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.

Re:As Joe Stalin said

[jb.hl.com]

Now that's irony: a dictator in a system diametrically opposed to democracy offering a truly insightful comment on how we've fucked up, and being correct about it.

If Communists commenting on democracy are making sense, you know something's screwed up.

Re:As Joe Stalin said

[0x20]

The fact that Stalin was a communist doesn't preclude him from being able to point out the built-in structural faults of capitalist democracies. In fact, he thought enough about their inherent problems that he rejected the system entirely. I'm not defending Stalin, just pointing out that he was not at all ignorant of politics. He was certainly much less so, in fact, than the average U.S. citizen.

Re:As Joe Stalin said

[einhverfr]

The fact that Stalin was a communist doesn't preclude him from being able to point out the built-in structural faults of capitalist democracies. In fact, he thought enough about their inherent problems that he rejected the system entirely. I'm not defending Stalin, just pointing out that he was not at all ignorant of politics. He was certainly much less so, in fact, than the average U.S. citizen.

I think you have a point, but I also think you miss the original posters' point. The quote attributed to Stalin in this context seems less about American politics than it is about Soviet politics. This is what is truly sad-- a commentary about Soviet totalitarianism being so darned close to the way American politics are going.

BTW, as a very interesting critique of both the Soviet and American political systems, I highly recommend reading "Perestroika" by Gorbichev (sp?). It does go a long ways towards discussing the good and bad of both systems and how the author sought to bring these together in creating a new way in the USSR.

Women voters?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since women have gained suffrage in the US, we've seen:

- Prohibition
- The Great Depression
- Nuclear weapons
- The Cuban Missile Crisis
- The assassination of JFK
- The Vietnam War

It's time to stop the madness! Repeal womens' suffrage now!

reminds me...

[flynt]

This reminds me of a group I heard about who set up a booth and handed out stickers encouring and "end to women's suffrage". Apparently plenty of females were in support of this, not knowing what the word meant.

Re:reminds me...

[Throtex]

They did this on The Man Show. Sounds a lot more formal when you just call it "a group" though. :)

Re:reminds me...

[riptide_dot]

It was on the Man Show on Comedy Central. Some of the women who came up to the booth were REALLY outraged too. It was hilarious. Only one of them (that made the edit) actually said "you're trying to end women's rights to vote?!?"

Re:reminds me...

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as the vast majority of people don't have to obey any laws, it's perfectly moral for the vast majority of people to not be able to vote.

But while laws apply to everyone, so should voting.

Re:reminds me...

[Moofie]

Smart chicks are hot.

Re:reminds me...

[dresgarcia]

Uhm actually the problem is that not enough people vote. I have friends who hollar and comlain about politics but have never stepped ina voting booth (and yes they are old enough to vote). If you didn't vote you can't complain about bush fucking things up is my opinion. It also seems a lot of these people act like they are too good to vote. "The candidates are fucking idiots" Well, one of those idiots will be running the country so choose which idiot you want and vote for him.

Jeez.

[James A. S. Joyce]

And there was me thinking that maybe, just maybe, the corruptive rot of politics hadn't sunk through to supposed grassroots groups like this. Guess I should've thought better and realised that astroturfing like this is doable after all. How much power do these groups hold? With the money they're being backhanded by Diebold, they might be able to exert some unwanted influence on the issue. :/
--
GNAA

Re:Jeez.

[CVaneg]

I don't think that this is a case of astrotufing. That implies that both groups are corrupt or that one group is accountable to the other. Rather I think it's more like a case of the Baptists and the Bootleggers where two groups want the same thing but for vastly different reasons. I'd like to think that the disability rights group really does just want better access in voting, and that they just don't understand the consequences of their actions. The money is probably not so much a payoff as it is Diebold taking advantage of the situation and bolstering a potentially valuable ally. Of course, I haven't done my research, so for all I know the group is made up entirely of ex-diebold employees.

Re:Jeez.

[Dr. Spork]

Yeah, I agree. This is ugly. I just wrote the following angry message in the feedback box on their contacts form. I hope they write back.

I thought I was someone who would automatically support your causes you champion until I read the NYTimes editorial about your inexplicable support for paperless Diebold voting machines, and your willingness to take bribes for the disenfranchisement of women.

Surely you are aware that you are in the pocket of a sleazy company which is itself in the pocket of the Bush administration, and both will do their best to see to it that women die rather than receive an abortion or govenment support in raising children.

To lobby for a fundamentally corrupt and opaque voting system puts you at odds with those who spent their lives fighting to give women political representation. You are voluntarily laying it down.

If you have abandoned your fight for the fairness of our democracy, there is no need for your organization to continue. And if the soulless corpse of your PAC attaches like a leech to the belly of Diebold, you owe it to women to change your name to something which better describes your current motivations, something with the word "WHORES".

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??

[Yaa 101]

the simplest solutions are always the best because the best solutions are always the most simple.

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.

Re:What??

[crimethinker]

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.

I've hammered on this in several other posts - a receipt which the voter can take out of the polling area opens many doors to new abuses. Imagine the scenario of "show your voting receipt to your union foreman if you ever want another raise in your career." It would never be that obvious, but word would get around. Once there are verifiable voting receipts, your vote can be coerced after the fact.

Voting must be anonymous, even from the voter himself (once he leaves the voting booth). For that reason, no completely electronic solution will ever be acceptable to me, and that's saying something for someone who has more PC's than children (5 vs. 4). I like machines to count the paper ballots, and it would be nice to have a "ballot verifier" in a private booth just before the ballot box, but I want the option to have humans re-count, and if we're only talking about bits, then that option is lost. Think of it as an "off site" backup.

-paul

Re:What??

[TMLink]

What about a printout that you don't keep? The printout happens on a piece of paper that's behind a window where you can see your vote and verify it before leaving the booth.

If there's any questions about the authenticy of the electric versions of the votes coming out, go to the paper trail (that supposedly everyone that used the booth verified by looking at). Or heck, just use the paper version as the official version. It aliviates the hanging chad issue without worrying about any kind of vote verification problems like you mention.

Re:What??

[MenTaLguY]

I think the OP was thinking of receipts that would _not_ be taken from the polling place by voters.

(after all, if they were, wouldn't they be kind of useless for a recount?)

Re:What??

[yakovlev]

You're misuderstanding what the verifiedvoting people seem to advocate. They advocate a piece of paper that the voter verifies BEFORE putting it in the ballot box. The idea is that we have decades of experience securing paper ballots in ballot boxes, so if the voter can verify that their paper ballot is correct, they've verified that their vote is correct.

This is not the same as advocating a receipt that the voter takes home with them and later uses to verify their vote was counted correctly. As you correctly realized, this makes vote coersion possible, and was already realized to be a BAD IDEA. That doesn't keep some people from advocating it anyway.

Re:What??

[FirstTimeCaller]

a receipt which the voter can take out of the polling area opens many doors to new abuses

Agreed. It is important to understand that when we talk about a paper receipt we are talking about a piece of paper that the voter can look at and verify and then place it into a ballot box. In some systems, this ballot is behind glass and is never even touched by the voter.

Verifiable voting is not at odds with anonymous voting. Both are essential to ensure a free and fair election.

Re:What??

[chmilar]

It's very simple:

The machine prints a paper receipt.

The machine shows a summary of your vote on its screen, which you can check against your receipt.

You put the receipt into a locked ballot box.

You do not leave with the receipt! In fact, it is illegal to take the receipt away from the polling station. What would be the point of letting you leave with it, anyhow?

In case of a recount, the paper receipts are counted by hand, as the final arbiter.

Random voting stations will count the paper receipts to verify that the electronic counts are accurate.

