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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."
I find it funny to see a story like this today, considering:
As of today, both our Prime Minister and Official Opposition were not elected. The PM who *was* elected retired and named a successor (hey, it's like a monarchy!), and the Opposition party didn't exist 2 weeks ago.
Spooky.
Having said that, when we actually do vote our leaders into office, yeah, the process usually goes off without a hitch.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Some of us hosers have had a couple of elections recently: the Ontario provincial election and the city council/mayoral election.
I was most impressed by the mayoral elections. In Toronto (don't know about the rest of them), the voting was electronically tallied but had a built-in audit trail.
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.
At the end of the day, the election TV coverage was almost farcical because almost all the results were in within an hour. If any candidate wanted to contest the vote, all the original ballots had been retained as part of the system.
Maybe that would be a good system for the U.S.
There are still a lot of precincts in the US small enough to use hand-counted paper ballots, and in those (in my experience) the same procedure is used. Actually, it's also used in the precincts I've been to that use OpScan ballots (use a special marker to mark the ballot, the scanner reads the ballot and saves it), except that the scanner takes the place of having to count all the uncomplicated ballots. The nice thing about the scanner system is that the paper ballots are perserved.
Save Maine's economy: write stuff down. All comments are exclusively my own, not my employer.
I quit voting some time back because of the rampant voter fraud that ALREADY exists in the system. The Canadian voting system is far superior then what we have now. As long as the ballots aren't counted in plain sight at the polling place BEFORE they are taken to the court house you will never have a fair election. We already have rigged votes. Voting machines are NOT going to make cleaner elections. It is just going to raise the scale of voter fraud one more notch. Florida was just the beginning.
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
I voted in the last 2 local referendum elections using touch screen. I go into the voting depot, they find my name on a paper list and I initial next to my name. Next a volunteer take a cartridge to an open voting machine, slaps it in, presses the big red button and I'm good to go. I press various checkboxes on the touchscreen, a yes/no pair for each question. At the end I get a review of my selections with the option of making changes. Satisfied, I hit the flashing red Vote button and viola my votes have been cast.
Now, there's no receipt mind you. Just put them on the web IMO.
Here's how: "An often overlooked approach to getting the attention of your representatives is to get involved in their campaign. Very few people contribute money or time to a campaign, and those that do are rewarded by having the ear of the politician when they are elected. Even if they aren't elected, they usually have influence on those that are elected, and there is always the possibility that they will run again." Source
-cp-
President Bush to Liberate Alaska!
We've been using electronic voting machines in India for a while now. In fact only this month, we had a 5 state election which went real smooth. Wonder whats the big fuss about it here in the US?
As a Canadian, I have to agree with Cringley, we were all laughing during the election of 2000 and still laugh at the e-voting system. We had an election call, a campaign and a vote faster than the count of 2000.
The one problem with his suggestion, as I understand it, is that the states are responsible for the design of the ballot in the USA. In Canada, the ballot design is dictated by Elections Canada (a non-partisan government agency) Every poll must have the same design for the ballot. The design is all candidates on a single piece of paper that folds 3 times. The candidates names are alphabetical and in white on a solid black background. The vote is marked in a white circle next to the name.
I guess to have a Canadian style ballot would probably require a constitutional change in the USA, with the states giving up some control over the elections.
California's Secretary of State announced last month that California will have a paper trail for its electronic voting machines (starting in mid-'05). It's a good thing IMHO. press release(PDF)
Not to mention the fact that is cost effective, especially when compared to all of the electronic touch-screen systems they're implementing some of the California counties. LA is claiming the touch-screens are more handicapped accessible and are bilingual, but the paper methods are as well. And a paper trail is probably better than any electronic one.
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
How to vote in 1 easy step
I agree wholeheartedly with your first paragraph. I would rather a small minority of well-informed, intelligent people who have really thought about the issues do all the voting. Why do we even want millions of people out there casting votes just because MTV told them to, when they really have no idea who the candidates are or what they stand for? Rather than all these campaigns to get people to vote, why don't we see campaigns encouraging people to educate themselves on the issues and the candidates? If, after they understand the platforms, people see a real difference in the candidates they will naturally want to vote. It is very clear to me that the people who don't vote shouldn't be voting, because they obviously don't care. Why do we want apathetic masses randomly casting votes? Isn't this the worst possible situation?
Maybe partying will help...
This still doesn't mean that voter fraud can't happen. Take the Quebec Referendum, where the "scruteneers" threw out as many "No" votes as they could if they didn't meet certain criteria
- A mark outside the circle, even if incidental.
- Not a perfect check mark, dash, or X
While a "Oui" vote written with a swaztika would be just fine.
Great point. Paperless voting means less paper. Which northern country exports a lot of tree pulp?
Actually, Paul Martin WAS elected. In the exact same way Jean Chretien was elected.
Would Canadians please realize that you're not voting for a Prime Minister, you're voting for a representative to Parliament, and that person in turn has a vote for the Prime Minister.
If you have a problem with this, maybe you'd think twice before you vote for a party.
