OT: Retinal imaging for voting

It is totally impossible to reduce "voter" fraud to zero. Remember, a lock only keeps honest people honest; some locks are in the category of being an attractive nuisance.

Obviously.. nothing is perfect... but if you can reduce it significantly(and even say up to 99%) then it's much better than what is going on now.

Well, Ultimately you can have so many checks and balances that it becomes worthless to cheat.

For example: the only way to "cheat" with such a device is to disassemble it and figure out the electronics or to cheat elsewhere in the system(Which ultimately is not preventable if everyone "agree's" to cheat)

Part of the reason is that it is attacking what isn't really the problem. Individual voter fraud is way too small of an effect to throw an election. Many people have to risk jail, one at a time, to make a significant effect. Plain old box stuffing, hacked machines and voter role purging can make much larger differences in the outcome per person committing the crime.

Retinal scans won't work very well on people with no eyes. There aren't very many but I'm sure that they can hire lawyers.

The no ink finger print devices do not work well on the elderly. Their skin tends to be very dry and doesn't replace as rapidly. The skin tends to get worn smooth. Even the evanescent wave method of detecting it doesn't work very well. Their finger prints still work quite well with ink. I'm sure there must be someone in the US with no fingers who would like to vote and who can hire a lawyer so this is an extra problem.

Some people may have issues with the DNA finger printing plan. There is also the question of how many votes a pair of identical twins get. Their DNA will be the same but not their eyes, assuming they have eyes. The number of identical eyeless twins with no fingers is likely to be very small but they will still have lawyers.

Many people get their pets implanted with an RF ID tag. We could tag all the people with tags like that and be very safe. A better method would be to tattoo a bar code on their foreheads so that a simple video camera can see those who are allowed to vote and those who aren't. If we go with this I want mine to have the number 666 somewhere in it.

Why go so high tech. Simply go with the ink bottle of purple ink like 3rd world places have done. It won't prevent those aren't supposed to from voting once but it does prevent them from voting 10 times. The percentage of adults who are not allowed to vote is so small that if you limit them to one at a time they will get lost in the noise.

It isn't reliable enough yet. The retinal / facial biometric things are online at some UK airports and are amusing to try if you have the time to spare and the right sort of frequent flyer passport. Be sure to leave enough additional time to go through normal security - fast track it is not. There is a good chance of seeing a BSOD.

Fingerprints are almost OK, but there was a famous close match fingerprint case in the UK where a detective won a case against her police force when it was eventually agreed by the worlds best experts that she had not contaminated a crime scene with her own prints. In a population of a few millions you get coincidental close matches.

DNA costs far too much and takes too long. Even the UK has only got a DNA database equivalent to a small fraction of the population (mostly criminals and suspects but also innocent people who were in an area where they were asked to voluntarily give a DNA sample).

WOW. The ultimate perfect device.

Unfortunately we are stuck with the reality that the current technology is pretty ropey. Something like 1% false match where non exists and 1% false mismatch for the same face. It seems to be worse if you are in a hurry, anxious or out of breath after running the length of the concourse.

Why not insist that all voters bring their passport or drivers licence and a utility bill then? That would generate a unique tag for person and residence. UK system works by binding people to the homes where they live via the infamous "Poll Tax" which still lives on under a new name. The electoral roll works reasonably although there have been some notable fraud cases in multiple occupancy houses.

They are manufactured by major Republican donors and lack independent verification and validation to standards that would be acceptable outside of a banana republic.

Particularly not the Repbulicans. Can you spell "hanging chads" ?

Regards, Martin Brown

On Oct 17, 4:53=EF=BF=BDam, "Jon Slaughter" wro= te:

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My sister-in-law has a bright shiney-new Green Card. From the look of it, it has about 30 dozen security features on it. (and IN it?) Assuming the card does not cost hundreds of dollars to manufacture, maybe that's a good first start? Just replace our existing paper voter registration cards - which in our State, do not have a photo ID on them.

Still, ID-ing the person will not tell you if they actually live in the precinct in which they are voting. That's a database lookup. And any network connection is vunerable to attack.

