Slashdot Mirror
Caltech & MIT Urge Wait On Net Voting
Booker writes "According to this article, a study by the Voting Technology Project (a joint venture of the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) is recommending that Internet voting be significantly delayed for further study.
"The teams expressed even less enthusiasm for Internet voting, which `has all the problems of absentee voting and adds problems of security,' said MIT computer scientist Ron Rivest. `At least a decade of further research on the security of home computers is needed before Internet voting can come in.'"
They do recommend better use of technology in voting, just not on the net - yet. They also report that between 4 million and 6 million votes were lost last November due to faulty equipment or other snafus. Read the report for yourself for all the info."
Here we write crosses on pieces of paper using pencils, and the votes are then counted by hand. Every vote is properly counted, and when a recount is necessary it takes from minutes to hours (depending on whether it's a full recount or just a bundle check).
This is utterly wrong. There is no need to prove your identity what-so-ever. I've voted in every local/general/european election in the last 10 years and have moved a number of times. I have never been asked for anything.
There are quite a few limitations to the simplistic approaches of crossing x's in boxes,
/. posters above, it's naive to say there are no problems with
filling in circles, marking lines and trying to determine if ballots are valid.
Despite the musings by some
these systems vs the punch card style systems.
The precinct that I did poll observer for did the X in a box with a pencil, and read by an
election official (observed by poll watchers from various political parties).
You'd be alarmed by the number of partially marked, overmarked, write-in lines not to
mention how heated arguments get to as to how to interpret these type of ballots.
Top problems (in no particular order)
1. two boxes marked
2. partial marks outside, but near, a box (like the box being circled).
3. partial erased boxes (the instructions in 4 languages say don't erase
and no eraser is provided at the polling place)
4. using the pencil to punch holes in the box
5. marked box with a write-in that might be the same name
6. marked box with a write-in that isn't the same name
7. writing numbers in multiple boxes (possibly ranking choices often with no legend)
8. asking for a ballot to take home for a friend/relative to drop off later
In the class we were taught that the law states we must throw out all of these ballots.
Fortunatly, these are usually less than 1% of the ballots (but there are a lot of them).
Note that in precincts with punch cards and optical cards, they reported the same problems!
All ballots allow write-ins and thus a pencil can be used to despoil any ballot even with these
systems. Poll workers (watched by poll observers) must extract any ballots with marks
in the write-in area for manual inspection in all precincts regardless of voting technology.
After taking the class and observing a poll, I'm determined never to do that again.
It's so sad, people are so stupid!
This doesn't even start to address the people who come in and beligerently want to vote when
they are not registered. Or people who take an hour to vote stealing the time from people
standing in line...
I guess what they say about sausage and politics is true...
Anyway, I believe it was one of the interactive versions that would respond, "You're not voting for Al Gore. Are you sure?" After a couple of rounds of this, it informed you that since you were confused, it would record your vote for Al Gore . . .
hawk
What I would like to see before 2004 is the following:
I think this is a nice cheap method, and would help reduce much of errors and problems that we had in the last election. There's other, less technical things that I'd love to see changed (like removing the winner-take-all) provision, but that's less likely to happen.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Smart cards don't help you much if the PC you plug them into has been compromised. Unless the smart card has its own display which can show you what it's being asked to sign, and a button to allow/deny this - and I've never seen any arrangement like that - then the software on the PC could use it to sign a completely different message from the one you wanted to send.
In the UK, and presumably also in Australia, representatives of all candidates in the election can be present as observers during counting.
Are you seriously claiming that having a bunch of guys look at paper ballots is accurate and fair? Maybe Australians are simply more honest then other folk (I will ignore the obvious joke about the ancestry of Australians), but it seems that manual counting is far worse than even the primitive machines that the US uses -- you can't bribe machines, but you can certainly bribe people.
Look it up sometime, I'll make a wager your country of 5 million people regularly loses 100,000+ votes or whatever it is you may do with 5 million people.
That's a 2% margin of error. Which is a really good margin of error. If the US has 250 million people then losing 5 million votes is also 2% (I have no idea how many people are in the US, but I'm pretty sure 250 million is close)
So if you think 5 million is ABSOLUTELY killer, let me ask you this... when was the last time you scored a 98% on a very long, very repetitive, very dull test?
People who quote themselves bug the crap out of me -- Me.
You're absolutely right ... that does drop them from an A+ rating down to an A. Perhaps an A-, just to be a cynical embittered tenure.
My point still stands, in my opinion, people are wanting perfection from the government!?
I agree it sucks to think that out of 100 of your closest voting friends (do any of us have that many friends) 6.5 of them didn't count. But if you randomly sampled from your friends, and randomly chose six of them, would it matter if you lost those 6?
People who quote themselves bug the crap out of me -- Me.
Don't confuse technology issues with existing voting problems.
Just as long as they're not using MS SQL Server 6.5...
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
but it seems that manual counting is far worse than even the primitive machines that the US uses
The paper clearly says that human tabulation is among the most accurate methods of counting.
Its not like one person counts the ballots and then burns them all -- usually several people count them, and any discrepancies can be resolved by even more people.
For all the hyperbole in Florida, people are very responsible about this sort of thing. Especially when cheating will be noticed quickly and the penalties are high (VERY high).
---------------------------------------------
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
It's no brilliant observation to note that people of different classes and races tend to vote for different candidates. So, any voting mechanism that makes it easier for some given type of people, who are likely to vote in a certain way, will have an "unfair" bias on the election's results.
Now, I love technology. I'm working this summer to bring technology to people who might not otherwise have access. But the problems with Net voting extend far beyond the ones that technology alone can solve, and my desire to see a fair election far outweighs my desire to avoid trekking over to the polling place. Net voting is not a good solution. The study refernced in the article makes some better ones, as does the Center for Voting and Democracy.
--
Not that I advocate such a national standard, but Congress could simply put forward a standard specification, and any vendor meeting those specs could provide the solution to each city/county/state/whatever.
