Dutch Commission Deals Blow To Electronic Voting

hcdejong writes "The Dutch commission that has been investigating the electoral process presented its final report yesterday (Dutch). The conclusions and recommendations are devastating to the current Dutch practice of voting electronically, and to plans for voting via the internet. Paraphrasing from the report: The deputy minister for the interior Bijleveld said in an initial response (Dutch only) that she would revoke the certification of the current generation of electronic voting machines. The minister plans to present an official Cabinet position on the electoral process in two months. The next elections (for the European Parliament, 2009) may see a return to paper ballots." Read on for a translation of some of the key points from the report.
Paraphrasing from the report:

• The current electronic voting machines do not comply with the basic requirements of an election (e.g. transparency, controllability, integrity).
• The paper ballot still offers the best way to comply with these basic requirements.
• The commission recommends using an electronic system to generate the paper ballot. The voter must be allowed to check the ballot before it is deposited in a locked box.
• Votes can be counted electronically (by scanning the paper ballots), with the option of a manual recount.

Comments

Unfortunately

[mastershake_phd]

The problem is any system can conceivably be rigged, paper or electronic.

Re:Unfortunately

[hcdejong]

With a paper system, you're reduced to rigging the results one vote at a time. With electronic voting, you could change thousands of votes at once.

Re:Unfortunately

[arth1]

The questions are how easy is it to rig, and how easy is it to hide that it's rigged.

As long as electronic voting systems make both easier, they're no good substitute for paper voting.

Re:Unfortunately

[morgan_greywolf]

Not if it has an auditable paper trail. The voter walks to the electronic machine, votes, and then two copies of a reciept, matching what's on the screen, come off a receipt printer. One copy for the voter, one for the election auditors. If the paper count doesn't match the machine count then you have election tampering.

Re:Unfortunately

[Gregb05]

Unless someone takes 500 ballots from a dozen heavily partisan precincts and sets fire to the votes.

Re:Unfortunately

[mastershake_phd]

With a paper system, you're reduced to rigging the results one vote at a time. With electronic voting, you could change thousands of votes at once.
 
With paper voting you are reduced to rigging the results one box at a time. Say the ballots from an area that votes predominately democrat were to disappear. Say you use a ridiculous name matching program to weed out "convicted felons". Just the types of shenanigans that were alleged to have happened in the past two US presidential elections.
 
The point is no matter what kind of system there is you have to trust the people running it.

Re:Unfortunately

[OverflowingBitBucket]

I don't know why but this shit seems really hard to get right. Electronic stock trading, bank transactions, military systems etc - no problem. Electronic voting - disaster every time.

Because anonymity plus accountability is really difficult.

In other systems you have nice trails that you can follow in the case of fraud.

In voting you need to ensure voter anonymity and it makes it that much harder to verify results. Add in political corruption and pressure from moneyed interests and it becomes a very hard problem indeed.

Re:Unfortunately

[SubGeniusX]

One copy for the voter, one for the election auditors.

The problem with this is that it can lead to vote buying ... show your reciept... get $$$

Re:Unfortunately

[Teun]

Never let a voter walk out with a proof of what his vote was.
In not so nice circumstances this could be used to blackmail the voter, "You better vote for my candidate or I'll find you're daughter".

A paper proof that the voter has to deposit in the (back up) ballot box is all what's needed.

Re:Unfortunately

[torkus]

Because vote buying doesn't happen now anyhow? Maybe not in as much of a 'pull lever - get cash' but the amount spent and given away to essentially buy votes is staggering.

Re:Unfortunately

[torkus]

Just let everyone vote on ATM machines. Or even better - hire a company that builds slot machines for vegas to make them. I guarantee it's harder to cheat a current vegas slot machine than the old-school paper voting systems.

Re:Unfortunately

[OverflowingBitBucket]

How on earth did you manage to reply in the wrong thread?

Long day. Saw comment, went back to main page, logged in, found comment, probably clicked on the wrong link, wrote reply, previewed, posted, realised mistake after seeing your reply, felt like idiot.

Re:Unfortunately

[QuickFox]

and then two copies of a reciept, matching what's on the screen, come off a receipt printer. Too many people are scared stiff of "doing something wrong" on the machine, and that, because of this, people around them will think they are stupid. Because of this they'll silently accept discrepancies, they'll assume that they "did something stupid" on the machine.

Let the machine produce a piece of paper that you carry to the poll box, a piece of paper that you can trash to make a new one if you're not satisfied with the first. The procedure should never be that you have to complain to a poll worker when you're not satisfied with the printout.

One copy for the voter, In addition to what others have said, that thugs or vote buyers could demand to see the receipt, and vote secrecy would be broken, also a receipt does nothing against vote-counting fraud. The receipt does nothing to prove that your vote was counted correctly, and gives you no way to correct an error.

Re:Unfortunately

[ajs318]

True. But at least paper is universally comprehensible. If everybody understands it, then everybody also knows exactly how it can be rigged, and can take appropriate precautions.

An electronic voting machine is not universally comprehensible. Even if the blueprints, schematics and software listings are published -- which would be the absolute minimum that anyone would expect in a democracy; the integrity of the democratic process is far more important than anyone's so-called "intellectual property" -- only a minority will be able to make sense of them (maybe even fewer people than you'd have to buy off to rig an election conducted using paper). And then there's still the problem of how to make sure the machine does actually match the published specification?

The simpler the system, the fewer potential failure modes. When one of the potential failure modes is the breakdown of democracy, you want to be sure that it isn't so likely.

Re:Unfortunately

[QuickFox]

Because vote buying doesn't happen now anyhow? The problem would get even worse, much worse, if you add a second type of vote-buying procedure. Immediately lots of people all over the country would find that in order to keep their jobs, they'd better vote for the candidate preferred by the boss. It's bad now, but it would get far, far worse.

Re:Unfortunately

[blahplusplus]

"With a paper system, you're reduced to rigging the results one vote at a time. With electronic voting, you could change thousands of votes at once."

How is this different from redistricting or buying votes?

Re:Unfortunately

[ajs318]

The voter walks to the electronic machine, votes, and then two copies of a reciept, matching what's on the screen, come off a receipt printer. One copy for the voter, one for the election auditors.

Extremely bad idea. No record of a vote must ever be allowed to leave the polling station -- it could be used for coercion. ("Everybody who takes time off work to go and vote had better show a receipt for [factory owner's brother] when they get back, otherwise they're fired.")

If the paper count doesn't match the machine count then you have election tampering.

If you're going to have to count the papers by hand anyway, then what's the freaking point in having the machine?

Re:Unfortunately

[hcdejong]

Redistricting isn't a problem in the Netherlands because we don't use districts. There's been talk of introducing a district system, but that particular disaster we've been able to avoid so far.

Re:Unfortunately

[Teun]

Wrong, in The Netherlands there are 19 districts (kiesdistricten, http://www.sdnl.nl/kiesdistricten.htm), a candidate for the National Parliament needs a certain number of signatures in a district to get his name on the ballot and stand for election in that district.
Yet in the end it's the national number of votes that governs who gets into the parliament.
Just being the (most) popular candidate in your district is not enough to get into the national legislative counsel.

Re:Unfortunately

[torkus]

I love people who automatically fail an idea because there's potential to abuse it. Yes, an employer could try to make people show proof they voted. Simply make that a felony with a $1,000,000 individual fine or $1,000,000,000 corporate fine, 10 years in jail and a $50,000 reward for proof and conviction. Want to bet how many people would bother?

Or hell...give the people the benefit of the doubt and start with the assumption that they'd be honest and show integrity. If you assume I'm a liar to start with, why would I care as much if i became one.

Re:Unfortunately

[QuickFox]

How on earth did you manage to reply in the wrong thread? [...] realised mistake [...], felt like idiot. This is an example of an important reason why we should be wary of voting machines. When people make mistakes on machines they feel more embarrassed than otherwise. Trivial mistakes that would be shrugged off if they happened with paper and pencil, with machines people will often feel as if the mistake were important, especially with computers they'll feel as if people around them might sneer at them. Much more so than with similarly small mistakes made with simpler technology like paper and pencil.

In a voting scenario this can become very important, as it can make people accept discrepancies, worrying that people will look down on them if they complain. Thus an attacker could introduce systematic small discrepancies that add up to a certain result.

The voting procedure must be designed to minimize this problem.

Re:Unfortunately

[hcdejong]

yeah, yeah, yeah. Details. As you say, in the end it's the national number of votes that counts, not a count by district. It's not a district system in the sense used by e.g. the USA and the UK.

Re:Unfortunately

[phantomlord]

And when it is your parent or spouse doing it, that fine, a felony conviction and/or any jail time will probably have a major negative impact on the rest of your life... much more negative than just voting how they told you to and showing them the receipt.

It would probably have an effect on exit polling too... only count the votes of the receipts people let you see. I've never been exit polled since my district always splits in the ballpark of 75/25 on state/federal level offices, but if I were exit polled, I'd deliberately give false answers to poison the data because I believe exit polling is inherently flawed to begin with.

Re:Unfortunately

[Anonymous Coward]

With paper voting you do not reduce vote tampering to one vote at a time.
If paper ballots are counted by an automated process tampering with the automated process can be just as effective. While such tampering won't work in elections where a landslide is expected from surveys, they can be very effective when the race is within the margin of error of dead even. It becomes simpler if over all a race is surveyed as dead even, but individual precincts are highly polarized as the level of tampering can be adjusted on a precinct basis.
Random audits whenever pre-election surveys and exit polling indicate that the outcome is within a small multiple of the margin of error of dead even may help some.

If paper ballots are counted manually, individuals would have to be bribed at each strategic precinct to allow such tampering.

Of course all of this is moot when the folks elected
0) Frequently skip roll call votes on legislation to make it much harder to determine which legislators were responsible for passing a bill.
1) Almost never read the legislation they vote on.
2) Usually take the legislation written for them by special interest groups.
3) Have a process in place where a clerk that is supposed to just spell check a bill can be bribed to insert legislation in favor of a given industry.

Re:Unfortunately

[volkris]

Life is not that simple.

Great, your employer has intimidated you into voting a certain way. Run to the cops? It may bankrupt him, costing you your job. At the least it would spell bad blood between the employee and employer, making it real hard to continue to work there, and there's no way additional legislation can overcome that.

In short, anyone who can intimidate you into voting a certain way has some sort of influence over your life, and pissing off such a person is just not a good idea. You must never walk out of the booth with proof of your vote, except that you voted at all.

Re:Unfortunately

[volkris]

An unriggable, infinitely transparent system that just plain doesn't work is of no use to anyone.

Add in the questions of precision, practicality, and affordability and you'll start to get a better view of the big picture.

In short, electronic voting has the potential to wipe the deck with paper voting on almost every test, yours and mine.

Re:Unfortunately

[ajs318]

It doesn't matter how harsh you make the punishment. The fact is that most people who set out to commit a crime, don't entertain the possibility that they might get caught.

When the stakes are this high, you can't trust anyone.

A receipt that shows which candidate a person voted for is of absolutely no benefit to anybody except cheats. It doesn't help the voter one single bit. The only way it could ever be useful is if everyone who voted in the election gets together in the same place, with their receipts. And that simply ain't gonna happen, my friend. Even if you did manage to get everyone together, can you really be sure that some of the people -- bear in mind that as far as you're concerned, they're mostly strangers -- really are who they say they are, and not just a bunch of hired stooges who travel around from town to town pretending to have voted for the winning candidate in the election there? (OK, that's a bit wild. But if a bent politician thought they could actually get away with it .....)

And you still haven't explained what good the machines are, if you have to hand-count paper ballots just to check that the machines were right.

Re:Unfortunately

[ajs318]

This old saw crops up again and again in discussions about voting machines. But the reason why gaming machines are so secure and so reliable depends entirely upon the relationship between operators and punters. The punter wants to make money at the operator's expense, and the operator wants to make money at the punter's expense.

If a machine pays out less than it's meant to, the punters will notice and just leave it alone (or better, post all over the Internet that it's crap). The amusement arcade / casino / chip shop operator suffers reduced takings as a result, and probably tells their friends in the industry. That machine, and others by the same manufacturer, will be shunned because it's unpopular with punters. End result, the manufacturer won't sell many machines which underpay.

If a machine pays out more than it's meant to, the punters will notice and empty it (and maybe post all over the Internet that it's a pushover). The arcade operator suffers reduced takings as a result, and probably tells their industry contacts. That machine won't be kept long because it's too popular with punters. End result, the manufacturer won't sell many machines which overpay.

Either way, the failure mode disfavours the manufacturer. And that's the real reason why gaming machines do what they say. A vote-recording/counting machine can have failure modes which don't necessarily disfavour the manufacturer (in fact, electing a candidate who promised a bung is a failure mode which favours the manufacturer).

Re:Unfortunately

[torkus]

Good god...you people are paranoid to the point of needing medication. I'm not saying that everyone needs to get a receipt. I'm arguing that it's not the end of the world if they do that you seem to think of it.

Put a big button for "I want a receipt". If the gas station can do it, a voting machine can.

You think couples don't argue NOW about who they're going to vote for? You think some employers dont' try to swing votes? This is NOTHING new. Giving people proof they voted isn't going to bring the world to a conspiracy colapse that you're predicting.

I mean, there's laws against sexual discrimination that are, by and large, followed. When they're not there's a lawsuit and fines. It's really the same as bringing any suit against your employer.

Exit polling...meh. That should be illegal.

Re:Unfortunately

[ajs318]

You don't even really need proof that you voted. An abstention is a valid vote (but won't give a receipt according to any known system). You only need proof that you were entitled to vote. Since there are only three ways you can not be entitled to vote -- under age, in prison / mental home or dead -- that ought to be obvious.

Re:Unfortunately

[Mix Master Nixon]

We cannot trust the people running the system. That's kind of the whole point of the way the United States was set up in the first place. Assuming that we cannot trust the people running the system, we must minimize the number and severity of attack vectors that could be used to undermine the electoral process. Like my man Scotty said, and this might not be the exact quote; the more complicated the plumbing, the easier it is to clog the drain. Get computers all the way out of polling centers, because the risks greatly outweigh the benefits when the plumbing gets that complex... eventually you end up ankle deep in your own shit. Sure, analog voting is no guarantee of accuracy, but digital voting all but guarantees more devastating forms of corruption than would be worth attempting in the analog realm.

Election rigging should be considered and punished as the highest sort of treason. Democrats, Greens, Libertarians, Republicans, it doesn't matter - if you get caught stuffing or gutting the ballot box, you get life in prison... at best. Rigged elections are an attack on national security. What if it wasn't the Republicans or Democrats doing the rigging, but rather, the government of Russia or China? What would we call it then? And why should we treat it any differently when the attack comes from within?

