US Voting Machines Standards Open To Public

Online Voting writes "The U.S. Election Assistance Commission has published new voting systems testing and certification standards for 190 days of public comment. For all the critics of electronic voting, this is your opportunity to improve the process. This will be the second version of the federal voting system standards (the first version is the VVSG 05). To learn more about these Voluntary Voting System Standards see this FAQ."

Comments

How about

[SamP2]

- Printed voting receipt
- All code open source, all architecture fully documented and publicly available
- No person-vote information recorded in database (database lists people as "voted" or "not voted", as soon as person enters a vote it changes to "voted" and won't allow another vote, while a separate database increments a counter for a particular candidate. These two databases are NOT linked together.
- No timestamps to ensure manual matchmaking between people and votes are not possible.

Ah hell. I could come up with lots of other reasonable suggestions, but its not like any of this will ever be implemented.

Re:How about

[heinousjay]

I don't like the receipt, and I have a hard time wondering why people would want it. It couldn't be used for anything related to the process because of the ease of counterfeiting.

Re:How about

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

Yes, print the voting receipt, but don't let the person take it with them. They can see it in the machine to verify that was who they voted for, but it stays in the polling place in case a manual recount is needed.

Re:How about

[mOdQuArK!]

Why do you need to print a voting receipt then? If the voter isn't going to take anything with them (not a good idea anyway), and they're going to leave something behind, then the ballot is the voting "receipt".

The only valid reason for checking peoples' IDs at the voting place is try and make sure that each person is eligible to vote, and gets one and only one ballot. Beyond that, there is no reason to keep track of any voter's ID.

Re:How about

[aynoknman]

Yes, print the voting receipt, but don't let the person take it with them. They can see it in the machine to verify that was who they voted for, but it stays in the polling place in case a manual recount is needed. Also, they can't verify who they voted for to a vote buyer.

Re:How about

[mithras invictus]

No, the receipt should be the ballot, not the other way around. One machine is meant to help the voter produce a human and machine readable vote, the voter can check the produced ballot unassisted and decide whether or not to submit it.

big problem

[ILuvRamen]

Has anyone else noticed that more money and time and effort has been spent trying to make and use good, fair, electronic voting machines than it would have taken to just keep using paper ballots and have them counted like usual? Isn't the point to save money and time and make it more efficient? I think another point was to make elections less riggable and more accurate but Diebold killed that dumb idea behind a long time ago lol.

Re:big problem

[mOdQuArK!]

The main advantages of using voting machines is that they can be used to print out a nice, clean ballot which can be easily counted (no misaligned filling-out of ovals or odd marks, don't worry about #2 pencils or color of pens, no hanging chads, the ballot contains only the selected choices so no "they really meant this choice!" type of counting, etc).

They're also good at providing alternative interfaces for the disabled (sound or braille) while still printing out a nice, clean ballot.

The only reason for COUNTING machines is for speed though, and since there's no easy way to make sure the counting machines haven't been compromised, we shouldn't depend on them at ALL except maybe for "preliminary results". For the final official result, we should still stick to the hand counting votes (especially if we have nice, clean, easily-readable ballots).

Re:big problem

[gomoX]

"Classic" voting (aka paper ballot in cardboard box) has many, many problems. We just had elections, and I waited in line for 2:30 hours to vote. A big part of that time was devoted to wondering why the fuck don't they use some sort of electronic system for this.

Some problems that are typical with regular elections:
- missing ballots for a given party make the thing go slooow
- you waste time finding ballots when there are many options (most countries don't have a two-party thing going on but instead have tens of partys)
- long time to cut ballots when you have elections for more than a single position (say, president and senators) - this factor also favors "block voting" for a party
- the signed-envelope system has loopholes that allow people to buy votes anyway
- you need people to supervise the whole thing, and no one wants to volunteer
- the whole process is so troublesome and complicated that people just want to get it done instead of actually thinking about the election they are making

Of course, the electronic counterpart isn't easy to build. But it could be better, it's not really that hard. You need an easy consistent interface, solid machines that won't be easy to break, and some kind of receipt showing that you voted. That's it.

