E-Voting Report Finds Problems with Modern Elections

JonRob writes "The Open Rights Group has released a report on challenges faced by voting technology. Using the May 2007 Scottish/English elections as a testbed, researchers have collated hundreds of observations into a verdict on voting in the digital age. 'The report provides a comprehensive look at elections that used e-counting or e-voting technologies. As a result of the report's findings ORG cannot express confidence in the results for the areas we observed. This is not a declaration we take lightly but, despite having had accredited observers on location, having interviewed local authorities and having filed Freedom of Information requests, ORG is still not able to verify if votes were counted accurately and as voters intended.' The report is available online in pdf format for download."

Comments

whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[timmarhy]

give me one problem with paper ballots? seriously you nerds, this is a solution in search of a problem.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[ajenteks]

The problem is it takes too much effort to steal an election if you use paper, duh!

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[geek2718]

Chad

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[VorpalEdge]

You won't have hanging chads if you have this two-inch-square box on a piece of paper that you mark with an x or fill in.

Hell, you could probably enlarge the font for the visually impaired.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[Rob the Bold]

give me one problem with paper ballots?

Blindness and other disabilities. Sure you could print braille ballots. So how about paraplegia, bilateral hand amputation, etc.? DRE voting machines can be adapted for a suck-and-blow interface. I can't think of a paper adaptation except for having someone else help the voter.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[HardCase]

I can't think of a paper adaptation except for having someone else help the voter.

An excellent solution.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[AuMatar]

Then have someone help the voter. In front of witnesses, so there's no chance of them being cheated. For the seeing impaired (but not blind) use large fonts on special paper and have vision magnification machines they can put them under in a suitably private area. That reduces the number of people who need help to a small percentage of the population (less than 1%) and we can just help them rather than come up with Rube Goldberg device to accomodate them.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[qbwiz]

Then have someone help the voter. In front of witnesses, so there's no chance of them being cheated.

Well, that really defeats the purpose of a secret ballot, then.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[gurps_npc]

Chads

Long history of people cheating them (While the current system sucks, a combo of electtronic + paper if properly done, can double our chances of catching fraud)

Takes too long to count.

Takes up a lot of space.

Costs a lot more money.

If someone is removed from the ballot, we have to reprint, which may not happen in time

Delivery must be assured with enough to all, which means a lot of waste

Blind people have issues

People that don't read english have issues

Ballot design for large number of possible candidates - people seriously want to be the guy on the top of the list, it gives a small, but real boost to their numbers

Oh wait, you just wanted ONE issue. Hm. Hard too choose just one.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[ZERO1ZERO]

Well for most of Scotland they did use paper ballots. But they designed it so badly and had PR and FPTP voting systems on it (i.e 2 crosses, 1st and second pref, then the order of your preferred councillor numbered from 1 to whatecer) that most people didn't understand it and something like 400,000 (?) vote sdidn't get counted cos the papers weren't filled in right.

So, even with paper it's still messed up.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[timmarhy]

right because spending huge amounts of money on your stupid suck and blow interface is better then just having someone help them because?????......

face it, there's better things for us to be doing.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

Chad

Hanging chads have been around for 60 years and standards had been around for years to deal with the "problem" (that being "stupid voters" who were unable to punch a square hole with a round peg... ha ha let us all have a good and hearty laugh at the expense of the "stupid" voters)

Voters should quit whining about losing and whining about the loser whining about losing and start asking serious questions, like "why was the recount not performed 'to spec', to wit, the standard hanging chad specification calling for any chad with one or two unpunched corners remaining?" Or, why did the SCOTUS decide that it suddenly had the power to run the state's elections when that power is clearly not at all within its scope? Or hell, why after decades of hanging chads did it suddenly become an issue?

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[zCyl]

For blindness, you can just have a braille voter card with a raised box to punch a hole out of.

So how about paraplegia, bilateral hand amputation, etc.?

They have to find some way to interface with the world, whether by feet, hands, assistance, or voice command to a computer. But then for their vote to have any verified chance of being counted, they will also need some way to verify its contents after being printed out to a physical copy, either by touch (braille) or by sight.

Using a computer interface is NOT incompatible with using a paper ballot. But the voter must have some way to verify the contents of the paper ballot, or the voter has not been granted his or her voting rights. I for one believe that the disabled should have the same right to verify that their vote has been counted as everyone else. Locking their votes away in a computer and never printing it to hard copy is not an acceptable solution, but using a computer as an interface for generating a paper ballot IS an acceptable solution.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[Amoeba]

For something that is supposed to be a cornerstone of our country, you'd think that the money, time, and other issues you list would be minor problems when compared to the overall purpose and goal of voting and the importance of integrity of accurate count and auditing. As an aside, why is election day *not* a national holiday? A serious WTF?

Of all the issues you list (and I'm sure others could come up with additional problems) not a single one of them is an issue around the ability to tally the numbers with accuracy.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[halcyon1234]

Well, that really defeats the purpose of a secret ballot, then.

Then just have a trusted witness. Judges, notaries, court clerks and most religious figures are already authorized to bear witness for official documents. Just have one on hand, or let someone bring their own if there's an issue. The ballot is still a secret, because the person's vote will be held in confidence.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[Vancorps]

I don't understand why they don't just make a system to do this. You the voter get a print-out and the voting office gets a print-out. Then the electronic counting can instantly tally everything. If there is a dispute then you count the paper ballots and life is grand. It's so simple it of course wouldn't work.

Of course then you need people on site which can service the printers since they will invariably break.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[Blakey Rat]

Which elections? If every election day was a holiday, then you wouldn't get a lot of work done between the new hospital levy issue and the fire department needing a new truck and, oh, Judge Bob's term is over we need to elect a new one.

Of course, making election day a holiday would help nobody in the states that do voting via mail now.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[timmarhy]

your e-voting system does nothing to solve any of those issues except for taking longer to count, which frankly pales in comparison to having a verifible count.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[RealSurreal]

And, as the report linked from TFA points out, in a lot of Scottish constituencies the winning margin was less than the number of "spoilt" papers, meaning that, had they been counted, the outcome could have been completely different. I believe this is known as disenfranchisement.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[AuMatar]

Welcome to life. There's no perfect answers. We have the following options

1)Secret electronic ballot, but no verification on the count, risking all of our right to vote being comprimised. But a small minority of the people who have problems voting may be able to get a secret ballot. Maybe. If those alternative input methods are actually developed for all needs. I see the ggp post does not help the blind and deaf for example.

2)Secret paper ballot, no help offered. The vast majority of people get to vote and be assured their vote makes it in as they voted, but a small percentage is disenfanchised.

3)Secret paper ballot, help offered. The vast majority see no difference from 2. THe majority of people disenfranchised in 2 are helped. A small percentage of those disenfranchised in 2 refuse help, but we're talking .1% or less of the population.

Of the 3, the alternative with lowest risk and highest percentage able to vote is #3. So until something clearly superior exists, its what we should go with.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[RealSurreal]

My council was one of those piloting electronic counting. The main stated reason for doing so was to save time. They started counting on Thursday at 10pm. They declared the result the following Tuesday. With a manual count the result in usually known sometime on the Friday.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[Smidge204]

Having a take-home receipt that can be used to verify how a vote was cast is just asking for trouble.

"Hey, buddy, bring me a receipt that says you voted for 'John B. Asshat' and I'll give you $100 cash. Sound good?"

Any and all paper records need to be kept confidential, which is slightly easier (but definitely not foolproof) if the government maintains those records.
=Smidge=

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[geek2718]

But chad is a problem not because the Florida recount came out wrong (or right or whatever you like), but because of the fact that there had to be so much effort/time/guesswork put into it. Processing accuracy (not to mention time) for e voting is a huge win. Chad is merely the most famous example, but any paper system is fundamentally inaccurate above a certain size election. Sometimes people forget this, but Florida was an excellent example that, with paper, there is really no meaningful way to define the "true" result. With many thousands of paper ballots, one can only speak of a statistical result accurate to within a certain %. With electronic voting you trade a 100% chance of these small errors for a much smaller chance of much larger errors (fraud, crashes, etc). That trade probably isn't worth it, and the only sensible system is electronic with paper trail which removes small errors (and provides accessibility) but allows for backup (albeit with aforementioned small errors) in the case of an electronic failure.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[Kadin2048]

but any paper system is fundamentally inaccurate above a certain size election.

I disagree. Paper systems make a certain amount of human error (feel free to call it 'stupidity,' I won't stop you) visible. Electronic systems hide it. They're not inherently superior.

The problem with the Florida ballots was a fundamental design flaw, combined with human error, combined with procedural mistakes.

You could fix many of the problems experienced in Florida, keeping paper ballots, by redesigning them and fixing the procedure. For example, the "dangling chad" problem of incompletely punched holes could be fixed by replacing the perforated-card ballots with optical ones, and giving the voter a big "dauber" type pen that they simply have to touch to the circle they want to fill in. Thousands of old people do this every day -- it's called Bingo Night. Do it with a UV-reflective marker and you can probably read them quickly using a machine. To prevent double-marks, just mandate that if you accidentally touch the marker to anyplace on the paper outside of a bubble you meant to fill in, you need to get a new ballot and start over. You could even have a 'test scanner' at the voting site that quickly scans a voter's ballot and checks for gross stupidity (double marks, marks outside the lines, etc.). If someone does manage to submit a ballot with two marks, it doesn't get counted, since the only person who can legally determine the intent of a voter is a judge. (I suppose you could put them all to the side and wait to see if the election is close enough to warrant bothering to look at them, but frankly I'd prefer that they just get thrown out. It's too easy to politicize the process of 'determining intent;' better to avoid it completely and only count well-formed ballots.)

Electronic voting covers up some of the inaccuracies of paper ballots and gives a false sense of perfection. They're not. You only think that the total you're getting is free of errors; there's just no way to look at a particular ballot and see if anything went amiss when someone was casting it. Last year when I went to the polls, there was a huge amount of confusion over one old codger who thought he was de-selecting candidates, when he was actually selecting them. I'm sure other people do similarly dumb things when voting -- but an electronic system just sweeps them under the rug behind a facade of digital faultlessness. It's camouflaging stupidity, not eliminating it. Just because the system gives you an output that's 1 or 0 doesn't mean that only ones and zeros went in; it's just being quantized down that way. You have no idea what's really going into it. All sorts of stupidity could be happening and you'd have no idea, just by looking at the output of an electronic voting system.

