Slashdot Mirror
Computer Scientists Rally for Reliable Voting System
Kim Alexander writes "Silicon Valley computer scientists, led by Stanford professor David Dill are asking Santa Clara county to purchase a new computerized voting system only if it provides a voter verified paper trail. Their concerns are based on the lack of adequate testing of these voting systems, and the fact that the software is closed-source and proprietary. Requiring a voter-verified paper trail will mitigate many of these problems. Dill's 'Resolution on Electronic Voting' has been endorsed by prominent computer scientists from all over the country, including Ron Rivest. Counties all over California and the US are going through a similar process. Patriotic nerds who want to do something to help protect our fundamental right to vote with confidence that our votes will be counted can help by contacting their state and local reps, writing letters to supervisors and getting informed!"
The first person who writes and validates a working, bulletproof software system for collecting votes wins $$billions.
That's the kind of patriotism we need.
that the present occupants of those political offices are the product of the present system. Don't expect wild enthusiasm for anything that has the potential to cause a personnel change.
Perhaps someone heard the interview on "Morning Edition."
Sorry I can't provide more details.
...but who's gonna teach Florida how to use them?
| - | - |
What does it mean, "it provides a voter verified paper trail"? Kiss goodbye voting anonymously?
I cannot support any voting system that's closed source. I want to know what the voting system is doing with my vote, and the only reliable way to do that and to maintain a free society is to be able to see the source. That doesn't mean everyone should be a contributor, but we should see what we're dealing with.
...Can only be possible with a sort of one-way encryption of a code, such as an md5sum. I'd hate to be able to have a vote traced back to me.
The next issue will be how to let the voter verify his vote (in the case of a recount, or contested count) without being identified as having voted one way or another.
What's this Submit thingy do?
..but I seriously can't understand why they'd want to impliment a *closed source* solution to this. I realize that corporations ran our govt before, but now they're not even trying to hide it.
If there so worried the voting software is closed source, why not start and open source project?
Until they get hit for an anti-trust lawsuit, that is.
Dude, where's my packet?
I honestly half to say I'm not too concerned about the absoluteness of democracy (for lack of better wording). Democracy is not an end in itself, but a tool for protecting individual liberties - and like any tool it can be abused too. It's disgusting to hear people suggesting that if you don't like something isn't right in a democracy - you have no right to have any other recourse accept to vote.
What's right and wrong, good and bad, truth or lie is not decided by popular vote or public opinion - but by observable facts that exist independently. What I hope happens is that new technologies "force" democracy to become more free even if it tries not to. EG, a voting popluace would never shut down the internet - but it may be impossible to stop free mp3's any other way. A voting population would never shut down ecommerce - but this would provide the infrastructure to avoid unjust tax even if the mob desperately tries to impose it.
I understand the possibility of fraud and such... we had electronic voting here in Georgia this last election cycle and it did very well.
If your disabled you can get assistance, and the machines can voice the choices as well for vision impaired.
There is a review at the end of the voting processing asking you to verify the choices you made are accurately represented.
Votes are transmitted to a central site and kept in the voting machines. They have multiple ways to prevent loss of votes due to power outages as well.
What this all leading up to is, how can the suggestion of printing out votes at the end of the day be meaningful? If the voter isn't there to review their votes who decides that anything nefarious hasn't happened?
If anything, a paper trail AFTER any voters have left is more of a risk that not having one. Suddenly you get back into the days of ballot stuffing, but instead now you just invalidate votes as needed. (or call for a new election, hoping your side turns out more this time).
Electronic voting still doesn't stop dead people from voting either, they just file absentee ballots.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
http://www.bestoftheblogs.com/2003_02_05_bestof.ht ml#90279110
This is an article about Chuck Hagel who is a nebraska representative. He ran for office and won in a very close run off, and controls a large interest in the private company that counted the votes in his runoff election.
The majority of the information in the above blog came from http://blackboxvoting.com/, which is a book about the future of electronic voting.
Just some fairly creepy stuff that's turned me off towards any sort of private computerized voting.
The problem here is that a paper trail is too easy to for other people to read.
Elections in Western countries are meant to be by secret ballot, people. That means your vote is anonymous. Why? Because people don't want other people knowing who they voted for. If someone voted for the 'Kill All Geeks' party, that's their right, and you can't condemn them for their vote (although you can certainly condemn them for their actions).
The best alternative solution to a paper trail would be to use a secure database that has public access. That is, members of the public can run a set of limited commands on it.. like
SELECT COUNT() FROM votes WHERE party='republican';
Or
SELECT COUNT() FROM votes WHERE state='alabama' AND sexuality='gay';
That way, the populace can access the database over the net and query it by SQL, checking the validity of the votes.
Preferably you'd use a proprietary database system to store the votes, as then you can be sure security is not compromised. A paper trail just opens up a whole bag of communist ghouls.
mogorific carpentry experiments
It's not a vote if I can't hold the ballot in my hand, look down and see "Al Buchanan" in the PRESIDENT column and say "1 for Al!".
The ballot needs to be:
Machine generated from a touch screen like device.
Machine and human readable.
Signed so as to be verifiable.
The ballot reciept, that's placed into the voting machine, is a random private key, handed to the voter before voting that is used to sign the ballot and ensure integrity. The voter can then take the receipt/key with them and use an Id number to check that their vote was actually tallyed.
This allows machine counts of paper ballots. It allows manual, human auditing of ballots and tally. It allows machine and human recounts of the ballots. It preserves the voting record for the election on something besides magnetic media. It allows "quick summary" for those willing to rely upon the stored, machine versions of the votes before physically counting the ballots.
This is the only way. You MUST have a piece of paper you can go back to and find a vote. Anything else is simply unacceptable.
And, no, it's not over the internet, but we know that will never fly anyway.
The fundamental issue is as follows....
Consider 2 elections. In one, you and I and everyone else have exactly a 75% chance of having their votes counted. In the other, the affluent young technocracy has a 99% chance of having their votes counted and the poor, old, or low-tech population has a 95% chance of having their votes counted. At first blush, the seond electiuon sounds more fair, but it is very clear that the first is totally fair and the second is terribly biased.
The problems in recent elections were not caused by technological failures. Dangling chads and the like are just a smokescreen and the recounts bore that out. The problems in elections are a lack of uniformity within the areas in which votes are pooled. Since the votes for president are done by electoral votes rather than popular vote, it is not necessary to have the entire country have identical machines and ballots, but this does need to happen at the state level. When I walk into my polling place, I should see an identical machine to every other voter in the state (randomly selected from the state pool). All the state ballots should be identical to every other ballot in the state. All the county ballots should be identical to every other ballot in the county, etc....
To do otherwise not only fails to solve the fairness problem, but it disinfranchises people for whom a mouse is a household pest.
