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Debian GNU/Linux Used in Electronic Voting Trials
RoweM writes "The Australian Capital Terrority will use a Debian-based, GPL'd electronic voting system in elections this October. See this article, and the vendor's press release. Note, this is not Internet voting, but an electronic vote registration and counting system--you still have to go to the polling booth :)."
And what if you can't go to vote on a Saturday, for example because you are an Observant Jew and its the Sabbath? (I assume there is a work around for this) or if you work on a Saturday?
Erlang Developer and podcaster
Actually, both examples you gave can be attributed to the Democrats. It was Gore's campaign that was distributing the cigarettes. (story from the station who caught them). With Motor Voter, it's not any harder to register to vote than it is to get a drivers license. Even before that, it wasn't that difficult. Heck, depending on your ethnic background, there are groups that will seek you out and help you become a registered voter. Given the little time that it requires, I am surprised that anyone finds it to be a hard process.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
It appears that your definition of art is whatever the "artist" thinks it is. By that reasoning, the guy who crapped his pants while waiting in line at the DMV, could claim it was an artistic performance. IMHO, this "art" is just a way to get attention by doing something as disgusting as possible and the people doing it probably belong in a mental institution.
I'm also sure there are many people that would like to use your individual/municipality logic applied to zoning, regulations, taxes, etc.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
I don't quite get it: al you .AU and .US people are so wrapped up about the NEW idea of electronic voting? Here in Belgium, 90% of the people voted electronicly the last elections, and some villages (eg where I live) started with electronic voting some 8 years ago or so.
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Here, the system is as follows: you get your voting card by mail a few weeks before the election-day (as usual), you go with your voting-card and ID to the guy that sits there, you give him your voting-card and ID, and he gives you a card with a magnetic strip (in stead of the paper with all the candidates on). You go to the computer - running DOS, slide the card in, take the laserpen and click on your candidate. The magnetic cards comes out, you go back to the guy, put your card in a cardreader, take your ID and go home...
The only problem we've had so far is with the laserpens: they aren't always accurate
booth:~# apt-get install harrybrowne ... 539 politicians currently installed.)
...
...
.../harrybrowne_3.04-6.1_i386.deb) ...
.../artolivier_2.53-5.2_i386.deb) ...
... 538 politicians currently installed.)
...
...
Reading Politician Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
The following politicians will be REMOVED:
georgewbush dickcheney
The following NEW politiciams will be installed:
harrybrowne artolivier
0 politicians upgraded, 2 newly installed, 2 to remove and 538 not upgraded.
Need to get 2/2 politicians. After unpacking 0 will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]y
Get:1 http://http.us.debian.org stable/libertarian harrybrowne 3.04-6.1 [520kB]
Fetched 520kB in 4m26s (1953B/s)
Get:2 http://http.us.debian.org stable/libertarian artolivier 2.43-5.2 [450kB]
Fetched 450 kB in 3m52s (1985B/s)
(Reading database
Impeaching georgewbush
Impeaching dickcheney
Selecting previously deselected package harrybrowne.
Unpacking harrybrowne (from
Selecting previously deselected package artolivier.
Unpacking artolivier (from
(Reading database
Inaugurating harrybrowne (3.04-6.1)
Inaugurating artolivier (2.53-5.2)
booth:~#
There are lots of warm and fuzzy words about open source, but the only thing the article says explicitly will be GPL'ed is the OS ("platform"):
The press release refers to "ACT's Hare-Clark electoral system" and says only:
Thanks as usual to Slashdot's editors for their insightful commentary.
If a thing is not diminished by being shared, it is not rightly owned if it is only owned & not shared. S. Augustine
The only issue I have with electronic voting is that it seems like it would be just as susceptable to being rigged as lets say.. chads... While it could be more accurate, it depends on how the austrailians are about implementation.
Implementation->If they do it right then they will be in good shape. If they do it like Bart (Bay Area Rapid Transit) then I think it would work. Bart uses linux in its system and I think Bart is pretty reliable, except for the occasionaly train failure. Bart is a metro transit system. Most of there issues are bad equipment or old equipment. (good implementation) (search google on bart) If they do it like Caltrans (California Transportation) and their implementation of the FastTrak then they are really screwed. FastTrak is a toll booth system that allows you to be auto billed instead of paying at the gate by an electronic reader. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. They only implemented it in a few lanes instead of all. (poor implementation).
In any case I am not familiar with how the austrailians are in their impementation of ideas, but if it is anything like the olympics I think they will be in good shape.
I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
Flame away, I have a hose!
Only 'flamers' flame!