--
The problem in Florida was that they were not only dealing with the issue of what constituted an actual "punch", but also the simple fact that the more times the cards were handled, the more errors would be introduced by potentially loosening other "chads". Optical scan ballots would not (and indeed, in those Florida counties using them did not during the mandatory recount in the first week) have any problems in that area.
--
Which may work well for broad issues, but would be an unmitigated disaster for the details. What percentage of the population is truly politically active? Even among them, how many follow the issues closely enough to cast an informed vote on every issue?
The vast majority would simply vote the way their media source of choice would tell them to (though of course, not be "told" in so many words), because they don't have the time or experience to folow the legislative minutia.
Direct democracy is dangerous in that regard, especially as we continue to complicate our everyday lives more and more through technology. The reason representative governments were created in the first place may have been for simplicity, but the fact is that given the amount and level of detail of modern legislation, very few except those whose full-time jobs are to deal with it can keep up with it all. And probably not even then -- that's one of the main reasons why Congressmen have staffers: to help them understand what they're voting on.
To illustrate, go to Thomas and look up 10 random bills and see how long it takes you to not only be able to summarize them, but to be able to answer any question about them.
--
Actually, computerizing the voting process (be it in a polling place or over the internet) would actually help people who can't punch a hole in a card, because you could give them immediate feedback that they had spoiled their ballot. In my mind, the major problem with the Florida system was the lack of user feedback.
--
--
E_NOSIG
As far as I'm concerned, it's the best way to let a community express itself through writing any sort of texts: constitution, book of laws, newspaper, weblog, novel, poem... Those texts being assembled in a library which can be browsed using a filter (to filter the elements which have a lower acceptation level, thus to have a high signal/noise ratio).
It's called VeniVidiVoti, and is about 80% complete. I'm looking for a community willing to test drive it, or for server space where to install the project's library.
It's functional, but there is no server actually hosting it, so you are limited to browsing a static copy of it, and reading its specifications.
It't not really secure either, it's a tool designed for communities, not for whole countries (not yet anyway). It could even replace a tool like Slashdot or K5H (conceptually at least)!
just have paper ballots, they work fine.
Another low tech solution, used in the world outside the US. Is to have physically separate documents for separate election.
The article points out that complex equipment increases the failure rate of voting,
Not just errors but systematic distortion, without transparancy or accountability.
Having a stack of ballot papers makes such things a recounts easier (at least it does it the ballot papers are sensibly designed.)
and thus decreases the credibility of US democracy.
How much credibility do you think it has right now. (Probably about the same as Zimbabwe...)
The simplest and most fail-safe voting system I've heard of is almost completely fail-safe: You use a pen to write a number inside a circle in the ballot. Pens and candidate lists are in the polling-booth.
You only need to use numbers for STV, on a simple first past the post system any kind of mark will do. (It is also perfectly possible to design such a ballot paper which can be machine sorted.)
But it's actually an advantage for ballots to be counted by hand, with representatives for all candidates watching.
The other thing to do is one election one ballot paper, multiple elections on the same ballot paper make counting (and recounts) far more complex.
The weak point of this is that in poorer countries the voters do not know how to read/write, but this shouldn't be a problem in the US.
There is a trivial solution here, that is to print the ballot papers with names and photographs. Even someone who cannot read or write can make a mark in a box.
However, in US there are a lot of things that are voted about, and not just dictated by the bureaucracy. In many 'democratic' countries of Western Europe there are very few votes expect the elections (parliament, president, local).
But AFAIK no European country has the situation of 2 political parties dominating things to the exclusion of everything else. Including other political parties, let alone idependant candidates.
You can get secure OSs. Trusted Xenix is B2, though apparently unobtainable nowadays, and Trusted Solaris is B1. However, for this I'd probably want B3, where you want something like the XTS-300.
This would be an addition to the electoral roll. As this is a new thing then what is happening is that they are screwing it up.
As for the others the only time that you could register was in (usually) September, when the forms went out. And I have been on lots of electoral rolls (probably still am on several - I was called to jury duty about a year after I had moved because of the broken deletion process) and I have never had to provide a single piece of id for any of them (I have even had the canvessers at the door filling in the forms and they just want the details).
For details see Waveney DC and Exeter. For a copy of the form you have to fill in then try here. All you have to do is print this out, fill it in and send it to your local council. Absolutely no mention whatsoever of the requirement for any identification.
Wrong. The system in the UK is that once per year a form is delivered to each household which you are legally required to fill in and return. This is used to compile the electoral register. Electoral registers are compiled and maintained by the local council.
The electoral register is "rolled forward", which means that an entry for a household stays until a different one is received. Needless to say this is a bit of a flaw.
From February 2001 (after an amendment to the "Representation of the People Act") you can request a form at any time and you will be added within 7 weeks. This is slightly different in that it is a personal form as opposed to a household form.
The main difference between the UK and the US is that registering to vote is automatic/compulsory in the UK, and voluntary in the US.
Any marking on the ballot which is not human-readable is an open invitation to spoofing -- a machine could be fixed to print the "random cloud of dots" for a favored candidate no matter what selection the voter made, with nobody the wiser.
The idea of a printer to produce the final ballot form is a good one, as long as the printout can be read and verified by the voter before casting the vote.
/.
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
The reasoning behind needing polling booths is a simple one:
It blocks vote/voter coercion!!!
That is, by having booths in a central, guarded, public area - such that one, and only one, person may enter the booth - no one can put a gun to your head (literally or figuratively) and tell you how to vote, to further their (or the group they represent) agenda.
This is the current problem with absentee ballots - there is no real way of knowing that the vote on an absentee ballot wasn't coerced in some manner. Currently, we have a low percentage of absentee ballots, so we just shrug our shoulders and move on. However, with internet voting from the home or elsewhere, we would have, in effect, a HUGE percentage of "absentee ballots" that could be coerced ("Want your check/job this week, Johnson? Go into that room and vote - ahem - properly...").
It isn't about security, it is about voter coercion.