Re:What??

[Gooba42]

This has been hashed over so many times guys.

The paper ballot is printed, the voter reads it, confirms it is correct. Then they turn it in.

Nobody goes home with the paperwork from voting. You go home with one of this "I voted" stickers.

The machine counts up the votes. In the event of an error or challenge to the electronic vote the paper ballots are then the authority. Since they are, in theory, verified by the voters themselves their authority really can't be questioned.

If a voter can't verify their own vote for some reason then some allowance will have to be made, agreed, but scrapping the *entire* verifiable voting system because of a minority case doesn't make sense.

Re:What??

[aka-ed]

As said earlier, simple solutions are great. But the rule of law is not always simple. You've addressed the overall purpose of these measures in an election, but not their role with regard to the individual.

As everyone has equal rights to vote, everyone's rights must be protected equally. At the same time, everyone has an equal privilege to the privacy of the vote. If a blind person can't read the receipt, he has to choose either less privacy (by having someone verify it) or less protection (by not doing so). It definitely creates a disparity of privilege for the individual.

Re:What??

[JonMartin]

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.

It can address the concerns, but not necessarily.

First, a quick clarification for a lot of posters: voters will not leave the polling station with their receipt. They are supposed to check it for accuracy and then drop it into a secured box so it is available for recounts and verification of the electronic results.

But when should polling stations do a paper recount? At random, say 1% of stations? Whenever a race is tight? How do they know the thresholds they are setting are sufficient to stop cheating? In an electoral system where a few dozen votes could determine the presidency there are simply too many ways things could go wrong. What guarantee is there that voters will correctly verify their ballots? Remember that the reason people love electronic voting is because paper ballots are "too hard". I see too many ways Diebold could be extremely clever by just flipping a few votes in certain situations to swing things. Think about it. Really thing about it. If you had access to these machines, what are the strategies you might use to influence the results? If you aren't terrified you aren't thinking hard enough (or just plain aren't devious enough).

The fundamental problem is that the votes are obfuscated from the voters. All the paper receipts in the world will not change this. What you type into the machine does not count. What is on the paper does not count. The only thing that counts is the number the box spits out.

The true solution is the simplest. Go back to paper ballots. What is your vote? Whatever you marked on the paper with a pen. No chance of anything changing your vote. Count the ballots by hand, with an observer from each party watching every vote get counted. No chance to drop any votes to swing a close result. Isn't this the true geek way? Ultimate transparency? Many eyeballs making the problem shallow?

This is how we do it in Canada. It's not sexy, it's not instantaneous (takes a few hours after polls close) but it works.

Re:What??

[micron]

People don't check their ballots for correctness before they cast their vote. Wasn't the purpose of all this to prevent the problem with "hanging chads" in Florida? If people don't check to make sure that they made clear holes in their ballot, they certainly are not checking to make sure that they made the correct vote.

When I vote, I can't see the holes that I made until I remove the ballot anyway.

Re:What??

[sholden]

You pick a percentage (trading off time and effort against chance of missing something) and do a count of the paper receipts from that number of randomly selected polling places.

If the numbers don't match for a particular booth by more than some margin of error (again a trade off of time and effort and chance of missing) - the margin could be 0 if the paper receipts are able to be reliably counted (they are machine generated after all, so there shouldn't be the problems with pencil and paper ballots of tick slightly outside of boxes, multiple ticks, etc) - then you do a paper recount of the *entire* election.

If the combined numbers of all the randomly selected polling places don't match by a smaller margin of error (skip this if the margin is 0 above) then you do a paper recount of the *entire* election.

Paper counts trump the machine counts. If the result of the election differs in the case of the recount the company who did the electronic voting machines can foot the bill and be investigated by some arm of law enforcement.

One thing that needs to watched is receipts not matching votes, if anyone complains of that then rhose machines need to be analysed with a fine tooth comb and people thrown in jail and another election held.

If suffieciently paranoid you could do a paper of the entire election everytime - you trust the machine counts if the random recounts pass, and take your time with a full recount. If the count differs people go to jail, and you hold new elections.

You employ some statisticians to work out the details.

Re:What??

[flossie]

Great! Now how do you suggest a dead person verify his vote(s)?

Use GhostScript to process the printed ballot?

Re:What??

[ChrisMaple]

But when should polling stations do a paper recount?

1. When a legally set threshold is met.

2. At random to keep the system honest.

3. When there is suspicion of fraud and the challenger can convince a court to order a recount.

4. Whenever the results are challenged, provided the challenger pays expenses if he still loses.

Re:What??

[flossie]

Don't forget the old engineering saying: "every problem has a solution that is simple, easy - and wrong".

Re:What??

[tobar mersa]

Imagine the scenario of "show your voting receipt to your union foreman if you ever want another raise in your career."

Or your boss (which is probably more likely because only 15% of workers were unionized in 1997). Or you have to show it to your priest in order to get communion for the next four years. Or probably fifty other possible scams which no one has thought of yet.

I agree with you: the answer is not verified electronic voting, but a non-electronic voting which can be tabulated by both computer and hand.

Re:What??

[AJWM]

Yep. Back when I lived in Canada (and maybe still), there was something called "declining a ballot". You show up at the polling place, they check that you're allowed to vote there, and -- as they hand you the paper ballot to take into the booth -- you officially decline it. They have to record that fact.

If enough people (a majority of voters, I think -- never happens) decline the ballot (vs just not showing up), that particular election is void and they have to do it over. Roughly the equivalent of voting for "none of the above".

I did it once -- none of the major party candidates were appealing, the Rhinocerous Party was (very conciously) a joke, and the Libertarian candidate in that area was even loonier than the Rhinocerous candidate. More satisfying than just staying home.

Re:What??

[sploxx]

What's the fuss?!
It's even simpler. Simply do not use voting machines at all!

What is wrong with the good old system of voting?

Am I missing something? It has been working for centuries now, why is it suddenly so outdated that it has to be abolished?!

BTW: I'm writing this as a E.U. citizen, the same 'modernization' of the voting system was proposed here. Gladly, most of the parties who demanded such a system are now opposing - Thanks to the diebold scandal...

[It is an issue noone talks about any longer - And this is can be counted at least as a partial success against electronic voting :) ]

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.

What needs to happen...

[Anonymous Coward]

is for some white-hat slashdot reader to go and actually steal an election as proof of concept and then publicize it. Sure he'll probably go to prison for the rest of his life, but he'll become a legend among techies...

take one for the team!

Re:What needs to happen...

[OldAndSlow]

You don't even have to publicize the theft. It can be obvious, like Kerry gets 100% of the vote in GA.

GA is, you will recall, 100% Diebold voting machines. Which is why the loss of Max Cleland is suspecious. Leading in the immediate pre-election polls, but lost the electronic vote.

Reality check

[nizo]

As long as it is secure, I can't see how an electronic system could be worse than paper ballots that you look at and can't tell which candidate the voter voted for. If the system verified for me which candidates I voted for before I left the poll, that would be great (so I know my vote got registered correctly). And certainly there is some kind of permanant audit trail that could be verified later?

Re:Reality check

[Anonymous Coward]

No, there isn't any kind of permanent audit trail that can be verified (at any time). That's the whole problem.

Re:Reality check

[riptide_dot]

The problem with an elecronic-only voting system is that without a tangible piece of evidence that you voted for candidate A over candidate B, any audit trail could potentially be just as corrupt or inaccurate as the initial vote was.

By including a tangible confirmation mechanism that's not electronic (like a paper confirmation), then the system can still be audited "by hand".

It's the same reason that financial companies are still required by the SEC to keep paper records of a lot of their activities.

