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E-Voting: a Flawed Solution in Search of a Problem
blorg writes "In the promised follow-up to last-week's I, Cringely column on E-Voting (discussed on Slashdot here), Robert X. Cringely discusses his proposed solution to the electronic voting mess. The ideas in this piece have all appeared already on Slashdot, but this stands as a well-argued condensation of them into a single article.
In the article, he looks briefly at possible solutions for the auditability problem but ultimately argues that technology introduces more problems into elections than it solves. Instead, he suggests that elections can be run quicker, cheaper and fairer using the paper-based Canadian model."
Here in Brazil we have been using electronic voting for some years, and the results are always good. There have never been any complaints about legitimacy (?) of the results.
Also, I don't think that paper-based voting models can be quicker than that. Here we usually have the results at the end of the night of the voting day.
--
Francisco
São Paulo / Brazil
Cringly has one small flaw in that, the scruitineers from each party do not count the ballots. The officials from Elections Canada do all the counting. The scruitineers are allowed only to observe the process, to ensure that there are no irregularities. In the three elections I scruitineered for, I did not witness any irregularities. And, in all three, no members of the public remained to watch the ballot counting. Voter apathy is probably as high or higher in Canada than in the US.
Julie Moult is an idiot.
(nb: I'm in Canada)
In the last civic election we used electronic machines but all they did was take the piece of paper we marked our X on and scanned it in. There was still a paper trail if a physical audit was needed.
Trolling is a art,
Actually, here in Sna Antonio, TX, they now use the Devil-spawned touchscreens with no paper audit trail.
You enter your votes; the machine says "thanks." And off you go.
You can hope it stored your votes correctly.
You can hope it will copy the votes into the data transmission devive they use to collect those votes.
You can hope the central system that reads that device correctly collects and reports all the votes.
But you cannot *know*.
And not a blind, ignorant, tottering ex-NYC Floridian in sight to blame it on.
Hell, I would LOVE paper ballots over this system!
READ the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the other amendments! http://lcweb2.loc.gov/const/const.html
Wrong.
Jean Chretien retired, and the Liberal Party of Canada *elected* a successor.
Canadians voted for our present ruling Party fair and square it was pretty clear who the people of Canada chose.
This is the way politics work in Canada: we vote for people in our riding to represent us, who represent a political Party, the members of the Party elect their leader. In this case the leader of the Party with the most seats in the House was Jean Chretien, he then retired, and the party elected a new leader. When the Parties term is up, or whenever the Party chooses chose prior to the term, the Party calls an election, and the voters of Canada elect new people who represent a Party.
If you don't like what you see then *join a party and vote for your leader*.
Sounds pretty far from a Monarchy to me.
Now - back to the article - I think that the Canadian voting system is pretty good. But what Cringely fails to note is that in Canada, for our elections, we are *typically* only voting for one thing: who will represent us in our riding. Whereas in the US voters are voting for people to represent them, and NUMEROUS referendum items. Canadian votes can be tallied quickly because we have so little to add up. Even using the Canadian system US votes would still take a MUCH longer time to tally.
Please don't confuse the Canadian system with American system. We don't hold "Presidential" elections per se; the point of an election in Canada is to elect Members of Parliament. The Prime Minister is the leader of the party that wins the most seats, and is appointed by the party. The PM is never directly elected by the general electorate.
Thus, in the last election, Jean Chretien was not elected as PM (although he was elected in his riding to the House of Commons); he was the leader of the party that was elected to the most seats. Now, Paul Martin is the leader of the Liberal party, so he is Prime Minister. I see nothing spooky about this whatsoever.
We use this system in San Francisco and while I couldn't imagine how you could be confused by this, I witnessed it happen.
I went to vote sometime last year (we vote a few times a year in SF) and I waited behind a guy who was having the ballot explained to him.
The poll agent asked him if he knew how to mark the ballot and he said, "Yes, you just circle the arrow." She politely told him that he needed to connect the two lines of the arrow, to which he added, "And then circle it!" She said, "No, no need to circle it. Just connect the lines." He seemed to have gotten this and took his ballot away.