Yep. Look for the "raise_dead-0.91.4.deb" package. Make sure to use the "--political-affiliation=" option.
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
That's right, I couldn't agree more. If you're handicapped and homebound, sick, or just can't afford time away from your hourly minimum wage job that supplements your foodstamps, you'll just have to trust those of us with the time/money/ability to take care of things for you.
/sarcasm tag around here somewhere!)
Serves you right for being poor/handicapped in the first place.
(Damn, I could have sworn I left a
Ignorance is the root of all evil.
And Bush can filter by race! If he can figure out regexp, that is...
Although I believe in Open Source, I don't think they make a valid point about its use.
Both a proprietary and an Open Source system can be code audited by outside people, if the proprietary company allows it. I think that any government should make that a stipulation before using anybodies code.
I prefer the Open Source solution, but if a proprietary solution comes along that performs the job better (and can be code audited) then use it. Better yet, wait two weeks and the Open Source product will have all of the same features!
Voter registration isn't all that tough... I showed up at the poll, told them I had moved into the state a year prior, showed my new Driver's license, signed a book... and voted. My new voter reg card came in the mail a few weeks later. Not too tough.
Voting isn't just a right, it is a duty (well-informed voting, that is - abstaining from voting due to ignorance is also a duty).
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"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
The problem with that method of voting is that you ALWAYS get the compromise candidate.
So, for example, if half the people [loved Bush & hated Gore] and half the people [loved Gore & hated Bush], but everone kinda liked McCain - we'd always have the McCains.
How is this a bad thing? You think it's better to have a president that half the country hates than one whom everyone kinda likes?
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Imagine how much easier it would be for third parties to actually have a chance in elections! There would be no allegations of "throwing your vote away" or picking the lesser of two evils, and a candidate couldn't win by dividing the opposition, because everyone in the opposition would prefer BOTH of their candidates to the guy on the other side. (ie. Nader wouldn't have "stolen" the election from Al Gore, because anyone voting for Nader would prefer Al Gore to dubya.)
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Two things:
i) Voting in Australia is compulsory. If you don't vote you can go to prison.
ii) Voting is always on a Saturday, not a weekday.
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
Well given that Buchannen's preferences would probably have gone to Bush it works out. What's more interesting is that with this method, a party could field two candidtates against each other and STILL have a chance of one of them winning. Think about this situation:
Candidate A gets 40% of the vote but doesn't prefer B or C.
Candidate B gets 35% of the vote and directs all preferences to C
Candidate C gets 25% of the vote and directs all preferences to B
In a US system, A would win even though 60% of the people would have preferred B or C. In a preferential system, B would win as he is the one most people prefer in power over all the others even though A got more of the primary vote. B was the least disliked of all the candidates.
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
Well, that's stupid. People who don't have an opinion shouldn't have to vote.
.01 of 1% of the people can count the ballots and assure the quality, they can easily create a conspiracy(like Bush's luck that his brother was gov. of Florida.)
I should have said - nothing stops you voting for no one (ie don't write on the card at all, or write crap on it). The point is you have to vote, even if it is not for anyone. As for people that don't have an opinion shouldn't be voting, it is interesting that the percentage of people who don't vote for anyone is less than 1% for most electorates in Australia. I'd say there is significant evidence that almost everyone has an opinion.
This is also stupid. I hated Al Gore and Bush(the Environmentalist vs. the Asshole) but I really didn't want Nader in Power. Who am I going to choose. Probably the one who would do the least damage and I wouldn't even touch the one who would do the most damage or had an ideal against mine.
So that's what you do. You give preferences in the order that you like the person. If you don't like any of them at all, just leave the card blank.
If normal people can't count it, it's too complex and too easily corrupted. If only
Unlike the rest of Australia, the ACT system is strange because of the extremely low population. The system is designed to give fair preferential voting with multiple candidates in each electorate. Just about everyone in the ACT understands it because of the media blitz - corrupting it is impossible given the media has access to the raw numbers.
On the whole, computer voting is the way that things almost certainly must develop. However with large countries (ie USA or Australia) you have problems with time zones. It would make more sense to stagger the voting so that the polls close at the same time GMT across the whole nation - thus avoiding the problem of Californians (or West Australians) knowing the results before they vote.
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
Sorry, but we don't have prisons to "accommodate" 50% of the population.
Sure, but you've got a government that will happily take the fines from 50% of the population.
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
For those in the US who are used to the idea of voting for just one person, and not even having to vote - this is a very different situation:
First, all Australians MUST vote in an election. If you do not vote then you will be fined, or put in prison. This means the voter turnout and load on the system tends to be much higher.