However, I do believe that the kiosks should contain computers running voting software - such software could show the candidate, a synopsis of what they are about (maybe with links to outside info - allowing the user to come up to speed on the candidate), and other info - with a set of buttons on the side (like an ATM) that say "Vote", "Next Candidate", "Previous Candidate" - maybe some arrow keys. Have synthesized audio with headphones (or make the booth soundproof) to aid the blind (along with braille on the buttons).
Such software would need to be simple and robust, so as not to crash - don't use touch screens, because they aren't as intuitive, and are useless (or near useless, I would suppose) to the blind. The software could report the votes back to a tabulating center for final count, etc via the internet - using a highly secure encrypted system - or maybe they should just all go back to the center over a leased line system, or maybe back to an armoured truck that uplinks the data via satellite.
Finally, allow a week or so for voting - so everyone can vote, and have the voting booth hours be flexible - heck, make the voting booths mobile or something, like they have mobile ATMS, etc.
All of this could be done today, and relatively cheaply. It isn't that hard...
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
In Utah each polling place has voting judges from each (major) party. This does tend to reduce fraud. It should be noted that Iron County Utah uses punch card ballots, and they had no trouble with them in the last election.
Best Slashdot Co
What is rather clear is that you cannot deploy a voting system, nor any paiement or security system for that matter, in the current environment. To deploy such systems, you need secure platforms. I mean really secure. So, naturally, Windows won't do. And even the Unices, will are probably much better security wise, are most likely not secure enough in practice.
What could be done nowadays, however, is a system using smartcard, or a similar hardware system.
In some European countries (and most notably France), smartcards are already being used, and smartcard readers that you can plug in your PC are starting to be available.
A generalisation of such a system could allow, among other things, a rather secure voting system. Of course, if would make it a bit easier to buy votes and control what people do, but there is not so much that can be done about this...
Maybe you receive an abridged version of the world news over there in Finland, but there are a whole helluva lot of people who think there's something wrong with it. And, frankly, comparing anything to its Finnish equivalent is unlikely to make much of an impression. :)
I'm afraid someone's going to steal my money, so I'm going to throw it all out the window.
It's not just the act of voting, it's those around the voter. Some employers have video cameras to watch the workers and could conceivibly see their employees votes. More needs to be done in the voter privacy area beyond sending things encrytped. This is for two reasons - one, people who don't want their vote linked to them and two, people could create proof of a vote and have a greater ability to sell their vote.
Then again, I'm probably just a paranoid freak...
Wheeeee
However, if we (as the people) want to have a easy channel to voice our opinions more or less constantly about the various policy proposals, then we could use the internet voting systems as described here. These would act as official opinion polls, not binding decision making mechanisms. Advisory, that is, so the vote buying/tampering/whatever would not be that tempting.
In this scheme the sample would be very large, and calculations to neutralize the effects of various usage patterns could be easily made. Oh why? Well, this kind of system would have to be connected to the official identity database which in turn could be connected to the tax agency's databases. So the information would be as accurate as it can be.
So how's that - the perfect poll democracy?
-miKa-
Such a system makes much more sense to me as it would unboubtedly be far cheaper to implement than somehow trying to get people through the process of voting on a computer. It's more inclusive, too, because it's a simple matter of listening to a prompt and pressing a button, so even the densest of the populace are likely to be able to handle it - I'm sure there's people who don't vote because they're too embarrassed to admit they can't read the ballot paper (I could make a wisecrack about American literacy rates here, but I won't). They even set up the trial here so that you could choose to hear instructions in minority languages such as Urdu and Punjabi.
Seems like a far better solution to me.
The CalTech-MIT report lays out a generic "modular voting architecture" called AMVA. In the description of it, the report's authors refer to it as "a new framework". After reading the AMVA section of the report, I realized that the AMVA is almost an exact duplicate of a voting system design I posted online three and a half months ago. I wrote out more details on this here.
nobody knows whether you blinked. :P
First and least, these orgs are not without their conflicts of interest. They are saying 'companies should not develop the technology to do e-voting, we need to study the probelm more. send money'.
More importantly, there is more than one way of doing things. Just because you throw 'network' into the equation doesn't mean it has to be a connection to a IIS 3.0 box w/ 56bit free for b*tt-wiping certs. It could just as easily be used to create a more decentralized voting system. Instead of picking one school in the district and making everyone go there, they can set several places to vote: schools, libraries, courthouses, whatever..
I would also suggest that it would be best in the long run (that is to make the long run shorter) if these systems were tested in the real world. These trials don't need to be binding and they don't even have to be done on elections of widespread importance. Even better, you can set some up in malls (or where ever kids hang out these days) and invite everyone to try to beat the system.
I wish I hadn't started to read that report. I don't have the time to read it all before going to work and there are so many maddening things about it. They try to poke holes in 'net voting' while pointing out that we can't even get the physical world right, but the method they used to get at these numbers make you wonder. For example, to talk about uncounted votes, they say that 2% of votes in 2000 did not count towards a presidential vote. Then they estimate that only 25% of that total did not intend to vote.. ? Then they mention that 5% did not record a senate or gubernatorial vote and try to blame most of this on disenfranchisement. Wouldn't you think that if there were problems w/ the voting machines, that these numbers would be more equal? Or maybe it just means we don't give a sh!t.
Hey anarchists, here is a way to screw w/ em.. Vote, but don't vote for anyone!!!
Millions of votes are 'lost' across the country, and some monkeys actually think that a couple hunderd screwed up votes in Flordia was the difference in who became president.
We have NO FUCKING CLUE who actually won, without manually recounting every single freaking vote in the country.
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
So that you don't have people moaning and bitching about a government when they haven't exercised their right/lived up to their obligation, to have a bit of a say.
When I riot, I like to know that I warned them!
Buckets,
pompomtom
Buckets,
pompomtom
"There's an exception to every rule. Except for some rules"
While there would obviously be a higher cost, having more than one network that you'd swipe your card through would be a fairly simple validation; have democrats run one and republicans run another. On the other hand, you'd perhaps need an odd number in case of ties, so have independents run a third.
