True, but then at least if there is a recount they can compare the computer record with the paper record and spot the difference. Without a paper receipt, all you can do is trust the machine.
This is all assuming we're positively dealing with forgery here. Don't jump to conclusions. As I study software engineering more and more, it becomes obvious to me that this mess can be very well explained by poor engineering standards.
They're the same problems of security, data duplication, and general buggery we see in software products across the board, its just that this time, it's happened in a niche which we can't afford those kinds of errors in.
The paper trails would have to be collected so they were available in case of a recount. Why are you even voting on machines anyway then? But I guess that is the big unanswered question anyway. Because Diebold says so? I don't know.
puzlThe Old FirmJoin Date: 2003-02-26Member: 14029Retired Developer, NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators, Constellation
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> As I study software engineering more and more, it becomes obvious to me that this mess can be very well explained by poor engineering standards. <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This just doesn't cut it. The statistical analysis shows bias in favour of republican candidates. That is the fundamental reason why an impartial investigation is needed. It is true that the investigation should not start out with the assumption that the republican party stole the election, but it should also not start out with the assumption that the democrats are being paranoid.
<!--quoteo(post=1577456:date=Nov 15 2006, 08:51 AM:name=puzl)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(puzl @ Nov 15 2006, 08:51 AM) [snapback]1577456[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> This just doesn't cut it. The statistical analysis shows bias in favour of republican candidates. That is the fundamental reason why an impartial investigation is needed. It is true that the investigation should not start out with the assumption that the republican party stole the election, but it should also not start out with the assumption that the democrats are being paranoid. <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Just because some apparently infallible statistical analysis seems to indicate that the system errors in favor of the republican candidates doesn't mean anything.
And I didn't say we should just forget about it, either, so don't put words in my mouth. I said that from the standpoint of a student of computer engineering/computer science whose also worked in the field for a couple years, this <i>feels</i> like the common problems faced in software engineering. It's just that people wanting it to be something else have skewed points and made claims without doing background research.
"Why would the system count votes backwards?"
Obviously this is because the voting is rigged, and not becomes a variable was not initialized before starting a recount of votes for the by chance democratic candidate so it started at some garbage value in the very bowels of negativeness, and all the votes in the united states could not bring above 0. See what I'm saying?
Not the mention that a lot of people seem to point the finger at the presidential election which we all know is not carried by popular vote - it's decided in the electoral college.
None of this is meant to be a vindication for the errors. In an area of such importance, special precautions should have been taken. But, we are talking about government contracts, after all. I've seen government contracts, and we're still trying to do for the military what Total Annihilation did for gamers in 1998.
And I'm not saying an investigation as to the cause should not be conducted, but regardless of what you say- you sound like you want a witch hunt.
Why not start with the assumption that this is nothing more than an engineering disaster and see where we go from there?
Wow, I'm amazed how this relates to the game Killer7. In the game, it turns out that the presidential candidates are also not chosen by the real votes.
And Man of The Year also plays the theme of voting error.
So the question is, how do we get sure unbiased votes?
moultanoCreator of ns_shiva.Join Date: 2002-12-14Member: 10806Members, NS1 Playtester, Contributor, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Gold, NS2 Community Developer, Pistachionauts
<!--quoteo(post=1577617:date=Nov 15 2006, 08:08 PM:name=Rob)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Rob @ Nov 15 2006, 08:08 PM) [snapback]1577617[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> Just because some apparently infallible statistical analysis seems to indicate that the system errors in favor of the republican candidates doesn't mean anything. <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> This isn't just statistical analysis. Every single aberration that has been found has benefited a republican candidate and hurt a democrat. This however may just be because republicans have been winning and democrats have been losing, so democrats are on the lookout for things like this in a way that republicans aren't. <!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> And I didn't say we should just forget about it, either, so don't put words in my mouth. I said that from the standpoint of a student of computer engineering/computer science whose also worked in the field for a couple years, this <i>feels</i> like the common problems faced in software engineering. It's just that people wanting it to be something else have skewed points and made claims without doing background research.
"Why would the system count votes backwards?"
Obviously this is because the voting is rigged, and not becomes a variable was not initialized before starting a recount of votes for the by chance democratic candidate so it started at some garbage value in the very bowels of negativeness, and all the votes in the united states could not bring above 0. See what I'm saying?
Not the mention that a lot of people seem to point the finger at the presidential election which we all know is not carried by popular vote - it's decided in the electoral college. None of this is meant to be a vindication for the errors. In an area of such importance, special precautions should have been taken. But, we are talking about government contracts, after all. I've seen government contracts, and we're still trying to do for the military what Total Annihilation did for gamers in 1998.
And I'm not saying an investigation as to the cause should not be conducted, but regardless of what you say- you sound like you want a witch hunt.
