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Feds to Recommend Paper Trail for Electronic Votes
flanksteak writes "The National Institute of Standards and Technology is going to recommend the decertification of all electronic voting machines that don't create paper records. Although it sounds like this recommendation may have been in the works for a while, the recent issues in Sarasota, FL (18,000 missing votes) have brought the issue a higher profile. The most interesting comment in the story comes near the end, in which the author cites a study that said paper trails from electronic voting machines aren't all they're cracked up to be."
actually it should never have been without a paper trail.
It's not like we don't have enough prior experience with data losss not to know how useful a paper trail is.
And the government with its sexdulpicates should have already know it.
"Thing is, depending on whether or not the machine prints a human readable output only then it could be made to lie on the paper record as well.
But if a paper copy is given to the voter, then lies are caught.
Why do we have to overly complicate voting in this country anyway? Other Western democracies make do just fine with pencils and paper, so what's the reasoning behind using electronic voting machines in a country where most people can't set the clocks on their VCRs?
http://www.forbes.com/opinions/2006/11/10/voting-f raud-security-tech-security-cz_bs_1113security.htm l
This article came out in forbes a while back and the author has the best solution I've seen for verifying votes on electronic voting machines. He proposes having a touchscreen computer to make all of your ballot selections and when you are done and hit vote it prints out a piece of paper with your sslections. You then can verify your votes were recorded correctly before putting your ballot in a box so that it can be run through an optical scanner at the end of the day to count the votes.
Part of the problem with the "paper trail" issue is that the idea keeps getting transformed, by gradual steps, into something that is totally useless. The paper gets put behind glass, printed on a roll, no recourse if it's too fant to read, etc. until there's no reason to suspect that it represents the voter's intentions and not some hacker's.
The ballot needs to be tangible, a physical object that the voter can inspect (handle, read and verify) and it should be the official record of the vote. If you want to have the touch screen machine give you an insta-count, fine (though I wouldn't) but the actual ballots should also be counted, every time, by hardware too dumb to hack, and if the counts differ the physical ballot count should be the one that is used.
--MarkusQ
Do you think people are gonna actually keep their receipts? you can easily set it to increment one person, make the internal paper trail increment that person, and have a printed receipt for the voter that shows they voted for the other person they wanted too..
unless you round up all those receipts (well simply check the garbage on the way out of the building) the whole concept of a paper trail is just a feel good measure.
why not just dump the electronic voting all together, it is expensive, the machines suck worse than machines that are a 100 years old...
ive got an idea for the feds to do, MANDATE the style of voting ballots, no more of this psychodelic pattern of every fricking county across the US using a different style of ballot, come up with one standard that will be required for everyone to use. then implement it electronically and mechanically.
The phrase "more better" is acceptable English. suck it grammar Nazis
Some of the differences may be related to memory decay, serial perception, and legibility of the printout. Regardless, it was an interesting point in the presentation.
In Maryland, before we got the darned electronic voting machines, our county had scantron forms. You filled in the mark with a marker, and fed it into the R2-D2esque machine, which collected the votes electronically. I don't see what the problem with this system was. It has a paper trail with the original paper ballot, and an electronic counting system. Why did we change? Because of the neat-o factor? Sheesh.
It seems to me that ATM machines get a great deal more use and account for a great deal of money. They give a receipt and also have an internal paper log. It takes two people to open one up legally ....
You'd think this was new technology in light of the voting machine problems.
But ATMs have been in use for at least a quarter century.
You don't want a transparent election. While times are not tough now, they may be in the future, and you never know what kind of trouble those around you could create if they knew or could find out who you voted for. Voting is a anonymous and deniable for a reason.
Now Diebold can helpfully offer to build these obviously-necessary devices for a mere 120% of the cost of their paperless brethren. Or upgrade their many, many useless old ones, but that's going to be pricey, since they weren't designed that way. It'll cost you at least 30% of a new one.
The only real solution to this whole mess is to add a 'None of the above' to the list. I'd punch that as many times as registering a vote.
I fail to see how that is a solution to anything. Why go through all of that trouble just to not vote? If you are just trying to make a statement, that sure is a stupid way to do it.
"The defense of freedom requires the advance of freedom" - George W Bush
You've got it wrong. NIST is not proposing to decertify anything. The white paper only talks about proposals for what requirements ought to be in the 2007 federal voting system standards. Read the white paper.
Let's face it, e-voting is a dumb idea. It's bad solution to a host of problems that never existed outside media and lobbyist FUD and creates more problems than it will ever be worth. "Fixes" to it will make it worse. Want a paper trail? Use paper ballots.
You obviously misunderstand one of the new and enticing features of electronic voting systems. Paper trails would only make wide-scale fraud more difficult!
Why go through all of that trouble just to not vote?
The point is that politicians cater to voters: mostly old people and nutcases on either end of the spectrum. People that don't vote are completely ignored. If there's a "both of you can go to hell" option, people who wouldn't vote can vote; they become people that would vote for you if you said something they liked, and someone, in theory, might start paying attention to them. This assumes significant numbers of people would do that. I'm not convinced they would.