Would this be too expensive?
Copyrights, Patents, Trademarks: temporary loans from the Public Domain, not real property ("intellectual" or otherwise)
Seriously, if you don't have the ambition to go out and vote, then you don't get a vote. There seems to be a huge push on Slashdot (and everywhere else) to increase voter turnout. Why? Because your high school civics teacher clicked his tongue at low voter turnout and told you it was a "moral obligation" to do your "civic duty"?
I'm all for increasing accuracy, but everybody here is really gung-ho on voting over the Internet someday. Do we really want our president selected by people who can't be troubled to go get off the couch? By people who don't know any more about the candidates than what they saw on a couple TV ads? By people who are just "too busy" to muster up more than a few clicks of their index finger? If casting your vote is not a high enough priority to squeeze in a 30-minute errand on Election Day, then so be it.
I'm not trying to be elitist, it just seems like there's very little stopping people who want to vote from voting under the current system. Heck, I don't even like the idea of encouraging people to vote because they're "supposed to." I tend to think somebody voting based on peer pressure is worse than not voting, especially if they haven't educated themselves about the candidates and issues. A lot of people went to a lot of trouble (oh, and died) so you could vote. I have no patience for people who think our current system is too much effort.
I don't see low voter turnout as a problem. In fact, in a certain selfish sense, I like it because it makes my vote that much more valuable. Voting is a right that everyone should be more than welcome to not exercise.
</RANT>
Are you sure you want to vote for [candidate name]?
You chose to vote for [candidate name]. Are you sure you want to cast this vote?
Your vote is about to be cast for [candidate name]. Please click OK to continue.
etc.
The process of voting needs to be made much much simpler and clearer, people need to be able to review their choice before they cast it, and they need to have an equally simple alternative in the real world. Try beta testing any new system on a bunch five-year-olds and you'll see just how many ways something you thought was simple can be done wrong.
And then there's all the arguments about security, skewed distribution of PC access, etc. etc.
Of course hand counting each vote costs tax money that, some might argue, would be better spent on other projects such as national defense or subsidies to their favorite industry.
The main attraction about voting using computers is that it provides a very quick way to count votes. So why don't they just use custom made computers with custom made software which are only network locally in the voting stations? This way each voting station knows the total number of votes at any point in time and can send it up the line by whatever means seems necessary.
And since electronics can be so unreliable, just print a voting slip which can be processed later in the same way as they are these days in the eventuallity in which there are doubts about the validity of the vote.
It's relative. The US losing a small country is like a small country losing a medium sized city. In this case, 4% of 5 million is 200,000. I wouldn't be surprised if Finland lost that many votes. If they lost *significantly* less than perhaps there is a model to which we should look. OTOH, perhaps we should do a world-wide survey and see who is doing best in that regard, and emulate them if possible.
As for nobody thinking it's wrong, that's simply not true. It was all you heard about until the matter was finally settled. We just didn't have any riots or anything like that. That, I believe, is one of the great strengths of this country. People are too busy working to take time off and riot. "Hey, are you going to the demonstration? No. I have to double-check the Smith account."
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
What, me worry?
just have paper ballots, they work fine. Or mechanical voting machines (we have them in New York, and maybe they haven't been manufactured in 50 years, but the plans have to be around). Then make it standard for the whole country. I swear, some people seem to experience something akin to physical pain when they contemplate NOT linking something in our society to the internet.
--
Several states had higher rates of disregarded votes than Florida. In particular, New York and Illinois had about twice as much, percentage-wise. What happened in Florida was indicative of what happened many other places in the country; it just got the publicity because it was the pivotal state in that close election.
From the fast facts in post #15, there are 150 million voter registrations in the US. Secondly, only half of those people voted, so suddenly that 5 million comes out of 75 million. That's 6.67%.
--
In spite of the suggestions and all the tests that I have made, I have not cavato a spider from the hole.
Disenfranchising stupid and lazy people would be ok, but (just to pick a random example) disenfranchising stupid and lazy Democrats without disenfranchising stupid and lazy Republicans is a very effective way to steal an election -- deliberately or not.
1. Get everyone in the United States into a BIIIIIIG room.
2. Everyone who wants to vote for one guy, they get on THIS side.
3. Everyone who wants to vote for the other guy, they get on THAT side.
4. A trap door opens up and drops everyone who voted for the other guy into a big-ass pit fulla scorpions 'n tigers 'n lizards 'n crocodiles.
5. Now everyone in the USA votes exactly the same. Yay!
Problem solved.
Honorary Member of Jackie Chan's Kung Fu Process Servers
Ah yes, and we can finally have a political system free of the friction of individual voters. Let's look forward to the day when everyone is coerced into signing over their voting rights in exchange for a job, debt relief, an education, or a year's supply of big macs.
The Libertarians would say any contract between willing parties in a free market is fair, but in the US the market isn't all that free - banks, insurance companies, etc. all hold far more cards than you and I do, and they all dictate pretty much the same terms. And we all have to swallow their terms or else go live in a shack in the woods and type a manifesto.
So I don't have much hope that a country where our votes are for sale will preserve the few shreds of democracy it has left.
-- Sigs are for losers
1. people write numbers next to names
UK's even simpler - tick or cross in a box next to a name. Of course that's because we have First Past the Post rather than Proportional Representation. Which may be a worse or better system depending on your point of view.
There are lots of arguments against using computers, or other technology for that matter, for voting. I agree with pretty much all of it, but I also think that a lot of people overlook one of the very important reasons that ticking a ballot is better than using computers.
To put it simply, everyone can understand the process - barring the very challenged. The process of indicating a candidate on paper, putting it in a box and having it counted by people reading it is an almost 100% manual process. Virtually anyone can understand it, and therefore trust it based on their own judgement.
Compare this with a computer voting system, or even a mechanical voting system. Show even a simple computer program to the masses and 99%+ of the general population won't understand it. Up this exponentially for something based on a distributed system.