Why not start with the assumption that this is nothing more than an engineering disaster and see where we go from there? <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> I hear you, but the scale of the incompetence here is truly staggering. If you were told you had to design a voting machine, is a microsoft access database the first thing you would think of to implement it? I think I heard what the actual reason was for the negative votes thing a while back. For some reason they were storing the vote total in a signed 16 bit integer that overflowed, which is I believe the stupidest error I have ever encountered in a piece of software. I mean come on, you are writing the code that decides the outcome of an election, and you think, "Hey why don't I store this total in the lowest precision type I have available? That seems like a good idea!"
With your experience in software engineering, that should strike you as beyond incompetent, and well into something else. There is one significant variable in the whole project: the vote total. There is absolutely no reason why that shouldn't be correct. How many lines of code do you think it would take to write something that counts votes? I'd say the core system would be maybe 100 lines tops. The systems for dealing with the touchscreens and hardware would be more complicated, as would the encryption libraries, but those aren't what is failing. If the machines were hanging periodically, or not communicating with the memory cards correctly, I'd say sure, fire the company making them, but it's probably not fraud. Counting is trivial. It takes effort to get it wrong.
If that doesn't convince you, look at <a href="http://www.thehill.com/news/012903/hagel.aspx" target="_blank">this.</a> Senator Chuck Hagel wins in longshot victory, after <b>he was chairman of the company that made the voting machines he was elected on and never disclosed it.</b>
One of the first things they taught me in college was how to write a vulnerability into a piece of code such that it can't even be detected with access to the source code. Read Ken Thompson's <a href="http://www.acm.org/classics/sep95/" target="_blank">Reflections on Trusting Trust</a> if you want to know how. Electronic voting might be a great convenience, but it should never be the official tally of the votes.
<!--quoteo(post=1577617:date=Nov 16 2006, 01:08 AM:name=Rob)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Rob @ Nov 16 2006, 01:08 AM) [snapback]1577617[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> [...]Why not start with the assumption that this is nothing more than an engineering disaster and see where we go from there? <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> Alrighty then. First conclusion: Apparently, "engineering disasters" want a certain party to win, given the disproportional way they affect the two parties. Curious, that. Someone should look into why engineering disasters have this motivation. Maybe somebody is good friends with engineering disasters, and engineering disasters feel like helping them a little?
puzlThe Old FirmJoin Date: 2003-02-26Member: 14029Retired Developer, NS1 Playtester, Forum Moderators, Constellation
Why does the motive matter? Why do you need to have evidence of voting irregularities to motive a periodic review of the electoral process? The type of investigation that people are calling for <b>should be already part of the system</b>.
Having said that, the statistics make it clear that the irregularities favour republicans. I think it would be extremely naive to believe that the current calls for an investigation are not motivated by the very questionable practice of recent elections, and the apparent favour it shows republicans. That is simply the motive for it, the investigative process that needs to be established needs to be objective and unbiased.
When a person is arrested for a crime and tried in court, he is assumed to be innocent, and he deserves an impartial trial, however, it is just stupidity to expect there to be no suspicion of guilt by law enforcement. You put a guy on trial because there is a case for that person's guilt.
You investigate the electoral system because there is evidence of fraud.
So, there's no other reason for investigating a faulty piece of equipment except that it's being misused to benefit someone else? Do all plane crash investigations start with the assumption that somebody brought the plane down?
Any level headed engineer who's been in software for awhile could have told you that transitioning to machine vote counting would be an uphill battle if you'd come and asked him/her before all this mess started. We hardly ever get things right the first time.
I particularly find it ghastly that some of the same faces I see in this thread wielding pitchforks and calling for the demise of republicans are the same faces who said that the military commissions act was the first step to fascism because it killed habeas corpus.
I guess I would be even further out of line to suggest that perhaps the democrats are actually the ones who rigged the machines to let republicans win? They then used the controversy to whip the hordes into a frenzy of retribution against republicans, sweeping the dem's into power to take over the world?
I find it hard to believe that if such a conspiracy of the republicans ever did exist, that the democrats didn't know about it. Does one man somehow cleverly engineer the software so that it can be assembled piece by piece by separate, isolated members of the development team, and once complete serves his purpose entirely? That's a pretty damned tough thing to do, and would require more mind power that I've ever seen in a person.
Then, the development team must have been in on it. How many were there? Programmers, designers, consultants, managers, testers. And none of those people had a problem with the knowledge of defrauding the entire electoral system. None of them would have let a word slip at the bar one night. None would have told their families, friends, coworkers on other projects.
