Florida Ruling May Lead To E-voting Paper Trail

dorkus123 points out this Palm Beach Post story which begins "An administrative law judge over-ruled an administrative decision Friday that the 15 counties that use touch-screen voting systems must be able to perform manual recounts in extremely close elections." Prior to this, counties using touch-screen voting were exempt from a requirement requiring that certified voting machines be amenable to manual recounts. wierzpio adds a link to the AP's similar story.

Comments

Stupid

[roman_mir]

The point is simple, you either trust the system to work properly or you don't. Requiring a paper output does not meant that this paper is true and in principle paper means nothing. Just look at the farce that happened in 2000 with Bush in Florida.

Re:Stupid

[josecanuc]

The paper trail is not best implemented as a "Receipt" for voting, as that denies anonymity and allows coercion.

The right way for paper-backed electronic voting to take place is to have the electronic system present an easy-to-use interface, which can be adapted on-the-fly for various limitations in voters (deaf, blind, unable to grasp objects, etc.). Have that interface be the way to vote. Then print the ballot out on a strip of paper and give that paper to the voter. The voter then walks to the ballot box and places the ballot in, just like we do now.

This eliminates ambiguity in deciding whether a particular ballot is valid or invalid, since the ballot would have a clear indication of the voters' intents.

Sure you can also get a quick, accurate count from the aper-ballot-printing machines, but if you want to do a "Recount", then there aren't any ballots for corrupt or inept voting officials to declare as invalid.

Re:Stupid

[defile]

How is a laser printed reciept placed in a secure box any different than a punched card or marked paper slip placed in a secure box?

In theory, it should be impossible to create an invalid paper receipt.

Compare to hanging chads or someone who checked more than a check only one box.

Re:Stupid

[josecanuc]

It's different because the computer operating the laser-printed ballot will not allow two names for the same office to be printed, or whatever way is used to indicate a vote for a candidate will not be allowed to happen twice for one position.

If the ballot does come out with "votes" for more than one candidate, the voter can see that and show the election officials to have the problem taken care of.

In this way, any question of election results is far less ambiguous. Those who say that e-voting's purpose is the quicker result are missing the point and appear to not understand that computers cannot be trusted because you cannot "see" they way they work. This is important to fair elections: voters must know that their vote is handled properly.

Re:Stupid

[vsprintf]

The point is simple, you either trust the system to work properly or you don't.

Sure it's simple. I don't trust the black-box voting machines. How many problems have to be reported before people finally realize these machines are not perfect? The paper trail means there is a fallback position when things go wrong.

Just look at the farce that happened in 2000 with Bush in Florida.

As I pointed out in a comment above, the Diebold machines in one Florida county returned a negative number for one candidate during that election.

Re:Stupid

[Audacious]

Actually a receipt does not deny anonymity. If the receipt is one of the new bar codes (;-) Just joking!) (like used by UPS and FedEx with the square with the dots in it), then if someone goes into a booth, votes, and then gets a barcoded receipt the receipt could have all of their choices on it along with their number (if wanted) or not.

The thing is - no system is failure proof. In the matter of paper receipts someone could print up hundreds of invalid ballots and stuff the ballot box with them after they go into the booth. With electronics - you just need a way to muck up the program or hardware. And yes - people really do try to do these things.

Even systems where a paper receipt is printed and then the person has to drop the receipt into a box in front of someone else can be tampered with. If both people are in on doing this then the person dropping the ballot drops multiple ballots and the other person verifies that they only dropped one ballot into the box.

The only way I know of to stop people from trying to muck up an election is to have cameras broadcasting everyone doing their thing across the entire nation, at the same time, and the video be recorded at multiple locations. But even then someone could tamper with the broadcast and what about anonymity?

So, in the long run, you want something which can record things in two or three ways: Electronically, paper which is readable by a computer, and paper which is readable by a person.

