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Building a Better Voting Machine
edmicman writes "Wired News has an interesting article about what would make the perfect voting machine: 'With election season upon us, Wired News spoke with two of the top computer scientists in the field, UC Berkeley's David Wagner and Princeton's Ed Felten, and came up with a wish list of features we would include in a voting machine, if we were asked to create one. These recommendations can't guarantee clean results on their own. Voting machines, no matter how secure, are no remedy for poor election procedures and ill-conceived election laws. So our system would include thorough auditing and verification capabilities and require faithful adherence to good election practices, as wells as topnotch usability and security features.'"
I'm serious. The more stupid and computer illiterate people you scare off, the better off we all will be.
Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door*
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
From TFA: "Random spot checks...This involves taking a random number of machines out of commission just before polls open on election morning to run a sample election on them to make sure the machines are recording and counting votes accurately.
Before the polls open? How about during the election? At random times during the day?
The poll workers should be required to have an extra one on hand just in case one breaks. It would be used to stand in for the one that was being checked. ( It could also be chosen for a random check. )
I think Wired is barking up the exact same, wrong, tree, that Diebold and every other manufacturer of voting machines is barking up - namely that they have all the answers.
The solution is very simple: require all electronic voting machines to be open source, and invite all software developers around the world to peer review the code. When that majoriy agrees that a system is secure, then it's ready for use.
Paper and pencil. Mark your choices, put it in a cardboard box. It's the perfect solution and scales wonderfully.
Many countries already use this advanced technique.
the best algorithm in the world is worthless in a poor implementation. enacting legislation that governed the process of counting the votes and verifying them is just as important as the machines themselves.
...vividly encapsulates that post-Watergate/pre-punk/coked-up moment when you could trust no one, least of all yourself.
Could you please express that number in Libraries of Congress? If you laid out all those lines of code without newlines, how many times would it wrap around the Earth?
For security, the MD5 hash of this message and sig is 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0.
Have one machine with fancy GUI's that are easy for people to use, which PRINTS a clear paper ballot on which the marks are both human and computer-readable (think of the little ovals you used to fill in with #2 pencil, only bigger ovals) and then a *seperate machine* which does nothing but scan and count the ovals.
The marking machines could be of any complexity, wouldnt require auditing (the names on the ballots would be pre-printed, the machine would only mark in the ovals). Voters could choose to use the machine, or to mark the paper ballots themselves, and in all cases would be able to *look* at the paper ballot and verify their selections before submitting it to be counted. The specs for filling in the ballots could be released (and in fact the ballot specs would be part of the specs for the counting machine), and anyone under the sun could make marking machines, of any design that they wanted. The key is that these machines would record votes only on the paper ballot.
The scanning/counting machine would have to be absolutely auditable, as simple and as transparent as possible. Every aspect of its operation would be required to be public domain, and available to any citizen upon request.
The true perfect voting machine consists of the following four components:
- Paper
- Pencil
- Locked box with slot
- Election official who can count
Anything else is a solution in search of a problem, and a way for partisan election officials to send some contract money to their buddies in the tech industry.
Seriously, who the hell cares about digital records or fast counts? I don't care how fast the results come in, I want them to be RIGHT. A voting system needs to enforce two basic principles: private votes and public counts. The voters need to know that their votes are private and anonymous, and the counting process needs to be simple and transparent enough that it can be understood, audited, and repeated. Computers, for the majority of people, are magical black boxes. They don't trust them as far as they can throw them, and that means there will always be suspicion of fraud, no matter how open the source and how impenetrable the outer casing. When we go to paper ballots, we guarantee that the process is easily understood, auditible, difficult to rig, and that counting is repeatable. There is no electronic system that satisfies all those conditions, and therefore electronic systems should not be used.
However, if we wanted to use touch screen systems to print out ballots instead of marking them, that's fine with me (it would make voting more accessible, with a well-designed UI). The voter can verify their votes before dropping them in the box. But the printed paper ballots need to be counted by hand.
For security, the MD5 hash of this message and sig is 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0.
"And I'll even give a pass on FL in 2000 even though the recount conducted by the press gave the state to the Republicans."
There WAS NO COMPLETE RECOUNT!
Shit I am tired of this fucking false rumor. There were thousands og votes not even counted, as well as hundreds of prople being turned away.
People involved with and running varias republican campahains were filmed interruptting the election process.
Plus there was an ever BIGGER problem in Ohio.
Personaly, I don't give a damn about election before I was born, I am concerned about elections that happen while I am a voter.
2000 was a shame, as was 2004, and you should be pissed about it no mattter what party did it.
Yes, if democrates had done that I would be just as pissed.