I got my ballot and began voting when I heard the agent say, "Sir, you seem to still be circling. Don't show me what you've voted, but show me what you are doing in the sample area." He proudly said, "I'm circling the arrows." At this point, having already finished, I turned in my ballot and left.
Just because its idiot proof doesn't mean we don't have idiots that can't figure it out. There are no voter eligibility standards in this country other than being over 18. Remember 50% of the country is below average intelligence and some of those on the border probably couldn't figure it out either.
The last time I voted in a US election (in Chicago), the ballot had (count them) 3 Federal races, 6 or so State races, a bunch of County races, a bunch of city races, and close to a hundred Judicial races plus some other stuff.
All of these races vary by jurisdiction: a given county board may have to print up dozens of variations on ballots because of different municipal and school board elections.
Comparing this mess with a country where you vote for one race at a time is just plain silly.
Maybe we elect too many officials. Maybe other countries elect too few. Who knows? But to compare a paper election in the US, and say that someone else manages to count the ballots in an hour is just plain silly. It can't be done when you've got ballots that make legal paper look tiny, and several hundred voters per precinct.
Sure, counting paper ballots is easy. Know why the vote counters should have their hands checked? The old pencil lead under the finger nail trick to invalidate ballots by scratching a mark outside of the box. And someone who actually looks at elections could go on and on and on.
John Roth
Far be it from me to criticize my home and native land (yes, that phrase is lifted from our national anthem), but:
1) The Elections Canada budget may have been 57 M$ for 2002-2003, but no general election was held that year.
2) The last general election was in 2000.
3) From the Elections Canada web-site, "The estimated cost of the November 2000 general election is $200 million." (Canuck bucks, about $152 MUSD).
compulsory voting, as is done in Australia and some Scandinavian countries,
Sorry, but no scandinavian country have compulsory voting. People just vote anyway - cause they care about the society.
Just saying it like it are.
Leave it to technology companies to pump big ideas into the PHB's, bureaucrats and politicians heads.
They could sell a drowning PHB a glass of water.
Federal election - Show up with your voter return card or 1 piece of ID and recent mail. The vote card is about half the size of a postcard. Mark an X in the circle beside the desired candidate. Stuff ballot into box that's watched over by a returning officer.
Provincial election - Show up with your voter return card or 1 piece of ID and recent mail. The vote card is about the size of a postcard. Broken arrows point to each candidate. Fill in the body of the arrow to make your choice. Stuff ballot into box that's watched over by a returning officer.
Municipal election - In the "canadian capital" of Toronto, show up with your voter return card or 1 piece of ID and recent mail. Tell them whether or not you're a catholic school or public school supporter. Get an 8.5x11 sheet with 40 candidates for mayor, 4 or 5 candidates for councillor, 6 or 7 for a school trustee. Fill in the circle for your choices. Walk up to the return officer, he/she tells you to feed your sheet into the HP Scanjet. It sucks your sheet in and you're done.
No idea how the process works with the electronics and paper ballots in the municipal election, but results were in within an hour after poll close. Impressive IMO.
At the last election, when I received my ballot, the number on top of the ballot was dutifully recorded by one of people at the table. I went behind the screen, marked my X, and folded up the paper. When I returned to the table, the person ensured that the number on the ballot was the same, and then tore off the number and passed me the ballot to place in the box (in full sight).
A common practice in struggling 'democracies' is to provide the voter with a filled in ballot, and the voter gets paid when he or she returns with a blank ballot. The unique number on the Canadian ballot prevents that practice. If I had tore off the number before leaving the screened area, I would have invalidated it.
The ballot was pretty simple: you connected two parts of an arrow together that pointed at your choice of candidate. None of this Florida confusion, you literally pointed at who you were voting for! Then, the ballot was read by a scanner that was placed over a large box. The scanner confirmed that your vote had been counted correctly, and the box kept the ballot.
That would be the Optech Eagle, made by Sequoia Voting Systems, and popular in Northern California as well. They also make touch-screen systems, but they do note on the home page that it prints a paper copy for voter verification (not a batch print), and that their machines got a green light from the Nevada Gaming Commission, which probably has stricter standards on condom vending machines than Diebold has on their voting machines.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.