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."

Comments

That's only part of the "problem"

[core plexus]

The real problem, as I see it, is voter apathy. I wonder how many more people would bother to vote even if they could vote from their own machines at home? I'd bet, not many more.

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!

Re:That's only part of the "problem"

[DrZaius]

So? How is this a problem? If people don't care or have anything to contribute they don't have to vote. What's worse is people voting who have been mislead or misinformed.

While we're talking about the "real" problem, I think it's corrupt and selfish people. Why should we have to worry about people cheating? I'd be much more worried about someone buying their way into power than if some people who don't really care not voting. The fact we have to worry about that is sad.

Don't get me wrong, people should vote. But if they don't want to, that is their right just as much as it is to vote.

Re:That's only part of the "problem"

[ajs]

Apathy mostly stems from the sense that the individual has no impact. I firmly feel that if we addopted instand runnoff voting (IRV), that would be overcome. First off, it would revitalize the third parties by allowing people to vote for whoever they wanted without any chance of hurting their second-favorite choice's chance of winning (should their favorite not win). This, for example, would have allowed a democratic voter to say that they wanted Ralph Nader to be President, but still vote for Al Gore if Nader didn't get the popular vote.

Second, given IRV, you have a good deal more incentive to remove the electoral college, which again makes voters feel empowered, and incents voting.

Re:That's only part of the "problem"

[Suidae]

IMO it is more important to move to a candidate ranking system than to have electronic voting.

Third parties in the US are pretty much screwed because people know about the 'vote stealing' effect. If people that would normally vote for party one vote for party three, party two ends up with the majority of votes, even if party one would have gotten the majority if party three had not been running.

Its dumb, and I think its a problem that electronic voting could help to solve (ranking candidates on a screen that can dynamicly reorder the names to show preferences could be much easier for stupid people to use than anything on paper)

Re:That's only part of the "problem"

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm surprised Slashdot readers don't support tech voting solutions.

You're seeing the scism between fresh-faced young college kids with enthusiasm for all things technological and us old hands who have almost every project we have ever had the misfortune to work on fail in one way or another. The fresh faced college kids are all ra-ra for technology ("Technology for all! Arn't computers great? We'll change the world!") while us old hands are simply looking at yet another project that is surely going to fail in oh-so-many predictable ways.

Trust the old hands. Technology is all shit, and none of it works.

Paper receipts

[pcraven]

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.)

Re:Paper receipts

[pavon]

Specifically, this allows someone to confirm how another person voted

I have heard this several times, and don't understand it. The whole point of a paper receipt is so that you can do a manual recount latter on to see if the machines are correct. Who cares if the machine can print out the same thing it is displaying on the screen, that doesn't help at all to verify that it is working correctly. The reason the people verify that the paper is the same as on the screen is to verify that the paper is correct, in case it is used for a recount. So the paper would have to stay at the voting place to be of any use at all.

Secondly, there is no reason the paper receipt would have to link the vote to the voter, indeed it should not. It would be nice if the electronic record of the vote could be linked to the paper ballot using some ID, but there is no reason for either of those to be linked to the voter.

Receipts do not compromise any sort of privacy whatsoever.

I do like the old-tech method. Put an X next to the person on paper.

The best method that I have heard of is the inverse of the electronic voting machines with reciepts. Voters fill in a scan-tron ballot. Then, within the privacy of their voting booth, they would scan the form and a machine would display their vote to double check that the ballot was readable and that they had not made a mistake. This machine would not be connected to the network or count their vote in anyway to prevent user errors from messing up the count.(Think about what happens when a fast food employee makes a mistake, and what they have to do to correct it. Now think about someone who has never used the voting machine making a mistake and needing to correct it, or worse needing to get a volenteer to correct it potentially violating their voting privacy) If the vote displayed is correct they deposit the ballot in a voting box (also in the privacy of their booth). Otherwise they correct it, or if necisarry dispose of the incorrect ballot and start over, and rescan until it is good. Another nice feature is that absentee ballots could be identical to other ballots.

It is more user-error proof than any other method I have seen. The technology is well-proven, secure, and familiar to voters and volenteers. There is no more room for fraud than anything else I have seen. Very efficent to count and recount, and can be recounted by hand if necisarry. And less expensive than what diebold et all are offering.

One thing few slashdotters consider

[jandrese]

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.

It does work pretty well here.

[salemnic]

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

Blame Canada

[glomph]

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

Go Canada!

[ka9dgx]

Everyone gets to watch the count if they so choose, amazing! You could get real Democracy with that!

--Mike--

My Opinion

[iamdrscience]

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

[yintercept]

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.

They're not "in search of a problem."

[El]

The problem e-voting is designed to solve is obvious: elections were getting too hard to fix.

Solution to the WRONG problem

[sakusha]

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.

Stop calling them "reciepts". They're BALLOTS!

[Ungrounded Lightning]

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.