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How Would You Design the Voting Technology?
Bob Glickstein asks: "Punch-card ballot machines are now universally reviled, and we techies all know the perils of electronic ones. But I haven't seen anyone talk about a better solution. It's gotta be inexpensive, rugged, reliable, accurate, verifiable, tamper-resistant, simple to use, and secret. Verifying a vote tally should not result in TV news images of rooms full of election officials, squinting at ambiguous marks on a piece of paper. What contraption can possibly meet all these criteria?"
Who would you like to see the next US President?
George W. Bush
Howard Dean
Ralph Nader
I am Canadian, you insensitive clod.
CowboyNeal
An electronic voting machine which should produce a printed record. Some type of blind-numbering system should be used for identities -- crypto theory has plenty of theoretical models for this. Users should be able to pick from a drop-down menu or type in a candidate, though for other countries (i.e., rural Africa, etc) or for certain classes of handicapped people, other methods, such as picking from a set of pictures, should be available.
This is pretty strightforward, but as diebold found out, the devil is in the details...
Just have the candidates fight it out in armed combat.
Robert Anton Wilson
... would be like Battlebots.
"Derp de derp."
Use Scantrons, where you bubble in the answer with a black pen or a #2 pencil. Have the people bubble in their votes, and run them through. This makes reading them very easy, especially since the machines are already in use across the country, and verification is as simple as looking at which one is bubbled.
--That's the point of being root, you can do anything you want, even if it's stupid.
If the idea is to accurately count the voter's intentions (how absurd) this would work better:
:-)
1) Voter checks in at front desk, signs voter registration and is given a punch card.
2) Voter enters a voting booth, and inserts blank card.
3) Voter enters their vote choices on touch screen (with pictures of candidates even!) and when done, card is automatically punched with appropriate votes.
4) Voter takes punch card and inserts it into a Republican card reader.
5) Voter takes card and inserts it into a Democratic card reader.
6) Voter takes card and inserts it into independent card reader.
7) Voter gives card to election offical.
8) Election offical presses a button. If results from 4 & 5 & 6 do not ALL match, voter must start over (back to step 2) with a fresh card (current card is destroyed.)
9) Card where votes match placed into old fashioned voter box for recount broo-haa-haa. (sp?)
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But as Joseph Stalin, I would never advocate having multiple parties each having their own electronic systems in a polling place. Accurate vote counts are kind of antithetical for me.
"Those who cast the votes decide nothing; those who count the votes decide everything." - Josef Stalin
OK, you get everybody in the whole country who is registered to vote, which I hear is about 25 people or something in America, and you put them all in a big room with only one way out and a big turnstile so once you're out you can't get back in and then I'm sure their is some room for electric cattle prods here and maybe a guy near the turnstile with a pencil and he can take notes on a piece of paper or the back of an old bus ticket or something and then as each voter tries to get through the turnstile to get away from the cattle prod guys this one guy with the pencil might say, 'Oh hey dude, who do you vote for?' and then the voter might say like, 'The Terminator' or 'That Wrestling Guy' or something like that and then the pencil guy could keep a tally right there on the bus ticket and then when everybody's gone except the cattle prod guy and the pencil guy then you could just add up the results and declare a winner. The only problem would be if the cattle prod guy or the pencil guy wanted to vote as well but I say those guys are barred from voting or even knowing who the candidates are because you can never trust some pencil using ludite I mean haven't you heard of biros and that cattle prod stuff is a little too kinky for me.
So there you have it. My New Voting System. Thank You.
Now wash your hands.
The most transparent technology there is at the moment for recording votes is for voters to tick boxes (or write numbers) on printed ballot papers and put them into ballot boxes. Voting slips are counted by hand based, in the presence of witnesses. If the result is close, the voting slips can be recounted. This system works well in Australia at all levels of government.
OK, we do get problems occasionally. But they are typically things like people impersonating other voters, and people voting multiple times at different polling booths. However, the system copes with this. If the number of voting irregularities detected is sufficient to effect the outcome of an election, a by-election is called in the seats in dispute. It really helps that the courts in Australia are not heavily politicised like they are in the US of A.
(The problems with voter impersonation, etc are also present when voting machines are used. The same solutions could be used in both cases; e.g. requiring voters to present photo ids, and throwing rorters into jail for a long time.)
That said, I absolutely insist on machine-readable and hand-countable pen-marked paper ballots. This is the only way to insure both fast and accurate election night returns *and* verifiable beyond-a-shadow-of-a-doubt recount ability. These machines have been manufactured for many years and they *were not* responsible for the Florida cluster-fsk.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
In 1992 I worked an election as an inspector. Each step of the inspection was signed off by a Republican and a Democratic inspector, after both of us saw and confirmed each step of the procedure. I think it would be much easier to make a mechanical clock run fast after the back was sealed on than it would be for anyone to cheat by manipulating one of these machines.
These are the steps, as I recall:
- The machines are shown with both backs removed. This shows a
matrix of mechanical counters, all of which are shown to read 0. There
are "total for office" and "total for candidate" columns at the top
and right. These also read zero.
- The inner back is fastened on. This covers all but the summary
row and column. These are checked to still read all zeros.
- The outer back is fastened on. This covers the summary numbers.
- The election begins. As each voter comes in, he or she is checked
off, so the number of votes can be compared against the machines.
- Inspectors from both parties are sitting with a view of the back of the machines at all times, to further guard against tampering.