Re:Reality check

[srleffler]

You've missed the point. Even if the machine displayed your vote on the screen to "verify" which candidate you voted for, how do you know that the vote it records on its hard drive is the same? More importantly, how do the elections officials verify that the votes they receive electronically haven't been tampered with? There is no permanent audit trail of any kind (AFAIK) with many of the new voting machines.

The nice thing with a paper ballot or vote record is that the voter can verify that their vote has been recorded correctly and we know how to secure those ballots to prevent tampering so that if there is a need for a recount it can be done.

Re:Reality check

[MenTaLguY]

That would be bad. One of the reasons for adopting the secret ballot was to eliminate the possibility of coerced votes.

Secret ballot:

Louie McFingers: "Youz vote for Pepsoco, or I breakz yer legs."

You: Um, ok.

You vote for Bipzi instead.

Louie *doesn't know*.

Online-verifiable receipt:

Louie McFingers: "Youz vote for Pepsoco, or I breakz yer legs. And bring yer receipt."

You: Um, ok.

You vote for Bipzi instead.

Louie checks your receipt online and *breaks your legs*. Or, if you "forgot" your receipt, Louie *breaks your legs*.

This is also why home (e.g. Internet) voting is a bad idea (e.g. Louie can stand over your shoulder while you vote), and why voting using absentee ballots is generally only allowed under limited circumstances.

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

[ClarkEvans]

I've written the League several times over the last few months. Their stance is not only wrong-headed, but they refuse to listen to their constituency. The NY Times article refers to a group of disabled people, ones who happen to have a great deal of influence with the LWV, who were given foundation monies from Diabold. You cannot pretend that politics is not involved here.

Well...

[TWX]

... if the League of Women Voters is friggin' stupid enough to support a cause that breaks elections, they're working quite well to make people regret granting women suffrage in the first place...

Re:Well...

[Ra5pu7in]

From what I can see in the AP article, the whole League of Women Voters is not that stupid. This is a political stand endorsed at the national level and being contested by more local level groups. Also, I wonder how many of the 130,000 members (less than the number of /. members) are elderly and/or don't know enough about technology to make an informed decision.

As to the number of women who don't know what "women's suffrage" means, it would be kind of fun to do this to men -- see how many are willing to sign a petition to end "men's suffrage". I'm sure that would resonate about equally with them. (Hey, what do you know ... maybe enough would sign to take away their right to vote. )

Re:Well...

[thisissilly]

the 130,000 members (less than the number of /. members)...
Good point.
Where is the League of Slashdot Voters? Sure, I contribute to the EFF, but if you could go to your local political candidate and say "I represent 10,000 voters in this state, and over 250,000 nation wide, and we want you to fix the DMCA" or what ever, they might actually take notice.

An interesting discussion about verified voting...

[G27 Radio]

I've posted about this on Slashdot before but looks like it's appropriate to post again.

Here's a link to the realaudio stream of the radio show I refered to.

In our state our governor, Jeb Bush, is against the whole verified voting idea. Suprising considering the whole fiasco here in Florida last time.

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?

Just goes to show...

[jwcorder]

That the Million Dollar Man Ted Dibiase was right. EVERYONE HAS A PRICE!!....lol....

Re:But...

[XanC]

I'll agree with you there. Probably the best way to make sure the Right Thing gets done with e-voting is to not bring up specific people or parties if at all possible.

unplublished letters to NY Times Editor

[ClarkEvans]

-----
Date: Fri, 7 May 2004 19:41:29 -0400
To: letters@nytimes.com
Subject: Secure Voting Techology

May 3rd's article "Who Hacked the Voting System?" begs the question:
why must these complicated voting systems be all encompassing?

Imagine a process where selecting candidates and tallying choices is
distinct. The voter enters a booth, uses a complicated touch-screen
machine, and emerges with a human-readable card clearly stating
their candidate. Then, the voter walks over to a brightly lit
election desk, feeds this card into the tallying machine, and
deposits their card into the ballot box.

Security is straight-forward. Voters will tell you when a
touch-screen system make an error. This leaves the tallying machine
to secure. Luckily, it is in plain sight and its operation is
simple. Further, if the tally is questioned, some or all of the
ballots can be reviewed by human eyes.

Candidate selecting technology is complicated. Card tallying ain't.
Let's keep them separate.

-----
Date: Sun, 23 May 2004 11:19:17 -0400
To: letters@nytimes.com
Subject: Demand Grows to Require Paper Trails for Electronic Votes

In the article Demand Grows to Require Paper Trails for Electronic
Voting, published May 23, 2004, Doug Chapin from the Pew Charitable
Trust said: "You can either build a fence around a cliff or put an
ambulance in the valley ... The paper trail is the ambulance in the
valley. Certifying the machines and testing them in the first place to
make sure they are secure is the fence around the cliff."

I think Mr. Chapin's analogy is poor, it is not an either/or, one would
properly do both. However, if he insists with this analogy, I suggest
Verified Voting is more analogous with the ability to ensure that the
fence around the cliff is actually working. The only way to detect that
a voting technology reflects voter intent is to complement touch screens
with a simple print-out listing the canidates the voter has chosen. Then
the voter can review their choices and stuff this print-out into the
ballot box so random or challenge recounts can happen. Lacking this
ability to verify voter intent, we are left with only one way to ensure
that our democracy is working -- trust a for-profit corporation.

-------
Date: Fri, 11 Jun 2004 10:09:04 -0400
To: letters@nytimes.com
Subject: The Disability Lobby and Voting

I am so happy to see the NY Times call-out the League of Weoman Voters
for their counter-productive stand; also, I can't believe that despite
my calls, Senator Dodd has joined this nonsense.

An optical scan solution can offer the best of both worlds. A
disabled-persons friendly touch screen or audio-system can be used to
generate the ballot; while the actual counting of the optical ballots
can be done with a much simpler optical reader.

By breaking the problem of filling-out and counting ballots, we get the
best of both worlds; the intermediate ballot provides the paper trail.
It is also easier to test optical scanners for compliance -- there is
less code to review, and deterministic inputs/outputs allow testing to
be automated. Further, since only one optical scanner is needed per
district, and can be closely monitored. Let user-friendly voting
machines thrive, but make sure they don't do the counting.

Unfair election aspect #3 - Equal coverage

[Seth Cohn]

Two obvious requirements for a fair election are that voters should have complete confidence about their ballots' being counted accurately and that everyone, including the disabled, should have access to the polls.

There is a third requirement for fair elections, and that is balanced coverage. Forget the liberal bias, or the conservative bias, the truth in the US is that there is a 2 party bias. 3rd parties are ignored, and given short coverage in the guide of 'to be fair'.... In Europe, 3rd parties quickly gain recognition due to the mix of ballot variety (lots of parties to consider), election style (more representive focused) and the coverage they get. Here in the US, if you aren't a Republicrat, or a Demopublican, you have to fight for coverage. People with a true shot, ie enough ballots that they could win, or will likely affect the course of the election should be coveraged with EQUAL access .(No nonsense like 5% of a poll, because without coverage in the first place, you can't get 5% of a poll... and if they did cover you, odds are you WOULD get 5% or more.)

I'm voting for Michael Badnarik Libertarian, who is also on almost all of the ballots
and so should you, if you think Government is out of control. Kush and Berry won't change that, and you're just voting for the lesser of 2 evils.

Vote for Good, vote Badnarik!

Re:Unfair election aspect #3 - Equal coverage

[Mad Marlin]

90% of Americans wouldn't vote for a Libertarian candidate even if they did know what they stood for. Plus, their candidate looks like a dork.

