Dominion Voting Systems
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How many of you - as developers - are taken aback by the revelations concerning the state of Dominion Voting Systems? Why would any self-respecting developer agree to write code in such a way as to allow subversion of its targeted purpose? What retard decided that storing vote counts as floating point numbers was a "good idea"? ANYBODY that's been a developer for any length of time knows damn well that when you do math with floating point numbers, the result is an *approximation*. and is therefore not accurate. Even more importantly, why would anyone use software that was demonstrably accuracy-challenged and so easily corrupted?
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013#realJSOP wrote:
What retard decided that storing vote counts as floating point numbers was a "good idea"?
The programmers responsible should be hanged, drawn, and quartered for their efforts, and especially for their "design". However, the accuracy problems are mitigated by the following: 1. Assuming only one voting machine per precinct, the number of voters would have to pass 2^24 (16,777,216) before problems would start. Most (all?) precincts in the US aren't that large. 2. Given (1), When calculating the results of local elections, or elections to the House of Representatives, the results will be accurate. 3. The population of California, the largest State, may be represented using 26 bits, i.e. the result will be inaccurate in the last 2 bits. Given that there are ~50 counties, the chance that a vote will be lost at the county level is small (a candidate would have to get more than 2^24 votes, probably more than the total voter register of any single county). When summing the county totals for a State-wide vote (i.e. Gubernatorial, Federal Senate, or Presidential elections), it is possible that a candidate would lose (or gain) a few votes due to round-off. Assuming no State-wide election is decided by less than ~200 votes, any errors are immaterial.
#realJSOP wrote:
Even more importantly, why would anyone use software that was demonstrably accuracy-challenged and so easily corrupted?
Isn't what's good enough for [Tilt Cove, Newfoundland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilt\_Cove) good enough for the entire USA? :-\
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. -- 6079 Smith W.
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A max int has been 2,147,483,647 since BEFORE dominion wrote their software. There are significantly fewer than 2 billion voters in the entire U.S.. There is *no excuse* for using a floating point value.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013Did Marc forget the joke icon?
cheers Chris Maunder
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That's OK. The UK one used an Excel spreadsheet to record positive test results ... an XLS file ... with a max of 64K rows ... :doh: £35M that cost, apparently.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
The world runs on Excel spreadsheets. No matter how complicated, finely crafted, or expensive the system is that's put in place, someone, somewhere falls back to managing it all on a spreadsheet.
cheers Chris Maunder
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#realJSOP wrote:
What retard decided that storing vote counts as floating point numbers was a "good idea"?
The programmers responsible should be hanged, drawn, and quartered for their efforts, and especially for their "design". However, the accuracy problems are mitigated by the following: 1. Assuming only one voting machine per precinct, the number of voters would have to pass 2^24 (16,777,216) before problems would start. Most (all?) precincts in the US aren't that large. 2. Given (1), When calculating the results of local elections, or elections to the House of Representatives, the results will be accurate. 3. The population of California, the largest State, may be represented using 26 bits, i.e. the result will be inaccurate in the last 2 bits. Given that there are ~50 counties, the chance that a vote will be lost at the county level is small (a candidate would have to get more than 2^24 votes, probably more than the total voter register of any single county). When summing the county totals for a State-wide vote (i.e. Gubernatorial, Federal Senate, or Presidential elections), it is possible that a candidate would lose (or gain) a few votes due to round-off. Assuming no State-wide election is decided by less than ~200 votes, any errors are immaterial.
#realJSOP wrote:
Even more importantly, why would anyone use software that was demonstrably accuracy-challenged and so easily corrupted?
Isn't what's good enough for [Tilt Cove, Newfoundland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilt\_Cove) good enough for the entire USA? :-\
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. -- 6079 Smith W.
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The world runs on Excel spreadsheets. No matter how complicated, finely crafted, or expensive the system is that's put in place, someone, somewhere falls back to managing it all on a spreadsheet.
cheers Chris Maunder
Guilty! :laugh:
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Not at all. All you have to do is a simple google search.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013#realJSOP wrote:
Not at all. All you have to do is a simple google search.