However, when it comes to protecting the foundation of democracy we can't even be given access to the source code as it is a "trade secret." Here's an example of this privatization of democracy:
As it turns out, open code and "thoroughly examined hardware" do not a secure system make. The problem is that the code has to get compiled, and it has to run on an operating system, and that has to run on a computer. Even if the code and hardware (if one can examine the microcode) appears to be entirely pristine, Ken Thompson explained in his classic 1984 essay "Reflections on Trusting Trust" (available online, do a Google search) that the compiler that compiled all of that code can be rigged such that malicious code can be concealed. For example: Since the dates of US National Elections are fixed to infinity (they are always the 1st Tuesday in November) and since many voting systems (as well as computer systems) rely on real-time clocks, it is certainly plausible to create a hardware trap that only goes off on election day. And that trap doesn't have to be in the voting system either, there's tallying devices, reporting software, and so on. It's a nightmare. The only sane solution is to rely on a voter-verified physical audit trail that can be READ BY HUMANS in case of the necessity for a recount. There's a lot of ways this can be performed (including one by David Chaum that allows the voter to verify that their ballot actually was entered into the final tallies), and true improvements in voting systems will only occur when this is recognized and the "trust us" mentality (including one that says we should trust the people who will supposedly verify all the open code) is abandoned. Please read the extensive writings on Rebecca's website www.notablesoftware.com/evote.html as well as Peter Neumann's for more information on the subject. And for those of you who are convinced, PLEASE encourage all communities who happened to purchase fully-electronic voting systems to have them retrofitted with printers BEFORE the November general election. Brazil is doing just that, right now, with 3% of the 400,000 voting machines they purchased back in 2000 (more may follow).
SIG:Slashdot: indymedia for nerds.
Anonymous voting does not mean the it's a secret ballot. It only means that it can't be traced back to you. Would you trust the fate of your vote on a ballot you can't read? How do you know it came out right?
As for your database solution, sure they can check the electronic tally, but how does that equate with checking the validity of it? You've solved nothing, and the fact that you think putting it in a proprietary database shows you've learned nothing.
Suppose N people decide to vote on an issue. For simplicity, let's assume that the vote is A or B. You pick a random number that only you know. In order to vote, you add your number and your vote to a list. At the end of the election, the paper trail is shown:
...
1928787: A
7483978: B
1662656: B
etc.
Along with a tally of the votes. Every voter can verify that their number is followed by their vote. You don't know what the other random numbers correspond to, but if yours was 1928787 you know that your vote is there and was counted as 'A'.
This is the basic idea. There's more to it of course, but it can be done.
See charts for twitter trends on Trendistic
1. Any voting system running on proprietary code should be assumed to be rigged.
2. Some of the companies that make such systems (Diebold) are affiliated with far-right wing politicians.
3. Paper audit trails do not exist. Without an audit trail, the only recount available is done by software provided by the manufacturer. Worthless.
4. In at least one state, which one escapes my memory at the moment, it is unlawful for any agency except the manufacturer of the machines to recount votes made on the machines.
5. A far-right wing ex-talk show host, now a congressman, was the primary shareowner of one of the voting machine manufacturers.
6. Exit polls have become unreliable for the first time in history. Election outcomes no longer match exit sampling. Why? Either the voters decided suddenly, en masse, to lie to exit pollsters, or mathematics have ceased to function, OR the vote tallies have been tampered with. I'd go with Occam's Razor: the tallies are being altered, just enough to win; not enough to be ridculously obvious.
7. The Florida mess. I remark on this only in passing, for I saw it mentioned by another poster. There was no mess: there was a close race, and a recount was needed. As the Floridians were proving, a perfect hand recount was easily done. But they were stopped from doing so by a partisan, panicking Supreme Court majority. Not that the thousands of operatives flooding the courts and the media weren't slowing it down to a crawl -- staged riots, lawsuits, arguing extensively over each ballot -- anything necessary to stop - that - recount. The Supremes had no legal precedent to do what they did. Constitutional scholars almost unanimously denounced the decision as BS. But they did the job.
And yes, BS headlines to the contrary, Gore won by actual votes counted. If overvotes ("Gore" written in, and also punched) were to be counted, and they would have been, Gore won handily.
And to my mind more importantly, if the military overseas votes postmarked after 11-07-00 had been disqualified, instead of illegally approved, Bush would have lost. Lieberman should be denied a shot at the crown just for caving on that point. those votes were sent in by Bush supporters after the close election was over, for the sole purpose of tipping the scale. Disgraceful.
But to report this would be to invalidate the Bush support shown in the media in Dec. 2000, and shown Bush to be a manipulator and a sham.
8. Back to point. Automated systems are fine -- but some say: a paper ballot should be printed out whenever a voter uses an automated machine. The ballot should be filed just as the hand-punched ones are today. In case of recount, the paper should be matched to the counts in the automated systems.
But here's the kicker: if the voter never sees the paper backup, how will the voter know the vote was accurately recorded? The software could mark Danny Fatcat on the file and on the printout, and the voter who voted for George Orwell would never know it.
The only way around this would be if the voter could review the printed audit ballot before the vote is committed. What if it doesn't match? What is the recourse?
And what is the use of an automated system if there is a voter review of a printed ballot? Better just to use the paper ballot and run it through a scantron.
* I don't think an automated system can be anything but rigged. The far-right ideologues in the U.S. are far too fanatical not to get involved in the manufacture and operation of these machines. It's a matter of God's will, the defeat of evil, the end of the world itself. If they can shave off a few thousand people from the Florida rolls because they have similar names to lawbreakers in other states, they can do just about anything. This is a war, and they intend to win it.
SCOTUS is going to be pissed if they find out they've got competition at rigging elections.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Right on and I got an even better idea-recognize that computerised voting is the LAMEST idea that has happened lately. All it has done is automate the ballot box stuffing potential, and made it near impossible to verify any actual count. Voting is IMPORTANT, it shouldn't be EASY, it's not supposed to be like ordering a book from amazon, it's the most important thing a citizen does besides sit on a jury and you are supposed to think about it, take it serious, and go do it. Yes, you should go stand in line,and mark your paper ballot. I filed a protest at my precinct this last election over this, it was our first "computerised voting". It was dismal, the precinct officer was completely clueless, was not even able to understand the concept of it getting programmed (and stuffed) in advance,with no way to verify it. She kept telling me, "no, it's flawless, if there's a dispute, we just rerun the tabulations!"
homer sez DOH!
I got my "voted" sticker, it has a little iconized computer pointing at itself, with the caption "I voted!". THAT'S RIGHT, the $%^**ing COMPUTER voted, I got no way to tell if I voted.
Background to some important information for USians:
votescam, the stealing of america
Each voter is given a (numbered) balot form with one column of candidate names and one (mathcing) column of empty boxes into which may be entered an apropriate mark ("X" or numerically ordered preference) to indicate voting preference.
The votes are sorted, and the sorted votes counted. This is done manually.
Any disputed votes are examined by the returning officer and representatives of the candidates and assigned or discarded by cocsensis.
Whilst the numbering of the ballots, and the recording by hand on the master copy of the voters roll at the polling station of which ballot is given to which voter, may slightly compromise anonimity, it provides no convenient way to decern the vote of any individual.
The cost of the occaisional employment of large numbers of tellers is almost certainly less than that of the various "automated" polling systems and the audit trail far superior.
>>>>truth; beauty; unix.<<<<
...that a resolution "endorsed by computer scientists" does not propose an instant run-off system, whereby each voter ranks the candidates in order of her preference. (She can vote traditionally by ranking only one candidate 1, and no one higher).
The benefits are enormous. The system is much less open to manipulation, and it is basically the only way for minority voices to be heard.
One cannot overemphasize the fact that today a rational voter will always choose the lesser of two evils, without considering candidates that are not evil, based on the mathematics governing her vote.
Let me repeat this: If you believe that a vote for the democratic candidate is a vote for evil, and you believe that a vote for the republican candidate is a vote for evil, and there is a third candidate whose views you agree with precisely, and who you think could fulfill the office perfectly were she elected (but there is zero probability of this, as there was zero probability of Nader's being elected) then under today's system your only rational choice is to forego your preference for the third candidate and vote instead for the lesser of the two evils. That is, you will be rationally impelled to vote for a candidate with whom you do not agree, when a minority candidate exists who could better represent you.