Hybrid electronic/paper systems are certainly better than paperless systems (which are anathema to democracy, frankly), but there's no reason, aside from a typical American obsession with instant gratification, to have the electronic side at all. There's no reason why we should be compromising our elections, introducing any unnecessary mysteriousness or opacity into the process, just to get the returns a few hours sooner. If it takes a few days to count all the ballots and make sure we do it right before we know the final results, fine! It's not worth the cost, or the risk, of e-voting, just to try to have the "final score" by 8PM on Election Day.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[Original Replica]

accuracy (not to mention time) for e voting is a huge win. Chad is merely the most famous example, but any paper system is fundamentally inaccurate above a certain size election. Sometimes people forget this, but Florida was an excellent example that, with paper, there is really no meaningful way to define the "true" result.

Wait a second. They can't even get a machine to punch a clear hole in a piece of paper and you want them to impliment a more complex system? Hanging chads aren't "stupid voters" they are faulty machines. A paper system is highly accurate way to arrive at a true result. You count them all. sure it might take a while, but it will take less than the four years it takes to wait for your next chance to get it right. The Florida election was an excellent example that there are alot of people will to "misplace" votes and that will only be easier when there is no physical human-eye-readable trail.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[Smidge204]

Chads

Use a pencil or stamp, not physical holes. No chads!

Long history of people cheating them (While the current system sucks, a combo of electtronic + paper if properly done, can double our chances of catching fraud)

Keyword IF. Given that electronic systems have been demonstrated to be laughably easy to tamper with, may as well just use all paper and be done with it. You can also serialize the paper ballots using UV reactive ink, barcodes or RFID tags to be sure none are missing when they're counted. Anything that is reasonably impossible for someone to read would work, so they can't associate a particular person with a particular ballot. (Before you ask, you don't have to hand out the ballots in consecutive order, either.)

Takes too long to count.

Paper ballots can still be machine counted. Use those "bingo card" markers (but in black) and you won't have any problems with half-filled circles or fills that aren't dark enough.

Takes up a lot of space.

I hear the latest electronic systems hold away into your shirt pocket when you're done with them. They're also indestructible and can't possibly be damaged if handled roughly or exposed to less than perfect storage conditions for any length of time.

Costs a lot more money.

Those electronic kiosks are also free for life, never need maintenance or replacement, specially trained handlers and tighter security.

If someone is removed from the ballot, we have to reprint, which may not happen in time

OR you can post flyers and signs at the voting places, and have the attendant (who checks if you're registered to vote and would presumably hand you the ballots) strike off the name with a sharpie.

Delivery must be assured with enough to all, which means a lot of waste

District FOO has QUXX registered voters. Send them 1.10*QUXX ballots. Have someone sign off that they received the alloted amount. And, as we all know from previous elections, there are ALWAYS enough machines to adequately serve everyone who shows up.

Hell, done properly with barcodes, you could even print ballots ON DEMAND. Each district gets to print some limited number of "emergency ballots" should they run out.

Blind people have issues

The electronic machines have special LCD screens that can telepathically project the choices into a voter's brain, too. Those touchscreens? High-res active tactile feedback so the blind guy knows exactly which virtual button he's putting his finger on.

People that don't read english have issues

How'd they manage to register in the first place? I mean, it's not like you can have one set of printed instructions posted somewhere, instead of reprinting them on each and every ballot, right? (I would hope we wouldn't need to translate the candidate's names, too... "George W. Arbusto" would probably be MORE confusing.)

Ballot design for large number of possible candidates - people seriously want to be the guy on the top of the list, it gives a small, but real boost to their numbers

If the ballots are serialized (see above) and/or machine readable data is supplied (Datamatrix 2D barcode, RFID chip) then the names on the printed ballot can be randomized. Need more space? We could even use MULTIPLE A4 sized cards. If they're RFID'd and/or barcoded then we can make sure we have a full set from each voter. I doubt we'll ever get that many candidates on one ticket, though.

Oh wait, you just wanted ONE issue. Hm. Hard too choose just one.

Yeah, especially when they're all closer to excuses than actual issues.
=Smidge=

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[Original Replica]

easy. After you vote and get your printout and verify that you vote was properly counted you must put you printout into a second ballot box that goes to a UN Elections Oversight committee.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[cheater512]

Cant guarantee that paper ballots are counted accurately either.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[ClickOnThis]

I can't think of a paper adaptation except for having someone else help the voter. An excellent solution. Indeed. It's called proxy voting.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[Evilest Doer]

Chad

And what problem *is* that African country having with paper ballots?

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[CrankyOldBastard]

In Australia we are very confident that votes are properly counted. In fact, in order to issue a rigged count you would have to bribe the opposing party's scrutineers in the 5 minute window between the submission of the scrutineer's form and the beginning of the count for every polling place as well as have all the electoral officers bribed, or else have a mole planted within the committee of each and candidate as well as having all the scrutineers and electoral officers bribed.

Blind voters select a person to place their vote under the supervision of the Returning Officer, who confirms the recorded vote with the blind (or otherwise disabled/handicapped) person.

There's a reason why the 'Australian Vote' is used as the model for most countries that are having their first free and fair elections.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[mOdQuArK!]

There's nothing wrong with using a machine to print out the ballot - a machine could print out a nice easily-readable summary of each issue, and how you voted for that issue (and leave out all of the other choices). No problems with hanging chads there. Also, machines would be good for accomodating disabilities (and could still generate a 'standard' ballot).

In most of these cases, the big problems are when people are trusting machines to the _counting_ (not the printing). That's the process which needs straightforward hard-to-fake-or-alter physical tokens (the ballots), and redundant & cross-checked counting setups which don't require that any particular set of people (like the machine operators) be trusted.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

guesswork

But there didn't need to be. As mentioned before, there's a well defined standard for counting punch ballots. "Dimples" and squares with one broken corner don't count. Nor do they spoil a ballot when a clear vote is marked for that field. Empty squares and squares that are half or 3/4 gone are counted, and they spoil a ballot when another vote is marked for that field. This is the standard that was used for decades, right up until 2000.

The question everyone should be asking is "why?"

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[speaker of the truth]

The electronic machines have special LCD screens that can telepathically project the choices into a voter's brain, too. Those touchscreens? High-res active tactile feedback so the blind guy knows exactly which virtual button he's putting his finger on. Call them out one at a time and have five seconds to touch the screen. Then say "next person" and do not count any touched in that time. If the blind person hasn't decided ahead of time that's going to take a lot of time. But it will encourage them to become informed. The machine can then print out the result in braille and the person can hand it in.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[compro01]

i personally like the idea of electronic voting, for above mentioned reasons.

however, i do not like the idea of electronic vote counting. make the machine simply print out a standard human-readable ballot and have actual people count the damn things, just like we do now, which makes a electrion difficult to rig, and still allows for the benefits of the electronic voting machines.

we get the best of both worlds that way.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[ppanon]

There's a reason why the 'Australian Vote' is used as the model for most countries that are having their first free and fair elections.

Yeah... So, how do you explain John Howard? :-)

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[timmarhy]

exactly, you'll never know when the next florida happens if your using and electronic voting system

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[db32]

People that don't read english have no business voting in America.

I'm all for immigrants, unless you are native American you came to America as an immigrant. The difference being the families showed up at the door they walked up, signed in, and frequently had their names changed and basically had to learn to read and write english to get by. If you want to speak spanish, pay in pesos, and so on, go to mexico. If you really think America is so great, then learn to integrate your culture and quit forcing the rest of us to learn your language. And before I hear some racist crap, one of my best friends growing up was an immigrant from Argentina. Mom, dad, and all the kids spoke perfect english (though they mostly spoke spanish at home), mom actually home schooled the kids up through grade school and taught spanish on the side. They are the perfect example of how immigrants can integrate into American society and still retain their culture.

Sorry, just one of my pet peeves about that kind of thing, but all your other points on the issues with paper ballots are spot on. Don't forget the infamous butterfly ballots too. I am a firm believer that we need to drop Diebold and all these other e-voting companies and contact Fisher Price to make a good voting machine that you can't screw up.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[servognome]

You won't have hanging chads if you have this two-inch-square box on a piece of paper that you mark with an x or fill in.

So what does it mean if there is a "/"? What if there is a scribble mark in one box and an "X" on the other? What if there is just a dot (as if the pen was placed in the center of the box)?

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[Cantus]

Plain simple, schedule elections to take place on Sundays, like the rest of the world. And for f**k's sake, use PAPER BALLOT (the *only* 100% transparent voting method)! What is wrong with the U. S. of A.???

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

"People that don't read english have no business voting in America."

Hey, it wouldn't only exlude many immigrants (as you realize), but I've known a couple of high school kids who couldn't read English. Granted, they could speak it well enough, but I digress.

At any rate, do try to realize that you're leaning far more toward a meritocracy than a democracy. And American patriotism tends to make a lot of noise over the value of democracy rather than any other political theory. Maybe there's something to that.

For what it's worth, my view is more along the lines of: if you pay taxes and are a citizen or permanent resident (this applies to many immigrants), you're more than entitled to have a say in the government that those taxes pay for, knowledge of English or not.

Plus, why stop at knowing English in your model? Why not restrict suffrage to only those who've received an A (or possibly a B+) in their high-school civics classes? Or why not to those who've taken a college-level introduction to political theory or critical thinking or economics, etc.? The latter are far easier to do than learn English, and they increase the knowledge of how the voting system actually works dramatically. Merely knowing English (but knowing nothing about the world) doesn't make a good citizen.

"If you really think America is so great,..."

For many, I don't think that their reason for coming is that America is "so great", just that it's at least marginally better than where they're coming from. They could view it as shit, really, as long as it's sweeter-smelling than their last home.

"...then learn to integrate your culture and quit forcing the rest of us to learn your language."

Wow, you're so hard done by! I'll shed some tears for you. (Let me speculate that despite all this "forcing", you've never cared (nor has their been any actual force) to learn another language).

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[cheater512]

Yeah I'm in Australia too.

What I meant human error comes in to play instead of computer error.
There is no guarantee that someone accidentally miscounted your vote.
Its got to happen quite a few times per election.

I still dont know how the US and UK have so many computer voting problems.
I could make a voting system with my hands tied behind my back which would work properly.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not a faulty machine, a faulty process. People were expected to hand punch the ballots with a stylus.

At least as far as I can recall.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[jasonjacks0n]

If someone does manage to submit a ballot with two marks, it doesn't get counted, since the only person who can legally determine the intent of a voter is a judge. (I suppose you could put them all to the side and wait to see if the election is close enough to warrant bothering to look at them, but frankly I'd prefer that they just get thrown out.

First, I agree with the basic sentiments of your post. You are, in the main, exactly correct.

But voting systems, given the constraints - perfect anonymity, one-vote-per-person, and count-every-vote - are just hard to do well. Your statement above is a great example of this: if we adopted your suggestion, any polling worker with a UV-reflective marker could "invalidate" votes just by marking an extra candidate or two. The over-marked ballots would then be set aside and left uncounted.

