Bernie Sanders
Related: About this forumVoting, a suggestion to Bernie
The problem is SECRECY, secret TPP, secret NSA spying, the secret ballot etc. I'm not afraid of anyone knowing how I voted, I'll scream it to the world.
They control us thru the secret ballot and secret software on the voting machines. When we finally decide that our votes can be shared with all Americans, then we take back the power.
We can set-up public, computerized, registered voting lists by Precinct, county and/or state and when we finish voting we log on and enter our choices beside our names. We can check daily to see if anyone flipped our vote. We also then control the software and our tallies must match the privatized machines or we take to the streets.
Request a copy of your ballot or take out your phone camera and make your own copy of the paper or computer screen. We can document our vote, we don't need anyone's permission.
This is simple stuff and will be more accurate than even exit polling where people drop their secrecy and report how they voted. This is our back-up system and we don't need legal verdicts for the American people to insure and protect their votes.
"We The People" can make it a right without even a constitutional amendment.
eridani
(51,907 posts)This is unbelievably stupid. More productive would be publicly available open source software for voting, and much more frequent hand count auditing than we do now.
Last edited Fri Jun 19, 2015, 05:17 AM - Edit history (1)
So now we let the corporatists discriminate between color, gender, sexual and voting preference
How about a password associated with your name for people who live in fear?
How many states can we do hand counts?
How do people verify there vote on computer screen voting after the fact?
eridani
(51,907 posts)King County, WA (second largest in the country after LA county) does extensive hand count auditing of PAPER ballots which, though scanned, are the legal ballots of record. The entire state did a hand count audit of the Gregoire governor contest in 2004, which she won by a couple of hundred votes. The had counts correlated with the scanner counts except for being slightly higher. That is what you would expect, given that scanner errors tend to be undercounts for the same reason that your printer occasionally picks up a couple of pieces of paper.
Touch screen voting should never be allowed, period. Though touch screens could be interfaces for producing PAPER ballots to be counted with all the other paper ballots.
With a secret ballot, there is no correlation between race, sex or anything else. The true corporate advocates are those promoting touch screen voting.
aspirant
(3,533 posts)but how many states don't? Do you have vote by mail and how many other states don't?
This is the problem and it's not going to change overnight, so a back-up independent counting system in unverifiable and problem states across the nation is necessary to protect our votes.
Can scanners be re-programmed? It's nice Washington state scanners are only off a little bit but can you guarantee that all secret scanners in every state produce the same margin of error?
So you agree that touch screen states should have a back-up independent counting system for these unreliable machines?
If you live in fear of reprisals, keep your ballot secret but there are many of us on DU, campaign volunteers, people wearing buttons, t-shirts, bumper stickers, lawn signs etc that are expressing our votes proudly and publicly.
eridani
(51,907 posts)Except they could be used as an interface to produce scannable paper ballots. The way to do is scanned paper ballots backed up by strict hand count audits.
aspirant
(3,533 posts)If you can guarantee me ALL 50 states will scan paper ballots with a back-up system of hand counting 100% of the votes by each state in the 2016 Elections, I will walk away with a smile.
If you can't, why won't you join in searching for a back-up system (inside or outside the process) that will guarantee our 2016 votes. This election is vital for this country's future and we should fight for each and every vote to be counted correctly.
This solution of coming out in overwhelming #'s and countering all the election fraud is planned failure. This just allows the cheating to continue and increase alongside with all the voter suppression. We must start now, not 1 month before the election.
eridani
(51,907 posts)We need a national voting rights amendment. As of now, states control everything about voting, and nothing can be done except at the state level.
hootinholler
(26,449 posts)Vote on paper and just let the 5th grade students count the votes.
I'll wave the magic wand and presto. All states are now voting on paper, all governors and SoS are in agreement.
No need for a back-up system to protect our votes just call in all 5th graders now to enter our paper ballots thru computerized secret corporate scanners.
hootinholler
(26,449 posts)I said let the 5th graders count the vote.
It accomplishes several things. First it builds a feeling of civic duty in our youth. Second, 5th graders are all about fairness. Third, they can count.
aspirant
(3,533 posts)it must be approved by the states who have scanners that count
Do we bring out the magic wand again?
hootinholler
(26,449 posts)Wanting to remove the secret ballot.
aspirant
(3,533 posts)of everyone voting on paper counted by Grade Schoolers
hootinholler
(26,449 posts)aspirant
(3,533 posts)hootinholler
(26,449 posts)Seriously, that makes no sense.
aspirant
(3,533 posts)Will your ballot be secret or have you publicly already announced who you will be voting for?