Infinium HQ in Sarasota?
Coincidence, I think not!
There are no "missing 18000 votes" down in Florida.
They are undervotes.The citizen cast a ballot-successfully- but did not vote in the Congressional election.
Happens all the time for lots of different reasons. Republican voters had a good reason here not to vote for Katherine Harris and the Democrat was out of the question.There may have been some confusion with the ballot layout but where were the complaints about not finding the candidates on the ballot before the vote was cast?
There is an unmentioned paralell to Florida2000.Just because your turnout campaign brought your voters to the polls in greater numbers doen't mean they were voting for your candidate.
As a scrupulously impartial observer there does seem to be more post election whine from the winners this time
I'd take it one step further: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=204463&cid=167 05323
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm
Oh it is quite simple. It is the fact that the person did put the effort to go to the voting booth and say I don't like any one of these people. If you just don't vote the position they will assume that you are on their side and you couldn't or you were to lazy to vote for him. Thus not effecting his policy. But if the guy one and he noticed that enough people voted none of the above it shows that you didn't like his policy. And he or an other party may work to see if they can earn the the people none of the above vote, the next time around.
Lets say you are Against both the Death Penalty and Abortion. But you want the government to expend its influence in some areas and reduce its influence in others. But no party follows your personal lines. Now lets say your views are in majority. Now right now no political party holes the Majority views. Saying I don't like any of this is extremely important method of getting your views heard without having to be a political grandstander.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Don't most ballots still support a "write-in" candidate?
Write yourself in, or whoever you think can do the best job if you don't like either candidate. It's like voting "none of the above", but if everyone agrees on who ELSE to vote for you could even theoretically have a good outcome.
The electronic voting machine should create a paper ballot. Two columns, one with the name of the person you voted for and the other will a bar code. This paper ballot will be the one counted.
This way the user can see who they voted for. The computer can count the bar codes (much more reliable than bubbles). All this paper trail stuff goes away. You actually still count the paper.
Besides, I'm a programmer. I can make the paper trail say one thing and the database say another. Paper trails don't mean shit.
An audit trail will get US back on the right track...
Buffalo wings are good - but Buffalo Pig Wings would be GREAT!
I had a question that I would like to see the Slashdot community have a go at. What exactly is wrong with the following electronic voting system (I assume something is wrong becasue it seems so simple):
You go to a voting booth. You are assigned a random and unique number. Your vote is tied to that unique number and made available online. Anonymity is maintained, while anyone can verify that their vote was cast accurately, and anyone who wants to can tally the votes. No central tabulator is required, and no moving of hardware containing votes is required. These have been major security concerns for Diebolds system.
Plus, of COURSE there should be a paper printout -one for the voter, and one for storage. Honestly, to not create the paper trail is either moronic or diabolic (the security errors in Diebolds system are almost too big to have been the result of incompetence.)
>"If you insist on paper you're tying elections to an old technology," he told internetnews.com.
In the name of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, either it works or it doesn't.
I was just talking to a friend who consults on DP for banks, having worked her way up from being a teller. They keep multiple records of everything and crosscheck everything. Double-checking begins at the earliest stages of data rollup. Humans look over the results from machines.
Paper "trails" do have the drawback that apparently voters never look at them. Currently I lean toward optical scan, filled in by the voter and not by machine, with readers set to reject invalid ballots with helpful error messages ("Looks like you voted twice for Congress")and trigger a shred-it-log-it-replace-it procedure.
Fascinating that the NIST requires an evidence trail only after Bush is no longer involved in a single election, only weeks after Democrats take back control of Congress.
So the law makes it harder for Democrats to steal elections like Republicans could get away with for years.
Though I bet Jeb Bush (R-FL) is pissed.
Next up, a law against lying the US into war. Or maybe against spending $TRILLIONS in debt. Against ignoring PDB warnings of terrorist attacks? Or maybe against NSA warrantless wiretapping. It all looks so much more sensible to live in a democracy when you're a civilian than when you're "the decider".
--
make install -not war
Computer scientists and election experts such as Roy Saltman disagree with the idea of going back to paper ballots. "If you insist on paper you're tying elections to an old technology," he told internetnews.com.
Yes, except that it was an old technology that worked. I wonder if Saltman thinks it's archaic to cut butter with a knife instead of trying to cut it with an iPod. Computers are not the right tool for every job.
Even if electronic voting wasn't an inherently bad idea, the current sorry state of most software would make it inadvisable.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
This system has all the benefits: the preliminary results are available immediately from the electronic machine, there is a complete paper trail, you know if the machine couldn't read the ballot, and absentee ballots look exactly the same as the ballots in the precinct. Why isn't this system used everywhere?
I don't understand why this fascination with electronic voting exists in the first place. I voted in the midterms and I was horrified to see that there was absolutely no physical record that indicated the black box had in fact recorded my votes correctly.