Even barring all that, a significant portion of the republican upper echelon would probably know about such a scandal, maybe even have a hand in it themselves. Now you have aides who overhear conversations, secretaries who have to shred papers, waiters at restaurants who see and hear things that are odd, and on and on. All of these people would have to be completely and unconditionally devoted to the cause and speak not a word of it to anyone.
And don't hit me with a "argument from ignorance" or I'll throw Occam's Razor at you. Personally if the truth is what you believe, then I've had about enough of society. To have a country as bad off as that requires that each citizen be willing to knife everyone else in the back. That's not a place I'd like to believe we live in.
Now, can some random errors that would probably explain the irregularities have gotten by all those people and made it into deliverables? Happens all the time. Not to hard to believe if you consider that the current estimate is something like one error in every 50 lines of code a person produces.
I also assert that such a program as GEMS would contain thousands upon thousands of lines of code. We should never confuse computer science and software engineering. While CS is concise and speedy, software engineering products are bloated and geared toward readability and maintainability, because software always seems to outlive expectations. (remember Y2K?)
moultanoCreator of ns_shiva.Join Date: 2002-12-14Member: 10806Members, NS1 Playtester, Contributor, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Gold, NS2 Community Developer, Pistachionauts
edited November 2006
I don't understand what you are arguing. Also, if there was in fact fraud, it needn't be a conspiracy. Read that ken thompson paper I linked in the last post. A single engineer could write a vulnerability that would be undetectible in the source code.
<!--quoteo(post=1577967:date=Nov 16 2006, 10:20 PM:name=Rob)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Rob @ Nov 16 2006, 10:20 PM) [snapback]1577967[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> [...]I particularly find it ghastly that some of the same faces I see in this thread wielding pitchforks and calling for the demise of republicans are the same faces who said that the military commissions act was the first step to fascism because it killed habeas corpus.[...] <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> I assume you mean me, among others. I don't see how that's ghastly. The only one wielding pitchforks is you. We're calling for an <i>investigation.</i> A FULL one. We're not asking to have the entire republican party locked away, we're asking that a full investigation be launched in order to ascertain whom, if anyone, to press charges against. That's how things are done in the civilized world. You don't lock people away and flush the key down the toilet before they've ever even seen the inside of a court room. You don't ignore possible signs of election fraud just because they could also be due to random chance - you ascertain WHICH of the cases is true.
I'm once again pointing out that we're asking for an investigation. We ask for nothing more than the TRUTH. If the republicans are free of guilt, they have nothing to fear. If Diebold is free of guilt, they have nothing to fear. If the democrats set this entire thing up to discredit the opposition, they have everything to fear. The purpose of an investigation is to ascertain who is guilty and who is not - to dispense with all this speculation and replace it with FACT.
I don't understand why you are opposed to that. If anything is ghastly, that is it.
<!--quoteo(post=1577967:date=Nov 16 2006, 04:20 PM:name=Rob)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Rob @ Nov 16 2006, 04:20 PM) [snapback]1577967[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> I particularly find it ghastly that some of the same faces I see in this thread wielding pitchforks and calling for the demise of republicans are the same faces who said that the military commissions act was the first step to fascism because it killed habeas corpus. <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Why, do I have to be able to afford a sword to have a say? Being a farmhand is an occupation too you know, just because more of us are farmhands than priests or burghers doesnt mean we're not as smart you know <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":(" border="0" alt="sad-fix.gif" />
<!--quoteo(post=1577967:date=Nov 16 2006, 03:20 PM:name=Rob)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Rob @ Nov 16 2006, 03:20 PM) [snapback]1577967[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> So, there's no other reason for investigating a faulty piece of equipment except that it's being misused to benefit someone else? Do all plane crash investigations start with the assumption that somebody brought the plane down?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> no, you start a crash investigation because there's evidence that a plane hit the ground. likewise, you examine equipment because of evidence of improper function.
Well, the amount of presumed republican guilt was pretty evident from previous posts. It reminded me of an angry mob about to riot, and THAT'S what I opposed. The investigation should start with the assumption of no foul play.
You see non-working machines and immediately jump to fraud without knowing any of the details of the inner workings of the system. These need to be made public and be analyzed by all parties involved <i>before</i> any decision is made to assume any kind of criminal intent.
I never say I wasn't for getting to the bottom of the issue, I just don't want this to be a witch hunt for republicans who are out to destroy our country. Look back at these replies and tell me know I'm wrong for thinking this is what the whole thread is about. Come on, the title is "hacking democracy."
I'm sure there's some foul play <i>somewhere</i> out there involving Diebold products. Then again, I'm sure there's also foul play involved hand ballots. You can't assume that a completely untried technology can hit live action and work on the first run out of the gate, even if it's been in use for years. History tells use over and over that we have to fail at things many times before we get them right. The Tacoma Narrows Bridge is a classic example of engineering disasters, for example.
