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."

Comments

That's how they want it

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't read the article (and probably won't), but it's my opinion that the Bush administration wants paperless machines to be used so that they are able to stay in power; they'll take advantage of the 'flaws' in the machines so they can have four more years of imposing their will on the American people.

And yes, that is a tinfoil hat on my head.

Re:That's how they want it

[Oligonicella]

You should check out how many Dem's are for the machines before making that insipid statement.

Re:That's how they want it

[Anonymous Coward]

Firsly, I don't know why you were modded as a troll so I'm sorry if replying to me has damaged your karma.

I'm sure many Democrats are for the machines, but I don't think that means much; it seems to me that increasingly the lines between political parties (both in the US and elsewhere) are getting more blurred. Sometimes an official affiliation does not truely reflect the allegiance of a person.

Politics

[Manip]

This is what happens when politics get in the way of good technology. No doubt you have people at the bottom of this mess saying how wrong it all is and non-technical people at the top saying how it will all work without any clue.

Personally I would like to see qualified people certifying that the solution is valid and actually has the power and willingness to throw out the solution.

This could also be achieved by, instead of hiring someone to build it, make it an open contract and let the companies compete to win the contract.

They have also talked about a paper-trail but personally I would prefer to see a PGP trail, that shows conclusively it was sent from X machine and not created in the database.

Re:Politics

[essreenim]

I would prefer to see a PGP trail, that shows conclusively it was sent from X machine and not created in the database.
Yep, as I understand it, this was the fumble with our proposed system (Ireland) and it wasn't the engineers that were at fault. It was the same thing that is always at fault. Non technicaly educated / uncapable people want to dictate the engineering of something they cannot conceive. When it finally dawns on them, it is too late. The system is ready and the "requirements" have changed.
I imagine a whole new Software Engineering model is needed for E-voting. - The same model as before, only with a million extra iterations of "Are you sure about this? The system will not provide this. We need this.."

Re:Politics

[Jerf]

They have also talked about a paper-trail but personally I would prefer to see a PGP trail, that shows conclusively it was sent from X machine and not created in the database.

How are you going to ensure that the PGP key on the machine isn't known to the central office, who is probably who created it in the first place?

I have a hard time imagining who has access to the database but not the PGP keys the machines have.

Remember, there are three basic threats here: Tampering by voters at the machines, tampering of the data en route to the final tally, and tampering of the data by the final counters, which always includes the manufacturors of the system. The third is the most dangerous, as it is the hardest to prevent and too many politicians have mere blind trust in the accountants. Your system seems to stop the second... or at least make a good try at it... but neither the first nor the third.

Moral of the story: Securing E-voting is hard work; if your solution is one sentence long, it probably isn't a solution.

Re:Politics

[swillden]

Remember, there are three basic threats here: Tampering by voters at the machines, tampering of the data en route to the final tally, and tampering of the data by the final counters

You forgot an important fourth threat (which may be the same as your second threat, but is worth pointing out separately): Alteration of the data by the machines.

This is why the paper trail is so crucial: We need something that the voter can look at to make sure that his/her vote was cast the way he/she wanted it.

And, really, given paper ballots, we *know* how to secure the transport and counting processes. You put the ballots in locked steel boxes, with representatives of all the major parties standing around watching whenever the boxes are transported or opened. Whenever the boxes are stored, they're guarded, again with oversight by the major political parties. Done!

Paper ballots too slow to count? Count 'em with machines! OCRable fonts can be used and/or a machine-readable barcode. If someone thinks the machines aren't counting right, let 'em recount by hand.

Moral of the story: Securing E-voting is hard work

Depending on your definitions, secure e-voting is either really easy or impossibly hard, because purely electronic voting is just a bad idea. Pretty, easy-to-use touchscreen voting machines make sense, high-speed automated vote counters make sense. But paper, human-readable paper, is what we know how to secure and manage, and what the voters will trust.

What is with this mechanized/electronic voting?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, what is wrong with a pencil and a piece of paper? I'm Canadian, and we just finished going through a federal election using this method across all ridings.

You get a slip of paper with the candidates for your riding listed in alphabetical order. You write an X in pencil in the circle next to your chosen candidate's name. You fold the paper and slip it into the ballot box. Done. Never have had any issues with this system.