If one wants to "solve" the problem of ambiguous voting I suppose the idea of a printed paper result that the voter verifies and then places in a box isn't bad, but I think it's overly complex given the issues at hand. I will concede the advantage that a printed result at least stands a very good chance of being completely non-ambiguous in a recount, but why not use some form of punch card and have a mechanical punch the button to stamp your card device in-booth so that there is no variability due to individuals not using proper strength? The card itself will have all relevant information printed on the card surface, but just fit into a purely mechanical device designed to ensure non-ambiguous punching of the result. What's so hard about this?
Of course there are all sorts of less-than-ethical motivations that can be brought up if we assume the worst about folks in power, that would prompt support for non-verifiable votes. Since assuming dishonest motives is the safe thing to do when transfer of power is at stake, I think we should assume the worst and ditch electronic voting altogether. Just my opinion, and perhaps a disservice to those who really think it would help, but sometimes newer really isn't better.
Also, I want a voting BOOTH, that precludes anyone seeing how I vote. Those machines I used this time were basically on stands with minimal visual guards. NOT the sort of thing I remember from when I was young, where the voting booth was fully enclosed. I would prefer to see a return to a healthy skepticism of the system on the part of the public - if people want changes that weaken privacy and verification, look for reasons why.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
Democracy for America, the follow-up to Howard Dean's Dean for America organization, is running a "Put paper ballets on the agenda" drive right now. They want people to tell Nancy Pelosi, as the future Speaker of the House, to make this a priority for next year's Congress.
So if you care about this issue, make sure she hears about it!
For what it's worth, I filed testimony in the EFF lawsuit, OPG v. Diebold, where Diebold was suing kids who (like me!) posted to the Web copies of some Diebold memos in which you can read about Florida precicints with negative 16,000 votes for Al Gore and Diebold "upgrading" the software to uncertified (read: "illegal") versions in California.
|/usr/games/fortune
I actually live in Sarasota, FL and like many others voted in the election that is in question. Although the was some negative campaigning by both canidates all of the pre-poll surveys came out in favor of the democratic canidate. The republican canidate spent over 4 million of his personal money on the election and has been investigated for shady business dealings in the past. Not to say that you can put 2 and 2 together and come up with something but it still feals fishy to me and I won't be shocked if something really bad comes out of this. Now for the irony, also on the ballot for Sarasota County was a mandate for voting machines with a paper based audit trail. That passed and will mandate an overhaul of the machines used in Sarasota that may prevent the issues that are currently being investigated.
Who exactly certified them in the first place? Shouldn't there have been some sort of requirements for accuracy, accountability, and security?
every time someone enters a vote into a machine, the poll runners verify that one of the counters incremented by one. And every 15 minutes or so it prints out a count-so-far and they're kept in order. That way every single vote is counted and there's a semi-paper trail in case something weird happens. That would solve like 99.9999% of the problems as long as the poll operators sign a thing saying they can't tell anyone the count thus far or the counter only shows the last 3 digits of the count.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
Warning RANT!
Then the people creating the current systems should all be fired. What kind of computer scientist doesn't understand that with any random access storage there is a risk of accidental or intentional destruction or alteration, at any time, in a random fasion. That's why it's called uhh random access. Hello? This is like a CS 101 second week quiz question. They even still call it RAM!
Any write once technology will be infinately better. Which one is academic. You can use a variety of write once technologies with a diverse amount of write confidence levels, number of rereads possible and techniqiue used, and cost. Just write the votes at they happen, in a sequential fasion, in a way that you cannot backtrack and rewrite.
Why the hell are do Sarb-Ox and Hipaa require worm tape and encryption in many cases, yet our voting systems have nothing but the seat of their pants.
As an aside Bruce Schneier chimed in on this recently. I wonder if this had any effect on NIST's comments.
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
Electronic voting benefits mainly the media. There really is not any real reason to have to produce the results of an election within hours after the polls close, except to support the media hype surrounding the election.
The ease of a voting system should not be directed towards the "counters", but towards the person voting and the people who need to be able to verify the counts during a dispute.
Use a simple paper ballot that the voter fills out (with maybe a mechanical/electronic assistance if needed), and places into a ballot box. The voter should not be able to walk out the door with any thing that can prove how they voted, as this can lead to selling votes or force someone to vote in a certain fashion (think of your boss saying that if you want to keep your job, you had to vote for X and bring in the proof).
Electronically/mechanically process the paper ballot to produce the counts. If there is a dispute the paper ballots are verified by hand counting.
The counting system should make a first pass through the ballots and perform a simple pass/fail on each ballot. Any ballot that fails goes to a hand count bin. The machine should be able to perform this "sorting" without human intervention (I believe that my local district's machines either require intervention with each failed scan, or simply indicates that there were failed scans within a batch).
thought the same thing.
if you haven't seen "Hacking Democracy" you better.
Anyone seen my jagged little pill?
-
Since the time each voter spends at the optical scan machine is just a few moments, there is no waiting while the person behind the curtain flipping levers on a mechanical machine works through all the races on the ballot. We use small folding tables with privacy shields, all of which can be folded up into a very small space for storage between elections.