This is no less than mathematical extortion.
You can either participate in a two-party system, or "throw your vote away." It is, in effect, a mathematical equivalent of having a voting booth in which you are to choose betweeen seven candidates by putting your token either into the republican ballot box, the democrtatic ballot box, or the trash.
Everyone who voted for Nader in our last presidential election placed their vote in the trash, since there was zero probability of Nader's winning. (Exception: vote trading.)
Read more about instant run-offs here, or do a google search.
In my country (which has British based laws - similar to the USA) we have a federal authority which supervises the voting for all levels of government, which provides information to anyone that asks (debt collectors often track people down from the address they have on the electoral roll). This department is too big, beurocratic, and decentralised for bribes to make any difference. On several occasions courts have looked into allegations of vote rigging, and have easily found the anwsers. For a few years the government of my state had been decided by a few fake votes in one bye-election, but the court (at state level) discovered this. By the time this had happened, another election had occurred which changed the goverenment again. Abuse still happens, but it is easy to track down when it happens.
Now, if you look at the current US system the biggest problems seem to be inconsistancy and verification of results. The results in Florida were a mess, and the court had very little to go on - and I'm sure even G.W. Bush would have been a lot happier if the results were clearer.
This is to my mind the biggest story of the year.
System Integrity Flaw Discovered At Diebold Election Systems6 .htm
http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0302/S0003
Risks digest discusses it
http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/22.55.html#subj10
The Guardian has an article today3 701,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,89
Excellent coverage by an expert
http://www.notablesoftware.com/evote.html
If You Want To Win An Election, Just Control The Voting Machines
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0131-01.htm
Whistleblowers speakout
http://www.blackboxvoting.com/whistle.html
Here in Allston, a neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, our votes were cast in a manner similar to many urban areas, with a mechanical voting machine older than I am, the kind that has a big lever that closes a curtain and a myriad small switches for selecting candidates or casting votes for referenda.
I know that these machines have many drawbacks: they cost a lot of money to maintain, store, and "program", though I've always assumed that to "rig" these machines too commit wholesale fraudulent voting would be to time consuming and complex to pull off. Hence, I had a certain amount of faith that the lever I'd pull would actually correspond to the name on the paper strip, and my desired vote would be tallied. I know also that this faith was rooted in sentimentality; I'd accompanied my parents into machines just like that when I was a kid, back in the Sixties.
Two elections ago, however, during a primary vote in September, there was a man at the polling place who was demonstrating a new system, produced by LHS Associtates of Methuen, MA, the "Accu-Vote" system. It used paper ballots, with small circles like on a standardized multiple choice test (like SATs, except without the need for the No. 2 pencil). There was an optical scanner that looked somewhat like a paper shredder, the kind that fits on top of a wastepaper basket. You fed the ballot through the scanner and it read the marks, ejecting the paper out the other end, into a bag, thus preserving a paper trail in case of a recount.
I filled out one of these sample ballots. There were "joke" choices on the ballot, and I intentionally mis-voted, to see how fault-tolerant the system was. Under "Mayor", I placed a check mark in the box next to "Fiorello LaGuardia". For "Board of Cartoon Characters", I put a tiny dot next to "Bugs Bunny". Under "Superhero Committee", I filled in the box for "Wonder Woman", intentionally overfilling the mark, and for "Sports Authority" I filled two boxes, "Babe Ruth" and "Jackie Robinson".
I went over to the company representative who was showing the demo system and handed him my ballot. He fed it into the machine and it was spit out the other side. Though I'd intentionally cast a faulty ballot, there was no indication that anything was wrong, and I showed him the marks I'd made, pointing out my screw-ups.
"Well, this is just a demonstration," he said.
"So, all this does is roll the paper through the mechanism?" I asked.
"Um, well, it's just a demonstration."
"You mean it's not a real machine?"
"Right," he replied.
"So the real machine would reject this ballot, right?"
"I assume that this will be the case." He didn't sound too sure. At this point, the police who work the election detail started paying attention to our conversation. I guess election detail is pretty boring for them.
"So who audits the code that runs this machine?" I asked him.
"I don't know, maybe the Board of Elections," he said. "I can give you the name of the project manager. Maybe he can answer your questions." He wrote a name on the back of a business card. I took it and thanked him for his time. I called a few times but never got a callback, and I doubt I'd get a satisfactory answer.
My fear is that it's trivial for this sort of machine to register a vote for Foo to actually be tallied as a vote for Bar. With the old mechanical machines, this sort of fraud would take days, considering the hundreds or thousands of machines and the dozens of people from the Board of Elections that set them up. However a "black box" system like Accu-Vote need only be programmed with fraudulent code once, after which that code is distributed to hundreds or thousands of EEPROMS or Flash cards or whatever the Accu-Vote uses to store its programming. The barrier to entry for wholesale voting fraud has been lowered, and if the winning margin is large enough, there will never be a recount.
The Accu-Vote system was deployed for the November 2002 elections here in Boston. If there was a public hearing about this change from mechanical systems, I never heard about it, and I read the Boston Globe every day without fail.
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
How will it ever be possible to trace any kind of voting mischief or voter manipulation or cheating or anything like that? It's all zeros and ones, and no one can see when data is manipulated like you can with a piece of paper.
Computers and electronics are good for some things. I don't think this is one of them.
it could have been really slick, too, with a touch-screen, pictures, and everything. Then, you just touch who you want to vote for and page down for the next selection.
At the end of balloting, it shows you a list of who you voted for and asks you to confirm. Once you hit [VOTE], it just prints out your ballot, you hand it to the vote judge, and thats it. No changes to the system required.
Probably too intelligent, tho. Good solutions dont make as much money as bad ones.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
As if voting was not already rigged, just think what eVoting will be like.
HypeLog.com If it's hype it's on Hypelog. Movies, TV, Music, SciFi,
I don't understand what all of the fuss is about. Here in Durham County, North Carolina, we use a voting system that is, in essence, something just like the multiple choice testing forms that we've all seen in school. Scantron, I think it is called. Instead of filling in the oval with a #2 pencil, one connects the beginning end (base of the shaft) of an arrow with it's pointy end by using a magic marker. The space between the two ends is detected as filled in or not by an optical scanning device. This way, there's a paper trail (the scantron type voting sheets) but the scanner/computer does the vote couting. What could be simpler than this? You slide the sheet into the scanner, it registers the votes, and then drops the sheet down into a locked container. Seriously, do we really need a touch-screen based one-arm bandit type machine that leaves no paper trail?
Why is a paper and pen such a problem? Why do machines(mechcanical or electronic) that can be easily rigged somehow the answer to a perfect election system?
I do not vote. One reason is because I don't trust voting machines or the people that run them. Even with paper ballots you can't trust the system when you can't watch them count the ballots AT THE POLLING PLACE!
In our county and state (Texas) they grab the boxes place them in a sheriff's deputy car(gee isn't the sheriff and elected official?) and haul them off to the county court house. How do I know that the ballots are the same ones that left the poll?
It is all crap, rigged from the get go(or too easily done so).
