Slashdot Mirror
Florida to Scrap Touch Screen Voting?
AlHunt writes "Florida Governor Charlie Crist is calling on the Florida Legislature to spend $30M to replace the troublesome touch screen voting machines with an optical scan system that allows a voter to mark an oval next to a candidate's name before slipping a ballot into an electronic reader."
...because I know it when I see it.
I think one is certainly due - faulty, unreliable equipment that failed to deliver as promised.
Oh right, poll worker says: Democrats use blue ink, Republicans use pencils.
Hmm.. here's a thought - why don't we give out slips of paper with the names of the candidates on them, then you CIRCLE your candidate.. and then (get this) PEOPLE count up the ballots. Woah.. and SOOO much more expensive right?
-GiH
I mean, we all know that Florida voters have a perfect track record of meaningfully, unambiguously, carefully, and thoughtfully placing a mark next to the right name. Yes, the scanner will kick out the badly marked ones... but I seem to recall they've been down that road before. What they hell is wrong with touch screen machines with a spit-out paper trail? Yeesh.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
the richest country on earth, not to mention the world's shining example of democracy
What has Switzerland got to do with Florida?
KFG
Remember the old punch-card machines coders used 30 years ago?
You could punch them out with a punching machine or with a single-hole punch, it didn't matter.
Do the same with ballots:
Let people fill in an optical scan ballot by hand OR give them a touch screen that will mark the ballot for them.
You get all the advantages of the touch-screen, including multiple languages, different ballots in the same polling place, accessibility for the blind and disabled, and more and you keep the advantages of optical-scan ballots, including a voter-verified paper ballot and a way to vote if the electricity goes out.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
If it can be made to work reliably and securely, electronic voting is by far the best way to go as it offers the possibility of having a much more direct democracy instead of democracy-by-proxy as we have now.
Consider this. You only get one vote every few years, which is then supposed to show your support for every decision your elected representative makes. It would be much better if you could vote on all the major issues, such as major bills, decisions to start wars, etc. With a physical based voting system though, it would be all but impossible to do this as the amount of effort to collect votes is enormous - hence we have political representatives we vote for who act as proxies for our wishes, and hopefully make decisions that the majority of the people would wish for. As we all know, this is often not the case. (eg. Copyright extention)
Now that nearly everyone has a computer (in developed countries) or has easy access to one via internet cafe's, libraries, etc. then imagine what it would be like if you could directly vote (via te internet) on bills such as say, the patriot act or extending copyright, instead of having to depend on some guy to make that vote for you? Apart from anything else, it would take a lot of the current power away from special interest lobby groups (read:big business), as they would have to convince a large slice of the population on how to vote, instead of a small group of senators etc. You would still need a body of lawmakers to put forward bills and propositions, but the general public would have much greater control over the acceptance or rejection of those bills.
The challenge of course would be:
1) ensuring everyone only got one vote, (say, through the use of a hardware keygen or something) and
2) your votes remain anonymous. I don't personally believe this is as valuable as being able to vote on every bill, and would happily sacrifice a little theoretical anonymity for a more direct democracy.
The ACLU fought against this exact kind of move in California - the use of paper ballots vs the use of electronic ballots - because according to them, electronic ballots are "twice as accurate" and the use of paper ballots would disenfranchise voters. According to the left and the ACLU in 2003, "punch cards are unfit for use" and are all for electronic voting.
i was there when they did this, and MAN... they were insistent that paper ballots go into the dustbin of history because of their error rates and their propensity to "confuse minority voters". Their words, not mine.
So, i guess that the governor of Florida should get his lawyers ready for this... taking their state back into the dark ages...
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
What the Governor wants is exactly what we do here in New Hampshire.
The tallying is instantaneous, the technology is proven (scantron tests in every school in the country) and the paper trail is there.
If they ever want voting in Florida to cease being a national joke this is the way to do it.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
As other people have pointed out, there is a compromise position: you could have electronic consoles to actually enter the vote, but which produce a paper receipt that's then put into a scanner to be counted. That way you get basically all the advantages of e-voting, with the benefits of optical-scan, but without having to have voters actually write anything on the cards. (Because, apparently, as a society we are incapable of writing and following simple instructions anymore. Not that this surprises me.)
