Researchers And Registrars Debate E-Voting

Paper Trail writes "There's a fascinating discussion going on right now over at SiliconValley.com. A group of computer scientists, journalists, voting activists, and county registrars are discussing the e-voting mess in an online forum that runs all this week. The panel is a who's who of e-voting: Avi Rubin, David Dill, David Jefferson, and registrars from San Bernadino and Riverside, CA. They've even got Scott Ritchie from the Open Vote Foundation. The question they're hoping to answer: "What's your assessment of the risks related to the use of electronic voting machines -- in the areas of verifiable voting, errors, recounts and manipulation -- not in the computer lab, but in a real-world setting? And how do those risks compare with current voting systems and other low-tech options?""

Comments

said it before -- I'll say it again

[Shakrai]

Would somebody please tell me what exactly is wrong with the lever operated mechanical machines still largely used in my state (New York)? The machines are sealed and verified by comparing counter numbers that are tamper-obvious. At the end of the voting day the machine is sealed by the poll workers who write the numbers down and send them to the Board of Elections, who later collects the machine itself.

They are next to impossible to tamper with (it would be glaringly obvious), they work if the electric fails (try that with your touch screen), they keep voters from overvoting just as effectively as a touchscreen does and at the end of the day they can be tallied in a few minutes. What is so wrong with the concept behind these machines that we need to all rush out and buy touchscreen systems? What advantage does a touchscreen offer? It is a closed-source solution that's infinitely easier to rig then a mechanical counting system.

Isn't this one case where we don't need to reinvent the wheel people?

Re:said it before -- I'll say it again

[Orgazmus]

You just raised the most important issue about evoting. Why the hell should we use them?

Re:said it before -- I'll say it again

[garcia]

What is so wrong with the concept behind these machines that we need to all rush out and buy touchscreen systems? What advantage does a touchscreen offer? It is a closed-source solution that's infinitely easier to rig then a mechanical counting system.

People want pretty colors and instantaneous stats. People don't want to worry about counting and recounting. People want to have the voting booth be available in 1000 different languages. People want to have their tax money spent on something that is ever-changing.

I would prefer (and basically demand) that we keep our current voting mechanisms the same. Will they? No. But that's not really something that my single voice can stand against.

Re:said it before -- I'll say it again

[Shakrai]

People want pretty colors and instantaneous stats. People don't want to worry about counting and recounting. People want to have the voting booth be available in 1000 different languages. People want to have their tax money spent on something that is ever-changing.

You can get near instantaneous stats out of these machines. And what multiple languages do you need? They see the names of the people running -- if they don't know "George W. Bush" is running the President and not the local Assembly seat that's their problem. Besides (in NY anyway) any voter can be helped by anybody else except for a boss or union official. The poll workers themselves can even enter the booth with him provided you have one poll worker from each major political party enter the booth at the same time.

Re:said it before -- I'll say it again

[JUSTONEMORELATTE]

Ok, I'll start:

• They break, and spare parts are expensive since they're not in current production
• The numbers on the counters are manually recorded, then manually transferred to a central registrar. That's two places with human intervention, and opportunity for error or, more remotely, fraud
• The manual processing takes time, and like it or not, people want to know results sooner than the morning paper.

--
What would it take?

Re:said it before -- I'll say it again

[Anonymous Coward]

People want an instant result. Also, the IT industry has managed to convince the world that machines, unlike people, never make mistakes so an electronic vote tabulator would be more accurate.

Re:said it before -- I'll say it again

[garcia]

You can get near instantaneous stats out of these machines.

No, not like you can when you're watching Survivor or an NFL game. Remember that's what people want... Monday Night Football commentary with tickers. Flashing lights and shiny metal. Oooh.

And what multiple languages do you need? They see the names of the people running -- if they don't know "George W. Bush" is running the President and not the local Assembly seat that's their problem.

You have negated any credibility you might have had with that statement.

Re:said it before -- I'll say it again

[iplayfast]

Trust to mechanical (or electrical) things always involves trust of the person behind it. There is nothing wrong with your system, except that it might be possible for it to break down during an election without the operator (voters) knowing it.

Maintainence on these machines must be certified, etc.

Pen and paper (drawing an X in the appropriate square) have worked for years, but again trust is given to the people tallying the votes.

Your system to me sounds like a better solution then the touch screens. More easily verified as working. Less likely to fail through wear & tear. The advantage I can see for your machines is the speed of tallying the votes. (Which are done as the vote is cast).

Re:said it before -- I'll say it again

[Martin Blank]

I can give you some reasons. They're not necessarily good reasons, but they are reasons used.

1. Virtual elimination of mechanical breakdown. This can be an issue with some of the older equipment. It doesn't address the electronic systems breaking down or crashing, though.

2. Rapid collection of stats. This has less to do with anything useful and more to do with people getting impatient. In most cases, the results are pretty obvious within hours of the polls closing. In other cases, we get a little tension for a few days as things come down to the wire. (In still other cases, we get a lot of political infighting for the next four years.)

3. Standardization of interfaces. I've only seen one e-voting system, so I'm not entirely sure how possible this is, but it seems to me at least theoretically possible that the presented screen can be relatively standardized across a state, at least in terms of basic layout (since county- and city-specific issues will be different, of course).

Personally, I miss the lever system that I used for about ten years. The 'ka-chunk' feeling of the ballot being marked seemed to give a tactile and auditory sensation to the emotional satisfaction of having expressed my opinion.

Re:said it before -- I'll say it again

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, they can fail to rollover from 999 to 1,000 (or similar counts) because the machine requires additional leverage to turn all of the counter wheels (just like an old analog odometer), and if the parts are worn, there might not be enough force.

So it's easy for votes to be lost due to mechanical error.

Re:said it before -- I'll say it again

[abb3w]

Would somebody please tell me what exactly is wrong with the lever operated mechanical machines still largely used in my state (New York)?

My current state doesn't use them. I used to live in NY, so I'm familiar with those machines. They were excellent. A trivial update of the design could allow electronic reading of mechanical vote tallies, if anyone cared to, while still keeping the old "seal" method for recounts. They are substantially better than the punchcard methods (used locally prior to last years touch screen purchase) or the electronic scams^H^H^H^H^Hschemes being suggested (and currenlty in use locally).

And I would say they are MORE effective than the touch screens for preventing overvoting. They give tactile feedback; you try it, and you realize the lever can't move.

Re:said it before -- I'll say it again

[truthsearch]

People want pretty colors and instantaneous stats.

When they watch TV, not necessarily when they vote. People don't care if they vote by pulling a 20 year old lever. They only care that it's quick, easy, and counts.

The masses aren't screaming for computer graphics on the windshield to aid in driving or a drive-by-wire joystick. People experiment with it, but the flashy stuff isn't what people call for in practical situations.

And making it colorful won't get more people to vote. People aren't running to the polls to check out the computers.

Re:said it before -- I'll say it again

[Zeveck]

The advantage is not to the voters, but to the company supplying the new systems. There is a ridiculous amount of money to be made by reoutfitting the entire United States with new voting technologies.

Hell...look at Diebold. They made their voting machines without a confirmable printout. Why? Just about everything else they make (from ATMs to cash registers) has a confirmable printout. But hey...look at that...now they can get paid AGAIN to go "upgrade" all the faulty machines they've already deployed. And then they can get paid again to fix the "bugs" in the machines.

Even if that is a little too cynical for you, the fact remains that the companies bringing out the voting machines are making a lot of money.

It is up to those companies to convince the public that they need and want new voting machines. It doesn't matter whether the existing technology works - they'll focus on its flaws and potential abuses and tote their shiny new products as if they are sleek and bugfree.

Create a sense of fear and then offer a remedy that appears to address it. Works in business. Works in politics. Works in just about anything really.

Re:said it before -- I'll say it again

[jbarr]

I agree 100%. It seems that most of the responses to your post deal with nothing more than convenience in the form of quicker tabulation, quicker stats, etc. Where is it written that we have to have results instantly? Who is mandating that the results must be available within minutes or hours? We have become so reliant on instant feedback that anything less seems absurd. Maybe it's time to step back from the wiz-bang world of high-technology and develop a voting system that really works. So what if "the best" solution ends up taking some extra time to validate and tabulate the results. I would certainly embrace the extra time it would take for sake of secure, reliable, accurate results.

Re:said it before -- I'll say it again

[Shakrai]

They break, and spare parts are expensive since they're not in current production

Then put them back into production. And if they go out of production what do you suppose is cheaper? To contract some local guy in a machine shop to make a part or contract some coder to try and figure out a closed source system because you needed a replacement part and it broke something?

The numbers on the counters are manually recorded, then manually transferred to a central registrar. That's two places with human intervention, and opportunity for error or, more remotely, fraud

They are phoned into the Board of Elections by the poll workers (at least one from each party) after the polls close. This isn't the "certified" tally but it's the one that is released to the news media for the nightly news/morning papers. Once the Board of Elections receives the machine back they open it up (again with a supervisor from both political parties present) and certify the tally. With at least two people doing every task the odds of error are small -- and fraud is damn near impossible.

The manual processing takes time, and like it or not, people want to know results sooner than the morning paper.

This is why you have the unofficial count from the poll workers and the later certified results. Electronic touchscreen systems will not change this. The count isn't "official and certified" until they manually count the absentee and challenge ballots.

And as far as fraud goes -- which system do you trust more? The system that relies on two public servants sworn to uphold a scared trust or the system that relies on private vendor companies with lovely quotes like "I'm committed to delivering Ohio's electoral votes to the President". This is a no brainer people.

Re:said it before -- I'll say it again

[The Angry Mick]

And I'll add one often overlooked:

It was hard for some older folks to simply pull the lever.

Re:said it before -- I'll say it again

[Shakrai]

So it's easy for votes to be lost due to mechanical error.

I could say the same thing about a touchscreen system that suffered a hard drive or non-violate memory failure. Even if you use top of the line name brand components (think Diebold is doing that?) think about a large enterprise network -- how many hard drives will fail when you start taking about thousands of systems? Now expand that scale to tens of thousands of voting machines and you start to see the problem.

Any election system we use (electronic or mechanical) needs to be inspected and tested prior to the election. To blindly suggest that these machines will suffer a breakdown without pointing out measures taken to prevent this scenario is just spreading FUD.

Re:said it before -- I'll say it again

[Pxtl]

Lever? Hell, Canada has done just fine with a friggin' X on a paper ballot, thanks.

Re:said it before -- I'll say it again

[Ratso Baggins]

I agree on the in general except on the time issue. We just had an election, entirely paper. The polls closed at 6pm and it was evident who had won by 8pm.