Is this somehow too complex for the US to use? I don't see the reason behind the technological fetish and all the issues it causes there.

Re:What is with this mechanized/electronic voting?

[RetroGeek]

A lot of this is probably to do with the number of invalid votes witnessed in each election, which inevitably is because of the paper/pencil option

Ah yes, but then this creates a self administered stupidity bar.

If you are too stupid to put an X in a black bordered circle, then maybe you should not be voting?

I STILL think that there should be some sort of additional requirement to vote. Something which tests knowledge of issues would be good, so that not just charisma and sound bites are important....

Re:What is with this mechanized/electronic voting?

[Anonymous Coward]

Something which tests knowledge of issues would be good

Of course, then it would be possible for someone to manipulate those tests in such a way as to prevent people with certain opinions from voting.

Re:What is with this mechanized/electronic voting?

[kfg]

Electronic voting involves the press of a button next to party name/candidate/symbol, which greatly simplifies things..

Please explain how and why.

KFG

Re:What is with this mechanized/electronic voting?

[pjt33]

So do you think it should be impossible to choose to spoil your ballot, or do you think that the majority of spoilt ballots are unintentional, despite the fact that if you do accidentally spoil your ballot you can show it to the election officials and get a replacement?

Re:What is with this mechanized/electronic voting?

[ultranova]

If you are too stupid to put an X in a black bordered circle, then maybe you should not be voting?

I STILL think that there should be some sort of additional requirement to vote. Something which tests knowledge of issues would be good, so that not just charisma and sound bites are important....

And then whoever is in power will change the requirements so that only his supporters are allowed to vote. For example, you are only allowed to vote if you are a landowner, or are only allowed to vote if your income is over a certain limit, or are only allowed to vote if you have been educated to a certain level, or are only allowed to vote if you have proven to be "patriotic" - and of course, if you have criticized your countrys current administration, then you are criticizing your country, and are thus "unpatriotic" and not allowed to vote. And of course, if your views of "issues" differ from the official truth, then you must be ignorant and thus are not allowed to vote.

Besides, why should the stupid people have no say in the laws they must obey ? Does inability to put an X in a black bordered circle mean that you shouldn't be a citizen but just a subject ? Is a high degree of intelligence some kind of requirement to being considered a human being, fully deserving a right to have a say in matters that concern you ? If you are stupid, should someone else be able to dictate what you can and cannot and must and must not do, and how the taxes you've paid are spent, without you having any way to retaliate against them, now matter how unjust you think they are ? In short, should the stupid people be nothing more than labor and military reserve for those above them, with no say in what is being done to them ?

And if you answered yes, then think again. Because, I assure you, once you've pushed those you consider stupid out of the seat of power, someone else will push you out. And why not ? After all, the odds are that there are smarter people than you, so obviously removing you from those who can vote can only improve the end result, no ? Well, maybe not for you... But, whoever will ultimately take the reins, will certainly benefit. And remember, it was you who wanted those you considered inferior to have no power; you just didn't quite realize that you, too, are considered inferior by some.

Before you start removing rights from people, please take a moment to ask yourself: What if it was me who this was being done ? And if you don't like the answer, then don't remove the right; because sooner or later, you will be the one being disempowered.

Re:What is with this mechanized/electronic voting?

[ProKras]

You're claiming that in the U.S. a lot of people are interested in the election (large Y) and few people are interested in the election (low X).

I'm saying that a lot of people vote in the elections (not nearly as many as should) but that very few people are actually willing to spend an entire Tuesday conducting polling. Because of this, I believe few would be willing to stay up all night after the polling is concluded to count votes.

In a country where election turnouts are apalling (something like 50% of the voting-age population)and polling stations cannot get enough volunteers as it is, I simply cannot imagine that enough people would be willing to volunteer to manually count ballots.

Re:What is with this mechanized/electronic voting?

[JonMartin]

3) Speed. We're an impatient country. If we can be told the vote totals right after elections close, we're happier.

What, a few hours is too long to wait? Impatience is not a virtue; elections are one case where you want to do things right the first time, even if it takes a little longer.

Hey, why not have the vote totals before the election! That would save everybody the trouble of taking time to vote!

Re:What is with this mechanized/electronic voting?

[dtjohnson]

"1) Accuracy. I secure evoting system should be 100% accurate. "

It is not realistic to expect to achieve 100% accuracy when counting millions of votes, regardless of the method used. Random factors will *always* decrease the accuracy, even with 'e-voting.'