That is to say: Have a voting booth which has a machine in it (whatever kind you want) which creates a paper ticket. The paper ticket has both a readable copy of the voting as well as a machine readable copy (ie: An itemized list and a barcode of the itemized list). The machine works by tallying the votes and printing the receipts (which can then be checked by the voter against what they wanted to vote for/against). The ballot is then taken over to a lock box and dropped in it by the voter. If there is a problem with the election or a recount must be done, then each ballot can be read into another machine which scans the ballot's barcode and displays that information onto a screen. The information displayed is reviewed against the printed itemized list and, if there is a problem (ie: Itemized List doesn't match the Barcoded List) - then you know there is a problem with the voting machine. If there are enough mistakes, then you have to have a re-election to deal with the problem and the machine's vendor.

That's my $0.02 worth.

Paper receipt?

[mOoZik]

Why would it be so damn hard for the e-voting machines to print out a receipt after a person votes - a receipt that is retained by the states? The whole point of e-voting is ease of use - maybe even cheaper deployment. But why would it be so hard to implement such a system...or is it all politics & big business?

Re:bull

[schneidafunk]

you can steal the election by the machines. Imagine one corrupt official (not that unrealistic) who changes the votes after the election is complete. How would you know there was voter fraud with the current electonic voting machines?

Re:bull

[Catbeller]

The humans added no error in the 2000 recount. The Republicans spawned numerous 527 groups that stormed the cable talkers and the courtrooms to insist that a recount was impossible; they were lying little @$%*&ers. There was a Bush called recount in the southwest at the same time as the Florda recount. There was no dispute there, only in Jeb's state.
The recount, once it was finally permitted to commence by the courts, went off without a hitch and was almost finished when the Supreme Court stopped everything. They had two readers per card, one from each side, and both had to agree before the vote was counted. It was foolproof, it was working, and they were on track to finish in 48 hours or less before Bush's men in the SCOTUS stopped the election.

Florida's lotto machines..

[itomato]

Florida has had nearly the same machines spitting out the same paper lottery ticket, keeping the same journal, uploading each set of digits scanned from the same "blacken in the circle" forms for nearly * 15 FUCKING YEARS *

Change the firmware, repurpose some hardware, and give us a goddamned voting system with some EQUALLY STRINGENT ACCOUNTING

This process has been carried out billions of times by now, and you'd think that they'd try to utilize some of the expertise accumulated through so many, many, many, many, many drawings (like mini-elections themselves.)

This is important: -------------------

Q. Who audits the Lottery?

A. Florida law requires a variety of strict audits and controls, and the Florida Lottery enjoys the distinction of being the most audited agency in Florida state government. The Lottery, unlike any other state agency, must submit detailed monthly financial statements to the Governor, Treasurer and the Legislature disclosing all Lottery revenues and expenses. In addition to the Lottery Inspector General's internal auditing procedures:

* The Legislative Auditing Committee contracts with an independent accounting firm to conduct an annual financial audit.
* The State Auditor General may at any time audit any phase of Lottery operations.
* A comprehensive security audit must be conducted at least every two years.
* An independent certified public accounting firm witnesses each Lottery drawing to certify the official winning numbers for the drawing.

Re:bull

[vsprintf]

If the correct count is close (i.e. a human would be likely to get it wrong), then we bring in the humans to add error. So yeah, stealing the election...but not by the machines.

During the 2000 election, the Diebold machines in Florida's Volusia County returned negative 16,022 votes for one candidate. Obviously those infallible machines were right, and we wouldn't want to introduce human error by having a recount.

first hand encounter

[jsm008us]

Well, since the Palm Beach Post is my local newspaper (yay!) and I have seen the butterfly ballots and touch-screen voting, I find all of this confusing! If you "evote" and only certain counties use paper trail, will the rest be "oh well, nevermind the votes, just make em all for Bush!"? Why is it only in Florida? I think it's the old people here (who drive at 10mph on all roads)!

Computing Architecture

[gorehog]

Can anyone explain to me why all the e-voting solutions are based on the Von Neumann architecture? This architecture is specifies reusable multi purpose computers. We could simply enough increase the security of voting machines if we built a computing solution specifically for the task, one whose logic could be implemented at the board level, one whose tallying would not be so dependent on easily modified and rewriteable memory.

eVoting and ATMs

[jd0g85]

Someone enlighten me: do ATMs leave paper trails?
Seems to me that ATMs work flawlessly. Perhaps we should be inspired by the simple but powerful ATM.