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
We are using the least accurate of possible voting systems, the plurality system. That is one of the reasons why the last election went the way it did. Our system is the worst possible, the one most likely to produce anomalies that do not reflect the will of the people. We need a preference-weighted voting system that prevents votes from being wasted if one's first choice candidate does not win. Like the "Borda Count" method. Many other countries are going this way. Most scientists and mathematicians agree.
r oo m/v0.1/html/lab6/lab6.html
t m
2 &b tnG=Google+Search&num=200
Do the math:
http://www.princeton.edu/~matalive/VirtualClass
http://www.ctl.ua.edu/math103/Voting/4popular.h
Or do a search for Borda Count on Google:
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Borda+Count%2
Read the explanations above and then..Write your elected representatives..
Voting through electronic means is a bad idea because of the doors it opens to all sorts of trouble. Imagine what might happen if someone decides to fix the vote. He would change the information in the database software and then track down the paper trail and replace that with a modified paper trail. Now, there would be no way to prove that any such thing ever happened. This is a really bad idea.
As people have pointed out, the general public doesn't actually know what's running on the machines, open source or not, so open source is no better than closed source. If someone tampers with the open source, joe user won't know. What is needed is an independent govt agency that is tasked with verifies the voting machine works. This can be done by hooking the I/O into a separate tester, for instance, designed by a differnt group of people. The tester votes at a rapid rate, randomly casting votes at a fast rate until the number of votes cast is greater than the number of votes actually expected to be cast. The vote totals can then be matched to the epected values to see if the machines are working. Of course, neither machine can be networked to avoid tampering after the machine has been found to work properly. A paper trail is useful in case there is an unrecoverable hardware error, although redundant systems should make the probability of this event very unlikely.
Vote for Pedro
Every democratic country has a famous election where even the dead vote. I believe that in the USA Truman was particularly popular with the dead.
Seeing the Forest has been covering the far-right Republicans-own-the-voting-machine-companies story for some time now.
They have a great collection of links to articles and websites about this story .
The RISKS forum/digest has had many, many articles on the potential and actual snafus of electronic voting; I thing the topic is a special interest of the digest's editor. Although the contributors are very much a part of the technology world, the mood there is pretty virulently anti-electronic voting unless there are old-school audit features such as paper trails. Closed source software is regarded very skeptically.
The most persuasive evidence is the actual experiences coming in from the field, around the planet. Many local governments are buying expensive new systems on surprisingly little information, and we may face problems like Florida's in no time -- but not actually realize it, for lack of auditing. I highly recommend flipping through the archive.
I sure hope they give this task to a responsible, accountable organization like microsoft or adobe, and dont leave it up to a bunch of subversive america-bashing communists.
(Picks up unibomber manfististo pen)
We have become a society that no longer has the time to "think" about the issues anymore. Paperboys are not out selling papers on the corner, nor are we having them delivered to our houses. Instead we are a society that has begun to transition from real to "virtual" content. Instead of waiting till the next day on the farm to get our news, we simply point a browser at cnn.com, or google news and recieve it at a moments notice. Even television is close to being replaced by the net as a source of news because it is an instantanious update that's up to the minute.
The format of television will not disapear. It's function is to stream out so that your attention does not have to be directed directly towards it, as you would have to with a browser. Yet it's format is adaptable to the net, therefore it's only reasonable to note that this conversion will slowly take place over the next 15 years.
Instantatious direct response to issues now facing canidates is giving them even greater power in directing their political policies. As soon as an issue is found out, a solution can be dispatched by the politician faster than has ever been possible.
Unfortunately for %90 of the voting public, technology is not an issue because they do not understand what power it gives their representatives in this day and age. When they vote they go on the good faith that this canidate will fullfill their duties to their voters for the duration of the term. Unfortunatly we get bozo's in office, leeching off you, the taxpayer while completely trolling other counties/states.
I think the best way to get electronic voting mainstream is to wait for the current generation of goverment to leave office. This may happen in another 8 years or so. So just be patient and wait. Since all the current canidates seem leery of electronic voting technology, our best bet is to put our votes on a canidate that wont look at it as a "black magic voodoo" ballot box.
IMHO, any voting system, computerized or not, must meet the following requirements:
- The voting must be anonymous.
- There must be a backup method that allows for tallying votes if the primary method fails.
- There must be a permanent audit trail to make recounts possible.
- There must be no way to associate a specific ballot with a specific voter (yes, this is the same as "anonymous" above but I feel it deserves special mention).
- Most importantly, the system must be designed such that its privacy and auditability are *readily apparent* to the *vast majority of voters*. You should not have to have a CS degree to be able to trust that your vote will be counted.
To me, to meet this criteria, any computerized voting system must print paper ballots which the voter can read and then turn in to a separate vote-counting entity. The system which solicits your vote and prints a completed ballot must be physically and logically distinct from the system which collects your complete ballot and counts it. I don't think open source matters -- if it prints paper ballots and the casting and counting functions are separate, it is easy to audit its accuracy.
NPR link ("State and local officials buy electronic voting machines in hopes of avoiding the low-tech messiness of pencil marks on paper ballots and so-called "hanging chads." But some computer scientists say vote-counting computers are inaccurate. NPR's Dan Charles reports.")
Now, "inaccurate" isn't quite the right word. Unreliable? Not robust? The problem being tampering, accident, or oversight, not the machines' native ability to add accurately.
*
Good for you, to have written.
The thing is that they need a hook of some sort. I don't think they're going to understand how important it is, unfortunately, until there is a tragedy. Similarly, you wouldn't have been able to get them to do a story on your criticisms of Space Shuttle heat shielding until, well, know. We wouldn't even be dumping punchcard ballors en masse -- and switching to electonic systems of questionable pedigree -- if not for Election 2000.
What would be wonderful, if it could be done, would be a comparison of actual voter intent with vote tallies. I know they do test runs (sometimes) but what the public would find compelling is a concrete "you screwed up this election" result. Kind of like the first time DNA shows we executed the worng person.
The errors made with electronic system, more often innocent than malicious, have been amusing so far. When something ugly happens, will we even catch it, let alone see it coming?
Completely coincidentally, Nebraska has a new law that prohibits election workers from looking at the paper ballots, even in a recount. The only machines permitted to count votes in Nebraska are ES&S.
And completely coincidentally, Senator Hagel has won recent elections by surprising margins. See also this capitol hill newspaper report
there's more to this, but I can't find the links yet.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
What they are talking about is having a
computerized system *supplement* the tried
and true ballot box mechanism. After you
make your choices on the computer, it'll
print out your ballot for you, which you
can read in ink and then deposit in the
lock box.
The problem with having a voting system based on open source code is we would end up with Cowboy Neal as President.
Read reviews of shopping cart software
Machine generated from a touch screen like device.
Machine and human readable.
Signed so as to be verifiable.
Err. No. I ain't signing my ballot.
Just place a cookie with a four-year time-to-live on the user's computer.
You all may laugh at me, but with such a system the Libertarians would stand a chance.
My other idea is an html form in which every radio button have a value of "libertarian."
I suppose I'll just wait for them to realize that our existing for of voting control that keeps someone from voting twice could also be used in this situation.
Having a conscience sucks; being a hypocrite would kick ass.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Normally, I'm not the conspiracy-theory type, tending more towards occam's razor and healthy skepticism, but This article , on an admitedly rather left-leaning publication, if at all accurate in merely it's factual assertions, disturbs me to no end. And of course, there's no mention in the mainstream media.
---
the pen is mightier than the sword, the sword is mightier than the court, the court is mightier than the pen.
While the use of proprietry software and the lack of a paper trail can't help, the problem appears more fundamental. It you turn elections over to private companies to run, which is really what you are doing if you use these voting machines, there are huge conflicts of interest. Take Senator Chuck Hagel who won the last two elections, against expectations, where 80 percent of the votes were counted using machines supplied and run by a company he indirectly owned.