This is the problem too many people voting for the party, not enough people voting for the person. I happily voted in the Burnaby Mountain riding for Svend Robinson because he was the person in my riding who best represented my political opinions and had the best track record amongst the candidates. And to think the Canadian Alliance representative almost beat him out. Does anybody even actually go to the debates anymore? The two people who clearly understood what they were talking about were the Conservative candidate and Svend. The Canadian Alliance guy consistently showed that all he was was someone reading off a piece of paper that Stockwell Day handed to him and really didn't understand a thing of politics. If I wanted someone like that in Parliament, I would have voted for the Rhinoceros party.
Fact of the matter is the Conservative candidate was a clear concise talker who understood the issues and showed himself to be a good representer of his constituents in parliament. But alas he got the least votes. Why? Because nobody likes Joe Clark! And it doesn't matter anyway anymore because now the Tories and the Alliance are looking to join up. So everybody that voted for a party leader basically threw their vote away.
Canadian system works, but only if people stop voting for the party and start voting for the representative.
Paul Martin was elected in the same respect that Chretien was elected: In his own riding. In no official terms did anybody outside of his riding put an X on "Jean Chretien, Liberal". So if you cast your vote for the Alliance or the Liberals based on the leader, then maybe you should go understand your voting system before you cast your next vote.
Karma: Non-Heinous
The difference between Canada and the US is that up north we have very few elections and very few elected officials. On the Federal level, I vote once, for my MP (members of parlement) and on the provincial level, its the same. And the prime minister (who holds executive power) is choosen by the assembly (ie he is the leader of the party with the most seats)... And then we vote for mayors and city council members and that's it! And more than that, all of those elections dont happen at the same time.. they are all separate... And they dont happen on fixed dates..
So why wouldnt our system work in the US? I've seen american ballots where people are are to answer dozens of questions.. To vote at the same time for the president, senator, congressman, governor, mayor, a few judges, prosecutors, etc, etc.. And not counting referendums... No one can keep up with so many races and carefully look at the candidates to pick the best one. America needs less votes for more democracy. Ohh and the ballots in there.. Its pretty easy to count when there is only one question to be counted for the whole evening... even the whole year.... When so many questions have to be counted, its a whole different matter...
So let me recapitulate.. the solution is to less elected officials and separate various levels of elections.. One question at a time!
In Australia, at least, it is compulsory to vote.
There is another advantage of paper ballots. They leave open the possibility of spoiling one's ballot paper. One problem with all the various machine solutions is that they offer a forced choice. What is a voter supposed to do if none of the candidates are worth voting for? There is no box for 'none of the above'. In the UK, each spoiled ballot paper is inspected by the various candidates, or their agents in order to determine whether the voter intended to vote for someone, but messed up. This provides and excellent opportunity to send a certain kind of message to the candidates. I know people who claimed to have written things like "Which ever way you vote, the government wins", or "Don't vote, it only encourages them", or even "Stop wars, eat politicians". With a paper-based system, the only limit is your imagination. With those voting machines, the voter is little different from a lab rat pulling a level. Sure, paper ballots are slower to count, but they still seem to work OK in the UK, with a population of 60 Million or so. Results are usually in by the early morning. This suggests that the Canadian style solution does in fact scale well.
Today on NPR there was a story about a conference here in the PRM (People's Republic of Maryland) about e-voting. One salesman representing the company that makes all of Denmark's (I think) voting machines. They don't require a paper trail, and he thought the Americans were being silly. His machines are so accurate that if the entire population of the world voted, there would be one error on his machines. The population of Denmark is just fine trusting the machines.
I almost spit my soda all over the dashboard.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
US cost $3.27
One of the main reasons it's cheaper is because all elections are run by a single body, Elections Canada, but in the U.S. elections are generally run by individual counties, each having to make their own ballots and having their own procedures. This also adds to the problem where poorer counties would have to make do with older equipment.
It would be cheaper and more efficient if each state had a single body that administered elections, buying equipment in bulk, but most states "pass the buck" onto counties for budget reasons, even though it ends up costing taxpayers more in the end.
I had an idea.
1) Mail every registered voter a barcode and it's cleartext alphanumeric number, before the election.
2) They can either go to a website or vote in person somewhere, they put in the number (or scan in the barcode), choose their votes, and affirm that they placed the vote.
3) All results are posted in plaintext to a website. People can check the list to verify that their vote was correct and counted, and they can run their own stats to make sure the counts are correct.
Voting is anonymous because only the voting registration people know which unique ID's go to which people, people get new ID's for each election.
Voting machines are really hopelessly obscure and not open in any way and fraud is so easy that it is laughable and ridiculous to even consider them. The criminals will love it. It's a perfect way to make voting meaningless and to ensure that the US eventually becomes a dictatorship. Good luck to the sheep who are willing to let this happen -- soon you will be roast mutton.
The fact that no voters watched isn't even Cringly's point, it's that they CAN watch, which is in stark contrast to the way things work in the US.
Secondly, it should be noted that in Canada the federal government controls all elections laws, from University Student Union Presidential Elections, right up to Parliamentary elections. Again, a huge advantage over the US system where by every state has their own mess of laws governing their elections. And if there is a problem with the way elections are being run it's a NATIONAL issue, not just some issue a state is left to figure out all by itself (to the oblivion of everyone else).
