Slashdot Mirror
ACM Eyes Policy Position on Electronic Voting
while(true) writes "The ACM is preparing to take a policy position on electronic voting in government elections. It has a poll page up to get feedback from it's members and where they also explain their proposed position. The proposed position calls for a paper trail to ensure a physical record of the vote. Go there and place your vote if you are a member. The ACM Public Policy Committee could be a valuable ally in many questions that are dear to Slashdot readers in the US. They have already spoken out on issues such as the DMCA, DRM, and private policing of P2P networks."
If they can't trust electronic voting, how will they trust thier online poll?
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Being the technology organization that ACM is, I expected it to offer a in-depth technical insight as to why exactly the current technologies were insufficient, theoretically what kind of technology was required end-to-end to make electronic voting trustable, etc. Instead all they say is "current technology suck so we need a paper trail". Not very scientific, eh?
E-Voting will not be trusted for quite a while. There are difficulties with authentication, and spoofing. I am glad to here ACM is trying to do something about it, as opposed to other companies just trying to scream out "I am better Uncle Sam, give me funding !", can anyone else guess why this project isn't opensource yet. Possibly because money talks more than common sense ?
paper trail to keep tabs on the system replacing paper voting seems a tad pointless. Maybe waiting would be better.
In the summary (realizing it was a quote, but that's what square brackets are for in this context), you could have enlightened your audience with the actual meaning of "ACM", like so:
The [Association for Computing Machinery] is preparing to take a policy position[...]
#19845
*pets the troll*
The ACM has clout, considerably more than a bunch of unwashed geeks who troll slashdot all day. They're the closest thing the software industry has to a union.
The ACM isn't a bad thing to look into-if I had a regularly meeting chapter within 50 miles I'd probably attend. They're a good deal for students, getting them internships at conferences and hooking them up with lectures and talks. I hadn't even heard of a "public policy" angle to them, but I think it's a good thing.
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
When I voted just now, they showed the current results -- nearly 85% of voters strongly agreed with the ACM's proposed position that there should be a paper trail. Wow.
They've already spoken out against the DMCA, DRM and private policing of P2P networks, eh? I guess that shows how little their opinion matters then, doesn't it.
I'm far more interested in what the EFF's official stance is, considering they're the ones with the real legal and lobbying power (miniscule as it may be when compared to the twin bohemoths of the MPAA and RIAA)
1. Ballots would be cardstock. with 'complete the line' method for marking choices. Each voter would get one blank vote card. The vote card would NOT have their name, voter number, or any identifiable information on it. The cards *should* each have a unique 'serial number' for accountability, plus some preprinted mark identifying what 'election' it was for.
2. Voters can either complete the card by hand, or use an electronic terminal (which can be closed or open source, doesnt matter), which they would insert, and the terminal would compelte the lines for them, and give them back the card. This terminal would neither record or count any selections. All it would do is complete the paper card.
3. Immediately after either completing the card by hand or using the terminal to complete it (and having the opporunity to verify what the terminal printed), the voter would step to a tally machine (which would be immediately adjacent to the terminals and hand-filling our area, to avoid any possibility for anyone other than the voter to see or confirm what they have marked on their vote card) and inser the card on the tally machine. The design of both the 'vote card', and the tally machine would be required to be fully open, documented, and auditable by any concerned party.
No closed-source software, nothing hidden or proprietary. Vendors wishing to provide the 'terminals' for filling out the vote cards, would be required to supply tally machines for the cards as well, and they would be required to supply 'extra' tally machines, to allow for both redundancy, as well as for the voters not using the terminals. (Im thinking something like 5 tally machines for every 4 terminals)
The tally machine would
Paper trails are for authentication, which can be done by spot checks.
Voting machines still allow easier voting and faster and more accurate counting, without the needs for lots of volunteers.
I voted last week and it was of those lame-o paper things where we had to mark an "X".
It seems to me that this format is pretty old and should be coolified with the latest technology.
The republic is too important to leave in the hands of easily manipulated bits. A paper fallback record is the bare minimum of prudence when introducing computers into the process of electing our leaders. Without it, there can be no confidence of legitimacy of any future government, especially given the high-profile politicking of senior executives of voting machine companies.