If you want abuse, you can look at what's going on in Ohio right now. Efforts there seek to disqualify up to 200,000 registered voters at the polls. For better or worse. I'm not taking a stance, just pointing out that that's a lot of potential votes.

-mpm

The race of purple people are going to drag you into court!

"Paul Hovnanian P.E." wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@hovnanian.com:

one thing to point out;illegally registered voters can obtain ABSENTEE BALLOTS and vote that way. Then DemocRATic election committees will count them.

The DemocRATs seem very accepting of voter fraud these days. They seem to oppose verifying voter registration despite the clear evidence of illegal registrations.(and their calls for "ethics" in gov't...they don;t know what ethics ARE.)

(because it's in their favor...)

My sister-in-law has a bright shiney-new Green Card. From the look of it, it has about 30 dozen security features on it. (and IN it?) Assuming the card does not cost hundreds of dollars to manufacture, maybe that's a good first start? Just replace our existing paper voter registration cards - which in our State, do not have a photo ID on them.

Still, ID-ing the person will not tell you if they actually live in the precinct in which they are voting. That's a database lookup. And any network connection is vunerable to attack.

If you want abuse, you can look at what's going on in Ohio right now. Efforts there seek to disqualify up to 200,000 registered voters at the polls. For better or worse. I'm not taking a stance, just pointing out that that's a lot of potential votes.

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The problem is that the democrats won't police themselfs. By having a machine that internally keeps track of who votes one can prevent multiple votes(it's quite easy to do). One must have a way to track and a way to secure. All can be overcome to some degree and it will at least take it out of the hands of groups like acorn and even reduce much of the government oversight because they don't need to worry about those groups.

There are a series of checks and balances that can be put in place to make it work pretty well. (much better than what is going on now)

For a presidential nomination it doesn't matter if the computer doesnt' know which district. As long as you are a us citizen and have the right to vote it's ok. It just makes sure you don't vote more than once.

If one wanted they could associate such information into the database so if there are discrepancies more information can be taken into account to resolve it.

The problem with id's is that they are easily counterfieted(the polling places usually do not have the resources to check and usually don't care all that much).

Remember, the problem is people voting twice. ID's do not solve that problem. A computer that keeps track of the individual's vote count does. Of course it has to do it right but assuming it does then it solves the problem. It also can't easily be counterfieted because it would be locked up in a bipartisian way(say a double lock where each party gets the key and only both keys can be used... along with security checks and such just in case).

The main issue is that people think that it will violate there privacy or that "big brother" is collecting info about them. To me, it's a small price to play to reduce the corruption a great deal.

Heres the scenario:

Joe blow goes in to vote. If he hasn't voted before then nothing happens. If he tries to vote again the machine will detect it(since it recognizes is info) and it warns someone. If he actually did vote before then of course he will shot... else his vote is taken manually and scruitinized to make sure it is valid(log's of the machines can be brought up to see what happened).

Also, if names/social numbers/etc were linked to the bio-info then it would be that much better. That way Joe will need to have the proper ID too and if it doesn't match then they know it's not joe but someone trying to pretend to be joe. Although it wouldn't do that person trying to pretend any good unless he couldn't vote in the first since his vote only counted once anyways.

There are some issues of course, with it because the computer system needs to be completely secure but it makes it much harder to fix an election.

The real reason of course is that the democratic party simply doesn't want such things implemented beacuse it hurts them because they can't cheat... cheaters never want it to get harder. In fact, since dems favor big government they should be te ones pushing for such things but they don't.

Check; that was a major problem last time in Florida. Electronics in a "ballot box" or in an ID thinggus can have "bugs" whether intentional or not.

Like a SSN? But there are people that have more than one SSN. Sorry.

Who is Chad, and how long was the rope?

now

Technically, the districts are just bigger. "State-sized" So it still matters, but I get your point.

I don't know if that's a fair assessment. -- Individual voter fraud (of either party) is unlikely to affect an election's outcome. The issue here seems to be an inflation of the voter rolls, not that those registrations reflect real votes come election day. ACORN was just paying by the name, without a means to verify intent and uniqueness. Whoever was doing the signing-up was therefore incentivized to make up fake registrations. A phone book, especially one from another town, would be an ideal source of names... And that appears to be what has happend here.

