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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.
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!
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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.
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.
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...
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.
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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?