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The machine can, as you suggest, catch overvotes and alert the voter and election officials to allow the ballot to be redone.
- In the event of a failure of the scanner, or to randomly audit to prove there's no hanky-panky with its software, a hand count can easily be done, without any damned chads to fall out during the process. Ballots can be temporarily held in an old-fashioned locked box, then transported to the county courthouse, where another machine can be used to count all the ballots en masse.
- Absentee and provisional ballots can be executed on the same form as regular ballots, but processed as appropriate, reducing costs and eliminating a possible source of problems.
For visually handicapped voters, all that is needed is a computer that can give braille, or headphones for oral feedback, and a printer to print the selections onto the same size paper as the other voters use. If it's set up correctly, this printer can print the regular ballots as well, allowing the election workers to begin the day with a smaller number of pages preprinted, and only need to print additional forms if turnout is fairly heavy.[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
All your vote are belong to U.S. Republicans, or so sayeth the mighty Diebold machine.
Because in most elections, you are voting on more than one thing, all on the same ballot. You might want to vote for particular candidates in most of the races but might want to not give any of the candidates your vote in a few of them. If there are a few races where you really don't want to vote, you should be allowed to denote that. At present, there is no way to record the difference between "I have made my intention known, and my intention is not to vote for any of the above" and "I meant to vote for a particular candidate, but my vote didn't get recorded". Being able to differentiate between these things eliminates one source of uncertainty about how the votes are recorded.
Specifically, in this case, some HUGE percentage of the ballots record no vote for this one race. Now you can say that this is due to voter dissatisfaction (that many people really wanted to express that they can't accept either candidate) or you can say that it is due to voting equipment malfunction. But that is exactly the problem: either one is a possible explanation, and whichever one did happen, the results would be the same! There should be a way to tell the difference between the two, since they are very different situations!
Basically, whatever the voter's intention is, the voting system should be able to capture that. Anything else means throwing away information that could valuable in the process of resolving problems around the vote (like the lawsuit that is, I believe, still going on in Florida).
I assume you realize that anyone who can hack the voting machine can also hack it so that the paper print-out will indicate your correct vote but the record on the card will be another set of votes, not what you made. The security of the system depends upon the integrity of the clerical staff in charge of the balloting system, it always has and always will. If you can't trust them, and make certain that some independent experts, who have to post bonds certifying the system is clean, certify and assure that no one has unauthorized access to the machines and all connections until the vote is tabulated. That will cost a little more but will put someone's money on guaranteeing that no one tampers with your vote.
CBS
Sure there are other issues like booth capturing and voter intimidation and bribing, but the technological transition has been smooth. To top it all India is still a developing country with a large percentage(40%+) of the voters being completely illiterate. If India can do it, so can US, its more of a will problem rather than tech
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
FB : https://www.facebook.com/TanveersPhotography
One thing I'd like would be for the electronic machine to generate a cryptographically-secure hash generated from all the votes cast on it. The paper ballots can then be electronically scanned and the same hash algorithm applied to the scanned data. If ALL votes are present and unmodified, then the hashes should be the same. Provided there is no collusion between the voting machine and the scanning machine makers, the probability of the hashes coming out the same in the event of vote-tampering of any kind should be extremely low.
However, knowing that tampering has occurred doesn't solve the issue of what to do about it. I'd simply insist on the election being re-held until all districts came back clean from tampering. Oh, and all sports, adult and cartoon channels would be legally required to stop transmitting until everyone bloody well voted and/or adjudicated honestly. Also, anyone caught attempting (or practicing) voting fraud should be compelled to buy everyone the DVDs of the shows they missed, before being locked up in a psych ward in Romania for the rest of their unnatural life.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Actually this time just RTFA isn't enough. You need to read the whitepaper as well.
e gislationProposal.pdf
It appears that at least one federal agency has not turned to the dark side. The draft NIST white paper recommends a voter verifiable paper audit trail that is also the ballot of record, AND robust auditing. I was very pleased to read it. I hope the final document isn't watered down, and I hope this or something similar is implemented in time for the 2008 election.
The premise of the whitepaper is that no software dependent system for counting votes (like a touchscreen with no paper ballot) can be fully vetted, and that they should never be used without a software independent record for use in mandatory statistically robust audits.
In other election reform news... There is an organization that has been a key mover in the election reform movement called electionarchive.org. They did a lot of very interesting statistical analysis of the 2004 elections and found some startling results. They have made a very solid list of 15 legislative recommendations. They can be found here:
http://electionarchive.org/ucvInfo/US/EI-FederalL
here is a list of the electionarchive.org recommendations
1.Manual Audits
2.Voter Service Reports
3.Auditable Voting Systems
4.Fund Manual Audits and Voter Service Reports
5.Teeth (enforcement)
6.Public Election Records
7.Election Monitoring Website
8.Submission of Reports
9.Public Disclosure of Voting System Software
10.Prohibit Certain Network Connections
11.Qualifications for Technical Guidelines Development Committee
12.Public Right to Observe
13.Vote Count Audit and Recount Committee
14.Repository for Voting System Disclosure
15.Prohibit Practices that Disenfranchise Voters
-- QED
Actually there's a number of jurisdictions that have a 'none of the above' option on theitr ballot. This is mainly to deal with constitutional problems leading from local laws that require write-in candidates to 'register' as write-ins so that their votes to be counted (in itself, a measure to prevent jurisdictions from having to tabulate votes for Mickey Mouse, James Bond, etc -- it happens, and there are always lawyers willing to argue that Mickey's votes need to be counted).
