Should touch-screens make an artifical "ker-thunk" sound?

Just got back ftom voting and waiting for the boys at FNC to recap the results (gave up ABC in 2004 after watching it since age 8 or so on election nights!)

The old-style lever machines are gone everywhere now. They claim they were easiest to rig, but there was a satisfaction when you pulled the lever and heard that "KER-THUNK" of the mechanics resetting. I said at the polls that the touch-screens should make the fake noise like a no-coin slot machine. One person said it would be a cool idea.

So, for a fun election night poll-what do you all think?

The touch screens should emit a blood-curdling scream when you vote. Or, perhaps, maniacal laughter. Or maybe a recorded audio of Obama saying, "I'll get you for this!"

Paper, pencil and a big cross.

The UK counts it's election in one night (give or take). In Canada, Nunavut is counted in mere hours... and it's an area the size of Western Europe (okay, it's easies to count fast when you have less places to count).

But seriously, why does there need to be machines to do a simple enough job? It seems over-engineering to me...

Quote: thecesspit

Paper, pencil and a big cross.

The UK counts it's election in one night (give or take). In Canada, Nunavut is counted in mere hours... and it's an area the size of Western Europe (okay, it's easies to count fast when you have less places to count).

But seriously, why does there need to be machines to do a simple enough job? It seems over-engineering to me...

Way too many to count by hand and hand counting casuses errors. Ever do inventory for even a small store? many errors possible. Some states will have 15-20 votes to count as well in some elections with ballot inititives.

Quote: AZDuffman

Way too many to count by hand and hand counting casuses errors. Ever do inventory for even a small store? many errors possible. Some states will have 15-20 votes to count as well in some elections with ballot inititives.

As I said, the UK manages to do a hand count for all it's major elections, over night. Each area is counted by a team of counters, and the results collated. As there is a physical piece of paper, votes can be recounted in the case of close run counts (which there was several of in the last UK election, meaning it took maybe 10-11 hours in some areas).

The UK is bigger than most (all?) States, so "too many" is hardly a problem.

I suspect many of the "saws" in the "counting tool shed", are not very sharp. When hand-recounts are requested, it always amazes me that there can be different counts with only a few thousand ballots. The immediate excuse was "hanging chad", but I'm not buying it. Egads, how hard is it to count a hundred, put a rubberband around it, and move on the next stack...

Quote: Ayecarumba

I suspect many of the "saws" in the "counting tool shed", are not very sharp. When hand-recounts are requested, it always amazes me that there can be different counts with only a few thousand ballots. The immediate excuse was "hanging chad", but I'm not buying it. Egads, how hard is it to count a hundred, put a rubberband around it, and move on the next stack...

I think that the functional problem in tabulating the Florida voting in the election that introduced us to the term "hanging chad" was this: having three individuals closely examine a single ballot often resulted in four or five opinions as to how that vote should be counted. That feature makes it very difficult to agree on a total.

Is it 21st century yet?
Why in the world can't I just go to elections.gov, type in my SSN, and vote by selecting a bunch of radio buttons?
No touch screens, no scary sounds, no "dull saws in the counting shed", no expenses, no missed school for kids, no recounts, no disputes. And no guesswork, the results are known immediately after the "polls" close.
What's the downside? (And don't tell me about hackers, it's just ridiculous)

Quote: weaselman

What's the downside? (And don't tell me about hackers, it's just ridiculous)

Yep. I'm sure there haven't been any hacked web sites lately. And you just know that the Chinese wouldn't be intrigued by an opportunity to hack the US federal election process.

Quote: Doc

Yep. I'm sure there haven't been any hacked web sites lately. And you just know that the Chinese wouldn't be intrigued by an opportunity to hack the US federal election process.

If Chinese want to hack our election process, they'd be much better off sending in a couple million spies on student visas, and having them walk into the polling place and vote (where I live, they don't even ask for an id. all you need is to name a random address).

Yeah, there were hacked websites lately. But that's not the right way to look at it. How many websites that were actually really protected got hacked recently?

Like, did IRS website get hacked? How about the US Treasury? FDIC? Why not?
Because it is just too damn hard, if not flat out impossible.