Re:big problem

[zcat_NZ]

You missed another advantage. Since the printed ballot is in a consistent (and preferably standard) format, those votes can be optically counted by a tallying machine built by a completely different vendor. If the preliminary count and independent OCR count agree within some agreed margin (we'll allow for misreading a vote or two per million, OCR isn't perfect). Then we can have a final, trustworthy election result within minutes of the closing of the polls. Accurate, trustworthy, _and_ fast. Wouldn't that be nice!

What a bunch of crap

[rastoboy29]

Too bad neither of the "major" political parties has the country's interests at heart, or we would have real, open standards for the machines themselves, and not just a voluntary fucking testing process.

Problems, not solutions

[michaelmalak]

You've violated the golden rule of specifying requirements:

- Printed voting receipt

The requirement is:

1. Individual vote verifiable by the voter's unassisted eye at the time of voting as to the vote selection and whether or not it has been tampered.
2. All votes verifiable by auditors' unassisted eyes after voting is complete as to the vote selections and whether or not they have been tampered.

Re:Problems, not solutions

[SamP2]

Your second option is not possible (as stated) unless the database links individual people to individual votes, which in turn violates ballot secrecy (with traditional voting, when you enter a ballot, you don't write your name on it, and while the auditor can count the number of votes, they can never know who voted for them).

The digital voting controls should be similar to traditional voting (count how many people entered/left and compare to number of votes), but NEVER record the voters identity on the ballot. Auditor or not, this knowledge is reserved for the voter and nobody but the voter.

Re:Problems, not solutions

[peragrin]

um with the 1930 electonric voting machines you could do both of those with out comprimising data personal data.

It means the voter doesn't log into the voting booth. the voter should only walk up to the both press a few buttons get a confirmation receipt and then stick said receipt in another box. The voting machine then is reset for another voter.

Electronic voting should only make counting faster not a complex database system that records everything about the voter.

Indeed a regular computer system is a waste in such a case. no more than powerful than the newton, or early palm is needed, no full oS is needed. the least complex the better.

Why hack a voting machine?

[jihadist]

...When you can simply bombard the numb populace with expensive television advertising, purchase stories in the "news entertainment media," bribe them by appealing to their greedy special interests, and manipulate them through churches and synagogues?

They don't have to hack the voting machines. They've already hacked the voters. Just as Plato predicted they would!

Why not start with an open standard?

[MosesJones]

Wouldn't it be better to start with an open standard around the election process for information exchange and the like? This Already Exists and is "recommended" by the US Government. Why only recommended? Surely this exactly the sort of thing that should be enforced as a basic requirement. Its not like the US Government could claim "we can't enforce that standard as vendors might not want to use it" its the US frigging Government legislate is what they do.

So a good start on the standards but it would be good to see compulsion come in.

Code can be altered on the fly

[Catbeller]

This is utter silliness. So what if you review the code? So what if there are "open standards"? The code you review can be swapped out on election day any number of ways! I mean, you are all programmers, mostly. How can you possibly fall for this? And there is code on the point of voting, code at the accumulators boxen, running Windows may I add, code at HQ adding up the accumulators' totals. It's the work of a morons's minute to swap out vote totals, or change the code at the point of voting to simply flip the voter's choice undetectably -- printing out a "receipt" that is worthless as record of what actually happened. The code can be changed and then replaced instantly. Or more likely, why bother? Who the hell can tell what code is really running on the box? The problem here is you all have a religious belief that when you ask a computer a question, you'll get an honest answer. But these are dedicated boxen, controlled by humans who are extremely motivated to alter the results. You can't beat them. You can only remove the means. No computers system should ever come near an election.

Canada does (did? sigh) vote using a manual process with real time oversight by suspicious characters from both parties present -- you know, the process we decided was mad in Florida in 2000. Somehow they finish up their elections in hours. Although, really, what the hell is the hurry to finish an election? Why not take a week? Someone REALLY wants to alter those votes. They want it quick, unmonitored, and completely open to tampering, and somehow this is the Only Way To Do It?

This idiocy wouldn't stand if we didn't have Kourictainment for a news media... god.