New technology

[Tiger650]

After having their arses handed to them by the electorate the grubs say we now need this s**t ?

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-07-10/e ... ng/7584594

[adam]

Manipulation is a concern, but I believe that it would be possible to prove whether the system has been tampered with or not without too much difficulty.

One way would be for every voter to get a receipt. On the receipt is a unique reference for their vote, as well as who they voted for, and their electorate. (Obviously not their name, or linked to them in any way)...

After the election the votes become publicly available. Everyone can see the whole database, receipt no's and who was voted for - this way people could confirm that the figures add up to what the AEC say they do (ie, not more votes than there are electorates) - plus that the vote against their receipt matches that on the database...

[brett1868]

Several years ago when I was with IBM we built the first of the eCensus platforms for the federal government. It worked by sending every household a letter with a unique PIN to use when filling in the forms online. It worked reasonably well providing the household was using one of the supported browsers, data was encrypted from point of entry right through to the pipe till reaching the ABS in Canberra. A similar system could be adopted for voting, send each voter a letter containing the PIN so come election day they could simply go online, punch their PIN and start clicking. My role was setting up and configuring the 2 factor hardware encryption between the servers I built and the ABS. I was submitted to a full ASIO background check and appointed as a temporary officer of the ABS as it was required to work on their systems. Was a fun project, got to play with some serious network encryption technologies....

[<<Genesis93>>]

After having their arses handed to them by the electorate the grubs say we now need this s**t ?

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-07-10/e ... ng/7584594

Like they all agreed the voting system was broken (read too many micro-party independents) and had to be 'fixed'....

They only want something that gives them an advantage... whether over each other, or the plebs/the 'proles' (or the 'proletariat' for the old schoolers)

Electronic systems have been used in the USA for some time..... ask them how its going, which they recommend; paper or electronic.... the word most commonly associated with the electronic system is corrupt/corruptible or hacked...

I recall 2 things being reported about their system, that people would press the button for eg 'Democrat' and the screen would say "You have voted Republican"! or vice versa and that during the Bush MkII election, there was at least 1 state reported to have erroneously or otherwise returned a Bush victory (Florida??) either through hacking or tampering...

Yes, we need a 'better way'.... but once the dust settles, the paper ballots are there to be counted/recounted/scrutinised....

[Oldbloke]

probably a good idea, hacking and rigging aside, Its a bloody joke that it takes two weeks to count up our votes.

LOL and NO ID required. FMD

[Tiger650]

Blokes.
Given that there is no shortage of our money to spend why do the Vlasti reckon we need this ?
I would sooner trust a fox with a chook.

[pete1]

The old way does pay lots of staff putting money into the economy. Computerised will be paying just as much to apple for overpriced Ipads.

[<<Genesis93>>]

The old way does pay lots of staff putting money into the economy. Computerised will be paying just as much to apple for overpriced Ipads.

Like the Federal Education and Health departments.... that dont run a single hospital or school... and cost us many billions of dollars but it cool cause it employ lots of people??

[Norton]

I'll leave the technical details to people like Brett but doing the whole line up for an hour to fill out paper ballets is stupid in this day and age, surely.

[Jandamurra]

No, no, a thousand times no!!!
Waiting for an hour to vote in an election?
People fought and died for the right to free and fair elections and some people are put out by having to wait an hour!?
How do we know the electronic voting will be free and fair? We can't. At least now there's a paper trail.
In the US there's electronic voting for Presidential elections and from what I know, all sorts of weird and wonderful things happen. Entire polling stations voted for Obongo last election, and Bush was favoured by similar shenanigans when it was his "turn".
The Republicans and Democrats are the equivalent of the Coalition and Labor, respectively. In the US they've divvied up the pie by means of electronic voting, several Ciongresspeople having shares in the company Diebold. Tweedledum and Tweedledee did it over there, so what possible reason is there to suppose the same won't happen here?
Turnbull and Shorten , the leaders of the "big two" gang in Australia, are in favour of it. They've got a duopoly to preserve. Let that sink in.
I wonder which pollies or those closely connected enough to them that they can use to hide their financial advantage have shares in the companies that want to set it up here?
I've got an idea: instead of spending a couple of hundred mil on a non-binding plebiscite, how about spending half that money making sure our current election procedures are above board?
Who's 100% sure even the current, much more transparent system, is not abused? Maybe not often or blatantly enough to attract attention, but a few hundred votes in a key seat here, a few there, just enough?
One Nation may well have been the victim of this in a seat on the north coast of NSW. Not that I fully trust Pauline Hanson, just saying. Who remembers that story?
I reckon it goes much deeper than just two gangs of losers wanting to sew the game up for themselves.
I take it as a given that most of our poliies, maybe even all in some measure, do the bidding of international financiers who stay behind the scenes.
How convenient for such people if elections can be massaged in the direction they want.
Which is the same as saying there'll be no meaningful elections at all if they go electronic.
With a paper trail, there's at least some chance of catching them out if there's cheating.
With electronic voting, we will just have to trust what the technicians and technocrats decide to tell us. Even if they're honest, there's no way of knowing they're honest, and of course there's no reason at all to suppose they will be honest.
As far as I'm concerned, all vestige of representation will be gone if electronic voting is brought in. The government will be as foreign in a constitutional sense as if we had a Chinese military governor. .All bets will be off in terms of my relationship with the government that is supposed to represent me.
Any strife that may arise in the community from this decision will be squarely at the feet of Turnbull and Shorten.