Yeh, I already did that and all I saw was reports that Trump was claiming this had cost him the election and whole bunch of news sites saying "No, not true". Which is why I posted "Fake news?" I'm guessing you got the information from somewhere. Why not let us have the link to that.
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Not at all. All you have to do is a simple google search.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013I did a simple Google search - and the only place I can find this claim is at: MIT PhD Analysis of Michigan Vote Reveals Unfortunate Truth about U.S. Voting Systems - The Thinking Conservative[^] To discover it's credibility just Google it's owner: Shiva Ayyadurai So yes, I strongly suspect this is fake news. Give me a better link not run by a complete crank and I'll revise my opinion. Thanx, Dave H.
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How many of you - as developers - are taken aback by the revelations concerning the state of Dominion Voting Systems? Why would any self-respecting developer agree to write code in such a way as to allow subversion of its targeted purpose? What retard decided that storing vote counts as floating point numbers was a "good idea"? ANYBODY that's been a developer for any length of time knows damn well that when you do math with floating point numbers, the result is an *approximation*. and is therefore not accurate. Even more importantly, why would anyone use software that was demonstrably accuracy-challenged and so easily corrupted?
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
-----
You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013Knowing where the "revelations" come from: it is just another case of total b******t. Yes: floating point may cause a slight difference or rounding error here or there but they pale into insignificance. Only total ignorance and the wish to peddle that to those who don't have a clue either is the reason behind spreading this. Being a long time developer I know better, no way on earth do you lose "millions of votes" because of it, you only have yourself to thank for that.
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How many of you - as developers - are taken aback by the revelations concerning the state of Dominion Voting Systems? Why would any self-respecting developer agree to write code in such a way as to allow subversion of its targeted purpose? What retard decided that storing vote counts as floating point numbers was a "good idea"? ANYBODY that's been a developer for any length of time knows damn well that when you do math with floating point numbers, the result is an *approximation*. and is therefore not accurate. Even more importantly, why would anyone use software that was demonstrably accuracy-challenged and so easily corrupted?
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
-----
You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
-----
When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013#realJSOP wrote:
What retard decided that storing vote counts as floating point numbers was a "good idea"?
It's not a good idea, but it doesn't seem to be as bad as you are implying. You would have to do far more testing than this simple program, and on the specific hardware of the machines, but on my machine it doesn't change the count by a single vote, even when using almost three times more people than there are in the US.
#include <iostream>
int main() {
__int64 test = 0;
double d = 0;
for (int i=0; i<16777216; ++i) {
d = d + 1;
}
std::cout << d << std::endl;d = 0;
for (__int64 i=0; i<1000000000; ++i) {
d = d+1;
}
std::cout << d;
return 0;
} -
How many of you - as developers - are taken aback by the revelations concerning the state of Dominion Voting Systems? Why would any self-respecting developer agree to write code in such a way as to allow subversion of its targeted purpose? What retard decided that storing vote counts as floating point numbers was a "good idea"? ANYBODY that's been a developer for any length of time knows damn well that when you do math with floating point numbers, the result is an *approximation*. and is therefore not accurate. Even more importantly, why would anyone use software that was demonstrably accuracy-challenged and so easily corrupted?
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
-----
You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013Python developers maybe? :laugh: However, I am reminded of when I was first learning to write programs in BASIC-PLUS on a PDP-11 in 1983, the book clearly states: "floating point calculations are more accurate than integer calculations" and "integers have a range only from -32768% to +32767%" We did everything in floating point and had no idea why anyone would ever use integers. (OK, VAXBASIC uses 32-bit integers.)
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#realJSOP wrote:
What retard decided that storing vote counts as floating point numbers was a "good idea"?
It's not a good idea, but it doesn't seem to be as bad as you are implying. You would have to do far more testing than this simple program, and on the specific hardware of the machines, but on my machine it doesn't change the count by a single vote, even when using almost three times more people than there are in the US.
#include <iostream>
int main() {
__int64 test = 0;
double d = 0;
for (int i=0; i<16777216; ++i) {
d = d + 1;
}
std::cout << d << std::endl;d = 0;
for (__int64 i=0; i<1000000000; ++i) {
d = d+1;
}
std::cout << d;
return 0;
}What about with single-precision?
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What about with single-precision?
