Information Technology and Voting

ChelleChelle writes, "In an interview in ACM Queue, Douglas W. Jones and Peter G. Neumann attempt to answer the question: Does technology help or hinder election integrity?" From the article: "Work in this area is as politically loaded as work on evolution or stem cells. Merely claiming that research into election integrity is needed is seen by many politicians as challenging the legitimacy of their elections... One of the problems in public discussions of voting-system integrity is that the different participants tend to point to different threats. Election-system vendors and election officials generally focus on effective defense against outside attackers, usually characterized as hackers. Meanwhile, many public interest groups have focused on the possibility of election officials corrupting the results."

Comments

Motives

[peacefinder]

"Election-system vendors and election officials generally focus on effective defense against outside attackers, usually characterized as hackers."

Absolutely untrue. What could be more hacker-proof than a paper ballot system?

No, what election officials evidently want is speed and ease-of-use. Hopefully they also want accuracy and precision, but the evidence suggests that many don't value those as highly.

What election-system vendors want is money. They make promises regarding speed, ease-of-use, accuracy, and precision to get that money. They may have excellent intentions, too, but its the profit that motivates them.

"Meanwhile, many public interest groups have focused on the possibility of election officials corrupting the results."

That's always been a problem. It's just that now, the inner workings of many election systems are no longer observable. That makes it very difficult to verify the integrity of the election process.

Re:Motives

[peacefinder]

Ars Technica detailed a plausible transmission path for a viral hack on a single machine to spread to the precinct, county, or even state level.

In the end...

[Otter]

The bottom line is that regardless of technology, there's an absolute need for:

1) Sincere trust in the vote-counting process

2) Sufficient respect for the system to not make gratuitous accusations

To the degree that people rightly, wrongly or dishonestly don't buy into the system, there's no technology that can prevent that.

That said, that security researcher who is allways linked here, who argues for pencil and paper even though the blurbs always make him out to be a fellow source code-fetishist, is spot-on.

Re:In the end...

[Salvance]

Your first two points are spot on. However, I have to disagree when you say:

To the degree that people rightly, wrongly or dishonestly don't buy into the system, there's no technology that can prevent that.

People trust technology when there is sufficient evidence that the technology is trustworthy, reliable, and sufficiently tested. When technology experts say "this is rock solid", people trust that. Up until now, there has been far more skepticism and, at best, guarded optimism surrounding the new voting machines than accolades.

A secure and reliable system, with paper audit trail, would change this IMHO. Take computers as a similar example. The vast majority of people distrust security on computers, but this is almost entirely because they are accustomed to using Windows. Ask the same person how secure Mac or Linux are, and you'll either get a 'Dunno' or a positive response.

Diebold continually has dropped the ball and made it easy for Americans to distrust the elections. Heck, even this past spring they were admitting massive security flaws, all while perpetuating security risks by maintaining Windows CE as the OS.

Can't beat paper votes and scrutineers.

[ribuck]

Technology hinders election integrity. How can you beat the integrity of a paper vote system, where the ballots are removed from sealed ballot boxes and counted immediately at the close of polling, with scrutineers from each party watching? There's very little scope for mischief.

Why bother bringing technology into the voting system? Polls are infrequent, so there's no real cost benefit to automation. It's not like voting is being done every day and needs to be automated.

Re:Can't beat paper votes and scrutineers.

[UbuntuDupe]

I agree, and think this is one instance of a more general mentality of "more advanced technology = better" -- a mentality people should dump ASAP. It's the attitude that makes software bloat right as computational power increases (Microsoft, I'm looking in your general direction). It's the attitude that says people should shift movie formats every 6-7 years (Sony, I'm looking in your general direction).

It's not Luddism if you want a new technology to actually be an improvement before you switch to using it.

Re:Can't beat paper votes and scrutineers.

[DarkBlackFox]

Where I voted this morning, we had paper ballots that were fed into an optical scan machine (by Diebold). The ballot was handed to me after I checked in, and each polling station had a hidden desktop with a felt-tip pen. All I had to do was fill in the circles corresponding to whatever candidate I wished to cast my vote for (much like a standardized test). When I was done filling in the circles, I took it over to the big machine, where a poll worker watched me insert it, and made sure the machine processed it correctly.