Re:Unfortunately

[ps236]

You need voter anonymity. You don't need vote untraceability.

You could, for instance, have a bit of paper or something with a hidden, machine & human readable random, unique code on it that no one knows. The voter puts this in the voting machine which reveals the code, and reads it. The voter votes, their vote gets printed on the paper, and the voter takes the bit of paper with them.
The voter can keep that bit of paper, and, if they want, type the code in on a website later and it'll tell them how their vote was registered.

OK, someone else could enter their code - but since there's no way of knowing who placed that vote (except to the person holding the bit of paper) the information of how that code voted is useless.

Now, you have accountability, and anonymity. It's not that high tech, and it should be possible to do in a relatively user friendly way.

(Internet voting is far harder, but I don't think you even could consider doing that in a verifiably anonymous way - a similar method to the above could be used, with the code being sent to you beforehand, but there's no way for the voter to know that someone else doesn't know which code was sent to whom. In the voting booth, there could be a bucket of bits of paper that the voter chooses from, so it is totally unpredictable which number a certain voter will use).

Re:Unfortunately

[arth1]

A receipt that shows which candidate a person voted for is of absolutely no benefit to anybody except cheats. It doesn't help the voter one single bit. The only way it could ever be useful is if everyone who voted in the election gets together in the same place, with their receipts.

False. If the total count of votes for someone/something is N, you only need N+1 votes to show an error. For N=0, that means a single receipt.

As for the potential for abuse, that would exist if, and only if the receipt would let anyone identify who or what the vote was for. If the voting information is encrypted, and the decrypted information can only be seen under the supervision of an official, and only by the voter alone or someone expressly granted permission to do so for recount purposes, there is no potential for abuse.

Well, that's almost true. In the US, there would still be the potential for forcing someone to vote. To avoid that, the US would have to change its laws so voting blank would become an option, like in other countries.

And one good thing might come out of this that can prevent abuse -- a voter can challenge being fired for taking time off on election day to cast his vote. This does happen in the US, unfortunately - there are employers who deliberately keep the employees at work to prevent them from voting, under threat of firing them if they leave.
Is it a big problem? If it happens to a single voter, it's a very big problem indeed.

Another potential for the receipt system is to get more people to vote. If you pay out a monetary sum for everyone who keeps their voter's receipt for six months, you'd get more voters. (Of course, again you need to change the US system to allow blank votes.) And more people keeping the receipt too, which would be useful for recount purposes.

Re:Unfortunately

[torkus]

See? More paranoia.

If the stakes were that high, I'd think more than 50% of the population would show up to vote for our president.

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0781453.html

Furthermore, you're saying you can't trust the same people who are voting. What's next, banning cell phone cameras from voting booths? I mean, your "boss" might make you take a cell phone picture of your votes. No matter what you do, there's always potential for abuse.

Again though, I'm not saying paper receipts are necessary. I'm arguing that they're not going to ruin an election.

Re:Unfortunately

[QuickFox]

This would break vote secrecy. A thug, employer, vote buyer, oppressive husband, etc, etc, etc, could force you to show your code and then check how you voted, and thus coerce you to vote the way they want, or else you lose your job, get beaten, etc.

And how would it be useful? When afterward you go to that website and check your vote, if it's shown with incorrect selections, how do you prove that it's wrong?

And even if you could somehow prove that it's wrong, how can you use this information? How do you get the error corrected? What can you do about it?

An even if it is shown correctly on the website, how does that prove that your vote was counted correctly? Maybe the system is tricking you, by deliberately showing you exactly the selections that you made, while at the same time showing the rest of the system completely different selections.

Votes on paper is the only solution.

Re:Unfortunately

[Mathinker]

> You think couples don't argue NOW about who they're going to vote for? You think some employers dont' try to swing votes?

Your system makes it impossible to convincingly lie about how you vote, an ability which undercuts what you want instead to outlaw. Your proposal would probably also infringe on the right of free political speech for all employers. Where would you draw the line? Would it be allowed for an employer to officially state a political opinion and say "I really like people who see this the same way I do"? It's a kind of vague coercion, there. People might suddenly start to "volunteer" to show their receipts to this guy (he didn't ask them to, now, right?).

The analogous behavior in the case of sexual harassment might be to stare a lot at your secretary's breasts. Not a lot of secretaries go to court over that....

> When they're not there's a lawsuit and fines.

Right. And people sued by **AA never choose to just pay up rather than go to court. What universe do you live in, anyway?

Re:Unfortunately

[ps236]

You could easily claim you'd lost the bit of paper

If you've paid money into your bank, and they haven't credited your account, how do you prove the bank's wrong?

If the system is lying, then paper votes are just as bad. How do you know someone didn't take your paper out of the box after you put it in there? How do you know the ballot box you put the paper into was a REAL ballot box? How do you know that the person counting the votes is honest? If several people check them, how do you know that all of them aren't colluding?

At some point you have to trust. If the system can show you the right data, it must have the right data, so someone doing an audit could find it. Just like with paper voting - except better - because a lost ballot box would be noticeable.

Re:Unfortunately

[torkus]

So then use an ATM as an example. Regardless, the fact that ATM and slot machines are sucessfully in use with little to no fraud shows that it's possible to create a publicly accessible device that allows secure anonymous or user-identified transactions.

The real problem is that people view money as far more important than elections. In addition, many people don't like the idea of new voting machines ruining their existing scams...so they will poke every hole and blast it across the news even if doesn't actually present a tested, working exploit.

Re:Unfortunately

[QuickFox]

Put a big button for "I want a receipt". If you want to stay employed at our company you'd better push that button.

The secrecy of your vote is a basic tenet of democracy. When international observers check on the voting process of a country, this secrecy is one of the absolute requirements. If it's not carefully observed, the observers will inevitably declare that the election did not conform to the basic requirements of free and open elections.

That's because when this secrecy is not carefully observed, this fact is invariably abused all over the place. Always. This is no paranoia, it's an observable fact.

Thus, if your country were to abstain from this secrecy, the rest of the world would no longer consider you a real democracy.

Really, it's that important.

Re:Unfortunately

[ajs318]

Great, so now the receipt is encrypted ..... you're adding all these layers of complexity apparently without a thought for the problem you're actually trying to solve.

I wrote some time ago how easy it would be to pull a fraud in a situation where a Big List of everyone's name, address and way they voted is published on the Internet. All you need is some advance knowledge of who knows who (which you can get from studying correspondence, CCTV records &c) and a big nasty DRM system. (Actually you don't need the DRM; you can do the whole lot with Open Source, but it helps with the "theatre" aspect.) Then you just make sure every individual gets a copy of The Big List in which their vote, and the vote of anyone in their immediate social network, is recorded correctly; but the votes of strangers are munged to create whatever final result you want.

The point is that a receipt does not help you. Not one bit. It is a complete red herring. It only shows how you voted; when in actual fact, what you need to know to be sure the result is accurate, is how everyone else except you voted.

Use pencil-and-paper, and have several people count the actual ballot papers by hand. Then the only failure modes are: (1) extra ballot papers getting into the box somehow, and (2) ballot papers being taken out of the box and not counted. Both can be minimised by using simple wire seals and independent scrutineers.

Re:Unfortunately

[phantomlord]

Good god...you people are paranoid to the point of needing medication. an ad hominem is a good, logical way to refute a point

I'm arguing that it's not the end of the world if they do that you seem to think of it. And I think you're minimizing the impact it could have on people. Right now, you can tell your spouse, parent, boss, whatever that you voted the way they wanted you to and there's nothing they can do to prove it. If you even offer receipts to take from the polling station, it becomes "You will vote the way I want and you will show me the receipt. Failure to do either will result in [X]."

Giving people proof they voted isn't going to bring the world to a conspiracy colapse that you're predicting. Who said anything about a conspiracy? I know people who grew up in highly partisan families who were expected to vote exactly how their family told them to, period. One friend was married and 25ish before she finally voted opposite her parents. Even then, she felt the need to lie to them so they wouldn't shun her. I'm not talking about some grand conspiracy... and I'm not suggesting it would create a new crime. Family members who threaten to abuse someone if they don't vote a certain way and/or do abuse them if they don't show their receipt or their receipt shows an opposite vote are already committing a crime or are likely to be if it is physical abuse we're talking about.

Re:Unfortunately

[torkus]

Get over your paranoia already.

You're arguing against something because it disallows you to LIE CONVINCINGLY? Oh wait, you run for office. Gotcha.

As for the law i suggested: You can still apply all the same parallels to discrimination as it stands. "I really like married (no gays) people who jog daily (no handicapped people)." Now, if you use that as a basis for making employment decisions, you're guilty of breaking the law. If I'm married and like to jog and tell you so...so be it. I'm not saying discrimination laws work perfectly either.

Second, sexual harassment is NOT discrimination.

Third, comparing the MAFIAA tactics to a discrimination or sexual harassment lawsuits is so far off base i'm not even going into it.

Re:Unfortunately

[phantomlord]

Where I vote, we're asked our name and sign next to it in a book. There's no way to know how I voted or if I abstained (we're still using the old lever machines and an abstain is simply going in, shutting the door and opening it back up without pulling any levers... it tallies you on the total voters counter but doesn't tally on the individual counters). In fact, there are usually a lot of local races with only one person running and if I don't know that person or I think they're an idiot, I will deliberately abstain for just that office.

That said, anyone can go in and check the books to see who voted... my dad worked for the town highway department and their boss (which is an elected position) would give them the day off iff they voted (which he could verify with the voter rolls). Of course, he had no way of knowing who they voted for.

Re:Unfortunately

[phantomlord]

I mean, your "boss" might make you take a cell phone picture of your votes. No matter what you do, there's always potential for abuse. and on the lever voting machine I use, I'd take the picture and then set the levers how I want them (they're mechanically cleared as you pull the lever to count your vote). On paper ballots, you take a picture before submitting and then request a fresh ballot because you made a mistake.

Re:Unfortunately

[torkus]

(begin cynicism)

Given that it's the US i'm taking about and it's the US (and our media) that governs what "things mean" I wouldn't worry too much about it. It would be "our" UN observers, right? meh.

(end)

There's also "if you want to stay employed here divulge xyz legally protected information". Your argument could be applied to any of a dozen things totally unrelated to voting. I guess we shouldn't document anyone's medical or mental history, right?

Re:Unfortunately

[PitaBred]

So why do you go by "torkus", and not have an email or website on your slashdot info? Anonymity has it's place, doubly so in politics. He's not saying "lying" in order to gain something other than perhaps freedom from persecution and retribution from people who may not agree with what he said/voted.

Re:Unfortunately

[QuickFox]

You could easily claim you'd lost the bit of paper "We did warn you that your job was on the line, and still you lost the paper? Of course you're fired, what did you expect?"

More on the importance of secrecy in my comment here.

If the system is lying, then paper votes are just as bad. How do you know someone didn't take your paper out of the box after you put it in there? How do you know [...] At most polling places you should find several observers who are simply standing there and watching what happens. They are observers from several interested political parties. They keep observing the entire process until the votes have been counted and reported. It is in each one's interest to react to any fraud that is unfavorable to his or her party.

Especially in a country with many influential parties, a large proportion among these observers are more interested in a change in power than in preserving the status quo. In this way they guarantee that the polling and counting process will be very carefully observed.

Re:Unfortunately

[ajs318]

But you've got almost the same situation with ATMs. If it takes more money out of a customer's account than it actually dispenses in real live pound notes, then customers will complain to the bank and the bank will eventually change ATM suppliers (or go bust as customers withdraw their money the old-fashioned way). If it takes less money out of a customer's account than it dispenses, then the bank will twig onto this and eventually change ATM suppliers. Either failure mode ends up hurting the manufacturer.

The only place in an election situation where you've got any naturally-existing conflict like this is between the various candidates, who would not be trusted one another to tell what colour shoes they were wearing if they could see each other's feet. And the way you can exploit this is to let the candidates be the "counting machine". It's what's been done since democracy was first invented and there's no good reason to change it.

Re:Unfortunately

[PitaBred]

Because ATM's are perfect. ATM manufactures are often the SAME as the voting machine manufacturers and they still can't get it right. ATM's and slot machines are successful in use because fraud doesn't have catastrophic effects across the industry, it's just a spot "hiccup". Voting machine fraud means the wrong person is put in office for however long, or even worse, amendments and other laws are passed erroneously.

Re:Unfortunately

[QuickFox]

I guess we shouldn't document anyone's medical or mental history, right? Documenting medical history is useful. How is a voting receipt useful? What's the point?

Re:Unfortunately

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't think that this is only an advantage. The result of our proportional representation system is fragmentation of votes over many different parties, and no clear winner of the elections.
As a result we always have colalition governments, which means that a party can basically promise everything during campaign, then drop that promise during coalition negotiations or later. Hence, a campaign and the actual government have very little in common, rendering democracy mostly useless.

Re:Unfortunately

[QuickFox]

What if it wasn't the Republicans or Democrats doing the rigging, but rather, the government of Russia or China? What would we call it then? And why should we treat it any differently when the attack comes from within? Mod parent up! Really insightful!

Re:Unfortunately

[torkus]

So now we've jumped from debate to personal attacks. A personal attack isn't relevant to the arguent. To take it a step further, posting an email address a/o website doesn't necessarilay identify me anyway.

And my point about lying still applies. You're designing a system with the requirement that people can be dishonest.

Re:Unfortunately

[Billhead]

That doesn't stop an employer from telling you "If you are going to take time off to go vote, bring me back the receipt or you are fired."

Re:Unfortunately

[Anonymous Coward]

So now we've jumped from debate to personal attacks. YOU were the one who jumped to personal attacks by saying someone who disagrees with you is "paranoid to the point of needing medication." I'm glad you understand personal attacks aren't relevant unless they're directed to people you disagree with.

Re:Unfortunately

[torkus]

Two approaches:

1) Again, requiring your voting information can be made illegal.
2) Make a detachable part or a separate receipt to prove you voted or hash the information. For the "abstention crowd" ... vote no one. You still get a receipt.

I like #2 - how many people leave early to vote and go home for a beer instead? I know more than one or two. Accountability for your actions is something i'm a big fan of.

And once again, I never argued that we NEED receipts. I'm arguing that it's not going to destroy the voting process. Keep in mind that a "receipt" doesn't have to have Bush vs. kerry with a big check mark. It could be a MD5 (or whatever, encrypt if you'd like) hash of your votes and the database table record number.

Print something that says:

Thank you for voting today. Your confirmation number is:

JNSDRG9UW4 NG9U324N5G097 34NHP9G38HG935 86NG93086HG P39586NHG3958 6YH3P956H 8NPEW95 68HG356H

Should you wish to confirm your votes were accuratly recorded, go to www.x y z.com and enter this number.