Even if there is no impropriety going on in this particular case, their is certainly the appearance of impropriety. The question of who makes, owns and runs the voting machines appears even more important than the software and proceedures used by them. Rather worryingly the use of exit polls in the 2002 election was almost non-existent, so there was no indepedent check on the results. Potentially the people who control the voting machines control the result of an election.
This is a very serious accusation you're making. Unfortunately, a single accusation by someone on Slashdot will not make a difference, even though it has been mod'ed to +5.
Why not just outline what needs to be done, in a reasonable logical list, as clear and short as possible? Like (IMHO);
Polling Booth: A) System is to be un-networked, for security. Only networked WITHIN the polling location, not to the "internet." B) all polling booths will use minimal hardware (save money for taxpayers, simple to code because of legacy code base, hard to hack because there isn't enough RAM for an exploit to be loaded). C) After minimizing RAM for prevention of exploits, checksum code after each vote is cast to insure security?
Polling Station Logs: A) Polling Booth "checks in" digitally date/time/unit stamped vote into database for polling station. B) Check-in's are done to a single, CHEAP (but reliable) PC running open source database like PostgreSQL. C) Backups are done to removable media frequently (USB drives every half hour?) D) Backups are IMMEDIATELY taken MANALLY to central database to update voting. (Bypassing internet hacks, and "physical hijacks" of data are ruled out because the next delivery will show that there is a substantial error). E) Digital Forensics is used to investigate any accusations of "ballot stuffing" where every backup drive, every polling booth, every poling location PC, and every central database that receives manual updates can be instantly checked both physically, and against each other, as well as by looking at low-level info that was "quickly erased" from all storage media.
Now THAT'S an idea. Just one off the top of my head in 2 minutes. Sure, there are better ideas, but my point is; take 2 minutes to come up with them rather than the typical 10 seconds to poke holes in them and criticize. Why not come up with ideas rather than trash those that exist? Anyway.... Rant Over...
anubi made an exellent point; I'm surprised it hasnt been modded up yet
"We have got to make Stan understand the importance of voting, because he'll definitely vote for our guy." - South Park
Perfect. Why not make it ten times easier to rig the votes? Now we don't have to do recounts and search for dimpled chads or whatever the hell they are. Now all Duhbya has to do is hire someone to change a couple digits in the code and Bingo! Instant re-election!
Hell, not like the American people have elected a leader in the last 20 years anyway. Thanks to the elite electoral college (which pretty much makes the public vote null and void) the lobbyists and special-interest groups may as well just appoint their puppet--I mean, dictator--I mean, PRESIDENT of choice.
I will work day and night to gain ROOT on America then....
-You're wasting your time. Alfador only likes me.
A similar process is followed in Canada, perhaps because we adopted the British system. Representatives of all parties up for election are allowed to be present at the polling station to oversee the voting and counting procedures.
Having been a scrutineer for the Liberal Party in Canada in the past, I can testify that this works. After the polls had been closed, counting the ballots for my riding took about two hours.
The experience made me remarkably skeptical of the 2000 American election, and particularly the claims that it would take WEEKS to recount votes. Realistically, if it only takes an evening to count them in the first place, it shouldn't take more than a day or two to verify the vote count even under the most pessimistic projections. Any system that requires significant time to verify voter intentions is desperately flawed.
Sig Bush!
Sig Powell!
Sig America!
America is the SUPER RACE!
Voting is wasteful; Sig Bush!
Voting is wrong; Sig Bush!
Voting is UnAmerican; Sig Buch!
AMERICA IS THE SUPER RACE; SIG BUSH!
Bush is the SUPER RACE FATHER; SIG BUSH!
Bush is PURITY; SIG BUSH!
Bush is LIBERTY; SIG BUSH!
Bush is EQUALITY; SIG BUSH!
Bush is FRATERNITY; SIG BUSH!
SIG BUSH!
The key word being Bulletproof. With so many people in the world with nothing better to do than crack a system (Install Linux on a blender, mod their washing machine, etc), I wouldn't bet on it in my lifetime...
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Who said that you had to have your name on the paper? The last time I voted my name on the "who registered to vote" list was in no way tied to the actual paper ballot I filled out. They crossed my name off a clipboard list, handed me a blank ballot to go fill out (one of those fill in the circle ones), and I put it through the scanner when I was done (which also spit it back out if anything was filled in wrong or difficult to read). Nowhere was who I voted for tied to my name, age, sex, race, job, sexual orientation, annual income, IQ, OS choice, preferred text editor, or anything. The only data they have is who the vote was for, and which precinct it was made in. Any other data would have to be gotten from exit polls, which for obvious reasons aren't done by the government.*
:) ). There wasn't any exit poll stuff around when I was voting, but then again it was late in the day and IIRC they were having problems with their equipment or something, so they probably just packed up early. I'm assuming that filling out exit polls is completely optional; if it isn't then 1. something's seriously fucked in this country (among other things) and 2. you can disregard pretty much everything I said.
Replace the "fill out and scan a paper ballot" with "push buttons at a computer terminal" if you want an uber-1337 100% buzzword compliant system. It all ends up on a disk either way.
I like your idea of a publically searchable database of votes, but it's just not possible for the US government to do. They simply don't collect anything beyond your vote and the precinct you live in, nor do they need to to determine who wins. Talk to the Voter News Service if you want a public database of voting info to study.
* I voted for the first time last November (hey, I'm still older than 90% of the people here
I've always wondered if the results of an outcome were to be challenged, if the source could be audited by representatives in a court. This Open Audit could quell a lot of complaints against using said software, or get them to remove it if it is found in error.
I've wondered if the same could be applied to an appeal against photo radar systems (aside from the facing your accusor thingy), to audit the source for photo radar.
has anyone started a project at sourcefourge yet? that will be the first step in the right direction....
buller, buller, anyone ?? anyone ??
That's impossible to do with a secret ballot. Having the secret ballot may have avoided voter intimidation, but it opens the floodgates to massive election fraud. The only feasable way of eliminating all election fraud is to have a database of each voter and their vote, and call each voter twice after voting day to verify that they voted the way the database says they did. Otherwise a small group of conspirators could easily stuff the ballot boxes with the votes of people who never showed up. In several elections in the south during Reconstruction, there were more votes cast than there were citizens of that district, I shit you not.
Repeal the DMCA!
I worked as a poll worker in the last election in Georgia, which started using Diebold's electronic voting machines statewide (becoming, as our Sec. of State proudly exclaimed, the "first state to go all electronic" in voting).
I have to say that I think the machines are a mixed blessing. First, the good things:
1) It's MUCH easier for the average voting person (read: old people) to vote with these machines than the previous paper ballots... you can get enlarged ballots if you have a vision problem, and can even get an audio ballot (there's a machine with headphones) if you need it. That, plus you can see exactly you you've chosen to vote for and have multiple chances in the process to check your vote and change it, if you want to.
2) It's MUCH easier on the poll workers... instead of having to manually count a lot of paper ballots (and dealing with all the chads), you can just consolidate the numbers from all the machines in a process that takes 3 minutes and then print a totals report. (Or, in some counties that use it, you can submit the results electronically via a dial-in connection to the poll HQ.)
3) It DOES NOT remove the audit trail of ensuring that the number of people who came into the precinct matches the number of votes that were cast. As other people have said, there is NO WAY AT ALL to match a ballot to a specific person because we have a secret-ballot process in this country.
