Slashdot Mirror
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."
More information on the French machines can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillotine
In the highest turnout since the sixties are unhappy with the machines. Quelle Surprise. Strangely enough none of the main stream media seem to have noticed this 'Catastrophe'.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
The turnout was reported at 84% - a post-war record and considerably higher than past elections. It could just be that capacity planning was to blame, rather than the voting machines.
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.
... people turn up and try to vote. The nerve of them.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
You can call me old fashion but I am against all kinds of voting machines.
Democracy works when free elections can be held and its results checked by any common citizen.
I don't know in the US, but in Europe, any participant in the elections has the right to a representative in all the pooling stations. Any common person can count the votes and confirm its results. When voting machines exist there's no real way for this kind of direct check.
First, because even if the code is open source, only programmers can check it. This is unfair to any other kind of citizen.
Second, popular participation. The mobilization of thousands of people in election days, counting the votes is a blessing and a grant of democracy. I've been a representative in several elections and I tell you, people enjoy being there helping and feel proud of it.
Democracy is the power of the people not the machines.
Math is beautiful... e^(pi*i)+1=0
I really think the article is misleading and/or didn't make his study correctly. I am a fervent opponent to electronic voting machines and I had to use these in my French town. So I decided to use them anyway but then I spent the day making people sign the paper version of the petition for maintaining paper ballots. I was outside a voting office and talked to every people coming out that had voted and asked them how they felt about that.
First surprise : 30% of the people I talked to signed the petition, based on their worries about the trust one can have in the system. In these 30%, there are two categories : people with a technical background who already knew the fundamental issues and also old people, who, contrary to popular belief, weren't afraid at all of a new machine but really had a problem with trust.
I have seen a lot of this shocking belief : "If it was not secure, computer people would tell us so". So I did, but most people are ready to hand over control to a small portion of the population. I also had a discussion with an official from the mayor's office telling me that these machines were totally secure because they were not computers but totally electronic machines (which is either nonsense or plain lie)
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
In other words, they threw up their hands and surrendered.
[Their place in line, of course.]
Quelle surprise!
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
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
or at least, it should be
check marks on a piece of paper, that can then be scanned optically, is no more complicated than voting should ever get. it's not a prolem that needs to be solved more efficiently. the more important consideration when it comes to democracy is legitimacy, trust. and if you can't feel it taste it touch it, if it's a voting machine contraption, or an electronic doodad, trust goes down
and for good reason: all voting mechanisms are prone to tampering. even with paper ballots, boxes of them can get lost, they can be scanned improperly, etc. but the point is, the more complicated the process, the more attack vectors you present. KISS: keep it simple stupid. a valuable concept in programming, a valuable concept when considering the voting process
the problem with people, especially on slashdot, is technophilia: we are always trying, almost fetishistically, to mechanize processes, even if they don't need to be. in most cases, this fetishism is harmless. but when faith in democracy is on the line, our technophilia needs to take a hike
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Here in France, a "Catastrophe" is something which is mildly irritating, like a crack in the pavement. So for example,
"Sacré bleu, c'est pas possible! Merde alors, c'est le fin de la civilisation! Il nous faut encore un révolution. Quelle catastrophe."
translates into UK English as
"Oh!"