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."

Comments

Re:bad UI

[moro_666]

Just look at the thing:

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Image:IVotronic_img_34 52.jpg

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.

Re:So all the parties that polled badly

[medoc]

No mainstream media. Yeah Right.
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-823448,3 6-900258@51-898967,0.html
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.

France Élection = NEDAP distributor in France

[Anonymous Coward]

They make 90% of the voting machine currently in use in France (where only 1.500.000 citizen vote with computer).

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).

Re:bad UI

[pe1chl]

There has been very similar discussion in the Netherlands.
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/Engli sh

Re:Possible non-technical explanation for queues?

[phayes]

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.