Nearly everyone has to rely on and trust a minority of the population to verify that their vote is actually being recorded correctly. Even for those who understand it, actually formerly proving that it works is one total bastard of a job. Then there's verifying the proof over and over, verifying the compilers, making sure the hardware is 100% accurate, and there's always room for lawsuits when there's big corporate money sponsoring government involved.
Alongside arguments of people having guns stuck to their heads in secret and so on, this is one of the big reasons that I think I'll always support cumpulsory anonymous polling booths run in a very manual, and very understandable way.
In my experience to date, a lot of the people who want net voting are people who don't have a clue about the risks or problems involved with the software development process, and are simply more interested in convenience. It makes sense for things like internal corporation votes, but general public elections shouldn't change, IMHO.
===
I agree with your first reason, privacy has always been of top importance for these matters, but #2 ? I don't know, but how much could a lowly citizen vote be worth these days when there are a bazillion other rednecks all voting at random ? The real corruption and vote cheating lies with organised crime and their many senate friends. Always has been, always will be. They don't need a webcam to prove their vote.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
What do you mean by "lost"? Are you talking about votes that the machines couldn't count?
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
Yes kids, remember in America you can only sell your vote if you are already an elected representative, preferably in Congress.
How many have used the self-serv checkout at Meijer?
I use the self-serve check-out almost every time I buy something from Meijer. Personally, I find it very easy to use, intuitive and conveniant. However, almost every time I have used the self-serve check-out, there has been another customer who is hopelessly confused.
I think the issue here (and it applies to voting machines as well) is that there is a large segment of the US population which has never used a computer. The reason why people have a problem with this type of system is that many elements of even the most simple user interface don't necessarily look like their real-world counterparts. Most computer users recognize a beveled regtangle as a button which can be somehow actuated to perform a task. Except on computer style keyboards, how often have you seen a mechanical button that looks like a computer UI button? If nobody told you, would you (honestly) know that a beveled rectange would perform some action if pushed? Probably not.
Just because it comes naturally to us does not meant it will to the entire population.
Come test your mettle in the world of Alter Aeon!
Here is my idea:
Each voting booth has a LCD touch-screen in it. There is a list of names for the specific office (also listed on the screen in bold letters.)
When you touch the name, it highlights in large red letters. There are only two other buttons on the page, back and forward. Thus making it very simple to use.
Each of these booths are connected to a printer, or series of printers. These printers spit out square pieces of paper, with what appear to be random clouds of dots. But these are actually a form of "barcode" that indicate what choices were made. These papers can be fed into reading machines for the final vote.
This system preserves anonymity, and yet makes it much harder to counterfeit votes, at least in any new ways.
The problem with Internet voting is that how could you tell if someone hacked the system and were entering invalid votes? How would you do a recount? It adds a very large element where corporate or government interests can really screw over the numbers.... or even a disgruntled programmer or system operator.
-- russ
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
It's now illegal to ask for identification when someone votes. Seriously. Plus, you get people who are too damned lazy to send in a little form on their own, then registering to vote when the register their car, and you have gobs and gobs of registered voters that have no intention of voting. Can you say VOTER FRAUD? I knew you could, boys and girls.
+5:offtopic,but anti-American
I think that net voting, with the current levels of technology, is a bad thing. Look at how easy it is to compromise 80% of the computers in the world! They can be either a)knocked off the net, b) hacked and forced to send back bad data, or c) hacked and used for an attack, all easily enough that it's simply a bad idea. If these researchers think that it's a bad idea, I'm all for their recommendation of not doing it.
I can just see it now...
US Government: "We need an online voting system"
Microsoft hands government a shrink-wrapped copy of Windows XP Server and IIS, Government hands Microsoft a huge check
Microsoft: "Here you go, if there are any bugs or exploits, look for the next release..."
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
cmclean
"Any similarity between the hooting of a million eager monkeys and Slashdot is purely coincidental." -THEFLASHMAN
When you register to vote in the UK, you are required to prove your identity using a passport/photo-id drivers license[1], and to prove your address by means of utility bills or tax documents.
Although PKI online is a step toward proof of ownership, and although electronic signatures are now considered legal in the UK (and EU??), I can still create a PGP key for an email address that I made up on @yahoo, @aol etc. etc.
I can then get my communist friends to sign my fake key, making it look as if I am really who I say I am. It's a question of trust.
So, what should we do to ensure that PKI is as trustable as Real Life(TM)?
Maybe we should ask the governement to get an encryption key, and we can get them to sign ours, after we have gone through the standard ID check, then votes could be accepted only from those who have signed with a key which is counter-signed by the government?, maybe the electoral roll could include an e-mail address to which the government sends an e-mail, and only accepts resposes from registered addresses (but how easy is it to fake email headers ;-).
That's just my immediate thoughts, any ideas?
cmclean
[1] Note to non UKians, photo's on drivers licenses are a new thing over here[2]
[2] And they suck IMNSHO
"Any similarity between the hooting of a million eager monkeys and Slashdot is purely coincidental." -THEFLASHMAN
How many people have figured out the ATM machines? How many have used the self-serv checkout at Meijer?
Use the pen or mouse to check the correct boxes (or a touch screen) on an old x86 workstation (running X?). Ballots can then be enlarged for the viewing impaired so that they can be double checked before submitting.
The terminal then prints out (or punches.. HEY a use for all the old punchcard machines!!!) a ballot. When the ballot is turned in, the tally is counted from the computer and from the machine. That way, we have a backup/physical method to re-count if necessary.
The cool thing though, would be that you could vote from any precinct and simply log into yours. (The physical ballot would have the appropriate information printed on it).
Voting should not be allowed from home. There is too much room for error at this time.
That's what anonymous digital "cash" is for. The anti-double-spending mechanisms in digital cash systems would be perfect for voting. Just get a token at your neighborhood DOT or library or something, and vote with it. Try to double-vote, and you give away your identity.
A little. It sounds exactly like the problems in a digital cash system. Try this page, especially the section on blind signatures and double spending.