For example, some fraction of the machines will fail on election day due to hardware failure, power failure, software failure, operator error, or something else. Some percentage of the ballots will be incorrectly entered into the machines due to operator error, last-minute changes, or error by the elections officials. Some portion of the votes cast will be in error due to mistakes by the voter such as mis-understanding of the screen display, inadvertently touching the wrong place on the screen, mis-reading the display, etc. Finally, of course, it is always possible that malicious individuals and organizations will attempt to subvert the e-voting machines through fraud, just as every manual voting process has been subverted over the years. The e-voting machines appear to be much more vulnerable to voting fraud than most of the manual processes we currently use because the e-voting machines leave no paper trail of accountability and because one malicious programmer can singlehandedly change millions of votes with a few key strokes. By comparison, Al Capone needed an army of helpers to enable all of those deceased voters to rise out of their graves and vote in Chicago.

The only contribution which the e-voting machines can make to the election process is faster speed in the vote-counting but speed is much less important than security against fraud in something like voting.

Re:What is with this mechanized/electronic voting?

[Idarubicin]

Speed. We're an impatient country. If we can be told the vote totals right after elections close, we're happier.

In the recent Canadian election, vote counts started appearing almost immediately after the close of polls on the east coast. With the exception of a few extremely close rates, the winner in each district was decided within an hour. How impatient do you want to be?

Now look at Canada. Count the votes 5 times. Do you think you'll get one result, or five? I'm betting on the five.

On the other hand, if the five are tightly distributed around a mean, then we're still in good shape. Recounts are mandatory in Canadian federal elections when the margin of victory is smaller than 0.1% of votes cast; candidates may also request recounts. (In the 1993 federal election, Anne "Landslide Annie" MacLellan won in her district (riding) by 11 votes after the final recount. This year, she won by a relatively large 721 votes--a whopping 1.4% margin.)

...you can rest assured that the machine recorded it correctly.

Presuming the system generates a paper trail. Otherwise, all bets are off. Of course, to maintain anonymity and voter verifiability, the paper trail would probably take the form of a human-readable paper ballot printed and deposited in a sealed box, which could then be hand-counted to verify...wait, that sounds awfully familiar...

Re:What is with this mechanized/electronic voting?

[demonlapin]

It's profoundly antidemocratic. We've cast our lot with letting everyone vote who hasn't managed to disqualify themselves (generally through an active process; I'm not sure what laws are regarding those who've been in mental institutions). Changing that is a significant alteration in how we do things. Actually, you'd probably be open to a discrimination lawsuit under the Voting Rights Act, which put poll taxes and literacy tests out the door (yes, I know it was really just enabling legislation for 24th Amendment, but I live in a state that is still subject to Justice Dept oversight for all elections, so I'm more familiar with VRA).

Besides, most voters do decide on the issues - one or two ideas that matter most to them. The fact that they disagree with other ideas held by their chosen candidate doesn't mean that they're stupid; it means that other things came first. Abortion is a great example of this; there are many blue-collar Catholics who vote Democrat, and plenty of Republicans that don't oppose it in all circumstances. But neither of those groups is stupid, as such, or necessarily ill-informed. They just pick a handful of issues that matter to them, find out where the candidates stand, and pick.

And since I'm putting it on every comment I make in this thread:

If your jurisdiction has evm's, request a paper ballot when you get there. Mine had preprinted ones with every race on them - they weren't just fill-in-the-blank. It was traceable, it was easy, and it was faster than electronic - no lines to wait in. Encourage your family and friends to do it. Tell everyone you know. We can't get around the unreliability of the evm's, but we can make sure our votes are counted properly.

Re:What is with this mechanized/electronic voting?

[1ucius]

4) It's logistically difficult to distribute ballots in multiple languages, particularly when there will be a lawsuit whenever you underestimate number of people who will use one particular version.

5) Blind people cannot use pencil/paper systems without help. ADA/disenfranchisement isssues result.

6) If history is a guide, cities will use these machines for 30 years. Easy software updates is probably a big selling point.

Re:What is with this mechanized/electronic voting?

[Rufus88]

Felons can't vote, and yet the fabric of society is not unravelling because of it.