Change the
doubletofloatand try. And change the 10 billion to 16777215. Still no votes changed on my system. -
The world runs on Excel spreadsheets. No matter how complicated, finely crafted, or expensive the system is that's put in place, someone, somewhere falls back to managing it all on a spreadsheet.
cheers Chris Maunder
I have read on occasion that here in America, both Democrat and Republican campaign strategists do most of their number crunching using spreadsheets. So yes, I agree completely with what you posted. In fact, most people I know that crunch numbers for a living use spreadsheets extensively.
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How many of you - as developers - are taken aback by the revelations concerning the state of Dominion Voting Systems? Why would any self-respecting developer agree to write code in such a way as to allow subversion of its targeted purpose? What retard decided that storing vote counts as floating point numbers was a "good idea"? ANYBODY that's been a developer for any length of time knows damn well that when you do math with floating point numbers, the result is an *approximation*. and is therefore not accurate. Even more importantly, why would anyone use software that was demonstrably accuracy-challenged and so easily corrupted?
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
-----
You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013Come on John. As someone who writes code for a living, you know better than this. It really doesn't matter the type when dealing with integers. In a float, 1.0 + 1.0 still equals 2.0. Even accounting for representation inaccuracies, which you know always happens on the fractional side, how many votes would you have to count by adding 1.0 before you get anywhere near an integer misrepresentation by addition? How great would the error really be? A couple of votes in either direction?
Asking questions is a skill CodeProject Forum Guidelines Google: C# How to debug code Seriously, go read these articles.
Dave Kreskowiak -
I have read on occasion that here in America, both Democrat and Republican campaign strategists do most of their number crunching using spreadsheets. So yes, I agree completely with what you posted. In fact, most people I know that crunch numbers for a living use spreadsheets extensively.
I do as well - they are powerful and really flexible. But ... once the data goes over a couple hundred rows, I move it to a DB and a C# app. 65K rows? Not nice, not at all. Mind you, I used to work for someone who did all his stores, manufacturing, accounts, personnel - the whole damn company in fact - on a single sheet spreadsheet. It took about 20 minutes to load, and when it recalculated prices you went for a coffee. Worked for years though!
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Given that world population is much smaller than 264 (~1019), I would think that using a ulong (C#) or unsigned long long (C or C++) would be more than adequate. Even assuming that human population doubles every 35 years, this still gives room for ~30-31 doublings, which will take ~1050-1085 years. In 3070 I expect to be safely retired. :laugh:
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. -- 6079 Smith W.
-
How many of you - as developers - are taken aback by the revelations concerning the state of Dominion Voting Systems? Why would any self-respecting developer agree to write code in such a way as to allow subversion of its targeted purpose? What retard decided that storing vote counts as floating point numbers was a "good idea"? ANYBODY that's been a developer for any length of time knows damn well that when you do math with floating point numbers, the result is an *approximation*. and is therefore not accurate. Even more importantly, why would anyone use software that was demonstrably accuracy-challenged and so easily corrupted?
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
-----
You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
-----
When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013For the floating voter of course! :rolleyes:
Best, Sander Azure DevOps Succinctly (free eBook) Azure Serverless Succinctly (free eBook) Migrating Apps to the Cloud with Azure arrgh.js - Bringing LINQ to JavaScript
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For the floating voter of course! :rolleyes:
Best, Sander Azure DevOps Succinctly (free eBook) Azure Serverless Succinctly (free eBook) Migrating Apps to the Cloud with Azure arrgh.js - Bringing LINQ to JavaScript
Ghost voters! We've had them in Chicago for quite a while now. :) GHOST VOTERS RAISE SPECTER OF SHADY ELECTION - Chicago Tribune[^]
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment "Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst "I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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I do as well - they are powerful and really flexible. But ... once the data goes over a couple hundred rows, I move it to a DB and a C# app. 65K rows? Not nice, not at all. Mind you, I used to work for someone who did all his stores, manufacturing, accounts, personnel - the whole damn company in fact - on a single sheet spreadsheet. It took about 20 minutes to load, and when it recalculated prices you went for a coffee. Worked for years though!
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony "Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
OriginalGriff wrote:
65K rows? Not nice, not at all.
:thumbsup: agreed.