This can verify the integrity of the information against the database - which has NO IDENTIFYING INFORMATION.

Re:Unfortunately

[zestyping]

Mod parent up.

Thank you for taking the time to refute (yet again) this common suggestion -- it seems to crop up in every voting discussion. We'll have to keep repeating the counterargument for a while to stamp it out.

Re:Unfortunately

[hcdejong]

I'd rather have the drawbacks of proportional representation than those of a district system (where you tend to end up with two viable parties, neither of which represent the views of the majority of the people). I agree that campaign promises are something that needs improvement, though.

Re:Unfortunately

[volkris]

I mean at the most that should be the output.

It's not a unreasonable or nefarious idea that, say, an employer would give a free vacation day to anyone going to vote. They just need to bring back proof that they did. It would be convenient for people in such a situation to have a receipt from the polling place to show.

Re:Unfortunately

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you have given a simple answer to the original idea of providing people with a take-home record of how they voted. Simply print people a paper receipt showing *every* candidate, and a simple 'magic number' being a one-way hash of the candidate's id, the voter's id, and secret key (one key for indicating the actual vote, another for the fakes). Anyone looking at the receipt will just see each candidate next to a meaningless bunch of numbers. The electoral officials will, however, be able to verify which was the actual vote.

Re:Unfortunately

[PitaBred]

A personal attack would have been if I called you a yellow-bellied coward for not having that information out. What I was simply doing was pointing out that you yourself use anonymity, and there are many very good reasons for it to be part of the system that governs us, so that it is more based on the true feelings of the voters, rather than any kind of coercion they may be subjected to. And if they ARE subjected to coercion, they can lie to keep their persons and property safe, while still voting their conscience without fear of being "found out". If your point is that the system is that people CAN be dishonest, well, yes. It's because it's safer for everyone involved that way, and will in actuality provide results more in line with the voter's actual desires than a "traceable" system would.

Re:Unfortunately

[uncqual]

2) [...] hash the information.
[...]
Should you wish to confirm your votes were accuratly recorded, go to www.x y z.com and enter this number. I've been an advocate of this sort of solution for some time. However, it won't work if the voter can verify their vote w/o insuring that others are not permitted to view the "counted" vote (else, we are right back to enhancing vote buying and/or coercion).

Although with more thought I'm sure a better system could be found, one approach would be to encrypt the vote selection (and database record number to later match with the actual recorded vote) on the receipt. One pass of encryption would be done with a voter supplied key/passphrase (not appearing on the receipt and to be retained only by the voter) and probably some salt (which may need to appear on the receipt in cleartext). A second pass would be done with an 'n-of-m' scheme using all the individual public keys of a panel of m "trusted" individuals (probably judges). The voter would always have the option of excluding the encrypted vote from their receipt (making it impossible for them to ever verify how they voted, but making voters more confident of the anonymity and confidentiality of their vote). The voter's registration number would also have to be on the receipt in cleartext.

If a voter desired to validate the recording of their vote, they would go to a "vote validation" site at publicly announced times after the count is announced. At these sites, at least n of the m panel members would be present (where n isn't so close to m that death or illness or forgotten keys of a few panel members would make it impossible to verify votes - but n is large enough to give confidence that collusion among panel members would be difficult). The vote validation sites would be constructed (physically and electronically) to insure privacy of the voter (so only they could see how their vote was recorded on their receipt and in the counting database) and the privacy of the panel members' keys. Upon showing appropriate picture id which (along with the registration list) shows that the person requesting verification and the receipt match, they would use a secure terminal to scan their receipt (which would verify it was the same receipt that was just matched to their id), enter their private key or passphrase. Simultaneously, n of the panel members would enter their private keys. Then, the system would decrypt the the vote recorded on their receipt and show it to the voter (only). If voter then wanted to (which they presumably usually would), the "recorded vote" would be retrieved from the database (since the record number is now available) and displayed to them. If any inconsistencies were found the computer would give the voter the OPTION (but not requirement) to initiate a review process at a higher level (high level state and/or Federal level judges probably) as election fraud is obvious (since the review process would necessarily result in some of those involved in the review process being aware of the actual votes recorded/cast by the contesting voter, the review must be optional).

There would probably have to be a procedure to limit the number of vote validations in order to keep the cost and delay down. Perhaps if more than some small percentage of the voters request the validation of their vote, some would be selected randomly to be validated and each party would be allowed to select a number (based on the percentage of total voters registered with the party) of "validation" requesters whose requests would be honored.

Re:Unfortunately

[Anonymous Coward]

and if the electoral officials can verify the vote, so can the person who demands your receipt.

Re:Unfortunately

[OverflowingBitBucket]

One thing I find unusual in threads on electronic voting is how people seem to suggest that they need a receipt. A receipt is, of course, for the reasons you state a very bad idea. Conversely, people don't ask for a receipt when they vote by paper. In fact, can you imagine the reaction if you asked an election official for permission to photocopy your vote before you cast it?

Of course, the reason may be the (very true) feeling that there is much more potential for misuse of electronic voting machines. It still doesn't justify the loss of anonymity.

I believe electronic voting machines should be pushed as an aid to the voting process, rather than a replacement. Get a machine with a nice, simple GUI. If the process is preferential rather than tick-in-the-box, let them drag around pictures of the candidates on the screen. When it is all done, let them hit a big green "Cast Vote" button. Out comes a printout with all of the ticks, crosses, and numbers in the right place. The voter then looks at their printout, and if they're happy, they drop it in the voting box, just like with a paper one. If they mess up, they return the printout as a spoiled ballot, and go back and do it again. You have a separate box and forms for people who want to fill it out by hand. At election close, you hand-count the hand-filled ones. You then split the printouts into batches. You scan each batch quickly (since the format is very consistent with printouts) and you have some preliminary results. You then handcount as many batches are needed (probably all of them) and use the scanned totals as a check. If they diverge too much, you get in triple the number of people and hand-count them again.

That way, the machines help- but not replace- the whole election process.

Re:Unfortunately

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless someone takes 500 ballots from a dozen heavily partisan precincts and sets fire to the votes.

This may seem strange to Americans but, in most 1st world democracies the ballot boxes are closely monitored by ALL parties at ALL times. The accepted American practices of "sleepovers" (California) or even actually removing a ballot box containing uncounted ballots out of public sight (Virginia 2004 iirc) are incompatible with most peoples definition of democracy. In most nations, you could try to grab a ballot box and run but at worst, you will force the people who's ballots are in that box to revote. It's actually a remarkably simple process that anyone who has ever flown understands: "Has this ballot box been out of the public's sight or been outside of the control of the public?" If the answer is no, proceed on the assumption that it has been stuffed full of bongs, bombs and ballots.

Re:Unfortunately

[QuickFox]

Exactly! That's exactly how it should work!

Having both electronic and manual count is very valuable as a double check. If there are errors, it's highly unlikely that both methods will give the same errors.

There's one detail where it seems I disagree with you. Where you say "they return the printout as a spoiled ballot" I get the impression that you mean that they give the spoiled ballot to some poll worker. But if that's what you mean, then that would break voting secrecy. Instead you just tear it apart and put it in a wastebasket inside the voting booth. It's best if this wastebasket is a locked box with a slit, so that nobody can see the interior. At the end of the day nobody knows who threw away what.

Re:Unfortunately

[drsquare]

If you're paper counting it anyway, why bother with an electronic system? Electronic voting is a solution looking for a problem. America might not be able to add up pieces of paper, but many other countries manage just fine.

Re:Unfortunately

[turbidostato]

"I love people who automatically fail an idea because there's potential to abuse it"

You'd better do. It's an extremly good idea.

Re:Unfortunately

[turbidostato]

"1) Again, requiring your voting information can be made illegal.
2) Make a detachable part or a separate receipt to prove you voted or hash the information. For the "abstention crowd" ... vote no one. You still get a receipt.

I like #2 - how many people leave early to vote and go home for a beer instead? I know more than one or two. Accountability for your actions is something i'm a big fan of.

And once again, I never argued that we NEED receipts. I'm arguing that it's not going to destroy the voting process."

As long as for the receipts themselves, I don't know how it works in USA, but in other countries you already can ask for them ("John Doe was voting here at 11:30 AM" and an official stamp). Now, if there's some tracking about what did you vote, that's not a receipt and, sorry, such a design is basically flawed beyond salvation and, yes, it'd destroy the voting process or, to be more precise, its meaning: preserving democracy. It's as simply basic as this: you CAN'T leave an audit trail about who voted what and preserve democracy. You might think you found a cute method for this but you'd be as wrong as if you though that you found a cute method for a perpetual movement machine.

Re:Unfortunately

[OverflowingBitBucket]

There's one detail where it seems I disagree with you. Where you say "they return the printout as a spoiled ballot" I get the impression that you mean that they give the spoiled ballot to some poll worker. But if that's what you mean, then that would break voting secrecy. Instead you just tear it apart and put it in a wastebasket inside the voting booth. It's best if this wastebasket is a locked box with a slit, so that nobody can see the interior. At the end of the day nobody knows who threw away what.

I think it is more the matter of me not understanding how spoiled ballots are currently handled rather than us disagreeing here. I know there is a process in place here (Australia) for example, by which you somehow return a ballot which you have accidentally spoiled (ie. messed up) and get a new one. I haven't actually spoiled a ballot thus far, so I don't know what the process is. I presume the folded ballot is dropped into a spoiled ballot box, and they give you a fresh one.

A similar thing could be done with electronically-assisted voting- much like the voting box, you deposit your printout into a spoiled ballot box, and then are allowed back to redo your vote. All that needs to be seen is that you put exactly one folded bit of paper into this box (they don't need to see what is on it) before you can go back again. Of course it would be in a different direction than the valid vote box, because you don't want people coming back to vote again after putting a ballot in the valid voting box. ;)

Re:Unfortunately

[drsquare]

I'd rather have the drawbacks of proportional representation than those of a district system (where you tend to end up with two viable parties, neither of which represent the views of the majority of the people)

Instead you get 400 parties, none of which represent the views of the majority of the people, with 300 of them in a coalition. Of course as so many parties are in power, they can all blame the other, and there is no accountability. You can't vote out an unpopular party, because they can just form a coalition, even if they hardly get any votes.

Re:Unfortunately

[turbidostato]

"The point is no matter what kind of system there is you have to trust the people running it."

What about *not* trusting them? What's the problem? You only need to trust your own observer but, of course, you won't trust the observers from the other parties, that's why you won't take out your eye from them.

By the way, that's exactly how the system goes in the rest of the world. In the USA it would be even easier since you only have two parties (for presidentials). Say party A and B present candidates on circumnscription X, then party A and B present an observer and the public government sends another one randomly chosen (like people on a jury). All of them watch for everbody else all the time and the ballot box never goes out from public view. At the end of the day, the precinct box is broken and the public observer counts the votes in presence of all the other observers. The total count must match the registered number of voters for that box; all the observers must agree on the votes that go to each candidate. Then they phone and/or send the paper resuming the results to the central agency (which eventually will be made public so every observer can recheck that published records are in accordance with their counting) and... that's basically all: simple, fast, protects the rights of the voters and it's extremely difficult to tamper. What's the problem with this? What's the problem the electronic voting machines try to solve?

Re:Unfortunately

[turbidostato]

"I guarantee it's harder to cheat a current vegas slot machine than the old-school paper voting systems."

That's because all parties with a saying share the same point of view (Las Vegas tycoons have a vested interest for their slot machines not to be broken into; slot machine builders could try to cheat Las Vegas tycoons, but since they are not the ones that take the money out of them, they lack the chance and even with the chance, they could be a bit of worried about their reputation and having a sorry end buried in the middle of Nevada desert).

Now, let Las Vegas tycoons have a hand on voting machines and expect the end of the bipartidism and the rise of the LVGP (Las Vegas Gambling Party) to the White House.

Re:Unfortunately

[QuickFox]

I'm not sure any procedure is necessary. Here in Sweden we cast our votes by giving three closed envelopes to a poll worker, one each for Parliament, region and local election. The poll worker checks a small slit in the side of each envelope where he can make sure that there is a single paper slip in each envelope, one envelope with a blue slip, one with a yellow and one with a white slip. He calls out the colors aloud to a second poll worker who marks each of the three in a list of voters. While calling them out he places them on three poll boxes, one of each color. After the second worker has confirmed, he shoves them in the slits of the three boxes.

Thus even though the poll workers have no way of seeing whom you vote for, they can check that you give exactly one slip in each election.

Thus at least with this procedure there is no need for any special procedure for spoiled ballots. Every voter can have any number of slips, it doesn't matter, because you can't deliver more than one when you vote.

Re:Unfortunately

[Anspen]

Well no, you can influence the number of parties you're likely to get by changing the minmal vote required to enter parlement.

Beyond that what you get is serveral parties having to work together to form a government. Which means compromises have to be made, which generally (though certasinly not always) result in a better result than a strong move to one side or the other.

Re:Unfortunately

[mastershake_phd]

Treating ballot observing like jury duty is one of the best ideas I've heard. However, if you are paranoid, you might wonder if ballot observers were still somehow planted. Has there yet been any system devised that cannot be circumvented, even if the effort required to circumvent that system is exceptionally high.

Re:Unfortunately

[turbidostato]

"The voter can keep that bit of paper"

And then, someone can "kindly" ask him for...
a) In fact keep it
b) Reveal his vote from it.

This only is more than enough for the system to be utterly broken but then it's only a minor nuisance compared to the *real* problem which is, of course, that somewhere there's a pairing about what voted who or else there would be no way for the voter himself to recover what did he vote from the system (at the very least, the holder of the vote coded with the key xyz voted A; the voter with the xyz code voted on the machine X at 11:30 AM; at 11:30 on the machine X voted John Doe -or else, nothing would avoid John Doe to vote a dozen times). Of course you can claim that the pairing is one-way... unless of course, someone was toying with the only single place (one point of failure anyone?) that holds the (presumably) one-way algorithm, or just was playing the Man In The Middle game when the voter was tracking his ballot in the web... I'll on purpouse will trigger the Godwing Law by saying a Hitler-like character would be enchanted with such a system... not only because it so dangerous but because is utterly stupid too!

Why the hell would you want to recheck what did you voted? Bad memory? On one hand you already know what did you vote, it is knowing what everybody else but you voted (or at the very least that the sume of the votes of everybody else is correct) what's interesting; on the other, you still have *NO* warranty that what the "recovering machine" is showing as your registered vote is in fact registered as such anywhere else but at the "recovering machine" screen.

So even while you thougth your system to be very cute and untamperable all you really did was giving a very interesting list of names to the Hitler-do-jour about who voted the "Jew Party" without giving you not the slightest clue that the published results "Jew party: 1 vote, Arial Party: 70.000.000 votes" where in fact a little bit misleading.

