Who's Blocking Verified E-Voting?

ClarkEvans writes "The NY Times has a great editorial today calling out the League of Women Voters for their counter-productive lobbying against verified voting. The article states that Diebold voting systems has given lots of dough to these opposition groups." There's an AP story about the issue as well.

Comments

As Joe Stalin said

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not the votes that count, but who counts the votes.

What??

[Anonymous Coward]

"But simply printing out a piece of paper will not, in our opinion, address all the security concerns. People are talking about a simple solution to a complicated issue."

Who says we can't have a simple solution? Printing out a piece of paper most certainly WILL address all of the security concerns. At a stroke it allows voter verification, recounts, and auditing to find both corruption and machine errors.

She's obviously not an engineer. Often, the simplest solutions are best.

Re:What??

[FirstTimeCaller]

The argument seems to be that the disabled will be unable to verify that their printed receipt will match the intended ballot. This may be true. It may also be true that a certain percentage of (non-disabled) voters will be too lazy to double check their printed receipt. But this is fine.

No one says that each vote must be verified - it is simply sufficient that each vote be verifiable. Since no one knows who will verify their vote and who won't, they can't afford to try and cheat the system. So, unless the implementors of the voting systems know who the disabled voters are (and therefore who's vote they might get away with changing), it's not really a problem.

In my opinion democracy is too precious to trust to an unverifiable voting system.

I am amazed at the apparent bias of this article.

[Microsift]

The submitter appears to have some issue with the League of Women's Voters, an organization whose only crime is buying the arguments of the groups who have been tainted by Diebold money. If I didn't read the editorial, I would have been under the wrong impression that The League had taken money from Diebold.

Interesting Article

[bogie]

Just goes to show that almost no group is above being bribed.

"What's even more troubling is that the group has accepted a $1 million gift for a new training institute from Diebold, the machines' manufacturer, which put the testimonial on its Web site."

The author is right there is no need to choose between "accessible voting and verifiable voting".
Without paper verification evoting has no future here.

Re:I am amazed at the apparent bias of this articl

[Politicus]

Agree. This issue does not appear on the LWV's top five voting problems statemnt.

My favorite argument against paper trails is how insanely expensive these machines would become. Really? I didn't know that the corner Kwik-e-Mart had one of these "expensive" machines to print a receipt for my $0.50 pack of gum. As far as I know, all ATM's have paper trails. How is it feasible to record a $20 ATM withdrawal but not a vote for supreme emperor of the earth for 4 years?

Re:saves time and effort; should be more accurate

[JonMartin]

With electronic voting, you should (in theory) get more accurate results, in less time, using fewer people. The paper verification means that if there is a dispute and a recount is called for, the option is available. However, you don't have to front that level of expenditure everywhere. It's much more efficient.

Why is it so damn important that results be known RIGHT NOW? Less than half the people in your country vote, and therefore don't care. For those that do your TV networks are projecting winners the second polls close. Up here we know the results before we go to bed. By morning most of the counts are official. Within days MPs are being sworn in.

Why is efficiency even an issue? I care about efficiency when I order a pizza. I care about efficiency when I buy a car. For one night every four years (or so) efficiency can go to hell. When deciding who will be governing me and my country I want accuracy.

It's worth noting that in their national elections in 2000, Canada had 21 million voters and the US had 105 million. You can see why the US might be a little more obsessed with the cost and speed elements.

Ah yes, the old "That won't work here, we're special" argument.

Yes, you have an order of magnitude more voters. But that also means that you have an order of magnitude more polling stations and volunteers to count votes. In terms of voting there is no fundamental difference between a Canadian city of 1 million people and an American city of 1 million people. The fact that you have 10 times as many of those cities is irrelevant to this problem.