Under a system like this, it would be possible to issue a blind-signed token to everyone who wants to vote. You provide ID and a blinded token, and the government verifies the ID and signs the token. You get it back and unblind it, and you now have a provably valid token, even though nobody but you knows what you originally sent to the gov't. Then, you take it to a polling place and vote with it. Trying to vote with the same token twice is exactly the same as trying to double-spend a digital cash token - you have a 1 in 2^k (I think) chance of it working, where k is the "security parameter" discussed by Chaum in his paper.
I just posted this in response to somebody else, but a while ago my friend pointed me to this page on digital cash systems that seem to describe and solve exactly the problems you state. If the government provided a public list of tokens used to vote, anyone could verify that the total is correct, and any individual could verify that his or her token is in the list, although nobody can match any token but his own to anybody else. It seems to me like a system like this could work really well.
The simple fact of the matter is that electronic voting by itself cannot possibly ensure integrity (assuming we are to maintain a secret ballot). That is especially true for online voting over the internet, but it is true even for precinct-based electronic voting. However, a combination of electronic AND paper voting can guarantee integrity if done right. Please see Ensuring the Integrity of Electronic Voting for the details.
I watch Brit Hume on Fox News
This is exactly what I had been thinking! There should be enough friction against voting that those who don't care enough to get off their butts and go somewhere to vote don't. I shudder to envision the republic when couch potatoes can vote from their "convergence" devices: Ellen Degeneres for President! Never mind the implications of having media companies own the transport for votes.
Another proud carrier of the $rtbl flag
The usual good source of thoughful and insightful comments, is RISKS / comp.risks, and in particular Vol 21 Issue 14.
because we don't like the nominees :)
.kb
Two Wrongs Don't Make A Right-- But They Make Me Feel A Whole Lot Better
Well, true in fact, however, net voting could cut down on some of the lines at your "voting center."
.kb
Two Wrongs Don't Make A Right-- But They Make Me Feel A Whole Lot Better
True, but also the politicians don't want to have to obey the population. As it currently stands, the govt can freely ignore the wants and desires of the people and only fear not getting relelected the next term.
Direct Democracy would allow the people to immediately see their wishes being ignored, and hence it will never be allowed.
I'm not too lazy, I simply disagree with the philosophy, processes and people currently involved in the 'democratic' system.
As someone put earlier - Vote Random!
So why should it be illegal to sell your vote?
It's just the difference between voting for someone who only _promises_ to give you more money and voting for someone who _does_ give you money.
WTF?!?! I live in __________ (non-US country), where the voting is ALL done by _____________ (either "PAPER" or "PAPYRUS"), where we put ___________ (a mark, usually an "X") beside a ___________ (a shape). It's __________ (adjective), and way better than ANY method you ___________ (adjective) capitalists could come up with!! Oh yeah, we count all the ballots by ___________ (part of the human anatomy) with a ___________ (magnifying device). And we always recount our ballots _____ (integer, from 3 to 50) times. Our population is ONLY _____ (integer, from 2 to 10) times smaller than yours, and we ALWAYS elect our __________ (head of something) without any confusion!!!!
geez.
ZERO
...at www.amihotornot.com...
---- Just another spud server.
At my school we used netvoting in the student council elections. It worked like this:
1. We logged on with our "Kennitala", this countries equivelant of a SSN, and recieved a password.
2. Logged on again, using our password (not very well written =) and were provided with an input form over SSL.
3. After typing out the form and submitting, our SSN/password could only be used to view statistics.
It was pretty good, but the people who wrote the code weren't very good at it, and the whole idea of the system suffered. Let real programmers create something simelar, and you've got my vote!
Today will be a good case in point. Steve Jobs is going to speak to the faithful at MacWorld. It's going to be broadcast online and its going to be reported on by the major Macintosh news sites. This event is interesting to a much smaller cross section of the population than a presidential election. Despite this the sites will slow to a crawl or be unreachable.
In an election there's a fractal like complexity to the breakdown of election results. On a country wide level you pick a particular party, the party from which the president comes. Going down to the next level you see individual states, states who as a whole agreed on which party to elect. Looking at things a bit closer you see counties within the state, and precincts within the counties. Below this you're talking about neighbourhoods.
Often the outcome of the election is known in advance for certain states, for certain counties, for certain precincts and certain neighbourhoods. Often its demarcated by the overall wealth of the neighbourhood or ethnic population.
With the present network infrastructure it would be fairly easy to target particular neighbourhoods and stop them from voting, at least if they intended to do so online. A highly targetted denial of service attack could easily swing a precinct.
Oddly enough this could work against the more affluent neighbourhoods. The poor neighbourhoods will have a much smaller percentage of homes who own a combination of computers and internet access. Rich neighbourhoods will have a higher percentage. Target the local ISP's, or in the case of technologies like cablemodems, the local routers near the neighbourhood and you prevent a segment of the population from voting in the manner they intended.
There isn't a lot of redundancy at the local level to guard against targetted network attacks. Sure, the voting system could be distributed ala akamai, but that doesn't help if voters are prevented from reaching it.
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
As a Brazilian citizen, I don't feel very comfortable to tell you how votings should be conducted in your own country, but I'd like to mention that electronic voting is already a reality here. Votes are collected by means of dedicated microcomputers.
There is a simulation available here. You can get more information on Brazilian voting system at TSE (pages are in Portuguese).
--- Signature? You must be kidding!
This is so sicking it could make someone vomit. It seems like someone seemed to forget that if your too dam lazy to walk a few blocks or drive 15 min to a place (school, community center, ect) to vote then you do not deserve the right of voting. All it takes is a few min to wait on the line and mailing in a dam simple form a few weeks or months before you vote and your done.
"democracy" So you think majority rule over a minority is great? I think it blows ass thank god I live in a republic.