And of course, once the rolls are artificially inflated, the argument is made that the entire list is suspect and we get into all this voter roll verification -- which has a demonstrated factual propensity to prevent far more ligitimate votes than illegal votes being cast.

If anything, the fraud was committed against ACORN, not by it.

It would be like you paying me to go out and collect aluminum cans, and you pay me by the can, but you never check to see if the cans are styrofoam, or even cans for that matter. I just give you a list and collect my paycheck. I honestly don't see how that affects the actual vote tally on Election Day.

I worry more about the ones with no fingers. With no finger to dip in the ink bottle, do they not get to vote or do they get to vote multiple times?

All joking aside, the "voter fraud" issue really is a complete side show. Voting machines that speak to a central server that can be hacked is a far bigger worry. One criminal act can make a million vote difference.

The loss of confidence in the election system puts the nation at risk. If the losing party feels strongly enough that the will of the people was thwarted and enough people agree, you have the makings of a failed state.

This is why the voting system needs to be secure, understandable and spread out over very many people. Many small errors leading to some noise or bias in the result will be better tolerated than a few big errors or even suspicion of error or intent.

If electronics is used, the design of the circuits should be public as should the software, if any. The intended design should be put up on a web site and all the hackers in the world should be invited to find any errors and suggest improvements. The folks who frequent this news group, I am sure, could come up with a system that is nearly bullet proof.

Things I'd suggest be in the machine:

A huge non-erasable memory: The machine will keep a record of every major event in its life that can never be erased. When this memory gets full, this machine goes to the archive warehouse for 20 years or more.

A largish long lived battery: This battery is inside the machine an operates some circuits that are always on.

A real time clock: The machine keeps a rough estimate of the time in this clock. This is for the logging of events into the memory.

Multiply cover switches: When any doors or covers are opened, this gets logged into the memory.

A GPS: From time to time the box records where in the world it is and the GPS time along with its real time clock value.

It would still be better than no system. Not everyone has a job so you can't check whether or not payments are going into that account to at least make the cheating expensive.

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Some of the ones ACORN got were obviously questionable. Some they tried to check and found that the addresses were bogus etc. They pulled them out of the main bundle and put them in a package that labeled them as such. By law they still had to send them in but they did mark them as suspect. The folks at ACORN aren't the evil monsters they have been made out to be. "When good intentions are combined with stupidity ..."

In Florida, perhaps. Here, they are called provisional ballots. They don't get counted until the validity of the registration in question is verified.

"Paul Hovnanian P.E." wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@hovnanian.com:

but look who would be doing the "verification";DemocRATic election committees.

That's like having ACORN verify the registrations.

Note the majority of election problems were in DemocRAT counties. (outside of Florida,too,IIRC)

what's wrong with pen and paper, tick a box.

put 20 markers (with anchoring string pre-attached) in the top of each box of 5000 voting forms.

Bye. Jasen

There really is nothing wrong with a all paper system. The disabled would need help to use it but this is also true of all of the mechanical and electronic ones.

To run a paper system you need more people but since it is the future of the nation I see no problem there. It would also take longer to get the results to the central location but there is a long time between the election and the actual taking of the oath for exactly this reason.

Yes and make a special version of the purple ink for the fingers. While you are at it make the ink in the markers a special ink too.

We could get "Sharpie" or someone to make up special markers. The plastic body of the marker could be some weird combination of colors that are only used for elections.

With special ink for the finger marks and the marker and special markers, owning any of them could be made against the law and declared to be evidence of the intent to commit election fraud. This would make things a lot more secure about extra votes being added.

To prevent ballot boxes from being tampered with or taken away, people watching would work nicely. As many as 10 people picked at random like jury duty may be needed. The ballot boxes could be shipped back to where they are counted on the transit system's buses. On election day, extra buses run while the polls are open to take people to vote. When the polls close some of those same buses take the boxes to be counted. In farming areas, the school buses and the like would be called into service.

Damnation Jon, what part of the privacy issue of secret ballot do you understand? Apparently none of it.