RoccoR5955
(12,471 posts)And go to hand-counted paper ballots?
Fuck this computerized shit.
ANY system can be hacked, so therefore is unacceptable.
I don't care what the system is, or how it's encrypted, I know people who can hack ANYTHING computerized, and if I know people, others know people. So let's just dump the damn things, and go to paper ballots.
aspirant
(3,533 posts)we twiddle our thumbs and watch the corporate secret computers roll along on there merry way.
Can you give me a plan to "dump these damn things"? Is it a Federal bill or do we go state by state and try to convince the govt officials to change their ways?
What is wrong with a people's back-up system to check our vote counting NOW?
RoccoR5955
(12,471 posts)is that it is a COMPUTER, and ANY computer can be hacked. A man in the middle attack can setup a separate site from your "people's backup system" to look however one wants.
How do we do it. ANY WAY WE CAN! There already is a movement to get rid of these computers. Google is your friend here.
aspirant
(3,533 posts)How can Google be my friend if it can be hacked too?
RoccoR5955
(12,471 posts)ANYTHING can be hacked. It just takes a certain amount of knowledge of the thing that you want to hack. If something is created by a human it is not perfect. It will always have flaws. We have to learn how to see these flaws and work with them or work around them. We might even make something do something do something it was never intended to do. That is what we call hacking.
aspirant
(3,533 posts)where's the negative in a back-up vote counting system?
RoccoR5955
(12,471 posts)If you have a backup of a hacked system, the system is still hacked, and if you have no way to verify that hack, you are screwed.
I see people making backups of their systems every day. They never test them though. When they need to restore a backup, they can't retrieve the files that they need, because the backup is corrupted (or hacked). All this because they did not test their backup.
I'm sorry, but I see how these computer things can break, having worked with them professionally for the past twenty some years. I don't trust them to our presidential, or any other important elections. You can't do what most management does, and throw technology at it, and expect it to get better.
aspirant
(3,533 posts)continually hacked and I can never trust them with dispensing my money and their paper accounting.
Sure things can be hacked and you're going to die someday too, but we make the most with what we have and "learn" from it.
eridani
(51,907 posts)ATM software is open, but voting software is proprietary
Banks insist that all code in ATMs be fully disclosed to them and they won't trust their money or their depositors money with anything less. Voting software by comparison is considered proprietary. Companies that make both ATMs and voting machines proudly boast of their open source software for ATMs in their advertising. This situation could conceivably be changed by demanding that voting software also be fully disclosed, but there are other reasons why open source code is not by itself sufficient to make voting machines like ATMs. For example, it would be necessary to match the code on all voting machines to verify its identity with the true open source master code immediately prior to each election. But even then, any diskette or other similar device could introduce a virus or other malware that deletes itself. Furthermore, human beings can not observe the vote counting even in open source environments.
In addition, there is the problem that open source code itself is not necessarily "knowable". One can think of the law as being open source "code", free of copyright and at least in theory available to all in free libraries. However, like the extensive areas of code in computer programs that often have unknown functions or utility, even a lawyer who spends his life studying the law doesn't understand how every bit of the "open source" law works, nor can we the people realistically understand even a fraction of exactly how the open source code for voting machines would work. Even with open source code, then, we would be required to accept election results on trust or faith, which is the opposite of checks and balances.
Were the code of the voting machine vendors suddenly opened up or disclosed, it would take a long time to understand it, we may in fact never understand it, and those who do understand will only be a handful of experts with a lot of time on their hands, probably paid by the government or a vendor and not loyal solely to the public.
Individual ATM transactions can be tracked, but individual secret ballots cannot be tracked
Every transaction in an ATM is completely tracked with redundant account numbers traceable to the account holder, and your transaction is photographed or videotaped for security purposes. In contrast, a secret ballot cannot possibly be associated with such an identifying number and still remain secret. The very secrecy of the ballot creates a virtually untraceable system that is wide open to both fraud and the cover-up of material irregularities. It is not feasible to provide a receipt in elections to prove a transaction because of concerns about using it to sell votes, though this concern might be addressed by making verification available only to the voter in secure locations like the elections offices.
To make ATM banking perfectly analogous to the process of voting, you'd have to have every account holder at a bank make a non-traceable (secret ballot) cash deposit on the same day (election day) by dropping this anonymous deposit (ballot) into a large bin (ballot box). Bank officers would then calculate the total amount of money deposited in secret with no public oversight, but not start counting until after the bank (polls) close. The account holders (the voting public) would then come back at the closing of the business day (election night) with the media in tow demanding instantly reliable bank balances and overall account results within minutes or hours of the closing of the bank (polls). Bankers (election officials) would insist along with some in the media that the convenience of speedy results was far more important than accuracy in one's bank account (election results).
