Proud of myself

[beth_leonard]

I got my e-mail read on the radio (Christine Craft on KGO just now). She was doing a show on voter fraud, election fraud, and voting machines. I sent in the following e-mail:

Subject: Voting machines one-liner

Hi Christine,

I've heard that the voting machines use anti-virus software.
This is a problem. A voting machine should never be connected
to the open internet. Learning your voting machine uses
anti-virus software is like walking into your 2nd grade
daughter's parent-teacher conference and hearing the teacher
tell you that he's very safe; he always wears a condom while
teaching.

If the machine is properly designed, you just shouldn't need
to do that.

References: News article about the problem:
http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2008/08/21/voting_machines.html

Where I first hear the joke:
http://xkcd.com/463/

She read the first paragraph verbatim and then the guest commented extensively on the details.

:-)

Happy Beth! This is another issue that I care about deeply.
--Beth in Sunnyvale

Comments

[eilonwey.livejournal.com]

Ouch. That's quite the similie! Congrats on getting your letter read.

[corpsefairy.livejournal.com]

Excellent!

What was the commentary?

[beth_leonard]

The guest went into more detail about the anti-virus software and the incident in question.
Machines were sending their totals to the main station, and the main station was sending the "all received" signal. He said that at first they thought it was the anti-virus software causing the vote totals to be incorrectly acknowledged, but then they removed the anti-virus software and still had the problem. I think he then used this as a talking point to launch into a monolog about why open-source software isn't the answer either. (Just because you can review the source code doesn't mean you know the source code is what's running on the machine you're voting on that day.)

--Beth

[geofizzgirl.livejournal.com]

Ahhh, my (new) backyard. Voting in Ohio is quite the adventure.

From my end, those machines are so bad I won't use them: I now vote absentee only.

[beth_leonard]

*nod* The guest was recommending that the most secure way to vote is in-person by paper only, and recommending that you call your local precinct and ask them to be sure to have enough paper ballots on hand in advance of the election.

There were some problems with abesentee voting he pointed out (I wish I could remember what ones), but not as bad as the voting machines.

--Beth

[geofizzgirl.livejournal.com]

I think the primary complaint I've seen about absentee is that they aren't counted if the vote isn't close enough that the absentee votes could change the result. I understand numbers well enough to not worry about that.

Our (rapidly becoming infamous) secretary of state has ordered that there be paper ballots for 10% of the registered voters in the precinct. She got a huge amount of criticism for that in the last election because of the cost, and the fact that very few of them got used. I found it ironic: newspaper articles about the paper ballot bru-ha-ha ran next to articles about the unexpectedly high numbers of absentee ballots that had been cast. Voters found paper, just not in the form that the secretary of state had anticipated.