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French Voting Machines a "Catastrophe"
eldavojohn writes "The electronic voting machine has soured another election. Some French voters have reportedly turned away in disgust after facing up to two hours in lines to use the machines. Further, the article reports, 'Researchers at Paul Verlaine University in Metz said that trials on two of the three machines used in France showed that four people out of every seven aged over 65 could not get their votes recorded.' This article concentrates primarily on usability and efficiency, but surprisingly mentions little (aside from user trust issues) about the security embodied in the machines or whether it was satisfactory. I think all three aspects are important to anyone aiming to produce voting machines. The manufacturer of these particular machines is France Élection."
Just look at the thing:
4 52.jpg
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Image:IVotronic_img_3
It looks like total crap, no wonder that people have difficulties by using it. Why in Bill's name did they start a new design for that kind of machines, ffs. we have had ATM's around for years, just stick to it, they work and people know how they work.
I'd tell you the chances of this story being a dupe, but you wouldn't like it.
No mainstream media. Yeah Right.3 6-900258@51-898967,0.html
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-823448,
It's not the parties who polled badly which complain, it's the electors. I am a Sarkosy elector (polled nice, thanks), and I can tell you I'm not happy with the queuing.
I'll just translate the last phrase from the article:
A 20 h 45, les derniers électeurs du bureau 5 font encore la queue derrière la grille. Les derniers ne verront pas le soleil se coucher.
At 8 45 PM [poll supposedly closed at 8], the last voters from poll place 5 are still queuing behind the closed doors. The last ones will not see the sun set.
Those NEDAP computer are the same in use and contested in the Nederlands http://www.wijvertrouwenstemcomputersniet.nl/Engli shWe Don't Trust Voting Computer.
Those are are the same computer aquired and never used due to public pressure by the Irish (see http://evoting.cs.may.ie/Irish Citizens for Trustworthy Evoting).
There has been very similar discussion in the Netherlands.
i sh
Here, too, the manufacturer said it was not a computer. An investigative group said "give us one, we will convert it to a chess-playing computer". Impossible, said the manufacturer, but denied them a demo machine. Then, they borrowed one from a municipality, and converted into a chess-playing computer. This, of course, lowered some jaws.
Furthermore, they wrote new firmware for it that manipulated the election results, and showed various different techniques for making sure this was not easily detected.
The device widely used in the Netherlands has no precautions at all against manipulation of the firmware by unauthorized parties. The operating lock is a standard C&K lock for which almost all keys are the same. I remembered having such a lock in the junkbox and indeed, its key number is the same as on the voting machines.
But the flaw most easily exploited turned out to be around vote secrecy. The electronics are so badly shielded that someone with a radio receiver within a few tens of meters can detect what vote is being made.
After the usual initial denial, it has been taken up somewhat seriously by authorities. Operational procedures for guarding the firmware have been added (like sealing of the access lid to the electronics).
Furthermore, a certain range of one type of machine and the entire series of another brand were declared unfit for use, because the emission problem could not be controlled by the manufacturer.
http://www.wijvertrouwenstemcomputersniet.nl/Engl
Nedap is. They had to change their machines in the Netherlands after the group Wij vertrouwen stemcomputers niet demonstrated flaws, especially with the LCD screen - it was possible to detect the selected vote remotely using a Tempest-like effect, if I understand correctly).
Anyways, I voted on such a machine, and saw how old people had trouble using it. It is also the first time I had to wait to vote (15 minutes instead of less than one), because their was only one machine and many people had to be told how to use it.
Two of the main parties called for their removal; I hope this is going to happen.
I waited for a half an hour because I went in at 8 AM. Going in early also meant that I was called on to count the vote.
Our polling station still uses paper ballots, so the time it took depended on the turnout & not on any machines. As we let everyone vote who was in line at 8 PM, we had to wait until 10 PM to start counting. While waiting, I asked the president of the polling station what the average time was. His answer: 90 minutes on average.
A +2 hour wait was not exceptional.
The major time consumer when waiting is, as always, the verification of the voting rolls which is done by reading a long listing of registered voters. It can take them up to a minute to find your name when you forgot your voters registration card.
As there is no paper trail & the code is not open sourced I wouldn't want to use the machines they used in the areas around Paris where they used electronic voting machines. However, the wait had nothing to do with their use or non-use.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
I really don't see what was wrong with the old system in france.
The old system was simple and foolproof when it came to counting etc. Take an envelope, one vote bulletin from each candidate, go in the voting booth, put the bulletin you want in the envelope, then you just held in above the slot while the guy pulls the lever and let it fall in.
The box was locked and made of transparent plastic.
Then to count the votes, they enlisted volunteers (people at your local voting facility often nagged you to come help after the poll, so it wasn't exclusive in any way shape or form) to count the votes.
Unlike the old american system with punch cards, counting the votes was easy and straightforward, and performed by humans.
Double checking the counts by recounting the piles of the various bulletins was also easy.
Given all that, I fail to see why they felt the need to move to electronic vote, which is much harder to get right, and can never get as transparent.
Anyone can understand how counting papers work and how the design of the old system was secure, whereas with an electronic system, you have to be a computer scientist with some knowledge of computer and network security to have a chance to know if it's secure.
And even then, you can't assess if the actual system is deployed in a secure way just by looking at the physical installation.