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Maryland Governor Wants Voting Paper Trail
smooth wombat writes "Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. said Wednesday that he has lost confidence in the state's ability to hold fair and secure elections this fall, and called for paper receipts for Maryland's electronic voting machines,and the delay of early-voting procedures approved by the Democratic-controlled legislature." From the article: "'In light of these recent national decertifications and the Maryland General Assembly's decision to override my vetoes ... I no longer have confidence in the State Board of Elections' ability to conduct fair and accurate elections in 2006,' said Ehrlich, a Republican, in his letter to Board of Elections Chairman Gilles W. Burger. Democrats criticized Ehrlich's apparent shift on the paper-receipt issue, noting that he vetoed a bill last year that would have studied the option. Advocates of reforming the state's voting system cheered Ehrlich's remarks, which he made a day before a Senate committee is to hold hearings on a bill that would require a paper trail. "
After the Red Team exercises that demonstrated how flimsy the system security was, he really should want the system upgraded and re-scrutinized.
USA Today Article
RABA Technologies PDF Report on Security Assessment
Let's hope this yields a chance to fix them. Our report is here. For a funnier take on it, see my boss in this Daily Show clip.
Keep your friends close.
Keep your enemies in a little jar on your desk.
Well then this bill was the outlier (the exception to prove the rule?). The complete text of the bill is only 3 pages long. It does one thing:
"The State Administrator of Elections shall study, review, and evaluate independent verification systems, including at least one system that includes a voter-verified paper audit trail, for the voting system currently used in the State."
The bill then goes on to describe how the systems will be evaluated and by whom. The complete text is here.
Here here!
Still, I can't fathom why Diebold would hesitate to release said code. Could it really be of such a proprietary nature that they can't divulge it. Are they worried about an end-run or unintentional vulnerability? AFAIK, the design of an electronic voting booth should be as straight-forward as possible , to the point of being bullet-proof:If what they have is anything more complicated that that, plus whatever plumbing code is needed, then something's very wrong; it couldn't possibly be worth concealing.
Paper records aside, the fact that the code can't be verified on-site by a third party is also worrysome. So how do you audit *the machines* (not just the votes) for tampering?
Why is this insightful?
You don't understand how a paper trail works.
In a nutshell:
You vote on the machine.
It prints a receipt that you can read.
You verify that the machine & receipt both agree on your vote.
You drop your receipt into a secure repository, e.g. an old fashioned ballot box.
Later, if there is any concern over the vote that triggers a recount, it is the secured receipts that are recounted, because there's no point in checking the machine a second time when it says that 10,000,000 votes were cast for Bush in a county with only 2,000 registered voters.
You mis-understand, the voter does not get a receipt.
What happens is eletronic voting machine replaces the role of the pen in marking a paper ballot. This in no way violates the concept of a secret ballot any more than marking your ballot with a pen and dropping it in a box does.
The paper ballot is placed in the vote box. The paper ballot is the official vote. Machine totals can be used for preliminary results, but some percentage of the machines will be auditted, to make sure their totals match that of the paper.
The whole issue of verified voting has been mired in stupid partisan squabbling for over 4 years. The entire Demoblican duopoly deserves large shares of scorn, blame, and (in a much better universe than this one) defeat at the polls.
Maryland also has a hearing today on SB 292, which would require "instant runoff" voting in Maryland ballots.
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make install -not war
I think that you have some misconceptions about what a voting paper trail consists of. While I don't know of any hard and fast regulations about what form such a trail should take, I doubt that it would take the form you seem to fear.
First off: the paper "receipt" does not leave with the voter. It is not like the slip of paper you can get at the post office as proof that you mailed something, or that allows you to track the parcel's progress. The receipt stays at the polling location, just like paper ballots currently do. It would be retained as a permanent record of an individual's vote so that, if the electronic results were ever in doubt or lost, a recount could be done with the receipts.
Second: Like paper ballots today, the receipts would not contain information that could link a certain vote to a certain person. This has been a feature of elections in the United States for years, and there is no reason that a paper trail would require any change.
Third: "Thugs," as you call them, are not allowed to interrogate voters on how they vote. Since the paper receipt stays at the polling station, the thug wouldn't have any way to verify which way someone voted. This kind of thing is taken very seriously, and coercing voters will land you in jail pretty quickly.
Fourth: Incorrect votes (i.e., when a person looks at the receipt and determines that what it shows is not what they intended it to be) would be discovered and dealt with at the polling station. Correcting a ballot would most likely consist of filling out a new one by hand, which would later be counted separately like absentee ballots. As I stated at the beginning, the receipt stays at the polling station. Once the voter hands it over (or places it in a scanner, etc.) their vote is considered "cast" and is irrevocable. This is essentially no different than how things work today with paper ballots - once you put it through that slot in the box, that's it.
I will not delve into the debate about whether using electronic voting with a paper trail is "more secure" other than to say that it is far and away more transparent and accountable than electronic voting without a paper trail. If anyone has reason to believe that the electronically collected votes have been tampered with or lost, then there is something physical to fall back on. Spoofing a paper trail takes a great deal more work and preparation than spoofing an electronic record. In that sense, having the paper trail makes our democracy more secure in the face of idiots blindly latching onto electronic voting as some inherently better way.
Yes, but only because his "change of heart" may let him stop a motion to allow for early voting. A paper trail cannot be put into place in time for the November elections.
Why on earth do you think that? Diebold has been selling voting units that produce paper receipts for over a year now. Maryland could just use those.
"The defense of freedom requires the advance of freedom" - George W Bush