Re:Unfair election aspect #3 - Equal coverage

[mabu]

Define 'essential services'. Most of the time, your 'essential' is not the same as mine... and so long as government continues to be about taking from one person and giving it to another person, Libertarians will continue to talk about reducing government.

Roads, electricity & utility regulation, environmental & health regulation.. there are literally tens of thousands of benefits the American people get from government that they have come to expect, that the Libertarians don't want to address. They want to make government smaller, but when you ask them, for example, whether or not abolishing the EPA and letting corporations self-regulate their industry and pollution is practical or beneficial, they respond, "Um, I'll get back to you on that."

Your average libertarian can't reconcile even the most basic ideals. They typically agree that corporations if left unregulated will act irresponsibly, but at the same time, they resent government regulation. You can't have it both ways.

If you went through a line item list of government-subsidized services, your average person would consider almost 70% or more "essential", and if they didn't, once they saw the repurcussions of, for example, housing or transportation departments eradicated and the responsibilities dumped on the state and the states raising taxes out the wazoo to compensate and how bad everything would get, they'd change their tune.

The Libertarians are smoking crack.

Re:Unfair election aspect #3 - Equal coverage

[gphinch]

But he won't win. And it's dumbasses like you who are going to get Bush re-elected, because none of the third party candidates take away from the Republican vote. Any other year I'd have your back but we need Bush out and Kerry is the only realistic chance of that. There's no argument you can have that could say that any 3rd party candidate has a chance this year. Maybe in 50 years, but you can wait 4, or else there might not be a country when the terrorists nuke major cities because of Bush's horrible Middle East Policy.

Re:Unfair election aspect #3 - Equal coverage

[Moofie]

How can my vote serve better than to express MY preference for who should lead us?

Your notion of "wasting votes" is the most destructive opponent to equitable political discourse in America. My vote is MINE. I will cast it for the person I want to lead. "strategic voting" is the same thing as group-think.

If..

[puppet10]

The American Association of People With Disabilities wants to promote non-verified voting for people with disabilities then let them be the only ones to use them and everyone else can have verified e-voting.

If they don't feel verification is necessary for anyone, then why would they feel deprived if their members can't verify their vote by reading the paper its printed on.

Diabold

[paulproteus]

Your typo "Diabold" is very close to these words:

• Diabolical
• Diablo

Are you trying to draw a parallel? :-)

Login-free links courtesy of Google News

[pen]

The Disability Lobby and Voting

The real problem with Diebold

[SteroidMan]

The real problem with Diebold isn't the lack of a paper trail. It's that the machines can and are being changed after being certified as reliable. A machine that gives you a paper receipt of your vote isn't worth a damn if someone can hack the smartcard that records the votes to log something else after the certification is complete.

Re:The real problem with Diebold

[sugar and acid]

That is the point of having a paper receipt that is put into a ballot box. Person reads what the printer spat out, and it looks like what they voted for and they are happy and puts paper ballot in the ballot box, if it isn't they know its not right and complain very loudly to the officials and they do something about it, like shutdown that machine for the day. If something weird happens in the election or as just an occasional precautionary measure for some randomised set of polling places, count the paper ballots and see if they tally with the votes recorded by the voting machines. If they do not correlate, use the results from the paper ballot count to determine the winner, and launch an investigation into what happened to the voting machines electronic records.

Without the paper trail how can they investigate this? And so if Diebold should modify the machines illegally, how will you hold them accountable? Simple solution to voting fraud by manipulating electronic voting machines.

Re:The real problem with Diebold

[Hektor_Troy]

Actually, that's the whole POINT of having a paper receitpt/ballot/whatever. You hand it in and it is used as a backup measure.

Since the paper can't be changed after it has been handed in, if there's any discrepancy between the electronic and paper results, the paper result is used. The electronic vote is merely for speedy results.

And some of the schemes I've seen make it mandatory to have a manual recount of randomly chosen districts, again to make sure. If you have a huge discrepancy in those, you can easily demand a manual recount in all the other districts, because something is obviously wrong. Like the machines having been changed AFTER being certified.

Re:The real problem with Diebold

[demachina]

This post isn't exactly insightful. The first part that the software is consistently being changed by Diebold is certainly bad and must be stopped. Its a near certainty they may have rigged crucial election in Georgia in 2002 and in Califronia in the last election by mysterious and unauthorized last minute changes in Diebold's machines.

But getting a verifiable receipt that shows how you voted, and when its put in an old fashioned ballot box its priceless. You can then go back and do a manual recount of the paper and establish if the machine count was accurate or not.

As long as there are truly random recounts of at least a percentage of all votes cast you will most probably catch rigging or machine errors. I don't care how careful you are in making sure the machines are certified and locked, a paper trail is the only way to make them reliable.

I read an interesting observation the other day. It does appear the Bush administration has a life or death reason to make sure they win the next election, both the White House and the Congress.

It appears the Bush administration has, at the highest level, violated the Geneva conventions and U.S. law against torture, perhaps not against Al Qaeda since they are in a legal gray area but most certainly they tortured people in Iraq who were under Geneva protections.

It is extremely important to the Bush administration that they win the election so they can white wash the investigation. If someone truly independent did the investigation and found them guilty and it appears there is a pretty big paper trail and a lot of people involved, both in recently unveiled memos in which the DOJ and the Pentagon were engaged in a failed attempt to give a legal basis for torture and in revelations about Copper Green which suggest this program of torture was approved at the highest levels by Bush, Rumsfeld and his deputy Cambone.

Today it was revealed that dog handlers who were used in Iraq to scare prisoners were in fact doing so under orders from military intelligence officers which debunks the Bush administration's BS that the torture was just a bunch of rogue army reservists. If the investigation isn't a sham its nearly certain the torture will be traced to the Pentagon and the White House. It simply was a war crime to authorize to the Bush administration has a life or death reason to make sure they win the next election at all cost.

If you want to see the latest thing in torture look here.ts Its the U.S. military's Active Denial System developed by Raytheon scheduled to start trials this fall. Its a millimeter wave beam weapon designed for non lethal crowd "control". Volunteers at Raytheon subjected to it described it as "unbearably painful, saying they felt as though their bodies were on fire". It should put an end to any unauthorized demonstrations against the U.S. or any of its allies. Its not entirely clear what happens to your eyes if you take the beam in the face at close range, or if it will cause cancer long term. I'm wondering if they are working on an indoor version since it is a perfect tool for torture, it leaves no marks. The victim wouldn't even know what was happening to them. It appears I now have a good reason to where a tin foil hat, or really a full body suit like everyone keeps telling me I should when I propose the possibility that the Bush administration is, in fact, on a fast track to dictatorship.

Re:The real problem with Diebold

[theLOUDroom]

A machine that gives you a paper receipt of your vote isn't worth a damn if someone can hack the smartcard that records the votes to log something else after the certification is complete.

WTF are you talking about?!
You completely miss the point here:

• The paper is supposed to STAY AT THE POLLS
• The paper provides a way to DOUBLECHECK THE ELECTRONIC RECORD.

Paper-trail e-voting is THE solution. It's fuckin HARD to tamper with a piece of paper inside a locked metal box that is only opened in front of multiple witnesses. Bits can be silently and instantly manipulated, but paper's harder to fudge.

Why, exactly?

[randyest]

Two obvious requirements for a fair election are that voters should have complete confidence about their ballots' being counted accurately and that everyone, including the disabled, should have access to the polls. It is hard to imagine advocates for those two goals fighting, but lately that seems to be what's happening.

Yes, indeed. And even after reading every linked article I still don't understand how, exactly, that requiring paper trails for electronic voting machines could in any way impede equal access to polls (for the disabled or anyone.) A little help here -- please?

