New Jersey Court Won't Block Electronic Voting

SilentChris writes "A New Jersey court has denied an e-voting ban request made by Rutgers University on behalf of a voter. The plantifs argued the machines 'are "inherently insecure" and do not offer a backup paper record of each vote, which means there is no way to verify ballots if there were a recount' (much the same as arguments made on Slashdot). The court responded by saying the 'alternative is worse. Every professional agrees that a paper ballot is a formula for disaster'. Despite the setback, the case hasn't been officially dismissed. However, the plantiffs will need to take action today to have an effect on next week's presidential election."

Comments

It's getting a bit close

[cheeseSource]

With less than a week away, it seems like it would be difficult to add paper trails even to e-voting machines. Next Tuesday will be an interestingly chaotic day to say the least, especially with the R&D's swarm of lawyers standing by...

Do they?

[Troed]

Every professional agrees that a paper ballot is a formula for disaster'

Except ... it works in the rest of the world - even in areas larger than the USA.

Re:Do they?

[Ohreally_factor]

Every professional agrees that a paper ballot is a formula for disaster

For the electronic voting equipment companies' bottom line.

Re:Do they?

[Anonymous Coward]

Every professional agrees that a paper ballot is a formula for disaster'

Do the court records show how the judge came by this knowledge? Were there expert testimonies? Or did he just pull that out of his arse?

Re:Do they?

[Anonymous Coward]

how much karma do you have?

Re:Do they?

[siriuskase]

Every professional agrees that a paper ballot is a formula for disaster'

Surely he didn't really say that! You can't trust a judge who speaks in absolutes, not unless it's a true binary situation.

I'm a professional and no one asked me.

Re:Do they?

[Anonymous Coward]

> > Every professional agrees that a paper ballot is a formula for disaster'

> Except ... it works in the rest of the world - even in areas larger than the USA.

India and the European Union comes to mind--two largest democratic electorates in the world.

Professional?

[SpaceLifeForm]

Every professional agrees that a paper ballot is a formula for disaster'.

Professional what? Professional Liars?

Too bad the Judge doesn't know tech from his arse

[Safety Cap]

Quoting said judge:

"Your alternative is worse. Every professional agrees that a paper ballot is a formula for disaster. Your alternative is to go to an emergency ballot or an absentee ballot."

I'm a "professional" and I say that paper is more secure and less prone to problems than a half-baked tech idea that was selected based upon the strength of its glossy brochure than its functionality.

I notice that the Voting terminals here in Texas had wide-open USB ports. What's to say that my little keyfob wouldn't accidentally be inserted, and that pesky autorun.inf would do strange, scary things to the machine? How are you then going to prove that you voted for who you say you voted for? You can't. How is that not a formula for disaster?

Here's a novel idea: combine the best of both worlds. Tech is great at constraining input in appropriate ways (only pick ONE, etc), whereas paper is harder to counterfeit. Have the terminal as the input device that then prints out the completed ballot, which is then dropped in the box. This eliminates the problems with people not being able to punch holes in cards correctly, while providing the security of knowing your vote was recorded correctly.

Not having a paper trail at all means your vote can be changed easily and without detection; having a paper that is only a "receipt" also means that your vote can be changed easily and without detection. Having a paper that IS your vote means that it is harder to change your vote, and would take some collusion and effort: printing money is easy; altering money is hard.

Ballot Box Observers

[lynx_user_abroad]

One wonders if one could make a persuasive argument that electronic voting booths are illegal because they deny third parties an opportunity to observe the ballot box?

Does anyone know of any state law (NJ or otherwise) which guarantees independent observers the right to verify the "ballot box" is empty before voting begins, to observe the box at all times during vote casting, verify that the box is sealed after election is closed, and observe the counting of the votes post-election? If so, I think an electronic ballot box would fail all those tests.

Re:Ballot Box Observers

[lpontiac]

Does anyone know of any state law (NJ or otherwise) which guarantees independent observers the right to verify the "ballot box" is empty before voting begins, to observe the box at all times during vote casting, verify that the box is sealed after election is closed, and observe the counting of the votes post-election?

This happens in Australia. The observers aren't really independant - but each candidate on the ballot in question gets to send one.

Sounds like far too sane an idea for voting in the United States though.

Re:Ballot Box Observers

[Anonymous Coward]

I see your score is only 1. You must not have that much karma.

Re:Ballot Box Observers

[Ironsides]

They do not deny third parties the ability to be voted for. You can still do write ins by law. Anyone in Jersey can go to the election officials and ask for a paper write in ballot instead of using the machines.