But I do agree with you that the submitted ballot should be paper.. electronic systems are exponentially easier to cheat without getting caught.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[Chandon Seldon]

Which elections? If every election day was a holiday...

One day a year becomes "Election Day", a day off. This will occasionally require emergency elections off-schedule, but it should be possible to schedule most elections into one day a year.

Of course, making election day a holiday would help nobody in the states that do voting via mail now.

Voting by mail is pretty sketchy.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[Chandon Seldon]

People that don't read english have no business voting in America.

That's a valid argument, but there's no reason to get separate political issues mixed up with each other.

It's possible to support multi-lingual paper ballots, and it's possible to have mono-lingual electronic voting. Voting fraud is too important an issue to let people get distracted by "they should learn english" vs. "that's racist".

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[Chandon Seldon]

98% of people being able to cast a reliable vote is much more useful than 100% of people being able to cast an untrustworthy vote.

Letting blind people vote is absolutely an interesting problem, but spending a hundred thousand dollars per polling station to require everyone to use untrustworthy electronic voting machines is an absurd solution. That's like requiring that everyone run the Boston Marathon in a wheelchair.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[Chandon Seldon]

we get the best of both worlds that way.

Well, except for the fact that you've just replaced a $0.25 pen or $1.29 sharpie marker with a $600 electronic voting machine for a somewhat marginal benefit. There's a good argument for having one electronic voting interface that prints out pre-filled paper ballot for the disabled, but buying a significant number of electronic voting machines is simply a waste of taxpayer money.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[Chandon Seldon]

Here's the thing: When there's human error in vote counting, you get a vote wrong. Maybe you get a couple votes wrong. Probably each incorrect vote was an independent mistake, so the errors tend to be random - and random errors will tend to average out.

On the other hand, when an electronic system makes a mistake it's usually because of a programming or configuration error. This will be the same mistake every time, so the error will tend to accumulate in one direction - meaning that it will give some candidate an advanatage.

That's completely ignoring the potential for fraud. A single line of code change by one person could get distributed to 1000 voting machines and influence 100,000 votes - no problem. Try to influence that many votes with paper ballots and you'd need a conspiracy of hundreds of people.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[compro01]

yes, but fiscal responsibility never seems to win over anyone [that matters] down in the US. i may not like the fact, but the thoughts of the corporations need to be considered in such matters for anything to get down the way things are in government now.

though I'm just fine with pure paper ballots, as the system up here in Canada has worked just fine and in all likelihood will continue to work fine for the foreseeable future, and even my grandma (who is 94 and legally blind) can use our big, simple ballots.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[drsquare]

No, disenfranchisement is when your vote isn't counted, not when you deliberately spoil the paper.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[refitman]

In these cases the ballot is put into the 'Spoiled' pile.

Seriously, what is the problem with you Americans, I've seen my 3 year old neighbour doing Paint-by-numbers and get it in the assigned spaces, how hard is it to follow the simple instruction "Mark the box next to the person you want to vote for with an X and no where else"?

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[CrankyOldBastard]

1) manipulation of the electorate - e.g. how many children were thrown overboard?

2) taxpayer funded advertising and cash "tax rebates" - e.g. baby bonus and the fridge magnets.

These are not flaws in our electoral system so much as flaws in the memories and ethics of the voters.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

Too difficult to manipulate.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[jabuzz]

You do realize in the United Kingdom (where this pertains to) the ballots are only secret because nobody actually bothers to cross reference the ballot paper serial number against the electoral register where the serial number of the ballot paper was noted down against your name and number?

In theory the idea is that if there is alergations of ballot paper tampering then we can go back and ask the person who they voted for and check the ballot paper. Not that it ever happens in practice, even when there has been electoral fraud (case of the Literal Democrate in Devon for example)

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[jabuzz]

Nope, in the United Kingdom all elections are held on a Thursday for reasons that nobody seems to actually know about. In fact parlimentary elections can only be held on a Thursday when parliment would otherwise have been in session further restricting the dates of elections.

However a paper ballot is as you say 100% transparent, and the counting is a highly parallizable problem, leading to quick counting. Typically in a UK parlimentary election the ballot closes at 10pm and all the results are known by lunch time the next day, with the vast majority known before day break.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[mpe]

Chads

You don't have chads with paper ballots. Since you are marking them not punching them.

Long history of people cheating them (While the current system sucks, a combo of electtronic + paper if properly done, can double our chances of catching fraud)

Unless you have a system where the counting can be verified by the average person fraud becomes a lot easier (and fraud detection becomes a lot harder.)

Takes too long to count.

With many US elections it wouldn't matter if counting took months. Proper paper based counting systems give results in hours and are used in places where elections take effect the day after polling closes.

Takes up a lot of space.

Ballot boxes stack quite efficently. Whereas computers tend to be need to be first boxed. There are also plenty of places you can store metal (or plastic) boxes which are not suitable for storing sensitive electronic machines.

Costs a lot more money.

Computer's don't? You also need things such as electricity at all of the polling places.
All you need with a pencil and paper method is light, carry out the election in summer and you will have daylight for all polling hours.

If someone is removed from the ballot, we have to reprint, which may not happen in time
Delivery must be assured with enough to all, which means a lot of waste

Newspapers appear to have similar issues solved and elections generally don't happen every week (or every day). Unused ballot papers can also easily be recycled (into other paper/card).

Blind people have issues.

And they don't have issues using a complex machine?

People that don't read english have issues.

Even illiterate people can recognise the name of a candidate, it's also possible to put a photo of the candidate next to their name. You put the instructions on a poster in all official languages of your country (which in many places dosn't include English), if people can't understand at least one of those they probably shouldn't be voting in the first place.

Ballot design for large number of possible candidates - people seriously want to be the guy on the top of the list, it gives a small, but real boost to their numbers.

Either print in alphabetical or random order. If anything this is more an issue for a computer screen, which is a finite length, than a piece of paper, which can be cut to any length desired.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[mpe]

You can also serialize the paper ballots using UV reactive ink, barcodes or RFID tags to be sure none are missing when they're counted. Anything that is reasonably impossible for someone to read would work, so they can't associate a particular person with a particular ballot. (Before you ask, you don't have to hand out the ballots in consecutive order, either.)

You can have the ballots printed with counterfoils attached with the same number as the paper. These also need not be printed in sequential number. RFID has the problem of increasing printing costs and makes the paper more difficult to recycle. Barcodes, even special ink, are unlikely to signficently increase printing costs.

Paper ballots can still be machine counted. Use those "bingo card" markers (but in black) and you won't have any problems with half-filled circles or fills that aren't dark enough.

These machines can be made simple enough that they have no "knowlage" of what the various marks mean. You might even want two machines, the first one to put all the ballots the same way around and the second to collate and count them.
If there are any problems, including machines breaking down human beings can still do the job.

Those electronic kiosks are also free for life, never need maintenance or replacement, specially trained handlers and tighter security.

How long do these last compared with a metal or plastic ballot box? Similarly a basic privacy kiosk made of plastic or wood...

District FOO has QUXX registered voters. Send them 1.10*QUXX ballots. Have someone sign off that they received the alloted amount. And, as we all know from previous elections, there are ALWAYS enough machines to adequately serve everyone who shows up.

You'd also want to record how many ballots are spoiled and how many are left.

The electronic machines have special LCD screens that can telepathically project the choices into a voter's brain, too. Those touchscreens? High-res active tactile feedback so the blind guy knows exactly which virtual button he's putting his finger on.

There are plenty of disabilities (other than blindness) which can cause someone difficulty using any method of casting a vote. Whilst a computer might be easier for some people it might actually be harder for other people than using a standard writing impliment. There just isn't a simple solution to address all disabled people.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[mpe]

It's possible to support multi-lingual paper ballots, and it's possible to have mono-lingual electronic voting. Voting fraud is too important an issue to let people get distracted by "they should learn english" vs. "that's racist".

The only "natural language" you need on a ballot tend to be proper nouns (the names of people and/or political parties) which don't need to be translated in the first place. If low levels of literacy are an issue you can always print logos and/or photographs as well. Instructions can be printed separatly as posters and placed inside privacy kiosks and other relevent places.
About the only situation where you'd need to provide translations on ballot papers would be in a country were you have multiple official languages which use different alphabets, e.g. Arabic and English. Where you have combinations such as English and French; English and Spanish; German and French; French, Flemish and Walloon; etc this tends not to be an issue.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[mpe]

Hey, it wouldn't only exlude many immigrants (as you realize),

In most places you have to be a citizen to vote. Usually you need to be resonably literate in respect of at least one official language of a country in order to become a naturalised citizen.

but I've known a couple of high school kids who couldn't read English. Granted, they could speak it well enough, but I digress.

Wouldn't you also need to be literate to use a computer based voting machine? Especially if the instructions are more complex than "Put a cross in the box next to the name of the candidate you want to vote for. Do so with each ballot paper you have been given. Fold each paper in half so the side with writing on isn't visible. Post them into the box."

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[mpe]

Then have someone help the voter. In front of witnesses, so there's no chance of them being cheated.

That someone could also be someone chosen by the voter or they could appoint someone to ack as their proxy. Proxy (and absentee) voting is likely to need steps to prevent organised fraud. However it isn't the job of the state to cover the voter being simply foolish.

For the seeing impaired (but not blind) use large fonts on special paper and have vision magnification machines they can put them under in a suitably private area.

Even a standard ballot paper with magnification. Which means once it goes in the ballot box it is the same as everyone elses.

That reduces the number of people who need help to a small percentage of the population (less than 1%) and we can just help them rather than come up with Rube Goldberg device to accomodate them.

Which could easily end up being difficult for the vast majority of people to use.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[mpe]

Well, except for the fact that you've just replaced a $0.25 pen or $1.29 sharpie marker with a $600 electronic voting machine for a somewhat marginal benefit.

This machine also needs supplies of paper, inked ribbons, ink/toner cartridge, etc. Also how do you cope with paper misfeeds without the possiblity of losing or duplicating ballots?

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[mpe]

In Australia we are very confident that votes are properly counted. In fact, in order to issue a rigged count you would have to bribe the opposing party's scrutineers in the 5 minute window between the submission of the scrutineer's form and the beginning of the count for every polling place as well as have all the electoral officers bribed, or else have a mole planted within the committee of each and candidate as well as having all the scrutineers and electoral officers bribed.

To rig the vote requires a large and complex conspiracy involving people who are unlikely to want to conspire in the first place. Especially where it is possible for members or the press and public to observe (even if not as offical scrutuineers). "Small" parties (and independents) also have exactly the same scrutineering rights as "big" parties.
A big problem in the US appears to be domination by two political parties who may well want to conspire in such a way, as well having election officials which arn't independent of the candidates.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[mpe]

Here's the thing: When there's human error in vote counting, you get a vote wrong. Maybe you get a couple votes wrong. Probably each incorrect vote was an independent mistake, so the errors tend to be random - and random errors will tend to average out.

