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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."
Until more people get involved in the political process, the majority will be subject to the will of the minority-those that actually get out and vote, and get involved in election campaigns, writing to their representatives, etc.
-cp-
President Bush to Liberate Alaska!
I have to agree with Cringely. Any paper-base receipt is suseptable to abuse. Specifically, this allows someone to confirm how another person voted. Bought votes are possible this way.
I do like the old-tech method. Put an X next to the person on paper. It is cheaper, and give old people something to do. (They staff all the voting over here, providing a very valuable service.)
E-Voting, when correctly designed, can be empowering to diabled (blind) voters who no longer need a friend to read off the ballot and tell them how to vote. While I'm sure you could get braile ballots printed, it is a lot easier on the disabled person if they can just put on a set of headphones and have the choices read off to them by the computer.
I read the internet for the articles.
Being a Canadian and a having experience with the Federal voting system, it doesn't offer a bad user experience either. You file with Elections Canada when you submit your tax return, and when election time comes around you get your lovely elector card.
On election day you're in and out in 10 minutes, with one neat x, and merrily on your way!
-s
Cringley is 100% correct. Look at the cost/speed. All this voting machine crap is just patronage & graft unbridled. Read the Cringley column.
The Canuck system is 100% open, 100% low-tech.
I'm screaming like some kind of Cliff Stoll now, but this shit is getting ridiculous.
Canadian cost per capita: $1.81
US cost $3.27
--Mike--
And the ol' fashioned paper method may work for Canada, but there's only, what, 5 people that actually live there, eh?
Why do people keep bringing this up as a reason paper ballots won't work? The USA has 10 times the population of Canada; that means we have 10 times as many people to help count ballots, and 10 times the tax base to pay them.
Here's another way of looking at it: Let's say each precinct has 1000 voters, and requires 10 people to count ballots. It doesn't matter how many precincts there are. Whatever the size of the country, you just need 1% of the people in each precinct to be willing to count ballots.
Remember the days when Republicans were the party of fiscal responsibility?
Problem: People are actually going to vote Democrat.
Solution: Voting machines manufactured by a pro-GOP company that do not leave a paper trail.
Simple, no?
When you have the vast majority of computer nerds/geeks arguing against making a system computerized then you should probably listen to them. When a group that is almost categorically in favor of a certain idea is convinced to argue against that idea, you know that you've stumbled upon a special circumstance that deserves some further consideration.
The big fuss is that the e-voting systems are being pushed because the last US presidential election fell within the margin of error of the voting system. This created an atmosphere of crisis. So rather than having an evolution of voting machines, we are getting a substandard product of crisis politics. Even worse, the crisis is being used as a justification for a great deal of pork barrel politics.
The evoting systems are coming from a flawed decision making process.
The development of closed source voting systems is also very anti-democratic. Ideally, voting sytems would have each logical step in the process open for criticism and review. Electronic voting is part of the democratic process. So this is a very good place for people favoring OSS to show case their ideals.
There are no voter eligibility standards in this country other than being over 18.
Simply being eligible to vote does not mean that someone actually can vote. In order to vote, one must be physically and mentally capable of voting. My grandfather in his final days might have been eligible, and perhaps even physically capable of voting if someone wheeled him into the room, but he was nowhere near mentally capable of voting.
You can make the voting process only so simple, but it is impossible to make it so simple that everyone can figure it out. Some people are just... baffled.
The ______ Agenda
The problem e-voting is designed to solve is obvious: elections were getting too hard to fix.
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Good luck getting mt dew on the ballot, succa! This is a two-party system, and both parties are beholden to the same peoples.
Evoting was mandated under the "Help America Vote Act" in the wake of the Florida coup. Consequently, the new Evoting systems are designed SOLELY to address the problem of undervoting and overvoting. Unfortunately, that is relatively minor problem compared to the security and integrity of the overall voting process. Nothing in these Evoting systems is designed to improve security or the integrity of voting compared to paper ballots.
