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Paper Trails Don't Ensure Accurate E-Voting Totals
An anonymous reader writes "In an new report from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation they say that paper trails increase costs and can actually reduce the chances a voters' choices are accurately counted. Congress is considering a 'Voter Confidence and Increased Accountability Act of 2007,' which would mandate 'voter-verified' paper audit trails."
Information Week has given itself a black eye by saying nothing at all of any interest or substance about this issue, while hyping a report that it can't even describe adequately. All this means is that a "Black is White, Up is Down" paper will be forthcoming soon from an industry shill. The only news here is that this a self-inflicted reminder not to read Information Week.
... the answer is very simple.
The voter marks the ballot paper with a pencil. The ballots are counted by hand by human beings.
Completely transparent, complete audit trail, safeguards against all the failure modes discovered over the decades, results within hours, recounts within hours if needed.
Oh, and I expect it's cheaper than all this inappropriate mucking around with computers too. Computers aren't the answer to everything. This is one application in which they have no place.
"ITIF wants to spark discussion of how new technology can solve the problems. The report outlines innovations in voting machines that offer "end-to-end verifiability." It explains the cryptography the systems use and says that Congress should pass legislation based on S. 730 and H.R. 2360, which require verifiable audit trails without specifying that paper be used."
1. Not end to end. I can't do cryptography decryption in my head, and the vote verifier at the other end, he can't also do decryptions in his head. So any solution that involved cryptography isn't end to end.
2. One doesn't preclude the other. You can encrypt the electronic vote AND STILL HAVE THE PAPER AUDIT TRAIL to check the machine's cryptographic vote matches the voters intentions.
3. Papertrails, or ballots as we use to call them, have a proven track record of uncovering fraud in voting. To date the fraud in electronic voting is suspect but unproven. It is unlikely that fraud is eliminated in electronic voting, because fraud is *easier* not *harder* to do when votes can be changed so easily and untraceably on mass in a computer. So the lack of uncovering fraud is likely to be a weakness in the auditability of these machines. i.e. we suspect voter fraud because of systematic irregularities in key districts, but nothing can be proved because the lack of paper trail to verify against.
Why does he want unauditable machines? I see from his history that he's a professional technology lobbyists, but I'm curious why the FUD to keep the voting machines unauditable?
"I would have much more confidence in a cryptographic scheme that makes it effectively impossible for a voting machine to cheat. This is not all that difficult to accomplish and the necessary design criteria are widely available in the literature. A paper trail doesn't really help."
There is just one simple, practical, logical rule for machine assisted voting that anyone need remeber:
A machine that prints your choice is at worst a waste of money, a machine that counts your choice is at best a waste of money.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
My opinion is that there is no 'secure' e-voting system.
I also do not see any reason to abandon paper-based voting, which still is not 100% secure, but much more difficult to 'hack' due to transparency by distribution of control.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
Why the fuck do you Americans need to use goddamn voting machines?
Canada gets away just fine with using paper ballots. When you vote, you use a pencil to put a check in a circle next to the name of the candidate you're voting for. The circle is large and the text is large, to allow those with poor eyesight to get a better view of what's on the ballot, thus reducing mistakes.
What's more, the results for Canadian elections are near-instantaneous. They actually have legislation in place to prevent the media from reporting about the final results in the eastern and central provinces while polling stations are still open in the west! Why the fuck can't the US manage that?
Yeah, the American population is 10 times larger than the Canadian population. But that's irrelevant! Use 10 times as many ballot counters, and the system will scale just as well.
It's a mixed situation here in Europe. Some of our nations use the sensible Canadian method. Others are stupid, and follow the American scheme with doodad voting machines and all that jibberjabber. But really, we should all just use the Canadian method. It's the best, and safest, there is.