So what if it took a week, it's not like anyone is advocating Citizen's Initiated Referenda where you could vote as often as monthly?

When there are institutional problems in the system like grey money or low voter turnout, complaining that the most accountable process is expensive and time consuming is very irresponsible for both the citizens and politicians in a democracy.

Re:said it before -- I'll say it again

[jbarr]

No, not like you can when you're watching Survivor or an NFL game. Remember that's what people want... Monday Night Football commentary with tickers. Flashing lights and shiny metal. Oooh.

I want to know who these "people" are. Personally, I would give up all of those bells & whistles for a system that is reliable, accurate, and fraud-resistent. Certainly, the integrity of the election process is more important than marketing fluff.

"And what multiple languages do you need? They see the names of the people running -- if they don't know "George W. Bush" is running the President and not the local Assembly seat that's their problem."

You have negated any credibility you might have had with that statement.

I disagree with your dismissal of his credibility. There are four years between national elections, and people have ample time to become informed. We need to develop a voting process that strikes a balance between reasonable accessibility and over-accommodation. Removing personal responsibility is definitely not the answer.

The most important thing in my eyes is to develop an election system that is reliable, effective, and virtually unchallengable (ie: the results are reliable enough that a challenge of fraud becomes virtually unnecessary.) Our current system is so screwed up, so in flux, so susceptible to lawsuits, so prone to varied interpretation that it invites challenge and fraud. One huge problem is that people in general are unwilling to accept a registration and validation process that would provide accurate votor validation. We can come up with all the latest and greatest systems, but unless we can accurately and reliably validate votors, the system WILL break down.

Re:said it before -- I'll say it again

[Saltine Cracker]

Here's a thought...
Why don't we enact legislation to pay 5 year olds in Asian sweatshops to to make new voting machines for us.

Secondly, one thing I don't think we need is instantaneous vote tallies. It's already bad enough that the press can sway election result by reporting on the east coast evening news that so and so candidate is winning the election while polling places on the west coast still have 3-4 hours of voting time left. I think this could be a real issue if the press can base their predictions off of real numbers, not exit polls.

Re:said it before -- I'll say it again

[Anonymous Coward]

Once the Board of Elections receives the machine back they open it up (again with a supervisor from both political parties present) and certify the tally.

Stupid me. I forget that there are only two political parties. Then it's all good.

Re:said it before -- I'll say it again

[ryanvm]

[...] the system that relies on private vendor companies with lovely quotes like "I'm committed to delivering Ohio's electoral votes to the President"

First, let me state that I think electronic voting in its current form is horribly broken. The best solution is a paper printout that gets deposited in a lockbox before the voter leaves.

That said - I am so sick of hearing the above quote bandied about as though it unmasks some voting conspiracy. Let's go over this one more time for the slow kids:

Whoever wins the election will be the president, right? (Save the Supreme Court jokes.) Therefore whatever machine is used to vote will be delivering votes to the president. Whether the president is Kerry or Bush, that statement still holds true.

Do you really think that anyone would be so foolish as to confess voting fraud in a public speech? I'll grant you it could have been worded more clearly, but there is nothing illicit about that quote.

Re:said it before -- I'll say it again

[Anonymous Coward]

How is it that one can say something like "both political parties" as if they're codified in the Constitution somehow and STILL think the political process is fair and working as intended?

Re:said it before -- I'll say it again

[SandiConoverJones]

I live in a backward county that still uses paper and pencil ballots. When I watch the news on election night, our precincts have a greater percentage of the people voting than other parts of the area, and our results are always in promptly.

I can see on my ballot exactly where I marked. They use ebony pencils, which do not erase gracefully, so a poll employee would have to work hard to even have a potential of erasing and revoting my ballot. (If a voter does make an error, they can go to a poll worker to have the ballot voided, and have a new one issued, and they'll check off a new serial number)

This is a technology that works, and I have heard of far fewer challenges in the pencil ballot areas than in the punch card or lever areas.

Right now my state is airing comercials for the people in the punch card areas, teaching them how to look at their ballots when they are done. I wonder what that cost.

I most certainly don't want e-voting. That is just too bloody easy to tamper with. Yeah, can you see it now, run it on Windows CE! LOL! Insert a virus that changes all votes to George McGovern!

Re:said it before -- I'll say it again

[Detritus]

They can, and have been, rigged. I've heard stories about people intentionally jamming selected gears to reduce the vote count for the opposition. Any machine can be rigged given enough time, money and motivation. Seals can be removed and replaced. Counters can be misread. Independent observers can be bribed, intimidated, or physically kept out of the area where the fraud is being perpetrated.

Re:said it before -- I'll say it again

[Joe Tex]

How bout this (All this is pedicated on the E-voting stuff to be handled correctly)

- Verification of ballot - no invalid ballots
- Context sensitive help, less confusion
- Possibility of more advance voting methods (condorcet, IRV, etc)

Re:said it before -- I'll say it again

[gphinch]

Pen and paper have worked for years

you obviously were abducted by aliens while the last presidential election was happening

Re:said it before -- I'll say it again

[Kwantus]

The numbers on the counters are manually recorded, then manually transferred to a central registrar. That's two places with human intervention, and opportunity for error or, more remotely, fraud

Amazing -- 'cause that's how we count ballots in Nova Scotia. I would never trust a machine to do a count. How we get around human intervention/error/fraud at the count:

There are at least four witnesses to the counting: the deputy returning officer and the poll clerk, who are nominated by the two leading parties, and at least two from the public (who are usually, but not necessarily, agents of two different candidates)

All the totals get printed in the newspapers so the witnesses can check their own poll and anyone can check the sums

Your system does nothing like that. Even where the ballots are counted by hand, all the numbers disappear into Voter News Service, which then reports what it wants. (I don't know what's replaced VNS. I understand it was dissolved after it so badly botched the con in 2000. It was a pretty secret society and its successor can be expected to be even more so.)

People want to know sooner than the morning paper

I REFUSE, as a voter, to buy into the horserace psychology. That's just hype created to get the whole scam over with and out of the news cycle. I want a proper count more than I want instant falsified results.

The results don't take effect for months; why the fuck the indecent hurry?

BTW all I get out of the forum anchor is "cyclic link". I guess konqi users are locked out >:(

Re:said it before -- I'll say it again

[2old2rockNroll]

It is up to those companies to convince the public that they need and want new voting machines.

While I agree with most of your comment, the companies don't need to convince the public. Congress mandated the change when they wanted to be seen *doing something* after the 2000 election, and they provided $4 billion to make it happen. Diebold and friends are in hog heaven.

Re:said it before -- I'll say it again

[clambake]

Would somebody please tell me what exactly is wrong with the lever operated mechanical machines still largely used in my state (New York)?

Well, for one, I won't be able to win by a landslide by promising to empty the entire US treasury into the bank accouts of the employees, investors and the families of the people involved with e-voting machines.

Re:said it before -- I'll say it again

[hacksoncode]

Well, err, because they have *exactly the same problems as touchscreen machines*???

There's no paper trail; in spite of what you say there's no easy way to determine whether multiple votes have been cast by the same person or by a poll worker; and there's no really easy way to verify that the mechanical system hasn't been hacked either (in case you're wondering, the insides of these things are incredibly arcanely complex).

Also, they aren't nearly as flexible, accessible to people with disabilities or who speak other languages (who otherwise have to give up the privacy of their vote or struggle significantly), or extensible to larger elections with many ballot initiatives (perhaps not a problem in NY).

Re:said it before -- I'll say it again

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not saying electronic voting is the better solution, but there are some advantages that I haven't seen mentioned here yet:
1. VOTER CONFIRMATION--voters get to see how their choices were recorded, and they are asked to confirm (this would have prevented people from accidentally voting for Buchanan)
2. DISPLAY FLEXIBILITY/ACCESSIBILITY--there are not the same space constraints for providing information. Text size could be adjusted for different users, and devices for allowing blind users to vote privately can be incorporated.

Re:said it before -- I'll say it again

[Anonymous Coward]

The potential problem:

USA = pwN3d, ph001

1eet h4x0r

Re:said it before -- I'll say it again

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you not understand the world you are living in? Bush can say Osama is no big deal, or even tell us that we went to iraq on false information. He can tell us that we recieved numerous detailed warnings in advance of 9/11, and NO ONE CARES.

They don't need to decieve people anymore. We're too stupid and complacent.

It may have meant something, battling green eyeshades, kennedy, WMD, turd blossom. It's all double speak.

"huh, well...diebold did say they would give bush ohio..."

Re:said it before -- I'll say it again

[swillden]

And as far as fraud goes -- which system do you trust more? The system that relies on two public servants sworn to uphold a scared trust or the system that relies on private vendor companies with lovely quotes like "I'm committed to delivering Ohio's electoral votes to the President". This is a no brainer people.

This question presents a false dichotomy.

The correct answer to the question is "Neither". We should trust no one to be in a position to manipulate our votes. That ideal may be unachievable, but with a completely transparent process, we can get very, very close.

Lots of people have said this before, but I'll say it again anyway. You want a good election system? Here's how:

• Use an electronic voting machine with a pretty, easy-to-use, easy-to-understand touch-screen interface. Big letters, big buttons, voice prompts (using headphones if needed), etc., so that everyone can use it, even if they're half blind, and even if they're not the sharpest knives in the drawer. Use all of the power of technology to make it accessible to all voters.
• When the voter has made all of his/her/its selections, and confirmed them, have the machine print a paper ballot that the voter can read. If you want to electronically tally votes, fine, do it. The paper ballots will allow recounts. If you want to automate recounts, fine, use an OCR-able font, or even print a 2-D barcode or similar containing the data. Make absolutely sure that there is a complete description of the voter's votes that can be read with only the Mark 1 Mod 0 eyeball, though.
• Have the voter drop the paper ballot into a locked steel box, watched by the polling volunteers, including representatives of the major parties.
• Transport, store and open the boxes only under the watchful eyes of party representatives and any interested citizen.
• Conduct recounts as needed, always in full view of anyone who cares to watch.

It's not hard. We *know* how to securely manage paper ballots, and everyone, no matter how technically clueless, or even technologically phobic, can understand paper ballots and see how the process assures their security.

Ink on paper is better than punched cards, it's better than mechanical counting machines and it's worlds better than purely electronic vote-counting systems.

Re:said it before -- I'll say it again

['nother poster]

"15,000 votes for the green party?!?! That can't be right." Said the Democratic representative scratching his arse. "You just wanna split them evenly between the two that count"?

"Sure," said the Repubican as he reached for another doughnut.