Seemed simple enough. The ballot itself has no personally identifiable information on it, and if there's a dispute or need for a manual recount, the paper ballots are presumably easy enough to get out of the machine. So these machines do have a paper trail, no potential for miscalibrated LCD screens, and have a ballot that's generally hard to screw up (fill in the circle).

The only way to really screw up a system like that is in the optical recognition software, which I'd hope is tested by poll workers before the polls actually open. And even then, with the paper ballots being retained inside, it's easy enough to do a manual recount.

Before this year we had mechanical voting machines, where you'd have to walk in, close the curtain by pulling a big lever, push all the levers down for the candidates you'd like to vote for, then pull the big lever back again to open the curtain and cast the votes. That was also easy enough, but mechanical machines like that are prone to more common failures, which was the primary reason for going with the electronic machines.

Re:Can't beat paper votes and scrutineers.

[Fahrenheit 450]

The only way to really screw up a system like that is in the optical recognition software, which I'd hope is tested by poll workers before the polls actually open. And even then, with the paper ballots being retained inside, it's easy enough to do a manual recount.

Many counters have counting registers that can be set to start at any offset you like. Start one candidate at +X votes and the other at -Y and so long as X and Y are in the statistical noise you've done your part to help rig an election without giving anyone reason to call for a recount.

Now, given a properly designed electronic system with voter verifiability, any joe can head out to someone he trusts (his computer, the Library, the League of Women Voters, the local Republicrat party office, all of the above) and have them verify that his vote was registered correctly and added into the final count correctly, and you can catch cheating at a very fine level (of course we'd still need to define policy for how to launch an investigation, but evidence gathering can be done by anyone). You can't get that with paper.

Re:Can't beat paper votes and scrutineers.

[Chandon Seldon]

Optical scan vote counting is potentially a good idea, but it leaves a loophole compared to hand counting the ballots.

Consider the following situation from the 2004 election:

In one of the counties in Ohio, computer counted ballots were used. When a presidential candidate challenged the results and suggested a recount, the county election officials first recounted a random 3% of the county votes as required by Ohio state law. When that 3% showed no discrepancies with the computer vote totals, the recount was stopped.

Now, there's a perfectly reasonable statistical argument for the 3% law - except for a couple issues. First, if there was vote tampering limited to a few select polling stations, it will only be noticed if the 3% selected includes those stations. Second, in the Ohio case, the election officials manually selected the 3% that was recounted - note that it not being actually random completely destroys the statistical argument *and* if the officials were in on it would allow them to make sure that there was no chance of known-questionable stations being recounted.

Conclusion: Computer counting is fine. It saves time and man hours. But... if there is *any question at all* about the validity of the computer results, the procedure needs to specify a complete hand count - and that count needs to actually occur. Anything less provides opportunity for voting fraud.

Lack of speed - disenfranchised voters

[SpaceLifeForm]

The DRE machines are actually slowing down the voting
process, leading to long lines, with waits in the hours.

Many people can't wait that long and have to go to work.

Re:Lack of speed - disenfranchised voters

[Tuirn]

while it's true that in many place, employers are require to give adequate leave for employees to vote. Most employees are payed hourly and won't received any money for standing around in line all day. The poor and even the middle class can't afford to do this living pay check to pay check. Today should be a national payed holiday.

Perceptions are Critical

[Maclir]

The most important part of any electoral system is that the general public must have confidence that the system is transparent and fair. That is, that everyone who votes has their vote recorded exactly as they cast it, and that there are built in checks and balances that make sure any attempt to defraud or corrupt the system are caught before the process is altered.

If people have no faith in the validity of the process - then the legitimacy of the results are shrouded in doubt - and then the basis of the democratic system starts to fall apart.