Re:Unfortunately

[turbidostato]

" The result of our proportional representation system is fragmentation of votes over many different parties, and no clear winner of the elections."

Don't think this is a disadvantage. That means that government if so much about wider representation, consensus and middle grounds.

"As a result we always have colalition governments, which means that a party can basically promise everything during campaign, then drop that promise during coalition negotiations or later"

But the promises that will tend to "fall off" will be those which rise less consensus which, again, is quite a good thing. On the other hand, you are free not to vote those parties that tend to forget too much about their campaign promises (well, if only voters didn't have such a fishy memory...)

Re:Unfortunately

[turbidostato]

"If paper ballots are counted by an automated process tampering with the automated process can be just as effective"

Of course yes. That's why you don't want any single entity (specially an amoral one) to count the ballots. That's why you have representatives of the candidates counting the ballots, because they are vestedly interested in their share to be counted at least as big as it is if not bigger (this being true for all the parties the end result is that all parties are counted for as much votes as they get but not more).

I probably don't understand in its enterity the voting system of the USA but what I don't really understand is what the problem is with just manually counting all the f* ballots! It is a highly parallelizable task which means it really doesn't matter if we are talking about 10.000 or 100.000.000 votes; just allow for about 1000 to 5000 votes for voting box and as many voting boxes as needed and you will be done in about two/three hours from the closing of the last voting box.

Re:Unfortunately

[turbidostato]

"Treating ballot observing like jury duty is one of the best ideas I've heard. However, if you are paranoid, you might wonder if ballot observers were still somehow planted"

That's why you use *all* of them. On each box you have a representative from party A and a representative from party B. In theory that would be enough, since party A and party B representatives cover all the interested parties. But since those representatives might be known in advance and could be bought/blackmailed, etc. you add another random probably unbiased observer (not that she will be really unbiased, but since she doesn't know nor is she known by the other observers chances for the whole lot of observers to be coalligated are almost nihil) to the process. Then they count by hand all the ballots, and you avoid marking on the papers: if it's about Bush and Kerry, you will have a paper meaning "I go with Bush" and a different one for Kerry (this way you avoid the problem of "but the cross is a bit out of the square" or "the punch is not in the center of the line" by the time you count them). This process is the one used for EU representatives (and EU's population is roughly the same than USA's) and all the votes are counted by hand in as less as four/five hours.

But your observation diservers another thought: when you say "Treating ballot observing like jury duty is one of the best ideas I've heard" I think you imply "...and I never heard about it before". Since this is (and has been) common practice in "the civilized world" for ages, and i.e. european citizens seem to agree about their voting process to work OK (there're, of course, other problems, but not this) maybe the solution for the USA goes not so much by researching about Diebold machines being good or bad but just avoiding reinventing the wheel and seeing if something can be learnt from other countries' experiencies.

Re:Unfortunately

[RK077208]

Yes, i agree with the above comment. They can lost the integrity of the voting. People can cheat to vote many times rather than one time by having paper system. So,i think online voting not suitable to apply in here =). Although it can save time and energy.

Re:Unfortunately

[phantomlord]

I probably don't understand in its enterity the voting system of the USA but what I don't really understand is what the problem is with just manually counting all the f* ballots! It is a highly parallelizable task which means it really doesn't matter if we are talking about 10.000 or 100.000.000 votes; just allow for about 1000 to 5000 votes for voting box and as many voting boxes as needed and you will be done in about two/three hours from the closing of the last voting box.

At the Federal level, every two years, there is an election for the House of Representatives. Twice in six years, you will have a vote for Senate in your state (2 Senators per state, each with a 6 year term. Terms are staggered so that every 2 years, 1/3rd of the Senate is up for election). There's also a Presidential vote every 4 years. Every even numbered year, you will have at least two federal offices on the ballot, but usually all three.

Now, it can vary a little at the state level. Here in NY, we have a State Senator and State Representative up for election every 2 years. Every 4 years, we also have several state offices like Governor, Attorney General and Comptroller. Those 4 year offices are held in the non-Presidential even year here (last one being 2006). Also, there is usually 1-2 referendums on the ballot.

Then, some counties have an election to pick a legislature... some do a Board of Supervisors instead (the Town Supervisor of each town holds a seat on the Board). In addition to that, there are also elections for County Justices, Coroner, Sheriff, Animal Warden, Clerk, etc. You might have another 6 or more offices here. Sometimes, counties may have a referendum on something like raising the sales tax rate as well.

Finally, you get down to the city/town/village level. In my town, the Supervisor, 5 board members with a 2 year term (3 one year, 2 the next), Highway Superintendent, 2 Justices and Clerk. If you live in the village, in addition to the above, you also get to elect a Mayor.

There are also school elections (board members and budget approval), but those are conducted during a different session for just school related stuff.

All together, there may be as many as 20 different offices/issues to vote on in a given year... Now, election day is a big deal. Talk radio is usually all election centric, whether a national or local show. The 24 hours news tv channels are 95% election (and 100% election between about 6pm eastern time until the national winners are called). Local news interrupts their shows to show local coverage starting around 9pm (poll closing time) and going until the major local races are resolved and even prior to that, they're often cutting to campaign headquarters to show their moods as election day goes on.

So... all the hype and media pressure makes people want results ASAP. Many times, the results of east coasts states are announced before the polls close out west (each state has their own poll closing time based on their local time, it isn't a standard closing time country wide) and sometimes (2000 Florida for example), they will announce their expected result "accidentally" before all the polls are even closed in that state. That reporting alone can cause people to not bother voting because "the polls are already pointing to who is going to win anyway."

So, the reason why people (especially the media who is busy selling ad time for all the people glued to the tv/radio) want mechanical/electronic/scanned/whatever voting is so they can have instantaneous results for those 20 ballots they cast and know who won before they go to bed at 11 or 11:30pm. Even if you divide each precinct into 1000 voters, you're still looking at potentially 20,000 votes to hand count before 11pm (because people don't want to just know who the new President will be, they also want to see if their friend won for the Town Board). Ohio is a key swing state and they're on Central time so they only have one hour to count the votes before the east

Re:Unfortunately

[RK077208]

Using paper can easy to control the votes..But using electronic also can save time and energy to calculate the votes..

Re:Unfortunately

[turbidostato]

Well, quite an interesting briefing, I should admit, which adds light to my knowledge about the issue. I think that it can be reduce to two points:
1) There's a lot of work for a single voting day (three to six elections can be concurrent).
2) You allow mass media to control to most notorious exercise of democracy.

I think the other issues can be disregarded, since they are either "peanuts" (i.e. having a school board election is a local issue so big mass media is not interested and we are talking about a limited number of voters anyway; even if they concur, I'd say it'd be good enough to process, say, presidentials and senatorial votes first, and then everything else), or are properly managed anywhere else (do you think 10 parties is a mess? Try any european democracy! you will find parties by the dozens).

I already talked about it in a different message, but I'll sumarize again it here: when european representatives are elected it usually concurs too on a day where you have presidentials on at least some countries, and probably local majors and some state-level elections too so you end up sometimes with at least four items to vote for. Since we are talking about a population roughly the same than at USA, I'd say we are talking cualitatively more or less the same, but we manage to count the votes by hand, we usually have no less than 80% results by midnight, 100% by the morning and official results next day and it seems the process doesn't rise the kind of problems seen on the USA. Food for mind, I'd say.

So in the end, the problem in the USA is twofold:
1) Why the heck the country of the liberties allow for mass media big corps to control the election day? It seems quite counterproductive to announce east coast results when polls are still open on west coast? I don't buy your assertion about "people want results ASAP" but I see is CNN and the likes the ones that want results ASAP. And even then, I know that in EU, even with dozen of parties and three or four electoral process concurring, counting by hand doesn't take so much than your mechanical methods (I know my president in no more time than it takes to know yours... in fact much less in your two last presidentials). Well, I admit everything is a little easier from the press point of fiew in EU since we are only three hours apart from east to west instead of six.
2) Your method of "the winner takes all" for presidentials at the state level means that even if there are 100.000.000 of voters, all the show can come down to a short bunch of geographically agregated votes (like those from Florida in last two presidentials) so even a minimal margin for fraud (like about five counties in the whole USA) can make an enormous difference (on a non-geographycally bound electorial process of course you can get a winner by a single vote, but then you won't know it in advance and it makes one-by-one precinct fraud procedures almost absolutly irrelevant). But then it clearly works *against* any centrally controlled counting procedures ("centrally" meaning here things like all ballots going to single point to be processed, or a single vendor producing voting machines). I don't think there's a valid software-based voting procedure yet, and specially those based or including a voting receipt which are basically flawed by design by the very begining, but even then, it would be easy to apply some on those methods in old Europe than in USA.

In the end, I think that the "problem" is basically a made up one: mass media looking for something controversial to talk about (it brings money to them, be it Irak war, sexual tendencies of somebody relevant or the election process), and vested interest from some big corps that would be delighted if they got the monopoly for tens of thousand voting machines to be sold (not to talk about the tremendous influence they'd get if only other big corps think that influencing the voting machine vendors can mean influencing the voting output).

Re:Unfortunately

[Mathinker]

I shouldn't waste my time but I reply with an analysis (in [[ ]]) of your reply:

> Get over your paranoia already. [[ personal attack, non sequitor ]]

> You're arguing against something because it disallows you to LIE CONVINCINGLY? [[ restatement of obvious ]]
> Oh wait, you run for office. Gotcha. [[ non sequitor, possible personal attack ]]

As for the law i suggested: You can still apply all the same parallels to discrimination as it stands. "I really like married (no gays) people who jog daily (no handicapped people)." Now, if you use that as a basis for making employment decisions, you're guilty of breaking the law. If I'm married and like to jog and tell you so...so be it. I'm not saying discrimination laws work perfectly either.

[[ Discrimination laws are slightly broken, so we should slightly break our safeguards against voting coercion, for some unstated reason (making it easier to implement electronic voting?). You've also missed a big point here, which is that an employer who hasn't hired you yet probably has LESS influence on you than a current employer. This is why I moved your analogy to the STRONGER one of sexual harassment.]]

Second, sexual harassment is NOT discrimination. [[ Correct. But then, I wasn't confused about it. ]]

Third, comparing the MAFIAA tactics to a discrimination or sexual harassment lawsuits is so far off base i'm not even going into it. [[ Dismissal of analogy out-of-hand. Why is it any easier to prosecute a discrimination or sexual harassment lawsuit than to defend against the MAFIAA? I can only think of one thing which might justify your dismissal of the analogy, which is that the possible rewards from a successful discrimination or sexual harassment lawsuit would probably be much larger than the "rewards" from successfully defending oneself from the MAFIAA. This point would seem to me to be largely offset by the relative difficulties of the two legal actions. Don't forget that the burden of proof is on the prosecution in a discrimination or sexual harassment case. ]]

Re:Unfortunately

[phantomlord]

I think the other issues can be disregarded, since they are either "peanuts" (i.e. having a school board election is a local issue so big mass media is not interested and we are talking about a limited number of voters anyway; even if they concur, I'd say it'd be good enough to process, say, presidentials and senatorial votes first, and then everything else), or are properly managed anywhere else (do you think 10 parties is a mess? Try any european democracy! you will find parties by the dozens).

The thing is, in theory, your state and local politicians are supposed to have a bigger effect on your life than the federal level ones... That rarely seems to be the case these days, but if you combine that notion with the fact that, especially at the town or county level, you might personally know the person running, many people care about the local elections more. Also, prior to the 17th Amendment, Senators were chosen by the state legislators rather than direct election. I'm personally not so sure that changing them to direct election was the right idea.

Why the heck the country of the liberties allow for mass media big corps to control the election day? It seems quite counterproductive to announce east coast results when polls are still open on west coast? I don't buy your assertion about "people want results ASAP" but I see is CNN and the likes the ones that want results ASAP. And even then, I know that in EU, even with dozen of parties and three or four electoral process concurring, counting by hand doesn't take so much than your mechanical methods (I know my president in no more time than it takes to know yours... in fact much less in your two last presidentials). Well, I admit everything is a little easier from the press point of fiew in EU since we are only three hours apart from east to west instead of six.

The east coast has the world's financial center, the US capital and all the country's major news headquarters. The elitists in those places already believe the world revolves around them so they want the winner before they go to bed. The media coverage (controlled by those people) is just a reflection of that. I'm not so sure the average adult (also remember, only 40% or so of them vote) feels they have to know the results that night.

Your method of "the winner takes all" for presidentials at the state level means that even if there are 100.000.000 of voters, all the show can come down to a short bunch of geographically agregated votes (like those from Florida in last two presidentials) so even a minimal margin for fraud (like about five counties in the whole USA) can make an enormous difference (on a non-geographycally bound electorial process of course you can get a winner by a single vote, but then you won't know it in advance and it makes one-by-one precinct fraud procedures almost absolutly irrelevant). But then it clearly works *against* any centrally controlled counting procedures ("centrally" meaning here things like all ballots going to single point to be processed, or a single vendor producing voting machines). I don't think there's a valid software-based voting procedure yet, and specially those based or including a voting receipt which are basically flawed by design by the very begining, but even then, it would be easy to apply some on those methods in old Europe than in USA.

Not every state uses the winner takes all method for electoral votes, though the vast majority do. As for the Electoral College, it reduces the odds of voter irregularities causing the entire election to come into doubt and ensures that you can't win by just catering to a few populous cities while ignoring the needs of the rest of the country. If it were strictly the popular vote that counted, you would have people screwing around with the vote in places that the media doesn't provide much coverage... stuff the ballot box in places like Alcova, WY (just a random town in the middle of nowhere I picked off google maps) and who would know? The vast major

Re:Unfortunately

[mOdQuArK!]

I love people who automatically fail an idea because there's potential to abuse it.

Do you also love people who propose ideas without checking to see if the idea has already been tried and failed?

There are plenty of historical examples of political corruption where voters were either bribed or intimidated into supporting a particular party (read history about Chicago's political "machines"). The moment it became difficult to verify a voter's vote, then that kind of pressure wasn't much of a problem anymore.

Your idea about fining violators is naive. What do you think a legislator who was elected by voting fraud is going to do when he/she gets into office? Quietly get rid of the legislation that defines the fines (or make them so small that companies/organizations won't care about paying them).

There's a LOT of people who will bribe or intimidate voters if the vote can be verified, because there's is so much to gain in both power and money through control of the government (and because they can use the same mechanisms of government to shield themselves from punishment).

The best voting setups today were developed through a lot of trial-and-error to counteract problems that were encountered during history. If you're going to propose "solutions" to voting schemes, then at least read enough about the history to know why certain aspects of voting systems are being proposed. Otherwise, you are only revealing your ignorance.

give the people the benefit of the doubt and start with the assumption that they'd be honest and show integrity. If you assume I'm a liar to start with, why would I care as much if i became one

And this statement demonstrates either disingenuousness, or naivete bordering on stupidity. The process of voting is not about the best way to establish a good personal relationship with someone else.