The counting is also done in front of scrutineers, who represent each candidate on the ballot. If a vote not for a candidate ends up on that candidate pile at least the scruitneer for the candidate it was for will object. Most likely all of them, including the scrutineer for the candidate who would otherwise have benefitted, are likely to call attention to the error. If someone is consistently poor at spotting mistakes which favour his or her candiate the other scrutineers are likely to complain. There may also be other observers present at the count. Thus many mistakes are likely to be quickly spotted.
The errors which get through are those missed by several people.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[pjviitas]

Chads
Long history of people cheating them (While the current system sucks, a combo of electtronic + paper if properly done, can double our chances of catching fraud)
-> How can a documented paper trail increase chances of fraud?

Takes too long to count.
-> There are 300M people in the US...figure it out.

Takes up a lot of space.
-> 5th largest country in the world...figure it out.

Costs a lot more money.
-> Money well spent.

If someone is removed from the ballot, we have to reprint, which may not happen in time
-> We all need to meet deadlines...figure it out.

Delivery must be assured with enough to all, which means a lot of waste
-> Again...deadlines, deadlines, deadlines

Blind people have issues
-> It's called braille

People that don't read english have issues
-> Adapt an official language or 2...I would think the US of all countries would be the first to figure this out.

Ballot design for large number of possible candidates - people seriously want to be the guy on the top of the list, it gives a small, but real boost to their numbers
-> Luck of the draw...too bad so sad...deal with it...its called life.

Oh wait, you just wanted ONE issue. Hm. Hard too choose just one.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[mpe]

Seriously, what is the problem with you Americans, I've seen my 3 year old neighbour doing Paint-by-numbers and get it in the assigned spaces, how hard is it to follow the simple instruction "Mark the box next to the person you want to vote for with an X and no where else"?

Together with "If you mess it up or change your mind ask the offical to exchange your ballot paper for a blank one." Which is an option the 3 year old artist dosn't tend to have...

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[mpe]

I disagree. Paper systems make a certain amount of human error (feel free to call it 'stupidity,' I won't stop you) visible. Electronic systems hide it.

Not all spoilt ballots are actually mistakes on the part of the voter. e.g. someone may place an unmarked ballot paper into the box as a way of indicating choosing to abstain. Whereas an electronic system may force them to choose a candidate.

You could fix many of the problems experienced in Florida, keeping paper ballots, by redesigning them and fixing the procedure.

It anything the problem is with the procedure, good ballot paper design isn't exactly rocket science.

For example, the "dangling chad" problem of incompletely punched holes could be fixed by replacing the perforated-card ballots with optical ones, and giving the voter a big "dauber" type pen that they simply have to touch to the circle they want to fill in. Thousands of old people do this every day -- it's called Bingo Night. Do it with a UV-reflective marker and you can probably read them quickly using a machine.

OMR machines don't need anything as fancy as UV-reflective ink.

If someone does manage to submit a ballot with two marks, it doesn't get counted, since the only person who can legally determine the intent of a voter is a judge. (I suppose you could put them all to the side and wait to see if the election is close enough to warrant bothering to look at them, but frankly I'd prefer that they just get thrown out. It's too easy to politicize the process of 'determining intent;' better to avoid it completely and only count well-formed ballots.)

Unless the "spoil papers" are actually the largest pile. In which case it probably makes more sense to consider the result "None of the Above" and hold a new election where none of the previous candidates may stand.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[mpe]

But voting systems, given the constraints - perfect anonymity, one-vote-per-person, and count-every-vote - are just hard to do well. Your statement above is a great example of this: if we adopted your suggestion, any polling worker with a UV-reflective marker could "invalidate" votes just by marking an extra candidate or two. The over-marked ballots would then be set aside and left uncounted.

The voter themselves places the ballot into a locked box, the only place there are keys to open the box is at the place where it will be counted. If anyone is caught with such a pen there then they are arrested.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[Catbeller]

The "hanging chad" problem didn't happen. In a manual recount, you simply look at the card. if the vote was cast, the punch is apparent. Counting it is as easy as putting a pencil in your pocket.

In 2000, the Republicans wanted that recount to stop, so they pushed every "issue" they could find to invalidate the concept of a manual recount. The newly neutered and boss-friendly news networks went along with it; high salaries tend to dumb down reporting, as reporters have so much more to lose now by bucking the herd.

I recall vividly, and can google it down eventually, the remarks being made by the Baker squad after the election. If the vote had gone Gore's way, they would have demanded recount after recount well into Gore's term of office, and they had sworn a mighty oath that they would never let up on the talking point that he had not won the election fairly. Since Gore lost, they would never let up on the talking point that recounts were worthless and subjective.

Recounts were performed in at least once western state that swung the election to Bush; Baker's squad never once mentioned invalidating those recounts. "Chads" or not.

In the media-sponsored recount done for months after the election, in which they simply counted the votes cast, including the votes where "Gore" was written in AND punched (overvotes) which were tossed in the real election, Gore won by around 80 votes. By all other methods of counting that just counted votes instead of finding items to disqualify the vote, Gore won. This isn't an opinion, it is a fact. We can no longer recount that election, of course, because almost immediately after the election the election records were destroyed.

If Gore had won, we would have seen that super-recount over and over again. Since he did not, recounts are silly and hanging chads invalidate votes.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[rabbitfood]

The problem is it takes too much effort to steal an election if you use paper, duh!

Only under some circumstances. If, as the British government has done, you actively push the idea of postal voting, and get your party activists to distribute, collect and 'help' people complete their voting forms, then it becomes a lot easier. The only problem is that they got rumbled last time they tried this, and there are a lot of irritating people now looking out for any clear discrepancies in postal voting behaviour.

Happily, the introduction of opaque and arbitrary electronic counting systems seems to be making it easier to mask such anomalies.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

I want to comment on this because I took the time to talk to one of the commissioners for the New York State voting board a year or so ago about this issue. Cost is THE issue for them. More than anything else paper is expensive. And I mean REALLY expensive them to deal with. Orders of magnitude more expensive. Especially since people want them to store everything and not have to worry about damage to either the material before the election OR after the election. The cost of it would have required major overhauls of the funding and quite frankly it just wasn't available. By the same token they weren't happy with the current structure of voting but NY has used machine voting(abeit, mechanical machines) to do voting for a very very long time and have been relatively successful at it. Both sides validate the count at the beginning of the day on the machine, and it's a well understood mechanical interface.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[mrosgood]

I've served as a poll inspector in King County WA, am a geek ninja, and an election integrity activists. You can read my erudite postings on WashBlog.

Oh wait, you just wanted ONE issue. Hm. Hard too choose just one.

It's easy to make a long list if you're allowed to just make stuff up.

Chads

I assume you're referring to the problems with chads in the Florida 2000 presidential race. The specific cause was the machines hadn't been cleaned out in 10 years, so the chads couldn't fall through.

Long history of people cheating them (While the current system sucks, a combo of electtronic + paper if properly done, can double our chances of catching fraud)

Um, no. There is no way to mitigate the problems with computerized voting. A voter verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) is a placebo.

Unless you were referring to the ballot marking devices, like the AutoMark. That's an okay solution.

As for cheating with paper ballot. Um, yea. Your point? In relative terms, are you trying to say that fraud and errors with paper ballots are a greater risk than with computerized voting machines? If so, please explain.

Takes too long to count.

Huh? My county, like many, uses precinct based optical scanners for poll site ballots. Not a problem.

Takes up a lot of space.

Huh? Have you see a warehouse filled with computerized voting equipment? The +900k paper ballots (and misc) from our elections are stored on a few pallets.

Costs a lot more money.

This is completely false. Cost per ballot for computerized voting is much greater than with paper poll site ballots. You may have been (inadvertently) referring to paper mail ballots. In that case, computerized voting and mail ballots are about the same.

If someone is removed from the ballot, we have to reprint, which may not happen in time

That's a straw man argument.

Delivery must be assured with enough to all, which means a lot of waste

With mail ballots, true. With poll site ballots, the elections office estimates turnout and orders 10% more than projected.

Blind people have issues

With computerized voting, true.

With paper ballots, not necessarily. There are many HAVA compliant solutions for assisting disabled voters. Tactile ballots, protective sleeves like the Vote-PAD and EqualiVote, ballot marking devices like the AutoMark, some goofy phone user interface used in Connecticut, the InkaVote used in LA County, etc, etc.

People that don't read english have issues

Reading English, yea. Our paper ballots are printed in Chinese and English. No problem. Soon, I expect will also have Spanish. No problem.

Ballot design for large number of possible candidates - people seriously want to be the guy on the top of the list, it gives a small, but real boost to their numbers

Huh? Candidate order is already shuffled in many jurisdictions, by law, on paper ballots.

So, other than being completely wrong on all points, you did pretty good. Thanks for posting.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[mrosgood]

How can you comment on this issue and not be aware of the problems with computerized voting? If you spent more than 30 seconds googling, you'd find acres of information which completely contradict your statements.

and the only sensible system is electronic with paper trail which removes small errors (and provides accessibility) but allows for backup (albeit with aforementioned small errors) in the case of an electronic failure.

Computerized voting is much more error prone than using paper ballots.

Perhaps you recall the 16,000 under votes in Sarasota, Florida?

ESI report of the Cuyahoga County Ohio's election meltdown details all sorts of errors with computerized voting.

No intellectually honest person who has looked into this agrees with you.

You either didn't bother to look or stubbornly remain willfully ignorant. Either way, thanks for posting.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[servognome]

In these cases the ballot is put into the 'Spoiled' pile.
Seriously, what is the problem with you Americans, I've seen my 3 year old neighbour doing Paint-by-numbers and get it in the assigned spaces, how hard is it to follow the simple instruction "Mark the box next to the person you want to vote for with an X and no where else"?

Which is what typically is done, unless you have a case where the is a close election then the "spoiled" votes become contentious. It's not like spoiled ballots or disputed election results are an exclusively American, look at the Italian election in 2006.
At least the US doesn't have riots following elections like France, then again the French will riot about pretty much anything.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[Anonymous Coward]

PUNCHSCAN.
Solves all the problems.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[Kadin2048]

This is true. Although as I think about it more, I'm not sure there's any anonymous/repudiable voting system that isn't subject to tampering if you assume that the poll workers are all compromised. You can make it more difficult, by placing the ballots into locked boxes, but that doesn't stop them from pulling other shenanigans. At some point you have to either trust them, and create a framework so that interested parties can observe and ensure that things aren't being manipulated. Aside from transparency, there's no real magic bullet around it.

