Slashdot Mirror
Electronic Voting in the News
heymarcel writes "After a negative review of the Diebold voting machines by the State Gaming Control Board, it looks like Nevada has gone with a competitor for the upcoming election. And Secretary of State Dean Heller is requiring paper receipts. According to the Associated Press story, Nevada is the first state to do so." There's another story about Nevada voting machines as well. zapf writes "It appears that the major e-Voting machine vendors have banded together to form the 'Election Technology Council.'" Reader SemperUbi writes: "Demand for a voter-verified audit trail is really gaining momentum these days. The Voter Verification Act, introduced yesterday by Senator Bob Graham (D-Florida), would require a voter-verified paper audit trail, ban the use of 'undisclosed' software and wireless communications for voting machines, and require mandatory surprise recounts -- all in time for the November 2004 election. Rep. Holt's HR2239 in the House requires much the same thing. Resistance to both bills may focus on the aggressive timetable, but the effort is worth it -- as Warren Slocum once said, democracy ain't cheap. Take that, Diebold!" And finally, a Maryland newspaper dredges up an internal Diebold email that recommends gouging Maryland if the state wants paper printouts for its Diebold voting system.
I'm amazed that companies whose sole purpose is to provide secure, reliable data management (ATMs, and now voting machines) would be so incredibly stupid regarding security and integrity of systems. Diebold's attitudes toward their voting machines make me wonder about their ATMs, and if they are as insecure and poorly implemented as the voting machines were demonstrated to be.
This is one place where we should definitely push for open source software with peer review. Otherwise we'll have elections under control of a few people without any recourse.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
In the US, you get the best democracy money can buy!!!
Not to shamelessly promote EFF or anything, but they have some really good information on e-voting on their website. Here's a pre-made letter to your senator (for those living in the US) asking him/her for support in the fight for secure elections.
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
We used to vote with paper and a pencil. Then we got those computers to vote with, because it was cheaper and more efficent. Now those PC need to print your vote on a piece of paper.
In short we succeeded in replacing a cheap pencil by an expensive computer with totaly no advantages.
A state that needs total accountability for its main industry (gambling) requires the same in the voting process. Right now, in Florida where I live, there is no accountability for fraudulent voting practices so long as you vote for the party in power. I almost want to move to Vegas now.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
There's only one horrible horrible problem with that system:
The guy buying your vote, threatening your family, or blackmailing you can also verify your vote.
Maybe because there wasn't any grand conspiracy to begin with...
Nah, better to deny that, wouldn't want your safe cozy little paranoid worldview to be shattered.
If everything goes right, its easier to have a machine count it- they are usually much better and less error prone than humans (thus, the improvement over pen/pencil).
But if they are just as prone to hacking as humans are ("count this in favor of John Steed or your family gets hurt!") , then there is no advantage.
It comes down to convenience vs. auditability. I don't trust people not to cheat. I want that auditability.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Yes, sounds good. But, how about printer problems? Have you ever been to a polling place? The level of technological help is not high. Personally, I'd put any government office at a higher technological level than a polling station.
Spare printers, printer cartridges, etc, will need to be onhand. In fact, I'd make sure that the "receipt" be capable of displaying on a screen so that people could write it down with a pen and paper. People trained to print the little receipt will need to be on hand. Anything that can go wrong will.
Lastly, none of this stops voter fraud. In many states, it's very easy to vote. Show up with a Drivers' License or a neighbor to vouch, and you're in. You only need to be a resident for 30 days. If you don't have a neighbor, or a drivers' license, you can show up in Minnesota with a utility bill in your name, and that's enough to vote.
-- No sig for you!
This is a horrible idea because it destroys anonymity. Giving the voters something to take away from the polling place that identifies them with a particular vote simply paves the way to voting abuse. Think of thugs standing outside a poor district's voting place demanding to see the identifying key in your example. The people watching this may decide to cast votes according to the perceived wishes of the thugs rather than risk abuse.
Yes, this is an extreme example, but don't think it could never happen. History plainly shows that if a voting process can be corrupted in any way, it will be. Strong-arm tactics included.
