Florida Literally Scraps Touch-Screen Voting

Kaseijin writes "Florida Governor Charlie Crist is getting his wish. The New York Times reports the state will replace touch-screen voting machines with optical-scan models by July 1, 2008 — the most aggressive timetable of any jurisdiciton rethinking this approach to voting. The touch-screen machines most likely will be sold to other jurisdictions or stripped for parts."

Comments

great idea

[ILuvRamen]

I think we should buy one for each Slashdot 10th anniversary party and smash them.

Translation:

[urcreepyneighbor]

sold to other jurisdictions We don't trust 'em, but you should!

Re:Translation:

[Pete LaGrange]

These should be returned to the manufacturer as unfit for intended purpose and a full refund extracted.

Re:Translation:

[lenski]

My favorite use for touchscreen ex-voting machines would be to drive a printer that generates human-readable ballots. Said ballots would be perfectly fine to count either by optical-scan readers or normal unaided humans.

Touchscreen "ballot printers" would go a long way toward eliminating overvotes and reducing undervotes (since a voter must be permitted to abstain from a particular race or issue).

As long as the Official Legal Ballot is durable and readable by unaided humans. The human can then manually scan his/her selections on the paper ballot before committing it to the official count. If the touchscreen system failed to record the voter's intent accurately, the voter can place the the machine-printed ballot in a rejection pile and fill in a paper ballot using manual methods (pencil, pen, etc.)

The point is that the voter must be able to audit his/her voting selections on the official legal record before committing it to the secure but open vote counting process.

Re:Translation:

[AuMatar]

The decision not to use highly insecure and completely unauditable machines to elect our leaders with? Yes, that decision should be forced an everyone.

Re:Translation:

[Kadin2048]

Uh, please give me one good reason why municipalities should be given the option of using highly insecure, no-physical-record, easily hacked "voting" machines in elections that influence the entire nation?

By your logic, we should allow states to allocate their delegates to the Electoral College by coin toss, cockfight, or single combat, if a bunch of political appointees in that state think it's a bright idea.

I think we should rigorously enforce some sort of minimum standard of quality for elections. Above and beyond that, sure, states can choose what brand and type of machines they want. But we all have an interest in making sure that elections are fair, unbiased, and transparent. Auditless electronic voting systems prohibit that by design, and for that reason they ought to be illegal. Leave them for supermarket taste-tests where they belong.

Parts?

[Klaidas]

Stripped for parts? Am I the only one thinking there won't be much of a demand for those? :/

Re:Parts?

[rizzo320]

I bet the touch screens could be disconnected and used for other purposes.

Re:Parts?

[AsmordeanX]

If they put them on ebay I bet hackers and geeks would swarm the auctions. A cheap (depending on what they want for it) VGA touch screen, small PC that you might be able to install a different OS to?

Sadly though, those $5000 machines will probably only sell for $200 tops online.

Re:Parts?

[rizzo320]

There's a version of linux for just about everything :-)

Re:Parts?

[zig007]

Funny, my interest did the exact opposite after reading the following:
"Proprietary firmware on closed system prevents hacker access"

Hm.. Were have I heard that one before? :-)

ah my eyes!

[quaketripp]

At first I was equating optical to retinal scan voting -- "Sorry, the correct choice was --" "AHHH! MY EYES!" In more rational terms, this is good, there should be a paper trail which is key to our voting process. You fill the circle in with a marker, slide the ballot in the dealy, it counts, and you can do a manual recount if needed. That's what is truly required.

Re:Will the new system be any more reliable?

[PhysicsPhil]

There are enough problems with arguments about whether a vote should be counted or not as it is, in any system. With optical scanning of a ballot paper, surely there will be arguments about whether what the scanner counts as a vote or not is actually the correct definition of what is a vote or not? The voting system is likely to be attacked by people who disagree with its definitions whatever it is.

The main advantage of the optical scanning system is it leaves a paper trail. If there is a dispute at the end of the election, it is possible to manually recount the ballots. Compare with the touch-screen voting, where no independent verification is possible. The ballots are also plain pieces of paper, so there's no issue of hanging chads or dislodging chads during a recount as in certain elections in the past.

Literally?

[Anonymous Coward]

As opposed to figuratively?

Re:Literally?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"As opposed to figuratively?"

Gah, don't be so literal.

Re:Literally?

[HoneyBunchesOfGoats]

Since the article says that most of the machines will actually be sent to a scrap heap, yes, it is quite literal. (Merely doing away with touch-screen voting and keeping the machines to use for other purposes would be a figurative scrapping.)

Re:Will the new system be any more reliable?

[jackb_guppy]

Nope. Not on the ones I have used.

1) you fill them out with a special black pen.
2) if you make a mistake, ask for new sheet and start again.
3) you place it into the optical scanner.
4) Green Light - your ballot is correct and you are done.
5) Red Light - you get a new ballot and start again.

Advantages:
Positive and Negative feedback if the ballot is clean and correct.
Voter SEES what is they choose, clearly.

Disadvantages:
Paper pile. But need only until election is confirmed.

Auditing.

[headkase]

I'm stunned that in the first place a system that could not be 100% audited was allowed to be used in the first place! Seriously, even though politicians don't seem to give a damn what you think the voting process is supposed to be a key-stone of democracy. If you can't trust the ballots you can't trust the system. It's fundamental.

Re:It wont matter

[WPIDalamar]

Also won't matter since Florida voters can't seem to figure out the whole voting thing anyways...

Paper?

[Froster]

Are paper ballots really that complicated? If there are multiple referendums or positions to be voted for, just use colour-coded ballots and ballot boxes. All this trouble with voting machines is just ridiculous.

As a Canadian, I've never voted with anything other than a paper ballot, and I have never had a reason to question the voting process as a result.

Re:Paper?

[zestyping]

Ballots in the United States are far longer than those in Canada. Have a look for yourself: NIST has a collection of ballots online.

Here's one example: Chicago, Illinois, November 2004. 10 pages of choices, with 15 elected offices, confirmations of 74 judges, and one referendum. We're talking about 1 or 2 orders of magnitude longer than a Canadian ballot.

I do not support unauditable voting computers. I just wanted to explain why the voting problem is much different in the U. S., and give you some idea why the desire for automation is so strong. (I'm Canadian as well.)

Re:Paper?

[noidentity]

"As a Canadian, I've never voted with anything other than a paper ballot, and I have never had a reason to question the voting process as a result."

America is the land of opportunity, like the opportunity to question the integrity of the voting process! I hope I've answered your question.

Another benefit of optical scan counting

[Colin Smith]

Is that you can design the voting form in such a way to fix one of the fundamental problems with democracy. You can make it confusing enough that those with insufficient I.Q. are able only to spoil their ballots, thereby improving the overall level of decision making by the then elected government.

I LIKE eVOTING because...

[JackMeyhoff]

.. I take along my PERMENANT marker and place a HUGE BLACK [X] on the SCREEN :)

Re:Do you trust the counters?

[NMerriam]

when Al Gore's lawyers first contested that vote

You are aware that it was Bush's campaign that filed the first court challenges to the Florida ballots, right?

I'm sure you'll happily apply the entire rest of your comment to Bush now that you know he's the one who caused the inevitable Caesar.

Much better idea

[WindBourne]

is to turn a few of them over to so of the crackers, reverse compile them, and lets see exactly how many bugs there are? In particular, I want to know, were the elections valid. For that reason, I suspect that the courts and the pubs will fight the idea of turning ANY of those over to an academians or crackers.