Dominion Voting Systems
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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.
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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, 2013For the floating voter of course! :rolleyes:
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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.
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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, 2013 -
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!
I once wrote a cost analysis system for Hyundai that took 90 minutes to recalculate. I was disgusted with it as it only got within 1m of reality, the boss was ecstatic, he could only get within 10m using his system.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity - RAH I'm old. I know stuff - JSOP
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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:
Why would any self-respecting developer agree to write code in such a way as to allow subversion of its targeted purpose?
No, you misunderstand, the software did perform its purpose. It was originally developed in Venezuela to help Hugo Chavez win "elections."
#realJSOP wrote:
Even more importantly, why would anyone use software that was demonstrably accuracy-challenged and so easily corrupted?
Could the fact that Nancy Pelosi's husband has an ownership stake in the company have anything to do with it?
The difficult we do right away... ...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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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, 2013Lots of reasons I can think of for designs that seem to not make sense (and obviously not all of these apply to the system we're talking about) - the person ultimately responsible for making the decision didn't know what questions to ask and/or didn't understand the technology - the person responsible was pressured by a superior to make a bad call - the product was chosen based on a relationship/favour, and not because it was the best/cheapest option - the product was created by a consultancy service that had a bunch of devs on staff (eg COBOL) that it couldn't find work on so architected the project to use a technology that would allow it to bill the idle bodies (I'm looking at you, new Australian Taxation System) - the decision was made due to security / technology / hardware / resource reasons that, once you understand the constraints, actually make sense for that application - the system was based off a system that's based off a system that's based etc etc and has proven to be solid and reliable and hence reduced uncertainty. (Ask Boeing how well this strategy works over time) I'm sure there's a bunch of reasons that made sense at the time. They may not make sense now, however. But who's going to invest the money to redo something when "it just works" (I should add some asterixis to that)
cheers Chris Maunder
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It may have depended on the outcome the developer wanted - a disputable result!
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity - RAH I'm old. I know stuff - JSOP
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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, 2013Who you want to be fired? The Dev who made the count variable to be 'float'? What makes you think it's Dev problem? What if it's intentionally done from upper management. IMHO, I think the Chief should be fired. :laugh:
The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up. Paul Valery
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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, 2013I'm not taken aback at all, in fact I'll go as far as to say that it might be the best way to design such a system! The idea that Dominion stores vote counts in a floating-point format seems to come from a NIST publication[^] describing a reporting standard. I don't think it's been proven that the Dominion software uses the described format, though I would not find it at all surprising if it did. This is an open standard, the creation of which involved the expertise of very smart, thoughtful, and experienced people, probably with strong knowledge of the problem domain. They are named as authors, if you question their work you may look them up and contact them to find out for yourself what their motivations were. The standard specifies that aggregate vote counts are reported as double-precision floating-point numbers, which it says "can include a f[r]actional component in special cases" (though the nature of such special cases is not described). How individual votes are stored in the machines is not specified (as this is intended as a generalized rather than machine-specific standard), the document only addresses how counts are aggregated for the purpose of reporting. Even if individual votes were recorded by a voting machine as a floating-point whole number (again, a fact which is not in evidence), it would require astronomically more addition operations than there are voters (let alone people) in the U.S. in order to reach a rounding error of even a single vote. In short, you can't possibly be certain that there's a problem here, but even your worst case scenario would result in effectively zero inaccuracy in the reported counts from the various Dominion systems in use.
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#realJSOP wrote:
What retard decided that storing vote counts as floating point numbers was a "good idea"?
Well, everyone knows that an
intcan only go up to 32,767 so you have to use a float to count higher! ;PLatest Articles:
Thread Safe Quantized Temporal Frame Ring BufferObviously done by the same folks who 'designed' the UK Track & Trace app; who thought that passing the data on an Excel XLS spreadsheet was a good idea as they never considered that there would be more than 16384 (or 65356 depending on which version of Excel they were using) cases to record in a day.
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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.
Yeah but you're forgetting about the dead....they can vote too ;)
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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!
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Yeah but you're forgetting about the dead....they can vote too ;)
OK, so remove one doubling. I'll also be retired in 3035. :D
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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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, 2013Yep, it's nonsense. I've tracked this down as best I could. The origin seems to be this (nearly 5 year old) article in Black Box Voting: [Fraction Magic — Part 2: Context, Background, Deeper, Worse – BlackBoxVoting.org](https://blackboxvoting.org/fraction-magic-2/) It seems that one person (a developer and poll worker) noticed that in his precinct, if you subtract the "number of people who didn't vote in this race" from the "total people who voted" (yielding the total who DID vote in that race), that number was one more than the number you get if you add up all the voted each candidate got. (since that race had 199 write-ins, it quite believable that one write-in wasn't readable and didn't make the counts, which would explain that -- but our guy doesn't like simple solutions). He figured it must be a floating-point round-off error!! So, he read thru Diebold's (Yes, this is about Diebold -- not Dominion!) apparently public bugtrak database (from 2001!), and spotted a few bugs related to decimal places in their outputs --- and he concluded that the votes were being tabulated in floating point. In reality, they were actually talking about where they display the PERCENTAGE of the vote each candidate got, which, in these days of ever closer elections, must be given in multiple decimal place. SO, to conclude: There is ZERO evidence that any voting system manufacture uses floating point to count votes.
Truth, James
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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, 2013I'm taken aback. Actually, I think that all election software should be entirely open source and verified by real programmers. Also, this technique of moving numbers from a scanner to an aggregator by little SD cards leaves too much room for sleight of hand. And ballots in Pennsylvania have bar codes. Whether or not they can be associated with an individual voter I don't know. There is one state using all mail in voting in which the voters themselves can login and verify that their vote has been recorded properly. Things can be so much improved. Having RCV and better candidates would help a lot.
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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, 2013