The issue is whether electronic voting machines should provide a "paper trail" -- receipts that could be checked by voters and used in recounts. There has been a rising demand around the country for this critical safeguard, but the move to provide paper trails is being fought by a handful of influential advocates for the disabled, who complain that requiring verifiable paper records will slow the adoption of accessible electronic voting machines.

OK, here's a stab at it -- "requiring verifiable paper records will slow the adoption of accessible electronic voting machines." But, er, why would it slow anything? And, if it does, can't we just use the "old way" (traditional polls) until the "new way" (electronic polls) is made more reliable and secure? I'll try again:

Leaders said paperless terminals, which about 30 percent of the electorate will use in the November election, were reliable.

Er, OK, but this is both tangential and arguable. I still don't see how requiring verifyable paper trails impedes anyone's access to the polls.

They had "no reason to believe" computer terminals would "steal your vote," the league said officially.

Well, there is some reason to believe that they'll make a mistake or be susceptible to fraud. See linked articles. Again, why do paper trails impede the disabled from voting? I'f I'm in the League of Women voters, it seems that, not only am I not going to get a straight answer to that, but I must support the position publicly (or at least not oppose it) -- yikes!:

League bylaws stipulate that local chapters must act "in conformity" with the national organization's stances. Individuals who take contrary positions cannot identify themselves publicly as league members.

League president Kay Maxwell says paperless computers, which can be equipped with headsets and programmed in multiple languages, make voting easier for the blind and illiterate, and for people who don't speak English.

OK, most computers are "paperless." Generally, it's the printers that have the paper in them. And, in my experience, most (all?) computers may have a printer connected without much trouble. Kay seems to imply that connecting a printer will break headset or multilanguage support -- wha? I'm still confused.

Furthermore, she said, demanding a paper trail so close to the presidential election would require hundreds of counties that have installed electronic systems to spend millions of dollars on printers, paper and technical upgrades at the last minute.

Well, I guess they should have done a little more due dilligence before sinking time and money into an insecure voting system. Why should we all have to pay for that stupidity?

For current members, Maxwell said, voter registration problems and dismal turnout -- particularly among minorities -- should be bigger worries than potential hackers.

These aims are not opposing -- it's possible to address security without impeding the ability of minorities to vote. I can't even see how the issues are related. Sounds like smoke and mirrors to misdirect attention away from the payola they're taking in from Diebold. Sad, really.

"From a voting rights perspective, we care a great deal about the openness of the system and access to the system, tha

Point by Point Rebuttal -- No Response

[ClarkEvans]

I'm a software developer with close to 20
years of experience. I was pointed to your position paper on VVPT.
Please accept my comments on your position paper.


Electronic Voting Machines and Voter-Verified Paper Trails (VVPT)
League of Women Voters
http://www.lwv.org/join/electionshava_dre- vvpt.htm l
The League of Women Voters strongly supports full and equal
voting rights for all eligible Americans, including persons with disabilities. The League also supports voter verification of ballots, including the requirement in the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) whereby the voter verifies the ballot before it is cast and counted. However, the League does not support proposals for a new requirement for paper-based voter verification - the voter-verified paper trail (VVPT) system that would require Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines to provide an individual paper confirmation for each ballot for each voter to verify.

A VVPT requirement undermines voting access for people with disabilities or limited English proficiency, raises costs, fails to guarantee security, unnecessarily complicates the voting process, undermines federal certification standards, and slows the replacement of outdated voting machines.


To be clear, VVPT would require DRE equipment to print out a physical paper receipt that the voter could review and then stuff in the ballot box. These printed ballots would then be the official record of the election.

These printed ballots would:

- be printed out when the user has completed selecting all
of their choices via the DRE's touch screen interface

- would only print out the individuals selected, and thus
is very simple to understand and uncluttered

- would be printed in the language used by the DRM machine,
cross-language support on paper is quite easy

- be in large font for reading impaired and could be handed
to an election worker to read for those who are blind

- would have an encoded version of the votes via a bar-code to
make scanning in the votes for semi-automated recounts easy

- would be printed on card stock using your average laser
or inket printer; thermal paper does not last long enough

To be more concrete about this, and to make it absolutely clear what
we are discussing, there is an open source application [1] with an
on-line demo [2] that produces this sort of printed receipt [3]. Be
advised that the user interface for making the selections is not
important to this discussion, the only thing that is salient is the
final receipt printed.

[1] http://www.openvotingconsortium.org/
[2] http://gyaku.pair.com/~vote/ballot2.html
[3] http://clarkevans.com/tmp/ballot-receipt.pdf

With this background, let me address your specific concerns. Before
you continue with this statements, I ask you to download the
referenced PDF file above and print this so that you can see exactly
what is being requested by the VVPT community.

* The voter-verified paper trail requirement undermines voting access. DREs make it possible, for the first time, for persons with visual disabilities or limited manual dexterity to cast secret and independent ballots.


The VVPT does not replace DREs. People would still use touch screens
to make their choices. The printed 'receipt' would be in the
individual's language and printed in a large enough font so that it is
absolutely clear.

Because DREs can be programmed in multiple languages, voters with limited English proficiency can participate fully and equally. The millions of Americans who face literacy challenges also can take advantage of the audio features of DREs to cast independent votes without embarrassment.


There is no reason why the printed receipt cannot print out results in
the voter's choice of language. During an official manual recount, it
wou

Re:Point by Point Rebuttal -- No Response

[frdmfghtr]

My God...that has to be one of the best pieces written on eVoting I have seen.

This past Tuesday, Virginia held a primary election, and the city of Alexandria used the eSlate voting system. When I inquired to the election board as to why a voting system was in place without a VVPT, even though the eSlate was technically capable of such a provision, here is part of the response I got from the Alexandria election board (HAVA=Help America Vote Act):

In addition, no electronic system that meets the requirements for HAVA and that provides a voter verified paper trail is certified by the State Board of Elections for use in Virginia. Hypothetically, if the Board were inclined to implement such a feature it would be powerless to do so.

This is in clear conflict with the alexandriavoter.org website:

Considering all these factors, the electoral board has faith in the integrity of electronic voting in Alexandria. Ultimately though, the faith of voters in the system is far more important than the viewpoints of elected officials or election officials. If the United States Congress or Virginia General Assembly determine that a voter verified paper trail is essential to maintain faith in the electoral system, eSlate can be retrofitted to provide it.

In other words, the eSlate may be technically capable of providing a paper trail, but current state and federal law does not allow the paper trail to be created as it does not meet HAVA standards.

The statement made by the website is therefore false and misleading--the eSlate can NOT be retrofitted to provide a paper audit trail. Whether the inability to create a paper audit trail is caused by technical or (in this case) administrative restrictions, the end result is the same: the eSlate CANNOT be reliably audited.

I have a letter here, containing this plus a few other paragraphs, that I'm sending to the board, plus the state and federal representatives and senators.

This Is Making News

[hoeferbe]

Not wanting to register to read the New York Times editorial, I searched on Google to see what I could find. I was surprised to find many news articles about how this is a real issue withing the League Of Women Voters. [google.com]

Your comment title is HOMOPHOBIC flamebait

[Anonymous Coward]

Try not to offend minorities if you want to be taken seriously. I'm posting AC because I don't want to get involved in a flame war, which I didn't start, that will screw up my karma.

Re:womEn?

[Anonymous Coward]

The League took a vote to make the change you suggested. Unfortunately, they used a Diebold voting machine, and the results were:

153% Nay
-12% Yea

gifts

[t_allardyce]

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.

