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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."
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.
3) The fact that it's the single most powerful political post an individual can hold, and that losers very rarely get a second shot at it, is a pretty powerful incentive to hang on and fight.
4) The fact that the people directly in charge of the vote counts were deeply involved in the campaign for one side.
5) The politicised nature of both the state and federal judiciary (I'm not so naive to imagine that judges in other countries don't have political views, but it is not so nearly as blatantly and publically political as in the US) made any decision they made contentious.
6) And, overall, the vote was really, really close - if a parliamentary election was that close in Britain or Australia the result would take almost as long to occur and perhaps result in a hung parliament and long periods of negotiations with the one or two whacked-out independents that get elected each time around.
Go you big red fire engine!
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Don't confuse technology issues with existing voting problems.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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E_NOSIG
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.
And in Australia (probably elsewhere too) there are always a couple of scrutineers watching over the shoulder of the counter.
Everywhere except the US. Since it's rather hard from scrutineers to check a machine... Also IIRC they did some of the Florida recounts in secret.
I'm not sure, but I suspect that the pencil is used to mark the paper so that if someone does mess up they can easily alter it (it's difficult to un-punch a hole).
Except that it's trivial to get a replacement ballot paper. Pencils most likely a combination of tradition and less risk of their failing to work or ink ending up anywhere it shouldn't.
Also, we only have to vote for one thing at a time (Parliment, European Parliment, etc.) - I understand that you USians were voting for a whole bunch of stuff all at the same time (Party, Judges etc.), or was that just FL?
It's not uncommon for several elections to be held together, the usual way of doing this is to use multiple distinctive ballot papers.
Rather than the US method which appears to have each polling district make up their own design, including composite ballots.
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...
Us over here in the UK cannot understand how the US system can be so broken.
I should point out that much of the perceived bizarreness in the US was related to:
1) A somewhat loopy state which did not have good hand-count procedures in place.
2) The teams of two utterly ruthless, completely unscrupulous human beings (OK. I'm not sure if Gore REALLY passes the human test, but I have to give him the benefit of the doubt) fanning the flames of this system.
Here in Washington State, we had an extremely close Senate race which forced a full recount (by law, not by lawsuit). Washington has all the issues Florida has: poor districts with lousy voting equipment, military personell sending in absentee ballots, etc. (admittedly, we don't go out much for vote-buying, and there aren't enough blacks outside Seattle to make it worthwhile to intimidate people in to not voting).
There was also a well-established procedure in place to handle all of these cases.
It took two weeks for all the absentee ballots to be considered "in", and a few days to handle a full recount of votes.
It was as boring as watching paint dry. The process merited less than two column-inches in the newspaper every day and a total of 40 seconds of coverage of the entire process on NPR.
j.
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
And in Australia (probably elsewhere too) there are always a couple of scrutineers watching over the shoulder of the counter.
bakes
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Ho! Haha! Guard! Turn! Parry! Dodge! Spin! Ha! Thrust!
I agree that maybe a more permanent mark might be a good idea, but it seems to work anyway. The benefit is that it's so simple (put an X in a box next to the name/party that you want to vote for) that you'd have to be stupendously stupid to get it wrong and it thus eliminates any of the problems seem in Florida except voter apathy (turn-out was very low in our last election too). I'm not sure, but I suspect that the pencil is used to mark the paper so that if someone does mess up they can easily alter it (it's difficult to un-punch a hole).
Also, we only have to vote for one thing at a time (Parliment, European Parliment, etc.) - I understand that you USians were voting for a whole bunch of stuff all at the same time (Party, Judges etc.), or was that just FL?
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.
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.
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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.
So remove people from the equation. Machines and computers don't have political affiliations.
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%.
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In spite of the suggestions and all the tests that I have made, I have not cavato a spider from the hole.
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.
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And a hard copy for you and for the voting office gets printed out, if validation is needed for later...
A hardcopy for the voting office is a good idea, but you really don't want one for yourself. If there's a way you can prove who you voted for, then there's a way someone can coerce your vote. It's a non-obvious but very important requirement of any good voting system that the voters not be able to prove who they voted for. Maybe some cryptographic verification that requires the assistance of a public voting official would be okay... as long as that official isn't crooked.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
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.
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
The usual good source of thoughful and insightful comments, is RISKS / comp.risks, and in particular Vol 21 Issue 14.
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
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!
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
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.
IIRC they did some of the Florida recounts in secret. Not that I heard of. In one place (Miami?) they were recounting in a glass room where anyone could look in from outside, but very few were allowed inside -- until this was stopped by a near-riot by Republicans who claimed they weren't getting a good enough view... (Maybe true, but the Republicans have been too damned good at the "big lie" technique ever since George I's "read my lips...")
Yes, in the US we have a whole bunch of stuff on the ballot. At a minimum, there's the President, Congressman, and Senator (if it's a senatorial election year). But the states are allowed to add other things. In Michigan, we also had state senators and representatives, various state executive branch officials that ought to be appointed by the governor instead, MI supreme court judges, the boards of state-run colleges, various ballot initiatives (that's a direct vote on a proposed law), and I think there were even county officials. It was a very crowded 11x17 scanner form. About the only offices that don't go on that ballot are the township and village officers and the governor. (The governor has 4 year terms, with elections at the presidential mid-terms so presidential politics don't get mixed up with that election. That's one of the two best provisions of the 1963 MI constitution, the other one being the balanced budget requirement. It should be extended to other offices.)
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.
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
While I like the idea of a duplicate network, I DON'T like the idea of either of the two major political parties running the networks. We'd have "Florida in every state" if the results tallied on the two networks were not the same. If it were possible, it would be best if all election officials were not affiliated with any party. (Yes, I know it's not possible.)
GreyPoopon
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GreyPoopon
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Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
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.