Paperless voting was a huge mistake, but touchscreen voting itself wasn't a bad idea. There's no need to get rid of the things from this very expensive experiment that we apparently conducted that worked, just the parts that didn't.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Voting fraud is bipartisan and as old as voting. Don't think it's a new Bush & Company thing.
Certainly we should strive to eliminate voting fraud and moving away from paperless touchscreen voting is a step in the right direction.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
The counting of votes must be observed by humans. Since people can't see electrons moving, no electronic vote counting should ever take place.
I'm willing to wait for election results. Isn't that a worthwhile price for democracy?
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
Salaries are for losers; Switzerland is for winners.
KFG
Another option is the method used here in Sweden - the straight paper ballot, placed into an envelope, and then placed into the voting box by the voter him/her/itself, after officials check your name in the the voting register and eye your voter ID card (mailed out a few weeks earlier) and photo ID.
;) )
Ballots are picked up by the voter outside of the voting booth (there is a table available with all flavors) or brought in yourself. (Parties usually mail out their ballots prior to the election). Also, major parties will have their people outside, handing out ballots. Alternatively, you can just vote write-in by spelling out the party name on a blank ballot. (This results in "The Donald Duck Party", etc. garnering a few votes every year...
One envelope per election (regional, local, national, referendums, etc.)
Pros: Very simple, very unambigous (no "hanging chads" possible), straight paper trail, etc. Electronic tampering virtually impossible. Voter identity is assured.
Cons: Electoral secrecy compromised to some degree(although not fatally) if ballots stored out in the open. Sabotage against ballot storage is possible, and happens (I.e. snagging the ballots of "the enemy"). Voter ID requirements will garner cries of "voter suppression" from the usual suspects, not as TV-friendly (counting the votes takes some time).
Just to set the stage for how bizarre Florida is for politics. Janet Reno ran against Jeb. My brother took a picture with her at an appearance at the Florida-Miami game and he said she smelled like moth balls.
"...the world's shining example of democracy"
I beg your pardon? Where did you get that from? As far as democracy goes, it is as bad as it gets.
I don't understand why authorities in the US insist on using voting machines. From my experience, I worked several times as NGO election observer on voting sites in my country (Croatia), and we had no problem with getting all the paper ballots and counting them. On practically every voting site in the country, there were (beside government appointed members) one representative from each political party and one or more NGO observers. Each of us had the chance to review the site and ballot boxes prior to voting, see them sealed, be present during opening of the boxes and counting and recount them himself. Also, each of us had to sign the final report and any observed irregularities.
I can assure that voting (at least on our site) was fair, since at the table were basically 7 people, and no two people there trusted each other:)
With all that, we managed to count all 1000 ballots for our site within 2-3 hours, and all the ballots were counted at least three times. Such system, in country of 4 million people enables us to get 90% of the sites processed by midnight of the voting day. Further, all the ballots are kept for one year, available for anyone's request for recount. I don't believe it's much different in any European country.
Near the end of that special the Supervisor of Elections for Leon County Florida (Tallahassee) did a demo trial of their optical-scan machines and allowed hacker Harri Hursti to supply the memory card for the demo. Mr. Hursti had discovered that there was a hook for executable code in the memory card, which is certainly a serious problem as you probably realize. Of course, the election was completely hacked (go watch the video, it's on Google Video) using a randomly selected optical scan machine made by Diebold.
The memory cards on these machines are supposed to be functionally equivalent to a floppy or a flash memory stick, yet the machines themselves have been programmed to go to a secret location in them, check for executable code, and to execute that code if found. Which is to say that they are designed from the ground up to facilitate fraud. Can you think of any other explanation for this?
Oh, and in Florida we already use optical scan machines in several counties. And we already have a law (pushed by Jeb Bush) which makes it illegal to look at the paper used without a court order. Just try to get that court order. Fat chance.
Mussolini was right, the merging of corporate and government interests has definite advantages . . . for a few. Our politicians can't begin to get elected without corporate money and support, so their interests are definitely merged. And look how easy it was to get rid of those pesky elections. And we haven't had any curbs on "trusts" since Reagan stopped all anti-trust enforcement. And the economy is doing so well too! Just ask them over at Halliburton, or GE, or any of the other war mongers.
And Americans sleep in front of their TVs.
Those of you in the rest of the world, take a good look at the people of the United States, this Christian country, and the fine example of "morality" we portray. Martin Luthor King, Jr. said it well: "He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it." and "He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it."
Have a nice day.
BillyDoc