- After the election, the outer cover is removed and the summary
totals recorded on paper. The total voters for each office should be less than or equal to the number recorded at the door.
- Next the inner back is removed and the matrix is recorded on paper.
The totals are checked against the numbers recorded in the previous step. All inspectors sign off on this as well.
I just don't see where such a system leaves any room for cheating. Of course, it also couldn't handle an election among 135 candidates, but that's got to be a first anyway.For anyone who hasn't used these machines, they have mechanical safeguards against voting for more than the correct number of candidates for any office. No hanging chads, no votes for too many candidates, no butterfly ballot confusion, and there's a paper trail that can be verified quickly rather than in a vague and subjective way.
Isn't it easier to trust clockwork you can inspect than code you can't? For one thing, no one's going to "download" you new clockwork when you aren't looking at it... and it's 100 years easier to audit.
--
I don't want to rule the world... I just want to be in charge of mayonnaise.
Just pick people at random from the population. You'll end up with a government which is just as incompetent, but a lot less corrupt. Also, it will be a good incentive to have a real education system.
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
When I visited Florida as a teenager fourteen years ago, I saw one of USA Today's cover polls that asked five year-olds who they'd like to have as their president. Top of the poll (with over 50 percent of the votes, if I remember correctly) was Big Bird from Sesame Street. Then came another bunch of fictional figures with Bill Cosby being the highest ranked human being (with around 10 percent, again IIRC).
Now, fourteen years on, these kids are just becoming elligible to vote for real. I'd think that either of those two choices, Big Bird or Bill Cosby, would make great candidates. For one thing, they have tangible diplomatic skills that have been tested over the years by the most feisty allies (Mr. Snuf-a-lufagus, Dr. Huxtable's wife), adversaries (Oscar the Grouch, the younger Huxtable kids) and special interest groups (Count Dracula, the older Huxtable kids).
Personally, my vote would go to Big Bird. I'd like to see a cabinet with real weight and authority and I think that his staff, including Bert and Ernie, would bring a certain gravitas to the West Wing that's been missing for the last few decades.
So, please, if we're going to see a Slashdot poll, can we add these two candidates for the benefit of that generation? Oh, and perhaps Britney Spears too.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
In the traditional UK system, every single step of the process is open to the public and visible, except for the voter marking the paper.
That's actually really surprising. I can watch in my local polling stations as voters ask for ballot papers, are given them, hide in a booth to mark them, come out and put them in a box. I can watch the box all day. I can see the box carried to the counting room, and stand on the balcony as counters take the papers out of the boxes and sort them into piles. I don't have to trust anyone else to oversee the process, it's all there for me (or any other voter or candidate) to check.
Nothing that happens inside a box with electronics is visible to an outsider.
The manual system is vulnerable to small human errors and small opportunistic fraud. It is totally immune to large systematic fraud.
The only disadvantage is the expense, but the authorities are considering switching from it to new systems that are several times more expensive to run.
Oregon abolished the polling place. That's right, we haven't had a voting booth set up for an official election in Oregon starting with the 2000 Presidential Election (don't blame us, we didn't vote for him, and we didn't leave home to vote against him!).
So how do Oregonians vote? In the comfort of their own homes. About six weeks before election day, every residence with a mailbox gets a voter's guide that comes with a voter registration card (if you're not registered and want to vote, you turn it in at least 30 days before the first election you want to vote in). A week or two after that, your ballot, secrecy envelope and return mailing envelope come in the mail. You punch out the appropriate holes on the punch card. Stuff your ballot in the secrecy envelope, stuff the secrecy envelope in the mailing envelope, and put your signature on the back, and either mail it or drop it off at the elections office, or if it's within a week of election day, at any of dozens handy points at various public facilities (libraries, town squares, city halls, courthouses, election offices, etc) staffed by elections officials specifically to collect ballots.
But how does Oregon prevent voting fraud? Easy. We check signatures on the envelopes against the voter registration. Not sure what the sample rate is, but fraud has not been an issue. If you don't get the ballot and you were supposed to, you go down to the elections office, show your ID, they verify your registration and they void out the missing ballot (so even if someone turns it in, when they go to scan the barcode before checking sigs, they see it's void and throw it out). They issue you a ballot and hand it to you and you're on your way.
What does all this mean? Well, for starters, you get three or four weeks with your ballot instead of three or four minutes. Time is on your side in making an informed, well-thought decision without having to stress out that you're missing out on having a life to go down to the polls and vote.
Encourage your state to abolish the polling place
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In my state we use optical scan ballots and it seems to be an ideal balance between verifiable paper trail and machine counting. Once the ballot is marked the optical scanning does indeed work well and is very quick.
The ballot is placed inside an opaque folder to hide the actual votes, but an end sticks out. A poll assistant aids the voter in feeding the machine, which sucks the ballot in and counts it. If there's a problem the ballot doesn't get sucked in and corrective action can be taken.
What could be done to improve the process is a screen-based marking station. Do away with the pen and use a touch screen in its place. This would eliminate the "stray mark" problem.
After a voter touches up a ballot, print it out in the booth. Voter then verifies it and submits it to the counting machine. If the ballot is incorrectly marked the voter would take it to the poll taker as a spoiled ballot and have it destroyed and try again.
This two-phase process has the added benefit of increasing the difficulty of hacking the system, since there are now two separate components instead of a single box to compromise.