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.

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.

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.

[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.

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.

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.

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.