One source, one vote 2

[Dimandja]

A company which developed software to be used in voting machines and applications has released it's source code for "evaluation", and to show that it is "hacker-proof":

"You can actually program it to cheat, and you can watch where the protocol detects where your ballot was changed ... which I think is very instructive," he said.

Should voting software be "open source"?

The link:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4677716/

Dimandja

 

[Tarwn]

Also, it is not legal to use a person's SSN for anything beyond tax purposes in the US, despite the fact that it makes a perfect unique id.

Of course, many places still base their customer id (or whatever they call it) on the SSN and move it into a grey area, but depends on how technical you want to get.

-T

[sub]01000111 01101111 01110100 00100000 01000011 01101111 01100110 01100110 01100101 01100101 00111111[/sub]
Need an expensive ASP developer in the North Carolina area? Feel free to let me know.

 

[philhege]

I love to invoke the Privacy Act of 1974. Of course, every application, function, survey, questionnaire, and program that wants my SSN says it's required information, and I can't participate/reap the benefits of said programs if I don't provide it. But it's illegal for them to require it, per the Privacy Act of 1974. But they still deny my participation if it's not on there.

I was in a live recording session. The recording company stuck a form in front of my face. Under SSN, I wrote "Privacy Act of 1974". They pulled the microphone from in front of my amp.

You can't win.

Phil Hegedusich
Senior Web Developer
IIMAK

http://www.iimak.com

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Boy howdy, my Liberal Studies degree really prepared me for this....
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A skeleton walks into a bar, and says "I'll have a beer and a mop.

 

[jwenting]

As with paper ballots e-voting comes down to TRUST.
You just have a smaller group of people you need to trust.

No more women and men with party affilliations you don't know sitting down and deciding if you voted A but really had meant to vote B and therefore they switch your vote.
Instead there's a computer programmer who you have to trust to record correctly which candidate you selected.

I don't know, I'd rather trust a colleague (especially since his product will have been tested to destruction) than some random people who have been known to make mistakes deliberately to prevent the other candidate from winning.

Many of the problems in the 2000 US elections in Florida came down to counters with strong sympathy for Gore counting a lot of votes that should have been discarded in Gore's favour.
Then when that still didn't win them the elections they demanded a recount and counted even more creatively.
When that didn't work they tried to get the suppreme court involved...
Of course Gore had already on national TV officially announced his loss of the elections after the first count, which to me means he concedes the elections and withdraws from the process.

 

[SQLSister]

And since the machines are built by a company which is owned by a big Republican supporter who has publically stated he will do everything he can to get Bush elected, I think trust is definitely an issue. Also, with no paper trail, there is literally no way to verify that the votes were counted properly. In local elections in CA for instance they had an instance of more votes for someone than the number of people who signed in to vote in that district. Electronic voting machines are simply not trustworthy and should be banned until they can be made so.

Questions about posting. See faq183-874

 

[tfg13]

screwloose,
I don't whole heartedly agree with you statement:

It starts with the people but they think it starts with the government (who is the people). Only when they figure that out.

The entire problem starts coming down to the individuals who are in the political arena. Once elected, they seem to forget about representing their people, and more on the money machines that fork over cash for their re-election bids. Wasn't it the people who elected them? The U.S. government seems to have their own ideas of what representing the people means.
By no means am I saying that the current government doesn't work, I am just stating that instead of having people who state publically that they can't survive on less than $80K a year is a little out of touch of the families who are scraping by on $21k a year.
Take for example the choices for the U.S. Presidency currently. Both have grown up with money, and never really understood what it means to live paycheck to paycheck like most of the "common" people. Of course both are going to say "no new taxes", but in reality, do you believe them?

Just so everyone knows, in this election, I am going to vote for the person who I believe in most.....ME!

 

[GwydionM]

The USA needs to put a cap on election spending, of the sort that we have in Britain. Where rich people still have a lot of influence, but most MPs are not personally rich. And where the working mainstream of the society have seen rising incomes since the 1970s, whereas similar people in the USA have stuck at the same level.

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A view from the UK