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E-voting to be a 'Train Wreck'?
An anonymous reader writes "The Seattle PI has published an AP story about the problems with E-Voting.
Her conclusion is that there will be so many problems with the more than 100,000 paperless voting terminals to be used in the November presidential election that the fiasco will dwarf Florida's hanging chad debacle of 2000."
Advocates of electronic voting say paperless ballots save money and eliminate problems common to old systems. But the technology brings a new breed of security concerns, including software errors and hackers, that critics say could render the results unreliable.
"Somehow, some way, people have always found a way to get into computer systems," said Kim Parrish, a 46-year-old insurance company worker who voted in Brooklyn Park, Md.
In California, new security measures range from random tests of touch-screen machines by independent experts to a recommendation that poll workers prevent voters from carrying cell phones or other wireless devices into booths.
The problems reported in California, though, were more basic.
When some San Diego poll workers plugged in machines, a screen for the Windows operating system and not the voting program appeared. Officials spent more than two hours getting all machines operating.
The problem, which apparently was triggered by a power fluctuation, affected between 10 percent and 15 percent of the county's 1,611 precincts, said Mike Workman, a San Diego County spokesman.
Officials said they were unsure how many voters had to leave for work before the problem was fixed.
In Maryland and Georgia, voters were able to use paper ballots on the spot while the machine encoders were fixed. Early voters in an Atlanta precinct also were given paper ballots because of machine malfunctions.
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It's a hoax.
The book discussed in the article has its own site, which might as well get its own slashdotting:
http://www.blackboxvoting.com/
There is a free online edition, which is cool. But it would probably be considered a political act to link directly to the PDF's
In case you want to buy the dead-tree edition, the site's "Order Now" link didn't work for me. There's always Amazon which should also stay up in case the main site goes down.
This Like That - fun with words!
Every time this issue comes up, someone points out that the Canadian system works perfectly (Elections Canada runs elections in many foreign countries which lack the infrastructure). Then someone claims that it won't scale. Ridiculous.
There are a bunch of polling stations for each riding. After the polls close, people at each polling station manually count the collected paper slips. These small numbers are then sent to a central point, summed, and the winner is determined.
It's distributed. If a riding had ten times as many voters, it would have ten times as many polling stations, and ten times as many people counting votes. It scales perfectly. As long as X% of the population is involved in ballot counting, the size of the population is irrelevant.
Yeah, right.
Nothing is wrong with it. There are plenty of area in the US (including where I vote) that use paper ballots you write on. I actually think that the local one is ideal: you use a black marker to connect two parts of an arrow which points to the name you want to vote for. You then put the ballot into a machine which scans it and retains it for record-keeping. I suspect that the machine will tell you if the ballot was invalid, and have you try again. It's very clear visually what is a vote and what isn't (how many stray pencil marks in a circle make a vote?).
No, the ballot I used here was a single piece of paper about a quarter of the size of a piece of 8.5"x11" paper. My ballot had five parties to vote for so it had five rows - name, party, and the circle to "x". Really, it's a pretty simple ballot with not much room for error... or so it seemed?? :)
When the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee can steal close to 5000 documents from the Senate mainframe with impunity... who would trust any Republican influence over voting rules.
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http://www.sltrib.com/2004/Mar/03052004/utah/14
http://www.sltrib.com/2004/Apr/04272004/nation_
Oh and remember the Florida election of 2000 when a private database company scrubbed thousands of eligible voters from the rolls? Well now one of the co-founders of Database Technologies is back in the headlines -- he's working with law enforcement agents in Florida to create what may soon expand into a national surveillance system. We talk with privacy expert Wayne Madsen, investigative reporter Greg Palast and a top intelligence official from the state of Florida.
A Florida law enforcement data-sharing network is about to go national. In the name of counterterrorism, the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security are pouring millions of dollars into the system to expand it to local law enforcement agencies across the nation. It's called Matrix, which stands for Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange. According to the Washington Post, the computer network accesses information that has always been available to investigators but brings it together and enables police to access it with extraordinary speed. Civil liberties and privacy groups say the Matrix system dramatically increases the ability of local police to snoop on individuals.