Re:said it before -- I'll say it again

[dahorowitz]

I was trained as a poll worker in NYC a few years ago (I was a student at the time, and had nothing better to do with a random Tuesday), but let me tell you, after going through the process, I have way less faith in the lever machines than I did as an innocent yet ignorant voter.

First off, as people pointed out above, the numbers are manually tallied at the end of the evening. The poll workers use a key to unlock the machine, and little windows appear with the individual tallies. These tallies are transcribed to a paper 'canvas,' and then transcribed again at the Board of Elections office. Granted, the voting machines are not reset until the election is certified, so it is possible to return to the source to review the count, but it is just as likely that an innocent error such as that caused by transposing two digits may never get caught.

More importantly, however, is that similar to touch screen voting, much of what happens with a lever machine during an election is of the Big Black Box variety. Beyond a master counter which is supposed to advance one count for every person who voted, there is really no way of knowing if the machine is functioning correctly. It is wholly possible that a counter for a particular candidate or ballot measure is malfunctioning, resulting in an undercount or overcount. More importantly, no individul record is kept of each vote (similar to the touch screen systems), so it is impossible to go back and 'recreate the voters intent' as you can with paper/optical scan systems.

Further, these machines are getting old and are notoriously unreliable. These machines jam somewhat frequently, and the 'official' method of clearing these jams is to force the red handle (the master voting control that unlocks/registers the votes for an individual voter) back and forth until the machine is operating normally. Of course, each time you do this, a new 'vote' is registered on the machine--presumably, it would be treated as a blank ballot, but once again, with the black box nature of the lever machines, one never is quite sure.

Finally, there is the people aspect. In NYC, there are so few registered Repulicans (particularly in Manhattan) that it is quite common practice for the Board of Elections to designate a Democrat as a 'Republican for the day.' In other words, a precinct that is supposed to have two Democratic and two Republican poll workers may end up having three Democrats and one Republican, or even four Democrats and no Republicans working!

Re:said it before -- I'll say it again

[CreatureComfort]

In my part of the country in addition to just elected positions, we tend to have a large number of ballot issues that need to be voted on. Thus you need to be able to read the description to know if you are voting on allowing a state income tax vs increasing the number of dog catchers allowed to communities under 5,000 population. It is required by law that we have at least english and spanish. In California, IIRC, by law they have a large number of languages that must be accomodated, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc. When they have to add State Constitutional questions, this can lead to very long and large ballots, with associated high printing costs. This is an issue that is addressed perfectly by electronic balloting. In addition, your solution of somebody helping the person disenfranchises anybody that really wants to cast a secret ballot. This is one of the big reasons that the disabled groups are so in favor of e-voting. Now a blind person can truly cast a secret ballot, and verify that the vote cast is what they intended. With traditional voting methods the disabled and those who only read (notice not speak) a foreign language are at the mercy of whoever is "assisting" them.

Re:said it before -- I'll say it again

[Robert The Coward]

You have never worked with one of those machines. I have. They aren't that "perfect".

"What is so wrong with the concept behind these machines that we need to all rush out and buy touchscreen systems? "

In concept nothing. Its realty that makes the difference hear. They are machines they breakdown on one election I was at the 1st 7 questions weren't counted on one machine as it failed to product any numbers when the machine was polled to get it data. Those vote might have been counted later but that night they weren't. They cost alot to build and mantain because they cost so much and only limited number or company can work on them making them hard to maintain. Also because of the cost there are limited number in any one area resulting in long lines in some sites if voter turnout is higher then the past. They are large and require alot of storage. That is what is wrong with them.

The touch screen system try and fix some of those issue just like those punch cards did until we find out how some area can mess up a rather simple system.

Re:said it before -- I'll say it again

[mdfst13]

You missed a step. After the paper ballot is printed, put it in whatever will be reading the ballot and verify that it is reading it the way that you expect. This ensures that the vote is understandable (and can count the votes so that the end of night count can be read off the reader).

Note that this step was what was missing from the problematic Florida ballots. No one ever verified that the vote was being read properly before the voter left. If they had, they would have caught both problems: votes that were indeterminate (due to hanging chads, etc.--these ballots should have been destroyed and replaced); and votes that were placed for Buchanan but meant for Gore.

Re:said it before -- I'll say it again

[Robert The Coward]

Yes but those machines talk to another machine that keeps a copy of the data the most you lose with a HD failiure will be one station. The person using the machine would have to go to another station to finish there vote. I have seen those machines fail more then once and don't think votes were counted on those machines as I know for a fact that it happened at least once.

Re:said it before -- I'll say it again

[Artifakt]

This illustrates one of the most important things for fixing the election process.

I'm an appointed poll officer again this November. As site supervisor, I get information on the primary voting records of the other workers at the site. This is regrettable, in that it intrudes on their privacy to tell me this information, but it's done so, in cases where voter assistance is needed, I can make sure two workers from opposite partys are assisting the disabled voter.
Right now, whenever, a volunteer can't make it for an election, Everyone involved has to scramble to find a replacement that doesn't imbalance the party affiliations. That means we have husband and wife teams, parent and child teams, or even the occasional case where several people are employed at the same location, working at the same polling places, because the risks of having a clique of some sorts from these sources is less than the problems of having all D's or R's. Some precincts tend to be heavily D or R, and volunteers tend to want to serve in their own precinct, if only so they can vote too. (Imagine having to choose to skip voting yourself becauser there's such a heavy turn out at the location where you are working you can't afford to get away for 30 minutes or so).
If you want fairer elections, there need to be enough people available so that all the cliques can be broken up. There need to be additional people volunteering to be poll watchers for the partys, and others checking various precinct's posted results for the local newspapers and radio stations (and more papers need to think like it's worth paying a reporter to check the numbers).
Sure, this points up other things that need fixed, like places where the local precinct results aren't posted for the local press, or places where the local radio stations are part of big national chains that have a decided disinterest in sending people out to check the local numbers, but those other problems are waiting on there being enough people involved as a start.

Re:said it before -- I'll say it again

[edrain]

1) I'm pretty sure people are voting for things other than the Presidency where the available options are not as immediately recognizable to a non-English speaker as 'George W. Bush' is. 2) Being informed is critical to the democratic process. Knowing English isn't. Failure to offer non-English balloting options is as potentially harmful to the process as Diebold is. Given how patriotic new citizens tend to be, it strikes me as a shame to exclude someone who recently arrived on our fair shores. That said, mechanical voting does seem to be the best option currently.

Re:said it before -- I'll say it again

[edrain]

Sophistry aside, that quote comes from a fund-raising letter that Walden O'Dell (CEO of Diebold) wrote on behalf of the Republican party.

While your reasoning holds up in a vacuum, a cursory glance at the context should make his meaning obvious.

On the other hand, it is possible that I have been trolled.

Re:said it before -- I'll say it again

[Anonymous Coward]

Pen and paper (drawing an X in the appropriate square) have worked for years, but again trust is given to the people tallying the votes.

Not where I come from:

Immediately after the close of the polling station, the deputy returning officer is to count the votes in the presence of the poll clerk and any candidates or their representatives who are present. If no candidates or representatives are present, at least two voters are to be in attendance. Tally sheets are to be provided to the poll clerk and to at least three of the other persons present.

(From Elections Canada website)

Re:said it before -- I'll say it again

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are talking about Florida, punched ballots and touch screen voting caused most of the issues.

The only real issue with pencil and paper ballots proved to be the lack of them when the machines failed.

Re:said it before -- I'll say it again

[swillden]

You missed a step. After the paper ballot is printed, put it in whatever will be reading the ballot and verify that it is reading it the way that you expect. This ensures that the vote is understandable (and can count the votes so that the end of night count can be read off the reader).

That's a reasonable thing to do, but it's not necessary. The authoritative version of the data is the human-readable portion of the printed ballot, so in that sense "whatever will be reading the ballot" *does* verify that it reads the way it should... and it's the voter who makes that verification, which is ideal.

If you want to automatically count the ballots it's a good idea to take a statistically significant random sample and verify that the human and machine-readable portions match, but that can be done after the fact.

Re:said it before -- I'll say it again

[ryanvm]

Hmmm - I thought it was a speech, but it looks like you're right. Regardless, I stand by my assertion that few people would be so foolish as to confess voting fraud in such a public manner (and I think it's been demonstrated that a fundraiser invitational is public).

The wording is slippery enough that the message could be interpreted either way. However, I think it hurts the anti-Bush cause (that's really what this is) when people choose the most outlandish and sensational intepretation and hand that out as a talking point everywhere they speak.

Re:said it before -- I'll say it again

[micheas]

. . . so it is impossible to go back and 'recreate the voters intent' as you can with paper/optical scan systems.

That assumes that voter intent is not regulated out of the process.

Most states have drawn up new laws for their electronic voting systems, and these laws tend to lean heavily on technical compliance with the law, and less so with what the voter intended.

Baum v.Arntz is a case that the Supreme Court may take. The director of elections in San Francisco threw out 14% of the votes for Terry Baum because while the voters wrote her name in, they failed to connect the arrow for the optical scanners.

The votes were tossed out based on the new law for the optical scanners, with any other voting system the votes would have counted (at least in California, as the laws currently are). Interestingly, if the voters that did not connect the arrows next to the name they wrote in had torn their ballots, an old section of the elections code that was not rewritten would have come into effect, and the ballots would have been counted.

The moral? The laws that are being implemented with these machines are even scarier than the machines.

Re:said it before -- I'll say it again

[mdfst13]

"The authoritative version of the data is the human-readable portion of the printed ballot, so in that sense "whatever will be reading the ballot" *does* verify that it reads the way it should.."

That doesn't guarantee that the official reader will read the ballot in the same way as the voter did. For example, the hanging chad issue was one where the voter thought the vote was going to be recorded in a certain way, but the actual vote was discarded as unreadable. "Human readable" is very vague. The main problem is that the voter knows what they want it to say and will just look for something that matches. The vote recorders are looking for a positive choice. The way to make sure that both are on the same page is to use feedback. Without that feedback, there will be confusion and discarded ballots.

Re:said it before -- I'll say it again

[swillden]

"Human readable" is very vague.

Sorry, I should have been more explicit.

What I meant by "human readable" is something like the following, printed in an easy-to-read font on the ballot:

Votes:
US President: Michael Badnarik (Libertarian)
US Senate: Gary R. Van Horn (Constitution)
US Cong. Dist. 1: Charles Johnston (Constitution)

There's no way for anyone to confuse the meaning of that.

Re:said it before -- I'll say it again

[iplayfast]

Yes, but you still have to trust that all the people present are not in colusion.

Damn

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a fascinating discussion going on right now over at SiliconValley.com

Not anymore. You should have atleast waited till the discussion was over. Cue all the trolls.