The bad points of the machine were:
1) People inheretly don't trust computers. Too many people have seen too many blue-screens-of-death and lost too many Word documents (think end-user here) to trust computers... and we computer professionals know better than to trust them. That's a big hurdle to overcome. And it didn't help that...
2) The voting machines had bugs in the code. We started noticing some odd activity on one of the machines, so we rebooted all 8 of the machines in our precinct during a down time of the day. (Rebooting does not reset the vote counts... they use NVRAM to store the votes.) Then a Diebold rep. comes into the precinct at about 3:00 and (after taking me away from the public's earshot) tells me that THE MACHINES HAVE A MEMORY LEAK, and need to be reset about every 75 voters or so, or they will mess up the voter's ballot! That's NOT good, and I was really surprised and disppointed the the Diebold people hadn't even load tested their machine with 75 voters before. (?!?!?!?) Fortunately, there was no big stink made about this after the election, even though two major statewide races had surprising (and close) results.
I guess the bottom line is that machines are a good idea in theory, and they can make the process easier overall, but they MUST BE TESTED. How can you put a machine out for public use that hasn't even been realistically load tested with 300-400 voters? (A typical machine gets about 200 voters per election... they increase or decrease the number of machines per precinct based on the number of people registered in that precinct.) If the SW company does their homework, electronic voting can be a good thing... but that's a big if.
- Proofs of Sturgeon's Law Delivered Daily -
Instant Runoff Voting Problems
IRV is great for letting you cast "protest" votes for unpopular parties, but once a third party becomes popular you end up with the same strategic voting problems that plurality voting has. Don't get me wrong, sticking with plurality is insane, but IRV would be a placebo; we need approval or Condorcet voting instead.
I am a representative to the Program Committee and will definitely be bringing this up tomorrow. Last year in committee I was among a contingent that argued that regardless of the kind of voting system we adopt, there must always be a papertrail so as to prevent the rigging of elections.
This is definitely coming up tomorrow.
If you're interested in seeing a small-party convention and have the time, it's taking place Sat/Sun/Mon, Feb 15-17 in Ontario, California. (as opposed to that other "Ontario, CA")
http://www.ca.lp.org/conv/2003/
$u(k 1t!!!!11!
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
We need to know how they voted.
We need to know exactly how the votes were counted, else a charge of fraud sticks, even if not proven.
We do not need more evidence our courts or accountants are corrupt. Please make the process transparent, or the rule of law becomes a farce.
Ed Craig "Who cares what you think?" George W. Bush, 4th of July 2001
They were running a lottery in Eastern Europe. It was based on a computer lottery system, and a good deal of work was done to secure the system... Work was done eneirely off of the internet, and when it came time to run it, the programmer and the program diak were escorted by seriously armed guards (sub-machine guns and all). Once the lottery was run, the programmer and disk were returned to their 'safe' place.
After a couple of rather 'coincidental' wins, some of the winners quieetly disappeared -- along with the programmer.
When you can prove to me that a system is immune from willful mis-programming, then I'll accept a voting system without a paper trail.
Until then.....
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
The fact that there's $$ to be made in selling / servicing voting machines will keep us from getting good ones.
It could have already be a done deal.
Use lotto machines, hell maybe even the network that they communicate with.
Use a slight variant of the existing paper tickets as ballots with a mechanism similar to the current punch card system.
When you've marked your ballot, turn it in to be read. You get a receipt that is your decoded marks.
You review the sheet at the polling place, make corrections as necessary. Like the terminals at the grocery stores you have to say "ok" for it to be accepted.
Your corrected receipt is given to you with a serial number on it. That serial number lets you later review what the "system" thinks your vote was on any particular item. If not you complain to the registrar of voters.
This setup would be cheap per voter ( no individual touch screens, just a single terminal per polling place )
Might use existing hardware / network ( take your ballot to the 7-11 to vote?). Heck, if they suspend lotto sales on election day this might be possible. Just send the usual polling place volunteers where the machines are.
Gives the voter feedback at the site to verify what the "machine" thought their marks were, allows them to correct. No strangers examining hanging chads to guess.
Final feedback using the receipt and access to the final tally. If a group thinks they got screwed by the count, all they have to do is compare their receipts to the official tally. It would be like lotto tickets, tied to the recipt number, not to you, so no privacy issues.
This is something that could be worked out in a month by some 1/2 way intelligent people and the people who wrote the lotto machine s/w. But given the usual amount of corruption and lobbying, it's never gonna happen.
bush wouldn't win california next election.
IMAGE VERIFICATION IS EVIL!
--I'm in georgia and I disagree with you 100%. The vote went FAST, it didn't go WELL. You, me, NO ONE in this state except a small handful of private parties knows how the real vote went. And said private parties have some verifiable ties to some partisan orgs. Early on in the morning there started to be a flurry of voting screwups reported,where the tally you mentioned DIDN'T jibe, in fact where a vote cast for candidate A went to B, something that seems outside the odds of probability given the simple nature of the code involved to register a hit someplace, I mean c'mon! there should have been ZERO mistakes. this is not an indicator of tested code that works as advertised, it's not super computer massive variable crunching we are talking about. This was reported even on drudge,I left at 1 pm to go vote, got back a little after 2 or so, and it was POOFED within that time and was minimalised and barely talked about during the evening, then the story disappeared. It was dismissed. And we had the first mass reversal in the governorship since the civil war, and this is to be taken as a coincidence? And there was a lot of pre and post polling that didn't jibe as well with the 'results". I'm neither a D nor an R,so I don't got a dog in this fight, but I just slap don't believe it. And I'll repeat, you do NOT know the vote went well, whether it was accurate, or whether or not it was rigged anyplace. There's no way to look in an empty ballot box in the morning to see it isn't pre stuffed (traditionally the first person in line in a precinct, I have done this myself). There's no way to look at the full box and see what the count is beyond believing what they say the count is, or to be more accurate, what it spits out at you.
When I did my complaint, they shuffled me off on the phone to some private voice on the phone who wouldn't even identify where he was to me. He wasn't even a governmental employee by his own admission. They refused to let me even talk to anyone who was a state of georgia official, I got the classic help desk with no answers shuffle. I said flat out it was closed source, no way to verify it, there was a high probability of fraud and certainly the potential for abuse, and the guy got indignant, but he KNEW I was stating the truth.
We HAD paper ballots, they WORKED perfectly ok and were not hard to figure out, and no "hanging chads" possible, it was fill in the bubble next to the vote. Any call for a recount can be done by any citizen at the end of the voting day following normal procedures in front of witnesses, regular old eyeballs still work. The ballot boxes were paid for, like 100 years ago or something, there was NO NEED to spend millions of dollars on this OTHER than to use smoke and mirrors razzle dazzle to fake out the rubes with the "new and improved computerised voting" "Look how easy it is! The computer does all the work!" The talking laquer heads on the boob toob were having near orgasms over it, another red flag for me, whenever the controlled press is "for" something I smell a rat,because a rat has always shown up in the past when they acted like shills and not newspeople. Phooie. they sold these scam voting machines the same way they sold over hyped stocks during the bubble, they shilled them. I saw the "public information" ads, I still got my flyer they sent to voters touting how cool it would be. double phooie.
Color me suspicious as hell, as far as I am concerned the vote got hijacked in an extremely sophisticated manner and hardly no one gives a squat about it. Georgia was their test state to see if they could get away with it in an entire state, they did, now it will go nationwide.