We need to find the problems in design and fix them, but we don't need to go ravaging about the country-side looking for fugitives without having first check other possibilities.
edit: @moultano:
The article was very interesting indeed. Pretty scary stuff, really. But would it be a simple matter, upon having the source code of the program in question and evaluating it by sight, to simply compile it using a clean binary? This would remove any bugs having been inserted using such a method. Of course you'd need to do this with the linkers and loaders, as well, on a separate system. It should then been a simple matter to test both systems side-by-side with identical inputs to see if there are enough discrepancies to identify that such tampering took place.
But even then. Yes, one engineer could do it, but then he'd/she'd have to distribute the bugged binaries to his co-workers machines without them knowing about it, and know which pieces of the product were to be targeted for a bugged compile. Not quite as far of a stretch, and surely doable, but still very strange. The republican party having a single, unnamed benefactor? I don't buy it, they barely have any <i>named</i> benefactors. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />
<!--quoteo(post=1578004:date=Nov 16 2006, 05:34 PM:name=tjosan)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(tjosan @ Nov 16 2006, 05:34 PM) [snapback]1578004[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> Why, do I have to be able to afford a sword to have a say? Being a farmhand is an occupation too you know, just because more of us are farmhands than priests or burghers doesnt mean we're not as smart you know <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":(" border="0" alt="sad-fix.gif" /> <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Hah, that made my day. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />
Rob, I shall inform you of a slight detail that I fear you have overlooked: We, the republican-bashing, democrat-loving, tree-hugging, communist residents of the Discussions forum will not be conducting said investigation, should it ever happen.
There. That should ease your fears of foul play considerably. Rest easy knowing that none of us will be tainting the investigation with our foul, anti-republican sentiments.
Seems like the real answer is that if rigging actually happens then it cancels itself out either in the same election or in subsequent elections. Alternately this merely goes to prove that there is no such thing as a good loser, or at least that the bad losers yell louder <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=";)" border="0" alt="wink-fix.gif" />
An imperfect system is still a system. Real cynics think that important things should be left to philanthropists since democracy is far too slow to act. To say the other side cheated and that the whole system fails is just lame. Conspiracy theorists make me sick.
<!--quoteo(post=1578372:date=Nov 17 2006, 08:02 PM:name=lolfighter)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(lolfighter @ Nov 17 2006, 08:02 PM) [snapback]1578372[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> Rob, I shall inform you of a slight detail that I fear you have overlooked: We, the republican-bashing, democrat-loving, tree-hugging, communist residents of the Discussions forum will not be conducting said investigation, should it ever happen.
There. That should ease your fears of foul play considerably. Rest easy knowing that none of us will be tainting the investigation with our foul, anti-republican sentiments. <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Don't make the mistake of thinking that I'm a republican. I'm on my own side. Whoever happens to be standing close to me is my ally until they leave the area. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />
<!--quoteo(post=1578397:date=Nov 17 2006, 09:53 PM:name=Hyperion)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Hyperion @ Nov 17 2006, 09:53 PM) [snapback]1578397[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> Seems like the real answer is that if rigging actually happens then it cancels itself out either in the same election or in subsequent elections. Alternately this merely goes to prove that there is no such thing as a good loser, or at least that the bad losers yell louder <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=";)" border="0" alt="wink-fix.gif" />
An imperfect system is still a system. Real cynics think that important things should be left to philanthropists since democracy is far too slow to act. To say the other side cheated and that the whole system fails is just lame. Conspiracy theorists make me sick. <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
If a system is set up to be as fair as possible, and it happens to give one side an advantage (no matter which side, or for what reason - engineering disaster or rigging it doesn't matter), then the system has failed. To say it hasn't failed is to say that the system was made for rigging or random result generation, and to make a system meant for that under the pretense of something else - that would be the epitome of lame in my opinion.
There is no need for conspiracy theories as you see, it is a very clear cut situation.
<!--quoteo(post=1578405:date=Nov 18 2006, 04:20 AM:name=Rob)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Rob @ Nov 18 2006, 04:20 AM) [snapback]1578405[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> Don't make the mistake of thinking that I'm a republican. I'm on my own side. Whoever happens to be standing close to me is my ally until they leave the area. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" /> <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> I didn't call you a republican. I merely cleared up an odd misunderstanding.
<!--quoteo(post=1578410:date=Nov 17 2006, 09:33 PM:name=tjosan)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(tjosan @ Nov 17 2006, 09:33 PM) [snapback]1578410[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> If a system is set up to be as fair as possible, and it happens to give one side an advantage (no matter which side, or for what reason - engineering disaster or rigging it doesn't matter), then the system has failed. To say it hasn't failed is to say that the system was made for rigging or random result generation, and to make a system meant for that under the pretense of something else - that would be the epitome of lame in my opinion.
