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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:
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.
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.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
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.
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.
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
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.
The problem with this is that it can lead to vote buying ... show your reciept... get $$$
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.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
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.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
But this is just paper ballot voting. The only difference is the complexity of the used pencil.
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.
Terrorists can't threaten a country's freedom and democracy. Only lawmakers and voters can do that.
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.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
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?
Oppressing an entire population is never cheap.
--Jeckler (/. Beta IS GARBAGE!)
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?
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.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!