People don't think about it much since the power of a single vote seems so trivial, but the results of voting are often literally about life and death (criminal laws), gobs of money, or transferring power to someone.

With those kinds of prizes available, it is the height of irresponsibility to propose voting systems that allow a small group of people to override the aggregate decision of the voters.

Re:Unfortunately

[mOdQuArK!]

There's nothing wrong with using a machine to print out the ballot.

You can handle a lot of disabilities that way, and make the ballot nice and readable so that a voter can easily verify that the choices on the ballot are the ones that they wanted (by getting rid of all of the OTHER choices, for instance).

Once you've got that voter-readable ballot, however, you've got to have a corruption-resistant way of counting them, and just about all of the current electronic-voting systems currently in existence fail that test miserably.

What I can't believe is how many of the voting machine companies completely blew off the existing voting process when designing their machines. Most of the existing laws about counting votes (like chain of custody laws, and multiple-party monitoring) came about to fix weaknesses that were discovered during the process of having elections. Why were all those hard-earned rules thrown out just because we wanted to count with a machine?

Re:Unfortunately

[mOdQuArK!]

Out comes a printout with all of the ticks, crosses, and numbers in the right place.

Better yet, just have the printout show the final choices (in an easily readable form), without any of the alternatives. This makes it harder to confuse adjacent voting choices when counting. If the user realises the choices aren't right, they can return the printout to an available shredder & vote again. If they accept the choices, they drop the printout into the ballot box.

Re:Unfortunately

[torkus]

I suppose instead of RTFA we have RMOP (read my other posts) - i'm not saying there should be receipts that have "i voted for stupid" written on them. I'm saying receipts (done properly, which generally would mean non-identifying, at least to someone other than the voter) could be a useful thing. because while there's the possibility of vote buying and other corruption (like it doesn't happen today) there is also the fact that you can ensure accuracy of the voting. That's impossible today. There is no possible way for me to know that my vote was actually entered, counted, and used for the election.

To address another point about the power of a single vote - maybe in "swing" states in the US. If you're not in one of those your vote is meaningless.

For the fines i mentioned - a politician won't try to repeal a law that clearly is designed to make voting honest. The press would have a field day with it.

Our trial and error with voting has plenty of errors...but they're existing ones and generally don't get any attention or press. Status quo is what politicians want. Voting machiens are not status quo, they could eventually lead to a *gasp* popular vote.

Re:Unfortunately

[torkus]

> Get over your paranoia already. [[ personal attack, non sequitor ]]

*yawn* Because your behavior and comments allude to "everyone is out to defraud me/us" that sounds like paranoia to me. Not a personal attack, an observation of existing comments.

> You're arguing against something because it disallows you to LIE CONVINCINGLY? [[ restatement of obvious ]]> Oh wait, you run for office. Gotcha. [[ non sequitor, possible personal attack ]]

WTS Sarcasm, PST. It's a general observation/attack on politicians. It's also how i think of them.

> As for the law i suggested: You can still apply all the same parallels to discrimination as it > stands. "I really like married (no gays) people who jog daily (no handicapped people)." Now, if you >use that as a basis for making employment decisions, you're guilty of breaking the law. If I'm married >and like to jog and tell you so...so be it. I'm not saying discrimination laws work perfectly either.
[[ Discrimination laws are slightly broken, so we should slightly break our safeguards against voting coercion, for some unstated reason (making it easier to implement electronic voting?). You've also missed a big point here, which is that an employer who hasn't hired you yet probably has LESS influence on you than a current employer. This is why I moved your analogy to the STRONGER one of sexual harassment.]]

I'm quite sure any voting laws against coersion and vote buying are not perfectly observed today. Sexual harassment is still illegal, still hugely fined. Yes, it happens anyway...just like every other law is broken sometimes. Refusal to pass a law based outlawing something becase you think it will be done anyway is circular logic.

>Second, sexual harassment is NOT discrimination. [[ Correct. But then, I wasn't confused about it. ]]

>Third, comparing the MAFIAA tactics to a discrimination or sexual harassment lawsuits is so far off >base i'm not even going into it. [[ Dismissal of analogy out-of-hand. Why is it any easier to prosecute >a discrimination or sexual harassment lawsuit than to defend against the MAFIAA? I can only think of >one thing which might justify your dismissal of the analogy, which is that the possible rewards from a >successful discrimination or sexual harassment lawsuit would probably be much larger than the "rewards" >from successfully defending oneself from the MAFIAA. This point would seem to me to be largely offset >by the relative difficulties of the two legal actions. Don't forget that the burden of proof is on the >prosecution in a discrimination or sexual harassment case. ]]

  ok. Prosecute sexual discrimination: crime, penal code. Civil lawsuit in addition for damages often taken without retainer by lawyers. Single person or DA (paintiff) vs. single person or corporation (defendant) vs. Copyright violation: By MAFIAA tactics, entirely civil suit. Very large corporation vs. single person (no DA, no criminal charge hence no 'right to a lawyer' iirc) .

Criminal vs. civil
Individual is plantiff vs. huge corporation is plantiff

Oh, and the burdon of proof is always on the plaintiff. Granted the bar is set substaintally higher in criminal cases.

Re:Unfortunately

[fuliginous]

I suppose you treat it like my limited understanding of athletes and urine samples. The A and the B sample. Basically you don't take either printed paper out with you, one drops in the box to be counted you place yours in the safe box that the nice policeman stands and watches over.

The only way the boss can verify is to breach the principle of the secret vote. I've heard from a party member in the UK who said how they met one pensioner who was about to die who had voted all their life and since being home bound helped to the polling station by the nice Labour man. They admitted they had in fact never voted for them but thanked them for the help over the years. - Unverifiable I know but true or not it makes the point.

Re:Unfortunately

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll find you're daughter

"your".

all what's needed

"that's".

Re:Unfortunately

[Anonymous Coward]

Anonymity has it's place

"its".

Re:Unfortunately

[Mathinker]

> I'm quite sure any voting laws against coersion and vote buying are not perfectly observed today.

Uh, the situation today is that it is impossible to coerce or buy votes effectively, since everyone can convincingly lie about how they voted (what you want to do away with). The only people you can coerce are those who you can convince that their votes are somehow not secret, or who are just too stupid to understand the ramifications of that secrecy. That's why your observation about the imperfection of those laws only strengthens my argument, and undercuts your own.

> Individual is plantiff vs. huge corporation is plantiff

Yes, but take into consideration that the majority of the RIAA cases where the defendent is innocent (and he doesn't represent himself) are abandoned eventually by RIAA, since their case is usually very weak, and they don't want to set a losing precedent.

An effective prosecution of voting coercion would almost certainly necessitate the testimony of the person coerced, and he has already shown that he is coercible by the defendent who now has an interest to coerce him to not testify. Doesn't sound like an easy case for the state.

Re:Unfortunately

[torkus]

The situation today makes it DIFFICULT to EFFECTIVELY coerce votes. It does NOT make it impossible. Your assumption is based on the fact that votes are entirely secret today. If someone has the means and desire to buy votes then they likely can at least build the illusion that they can confirm their bought votes. In addition, on a larger scale - it's been proven that you can sue your way into winning an election. I won't dwell on the legal stature of that debacle.

You continue to ignore the fact that my support of a receipt does not necessarialy include something that provides a plainly discernable vote list to anyone who views it. My suggestion of a new law was in parallel and a secondary measure.

>Yes, but take into consideration that the majority of the RIAA cases where the defendent is innocent (and he doesn't >represent himself) are abandoned eventually by RIAA, since their case is usually very weak, and they don't want to set a >losing precedent.

Not relevant. How does this have anything to do with my statement? How does it even have anything to do with the half sentence you quoted out? In one case the plaintiff is an individual person of limited means. In another case the plaintiff is an enormous corporation with effectively unlimited means for the purpose of an individual lawsuit. David vs. goliath or goliath vs. david. You either don't understand my point or are poorly explaining yours.

>An effective prosecution of voting coercion would almost certainly necessitate the testimony of the person coerced, and >he has already shown that he is coercible by the defendent who now has an interest to coerce him to not testify. Doesn't >sound like an easy case for the state.

Circular logic. Not taking the bait.

So anyhow, i'm done. You're no longer making any relevant points or offering actual debate. Cuting out tiny bits of an argument and then talking about something distantly related at best does not count.

Re:Unfortunately

[hasmah]

its true but we must make sure that voting that we get must not from the same person =)

Re:Unfortunately

[RK077208]

seen heroes anyone? (that kid-who-can-talk-to-machine change the voting outcome of an entire city using online system)

Why

[clarkkent09]

I don't know why but this shit seems really hard to get right. Electronic stock trading, bank transactions, military systems etc - no problem. Electronic voting - disaster every time.

Re:Why

[MacTO]

I don't know why but this shit seems really hard to get right. Electronic stock trading, bank transactions, military systems etc - no problem. Electronic voting - disaster every time. Because people are willing to accept a certain degree of corruption in financial transactions that they are unwilling to accept in the democratic process? Because military systems are diverse, in function and manufacturer, and are rarely designed for a specific military conflict (i.e. it is difficult corrupt the system to serve a particular side in a conflict)?

Re:Why

[butlerdi]

The stakes are far greateer and the players are far sleazier. In bank and trading scenarios there really is not much incentive as the folks controlling each link in the chain benefit by providing a good service over a long term. Politicians often have only one chance in a lifetime.

Re:Why

[0100010001010011]

Most places only get once a year to test a system. Imagine if you only got to compile once a year. No matter how much bug and error checking you did, something would probably come up. We can't even get 25% of the population to vote in the US. Military, Bank, Stocks. Those happen daily at millions of transactions per minute. If something is wrong, it becomes apparent rather quickly.

Re:Why

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Because people are willing to accept a certain degree of corruption in financial transactions that they are unwilling to accept in the democratic process

How quaint... I assume you don't live in the US right?

Re:Why

[guruevi]

Just because the stakes are very, very high. If you control the process of creating such voting machines and you have the ability to hide whatever is running on it you have the ability to control the voting process and the results, to put it in laymen's terms: you are "root" without a syslog or bash_history in voting who gets to be in a certain office. Any politician would give (or have given) their soul for control over the voting process, look at the latest elections.

Something about power corrupts, absolute power...; the people that create these voting machines have absolute power over the political landscape of any given nation they sell their product to.

Re:Why

[mrvan]

The problem is the requirement of secrecy: Banking systems etc. are transparent because all involved parties can check the whole process and do the accounting. In elections, a fully transparent process is impossible because every vote has to be secret. This makes it very difficult to do things electronically, as the checks need to be at the micro level and at the time point of voting, rather than at the macro level afterwards

Re:Why

[OverflowingBitBucket]

(As previously posted into the wrong thread by accident- long day)

I don't know why but this shit seems really hard to get right. Electronic stock trading, bank transactions, military systems etc - no problem. Electronic voting - disaster every time.

Because anonymity plus accountability is really difficult.

In other systems you have nice trails that you can follow in the case of fraud.

In voting you need to ensure voter anonymity and it makes it that much harder to verify results. Add in political corruption and pressure from moneyed interests and it becomes a very hard problem indeed.

Re:Why

[torkus]

HAHAH...that's hilarious! I actually laughed out loud. I desperately hope this was an attempt at sarcasm that left out the hint.

If you think stock trading has even 1% of the inaccuracy of PAPER VOTING BALLOTS you're delusional. I would know, IAITFAEE (A am IT for an Electronic Exchange). We will never have a bunch of stock trades just 'disappear' like votes can. You will never see a transaction that's not authenticated and tracable from initiation to completion. Ever. We're audited regurlarly. Do you think companies would have trillions of dollars in stock portfolios if it wasn't safe? Our daily volume is in the billions of shares - easily 10's of billions of dollars daily. .0001% inaccuracy would be $1,00,000 "lost" daily. Do you honestly think any "old school" (or new) voting method is 99.9999% accurate?

Remember the horror show they made from the paper punch ballots in bush's rigged election? I actually remember someone coming to the mall by me (in NY) for a school project. They asked people to do a dummy vote and punch the paper in an attempt to prove it was inconsistent and easy to mis-vote.

Re:Why

[torkus]

Are you kidding? If you could skim .01% for a week you could retire and never even think about money for the rest of your life. You assume that a bank is a single entity and there is no indivitual that would want to benefit at the detriment of the bank.

No argument that politicians are the barest step above felons.

Re:Why

[Dreetje]

There are a few reasons mentioned in the other replies. But I didn't catch one of the most interestings ones: It's not worth it. In the Netherlands we have an election every two years. One time for the national government, and one time for the regional government. The European elections are extra's. But a financial system or a military system are used day by day. The election system is only used occasionally. There will hardly be any competitors on the election market, because it's simply more hassle then it's worth. To create a tight and secure system would mean a very high investment with very low chance of returning your investment. Only one aspect could be wrong and your application would be ditched, just like the electronic machines mentioned in the article.

Of course the very weird and strict rules don't help either. (Weird as in, not normal in any of the mentioned systems).

Re:Why

[torkus]

Wrong. Every vote needs to be ANONYMOUS. That's different from secret.

You could still make every transaction tracable from start to finish. You just need to put a disconnect between the physical person and the initial transaction.

Yes, easier said than done but certainly not impossible. Off the cuff idea (as example, i'm sure it has holes) - everyone scans their fingerprint and votes. That fingerprint is used as a one-way hash to encrypt the vote. Now you have a record of the hash in the system but it's not tied to a person and you can't reverse it to get the fingerprint back. Next person votes and you compare the hash - have we seen this guy before? No. Ok, allow the vote.

This makes every voter forcible unique without ever identifying them. Now, if i can come up with that in 15 seconds then a couple billion dollars and 1000's of people can easily design something that will life up to what we need.

And hey, why do votes really need to be anonymous? If you voted for bush everyone SHOULD have the right to point at you and laugh or refuse to employ you!

Re:Why

[torkus]

Do you have any idea how much the voting machines cost? Each? Now multiply that by the number of existing voting machines. Now add in maintenance and support, back end systems, etc.

If you think it's not worth the money you have no clue.

Oh, and there's competition. If you think one problem would invalidate a whole system and make everyone re-buy a few billion in voting machines for the hell of it, you're delusional. Do you think vegas would shut down and replace every slot machine if they found a problem? No, they'd fix it.

Re:Why

[Red Flayer]

The answer is right there in the submission title:

Dutch Commission Deals Blow To Electronic Voting

Obviously, Electronic Voting is too busy doing rails off a hooker's backside to get it right, and we have the Dutch Commission to blame for that.