There is no need for conspiracy theories as you see, it is a very clear cut situation. <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'd have to disagree. I don't think its feasible to design a system that doesn't give one side <i>some</i> advantage over the other, and we've been dealing with fraud ever since the constitution was first written.
Therefore, I suggest that the success or failure of a system should be measured in <i>how much</i> advantage it gives to one side over the other. Also, using a binary "failed/succeeded" is overly simplistic--ideally we want to compare how much unfairness is present in the new system with the unfairness in the old system, and choose the one that is better, <i>even if it still isnt perfect</i>.
The problem, of course, lies in the fact that no one really knows how much fraud and/or error was already present in our paper ballot system. We know there is SOME fraud, because periodically we catch someone in the act of cheating, but we can only assume that most instances of fraud go undetected.
Perhaps electronic voting systems will make voter fraud easier to detect...or perhaps they will make it harder to detect. Only time will tell.
moultanoCreator of ns_shiva.Join Date: 2002-12-14Member: 10806Members, NS1 Playtester, Contributor, Constellation, NS2 Playtester, Squad Five Blue, Reinforced - Shadow, WC 2013 - Gold, NS2 Community Developer, Pistachionauts
<!--quoteo(post=1578738:date=Nov 19 2006, 03:48 PM:name=Cxwf)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Cxwf @ Nov 19 2006, 03:48 PM) [snapback]1578738[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> Perhaps electronic voting systems will make voter fraud easier to detect...or perhaps they will make it harder to detect. Only time will tell. <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> We don't have to just passively wait for something to happen. Electronic voting can be done right, and we should make sure our elected officials know that getting it right is a priority.
Well, the NEWLY elected officials might get on that case. Maybe. I doubt the old ones cared. Intentional or not, the flaws in the system benefited them. The first rule of engineering is to never touch a working system.
<!--quoteo(post=1578991:date=Nov 20 2006, 08:51 AM:name=lolfighter)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(lolfighter @ Nov 20 2006, 08:51 AM) [snapback]1578991[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec--> Well, the NEWLY elected officials might get on that case. Maybe. I doubt the old ones cared. Intentional or not, the flaws in the system benefited them. The first rule of engineering is to never touch a working system. <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Actually it's "approximate everywhere, because you are a lazy *******." Followed closely by, "because of the law of diminishing returns, putting more work into this will not produce more output. Since you are a lazy *******, leave it alone," which through extrapolation leads to "this system already works. Leave it alone. Because you are a lazy *******." <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin-fix.gif" />
Comments
They're the same problems of security, data duplication, and general buggery we see in software products across the board, its just that this time, it's happened in a niche which we can't afford those kinds of errors in.
As I study software engineering more and more, it becomes obvious to me that this mess can be very well explained by poor engineering standards.
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This just doesn't cut it. The statistical analysis shows bias in favour of republican candidates. That is the fundamental reason why an impartial investigation is needed. It is true that the investigation should not start out with the assumption that the republican party stole the election, but it should also not start out with the assumption that the democrats are being paranoid.
This just doesn't cut it. The statistical analysis shows bias in favour of republican candidates. That is the fundamental reason why an impartial investigation is needed. It is true that the investigation should not start out with the assumption that the republican party stole the election, but it should also not start out with the assumption that the democrats are being paranoid.
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Just because some apparently infallible statistical analysis seems to indicate that the system errors in favor of the republican candidates doesn't mean anything.
And I didn't say we should just forget about it, either, so don't put words in my mouth. I said that from the standpoint of a student of computer engineering/computer science whose also worked in the field for a couple years, this <i>feels</i> like the common problems faced in software engineering. It's just that people wanting it to be something else have skewed points and made claims without doing background research.
"Why would the system count votes backwards?"
Obviously this is because the voting is rigged, and not becomes a variable was not initialized before starting a recount of votes for the by chance democratic candidate so it started at some garbage value in the very bowels of negativeness, and all the votes in the united states could not bring above 0. See what I'm saying?
Not the mention that a lot of people seem to point the finger at the presidential election which we all know is not carried by popular vote - it's decided in the electoral college.
None of this is meant to be a vindication for the errors. In an area of such importance, special precautions should have been taken. But, we are talking about government contracts, after all. I've seen government contracts, and we're still trying to do for the military what Total Annihilation did for gamers in 1998.
And I'm not saying an investigation as to the cause should not be conducted, but regardless of what you say- you sound like you want a witch hunt.
Why not start with the assumption that this is nothing more than an engineering disaster and see where we go from there?
And Man of The Year also plays the theme of voting error.