Re:Ballot Box Observers

[lynx_user_abroad]

Anyone in Jersey can go to the election officials and ask for a paper write in ballot instead of using the machines.

I believe this is the case nationwide, but I can't cite a source.

What happens next could be of interest: The total number of write-in ballots are determined, but not tallied. No attempt is made to determine voter intent, which is to say, even if you wrote-in the name of someone on the ballot, it will not count as a vote for that candidate, at least not yet. These are treated as "disputed" ballots.

Then the official ballots are tallied and a number of votes for each candidate determined, as well as the number of votes where intent cannot be determined. (This stack would include all the "hanging chad" ballots, the optical scan ballots which weren't unambiguously scanned, etc.) These are also disputed ballots, and a count of the disputed ballots is made.

If the race is not close (where "close" is a function of the difference in votes between two candidates and the number of disputed ballots), these ballots are never looked at again; no attempt is made to determine voter intent.

In a close race, where adding all of the disputed votes to the runner-up would change the result, only then is an attempt made to determine voter intent for the disputed ballots.

This is the lynchpin: electronic voting machines make it possible to place all the votes cast on a given machine into dispute. Or, select a more common trait; poorly trained election workers at a certain precinct means you can place a whole precinct into dispute, allegations of flaws in a certain version of the e-vote software places all votes cast on boxes running that version into dispute. This means they don't get counted for any candidate unless the race is "close", and almost guarantees that the race will be "close enough" to require them to be counted.

Recall that, in Florida in 2000, the state's Electorial Votes had been granted to Bush (by the Board of Elections and the State Legislature) long before the "voters intent" could be extracted out of all the hanging chad and butterfly ballots. In effect, the people of Florida did not vote to elect Bush in 2000 (although if things had gone more smoothly it appeared they would have) but instead the State Legislature cast that vote, and apparently cast it with prescience, spotting in favor of Bush over Gore before the recounts and lawsuits made the final determination.

From where we stand today, it appears that, best case, we will never know if the candidate elected to office in 2004 is the one we actually would have elected if things had gone more smoothly. In the worst case, we'll see several states where the Electorial Votes will be cast for one candidate or the other by whateve mechanism is provided for by that state's law, and it will later turn out to have been cast differently than they would have been had the process gone smoothly.

Oh! to be a Lawyer in 2004; think of the windfall. But I suppose I shouldn't be greedy. After all, I was a Mainframe programmer through Y2K. What more could I ask for?

Re:Ballot Box Observers

[Ironsides]

To go over some, under the FOIA i think it was soemone actually go their hands on the balots after the count and Bush did win. Sorry, can't site a source.

allegations of flaws in a certain version of the e-vote software places all votes cast on boxes running that version into dispute.

This would be the entire counties/systems votes since they all should be running the exact same version. Hmmm... That would be interesting, the entire states voting challenged all in one go.

Re:Too bad the Judge doesn't know tech from his ar

[CrimsonAvenger]

How are you then going to prove that you voted for who you say you voted for?

Hmm, just out of curiousity, how would you prove that you voted for who you say you voted for with a paper ballot? Not like they let you take a copy of your ballot home with you, or the orginal ballots have names inscribed on them, is it?

I haven't used a paper ballot in nearly 20 years. But seems to me that they didn't have serial numbers that were cross-indexed with the voter rolls then, so switching ballots out wouldn't have been all that hard if someone had wanted to.

Frankly, the added security of paper ballots isn't really there. All it does is add an alternative method of doing a recount. Which would be useful in conjunction with electronic voting, but when you eliminate the electronic voting, you're still back to only one way to count the ballots.

Re:Yet more proof

[oroshana]

As an NJ ex-resident, I agree completely.

Have the courts heard of "hackers"?

[d102804]

My mind boggles when I hear that a court supports electronic voting without a paper trail. Currently, the Chinese (in both mainland China and Taiwan) have an army of hackers.[1] They work relentlessly to hack into American computer systems and would attempt to alter the results of an election to throw the win to the politician willing to sacrifice American interests in favor of Chinese interests. Without a paper trail, how could anyone contest the results of a tampered election?

Fundamentally, there is nothing wrong with a paper ballot. The problem in Florida is unrelated to the "paper-ness" of the ballot; the problem is that some voters are so incompetent that they cannot follow the simple instructions on a paper ballot. Frankly, if you are so stupid that you cannot follow simple instructions targetted for a high-school audience, then the loss of your vote is no loss to democracy.