Re:Why

[butlerdi]

Theft by employees can be handled by risk management. It is an industry as opposed to a political machine I was thinking of. In a sense the bank could skim off a bit and many do, through overzelous charges and mis calculation of interest. This has been a problem for a long time and a good example of the outcome can be found here http://www.financemarkets.co.uk/2007/09/12/lloyds-tsb-commences-bank-charges-war/ and has resulted in the creation of several new services like this one http://www.bankcharging.co.uk/.

When elections are rigged YOU control the regulatory machinery which would normally be used to combat the wrong, this is not the case in commercial situations to such a degree.If someone steals a bit of your cash you can probably recover it.

If on the other hand someone steals an election your life may be ruined by the policies of those elected. A few good examples at present come to mind ...

Re:Why

[foobsr]

Because military systems are diverse, in function and manufacturer, and are rarely designed for a specific military conflict (i.e. it is difficult corrupt the system to serve a particular side in a conflict)?

The bigger picture is that 'military systems' are (basically) rigged to transfer funds from the taxpayer to the manufacturer who does not care much who blows up at/in the end (on a side note, e-voting systems may well be seen as an element of the distribution chain if appropriately prepared to ensure continuity with regard to the sales-droids, aka politicians).

CC.

Re:Why

[fbjon]

And who in their right mind would pay for all that, with no real guarantee that it'll actually be safe to use?

Re:Why

[fritsd]

everyone scans their fingerprint and votes. That fingerprint is claimed by your friendly government to be used as a one-way hash to encrypt the vote.

Fixed that for you. Seriously, we're talking about obtaining significant power in a nation for 4 years; I'm shocked at the level of naïveté of the comments here today. And that's with my tin-foil hat off.

Oh and BTW, if we're going to be governed for 4 years, or 1461 days, I don't mind if it takes 1 day to count the votes. It often takes months to form a viable coalition anyway.

Re:Why

[torkus]

*YAWN*

I think you missed your tin foil underpants then. Published source code for the paranoid then.

See, my basic theory behind making elections a touch more legitimate is that we might eventually have a legitimate (read: honest) government with actual accountability to the people.

Next?

Re:Why

[furbearntrout]

to put it in laymen's terms: you are "root" without a syslog or bash_history

Only on slashdot are those layman's terms, lol.

Re:Why

[RK077208]

Of course why? it is crazy idea..hard to implement..because hard to satisfy all the people

Re:Why

[RK077208]

it's will be really messy to have online voting..may have burden to the people.. and one thing,is it can fulfill the integrity in the system?

mixed feelings on e-voting in general

[he1icine]

I can see this as a blow to pure electronic voting, but not so much electronically assisted voting. Maybe I'm just cynical thanks to US election debacles, but I find it hard to conceive of a truly trustworthy paperless voting system. The paper ballot and electronic counting setup at least provides a clear path for voting audits when needed.

Re:mixed feelings on e-voting in general

[morgan_greywolf]

Agreed. At the very least, a paper ballot showing how the voter voter, even if the machine does the initial count, auditors need to count the paper ballots as well.

Just Like the Dutch

[Anonymous Coward]

Always kicking someone when they're down.

Ireland

[zoney_ie]

We nearly ended up using the same kit here in Ireland. There was an initial trial (6 constituencies used the machines in a general election) but afterwards there was a big controversy thrown up. The government set up a committee to investigate, mainly with the intention of keeping people happy, but the committee didn't just rubber-stamp the system. The committee alleged the machines were OK but the software wasn't (things like no secure process to approve updates, collating all the votes in MS Access databases, nonsense like that).

Fortunately this was enough to scupper use of the machines in Ireland (as it was too much effort for the government to try and address even the very lenient concerns of the committee). Unfortunately, we are still storing the machines at a cost of millions of euro a year. Also the politician responsible for the mess got re-elected, cause his own constituency are happy that he's looking out for his area - national e-voting débacle is not in the minds of the locals.

The recommendations of this Dutch committee would be good here in Ireland. There are often spoilt or disputed ballots because we use PR-STV (you number your preferred candidates rather than tick a box). Also counting takes a long time - up to a week including recounts sometimes till the last constituency is declared. So machine filled-out ballot papers and machine counted ballots would be great - especially if manual processing of the ballots is allowed in parallel, or for a certain no. of randomly chosen constituencies, or in any case of a challenge.

But it's not likely the powers that be here would succeed in implementing it. Last time around they nearly ended up not being ready with enough simple partitions for the ordinary bog standard voting!

Re:Ireland

[SigILL]

We nearly ended up using the same kit here in Ireland. There was an initial trial (6 constituencies used the machines in a general election) but afterwards there was a big controversy thrown up. The government set up a committee to investigate, mainly with the intention of keeping people happy, but the committee didn't just rubber-stamp the system. The committee alleged the machines were OK but the software wasn't (things like no secure process to approve updates, collating all the votes in MS Access databases, nonsense like that).

If I recall correctly those were actually voting machines of Dutch origin.

Re:Ireland

[zoney_ie]

Yes, that is what I mean by the same kit. It was the Nedap voting machines. We had some news articles even more recently in our national news about the controversy in the Netherlands. Just right for people to be reminded regularly of how our government wasted millions of euro, and continues to. Our Taoiseach (Prime Minister) complained about our backward use of the pencil and paper even just before the last recent general election. It's preposterous - he's the one running the country - his government is responsible for not implementing a proper e-voting system if they wanted one, and yet he moans as if it's the fault of whingers and morons that we don't have e-voting here. The sheer gall of it is infuriating.

It's the same response about anything here. If you point out the government's failures you're just a trouble-maker (e.g. complaining about one of our cities not having clean drinking water all summer). The worst thing is, there are people who actually don't like our opposition politicans for doing this. No wonder the opposition are luke-warm and ineffective! People actually voted in the same government again who can't actually provide public services in a time of unparalleled prosperity - public services in some cases are worse than when we were poor! I mean really - an entire city without clean water? They manage that in countries that are otherwise a joke.

Re:Ireland

[RAMMS EIN]

``We nearly ended up using the same kit here in Ireland.''

In fact, the rejection of the machines in Ireland seems to have sparked the (grass-roots, kudos go to wijvertrouwenstemcomputersniet.nl) investigation in the Netherlands. Finally, they seemed to have stirred up enough commotion that the government took some measures (although, I must say, they fell short of what would have been desirable).

It is amazing that voting systems like the ones we had in the Netherlands (and the Nedap machines we shipped to Ireland weren't the worst of them) were allowed in the first place. Perhaps we can now finally put an end to this debacle. I don't care what the voting machine manufacturers or the government have to offer. I understand they want to deny the problem and cover their asses. But we _need_ a voting procedure that we can trust. As far as I am concerned, we can straigh out ban most of the authority figures who have been involved in the process so far from ever having any influence on the process again. This is important, and they tried to mislead us into thinking everything was alright when it wasn't, and they should have known it wasn't (after all, this was after the findings from the irish and wijvertrouwenstemcomputersniet).

There are ways to get vote counting right. Many people have thought about the issue, and some have come up with good solutions (for example, David Chaum's Punchscan, and Ron Rivest's ThreeBallot). However, the simple solution that works for most people, can be understood by pretty much everybody, and provides a decent level of trust, is simply voting on paper and counting by hand. Sure, it's labor intensive. But this is about who gets to rule us. Surely that's worth some trouble.

There will be a paper trail

[wowww]

They are planning for new voting machines. The machines will print on paper what you have voted. Afterwards you put the paper in the voting box. That way you have the quick results and you're able to validate the machines if necessary.

Re:There will be a paper trail

[QuickFox]

There should always be both electronic and manual counting. The electronic counting delivers a quick result, the manual counting delivers the official and definitive result. In the case of discrepancies you check again, and you investigate where exactly the error appeared.

It may seem like an unnecessary expense to always count manually, but we should allow the legitimacy of democracy to cost some. It's worth it.

Re:There will be a paper trail

[ajs318]

If you're going to count manually, why bother counting electronically at all?

Re:There will be a paper trail

[QuickFox]

Mainly because it's cheap and gives a valuable double-check. If there are errors of method in the manual process, the electronic process will probably not have the same errors. Thus you get better reliability than you get using manual counting alone.

Less important, but also valuable, is the quick results that you get from electronic counting. This speed is not important enough to decide which counting process to use, far from it, but it's still valuable in my view.

Re:There will be a paper trail

[wowww]

Well, usually you will not count manually. Only in case of close margins or if some group distrust the outcome of the election results.
Or if is a machine is suspect. Or just random sampling across the county to check for faulty machines.

Don't tell me to the RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

At least this time around there is an excuse for not RTFA for most!

The systems used by the dutch have be scrutinised alot and have been found to be exploitable.

In Ireland, many voting machines were bought off Dutch company Nedap - currently they do what most politicians do, and sit around idly doing nothing.

Online Voting...

[Notquitecajun]

Online voting has always seemed to be a REALLY bad idea for me. Too easy to manipulate a vote...to easy to call someone and have them log on (which brings up the "no campaining near polling places" rules)...just too easy. Voting should take effort - if you go somewhere and spend some time, it means more and you are more apt to make sure of what you are doing.

Agreed, at least in the US, there should be some provision for those who work long hours to go vote during the day (national holiday or something).

Re:Online Voting...

[rickb928]

Gotta love it. First, you complain that electronic voting makes it too easy.

Then you complain it's already too hard, and we need a holiday to give the workers the time (not the energy, interest, or will) to vote.

Which is it? That voting should take some effort, as if that makes it worthwhile in and of itself, or that we should make voting easier, with a holiday and all the time in the world to stroll down and cast a vote, if we feel like it?

Oh, and since when does the effort of casting a vote make it more important? By that measure, perhaps a little barbed wire and concrete pipe to crawl through to get to the polls would make it REALLY IMPORTANT NOW!!!

sheesh.

Re:Online Voting...

[torkus]

You're saying that it's not easy to manipulate an election already? Let's see. In the US presidential candidates only campaign seriously in the few "swing" states. And guess what! Those states are NOT the ones driving the ecconomy. They're not the main population centers of the country.

So tell me, how is the vote not manipulated from the start? You ignore the fact that probably >50% of votes in the country are basically pointless to begin with.

How about this: allow online voting, electronic machines - the whole gamut. Then let the POPULAR vote decide who wins. Yes, you can buy votes. Yes, you might hack some votes. Yes you might have some people double or triple voting. But if you make the pool that much larger it's easier to watch for trending that might indicate hacks. You simply can not afford to BUY votes. If you get voting rates up to 50, 75% of the population you're talking about what, 100 million people? Pay half of them 25$ each and you're spending 1.25 billion to get elected. Hell, if you want it that bad...GO FOR IT.

Re:Online Voting...

[leuk_he]

RFTA..or at least the header here This is not about online voting, this is about voting on paper

Detail that is not mentioned: In the ntherlands we commonly use a red pencil to vote, so one speaks about getting the red pencil back, not getting the ballot papers back.

No way, this is not how governments work!!

[Great_Geek]

Come on, everybody knows that the people in power won't change the voting systems. Seriously, given that the current politicians were elected via the current system and that their only hope is to keep rigging the election, how can you expect them to change the system?

Oh, it's about the Dutch; that's ok then - those people care about their elections.

Re:No way, this is not how governments work!!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the line that I found funniest in the summary: "The minister plans to present an official Cabinet position on the electoral process in two months."

Can you imagine if Bush were to appoint someone to review the electoral process? I'm sure the results there would be totally impartial...

Re:No way, this is not how governments work!!

[Da Fokka]

One huge difference between the Dutch and the US political system is that the Dutch have coalition governments. Usually (in fact this has always been the case), no party has the majority of the votes. So if the guy reviewing the electoral process were to help his own party, surely the other coalition parties (as well as the opposition parties, obviously) would be up in arms.

Re:No way, this is not how governments work!!

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't be Dutch if you make that remark.

The only thing we Dutch seem to care about is to have another chance at moaning about things, telling it should be different and form another commission to decide what to do next, till the whole thing is forgotten ;)

Is it fail proof?

[PietjeJantje]

The electronic voting system proved to be easy to hack. The new system they will build will operate like this:
- The new voting machines will look almost identical to the current electronic voting machines.
- But instead of a message on the screen "You have voted. Thank you.", it prints the vote.
- You take the print, check it, and deposit it in the voting box.

This will be much harder to beat, but it remains to be seen how accurate the scanning system will be. By printing the vote, one can eliminate many errors like with chads, but still people can bend, grease them, etc.

In the meantime we'll return to the red pencil.

Re:Is it fail proof?

[Sique]

But this is just paper ballot voting. The only difference is the complexity of the used pencil.

Re:Is it fail proof?

[dmatos]

Except that machine-printed ballots will not be subjected to such problems as hanging chads, partially filled circles, or multiple boxes checked.

Additionally, since you are not limited to a single piece of paper on which to display all information, it should be possible to make the UI much more user-friendly. As I understand it, on US ballots, there are often multiple selections that need to be made at one time. With electronic voting, each electoral race (President, Police Chief, Congressman, etc) could be presented on a single screen, so you don't end up accidentally selecting a potential Congressman for Police Chief.

Re:Is it fail proof?

[Sique]

That's right, but it doesn't need any of those much touted features the e-voting was supposed to have.

It's just a machine helping your hand while you are making your choice, like a jig or someting.

Re:Is it fail proof?

[dmatos]

Well, given that the ballots should be very predictable (since they're machine generated), you'll get the benefits of fewer spoiled ballots, and it should be relatively easy to design a machine reader to count the votes (like scantron cards) rapidly. Are there other benefits that e-voting is supposed to have?

Re:Is it fail proof?

[Teun]

But this is just paper ballot voting. The only difference is the complexity of the used pencil. Insightful.

Yet the way I understand it is the electronic tallying will still be the prime result for the evening news.
Later, possibly only after a complaint will the paper ballots be counted.
I would find this satisfactory, even with a Closed Source machine there is a 100% check on the validity of the outcome.

Re:Is it fail proof?

[zestyping]

No, it's not quite the same. The choices are presented to the voter by a machine rather than on a printed piece of paper. This means the machine can lie to the voter.

In a simple election, the voter might easily detect when the machine lies. But for a U. S. election, which might have dozens of contests, the machine could lie in many ways with a low chance of being noticed (e.g. omit a contest, change the wording of a proposition).

The machine doesn't even have to lie outright. All it has to do is bias the measurement: feature one option somewhat more prominently, be slightly more likely to malfunction for certain voters or choices, etc.

An electronic ballot printer is still a lot better that having no paper ballot at all, but it's not as straightforward to assure fairness as with a hand-marked paper ballot.

Re:Is it fail proof?