So the question is, how do we get sure unbiased votes?
Just because some apparently infallible statistical analysis seems to indicate that the system errors in favor of the republican candidates doesn't mean anything.
<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This isn't just statistical analysis. Every single aberration that has been found has benefited a republican candidate and hurt a democrat. This however may just be because republicans have been winning and democrats have been losing, so democrats are on the lookout for things like this in a way that republicans aren't.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->
And I didn't say we should just forget about it, either, so don't put words in my mouth. I said that from the standpoint of a student of computer engineering/computer science whose also worked in the field for a couple years, this <i>feels</i> like the common problems faced in software engineering. It's just that people wanting it to be something else have skewed points and made claims without doing background research.
"Why would the system count votes backwards?"
Obviously this is because the voting is rigged, and not becomes a variable was not initialized before starting a recount of votes for the by chance democratic candidate so it started at some garbage value in the very bowels of negativeness, and all the votes in the united states could not bring above 0. See what I'm saying?
Not the mention that a lot of people seem to point the finger at the presidential election which we all know is not carried by popular vote - it's decided in the electoral college.
None of this is meant to be a vindication for the errors. In an area of such importance, special precautions should have been taken. But, we are talking about government contracts, after all. I've seen government contracts, and we're still trying to do for the military what Total Annihilation did for gamers in 1998.
And I'm not saying an investigation as to the cause should not be conducted, but regardless of what you say- you sound like you want a witch hunt.
Why not start with the assumption that this is nothing more than an engineering disaster and see where we go from there?
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I hear you, but the scale of the incompetence here is truly staggering. If you were told you had to design a voting machine, is a microsoft access database the first thing you would think of to implement it? I think I heard what the actual reason was for the negative votes thing a while back. For some reason they were storing the vote total in a signed 16 bit integer that overflowed, which is I believe the stupidest error I have ever encountered in a piece of software. I mean come on, you are writing the code that decides the outcome of an election, and you think, "Hey why don't I store this total in the lowest precision type I have available? That seems like a good idea!"
With your experience in software engineering, that should strike you as beyond incompetent, and well into something else. There is one significant variable in the whole project: the vote total. There is absolutely no reason why that shouldn't be correct. How many lines of code do you think it would take to write something that counts votes? I'd say the core system would be maybe 100 lines tops. The systems for dealing with the touchscreens and hardware would be more complicated, as would the encryption libraries, but those aren't what is failing. If the machines were hanging periodically, or not communicating with the memory cards correctly, I'd say sure, fire the company making them, but it's probably not fraud. Counting is trivial. It takes effort to get it wrong.
If that doesn't convince you, look at <a href="http://www.thehill.com/news/012903/hagel.aspx" target="_blank">this.</a> Senator Chuck Hagel wins in longshot victory, after <b>he was chairman of the company that made the voting machines he was elected on and never disclosed it.</b>
One of the first things they taught me in college was how to write a vulnerability into a piece of code such that it can't even be detected with access to the source code. Read Ken Thompson's <a href="http://www.acm.org/classics/sep95/" target="_blank">Reflections on Trusting Trust</a> if you want to know how. Electronic voting might be a great convenience, but it should never be the official tally of the votes.
[...]Why not start with the assumption that this is nothing more than an engineering disaster and see where we go from there?
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Alrighty then. First conclusion: Apparently, "engineering disasters" want a certain party to win, given the disproportional way they affect the two parties. Curious, that. Someone should look into why engineering disasters have this motivation. Maybe somebody is good friends with engineering disasters, and engineering disasters feel like helping them a little?
Having said that, the statistics make it clear that the irregularities favour republicans. I think it would be extremely naive to believe that the current calls for an investigation are not motivated by the very questionable practice of recent elections, and the apparent favour it shows republicans. That is simply the motive for it, the investigative process that needs to be established needs to be objective and unbiased.
When a person is arrested for a crime and tried in court, he is assumed to be innocent, and he deserves an impartial trial, however, it is just stupidity to expect there to be no suspicion of guilt by law enforcement. You put a guy on trial because there is a case for that person's guilt.
You investigate the electoral system because there is evidence of fraud.
Any level headed engineer who's been in software for awhile could have told you that transitioning to machine vote counting would be an uphill battle if you'd come and asked him/her before all this mess started. We hardly ever get things right the first time.
I particularly find it ghastly that some of the same faces I see in this thread wielding pitchforks and calling for the demise of republicans are the same faces who said that the military commissions act was the first step to fascism because it killed habeas corpus.
I guess I would be even further out of line to suggest that perhaps the democrats are actually the ones who rigged the machines to let republicans win? They then used the controversy to whip the hordes into a frenzy of retribution against republicans, sweeping the dem's into power to take over the world?
