Doubting Electronic Voting

twitter writes "The NYT is raising the alarm on electronic voting. After citing expert opinion on the need for a paper trail, they then quote election officials and vendors who dismiss that opinion as the ignorant work of dreamers. The reporter titles his article, 'To Register Doubts, Press Here' and seems less than convinced."

Comments

Yeah right

[Ishin]

We all saw what good a paper trail did in Florida in the 2000 USA presidential campaign. The problems run much deeper than just a paper trail in the USA. When people are cut off from voting by police roadblocks, and thousands of ballots are thrown away, or arranged in a confusing way to try to get people to vote for someone that they don't want to, there's more than just a paper trail problem.

Unfortunately, the US government runs its own elections, rather than a truely impartial third party.

Politics are a dangerous thing in America.

Re:Yeah right

[Dr. Bent]

Unfortunately, the US government runs its own elections, rather than a truely impartial third party.

"a truely impartial third party"? Like who? What organization is responsible enough to oversee the elections of the most powerful nation on Earth and yet has no opinion one way or another on how they should go.

There is no "impartial third party". The U.S. electoral process isn't perfect but handing it over to Deloitte and Touche, or the U.N. or any other supposedly 'impartial' body is just going to make it worse. The best way to keep it legit is just to make the counters accountable.

It's not about electronic vote casting.

[s20451]

The best idea is not electronic vote casting, it's electronic counting. The most recent Toronto mayoral election used a ballot similar to those used in electronic test-scoring, where you use your HB pencil to fill in a blank. The votes were all counted within a couple of hours after the polls closed.

If you wanted to avoid confusing the easily confusable, you could have a touch-screen system that prints a paper ballot, with the blanks ideally positioned for the electronic counters. Efficiency and a paper trail.

Brazil

[Gleef]

National Semiconductor and Unisys (two American companies) made a really good electronic voting system for Brazil, they've been using them since 1996. It has a tamper resistant paper trail, so it is completely auditable, unlike most of the systems described in the article. From what I've heard, the machines work quite well, and people are happy with them. (Please, if someone has actually voted with these, share your experiences)

I fail to see how having a paper trail with electronic voting is "dreaming", it strikes me more as "required", particularly if we want to consider our government democratic.

Touch screens with printouts

[dszd0g]

Any opinions on the following:

When one goes to the polls, you do the signup sheet thing. They hand you a card with a barcode on it. The barcode is not tied to the voter in any way. Only the voter knows their number.

Of course some algorithm would be used to generate the numbers and they would have large gaps. A good algorithm should prevent people bringing their own cards and hiding them in their pants, right? Smart chips could be used if people want to be paranoid (that would get expensive).

You go to a machine, insert the card. You place your votes on a touch screen. The software confirms your votes. Then it prints the results onto the card.

If you look at the card and see a mistake or for whatever reason, you go back to the main desk. They swipe the barcode, which cancels the vote and hand you a new card. If someone starts swiping invalid numbers the front desk is notified.

One can then bring the card home. After the election you can enter the barcode and check to make sure the database matches what is printed on the card.

This last one is important to me, because I feel it adds some accountability. If someone can get enough people to hand over their cards after an election an audit should be possible.

I've been up all night so this probably has holes in it, but what do you think of the overall process?

One could take the barcode thing a little farther and when the voter pamphlets are handed out there is a barcode printed on them that one can bring to the polls to make it easier for them to find the voter's name. One would still be required to sign (this isn't really any security, I assume it is allows some legal protection). If the voter does not have the barcode they would be required to provide some form of identification. I don't flat out like requiring identification, but this provides a way out.

Re:Right..... and all financial transactions onlin

[Scaba]

...but this reporter is nervous about voting?

He's nervous, beause with electronic voting, a paranoid, warmongering lunatic may be able to fix an election, get himself voted in, and start an aggressive campaign of pre-emptive...oh wait.

The US government does NOT run elections

[YetAnotherAnonymousC]

Unfortunately, the US government runs its own elections, rather than a truely impartial third party

An important point, though: the Federal government does NOT run any elections, period. Elections are the responsibility of the states. This was done on purpose so that the federal government could not rig elections for itself. Of course, as we've seen in practice, federal intrusion in state business has become so commonplace that federal action frequently affects state elections, from Federal voting rights acts to the 2000 presidential election. Of course, the ends could be said to justify the means for much of this federal interference. But there is a legitimate states' rights/federalism argument to be made against any federal interference in state elections.

