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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.
Oh riiighht. All you have to do to prevent tampering with an on-line computer is to "wrap it in tamper-proof tape." Sure. Uh huh.
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
...everything's secure when you use Duct Tape!
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.
After everything we've heard about Diebold in the past few months - thier ties to Bush, uncertified software, etc - does anyone really trust them to accurately count and record the results of the votes?
Maybe the states that are still using Diebold machines know something I don't, but I really don't see why you'd want to take such a risk with something as important as voting.
Twenties Retirement
This provides identical results at greatly reduced cost and time.
We need to think carefully about this tech but we also need to embrace it. We already let automation run our reactors, manager all of our money, keep us from running into each other at intersections, etc.
Going a few links into that site, we find a list of how each person voted on roll call votes at http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2004/index.asp
(ironically enough, the list is as tallied by the electronic voting machine)
Twenties Retirement
1) A custom OS WILL have bugs. All new software does. Do you want to vote on buggy software?
2) Part of the outcry (at least here) against e-voting is exactly that - that nobody can see the source, which means we have no way of knowing if it's correct, if it has backdoors, etc.
3) Nothing is 100%, expecially when people are involved.
Twenties Retirement
Who's to say the source doesn't contains election-rigging code, and locking it up so no one can review it. Even if it was "open source", someone at each poll location would have to review the source and compile it there in front of a few officials just to make sure no one loads a malicious binary. That may not even prevent a code snippet:
while(1)
{
voteRepublican();
}
from being sneaked in to the source undetected.
$cat
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)
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.
Before diving in to what kind of design we should be using, I think some time needs to be spend deciding the design parameters. The solution should probably:
The Nevada Gaming Board has been cited as a good example of the kind of extremely paranoid testing and auditing that needs to go into a system this important. However, for a voting system we've added some new and challenging criteria- anonymity, ease of use, and fairness. None of these individually are difficult, but when combined with the testabilty and auditability become particularly challenging. How do you ensure that individual votes are getting properly registered while still maintaining the anonymity of the votes?
Personally, I don't see how all of these criteria can be met in a "remote" (e.g. web) voting system. However, I think these problems are all solvable with our current technology, if we are careful. In fact, I think that if a system were designed carefully, we could even come up with a system where we can, if necessary, confirm (validate) a region or even nation's voting results by storing individual voting results on voter-owned smart cards.
Assume we set up a system where every voter is issued a voting smart card that they retain possession over. When you go in to vote you stick your smart card in the voting machine. You then vote, and it records your choices on the card. Audits could then take place after an election by having randomly selected voters come in and stick their smart cards into a seperate vote validation system that retallies the results and allows voters to confirm their vote selection. Using statistics, you can set a threshold for when the error level is too suspiciously high, and require revotes in the regions with anomalous results. By using different vendors to provide the voting machines, smart cards, and vote auditing system, you can greatly increase your assurance that no entity has tampered with the voting results. Apart from the influences of the media... and politicians... and education system... and religions.....
On second thought, forget the whole thing. :)
In the end, what is the value of an uninformed vote?
George W. Bush will be happy to tell you.
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.
The Campaign for Verified Voting in Maryland has a website at www.truevotemd.org. If you're a Maryland voter or just want to show your support, go there and sign up. If you're going to vote on Tuesday in Maryland's primary, we're organizing a protest to demand paper ballots.
The problem in Maryland is that the officials at the State Board of Elections are in Diebold's pocket. Realize that San Diego and other California counties are getting voter-verified paper trail equipment from Diebold for free, despite paying only 60% as much for the machines as Maryland. Maryland also bought a much larger order. However, since the SBE officials won't go to bat Diebold is trying to charge big bucks for the VVPT. Diebold is also spending heavily in lobbying and contributing to the Maryland Delegates and State Senators who could pass legislation that would force a VVPT.
Some other good sites if you're interested in this topic:
www.verifiedvoting.org
www.blackboxvoting.org
--Paul
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?