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E-voting Trials and Tribulations
Alex Susor writes "This article is about the new digital touch screen voting system in Georgia, the first state in the nation to adopt this method of voting statewide. Demonstration machines were set up at the recent primaries to teach voters about the new system (to be in place for the November general election) and had some big problems." Compare and contrast to systems in Florida and Germany.
ELECTION 2002 PRIMARY
New machines hit snags in Tuesday tryouts
By MICHAEL PEARSON
Atlanta Journal-Constitution Staff Writer
machine
Louie Favorite/AJC
Touch-screen voting will be used statewide Nov. 5. Hall and Marion counties reported no problems with the system in their primaries.
Software problems and human error prevented some voters in Tuesday's primary from trying out Georgia's new touch-screen election system.
State officials promise the problems should be fixed before the statewide rollout in November. And they pointed out that the machines worked well in Hall and Marion counties, the only counties where real votes were recorded electronically on Tuesday.
In Fulton County, at least 11 percent of the touch-screen machines failed. Some froze up like balky home computers, while others got stuck in a mode that effectively locked up the machines, said Gloria Champion, the county's director of registrations and elections. No one was denied the right to vote because the machines were only being demonstrated for interested voters. The real votes were cast on punch cards.
Chris Riggall, a spokesman for the secretary of state's office, attributed the problems to errors by poll workers, a glitch in the Windows operating system that runs the machines and problems with electronic cards that replace paper ballots and ballot boxes.
Riggall said an extensive training program for poll workers, a planned software upgrade and ample technical support on Election Day should hold problems to a minimum. The training and software upgrade already had occurred in Hall and Marion counties, where actual electronic voting was near- flawless.
"Certainly the best measure of the performance we expect was in the two counties where we were configured to actually hold an election," Riggall said.
Hall County elections chief Anne Phillips said she was thrilled with the system.
"We had a really good day," she said.
But Fulton County officials said they still worry there isn't time to ensure a smooth Election Day. Commissioner Bob Fulton, a Georgia Tech engineering professor, likened the planned November debut to the liftoff of an unproven rocket.
"Once it launches, you don't have many options," he said.
The state purchased 19,015 of the touch-screen machines in May to replace a patchwork of older systems and head off a repeat of the 2000 presidential election, in which old technologies complicated tabulation of an already close vote.
Each of the state's 2,823 voting precincts got one of the machines for voters to try out on Tuesday as part of the secretary of state office's ongoing voter education campaign.
The most common problem was untrained poll workers unintentionally starting the machines in "election mode" instead of "demonstration mode," Riggall said. The access cards needed to display ballots on the machines weren't programmed to work in election mode, and poll workers weren't equipped to override the strict controls placed on machines in that mode.
In Fulton, poll workers also reported the machines mysteriously switching from demonstration mode to election mode, Champion said. But state election officials and the company that makes the machines, Diebold Election Systems of Ohio, said that's virtually impossible and instead suggest untrained workers were to blame.
"It's very difficult to create a problem with it, but sometimes they do it," said Mark Radke, Diebold's director of the voting programs.
The only other reported problem, Riggall said, was power cords improperly attached to the machines.
Diebold officials say its machines have been used in elections in Maryland, Virginia, Indiana and California with few reported problems.
Just to make sure, the Ohio-based company will send 387 support employees to Georgia on Nov. 5, including one roving technical support worker for every 30 precincts. Poll workers will be trained after the Sept. 10 runoff elections and will also have the benefit of a toll-free support line for immediate help, Riggall said.
Slashdot, come for the goatse, stay for the trolls.
(I'll let y'all verify that Gore won from your own preferred, trustworthy news source)
. recount.01/
Sorry buddy, you should read more.
http://www.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOLITICS/04/04/florida
Some florida newspapers did a full recount and verified the opposite of what you said. Wasn't all of this finally over two years ago now?
Instant run-off voting is a step in the right direction, but it too is still leagues away from being able accurately representing the will of the voting populace. What about Approval voting? It is just one of many options out there.
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
The Vivendi hijacking seems like what this system is waiting for. http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/may 2002/tc20020521_3291.htm
Bill, can you factor this prime number for me?
It had a touch-screen with a display that was probably about 18" high and 9" wide. There was a card reader to the right where you inserted your voting card. I'm not sure how the distribution of the cards will work. I don't know if they will issue every voter a card or if you get the card when you go to vote. It looked like it had a smart chip on it instead of a magstripe.
The user interface was pretty easy. It would present one or more categories and all the candidates for each category. You just touched the one you wanted. Once you selected a candidate, it greyed out the others. It took me a few seconds to figure out that if I changed my mind, I had to touch previous selection to undo it. There were "Next" and "Previous" buttons to navigate through the various pages.
At the end, it showed a summary of my votes so I could give a final yes/no to my choices. It printed out some kind of receipt, I think, but I didn't really look at it.
If I had to guess on the platform, I have to say that I did see an hourglass icon that looked just like the one in Windows. Maybe they're running WinCE or something. It looked a lot like one of those "pen computing" devices that never really went anywhere.
I would probably feel a little more secure about the system if it printed out a ballot that I then had to put in a ballot box, so it wouldn't be any worse than what we have now (from a fraud standpoint). It is certainly easier to use than the punch ballots we have now.
Here in Brazil we are voting eletronically for about 6 years, the system is a computer with windows CE, a printer, a memory flash card and two floppies developed by Unisys. Finished the votation, it prints a paper vote.
To me, it seemed to be very secure and simple to operate.
It will be used in presidential elections at 10/06 this year for about 80 million people.
The machine can be seen here http://www.folhape.com.br/hoje/31-07informatica-0
Ireland has a reasonably complex voting system. Each voter has a single vote, but can vote for several candidates in their order of preference. (Each constituency has between three and five seats). Even given that complexity, the system seemed to work well. There was about the expected turnout in each count center, and there were few concerns expressed about the usability of the system.
Some info is at http://www.environ.ie/electronicvote.html.
You can find some information on better solutions (particularly approval voting and Condorcet voting) at Electionmethods.org, including and explanation of why Instant Runoff isn't a much improved voting system.
We were the first country to have 100% electronic voting (and the 1st to have any kind of it, I guess) . This year's election (federal and state representatives, state governor, senate and president) about 80% of the voting booths will be transmit the data and give the results a few hours later. ;). :)
Yes, we're poor but we know about digital democracy
BTW, we *don't* use M$ OSs on it. It uses VirtuOS sort of multitask DOS. Old but works
Adilson.
Faith can move mountains. I prefer dynamite.
In this site you can try and see how we'll vote in the next elections here in Brazil.
S imulaUrna/SimUrna.html
http://www.tse.gov.br/eleicoes/eleicoes2002/urna/
Maybe i'm late in replying to this story, and hence this post won't be modded up.. (and i don't have that +1 bonus yet :-) but i just thought of putting here the fact that India has successfully used evm's in its elections. more details can be found at here And it does not contain Microsoft software :-)