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. "

Comments

Work with him!

[2nd Post!]

What, a guy can't make a mistake, change his mind, and try and fix things?

Work with him, Democrats! Work with him! It's better for everyone that the system is fair, because eventually it will be you that gets screwed over.

Re:Work with him!

[SydShamino]

What if the Democrats said:

"Well, first of all I wish that he had not blocked our efforts to study this last year, but ensuring fair, accurate voting for our citizens is better late than never. We'll get started immediately to implement fixes to the process and work with the governor on this issue."

The media picked it up as "Democrats critized the governor for his change of position on the issue" but "promised to work to enact new legislation."

Slashdot reported "Democrats critized the flip-flop."

And you complained about the Democrats.

I see the first quote as a very guarded way to say that you are pleased with the governor has done, without it being a sound bite exploitable by the Karl Roves of the world in the next election. From there it was distorted until it simply mentioned the criticism, which amazingly still makes it exploitable by Roves.

(I didn't RTFA and I made up all these quotes for illustrative purposes only.)

Congratulations

[truthsearch]

Maryland Governor Wants Voting Paper Trail

Congratulations, so do your constituents.

Hey, you know what an easier way to do this

[Anonymous Coward]

Gee, paper receipts. I wonder how we could possibly implement that.

Oh wait, here's an idea. Why don't we just use PAPER BALLOTS.

If you really want your fancy touch screens and all to waste tax dollars on, fine, use them. Just have the voting machine print out a ballot. But we should never be in a situation where we're considering an electromagnetic smudge to have a "vote". You simply cannot have accountability with electronic votes. Electronic voting is a bad idea to begin with and the fact the voting machine companies are now themselves a political interest makes the idea uterly unworkable.

Why is anyone against paper trails?

[germanStefan]

The question is, why should anyone be against a voting system where people know that their vote was counted? If I press a buttong for candidate A and the paper trail shows candidate B, then one knows and can complain and perhaps revote? The only arguments I have heard of so far are that it would be to expensive. While it may cost a bit, I still think that the costs outweigh the problems when there is no paper trail.

How many districts have we heard about, where their have been problems with electronig voting machines? Don't get me wrong, I use ATMs all the time, and trust it with my money, so I don't see why it should be so hard to come up with a secure and easy way to use voting machines. Diebold, the same company in trouble in several counties, is trusted for making great ATMs, but their voting machines are notoriously bad and their behaviour not to be trusted http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,60563,00 .html. Voting machines's source code should be open to election officials, so that they can take a look at them and make sure that they don't count backwards...

Re:Why is anyone against paper trails?

[smooth wombat]

The question is, why should anyone be against a voting system where people know that their vote was counted?

Because if one has a verifiable paper trail it makes it that much harder to rig an election.

Don't get me wrong, I use ATMs all the time, and trust it with my money, so I don't see why it should be so hard to come up with a secure and easy way to use voting machines.

This is the same thing I keep harping on. The usual response from Diebold (and others) is that because it is electronic there is no need for a paper ballot.

So is adding/withdrawing money from an ATM. You shouldn't need a receipt to verify that the correct amount of money was withdrawn from your account because it's all electronic.

The same thing goes for grocery shopping. Since it's all electronic there shouldn't be a need to have a paper receipt of all your purposes. You should be able to trust the system didn't overbill you for a product or add in products you didn't buy.

But hey, who am I to use logic when talking about a verifiable paper trail. After all, I should just accept that the government is always right in these matters because the companies making these products have told them there is nothing to worry about.

Re:Why is anyone against paper trails?

[dodongo]

How do you know that your paper receipt says the same thing as the electronic registers kept in the machine? Are you going to have a complete count of the paper receipts every election? And don't give me that random audit crap. If you are going to do a random audit, someone knows which precinct it is in, and just rigs the ones in other precincts.

You don't know the what's stored in the computer ever -- that's the problem! But having the paper ballot stored securely at the voting site ensures that, in the event of a contested election, officials can return to the voter-verified paper ballots which we're certain are correct, verified by each voter independently, and furthermore, unquestionably legible (and thus superior to handwritten or punch-card ballots), as the thing is printed in plain English. In so doing, we can ensure that IFF there is a contested election, the paper receipt, which the voter is certain is accurate, can be used to augment the uncertain, unverifiable digital trail. No "random" audits are truly needed, though perhaps a random sample to be determined afterwards could be used, if only to assuage concerns about the legitimacy of this new system.

Either you go to a complete paper system, with it's ability to be scammed or you go completely electronic with it's ability to be scammed. At least the electronic produces fast returns, and faster processing of people.

While it's ostensibly possible to rig an election using any one sort of ballot, I would submit that it is perhaps a bit more difficult to rig an election using two different media to document a ballot. Through verification and recounting as outlined above, the potential to truly rig an election goes back, at least, to the good old days of having dead people vote, double-registration, etc.

Oh, and don't get on mark sense ballots either. I SAW those scammed in the 2000 election by the supervisor of elections in Orange County Florida.

I don't know what you're talking about, but that's OK: I fixed the world in responding to your two earlier paragraphs :)

It's about time...

[DevolvingSpud]

The company I work for, RABA Technologies, was the one who did the hack-into-the-Diebold thing for Maryland; this was one of our primary recommendations to them. Like the article said:

"A national technology consulting firm he hired to review the system in 2003 found security flaws, but state officials said they could be fixed quickly"

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.

Re:Vetoes aren't as significant as you think

[Peter Mork]

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.

Re:Paper trails are a stupid idea

[roystgnr]

The concept of a paper trail or voter receipt or whatever you want to call it is stupid. Just imagine a paid thug taking people to the polling place and then asking to see their paper receipt to make sure they voted "the right way".

You don't take the paper ballot home with you. You put it in a locked box, where unlike electronic ballots it cannot be invisibly changed later.

How will you handle "wrong" votes? Where will you change them? When will you change them? How long will people have to change their mind?

By destroying the original paper ballot and printing out another; in the polling booth; while you're voting; until you've put your ballot in the box. Note that you can still have computers print out the ballots if you want - and you may want to, so they can prevent voters from accidentally choosing two candidates in the same race, help read to blind voters, warn voters who may have unintentionally missed casting a vote, and make long ballots easy to read. What is important is that the final official ballot is in an immutable human-readable form that gets checked by the voter before it is cast.

If I'm smart enough to hack votes inside a machine, why would you assume that I'm not smart enough to spoof the paper trail?

Because hacking into a computer that your opponents are watching requires you to be smart, but hacking into large numbers of ballot boxes that your opponents are watching requires magic.

Want to make elections more accurate and secure? Forget the voting machines and focus on the weakest elements of the election process, absentee ballots and voter registration.

No, remember the voting machines while also focusing on absentee ballots and voter registration. Security is hard and tedious - if you want the voting system to be secure, you have to secure every weak element of the process, not just the weakest.

as a Marylander and TrueVote supporter...

[frankie]

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.

1. Shortly after the Florida chad fiasco of 2000, our elections administrator Linda Lamone decided to buy DRE machines from Diebold. Voter advocacy groups weren't loud enough ($$$) to block it.
2. TrueVote eventually started building momentum & influence, but neither Lamone (D) nor Erlich (R) were interested.
3. Once the voting population finally made themselves heard, the state legislature (both sides) voted in favor of fixing the machines.
4. Diebold then laughed at Maryland for failing to request paper trails previously.
5. This week, after Erlich realized that this issue could help his reelection bid, he came out in favor of fixing the machines too. So here we are.