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Evoting in India, Maryland
Anonymous Coward writes "EVMs are back in the news again. The BBC is reporting on the use of over a million Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) in India for Parliamentary elections in April. With a billion people and an electorate of 668 million, it is by far the largest democratic election exercise in the world. A picture of an EVM is provided." And Kierthos writes "An article on Yahoo! News mentions that Maryland's voting terminals will be wrapped in tamper proof tape, which 'just protects that malicious code physically', according to computer scientist Avi Rubin. Also mentioned are California's ongoing system of e-voting, as well as a point on whether Diebold should be banned in California after using uncertified software in last October's election."
If the "tamper proof" tape is what I think it is, that would only show if someone broke the seal. If this happens, does that mean all votes on that machine are thrown out as unreliable? That sure creates the possibility of someone, not liking how pre-election polls are showing their favored candidate, intentionally breaking the seal to throw a wrench as it were into the election. I must be missing something there.....
As far as the overall debate on e-voting, I like how they do it here in Alaska. It's the old "fill in the bubble" tests like you used to take in school. You fill in the bubble on the ballot, which the ballot itself is very well laid out, then when you're done you feed the ballot into an electronic counter which keeps a tally there on the spot. When the polls close, an election worker connects the machine to a phone line, the machine then dials out and reports the results for that precinct. Results are all in w/in ~2-3 hours of the polls closing, and there is defiantly a paper trail that can be followed, if need be.
Everybody talks about electronic vote - just look at Brazil. I'm 30 years old, have been voting for 12, and have never voted on paper. They've been doing this for a long long time there, and did so in the last presidential election 2 years ago.
t acao_na_urna_ele.htm
This is how we vote in Brazil (google translate from portuguese):
http://www.tre-mg.gov.br/eleicoes/simulacao_de_vo
Somehow, none of the articles ever mention that the Wisconsin State Elections Board decertified unverifiable touchscreen systems after I convinced them a year ago. Too far ahead of the curve, I guess.
The Executive Director's report
Ben Masel: 51,282 votes for US Senate in the Wisconsin Democratic Primary
Each party has a symbol e.g. Elephant, Lotus, wheel etc. If you want to vote for the ruling BJP, you press the button next to the Lotus. That's how they have electronic voting even with the illiteracy problem.
The specs for the Indian EVM. This is definitely going to be the most widely deployed and used e-voting machine in the history of mankind. Seems pretty secure, except for the lack of a paper trail. But with 600 million eligible voters, I guess the lack of a paper trail means a lot of forests have been saved. Besides most attacks against the election system tend to be pretty unsophisticated , ie, boot-capturing and voter initimidation.
Looks like this machine will definitely go a long way in ensuring the fairness of Indian elections. Maybe I'll even vote next time.
more about me
Gerrymandering? (More on this via google)
Recently the election board or whoever was in charge of all that had at least one operatiopn recruiting tech people to get these things in shape and deployed. I wouldn't touch it with someone elses ten foot pole. Their whole opration seemed to be on a very last minute frame of mind. They were using timelines that gave only a few days from date of hire (date of job posting actually) to setting up machines in the field. I got no indication that any sort of security checks were being done on these people, and while I'm not a fan of adding more security clearance required jobs, should just any shmoe be able to get one of these jobs without being checked out? Seems fairly untrustworthy to me, and from my perspective, I would not want to be the one who signed off on a machine where something went squirrely.
And whats so difficult about having a printed voter verifiable receipt anyway?
I was in a Maryland high school the other day, and there was a pile of black containers labeled "Diebold" addressed to the voting board, sitting unattended in the cafeteria.
Each case was held closed by a wire lockout, available only to those elite groups who receive electrical supply catalogs.
I of course chose not to mess with them. Any come-from-behind victory I make on Tuesday will be purely coincidental.
Everyone interested in this issue should take a look at the VerifiedVoting Website.
Electronic voting needs to solve two problems: Guarantee that every vote is counted exactly and guarantee that everyone can trust that result.
As Schneier points out, there can be no trust without a paper trail for verification. So it is quite important to support legislation mandating such a paper trail.
Lenz Blog
It's a parliamentary system. Voters don't vote for the George W. Bush equivalent. They vote for their local Member of Parliament, who could be a member of a political party (usually is), or an independent. They usually do that vote based on how that MP's been performing (he/she's supposed to take care of that constituency) and they know that very well. And at the end of the day, the party with a majority support in the lower house of parliament gets to govern. It works.
Election Commission of India is proposing Vote for nobody in this election.
Any idea how many democracies in the world give this option to the voters?