I really wonder why people are so furious about paper trails.
Remember the ghastly voting issues in Florida 2000?
Well, they actually had paper trails, and it didn't change a thing. As it turned out, the courts ruled the recount illegal.
It seems that legal deficiencies of the US voting system are a much bigger problem than missing paper trails.
Don't forget that paper trails aren't immune to counterfeiting in any way. It's probably very easy to print a lot of paper trails with a standard PC and very little extra equipment.
It can't be that difficult built an electronic voting system, that is about as secure as the normal paper voting.
On the other hand, I don't really get why voting machines are so sought after in the first place. Here (in Austria) all vote counting is done by hand, in the local communities, with members of every party in the voting committee.
You only need a few people for a single day, and counting is insanely fast.
Since they start counting when the vote is still going', they have about 50% of the votes counted by the time the vote ends (usually 5 pm). At 5:10 pm, the first estimates are aired on TV, at 8:00 pm about 80-90% of the votes are counted and at 10 pm the Bundesministerium für Inneres announces the final results.
I can't help but think eVoting is a solution in search of a problem. Well not exactly, but it's overkill. The taxpayers are expected to shell out for expensive machines, that don't always work, and when they do work, aren't verifiably to be acurate.
Compare this to Canada. They used paper ballots with big boxes next to the canidates' names. You place a mark in the box, and your vote is cast. After the polls close, they dump out the ballot box in front of anyone interested, and a representive from each party examines each ballot and tallys the votes. When ever vote has been counted and everyone's tally agrees, they call in the count is official. They place a phone call, and they go home.
Simple. Cheap. Transparent. Effective.
We could learn alot from our neighbors to the north.
why not try to make evoting just an interface to already used methods, like punch cards. no, seriously, that way we dont get those crap about hanging chads again, and the elderly can have a touch screen which would be simple to select the candidates, out comes the card, and into the ballot box it goes.
it can be that simple, and I'd rather have punch cards than electronic storage, since electronic storage can be corrupted, or changed. one hard drive failure in one voting machine or system could lead to a panic, punch cards may be old and simple, but they work! so, why not just combine the best of both worlds?
But in the U.S., most ballots are much more complicated. We (in the US) have a tradition of wanting the citizenry to speak out/vote directly on a number of different issues, and having seperate local and state elections. It's a pain to setup a poll, and a pain go to a poll, so a voting decision is actually more complicated for US citizenry than a non-US citizen might think. A vote might involve federal election (a President, House member, and a Senator), state election (a state senator / representative / governor), local election (county/town board, mayor, school board, sheriff, judges). It probably also involves multiple bond decisions ("shall the state take out a loan of $X to do Y"), and proposals to change the state constitution in various ways. When I go to a poll, I'd be shocked if there were fewer than 4 choices, and there are usually many, many more.
As a U.S. citizen, I'm used to it, and even like it -- it allows me to participate more directly in various decisions than citizens of some other democracies. And the multi-tiered approach to democracy is deeply embedded in how U.S. politics works. But the more complicated ballots, along with the sheer number of people in the U.S., make it the purely manual approach more painful. It's still possible, of course, but some sort of automation is desirable.
Untrustworthy automation is a terrible idea, of course. Hopefully various organizations like the ACM and Verified Voting will change the system so that we can actually have confidence that our votes are being fairly counted.
Oh, and the problem in the 2000 election wasn't that recounts are illegal. Recounts happen occasionally in the U.S., they're even required in certain cases. As I understand it, the problem was that recount rules are supposed to be consistent and clear before the election, and Florida's setup was revealed to be an absolute travesty. Of course, these unauditable electron-only voting machines have exactly the same problem; there's no consistent and clear way to do a real recount, because there's nothing that can be independently recounted. Instead of creating a recount travesty, they need to make real recounts possible. And a computer-printed (and human-verified) paper vote would eliminate the nasty problems in the Florida 2000 election, where it was incredibly difficult to figure out the voter's intent from a card with multiple hanging chads (with more hanging chads created through handling!).
