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California to Require Paper Voter Receipt
DDumitru writes "Wired reports
that California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley will require all electronic
voting systems be equipped with a voter-verifiable paper receipt. This receipt
will not be retained by the voter, but deposited at the polls and may be used
to audit electronic election results.
All new voting system installed after July 1, 2005 must include the new printers.
Existing systems, including the systems already installed in four counties must
be retrofitted by July 2006.
It looks like the public outcry about Diebold and other voting equipment manufacturers
has been heard, at least in a very major market for these machines in the US.
It should be very difficult for other states to not follow suit."
This needs to be implemented *before* the elections next November to avoid a mess again.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
if diebold CEO is still promising (and meaning it) to deliver W..
Oh, wait.
The printer was delayed until AFTER the next major election.
Way to deflect the issue, kids. "yeah yeah, we have to be accountable... but in two years". Too bad they're going to have a little thing like "presidential election" first before all that comes about, huh?
Democracy works?
What's so bad about being lazy? What if there was a war and nobody showed up?
Yeah right, so his company makes even more money...
But what will be counted?
The electronic votes or the printed votes.
Who says they are the same?
Who says people will even bother reading the piece of paper?
Will Diebold voting machines should now carry warnings that state, "This voting machine contains technology known by the State of California to be harmful to Democracy"?
What exactly is wrong with taking a piece of paper with every candidate's name on it, and making an "X" beside your choice? This is the way things are done in Canadian federal elections, no fancy-pants touch screens or butterfly ballots or any other nonsense. Everyone gets a ballot with a standard design, from Victoria to Halifax.
Sometimes the best solutions are the simplest. If technology doesn't simplify life, what use is it?
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
Why does the bill allow such a long timeline? By requiring a paper trail in 2005 (not in time for the next presidentail election), the legislature is clearly saying there is a problem that needs to be addressed. Why does it not need to be addressed in time for the Presidentail election?
A year is plenty of time short of deliberate sandbagging.
I don't think that electronic voting is really an advantage over traditional methods, especially as it's so open to abuse. But if it is implemented, then at least the possibility of verifying results is now there.
I'm sure some smartass will just claim their voting receipt is different from their vote just to kick up a stink though... enough of these could throw the thing into more doubt.
This idea was invented by Shampoo.
I see two possible scenarios which make this an unrealistic solution:
(1) The receipt includes a voter ID and the results of their vote. This totally violates the anonymity of the voting process but does allow for counting.
(2) If the receipts include no voter ID but just some form of transaction ID, then why print them off at all? Just run some report at any point during the voting process to see the tally? Why not? If the voting system is compromised, then there is no way to ensure the paper votes with the transaction id, generated from the compromised system can be trusted either.
As I see it, this solution does not add value without removing rights.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
the point isn't that people will get the receipt and double-check it. although that will be a nice side-effect.
the point is that we'll have a complete paper record of who voted for who. the system will be accountable for its results instead of just numbers in an access database that could have been tampered with.
that's what "paper trail" means.
prof.hojo.
my site.
True, but at least it would be possible to hold a paper recount, which would show such a deception.
What's so hard about using a sharpie to fill in a (relatively large) bubble next to the canidate you want to vote for? Then use any computer technology you want to count the bubbles. Sounds cheaper to me. The paper trail is there, and only what needs to be automated (counting) is.
Maybe setup a few touchscreen kiosks for those who really need it. For the rest of us, I want my pen and paper.
$cat
I know it would probably create long lines at the polls, but I for one would be more than happy to wait an hour or more if I could know that my vote wasn't being rewritten by some unseen entity.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
You have to give the counties an appropriate amount of time to purchase voting machines that work this way. Not all of them have money falling out of their pockets that they can spend on brand-new voting machines (again), if they happened to recently purchase some machines without these features. Granted, those counties probably should not have purchased such machines, but if you force this on them too soon, you will get a backlash because the counties will have to pull the money from other parts of their budget.. AND that would piss voters off.
Voter: Sheriff, I just voted with that machine over there, and it said I voted for Bubba Smith.
Sheriff: Yeah, what's the problem? Don't like my cousin?
Voter: Uh, no everythin's fine. Forget it.
This is about all of the electronic voting machines (even though Diebold is most suspect) and it's about the whole country.
