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.

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: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.

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: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.

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.