House To Vote On Paper Trail and OSS Voting Bill

Spamicles writes "A vote is imminent for the bill that is a direct response to problems in the 2006 elections. This legislation would create a paper trail for elections, require a manual audit of every federal election, and open the source code of voting software in certain circumstances. The bill currently has 216 co-sponsors and is expected to be brought to the floor of the House and passed any day."

Comments

Re:I'm Canadian

[bidule]

Yeah, the only problem is that we have a vote to cast. Easy to split in stacks. They have 3-4 things to vote in one go. It would be fixable by handling each item separately, I guess.

"Good Intentions"

[ejoe]

I don't doubt that the original author of this bill was well intentioned (there was so much to fix about HAVA, after all), but this bill is not the answer, and it's _not_ good. We don't want computers enshrined as the method of resolving or counting votes. The Canadian (and the Europeans, e.g., the Swiss) have it right. Paper ballots that are manually marked that _anyone_ can verify are the right approach. Slashdot is what got me involved in this issue originally, and it's thanks to the skepticism of computer professionals that we know how bad these systems are.

This bill is being called the "Patriot Act of Elections"...be sure to get all the facts before you decide it's a good thing, and I'm sure you'll decide it isn't. Here are two great resources to start with:

http://www.electiondefensealliance.org/

http://www.bradblog.com/

(and in particular on the Brad Blog, check out Ellen Thiesen's analysis of problems with this and the Senate bill currently being worked on)

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4678

Re:"Good Intentions"

[jpop32]

There's a key difference between any banking system and voting, and that's anonymity.

That's not a key difference. That's an implementation detail.

And, given all the issues we've had with problems such as mass identity theft via millions of card numbers being stolen in a single swoop, do you really consider those systems secure, reliable and verifiable?

Dude, wake up and smell the coffee. The discussion is long over, and the verdict is in. Electronic voting is old hat in many places in the world.

Belgium does it since 1991 (!). 60% of French absentee ballots are cast over the internet (first used in 2003.). European Union as a has a initiative (http://www.eucybervote.org/index.html) to enable both internet voting and voting using the mobile phones, EU-wide. First trials have already been carried out. Brazil uses 400000+ electronic voting machines (over 150 million voters), and the final election results are known minutes after the polls close. India experimented with it since 1982. (!!), and is using it exclusively since 2003 (over a billion voters!). If it's good for the biggest democracy in the world, it should be good for the US.

So, just because the US hasn't figured electronic voting out yet doesn't mean it doesn't work at all or that there is something fundamentaly wrong with it. Particular implementation may be faulty, but that doesn't mean that every implementation is faulty. But, in an electroral system where it's perfectly legitimate that a candidate that recieves a majority of the votes isn't elected, and a winner can be appointed by un-elected judges, I can see why you're worried.

PS - Remember, too, that cash still a tangible artifact, and, the most valuable cash in general use is, wait for it...Paper!

Sure it is. If you're posting from 1975. Here, in the 21st century, majority of cash comes in plastic form. Oh, you'll love it once you get here.

Other things in the bill

[morgan_greywolf]

Other things in the bill:

Prohibition of wireless networks for use in voting systems
Prohibition of voting systems connected to the Internet
Excludes the use of COTS hardware and software (what about embedded OSes?)

See the full HR-811 bill.

Re:Regardless of political affiliation...

[ronadams]

As someone who co-founded a homeless outreach group, I can tell you that, at least by Ohio law:

1. They can use the address of a homeless shelter they are staying at as their legal address, provided they follow the shelter's sign-in rules, which vary from shelter to shelter.
2. They can get a picture ID for $10, if they have a social security card (which they can get for free.
3. There are organizations that will help homeless people who are interested do all of these things, even to the point of fronting the fee for the picture ID, which they often must have for some treatment programs anyway (especially those that involve paid-for housing).

Re:Zero Evidence

[Ironsides]

Wanna Bet

Re:media picked candidates

[Elemenope]

He's not very 'closet' about his Libertarianism. He was the '88 presidential candidate for the LP, and has almost unwaveringly voted consistently in Congress with guidelines best described as Libertarian. However, I have to disagree with your wider thesis. Reaction polling by CNN following the Republican debates named R. Paul the clear winner on many metrics; however, the pundits didn't even mention him when discussing who they thought 'won' the debates, with their comments uniformly gravitating towards the 'front-runners'. Much more attention and coverage was paid towards Giuliani's response to R. Paul's comments on terrorism than was paid to R. Paul's actual comments. And so forth.

EFF write up on this bill

[ukemike]

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has written an analysis of this bill that is very useful, quick to read, and well... correct.

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/005308.php

I have been following the issue of election theft and computerized voting very closely for years, and I say that this bill is our best hope of fixing the elections system. It isn't perfect but compared to what we have now it is an incredible improvement. I'm also not claiming that this will fix any of the other ills of our political system, but this is a critical element to saving our democracy. PLEASE PLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASE call or write your representative and beg, plead, implore them to support this bill.

http://www.house.gov/writerep/

What does it do?
Requires voter verified paper ballots. The physical paper ballot is the official legal record of the vote instead of some bits in a Windoze PC.

Requires manual audits of 3-10% of randomly selected precincts. This is by far the most important part of the bill because this is the tool that can be used to detect fraud. Note, audits are currently extremely uncommon even in the cases of recounts or close elections. In many cases audits are impossible because the data needed is lost in the electronic counting process.

Would require release of source code of some portions of the voting software to certain people. Okay obviously this is a compromise between opening the source, trade secret concerns, and the practical fact that MS isn't gonna release the source to Windows or Access, which many of these systems are based upon. Still if Slashdot readers don't get that this is a step in the right direction then no one will.

Re:media picked candidates

[Laur]

Dump that lesser of the top two evils "vendor lockin" they always push, it's just plain harmful and results in the political situation you see today and what you have seen over the past generations.

I think the two party political situation has much more to do with the voting system used in the US. With the current "winner-take-all" voting method, voting for anyone but the top two really is throwing your vote away. If the US used a proportional system of some type then third parties would have much more power. I wonder why the two parties in power won't pass any laws to help make that happen?