The insane rush to count the bank deposits (ballots) within minutes or hours on election night would them be used as a primary argument for making the banking deposits invisible and unverifiable by converting them to electrons, so that they could be processed all the more quickly and conveniently. Hopefully it is obvious that in such elections we would be putting intense pressure on a very fragile and inherently unauditable system. In contrast, public and auditable systems can work only at deliberate, and visible, speed.
ATM errors typically have no consequence for users because they are correctable, but ballot tabulation errors have very serious consequences that are usually not correctable
With banks, you have at least 60 days after receiving your statement, if not much longer, to contest and challenge the transactions involving your account. With voting, there is no possibility at all of correcting your vote after you leave the polling place. In fact, voters are considered legally incompetent to contest their ballots with extrinsic evidence under stringent anti-challenge provisions. Election contest laws are subject to extremely short statutes of limitation such as ten days. At any rate, you couldn't locate your own specific ballot for purposes of challenging its tabulation, and some elections officials have preemptively cited academic research purporting to suggest that significant numbers of voters "don't accurately remember their own votes" after having voted, in order to cast doubt on members of the public who may wish to question the tabulation of their own votes. Thus, nothing is allowed to impeach or contest the rushed count, not even the voters themselves were they somehow able to show their own ballots counted incorrectly.
Broken touch screen voting machines have disenfranchised many, many people who have had to get back to work or school before a functioning one could be made available to them during limited voting hours. A broken ATM just means that you have to go to another bank branch or supermarket, at any hour of the day or night. In the case of voting, touch screen machines are expensive bottlenecks where you may be forced to stay in a long line at only one polling place. You usually cannot go elsewhere to cast your vote, though in some states a provisional ballot may be allowable.
In summary, you vote untraceably (assuming that you arent turned away unable to access a functioning machine, or by long lines), you're not allowed to challenge or change even your own vote, you're not trusted to remember it, and then the elections officials refuse to disclose their data (ballots) or their analysis methods (counting software) on the grounds of trade secrecy, only releasing their conclusions (election results).
Such a system has absolutely none of the safeguards built into ATMs, which have quadruple redundancy. If you take out $100, you can count the five crisp $20s, check the receipt, cross-reference it with your bank statement listing individual transactions tagged with unique numbers, and if necessary, request the photo of you making the transaction.
ATMs have extensive real world testing that vote counting systems can never have
Principles of elementary systems analysis dictate that any complex system, whether mechanical or electronic, is highly unlikely to ever be free of bugs. Such systems can, however, eventually be made robust and reliable by banging them against reality hard and often. ATMs are part of a complex system that has had most of the bugs worked out of it by being constantly tested in the real world, billions of times an hour, 24/7, 365 days a year. Even so, they still malfunction occasionally, though if you run into one that isnt working its usually a minor hassle to find another one.
In contrast, voting is something we do a couple of times a year, and letting machines with complex hardware and software do it for us means that elections must inevitably always be a beta test. This is why you rarely hear of ATMs that dont work because of heat or cold or humidity, but commonly hear of voting machine breakdowns for those reasons and many others. If we only drove our cars for a couple of hours once a year, they'd suck pretty badly too. Beta test mode is absolutely unacceptable for something as important as voting.
Moreover, even if billions were spent on ATMs, there is no conceivable way that we would all be able to use an ATM in the same 14 hour time period, even under completely optimal and bug-free conditions. Forcing voters to use electronic voting machines means forcing them to stand in long lines instead of the five minute service guarantees we are used to in stores. The "promised land" of electronic voting promises only convenience for election officials, inherent invisibility of mistakes (which appeals to both vendors and election officials), and replicates the situation we now have with school systems whereby rich districts get great service and poor districts get poor service. The ultimate effect of electronic voting is therefore structural disenfranchisement of the poor by the forced bottlenecks of expensive machines.
We can safely entrust others with tracking ATM transactions, but we can only trust ourselves to supervise vote tabulation
The current situation is this. We now have no basis for confidence in election results because the data and the method of its analysis are never disclosedonly conclusions (election results) are disclosed. Voters are considered legally incompetent to change or challenge their votes, or even to recall what those votes were. Voters are widely considered by elections officials to be the cause of machine malfunctions themselves, resulting in delayed responses to fix them. Furthermore, the poll workers are not supposed to observe the voters and therefore can't easily verify whether a given problem is a machine problem or a voter problem. (Would any self-respecting software engineers refuse to include an undo function in their word-processing program, and then blame users for not being smart enough to avoid mistakes 100% of the time? Most user error is really system design errorreal world testing should result in errors being hard to make and easy to recover from.)