On the contrary, I think it already has. Thousands of Black voters were illegally and intentionally disenfranchised in Florida in the 2000 presidential election, and the illegality of felons voting was the means by which they carried it out and made it look like an accident. As a result, the candidate who would have won, lost. I submit that any adverse impact of allowing felons to vote would be dwarfed by the damage caused by the illegal purging of legal voters from the registration rolls on the grounds of preventing felon-voting.

Re:What is with this mechanized/electronic voting?

[mrchaotica]

Originally, our system was supposed to be like yours: We elected district representatives (for the national House of Representatives) and whatever state and local officials were applicable (varied by state). The state government (not Congress, or the people) would choose Electors, of a number equal to that state's Congressional representatives (Senators + House members), who would then vote for the president. We didn't even elect senators; originally they were chosen by the state legislature too.

So the way it was supposed to work was people -> state government -> electors -> president, and each layer could choose for itself, rather than be forced to reflect the majority of it's constituents. Even now, technically, an Elector could make the opposite decision (i.e. opposite of the popular vote in that state), unless the particular state has a law against it.

Of course, now we have direct election of senators, and many states have the popular vote choose the electors directly. The government has become much more democratic than it originally was.

Unfortunately, many people don't realize that democracy == mob rule == popularity contests, which is why the government (especially the presidency) is getting more and more screwed up over time, and why elections are so focused on mud-slinging and character attacks, rather than issues - emotion is more effective at ruling a mob than reason.

Re:What is with this mechanized/electronic voting?

[Idarubicin]

I still think being able to say "So-and-so got *exactly* 8,192 votes" is much better than "So-and-so got 8,200 votes with a 95% confidance interval with a radius of 10", even if the next runner up is obviously behind.

Except that you have a degree of uncertainty with any measurement system; at least with paper ballots you have an opportunity to recount.

Outside of fraud, I think that you can rest assured that the vote would be recorded correctly, especially if the code was audited by professors and other independent sources. It'd take a really really bad bug or a deliberate fraudulant attempt from within the company to do it otherwise.

Even if the code is audited, you have no guarantee that the compiled code the machines are running is the same as the code that was audited. Diebold has been regularly caught running uncertified versions of their software on voting machines, for instance.

And anyway, a paper trail wouldn't add any assurances in that situation anyway. ...

Sure it would. I said a voter-verifiable paper trail, remember. A machine prints out a ballot with your selections in plain text, which you then fold and put in the ballot box. Further, I trust the average election worker to be able to monitor and understand the security requirements to maintain a cardboard ballot box. I don'y trust those people to be able to manage an electronic voting system. You're quite right that a record that couldn't be verified by the voter is pointless. Further, a system that just recorded the votes in sequence on a paper tape could compromise the secrecy of the ballot.

Except you wouldn't handcount all votes. Take a random selection of maybe 10% of the precincts to count. If the count differs from the electronic totals by more than the margin of error of the counting system, or if the two methods yield different outcomes of the elections, recount the state.

On the other hand, you've gone to all the trouble to hire all those election workers to operate and monitor the polling stations. Why not have them stay for an extra hour to count ballots? It's not that difficult a task, and again it is something that is easily understood, monitored, and verified. Considering what it costs to buy, distribute, maintain, and repair the specialized hardware for an electronic voting system and the parallel paper handling to verify it, paying your election staff for an extra hour or two starts to look pretty cost-effective.

Re:What is with this mechanized/electronic voting?

[Wakko Warner]

A friend of mine just told me that comparing the two systems is like comparing cheque books with atms, which is not a bad analogy ;)

Except it is, because ATMs have paper trails.

- A.P.

Confidence

[bunburyist]

The problem with E-voting is that there's no trail as the article suggests, how can we be sure that a vote cast for someone hasn't been tampered with. Given the importance of the decisions being made, I think it is unwise to trust a method that has been proven unreliable. It leaves too much room for uncertainty. In this particular instance I don't think that the benefits outweigh the risks.

A 'Train Wreck' you say?

[u-238]

Train Wreck, relative to whom?

Not the media, that's for damn sure...

They'll be pressed to find a more enthralling debacle than what happend with Bush and Floridia last election - maybe this foreseen disaster will give them just what they need to keep everyone hooked.

MoveOn.org also pushing for paper trail...