The problems in Florida were not an issue of AVAILABLE technology - we mostly use a far from state-of-the-art optical ballot reader in MN that immediately registers an improperly filled out ballot, and they work just fine. Floridians have simply chosen not to pony up the relatively miniscule amounts necessary to upgrade to a decent system. Funny how a lot of governments don't assign much priority to making sure the will of the citizens are properly registered, ain't it?
The other problem of Florida is that our beloved 2-party system offered the nation such boring, lame, uninspiring candidates that the race was nearly a dead heat. Sometimes it's hard to choose the lesser of such luke-warm evils. From a metrics point of view, if you're dealing with a big enough sample there are going to be some errors. No matter how good the system for counting, there is the possibility of a statistical tie, which is more or less what happened in Florida. So these comments about "what if MY vote wasn't counted? The Horror!" are pointless. Democracy is never going to work that way. When you're performing a huge number of "measurements," well, some of them have got to be part of the error. With a decent counting system (i.e. one not based on 19th century loom technology) the factor of error will be small, will generally cancel, and the problem is essentially solved. It just costs a tiny little bit of money, say the cost of not designing a faulty helicopter that crashes and kills people. Priorities.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
Relax, I'm just yanking your chain. The US has the most complacent, apathetic electorate of any major democracy and it's a disgrace as far as I'm concerned.
But what the hell're you going to do? You can't FORCE people to vote... Oh, wait a minute. Compulsory voting? I honestly hadn't heard of that one before, so thanks - it's always nice to learn something new. Answer an honest question - it's nice that 90% of your eligible population vote and all, but does it not strike you as ironic that you are compelled by law to participate in the democratic process?
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
Unless I'm totally off base, Australia's population is pushing 20 million. The United States population is pushing 300 million. That's 15X larger, not 3-5 as this poster states. So I'm afraid I can't accept this person's advice on the subject of counting.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
Ok, despite the unfairness of Internet voting today (intellectual voters would be favoured because of easier access to computers) there seems to be another problem with it:
...
Today legislature for a given government lasts about 4 years (in average). After massive persuasion just before the elections, government can do more or less what theyre supposed to do in this period: foster their lobbies.
And now imagine a prospering Internet-voting infrastucture. Do you think it will only be used every four-years? No! Instead it will be used more and more for plebiscites, monthly, weekly even daily polls. If legislation gets bound tighter to these poll-results we have the purest form of direct democracy, in which political leaders are forced to react.
Do you think that this is in the interest of those leaders? Judge yourself
Actually, there is one even simpler voting system: You get several piggy-banks with good locks, and chain them down inside the voting booth. You put a picture of a candidate on each piggy-bank. You give each voter one token.
1. Go into a booth with a computer, printer, and paper shredder. On the computer, you make your choices, it verifies that you didn't vote too many times for one office, then it prints out a Scantron form. Check it, fill in any write-in names, and turn it in. Scanning is over 99% accurate under these circumstances -- and if the election comes in within the error margin of the scanners, they can hand-count scanner forms as easily as other paper ballots, and much better than punch cards. The computers will have earphones for use by the blind. If it's considered desirable, they could have pictures of the candidates for the illiterate.
2. For the techno-phobic, there are fill-in-the-box scanner forms and #2 pencils. They may have more spoiled ballots due to voting for two presidents, etc., but I don't see anywhere in the Constitution that guarantees equal rights to morons who can't count to two. (Of course, I would like to see far fewer things on the ballot like "Trustees of Michigan State University. Pick 5 out of 14" Who are these people and why in heck are we voting for them anyhow?)
Let's definitely NOT have federally-specified voting systems. If we were to have a single voting system across the country, first think of the massive bribery, I mean campaign contributions, as Congress gets to pick the winner in the marketplace, and then think of the possibilities for cracking... Set some minimum standards for accuracy and security, resolving voter registration problems, getting everyone who's standing in line through before you close, and let the states and localities pick a system that meets the requirements. E.g., there's no reason to make a village with 500 people buy a fancy system designed for cities of millions, hand-counting will do quite well. I would consider federally mandated opening and closing times, the same across the nation, and a ban on news media trying to guess the winner before the polls close.
And finally, Americans should GROW UP. You don't have a right to know who the winner is before going to bed on election day. If it takes a few of weeks for a sufficiently accurate count, quit whining and be glad you don't live in 1820 when the results had to come in by horseback!
4-6 million votes lost! This means something like 3 percent (I guess) of the votes. I'm worried about this. Narrow-margin elections might be influenced by any bias in the losing votes, and in some cases, results are not representing the majority of the voters. Technical solutions make a bias in the voting system, making voting and registration easier for the more techical people. So, people with less techological skills (some racial minorities, the old and the disabled) are having even less say in the vote. The article points out that complex equipment increases the failure rate of voting, i.e. the bias, and thus decreases the credibility of US democracy.
Now, if the equipment gets more complicated, (adding internet voting) does this decrease the bias or the failure rate? I doubt it. Why do you have to use a machine for voting? The simplest and most fail-safe voting system I've heard of is almost completely fail-safe: You use a pen to write a number inside a circle in the ballot. Pens and candidate lists are in the polling-booth. If you make a mistake, you rip the ballot and return the pieces, and get a new one.
The weak point of this is that in poorer countries the voters do not know how to read/write, but this shouldn't be a problem in the US. A machine can't read all ballots if this is applied, but considering the problems in Florida, machines should not read the vote.
By that mode of thinking, what about people (like myself) who don't have a car, yet are forced to vote at a location well off of any major public transit route? What about disabled people? It's certainly no harder to hit the local internet cafe.
However, there are posters around for the favorite candidate of X's CEO and managers. The bosses clearly make it known who their favorite is. Do we have a fair election here?
I don't see how this would influence voters any more than our current system of 24 hour lies (err.. I mean endorsements and ads for candidates), or the incredible media bias on TV, in newspapers, on the radio....
Another common knock against electronic voting is that someone could radically alter the outcome of an election. I guess some people don't realize that votes that are counted by hand tend to be counted by people, people who tend to have opinions, just like all the evil l33t h4x0rz our there :) (Yes, I'm aware that there are strict controls on a hand count, but when professional athletes making millions are still tempted to throw matches for money, I can't imagine some civil servants making $20,000 a year being all that hard to persuade en masse).
