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Quebec Bans Electronic Voting
gfilion writes "The Chief Electoral Officer of Québec tabled an evaluation report that makes a troubling diagnosis of the problems that occurred during the municipal elections of November 6, 2005, in some of the 162 Québec municipalities that used electronic voting. He says: "Not only did the systems fail, but the corrective measure proposed were insufficient, poorly adapted and often came too late." There was a moratorium on electronic voting prior to the November 6 election, it will be extented for future elections."
No its not sad to see it thrown out. The Quebec electoral system is very simple. In the municipal election you have 2 vote (councillor and mayor), in the federal and provincial election you only vote once (for the member of parliament). So its very easy to count paper ballots, its done within 1-2 hours after the election closes in most cases. We have been perfecting paper ballots for over 200 years. So yes, they are much more reliable. Electronic voting in our system is pointless, its more expensive and has no benefits.
Yes. I definitely agree e-voting hasn't come far enough to be implemented in voting booths. As you say, paper ballets have been around for centuries and work just fine. Maybe eventually when e-voting is 99.99999995% error proof, has paper trails and works as it should, then maybe it could be implemented. However until then, I agree paper ballots are much better.
... is not the banning of e-vote. Believing itself above the system, Quebec completely misses the notion of democracy, as much as aristocrats continue to cling to dwindling legacies in the 21st century.
Please explain how banning a voting system that so far has demonstrated countless flaws is bad for democracy? I am very happy my government took this stance. Last elections there were quite a few close races between representatives, some as close as about 50 votes. If this buggy electronic vote would tip the balance of power from a party to another, it is unfair and bad for democracy. Bug today is an exploit/abuse tommorow. Voting has to be transparent, accurate and there needs to be a paper trail.
Oh and, Quebec is one of the very rare provinces/states/territories in North America that is running serious studies about having a proportional representation modeled election and parliament. Something that could eliminate the "cartel" of a 2-3 party system we see throughout North America. Something good for every individual instead of a few partisans of selected parties. But yes, Quebec misses the notion of democracy!
I don't think the word "democracy" means what you think it means.
http://www.elections.act.gov.au/Elecvote.html It's open source, it's verifiable, it's secure.
But doesn't even the most open, verified system still suffer from having the "Vote for Bob" patch installed at the last minute by an official-looking guy with glasses and a clipboard? I know, this shouldn't be allowed, but it seems to happen all the flippin' time! People just don't yet understand what's required to keep a computer secure, but it's pretty easy to understand "Don't let anyone steal or tamper with these little pieces of paper!" Security has to deal with what actually happens in the real world, not in theory, and out here in the real world, computers are a mystery to most election officials in a way that pieces of paper are not. This mysteriousness can lead to bad decisions about what kind of access is allowed.
OK, the Australian system is voter-verifiable, but if you're going to need to have all the voters bring back their receipts afterwards, why not just count the paper to begin with?
If I were an American, I'd be very frightened about voting using an electronic machine, given all the horror stories I've been reading. And as a Canadian, I'm quite happy with our paper ballot system, and I'll resist any attempt to replace it!
The paper ballots are effectively useless because firstly, recounts are only done automatically if the margin of victory is extremely low. A clever hacker will make sure the margin is slightly greater than the trigger.
Secondly, many secretaries of state are instituting punitive costs charged to the candidate demanding a recount. It costs millions to challenge the count. A lot of campaigns find it hard to justify the cost, and may well not have the money left over.
And third, I strongly opine that even if the paper ballots clearly show that the electronic totals were altered, the news media will bury the story, if they don't simply report it as a conspiracy theory and bad methodology counting the paper. After all, Gore had the majority of the cast votes in 2000 per the media-sponsored recount done after the election, with bullet-proof counting methods and both parties staring at the process. To THIS DAY people don't even know that the recount was done, and if they do, they concentrate on the recount as per Gore's original request, where he barely lost, rather than the state-wide recount done by the Tribune-led media project, which showed he barely won -- if all the votes that clearly showed a choice were counted.
Fourthly, a HELL of a lot of "spoiled ballots" are being tossed these last six years, far more proportionally that were found before. I don't think people magically started messing up their ballots. There is a heavy finger on the scale, one that favors Republicans. Since they are spoiled, so-called, we don't count them again. Toss out enough "spoiled" ballots from poorer (black/college) Democratically leaning areas, and they have plausible deniability as to why the e-count doesn't match the paper count. And yes, since the computer would be printing the ballots, this should be a silly argument, BUT THEY WILL MAKE IT ANYWAY, and the assembled dopes of the media will swallow it, as they have all the other garbage in every major election since 2000 (statistics don't work anymore? Only Democrats lie to exit pollsters, only in close races? COME ON!).
Guaranteed, two weeks from now: Republicans will hold on to both houses. By slim margins. No paper trails. And all these polls showing that Democrats will win by landslides? Dismissed as conspiracy theories. Just statistics.
Sometimes statistics is the truth and smarmy little me say are lies.