[frostman]

Over on the Democrat political site MoveOn.org they are also pushing for voting with a paper trail.

They have a petition to sign... it would be nice to see a corresponding Republican site do their own petition, since I doubt any Republicans would sign a petition on MoveOn.org but at the same time I imagine there are plenty of Republicans who also see the dangers of closed-source, paperless e-voting.

There are a lot of conflict of interest issues here (as mentioned in the article) but I think these would actually be lessened if there were grassroots pressure from both major parties to use more secure and auditable voting systems.

there's already been a successful precedent...

[sirdude]

if it can work in a country with a billion people (India), it can work in a country with 200+ million people.. :S I don't see what all the hullabaloo is all about.. We are talking about unconnected electronic voting machines with a battery back up... not thought-readers..

I disagree with the entire premise

[HBI]

Voting has been screwed up since the very beginning. You have to trust the people working at the election districts who handle the ballots. I don't. Do you?

That said, the fraud usually cancels itself out, and a winner is clearly chosen. It was godawful close in 2000, which was the source of the problem then. There is very little chance that is going to happen again. After 52 presidential elections, we finally had one that was within 1000 votes - the closest before that was Nixon in 1960, I believe.

It may not happen again during your or my lifetime, in which case the usual election fraud won't be of any concern at all to the general public.

Re:I disagree with the entire premise

[foidulus]

Exit polls(if done accurately) are a great way to back up election results(esp. if the election isn't close), if the exit polls reveal a result very different from the vote, then a lot of people will suspect something. The problem is, what power do they actually have when they do suspect something?

I'd just like to point out

[addie]

That Canada had its federal election last week. I voted by putting a big X on a paper ballot, using a plain old pencil. By the time I woke up the next morning, all results were finalized and we had our government. A few ridings will be recounted, but it won't affect the overall result.

While it's true that the USA has 10 times our population, I still don't understand why so much money, time, and stress is being spent on electronic voting machines. Technology is NOT a solution to every problem, and in many cases it overcomplicates a classic, tried and tested method.

How would you feel if you spent hundreds of dollars on a robot that buttered your toast, only to find that it took more time to fill up the butter reservoir and clean the machine than it did to butter your toast in the first place?

Agreed

[Anonymous Coward]

This is magnified even more when one party has the majority in all chambers of the government. Plus, when your brother is govenor of the state that was in question, it looks ... really bad.

I say go back to good ol paper based methods. And if there is a dispute, keep the supreme court and congressmans' underlings away from the recount area. /weeps for my country

RTFA.

[khasim]

"We must not frighten voters or inadvertently provide any type of disincentive to voting," Diebold spokesman David Bear wrote in an e-mail when asked to respond to Harris' claims that the company's software is riggable and insecure. "While security is an important issue ... improvements can and will be made."

Again, "While security is an important issue ... improvements can and will be made."

Security is NOT "an important issue".

Security is THE issue.

If it is not secure, then we should go back to paper ballots which are trackable.

Wrong.

[brunes69]

You have to trust the people working at the election districts who handle the ballots. I don't. Do you?

No you don't. By law any citizen can watch the count - including you - if they so wish. And in any swing district you can be sure there is both a republican party official and democrat party official there to make sure it is "fair" (read: they contest every vote they can).

Now, how are you as an independant citizen going to audit the voting machines? The only relevant way would be independant auditing of the source code. However, since it is closed source this is not possible, thus you get some machine counting god knows what. And most of the time you don't even have a paper trail.

Where's the right?

[identity0]

I see a lot of anti-Diebold stuff lately, like from Ruckus Society, Why war or indymedia, but they're all left-wing groups.

Isn't anyone on the right concerned about e-voting and what it could mean for election integrity? Is it just that the left is more concious of bad elections because of the 2000 elections? Or are conservatives just automatically pro-corporate? I would think that anyone who calls themselves 'conservative' would be against meddling with the voting process without good reason...

Re:Where's the right?

[ChristTrekker]

(Speaking as an American.)

All your railing against "the rich" sounds exactly like someone taken in by the class warfare inciters on the left.

The State's activities beyond maintaining law and order should be eliminated. The purpose of gov't is to safeguard our rights, it is not to provide this or that need to this or that group. In a free country you have the opportunity to provide for yourself - use it. If your country isn't free, that's what you need to work toward, not wealth redistribution.

