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Interview with Voting Machine Company Reps
laupsavid writes "Here's an interesting interview with government and industry reps on the Black_Box_Voting site. I think it's funny (yet terrifying), almost like an extended Shark-Tank Unclear on the Concept item. They interview Paul Miller, Registration and Systems Manager of the Office of the Secretary of State. Black Box Voting is dedicated to informing people of reasons to reject electronic voting systems. I believe Bev Harris runs the site, and she claims to be an expert on accounting fraud. Also, see this area of the a site called Ecotalk for a list of instances of purported fraud by electronic voting."
One of my favorite stories occured in a western state, I believe New Mexico. The local election official was suppose to set up the "tailor" files for the electronic vote counting system. Afterward, he was suppose to run a variety of test cases to make sure it all worked right. So on election night, their counting the ballots and someone noticed that the totals don't add up right. As I recall, a large group of ballots were being ignored. In a panic, they ID the problem and call the equipment vendor asking how to make the necessary changes. The vendor begs them not to change a thing and call a judge, pointing out that any changes made on election night will probably led to a election fraud trial. They call in a judge, who brings in reps from the handful of political parties. It takes days to fix the problem.
Without a hardcopy of each vote as it is cast, a recount is nearly useless.
I propose that each voting station be issued a single unperforated paper roll of ballots, with the voting booths in a line. Each vote would be punched and signed on the same roll.
Instead of having a pile of cards that could be selectively lost or stuffed, the individual rolls would be easier to keep track of. Plus, hand recounts would be far easier.
This could be abused too, but I'm not offering perfection, just perhaps an improvement.
The more out-of-sight and automated a system is, the better is has to be. Just to break even.
If anything is hidden, there is at least the perception that evil-doers *can* do things they shouldn't.
While I don't necessarily trust either the Democrat or the Republican election officials, I do feel fairly safe trusting that both are in no mood to let the other side get away with much of anything.
I don't have any answers, but unless anyone can at most anytime publicly ask any election official just what they are doing and expect an explanation, there will be at least a suspicion that there's "funny business" going on.
I think this is one of the best ideas I've heard, and its very simple. Have the machine print out your choices, let you review them, and then drop them in a ballot box. This gives us an independent recount method if there is some sort of fraud suspected.
-prator
I'd feel a lot better about electronic voting if someone could download the code and review it, to make sure some programmer didn't get and 'extra' bonus that election cycle.
I realize there's no money in it, but w/ all the /.ers talking about how the current systems are rife with opportunities to tamper, I would thinks that *someone would be working on it, if not for their own amusement, for the good of free democracy.
Unless of course all you coders are to busy playing America's Army...
Hanging chads aren't really in any way a form a fraud. Fraud usually implies that the incorrect tallying of the votes was purposefully altered. Hanging chads are simply cards where the tiny circular piece of paper hasn't been fully punched out and is hanging from the hole. Actually, in 1996 I believe a house seat was won in Mass. by William Delahunt based on cards with "bulging chads." The cards simply had a little bump and they included that as "voter intent."
People should also consider the number of spoiled punch cards ballots and its ralationship to fraud.
Its really easy to stack these things up and stick a stiff wire through the hole you want. People that voted the way you wanted don't get spoiled ballots. People voting the other way get two holes punched -- and their votes eliminated.
Don't think is hasn't happened.
Bear in mind that most of these electronic voting projects are resisting the idea of a printout for the voter, because (they say) they don't want the expense of the inevitable manual recounts. Bear in mind, also, that a group of Saudi investors recently bought a controlling interest in election.com.
finally, someone advocating testing! unfortunately, it's a technical solution to a social problem. how do you say "we have a reasonable confidence that noone tampered with the machines (read: voting process) in last night's election"? the last election i voted in (municipal) the people tallying the votes knew that i (or anyone) could walk in and observe the process. if anyone yelled hanky panky, it was possible to completely reconstruct the original data set at a later date and answer the challenge.
the problem is not testing beforehand, but testing during the voting and after the voting, ie as the votes are being tallied. do you expect that even a small minority of the population could understand a runtime coredump/stack trace printout (a la MacsBug) even if they were available? the idea of counting votes marked on on artifacts and in the open is very hard to improve upon.
to the challenge of "but hey, storing the data in bits is an artifact!", i answer: look at the hard drive closest to you (may not be visible) and ask, how long is the warranty on it good for?
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I think another anti-fraud device that an 'Electronic voting with Printout' system might have is cross checking.
The procedure would be this
1) You would get a printout-ballot encoded with machine AND human readable information after you make your selection via touch screen. Each printout ballot would be encoded with a unique, but anonymous control number.
2) You would audit the printout to ensure the right selections were made.
3) You would deposit the printout into a sealed ballot box.
4) After the polling place closes, the electronic ballots are encrypted and transmitted to a separate secure computer.
5) The printout-ballots are then tallied by a third party at a separate location, using the separate secure computer system.
6) The printout ballots are cross checked with the electronic ballot information via the anonymous control number.
7) If electronic ballot=printout ballot the vote counts, if not it doesn't
Since the voting information would be in two different formats, and tallied by two different people, the opportunity for fraud would be limited.
Would you find it surprising that black Republicans in the 2000 Florida election had a 50-fold higher likelihood of having their ballots invalidated than black Democrats? It's true. That's because the precincts where so many blacks had their votes stolen were actually under the control of the Democratic machine.
Statistical analysis shows that by far the most likely reason for so many "double punched" ballots in black Florida precincts was that Democratic operatives took stacks of ballots after the voting and ran ice picks through the Gore hole. Gore votes were unchanged; Bush and Buchanan votes were rejected because of double punching. This is also why there were so many hanging chads; the ice picks did not separate the chads cleanly.
Maybe you think it is normal for minority precincts to report 99.94% voter registration, 100% voter turnout, with 90%+ of votes for the Democratic candidate, and always reporting after the Republican county vote totals come in. I don't.
If voter fraud is ever stamped out completely, the Democrats can kiss the White House goodbye for a generation.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
What is so freaking difficult about counting votes accurately?? (1+1=2!) I agree with most /.ers here, there should be a paper trail definitely. I would suggest something like a ticket with a confirmation number, and vote info printed out after voting electronically. Similar to the money order or lotto tickets you buy at 7 eleven!
ie. A voting ticket automatically printed out after vote is submitted, with 2 parts, where one part you keep and the other is placed into a secured box.
Miller: "What you're implying is that there is a way for a programmer to know where a candidate will be on the ballot to give that candidate a benefit. That's impossible."
Harris: "Regardless of who sets up the ballot, the ballot does identify who is a Republican and who is a Democrat. So there would be a way for the program to know that. Why couldn't a programmer, for example, set the machine to wait for a couple hundred votes and then put, say, one out of every 10 Democrat votes into the Republican bin?"
Miller: "It's not the programmer that programs the machine."
Harris: "But whoever does it identifies, for example, who is a Democrat and who is a Republican, so regardless of who inputs that, the machine would be able to read and identify that too."
Miller: "I'm not going to talk about proving a negative."
Harris: "But the positive, which can be proved, is that every election system that's ever been used in the USA has, at one time or another, been tampered with. And what we do know is that $800 million has gone toward contributions to candidates. So certainly we can predict that someone will try to tamper with a programmer. And therefore, what I'm asking, is what safeguards do we have in place to make sure that, if someone tampers with a program or a CD update --"
Miller: "I think we've gone as far as we can go."