[1] Li Thian-hok, a Taiwanese living in the USA, wrote a threatening opinion piece in the "Taipei Times". He warned that 600,000 Taiwanese holding American citizenship would vote against any politician who favors American interests over Taiwanese interests.

Re:Have the courts heard of "hackers"?

[Ironsides]

Without a paper trail, how could anyone contest the results of a tampered election?

In order for the Chinese Crackers to get access to the voting machines, the voting machines would have to be on the internet and accepting all incoming connections. Adn they would have to be able to hack them in under 12 hours. All electronic machines I know of so far only make outgoing Phone Modem connections to report results, never going over the internet. The computer that tallies the individual results is not connected to the internet and will only take calls from certain phone numbers (AKA where the voting machines are located). Prior to using these electronic machines we used mechanical ones for 30+ years. They went to electronic machines in my county cause the mechanical ones had to be delivered 2 days early, weighed hundreds of pounds each and cost a hell of a lot to store in a wharehouse. They also took longer to count and did not have a paper trail. So not having paper is nothing new unless you wanted to do a write-in or use a paper ballot.

Re:Yet more proof

[mpost4]

Why dose NJ have all the toxic waste dumbs and CA all the lawyers?

because NJ got first chioce.

(OK I know offtopic, go ahead mods mod me down, I deserive it.)

Hmm

[Fenis-Wolf]

Now, I like the idea of Electronic Voting. I think it's a good thing.
However
Electronic voting should be strongly resisted if they refuse to provide backup, paper receipts. Now, I don't want voters walking out of polling places with ballots, but if the database gets corrupted, I want that paper ballot to be available so my vote gets counted!

You do use an ATM don't you?

[kuwan]

Do you have a credit card or debit card? Do you ever use them? Do you always get a receipt when you take money out? Do you use the Internet to purchase stuff online?

How many ATM transactions happen every day? How many credit card transactions happen every day? We know how to make electronic machines that can replace manual or mechanical processes. If these things weren't very secure (I'm not saying they're 100% secure) then we wouldn't use them nearly as much as we do. If they weren't more accurate than what they replaced then they wouldn't be very cost-effective.

The bottom line is that these electronic voting machines can be, and probably already are, many times more accurate than paper ballots. We know how to make ATMs, we can make them secure, reliable and even easy to use. Why are you so against doing the same thing for voting machines?

Re:You do use an ATM don't you?

[MindStalker]

Problem is you get a statement in the mail that tells you your credit card purchases and ATM withdrawls and whatnot, or you can check these online. You can't do this at the voting booth for valid reasons. In fact I have had ATMs error on me and withdrawl money from my account without giving me the money. Its extremly rare, but multiply this by millions of people and the fact that there is no way to go back and verify gives the maker a chance to cheat that it doesn't have with ATMs and such.

Re:You do use an ATM don't you?

[NigelJohnstone]

If the bank stole your money, they would lose you as a customer, so their interests and yours are aligned.

Plus listen to the ATM when you take the money out and you'll hear it print a note on the internal printer, even when you don't request a receipt it still prints a paper trail.

"The bottom line is that these electronic voting machines can be, and probably already are, many times more accurate than paper ballots."

"and probably already are", they're unverifable, its not enough to say "and probably already are" you have to be able to say "and verifably are".

Re:You do use an ATM don't you?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

After seeing the leaked Diebold code- I've started avoiding ATMs manufactured by that company.

Re:You do use an ATM don't you?

[Dachannien]

The bottom line is that these electronic voting machines can be, and probably already are, many times more accurate than paper ballots. We know how to make ATMs, we can make them secure, reliable and even easy to use. Why are you so against doing the same thing for voting machines?

I think that's a question best addressed to Diebold.

I am worried for the country

[mpost4]

There is so much hate out there on *BOTH* sides, that no mater who wins there is going to be major back lash from the other side.

I see so few people voting for some one, I see most people voting against the other. I am at the point I think we should abolish the current 2 partys and see how the 3rd parties do, I wil back the constution party.

But this just shows how fscked up the system has become now. I wish that they would go to the voting boxes we have here in the Pittsburgh area older, but I don't think you ever heard of said problems in Pittsburgh, or it could be Pittsburgh is a one party system ares (you are eather out of office or a democrate here)

Re:I am worried for the country

[MindStalker]

Problem with constution party is on one hand they say they want to return all power to the states and let them run their things. Then on the other hand they state that these states must adopt a Republican system (the voting style not the party) or the federal government should lay the smack down on these states that don't. They also imply that abortion and other immoral acts should be illigal in all states, but come just short of saying that the federal government should see to it.