There are three kinds of websites that get hacked - (1) those, run by amatures as a hobby, (2) those that don't care about getting hacked, because it is more expensive to get protected than to deal with the consequences, and (3) those that, despite what they say publicly, actually like getting hacked, because of the publicity it generates.

Oh, and also, even if some evil genius somehow manages to break into elections.gov, what can he do? He can't possibly expect that nobody will notice the break-in, so, there is no way he could alter the outcome of the elections, the only thing he can possibly hope to achieve is canceled elections. Is it really all that scary? We'd just need to vote again.

Quote: weaselman

...Yeah, there were hacked websites lately. But that's not the right way to look at it. How many websites that were actually really protected got hacked recently?

Like, did IRS website get hacked? How about the US Treasury? FDIC? Why not?
Because it is just too damn hard, if not flat out impossible.
...

You mean sites like Google and US DoD? It appears that they are not secure enough. It depends heavily on how skilled and how determined the hackers are. And I still feel the US election process would make an extremely tempting target.

Quote: Doc

You mean sites like Google and US DoD? It appears that they are not secure enough. It depends heavily on how skilled and how determined the hackers are. And I still feel the US election process would make an extremely tempting target.

It would--you wouldn't have to steal an election but merely crash the system to have a major, negative impact.

Quote: weaselman

Is it 21st century yet?
Why in the world can't I just go to elections.gov, type in my SSN, and vote by selecting a bunch of radio buttons?
No touch screens, no scary sounds, no "dull saws in the counting shed", no expenses, no missed school for kids, no recounts, no disputes. And no guesswork, the results are known immediately after the "polls" close.
What's the downside? (And don't tell me about hackers, it's just ridiculous)

I'll take that one step further. Why do we need "representatives"? Can't all the members of a congressional district, in the case of Congress, or a state, in the case of the Senate, log on to the government website and let their preferences be directly known, and thus be the actual basis of the vote?

Quote: Doc

You mean sites like Google and US DoD? It appears that they are not secure enough.

Google belongs to category #3 on my list - they not only don't mind getting hacked, but actually like that to happen (and no, it's not the same as dismantling all security measures, and just opening the site to anyone - still has to be reasonably hard to do to generate publicity).
About DoD, I am not sure. I am inclined to think, they are #2 (don't care, because there is no harm), but it's also possible that there was some component of #3 involved (controlled dissemination of information has always been one of the most important and valuable tools in military intelligence).
Besides, if we are talking about the same incident, they weren't really hacked, they just published wrong documents, allegedly, by mistake.

Think about it for a minute. Isn't IRS a "tempting target"? Or how about something like Fannie May? Or your local land court? Or a large hospital? A hacker could literally make billions if he could break into any of those sites. And if the motivation is political terrorism, think about what effect on the economy would make a break-in into NYSE, or E-Trade, or Vanguard or even some third-grade mom-and-dad's brokerage firm?

Trust me (I do know something about the matter), it is much-much-much harder than it is common to believe. And the simpler the web site is, the harder (even harder) it becomes to break it. Compare a real-time trading system to a bunch of radio buttons on a page.

Quote: mkl654321

I'll take that one step further. Why do we need "representatives"? Can't all the members of a congressional district, in the case of Congress, or a state, in the case of the Senate, log on to the government website and let their preferences be directly known, and thus be the actual basis of the vote?

Because the USA is a republic, not a democracy.

Quote: mkl654321

I'll take that one step further. Why do we need "representatives"? Can't all the members of a congressional district, in the case of Congress, or a state, in the case of the Senate, log on to the government website and let their preferences be directly known, and thus be the actual basis of the vote?

That would be nice ... The problem with that though, is that the average person is either too busy or too stupid or both to be able to keep on top of all the current open issues and make intelligent decisions about them.

Quote: AZDuffman

Because the USA is a republic, not a democracy.

That's kind of my point. It's a republic because it was a practical impossibility in 1789 for each citizen to make his wishes directly known to the national legislatures, at least not in time to get anything done. That obstacle no longer exists.