A paper trail is a good idea, just not one that the voter carries away with him. Ideally, the voting machine would print out a receipt which the voter would then place into a ballot box for safe keeping in case it is needed for a recount.
No matter how many of my rights are taken away, somehow I still don't feel safe. -Frigid Monkey
These paper receipts are a poison placebo, that will keep us screwable at the voting booth. What are we supposed to do with a receipt? They merely give the false illusion of security, while papering over the same insecurity problems. We should just inspect the pretty-printed "receipt", and drop it into a slot if we like it enough to cast it as a ballot, before leaving the booth. Optical scanners can get an early sanctioned count at the close of polls, but the official record must be the actual cast ballots. In the current fraud climate, any candidate requesting a recount, by human hands, if necessary, should be accommodated, no questions asked.
The paper ballot should never leave the booth. Many voters might be intimidated by buyers/threats into bringing the receipt to a vote controller, even if there are easy ways to vote differently from a receipt. By settling for a paper receipt, we're handed the illusion that there's a paper trail, so the pressure's off. But the fraud will continue unabated.
--
make install -not war
What is the actual benefit of voting electronically? Many countries use the tried and true method of voting using paper and pen -- just mark your X in the square next to the name. Volunteers tally up the votes at the end of the voting day and, within hours of closing, you get your results.
It's something everybody understands. The paper waste is minimal compared to the paper output of election-related things -- government paperwork, campaign signs, and flyers in your mailbox and everywhere else. You absolutely don't get hanging chads, broken levers, or some other malfunctioning convoluted contraption. Recounts and verifications are simple -- get those same volunteers to count 'em again.
Geek factor aside, where's the benefit of going electronic?
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Let's remember something else.. the state puts out the contract for these, and ACCEPTED them.. they were the ones responsible for spending the money wisely, NOT Diebold.
If the state failed to insist on a paper trail, how can you scream at Diebold for not providing one?
For the last decade, when I vote, I fill in circles on a sheet - sort of like filling out the SATs. When I am done, I feed my ballot into some box/machine.
I don't know where or when the ballots are counted, but we have long had machines which could read these ballots. There is a paper trail. Every time an idiot plays the lottery, he also practices filling out a ballot (as the lottery tickets use a similar method).
Obviously, this must spend lots of money getting fancier systems which are no more acurate, and for now leave no paper trail.
Where law ends, tyranny begins -- William Pitt
I think the idea of the paper trail is mainly important so there is a record folks can understand-but with good encryption it shouldn't be necessary. What _is_ necessary is better means of monitoring low tech vote fraud-and that probably means cameras at the polling places-and _never_ allowing ballots or media out of the view of a camera--and good encryption on those records.
There's not much less interesting to a politician that a zillion copies of the same letter. It just plain smells.
Write your own! If you want, look at the EFF letter as a model. But don't just rephrase it. Use those parts which get your dander up more than the rest, and write your own words as to why it pisses you off so much.
Infuriate left and right
I mean, seriously, with everything that has happened it is about time hackers not only whine about it, but actually steps up and creates a system that does it right. There's nobody more qualified to do it than a bunch of hackers anyway, and it should be an ideal field to show what can be created, and it should be a rock-solid business plan: You sell hardware and open code.
Start with a prototype that does what the proposed bills say, based on a free OS. Then move up to implement the best things out there (there was this crypto proposal here a couple of weeks ago), and then strip down the OS to the bare essentials needed for the operation. That way, conducting an exhaustive review of the complete source becomes managable.
Really, hackers should see this as a great business opportunity!
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
A receipt would prevent anonymous voting; it's what you'd provide to -- oh, Enron -- to prove that you voted for the "right" candidate. Then they pay you. (Maybe a meal, or by not firing you, or whatever.)
An audit trail is what's needed. And a paper, voter-verifiable copy of the ballot you just filled out is exactly the right thing there. But it must never leave the polling place,
Let's stop having slashdot advocate that the world make it even easier to sell out to corporations and other organizations that are corrupting the political process. Stop calling them "receipts" in the stories, and get editors who stop making such mistakes. Let's try to be up-level from the Faux News Network.