[Anspen]

Yeah, that part is confusing. Why not simply still use the machine to count the result, and then allow a challenge, where the paper ballot is counted. You get the advantage of speedy results with the security of paper ballots.

Re:Is it fail proof?

[Sique]

Because the security of the paper ballots relies on the fact that the very process of counting can be watched. (In fact you can watch the whole process of the elections from manufacturing the paper, during printing the ballots, distributing the ballots, sealing the ballot-boxes, identifying the voters, watching the voters putting the ballots in the boxes, opening the boxes, counting, resealing the boxes, transporting the boxes to the central election bureau, and finally storing the boxes at a secure place until all issues are resolved, and in no single situation this watching is harmful to the voting rights of the voters, because the actual process of casting the vote is hidden from everyone else's eyes.)

Any machine that counts faster than the human eye can follow, is thus denying the citizens the right to watch the count and thus the right of assurance that every vote counts equally.

To me fair counting is more important than voting results at the moment of closing the ballot places. It has to do with my personal experience of actually knowing how you rig elections by counting, and how you can prove afterwards that the elections were rigged because enough people were present during the count. As a compromise you could get preliminary results by scanning the ballots, but those are of purely informational value and are not legally binding.

I wonder ...

[ThirdPrize]

how much a botnet would be worth to a crooked political party? Spam the electorate and then mount a DOS on the voting server with votes for them. Or the opposition if they were being devious. I suppose all the while we are receiveing spam the bots arn't being used for anything more dangerous.

Re:Why -- anonymity

[EJB]

I can tell you why: anonymity
In stock trading systems, bank transactions, etc., all parties are known in one way or another. Depending on the techniques used, if something goes wrong, the party that's wronged can prove who they are and that something didn't go as they directed.

That doesn't work with electronic voting, since it is supposed to be anonymous. There are many reasons for that: full freedom in casting your vote (no employers, governments etc looking over you shoulder to check that you voted 'correctly'), and also not being able to prove what you voted for, to avoid vote-buying (you can pay for a vote but you'll never know what you paid for)
It is very hard to build anonymity into an electronic voting system, and still have the same degree of tamper-proofness as a paper ballot.

It should be noted that in the Netherlands, you have to color a circle of approx 1 cm diameter red. It is easier to see what the intention of the voter was than with hanging chads.

Erwin

Dutch Commission Deals Blow

[Anonymous Coward]

Well it is de-criminalised out there;)

Re:I was just about to say...

[msh104]

I am from the netherlands and well.. what shall i say.

Would there be any purpose in having a commision if they where NOT allowed to give a negative advice?
the entire purpose of the commision was to give advise about the direction we should move in.

If a commision does not have the freedom to draw its own conclusion without incuring risk to itself it would in my eyes only serve to keep the populous ignorant and happy about something that was already decided beforehand.

Why the need for speed?

[SmallFurryCreature]

In case you don't know Holland like Belgium is a coalition goverment, that means we do NOT have a single party who wins the election, unlike say Britain, France and the US.

For a long time now it has taken ages to get this coalition together, it is usually done by the largest party (but not a majority) exploring what other parties are close to its ideas and are willing to work together so they can have a majority. The problem is that this ALWAYS takes a lot of time, sometimes months. So who cares about the speed of counting, what does 1 day spend counting mean if the goverment then needs 2-3 months to get together?

We are so obssesed with instant results that perhaps we fail to realize that we add speed as a requirement when it isn't needed. "We need the election results as soon as possible". Why? "... just because". Drop the speed requirement and then see what kind of system you can come up with.

On a side note, the belgium goverment at the moment is taking a long time to form a new goverment, whole months have gone by without a party in charge (in the dutch system the current goverment has to stop and this leaves an effective power vacuum during formation) and yet the world keeps on turning. What about an experiment, we put all politicians in jail for a year, and see what happens. My bet is the same as usual, nothing at all, but at a greatly reduced cost.

Common sense from the dutch

[Joce640k]

Well done!

Computer voting sounds good but the reality is very different. No system should be trusted without a full, audited paper trail which allows recounts.

PS: What exactly is wrong with mechanical ballot counting machines? Anybody who can't figure out how to punch a hole in a piece of paper shouldn't be allowed to vote anyway.

Re:Common sense from the dutch

[hcdejong]

I've never used a mechanical system, but I can imagine several problems. The 'hanging chads' has been well publicised. Also, how well does a mechanical system scale? For national elections, you have to be able to mark one choice from several hundred. That's rather a large piece of paper to manipulate into the machine. The last time I used a paper ballot, the ballot was about A2-sized and was folded like a map. I suspect a printer has less chance of damaging the ballot than a hole punch would.

Re:Common sense from the dutch

[AllAboutVoting]

>Well done!
I agree that they are switching to a better system.

>Computer voting sounds good but the reality is very different.
>No system should be trusted without a full, audited paper trail which allows recounts.
I agree. But even paper systems (or paper and eVoting hybrids) can be hacked if
shenanigans happen when the votes are being counted.

Election fraud has a long history in the US.

"It's not the people who vote that count. It's the people who count the votes."
  -Joseph Stalin (allegedly)

The good news is that there is active research and some light deployment of voting systems that ensure end-to-end verifiability without compromising the secret ballot. Voters can be confident that their vote was counted-as-cast and not dumped in the garbage dump.

Systems that do that are called end to end verifiable. One such system is PunchScan.

Some end-to-end verifiable systems involve voting machines. Some do not. A common theme is that voters take home some sort of 'receipt' with which they can verify that vote was counted as cast but where the receipt does not reveal how they voted.

I do not think end-to-end verifiable voting systems are yet ready for wide deployment. I do think:

• that they should be discussed and seriously considered
• that additional funding for basic research of E2E verifiable technologies should be supported
• that limited deployment of E2E verifiable systems should be allowed and encouraged
• laws that frustrate any of the above are misguided

Estonian E-Voting System

[Rehapapp]

If you want to know how proper Internet Voting System works, then read Estonian E-Voting System - General Description
The only prerequisite for a country to use the system is that it has to deploy PKI at first...

Re:Estonian E-Voting System

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll admit I haven't read the whole thing. But even with using PKI there just is no guaranteed privacy while voting online. In a votingbooth people have the freedom to decide for themselves what they want to vote, since we don't allow two people into a booth at the same time. What is there to stop for example an oppressive husband from forcing his wife to vote the way he wants to while voting online? It could infringe on the basic right of people to cast their vote any which way they want to.

Re:Estonian E-Voting System

[Rigrig]

What is there to stop for example an oppressive husband from forcing his wife to vote the way he wants to while voting online? She can change her vote later.
Also, she can still vote the 'old' way, and if she does so it overrides any online votes.

Re:Estonian E-Voting System

[Anonymous Coward]

Anonymity of the vote in the Estonian system (encrypted vote in a signed container which is possible to strip off) is vulnerable to collusion between vote validators and vote counters (there is a shorthand for both, it is spelled "government"). Also, since vote counters receive unsigned data, it is possible for them to, ahem, err.

Finally of course, the keys of the PKI system deployed have been generated by the issuer of the ID cards, not their users.

In my opinion, it is impossible to design an electronic voting system which satisfies the following:

A) digital election results can be published for everyone to examine
B) each voter, and only that voter, can verify their own absence or presence, and their vote
C) anyone can verify the absence of fictive voters
D) anyone can verify the accuracy of anonymous votes

Finally, some common sense.

[spungo]

As far as I'm concerned, the abscence of absolute electronic security -- or any methodology that even comes close -- renders the whole idea of replacing paper ballots utterly absurd. Democracy's just a little too important to jeopardise with unproven (and unprovable?) technology. Hopefully other nations will see fit to pay heed to this moment of refreshing clarity from our Dutch pals.

Rubbish...

[Joce640k]

The Ballot machines can easily be left in place all year round so you can test it every day.

Re:Rubbish...

[WiFiBro]

The machines in question had a wossname, programmable chip (EPROM and EEPROM).

The people of wijvertrouwenstemcomputersniet.nl (=wedonottrustvotingmachines.nl) showed how (http://www.wijvertrouwenstemcomputersniet.nl/images/9/91/Es3b-en.pdf/) you can reprogram the Nedap/Groenendaal ES3B voting toy in such a way that it is really hard to detect (physical checks were amateurous anyway).

First by having a test whether the test is genuine. For instance, lasting at least 8 hours with a certain randomness in the voting pattern.

Only then it would start the 'fraud routine', also with several precautions against discovery.

If Microsoft Excel tabulated the vote results...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Candidate A won the election by a vote of 100,000 to 72,117!"

Re:I was just about to say...

[geschild]

Inappropriate GP comment about drugs aside:

*Woosh*

Joke ---> .......#

                        O
                      \|/
You ---> |
                      / \

(Not your fault. Typical case of: "lost in translation, by a Dutch person." (tm) :D)

How about the users?

[Dreetje]

Voting is a very important issue. It's the base of our democratic system. Surely the way we vote is very important. However the rules that are employed are very rigid. We could have very good systems for voting by internet if these rules weren't all in place. For example, in the Netherlands every choice should be directly visible, which leads to big bulky voting machines and makes it practically impossible to get it all on a webpage.

There are in fact ways the prime goals of a good voting system could be met, like anonimity, verification of your vote etc with electronic help. For example a card with chip which has your personal key. It could still fulfill all primary needs but can't be used because of the rules. So the rules are really the things we should look at. A link where some is explained: http://aaa.surfnet.nl/info/en/surfkey/artikel_content.jsp?objectnumber=179344

Stepping back to pen and paper might not be such a deal, but I bet if you ask Joe Average on the street that he doesn't mind at all how he votes, if he votes at all. The democratic base might be very important, but hardly anyone uses their rights with voting. So we should just be sure that everything goes honestly and make it easy for the people to vote.

Of course, making the elections easier won't necessarily mean a better election. However if more people, the result would be more democratic. And you wonder if current politicians want that...

Re:How about the users?

[torkus]

Anything that changes the status quo with voting or politics is a "Bad Thing". They're so used to how they have the system rigged do you really think they want change?

How about just a straight popular vote? I mean, in the US, 200 years ago it was impossible to tally all the individual votes simply because of distance and transportation. Today there's no real reason why everyone can't have one vote and you add them all up. Biggest number wins. For christ's sake, there are TV shows that count more votes than we get in a presidential election. Yes, there are multiple voters but they're usually paying 25-75c per vote.

If more people are willing to PAY TO VOTE for american idol or some nonsense than will vote for free our PRESIDENT...we have a problem.

We're going down the wrong path.

[Anonymous Coward]

We've become so enamored and dependent on technology that we are COMPLETELY missing the point here. Get off your lazy ass, go to a polling place, wait in line, show some patriotism, and cast your fucking vote. There's absolutely no reason why this has to be done electronically or over the Internet. There is far, far too much room for mass-corruption. We've relegated the political process to one of laziness and complacency. It's time that we elevate the voting process to one of importance instead of a chore that needs to be made easy for the lazy bastards who are bringing this system down. And we can do this by keeping it simple, local, and controllable. We don't need overly technological solutions for this. What we need is for people to be held accountable for their actions, and we need proper consequences for compromising that accountability. The real breakdown is in the complete breakdown in actually enforcing law.

Re:We're going down the wrong path.

[pclminion]

We've become so enamored and dependent on technology that we are COMPLETELY missing the point here. Get off your lazy ass, go to a polling place, wait in line, show some patriotism, and cast your fucking vote.

Quit making me barf. Voting is a civic duty, certainly. It's what keeps the gears of the democracy turning. But patriotic? Get over yourself. Voting is basically like changing the oil in your car. You have to do it from time to time to keep things running smoothly. But we don't throw a fucking party and slap ourselves on the back every time we get an oil change. "How proud I am of myself, for taking care of my vehicle!" What crap.

In the US, the original patriots were the OVERTHROWERS of British rule. How the hell do such actions relate to the mundanity of voting?

Great headline

[192939495969798999]

From what I hear about Amsterdam, the Dutch really can deal a blow!

BTW -- vote buying isn't the issue

[stomv]

It's voter intimidation. Buying votes just isn't a very efficient use of money, and AFAIK in tUSA, it's not illegal.

The real problem is when spouse/neighbor/employer/union_rep/government_official/pastor leans on you to vote a particular way, and then demands proof. Physical, financial, and spiritual intimidation is the real potential for abuse, and is illegal.

Re:An important quote from the article...

[WiFiBro]

Most people can't read Dutch, you insensitive sod.

I'll give it a try:
"Voting in a self-chosen polling station within ones municipality -in my opinion- facilitates the desire of those municipalities to be flexible towards the voter."
and
"For trust in democracy it is important that the elections comply to the guarantees/assurances as have been clearly put forward by the committee. As shows the title of the advice 'voting with confidence'."

Really Simple

[WindBourne]

All the other systems are suppose to be in the open and traceable. That means that we can easily detect when things are wrong (and it happens far more than ppl realize). OTH, the vote is suppose to be secret and untraceable. More importantly, many of the companies who are putting these systems together absolutely do not want a paper trail. What is funny about that, is that it could double or triple their profits. But they do not want the responsibility of getting it right, just the profits. Welcome to the business world.

Re:I was just about to say...

[geschild]

Well, I didn't have to, I just felt like it! (Cruel and unusual punishment is fine among country-men in the Netherlands.)

Nah, just kidding. This is where the "Slashdot formatting did it" defense comes into play, although the preview was alright. Odd.

ALL voting is riggable on a wide scale

[WebCowboy]

...the key is what measures are in place for verification, fraud detection and correction.

With a paper system, you're reduced to rigging the results one vote at a time.

In Canada in 1995, the province of Quebec held a referendum on whether to secede from confederation and pursue the goal of becoming a sovereign country. The overall vote was extremely close; the "No" side (those who wished NOT to secede and favoured remaining in Canada) won by just over 1% margin. Just as any close election should be the resulting ballots and the vote in general were examined closely.

The vote was conducted by a pure paper-ballot, with scrutineers performing the counts manually (ie. the ballots were not only paper, they were also not of the "machine-readable" kind). Since the votes must be counted one at a time, it does not matter if the results can only be rigged one vote at a time because they can be rigged while they are counted.

This is what happened in Quebec in 1995. Supporters of the "Yes" side (who wished for Quebec to become an independent country) tried really hard to make the vote turn their way by challenging ballots. Fully 80 THOUSAND ballots or more were challenged in such a way (similar to the "hanging chad" issues in Florida in 2000) and most of them clearly indicated the intention to vote "No". It was enough to considerably narrow the already small margin of victory for the "no" side and could've potentially meant a spearation declaration and constitutional crisis in Canada. Ballots were challenged by "Yes scrutineers" for things like the voter using a check mark or filling in the circle instead of using an X as shown in voting instructions, or because a dot or a stray mark was present within the "Yes" circle even though a proper X was in the "No" circle, or because the X extended outside the circle a bit, or because there was evidence of erasure marks on the ballot.