Quote: mkl654321

That's kind of my point. It's a republic because it was a practical impossibility in 1789 for each citizen to make his wishes directly known to the national legislatures, at least not in time to get anything done. That obstacle no longer exists.

Greece did it 2000 years before that. A democracy would be anarchy. Look at it now. People in CA vote on something and the losing side sues.

Quote: weaselman

Is it 21st century yet?
Why in the world can't I just go to elections.gov, type in my SSN, and vote by selecting a bunch of radio buttons?
No touch screens, no scary sounds, no "dull saws in the counting shed", no expenses, no missed school for kids, no recounts, no disputes. And no guesswork, the results are known immediately after the "polls" close.
What's the downside? (And don't tell me about hackers, it's just ridiculous)

I think theft of SSNs is the problem with your plan. Somebody steals a bunch of SSNs, logs on at 12:01 AM or 7:01AM or whenever the polls open, and votes with the SSNs of others. Then, when the legitimate voter, they can't vote because a vote has already been cast in their SSN. I'm sure a similar type of fraud occurs in person each election, but it's much harder to pull off, especially by a small group in large scale, when you have to physically go to the polling place.

Quote: EnvyBonus

I think theft of SSNs is the problem with your plan. Somebody steals a bunch of SSNs, logs on at 12:01 AM or 7:01AM or whenever the polls open, and votes with the SSNs of others.

I was simplifying. Of course typing your SSN alone would not be enough. Name, address, DOB would also be required, plus some kind of a password, that's mailed to you ahead of time.
Once again, if it was this easy to steal "a bunch of SSNs", one could make some really serious money on it. Think credit cards, loans, social security, bank accounts, insurance, taxes - you could get access to EVERYTHING.
Besides, it's not really as simple to just login and vote with somebody else's SSN (especially a BUNCH of them). Everything you do on the internet is logged. They know your IP address, your ISP, the manufacturer of your computer, most of the time, your physical location.
You could fool them once or twice by using proxies or hurds, but to make a difference in the election, you'd need at least hundreds of thousands of fake votes. It's unrealistic.

Quote:

Then, when the legitimate voter, they can't vote because a vote has already been cast in their SSN. I'm sure a similar type of fraud occurs in person each election, but it's much harder to pull off, especially by a small group in large scale, when you have to physically go to the polling place.

To the contrary, it is actually easier to do in-person. You walk in to the poll, give them a fake address (you don't need to know anything about the person, just any street address. it is easier to cast an illegal vote in US than to buy a pack of cigarettes), and walk out, without a trace. When the real person shows up, you are long gone. If you tried to pull something like this with a computer, even if you somehow managed to get hold of all of the personal information, plus the secret password, and voted, your action would still be logged, so that you'd be easily found and prosecuted.

Quote: mkl654321

The touch screens should emit a blood-curdling scream when you vote. Or, perhaps, maniacal laughter. Or maybe a recorded audio of Obama saying, "I'll get you for this!"

You ever hear the "I Dream of Jeannie" video slot. I believe at some point it moans, "Oh Master!"

Quote: weaselman

... You walk in to the poll, give them a fake address (you don't need to know anything about the person, just any street address. it is easier to cast an illegal vote in US than to buy a pack of cigarettes), and walk out, without a trace.

Sounds as if you have a serious problem at the polling places in your district. I've only been voting for a little over four decades in five (I think) states. Over that period, I have never been to a poll where all I had to do was claim a street address in order to get to vote. Your district seems to go out of its way to invite voter fraud. Most commonly, I present my ID and my voter registration card, and my documents must match the registration list that they have at the polling place.

There have been some criticisms recently that requiring a government-issued, photo ID would be discriminatory, but I haven't been convinced that there is genuine validity in that argument. I suspect there would be similar claims that expecting voters to have access to the internet would be discriminatory, and there is more likely some validity to that.

Quote: weaselman

If Chinese want to hack our election process, they'd be much better off sending in a couple million spies on student visas, and having them walk into the polling place and vote (where I live, they don't even ask for an id. all you need is to name a random address).

Yeah, there were hacked websites lately. But that's not the right way to look at it. How many websites that were actually really protected got hacked recently?