Don't be surprised if the new discussions includes FP, Frossttyy Pissy, GNAA, Troll your mama, Natalie Portman, grits and SCO is teh ghey!!! OMG. LOL!!

Oh, great.

[NightDragon]

Great..... Evoting.... just another thing that 13 year old kids can hack... "Oops, mommy, i didnt know that what i did would place 30,000 votes for nader!"

If we want truly verifiable voting

[Anonymous Coward]

Simply mark and remove a finger joint from each voter at the polls and after approximately 28 votes, you get a free pair of mittens.

Electronic voting machines aren't the problem

[Frequanaut]

It's the people who hate democracy:

See here for more

And yes, I know it's a partisan site, but it's just collecting news stories, look past the commentary.

Re:Electronic voting machines aren't the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

Flamebait?! Holy crap, who is modding this? While his comment may be a bit frothing, the link is frigging amazing.

Re:Electronic voting machines aren't the problem

[Frequanaut]

How is providing a list of stories concerning voter registration fraud moderated as flamebait? Moderation is screwed.

Re:Electronic voting machines aren't the problem

[Frequanaut]

It's not frothing. These are people actively trying to stop democracy.

Re:Electronic voting machines aren't the problem

[Detritus]

It's a very selective list. That might be grounds for considering it to be flamebait.

Re:Electronic voting machines aren't the problem

[Frequanaut]

The activities described in the stories are a federal crimes against Americans.

It doesn't matter if they're suppressing the registration of democrats, republicans, the greens or the one guy in the freaking Socialist Dog Ball Lickers Party of North Dakota.

For christs sake, just because a federal crime is committed against someone you have a political disagreement with does not make it ok. These are your fellow Americans. Do people hate their political opponents so much they're willing to destroy democracy and America to win?

What's the freaking point?

Do they see the irony of Americans being killed and maimed in Iraq to provide democracy for people who don't want it while attempting to kill and maim democracy for those people who wanted it enough over here to actually register?

Recounts?

[FatherKabral]

Has anyone forgotten what happened in Florida? Granted that recount was a great big cluster, but what happens if the data is lost? No paper copy means no recount...everyone would have to vote again, and that could mean changed votes, fewer votes, etc. If it ain't broke......

Re:Recounts?

[Skye16]

No, it doesn't mean they have to vote again. It means it goes through just as it is. Hence the reason the Supreme Court told Florida to stop the recount - they had to get on with things before January Something-Or-Other for when the Electoral College met and voted for the President. In essence, it comes down to "if you're not ready, tough titty". I don't like it, but that's the way they went with it.

Of course, I could be wrong in my assessment, so if I've piqued your interest enough, perhaps you could look it up and see if I'm right? :]

Saying things you aren't sure may not be admirable, but at least I'm pointing out that I could be wrong :]

Re:Recounts?

[abb3w]

they had to get on with things before January Something-Or-Other for when the Electoral College met and voted for the President.

Or, alternately, fail to certify the vote count, and not send ANY electors. Which would have caused a far bigger stink.

Re:Recounts?

[aminorex]

Actually, I don't think the Supreme Court had jurisdiction over that case. States decide their electors according to the rules and laws and whims of each state. For the federal government to adjudicate on those rules is antipathetic to the federal principle, and to the Constitution.

Re:Recounts?

[DigitalRaptor]

No, the Supreme Court didn't have jurisdiction. They were relied upon because Bush knew they would side with him.

There are specific federal laws governing elections, and more specifically the couting of military ballots. The law is, if they aren't in by a certain date, they aren't counted.

Bush and his people (namely his brother and Kathleen Harris) broke federal election laws and counted all military ballots, regardless of when they came in, to the tune of a +800 gain for Bush, pushing him over by 576 votes total.

Obey the existing laws (both state and federal) and Gore wone by nearly 300 votes.

Also said it before and saying it again

[pjt33]

Who needs a lever-operated machine when pencils are available? (I've been told before that US elections often involve casting about 20 ballots at once for everything from municipal dog-catcher to President, but I don't see how hole-punches make counting easier or quicker than with pencils).

Don't see what the fuss is about

[raitchison]

Even if the worst FUD claims of the anti electronic voting crowd are true electronic voting is no more vulnerable to tampering than paper ballot voting. Where ballots can (and are) lost (or "lost") and there are dozens of opportunities for workers to mess with or change things.

I've voted touchscreen twice and it was great, I got to vote in advance of election day (when it was convenient for me). Though there was a LOT of pressing "next page" for the CA Recall election to sort through the >100 candidates. :)

Like any new system it will no doubt have it's own issues that will need to be worked out. That's the price for progress.

What I'm waiting for is the opportunity to vote online.

Re:Don't see what the fuss is about

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, let's replace something that's comparitively cheap and simple with something that's expensive and complex.

That's always a recipe for success.

Re:Don't see what the fuss is about

[greechneb]

I think what we have here in our county is a nice system. It's similar to a scantron test. you color in your choices, and when you are done, it is fed in. If there is a problem, it spits it back out. At the end of the day, it prints out a total. The judges count the number of ballots to make sure it matches the number of ballots entered. If nothing is out of line, it only takes 30 minutes or so for them to balance at the end of the day, and then take the results in. It cut down the balancing time by nearly half. If there is a recount, the paper ballots still exist. Don't know who makes the machines though... probably diebold.

Re:Don't see what the fuss is about

[truthsearch]

Even if the worst FUD claims of the anti electronic voting crowd are true electronic voting is no more vulnerable to tampering than paper ballot voting.

Wrong. In most states there are multiple eyes on every ballot from the moment they're taken out of the box until they're counted and sealed. An all-electronic vote is not usually reviewed by multiple people. That's why in test runs thousands of fake extra votes are able to be counted. If every electronic vote was scrutinized the same as paper then they'd be roughly equally vulnerable, but they're not and probably never will be.

Re:Don't see what the fuss is about

[raitchison]

Really not meant to be flamebait but:

The horse and buggy were cheap and simple compared to early automobiles.

Pencil, paper & a sliderule were certianly cheap and simple compared to the first computers.

Newer is certianly not always better but it's most definitely not always worse.

Re:Don't see what the fuss is about

[pavon]

Even if the worst FUD claims of the anti electronic voting crowd are true electronic voting is no more vulnerable to tampering than paper ballot voting.

That is simply not true. With paper ballot voting the only people who can tamper with the ballots are the election officials, and members of all interested parties, observe the voting and tallying process. With some of these poorly implemented systems, anyone with internet access or access to the voting machine (any voter) could potentially hack and tamper with the voting results. This is not a theoretical concern either - there are proven vulnerabilities with these systems.

The lesser reason why your statement is incorrect is that with paper ballots, if fraud is suspected, you can at least go back and do some post mortem analysis of the election - recount the existing ballots, make sure that the number of people who signed in at a voting location is consistent with the number of existing ballots. With most of these electronic voting systems this is currently not an option (although it could be).

These complaints are not FUD, by any stretch of the imagination.

Re:Don't see what the fuss is about

[AnotherBlackHat]

Even if the worst FUD claims of the anti electronic voting crowd are true electronic voting is no more vulnerable to tampering than paper ballot voting.

There's at least one significant difference.

Fraud with paper ballots involves much larger numbers of people.

A single hacker could theoretically change every vote.

-- should you believe authority without question?

Re:Don't see what the fuss is about

[veg_all]

Wow, thanks. That was so convenient. After I read the first word of your reply I didn't have to read any further.

Re:Don't see what the fuss is about

[Kwantus]

Where ballots can (and are) lost (or "lost") and there are dozens of opportunities for workers to mess with or change things.

This is FUD. A paper count can at least be opened to the public and watched by whoever wants to see. There is no way to witness what goes on inside a sillycon chip.

I could never trust an "election" counted by machines. (Hard enough to trust people; but a black box spitting out Walden-"committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President"-O'Dell-alone-knows-what? I'm not yet that stupid.)

Re:Don't see what the fuss is about

[Len Budney]

What I'm waiting for is the opportunity to vote online.

So is everyone at FreeRepublic.com. Check out their "Freep the Ballot!" ads next election.

Re:Don't see what the fuss is about

[Anonymous Coward]

The point it that it hard to engage in systematic vote shifting on a mechanical system. You have to have a person or persons fiddle with EACH machine. Once the electronic machine data hits any sort of network, the data can be changed (possibly subtly) on many machines. Swinging a 1% vote on 1000 machines will be a lot harder to track than spotting a few mechanical machine outliers.

Re:Don't see what the fuss is about

[Daniel Dvorkin]

electronic voting is no more vulnerable to tampering than paper ballot voting

Please explain to me in detail how one person, exerting no more effort than is necessary to write a line or two of code, could alter several thousand (or million!) paper ballots at once.

Re:Don't see what the fuss is about

[Anonymous Coward]

You obviously forgot or don't know how LBJ got elected to the Senate in Texas.

The same thing happened in this year's Democratic Party primary in that part of South Texas. Boxes of 'lost' ballots for the losing candidate were suddenly 'found' during the recount, changing the outcome of the election.

Re:Don't see what the fuss is about

[Anonymous Coward]

To put it very bluntly you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.

I challenge you to devise a plausible scheme under the Canadian system where any single individual could materially affect a riding. (eg: cast or cause to be miscounted more than 100 ballots in a single riding). In turn, I maintain that it is possible for a single Diebold employee to invalidate *every* ballot cast on *every* Diebold machine in any given election. If it helps to convince you, I would happily lay out the sequence of steps, real world examples of the methods and possible motivations for doing so. All I ask is that you read some related threads and "Black Box Voting" first.

It's not the machines

[wombatmobile]

What's your assessment of the risks related to the use of electronic voting machines

The risks come not from electronicness or mechanization, but from the people who design evil systems and implement them in the name of democracy.

Vote From Home

[clinko]

Voting from a PC at home is a bad idea because it unfairly gives people with money a chance to vote easier than without.

I guess this is obvious, but had to be said.

Re:Vote From Home

[David_W]

Voting from a PC at home is a bad idea because it unfairly gives people with money a chance to vote easier than without.

Um, what's wrong with making it easier for someone (even if it's only a select group) to vote? If an online/at-home voting scheme were implemented, I doubt that central polling stations would be removed, so everyone would still have at least the same opportunity they previously had, plus those with computers at home have a greater opportunity. (In fact, arguably, by having home voting it makes it easier for those who don't have computers at home because the polling stations they would use would be less crowded.)

(Note to pedants: I'm only addressing this one point. Please resist the urge to reply to me telling me the 100 other things wrong with online voting, as I already know them. :))

Re:Vote From Home

[Trolling4Columbine]

No it didn't have to be said. The same could be argued, then, of people who have cars, or of people who can read/write, or a host of other conditions that you would argue that make it "easier" for one group to vote.

