Time out for Hosing

[howeird]

One of the test cases was written incorrectly, it said to put together four sets of video channels, each with 48 programs on it. So I did. This is about 2/3 more bandwidth than the machine can handle, so it is responding painfully slowly to my attempts at recovery. The test was supposed to say make four sets for a total of 48 programs.

Which means I have time to blog while I wait for it to recognize the HACF command (Halt And Catch Fire, for those of you who don't remember the first Intel processors. Or maybe it was Zilog. Zylog? I forget).

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<soapbox>
My friends seem to lose track of the fact that the Democratic nomination process is not an election in the sense that the Presidential vote will be. The process does not have popular elections in all 50 states and however many territories there are, and the rules for the process are set by the party, not by any objective government body. The rules can be changed by the delegates to the convention, and by the party officers (such as that silly ruling seating all the FL delegates but only giving them half a vote each). The candidates can work to change the rules in their favor, they can even sue the party if they think the rules shafted them (or just want to gain a political advantage). It's not over till it's over.

In the tradition of Stalin, Lenin, Pol Pot, Mussolini, Mao, Franco and Marcos, the Republicans have decided to keep their nomination process simple with only one name on the ballot. This is not the way democracy is supposed to work, and definitely not a process the Democrats should emulate.

I've been a delegate to a state Presidential nomination convention where one candidate had a substantial lead, and I was pledged to another candidate. Despite the foregone conclusion, the convention officials allowed all of us to have a voice, and when the vote came we felt we had been given a fair shake, even though we lost. I'd like to know that all the delegates to the Demo convention get the same fair deal, because if they don't, the process is broken, and it sucks to be them.
</soapbox>

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BASFA was fun last night. For only the second time ever, I needed to put more than $1 in the pun jar. There was a lot of that going around. As a test, I put a CD into the auction for a new singer which has a track that's getting almost constant airplay on the commercial rock stations. No one recognized it, I think it sold for 25 cents. I bought an item in the name of the Computer History Museum which I'll give to johnnyeponymous next time I see him. It's like a hand held Babbage engine.

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I voted this morning. As a non-partisan, all that was on the ballot were the two state "eminent domain" issues, a Whisman School District bond measure (which just continues one in place which expires every 8 years), a superior court judge (I voted for the only candidate who is not a prosecutor) an unopposed candidate for water district commissioner (I didn't vote) and Liz Kniss, running unopposed for county supe. I wrote my own name in.

Mountain View had primaries for city council, but they are all partisan, sadly. IMHO, city-level politics should be non-partisan.

It was a heavyweight paper ballot. Take a pen and connect the two parts of an arrow to indicate your vote. Weird.

===    ===>
needs to become
========>
for a completed vote.

I much prefer touch screen.

Comments

[herufeanor.livejournal.com]

Touchscreens are great, if you can make them hard enough to hack. Unfortunately, the prevailing touchscreen voting machines make your local 7-11 cash register look like Fort Knox. I don't know about you, but I'd rather have a slightly weirder or more confusing paper voting system then one that makes massive-scale voter fraud as easy as sticking a USB thumb drive in the voting machine.

As to the Democratic primary, you have a point on principle, but from a practical standpoint that doesn't really work so well. As you yourself stated, the Primaries aren't really a democratic election in their own right, and the party would be completely within it's rights to just declare a candidate. They're doing us a courtesy by allowing us a voice in the process at all.

Keeping in mind that the ultimate objective is to win the general election, all the steps along the way should be angled towards that goal. The purpose of the primary election step is to choose the best candidate to represent us in the general election. Right now, it seems like some people are forgetting that the primary election is just a step on this path, because dragging it out HURTS the ability of EITHER candidate to compete in the general election, which is the real purpose of this whole process.

If I thought that Hillary still had a real chance, then I'd be all for her continuing. However, she would need to win every remaining contest, in a LANDSLIDE, to stand a snowball's chance in hell at the convention, and even then it would be a very small chance. All the continued contest accomplishes is piling more dirt on Obama, making McCain's life easier in the general election.

