trying to shut down the Pentagon and call you a "liberal" .....