Like, did IRS website get hacked? How about the US Treasury? FDIC? Why not?
Because it is just too damn hard, if not flat out impossible.

Gary McKinnon did a pretty good job of hacking into military servers. I think it's very, very naive for you to make an assertment that hacking "sites that matter" is "very hard". Software is written by humans, who aren't perfect. Therefore, the software won't be perfect. The closest we can get to fixing that is open source software, but I think as long as there will be humans writing software, there will be exploits.

I do think someday, eventually the method of voting you described will happen, but claiming that websites that are "actually really protected" are somehow invincible is incorrect, and frankly a dangerous opinion to hold.

Quote:

I think it's very, very naive for you to make an assertment that hacking "sites that matter" is "very hard". Software is written by humans, who aren't perfect. Therefore, the software won't be perfect. The closest we can get to fixing that is open source software, but I think as long as there will be humans writing software, there will be exploits.

Do you bank online? Access you credit cards accounts? E-file your taxes?
Is it as naive of you? Or do you somehow manage to convince yourself that in this case it's ok?

Yes, there will always be exploits, that's not the point. But how much investment does it take to come up with an exploit, how much risk does it carry, and how much harm can it do or how much benefit can it bring to a hacker - that's the question. And the answer is ... well, if you do your banking online, I think, you know the answer.

Quote: Doc

Your district seems to go out of its way to invite voter fraud.

Yes, exactly. And my point is that even though it is this easy. There has not been any fraud for a very long time (not any significant cases, the kind everyone would hear about). I mean, we all heard about those fake voter registration records created by Acorn (or whatever the name was), rigged voting machines etc.
But the kind of fraud we are talking about here ... well, it's like casino's cheating :) Everybody is afraid of it, but no one has ever seen it. Why? It's just way too hard, risky and costly, and the benefit from it is next to none.
You can't possibly hope to swing the elections one way or another this way, the absolute most you can expect is that the election will be canceled and held another day. And for that you'd risk federal felony charges? I don't think so.

If you can hack a well-protected server, and are willing to accept the risk, just go rob the Amazon, or get yourself a zilion of fake credit cards, and max them out - it's lower risk, and potentially unlimited benefit.

Quote: Doc

Most commonly, I present my ID and my voter registration card, and my documents must match the registration list that they have at the polling place.

We don't even have such a thing as a voter registration card around here.

Quote:

There have been some criticisms recently that requiring a government-issued, photo ID would be discriminatory,

Yeah, I think that's the argument they use here too. I could never figure out who that would discriminate against (and, if it is, then why it is not so when you are driving or boarding a plane, or buying alcohol or opening a bank account), but yeah, that's the argument.
Believe it on not, one of the local towns has recently decided that it was discriminatory that only citizens cold vote, so now even illegals are allowed to vote in their local elections.

Quote:

I suspect there would be similar claims that expecting voters to have access to the internet would be discriminatory, and there is more likely some validity to that.

There is no need to require internet access. There would still be a few "polling places" setup in schools and libraries where one can walk in and vote.

Quote: weaselman

Do you bank online? Access you credit cards accounts? E-file your taxes?
Is it as naive of you? Or do you somehow manage to convince yourself that in this case it's ok?

I do all those things because I have recourse, not because I trust them to be hack-proof: a copy of my tax returns to refer to, FDIC, etc. In all those instances, it's worth using the Internet to my advantage, because I can be relatively sure I have something to fall back to.

I don't have any recourse when I vote, because the whole thing is anonymous. I mean, I know how I voted, but there's no way to really prove that once I did.

Quote: weaselman

Yes, there will always be exploits, that's not the point. But how much investment does it take to come up with an exploit, how much risk does it carry, and how much harm can it do or how much benefit can it bring to a hacker - that's the question. And the answer is ... well, if you do your banking online, I think, you know the answer.

Investment? All it takes is someone finding an exploit. That doesn't necessarily have to take long at all, depending on how weak the system targeted is. Plus, it could just be some guy in a basement on his own - none of it has to be a huge investment.