[howeird]

Any election can be hacked. It is FAR easier to hack a paper ballot than an electronic one. Remember hanging chads? Remember the boxes of paper ballots found in a dumpster?

I disagree that the whole objective is to win the election. The objective is to find a candidate. In the past this was done in smoke-filled rooms by fat cats we never saw. Now it's done by fat cats we may or may not see. Do the math on Obama's campaign chest, and only $75 mil of his $220+ mil came from small donations. Hilary at least had some of her own megabucks to throw down the drain, but most of it was fat cat money.

The voters won't give a crap in November about anything said between the candidates before the conventions. They can't even remember when gas was $1 a gallon.

[herufeanor.livejournal.com]

Yes, I remember the hanging chads. I ALSO remember that we could go back and recount them, and did, and arrived at a pretty solid understanding of the final tally. Without paper ballots, all we've got are a couple numbers. Everything that has been tallied thus far on a given machine can be completely erased and changed to anything else in a couple seconds by a clever hacker.

While you can cheat with paper ballots, it takes a LOT more doing, and is typically much more traceable. In 2000, we have a decent idea of a lot of the voter fraud that went on, because most of it still had to happen with traditional methods of turning people away, messing with people's registrations, and crap like that, which can be traced. In 2004, we have no idea how much fraud actually went on, because all those computerized voting machines are like little black boxes, with no history or anything. Nearly every one of them could have had completely fabricated results, and we'd never know.

Also, you'll notice that I actually DID say that the point of the primary is to pick a candidate. However, the point I was making with that is that this is merely on step along the way to a larger goal, which is to win the general election. If the objective is NOT to win the general election, then the whole process of picking a candidate is completely pointless. Why pick a candidate if we don't intend for them to win?

Plus, low an opinion as I often have of the electorate, I think it's ridiculous to say that they don't remember what happened in the primaries. We're talking a matter of months here. In general, people may not remember all the details, but they WILL remember the general impressions they had about the candidates, and the more negative those impressions get now, the more negative an influence that will have on their impressions in 6 months when they vote in the general election.

(Also, the average U.S. gas prices haven't dipped below $1 since '99. That's nearly 10 years ago. I would think it a lot more ridiculous if people had not yet managed to adjust to the idea that gas costs well over $1/gallon, and likely will for any time in the foreseeable future.)

[howeird]

I ALSO remember that we could go back and recount them, and did, and arrived at a pretty solid understanding of the final tally
Uh, no. The more those cards were handled, the more chads fell out, disqualifying more ballots.

by a clever hacker
Yup, but there are very few clever hackers compared to the number of idiots who could easily hijack a paper ballot.

Yeah, you're right about gas, I should have said $1.99 a gallon, which we had during the current administration for about a week. Longer back east.

I suppose I ought to say the electorate won't care in November, whether they remember or not. I certainly won't care.

[unseelie23.livejournal.com]

But you only need one clever hacker and the internet... seeing as how all of the details necessary to rig an election are already published, you might not even need the hacker any more.

[howeird]

The hacker needs access to more than the internet. Election returns are filed county by county, that's a lot of individual accounts to hack. Each county has its own system, which makes it a bigger challenge.

[unseelie23.livejournal.com]

But not big enough, in my opinion, and some serious security compromises were made in the name of cost savings. The Diebold machines are nowhere near as secure at their ATMs because it would cost too much. I realize that this is going to be an issue no matter what, but come on... the same key (from filing cabinets, readily available from office supply firms) will open all of their machines. There's no excuse for that.

I'm not against electronic voting, but I am against electronic voting with the current systems. Not enough checks in place, too easy to compromise, not enough ways to determine if they have been compromised, etc. We need something better than what we got.

[herufeanor.livejournal.com]

The error rate from hanging chads is in the tiny fraction of a percent. It was ridiculously anomalous in Florida in 2000 that this fraction of a percent actually mattered.

With a computerized voting machine, you can use any of a hundred easy methods, published online, to alter the entire tally of the voting machine, which could be hundreds of votes, in moments. The privacy shield which keeps your vote private will typically provide more then enough privacy to keep anybody from seeing what you're doing. And voila, you've changed potentially hundreds of votes.