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Yeah, living in China must be a real treat. Must be even better to be in the 'minority'.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Security isn't just tampering with your vote. Votes can be encrypted easily and reliably. The problem is someone casting multiple votes. It is virtually impossible to be sure that the vote actually came from who sent it.
1. people write numbers next to names
2. people read all votes by hand
3. the result is accurate, and all formal votes are counted....
why is it neccessary for automation? theres only 3-5 times the population, so why not have 3-5 times the vote counters?
Can anyone tell me why the US voting results is partisan?
it only creates problems (see Florida, Nov2000) ;p
To do so electronicly requires some clever combination of traceability with non-traceability. Someone need to invent a method, no less remarkable than public key encryption, that allows a voter to trace that his vote is counted as it should be, to allow officials to trace that each vote did come from a voter, and that each voter only voted once, but does not allow anybody to match a voter with a vote.
Until this happens, electronic voting is not feasible.
Er... you do realize, do you not, that the U.S.A. is also a republic? A republic in which our representatives are democratically elected, but a republic nonetheless.
...No, come to think of it, you probably didn't realize that, considering the appalling lack of decent civics education in the schools these days.
"Pure Democracy" is four wolves and one sheep voting on what's for dinner.
"Pure Democracy" is two men and one woman voting on whether it's OK for the men to tie the woman down and have their way with her.
"Pure Democracy" is a population consisting of 80% whites and 20% blacks voting on whether it's OK to keep blacks as slaves.
In other words, "Pure Democracy" is mob rule, the law of the jungle, and I'd just as soon live in our representative republic, thankyouverymuch.
that we should stop the /. polls? maybe we should just vote for jelly-doughnuts....
Another fucking way for [us] educated white guys to vote. Just what we need!
Fight for your right to read books!
Just think of all the new and interresting ways we could tamper with politics. Give us Internet voting, and a couple of kids with nogthing else to do will give us Dan Quayle for president.
Nothing new, then? We manage very well to screw up elections anyway. The Florida Ballot Ballet wasnt the only one in the world. Merely one of the biggest. Lets make sure the analog voting works first. Then we can get all technical...and stuff.
...um...like...a sig...
...online voting could usher in a new era of pure democracy. In the past this wasn't really feasible, but if everyone were able to vote and have their votes tallied instantly, then think of the possibilities. Any time an issue came up, a vote could be organized, and everyone could vote from home. If you didn't have a computer at home, then you could head to the library and do it.
I think that online voting could change society in a lot of ways. I doubt it would ever be secure--even today's votes aren't free from people that dabble with the results. And I must say that the idea of a pure democracy is indeed very interesting, yet very frightening at the same time. It's true that the unwashed masses sometimes do not know what is best.
In Palm Beach, a "decade" of further research either works out to 34 years, or yesterday, depending on how many of the MIT computer scientests were named "Chad".
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
I don't see what the problem is. Just XOR all the votes with the string "encrypted" and send them in.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
I am sorry but this comment just made me laugh. Regardless of how insignificant it may seem to some of us proud Americans, this post DEFINITELY makes good sense. I know it made me think about things in a different light.
KARMA TAG! You're it.
Nice to have a proof of vote. - That means you can get busted for selling your vote.
- Which I do hope is very illegal, even in the US.
Of course, if those promises were actually kept, then the election process would be less of a farce than it is today.
It's going to be expensive to hook up all the cemetaries ...
Hey stop the press for a second, ok.
I live in Finland, a country whose entire population is about 5 million people. The US lost more votes than there are voters in my country. And noboy thinks there is anything wrong with that?
The USA, a country where about 50% of the people vote and they loose 4-6 million votes, a small countrys worth.
And nobody even blinks. You just talk about the security in voting via the net. Now how fucked up is that?
fish.
In Denmark we write (with a pencil) a mark next to the names on a list. Then all the lists are counted by hand. It works! And we always recount the lists.
I guess all systems (including the Danish) have errors. The best way would be to determine what the uncertainty of the system is statistically. Then we could determine how many percent you should win with compared to the opponent in order to be scientifically sure of the outcome - otherwise run the election again. Fair and simple.
This would work for any type of system. Internet, punch cards, lists, etc...
Of cause you could end up in a situation where you would have to continuously run the election, as the margin never became significant enough. But as the elections progress the total amount of votes would probably cause the significance to increase.
If the statistics expect 4-6 million lost votes in the presidential election, then you can calculate the significance of the election to determine (lets say) a 95% sure outcome.
Saggi
-:) Oh no - not again.
www.rednebula.com
Having followed this working group and report with some interest (familiar with the MIT side faculty involved), I find it extremely faulty. They chose to focus on something that truly has very little to do with the problems they cite. Voting irregularies in the US, in general, have very little to do with the voting technologies themselves. Highly accurate and (long term) inexpensive technologies (ie, optical scanners) have been available for 20+ years. However, these technologies are not distributed equally. Further, the report cites that in fact 3 million (at least half) of the missing votes were due to problems in registration or on election day (ie, turned away at the polls). Florida had a fairly technologically advanced system of laptops and a centralized comptuer database in place. However, these resources were again not distributed equally. In fact, in both cases, these problems were concentrated in areas of high concentrations of people of color, people or low income and immigrants. This MIT/CalTech report had no information that voting rights advocates having been shouting for at least three decades. For a complete look at what made up the problems in Florida, see this report from the United States Commission on Civil Rights. I would of course add that any state, were its election procedures put under such intense scrutiny as Florida, would have such irregularies come up.
I can't remember the source, I'll keep looking for it, but I thought this was a problem once posed in theoretical computer science, and as I remembered, the answer (and I belief with proof) was that you could not have, simultaneously, but complete anonymity (ie, it can never be revealed how an individual voted) and complete authenticity (security, being sure no one is voting twice, fraudulently, etc..) Anyone else familiar with this problem?