Don't take this as a personal flame, but I just had to disagree strongly here. When I look around and see what else is going on, aww %^&*T! It's a duck, it looks like a duck it walks like a duck it's quacking like a duck it's a dang fascist junta takeover. This "vote" scam just fits in with all the other bush-wa that's going on.
This is my second reply in the thread, but I am gonna drop this link again anyway, I think the subject is important enough.:
Votescam
Sorry, I'm a little peeved at writing the same darn URLs every time this comes up.
- Technical description by the ACT Electoral Commission
- Comments by a user in the Australian Computer Society on how the system worked in practice.
- Executive Summary of how it worked.
- 1 MB PDF full report.
- And finally.... The Source
Jeez... I mean, it's been a while that this has been available. Posted several times onZoe Brain - Rocket Scientist
Note, that where I'm from (Australia) we vote with a pencil and paper so I guess I might be a bit of a luddite.
:) due to machines being a little faulty sometimes.
:)
The only benefit of electronic voting is speed of determining the results (ignoring vote from home over the telephone or internet for the moment).
Currently the US seems to use machines for voting which punch holes, etc. That gives a paper trail, but makes the counting a bit error prone (as we've seen in the past
To me a good enough system would be a machine which you make your vote (via a touch screen for example) and it prints out a paper vote that you put in a box (just like with a normal pencil and paper vote) while also storing the vote on its hard drive or whatever.
Then at the end of the election you can get a quick vote tally by getting vote counts from each machine and adding them up (that would be automated as well I assume, plug the machines into a (private) network and have them report their votes to a 'master' machine which tallies them).
You make sure the tally is recorded seperately for each machine (maybe even split it up by conveniant time slots as well). The boxes into which paper votes went are also seperated the same way. Then you can manually tally the votes in a box to confirm the electronic count on the machine. Depending on your level of paranioa you could make that the official count, and the machine reported count just an "early estimate". Or you could randomly select boxes for hand counting and then comparison with the machine tally. Or you could select 'suspicious' or 'close' counts for the manual recount.
I see no reason why the voter should get a receipt so they can check their vote - currently that doesn't happen (at least in Australia) and it would remove the anonymity that is essential to not getting your legs broken and kids murdered when your slip doesn't match the vote those big men with baseball bats told you to make.
In my opinion, you might as well use machines to do fast counting. But since machines break, hard drives crash, coding errors are made, etc., you better make a paper copy of each vote for manual counting as well (heck, a powerout might make manual counting via candle light faster
It's not fool proof. People can still cheat the system, but it doesn't add any additional ways that don't already exist.
Of course we have a state election here (NSW) coming up in which the winner will be either the fascist police state Labor party who are planning on restrospectively overturning double jeopardy. Or the fascist police state Liberals (and Nationals in coalition) who want to extend the current police 'anti-terrorism' powers because the searching of premises and people without a warrant at the whim of the police officer isn't enough. So I might be easily convinced that voting doesn't matter anyway...
ElectionMethods.org
I watch Brit Hume on Fox News
The company I work for is currently preparing a bid for pilot project that will allow the citizens of the largest Swiss state to vote via Internet and mobile phone, along with the usual paper method.
The main driver of the project is to increase turnover, especially for young citizen that are supposed to be more prone to vote via these "new" technologies.
Our (swiss) laws already incorporate specific requirements regarding e-Voting, including the ability to audit the process, the security of the whole system and the secrecy of the votes.
Swiss citizens usually have to vote or elect several times a year and the voting process is considered as mature, every step being supervised by committees containing members of different parties/lobbying groups.
The voting registers are held at the local level, and are continuously updated every time a citizen moves in or out of the city, reaches the voting age or dies, and are crosschecked by the higher authority. Voting material and voting cards are automatically sent several weeks in advance to the possible voters, they do not have to register themselves or require anything. So by design, we have no dead people voting or minorities prevented to vote because they did not register themselves due to lack of information.
e-Voting is considered here as a good thing, as it allows to streamline the counting process and should increase (our low) turnover by not requiring voters to physically present themselves to the voting booth (in some states, the majority of voters already use the generalized absentee (snail mail) voting process).
I find it quite surprising that a large majority of the US "geeks" has such a mistrust in the electronic vote in particular, and the ability of their authorities to conduct a fair and lawful election in general. Aren't the USA supposed to be the most democratic country in this world ?
--and did you contact any whistle blower styled news people in this state? Have you called this in, written a letter to the editor to the journal constitution, filed any ethics violations with the secretary of state? did you STOP YOUR VOTE at your precinct when you found this out? This is the first I have heard of this memory leak and reboot problem, and I have looked for info.
This election was flawed,and my guess it was thoroughly rigged, key races, key precincts, you can't tell if what the diebold guy told you is true or yet another scam, no idea what rebooting did. At best you know at your precinct how many bodies walked in the door, and what the machine told you there on the spot, that's it. No one knows what the real numbers are. No one even knows the real collated numbers, do they? It's all based 100% on this vague "trust us, we are the new corporate government, we would never lie to you". And do you really believe a republican governor got elected? In Georgia? And that cleland lost? Disregard personal left/right schisms, just the sheer common sense odds of it happening.
We are living in a high tech styled germany of 1936, that's my opinion. Orwell was wrong, it's WORSE than what he prophesized.
One last thing, why did you say "Fortunately, there was no big stink made about this after the election, even though two major statewide races had surprising (and close) results."
Fortunately? You think this is a GOOD THING? and you are a poll worker? I am GLAD that this is caught on the web here, I just MIGHT do something with this little post of yours.
have a GOOD DAY.
I think our next president would be an insensitive clod, you insensitive clod!
or maybe natalie portman, damn my ^H^H^Hot grits in soviet russia
--
This is a good idea, but it does not go far enough. How would they know that the machine code was compiled from this version of the source code? What they need to do is get an image of the hard drive on the machine that the votes are tallied on. That way, they can examine that if fraud was suspected.
I hadn't put that much thought into it, nice to see an informed opinion.
private computerized voting ... is just a polysyllabic way to say "fraud".
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
...by getting people to use your easily manipulatable system, and then accepting the highest bribes.
Which seems to be an apt description of how the voting companies are working.
See blackbox voting for lots more on this...
Open souce? Checksums? Backups? Redundancy? NONSENSE!
All we need is two things to ensure safe, accurate computerized voting.
1. Machines that produce a voter-verifiable audit record (paper ballot).
2. A law that says that anyone can call for a manual recount at any time, and if the electronic results are shown to be incorrect, everyone involved in building and installing the system will be shot. (If they're willing to risk our democracy, the should be willing to risk their lives. Conversely, if they're not willing to bet their lives on it, why should we risk our right to vote?)
Why doesn't the computerized voting system use a system like this:
... except then they could easily tie your vote to that individual number ... which would be a gross breach of privacy ... never mind. =)
1) The government includes a 10 or 12-digit "key" printed on the card that they mail you when it's time to vote. (Could even be a barcode on the back of the card.)
2) When you actually vote, you have to enter your driver's licence # to make the vote count.
There, problem solved. The government has your driver's licence number. It could easily maintain a database like that.
(sarcasm) This is great, and since we know that there is absolutely NO way to manipulate or hack a box running a modern OS, we can sleep safely at night knowing that we live in a free world and not one run by some script kiddie. (/sarcasm)
1 - Voter checks in with a volunteer who checks off their name like they do now then tares off a random number from another sheet (numbers are given out on a first come first serve basis and are only assigned to poll locations)
2 - Voter goes to machine and punches in their number that they were given by the volunteer.
3 - Voter votes.