So by using technology the way the US is - no method to independently verify counts, no unalterable audit trail, lack of confidence in the integrity of the system - has not just hampered the process, but is severely damaging it

I can't speak for everyone

[deinol]

But my experience here in Orange County, CA with electronic voting was quite good. The click wheel interface looked the same as I remembered last election, and the device was easy to use. At the end of selection, it has you verify your votes on the screen in a final summary page. It then prints your votes on a sheet of paper and has you verify it again. Thusit has: ease of use, electronic counting, and paper trail for verification. I can't complain.

So while there may be a ton of voting systems that are flawed, it seems there are some excellent vendors out there. Now if only we could get more precincts to use the good systems.

Perception

[EmbeddedJanitor]

What they want is perceived hacker-proofness. Joe Sixpack can easily think of ways in which a paper ballot could go wrong (stuffing, losing papers, miscounts), but cannot think of easy ways to hack an electronic system. Therefore to Joe Sixpack, the electronic systemm seems more secure.

Remember in politics truth is putty.

Robot (R-NE)

[Doc Ruby]

Like even more fraudulent Republican robocalls harassing voters, this time in Nebraska?

IT in voting systems reduces trust

[jesterzog]

Election-system vendors and election officials generally focus on effective defense against outside attackers, usually characterized as hackers. Meanwhile, many public interest groups have focused on the possibility of election officials corrupting the results.

Personally I think the second part of this paragraph is the most important. One of the huge problems with any use of information technology as a fundamental part of an election process is trust. Above anything else, an election system should be trusted by as much of the population as is possible, and to be fully trustworthy, the election process has to be fully visible and understood by as many people as possible.

It's quite easy for most people to understand a manual election. It's as simple as voters making a mark on a paper ballot, putting it in a secure box, and then having the votes counted afterwards. Any concerned groups from nearly any cross-section of society can examine the process, provide observers, and make sure it's being done properly.

Wrapping up the selection, verification and counting process inside computers reduces the amount of people who can understand what's happening by orders of magnitude. It doesn't really matter if the voting system is open source, well designed and administered, or whatever. It's always going to exclude the majority of the population from being able to fully understand how it works, and to trust that it's working properly.

It's quite possible that IT systems can help with elections, and they already are in some places, but I don't personally think they should be used at the expense of a manual process, and I don't think they should be depended on for anything other than an early indication of the result. Voting machines, when used, should always provide voter-verified paper trails that are always deposited in a secure box in a voter-verified way using a fully visible and voter-controlled process. Manual recounts should be mandatory if there's any reasonable doubt of the outcome by anyone.

Vote By Mail

[Doc Ruby]

Vote By Mail is the answer. To broken/crooked voting machines in polling places, at least. Then we've got to make sure the machines that count the votes aren't broken/crooked. But there's so much fewer of them, not operating in realtime, that it becomes a manageable IT problem rather than an IT nightmare.

We should probably replace the counting machines with humans, picked from random volunteers and OK'd (and monitored) by each party on the counted ballots, recorded on videotape. One step at a time.

Tech I trust

[Malakusen]

I trust technology to let me send emails around the workcenter, I trust it to let me play games on my home system, and I trust it to let me write up form and documents and such, related to work. However, I have had more then enough problems with all of those, with corrupted documents, computer troubles related to gaming, problems with the email servers, and so forth, that I do not trust a computer implicitly to save my life or run an election. Computers are great tools, but they are not perfect tools. I frakking love technology, but that doesn't mean I implicitly support it. I also work with technology enough to realize that it is possible to get a computer to do whatever you want it to, if you know what you're doing. That means I've got little to no trust in the reliability of electronic voting machines and vote counting machines, and nobody else should either.

Re:High Treason

[Watson Ladd]

Unfortunately, treason is a very narrow crime in the US. You have to give aid to an enemy of the United States. So it wouldn't stick.

Doug Jones website:

[sakusha]

I have posted links to Doug Jones' website on numerous occasions here on Slashdot and this seems like another good time to post them. His reports on the history and theory of voting are excellent.

In particular, I recommend his essay on Paper Ballots.
A Brief Illustrated History of Voting is another excellent essay.
There are dozens of technical essays on voting systems on Jones' main Voting and Elections site.