That said, voting from home is a TERRIBLE idea because of all the insecure points between a home PC and the vote database.

Re:Vote From Home

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is that an issue. In our Republic you have a right to vote. Poll taxes are illegal and its gernerally held that its illegal to do anything to make it harder for a certain group to vote but there is no reason it can't be made easier. Nobodies rights are being infringed if everyone with an internet connection could vote from home. There is no specificly identifiable group there that the law would be discriminating aginst, so long as all existing polling places remain open for the same hours they are now, it can not be claimed such an action would be intended to disadvantage a specific group, or advantage another, it would not violate equal protection. Now before you say but but but its wrong becase even though its not writen to its practice will disadvantage a certain group, consider that we allow all sorts of laws against panhandeling, use of parks after hours, restrictions on the ownership of shopping carts, etc. Clearly the practice of these things is more detrimental to a certain group (homeless people) and yet we don't say it violates equal protection becase the behaviors would be punished no matter who did the acts, it so happens that homeless tend to do them more.

Re:Vote From Home

[Anonymous Coward]

Voting from home is seductive, but suffers from the same flaws as a postal ballot - it's far too easy to rig.

If people vote in their homes, whether on paper, on their computers or whatever, it's trivial for people (husband/father/local party toughs/whoever) to make sure that they vote the "right" way. At the polling station, their independance in enforced, at least at the actual time of voting, so the vote is reasonably free.

Any move that allows people to vote in a less controlled situation for mere convenience is a threat to democracy.

People who are sick or on vacation so have postal votes are OK - there's sufficiently few of them to make organized influence difficult. Military postal votes are potentially a weakness, depending on the degree of anonymity offered to military voters. If a soldier is allowed to vote in sight of his fellows, or a superior, that's a source of influence and thus a flaw. Note that I have no idea how military ballots are actually conducted - is there anyone on duty abroad out there who would care to enlighten me?

Re:Vote From Home

[mefus]

The same could be argued, then, of people who have cars, or of people who can read/write, or a host of other conditions that you would argue that make it "easier" for one group to vote

That wouldn't be a valid argument, to say the problem is systemic so why shouldn't we exacerbate it. Sheesh.

Re:Vote From Home

[kelnos]

That's silly. Making it easier for some group of people to vote while leaving the status quo for the rest is not at all unfair. Now, if the proliferation of online voting caused there to be fewer physical polling locations such that some voters became disenfranchised, then sure, I'm with you. But adding an extra way of doing something that makes it easier for one group while not detracting from any other groups sounds like a great idea.

Having said that, I wouldn't trust a voting system that was available to the internet at-large without some guarantees about its un-crackability (which is generally impossible).

Re:Vote From Home

[radio_babylon]

Voting from a PC at home is a bad idea because it unfairly gives people with money a chance to vote easier than without.

personally, i think its a great idea for just that reason... in fact, id like to go old-school and say only landowners can vote... i find the idea that just anybody (non-felon, citizen, over 18) can walk up and influence the direction of the country to be absolutely horrific...

want to vote? no problem: buy a house. cant afford one? no problem: work harder, SAVE your damn money, get a better job. dont have the education to get a better job? no problem: get your ass educated. something in the way of your education (a brood of grubby kids, too damn lazy, too damn stupid, not enough time, too high, too drunk, too much time in jail, too fat to get out of the house, manic-depressive, ADHD, whatever)? tough titty said the kitty. no voting for you, so sorry so sad... just go back to whatever it is youre doing to waste your life and leave running the country to the people who actually have some skin in the game...

people like that are exactly the kind of people i DONT want deciding the direction of the country.

on the upside, people like that dont usually vote anyway... but the idea that they COULD just gives me nightmares...

Re:Vote From Home

[arodland]

That's not the argument. The argument is "it isn't a problem. But if you really want to think it is, why not rail against X, Y, Z, and T before you worry about Q which hardly matters? It might not solve the problem, but at least you'll stop bothering me for a while."

OT - re: cluster

[sczimme]

Another way to get around saying "cluster f**k" in polite company is to call it a "Charlie Foxtrot". Ex-military will probably recognize the term and most civilians will assume Charlie is a person. :-)

/yup, off-topic

Probably their association with Chicago

[Anonymous Coward]

Mechanical/lever machines are associated with the Kennedy voting fiasco in the 1960 race between Nixon and Kennedy.

Simplifying greatly, the people who tabulated the votes from the lever-operated machines were pro-Kennedy. Vote tabulation was done by opening the machine up, and reading numbers off a little odometer-style readout. When the numbers were written down, the Kennedy numbers were written as higher than the machine recorded, and the Nixon numbers as lower.

However, the Democrats weren't the only people rigging that election. Downstate Republicans did their share of double-voting, including many people from conservative St. Louis hopping across into Illinois to vote in that state, as well as their home state.

It is more vulnerable

[Anonymous Coward]

The fundamental difference is that paper ballots and other old school systems leave physical evidence.

There has been some degree of fraud in many paper ballot elections over the course of the nation.

Do you think the fraud will be decreased by removing physical evidence?

Re:It is more vulnerable

[mcwop]

Old school physical evidence can easily be destroyed - burn the ballots. Voting is insecure at several points, from not proving who you are, to purging voters from registration, to destroying votes, to tampering with electronic machines.

It could be made more tamper-proof, but remeber the government is running the show, and the governmentt is inept at many basic services it provides.

Scrutineering

[lpontiac]

Any layman can look over the shoulder of anybody doing anything with the current system, and know at a glance whether the work is being performed correctly.

I have a degree in computer science, and I can't look at an electronic voting system and see that it is working in the correct manner.

This is why I don't think electronic voting systems can ever replace a manual system.

Re:Scrutineering

[Ignignot]

So maybe instead of having people check how people are handling the votes, we should have programs checking how programs handle the vote. Instead of having your vote recorded by one program on one machine, have it recorded by 3 programs on 3 machines, all written by different companies / OSS or whatever. If they don't match up, then you have a problem.

Re:Scrutineering

[mefus]

That's true: the secrecy of the ballot has been extended to cover the tallying mechanism. Disaster.

That being said, if the system were open source and included some kind of hashing mechanism to verify the binary is a product of the certified code, and the certification rules for the hardware were more strictly obeyed, evoting could be plausible.

None of this is possible with Diebold, or ES&S, or whatever.

Re:Scrutineering

[mdfst13]

Open source is not the fix here. What if they replace the *entire* system with another binary that produces the same hash?

The problem is that these systems aren't auditable because there is no voter verified record. To fix this, you add a voter verified record (i.e. print out the ballot). If you have this record, you don't need to verify the machine. The record is sufficient.

Re:Scrutineering

[mefus]

What if they replace the *entire* system with another binary that produces the same hash?


I'm not arguing your other points here, but that is orders of magnitude harder than what's currently available, and virtually impossible in a validated system if validation is done correctly.

Re:Scrutineering

[natoochtoniket]

I have a Ph.D. in computer science. I have been researching methods for creating verifiably correct software for the past 25 years. Proving correctness is an incredibly hard problem, even for very simple programs written in well-defined programming languages.

Even if the entire source code for these voting systems were made public, I'm sure it would not be possible to prove that every vote will be recorded and counted correctly.

If it aint broke....

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

Our county uses optical scan ballots, and they work fine. They are fast to count. There is a physical backup that can be hand counted if need be. They require no fancy equipment and the polling place. And, if you can't figure out how to mark them correctly, you really are too stupid to have your vote counted.

I am totally at a loss to understand this rush to some sort of electronic voting. I regard voting as the one, true sacrament of citizenship. I have no problem with it taking a little bit of time. After lying to pollsters for months, the ritual of going into the booth and casting my secret ballot is very satisfying.

Remember, voters are citizens; all others are residents.

Re:If it aint broke....

[neonfrog]

Interesting tag. I could say that "taxpayers are citizens; all others are residents" and be equally as clever and as wrong as you are.

Voting gives you nothing over the rest of society. It gives YOU peace of mind that you were involved in your own way. I may choose to get my peace of mind by not voting. Neither of us gets a citizen "promotion" for our act. Your statment implies that you are entitled to something and I am not. I'm no constitutional expert so I'll let you tell me where it says that your point of view enhances your status in this country.

There are an infinity of reasons to not vote. All of them are valid forms of protected expression and therefore should be counted.

If I think NONE of the candidates are worthy of leading this country, and therefore choose not to vote, I am not a citizen? I'd argue I'm MORE of a citizen because I'm interested in the greater institution of the United States of America, not some guys who scraped up a few hundred million bucks this year to get on TV a lot.

If I feel that ANY of the candidates are equally capable and I'm really not interested in the few percentage swing in government that occurs during a single term, and therefore choose to not waste taxpayer's dollars by having someone count my vote, I lose rights? I shouldn't because I fully support the system that is designed to not make things get too crazy and be reversible every 4 years.

I pay taxes. Am I not afforded the COMPLETE rights of citizenry (including exercising free speech about the candidates) even if I don't vote? I damn well better 'cause I paid for them!

I don't pay taxes because my full-time job and life situation keep me below poverty level as defined by my government. I blame them. It's not just the candidates -- it's the whole system. I choose not to vote, and thereby exercise my constitutional right not to, so I can be in the MAJORITY of people expressing apathy with things as they are. I lose rights? I damn well better not since I paid for them in something stronger than $$$.

If I feel that putting forth a non-partisan website dedicated to educating voters about the power of voting and choose to not vote myself to maintain the true non-partisan-ness of my dialogue, I'm denied something?

If I just don't care because in general my life is okay and has never been affected by who is playing hide-the-sausage in the White House, and just don't feel like voting so that individual can feel more important for a few years, I'm somehow a reduced person?

It doesn't matter if I voted or not -- it is the President's job to have ALL the citizens' in mind when a decision is made that affects some of them. They don't get to ignore those who didn't vote for them and they don't get to ignore those that didn't vote at all.

All that being said, I like to think it is important to vote. I never have. I might this year for the first time ever. If I decide not to, you don't get to decide that I don't count.

Re:If it aint broke....

[Anonymous Coward]

I see voting as a civic duty. I don't ordinarily vote for the candidate I "like best" or really try to affect the short term outcome in any way. I vote for the parties and people that represent the direction that I want my country to take. The US lets about a million people run for president so to say "I don't like any of them" is pure BS. It says that you love everything exactly the way it is and I don't want anything to change or that you just smoked a big fatty and would rather watch Oprah.