The 2000 ballot fiasco was orchestrated by Republicans to favor our s-Elected president. When it came to military votes, they wanted every single vote counted, regardless whether they were late, valid, or tampered with (there were military votes hand-completed by Republican operatives AFTER the official end of the voting period).
Bush has not earned anything he's ever had in his life, including his current office. It has always been given to him by his connected buddies.
How about because Diebold-the-ATM-manufacturer doesn't actually make the voting machines? The voting machine division is a recent aquisition of another company that had previously designed & manufactured the machines; Diebold saw a hot market after the 2000 election and purchased it. It would be like saying "why does Time-Warner provide such crappy internet service when they make such great movies?"
Someone needs to start an OpenEVOTE on Sourceforge.
By the People, For the People.
"By the way, most modern industrialized (and even some not so industrialized) nations have realized that blocking ex-felons from voting is just another way of disenfranchising a class of voter - akin to poll taxes and the like"
Leave it as is. If you choose to commit a felony, you are choosing to throw your right to vote away. You don't HAVE to commit felonies, after all. The felons disenfranchise themselves.
What is it with America's love of voting machines? They don't use them virtually anywhere else.
Haven't you bloody Americans learnt the KISS system - Keep It Simple Stupid.
This means no bloody machines, period !!! If Australia (& also virtually the rest of the democratic world) can do hand counted paper ballots, then so can the US.
The only reason they use machine systems in the US is to cut costs, but the simple fact is they arn't as good (they invalidate more votes then hand counts do, they intimidate & confuse a good percentage of voters & they increase the odds of something fucking up (murphy's law)
Look at the mess, as well as the fucked up punch card machines you have counties with lever machines, other with optical machines, toggle switch machines, push button machines & also touch screen systems too. Then there are places like Oregon where all votes are of the mail in variety (which obviously discriminates against the homeless & disorginised). The simple fact is that huge numbers of people are intimidated with this complicated mess that's one of the reasons why most Americans don't vote & why the US has about the lowest voter turnout in the OECD.
Look at all the people that are intimidated by machines & even now still refuse to use Automatic Teller Machines, & there are plenty more people like that then just the illiterate, the elderly & immigrants that have poor 2nd language skills.
Its as if the bureaucracy in the US are on purposefully trying to discourage the masses from voting.
The only way to go is to Keep It Simple Stupid. Which means aiming at the lowest common denominator & designing a system that the stupidist simpleton can understand.
Which means 'X marks the spot' / 'tick the box' hand ballots.
That means a piece of paper with the candidates listed in a columne & another columne of boxes on the side with just one box next to each candidate.
Here are a couple of examples of 'KISS' paper ballots, the 1st one is an example of an Australian preferential ballot (any Americans who support 3rd parties should be demanding that the US system be made either preferential or proportional, otherwise no 3rd parties will ever make any long term headway), the 2nd ballot is an example of an 'tick the box' ballot.
As far as counting goes the US should be doing what Australia does (& most of the rest of the developed world does similar) & hold the vote on a Saturday (I wonder how many blue collar workers in the US chose not to vote because of the incoveniance of voting on a Tuesday), using local schools as voting centres. Then leasing indoor stadiums & convention centres nationwide which are to be used as counting centres for the thousands of temp workers employed to count the votes. Each counter also has a Labour & conservative coalition scrutineer looking over his/her shoulders. You see by voting on Saturday it means there's a huge availability of temp workers to count ballots (useally teachers & other public servants after extra dosh) & party volunteers to scrutineer counting, which wouldn't be available if voting occured for some bizarre reason on a Tuesday
Sure its labour intensive, but as any UN election observer will tell you this is the best system if you want high turnouts with low rates of invalid votes & a result that's as accurate as can be, by Monday morning at the latest (actually in the vast majority of elections we know who's won by about 8pm the same night).
Also all politicians must be removed from any decision making processes as far as the running of elections are concerned, etc.
Look at the way democratic afiliated local officials OKed the hand count iin Palm Beach & then the Republican Florida SoS blocked the hand count (& she was Bush's co-campaign manager, which makes it an even worse conflict of interest). That sort