Second, ACT elections allow you to vote preferentially. This means you not only select the first person you want, but order all the candidates in the order you'd prefer them in power. This prevents the problem in the US of Nader stealing votes from Gore (all Nader's preferences would go to Gore) and so instead of the most popular person winning, the LEAST UNPOPULAR one wins. This is a significant improvement.
Third, the system used to actually count the votes in the ACT is hellishly complex and only really understood by statisticians. I find it quite bizzare, but it seems to work.
Fourth, the ACT tends to have dozens of candidates for the positions. Partys with names like "Surprise Party" and "Party Party Party" are running and even get quite a few votes.
Fifth, less than half a million people live in the ACT so the system can really be quite inexpensive and small. The ACT itself is only a few dozen miles across so the whole logistics are incredibly differnt to the USA.
So, to summarize, the ACT elections are very different from US elections. Consider all the facts before you make a generalization about whether this would be good for all of Australia, or even the USA.
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
A quick eye scan spotted 4 or 5 people from internet voting startups, one venture capitalist, and couple of reps from big software companies.
Yep, nice and unbiased.
But as a person who was the only one of all my friends to vote in the last presidential elections, because noone else could be bothered to go and pull a bunch of levers, I think that restricting voting to offline only is a good idea. It serves to give the control of the government to those people who care enough to get their ass out of a chair and walk to the voting center. I honestly don't think that I would like all the people who didn't vote out of lazyness to be able to do so online with a few mouse clicks, because they are probably just not interested enough to make an informed decision, and might just randomly click on the boxes that they're not sure what they mean.
Something so serious as selecting your government should require the small barrier of entry that getting to the physical voting booth represents.
Ñ'
apt-get new_candidates
well, it's about time there was an open source alternative to the previously announced systems by at&t, dell and compaq.
the best part about an open source system is that by definition, it'll have an open architecture that lets it interoperate with other systems...not to toe the slashdot line, but the last thing we need is a proprietary voting protocol run by a big company.
last i heard as well, california and arizona were implementing this the way it sounds, i.e. voters can actually vote over the internet...i think it was using some sort of shared public-key security to encrypt the ballots, and the key for decrypting the ballots is shared among election officials, so that no one party can view the actual ballot.
http://www.elections.act.gov.au/hare.htmll arke.htm
http://abc.net.au/public/elections/2001act/hare_c
http://polisci.nelson.com/electsys.html
and, of course,
http://www.google.com/search?q=Hare-Clark+electora l+system
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"Small minds discuss people, average minds discuss events, great minds discuss ideas"
I know California did electronic (i.e., touchscreen) voting in several voting districts last year, but I'm fairly sure it was a closed-source project.
The only problem is... I do support. User support. Luser support, in fact. I have users who can't double-click because their reflexes, numbed by years of sitting in front of the television eating Sara Lee cheesecake, have slowed down to the point where inertia takes all their strength to overcome. These users are NOT computer literate. Yet they're supposed to be able to figure it out? Florida elections will become the low bar for new heights of stupidity.
Wait, let me be original! I'll make a joke about using apt-get during the vote!
Zaphod B
Zaphod B
When duplication is outlawed, only outlaws will have
If Floridans can't figure out paper ballots, how are they supposed to figure out how to vote with GNU/Linux??
Got Rhinos?
Internet voting has *much* more serious flaws than that.
Main Flaw #1: DOS attacks.
Rigging an election is as simple as DOSing servers in counties that tend to vote for your opponent.
Main Flaw #2: Virii.
While encryption can ensure a secure channel, there is nothing to prevent something at an up-front level like key filtering. A virus could easily propogate that would ensure only a certain candidate gets voted for (or another candidate doesn't get voted for).
For remote digital voting to be feasible, a) it can't run over the net, and b)it can't involve a modifyable system. You'd need a fixed-hardware platform with hardware-level encryption, which establishes a secure PPP link straight to the voting server. Sure, phone lines could be cut or whatnot, but that's on the level of complexity of blocking roads to polling places, and isn't self-propagating.
Everything else is a social nightmare that would make the last US election look like it ran smoothly.
-= rei =-
"Well, then fire it up and show me what this..." (sigh)
It's this type of situation that code should unarguably be forevermore open and available for study.
Because we all know what would happen with Internet Voting - as outlined by a classic comedy central book called "Byte Me" - "Voter turnout will approach 90%, and Alicia Silverstone will be elected President".
In short, the Territory is divided into 3 districts, each with around six seats in the assembly available.