Consider if you were one of the people behind the scenes. You make big donations to both parties so you can be assured that, regardless of whether Bush or Kerry gets in, you've got a seat on the gravy train. In this role, do you prefer it if lots of people vote or very few? Would you rather have protesters in the streets or in their living rooms?

Re:If it aint broke....

[neonfrog]

How you choose to vote is your business. You could vote for Nader because John Kerry's hair offends you and you want Kerry to lose.

My choosing not to vote is my business and I'm allowed to do that in this system of government. If I have any "civic duty" whatsoever, then it is to use the polls for an effective political purpose to further this great country. I have done that by not voting and telling people why I didn't vote.

When about half the country doesn't vote, the majority of the populace has just told you that they are not interested in the "lesser of two evils" or the "locked down two-party system." It is kind of unfair that the minority that likes that warped thing gets to beat their breast with pride and proclaim "civic duty fulfilled!" My voting for anyone in the current system does not allow me to fulfill my civic duty to use the polls for the betterment of this nation. I'll (not) vote and stay in the majority and let the message continue to sink in.

is that your final answer....

[Anonymous Coward]

it would be great if the machines said "is that your final answer"....i might get out and vote then, for now at least i can say "you can't blame me, i didn't vote"

Proxy Power!

[Anonymous Coward]

My workplace has been banned. My entire workplace ... for 3 weeks now. This is ridiculous. We have written to demand a full explanation for the reason, but in vain.

I'm using a proxy ... so I guess your heavy-handed tactics aren't all that effective in the end, eh?

Well, they are effective in annoying the crap out of me and dozens of other people. Aren't you proud?

Now I am submitting redundant stuff on your forum just because I am extremely pissed off on behalf of myself and my coworkers. I would be posting something worthwhile if I were calm, but I am not at present.

Reconsider your inane banning regulations now!

P.S. The MD5 of our SubnetID is "09f78530e96631543b1806ad71d8d840" ... now do something with that for Chrissake!

best typo ever.

[Anonymous Coward]

sworn to uphold a scared trust

Best... typo... EVER!

The big question

[darkstar949]

The touch-screen system do sound more convenient, however they lead to some major questions and issues that would need to be resolved. Namely the following -

What type of fail-safes does the touch-screen system have in case of system failure (i.e. Hard drive dies, power goes out, ect) in which you can quickly recover from something unexpected happening? My understanding is that the touch-screens in the booths feed the data into a central computer that tabulates the results, so what if something happens to that central computer (say the software crashes) and some of the data is lost - are those votes just flat out lost, or are they stored in more than one place.

Which leads to the next question - what is there to ensure that my vote is counted and is not 'replaced' with a vote for a different candidate? There are several places where the vote could be changed with out any real means of determining if that did in fact occur. With most of the current systems there is some way to tell if someone tried to tamper with the vote, but with these systems you have to pretty much trust the companies system.

In Alaska

[RealAlaskan]

In Alaska, we vote on bubble sheets. Fill in the oval next to the candidate you want (or dislike least). A machine reads the ballots and counts the votes, giving the instant, error-free [1] readout everyone says they want, and the bubblesheets are still there, to be audited at leisure. It seems like the best of both worlds.

It should be error-free, but, in our local election last week, the machines somehow managed to count 11 more ballots than were cast. That's where the paper ballots come in: they're human readable, and humans are auditing and handcounting them right now.

Anyone else hear about. . .

[smooth wombat]

the new electronic voting system developed by David Chaum? No? If you're reading /. no wonder! Stories of ontopic interest are rarely posted.

Here's the link to the Business 2.0 article talking about his new system which he claims is "the first electronic mechanism that ensures both integrity and privacy."

Re:Anyone else hear about. . .

[mdfst13]

Any system that allows you to verify your vote allows you to verify to a third party that you voted in a certain way. That is inherently bad, as it allows vote selling.

We don't need a complicated eVoting system. We need a system that has the voter verify that the vote counter is counting the vote correctly prior to storing the vote. That was the only problem in the Florida election: people thought that their votes were being cast in a different way than they actually were. Simply putting the ballot through a reader would have told the voter how the vote was actually to be cast. The vote could then be put in a locked box for later recounts (or destroyed if it did not match the voter's wishes).

Three examples

[wombatmobile]

Diebold, Diebold, and Diebold

Re:Three examples

[rts008]

Could not have said it any better than that!

One Word....

[Anonymous Coward]

...Scantron. Complete the arrow with the marker, you've got a paper trail and instant electronic tally's.

Anyone want to post some of the relevant parts?

[10111011110111011010]

Ahh, my old arch-enemy and perfect foil: Websense. Online forums are filtered here. Grrr!!!

Vote Early, Vote Often

[Doc Ruby]

The New York City Council has a Government Operations Committee hearing scheduled for Tuesday, 10/26/04 (two weeks from yesterday) on HAVA oversight. The Help America Vote Act was passed after the 2000 Florida election travesty, funding states to upgrade their voting equipment, registration procedures and pollworker training. This unprecedented handout of Federal money (every American taxpayer's money) to states is creating public hearings in practically every state, and most big cities, about electronic voting machines. If you post eVoting positions to Slashdot, put your mouth where your "Submit" button is, and go say something with your neighbors at a hearing, where it actually matters. Or just go lurk at a hearing anonymously - only cowards duck the chance to see important nuts and bolts of their communities in action.

As a person from SB county

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been through 3 ballot systems in 2 years...

Punch cards, which, despite the Florida "fiasco", seemed to work just fine for the 90% of people who could spell "clue." Also, the equipment was cheap and light enough that many small polling places could be had instead of one large center, which was nicer for people in that they could WALK to the polling place nearby and vote.

Optical bubble scan-ins which were the emergency "fix" to the punch card "problem"... Huge sheets, lots of complaints from people at the polling center about broken pens, and of course, the system they came up with to verify all this required one large polling place for all the workers, which now required a drive to reach. Also, it took about 30-40 minutes of line waiting to get to the booth to vote. I saw more than one couple just get tired of waiting ("Dinner is getting cold, lets go.") and walk off.

Finally, touch screens. Same problems of equipment and pollsters forcing a central polling place, but at least the line wait isn't nearly as long. Most voters are confused how the system works though, and it leads to a lot of uncertainty. The scancard they give you at the front table to start the process doesn't record your vote, just tells the machine your ID, so they throw the card into a bin afterwards to be reprogrammed, or sometimes just immediately reuse it. Lots of older people got pretty huffy when they thought their ballot was being thrown away. Oh well, at least where I was, they required a printer to be hooked up to each machine, and it printed out in a tape roll the record of what votes were being cast. Mind you they probably just threw the roll out, but the system to cover a paper recount was there.

Just as long as I'm writing the voting software

[NigelJohnstone]

"I've voted touchscreen twice and it was great, "

Playing devils advocate: I could write an easter egg into the software, so that when I come along to the voting booth, I tap my finger on the screen in a few special unmarked places, and that machine then favours my chosen candidate.

Tell a few of my friends and we could easily do that with all the machines in a swing state.

The pre-checks wouldn't pick it up, the random machines taken out for testing wouldn't show the problem (because I wouldn't be activating my easter egg on those machines).

Whoever writes the voting software controls the election without the paper trail.

Its fine to make unauditable voting machines, just as long as I'm writing the software. :)

Re:Just as long as I'm writing the voting software

[raitchison]

This makes the IMO unreasonable assumption that a single individual writes code for the machines without any checks or oversight by at least one other person, and that the malicious coder is willing to become a fugitive or go to jail when (not if) the easter egg is discovered.

The same type of scenario applied to paper ballots would have one person drive the ballots from the polling place with no escort or other checks where they could easily drop one of the boxes in a dumpster on the way if they know the precinct doesn't favor their candidate/party.

Make no mistake, I'm in no way suggesting that electronic voting should be free from scrutiny and believe that every effort should be made to ensure the integrity of the votes but if we wait until all the bugs are worked out of the system before we start using it we will never find out what the bugs are in order to fix them.

It seems to me that electronic voting not only holds the promise of reducing election fraud (or error) to a tiny fraction of what we have seen in the past but doing so while making voting more convenient and accessible for the voting public.

I'm personally distrustful of paper records as they rely on humans to read and interpet them so I'd prefer something like a smart card ballot record, one for each voter, that the machine spits out after you vote. These could be used for recounts or other audits. You could easily verify the integrity of the smart card data with a separate device or program inside the machine, designed by a different group/company that read the card and compared it to what the voting machine held in memory.

I have yet to see any evidence from any of the critics showing that even voting machines with no paper trail are any less secure than paper ballots in real world scenarios.

Re:Just as long as I'm writing the voting software

[BobaFett]

This makes the IMO unreasonable assumption that a single individual writes code for the machines without any checks or oversight by at least one other person, and that the malicious coder is willing to become a fugitive or go to jail when (not if) the easter egg is discovered.

Not really, it makes the assumption that after the code is written by many individuals, there is a single individual with the power to alter it. I think this assumption is fairly reasonable. Sure, this individual is probably not a regular programmer who logs in at the last second and hacks some code, although, if security procedures in the company are lax, even this is possible. But someone with enough authority could do it:

"Attention headcount, CEO speaking. Everyone clear the building, we're about to load the voting machines with our security-audited verified code onto the armored truck and ship them under guard to the polls. Building clear? Yes? Good, let me just replace the flash chip in the machine with this one in my pocket... done. Now haul them away!" :)

As far as the penalty argument, if it didn't work on CEO of Enron why do you expect it to work on CEO of Diebold?

Re:Just as long as I'm writing the voting software

[2old2rockNroll]

I have yet to see any evidence from any of the critics showing that even voting machines with no paper trail are any less secure than paper ballots in real world scenarios.

During all these discussions, you've never made it to http://blackboxvoting.org/? I consider machines that let real votes disappear to be pretty insecure.

Re:Just as long as I'm writing the voting software

[raitchison]

During all these discussions, you've never made it to http://blackboxvoting.org/ [blackboxvoting.org]? I consider machines that let real votes disappear to be pretty insecure.

OK I just spent a good deal of time reading that site and even reading about the chimpanzee and the GEMS software and the elections officials in Riverside country I'll still stick by my original statement:

I have yet to see any evidence from any of the critics showing that even voting machines with no paper trail are any less secure than paper ballots in real world scenarios.

Notice the bolded parts. Even if someone were to "melt down an entire election" (and get themselves thrown into a federal pound me in the ass prison) using back doors and 6 lines of VB script there's still the memory in the voting machines to go back to.

Are these systems perfect? Heck no. Are they more flawed than paper ballots? Not by a longshot IMO.

