Write your senators

[bascule]

Wow, sounds like a political thread. I think I can safely stay away from that.

So, I'm pretty sure that everyone is aware that the overwhelming majority of the e-voting platforms were demonstratably compromised in the weeks before the 2006 election. We don't know if the vote was hacked, but we all know that it could've been hacked by anyone with enough brain cells to follow the instructions in the easy how-to videos, and that's bad. If you can hack the vote, then you don't have democracy. I think this warrants a little outrage from the computer security community.

I'd really like to see someone like the EFF get behind a senatorial letter writing campaign, and encourage the government to pass federal guidelines which would standardize around an open source infrastructure. The state can still run the thing, but the devices should have to pass federal quality inspections, and the software needs to be auditable by everyone who cares to look.

I'm going to go ahead and write my senators. Anyone else agree?

[Thorn]

Re: Write your senators

bascule, you and I are generally on opposite ends of the political spectrum, but I am right with you on this one. Anyone of any political stripe who is concerned about whether his vote counts should be concerned about this.

People should be outraged. This is not a political issue per se, but nothing short of insuring the life of the democracy.

[goathead]

Re: Write your senators

couldn't agree more. this democracy is all we have at the moment and we should do what we can to have confidence that, although flawed in many ways, our votes would be accurately tabulated.

i would be curious if anyone has insight as to how feedback is handled by our respective senators. i would assume that the emails and feedback are discriminated and sorted into categories and then depending on the volume, sampled. i would think that it would be more likely that santa would read all of his emails before these folks would.

[theprez98]

Re: Write your senators

i would be curious if anyone has insight as to how feedback is handled by our respective senators. i would assume that the emails and feedback are discriminated and sorted into categories and then depending on the volume, sampled. i would think that it would be more likely that santa would read all of his emails before these folks would.

I spent some time working in Congress. This info is based on my experience and may be different depending upon your representative or senator.

Most people in Congress will only care about mail/email from people in their district. They may add their addressses to their database for future reference, but most of the time only constituents will get a response.

Anytime a new subject is addressed, the issue is researched if necessary and then a letter is composed for the congressman to review. It may be a simple "thanks for your view on this issue" or it may expound upon the congressman's views. This then becomes a form letter for future responses. Eventually you have a library of form letter responses.

Some congressmen have their Chiefs of Staff or someone to screen a handful of letters that may get a personal or handwritten response.

Some offices may keep a rough tally of how many people are "for" or "against" an issue, but many times if the congressman has already declared a position on an issue, these numbers may not matter as much to them.

Overall, there is a HUGE volume of mail, email and phone calls that come into the typical congressional office. The manpower doesn't exist to give every contact its due, but the staffs are generally hard-working and do their best. Every office is slightly different, too, so you have to take that into account.

[bascule]

Re: Write your senators

theprez98, I couldn't agree more. Every attempt I've made at writing my senators alone has been fraught with failure. I receive a boilerplate letter correlating the subject of my letter (at least as well as they can distill it) with the policy of the senator in question, even if that policy is diametrically opposite the contents of my letter. It sucks. That's why I was hoping a coordinated letter writing campaign might help, but maybe not. I received similar boilerplate political plank letters when I was part of such coordinated campaigns.

But, back to the topic at hand... for those who haven't seen it yet Diebold used the same key for every voting machine and posted a photo of that key on their web site:



That image has been used to successfully make copies of the key.

[astcell]

Re: Write your senators

There was nothing wrong with how we have been voting for decades. And there are more ways to break things with a computer than there are to fix things using a computer. And if it runs well, you can ONLY break it.

I have no idea why people believe that clicking for Candidate A on a screen really means anything. You may as well believe spam popups on your computer screen.

If you are to stupid to punch a solid hole in the paper maybe you better go back to school. And definitely do not vote. Computers may make it easier for the incompetent to vote, but do we really want that?

Who ever said computers were safe to begin with?

[goathead]

Re: Write your senators

thanks for the insight prez

/word