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

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.

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.

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.