Suck my cock a fucking gift! Oh i see its a gift when i slip a 50 to the traffic cop who just pulled me over. Of course its a gift when i ask the jury if they would like their new cars in red or blue and its certainly a fucking gift when presidents get donations from group x and then their policies and actions just happen to benifit group x.

VOTE WITH PAPER

[brunes69]

I honestly don't understand the concept behind this e-voting. Why do Americans think that voting constantly needs to be mechanized? First, the goofy mechanical lever system. Then the goofy punch cards. now the goofy computers. And all in all none of it ends up ever being any cheaper or faster than just filling out paper ballots by marking an X.

Now everyone is talking about printing out a paper receipt for recounts etc. So now we are using at least as much paper as paper votes.

You *know* the first time these machines are used in any contested election, one of the parties will cry foul. And there will be a recount. Which will take just as much time with paper votes.

So why the *hell* not just use paper votes in the first place? Empty boxes, you mark an X. We have been doing this in Canada forever, and we are still doing it this year. Why? Cause it is cheap, and it works. There's no hanging chaffes, no computer error, no security issues, it's totally transparent to the public.

Re:VOTE WITH PAPER

[demachina]

"So why the *hell* not just use paper votes in the first place?"

Because in the U.S. we have a government that is on a fast track to dictatorship and global empire. The people in power very much want to be able to rig elections so they cane be sure they get the right answer. They also want to sucker the American people into thinking that they still live in a democracy, and that their vote counts for something (when it doesn't). They don't want the little people to get upset about living in this new form of smoke and mirrors dictatorship.

The good people in Canada have a nice little country with no aspirations to dominating the planet so fair elections are still in order, though they won't really count for much either since you live next door to the world's biggest bully.

Computers untrustworthy?

[Anonymous Coward]

All of our money, nuclear power, nuclear weapons monitoring and management, life support systems, transport systems, airliners etc are managed by computers, yet apparently they are not up to the task of incrementing a counter for a name.

Re:Computers untrustworthy?

[elegie]

The VerifiedVoting.org Web site explains the issue of mission-critical computers versus electronic voting machines. Basically, voting machines are not designed and built with the same care as mission-critical systems. Also, voting machines have to be able to resist deliberate tampering in addition to accidental crashes or failure. (Electronic vote tampering could come from inside individuals or those close to the voting systems, as opposed to an attack by someone outside.)

With respect to financial systems, security expert Bruce Schneier has talked about financial transactions versus electronic voting. There is a difference in securing the two because financial transactions have identifiers associated with them but votes have to be anonymous. With respect to electronic financial transactions, both parties know (or can find out) the identity of the other to resolve the issue if something does go wrong.

The ability for votes to be counted accurately and to represent the will of the voters comes close to affecting the existence of a democratic government and freedom for the people.

we're screwed

[mabu]

If Diebold machines get in the 2004 primary election, we're all screwed if we're not voting for Bush. Think about it.

If by some chance, Kerry wins the election, I predict all our critiques and cynacism will end up being used against us, as the mainstream media will suddenly ressurrect the Diebold story and use it as fodder to throw the whole election process into question, and likely land it back on the steps of the supreme court. I know that sounds like a ridulous assertion, but so was what happened last election.

With no paper trail to verify, and the media going apeshit because Bush has been dethroned, it wouldn't be unrealistic to have yet another major election up in the air.

Re:we're screwed

[theLOUDroom]

If Diebold machines get in the 2004 primary election, we're all screwed if we're not voting for Bush. Think about it. If by some chance, Kerry wins the election...and the media going apeshit because Bush has been dethroned

I think this is a good time to remind everyone that Bush's dad used to be head of the CIA.
I would be much more afraid that Bush wins (despite the "mission" being "accomplished"), with the help of some help from the same type of folks who brought us Iran-contra.

I would definately not put it past a memeber of the Bush family to break the law for politcal gain, so long as they think they won't get caught.

I don't understand why ppl oppose a paper trail

[Anonymous Coward]

The first thing I can think of, is if for example, they did away with providing a receipt for credit card transactions. Maybe a lot of companies would only deduct the correct amount but what would you do if someone over charged your account and pocketed the difference? You would probably not realize the error until after you received your bank statement and then disputing the issue would be more difficult without you being able to produce documentation to support your claim that there is an error.

It's so boneheaded and stupid I can't believe it is a subject to be argued over. Unbelievable.

I did that last time, but not this time...

[raehl]

Last time I voted for Nader. Not because I really wanted to vote for Nader, but because I wanted to vote for the viability of a third party.

But, now I know just how evil Bush is, so voting for a third party will just have to wait until 2008. Right now it's more important to make sure we're not down to one party by the time 2008 rolls around.

Re:I did that last time, but not this time...

[TheGratefulNet]

damn straight!

we (the US) hopefully have learned our lesson. we've grown up a bit. the world is NOT the peter-pan ideal place we are taught, as kids, it is. voting for the lessor of two evils IS a valid stance to take.

principles are great - if you can afford them. we cannot now, since we know what the last 4 years got us and its urgent that we not let fascism creap along any more than it already has.

nader should be put out of his misery. he's so counter-productive, its unreal. I like the guy, overall; but he's clouding the issue by 'throwing interference'. fool me once, ...

no, its not wrong to vote out the worst of the two. yes, there ARE only two (grow up, ok; this is reality) and so since its not a race of the best man winning, we have to think of stopping the worst man from winning.

it really is that simple.

Absentee ballots

[barryp]

The same thing could be done much more easily now with absentee ballots. "You better register for an absentee ballot and bring it to the shop/church/nursing-home/whatever so your boss/pastor/spouse/doctor/parent can make sure you vote correctly".

I think going to a polling place to vote, where you can vote without anyone's interference, should be pretty much required - and the absentee thing should just be for really unusual circumstances, and not at all encouraged without a good reason.

Santayana speaks

[JohnQPublic]

Imagine the scenario of "show your voting receipt to your union foreman if you ever want another raise in your career." It would never be that obvious, but word would get around.

It would be that obvious, and it was that obvious. Chicago ward captains were famous for it during the Daley pere regime. So were company stores in Southern textile towns during union-accreditation voting. Any time one's vote can be observed or reverse-engineered, it can and will be coerced.

They're very much up to that task.

[raehl]

They're just not up to the task of preventing the counter from being overwritten, or preventing me from incrementing the counter 1,000 extra times.

There's one more issue you're missing: With banking, nuclear power, nuclear weapons, life support, transport and airline computers, the people who manufacture, maintain and control the computers have an interest in making sure the computer functions in the way it is advertised to function.

The people responsible for the manufacture and maintenence of the voting computers may have a greater interest in having the computers function not in the way they are advertised to function, but in a way that selects the manufacturer's prefered candidate.

Security isn't just about the mechanics of a system, it's also about the environment that controls how those mechanics are operated. For example, an auction works very well for establishing the fair price of an item when multiple buyers bid on the item. The mechanics of an auction don't work so well if you change the environment to allow the seller to also secretly bid on their own item.

Security isn't just about the mechanics of a system, it's also about the environment that controls how those mechanics are operated. Computers become much less trustworthy when the people in control of the computers may not want the computers to do what they're supposed to be doing.

Stop Womens Suffrage!

[radd0]

Put an end to this atrocity!

Cryptography 101

[ErikTheRed]

Binary-encode the results and a serial number (used to uniquely identify the vote in the tally - note that all current ballots, at least where I live, are serialized), salt it, then encrypt it using one of several public keys (there could be thousands of them). Append information that determines which key is used. Print out the data as a two-dimensional barcode. This barcode could be read at a machine at various government offices.