Risk? It's not terribly difficult to stay anonymous on the Internet either.

Harm? That's hard to say. Hundreds of millions have been lost to hacking - I'd call that lots of harm.

Look, I'm just saying brushing aside the possible hacking argument to polling via internet by saying "the risk isn't worth it" or "it's too hard to do" is not the way to approach this. Hacking happens, and on some of the most seemingly secure systems out there. The Puzzle Palace itself, the NSA, has been hacked before.

Quote:

I do all those things because I have recourse, not because I trust them to be hack-proof: a copy of my tax returns to refer to, FDIC, etc.

If somebody hacks the IRS site, steals your info, and opens a credit card in your name, good luck proving it wasn't you ten years down the road, when the collection agency finally finds you :)

Quote: ElectricDreams

I don't have any recourse when I vote, because the whole thing is anonymous. I mean, I know how I voted, but there's no way to really prove that once I did.

That's not a problem at all. You can get a receipt from the voting site after you vote.

Quote:

Investment? All it takes is someone finding an exploit. That doesn't necessarily have to take long at all, depending on how weak the system targeted is.

Exactly. My point is that if the system isn't weak - like an IRS web site, or vote.gov, it's not worth hacking, because of extremely small (practically non-existent) return on investment, and extremely high risk.

Quote:

Risk? It's not terribly difficult to stay anonymous on the Internet either.

Difficult? No, it's just impossible.
I mean, it depends on what you are doing. Watching porno anonymously is doable (and, yes, quite easy).
But accessing anonymously a government website, that makes it a point to prohibit anonymous access - nah.
You'd have to hack into somebody else's computer first, and their IP address would have to match the geo address you use for your fake vote - that's the very least. If you wanted to make any measurable impact on election, that means having to hack into several thousand residential computers, and not just any computers, but ones, picked specially, so that you know the owner's addresses SSN and bio data, within a short period of time (a few hours at most). This buy itself is an impossible feat to pull, but, even if you manage to do it, don't think for a second that you've remained anonymous - the ISP logs of the computers you hacked into will tell where you came from. You could have used a proxy, but they have their own ISP as well.
Don't be naive. If the feds needed to connect you to something you do on the internet, they'd be knocking at your door within a few hours.

Quote:

Harm? That's hard to say. Hundreds of millions have been lost to hacking - I'd call that lots of harm.

We are talking about harm caused by having to move an election to another day because of a hacker, not from from hacking in general (BTW, you'd have to subtract at least the value of free publicity - and it's not cheap -gained from those hundreds millions)

I think my much-earlier point (probably not well expressed) was that there are apparently a large number of very-skilled hackers, likely operating with government support, trying to infiltrate US Government computers. These hackers operate in countries and environments where it is not possible for our laws to impact them. They and their government backers/employers might well consider it worthwhile to disrupt the US election process, perhaps not stop it but just create enough confusion that we spend months arguing about who was properly elected and who was not. Can't you just imagine the outcry if there were numerous districts across the country where far more votes were cast than there were people eligible to vote?

Quote: Doc

I think my much-earlier point (probably not well expressed) was that there are apparently a large number of very-skilled hackers, likely operating with government support, trying to infiltrate US Government computers. These hackers operate in countries and environments where it is not possible for our laws to impact them. They and their government backers/employers might well consider it worthwhile to disrupt the US election process, perhaps not stop it but just create enough confusion that we spend months arguing about who was properly elected and who was not. Can't you just imagine the outcry if there were numerous districts across the country where far more votes were cast than there were people eligible to vote?

Yes, but can't you imagine the outcry and TOTAL CHAOS this county would be in, if IRS for example lost all the tax data for the last six years, or if it started charging outrageous fees and penalties to everyone, because the tax returns they submitted would never make it into database? Or if BankOfAmerica lost everybody's loan records all of a sudden?
Or if a major stockholder in Microsoft decided to dump all his stocks for a penny?

What I am saying is that, if there are any skilled hackers out there capable of and interested in hacking government websites (which I doubt), they'd be much better off taking on one of these (or numerous of other) tasks right now to bring our whole economy to stand-still instead of waiting two years just to cause som minor inconvenience to US voters.