I find it hard to believe that if such a conspiracy of the republicans ever did exist, that the democrats didn't know about it. Does one man somehow cleverly engineer the software so that it can be assembled piece by piece by separate, isolated members of the development team, and once complete serves his purpose entirely? That's a pretty damned tough thing to do, and would require more mind power that I've ever seen in a person.
Then, the development team must have been in on it. How many were there? Programmers, designers, consultants, managers, testers. And none of those people had a problem with the knowledge of defrauding the entire electoral system. None of them would have let a word slip at the bar one night. None would have told their families, friends, coworkers on other projects.
Even barring all that, a significant portion of the republican upper echelon would probably know about such a scandal, maybe even have a hand in it themselves. Now you have aides who overhear conversations, secretaries who have to shred papers, waiters at restaurants who see and hear things that are odd, and on and on. All of these people would have to be completely and unconditionally devoted to the cause and speak not a word of it to anyone.
And don't hit me with a "argument from ignorance" or I'll throw Occam's Razor at you. Personally if the truth is what you believe, then I've had about enough of society. To have a country as bad off as that requires that each citizen be willing to knife everyone else in the back. That's not a place I'd like to believe we live in.
Now, can some random errors that would probably explain the irregularities have gotten by all those people and made it into deliverables? Happens all the time. Not to hard to believe if you consider that the current estimate is something like one error in every 50 lines of code a person produces.
I also assert that such a program as GEMS would contain thousands upon thousands of lines of code. We should never confuse computer science and software engineering. While CS is concise and speedy, software engineering products are bloated and geared toward readability and maintainability, because software always seems to outlive expectations. (remember Y2K?)
[...]I particularly find it ghastly that some of the same faces I see in this thread wielding pitchforks and calling for the demise of republicans are the same faces who said that the military commissions act was the first step to fascism because it killed habeas corpus.[...]
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I assume you mean me, among others. I don't see how that's ghastly. The only one wielding pitchforks is you. We're calling for an <i>investigation.</i> A FULL one. We're not asking to have the entire republican party locked away, we're asking that a full investigation be launched in order to ascertain whom, if anyone, to press charges against. That's how things are done in the civilized world. You don't lock people away and flush the key down the toilet before they've ever even seen the inside of a court room. You don't ignore possible signs of election fraud just because they could also be due to random chance - you ascertain WHICH of the cases is true.
I'm once again pointing out that we're asking for an investigation. We ask for nothing more than the TRUTH. If the republicans are free of guilt, they have nothing to fear. If Diebold is free of guilt, they have nothing to fear. If the democrats set this entire thing up to discredit the opposition, they have everything to fear. The purpose of an investigation is to ascertain who is guilty and who is not - to dispense with all this speculation and replace it with FACT.
I don't understand why you are opposed to that. If anything is ghastly, that is it.
I particularly find it ghastly that some of the same faces I see in this thread wielding pitchforks and calling for the demise of republicans are the same faces who said that the military commissions act was the first step to fascism because it killed habeas corpus.
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Why, do I have to be able to afford a sword to have a say? Being a farmhand is an occupation too you know, just because more of us are farmhands than priests or burghers doesnt mean we're not as smart you know <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":(" border="0" alt="sad-fix.gif" />
So, there's no other reason for investigating a faulty piece of equipment except that it's being misused to benefit someone else? Do all plane crash investigations start with the assumption that somebody brought the plane down?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
no, you start a crash investigation because there's evidence that a plane hit the ground.
likewise, you examine equipment because of evidence of improper function.
You see non-working machines and immediately jump to fraud without knowing any of the details of the inner workings of the system. These need to be made public and be analyzed by all parties involved <i>before</i> any decision is made to assume any kind of criminal intent.
I never say I wasn't for getting to the bottom of the issue, I just don't want this to be a witch hunt for republicans who are out to destroy our country. Look back at these replies and tell me know I'm wrong for thinking this is what the whole thread is about. Come on, the title is "hacking democracy."
I'm sure there's some foul play <i>somewhere</i> out there involving Diebold products. Then again, I'm sure there's also foul play involved hand ballots. You can't assume that a completely untried technology can hit live action and work on the first run out of the gate, even if it's been in use for years. History tells use over and over that we have to fail at things many times before we get them right. The Tacoma Narrows Bridge is a classic example of engineering disasters, for example.
We need to find the problems in design and fix them, but we don't need to go ravaging about the country-side looking for fugitives without having first check other possibilities.
edit: @moultano:
The article was very interesting indeed. Pretty scary stuff, really. But would it be a simple matter, upon having the source code of the program in question and evaluating it by sight, to simply compile it using a clean binary? This would remove any bugs having been inserted using such a method. Of course you'd need to do this with the linkers and loaders, as well, on a separate system. It should then been a simple matter to test both systems side-by-side with identical inputs to see if there are enough discrepancies to identify that such tampering took place.