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[gurps_npc]

Wow, you put a lot of your own arguemnts and have no idea what I was saying. Look, if you disagree with me fine. But you are not god, and I was polite to a rude posting. Don't be rude to me. I can do it back toyou: Grow up and admit people may differ in opinion with you . You are not right all the time - otherwise you would be elected president instead of Bush.

Here, why don't you listen to someone else once in your life. I also have worked at an election. And this is what I know.

1. Thank you for admitting the Chad problem. Too bad you did not do anything at all besides admit it. OK, so the problem was caused by faulty paper machines. So what? It still existed. it still applies. Try acutally RESPONDING to my point instead of simply admitting it existed and then ignoring it. Chad was one example of problems with paper. Ink also has similar issues. It runs. It runs out. People check not quite in the box.

2. Nice statement of no with total lack of response to my argument. Something that is obvious and clearly possible, you just say NO, without actually saying why it is impossible. Yes I admited that current machines don't do it. That is not the point. Here let me explain why people want electornic machines, - it has to do with theory, not fact.

You have one way of storing votes. To cheat an election, you have to alter the votes in that one method.

You could have TWO ways of storing the vote. To cheat an election you now have to alter the votes TWICE. You have to do everything required for the first way and then do something just as hard again. Could this possibly make it harder to cheat? Yes. I am not refering to any particular method, but instead to the OBVIOUS fact that requireing people to cheat twice is harder than letting them get away with it just once. As long as both methods are built to be acceptable by themselves, this way works. The fact that idiots making the first set of machines built crappy shit does NOT mean it is impossible to build effective mechanism. We just have to demand they do it right.

3. Wow. Your particular county does not have a problem counting ballots. Good for you. OK, maybe we can pay you to do the entire country. That sound good to you? Yes it is possible to get all the counting of poles done no matter how many votes you have. But wait a second. The hand recounts take forever. Hm. Could that be a problem? The republicans repeatedly objected to recounts cause they take too long. Recounts take time, a lot of it.Why? Because recounts are done after most of the volunteers have gone home. Sorry charlie, you don't know what you are talking about, speed IS an issue. Watch the news once in a while, you might learn something.

4. Yes, computers take up space. A set amount of space forever. Can you show me the votes for last election? Sure you say, they are in the warehouse. Woops. Investigations clearly show that those votes routinely get thrown OUT, often before the recounts are done, because of space constraints. With electronic storage, we can keep electronic records basically for ever. Makes rechecking and looking for fraud a lot easier. Paper gets thrown out, electronic records do not. Simple fact of life.

5. Yes upfront costs are greater for the machines. The machine I used to vote is 40 years old. If we buy a new electronic voting machine that works and keep it for 40 years, guess what, it is cheaper than the paper one.

6. Straw man argument? Hm. Nope, I just checked, this is NOT a straw man argument. Definition of a Straw man argument: "to create a position that is easy to refute, then attribute that position to the opponent". What exactly are you talking about? This is MY argument - I am NOT attributing any argument to anyone else.

It repeatedly happens in real life - ballots change. People die. Courts throw people off the ballot, or demand someone should have been on it. Computers allow us to change it instantly. Paper does not. Yes, we can live with this

Re:whats wrong with paper tickets anyway?

[gurps_npc]

Some of the people that replied to my reply gave some uneducated, poor responses. One of the things people claimed was that "foreign language ballots" are acceptable.

Here is a recent article, from the AP. Computerized forms let you hear the real name, and can even include a picture of the man. For 'issues' instead of ads, the problem is MUCH worse, because they tend to use formalized/legallized language, that is hard to understand in the original english. BOSTON (AP) - Mitt Romney's been called many things as he runs for president, but chances are "Sticky Rice" isn't one of them. That's how his name might be read on some ballots, according to state Secretary William Galvin. Galvin says the federal Justice Department is pressuring Boston election officials to translate candidates' names into Chinese characters in precincts with prominent Chinese-speaking populations. But there's more than a little lost in translation, according to Galvin. Since there's no Chinese character for "Romney," translators have resorted to finding characters that most closely match the sound of each syllable in the name. The problem is that there are many different characters that could be used to match the sound of each syllable, and many different meanings for each character. So Mitt Romney could be read as "Sticky Rice" or "Uncooked Rice." Fred Thompson might be read as "Virtue Soup." And Barack Obama could be read as "Oh Bus Horse." Galvin's own name could be read at least two different ways, as "High Prominent Noble Educated" or "Stick Mosquito." But perhaps the most perplexing translation would be for Boston Mayor Thomas Menino's name, which could be read as "Sun Moon Rainbow Farmer" or "Imbecile," or "Barbarian Mud No Mind of His Own." "To try to make rhymes or approximations in Chinese, you can have unintended negative meanings," Galvin said. "It leads to confusion. You can render it with a good meaning or a bad meaning." To add to the confusion, Galvin said, the ballots have to be offered in two major Chinese dialects, Mandarin and Cantonese, leading to even more potential variations of candidates's names. But advocates for minority voting rights say Galvin's objections are misdirected. If the translations are awkward, they say, the candidates should be free to offer variations, or look to the way Asian language newspapers already transliterate their names. "We are looking to make sure Asian Americans are able to vote for their candidates of choice," Glenn Magpantay, staff attorney of the New York-based Asian American Defense Fund, told the Boston Globe. "This is difficult to do when voters with limited English proficiency cannot find those candidates." Cynthia Magnuson, spokeswoman to the Justice Department's civil rights division, said a system is needed to let voters with limited English vote without the aid of election monitors. "This will allow them to vote independently," she said. Galvin said he supports translating the bulk of the ballots into Chinese as required by a 2005 agreement with the justice department, as long as the names of the candidates' names remain in Roman letters.

Diebold's reaction....

[Checkmait]

What's the betting they'll sue for some arcane reason? :-)

Nothing is Perfect

[reddburn]

"I mistrust all systematizers and avoid them. The will to a system is a lack of integrity." - Friedrich Nietzsche Twilight of the Idols

I agree that no system is above corruption - paper ballots included - but the lack of any verification is the greatest issue with the e-voting systems currently in use. Election fraud has been with us since the first Greek citizen was bribed for a vote; however, Diebold and others - with help from elected officials - are making a concerted effort to ensure that there is not - and will not be - such a system of verification. This report is terrifying, and I'm not sure what citizens can do beyond what they have been doing, given our current political climate.

Re:Nothing is Perfect

[Tuoqui]

I'm not sure what citizens can do beyond what they have been doing, given our current political climate. Simple, get a gun and go shoot these assholes. It is part of your Declaration of Independence and your constitution's second amendment. Those old dead white guys that wrote this stuff in the late 1700's knew what they were doing (better than today's politicians anyways).

Re:Nothing is Perfect

[reddburn]

And replace them with ... more people just like them? Would we have an election? Who would ensure that it was fair? Armed men at gunpoint?

Why I don't have a PDA

[EmbeddedJanitor]

For many purposes it is very hard to beat dead trees and pencils. Just because something can be computerised does not mean it should be.

The major reason that the unwashed masses don't really care about paper vs electronic ballots is that they really don't care about politics and voting. If this was to do with something important to most people (eg. What is on TV tonight) then you'd get people interested.

maybe...

[Dance_Dance_Karnov]

it's just me and I'm not up on all the whys and wherefores but how fricken hard can it be to count something?

Re:maybe...

[kmac06]

What's the highest you've ever counted to in your head? What's the largest amount of anything you've ever counted? How many pieces of paper do you think you could count before making a mistake?

Re:maybe...

[TubeSteak]

it's just me and I'm not up on all the whys and wherefores but how fricken hard can it be to count something?

Try reading what Bruce Schneiner has to say:
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2004/10/gett ing_out_the.html

Of the things he lists, I think the facts that everyone votes on one day & 'we the people' expect results almost immediately are the biggest obstacles to getting a proper count.

Can I get a "Duh" tag?

[andrewd18]

Can I get a "Duh" tag applied to the article? I thought everyone knew there were problems with modern elections.

In other news....

[SoapBox17]

E-Voting Report Finds Problems with Modern Elections

In other news: the earth is round and Richard Stallman really is an alien.

Video at 11.

Electronic Voting Is a Bad Idea

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Well, it's more than a bad idea. E-Voting is probably the biggest threat to democracy since the second world war. I'm not exaggerating here. It's the apathy within we should be afraid of.

But I digress. Let's roll out an analogy here.

Let's say the government contracted out the counting out of paper ballots to private companies. Let's say again that these companies took your paper ballots into a huge warehouse with blacked out windows and wouldn't tell or show anyone how they were counting the ballots. They simply emerged hours or days later and announced the result. Would you be satisfied with this? Would you accept the result?

Let's soften the blow. Supposed the company allowed government inspector into the warehouse to supervise the counting. Would that make you feel more confident in the result?

Now, what is the difference between the warehouse, and the current systems of E-Voting. What is the difference between the warehouse and [b]any[/b] system of E-Voting, present or future? Why accept a computerized count if you wouldn't accept the warehouse. (Of course many people would accept the warehouse, but I digress...)

You know what the depressing thing is. Most people want E-Voting. Not because they think it's cheaper. Not because they think it's more reliable. It's because they think it's cool.

Re:Electronic Voting Is a Bad Idea

[Geoffrey.landis]

My thinking is that it should be illegal to use any voting software unless the source code is available for inspection by anyone. The electronic-voting companies all seem to be saying that the source code is proprietary, nobody is allowed to look at it and see it. I find this frightening. The actual voting in a democracy needs to be secret, but every aspect of counting the votes needs to be completely, absolutely, without exception open.

as for paper trails-- that's easy; just do the voting using optical scanning. Everybody in America who's gone through the education system has been trained on number two pencils and standardized test forms. Yes, I'm aware that in a few isolated cases the scanners have had problems, but, first, that's a solvable technical problem, and second, optically scanned ballots can be counted by hand; if there's a problem, it is possible to detect it.

Unlike the touch-screen electronic ballots, where if there's a problem, you'll never know.

Re:Electronic Voting Is a Bad Idea

[Rob the Bold]

The electronic-voting companies all seem to be saying that the source code is proprietary, nobody is allowed to look at it and see it.

In the US, the FEC requires that the software (source) be reviewed by an approved thrid-party auditor. This should help in theory, but there is no provision for verifying that the binaries loaded, burned, or flashed into the equipment are in fact compiled from the audited source.

Re:Electronic Voting Is a Bad Idea

[kmac06]

Like the other poster said, I think your warehouse analogy only works for closed source voting machines.