With paper ballots, the best you can really hope to do is stuff a couple extra ballots in the box. If you're really good, you might get 2 or 3 extra votes. However, it's EXTREMELY risky. You can't take care of this in the privacy of your voting booth. You need to be sneaky while inserting the ballot into the box, so if the poll workers are paying attention you could be in a lot of trouble. The people with enough slight of hand to pull this off without significant risk are much fewer and far between then the people with the minimal technical expertise required to hack a voting machine, and the pay-off is WAY smaller.

Now, if you have a situation where the majority of the poll workers at a given precinct are corrupt, and working together, then you're pretty much screwed. They can hack the voting machines at their leisure, OR stuff the ballot box. However, if they're stuck with stuffing the ballot boxes, they increase the total number of votes. They need to make sure that matches the paperwork (i.e. the number of people who are checked off as having voted matches the number of votes), which is limited by the voter registration levels. If they push that too far, and have, say, a 90% voter turn-out, that will raise eyebrows, and possibly trigger an investigation. I believe they typically also keep track of the number of blank ballots they start with, so if they start removing existing ballots from the ballot box to bring the numbers down, that will result in another suspicious incongruity. This would take some doing anyway, since the ballot boxes are typically locked, and the poll workers aren't normally given the keys. If they start calling people to figure out who ACTUALLY voted, the truth would come out pretty quickly.

It may be a bit unlikely that this investigation would actually occur, but at least with paper ballots it's possible. With computerized voting machines, they can just go and alter all the existing votes, without changing the total number of votes, leaving behind absolutely no trail, and no evidence.

There is a compromise to this, though. Ideally, there should be a computerized voting machine which prints a paper ballot when you're done. You can then review the paper ballot, confirm that it came out correct, and if it did, put it in the ballot box. If it did NOT come out correct, you can feed it back into the machine and start over. This way, you get the convenience of a computerized interface to cast your vote, and yet still have a paper trail for latter investigation.

[unseelie23.livejournal.com]

That's not correct. Checking opensecrets.org (http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/donordemCID.php?cycle=2008&cid=N00009638), I add up $140.1 million in individual contributions, and that doesn't include anyone who contributed less than $200 (of which I would be one). Seeing as how he's raised $265m, that would indicate that approximately $125m is small donors. His campaign shows 94% of his funding is fully disclosed, which is significantly better than either Clinton or McCain. And unlike either Clinton or McCain, his campaign isn't in debt.

Now, if you look at the industry breakdown, that does tell you some things, mainly that the same industries back both candidates.

By industry, Obama's funding is coming from Lawyers, Retired, Securities & Investment, Education & Business Services... accounting for around $50m (19%).

By comparison, looking at Clinton, it's the same five industries in the top 5... accounting for close to the same amount of money, $46m (21%).

[howeird]

I'm not sure how the numbers you quote add up. I'm not being argumentative, just looking for further explanation.

If I read what you wrote correctly, Obama received $265 mil - $125 mil in small donors leaves $140 mil from large donors. Is that correct? 52% from large donors?

If 94% of his funding is fully disclosed, but only 19% is accounted for by Lawyers, Retired, Securities & Investment, Education & Business Services, where did the other 75% come from?

I should point out that I am not pro-Clinton, I am pro-choice.

[unseelie23.livejournal.com]

Not arguing that more than 50% came from larger donors, just that the gap is not as large as you imply. 48% is actually pretty impressive. and $125m is quite a bit more than $75m.

As for industry stuff, I took the top five... it's nowhere near complete. It was meerly meant to show what industries are behind which candidates. Legal is #2 for McCain, Education isn't in the top 10. The #1 was Retired, which isn't really a shock.

If you're Pro-Choice, about all I can say is that McCain's probably not the best choice. I would expect the same level of support from either Obama or Clinton, however.

[howeird]

Thanks. The 48% actually scares me - think lemmings. But yup, it is impressive.

McCain is not a viable choice for me because of three things:
-Pro-war
-Anti-choice
-His Vietnam captivity followed by us losing the war creates far too big an incentive for him to "win" in Iraq at any cost. Like W, it's personal with him.