Electronic voting and air gaps

[Millennium]

The only way you can possibly make electronic voting machines acceptably secure is to not network them at all. This isn't so much a measure to prevent hacking as it is a measure to control the amount of damage a hacker can do; if only one machine at a time can be hacked, then damage remains localized. Here's my idea for such a system:

• The user shows up at the polling place, and is given a token, which will be used to operate the voting machine. The user then goes to one of several voting booths, which can be chosen at random.
• The user presents the token to the machine, which marks that token as used (such that it can never be used to operate another machine). Only then is the user allowed to begin the voting process.
• The user chooses a language for onscreen text and voice instructions. Ideally, instructions should be phrased in such a way that they can be reused between elections.
• The user is presented with a list of candidates, including names and pictures. One by one, each candidate is highlighted; as this occurs, a voice sample is played of the candidate saying his or her name. This is important, because it allows for a person to recognize the proper candidate based on written name, picture, spoken name, and sound of voice. This is pretty much everything that can reasonably be done to ensure that a person knows which candidate is being voted for.
• The vote can be controlled in two ways: by touching the candidate's name onscreen, or by pressing a button as that candidate's name is being read. This latter is a measure to accommodate blind voters., or others who could not effectively use a touch screen.
• Each vote is confirmed twice, onscreen and by voice -again using the sample of the candidate- to ensure that the voter is absolutely certain that this is the proper choice.
• Once the voting process is completed, a paper ballot is printed for the user (there will be strong warnings onscreen and in voice to ensure that the user understands to take the ballot). This ballot is marked with a barcode stating what machine it came from, but no information which could identify the user (this is why it is important to let the user pick a booth at random). The purpose of this barcode is so that if a machine is known to be tampered with, votes cast using that machine can be tracked down.
• The ballot is then taken by the user to a ballot box, where it will be shipped to the usual facilities for counting purposes.

The advantages to this system are many:

• Every possible method of recognizing candidates is taken into account. This won't totally eliminate confusion -some people are so monumentally stupid that nothing will get through to them- but this minimizes that problem.
• There is a paper trail which can be consulted. The value of this cannot be overestimated.
• There is no single point of failure. Tampering with a single machine cannot in and of itself damage any other machines, so the number of votes which must be considered suspect due to machine tampering is minimized.
• Counting is still done by machines, which are not prone to bias as humans are, but because the ballot os filled out by machine, the process is somewhat more controlled.

And one final note, particular to US elections: poll results should be considered classified information until the polls are closed in all fifty states. Timezones being what they are, this exit-poll crap is causing election results in East Cost states to affect West Coast states, however slightly, and that needs to be dealt with. Each state's results must be completely independent of the results of any other state, and measures need to be taken to ensure that.

It needs to be open

[Ripplet]

There's (allegedly) a good example already of how electronic voting can be abused.

1996: Chuck Hagel wins "stunning upsets" in both primaries and the general election in Nebraska.

2002: Chuck Hagel gets reelected in a landslide, with 83% of the vote.

A single company programmed, installed and largely operated the machines that counted about 80 percent of those votes.

This company used to be headed by, and is still part-owned by, you guessed it, Chuck Hagel.

Coincidence, yeah right.

Oh, one more thing. Charlie Matulka, who lost the 2002 election, requested a hand count of the vote. His request was denied because Nebraska has a just-passed law that prohibits government-employee election workers from looking at the ballots, even in a recount. The only machines permitted to count votes in Nebraska are those made and programmed by the corporation formerly run by Hagel. Hmm, wonder who pushed that one through!

Matulka's comment:"If you want to win the election, just control the machines."

(most of the above info shamelessly plagiarised from that last link).

Now, this doesn't mean that you can't use electronic voting, just that the whole process needs to be completely open and exposed. The source code needs to be open, the hardware design needs to be open, you need independant and unbiased people to check that the open source code is actually what is running on the open hardware, the whole thing needs an open audit trail in the event that a recount is required etc. The whole process is a helluvalot more complicated than just a machine that counts votes. So people need to be given proof that their votes are not corrupted in any step of that process.

Why reliable electronic voting will not happen

[targo]

The main reason is actually political, not technical. Imagine a world where we have really foolproof and very convenient electronic voting (like everybody just voting from home over the Internet, provided that a good and secure protocol is invented for it). Elections would be hundreds of times cheaper because of lesser staff and organization costs. As a result it would become possible to have people vote for many more issues than just who is going to be a president (think Switzerland where almost everything is decided by popular vote). We would never have DMCA or any of the other strange laws pushed through by special interest groups and hurting the general public. Congress would suddenly lose 90% of its importance, becoming just a law-drafting institution without too much decision power.
Obviously this is something that today's rich and powerful would never want to happen, and they would fight long and hard before giving any of this power up.