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/0
The Florida company that built the database was founded by the man behind ChoicePoint and Database Technologies. The companies administered the contract that stripped thousands of African Americans from the Florida voter roles before the 2000 election.
Although narrower in scope than John Poindexter's controversial Terrorist Global Information Awareness program, Matrix may serve a similar purpose because it provides unprecedented access to US residents regardless of their criminal background. And states are eager to participate in the new program. On Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security announced plans to launch a pilot program in state law enforcement data-sharing among Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and New York.
> Robert Heinlein tests another approach in Starship Troopers (the book not the movie),
> where military service is a prerequisite for attaining citizenship--and the right to vote and
> run for office. I guess the idea is that the only people who can make good decisions about running a country are the ones who have put
> their lives on the line in its defense (i.e., they have a personal investment in its success).
Wrong. In several places.
What is it about Starship Troopers? Nobody seems to be able to read what Heinlein actually wrote in that book. I'm not sure I agree with it all myself, but at least read what the man wrote.
You did *not* have *military* service to vote. You simply had to have served. This could turn out to be military service, as it did for most of the characters we see in the book. But it could also turn out to be digging ditches somewhere. Heinlein specifically says that most of those who sign up for service to get the vote do *not* wind up in the military.
Heinlein also gives his idea of *why* this would work right there in black and white. Put simply, people who have signed up for service have demonstrated their ability to put the needs of the community before their own needs.
I should also add that the system is *not* exclusive. Anyone, *anyone* can sign up. They will find *something* for you to do, and give you the vote. No one is turned away. The only way to not get the vote is by quitting or by malfeasance (if you're court-martialled out of the military, for example).
Chris Mattern
Well this was how my voting experience in India unfolded..
.. you get the idea..
:S Luckily, one was the party I planned to vote for, so I hit the appropriate button and heard a nice loud buzzer that signified the end of the second voting experience of my life..
A couple of weeks before the elections each and every house in a particular sector received a number of ID slips - one for each voter in the house. The slips had the location of the voting "booth", gate number and an ID number for the voter..
On Election day, I walked down to a neighbourhood government school which had been taken over for the purpose, went to the appropriate gate, and walked straight into the voting room (no queue at that time of day..) I was greeted by an L-shaped row of desks leading to a partitioned-off voting area behind which the voting machine had been placed.
First person checked my voter slip, asked for some other form of ID - passport, ration card etc.
He confirmed my authenticity using a big ledger he had on his desk. He then rattled off a number to the next person - a woman with another register.
I was asked to move along and sign where she pointed (next to my name and ID number..). I did so and was given a slip of paper and asked to move to the next table.
The next lady took the slip of paper and checked something in *her* register and filed the slip somewhere. She then marked my left index finger using some kinda indelible ink and asked me to move to the
last lady : pointed to the voting area and I guess she would have given me some information if I'd asked or looked like I needed it.. She pressed a button on her table which I presume, activated the voting machine..
I went over and found a little rectangular box with a number of buttons with corresponding labels next to them.. (about 12-14) Now the really stupid thing was that the labels only had the party symbols on them (no text) - I could personally only recognise about 4 of them..
That was about it..
Pros:
Quick ballots counts. Since every vote is in a machine readable format every vote is electronically scanned and tallied.
Paper trail of every ballot. Since every ballot starts out on paper ...
Lower cost per seat than proposed evoting systems. One or two bubble sheet scanners would be enough to handle even the largest voting sites and for a fraction of the cost of proposed touch screen systems. Assuming that bubble sheet systems are of equal price as touch screen systems (IMO a scanner/counter might cost less than a touch screen system) compare buying two scanner/counters or 20 to 30 touch screen systems. The bubble sheet readers win that one hands down.
Easier to setup. Bubble sheet scanners can be previously setup so that on site workers only have to plug it in to an electrical outlet and go. Add in a cell phone connection for remote monitoring. I guess you could even build in a DC power unit with a battery. IMO overkill but in case AC power is not readily available. The setup per unit should be equal or a bit less than touch screen systems, but since many more touch screen systems need to be set up per site the bubble sheet wins. It's a minor win over touch screen systems but is compounded since much fewer bubble sheet scanners need setting up.