4 - Machine spits out a random number on paper that the voter can then take as their recipt.
5 - All votes are listed in plain text on a public internet server. The votes are arranged by the random number spit out to the voter.
This way there is anonyminity as there is several layers of obsfucation. Even if you controlled the software, the best you could do is associate a vote with a polling location. More importantly, there is checks and ballances: the voter can check the website and see if their random number is there and that it is associated with what they voted, and all the votes add up. If someone's number wasn't there, you'd know something was fishy. If the votes didn't add up or were different than what was reported you'd know something was wrong.
1. Endorse the resolution on electronic voting. http://verify.stanford.edu/evote.html 2. Most people don't seem to know what's happening. Tell them about it, and point them to the web page. 3. If you live in Santa Clara County, CA, contact the election staff and supervisors to let them know you consider this an important issue. http://verify.stanford.edu/dill/EVOTE/scco.html 4. email offers of help to "elections@chicory.stanford.edu". More ideas would be appreciated.
--where I live there isn't any paper record. There's a digital record that you have to accept as authentic, based on "trust" with no "verify".
Wishes? Back to full normal paper ballots, low tech. Extremely easy, still works fine, you can see on the thread that canada has no problem with voting and counting and recounting this way. there's zero reason other than the fraud potential to go electronic voting. Also like to see a 24 hour voting day, not a business hours vote day that discriminates against people who have to go to work. I've seen way too much evidence that a lot of people don't vote because they can't get out of wark. I actually quit a decent job before when I wasn't "allowed" to leave so I could catch getting in line at night, a day they insisted I work overtime past poll closing. Cost me serious folding money just to go vote. Right now it's more welfare people and business owners/bosses who are more likely to vote, as they have more control over their time schedule. And a first choice, second choice, etc, on the ballot, so people would be more likely to not do this "lesser of two evils" vote, and also a "none of the above" choice.
Hook up a dot-matrix printer to the voting system. Each time a vote is cast, have it print a line with the results. Keep it under lock and key so that people can't see the totals. Or run carbon paper through it and run it without a ribbon, so that if the paper needs to be counted, all you have to do is rip off the top sheet and you have all of the results. Easy solutions.
Most of us have the right to vote, I'll grant you, but wasn't it recently decided that states don't have to make reasonable efforts to count your votes if they don't want to?
Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska (a former conservative radio talk show host) owns part interest (a $1M-5M dollar investment) in The Macarthy Group, which owns a company called "Election Systems & Software". Sen. Hagel was, at one time, the chairman of ES&S. ES&S supplied the voting machines that count approximately 60% of all votes cast in the United States, and they counted all the votes in Hagel's 1996 upset and 2002 landslide wins in Nebraska. ES&S is loathe to reveal the source code. Sen. Hagel neglected to disclose his interest in ES&S on his FEC Personal Disclosure statements, claiming that his interest in The Macarthy Group (a privately held banking company) was exempt as an "exempted investment fund" (a rule which exempts candidates from disclosing their mutual fund holdings). Hagel's financial disclosures (or lack thereof) from 1996-2002 can be found here. Also interesting, in 1996 Hagel became the first Republican to win a Senate seat in Nebraska in 24 years to win a Senate seat helped in part by an unprecendented show of support by the black community who had never before voted republican.
Vonnegut: "What is the purpose of life? To be the eyes, ears, and conscience of the Creator of the Universe, you fool."
I wrote about this in 2000. It's easy to have a paper trail that the voter can verify but nobody else can see.
Print out the record of the voter's choices and have that printout appear in a window. Once the voter is done voting the window becomes obscure or the paper with the votes on it drops away (maybe gets cut into a large bin to avoid being able to reconstruct the sequence of the voters?).
There's no reason we can't have a system where the voter sees the paper evidence that their vote was counted and the voter remains anonymous.
Of course, this depends on a trustworthy computer counting the votes in the first place and not discarding or altering electronic votes and printing out everything correctly. Open source it must be, then.
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
Unionize! Organize! I mean, hell, we created that king of organization himself, Mr. Networked Computer. Computer programmers should have as much political power as the computer owners themselves. In this manner, we can guarantee that no man, woman, or child will be forced to use undocumented code again! Everyone can program! Children in the streets, programming with their friends and thinking "man thank god the programmers offer their knowledge so readily and made this LISP syntax so easy to understand!" or maybe "shit if it wasn't for those programmers I'd be living in a police state".
People would love programmers, and hence not only pay them more, but also offer them more sex. C'mon nerds, you want sex, right?! Power to the people!
The electoral system isn't "antiquated". If the founders had intended the electoral college members to be nothing more than courriers, they could have easily done that.
I actually do agree with your idea that the electoral system is not antiquated, and I prefer it slightly to just en masse popular voting.
But, as far as I can tell, the electoral college was sincerely set up as a system of couriers. Not just from the level of pragmatics, but also because, considering what they foresaw as the extent of the "union" at that time, the idea of some sorta national system watching the election returns from each secretary of states office just doesn't seem like a way they would sought to do things.
The concept of electoral votes going winner takes all on the state by state basis is not implicit. I believe that Nebraska splits its electoral college votes by the actual popular vote. However, states quickly figured out that their own power in any election was maximized by going winner takes all. That's created an interesting system that continues to this day...and one which I still slightly prefer to en masse popular.
That doesn't mean that innovations still can't be done. For instance, a state could go to some type of multichoice/preference voting system for the presidential election, but still be winner takes all with the electoral college. That way the state is still individually powerful, but minor party candidates have some chance in affecting an election.
NPR had a story about Black Box Voting, a book about Georgia's electronic voting system and it's problems. All sorts of great info on the website.
"America, I smoke marijuana every chance I get."
So the person attempting to blackmail him just asks to see the receipt.
Such has been the case regarding Chuck Hagel, and the voting debacle in Georgia, Florida, and Nebraska. As long as any political group owns the machines, democracy will be nothing more than a joke.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
I hate slashdot. All of you are morons. Search for SENSUS and cryptographic voting protocols.
"...and a _mule_???"
And it is just coincidence that the good Senator from Nebraska was previously the CEO of the company that counted the ballots? (No, the previous poster did not pick a hypothetical example.)
Where can I order me up some more "coincidences" like that?
Plurality voting is the source of most of the election problems we have in the US. We don't need "campaign finance" reform, we need voting method reform! The problem isn't that Democrats and/or Republicans spend a lot of money, the problem is that we can't effectively vote against both of them!
Glad to see someone else posting useful Condorcet links. Condorcet is so superior to other methods, and IRV so flawed, I'm surprised that IRV is still mentioned as a possible replacement for plurality.
Constitutionally Correct
Except for felons actually in prison at the time of the vote, no one should be denied their right to vote. Florida denies ex-cons the right to vote even after they are out, which results in 31% of the black males in Florida not being able to vote.
"I do not fear computers. I fear lack of them." ~ Isaac Asimov
Our current system uses the plurality vote, which just means you cast one vote (only) for one candidate. This method is simplistic and extremely inaccurate because it doesn't take into account second choices. The result is to encourage people to only vote for front runners, which artificially props up the two major parties.
There are several better methods:
Each of these methods is statistically superior to the plurality vote, and they're already in use. Changing the voting system is a state issue (the Constitution doesn't specify) and can be accomplished in each state with a simple statute.
For more info, see the following links:
ElectionMethods.org
http://whyfiles.org/shorties/068voting/
http://www.discover.com/nov_00/gthere.html?articl
Read my keyboard review.