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[Roger Austin <raustin3 AT nc.rr.com>]

Christian Stalberg wrote:
> January 6, 2008  Can You Count on Voting Machines? By CLIVE THOMPSON
<snipped>
> specter of partisan hackers throwing an election. But the real problem 
> may simply be inherent in the nature of computers: they can be precise 
> but also capricious, prone to malfunctions we simply can’t anticipate.

 This is not true. You can anticipate most errors, or at least you can
estimate where most of the errors will come from during testing. Any
capable analyst will understand the weaknesses of a system if they are
paying attention and have the budget to address them.

> This is because computer scientists understand, from hard experience, 
> that complex software can’t function perfectly all the time. It’s the 
> nature of the beast. Myriad things can go wrong. The software might have 
> bugs — errors in the code made by tired or overworked programmers. Or 
> voters could do something the machines don’t expect, like touching the 
> screen in two places at once. “Computers crash and we don’t know why,” 
> Felten told me. “That’s just a routine part of computers.”

 This is a very stupid statement and the reporter should have challenged
this Felten person about it. I guess it fit the reporters agenda so they
didn't bother.
 Touch screens and the software subsystems are more robust that that.
Try it the next time you are at the Teeter checking out and see what
happens. Those grocery store POC systems are much more complicated than
any voting machine should be.
 It is easy to blame the programmers.

> If the machines are tested and officials are able to examine the source 
> code, you might wonder why machines with so many flaws and bugs have 
> gotten through. It is, critics insist, because the testing is nowhere 
> near dilligent enough, and the federal regulators are too sympathetic 
> and cozy with the vendors. The 2002 federal guidelines, the latest under 
> which machines currently in use were qualified, were vague about how 
> much security testing the labs ought to do. The labs were also not 
> required to test any machine’s underlying operating system, like 
> Windows, for weaknesses.

 I have been a programmer/analyst since the early '80s. I don't
understand what is so complicated about a voting system. I've been
involved in very complex systems development in a highly regulated
(FDA, EPA, DEA, etc.) environment so I know a little about building
systems that are built to be robust.
 There is no way that a computerized voting system should be more prone
to error than a medical device or military system. It may be true that
some systems crash without warning, but there is usually a good reason.
If a blue haired lady trying to vote crashes a voting machine, you are
using the wrong development environment and/or people to build it.
Plus, you are probably making it much too complex so there is more
risk to failure in the system.
 Crappy software written on any OS will stink. I sounds like the
vendor management looked at this as a revenue stream and ignored
the developers. Nah, that never happens...
 Okay, I am through ranting now. Get back to work.
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