E-Voting Concerns Going Mainstream?
from the nice,-but-too-late dept
Just as the latest reports of e-voting glitches float in (yes, these are brand spanking new reports of problems), it appears that the issue of e-voting machines is hitting the mainstream. In the past, Diebold has been able to brush these concerns off as being from a bunch of conspiracy-theory kooks — even as example after example after example showed that their voting machines have serious problems. This weekend, however, we saw Time Magazine question if e-voting machines can be trusted while the popular comic strip Foxtrot made fun of e-voting machines by suggesting that dressing up as one was about the scariest costume you could have on Halloween (while then noting that no one really cares). It’s great that the issue of e-voting machine problems is clearly reaching the mainstream (despite the fact that evidence of problems has been shown for many, many years), but it won’t change the fact that many of these machines will be used in the upcoming election — after which, do we really expect these issues to get much more attention? Update: And on top of that, now Fortune has its own article about Diebold’s problems. It is a fascinating history of the company, noting that they’ve basically been naive and stupid when it comes to the voting business. A few interesting factoids though. Since Diebold replaced its CEO, the majority of the exec staff has been replaced. Of course, they still seem just as defensive. The other interesting point is that the new CEO is apparently considering whether or not to ditch the e-voting business completely. In the meantime, though, he made one little change: he had the company take its name off the front of the machines.
Comments on “E-Voting Concerns Going Mainstream?”
If Diebold machines appear in my district I’ll opt out.
As a CSI:Miami episode, e-voting writes itself.
come on mike
I thought you knew the unwritten rule: never link to sites that require registration.
I assume you’re talking about the florida incident where even if you voted democrat, it asked you to confirm the republican?
Or are you talking about chavez owning stake in a voting machine manufacturer, or how easy they can be hacked, or how there’s no permanent record of your vote other than the electronic record,
or how the solution to people who bring up problems seems to be “lets not use this machine until you leave”
or maybe it’s the fact that when some machines error, they just don’t count any of their votes..
or there could be…..
ah it don’t matter. The greatest trick America ever pulled was convincing America that it wasn’t a two-tiered theocratic oligarchy.
evoting machines
SInce the problems are out there and have been know for some time. How come the USA government is not holding that company accountable. I know my company does to me if I screw up.
Bush!
It’s all Bush’s fault! Someone think of the children!
(sorry, I had to do it)
This essay on ArsTechnica is a detailed look into several e-voting systems and their flaws:
How to steal an election by hacking the vote
As the author explains, this isn’t actually a “hacking guide”, but more so an expose on what is wrong with our current systems.
Open source project
Why isn’t there an open source project on this? Unless something like this is looked over by a lot more people there will be problems..