You are correct, to an extent, that "right wing" people do not like democracy. The Founders of the USA did not like democracy either. Too much like mob rule - the tyranny of the majority. That's why the US was designed as a republic. Article 4 Section 4 of our Constitution says the US shall guarantee each state a republican form of government, as well.

The wealthy have more to lose in a democracy. By definition, the rich people are going to have the money. In a democracy, the 51% of the people on the "poor" end of the money spectrum could vote to give themselves the rich people's money - that's essentially what happens when you tax the rich more for gov't services that are used disproportionately by the poor. Singling out people (or groups) for different treatment is not equal protection under the law, and is unjust. OTOH, everybody has just as much to gain in a republic, where rights and freedoms are protected by law. You have the opportunity to do whatever you want with your life, to work hard and to make as much of it as you want. Poor immigrants came to America in the 19th century because it was the Land of Opportunity, not the Land of Hand-outs.

If your concern is justice for all instead of misguided compassion for a few (and envy) then you'd understand that a flat tax is much more sensible and fair. The 10% from "the rich" is obviously much more than the 10% from "the poor" but they're paying the same so who can complain*? You wouldn't tax an arbitrary group like "blacks" more, so why would you levy a higher tax on "the rich"?

Better yet would be a consumption (sales) tax to replace income tax, because you are in direct control of how much tax you pay. You can buy cheaper alternatives, or forego a purchase altogether and invest the money instead. You are taxed only on what you can afford to buy, and you're the one who decides what that is. Since government's job is to safeguard our rights, and life is the paramount right, it is not just for the State to tax the basic necessities of life: food, clothing, medicine. With these items removed from taxation, the poor will pay very little in taxes, but this result is arrived at through justice, not arbitrary class-defining legislation.

No wealthy person I know believes they shouldn't pay their fair share of taxes. But they do believe they shouldn't pay more than their share. Government-mandated "compassion" to the poor provides a disincentive to work, and since a majority of wealthy people got that way through their own efforts, they are understandably annoyed by others leeching off their efforts while contributing little. Gov't regulations distinguish poorly between the genuinely needy and those who choose to abuse the system. Charity is not a job gov't is suited for. Not many people like receiving charity from someone they know, and will work to get out of that situation - but these same people will gladly receive an entitlement from a faceless gov't entity. Through welfare programs, gov't perpetuates the welfare class that relies on it - and can thus be counted on to vote for more and more gov't. It's an insidious means to erode liberty.

* Actually there is still much to be complained about with a flat-rate income tax. If we (presumably) enjoy the same freedoms whether we are rich or poor, why do the rich have to pay more for the gov't that secures those rights? If every individual has equal worth before the Creator that endowed th

The problem with PGP/GPG voting

[supersat]

That presents another problem: if people sign their votes crypographically, they can be compelled to reveal how they voted. With the current system, if you were forced to say how you voted, you could lie and there'd be no way to tell if you were telling the truth. Having the machines sign the votes would do no good since they could change the vote cast.

modeling complexity

[Doc Ruby]

The paper/pencil tool isn't too complex for the USA, it's *too simple*.

Canada has 1/10th the number of people as the USA. Not only is the scale of votes greater, but consequently the complexity of relationships among the people, therefore the political groupings and representations. As well as the laws in proposition ballots. Part of the American complexity is the difference in ballot styles and subjects in different jurisdictions, like different states, as well as the deeper hierarchy for intergovernance. Moreover, Canada's party/parliament system produces more politicians by appointment, like members of the Candian "Senate", and the Prime Minister, than in the USA, where ballots must determine those.

All these basic differences are compounded by other cultural differences. Canadians are more likely to wait in an orderly fashion to learn the outcome of a change for which they've waited years, and which won't occur for months after they've made their statement. Americans want immediate feedback, or we won't even vote in as substantial numbers. And that makes us much harder to govern, including just getting a report of our selections of representatives.

However, a combination of pencil/paper and electronic counting/reporting would be a good synthesis of both the inconveniently inadequate Canadian system and the woefully inadequate all-electronic system. Optical scans of pencil/paper for immediate, unofficial reports, with binding recounts by cross-supervised volunteers, recorded to DVD, and federal investigations of discrepancies. Bionic ballots!

Re:modeling complexity

[mpe]

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.