Re:Electronic Voting Is a Bad Idea

[labnet]

unless the source code is available for inspection by anyone As has been mentioned before. The ONLY way for e-voting to work is to have the machine spit out a paper ballot the user can check before placing in the ballot box for MANUAL counting, OR (but not preferably) manual verification of an electronic total.

Re:Electronic Voting Is a Bad Idea

[Vihai]

My thinking is that it should be illegal to use any voting software unless the source code is available for inspection by anyone.

It still is not enough. You cannot know for sure that the code you audited is the one actually running on the hardware it is supposed to run on. A computer is too complex and opaque for a man to verify how it is working.

On the contrary, paper and pencil are verifiable and you can be quite confident that the person counting your vote will see the X you wrote the same way you think.

Re:Electronic Voting Is a Bad Idea

[roystgnr]

Like the other poster said, I think your warehouse analogy only works for closed source voting machines.

Unfortunately, there is no such thing as an "open source voting machine", because there are no computers that execute only human-readable source code. Making it harder to slip trojans in the source code is better than nothing, but there's still no way to be sure that "the" source code is actually in charge of the voting machines. We've already seen electronic voting machines caught running non-certified software; they can get away with it again.

Here's your open source warehouse analogy: you give the people in the warehouse a set of instructions that have been carefully inspected to ensure that following them to the letter will result in an accurate count. So what? Even if there are no loopholes, how do you prove that everyone inside will obey your instructions?

Re:Electronic Voting Is a Bad Idea

[Jarik_Tentsu]

For some people, there's also the convenience perspective and using a system they may feel more comfortable with.

~Jarik

Re:Electronic Voting Is a Bad Idea

[mpe]

My thinking is that it should be illegal to use any voting software unless the source code is available for inspection by anyone.

This dosn't actually help much. Since it's not easy for anyone to verify that a specific machine is actually running that software.

Re:Electronic Voting Is a Bad Idea

[mpe]

On the contrary, paper and pencil are verifiable and you can be quite confident that the person counting your vote will see the X you wrote the same way you think.

In a decent system you can be sure that there will be several people making sure that the ballot paper you marked will be counted correctly.
Many of the problems in the US appear to be to do with lack of transparancy and openness. Something which "voting machines" actually make worst.
More or less anyone can be a scrutineer, it dosn't require a PhD in computer systems with the equiptment to carry our a forensic level examination of an operating computer.

I'm guessing you're not an American

[benhocking]

In a typical American election, you might be voting for President, Governor, a Senator (2/3 chance), a Representative, a Mayor, School Board Members, State Representatives, ballot initiatives, etc. A 2-inch-square box for each of these would require a lot of paper.

Re:I'm guessing you're not an American

[VorpalEdge]

Actually, I am. And to reply to that; since when has government cared about wasting paper or raw materials? Furthermore, if we're trying to reduce paper consumption, I can think of many far better places to start than making voting inaccurate.

Re:I'm guessing you're not an American

[notamisfit]

The way we've got it in OK isn't the worst, I guess. Complete a few arrows on a 8 1/2 by 10" ballot and drop it in a slot. It seems pretty hard to screw up, but I guess they always need a justification for a recount.

Re:I'm guessing you're not an American

[OzoneLad]

Furthermore, if we're trying to reduce paper consumption, I can think of many far better places to start than making voting inaccurate.
I'll add another furthermore to that: Cost should be no object when trying to ensure that an electoral system is fair and representative of the wishes of the electorate.

Re:I'm guessing you're not an American

[nogginthenog]

You don't *need* to have all these elections on the same day you know.

Re:I'm guessing you're not an American

[mpe]

In a typical American election, you might be voting for President, Governor, a Senator (2/3 chance), a Representative, a Mayor, School Board Members, State Representatives, ballot initiatives, etc. A 2-inch-square box for each of these would require a lot of paper.

You don't actually need a box that big. Paper isn't exactly expensive. Not that you need expensive paper, newspaper or till roll grade would be fine. Paper is also highly recyclable.

Voter-verifiable counting

[peacefinder]

For your consideration, may I present my[1] idea for a voter-verifiable counting system:

---

In addition to any other vote-counting or verification system, a county
elections office could take a full optical scan of the ballot papers.
The data from these scans would be made available to all who request it;
anyone could acquire the data and perform their own re-count with any
method of their own devising.

This would provide complete transparency for the automated portion of
the counting process.

The problem with optical-mark scanners, of course, is that the
scanner's internal software and firmware is vulnerable to tampering.
Such a tampered machine cannot change the ballots it reads, but it can
misinterpret them.

By providing a raw image scan to the public, we'd be enabling many
eyes to provide their own interpretation of the ballots. Any
optical-scan vulnerability would become moot. We would go beyond a
voter-verified ballot, and get to a voter-verified count.

This is technically achievable with commercial off-the-shelf hardware
for well under $100,000 per county in capital expenditures.
Specifically:

* Industrial scanners of sufficient reliability are available. At my
workplace we have a "light" duty commercial scanner with a duty cycle
of 8,500 scans per day; this machine cost around $7,000. If county
clerks were to have about 5 days to produce the scans, two of these
scanners could completely scan the ballots for all but the largest
counties. And, of course, heavier duty scanners are available.

* Since industrial scanners are not optimized for ballot reading or
even optical-mark recognition, it would be much more difficult for any
malicious entity to successfully tamper with their software to produce
inaccurate ballot image scans. It's much more difficult for software
to produce an incorrect image than an incorrect interpretation of an
image. What's more, these scanners are available from several
manufacturers; if one distrusts any or all scanner vendors, one could
simply scan the original ballots with a variety of different
manufacturers' scanners and compare the results.

* For the standard optical-scan ballot, a fax-quality scan would be
sufficient for a voter-verified count. Better scans are possible for
higher time, money, and data storage budgets, but I don't think they
would be necessary as a practical matter.

* The data storage requirement for an approximately fax-quality scan
of every Oregon ballot - approximately 2 million ballots with 100%
turnout - would be under 500 gigabytes uncompressed per statewide
election. (And ballot scans should be highly compressible even with
lossless and error-correcting algorithms.) Portable hard drives that
large are available for around $300. Most individual county ballot
scan datasets would even fit on larger iPods.

---

This brings up a couple other problems, of course. Foremost, the ballots have to be on ADF-feedable paper, and probably had best be marked ballots rather than punched-paper. Also, the question of what to do with a voter-made distinctive or identifying mark on the ballot needs to be addressed. (Distinctive marks could lead to buyer-verified vote buying.)

But still, it's a huge step beyond just trusting the county's optical-scanning ballot interpreter.

[1: Actually this is my brother's idea, which I have modified slightly.]

National holiday

[benhocking]

As an aside, why is election day *not* a national holiday? A serious WTF?

As much as people can argue about whether to just use paper ballots or use verifiable electronic ballots, I don't know of anyone who thinks election day shouldn't be a national holiday. So, I'll second your question. How hard could it be to make this happen?

Re:National holiday

[dosboot]

Voting doesn't take a day's effort. It doesn't even take a half hour. If you aren't going to vote you would probably just piss off the day anyway.

the anti-vote-buying laws would ban that.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

In addition to any other vote-counting or verification system, a county
elections office could take a full optical scan of the ballot papers.
The data from these scans would be made available to all who request it;
anyone could acquire the data and perform their own re-count with any
method of their own devising.

Vote-buyers could pay people to vote a particular way and make
an individual identifying mark in some non-significant part of
the ballot. The scan would enable them to check whether the
voter had voted as he had been paid to do.

(I found out about these laws when looking into getting FOIA
access to the raw output of an OCR scan of ballots, intending to
do statistical analysis to look for various kinds of vote fraud,
which might show up as long runs of identical or near-identical
ballots or other anomalies. Sorry, no can get.)

Re:the anti-vote-buying laws would ban that.

[peacefinder]

Yup. In most places it would take some legislative changes to implement.

It's probably true that vote-buying would be a worse problem than inaccurate counting. In Washington (where my brother lives) a ballot with an identifying mark is disqualified. If that were extended to all distinctive marks, then keeping ballot images secret would not be necessary.

(But then people would start arguing over what constitutes a distinctive mark, naturally.)

It is undoubtedly a tough problem all around.

Re:the anti-vote-buying laws would ban that.

[Chandon Seldon]

In Washington (where my brother lives) a ballot with an identifying mark is disqualified.

How can that work in the presence of write-in votes?

I would support electronic voting if...

[Bananatree3]

* The same level of scrutiny placed on debugging the Space Shuttle computer code was placed on something arguably as important, if not more so: the national election

*Make the code as open and freely viewable as possible. This will ensure maximum review.

* There was a NATIONAL standard. None of this spotty state-by-state Quality Assurance hooplah. Utilize the standard Southwest Airlines uses: find one rock solid, simple standard and stick to it across the board.

* Minimalism over Featurism: Make the system as simple as possible hardware/software wise. The more complex a system, the more room there is for error.

* Hardwired hardware vs software. Once a system has been hammered out to the quality level of Space Shuttle computer code, burn it into a chip. Utilize as little software as possible, as it is much harder to manipulate physical hardware then it is to flash a memory card

* Make the hardware as hard-wired as possible. Utilize ROM-only memory. No memory cards, no FPGAs, no flashable BIOS, but straight up hard-coded hardware. This will greatly reduce the ability to tamper with the system before an election.

* Make physical security an absolute top priority. Physical security is one of the major complaints against Dibold systems.

* Any upgrades needed would go through just as much review as the original code, and would be published just as freely and openly. Also, upgrades could only be made within a certain amount of time before an election. Once this time period has passed leading up to an election, the hardware could not be changed at all. This would help reduce any last minute changes to the code.

* Make the manufacturing of this electoral system completely governmental. Yes, it may be bloated as other government projects, but it will not be controlled by private interests which have profit interests and would likely copyright parts the system. It will be a system for the people by the state. No middle man.

* Setup an independent commission to oversee the entire roll out of this system, at every single stage. From the infancy of the code to election day and beyond.

* A physical paper trail MUST be incorporated, and be reviewed by the citizen ballot caster on election day. It MUST also be a federal offense, punished with heavy penalties, for tampering with this trail. Also, it must be a punishable offense for not auditing the election against the paper trail.

Under these points, I would support a digital voting system.

Re:I would support electronic voting if...

[Chandon Seldon]

Make the hardware as hard-wired as possible. Utilize ROM-only memory. No memory cards, no FPGAs, no flashable BIOS, but straight up hard-coded hardware. This will greatly reduce the ability to tamper with the system before an election.

This just makes the hack more expensive, and harder to detect if it's accomplished. Have you ever tried to "audit" an IC?

There is one essential property of a voting system that no purely electronic system can have: A 83 year old retired painter needs to be able to understand why they should trust that their vote was properly counted. With a ballot box, they can understand and even act as an election observer. With a purely electronic system, even an expert in the field can't know that a vote got counted unless he audited each voting machine with a million dollar budget and an electron microscope - and even that won't help if it has writable code memory *anywhere*.