Re:I am worried for the country

[mpost4]

Well the Declaration of Independence. says we have the right to *LIFE* liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Abortion denies to the unborn all 3 of these 3 rights, and the federal government then does have the authority, nay I say the responsibility to protect these 3 rights. And the 14 amendment does say a person can not be "deprived of life, liberty or property without due process; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.". In abortion the unborn human person is deprived of life (and the other 2) with out due process, what crimes can an unborn commit? Also the Constitution does not give the courts the right to write law, all it can do is interpret the law or determine if a law is constitutional, Roe vs. Wade was the SCOUS wrote a law in that ruling there for it is an unconstitutional ruling.

Re:I am worried for the country

[Poppler]

Hmm. I personally am opposed to abortion unless the mother's life is in danger, but when you write:

Also the Constitution does not give the courts the right to write law, all it can do is interpret the law or determine if a law is constitutional, Roe vs. Wade was the SCOUS [sic] wrote a law in that ruling there for it is an unconstitutional ruling.

you are incorrect. SCOTUS didn't "write a law". Roe vs. Wade was a ruling on the constitutionality of existing laws criminalizing abortion. So even though we may not agree with their ruling, it was within their constitutionaly granted power to do so.

Re:I am worried for the country

[mpost4]

They did not just rule on that, they said that abortion is to be law, and a "right". if that is not writeing a law, I don't know what is.

Re:I am worried for the country

[siriuskase]

That's what happens when you only have 2 viable candidates. It's easier to sling mud at the other guy than to build up yourself. Negatives make a bigger impression on the people who vote. The problem is that most people would rather stay home than vote for the lessor of two evils. The irony is that our candidates may be decent people, but when they are both demonized by the opposition, it is hard to be satisfied with whoever wins.

Re:I am worried for the country

[cpt kangarooski]

No, that's not what they said.

The default rule in the US is that activities are lawful unless actively made unlawful.

So if there was no law that talked about abortion at all, neither saying it was legal nor illegal, then it would by default be legal.

In order to make it illegal, a government has to pass a law saying that it is illegal.

The power of a government to make a law is limited by higher laws. For example, cities cannot make laws that their state legislatures tell them they cannot make. State legislatures cannot make laws that their state constitutions tell them they cannot make. And so forth. The highest law is the federal Constitution, which among other things, tells all levels of government that some things are not in their power to forbid.

The federal Supreme Court is the ultimate interpreter of the federal Constitution. Where there is a dispute as to whether a certain passage in the Constitution means one thing or another, they ultimately decide. Of course, the members of the Court are only human, and sometimes make mistakes which can be corrected by the Court later, or by amending the Constitution. Also one might ultimately propose that the interpretation is more limited than it initially appears, by trying potentially feasible variations on whatever led to the prior interpretation.

Here, states had laws forbidding abortion. The Supreme Court found that at least to a certain extent, the Constitution forbids governments from doing so.

They didn't say that people can get abortions so much as they said that the government generally cannot stop them from doing so. This is pretty much what they do all the time: the government tries to make people do something or not do something, and the Court either forbids the government from it on the basis that they have no power to do so, or they find that such power does exist.

Now, courts ALSO do create laws in our common law tradition. Most of the law of contracts, torts, property, etc. have been created by the courts for many centuries, all the way back to England. But that isn't what has happened in any of the notable abortion cases.

Seriously: have you actually READ Griswold v. Connecticut, Roe v. Wade, and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey? They're all fairly important, and if you want to intelligently discuss abortion generally, you're not going to be able to do so otherwise.

Of course, if intelligent discourse is not what you're looking for, feel free to remain ignorant.

Re:I am worried for the country

[Poppler]

They did not just rule on that, they said that abortion is to be law, and a "right"
Actually they ruled that the desicion to have an abortion falls under the right of privacy, not that it was it's own seperate right.

From the actual decision:

This right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment's reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy. The detriment that the State would impose upon the pregnant woman by denying this choice altogether is apparent. Specific and direct harm medically diagnosable even in early pregnancy may be involved. Maternity, or additional offspring, may force upon the woman a distressful life and future. Psychological harm may be imminent. Mental and physical health may be taxed by child care. There is also the distress, for all concerned, associated with the unwanted child, and there is the problem of bringing a child into a family already unable, psychologically and otherwise, to care for it. In other cases, as in this one, the additional difficulties and continuing stigma of unwed motherhood may be involved. All these are factors the woman and her responsible physician necessarily will consider in consultation.

