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

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?

[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?

[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?

[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?

[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.

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'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?

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...

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.

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.