So you are proposing an "intelligence" or "informedness" criteria on who should vote? So much for universal franchise ... Who, pray tell, should make this judgement?
It is my experience that compulsory voting, as is done in Australia and some Scandinavian countries, results in a more politically engaged populace.
When I say it is my experience I mean that---people in Australia are more engaged with the political process than they are in the states. I put this down to USians who don't vote ignoring politics in total, while Australians who know they are going to have to show up at the voting booth make at least some effect to know what they are doing when they vote.
Frankly it ain't a complex decision---particularly in the first-past-the-post system in the States.
It is not all about freedom---democracy requires some duties from citizens and voting should be one of those.
James
ps. Before you get all excited about being compelled to vote realize that in effect this means that you have to show up and have your name ticked off on the electoral role. They then give you a ballot which, if you'd like, you may smoke in the booth, or vote with.
I have to agree with Cringely. Any paper-base receipt is suseptable to abuse. Specifically, this allows someone to confirm how another person voted. Bought votes are possible this way.
Cringley is perpeutating a misunderstanding about the so-called "paper receipts" - that the voter takes them home, and can show them to another person to collect his graft. This is NOT what they are about.
They are not "receipts". They are "ballots". They are the OFFICIAL record of the vote. They are collected in at the polling place and placed in the ballot box. If there's any question about an automated count, a manual recount of these papers becomes the final tally.
The voting machine helps you fill them out, so there's no issue of improperly marked votes (like "hanging" or "dimpled" chads, Xes outside the box, or lightly filled-in mark cards) and no ballots "spoiled" by over-voting or other improper marking. But after the machine fills out your ballot you can check that it did that part of its job correctly - and try again if it screws up.
The voting machine MAY also count your vote as it creates these cards, to speed up the report. But the marked cards trump the voting machine's tally, which means they're the REAL record.
So let's clear the air by calling them what they are - human-verifiable machine-printed BALLOTS.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Everyone gets to watch the count if they so choose, amazing! You could get real Democracy with that!
Naw.
As long as you're voting on who will represent you you only get a real Republic.
Now if you change the rules so you vote directly on all the issues, rather than electing people to do it FOR you, you'd have a Democracy.
But I bet you wouldn't want to spend as much of your life arguing and voting as your representatives do. B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I don't know where this idea of standing in line for months when you get sick comes from. My experience has been radically different. Yes, you wait for stuff that's not getting worse, or won't be any harder to treat if it waits. That's a fact of life; however, everything that needs to be treated *now*, is. For example, from detecting a glitch in my eyesight to treatment was under 3 weeks, including 5 appointments with different health professionals and some business travel on my part (I don't work in the city I live in). That's pretty impressive for something non-life threatenning. And although I pay a bucketful of taxes, I actually feel I'm getting something for it. You might want to try living in the US, where they take nearly as much but give wars in Iraq and fraudulent voting machines with it instead of health care...
Most people vote for the party or it's leader, *not* their representitive. Why? Because in Canadian politics it's your only chance to have a say in what essentially acts as our 'executive', and individual members tend to get forced to vote certain ways by the party.
As much as I prefer most Canadian politicians to American politicians, our political system doesn't have as much protection in terms of separation of powers, (we have only 1 truly active legislative body, the senate has little function), and our Consitution is easily usurped with the 'notwithstanding-clause'. It makes me very worried to think what would happen if the Canadian Alliance were to come into power (which to a large extent is probably why the Liberals have such a stranglehold.) If the people running the US were running under the Canadian model... well, it would not be good.
First, he brings up the stupid false argument against a paper trail by equating a paper trail with voter receipts. The paper trail everyone advocates is where the precinct *keeps* the paper ballot. There's no receipt that the voter walks out with.
Second, if this HAVA thing is all based on a creative reading of the act, "Well, they said auditable but they don't really MEAN it", why can't someone just sue? This is just the sort of the thing that Supreme Court is made for, to smack down Congress when they write a stupid law.
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