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."

Comments

Problems w/ Net Voting

[mlc]

The problems with net voting do not just extend to the "obvious" (to the /. crowd, anyway) authentication, security, and other technical challenges. The real problems, IMHO, are much much bigger. I see two key problems: [my comments apply specifically to US but may have parallels in other places.]

• In current society, access to computers is not evenly spread throughout all socioeconomic and racial classes. Poorer people are less likely to own home PCs than richer people. Even ignoring this effect, white people and asians of any given income level are more likely to own PCs than black and latino/a people of the same income. For statistics and pointers to sources, google turned up this; plenty more info exists on the 'net.

  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.

• With Net voting, the anonymity and "sanctity" of the ballot box can be entirely lost. Imagine either of the following scenarios:
  • Since many of its workers are low-income and do not own home PCs, Company X sets up terminals for its workers to use to vote when they come to work. 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? (What we have is, in effect, the privitization of the polling place. This frightens me.)
  • [blatent gender stereotypes ensue. switch the genders or make the people the same gender if you like in this example.] Mr. & Mrs. Y have been married for n years; however, recently there has been some trouble in the relationship and Mr. Y has been beating Mrs. Y. Mr. Y favors some kind of conservative, "traditional values" candidate. Mrs. Y would really rather vote for a candidate more supportive of women's rights. However, Mr. and Mrs. Y sit down to vote together, perhaps because Mr. Y thinks he has to show Mrs. Y how to use the computer or whatever. As Mr. Y stands over Mrs. Y's shoulder, perhaps after having had a drink or two on his way home from work, who do you think Mrs. Y is going to vote for?

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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// mlc, user 16290

Re:On the internet...

[pmc]

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

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.

Real value of paper ticking voting

[jesterzog]

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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Another excellent site about electronic voting

[plcurechax]

Rebecca Mercuri is an authory on electronic voting, and her site is an excellent source of information on the subject.

The usual good source of thoughful and insightful comments, is RISKS / comp.risks, and in particular Vol 21 Issue 14.

There's going to be a problem with this in Chicago

[pyramid termite]

It's going to be expensive to hook up all the cemetaries ...

4-6 million votes!

[burke3gd]

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?