More on the Dangers of eVoting

blamanj writes "A lot of discussion has been focused on the lack of security in electronic voting systems. What hasn't been as widely discussed, is just how tiny the voting manipulations have to be to have an effect. In this months CACM (cite, pdf of original paper is here), some Yale students show that altering only a single vote per machine would have changed the electoral college outcome of the 2000 election. Changing only two votes/machine would have flipped the results for four states."

Comments

Re:On a side note

[drlake]

Well, it's a bit more complicated than that. I teach American politics at a campus where P. Diddy and crew just came through, and we talked about it in class after the rally. The point isn't simply to vote, but rather to take responsibility for your life. That entails being an educated voter, not a random one. That message is getting through to the kids, so I'm most definitely NOT appalled by it.

I totally agree

[Kujila]

eVoting might be the "wave of the future" but the future ain't here yet!

One of the most troublesome states to meddle with the faulty "eVoting" system is Florida. In addition to this, there are thousands of absentee ballots missing.

I expect Florida to be somewhat troublesome come this November. :) ...now, for this eVoting stuff...It's easy to spoof an e-mail and not get caught, but it's not so easy to spoof an actual letter and not get caught... I apply this same analogy to eVoting. You could attempt to forge a physical ballot (like the guy in Ohio who recently attempted to register celebrity's names as voters), but you would most likely get caught in the long run, whereas if you modify an "eVote" you can slide home-free into office.

Politics is a crooked business to start with, and this eVoting stuff is just twisting it even more!

Maybe next time, but I hope they lay off of these things this time around!

Paper receipts and voter fraud question.

[hotspotbloc]

One of the "solutions" being pushed by many is a paper receipt of one's vote. If a voting machine has been compromised wouldn't a receipt be useless? I mean if the machine has been hacked what's keeping said hacker from just writing a routine to print out whatever the voter voted for and recording something different? What are the election officials going to do, ask everyone who voted to bring in their receipts? Kinda kills off the whole "secret ballot" thing.

IMO optical mark recognition (aka: bubble sheets), also made by Diebold and others, is the closest thing out there that allows for fairly secure vote protection while allowing for electronic tallying. I know that evoting is also about access to others but at the cost of a honest election?

We had it here... :(

[smoothwallsamuel]

Here in Canberra (that nice little capital city of Australia) we had electronic voting for our election, and it is now probably going to be the focus of a court challenge by a losing party.

Personally, I agree with the time honoured tradition of paper voting...at least there is some physical record of votes.

samuel

UI designer interview questions

[MillionthMonkey]

From County Responds to Voting Machine Problems BY LEE NICHOLS

Travis County election officials have responded to complaints that voters casting straight-party Democratic ballots are discovering, when performing a final check of their ballots, that their votes for president have been changed from Kerry/Edwards to Bush/Cheney. The officials say that, after trying and failing to replicate the problem on its eSlate voting machines, they have concluded the vote changes are due to voter error rather than mechanical failure.

Gail Fisher, manager of the county's Elections Division, theorizes that after selecting their straight party vote, some voters are going to the next page on the electronic ballot and pressing "enter," perhaps thinking they are pressing "cast ballot" or "next page." Since the Bush/Cheney ticket is the first thing on the page, it is highlighted when the page comes up - and thus, pressing "enter" at that moment causes the Kerry/Edwards vote to be changed to Bush/Cheney.

Fisher stressed very strongly that voters should not rush, but carefully and thoroughly examine their ballots on the final review page before pressing "cast ballot."

Fisher said the county has received "less than a dozen" complaints from the more than 70,000 voters that had cast ballots by Friday afternoon. She said the county has also received a complaint from the Travis County Democratic Party. TCDP Executive Director

Elizabeth Yevich said it was not a formal complaint, but that the party had expressed concern and the county had been "receptive and responsive."

After reading the above selection-

1. Can you identify any UI design flaws in the user interface described above?
2. What would be a more reasonable default selection in this case?
3. Are poor UI design and user error mutually exclusive?

Fixing what was never broken

[bubbaprog]

We have e-voting because those in control know they can use it to their advantage. There was nothing wrong with a paper ballot with a box that you place a mark in next to the candidate you choose. They replaced it with error-prone punch cards and butterfly ballots because it was EASIER. If they wanted to guarantee the most accurate recording of votes, they'd use a paper ballot you marked with a pen, which was then counted by a human being, then recounted by a different human being. You know, like you had in high school? They don't do it that way anymore. They could, if they wanted to. They don't. And so we have systems that are open to interpretation and manipulation.

Re:Unrealistic

[SpaceLifeForm]

Funny? No.

Will it help bush? I hope not. Many of us foresaw something regarding OBL happening immediately prior to the election anyway. The great masses of the brainwashed electorate won't be affected by this. It's only the very scant few that haven't made up their mind by now that could be affected. The anti-bush crowd is probably scared more by the bush adminstration than OBL.

So, in summary, I'm not convinced that bush has been helped at all.

Re:Unrealistic

[grumpygrodyguy]

No voter fraud cases are being in any way instructed by anyone up-top. Most likely, those in positions even close to power don't even consider that the fraud could be happening.

Don't bet on it:

"Hi All,
A friend sent this to me... wanted to pass this information on... double check your votes before you leave the polling location....

From my friend Maryellen.

No joking around. Here's an important heads up ...

Yesterday a friend voted early at a polling location in Austin. She voted
straight Democratic. When she did the final check, lo and behold every vote
was for the Democratic candidates except that it showed she had voted for
Bush/Cheney for president/vice pres.

She immediately got a poll official. On her vote, it was corrected.
She called the Travis County Democratic headquarters. They took all her
information, and told her that she wasn't the first to report a similar
incident and that they are looking into it.

So check before you leave the polling booth, and if anything is wrong, get
it corrected immediately. Report any irregularities to your local Democratic
headquarters.

Make sure you pass this along to your friends ... hopefully this is all over
the airwaves by tomorrow ...

DON'T FORGET TO VOTE!!!"

Solution to E-Voting Fraud

[radtea]

We need someone to exploit one of the many Diebold machine vulnerablities and use it to report every single vote as being one for Nader. They'd only have to hack a few machines to make the problem glaringly obvious. Bonus points for doing it in a "dead-heat" state where the effect on the final election outcome will be impossible to determine.

The point isn't to throw the election, but to show the world unequivocally that we aren't talking about theoretical possibilities, but a serious practical threat to American democracy.

The outcome would be short-term chaos, as the whole U.S. electoral process would be thrown into disrepute, but the long-term result might be to get all major parties to insist on voter-verified, re-countable paper trails, as were used successfully in the recent referendum in Venezuala.

On the other hand, the long-term outcome might be to round up and shoot everyone with the skills to exploit such e-voting vulnerabilities.

--Tom