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Can America Trust Electronic Voting?
A anonymous reader writes: "The Sacramento Bee wrote an excellent article about the issues surrounding electronic voting. It was written by the Yolo County clerk/recorder and a professor of law at UC Davis. They quote sources such as Peter G. Neumann and Diebold's president Walden O'Dell."
... But the only e-voting situation I would trust would be an open source one. Even with paper reciepts, there's still an unprecidented oppourtunity for fraud.
The problem is not the technique, the problem is the fraudulous mentality of the management of these companies...
Frankly, I am not as concerned about electronic voting as I am getting Americans to actually vote in the first place.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Most people I know vote straight Democrat or straight Republican, and rarely actually do any homework about "the issues" or what the candidates they are voting for actually represent.
Obviously, my own experience isn't necessarily reflective of the whole of the US voting pool, but I have trouble believing that the majority of people actually do research every candidate before a vote...
evil adrian
According to all the "media recounts", Bush won the election unless you counted the votes against methods prescribed by Florida law -- much like Johnny Carson's Carnac. I don't know if you understand US Presidential Elections, but our President is elected by the Electoral College not by the popular vote. Bush won by 2% in the Electoral College.
Bush and his government do not listen to the UN, detain prisoners with no charges, and therefore do not believe in democracy.
The UN does not dictate to the United States because we are a sovereign country. It would unconstitutional for President Bush to allow the UN to dictate to USA. The US does not detain "prisoners" without charges. We do, however, place into detention terrorists that have attacked or are plotting to attack the US or its military. It is very simple not become a guest of Gitmo, do not conspire with terrorist organizations that threaten to cause mass casualties. We do believe in democracy in America and brought it to many nations around the world. Two shining examples are Germany and Japan.
I understand that it is vogue in many minority "clickish" groups to engage in vitriolic hyperbole in regards to our President. Those that have underestimated our President's intelligence or will have found themselves on the losing side of not only elections but of history. There are many complaints that can be brought up about our President such as his love of big government programs but it is rare to ever hear valid ones from his foes, much to their electoral peril. President Bush main strength is that he is constantly underestimated and overly mocked.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Most people are missing the point. An election must not only be fair but it must be seen to be fair.
I have no idea why the US has such problems with their voting. In the UK everyone votes on paper..... with a fucking pen. (No dimpled chads crap!) It is counted by hand and is never out by more than 10 votes in 30,000. We also have the result by the early hours of the morning.
The point is if you want to go and count all the votes yourself you can. The whole idea of an election is that it is open. For this there must be a paper trail. Why complicate the matter? The other point is that it is secret. Who I vote for is none of anyones bussiness. I would always be nervous with electronic voting for two reasons. I want to know that my vote has really bean counted and I want to know that I am anonymous.
As regards election fraud it is easier to imagine someone messing with an electonic count than someone turning up with a few suitcases of paper and trying to stuff them into a ballot box in fron t of the election officals.
.
There's one problem with this scheme, namely lack of anonymity. Also if you give a receipt it opens the door to bribery, since an outside party can verify who you have actually voted for. Anyone with access to the database can also see who you voted for.
Voting has to be anonymous.
Why can we trust computers to handle hundreds of billions of dollars in international business, but not voting?
The problem in the equation is the involvment of our government, who have failed to earn our trust in the last few decades, not the concept of electronic voting itself.
-Z
Hi all,
With more and more surprise I am reading all those articles about how the USA (nr 1 in IT in the world) is struggling with E-voting.
I am 30 years old now, the first time I voted was when I was 19 or 20 yo (first chance), and that was electronical. I have never casted my ballot on paper, ever. At the time, we are talking 1990, about 50% of The Netherlands was using voting machines, a few years after it was 100%. The first machines were installed in 1985.
Agreed, no fancy touch screens (how would that work?? 15 parties, up to 40 candidates per party - that can never be shown on one normal touch screen, thereby giving an advance to the party first shown of course), though a reliable, robust, and secure way to vote it is. It uses a panel with a huge number of buttons (one per candidate), a display to tell which candidate you are about to vote for, and a "Vote" button. That's all. No Internet connection (what is that good for other than allowing hackerse to access the machine). Never, ever has there been a dispute on voting security with these machines.They work, everyone is happy with it, and they are a great improvement on the paper voting.
USA is making a true fool of themselves.
How come they can not even design something simple (not easy, but simple as in few functions needed) as a voting machine? How can we ever trust their electronic "smart bombs" and whatnot? And their computer based aeroplanes? And more computer software which has to be tamper-proof and absolutely safe.
Electronic voting is not rocket science. Ask the Europeans about it, there the technology can be bought in from the shelf. Not fancy, though tested in several elections and found good.
Maybe they need another election disaster like Bush to realise it is time to have a look across the border and see how a real election is held.
Wouter.
You know, I passed the Crest Theater here in Sacramento the other day when they had the citizenship swearing-in scheduled. There was a line a block long of immigrants excited to become US citizens and in a way I felt bad for these people. How many do you think would turn back if they saw how much people born here took it for granted and, in doing so help create the corruption they always complain about?
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
We dont live in a democracy though. The vote of the people is only considered by the electoral college.
The electoral college votes are really the only ones that matter. They dont necessarily have to "agree" with the peoples choice.
A true democracy elects its officials by the people. We, do not do that.
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
I wish we were as concerned about who we vote for as we are how we vote for them.
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
Unfortunately, I can't see a method of verifying that your hashed vote is still there without having someone else be able to beat you up and do it... Same thing with paper voting, though.
Locked metal boxes with a slot into which you drop your ballot, with oversight from all the major political parties whenever the box is closed, opened, transported or stored.
These problems were very well-solved ages ago.
Given locked-box technology, your scheme is needlessly complex. Just print a ballot with both human-readable and machine-readable versions of the voter's selections, and also store an electronic copy of the vote. None of these should be personally identifiable in any way, or even timestamped. Hashing and signing are unnecessary. The voter drops the ballot in the box.
At the end of the day, the electronic votes are tallied, and that's the result. If anyone wishes to contest any part of the vote, that voting district's ballots can be machine-counted. If anyone wishes to claim that the machines are in error, the ballots can be hand-counted. Just for good measure, election officials should randomly select a set of districts for machine counting, with the results to be compared against the electronic totals. Significant discrepancies should invoke a system-wide recount. Also for good measure, election officials should randomly select a set of ballots (making sure there are some from every district) and both hand and machine-count them. Discrepancies should cause a thorough review of the system to determine where/how they originated, and might indicate the need for a system-wide hand recount.
Technology never provides security. Process is always the source of any security that exists; technology is only a means of making the process more convenient and cost-effective. Note that this is even true of the locked boxes, where the technology is only a means to make the oversight process more manageable.
For security, focus on process first, technology second.
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