However the US is probably considerably less complex in these respects than the EU, it most definitly is population wise. Yet the recent elections for the European parliment elections were conducted using pencil and paper.

consent of the governed

[Doc Ruby]

Voting is not the way to get hundreds of millions of Americans to make the most "intelligent" decision. It's the way to get us to agree to accept the winner, because we participated in the process. Unstructured mass communications offer accurate models of the mass activity only when resampled frequently, without feedback with alternate, biased models like polls and platforms. One-shot elections on a single day, amids a yearlong media circus, that control governance for the following 4 or 6 years, make for bad models. But they've gotten people to agree to accept a demonized "opponent" as their leader for centuries in America, no matter how stupid we are.

poor balloting

[Doc Ruby]

In richer Florida counties, mechanically defective ballots were returned for revoting. In poorer counties, the votes were discarded. There's clearly a political campaign agenda in those policies, in a state governed by one presidential candidate's brother, where the election is controlled by that candidate's campaign manager. And still manages to produce a victory by under 60 votes out of a 15 million population.

ATM's

[Anonymous Coward]

Diebold also makes ATM machines, and I'm sure there's a paper trail there because the banks and public would never accept it otherwise. Is our banking system more important than our democracy?

"Take away oversight - someone will steal."

[dpbsmith]

Best quote in the article:
"You take away oversight - someone will steal. I guarantee it."

That makes sense to me. It seems to me that it ought to make sense to anyone, at any wavelength on the political spectrum.

Where *are* the journalists?

[Doc Ruby]

What's "odd" is that there are so few American journalists following her lead in covering the gory (pun intended ;) details of rigged voting. That does make it odd that Ms. Harris is so dedicated to her job - why shouldn't she just accept the privileges that the winners in rigged voting would hand her, along with the rest of the educated white professionals in America? Because she's smart enough to value her freedom, unlike the rest of the media, which would print fascist press releases anytime, as long as it's steady work without lifting anything heavy.

I'm happy I moved to Canada

[MichaelCrawford]

My wife, who is from Newfoundland, is sponsoring my immigration to Canada.

I feel very fortunate not to be living in the US anymore. I didn't feel safe. For example, I've received some threatening email from people who didn't like what I wrote on this page.

You can immigrate to Canada too. The most permanent way is to marry a Canadian citizen or permanent resident.

You can live and work here for a year if you get a TN-1 visa, which you can qualify for if you have a bachelor's degree and a written job offer, for a job that's on a certain list specified by the NAFTA agreement. Any qualifying citizen of the U.S., Mexico or Canada can work in either of the other NAFTA countries with a TN-1. The procedure for getting a TN-1 is very simple and inexpensive, and can be renewed each year if you continue to qualify.

During the dot-com boom, Canada established a special visa just for computer programmers. There was a shortage here, because all the Canadian programmers were going to the US to work. You'll need to find a Canadian company to hire you as a programmer and sponsor you for the visa.

Programmers don't make as much in Canada as they do in the US, but then the cost of living is much lower here (in Nova Scotia anyway) than anywhere I've lived in the US.

non technical people?

[zogger]

where have non technical people been involved in adopting e voting? Where I live in Georgia, "technical" people designed and built the diebold e voting machine. "Technical" people in state government "approved" it, based on "technical audits". Based on the recommendations of these "technical" people, non technical peoples concerns were laughed at, ridiculed, they were assured "it just worked".

Big fat hairy lie. A complete falsehood, a fabrication. Technical people foisted this abomination on us. Bad people with a big brother political agenda, IMO.

Some things are better mechanised, others AREN'T. The big problem with simple paper ballots was the ridiculously designed election system, which insists on less than a 24 hour voting period, and to have it always during a normal workday, where either the rich boss class could go vote whenever they wanted to, or the completely non rich "welfare" class could go vote. they also control the debates, how any third party can get on the ballot or an independent, they also contro the media and who gets covered and who doesn't, brainwashing generation after generation that voting for criminal globalist party Candiate A over B will somehow result in "change for the better" and "choice". People in the middle with this voting scheme they were using before had a hassle, so it lead to the "technical" people in politics, based on THEIR decisions, to say "aww gee, looks like YOU got problems now" which they wanted to fix with magic voodoo "computers", and it turns out to be a complete congame scam, with the highly likely designed from scratch ability for the "technical" people who have a political agenda to *hijack elections* on a mass scale, instead of having to do it the old fashioned hard way, precinct by precinct, which was hard to do. Now they can do it from "technical" vote hijacking central command someplace. And now we are being told that if we just make it even more complex,and more expensive, that we can have a "paper trail" to "prove" the vote isn't hijacked. How do you do that when the people who are doing the vote hijacking are the people who design the system and run the candidates that THEY want, and insist on THEIR "technical" way of doing things? Vote 'em out? ain't that a catch 22 then? "Technically"?