This is clear proof that even if fraud can only occur one ballot at a time, it certainly CAN be widespread and of large enough magnitude to cause a dramatically different outcome. It was not the voting method that rectified or revealed the situation, it was the mechanisms in place to appeal, recount, investigate that were effective.

In a way, a proper HYBRID system (electronic with paper verification ballot) is probably the best of all options. The paper is electronically printed and thus not open to subjective rejection by biased scrutineers. If the paper verification ballot is mis-printed due to mechanical problems or buggy software and does not properly show the voter's intentions there can be a system in place to reject the vote on-the-spot (it can be cancelled electronically and a re-vote can be permitted, with proper audit trail of course). If the electronic tally is disputed for any reason then the paper ballots can be counted manually and if the two totals are right out then an inquiry and possible re-vote can be ordered.

With the Diebold machines that had inadequate or nonexistent voter verification by paper there was no way of detecting a tampered machine. With mechanical "pull the handle" systems where the voter cannot see and examine a ballot card clearly indicating the right vote was registered you get the exact same problem (seems to be what the issue partly was in Florida--the voter did not get to see a ballot that clearly showed the chad was properly punched out beside the proper candidate). With a purely paper system such as typically used in Canada there is inadequate verification in the other direction: Machines are not emotional and they can tally votes much more accurately, without political influence--PROVIDED THEY ARE ADEQUATELY INSPECTED AND SECURED to avoid tampering. All in all, I believe a properly implemented hybrid system is the way to go.

Aside from the paper verification/backup, I'd also make it a requirement that both the software should be OPEN SOURCE and INTEROPERABLE (ie. not dependent on a single vendor's hardware). The government, any candidate

Re:Why -- anonymity

[Ghost Hedgehog]

Electronic voting is still young and what we see now is the system is not yet perfect. However with each election the system get better by learning from mistakes. Like you have to keep watch on the machines after they are sealed and just not store them in a warehouse where everybody can access them. Luckily we have a group in the Netherlands that appoints these problems and so the electronic voting will get better after each election.

Credit to "We Don't Trust Voting Computers"

[AlXtreme]

This whole issue wouldn't have existed without thorough research and lots of persistence of the group at "We Don't Trust Voting Computers". These men and women have dived into the voting computers used for decades in the Netherlands, found numerous serious flaws and made them public. They forced our government to install this commission, which has lead to the best possible outcome: no more electronic voting.

Thanks guys, you rock.

Flamebait?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm curious to how this is flamebait. A pun on the headline, but flamebait? Language barrier problem?

In any case, selling (dealing) cocaine (blow) in the Netherlands is illegal.

Re:Why -- anonymity

[RAMMS EIN]

``Electronic voting is still young and what we see now is the system is not yet perfect. However with each election the system get better by learning from mistakes.''

Yes, as long as people investigate the issues and make a big ruckus when there's something wrong.

As we have seen, voting equipment vendors and governments alike will do their utmost to keep problems hidden and to downplay problems that are exposed.

They can and do go as far as threatening those who would save democracy.

And the worst thing is that most people are thinking "ah, it will be alright." Well, yes, it will be, as long as people are fighting the good fight and being allowed to succeed.

Inherently flawed to begin with?

[0p7imu5_P2im3]

...if I were exit polled, I'd deliberately give false answers to poison the data because I believe exit polling is inherently flawed to begin with.

And it's people with attitudes like that which make it "inherently flawed to begin with."

Re:Inherently flawed to begin with?

[phantomlord]

...if I were exit polled, I'd deliberately give false answers to poison the data because I believe exit polling is inherently flawed to begin with. And it's people with attitudes like that which make it "inherently flawed to begin with. 1) people shouldn't be compiling info on a vote in progress. Nobody needs to know which way the polls are tilting 12 hours before the polls close. If we have to wait until the next morning to get a result, that's fine with me... it would prevent the media from trying to interfere with the vote in subtle, and sometimes not so subtle (such as calling an election before all the polls have closed), ways.
2) there is sample bias produced by the exit poll takers. For example, a college male is more likely to ask an attractive female how she voted (so he gets a chance to talk to her) than he is another demographic. A 20 year old female is more likely to vote a certain way, so they're a more predictable vote to begin with... it is only if they don't vote the way you think they will that they're an interesting demographic to poll and if that's the case, a lot of other demographics will be showing even more extreme statistics.
3) Along the lines of #2, some people feel threatened by someone asking them their vote and will succumb to peer pressure in reporting it. Those people are more likely to tell the exit poll taker what they think the exit poll taker wants to hear rather than their real vote, especially if they're casting a minority vote in their area (someone in San Francisco may say they voted for the liberal rather than the conservative they really voted for in order to avoid a possible confrontation)
4) You have people that will deliberately give false information to poison the data (whether I do it or not doesn't matter because other people are doing it... I would just poison it a little more)
5) To "correct" things like the stuff above, you need to normalize your data... that said, how do you know exactly how to normalize it? There are tons of factors in why you're getting the result you are and it can be especially hard to analyze in real time on the day of the election. Besides, what good is a poll where you have to fudge the data to get the results you want, especially when there is a real poll with data that isn't so manipulatable* that your fudged poll is supposed to be guessing the outcome of.

Yeah... it's possible to manipulate the ballot box and that's the core problem with our voting systems. Fixing that is outside the scope of my reply to you.

Re:Inherently flawed to begin with?

[Anonymous Coward]

why mod overrated? Is there some reason we should hide the flaws of exit polling? We must question the results of the elections but not question the flaws of the questioners? Are you afraid of cognitive dissonance or something?

Hanging chads

[Joce640k]

I'm pretty sure the "hanging chads" problem can be solved...

A solution without a problem?

[dan the person]

Why do we need electronic voting?

In new zealand we use paper ballots, you tick the box you want with a marker pen. Polls close in the early evening, and the result of the election is usually known later that night.

The paper ballets are anonymous, transparent, reliable, and cheap.

Remind me, what problem do electronic voting machines solve?

Re:A solution without a problem?

[El_Muerte_TDS]

Remind me, what problem do electronic voting machines solve?

The problem of poor math skills. People even fuck up math when they're using a calculator.

Re:A solution without a problem?

[jbn-o]

The only role for computers to play in voting is helping to prepare a paper ballot. And even that role should be optional, according to the voter's desire. In that role there are genuine advantages no voter should have to do without. Computers can help the illiterate and blind vote in privacy (meaning that they don't have to bring a buddy into the booth with them, thus divulging their vote).

No computers are needed to count ballots at any stage of the election process. All counting can be (and is, in surprisingly large districts) by hand. I remain convinced that anyone insisting on computerized vote counting is framing the issue to place speed ahead of more important concerns such as accountability. Even ranked voting schemes (where one ranks candidates instead of picking just one) can be counted manually.

In the US, HAVA (the 2002 "Help America Vote Act") is largely a gift from the federal government to election machine vendors which compels states to revamp what may have been a perfectly adequate election system. The small advantages my county got from HAVA-compliance were far outweighed by the disadvantages. I'm unaware of any systemic substantive improvement in voting procedures that resulted from this act, but I'm aware of ongoing problems that merely shifted how elections were rigged.

Re:A solution without a problem?

[RK077208]

no need to use human energy to calculate all the paper ballots to know the result..save time and can know the result faster..

Re:A solution without a problem?

[dan the person]

the human energy is part of what gives us transparency in the process. Waiitng a few hours for the result is a small price to pay.

Not technical, it's a matter of political will.

[jbn-o]

It's not hard to get right, it's hard to get past vested interests which are intent on selling crap. I wrote an article for CounterPunch dealing with free software voting machines and served on an appointed committee which recommended election hardware and software to the elected county board (the county board made the real decision, taking our input as just a recommendation). I was able to explain the fatal flaws in all the options before us and they're not hard to understand or see how to do a better job.

But our choices were very restricted; we were hamstrung early. From the first day on the committee we were informed that the state only let us look at "approved hardware" (it turned out this was a lie, and one of the machines we ended up picking had not yet been approved at the state level), vendors opted out (some because they didn't like our request for proposal which included a clause—at my insistence— that we have free software voting software, some because they weren't willing to sell in our state, some just ignored our request to see their system), and some on the panel genuinely didn't foresee what should be obvious to anyone even mildly interested in democracy: when you pick a proprietor you're picking a monopolist. Our end recommendation was merely the best of the worst, not something I'd genuinely endorse given more reasonable options.

I'm under no illusion about voting system security and free software; the issue about free software voting machines does not revolve around security. I wanted (and still do want) free software voting machines because I know that localities want control over their towns, counties, and states. They want to be able to correct bugs in their voting machines and improve the software so it can handle elections other than first-past-the-post. We're talking about machines that have to last decades here, not a cheap personal computer you can afford to replace after 5-7 years. But when the software is a monopoly, voters are at the mercy of the proprietor. If the proprietor says "no", you have nowhere else to go but to buy another system (which is simply not an option for many counties starved for money, such as my county which can't afford to repurchase a whole new set of machines and software licenses). You wouldn't tolerate this lack of control over your life for your car, your house, your plumbing, your electrical system, and you'd never hesitate to hire experts to do work for you in any of those things (because you're probably not a programmer, electrician, mechanic, architect, roofer, etc. yourself). But people have a lot of work ahead of them to teach others to value software freedom for its own sake.

What needs to be done is remarkably well understood. For the most part the technical issues involved are rather plain and easy to explicate to the uninitiated. What's lacking is largely political will to make better systems a reality. I don't have the time to make a new voting system myself, but in the interest of making better systems happen I am willing to work with those who are building a better system. I'll contribute my expertise and experience working on this voting machine recommendation committee.

Best of both worlds

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not extend the recommendation and use the machines to facilitate easier navigation of voting, allow the user to print the final ballot for review and submission, store the results and communicate centrally and compare the results of scanned ballots vs electronic results.

secret ballot + election integrity - is possible

[AllAboutVoting]

It is possible to have a secret ballot and still have election integrity. Systems that do that are called end to end verifiable. One such system is PunchScan.

Some end-to-end verifiable systems involve voting machines. Some do not. A common theme is that voters take home some sort of 'receipt' with which they can verify that vote was counted as cast but where the receipt does not reveal how they voted.

I do not think end-to-end verifiable voting systems are yet ready for wide deployment. I do think:

• that they should be discussed and seriously considered
• that additional funding for basic research of E2E verifiable technologies should be supported
• that limited deployment of E2E verifiable systems should be allowed and encouraged
• laws that frustrate any of the above are misguided

paper voting systems are not enough

[AllAboutVoting]

>With a paper system, you're reduced to rigging the results one
>vote at a time. With electronic voting, you could change thousands
>of votes at once.
There is some truth here. eVoting can enable 'wholesale' fraud where only 'retail' fraud was available with a paper system.

But fraud is very possible with paper ballots and there has been a long history of election fraud in the US. Consider that the careers of 6 out of 11 post-WWII US presidents were heavily influenced by election fraud.

It is possible to have election systems that have a high level of election integrity and still have a secret ballot. Systems that do that are called end to end verifiable. One such system is PunchScan.

Some end-to-end verifiable systems involve voting machines. Some do not. A common theme is that voters take home some sort of 'receipt' with which they can verify that vote was counted as cast but where the receipt does not reveal how they voted.

I do not think end-to-end verifiable voting systems are yet ready for wide deployment. I do think:

• that they should be discussed and seriously considered
• that additional funding for basic research of E2E verifiable technologies should be supported
• that limited deployment of E2E verifiable systems should be allowed and encouraged
• laws that frustrate any of the above are misguided

Online voting has basic structural problems.

[jbn-o]

There's also a problem of not knowing if the person's vote is genuine. No matter how fancy the security system is, I can't tell if that "vote" coming from some remote system was pressured (an abusive spouse or house mate forcing someone to vote a particular way). In a voting booth, election judges can see who goes in and there's a reasonable means of giving voters their privacy. This is also a reason why you don't want a "receipt" after voting (not that you asked for this, it just comes up often in discussions like these among technical people). It's not a good idea to give anyone the power to effectively compel someone to vote a particular way or be able to check on one's vote (even one's own vote) after the ballot has been cast.

I think making election day a national holiday sounds like a good idea; it's easy to implement, low-tech, familiar, and for a good cause.

Re:Online voting has basic structural problems.

[AllAboutVoting]

I agree that online voting has serious issues. Among these is the essential loss of the 'secret' ballot which means that vote buying and coercion can become big issues in the US again as they were in the 1800s.

-AllAboutVoting
http://allaboutvoting.com/

Um...title?

[Anonymous Coward]

Shouldn't the title read 'Dutch Commission Blows Voters in Booths'

When Will It End?

[Comatose51]

"Dutch Commission Deals Blow To Electronic Voting"

I know the Netherlands is a open, permissive country but the government dealing cocaine is just a little too much. No, I did not RTFA.

Too many choices...

[Curmudgeonlyoldbloke]

One thing that the Dutch have got right though, is ensuring that people are well-informed as to their voting options, to help them select the right party to vote for:

http://stomwijzer.nl/

I think it may have to do with volume :-)

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that the sum population of NZ is just a little bit smaller than the target audience for this report, which also has the positive effect that in NZ it's easier to ensure it's done relatively fair.

I must go and find out how the Swiss do it - they combine being the sole remaining true democracy in the world with a federal system so they vote at the drop of a hat (I think if you can get 40'000 people to agree with you, you can get a national vote on something). I would assume they must have come up with a sensible approach by now.

Anyone here who knows the mechanics behind the Swiss voting system?

Going back to the question "why do you need electronic voting machines" - may I offer a paranoid answer? Watching what happened in the US one could muse that such a requirement stems from a need to PREVENT a fair election. It would make sense of a whole lot of strange events there..

Re:Vote counting is a perfectly scalable problem

[dan the person]

Countries with lots of votes to count, have lots of people to count them. The ratio of counters to votes doesn't need to change.

Use a verified standard

[Anonymous Coward]

OASIS has produced various iterations of a standard for electonic voting (http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=election/) - if agencies prefer to go their own way with untried and unverified systems, they are asking for trouble. Lot's of effort went into developing a tried and trusted standard - any agencu that tries to roll its own before even trying out an agreed standard, should be taken outside and shot

technology vs realibility

[aman534]

In my opinion, there is no reason why we need to switch to electronic voting. Although we are leaving in world of technology nowdays, but still in some cases technology can become useless. Many countries in the world are still using paper ballots for voting. Not just because it is anonymous,transparent and cheap, but paper ballots are also reliable and more secure to be used. There is no point to be proud of using electronic voting,if we end up with millions of modification votes.