Is it really so hard?

[laron]

- Vote with a computer interface
- the computer stores your vote
- you get a receipt how you voted
- you check and fold the receipt and drop it into a sealed box.

After the election ends, the computer spits out the results.

In randomly selected polling places, the paper receipts get counted manually. If there are major differences, more polling stations will be selected for a manual count.

Re:Is it really so hard?

[Kijori]

There's a big problem with that - men waiting outside. If you don't bring your paper receipt out - and have it say the right thing - they break your legs. The chances of it being undetected are high enough for it to be feasible.

Re:Is it really so hard?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not have have paper voting for ALL voting locations? Was there ever a problem in the first place that justified the need for electronic voting?

The main reason we should all be using paper voting is that EVERYONE can understand it without any complicated electronic equipment that can't be trusted. You should be able to put in your vote and watch it go to a counting center... where you can help count, with various people watching to make sure that no one is adding up votes incorrectly.

Everyone can understand paper voting, it is easy, time tested and we've never had problems with it before.

Why does no one listen to the TRUE computer security experts who have written their own encryption algorithms and well respected books & papers? When they overwhelmingly say that electronic voting is a HORRIBLE idea, they really do mean it. But you don't even need an expert to tell you this. Just ask yourself "can you physically see your vote go through the whole system from start to end?". Paper voting = yes, electronic voting = no. So why people trust electronic voting is completely beyond me.

Re:Is it really so hard?

[Anonymous Coward]

You didn't read the forth point of the poster, you don't walk out with a receipt.

Re:Is it really so hard?

[drawfour]

I've heard of people not RTFA, but not RTFP (post)?

From the post you responded to:

- you check and fold the receipt and drop it into a sealed box.
What this does is let you verify that the computer printed the correct votes. No more "hanging chads" or "double-votes" where someone tries to cross off a mis-vote. Then, once you are satisfied that the computer printed the right things, you drop off what is effectively a paper vote. So the men outside cannot know who you voted for.

The benefit here is that the electronic votes are tabulated instantly, so once the polling offices close, the results are known. Then, over a period of time, randomly selected polling centers are counted by hand and verified that the results they sent out (computer tabulated) are the same as the receipts (human tabulated). Any errors, and an investigation is launched to figure out what happened.

Re:Is it really so hard?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does no one listen to the TRUE computer security experts who have written their own encryption algorithms and well respected books & papers?

Like Bruce Schneier, Applied Cryptography?

Just ask yourself "can you physically see your vote go through the whole system from start to end?". Paper voting = yes, electronic voting = no.

p.128: "[Each] voter can look at the lists of identification numbers and find his own. This gives him proof that his vote was counted."

Maybe you should go read up on some of those experts yourself.

Re:Is it really so hard?

[Cantus]

This is convenient for getting quick results, however this could result in massive fraud. Come on Americans, learn from the rest of the world. Vote with paper ballot and read the ballots publicly, with the press and party representatives looking. This is the only fully transparent way of voting and counting results. And schedule elections for Sundays.

The supposedly 'healthiest' democracy in the world has one of the most backward voting systems I've seen. Not to mention that duopoly/cuasi dictatorship called the Democrat/Republican parties.

Re:Is it really so hard?

[laron]

The trick is, it paper receipt IS the vote, at least if there is a manual recount.
So if you take it out, you are literally throwing your vote away.

Re:Is it really so hard?

[Chandon Seldon]

- you get a receipt how you voted
- you check and fold the receipt and drop it into a sealed box.

If you mean "ballot", say "ballot". Voting receipts are a bad idea.

You might be trying to imply that the paper ballots are just for a recount, but that's a bad idea too - it's too easy to block a recount like they did in Ohio, even when the presidential candidates in positions #3 and #4 both demanded a full recount.

Re:Is it really so hard?

[mithras invictus]

The comment you refer to states:

"In randomly selected polling places, the paper receipts get counted manually."

That is not a (requested) recount but a safety measure.

You might be trying to imply voting receipts are a bad idea, but you don't give any arguments why that would be so.

Re:Is it really so hard?

[Chandon Seldon]

"In randomly selected polling places, the paper receipts get counted manually."

What, randomly like in Ohio?

If we actually count the ballots, the count should be legit. If we rely electronic counts and statistical sampling, everyone will assume things are fine even when they're completely fraudulent because "math is hard".

Re:Is it really so hard?

[laron]

Okay, let's call it a ballot.
Regarding recounts: A "recount on demand" is of course a possibility. Maybe you would have to provide the manpower and/or pay for a judge to observe the recount. Feel free to add your own ideas.

Re:Is it really so hard?

[Kijori]

Sorry, who didn't read the post? I don't mean to overreact, but I find it quite rude for you to criticise me while making the exact mistake you're accusing me of!

From the post I replied to:

In randomly selected polling places, the paper receipts get counted manually From my post:

The chances of it being undetected are high enough for it to be feasible. So what I was actually saying was that since only a sample of polling stations are manually counted, if you swing one station by intimidating voters you've got a good chance of getting away with it. All you do is tell the people inside to vote for the party you want on the computer, drop off a blank piece of paper in the box and bring the receipt out (or else!). This isn't just a trivial vulnerability; since if you're strong arming voters you're likely to be losing in that district anyway it can only improve your chances.

Re:Is it really so hard?

[Kijori]

The trick is, it paper receipt IS the vote, at least if there is a manual recount.

So if you take it out, you are literally throwing your vote away. Well, that's the problem - there isn't always a manual recount. If you're losing a district anyway then forcing people to either vote for you or invalidate their votes (depending on whether there's a recount or not) can only be helpful.

Re:Is it really so hard?

[drawfour]

It is very trivial. Add a barcode scanner so that a barcode is printed on the receipt, and that barcode is scanned before dropping it in the box. No barcode scan = no vote. So you can't drop in a regular piece of paper to show the guys how you voted.

Re:Is it really so hard?

[Kijori]

And if someone "forgets" to scan it? If they scan it and don't drop it? If they scan it and drop something else? What's needed is a system where it's impossible to both vote and take your voting slip outside the booth. The suggestion that has been posted many many times before - the one where the paper receipt drops down behind a glass screen, allowing you to validate it without taking it anywhere - seems rather more sensible to me.

Re:Is it really so hard?

[drawfour]

If someone "forgets" to scan it, it's not a vote. It MUST be scanned to be a vote. You can make something that will require they physically release the paper into a box before it's scanned, and once it's there, it cannot be removed.

The problem with the "glass screen" is that you need to be assured that you can't somehow get a "double vote". What I mean is the vote is viewed, and the voter deems it to not be what he intended to vote. So now he needs another vote. You have to be assured that what is behind the glass screen can be physically removed so the person can shred the invalid vote. Otherwise, what's to prevent a system from double-voting? It can just keep the paper vote somewhere else, count the vote electronically, and later add that piece of paper into the vote box.

A system where the voter physically controls that piece of paper makes him sure that the piece of paper with his votes gets into the ballot box. Just like today, if someone walks into a voting booth and then walks out and "forgets" to place his vote in the box, it doesn't count. Same rule should apply here.

Re:Is it really so hard?

[mrosgood]

The majority of jurisdictions in the United States use the Australian Ballot system. That means secret ballot, uniform ballots, and a public vote count. This has been shown to be the best compromise for our form of elections.

Providing a voting receipt destroys the secret ballot. Opening the door for coercion, vote buying, and other forms of voter and election fraud.

Receipts are not necessary, or even desirable, for ensuring election integrity.

Changing the election rules don't help either

[sjwest]

when you voting in several elections, each with different rules your just asking for problems and this happened in scotland.

If your vote is 'meant to count' - then these politicians will find a way to make it not matter.

example: in our local election i could vote for 8 candidates. It becomes meaningless quite quickly

Re:Changing the election rules don't help either

[Anonymous Coward]

example: in our local election i could vote for 8 candidates. It becomes meaningless quite quickly

Huh? Yes, if all the candidates are crap, the election becomes meaningless. If you don't feel that any of the candidates represent your views, the election becomes meaningless to you. If there is a candidate that DOES represent your view but polls (i.e. media that are not necessarily neutral) tell you this candidate has no chance of winning, the election becomes meaningless to you.

Besides, the usual way that representatives are elected in the U.S. (single-candidate districts where the "winner takes all"), large minorities (up to 50% minus one vote) don't get represented at all, in each district. The map of what area belongs to what district makes all the difference and is often (as in CA) determined by the political parties (i.e. organizations with a self-interest), and not some objective method.

The fact that everyone's guess about other people's decision become paramount when voting in U.S. elections makes the whole process a joke, or at least seriously flawed. Since the system is flawed, everyone has to second-guess everyone else, guided by polls and marketing (hello money)

PS. Yea, I should register on Slashdot, but I'm lazy. Besides I'd get taunted for having a high-numbered user ID...

Why not a combination of the two?

[TitusC3v5]

Is there something so terribly wrong with the scantrons we use so often in college and standardized testing? Quick, easy, and if there is a recount, a quick visible inspection makes it easy to tell who somebody intended to vote for.

Re:Why not a combination of the two?

[TitusC3v5]

Note to self: The preview button is there for a reason.

Re:Why not a combination of the two?

[notamisfit]

Some states have similar ballots: Oklahoma does, for instance. Complete some arrows, and drop it in a scanner on top of the bin. At the end of Election Day, it spits out counts, and the ballots go to the election commission in case a recount is needed. It's probably not a 'perfect' system, but what really is?

Re:Why not a combination of the two?

[Chandon Seldon]

It's probably not a 'perfect' system, but what really is?

Perfect is hard, but we can do better than straight optical scan. For example, the separation of sorting and counting machines described here is pretty good (although I'm not convinced that marking machines are a good idea compared to sharpies).

Add "open source" and you've got it

[TheAxeMaster]

Seriously, that's all they need to do. Print a small paper receipt and drop that into a box and the county clerks could even count them all manually, but at their liesure. We'd have an electronic tabulation immediately, no staying up till midnight waiting for results, people working late, etc. Open source the code for peer review and its a solidly secure, reliable system. Who exactly isn't getting this? Oh...the people in charge who are techno idiots. Right...

Disenfranchise the idiots, That's good!

[HornWumpus]

If your too stupid to punch a hole or mark a box your vote shouldn't be counted.

Sucks to be dumb. There is no law that can change that.

The old dilemma

[Swift2001]

I'm not for digital voting unless or until it is combined with OpenID, public key privacy, and a very high level of trust. This is not going to happen any time soon.

You need all day to vote?

[HornWumpus]

At least in the USA you have to be given enough time off to vote.