More durable than proposed evoting systems. Touch screens can get ruined very quickly. Also the average user tends to be rougher on touch screens when they are starting to fail. Harder screen faces are more durable but can crack from abuse, like poor shipping or dropped during setup.
Easier to train poll workers than proposed evoting systems. The only thing the poll worker needs to know is how to tell the voter how to insert to ballot. No navigation questions or use issues. Most everyone here has had the misfortune of working with the most clueless user that would easily get confused on the simplest touch screen system. Considering that most poll workers are of an age where computer use is not second nature and this problem is compound.
Cons:
It's electronic and is bound to fail sometime. While IMO bubble sheet readers are more durable than mechanical voting booths the scanner/counter is bound to fail. The ballots would need to be rescanned. A serial number (tied to the ballot and not the voter) could check for incomplete electronic counts.
No instant native language support. The touch screen wins here. The bubble sheet method requires a poll worker to help the voter choose a ballot from ballots in different languages. IMO a minor issue.
Think of it like a paperback book. It's a format that's been around for hundreds of years because it's the best thing we have. While electronic books have been around for a few years and have some advantages, paperbooks are still better and, in turn, will still rule until something better comes along. As Chris Rock would say: "Just because you can do something doesn't make it a good idea." Just because we can vote on touch screens w/o a paper trail doesn't make it a good idea.
I'll go back to my cave now. =)
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity but they've always worked for me" - HST
I just worked for the federal elections last week as a poll clerk. (I'm the one who crosses-out the name of the voters as they came to vote).
Each poll had about 500 electors - more than half of those showed-up in my poll.
The system scales pretty well, and the paper-trail is there: we're having an automatic recount, as there was only 35 votes difference out of 45,566 (less than 0.1%). No diddling about hanging chads, each one of every actual hand-marked ballot is physically looked-up by a human-being and counted.
Canadians also have Provincial votes (for the representative to the Provincial legislature), Civic votes (for municipal representatives... these get a bit trickier, as there's usually a mayor, entire civic board, parks board, local issues, etc.) and referrendums (for Federal and Provincial issues which need special feedback from the population at large).
Canadians try to keep voting for the leaders as simple and as close to home as possible -- after all this is a large responsibility which affects the future of millions of people.
For Americans wondering how the Prime Minister gets elected, it goes like this: All of the (308) representatives elected form the next Parliament of ministers. The party with the most representatives votes to select the person to be the Prime Minister. This is usually the leader of their party.
At any time, the general population can send a petition to Parliament on any issue; Parliament must address issues that have a certain amount of support. Using this method, the people can call a vote of non-confidence if they feel their Prime Minister (or any other minister) is failing to do their job adequately. This triggers a by-election, which results in everyone having to re-vote on the person or issue being contested.
We have just completed an election in Canada. Our results were available about 2 - 4 hours after the polls closed.
;), but I see no reason to bring computers into an election count.
We count the whole thing by hand, It works well and is very secure.
You just have to have an effective heirachy that counts from individual polls and feeds the results up the chain.
I'm a linux sysadmin, yeah big deal
PenGun
There is a bill sitting in the House with 140 co-sponsers to require a paper trail for evoting this November. Its apparently being held up in the House Administration committee by Robert Ney (R-Ohio). He's from Diebold's home state though not sure they are in his district. He is one of the principal authors of the bill that funded the evoting mess in the first place, HAVA.
Here is his contact info especially if he is your congressman and you want to adjust his attitude.
Here is his statement on why he opposes the bill and is apparently going to be able to kill it. Its signed by Mitch McConnell, another Republican I wouldn't trust democracy to, but there are two Dem's as well Christopher Dodd and Steny Hoyer.
It contains some disturbing statements, this one in particular:
"Most importantly, the proposals requiring a voter-verified paper record would force voters with disabilities to go back to using ballots that provide neither privacy nor independence, thereby subverting a hallmark of the HAVA legislation. There must be voter confidence in the accuracy of an electronic tally. However, the current proposals would do nothing to ensure greater trust in vote tabulations"
Not sure how they can claim a recountable paper trail, "would do nothing to ensure greater trust in vote tabulations".