Make it so that the VOLUNTEERS who run the voting locations can be thrown in jail if they make a mistake. That'll really encourage more people to help out.
Computer prints you a receipt with a random number. Your vote is kept with your random number (electronically, plus internal paper roll in case electronic copy is FUBARed). You can check your vote, using the random number, on the web or via a bulletin board at the voting place the next day. Poll workers count the total number of voters at each site, which should "exactly" match the number of records on the web/bulletin board.
Can anyone think of a way to cheat THAT system?
It seems to be able to handle extra votes, dropped votes, and changed votes.
Early voting "results" being announced nationally leads to people NOT voting because "it's already been decided".
On the other hand, we have exit polls in the place of real results, so I guess we're no worse off.
So the machine is preprogrammed to count every 3rd (say) Dem vote as a Rep vote, but to print all Dem votes as Dem votes (and Rep votes as Rep votes).
Unless a rat is smelled and every paper vote was recounted and compared with the machine tally, the scam is unlikely to be noticed.
We've already seen that even with all the evidence of fraud in the last few elections there were almost no subsequent investigations.
The liklihood is very small that an untrustworthy hybrid system would reduce election fraud, and certainly won't eliminate it.
There is only one method which can be trusted: PAPER VOTES.
Only paper votes.
Electronic-only or hybrid systems exists only to enrich the system manufacturers, and enable election fraud. Those are the only reasons they've been foisted upon us.
If you had only read the summary better: If 18000 people vote for democrat candidates in other races, but in one race their votes are not counted, why would you think this is fraud by the democrats?
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
The real reason they want to use touch screen voting machines is so they can pay for all the new equipment by selling targeted ads on the touch screens. As you vote, the ads will be tailored to the demographics of the candidates you support.
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
Why do people need to (re)invent stuff? How about using the model of airline tickets and checkin. The systems, machines and paper support exist, and could be easily and cheaply modified. The security flaws have been widely discused and documented, so could be fixed. Present you ticket, (voting card), get your boarding card (voting slip), go to the gate and check in (vote). Keep you slip with flight and seat number (your paper record of having voted, but not for who). Need to audit who you voted for - go to a public place, (avoid problems mentioned above) and give 'em your stub... The software to run this? Open source, natch... Or maybe we could get a good deal from one of the bust airlines?
You sort of missed the point of paper trails.
In US States with competent electronic voting standards such as Nevada, a third party audits a random sample of all machines (usually 1-3% in practice, which is adequate), comparing the paper results with the electronic results. Any discrepancy found in the samples between the electronic results and the paper results triggers a full recount from paper, which is presumed to be correct since the voter verified it. This buys you the speed and accuracy of electronic ballots in theory, with the fault tolerance and robustness of third-party audits and independently derivable paper results. The best part is that it is extremely resistant to software/hardware attacks since the voter verified paper is statistically sampled to detect such attacks. Trust but verify, no?
The issue here is that there have been times when all the candidates insult your intelligence and I refuse to vote for any candidate in certain races. I have done this many times since I started voting. I find it very hard to chose the lesser of two evils although I have voted against a particular person or issue at times. A none of the above choice would be a clear indication of that and prevent shenanigans by lawyers to turn my 'Hell NO!' vote into a vote for their side like they are trying to do now.
Too lazy to create a sig...
Electronic voting is great, just what needs to change is the method of input. An intangible "push button" system where you then have to create an after-the-fact paper trail is backwards. Why adopt a paperless system when you want a paper trail? It makes no sense. Simply have the paper trail be the input system. Florida had it right, just it's implementation was lousy.
Here in Canada, in our last election we marked an "X" on the ballot in a circle beside the candidate we wanted. While I watch, that ballot is fed into a machine which records the vote on it. Simple, and fast, and accomplishes all that any purely electronic system accomplishes. American-style election drama is completely unknown up here - and we have a much larger area to work the logistics for. No punched holes, no hanging chads, no lost votes, no wait.
Nuff Said.
Is is not possible to have a system where you can check your vote later? If the paper produced has a unique barcode/ID per vote, and you keep your paper for later, there should be a way you could check your own vote electronically from another outlet later.
Why not just have the voter vote on paper like they used to, and then just use a machine to scan the ballots and transmit the results? That way, the paper trail could be trusted, and if there was any doubt about the machine, you could use any other to verify the results.
If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation?
