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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?
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
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.
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
There is a fundamental difference between an ATM and a voting machine, though. In an ATM, you MUST keep track of the user who was standing at the machine doing the transaction. With a voting machine, you MUST NOT keep track of who is standing at the machine at any given time. Doing so could leak information about how that person voted.
And, as has been proven, a company that can do one well can real screw up the other (hint: begins with a 'D' and rhymes with "re-told").
-J
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!
Not a receipt. A receipt is a bad idea. A verifiable paper trail. If you need to involve computers (the only semi-legitimate reason that I've seen involves handicapped voters), then have the computer print the marked ballot. The person inspects it and then puts it into the ballot box. That is the official ballot. The person does not take a receipt with them. That makes it too easy to coerce people to vote a certain way, or punish them if they vote the wrong way.
How is that better than voting by marking up a heavy card stock ballot with a marker and running it through an optical scanner? If the goal is to minimize steps, why have the touch screen mumbo jumbo at all?
Plus, a sharpie is a lot cheaper than a tablet computer with built in printer.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
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).
if you haven't seen "Hacking Democracy" you better.
Anyone seen my jagged little pill?
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
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.
If you're a programmer, you can probably also make the barcode say one thing and the name another.
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?
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.