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Indian Voting Machines Compared with Diebold
Hanuman_Ji writes "The Indian general elections, 2004 is now complete - and the result is an upset. As reported earlier, this election was conducted entirely through Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs). This article gives a nice overview of the machines used in this process and also adds a comparison with the Diebold machines. More information is also available at the equipment manufacturer's website."
Each machine has its own strengths and weaknesses based on various design goals. If you happen to be looking for fair and accurate voting tech, by all mean go with the Indian setups. Diebold's customers have different requirements is all.
Thank god. What's the point of internet voting? If someone can't be arsed to walk 100 yards to vote, why do we want to know what they think -- they probably don't. We have proxy and postal votes for people who really can't make it to a polling station.
in any case isn't `secure internet' a conradiction in terms?
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
It works because the main responsibility still rest with the election officials, not the electronic device.
The main difference from a normal electoral system is that the "box" is a button-based data recorder here, instead of a ballot paper box. Everything else is the same, no roles were being replaced.
Btw, anyone knows if there is a button for casting invalid vote?
Hey, that's my password you are typing
It's just too hard to fix an election if the system is simple or reliable. It seems there is a need to keep voters confused and distracted, and this would fit perfectly with the Diebold design.
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"outsourced to India!"
Maybe it was. Does anyone know for sure who wrote the code?
OTOH, they presumably do so on a daily basis, so it just becomes `go 100 yards out of their way'.
There is a widely recycled assumption that we need to get more people to vote and/or `become involved in politics'. This seems to be to be amazingly stupid. We need to get more people to think about politics. The voting etc will come as a natural consequence. Getting them to vote without thinking first is just a way to reduce the average information content of an election.
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
Yes, we do need the massive complexity of Diebold or similar systems to run American elections.
no, we need something simple yet scalable. The two are not mutually exclusive. Anything built on top of Windows is needlessly complex.
The thing that I like best about the Indian system is that it essentially duplicates the old-fashioned paper ballot, without the paperwork. Instead of a box that the voter puts his ballot in there's a little electronic box that adds up the votes as it goes along. The control boxes are physically taken to the central voting registry and manually unlocked to record the vote counts, with interested parties having immediate access to the results and the ability to do a precinct-level recount almost immediately.
Notice what's not there: no network to expose data to possible manipulation between voting machine and central server; no fancy machine lacking tamperproof seals; no fancy database with built-in unpassworded backdoor "for support purposes"; no MS software anywhere in the loop; no manufacturer's president sworn to "delivering the vote" for an incompetent incumbent. It's those last couple of items which will prevent the adoption of the Indian system in this country.
Just my $.02,
Ron
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