[brett1868]

The technology can be deployed that would make the voting process very secure and fast but there's a massive cost problem. Most Intel based servers are leased and amortised over 4 years and engineered to be upgraded or replaced at life end. Given that we vote on average every 4 years us taxpayers would be footing the bill for entirely new infrastructure each election. Hardware cost is around 20-25% of the total cost by the time labour and management are factored in. I say, keep the current system but expand the ability / locations of where people can lodge absent votes. Instead of the 1 day pissed away in line waiting the voting can be run over a week, this is already in place so expanding it shouldn't require much effort or cost. Then and again, the government fellas are masters of screwing the simple things in life.

[Jandamurra]

Brett, you have interesting things to say but I think you're missing a big part of the point as I explained above.
Having the polls spread out over a week as you suggest is a good idea. ATM, though, there's nothing stopping a person from voting earl if they want to, so practically speaking, the polls are spread out already.

[Tiger650]

We now have the situation where many million of our $$$ have been spent to set up a census and as of this evening the whole thing has gone to s**t.
I will bet a penny to a pound that the people who "organized "this debacle will still be paid, those who pay them get money for free and so it has no value, more will inevitably come from the taxpayer.
As sure as day follows night.
I tried twice to access the Census website "you are forbidden " Orwellian s**t abounds.
In truth I am pleased, hoping that this will set more folk wondering where their sweat goes and perhaps become resentful of the threat of a $180.00 per day "fine" for non-compliance.
Money has nothing to do with it mind you, just a good way to make you "comply ".
I sent the buggers the following via the ABS feedback function which apparently still works.

"Cannot access census website, "access forbidden " you are fools and I do not waste time with fools, I have photos of "access forbidden " and I will take a photo of this for use in my defence if you incompetents pursue the issue "

Those who work spend 66% of their labour paying taxes, that is a fact, I shall not spend my free time "complying "when the useless bastards cannot get organized.

They are treating us as self maintaining cattle.

[Gwion]

Robo-dairy... Without the back scratcher!!!

[doc]

I'm glad it went down. I've had concerns about the security plus the requirement of having to give out name. This gives many an excuse now for not filling it out.

[Norton]

Waiting for an hour to vote in an election?
People fought and died for the right to free and fair elections and some people are put out by having to wait an hour!?

It's not 1 hour.

It's 16 million people (hours).

I'd say it's better we did it online and had 15.9 million hours spare to do other important things.

[Jandamurra]

I didn't give my name or DOB for the census people.
On the subject of new technology, how about instead of electronic voting, we have citizens armed with smart phones etc. to be involved in the counting of votes and the supervision thereof, in real time?
That would be the best of both worlds-the old, (relatively) secure and unfakeable "paper" world and the new world that allows instantaneous communication.
Funnily enough, out of all the bright ideas the pollies and public servants have, I've never seen this anywhere.
Can't imagine why...

[chacka]

probably a good idea, hacking and rigging aside, Its a bloody joke that it takes two weeks to count up our votes.

I was listening on the radio and they were talking about one electorate where they've had to do the recount 7 times, each time because they come up with a slightly different results of between I think 13-24 or something variation that said. Counting by hand, open to human interpretation error...

f***ing joke it is.

[sandgroperbill]

I dunno. The census is taking even longer, and that was electronic.

I don't want to see electioms go electronic. Way too many risks and potential problems.

[Jandamurra]

@ chacka
I agree with sandgroperbill.
That electorate with the 7X recount-do you think the people would have been better served with one electronic tally that could be hacked?
The very fact that it was able to be recounted seven times is good. Not I suppose that it got to that situation for whatever reason, just that human beings were available to correct it.
What did you think about my idea of combining new and old? In the above exam0ple, one option would be to have volunteers with their smart phones present as counting and re-counting is done. We can preserve the old system while using new technology to make it more reliable and I'm sure it could be done at a fraction of the cost of the gay marriage plebiscite.
Surely that floats your boat?