If the machine craps out and refuses to print the verification you stop using it ... calling print outs undependable is a bit silly. The reliability of machines has been abysmal because the appropriation process has been abysmal, industry gives you what you pay for (ie. if you accept expensive crap they will make expensive crap, if you only accept cheap and good products they will make it if they are capable ... but as long as you keep buying expensive crap they will never even try). Urns can break, how is that more dependable?
What is wrong with having a barcode on the verification print out? It's simply an extra redundancy, it's completely irrelevant to the human spot checking of the validity of the votes. The more redundancy the better.
You'd have to have a pretty small number of votes being cast for this to be relevant, otherwise fraud will still be caught by the ones who do check.
Yes there were problems, but the PAPER TRAILS REVEALED THE PROBLEMS! Read it here, they revealed the discrepencies, missing ballots, machines crashing, all the nasty stuff that would have been secret if the paper trail wasn't there.
85% of the VVPAT Ballots and VVPAT Summaries reconciled after the primary manual count, where
approximately 15% required a secondary count
1.4% of the VVPAT cartridges exhibited missing ballots.
16.9 % of VVPAT tapes showed a discrepancy of 1 - 5 votes between the tally of ballots and the results
report; 2.1 % showed a discrepancy of over 25 votes.
During the manual recount, team members discovered 40 VVPAT tapes (9.66%) that were either
destroyed, blank, illegible, missing, taped together or otherwise compromised.
Identifying information on the VVPAT tape such as precinct information and machine identification was
inconsistent, as were the summary reports printed at the end of the day. 2.8% of the VVPATs were
missing machine ID numbers; 5.4% did not identify the precinct, increasing the difficulty of a meaningful
audit and raising questions about the integrity of the vote count.
VVAPTs showed evidence of booth workers using trial and error to print reports and start up or close
down the machines; workers apparently attempted to overcome printer problems by shutting down
machines, removing and replacing cards, and restarting machines.
72% of the labels identifying cannisters containing the VVPAT tapes were missing information. 46% of
the canister labels were blank.
Booth workers frequently failed to sign the tapes. Such failures in chain of custody also increase the
risk of a legal challenge.
The answer is right in front of you. Combine #3 and #4.
Electronic voting machine presents each position/issue in an isolated way, including lookups on official position papers for candidates or explict law wording for referendums, thus eliminating the opportunity to 'make the wrong kind of mark' or leave a 'hanging chad.' Next up, print out a copy. Voter verifies accuracy, remits it to a bullet-proof optical scanner. Paper is then secured.
A) Electronic machine can still tabulate results which can be used internally as a benchmark for verifying official counts.
B) Scanner tabulates official results, none of which are reported to the media or anyone else until the next day, after all voting has ceased, even though internet and tv conglomerates complain about lost revenue from the missing late night drama.
C) Paper ballots are stored for 180 days past the election or challenge, which ever is last, so they can be THE ultimate determinant of any dispute.
If the problem is that people make mistakes in counting, mark and scan technology should produce better results. If the problem is votes from dead or imaginary voters, how can any technology help?
If there is, as I suspect, no real problem at all, why the hell are we stumbling around with all this half-baked technology?
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
What's sick is that the whole process can be done completely without the possibility of fraud, easily and pretty fast (can count say 1 vote per second):
1. Voter places vote on electronic vote-printing machine
2. Drops physical vote into box
3. After polls close, citizens watch workers open boxes and
4. Show vote, scan into tabulator that shows running total
5. List individual totals for all polling locations on the web/newspaper/wherever.
Because each step is observed by the public there is no fraud possible (unless there is not even one concerned citizen to cover that polling location).
All other issues aside, there is no possible way we could afford anywhere near that many touch-screen machines. Even barring technical problems this is bound to cause a bottleneck as people ponder their vote.
Mark your vote on paper, put it in a box, the box is later emptied out and votes are counted by people. Observers from every party and some independents keep it honest. Blind people can use braille ballots with a punch system, or electronic etc.
Works in UK, India, etc.
What good is a paper trail? Sure, it will print out the votes that I cast. But how do I know they are really being counted? Electronic voting just doesn't work. We need a manual system where you mark your ballot with permanent ink and that ballot gets counted both by machine and by hand. And the choices have to be far enough apart on the ballot to prevent inconsistencies. Its the only way.
If a voter can prove a vote, one way or another, then their votes can be bought with money or threats and democracy will fail. If a voter cannot prove how they voted, any threats or buyouts are pointless because the people can lie.
Creating a paper record of votes cast electronically is a bit like installing a floor drain to fix a leaking roof.
For one thing, there's always going to be a failure mode in which the paper record does not match the electronic record. That's impossible to do anything about -- you don't know, and can never know, which one is right.
One "proper" design for a vote recorder (assuming you aren't just going to use paper ballots, hand-counted under scrutiny just like people have been doing ever since democracy began) would use one record per possible way of completing a ballot paper, as opposed to one record per voter, to ensure anonymisation happens as soon as a vote is cast; and the recording system would be non-reversible (except possibly by a severe, obvious and deliberate action which would be prevented whilst the machine is in operation). It should also be Universally Comprehensible; that is, it should not employ any technology beyond the understanding of a school leaver with passing grades in all subjects.