We need to fight for democracy here in our time, meaning that the government must serve the public, which is the ultimate source of political power, and not the other way around. Public "servants" should not seek their own convenience and insulation from accountability for mistakes, but should instead be rewarded for falling on their swords and reporting problems voluntarily and immediately.
We the People must insist on vote counting methods that are transparent and public, that have robust checks and balances, and that keep fully in mind the very unique features of elections that make them not analogous to much of anything else. Thomas Jefferson anticipated every generation would need a revolution in democratic values to remember the inalienable rights of We the People and assert them against government officials who (quite naturally and even understandably) believe that their full time specialist status entitles them to special rights, because that is the route to something other than democracy, something other than We the People being in charge.
aspirant
(3,533 posts)Working to change this proprietary software system is useless in many states.
A back-up method of vote counting by the people is a must, until we can clear up this mess.
eridani
(51,907 posts)Scanned paper ballots plus hand count auditing is the way to go. Getting consistent results with two methods of counting increases confidence in the result. Similarly, when paleontologists get similar dates from counting tree rings and then doing carbon 14 counting, this gives better results than either method alone.
RoccoR5955
(12,471 posts)There are things that are called skimmers which can take the stripe and recreate it. These skimmers, along with hidden cameras can and have compromised many an ATM card. Perhaps you don't know that, and if you don't know about them, nor how to identify them, you are vulnerable. Look up "ATM skimmers" on google.
Yes we have to learn, but as we learn, so do hackers. Nothing is infallible, and my vote is too important to trust to computers.
My money I can get back, or replace, but not my vote.
aspirant
(3,533 posts)and see Touch Screens and/or computer scanners, do we walk away because our "vote is to important to trust to computers"?
There has got to be a back-up system to protect and insure are votes NOW
RoccoR5955
(12,471 posts)NOT computer.
rock
(13,218 posts)You must distinguish public votes from private votes. Public votes (votes by politicians as representation) need to be non-secret and published. Private votes (votes by citizens, especially by those who have no political power) need to be secret to among other things avoid reprisals).
aspirant
(3,533 posts)We don't jump here, we bounce
rock
(13,218 posts)The rules as I stated them are for a Democracy. Therefore, in this case they were wrong. It's simply nonsensical to pretend to 'represent' me secretly.
aspirant
(3,533 posts)the people to create ways to insure and protect their votes?
It's even necessary for a solid functioning Democracy. Why do you ask?
aspirant
(3,533 posts)(voters having free choice) from a back-up source, you would support that Democratic action?
I don't think under the Constitution that voters are free to make that choice. The framers were well aware, to quote Owen from "Jurassic World", "That's not a good idea." Although I see that you think it is, it is not. I'm not trying to convince you, I'm just telling you what is well known in political science.
aspirant
(3,533 posts)publicly or privately to come to our own tallies?
Where in the constitution is that prohibited?
Why didn't exit pollsters tallies that predicted results result in prosecutions?
RoccoR5955
(12,471 posts)aspirant
(3,533 posts)and share with us your reprisals? If some live in fear and need protection fine, but others have free choice and can go beyond the veil of secrecy.
"votes by citizens, especially by those who have no political power" Explain to me how a citizen's vote doesn't carry the POWER of electing our employees, the politicians.
We need to protect and insure "The Power of The Vote" anyway possible.
RoccoR5955
(12,471 posts)I am the type who believes that the only thing that we have to fear is fear itself, to coin a phrase.
Reprisals, are none. Why would someone injure me for whom I vote for? This is absurd. Reprisal for stating who I am voting for. If someone decided to achieve reprisal for whom I vote for, they would have to deal with the police. If they say that it is within their first amendment rights, I would say that their injury to me is not free speech, and would prosecute them for it, as well as file civil suit for damages.
The best way to combat this is within the law.
Why would anyone want to hurt someone for stating that they are voting for Bernie?
Stevepol
(4,234 posts)Hand-counted paper ballots is the gold standard.
But Opti-scans that just count the paper ballots that can be audited and recounted easily would be OK I think IF THERE IS A REQUIRED AUDIT for every election, and not just 1% either, 10% is a much better way to verify the result.
As things now stand we've got a hodge-podge of types of machines and lack of auditing, touch screens that supposedly print out a tape that often doesn't match the vote of the voter and in some places (as here in Wichita KS) is very difficult to count.
Unless the vote can be and is verified, it's not possible to have a democracy.