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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.
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.
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.
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 :-)