I think that those criteria would be satisfied by a simple bank of interlocked, non-resettable, mechanical counters. The housing would be mostly transparent, so that the operation of the interlock mechanism could be seen. Each counter would have a large push-button adjacent to it, labelled for the candidate, and would normally be covered by a shutter. A partial depression of the button would retract the shutter, revealing the counter; and operate the interlock, preventing the depression of any other button. Further depression of the button would advance the counter under the view of the voter; return the shutter to the deployed position; and lock out all buttons until the machine is (remotely, using a Bowden cable) re-primed for another vote by the Presiding Officer or assistant.
The machines could be made available for public scrutiny almost until the commencement of polling. As each one is delivered to a polling station, the Presiding Officer would -- in the presence of representatives of all candidates -- record the present readings on each counter on a paper label on the inside of a hinged flap, underneath which would be a mechanism to retract all the counters' shutters simultaneously, and which would be sealed shut with an Official Seal. More Official Seals would also be used if necessary to lock-out any unused buttons.
At the close of polling the seals are given one final check, then cut open; and the previously-recorded readings are subtracted from the present readings on the counters (allowing for wraparound if necessary) to give the total vote for each candidate. This would be done in the presence of each candidate's representatives.
There is a way to determine partial results before the close of polling, but it would require two groups of as many people as the product of the number of candidates and the number of vote recording machines. Each member of the first group would in succession vote for a different candidate near the beginning; at a later stage each member of the second group would again in succession vote for a different candidate, and subtract their numbers from the first group's numbers. I don't think it's workable in practice.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Not only is it incredibly easy to cheat, but it invites the worst kind of cheating.
"Vote for Candidate X or you're fired. Bring your reciept in and we'll verify it tomorrow."
Or...
"Vote for Candidate Y or I break your legs. If you don't show me your reciept, I break your legs slowly."
--
"I personal[ly] think Unix is "superior" because on LSD it tastes like Blue." -- jbarnett
Except you'd expect the under-votes to be random distributed between candidates, but this one was Democrat focussed.
You're missing the main point, this race is very suspicious, a massive undervote, the votes show the remainder of the ticket voted democrat, indicating bias in the under-vote.
The point is IT CANNOT BE VERIFIED. If 18000 Republican votes had vanished and a Democrat scraped through by a whisker, the same problem would be true, THEY HAVE NO WAY OF VERIFYING THE VOTE, and literally have to take Diebolds word for it.
In that very same election that you are talking about people found that they could wash the ink off and voted twice. You should have known it wasn't entirely true when our government bragged about it. It's a shame that the american media has become lazy and tends to source their facts from government press releases instead of doing actual reporting.
equals expensive ballot printers.
Let just stop a minute and think about this. What are the actual requirements? Does electronic voting actually solve these problems better than any other approach? Why are we discussing paper printouts when we haven't even determined if electronic voting is the proper solution?
IMO, electronic voting is a solution looking for a problem.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Just like the rest of computer assisted voting a paper trail is absurd, an udder sewn on a bull. In a system whose very purpose is to eliminate the need for manipulating physical media and eliminate transparency, a paper trail is only good for is for catching legitimate process errors though it does provide a layer of camouflage for those that would still promote these systems. .12% of voters that check the paper against their vote don't complain and record the votes you want. No problem. Of course on those occasions where there is both fraud and error in the execution the paper trail might be helpful but then we begin to enter the realm of the absurd in a big way.
Hand recorded paper ballots, redundant hand count at precinct level with lots of people involved is the ONLY WAY to even come close to sufficient transparency in the electoral system.
In the case of those that wish to perpetrate a fraud, all a paper trail does is make it necessary to be more careful when rigging elections in order to make the results fall within valid statistical bounds. Provided the receipt is in human readable form which is not a given, let the paper trail reflect the true vote so the
Simple math:
Take a deck of cards. Time yourself as you separate them out by suit. It normally takes about 10 seconds.
There were 120 million votes for President last year.
That's 2.3 million decks of cards.
2.3 million decks = 23 million man-seconds = 383,333 man-minutes = 6388 man-hours.
So if you *started* at 8 PM Pacific Standard Time (11 EST) after all of the contiguous 48 states' polls have finished, and you had 6,400 workers sort decks of cards for *1 hour*, you could have a complete count of the ballots by 9 PM. You could recount it - twice! - by 11 PM, and by 2 AM Wednesday we would know for certain who was President.
Questions for the Class:
How could you make this more efficient? What if you started counting *during* the polls? Does having a bunch of different elections on one sheet of clearly delineated graph paper affect the count at all? If it magically took *5 TIMES AS LONG* to count the records, would this matter in the slightest?
