GEMS voting system. Can a programmer read this please?

a reply to: youcanttellthepeople

If it it 16 bit hardware, that 4 trillion. These tabulators seem to be for a precinct to scan in ballots and accumulate votes. At least I got the impression that was the equipment, not a voting machine.

Anyway, if it for a single vote entry, no need.

a reply to: Starbuck799

No, TheRedneck is an electrical engineer. He just tutors programming courses at the Bachellaureat level.

Seriously, I have loved computers since 1980. And hated idiotic programmers almost as long. Digital logic is so simple, it boggles my mind why so many people can't grasp the concepts, and won't even ask for help.

I wish more people asked questions like the OP. I wish more software developers did too.

TheRedneck

a reply to: roadgravel

Actually, you're thinking about 32-bit. 16-bit is 65535.

Even on an 8-bit machine, though, integer values are not limited. You can process as many bits as needed as long as you allow for it. I can easily process 64-bit integer values on a 16-bit MSP430 if I had a need to.

That's a range of 8x10^18 unsigned...

TheRedneck

I was expecting a link to a vcs repo.

Derp.


These softwares really should be open to the public.

I guess that would make it hard to do dubious things though.

a reply to: Tsubaki

That would be a huge loophole. Show me the source code on any networked software and I can hack in... so could several thousand other engineers, programmers, and hackers. We're sort of in a catch-22 on that. Do we open the machines up to hacking, or hide the code and anything malicious already in it?

TheRedneck

originally posted by: TheRedneck
a reply to: roadgravel

Actually, you're thinking about 32-bit. 16-bit is 65535.

Even on an 8-bit machine, though, integer values are not limited. You can process as many bits as needed as long as you allow for it. I can easily process 64-bit integer values on a 16-bit MSP430 if I had a need to.

That's a range of 8x10^18 unsigned...

TheRedneck

Your correct. Mental flub. I was think about 32 bit but typed 16 for some reason. The point being that I doubt there are even less than 32 bits being used now.

edit:

Point being most languages would be using a 32 bit integer by default.

I guess that would make it hard to do dubious things though.

Security by obfuscation is generally considered bad security. It's one reason why the most accepted and secure encryption routines are not secret. Knowing how software works doesn't mean it is necessarily insecure. It will help others to find flaws that can be exploited, if they exist.

originally posted by: bobs_uruncle
a reply to: bbarkow

What it means is simple, the vote can be rigged based on who is voting. All votes are weighted by a selected multiplication factor based on political alignment, race and gender, from 0.0001 to 25. As an example, 1000 black female Democrats could be counted as 25000 votes. However, 1000 white male republicans could be counted as 1 single vote.

Dirty politics and election fraud at its finest!

Cheers - Dave

Yeah, but Trump was called a snowflake for acknowledging the threat of a rigged election.

And as someone currently studying coding, this is pretty basic as far as coding programs. It's built in.

It appear that it is based on the access database types and the doc referring to weighted voting. not the program actual code.

Even though weighted voting is used in certain circumstances, seems like a bad idea to use that software on a machine that is for a traditional US political election.

I suppose we know why it might be there then.

originally posted by: MysticPearl

originally posted by: bobs_uruncle
a reply to: bbarkow

What it means is simple, the vote can be rigged based on who is voting. All votes are weighted by a selected multiplication factor based on political alignment, race and gender, from 0.0001 to 25. As an example, 1000 black female Democrats could be counted as 25000 votes. However, 1000 white male republicans could be counted as 1 single vote.

Dirty politics and election fraud at its finest!

Cheers - Dave

Yeah, but Trump was called a snowflake for acknowledging the threat of a rigged election.

And as someone currently studying coding, this is pretty basic as far as coding programs. It's built in.

It is built in, in this case, it appears as maybe a database function, but someone had to add it to the programming. In a strict numerical sense, one vote is one vote. This kind of programming in a machine used for voting is an abomination. You could take gender, race, financial class, etc and it would be a simple math function on the cells to produce the weighted vote value. This should be highly illegal.

Cheers - Dave

originally posted by: roadgravel
Why would a vote in the programming even be designed as something other than an integer unless some bias was planned to be introduced.

Some back end system may deal with values as doubles ( decimal ) and the programmers decided they would rather port those values in without converting them. It really depends on the language they are coding in.

Mostly it is just really suspicious.

-FBB

EDIT
The decimal values could be used in some sort of hash function (for quickly finding an item in a database) and adds a value to the vote for verification purposes. A decimal value could be produced with some combination of the SSN and name of the voter and added to their vote tallies.

I am only thinking of lame ways to tag items for searches later though sooooooo don't consider this a reasonable justification for their coding decisions, just a thought experiment.

a reply to: roadgravel

Dunno what I was thinking of - it was late!

A short - yeah, that's what I was thinking of, a short *he tells himself whilst slowly exiting stage left*

Well that beggars belief for me - what a mess
Maybe the US should be considering a 'preferential' type system such as we have in Oz but that is also somewhat untidy. It is, however, fair in that no person's vote is worth more or less than any other's within any given electorate.

originally posted by: youcanttellthepeople
a reply to: roadgravel

Dunno what I was thinking of - it was late!

A short - yeah, that's what I was thinking of, a short

*he tells himself whilst slowly exiting stage left*

haha...you got that right. 65535 and 32767 are etched into my brain from the early days in the PDP 11 world.

At least I didn't go with Mandela.

a reply to: TheRedneck

In this case, it sounds like the increment isn't necessarily by 1. There are many ways to code a number into software: integer values are the simplest and hold only whole numbers, while doubles, floats, etc. rely on a coding scheme and specialized mathematical modules to handle decimal numbers. Obviously vote totals should be integers, since there should never be a vote total that isn't a whole number. But it appears float values are being used, which is either an extreme waste of memory/processor time that indicates a thorough lack of expertise on the part of the programmers, or an attempt to allow fractional or weighted voting.

Either way, this disturbs me.

Don`t you know that votes from the elite and/or reptilians count double, even triple, while a vote from a homeless person or any other hostile (to them) group counts 1/4 or less?

Besides, I thought that at Microsoft programers are instructed to make their code clean and transparent and reduced to bare minimum space. Simply can`t understand why they would put (or even hire) someone that lacks experise to work on such project...It would be more logical to say that they know exactly what they are doing.

Just my 2 cents.

Well, a month late to this thread...

originally posted by: youcanttellthepeople
I'm a Dev - c# mainly but from a C/Java background.

I suspect they're not using ints as they only go up to a certain value (can't be arsed to check). If its unsigned (so you ignore whether it's negative) then that doubles the range, but even so.

Floats also only go up to a certain value.

A 32 bit int goes to about 2.15 billion (signed), which is enough for any voting machine.

The only difference between int and float is the decimal adds precision to one side while removing it from the other.

Of course you can go above those numbers too but it just takes more memory.

Anyways... votes should be in int form because there are no fractions of a vote. The only reason that would be deliberately added in is if someone wants to shave fractions of votes from one candidate or another, or depending on the hardware involved they're trying out some sort of fuzzy logic system. Neither of which would really be a good idea.

I don't understand why we don't have a searchable database that works like block chain.

Totally out in the open.

a reply to: roadgravel

Why would a vote in the programming even be designed as something other than an integer unless some bias was planned to be introduced.

Integer can only have a maximum value of 32767. If program was modifying a database directly with a new total the programmer might have used a different type (using decimals) instead of using a long type.

Would make me suspicious though.

a reply to: bbarkow

I've been a software developer for 15 years, if you're counting votes they are whole number integers, there is no reason for them to be doubles/decimals.

None.