As 100/6 is 16.666% thats how much of the vote you need to win a seat in the Assembly. It means strong voices like the greens aren't excluded and tends to produce minority government's that have to gather broad support for their policies.
The preferential stuff cascades votes for candidates that already have their "quota". The math is a little complex but the system gives solid results and responsible governments.
The downside in the past has been it takes a couple of weeks to figure out the bottom of the piles where preferences are all over the shop (I for instance start by numbering those i hate most last and work my way up the ballot to gove a "1" to my least hated candidate, or a fruitloop want to encourage, safe in the knowledge that my real vote will end up going to someone else.)
'There is a Light that never goes out.'
Bah! I'm waiting for the day when I can actually vote online. Bruce Schneier outlines a good protocol for this in Applied Cryptography. Is it just me or is this not going to happen because the average person doesn't realize how secure it is?
From their homepage:
Welcome to the FREE e-democracy project's website. We are a project dedicated to creating the GNU.FREE Internet Voting system and also advocating Free Software in e-democracy. To understand why we think it's important for e-democracy software to be Free Software which is non-partisan and non-commercial in origin see our Writings Section. GNU.FREE software is written in Java and is available from the Download Section. There is more information in the Users' Section and considerable technical detail in the Developers' Section. The GNU.FREE software suite is an official package of the Free Software Foundation's GNU project and is supported by FreeDevelopers.net and OpenElection.org. More affiliates, related sites and people are available from the Connections Section.
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day.
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day.
Teach him to eat and he will fish forever.
... can you do an apt-get to upgrade the results ?
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
in the Florida election, and most elections overall, I've wondered why there's a complete lack of confirmation in your votes. My own feeling is: if I can't close a document on my computer without a message asking for confirmation, why should I be able to vote without a confirmation?
Beware typoes.
The most important part of the article is that voters will be able to choose one or the other...in some senses voters will also be voting for paper vs. electronic votes.
I've never had a huge aversion to paper ballots, and in fact prefer something that has a tactile presence that can be recounted later.
Beware typoes.
Adding a printer adds a magnitude of complexity, nuless it's a high-end printer like those used in manufacturing houses. But then, you add a magnitude of cost.
No argument about the benefits of your suggestion, but I pity the fool that has to support it.
- Dan I.
Of course it does, and that is what our Australian friends have understood. They were thinking to themselves one day "Hmmm. I need a computer tool to count votes, and I need to make sure that no vendor biases the code to favor a given party. So I need to see the code. What vendor will let me see the code to insure the voting is fair, and how can I insure the public that there isn't a RNG in the code affecting their vote?" Why, use the GPL, of course! You can publish the code to the public to insure accuracy. Maybe someone will see a small flaw and fix it for you too. People can be assured their vote is being counter fairly.
Perhaps the States of the US will go this route too to help count our ballots. I never got a look at the machine code that counted those Florida ballots after all. I know there are plenty in the GPL community that would love to have a shot at the code, and to submit suggestions to the state equivalent of the NIST for enchantments of the code. Its nice to see a national government recognize the GPL can be a great asset to their problems, and they get all that code for free to boot! Save a dime and get better software! Perhaps Australia will donate a little cash to a GPL project to give back to the community as well? I am happy Australia has picked up on the GPL solution.
Lawrence Lessig is my personal hero.
THX in advance
D - M - C - A
If god had intended you to be naked, you would have been born that way.
Seems to me the American system could do with being easier to vote in. I'm used to it being easy to vote; elections on saturdays, every primary school a polling place, pre-polling centres in all city centres for if you're going to be busy on the day, and postal voting for when even pre-polling isn't practical. When it's compulsory to vote, the constitution makes sure it is easy to vote; no four hour queues for me!
Rachel
I don't honestly think this will happen, but something to think about...
I agree - this is something that needs to be thought about. I'm confident in Australia's electoral methods (as a whole) because issues like this form the core of our electoral system.
In Australia, all elections are run by the Australian Electoral Commission - a completely apolitical, independent body. I believe (though IANAP, I'm not sure about this) that party representatives are at every count, and have the right to query any vote as it goes through. And I reckon that no-one with active membership of a political party would be allowed to work in the Australian Electoral Commission.
As far as I know, America has no independent apolitical body responsible for the standard running of elections - hence the ludicrous situation where affirmed members of political parties (let alone the BROTHER of one of the candidates) have a say in how and why votes count.
So while this situation is possible, I would hope that this is one area where Australia can't screw things up. (Now digital copyright law, that's a whole different kettle of prawns)
--This post is about truth, beauty, freedom, and above all things, Karma
-- This post is about truth, beauty, freedom, and above all things, Karma