duh, that's what we had before without spending thousands of dollars per polling place, a paper trail. Cost peanuts, worked as well as anything else, and at least they couldn't hijack ALL the polling places. Terchnically that is.

Just because someone doesn'tlike YOUR pet electronic gizmo doesn't mean they can't think for themselves or are somehow inferior to your excalted position as arbiter of all things "technical". A lot of us geeks think it's a better techncial idea to use KISS instead of rube goldberg gizmos run, designed, and profited from by crooks for something as important as voting. Crooks can be as technical as anyone else, being "technical" is ZERO guarantee you are honest or capable of seeing a big picture. Techncial people bring us efficient mass murder, spam, viruses and nowe sophisticated vote hijacking. Ya, they bring us some good, but they bring us just as much non-good.

Re:non technical people?

[essreenim]

Yeah, I feel for you. I think Politics is wrong in the US. In Ireland, my homeland, our current leadership is a coaltion of Fianna Fail and the Progressive Democrats. Before that it was a coalition of Fine Gael, the Labour party, and thwe green party (I believe) - dubbed the rainbow coalition. No absolute power there. Im hoping for a return to something like the Rainbow coalition in next election. Its not perfect but there are far worse things.

Bare in mind though that the US is massive. It really needs huge parties to run it. How many huge parties can you have? There should be more in the US, not just 2. But I see this as a possible reason for your political makeup. But stillI prefer our political landscape...

Re:More Problems

[upsidedown_duck]

Officials said they were unsure how many voters had to leave for work before the problem was fixed.

For example, how many of those people were middle-class workers who really had only two hours to go vote and get back to work, and how many of those people were white-collar workers who could pretty much take the whole day off and do the work later?

This is potentially a huge side-effect of technology in voting. 15% downtime for voting machines really can effectively disenfranchise people, but in very subtle and very hard to measure ways. The downtime for a piece of paper is 0%, unless it is on fire or wet, and the scalability of buying a big case of pencils for $10 means very high throughput at the polling stations, thus allowing more people to vote.

Does she even have an actual argument?

[nwbvt]

Reading through the article, I can't find an actual argument against E-Voting. She claims that too many people involved in the companies have ties to "conservative political groups". So what? CEOs of many companies have ties to political groups, both right and left. Just because someone is connected to the Cato Institute or the Christian Coalition doesn't mean they can't develop a decent product. And nearly everyone out there working the polls is politically active, meaning that they are generally either tied to conservatives or liberals. And nowadays massive fraud is relatively rare, not counting old people who aren't strong enough to punch holes in cards.

It seems all she can do is bash other people personally. It mentions that she even trashed Bob Woodward on her website because he didn't return her calls. That might qualify her for psycho-chick of the year, but it won't convince me to oppose e-voting.

Re:Does she even have an actual argument?

[nagora]

And nearly everyone out there working the polls is politically active, meaning that they are generally either tied to conservatives or liberals.

Which is sort of why it's vital that outsiders can keep an eye on them. Which is the point. E-voting is not the problem, no paper trail is the problem and it would be regardless of the electronics.

nowadays massive fraud is relatively rare

And why do you think that is? Because modern people are just naturally upstanding citizens?

TWW

Maybe you should ask black america

[metalhed77]

You should probably ask former slaves about how mandatory 'literacy' tests helped their voting. They were given literacy tests of exceeding and ridiculous difficulty. The upshot was that massive numbers were turned away from the polls.

Screwed either way

[Brandybuck]

If Bush wins, he is going to be accused to rigging the vote no matter what. He can't avoid this accusation, no matter how silly it might be at the time. Don't upgrade the voting machines, and he obviously won only because punch ballots were used. But if electronic voting is used, then he obviously won because of the untested ballots.

There is no voting technology that can be used that would prevent such accusations if he won.