Hardly Anyone Cares About Computer Voting Problems

Avidwriter writes "It's a sad thought that Roblimo explores in a NewsForge article about computer voting fraud and how you'd think all honest politicians would be working to make sure computerized voting systems are open source, and why open source wouldn't hurt well-run voting machine companies' profits. Not that most people care, since they don't even bother to vote, right?"

Comments

in australia I hear they have mandatory voting

[dreadnougat]

even if you vote "abstain", or you get a small fine (unless you CAN'T be there, ie are hospitalized)

At least it would stop the whining about voter turnout :)

no kidding

[croddy]

the student government at my college switched to computer voting a couple of years ago. every semester it's the same story; some terrible problem with the system means we have to do it all over again, usually twice.

I've written to the voting committee, written editorials, but no one cares. they claim that it's better than paper voting because machines don't make mistakes.

once I voted 12 times. but that was because they were relying on cookies. that was fixed in the revote. once they used checkboxes instead of radio buttons, and I voted for everyone. but that was fixed in the next one.

people are lazy, and even if it's got problems, they prefer clicking on some web form to actually going and voting in person. I say if you're too lazy to get up and vote, then you probably shouldn't be voting anyway.

but nobody cares, machines don't make mistakes... yeah? well, I've got a 20 page study of georgia voting technology that disagrees.

it's high time we had an election server h4x0red to make people think twice about it.

Good reliable voting solutions

[einhverfr]

Here are the guidelines I came up for a fraud-resistant electronic voting system:

1: The traffic with the database server should be properly secured (ipsec, ssl w/client certs, etc.)

2: The data should be stored in an accountable way. For example, if the data is altered, there should be a way to determine this.

3: The system should allow manual verification of results.

So here was the system I designed:

1: Database server communicates with clients using ESP/IPSec protected communications.

2: Voting machines use touch-screens. At the end, the voting machine displays a list of candidates you voted for and asks you to confirm. Then when you do, it submits your data to the database and prints a ballot. The database also stores information relating to the ballot regarding which voting station you were at. You deposite the ballot in the ballot box.

The ballot contains: 1: An easy-to-scan bar code
2: A human readable ballot listing for manual verification. 3: The ballot serial number.

This gives you almost everything you get with the paper system as well as everything you get with the electronic system.