But even then. Yes, one engineer could do it, but then he'd/she'd have to distribute the bugged binaries to his co-workers machines without them knowing about it, and know which pieces of the product were to be targeted for a bugged compile. Not quite as far of a stretch, and surely doable, but still very strange. The republican party having a single, unnamed benefactor? I don't buy it, they barely have any <i>named</i> benefactors. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />
Why, do I have to be able to afford a sword to have a say? Being a farmhand is an occupation too you know, just because more of us are farmhands than priests or burghers doesnt mean we're not as smart you know <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":(" border="0" alt="sad-fix.gif" />
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Hah, that made my day. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />
There. That should ease your fears of foul play considerably. Rest easy knowing that none of us will be tainting the investigation with our foul, anti-republican sentiments.
An imperfect system is still a system. Real cynics think that important things should be left to philanthropists since democracy is far too slow to act. To say the other side cheated and that the whole system fails is just lame. Conspiracy theorists make me sick.
Rob, I shall inform you of a slight detail that I fear you have overlooked: We, the republican-bashing, democrat-loving, tree-hugging, communist residents of the Discussions forum will not be conducting said investigation, should it ever happen.
There. That should ease your fears of foul play considerably. Rest easy knowing that none of us will be tainting the investigation with our foul, anti-republican sentiments.
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Don't make the mistake of thinking that I'm a republican. I'm on my own side. Whoever happens to be standing close to me is my ally until they leave the area. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />
Seems like the real answer is that if rigging actually happens then it cancels itself out either in the same election or in subsequent elections. Alternately this merely goes to prove that there is no such thing as a good loser, or at least that the bad losers yell louder <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=";)" border="0" alt="wink-fix.gif" />
An imperfect system is still a system. Real cynics think that important things should be left to philanthropists since democracy is far too slow to act. To say the other side cheated and that the whole system fails is just lame. Conspiracy theorists make me sick.
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If a system is set up to be as fair as possible, and it happens to give one side an advantage (no matter which side, or for what reason - engineering disaster or rigging it doesn't matter), then the system has failed. To say it hasn't failed is to say that the system was made for rigging or random result generation, and to make a system meant for that under the pretense of something else - that would be the epitome of lame in my opinion.
There is no need for conspiracy theories as you see, it is a very clear cut situation.
Don't make the mistake of thinking that I'm a republican. I'm on my own side. Whoever happens to be standing close to me is my ally until they leave the area. <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/tounge.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":p" border="0" alt="tounge.gif" />
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I didn't call you a republican. I merely cleared up an odd misunderstanding.
If a system is set up to be as fair as possible, and it happens to give one side an advantage (no matter which side, or for what reason - engineering disaster or rigging it doesn't matter), then the system has failed. To say it hasn't failed is to say that the system was made for rigging or random result generation, and to make a system meant for that under the pretense of something else - that would be the epitome of lame in my opinion.
There is no need for conspiracy theories as you see, it is a very clear cut situation.
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I'd have to disagree. I don't think its feasible to design a system that doesn't give one side <i>some</i> advantage over the other, and we've been dealing with fraud ever since the constitution was first written.
Therefore, I suggest that the success or failure of a system should be measured in <i>how much</i> advantage it gives to one side over the other. Also, using a binary "failed/succeeded" is overly simplistic--ideally we want to compare how much unfairness is present in the new system with the unfairness in the old system, and choose the one that is better, <i>even if it still isnt perfect</i>.
The problem, of course, lies in the fact that no one really knows how much fraud and/or error was already present in our paper ballot system. We know there is SOME fraud, because periodically we catch someone in the act of cheating, but we can only assume that most instances of fraud go undetected.
Perhaps electronic voting systems will make voter fraud easier to detect...or perhaps they will make it harder to detect. Only time will tell.
Perhaps electronic voting systems will make voter fraud easier to detect...or perhaps they will make it harder to detect. Only time will tell.
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We don't have to just passively wait for something to happen. Electronic voting can be done right, and we should make sure our elected officials know that getting it right is a priority.
Well, the NEWLY elected officials might get on that case. Maybe. I doubt the old ones cared. Intentional or not, the flaws in the system benefited them. The first rule of engineering is to never touch a working system.
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Actually it's "approximate everywhere, because you are a lazy *******." Followed closely by, "because of the law of diminishing returns, putting more work into this will not produce more output. Since you are a lazy *******, leave it alone," which through extrapolation leads to "this system already works. Leave it alone. Because you are a lazy *******." <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin-fix.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt="biggrin-fix.gif" />