...as goes California, so goes the nation. Smog laws; consumer protection laws, etc. Not always, but usually. Too bad CA can't stop shooting itself in the foot when it comes to business and health care.
A paper trail is just a sanity check, and a completely reasonable way of keeping things in line.
did "republic" and "democracy" become mutually exclusive?
i e= UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
http://www.google.com/search?q=define:republic&
The US is a republic. Eire is a republic. The soviet union was a bunch of republics. China is a republic.
In Iowa to vote you go inside your own booth will nothing but a pencil and a scantron sheet (like the ones you fill out on a standardized test). Fill in the circle and you're done.
Of course, the circle has to be completely filled in. But the again, if you can't fill in a circle then you probably shouldn't be voting.
Counting the votes is relatively fast. We usually know within 2 hours of the polls closing who has won.
Why do we even NEED an electronic system? What is wrong with the paper ballots?
-Nick
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
That's ridiculous. It'll be easy for other states to not follow suit; what will be difficult will be for the companies who make these machines to avoid producing them with this as an option. This, as a result, will make it easier for states to follow California's example, if they are so inclined. But sticking to the status quo of electonic voting has not become more difficult yet.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
Yeah, and of course the CIA, being the honest and independent source of information that it is, would tell you that this "democratic tradition" is a bit shaky right now...
Don't whistle while you're pissing.
The problem with this little scheme is that the printer generates a linear log of votes, and this might be used to figure out who voted for whom. There goes your anonymity. People might be afraid of retribution for voting the wrong way.
I recommend using blinded signature techniques to solve the problem. "Poll watchers" will network their computers to the voting machine, and when someone votes, their machines will sign the voter's choices through a blinding mechanism that will validate the vote. The vote will then be released to the poll watchers' machines mixed with "chaff".
The chaff would be generated prior to the vote; a large number of votes would be created, tabulated and signed blindly. Each vote broadcast on the network would be mixed with ten or so randomly chosen chaff votes. At the end of voting, the unused chaff votes would be tabulated again, the number of chaff votes cast would be calculated and subtracted from the total, giving the true number of votes cast.
However, there are some differences between the American and Canadian electoral systems. Please remember, the US Constitution explicitedly puts the responsibility for conducting elections in the hands of the states, for example Section 4, Clause 1 on the election of Senators and Representatives. Furthermore, as witnessed in the last election, we use an Electoral College to pick the President. The selection of the Electoral College members is decided by the individual states. So the Federal government cannot mandate a uniform ballot. (Your statement also ignores the fact that most, if not all, localities use the national elections as opportunities to decide local issues that require some customization of the ballot.)
To do what you propose, while it has merit, would require a Constitutional amendment. One that is not likely to be passed because the states would have to give up some of their power.
Or you could dig a tunnel under the vote station and use a saw to make a hole under the box where all the paper votes are kept. Then when a paper gets fed to the box, you will take it and replace it with another vote of your liking. Don't forgot to wear a tinfoil hat during the operation.
With one machine for every 150 voters you've got to wonder what the point of machine voting is.
If you want to see a really clever electronic voting system, check out VoteHere. They use paper receipts that basically records a hash of your vote, so your receipt cannot prove to anyone who was not looking over your shoulder when you cast the ballot what that vote was, but still allows you to prove that your vote has/has not been changed after the polls close. As VoteHere points out, authoritative paper receipts really just turn the machine into a very expensive pencil, when they offer the potential to do so much more.
By the way, I have no ties to VoteHere, I've just been studying electronic voting a lot lately.
For more info, see http://www.verifiedvoting.org/
Of course, this system has weaknesses, as will any system which enforces both authenticity and anonymity, but even if it cannot be protected against all attacks, it at least lets you know when an attack is happening, which is a huge step up from most paper and even electronic systems.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
I've voted in every election in the last fifteen years and have yet to wait in line at a polling place.
-1 Paranoid or -1 Bad Solution would be more appropriate.
There's already a linear log of votes - votes at the bottom of the ballot box were turned in first. And that doesn't change - THE VOTING MACHINE DOES NOT COUNT VOTES! It just produces paper ballots with greater accuracy than previous methods. That's it. It's the paper ballots that count.
paintball
I wonder if diebold CEO is still promising (and meaning it) to deliver W..