More fundamentally many think encouraging everybody to vote is a good thing. I disagree. Encouraging everybody to become informed is a good thing. IMHO Keeping the uninformed from voting is actually a good thing.

Re:You need all day to vote?

[Qzukk]

At least in the USA you have to be given enough time off to vote.

How much is enough? If you come in a half day late because the election organizers dropped the wrong machines off at your precinct and when the correct machines were brought in hours later, half of them didn't work, is that "enough time off"?

Re:You need all day to vote?

[speaker of the truth]

If they don't vote they'll go "eh, not my fault. I didn't vote." If they do vote and find out their candidate is a real cocksucker they'll be angry and might even start to educate themselves. Getting people to become informed isn't as important as getting people to no longer be disenfranchised with the election process. Once that happens becoming informed will follow. Unfortunately the two major parties have a strong incentive to keep people disenfranchised.

Re:You need all day to vote?

[ppanon]

It's hard to be well informed when nearly all major news outlets are providing partial or complete disinformation.

Case in point, the reporting on the incompetency of the Bush administration in its first 4 years prior to the 2004 election. I wasn't fooled, but apparently more than half the American public was, although it helped that they wanted to be fooled because the so-called liberal media were marketing or white-washing a right-wing nightmare as a seductive pipe-dream.

Re:You need all day to vote?

[Chandon Seldon]

You need all day to vote?

Voting is pretty important. I think that any potential downside of giving people the whole day off, even every year for local elections, is a risk I'm willing to take.

I have a suggestion

[PhatKat]

Why not pass it over to the banks? You have to pay for postage on an absentee ballot. I would happily pay that amount of money for a transaction from a bank with a receipt, perhaps an encrypted receipt I could forward to the DNC, RNC, or anyone else counting. I know some people have problems with online banking, but at least where I bank--the boeing employee's credit union--I would safe using this system to ensure my vote gets collected, counted, and a receipt returned to me or anyone else to which I would like to have it forwarded.

I strongly disagree with anyone who says that e-voting is a threat to democracy. the closer we can get the voter to the decision-making process--assuming you believe the voter should have a part in the decision making process--the better.

Re:I have a suggestion

[mithras invictus]

1: This receipt could be used to buy/coerce your vote.
2: All your banking transactions are reported so you can verify they have not made a mistake, this is not an option for voting because of vote confidentiality.
3: It's great that you trust you bank so much but the voting process needs to be based on verifiability, not blind trust.
4: If you mean that showing up at a polling station is too much hassle for some people, then maybe they don't care enough about the decision making process to be able to make an informed decision.

Re:I have a suggestion

[PhatKat]

Getting to a polling station doesn't mean the same thing for everyone. Blind trust is absolutely not what I validated in my original post. If I could go online and to an official polling site, have my personal information encrypted along with my unique vote number -- like a credit card number generated for everyone voter. the government knows it's a legitimate number but not who it came from. but it's possible for the bank to validate that a credit transaction was made with that number which is somehow linked to your encrypted personal information. maybe it's can't be done this way but if I can make my banking transactions safely online, it's possible to set up a system toat safely collects, counts, and provides a way to prove votes were really made.

you high and mighty who can put everyone else down for not getting to a polling station to vote. what other services do you expect people to have time to do in person these days? We won't people voting more, not less. if you have three jobs, or worse if you have three kids, it's going to be harder to go wait in line at your particular polling station.

Re:I have a suggestion

[mithras invictus]

My point was that voting is too important to sacrifice security for ease of use. There are a lot of possible measures to make voting easier without safety drawbacks like making election day a national holiday, allowing voters to choose any polling station, setting up commuter polling stations etc. The problem with internet voting will be that there is no way to ensure vote confidentiality (votes could be sold, people could be coerced to vote a certain way) and there is no separate record for a security recount.

Bank Transactions aren't a problem...

[Anonymous Coward]

We bank online and yet we can't trust e-voting terminals? Perhaps we just need to find a competent company like Microsoft to handle this.

unnecessary innovation

[slib]

I'm not sure why many Western countries are obssessed with updating to electronic voting systems. They're 1) expensive, 2) very easily breached, 3) widely distrusted, 4) made by morally vacuous people (i.e. Diebold), 5) leave little to no paper trail most of the time, & 6) difficult to figure out in some instances (I'm talking about elderly people here). "eVoting" should be tossed out the window and replaced with something much, much more reliable - like a nationally standardized system for paper votes, counted and recounted by hand, and stored in a place - in the originally submitted order - where they can be easily recounted.

I think I voted

[El_Oscuro]

Stealing an election with paper ballots is a royal PITA. Fortunately, with E-voting, it is much easier.

At first glance, I thought it said...

[onosson]

Report Finds Problems with Modern Electrons I thought I was going to read some major finding from a physics lab!

Great work Jason and everyone else

[GonzoTheGreat]

It is good to see the report out and see in measured words what those of us watching saw; that the preparation was below standard, procedures far from robust and the systems more black box than the public, candidates and parties happy to cope with.
I was proud to be part of this observation team and am looking forward to the next project I can give time to.

If anyone here wants to support the Open Rights Group either financially or buy volunteering to join in in further projects, scoot on over to http://www.openrightsgroup.org/support-org and sign up!

Well, no particularly big surprise there

[jimicus]

I did RTFA.

It sounds like a typical UK government IT scheme:

• Place lots of power in the hands of outsourced vendors (ie. private companies) yet don't hold them legally accountable for their products.
  
• Don't bother testing any of the systems - that's what the pilot is for, isn't it?
  
• Don't put anyone with any technical expertise in place on the government side of the supplier/customer relationship.
  

In short, such monumental managerial incompetence as to make me question if there are darker forces at work. I know you shouldn't ascribe to malice that which may be attributable to stupidity, but really, is anyone over the age of 12 that naive?

Re:Well, no particularly big surprise there

[Devistater]

Its not restricted to the UK. Everything you said applies to USA, and we've been using it for years.

All day would be nice

[benhocking]

Encouraging everybody to become informed is a good thing. IMHO Keeping the uninformed from voting is actually a good thing.

If people had all day, maybe they'd take the time to become informed. (Allow me my dreams.)

It should take a lot more than half an hour

[benhocking]

I try to stay up with the topics, but the day of the election I always make a point of making sure I know about every politician (regardless of party) and every resolution that will be on my ballot. That in itself takes far more than half an hour. Furthermore, when I lived in Atlanta, it'd take half an hour just to drive to the polling location and find a place to park! Then, there are the lines (usually around early morning and late afternoon/evening because almost no one has the day off). If you're lucky enough to live (and vote) near where you work, you could always do it during your lunchtime.

Making it a national holiday is symbolic as well. It says that this is important to us. Right now it says this is something that I'll try to squeeze in before work (if the lines aren't too long), or I'll try to squeeze it in before dinner (if the lines aren't too long). Election day should be a big deal, and not just seem like an afterthought.

If you aren't going to vote you would probably just piss off the day anyway.

How is that different from Memorial Day, Labor Day, MLK Day, or any other national holiday? Those who don't honor it (probably the majority of Americans for all of those), do exactly what you say they would do for a national holiday to vote. Why would it bother you that they did it on this new holiday as well?

Estonian E-elections worked well, again

[barwasp]

The key is that one is allowed to vote unlimited number of times, last vote being the one that counts. So, if there is a pistol on your head demanding you to vote for someone you don't want to, then when the pistol has left the building you can cast another vote to revert that earlier one. The same goes for situations where somebody is giving you money for voting that somebody. After having been paid you could re-vote and cancel that vote that you were paid for.

A detailed description of Estonian model is available http://www.vm.ee/estonia/kat_340/pea_172/7025.html

As a result; Estonians were again able to pull successful e-elections. Why should we reinvent the wheel and not use their E-voting model as a model?

Hyperbolic nonsense.

[RealProgrammer]

The problem isn't black-box electronic voting, or paper ballots with dimpled chads, or any of the hypothetical situations you can conjure. One aspect of the problem is trust. We must not trust any one entity, whether Diebold or Fred and Ethel the election judges, to count the votes.

Read Acceptable Electronic Voting. Here is an excerpt:

There are two fundamental resources in voting, the physical ballot and the information contained on the ballot, the votes. The ballot is important as a physical record of the intention of the voter, but the information on the ballot is far more important to the process. A ballot may contain several votes, one per contest (except for multiple-choice board races, ballot initiatives, etc.).

The job of both electronic voting and paper ballots is quickly and securely converting the ballot into a vote, while maintaining the physical record for what is essentially forensic analysis. The situations are almost opposite: with electronic voting, bits can be mangled and made not to match the physical record, if any, but with paper ballots the paper can be mangled, discarded, or destroyed before, during, or after the counting process. Both processes are subject to time shifting: we don't know when the bits in an EVS got there, nor do we know when the paper ballots were cast. All we have are the controls in place, so we can at least get to the reasonable doubt level with paper ballots, but not, as you say, with black box electronic ones.

What's needed is a hybrid, to avoid violating the security principle of Least Common Mechanism. If the electronic system creates a physical record of each ballot/vote, and sends the results in itself, then if each voter checks the physical record as it is created there is an extremely high likelihood that the vote tally will be accurate. If a paper ballot reader tallies the votes itself, there is already a physical record.

Either way, by separating the counting from the collection of ballots, you avoid Least Common Mechanism and force a tamperer to match any electronic tampering to physical tampering, which is a lot harder than doing one or the other. The physical ballots should be counted the same as always, and serve as the official ballot since they will be there for verification. It then doesn't really matter whether the voting machine is open or not.

Hasn't worked out so well so far.

[HornWumpus]

The schools are the basic problem. Idiots abound.

No excuses. Inform youself.

[HornWumpus]

Every source has a viewpoint, from the lefties at NPR/ABC/NBC/CBS to the righties at FOX and talk radio.

This is called the net. Read as many sources as you can find, then impose your own viewpoint, then check yourself.

Unpaid day off?

[HornWumpus]

I'd be fine with that.

Many want all day to vote so they can 'vote early and often.'

Most cases of polling stations being kept open late are when a party (cough, democrats, cough) realizes they are about to lose and sends voters out to vote just one more time at the last minute.

Allow you your dreams?

[HornWumpus]

Sure. But lets not make policy based on dreams.

They've had lots of chances to look into the issues, why would we assume they'd spend voting day differently than any other day off.

Why should Memorial Day be a holiday?

[benhocking]

Why should Thanksgiving? Why assume they'd spend those days any differently than any other day off? Don't get me wrong, I'm not arguing for a holiday just for the sake of holiday. How about we vote on Labor Day? (I was going to suggest Thanksgiving or the Friday after, but then realized how many people would be in entirely different states.)