OTOH we wouldn't have gotten rid of habias corpas.
"But like I said, there is enough transparency that in any national election fraud can't swing the totals more than a point or two and the Electoral College minimizes the damage in Presidential elections.
laughable, giving people more weight then others is an imbalanced system and it needs to be changed.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
For those who are interested in seeing a proper voting system put together, check out the Open Voting Consortium. They have a free, open-source voting platform that addresses all of the concerns. It has a verifiable paper trail as well as support for blind users and multiple languages.
I personally have donated money to this organization and believe they are doing the right thing in addressing the current mess we have now.
Their paper trail has a really nice feature in that it also prints a bar code for a quick machine recount of the ballots as well as a human readable output.
-Aaron
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
At the end of the article they mention David Chaum's method of voter verifiable elections. I first saw this several years ago in graduate school (I believe I was reviewing an earlier version of the paper for a conference). It is a gloriously beautiful protocol, far beyond what I ever hope to see implemented in my lifetime. :( I suggest you take a look, I will look at the version referenced in the article again tonight as the exposition is considerably clearer than the version of the work I read (dumbed down a bit for a mass audience).
No one said Democrats don't steal votes. Well, no one with a clue. However, while we don't have any proof that Dems have stolen any presidential elections, we have piles of proof that the reps have stolen the last two of them.
Nixon was a Republican until he ran his 1972 campaign independently. Really, he was still a Republican, but I think he was just trying to insulate his party.
How convenient that Bush repeated the "votes from beyond the grave" gambit (which is older than democracy - oh wait, no one has ever actually tried a true democracy, they've all been representative or restricted, even unto Athens) in 2000... and succeeded.
Of course, you seem to be forgetting the scam with which thousands of non-felons were added to a list of felons who were not eligible to vote down in Florida. The company was explicitly told that they would get paid if they did not check their list for validity.
You are either an idiot or a troll. I put my money on the second. The recount was not completed, it was illegally stopped by the unilateral action of a single supreme court justice. The recount did NOT give the election to Bush; it would have Definitely given it to Gore.
A lot of this is because in the florida precincts where they used the scan-tron type forms, they had a form scanner with a switch on it. This switch determines whether mismarked ballots are kicked back out to the person inserting them, or silently accepted. In at least one primarily black precinct this switch was set to silently accept; in the majority of precincts it was set to reject. I guess in florida you only get to have your ballot checked at submission time if you're white.
The electoral college is the thing that makes our claims of Democracy a farce. Even given all of their cheating bullshit, the republicans still lost the popular vote in the last election. This is only like the fifth time that the electoral college has overridden the popular vote, proof that it is utterly unnecessary, but also proof that it sometimes goes against the will of the people and should be disbanded.
The electoral college was instituted because it was supposedly believed to be a necessary item to prevent mob rule. In reality, it is a power structure created to keep the powerful in power eternally.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I would just like to point out that while the parent post is trollish in nature, it is a sentiment similar to what nearly all (if not all) of the founding fathers believed. That being certain qualifications are needed in order to cast a ballot. Their fear was some rogue could convince less educated people to vote for him so that he could, in turn, pillage the government and/or be a tyrant. I'll grant it's a thorny issue, but the problem of attempting to intentionally limit people who vote is that inevitably some racial groups will be disenfranchised (as well as other categories of population, such as the elderly in this case). Also, some local officials will try to exacerbate the situation to their favor (as happened-- and is still happening--in the South).
Ok, voting machines cannot be guaranteed to be bullet-proof. Anyone who knows a decent amount about computer software & hardware gets that.
But why is it so hard to envision a simple audit trail to absolutely guarantee the authenticity of any election?
1) Make sure every voting machine spits out a paper receipt with a unique transaction number and the vote(s) recorded.
2) Make public a web site that displays *every* receipt number and its vote(s). Ok, it might be 300 million database records, but a simple menu across the top will let anyone drill down to their receipt number and confirm their vote was recorded correctly. We'll file this exercise as each Citizen's Responsibility. (It's important to note that having a citizen enter a receipt number to see those particular ballot results will not be secure since it would take a different path through the web site software, and also reduce anonimity).
3) Democracity loving geeks everywhere will write code to scan that (huge) web site and confirm the final totals.
It seems so simple. What am I missing?
- The Kessel run is for nerf herders. I can circumnavigate the entire Central Finite Curve in a lot less than 12 parse
There should inherently be distrust of our election officials, always every time, forever.
If they cant stand an audit, they should not be there.
Ever sell a house? Escrow companies exist because there is something of value
and in the transfer you cannnot trust always the other side. Which is exactly
as it should be. Sell a car? Notice of transfer of liability. Why? Because
you cant always trust the other party involved. Which is the way it should be.
