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

First vote!

[Zorilla]

First vote! Oh, crap! I pressed the Buchannon button!

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?

[Roger_Wilco]

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.

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?

[Chris Mattern]

> 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

Re:What is with this mechanized/electronic voting?

[Pig Hogger]

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.

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.

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.

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.

More Problems

[SolidCore]

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.

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..

Re:GIGO

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a hoax.

Link to book site

[frostman]

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.

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?

Re:I'd just like to point out

[upsidedown_duck]

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?

Product development and marketing is designed to make potential customers not think about this. For example, those self-contained iced tea making machines are actually no faster than simply boiling the water in a microwave, brewing the tea, and dumping it over ice, but that doesn't stop millions of people from spending $20 on the machine. Effectively, electronic voting is riding on the tremendous marketing behind technology over the last two decades, and it appears tons of people got hooked and are now being reeled in.

Elections, don't count on it.

[Qrlx]

Apologies for flying off-topic here, but what does it matter if we have paper ballots or electronic ballots if we aren't going to have elections in the first place?

The "precedent" is already set for suspension of elections. The bombing in Madrid, days before the pro-Iraq-war Anzar government got a swift kick out of office, shows how "Terror Sways Elections."

Nevermind that 90% of the Spanish people opposed Spain's entry into the Iraq war, or that the Nationalists suppressed evidence and blamed the bombing on ETA.

But that "liberal" New York Times bravely parroted the party line that Terror Sways Elections, so when ours are suspended, Cheney can say "Look, it's not just me, it's in the New York Times!"

Regardless of how you feel about the "Black Tuesday" scenario outlined above, the important point is this:

If you're going with the opinion that Terror Sways Elections, you're basically stating that terror is an effective political tool. Is that the precedent you want to set?

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.

Simple: Humans take a while to get things right!

[Theovon]

The US independence on July 4, 1776. That was 228 years ago. Plus, at that time, there were simply fewer people. While I don't know what difficulties the US might have had with vote counting back then, the fact is that we've had over 200 years to get the paper-and-pencil method right.

Why? Humans are slow, and they don't think ahead. It takes a long time for people to figure out what's wrong with their methods, and they're slow to adopt changes to correct their problems.

Taking this into consideration, why should we be surprised that electronic voting doesn't work yet? OF COURSE they're going to screw it up! Even Diebold and their unethical behavior is par for the course.

You know how a lot of different kinds of software don't become "feature complete" until they've been around for about 10 years? I once read that in an article linked by slashdot (so it must be true *g*). Voting software isn't going to be any exception.

But feature completeness is only one part of the problem, especially when you have a system that (nearly) EVERYONE wants to hack. Computer security has been a problem for a very long time, and it doesn't look like it's going to get solved any time soon. We probably need another 50 years before things get figured out. Buffer overflows are only the focus of THIS decade -- once that's dealt with, who knows what's next.

So don't sweat it. The simple fact is that we'll be lucky if our grand children (if we're in our 20's) see reasonably good electronic voting machines. That's just the result of the way technology moves when humans are involved.

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?

[demachina]

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. "

Indian vote hardly comparable

[Safety Cap]

India just put six hundred million voters through an all-electronic election.

They DID NOT use a Diebold-based evm. The Indian evms were much simpler, less expensive, and more robust than the Diebold versions---the way one would expect when conducting a mission critical task, such as deciding the fate of a country.

Fraud

[deanj]

This should scare everyone, no matter what their political affiliation.

There's going to be voter fraud BIG TIME this election, and paperless voting will only help that happening.

I seriously think we're going to end up with precincts that people not eligible to vote voting anyway, people voting multiple times, people buying votes, polls being left open HOURS longer than they were supposed to (judge in the pocket, get him to rule for you... Hey! Throw an election your way!)

OK, that's not much of a stretch. Those things happened in Florida, Missouri and Wisconsin last national election.

How many convictions did you hear about because those things? None.

This is gonna get a lot worse before it gets better, and there had better be some serious jail time for the people who are doing this stuff or it'll be impossible to hold an election.

I seriously think we're going to hear about precincts that end up with more votes than actual registered voters.

Best of both worlds

[hotspotbloc]

What is so wrong with "bubble sheets"? As I see 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. =)

code to voting machines, how hard?

[SQLz]

How hard can it be to write voting software that increments a number by 1. I mean, a damn computer can increment a number pretty fucking well, don't you think? I'm a programmer and it boggles my mind the Linux kernel could be written in a distributed manner by developers around the world but DieBold can write a program to increment a fucking number by 1.