However, they go on to say:

On the basis of elements such as these, appellant and some amici argue that the woman's right is absolute and that she is entitled to terminate her pregnancy at whatever time, in whatever way, and for whatever reason she alone chooses. With this we do not agree. Appellant's arguments that Texas either has no valid interest at all in regulating the abortion decision, or no interest strong enough to support any limitation upon the woman's sole determination, are unpersuasive. The Court's decisions recognizing a right of privacy also acknowledge that some state regulation in areas protected by that right is appropriate. As noted above, a State may properly assert important interests in safeguarding health, in maintaining medical standards, and in protecting potential life. At some point in pregnancy, these respective interests become sufficiently compelling to sustain regulation of the factors that govern the abortion decision. The privacy right involved, therefore, cannot be said to be absolute. In fact, it is not clear to us that the claim asserted by some amici that one has an unlimited right to do with one's body as one pleases bears a close relationship to the right of privacy previously articulated in the Court's decisions. The Court has refused to recognize an unlimited right of this kind in the past. Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 (1905) (vaccination); Buck v. Bell, 274 U.S. 200 (1927) (sterilization).

We, therefore, conclude that the right of personal privacy includes the abortion decision, but that this right is not unqualified and must be considered against important state interests in regulation.

Meaning they did not rule that there was an absolute right to an abortion.
What they did rule was that

All this, together with our observation, supra, that throughout the major portion of the 19th century prevailing legal abortion practices were far freer than they are today, persuades us that the word "person," as used in the Fourteenth Amendment, does not include the unborn

So they don't feel that the 14th ammendment applies. I think that's morally wrong, but that's what they decided. There is a difference between this and passing a law saying "abortions are legal".

if that is not writeing a law, I don't know what is
except by that definition, a reversal of Roe v. Wade would be "legislating from the bench" as well. Before this decision, there had to be a law

Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should I bother to post a good post on this story? Noone is going to moderate this, and therefore I won't get any karma.

Even better

[ThePyro]

Here's a novel idea: combine the best of both worlds. Tech is great at constraining input in appropriate ways (only pick ONE, etc), whereas paper is harder to counterfeit. Have the terminal as the input device that then prints out the completed ballot, which is then dropped in the box.

Even better: you could have the voting machines keep a complete GUI transactional log of every voting session, to help verify the final paper ballot count.

Polling places using electronic voting machines are already reporting oddities: 200 people come in to vote, but only 150 votes are recorded by the machines. Were those other 50 votes "lost" by the machines? Did those people just decide not to vote? Right now, we can't tell!

Similarly, even with a paper trail, what do you do if 200 people come in to vote, but the ballot box only has 150 paper receipts?

If the machines kept a complete GUI transactional log, you would be able to verify that 50 people pressed the "submit" button before voting for anybody, and that there's nothing fishy going on.

Re:Even better

[stanmann]

At which point, you use the fisheye camera embedded in the diebold machine, and go eliminate them from the gene pool.

What!

[goatan]

'alternative is worse. Every professional agrees that a paper ballot is a formula for disaster'

IT works everwhere else it even worked in previouse American elections, Perhaps the statment should read "Every Electronic voting booth professional agrees that a paper ballot is a formula for disaster'

Re:Too bad the Judge doesn't know tech from his ar

[NigelJohnstone]

"I haven't used a paper ballot in nearly 20 years. But seems to me that they didn't have serial numbers that were cross-indexed with the voter rolls then, so switching ballots out wouldn't have been all that hard if someone had wanted to."

My understanding of US paper voting is this (based on how it works in Europe):

You vote on a specially printed ballot with security features.
Your vote goes into a locked ballot box which the local polling workers can't open.
The ballot box is taken to be opened and counted.
All of these steps are done in front of representatives of opposing candidates.

So its difficult to see where the swap would occur without the candidates representative seeing it. Ballot stuffing use to be possible, until they started counting the voters through the door, ballot box distruction was possible, but now they're metal boxes individually numbered and tracked with a signature trail.

So paper trail elections seem pretty damn good to me.

Electronic voting could be made to work, but it could use an audit trail. Otherwise a tap on the screen is all thats needed to change the votes recorded.

Whats the big deal with E-Voting

[UpsideUp]

the benefits of e-voting so outweight the problems. Everyone seems to think it is in-secure because there were two kids in their basement with their dad's laptop and they cracked into the prototype system. news organizations picked up on this, and it was spin city. e-voting insecure. Tonight at 11:00, who are you voting for? then suddenly we have this outbreak of paranoid housewives who now don't truse e-voting. They tell their husbands, their husband tell the co-soccer coach and on and on and on. Let me put it this way. We trust our finances to the internet, encryption and redundancy. I think that the reason we are so resistant to e-voting is that then there will be some accountability to the system, and accountability scares people.