If an ATM screws up, someone is probably out a lot of money.
If eVoting screws up, we get the wrong idiot in the Whitehouse, a erroneous war, and taxpayers are out a lot of money.

The same care that went into designing ATMS should be utilized in designing touch screen voting. Our voting systems should probably be built from the ground up with only one purpose in mind. Basing your software on a fallible OS (*cough* Windows *cough*) is foolhardy.

Our current voting machines and ATMs had to stand up to scrutiny before they were implemented. Rushing to implement a new system by an arbitrary deadline is asking for trouble. Let these machines prove themselves, then legislate their implementation.

I hope a trail is forced in other states...

[mgoodman]

...like Maryland. E-voting without a paper trail is total crap.

And closed source e-voting is even stupider. Public systems that are the basis of our freakin' democracy (or constitution-based federal republic; strong democratic tradition; whatever you want to call it) should be available for everyone to see.

Re:Keep it simple

[caitsith01]

The historic problem with this approach is also accountability - ballot stuffing (i.e. putting lots of extra paper ballots in the box) has always been a problem with paper ballots. If there are a suspicious number of votes in the box, how do you tell who put the extras in, which candidate they were voting for, etc?

There is a bit of info on this page about the problem. The parties used to actually force people to vote on coloured paper depending on who they were supporting, and they made the ballot box transparent - so they could always tell who you were voting for! Of course, if all the officials at a particular voting station were corrupt, then practically anything could happen.

And, while I agree that without the correct technology paper voting as it is used in the UK and Australia is a much better plan, it's not as though the British system hasn't been the home of massive electoral fraud over the years. Blackadder probably sums it up pretty well:

Political Commentator: And now it's time, I think, for a result, and tension is running very high here. Mr. Blackadder assures me that this will be the first honest vote ever in a rotten borough. And I think we all hope for a result which reflects the real needs of the constituency. And behind me...yes, I can just see the Returning Officer moving to the front of the platform.

Blackadder: As the Acting Returning Officer of Dunny-on-the-World...

Commentator: The acting Returning Officer, Mr. E. Blackadder, of course. And we're all very grateful, indeed, that he stepped in at the last minute, when the previous Returning Officer accidently brutally stabbed himself in the stomach while shaving.

Blackadder: I now announce the number of votes cast as follows: Brigadier General Horace Bolsom...

Commentator: Cheap-Royalty-White-Rat-Catching-And-Safe-Sewage-R esidents Party...

Blackadder: No votes.

Blackadder: Ivor Jest-ye-not-madam Biggun...

Commentator: Standing-At-The-Back-Dressed-Stupidly-And-Looking- Stupid Party...

Blackadder: No votes.

Blackadder: Pitt, the Even Younger...

Commantator: Whig...

Blackadder: No votes.

Commentator: Oh, there's a shock.

(Pitt the Even Younger turns to his mum and cries)

Blackadder: Mr. S. Baldrick...

Commentator: Adder Party...

Blackadder: Sixteen thousand, four hundred, and seventy-two.

(Cheers are heard.)

...

Commentator: And now, finally, a word with the man who is at the center of this bi- election mystery: the voter himself. And his name is Mr. E. Bla-- Mr. Blackadder, *you* are the only voter in this rotten borough...?

Blackadder: Yes, that's right.

Commentator: How long have you lived in this constituency?

Blackadder: Since Wednesday morning. I took over the previous electorate when he, very sadly, accidently brutally cut his head off while combing his hair.

Commentator: One voter; 16,472 votes. A slight anomaly...?

Blackadder: Not really -- you see, Baldrick may look like a monkey who's been put in a suit and then strategically shaved, but he is a brilliant politician. The number of votes I cast is simply a reflection of how firmly I believe in his policies.

Re:bull

[Anonymous Coward]

For the presidential election, you can only vote in one place. But is there anything wrong with them voting for the NY and local government in NY and the Florida and local government in Florida?