FTR you can mod this down as flamebait if you want but as I was reading that site the whole notion of tinfoil hats kept coming to mind.

Re:Just as long as I'm writing the voting software

[Anonymous Coward]

This makes the IMO unreasonable assumption that a single individual writes code for the machines without any checks or oversight by at least one other person

No, he only makes the assumption that some part of the code is written without any checks or oversight or that the code passes those checks and oversight. Given that bugs continue to find their way into software one must recognize that meeting this prerequisite is not only possible but likely. One could also propose (as the poster did not) that the people responsible for the checks and oversight are involved. For example, if the company producing the code was both very secretive and very partisan, one could presume a temptation to "help" the election with little chance of consequence.

The same type of scenario applied to paper ballots would have one person drive the ballots from the polling place with no escort or other checks where they could easily drop one of the boxes in a dumpster on the way if they know the precinct doesn't favor their candidate/party.

That is actually a very accurate description of the key premise of Bev Harris' "Black Box Voting". Read it.

It seems to me that electronic voting not only holds the promise of reducing election fraud (or error) to a tiny fraction of what we have seen in the past but doing so while making voting more convenient and accessible for the voting public.

As noted elsewhere, electronic voting can only increase election fraud so let's look at error. Current electonic voting systems are (anecdotally) something like 85% accurate (actually less but we'll ignore the really crazy results such as Gore receiving -16022 votes in Volusia County). By contrast, a recent Australian election recount revealed a (human) error of something like 0.05% in the initial count. Since some error is expected, most democractic systems force an automatic recount whenever the vote is within a few percent which further increases accuracy. As a consequence, it may not be necessary to be more accurate (99.97% is probably good enough) and, in a real world of messy inputs and messy communications, it may not be possible for a machine to be any more accurate.

I'm personally distrustful of paper records as they rely on humans to read and interpet them so I'd prefer something like a smart card ballot record, one for each voter, that the machine spits out after you vote. These could be used for recounts or other audits. You could easily verify the integrity of the smart card data with a separate device or program inside the machine, designed by a different group/company that read the card and compared it to what the voting machine held in memory.

As a voter I am personally distrustful of electronic records that require a "black box" device to read or interpret them. I suspect that, in the case you raise, it is not the paper you distrust (as you can easily verify it) but the reader. By moving to an electronic record, you can no longer trust either the reader or the record.

I have yet to see any evidence from any of the critics showing that even voting machines with no paper trail are any less secure than paper ballots in real world scenarios.

I suspect you will never find that evidence. If the existing real world incidents and the various professional analyses don't constitute sufficient evidence for you, then nothing will.
That said, I'm sure if you post the exact kind of evidence you want and providing that it is not illegal, somebody here can point you in the right direction.

Re:Just as long as I'm writing the voting software

[2old2rockNroll]

I have yet to see any evidence from any of the critics showing that even voting machines with no paper trail are any less secure than paper ballots in real world scenarios.

Geez. Let's try something easier than a whole site. http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0310/S00211 .htm The 2000 election in Florida was a real-world situation. It's pretty hard to get 16,000 negative votes with paper ballots. Diebold did it.

well, I should have used the 'Preview' button!

[Doc Ruby]

The New York City Council has a Government Operations Committee hearing scheduled for Tuesday, 10/26/04 (two weeks from yesterday) on HAVA oversight. The Help America Vote Act was passed after the 2000 Florida election travesty, funding states to upgrade their voting equipment, registration procedures and pollworker training. This unprecedented handout of Federal money (every American taxpayer's money) to states is creating public hearings in practically every state, and most big cities, about electronic voting machines. If you post eVoting positions to Slashdot, put your mouth where your "Submit" button is, and go say something with your neighbors at a hearing, where it actually matters. Or just go lurk at a hearing anonymously - only cowards duck the chance to see important nuts and bolts of their communities in action.

Make Election Day a Holiday!

[justanyone]

Many other nations make Election day a holiday. We should have election day as a Work & School holiday.It would solve problems:

• with too-few people voting since there's far more time to do it and less hassle;
• evening news coverage couldn't influence the election since most people would have voted by then;
• It would reinforce the idea that democracy requires attention and is important;
• people attempting to vote at the wrong precinct would have time to get to the right one;
• More professionals could volunteer to work at polling stations, which would speed vote counting and allow for disabled people to be assisted by people of both parties;
• We would get another vacation day;
• A better-educated cross section of college students and "slacker-class" (Jon Stewart's term) would vote since the ones too drunk from "no-class-tommorrow" syndrome would have too big a hangover to vote, while the nerdier non-drinkers would vote more reliably.
  • These comprise a very valuable argument:
  • Make Election Day a Work/School Holiday !
    

Re:Make Election Day a Holiday!

[Kyusaku Natsume]

I can't believe that election day isn't a holiday!!! This single fact makes the american democracy even worst -by implementation, not by design- than the mexican democracy. Americans sould check this:
http://www.ife.org.mx/

This is the only thing that works right in the mexican political system. About the parties and 99% of candidates, please don't ask...

Re:Make Election Day a Holiday!

[natoochtoniket]

Further, it should be a paid holiday for people who vote, but an unpaid holiday for those who don't.

(When you vote, you should get some sort of receipt to prove that you voted. Not how or for whom, just that you voted. Turn that receipt in to your employer to get paid for the day.)

Now, that would increase turnout at the polls!

Pencil

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the problem with using a pencil? All you got to do is mark an X next to your least disliked candidate and away you go.

Change the outcome with a 5-line VBScript

[aminorex]

the folks at blackbox voting did this with one of the major systems. i can't remember if it was ES&S, Sequoia, or Diebold, but i do remember vividly that they changed the outcome of an election with a 5-line piece of VBScript.

at least with paper ballots it took actual human hands to change each vote individually. now it's a script-kiddie job.

e-voting is good, but...

[putch]

all of your points are dead on.

the crux of the matter is verification. there NEEDS to be a paper trail. the ONLY reasons given against paper trails are 1) cost and 2) paperjams.

1) the cost of running an election in democracy shouldn't be an issue. it'd be a lot cheaper and more efficient if we just got rid of elections alltogether.

2) a paper jam is an inconvenience that costs a little bit of time but doesnt destroy a record of votes cast. but a magnet or other "feature" (read:bug) could wipe out the entire vote count. that is slightly more than an inconvenience.

there is NO valid argument against a voter-verified paper trail.

Re:e-voting is good, but...

[siriuskase]

the crux of the matter is verification. there NEEDS to be a paper trail. the ONLY reasons given against paper trails are 1) cost and 2) paperjams.

Fortunately, Diebold has lots of experience dealing with both of these problems. They've been making atms for banks and others for at least a decade. It's been ages since I've seen an atm down due to a paperjam and the cost is such that every little quickymart has its own atm.

it's to control...

[zogger]

...the elections by the globalist elite, you know, the folks who think most of humanity consists of "useless eaters". It REALLY is that simple. People are hip enough to see if you have a one party state that it's a dictatorship. With two parties it gets harder to see and it's easier for folks to stay in comfortable denial about it, and computerised voting is a great way to KEEP it a two for one party sham election.

We've always had election fraud to some degree, but perots and naders and buchanans campaigns scared the socks off of the elite globalist goons, they needed a way to outright insure that the international bankers/corporate party candidate always won, in ANY race if that is what it took. The internet has started to break the back of the controlled propoganda press, people CAN find out there are other viewpoints and other candidates, so combining scam e voting with controlling the "debates" and who gets on the ballot and with gerrymandering, etc, etc, they can be sure to always get their puppet doofus in no matter what else happens.

You can go back and research this, it's origins. Several good whistleblowers out there were discovering the higher level truth of the tallies 20 years ago, this newest dodge is just an extension of what they have been doing since then.

Last time I voted with a diebold machine I checked the results later, MY vote was never registered in the official tally near as I could ascertain, and with no way to check it, you have no case to prosecute. They can hack these machines in advance, or on the fly during the election, with modems or whatever, inserted cards. They've been busted already, yet we still have them. That should be enough of a clue right there.

Bring back chads!

[Anonymous Coward]

From my observations of the recent California elections, the optical ink system that has replaced the punch card is much more error prone than old Mr. Chad. I've found that several times when I thought I was making a proper mark the pen failed to do so, and if I had not been attentive I would have had several undervotes. So I say, I want my chads back!

Not at all

[Anonymous Coward]

(Posting anon because Slashdot isn't working for non-anon right now).

"This makes the IMO unreasonable assumption that a single individual writes code for the machines without any checks or oversight by at least one other person, and that the malicious coder is willing to become a fugitive or go to jail when (not if) the easter egg is discovered"

It surely takes only a single coder to code such an easter egg. To get it past code review *may* take another. So we're talking about a tiny conspiracy required to do it.

The reward is control of the most powerful nation in the world, so the reward for doing it is huge. Once you control the executive branch + Congress who is there to arrest you?

"I'm personally distrustful of paper records as they rely on humans to read and interpet them"

I'm distrustful of paper ballots too, everyone is. That's why they're sealed in boxes and monitored and the count is monitored by all parties. Nobody trusts paper ballots, they don't have to, because they're easy to monitor and hard to fake.

In the same way, nobody should be forced to blindly trust that electronic ballots don't have easter eggs. Nobody should have to trust Diebold et al. haven't put an easter egg into their machines.

Not at all (repeated from my anon post)

[NigelJohnstone]

(Copy of my anon posting, now that Slashdot login is working again).

"This makes the IMO unreasonable assumption that a single individual writes code for the machines without any checks or oversight by at least one other person, and that the malicious coder is willing to become a fugitive or go to jail when (not if) the easter egg is discovered"

It surely takes only a single coder to code such an easter egg. To get it past code review *may* take another. So we're talking about a tiny conspiracy required to do it.

The reward is control of the most powerful nation in the world, so the reward for doing it is huge. Once you control the executive branch + Congress who is there to arrest you?

"I'm personally distrustful of paper records as they rely on humans to read and interpet them"

I'm distrustful of paper ballots too, everyone is. That's why they're sealed in boxes and monitored and the count is monitored by all parties. Nobody trusts paper ballots, they don't have to, because they're easy to monitor and hard to fake.

In the same way, nobody should be forced to blindly trust that electronic ballots don't have easter eggs. Nobody should have to trust Diebold et al. haven't put an easter egg into their machines.

Trust Us

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course you should trust them.

It's not like the chief executive of Diebold has promised to deliver the votes the George Bush. Or. Darn!

Without the Internet, these things would pass us by, but with the engagement of the people, we'll overturn this scam.