That's just not going far enough... We need a machine that presses your finger against the proper coordinates of the touch screen, using speech recognition software to determine your candidate. (For people who can't speak it takes a snapshot and presses "R" for people in suits, "D" for people with any appreciable amount of skin pigment, and for all the folks in Walmart clothes selects the candidate who ran the most scathing attack ads.) Then a printer prints out your suggestion. Another machine uses OCR to scan the print out. Then a speech synthesizer reads the scan out loud to you and you verify it by dilating your pupils into an eye scanner. The eye scans would then be printed out and stored in a giant filing cabinet so that they could be trucked to central tally stations where they would be securely interpreted by a giant, infallible paper-eye-scan-scanning machine. When all the tallies were in it would send the results to a dialer which can phone everyone and tell them who won. Because at all costs, we have to involve machines.
For each ballot question the voter is provided a color coded, different size ball bearing. Simply drop the ball into the hole next to the selected option. Oversize balls won't fit, undersized balls are sorted out and return back to the voter. At the end of the day weigh the boxes, instant vote count. All the "ballots" can be reused every year. You drop your balls and can't find them? Too &^*#ing bad. The boxes can be on scales to be monitored, with those monitoring not shown which box corresponds to which option.
Again, I think this is a pretty ineffective way to try to get a politician to cater to you.
Some better ways that I can think of:
- Get involved in a political party so you can give your input into their platforms and what candidates they promote
- Contact campaigns and candidates directly to give them feedback
- Join non-profit organizations or political groups that can lobby for the causes that are important to you
- Seek out other like-minded voters and start your own advocacy group
If you really don't like any of the candidates, then sure, don't vote for any them, but don't delude yourself into thinking that this is making some powerful "both of you can go to hell" statement that is going to make a difference. Its not.
"The defense of freedom requires the advance of freedom" - George W Bush
That would be more effective, but that's not what they're going for. These people want their dissatisfied voice heard and to be registered as people who would vote if they liked an option, but they don't want to put in any more effort than anyone expressing satisfaction.
Of course, I probably can't actually speak for them. I'm not one of them.
more expensive, but mostly a vulnerability point for stuffing the ballot boxes.
Ballots should be pre-printed.
The machine for the blind voter to remove the dependancy on a sighted person who might subvert the vote should simply fill in the circles on the pre-printed ballot, to avoid printing ballots on-site.
Come to think of it, even having machines for the blind is problematic. I'm not sure if I were a blind person whether I'd prefer to trust a human friend or a machine I couldn't see designed and built by people who might want to steal my vote. I guess the only protection here is the assumption that votes by blind persons are few enough to not be worth stealing.
Other than that, your short analysis is about as good as a short analysis gets.
The best we can do is try to avoid adding ways to fix the vote, which means refraining from trying to improve on what works.
The voter marks the ballot by hand, and the ballot is the paper trail. End of story.
I can understand wanting to help voters who aren't physically able to mark ballots accurately, but the voters who just don't value their votes enough to mark their ballots carefully, well, their votes aren't going to end up counting for much anyway. I guess the more polite way to say it is that, in our effort to help the voter, we should focus on the voters who actually need help, and be careful not to be wasting time on stuff that will only help those who refuse to help themselves.
Why does everybody insist on using paper for e-votes? Isn't that just the opposite of what they are trying to accomplish.
I do however agree that there should be a trail. I suggest the following: a full RDBMS which has been altered to record ANY change AND a READ-ONLY medium (CDR & WORM) for secondary storage of those records and an on- and off-site backup. With HIPAA, ISO9001 and Sarbanes-Oxley I think the knowledge should be here to record, retain and control such information. If you want, I have a general idea of how it could be done and with a little time and 2 other engineers I could devise you an acceptable open sourced (both hard- and software) solution to do something like this.
Well, just me, but since it's the government it doesn't surprise me that inefficiency, incapability and stupidity do rise high.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Contrary to the central assertion, the people in Sarasota County did not vote in "straight line" manner where one could reasonably compare different races, and the votes were not dominantly Democratic (votes - not voters).
a rchive/enight.asp
Total votes cast in Sarasota county: 142,532
Governor: 76,198 (R) vs 60,214 (D)
US Senator: 58,339 (R) vs 80,177 (D) (Katherine Harris race)
Att Gen: 72,185 (R) vs 64,047 (D)
Ag Comm: 79,406 (R) vs 55,653 (D)
CFO: 66,965 (R) vs 69,169 (D)
In all of the races above 135-138,000 people voted.
And the race in question:
US House 13th: 58,632 (R) vs 65,487 (D)
So there is a ~15,000 vote difference in this race compared to the others...
But which candidate's total seems to be "too low"? (unless you believe that Vern Buchanan was as unpopular with Republicans as Katherine Harris)...
Source:
http://election.dos.state.fl.us/elections/results
Final 2006 "Proof of Global Warming" US Hurricane Count -> 0
Well,Duhhh. How obvious does it have to be before the Government figures it out? Something as important as election results put into a format that is subject to instantaneous and permanent data-loss? I was amazed that it was ever even considered... much less used