Senators Clinton and Kerry Submit Open Voting Bill

An anonymous reader writes "DailyKos is reporting that a group of senators and representatives including Hillary Clinton, John Kerrry, and Tubbs Jones, have proposed an 'open-source' voting bill. This bill (The Count Every Vote Act of 2005) corrects many of the problems in the last election. Notably, it requires paper receipts, and that the source and object code of all electronic voting machines to be open and readable by the public. " Commentary on the bill available at the Miami Herald.

Comments

hand count more accurate?

[fishdan]

...The Count Every Vote Act of 2005 will provide a voter verified paper ballot for every vote cast in electronic voting machines and ensures access to voter verification for all citizens, including language minority voters, illiterate voters and voters with disabilities. The bill mandates that this ballot be the official ballot for purposes of a recount.

Why should the manual count paper of paper ballots be the official recount. Why would there be a recount of a machine tabulated vote? Does someone think the machine miscounted? And why why why do people keep thinking that a hand count done by humans would be more accurate than a machine count?

Re:hand count more accurate?

[Fjornir]

Did you miss the stories about the machines that lost votes? If there had been a paper ballot printed by the machine there would have been no data loss.

Never mind the "Do we trust diebold" conspiracy theories however (in)valid they may be, the voter should have a right to see that their ballot was cast as the intended it to be. Unless you've got some cool superman xray vision or mad van Eck phreaking powers you can't tell what the machine is recording as your vote.

Good and bad

[GQuon]

"Paper records of electronic voting:" Good, as long as voters can't prove to somebody else who they voted for. That would facilitate vote buying.

"Election-day registration": Need to read the bill. If volounteer (partisan) groups get to haphazardly register people at the polls, that's a bad thing. Registrations should be in order some weeks before the elections.

"Election Day as a national holiday.": Good. Productivity could go down, but it could increase turn-out and the importance of the election in people's minds.

"Restoration of voting rights for former felons": Not sure. Is a felon that has served its sentence entitled to the same rights as others?

"the source and object code of all electronic voting machines to be open and readable by the public." Definately good. The many-eyeballs approach to security validation is perfect for this case, since it's an application with such a huge number of interested parties.

Now, how about non-citizens voting and proof of identification? Anything on that?

This isn't "open source"

[PatHMV]

It may use the term, and call for the software source to be viewable by the public after being submitted to the "Commission", but it is certainly not "open source" as we normally use that phrase. Open source programmers aren't usually subject to background checks. And I assume they mean for this last clause here to mean the compiled binaries, but by its strict language, they'll have to print the source code in newspapers, because it can't be transferred over the internet.

As for paper ballots, the idea is good, but will it really work well in practice? The machines will have to be able to void individual paper ballots if the voter, looking through the viewplate, realizes he didn't vote the right way. All this paper handling adds a lot of mechanical complexity to the machine, making breakdowns more likely.

Here's the text of the bill calling for programmers to have background checks (p. 10):

''(i) The manufacturer shall conduct background checks on individuals who are programmers and developers before such individuals work on any software used in connection with the voting system.

''(ii) The manufacturer shall document the chain of custody for the handling of software used in connection with voting systems.

''(iii) The manufacturer shall ensure that any software used in connection with the voting system is not transferred over the Internet.

Re:Corporate Lobbies vs. Public Interest

[bheading]

The public interest is for a hand-counted vote, observed by all the candidates and other independent members of the public, which in other countries is typically completed well within 24 hours of the polls closing.

Any kind of mechanised vote counting whatsoever serves to hide the vote counting process from the electorate. Receipts are a red herring; they are the only way to verify the electronic count and, as a result, render the electronic count completely redundant.

Re:Corporate Lobbies vs. Public Interest

[kbnielsen]

How is it, that Bush has been right on the war on terror ??

I'll agree with you, that Bush won the war. But he has lost the peace. If you take a look at the world at present:

• Afganistan: Outside Kandahar mostly ruled by loal warlords, whose loyality is really doubtfull. Law and order has not been restored in Afganistan after the fall of the Taliban rule
• Iraq: Daily reports of wounded or killed American soldiers, especially since the official war ended. An undisclosed, but very high, number of civilian casualities. Some humanitarian organisations estimates this to be over 100.000 individuals.
• Rest of the world: More people hates the USA than before Bush took office. In many parts of the world, the us is no longer seen as the leader of the free world or the big idol, to whom other countries can look up to. This is especially true among the closest allies of the United States, such as Germany and France. For instance, Germany has been a very close ally to the US in more than 50 years, and has followed the US through thick and thin. Now the Germans put the foot down, but the US isn't listening.

Please don't forget that the attacks on the US was motivated by hate to the US. How can one claim to create a more secure world, if one is only stirring up more and more hatred ??

And to all the military-centric folks: No, a great big military doesn't help, because you are not fighting an organized army.

So no, I'm not in the opinion, that Bush has done a very good job while in office.

Re:Corporate Lobbies vs. Public Interest

[iwadasn]

Or how about the right to vote? If groups inherit the rights of their members, then they can cast a vote, right? Dems and republicans can each make millions of paper corporations, and the votes of actual people will be irrelevant. It always started out simple, and needs to be returned to that way.... Here's roughly what it should be, though perhaps I defined citizen a little too narrowly...

1) "People" in the constitution refers only to citizens. The constitution shall not be construed as to confer any rights upon fictional or artificial entities or groups (nations, corporations, unions, etc...), nor upon non-citizens. Non-citizens (this might be unwise), corporations, nations, and groups would get their rights through treaties or laws, such as the Geneva Convention.

2) Citizenship cannot be stripped or given up except by mutual consent of the United States, and the citzen in question, in writing, witnessed by a court of competent jurisdiction, and only contingent upon the receipt of foreign citizenship. Nothing of value, other than another citizenship, may be offered in exchange for relinquishing US citizenship.

3) Citizens cannot be denied the right to vote for any reason whatsoever.

4) Those who are born in the US are automatically made citizens. (this is how it is now).

Something like that. Would clean up all sorts of little loopholes. For instance, a Deleware court's decision so many years ago that (in a blatant act of Judicial Activism) gave corporations the rights of "people". In addition to the "Lock up as many black and poor people as possible, and then we can prevent them from voting us out of power after they get out..." and "declare them terrorists so we can strip their citizenship and we don't have to treat them like humans or let them vote..." angles.

Might only require a single amendment.