They also want the same agency that is apparently responsible for the current mess to have plenty of time to create a new one so they want no audit trail in time for this election:
"Questions regarding voting systems security, as well as many others, need to be examined by the entity responsible for doing so under existing law, the Election Assistance Commission, before Congress begins imposing new requirements, just months before the 2004 presidential and congressional elections, that have not been fully considered. The security of voting technology is a non-partisan issue. We encourage you to allow HAVA to be implemented as enacted and provide those who are charged with ensuring the security of voting systems the time and flexibility needed to get the job done effectively. "
@de_machina
We use bubble ballots out here in Arizona and I wholeheartedly agree. This is definitely the way to go.
Each person is handed a ballot. They go to their booth, where the official election literature is posted, along with an ink pen. Fill in the bubble by your candidate's name. Couldn't be simpler.
Next, you take your completed ballot up to the machine. You place it face down in the scanner and it sucks it in. If the ballot is valid, the light turns green, your ballot is dropped in the ballot box and you get the little sticker.
This has the speed of computer scored elections plus the paper trail of ballots for double checking. Plus, if you fill out a ballot incorrectly (check two people in a race where only one is permitted or something) the ballot is spat back. The election official can then help you. This should eliminate most problems with incorrectly filled-out ballots.
The weak point in the system is the programming of the computer scoring. Random spot checks comparing paper ballots to machine talleys could easily be used to ensure correct behavior.
Proven reliable technology. Course, we've got to dump it for touch screens with no software audits or paper trails.
Stupid.
If complexity is too hard for you to read, let alone understand, just stay out of the debate. If you're actually interested in learning, read on. Complexity is a measure of the interconnectedness of separate things. More things can mean more complexity, as the number of possible relationships increases. Just as nine women can't just make one baby in one month, there are dependencies among the larger populations that create increased complexity. That's why even Canadian elections can't be held with just a verbal affirmation, which would work in a small group. Increasing the scale of the population usually means increased complexity, which requires more complex accounting.
Americans live in an overlapping hierarchy of school board, village/city, possibly an inclusive "town", county (possibly including or included by the city), metro area, state, multistate region, and nation. One state is based on a different legal paradigm (Lousiana is "napoleonic", and has parishes instead of counties), and each state has its own laws, as do cities, which include different details in representation. There are other political organizations which reconcile these differences where all must be counted together. And that's all very complex. More complex than the smaller and more consistent Canada, which is why our election process is more complex.
The complexity of actual American law is probably more complex than necessary, like most laws. But that doesn't mean it can be as simple as one sufficient for Canada.
--
make install -not war
It's not "SuffErage", it's SUFFRAGE; it's has nothing to do with the word "suffer":
"suffrage." Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged. Merriam-Webster, 2002. http://unabridged.merriam-webster.com (7 Jul. 2004): from Latin suffragium: vote meaning (among others): the right or privilege of voting in political matters or the exercise of such right; especially : the right or power to participate in electing public officials and adopting or rejecting legislation in a representative form of government
When I was young something like this was common in certain states....along with poll taxes (you can only vote if you come up with the money).
If you were white you tended to pass (often as not the people running the thing just said you passed if you were white) and if you were black you tended to fail (often as not the people running the thing just marked you failed).
Please mod parent up. It is a common enough belief that it shouldn't be modded as troll, especially in light of the Diebold memos.
Just to address one misleading claim: "voter-verified paper record would force voters with disabilities to go back to using ballots that provide neither privacy nor independence, thereby subverting a hallmark of the HAVA legislation." This is not true of any well designed Voter Verified Paper Ballot system. There are several commercial voting systems from smaller companies that produce printed ballots without losing voter privacy or independence. And of course the Open Voting Consortium has implemented an open source eVoting system that allows for voters, including those with with disabilities, to use touchscreens or keyboard to enter their votes (thus eliminating invalid ballots, providing for spoken, multi-lingual prompts, etc.). The system prints paper ballots that the voter can verify, both by visual inspection and by running the ballot through a stand-alone verification station (i.e. that can read the ballot back for the voter to listen to). The paper ballot is the vote, which is counted using scanners, then stored for auditing and/or recounting.
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