Re:Whats the big deal with E-Voting

[Stevyn]

If you can't see your enemy, it makes it difficult to prepare for their attack. You can lock ballots in a big steel box and be comfortable that no one is going to steal them...or at least without you knowing about it. However, when that familiar box becomes a box with "some microchips and diodes" and you don't know how to protect it, you become very afraid that the voting system isn't safe anymore.

Electronic voting is the way of the future, but the engineers developing these machines can't overcome the psychological problems why people are afraid of it.

I am a resident of New Jersey and I've voted electronically in my home district. I am not concerned with it's safety. However, voting is more about confidence in the system than actual numbers. If you don't trust the system, the whole system crumbles. That is more important than making the process cheaper and more efficient.

Unless you're a Democrat in Florida...

[Anonymous Coward]

Then paper ballots are very unreliable.

What a crock.

[scowling]

"Every professional agrees that a paper ballot is a formula for disaster"

The Canadian federal elections use paper ballots, and every vote is counted within eight hours of the closing of the polls.

Paper ballots work. Non-transparent systems like most of the e-voting systems in the US are the recipes for disaster.

Re:Too bad the Judge doesn't know tech from his ar

[CrimsonAvenger]

My understanding of US paper voting is this (based on how it works in Europe):

You vote on a specially printed ballot with security features.

So, they don't have printing presses in Europe? People counterfeit money all the time - if they can do something as complex as money, a ballot is a cinch.

Your vote goes into a locked ballot box which the local polling workers can't open.

The ballot box is taken to be opened and counted.

All of these steps are done in front of representatives of opposing candidates.

Do the observers travel with the ballot box to where it is counted? If not, that would be the best time for fiddling with the results.

So its difficult to see where the swap would occur without the candidates representative seeing it. Ballot stuffing use to be possible, until they started counting the voters through the door, ballot box distruction was possible, but now they're metal boxes individually numbered and tracked with a signature trail.

How do you handle the Graveyard voting? You know, someone comes along and represents himself as Joe Blow, votes, then goes to the next precinct, and repeats the process with a different name. Faking ID isn't hard, really - kids do it all the time to get beer.

So paper trail elections seem pretty damn good to me.

I have nothing against them, myself. I don't think they provide BETTER security against fraud than electronic means. It just requires different precautions against the slightly different types of fraud allowed by the medium.

Re:Too bad the Judge doesn't know tech from his ar

[Troed]

You're registered in one precinct, and you show your "voting card" when you vote. Unless you manage to get voting cards belonging to other people, and vote before they do/want to, there's not a problem.

Again - it works everywhere else - what makes you think the US is so special it wouldn't work for you?

Re:Too bad the Judge doesn't know tech from his ar

[CrimsonAvenger]

If they're dead, they won't show up to vote. This, by the way, was the favorite method of stuffing ballot boxes by the Democrats in Chicago for many years.

Not that I believe that it is still happening, in spite of the fact that one of the people Gore brought to Florida to help him with his recounts was the son of the Chicago Mayor most notorious for that sort of thing. Interestingly enough, the son was also Mayor of Chicago. What a coincidence!

Re:Too bad the Judge doesn't know tech from his ar

[Troed]

If they're dead, they haven't got a voter's card.

Re:Too bad the Judge doesn't know tech from his ar

[CrimsonAvenger]

Really? In the USA, the government doesn't come around and confiscate your voter's card from your widow. They do that in Europe?

Seriously, in the USA, with 50 different States, replacing a dead man isn't terribly hard. Basic technique - find someone who died in a state different than the one he was born in. Not hard to do, we're a moderately mobile people. Get some fake ID made, and request a copy of his birth certificate from the issuing State. Go elsewhere with that perfectly legal, valid birth ceritificate, and use that to get REAL, LEGAL ID in that name, with your picture attached. Then register to vote somewhere convenient to you. Shazam! You now can vote twice, and the odds are good you'll never be caught out, as long as you don't do anything else illegal (if the cops ever have a reason to do an ID search on you, coming up with two names would be embarrassing, to say the least, so you want to stay off the cops' radar if you play this sort of game).

Re:Too bad the Judge doesn't know tech from his ar

[siriuskase]

My ideal system would work like this:

The computer terminal would be used as an input device that can verify that the voter's input makes sense and give him a chance to revise his choices if he'd like. If he'd like to cast a vote that doesn't make sense to the machine, he should be able to do that too. (why? I don't know, I just don't like the idea of someone not having complete freedom to vote as they'd like.)