I am neither a computer scientist nor a system operator. But I think most of the examples like you are suggesting could be resolved by going to the off-line backup then auditing the more recent transactions to verify the proper current state. It would be a nuisance, granted. But in the case of voting, it is a one-time entry (no going back to yesterday's backup), and I am not certain just how well individual votes can be audited when they are entered electronically, particularly if the data is entered over today's internet. I think it would only require a modest disturbance to create a major problem

Quote: Doc

I am neither a computer scientist nor a system operator. But I think most of the examples like you are suggesting could be resolved by going to the off-line backup then auditing the more recent transactions to verify the proper current state. It would be a nuisance, granted.

It would be an a lot bigger "nuisance" then having to postpone elections.
Imagine what will happen to the market (within minutes) if somebody dumps 60% of Microsoft stock for a penny on a dollar. Remember that most of the trading is done nowadays by automated systems, making decisions without human intervention. The whole market will crash immediately, and it'll only be the beginning of a huge chain reaction.
By the time feds realize something went terribly wrong, and stop the trading, trillions of dollars will be lost. Perhaps, they'd find a way eventually to reverse some of the trasactions and recover a part of the losses, but that will take months.
And even if everything was reversible, imagine what will happen to the market in general ... remember, we are talking about the market, that plunged 20% when Greenspan so much as hinted at his concern that certain technology sectors may be slightly overpriced.

Or consider the IRS getting hacked. It would be enough nuisance if someone just manages to break in and kill the entire database - you are right, in that case, they could just revert to the latest backup, and everything is great. Everybody would have to refile their reports, and it would cost a shitload of money, and take many months for people to get their refunds etc., etc., but still ...
But what if the hacker does not make himself known right away. Suppose, one intercepts people's e-file returns, and replaces the bank accounts for the refund with his own . How many months do you think would have to pass before the problem would even be noticed, let alone acknowledged? And where would all the money be by then?
Or, forget replacing the bank accounts, one can just steal the ACH info from the returns, and withdraw the money targeted to IRS. Then, when IRS comes aroudn to make the charge, sometimes there will be two charges to the account, and sometimes, there will be insufficient funds, and people would get slapped with a penalty, and ... how much nuisance would it take to resolve that (remember, there will be tens of millions of cases, each involving several banks, the IRS, the clearing house, likely, a few lawyers, and the taxpayer)?
Or simply add a $1000 to a random line of every 15th tax return ... and see what falls out ...

The possibilities are countless.

Quote:

But in the case of voting, it is a one-time entry (no going back to yesterday's backup), and I am not certain just how well individual votes can be audited when they are entered electronically, particularly if the data is entered over today's internet. I think it would only require a modest disturbance to create a major problem

They can be audited very well. Like I said earlier, when you connect to an internet server, especially a government one, it can instantly determine your location, your ISP, the operating system you are using, the last X sites you visited etc., etc.
For example, it could be required that every voter provides his ISP and network address as a part of registration if he wants to be able to vote over internet at his own location (if not, he can go into a polling place, where a secure computer is setup, and vote from there). Nobody would be able to even connect to the site under your name, unless he is already in your home, or broken into your computer (which by itself is easy, but remember that he'd also have to connect your computer with you SSN and bio data, and do it not once, and not twice, but millions of times ... and again if somebody can get their hands on this kind of information right now, there are trillions of dollars to be made on it, so why are we not hearing about them?).

Quote: weaselman

... For example, it could be required that every voter provides his ISP and network address as a part of registration if he wants to be able to vote over internet at his own location ...

Not going to work for a lot of us...my ISP (like many others) provides dynamic addresses, so if I register with the address I have in October, it likely will be different in November.

Quote: Doc

Not going to work for a lot of us...my ISP (like many others) provides dynamic addresses, so if I register with the address I have in October, it likely will be different in November.

First, I said "network address" (does not change), not "IP address". But if you think that's not secure enough, there is an even better way - they can require the MAC address of your router instead of ip.

Or, even more elegantly, they could send you an RSA certificate associated with your voter registration. That's just plain unbreakable.