Yes, there is potential to have someone else read the barcode, but there are physical ways to limit the abuse (have a "trusted" person or people put the barcode through the reader, the voter can then view the vote through goggles or an American-Football Instant-replay style viewer, there are many other options). At this point you can make sure nobody is going in there to check more than one vote. Someone could, with a great deal of effort, check several receipts, but it would be impractical to verify votes on anything even approaching large scale. You could make it a felony to knowingly do so, etc.

This gives you a printed receipt that no one can read (unless they get all of the private keys) or trace back to a specific voter. The voter can personally go back to the gubmint and verify their vote against the database. This could, of course, still be rigged, but it would require a more or less complete compromise of the systems involved.

Ain't astroturf.

[Grendel Drago]

It ain't astroturfing. If you'd, y'know, read the article, you'd notice that local chapters of the LWV are up in arms about this, and there's a very real chance that this issue is gonig to cause a change in leadership.

This is a case of Diebold buying the president of a nonprofit, and the members becoming outraged that their views aren't represented. Luckily, they can change that, and that's just what they're doing now.

--grendel drago

What machines are good at is following orders.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Counting is what machines are good at. I trust them (as long the code controlling them is open for public scrutiny) much more than some group of (always biased) humans.

Actually, what machines are good at is following orders. If they're ordered to count, they count. If they're orderd to fake it, they fake it.

I too trust them to do a better job of counting than people - as long as that's what their orders (the program) tells them to do. But I have no way of knowing that the code that the public examined is actually the code running on the machine - and I trust the machine to help hide what code it's running if THAT's what it's been ordered to do.

That's why I can never trust the machine to count.

Now, I CAN trust:
- the paper a machine prints to remain unchanged until the period for recounts is over.
- electors (who are paying attention) to become irate if the machine prints the wrong votes
- the partisans for MY candidates and side on ballot measures to do their best at any recount to assure that the partisans for the OTHER candidates and sides don't fake the count.

So I will trust the election if, and ONLY if, the machines are printing the TRUE ballot, which is then checked by the voters and stored in a ballot box, and the electronic count on the machines is simply an accelleration, subject to being tossed out in favor of the manual recount if there's any question.

Note that once the audit trail is in place there is much less incentive to hack the voting machines. It would be ineffectual AND it would be detected. Without the audit trail there's no way to correct such tampering, or even know it has occurred. So there's a much greater likelyhood it will be attempted.

How do you know it hasn't happened already?

disabilities groups hurting themselves

[belmolis]

Beyond the damage that this does to democracy, the other sad thing here is that by focussing so narrowly on their special interests the disabilities groups are very likely hurting themselves in the long term. Presumably most of us sympathize with people with disabilities and support measures to make life easier for them. In the future, I'm going to have to look very carefully at what these organizations want to see whether it is really a good idea. I won't be able to assume that they know what is in their own interests and that it isn't going to be harmful for everybody else. Their bad judgment in this matter has made them less trustworthy.

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.

Re:Kerry? Please.

[JonMartin]

Man, if you're going to steal an election, go balls out. Go for someone with no chance at all. 100% Nader, all da way.

Even better would be a write in candidate. Especially if the machines don't support write in candidates.

President Harry Ass McGee.

Does America want "Fair" voting?

[bill_kress]

I rarely, if ever, hear voting questioned in America. The times I have heard anything about tampering the report is treated with distain (Obviously some jaded canidate is lying).

If you think about it, considering human nature and our voting system, votes HAVE been tampered with, and probably on a pretty wide scale.

It is unbelieveable that nobody ever caught anyone tampering.

Tampering would help incumbants, those with the power to use it and hide it.

I can believe that tampering is rare, but to never have heard about it at all?

Lett the League know what you think (politely)

[jcaplan]

I believe the LWV is well-intentioned, but a bit misguided in this matter. A few thousand folks pointing this out may help considerably. They may be contacted at:

1730 M Street NW, Suite 1000,
Washington, DC 20036-4508
Phone: 202-429-1965
Fax: 202-429-0854

They also have a feedback form at:
http://www.lwv.org/forms/contactus.cfm

Here is a copy of the note I sent them.

I recently learned of LWV's opposition to use paper audit trails in electronic voting. As a computer professional I can assure you that this is a grave mistake, which will result in elections where the true winner may never be known. The prolems are myriad, from buggy software to willful, and untraceable, manipulation of the results from people within the company running the election, local officials or skilled hackers from the outside. My specialty is "software quality assurance", which means I am a specialist in finding "bugs" in software. The very first axiom of software quality assurance is that all software containing over a few dozen lines of code contains bugs. Some are never encountered, others cause your computer to crash or corrupt its data. The most serious are those which leave computers wide open to intruders. Even the best software, written by highly skilled professionals contains serious bugs which may not be discovered for years, sometimes because it is discovered that someone is taking advantage of the problems for their own gain.
The most serious problem, I believe, is the possibility of an insider manipulating the results. If an election is entirely electronic insiders can and will make changes, despite any attempts to secure the systems through encryption, digital signatures and other technologies. Let me give you a quick example. A couple of years ago I worked at a company where people could purchase web services online. Customers were told that their transactions were secure because their connections were encrypted. Anyone in our company who had access to our main database had access to the full details of all of our customers credit cards, address, name, expiration date, phone number, etc. Definitely enough information to commit substantial fraud, if done carefully. The only barriers to this fraud were the honestly of my company's employees and the credit card companies fraud-detection systems.
Your concern for the rights of disabled citizens to vote in laudable. All I would ask is that each voting machine have a printer attached to it which would provide a backup copy of the votes for a recount. This could be easily done in time for the fall elections.
For the long term, we should look at standards for electronic voting machines, developed with input from the public and computer professionals. Such standards should include public review of the computer programs running within election machines, to ensure accuracy and security, as well as digital signatures at every stage of the vote-counting process, paper and electronic. This more extensive process could be completed in time for the 2008 elections, but the key is to have a paper audit trail for this fall, which will be counted along side the electronic results to produce a results the will can be counted on to be tallied correctly by the American public.
I love computers, but I do not believe that they are a panacea for the problems which we encountered in the 2000 elections. Please reconsider your position. There is no real conflict between having truly auditable elections and protecting the rights of the disabled.

Thank you very much.

Bad scenario

[cretog8]

I don't know if people understand just how bad this could get. I was one of many who felt that the 2000 election was a bit fishy, but since it was really close, I could accept that it was effectively decided on a coin-flip. In any case, it was decided, and there was nothing reasonable to be done about it at the time. At least I knew there was another presidential election coming up in 2004.

Since then I've come to *really* distrust Bush and company. Besides the deceit leading up to Iraq, it seems that the Bush administration has developed a pattern of deciding that their desired policies are more important than legal and constitutional niceties like habeas corpus, trial by jury, the Geneva Conventions, etc. I can completely imagine some members of the administration deciding that "staying the course" is more important than the peculiarities of one election.

Maybe I'm over-reacting and being paranoid, but there are a lot of people like me, people who sat quiet after the 2000 election because they had faith our democracy would handle things eventually.

Now suppose the 2004 election is decided for Bush by state or two which uses a bunch of these voting machines. Then what do I do? Do I take it quietly again, when I've got no way to know if there was cheating?

Again, I'm one of many. Our democracy may not be strong enough to handle 35% of the public believing in a pattern of stolen presidential elections. After all, what do we do if voting can't change things?

What's next? Blocking voter registration efforts?

[chipwich]

LWV's position is indefensible... How can any organization not endorse a completely open voting system with paper trail and software which is open to public examination? LVW's current position threatens the fabric of democracy by entrusting corporations, not citizens, with the critical task of ensuring that our elections are credible.