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
I looked on Drudge Report and it seems a couple of Representitives have requested UN oversight in the next election. It's Drudge, so who knows how accurate it is, but it would be wild to have UN observers validating the election. Personally, I think the elections should last a week and for an independent (publicly funded) group make sure every single eligible person votes. Or better yet, cast your vote on your tax form...heh.
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
This is almost a "Delphi study". A Delphi study is
actually when you ask a number of professionals in a certain field about their opinion, or expectations, about a number of topics. Then you process the results, show the results to the same group of professionals, and ask their opinion again.
Something like that.
Opening the source isn't enough. How do I check that the code running on the machine I place my vote on is compiled from the source code I checked? And how can I check the _compiler_?
Actually, I don't really care about the software and all. Just print a paper ballot that goes in a box, and have the local representatives of the political parties, or anyone else interested, recount the paper ballots if they feel like it. That's all that's needed.
Having the machines provide an interface to more easily cast the vote has advantages for the blind, old and handicapped, and this is a good thing. For most of us, the paper method works just fine.
/. terms: Remember when Lessig said, "Why won't they fight?" This is the same apathy on a broader scale with the same consequenses.
I love tech, but if there is one aspect of live that deserves the luddite treatment, this is it. Why?
Trust is one of the pillars of democracy. Participation is another.
The transient nature of electronic bits combined with our inability to actually see them move and change breaks the chain of trust we need to be assured our system actually works. We can see paper move, we can know the persons who perform the tally. With bits, we simply have to hope the machine does what its creator says. Given our history, we are fools to place our trust into such a system. Concentrations of power have always proven bad, why would this be any different.
The rush to speed the process is counter to the goal of participation and political discourse over the issues. Voting is not supposed to be quick. Voting takes time because it takes time to make the hard decisions. Since these decisions largely affect all of us, we should be taking the time to make them correctly. Coolness factor aside, the current push to modernize voting actually marginalizes the process. This is not healthy.
Early in life, I saw the political process as being messy and time consuming. I did not always vote. Having gotten a bit older and wiser (thanks GW for getting me involved!) I see now the true value of the process.
The last 4 years have shown me the result of hasty decisions made with broken trust and I don't want to experience any more.
On a side note, why doesn't Kerry push this HARD! I don't get it. Somebody please explain this to me. Seriously. why not?
GW has motivated me to stay involved and perform my civic duty. Not everyone agrees, but there are an awful lot of people who do. Why be lazy? Isn't this stuff important to you? To put this in
I am going to perform my civic duty. My state, Oregon, has a mail in ballot system with its own problems. Still I call and write letters and tell people how electronic bits really work. I mailed a copy of "Black Box Voting" to my representitive along with a call to action on reforming the process.
You folks living in the swing states should get off your duff and do the same because it directly affects you!
Good results take hard work. This means casting your vote with due consideration over the issues, preferably with your peers prior to the vote. Some of us have to tally the votes cast, make sure you are one of them. Work hard to build trust with others doing the same. Ask to watch the process --it is public, afterall. Somebody said, "the price of freedom is eternal vigilence". (ok, so I need to work at spelling --civics first!)
Ask your peers and representitives to see the process and show their trust with an open voting process. If they argue it's too much work, let them know there are plenty of unemployed and senior citizens willing and able to get that work done. If they don't understand the trust issue, talk about the machine and their inability to know what happens inside the wires.
We need to close the circle of trust. The last election and its 4 year result should motivate a large enough percentage of us to make this a non-issue. The fact that it hasn't disturbs me. Do we really not give a fuck? Maybe we do need a bit more punishment and loss of freedom to make the point perfectly clear.
I get it now, will you before it's too late to live long enough to see the damage undone?
Fucking do something.
Blogging because I can...
If they can't trust electronic voting, how will they trust thier online poll?
Easily: they're the ones running it.
If you let me personally set up every computer counting votes, I would trust electronic voting too. Unfortunately this probably isn't a solution to our election problems, since other people don't seem to trust me as much as I do.