Then, it will simultaneously increment its counters, just as the Diebold is supposed to be doing right now AND printing out a user readable, unambiguous paper ballot. It can have holes or dots, I don't care, just as long as it is unambiguous and user readable. Now the vote is recorded two ways that should match.

Election returns can be compiled whichever way is most convenient, I assume the computer tallies will be totaled.

Then the paper ballot can be used to audit a random sampling of the terminals.

The paper ballots can also be used for recounts when necessary.

One more advantage is that in the event of machine failure or very large turnout, the paper ballot can be completed by hand without use of the computer terminal (just don't forget to have someone count them) similar to how we were able to punch our butterfly ballots in the past without using the butterfly thingy. Of course the machine will make neater chads/ovals and I suspect that once we have a trustworthy system, most people will be happy to use the machines.

The nice thing about using the terminal to punch/mark/create a paper ballot is that if makes it less likely for someone to monkey with the software without being caught.

Re:Too bad the Judge doesn't know tech from his ar

[Ironsides]

Voting terminals here in Texas had wide-open USB ports. What's to say that my little keyfob wouldn't accidentally be inserted, and that pesky autorun.inf would do strange, scary things to the machine?

How do you know that it will actually run? Are they running linux or windows or do they even have an OS at all? Are the USB drives enabled? Do the machines even have USB drivers installed? Etc... Etc...

How are you then going to prove that you voted for who you say you voted for? You can't.

Sounds just like the mechanical voting machines my county had been using for 30+ years.

Re:Too bad the Judge doesn't know tech from his ar

[lynx_user_abroad]

How do you handle the Graveyard voting? You know, someone comes along and represents himself as Joe Blow, votes, then goes to the next precinct, and repeats the process with a different name. Faking ID isn't hard, really - kids do it all the time to get beer.

Assuming you're a professional (you can create an unlimited number of perfect-but-fake ID's, you have a way to be assured you will never be recognised by anyone who knew the deceased, you have a way to ensure dead people are not purged from the voting roles, you have an adequate supply of suitable "dead" people to fake and precincts in which to cast their votes, you have fabulous cross-precinct transportation capabilities, you waste no time casting the votes, etc) you may be able to bump up the votes for your candidate by a hundred, max, in a given day. By yourself, this wouldn't have changed even the '2000 election in Florida. Add to is a conspiracy of a half dozen or so equally-talented and completely trustable accomplises and you might have made a difference. If you had seen it coming.

Compare that to the number of votes I (using rigged e-vote software) could add or subtract by simply mistakenly declaring some temporary variable as a an unsigned_short rather than an int, or forgetting to clear the carry_bit between operations.

Take the number of votes fudged on this one machine in this one precinct. Multiply by the number of machines per precinct, the number of precincts, and the number of states where the machines are used. It's clear one of the more difficult problems of rigging an election this way would be calibrating the exploit to avoid a massive landslide result from a close (by the polls) election.

San Francisco does it almost right IMHO

[josepha48]

In SF we get large paper ballots ( 11x17 or bigger) and a black pen. For propisitions, you have a yes and no and you draw a line between them. You have a line to select your candidate also. The ballot shows the candidate and party they belong to, and they are usually in columns, with a heading of what you are voting for, and seperated by lines. Like and HTML table with one column and a table header.

Then you get a reciept, and they put it through a machine, which counts it. Unfortunately you don't get a copy of who or what you voted for, which is one area they could improve on.

If you select both Yes and No the machine will reject the ballot and you have a do over. If you select 2 or more people for the same office it gets rejected and its a do over.

Its not perfect, but it seems to work pretty well. Like I said, all I think it needs is a reciept.

Re:San Francisco does it almost right IMHO

[Piquan]

Unfortunately you don't get a copy of who or what you voted for, which is one area they could improve on.

You shouldn't get such a copy. If you can prove your votes to a third party, then said third parties can start employing bribes, extortion, etc. to alter votes.

Re:San Francisco does it almost right IMHO

[zahl2]

I was an election official poll worker in SF. If you get at least one non-stupid person working it seems like a pretty good system. After the polls close, two things happen:

1) An election official comes by to pick up the memory card from the machine. (You have to break one of those counting seals to pull it out. I don't remember, but I think the seal goes with the memory.) That gets driven to the seccrit spot to be counted.

2) Poll workers count and checksum the number of paper ballots (used, counted from the machine, etc.) to account for everything. They seal it all up in different bags, put it in a box, and go and deliver the box.

Next day:

Everyone screams about the provisional ballots.

They discover ballots floating in the Bay.