Moreover, opposition to a public advocacy group such as verifiedvoting.org implies that a conflict of interest exists within LVW which pits its leadership against the very members which they are supposed to represent.

What's next? Speaking out against nonpartisan efforts to register voters?

This is a shameful time for the league.

What really matters:

[Dr. Spork]

It's where the money goes. See, Diebold is trying to sell as many of their crappy paperless machines as possible.

After they saturate the market, they'll grab their foreheads and say "oh, these machines need to be replaced with ones that provide a paper trail" we must avoid recount debacles like 2000 and 2004... so we propose... like... OUR NEW MODEL! Buy buy buy! It's only tax money!

In the meanwhile, they might well steal another election for Bush, which might do wonders for their bottom line.

Democracy must be seen to be done

[LoocSiMit]

The simple fact that there are is a significant proportion of people who are suspicious of voting machines means we shouldn't use them. Democracy must not only be done, but it must be *seen* to be done.

While many slashdotters may think they would be able to verify for themselves that a voting machine hasn't been tampered with, I'm sure many of us could come up with a way to ensure our tampering wouldn't be detected.

We vote, what, every couple of years? It is arguably the most important thing most of us do for our country. Is counting bits of paper really that hard?

The only way I can see that the electorate can see for themselves that democracy is being done is for ballots, once marked, to be put into transparent ballot boxes, transported to the counting station in full view and counted in full view. I can see no other way the average person can be confident the election is fair.

E-voting for the public

[quantaman]

This just seems to be part of a larger problem of people unfamiliar with computers just not getting the issue so I've constructed what I think is a pretty good metaphor of the problem.

There's this company, called Diebold, and their employees are fast counters, really fast, so fast they can count all the votes in an election almost instantaneously. The problem is they need a warehouse to do the counting in.

So at all the voting stations they build themselves a warehouse. An election official come in a few months before the election and look around, lots of boxes are around, a whole bunch of different gadgets, the officials can't look over everything but it seems alright. The official remindes Diebold it's against the law to touch anything or let anyone inside before election time for security reasons. A couple days later the Diebold employee in charge goes back inside, he moves some things around and is seen driving up in moving trucks and taking boxes in and out but the election official doesn't see. One day when the Diebold employee isn't at the warehouse a guy is walking down the street and notices a door wide open, he wanders in and finds himself in the warehouse. He decides to take some pictures, windows are left open, most of the doors are unlocked or just have a piece of rope to tie them shut and their security alarm is a mute poodle. This guy shows the pictures around, security companies everywhere are just appaled, they can't believe how bad security is and are screaming it's way too unsecure to hold votes in but the government and Diebold ignore them.

So election time comes around and you have to vote. You go to the lobby at the front of the warehouse and go into your booth. There you mark your ballot as usual (except they have really nice ballots and pencils). Then instead of putting it in a box you go and give it to a person standing behnid the counter, it's supposed to be an elections official but it could also be a guy who snuck in off the street. Your ballot is out of sight for a minute as he carries it over and hands it to the Diebold employee, the Diebold employee then tells you he'll put the ballot in a box and he'll count it at the end with the others. He then goes into the warehouse and that's the last you, or anybody else but the Diebold employee, see of your ballot. After the election the Diebold employee comes out and tells everyone what he counted and who won the election, it not who most people expected and a couple people ask for a recount but the Diebold employee says that he threw out the ballots as he counted them so you just have to take his word for it. A couple of people ask why they didn't just put a photocopier and a traditional ballot box in the lobby where everyone could see it and no one could tamper with it. After marking your first ballot you would be be able to make exactly one copy of it, you could then put the second ballot in that ballot box and at the end if they wanted a recount they could just count the ballots in the traditional box. The Diebold employee (who lost a bunch of the ballots before counting them) says that his counting is good enough and that the old ballot box couldn't be trusted. Oh yeah, that Diebold employee was also campaigning for the guy who won.

Please feel free to redistribute this or give me any suggestions you might have on how to make it better. I've tried to be as factual as possible (not sure about leaving the upset in there).

I hesitate to be so sexist...

[localman]

...but nearly every guy I know would ask "what the hell does that mean" before getting too worried about it. However I've noted that a fair number of my intelligent female friends are quicker to act like they know what something means when they don't.

It's not that women are less knowledgable, but they're less likely to admit it, and risk looking stupid. Sad thing is that it usually backfires as there's few things stupider looking than being highly confident in one's ignorance.

I figure women do this is because of all the pressure for an intelligent woman to prove she's not ignorant. But really the smartest people are quick to ask questions and admit when they don't know something. How else would they learn so much?

Kinda sad that it works out that way.

Cheers.

I have been thinking about this for a while...

[HerbanLegend]

I think I have a solution to all this voting nonsense. The first step is to issue every voting age american a Public and Private Key , as per PGP.

Then, when the voting is actually taking place, the votes are encrypted using the Government's widely-known public key, and is digitally signed using the private individual's Private key.

This way, even the voting machine doesn't know what votes a given data stream actually contains, since the signature of the individual changes the representation of the votes. When the gov't. recieves the vote, it decodes the message using it's own private key, and then re-decodes it using the voter's known Public Key.

In other words, don't count on a machine to do the counting at the voting machine level. Assign one public, open-source machine to decode all the votes once they have been registered. There is no reason for the voting machines to do the counting themselves.

Another possible method would be to use two seperate machines for the voting. The first has a touch-screen and all the bells and whistles, and punches you a physically verifyable ballot, which is then put into the second machine, which reads the card and asks you to confirm the votes again. When you do, then a physical counter is incremented. The first machine is all or mostly electronic, and the second entirely mechanical, so there is no funny business.

What makes electronic voting less secure??

[Quantum Jim]

People act as if this issue (and, for that matter every other issue) has a clear solution. As if any reasonable or intelligent person can't debate the causes of the problem and the proposed solution! This is kinda arrogant. Most issues in politics are very complicated; simplifying them usually only helps the politicians and does not make a simple solution more desirable.

For instance, I wonder how many of those paper receipts could be dusted for fingerprints. Wouldn't that make it easier to figure out who voted for whom? Is it easier or harder to backtrack the voters than traditional paper ballots? And what about all those methods for electronic security. What makes a computerized voting system easier to fraud? If I wanted to fix a traditional election, all I'd do is replace ballot box with an identical one with my votes. Digital results can be harder to fake (md5 sums, multiple copies transported, and even quantum encryption could identify interception of the results by a third party).

Really, what's the difference between not knowing how a computer stores its information verses ignorance of how a box of ballots are handled? They both are vulnerable.

Re:technology will do 97% though

[Jameth]

OCR is 100% accurate for letters designed to be read by it. You've seen them on checks before, they have blob-like endings to guarantee differentiation.

Some work would be required to make them both human and computer readable, but there are many very talented font creators out there who would be glad to do the job at a reasonable salary.

Transparent Accounting is Needed

[pherris]

It's not just the League of Women Voters / Diebold but there are many, many other "nonprofit" groups that do this. It's long been suspected that the "Partnership for a Drug-Free America" gets the vast majority of their money from three groups: the alcohol industry, pharmaceutical companies and to a lesser degree law enforcement unions. This makes sense since they benefit most from keeping certain drugs illegal. PDFA is nothing more than a group of lobbyist cheating the Govt out of taxes with their not-for-profit status.

The solution is to demand (and IMO require by law) these groups open their books and show where there money comes from and where it goes. IMO this isn't unreasonable since they enjoy nonprofit status unlike, say, a lobbyist group. The extra benefit would be honest nonprofit groups would grow. Honesty really is the best policy.

Any group (or church for that matter) that is not willing to show who gives them money and what they spend it on should get nothing and be treated with suspect.