Interesting idea

[eseiat]

But I'm not so sure about some of your reasons. You seem to only value the "intelligent" and "professional" citizens of America, while type-casting the working class and younger demographics as comically bumbling members of society. I think some of your reasons are good, however, if you keep the demeaning statements out you make a much more solid argument. One over-riding factor prevents this though and that is that in our Uber-capitalist, every-second-means-more-money-so-I-can't-value-any thing-more-than-the-dollar, economy people are very unwilling to close businesses for the sake of anything, especially something like a voting day. While your idea is noble, and I agree with it, the feasability of this action is entirely utopian.

Validation

[homeslice3]

I think the best solution to the electronic trail is to simply have your e-voting machines two things:

When you're done voting, the record is added to the database. And the computer spits out two copies of the voting record:

One copy goes to the voter, with an outline of how he/she voted.

Another stays with the computer and is used to verify the e-voting tallies if neccessary.

Both printouts are bar coded and have a user/id pin combo that the voter can, after the election verify that his/her vote has been tallied as intended.

This way you get both a paper and electronic audit, and the voter is assured his/vote is counted as intended.

Citizenship

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

neonfrog wrote a fairly long and heartfelt piece taking issue with my tagline, "Voters are citizens; all others are residents."

neon, you wrote that the implication is that voting somehow makes me better than non-voters or gives me some enhanced status in society. I don't see it that way at all. I see citizenship as a series of obligations; a social contract. I see voting as an obligation that is part of good citizenship.

If you see no difference in the Presidential candidates, and none are to your liking, fine. I am certain that in your home town, there are many more offices on the ballot where your individual vote really does count and where the outcome affects you personally, to say nothing of initiative referenda. Local school board seats, water district board seats, town council, local judges are all elected in most places, and unless you live in a really big city, it doesn't take more than a few votes to change the outcome. The candidates are people you can meet personally, and their decisions matter where you live. If you leave a blank after "President" and consider it a vote for "None of the above", great. Voting in a contested school board election where only 300 total votes are cast matters much more.

I will cast a vote for President, even though the Electoral College system makes my vote meaningless when you consider the state I live in. I consider it a personal responsibility.

Re:Citizenship

[neonfrog]

As you say. You consider it a personal responsibility.

As a citizen I only have one obligation -- obey the law. There is no law that says I am obligated to vote.

I get your point about a "social contract." It is an unwritten thing. I am saying that I am fulfilling that unwritten obligation by NOT voting because of all the things that action says. I am allowed (and obligated in your social contract) to take the action at voting time that I feel has the most meaning (or whatever my qualifiers are). Not voting sends a powerful message. It could mean that I am dissatisfied with our system of politics. It could mean that I am completely satisfied. How do you know which it is? The same ways you know whether a John Kerry vote was for him or against President Bush -- you read about it somewhere other than the results of the polls.

None Of The Above. I'm not a supporter or follower of this organization, but they help make my point.

Thank you for engaging in a thoughtful dialogue!

News Flash

[Anonymous Coward]

"They" just want an easier way to steal votes.

What will we say when the govt declares someone the victor ?

What will a Federal Judge supena , a hard drive ?

This is about the two usual suspects ; money and power.

Best of both worlds.

[Audacious]

Do both. Have a machine which generates two slips. One to have and one to share (put in a locked vote box). Make the slips have each recorded vote as well as a barcode. The barcode just represents the entry into the database.

The machine registers the vote electronically. The paper slips allow vote checkers to bring up each record without having to sort through the paper slips. (Just scan the barcode.) The printed paper receipt allows a visual check of the vote against what is recorded in the database.

The paper slip also allows the person to view what they voted for in the booth. A booklet (or several for that matter) of what questions were asked on a per screen basis could be provided so people can check to make sure their questions were accurately recorded. Since the person is given both slips of paper they have the chance to check and even change a ballot by just going back into a booth, put the paper slip under the scanner found there and bringing back up their vote. Once done the machine can print back out a new set of slips as well as update the database.

Each slip of paper would have the date/time prominetly stamped on it so voters would not (hopefully) become confused on which ones are the latest vote.

The voter votes, takes the slip to a lock box, puts one slip into the lock box, and takes the other one with him/her. Each machine has a private database which, after voting is through, transmits its information to the main database. The machine could also generate a CD/DVD with a copy of the database on it.

If there is a problem, it is resolved by: 1)Checking the database on each machine against the main database, 2)Checking the individual databases against the CD/DVD for that machine, 3)Checking the slips versus the database on each machine, 4)Checking the slips everyone has (requires a recall of everyone who voted) against the slips in the lock boxes.

I think this system would be fairly fool proof. Some may say it would be too expensive to run. Not so. The paper slips do not have to be specially made. There are lots of small printers which are currently used (Heck! Walmart, Home Depot, Loews, Krogers, and many other companies use standard registers to print lists of items bought with a barcode at the bottom so they can recall exactly what was bought. So how a person votes should not be a big deal here. These registers use the standard $1.50 roll of plain paper.), and one DVD per machine is not a lot of money being spent. (Personally, I think a CD could probably handle the entire dataset so a DVD writer would be overkill. Since CDs are now down around $0.10 each - I don't think spending $1.00 for ten machines is going to break the bank and even $1,000 for 10,000 machines [Which I think at that volume the state would probably get an even better price break on a per CD amount.].)

Just my $0.02 worth.

desirable properties of voting systems

[jrtom]

In order to get anywhere with Shakrai's question--which is a good one--we need to try to agree on the essential principles and desirable qualities for a system. A related point I'll make briefly is that it's worth considering the (de)merits of both the voting machines themselves, and the system that makes use of them. Good designs for each are necessary in order to get good results, so it's not sufficient to just evaluate the machines.

So here's a link to a short essay that I've written, in response to this post:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/jrtom/1007.htm

from which a brief excerpt:

I haven't used the lever operated machines that Shakrai describes, so my analysis is based on my best guesses and his brief description, and I might have missed something. In any event, it sounds like it covers the essentials fairly well, although it's not clear how well it provides security. As for the desirable qualities, if we score them on a 1 (bad) to 5 (excellent) scale, I'd guess clarity: 3 (no pictures by the names), flexibility: 1 (changing scheme probably requires replacing hardware), transparency: 4+, convenience: 2 (sounds difficult for blind, disabled, illiterate, or non-English-speaking voters), efficiency: 2, interoperability: 2, privacy: 4 (not 5 because the low convenience may, as you pointed out later, require a voter to get help to make their choices). So: a workable system, but one that has room for improvement.

Hand counted paper ballots are best

[DABANSHEE]

Tick the box next to your favourite candidate voting which is hand counted & hand scrutineered.

The trouble with the Yanks is they vote on a work day which means there isn't the availability of thousands apon thousands of volunteer scrutineers from the political parties to stand over hand counters' shoulders & watch them count.

I myself has said many times that simple, keep it stupid 'tick the box' paper ballots are best, but that's too simple & easy for those who like to wank off with unnecessary technology

Gez you can even do preferential voting the KISS way, 'number the boxes in order of preferance' is pretty self explanatory.

Plus hand counting scales fine.

The US holding an election would be no different than if Canada, the US, Oz, Germany, & Denmark etc all just held their elections the same day - now would the election system in Oz overload just because the UK is having an election too?.

Remember when the US has an election its actually just 50 seperate states having an election the same day, most smaller than Canada

I'll tell you how hand counting is done, many halls, standiums & conference centres are hired in the country & people are paid to count, with each counter having 2 scrutineers looking over his/her shoulder, one from the Labour party & one from the conservative coalition, simple aye. Problem is for some stupid reason the Yanks vote on a work day, meaning there just isn't the availability of party volunteers to scrutinise hand counting. Why they don't change to voting on a saturday like most people? Who knows?

Another problem for the US is that they hold so many elections on the same day. But there's no real requirement that state or local elections should be held the same day.

Well if hypothetically all fed/state elections are 4 year term elections, then the state elections could be held when the traditional mid term elections occured, then local elections at the same time as both the federal & state elections.

It's done in similar ways as that in many places. Being a saturday people just pop into the local school while out 'n about.

Also you just have a different ballot papers for each election on the same day. When people reach their spot they're given a ballot paper for the judge, another for the sheriff another for the senate, another for their congressional rep. The different ballets are colour coded - after ticking or numbering the preferances (if it's a preferantial election), one just sticks them in what ever box matches their colour.

Meaning 3 ballot papers in 3 different colours matching 3 different ballot box colours on federal election day (President/VP, Senate, House), 3 ballot papers in 3 different colours matching 3 different ballot box colours on state election day (Governor, State Senate, State House). Then one follows the same procedure for local positions that are being voted one, unless there's only one or 2 candidates running for different positions in which case you could merge some elections onto a sectional ballot paper.

That's how it's done in Oz (except we go through the added expense of having local elections on a different day, but that's only for councillors or maybe the mayor. depending on the council) & we useally know the election outcome the same (sat) night, with official confirmation the next day. Actually it's extremly rare in Oz for us not to know the outcome by monday morning at the latest

Re:Hand counted paper ballots are best

[Martin Blank]

Why they don't change to voting on a saturday like most people? Who knows?

The most common fight against putting it on the weekend comes from religion. Christians argue against putting it on Sunday because that's their holy day. Jews argue against putting it on a Saturday because that's their holy day. Businesses complain about making the day a national holiday (my preference), even though there's no requirement that any company gives a particular holiday off. Companies in some states are required to give at least two hours off (unpaid) for employees to vote if they request it.

Another problem for the US is that they hold so many elections on the same day. But there's no real requirement that state or local elections should be held the same day.

There are legal requirements. Federal law specifies the date for federal elections ("[t]he Tuesday next after the 1st Monday in November, in every even numbered year"), and state law provides for matching that date in most cases, so you're talking about changing a lot of laws. In addition, elections are expensive. They take time and money to prepare, print, distribute, conduct, collect, count, verify, and publish -- $300 million nationally in a presidential election, according to one estimate, and almost all of those costs are borne at the state or local level.

As for separate elections simplifying things, I doubt that would happen. In my area alone (a city in Orange County, CA), I will be able to vote for President/Vice President, one of two Senators, and a House Representative at the federal level; an Assemblyman and possibly a Senator at the state level; and at the local level there are college district trustees, local school district trustees, city government (mayors, city council members, treasurer, and clerk), water district commissioners, sanitary district commissioners, sewer district commissioner, and library district trustees at the local level. This doesn't include sixteen state-level initiatives that are on the ballot and various county-level initiatives that may be, depending on the location of the voter. I'm not quite sure, but we may also be electing judges. That seems like quite a lot to some, but it's about normal for California in a major election year, so you can see why splitting things up more than they are (there are primary elections in June) could make things more confusing and certainly more expensive.