I can only hope our neighbors to the south come up with some solution to this problem. If anything, at least this electronic voting machine debate has sparked interest in how US elections are actually carried out.
Rich...
Give me a break. Have the receipt be a md5 sum of the voters unique "name" or "id", a unique election "id", some "secret key", and the person they voted for.
This receipt itself can then only be "verified" at the voting booths by using a computer in the similar fashion as to which the person voted.
Selling this receipt to anyone would then be useless (you can't verify the receipt unless the original person is physically there, just like the voting process). Unless of course that person already had access to the machines originally used to vote, but at that point you've already lost the battle.
Personally I think we need a secure way to vote from the comfort of our homes. Only then will the voter turn out be above the average 50-60%.
Open Source Time and Attendance, Job Costing a
First off, I am a Canadian, and my better half is blind. I've seen how she votes, using one of those paper templates, so I have first-hand knowledge of how the system works.
Most blind people can't read braille--somewhere on the order of 6-10% are proficient using this method.
Accordingly, braille ballots are essentially useless from that point of view. The templates that are used are made of paper, and have circles punched where the voter is supposed to put the X that marks the spot. The candidates are listed on the ballot in alphabetical order; it is no big deal for the election official to read off the list, and the person can count down the appropriate number of holes to mark their choice without any assistance whatsoever. Sometimes the low-tech solution is the best one after all.
I mean seriously folks:
- Go to the machine
- Place vote
- Receive receipt; receipt has machine readble bardcode containing an ID back to the vote record. Place receipt in receptacle
- Receptacle scans receipt and checks barcode ID against DB and flags the DB record as having a valid receipt and therefore it's a legal vote.
- All receipts go into a big lock box that is only opened if fraud is suspected
Is that difficult to comprehend?-- All views expressed in this post are mine and do not
-- reflect those of my employer or their clients
I find it odd that the tech community seems so against e-voting. Perhaps its just the methods suggested.. IE closed code etc... But it surprises me that many seem to think its impossible to do right.... or even that it could be better than the current system. For those that suggest perhaps thats a good reason to doubt the ability of an electoric voting system I point out that those 'most' knowlegeable once also decried the posibility that the world was round, that the sun revolved around the earth and any number of other things that later prooved not to be the case. Just because computer geeks are having a ludite reaction to an encroaching technology does not mean that the reaction is a valid one.
given a working valid system...
Results are instant.
ballots cannot be incomplete or improperly filled out.
Certification can be more in depth.. cross checking with other databases to make sure dead people to vote for instance.
absentee voting can be made possible without mail in votes, and they can vote when everyone else does at electronic voting stations. Though I grant for that to work you need a national standard voting system that is always available ( permanent voting stations as opposed to temp ). Colleges, embasies, military bases and similar places would have permanent voting facilities to allow for people away from home to vote when needed.
All of those are problems that can be addressed and all but eliminated by an electonic voting system that are almost impossible to irradicate from a physcial paper voting system.
There is the possibility for fraud obviously... but so is there in the current system. In fact its rampant in the current system, especially in the mess of systems used across the nation due to no standard voting system in the US.
I think most people seem to focus on the possibility of remote fraud, and the possibility of a far more easily manipulated system. HOWEVER remote manipulation also means remote verification. People tend to evaluate the certification process based on the older system without thinking of the new implications for verification possible. This whole argument reminds me of the begining of E-commerce and the fear of credit fraud so bad no body would buy online.... yet how many people shop on amazon and e-bay now ?
In short the problem is solveable/manageable, and the potential gains in instant returns and far smaller inherent margian of error matched with the ability to make voting far more available far outweigh the potential problems in my opinion.
I don't ask you to be me. I only ask you not expect me to be you.
It's important to realize that the controversy over electronic voting machines is with a very specific makes and models. Being against *all* electronic voting machines is very misguided.
Most electronic voting machines in Indiana are Microvote-464s. In my district, Elkhart county uses scantron while the rest use th 464s. Election returns come in within an hour from the counties with the 464s and hardly a dispute, whereas Elkhart county never comes in until 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning, and there's always concern over miscounted votes. Let's face it, Scantron is inaccurate.
First available in 1986, the Microvote-464 these sweet little machines don't leave a whole lot of room for election hanky-panky. A number of particularly good features:
The "screens" are paper. This has the distinct advantage that the machine has *no idea* of which candidate corresponds to which button. All the machine is doing is tallying how times a particular button is "pushed." (I put pushed in quotes because you can change your vote until you confirm your ballot.)
The machine is activated by a remote console staffed by poll workers. When they see somebody go into the booth, they hit a button to allow the person to vote. Makes it very hard to double vote!
When the sheriff's office preps the machines for an election, it is done in the presence of representatives from each party. There are several physically separate chambers in the machine, one of which has controls for a clock. The clock is set so that the machine can't be used at all until election day, and then that compartment is sealed using seals from the respective parties. Another compartment contains paper recipts for the votes for that day, which are constantly printed in randomized order throughout the day.