electronic voting

seeing as this is THE geek site, and therefore somewhat educated in these things, does anyone here actually trust electronic voting? 'they' say that the security on them cannot be breached. any comments? ps. its a beautiful day. aloha Laurie.

 

Thats a load of nonsense. No security is foolproof.

I would trust it, as long as it was anonymous, and they didn't log any details that could be identifyable to me, and that the records arn't held in public view (offline, i mean).

 

LOL
As soon as someone says that something is unbreachable guaranteed someone out there will find a way to get through. Personally I think it's a take your chances kind of thing. I do all my banking online and take what precautions I can. I believe in the old adage "Hope for the best but prepare for the worst"

 

I don't trust any voting

yea the box is lock'd. . so what. . .
and even so
"When I say recount. .I mean for the very first time"


post script
you don't have the drear I do here
but yes the foilage(sp) is lovely

 

I prefer paper, but our voting center is right her in our building (isn't that convenient?), is never really crowded, and IL isn't a swing state. If it was, I might want something that isn't going to have "hanging chads" Not that I was disappointed with the results of the last election, just all the controversy and hassle around it. I'm with GT... looking forward to it being over with.

 

I'm perfectly happy with our paper ballots. They list the candidates, and a broken arrow points toward each name. If you want to vote for that person, you colour in the center part of the arrow, making it a solid arrow that points to their name.

E-voting....not so much, not just yet. We had online voting for the Democratic Caucus this year, and that sat funny with me as well. Too many very real possibilities for screwing up involved for my taste.

 

Here in Oregon we are the only State in the Nation to have exclusive mail-in voting. Sent mine in today. It's a paper ballot returned in a "secrecy" envelope, which is put inside a mailing envelope. Definitely not high tech, but they say that it is very cost effective. Oh yeah, the voter has to supply the postage too.

 

Just what we need, another way to fix an election.

 

Good timing for this question. Yesterday Florida started their early voting, and Broward County, which is using all computer/touch screens, had problems at 9 out of their 14 polling places. Computers crashed, they wouldn't hook into the master database that verified that a voter was registered and legit, and some of the polling places didn't get online properly until 3:00 PM (polls closed at 6:00). Lots of LONG lines and hours-long waits, and early voting is NOT busy like election day. Can't wait to see what all screws up on a real, busy election day.

As far as security, NOT. There are at least 3 different systems being used this year. IIRC, only ONE system has any kind of paper/hard copy backup, which means a computer crash WILL lose votes. Plus auditing and verifying after the election is impossible. Not real smart. Most of the systems are supposedly fairly secure as far as monkeying with them from out in the field, but all of them are vulnerable to tampering by the company itself (ie: a single employee in the right spot inside the company).

The push for faster tabulation is primarily by the media, who wants to be able to announce a winner quickly. Like instantly. Tough. Taking a few hours to hand-count is far better than having a fast, but wrong answer. Most of the hanging chad nonsense from Florida 4 years ago was bogus; an attempt to keep recounting until they got the answer they were looking for.

If you're too stupid to punch a simple hole in a piece of paper, or flunked Crayola 101 and can't color inside the lines, PLEASE stay home. Computers are great for a lot of things, but currently at least, they're NOT great for elections.

 

Even more worrisome than the various electronic voting systems that can crash & burn are the MANY instance of voter registration fraud going on this year. Paying people to get other people registered is so stupid. If you don't care enough to get off your butt & register yourself (which is NOT difficult), you don't care enough to know what's going on. Again, if you don't care, stay home, as your vote will be meaningless. And fraud is WAY too easy, and seems to be rampant.

http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041019/NEWS09/410190343

And not all voter registration is "impartial".

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=39825

 

Yes, but you make it sound as if only the Democrats are up the shenanigans, G.T. Not so. Both sides are being stupid this year (and have every other year, but this year they're getting caught).

http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/NewsArticle.cfm?ID=2213
http://www.johnmccrory.com/wrote.asp?this=460

And then there's the thing where there are several hundred, or perhaps several thousand, people registered in both New York and Florida...and who vote in BOTH states.

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/224449p-192807c.html

 

Didn't mean to imply that it's all one sided; it's not. And the biggest registration fraud has been ongoing for some years: Motor Voter Registration, where you get registered to vote when you get a drivers' license. You don't have to prove you're a citizen to get a drivers license, so non-citizens get registered to vote, which is illegal, but nobody cares.

 

I actually knew that you of all people weren't making it one-sided...I was just concerned for some of the people reading who might assume it was so.