From the Trenches of Electronic Voting

Avi Rubin, an expert on electronic voting systems, worked as a judge in two elections in 2004, and he worked the chaotic Maryland primary election yesterday. His blog article about a day spent with Diebold voting machines gives impressions from the trenches of electronic voting. From the article: "The least pleasant part of the day was a nagging concern that something would go terribly wrong, and that we would have no way to recover. I believe that fully electronic systems, such as the precinct we had today, are too fragile. The smallest thing can lead to a disaster... I can't imagine basing the success of an election on something so fragile as these terrible, buggy machines... As far as I'm concerned, the 'tamper tape' does very little in the way of actual security... I hope that we got it right in my precinct, but I know that there is no way to know for sure. We cannot do recounts."

Comments

Re:Re-Count?

[rfc1394]

Ok, correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't such a system keep a master table of every vote that was recorded, at what time, on what electronic ballot, what location, and by whom? Therefore, in truth, they could in some manner confirm every voters vote with the voter themself? I know they're not going to do it, but wouldn't that data be available, therefore recounts are possible by confirming each voters vote with the actual voter?

Okay, you're wrong. :) They do not do this, and it would probably be illegal if they did. Such a log would violate some state laws and state constitutions requiring that voters be able to vote in secret (which would include being anonymous as a result of what they voted). A log that showed who voted for whom would provide way too much loss of privacy and make it too likely that how a person voted could be tracked and discovered.

There is a very simple, much more inexpensive and reliable method of providing secret ballots with anonymous voting. It's called using a printed ballot. Most precincts have a few hundred people voting, it can't take that long to count X's on a page. And having been a polling officer at a local election - twice - I know of what I speak. And yeah, we use electronic machines at our polling place. I'm not sure if they are accurate or not, but we do.

The simplest answer would be for the machine to issue a slip with each ballot that is dropped into a hopper after the vote. The slip would only display the vote, not who did. And to make sure it was anonymous, the hopper could be rotated regularly to mix the slips.

Re:Re-Count?

[smooth wombat]

Ok, correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't such a system keep a master table of every vote that was recorded, at what time, on what electronic ballot, what location, and by whom?

You're kidding, right? The whole purpose of our election system is so no one knows how you voted. What you're questioning is the complete opposite of the way things are (supposed to be).

Therefore, in truth, they could in some manner confirm every voters vote with the voter themself?

See above. No, you cannot confirm with a voter how they voted. It's supposed to be a secret.

I know they're not going to do it, but wouldn't that data be available, therefore recounts are possible by confirming each voters vote with the actual voter? Example: The master record says you John Doe voted for Patty Sue, is this correct?

For the third time, NO! We DO NOT record the name of a voter with a vote. All that is recorded is a vote.

However, what Avi is saying is completely correct because even when we are told they can recount the votes cast, there is no way, currently, to verify if the votes were recorded correctly when cast. For all we know there is code somewhere which takes every fourth vote for one candidate and records it for the opposite candidate.

This is why a paper trail is absolutely, positively, 100% needed if we are going to be forced to use electronic voting machines.