If you buy something you are issued a receipt. Why? Lack of trust. Which is
the way it should be. Your bank sends you statements each month. Repeat as
above. I wont go on, because I have made my point, I hope.
for each $party in America.PoliticalParties
Not OK when $party steals or commits fraud in an election.
next
emt 377 emt 4
Personally I have seen enough examples to believe Democrats routinely steal enough votes to gain a 1 or 2 point advantage in any national election and substantially more in certain local races. But we Republicans simply spot em the handicap and go on to win elections.
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http://www.leanleft.com/archives/2004/07/27/3244/
o ny_of_v.html
l s/phone-jamming/
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/05/17/wednesd ay/index.html?eref=sitesearch
You need to read more. There are plenty of cases of Republicans doing shifty things.
LAS VEGAS -- Elections officials have rebuffed an attempt by a former GOP operative to purge about 17,000 Democrats from the voter rolls in the battleground state of Nevada, where the two presidential candidates are in a dead heat. Dan Burdish, former head of the state Republican Party, filed a challenge last week claiming the Democrats should be removed from the rolls because they were inactive voters. When asked why he did it Burdish told the press, "I am looking to take Democrats off the voter rolls." http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,135334,00.htm
2004: The State of Florida compiled a list of 47,000+ felons to be barred from voting. Jeb Bush struggled to keep this list secret. After a lawsuit to make the list public, it was discovered that African American felons (who tend to vote Democrat) made-up 50% of the list, including a number of African-Americans who had regained the right to vote, while hispanics (who tend to vote Republican) made up only 61 of the 47,000 felons on the list. http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/07/01/florida
Clint Curtis testifies under oath that Florida Representative Tom Feeney asked him to create a voting machine that could secretly switch the vote to whomever is pre-chosen to win an election. http://www.boingboing.net/2006/10/09/video_testim
2002: In New Hampshire, Democrats setup a phone line where disabled or elderly voters can call to get a ride to the polls. On election day, they are mysteriously jammed with calls from people hanging up. Legitimate voters can't get through. After some investigation, they trace the calls back to "GOP Marketplace" in Virginia. Republicans are convicted and admit that they did it to stop Democrats from getting to the polls. James Tobin, New England regional director of the Republican National Committee is convicted. http://bigbrassballs.wordpress.com/tag/gop-scanda
Gore never asked for a statewide recount because he was afraid a statewide recount wouldn't have given him the net votes he needed. He only asked for counts of the undervotes in Democratic-leaning counties because he thought he could get just enough votes to be elected. His rhetoric about "count every vote" was total hooey.
So if the U.S. Supreme Court hadn't put a stop to the recount, Gore would have still lost, only he would have been hoisted by his own petard instead of having the convenient "judicial coup" excuse.
There's an interesting article on the whole despicable affair HERE.
Voting machines should be at least as secure as slot machines. The state of Nevada has standards for those, as I wrote in a previous Slashdot article. Nevada is concerned with collecting taxes and not cheating customers when the machines are owned by very shady people. So they have technical standards with teeth. Stuff like this:
(a) Employ a mechanism approved by the chairman which verifies that all control program components, including data and graphic information, are authentic copies of the approved components. The chairman may require tests to verify that components used by Nevada licensees are approved components. The verification mechanism must have an error rate of less than 1 in 10 to the 38th power and must prevent the execution of any control program component if any component is determined to be invalid. Any program component of the verification or initialization mechanism must be stored on a Conventional ROM Device that must be capable of being authenticated using a method approved by the chairman.
(b) Employ a mechanism approved by the chairman which tests unused or unallocated areas of any alterable media for unintended programs or data and tests the structure of the storage media for integrity. The mechanism must prevent further play of the gaming device if unexpected data or structural inconsistencies are found.
(c) Provide a mechanism for keeping a record, in a form approved by the chairman, anytime a control program component is added, removed, or altered on any alterable media. The record must contain a minimum of the last 10 modifications to the media and each record must contain the date and time of the action, identification of the component affected, the reason for the modification and any pertinent validation information.
(d) Provide, as a minimum, a two-stage mechanism for validating all program components on demand via a communication port and protocol approved by the chairman. The first stage of this mechanism must verify all control components. The second stage must be capable of completely authenticating all program components, including graphics and data components in a maximum of 20 minutes. The mechanism for extracting the authentication information must be stored on a Conventional ROM Device that must be capable of being authenticated by a method approved by the chairman.
That's part of what's needed. Those standards cover the possibility of an "alternate program" in a slot machine, and provide a way to check for it, with logs and an external program check capability.