Oh, wait.
The printer was delayed until AFTER the next major election.
Give it a rest.
EVERY elected executive-branch office in California is held by a Democrat except the new gubernator - who is a flaming liberal on all issues except partly on fiscal AND married into the Kennedy clan and advised by them.
That includes the Secretary of State who promulgated this decision.
Yes we'd ALL love to have this done in time for '04. But CA is in debt up to its eyeballs and you KNOW the election machine companies will charge extra for a rush job.
It's going to be tough enough deciding how to handle the inevitable cases where the pissed-off voter comes to the official with the ballot stub and says "HEY! This machine didn't vote it right!" without leaving the barn door open for tampering with the electronic count.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Remember that the receipt is actually a printed ballot, put into a ballot box at the polling place just like the current ballots. If the machine printed out one thing but recorded another, then during the inevitable recount (in CA a recount is automatic if the margin is less than a certain amount) they'll find a discrepancy between the results of the recount and the results reported by the machine. You start seeing that in several recounts, especially if it changes the outcome of the election, and there'll be enough of an outcry that an investigation will have to be started.
You're missing the point. Here is a quick top 10:
1) a receipt would be something you keep. they are talking audit trails.
2) who is to say the paper matches the computer? ONLY recounts would show anything going on. If candidate X loses by 10% do they ask for a recount?
3) How many "bugs" will produce incorrect printouts that will go unverified? (at least enough to win another 10+%)
4) Transaction ID system can be compromised.
5) A voter ID system is harder to compromise, but is illegal in that you are not anon.
6) A complex hack would involve dumping printouts you don't like; which is EZ since its automated!
7) A more compex hack would result in 2 printouts.
8) A paper trail will not effect the next 1 or 2 elections. So they can come up with other tricks.
9) verification could make butterfly ballots look like child's play. (BTW, nobody mentions how EZ that is to hack, and how it was done in miami..)
9.5) Why not print off a report later? who could tell the difference???....
10) The point behind breaking areas up, is that you can remove corrupted area's results. It also is supposed to make it more difficult to cheat. Machines negate this, esp. when there is only 1-2 kinds of them used.
The motivation to WASTE our money on something so cheaply and securly done, is either foolishness or something else...
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
There is a very big problem with this type of system: it enables vote selling (someone gives 10$ to every person that produces a receipt proving they voted for a specific candidate)
You misunderstand the "receipt".
They don't keep it. They put it in the ballot box for potential recounts. It IS the official ballot - the count in the machines is just a convenience.
- - - - -
The point about vote selling, however, is significant.
One thing I'd have liked to do, a few elections back, was to get a raw record of the ballot-reader output from the individual precincts with electronically-tabulated ballots (punched cards, OCR marked cards, etc.)
Putting the raw record up on the internet would allow:
- anyone to write their own software to check the counting software.
- individuals (or neighborhood groups) to check that a ballot marked THEIR way (or the correct number of ballots marked their way) was included in the count.
- Statistical analysis to hunt for signs of election tampering (i.e. runs of identical ballots, precincts with counts wildly divergent from polling expectations, systematic spoiling of ballots otherwise voted for one party or candidate, etc.)
Unfortunately this might fall under the bans on exposure of individual ballots that were passed to hinder vote-buying schemes.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
How do you know it says the right thing? Well, uh, you look at it before you drop it in the ballot box. That's why it's called a "voter-verifiable" paper audit trail. If Alice is running against Bob and you want to vote for her, the machine gives you a piece of paper and you make sure it says "I vote for Alice" and not one that says "I vote for Bob".
RTFP/RTFM. You can't do vote-buying with the vote-here scheme, because the receipt doesn't say who you voted for. The receipt just shows a cryptographic hash of your vote that you can use to confirm that the vote didn't change. You can verify that the hash corresponds to the vote you intend in the voting booth, but once you leave the poll, there's no information left to prove who you voted for. The ballot remains anonymous, and your vote is secret.
The vote-buying schemes you describe are *exactly* what VoteHere's system is designed to avoid.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
Uh, the Buchanan problem was due to a ballot designed by DEMOCRATIC election supervisors. Besides that, the flawed ballot design was not the issue in the big court battle: the counting method (or lack of one) was.