They discover ballots that a stupid pollworker took home with them.

Etc...

Ok, so maybe it isn't perfect. But at least the EAGLE machine beeps differently at you if you try to do something stupid.

Slashdot Poll

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

This should be a slashdot poll. Do you agree that "a paper ballot is a formula for disaster" when compared to the current, electronic voting machines? Then mail the results to this judge.

Re:Too bad the Judge doesn't know tech from his ar

[Troed]

Prior to each election voter's cards are sent out to those who are allowed to vote. We don't send cards to dead people.

Re:Too bad the Judge doesn't know tech from his ar

[CrimsonAvenger]

Interesting. How do you determine whether the Government is sending cards to all the right people, and none of the wrong ones?

That said, we don't do it that way over here...

Re:Too bad the Judge doesn't know tech from his ar

[Troed]

If they did, it would suddenly become quite obvious. I live in a state with free speech, unlike what's currently seen in the US.

Re:Too bad the Judge doesn't know tech from his ar

[xlv]

That said, we don't do it that way over here...

Well, instead of refusing to see the problem(s) with the current US system, you could take some clues from other countries to improve the system. But I guess this goes against the "we're the best country/democracy in the world" propaganda the US public has been fed for so long as well as the Not Invented Here syndrom. And of course, you would have to admit the current system is not perfect, something the current administration may have a problem with...

Re:Too bad the Judge doesn't know tech from his ar

[CrimsonAvenger]

Lots of problems with ANY system. Don't know that we would fix them by mailing people Voter Cards.

After all, if the Voter Cards weren't mailed out properly, we'd disenfranchise people. Which would be a bad thing. Or of the Voter lost his card, he'd be disenfranchised. Again, a bad thing. Or if you were, by a mischance, not issued a Voter Card because your name matched that of a felon, we'd disenfranchise people. A bad thing.

We have Voter Rolls here. When you vote, you go to your precinct, and present them with proof you are who you say you are (except in States where that has been deemed illegal), and sign the List to show that you voted. It is countesigned/initialed by the person handling the voter rolls. Where I vote, we have two people, one of whom verifies my ID, the other of whom checks the Voter Rolls for my name. Then you vote. No Voter Card needed.

So, your turn. Demonstrate how Voter Cards would prevent any disenfranchisment of Voters. And how they'd insure that only the named person could actually vote. Or, for that matter, how they prevent me from getting a fake ID and axquiring more than one of them.

Recipe for disaster

[thelenm]

The court is absolutely right on this one. Paper ballots are a formula for disaster. And that disaster has happened in every single election in the history of the world. It's insane to think that paper ballots are a safe choice when they have never, not once, been used in an election that didn't turn out to be a horrific tragedy for the human race. Hitler was elected with paper ballots. I rest my case.

Funny, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm going to go with causation on this one. Lawyers are well off enough that they can afford to live far away from a toxic waste dump, making 3,000 miles away from New Jersey a natural choice.

No brainer

[Anonymous Coward]

It's simple. If an electronic voting machine does not produce a record, per vote, that can be used reliably in a recount, it's no more reliable than any other system that does not produce a record that can be used reliably in a recount.

This is a no-brainer.

No system is perfect, but transparency and reliability is absolutely essential to the democratic process. Even if these machines were reliable, which I think is questionable, the whole process is not transparent.

Manual counting and recounting can be observed, etc. Electronic counting cannot directly be observed, which is all the more reason a mechanism for a recount is needed.

No election or election process is absolutely perfect and there will always be ways to corrupt the results, but it seems to me that without the "paper trail" there is no way to validate the results. What I don't understand is why validity of the results is taking a back-seat to everything else. If you're going to have an election, the validity of the results is absolutely important.

Having voted in the Canadian election this year, I have >99% confidence in the process and validity of the results. Of the remaining 1%, >0.9% is lack of confidence due to human error. 0.1% is lack of confidence due to malice and "rigging". I'm sure somebody, somewhere voted who should not have (was not a citizen, voted twice, was not old enough, etc.). However, the problems (somebody voting who shouldn't have, counting/calculating errors, etc.) are nowhere near as likely or on the same scale of the problems that can result from a process that is not transparent and whose results cannot be verified for validity.

There are a lot of things I like about the US, but its elections process needs a *major* overhaul.

There are processes that are consistently and reliably used outside the US that produces valid election results (which may be verified). I have heard no good reason why these could not be used in the US. The only reason I heard has been cost. Well, elections aren't cheap. If a country can spend a couple hundred billion dollars to bring democracy to an Arab country, it can afford to do its own elections properly.