Slashdot Mirror
Florida Election Ballots to be Printed On-Demand
davidwr writes "The St. Petersburg, FL, Times reports that Florida is going back to paper ballots, but with a twist. They are printing the ballots on-demand, right there at the polling booth. This isn't machine-assisted voting where a touch-screen fills in your printed ballot for you. It's just a way to save printing costs and reduce paper waste. 'Without ballot on demand, poll workers at 13 early Hillsborough voting sites would need to stockpile stacks of every possible ballot type. With ballot on demand, poll workers can print out a person's distinct ballot type when he or she arrives to vote.'"
These machines will jam or run out of ink with no geeks around to fix it.
Welcome to good ideas which don't stand up to the reality of 5-6 old people monitoring a station.
I like muppets.
...machine malfunction, or the printers not printing out the correct things?
They will be pre-filled in for the Republican candidate. To save you the time of thinking that your vote will actually be counted towards the candidate you intend to vote for.
Monstar L
It would be very interesting to read the threat analysis for this scheme, which doesn't have decades of world-wide experience behind it like print-in-advance ballots do, with all the associated gubbins such as secure printers and individually numbered ballots which are audited and counted and signed for every time they change hands.
(Even with proper ballots there's an interesting question: if there are 1,000 voters and there has never been a turnout of more than 300 in this area, how many ballots do you print, bearing in mind that you'll almost certainly lose your job if you print just one too few, but on the other hand people will be upset with you if you end up wasting two thirds of your print cost?)
I like this move. With all the diebold problems and election computers found to be wanting, nobody has really addressed the question: "What is wrong with paper in the first place?"
Sure, it's slow to count but not overly so. While US ballots are more complicated than UK ballots they still take just over a day to count. If you can't wait that long, you're just impatient.
If you want a quick answer, just use exit polls. Until Bush's election fraud, these were a reliable way of having an idea of who has won the election.
We already have a well evolved security procedure for handling paper ballots. Why are people so quick to throw that away a proven solution and to try a totally closed computer system off a random vendor to solve a problem that never really existed anyway? I'll leave the answer is an exercise to the reader.
Simon
This is a really great idea. I really, really great idea. This is the kind of "duh" stuff that all of our modern technology is supposed to help fix.
...and really, how many tax-payers pay attention to the money their government spends on ink?
You know what would be an even better idea? Make these ballot printers with a special, proprietary ink cartridge. This would help prevent counterfeit ballots. Of course, since you can't let these machines break down, the cartidges would probably have to have an internal sensor that shuts down the printer when the ink level gets low. Maybe, just to be safe, they would have to kick in when about 60% of the ink is gone. We need to protect the voters, after all.
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
I don't get. We have had, in theory, the protocols to make cryptographically secure verifiable & anonymous e-voting for years now, and yet it hasn't been implemented.
A bunch of hungover CS undergrads with 24 hours till their deadline, would come up with a better e-voting implementation than the hopelessly naive excuses spewed up by diebold et al.
the Republicans don't seem to mind all that much; just make sure that the red in comes due when the next generation will have to pay it.
Think global, act loco
Only difference is, sometimes the vehicle, which is supposed to bring the ballot papers on demand from paper factory, is also out of order...
to be read. After all that is what caused the SNAFU last time.
So what keeps you from getting a subtle identifying mark (barcode, watermark, whatever) placed on your individually printed ballot?
And then what keeps someone from paying off those who voted as instructed, or beating the hell out of someone who didn't vote as instructed?
You are awash in a sea of fiercely stated opinions. Obvious exits are: 'File->Quit', 'Reply', and 'Page Down'.
When Ms. Jones has her registration checked against the voter rolls they print the ballot. The ballot could contain encoded information identifying Ms. Jones.
Have a look at; http://www.eff.org/issues/printers
Saving paper sounds good but not at the expense of the secret ballot.
So they dropped the idea of easerable markers and registering school children?
So how is a partial paper ballot useful for verification ?
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
USA has always demanded on a way to cheat in their election systems. Fraud-proof systems just won't do for the americans.
Printing these on demand will simply let any insider print and fill out as many as are needed to get the right candidate to win.
2004 election results and exit polls prove a clear fraud took place. The US Secret Service, the media nor the FBI are doing nothing, not a single arrest to day on the matter. And CIA is still flying torture jets filled with cocaine. The criminals are running the show and americans are busy playing ostritch.
I'm not so worried about voters, but corrupt poll workers. All of the "paper trail" advocates basically ignore this problem.
Dot matrix printer?
The world of tomorrow, YESTERDAY
--- Do you believe in the day?
It's easy enough to print a random number on each officially printed ballot and log the random number along with what should be on the ballot. The ballot already has numbers on it to indicate the voter's precinct so the counting-machine knows what to look for.
As part of the ballot-counting process, the random number can be compared against the precinct number and if they don't match it's spit out as an irregularity. At this point it would be up to a human or probably a set of humans from all major parties to determine if this was a fake ballot or if the ballot-printing machine just didn't log the random number properly.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The problem with paper is people with certain handicaps can't use it without assistance.
Electronic voting machines reduce this number.
Most blind people and people with limited manual dexterity can use an electronic machine and vote anonymously.
Voting machines can also lower cost when you have lots of people voting with different ballots, as in Florida's early-voting. Florida is now using a different and IMHO better solution than e-voting to lower costs. It can also reduce costs in areas where ballots are required to be printed in more than 2 languages. With e-voting or Florida-style print-on-demand you can have the voters vote on screen or with ballots that are in English plus the voter's language, rather than printing up ballots in 3, 4, or more languages. You also make it feasible to vote in less-common languages that traditionally would not have been printed.
You also don't have the problem of vague ballots like the infamous half-punched Florida ballots of 2000 or paper ballots where someone marked more than one choice or didn't completely erase a vote.
There are better ways than e-voting to handle the unclear ballot problem. For a discussion see just about any Slashdot thread dealing with voting machines.
The physically-handicapped problem is where the machines are a big win.
Allowing voters to vote in less-common languages is another win for e-voting, but printing-on-demand also solves this problem.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
There is no contradiction, we are discussing on demand printed ballots vs. pre-printed ballots.
Pre-printed ballots probably waste paper but are secure against this type of privacy violation.
And they will tell you that no matter what, they're old, and they can't manage anything.
Pre-printed ballots have a security code on them (otherwise anyone with a decent photocopier could make 100 of them).
It's theoretically possible to link the ballot number to the person but quite hard.
The worst are postal ballots are 100% traceable, and 0% verifiable. In the UK they forced postal ballots on us for a couple of years (closed the polling stations) - you had to fill in your vote then sign and date the form!! So much for anonymous ballots... (only ref. I can find these days is an old blog: http://postalvoting.blogspot.com/)
The practice was stopped, luckily. It was found people were stealing/buying unused ballot forms and sending them in bunches to influence the vote (the whole husband/wife thing came out.. with no anonymous voting the pressure on one person to vote the same as their spouse was extremely strong).
Then Geek Squad will decide the election.
Printers are going to break, people are going to be stuck in line waiting for a ballot to be printed.
What a wonderful clusterfuck this is going to turn out to be.
Don't be shocked if "PC Load Letter" replaces "hanging chads".
Yep; My first thought was like yours--now the election can be thwarted in new ways!
/not serious
It would be so much easier just to go back to monarchy or dictatorship!
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
How do you know that peoples vote that was not on a paper ballot is counted correctly?
Also what guarantee is there that people do not somehow print out some hidden code for each ballot, thus making it not so secret anymore.
Make a paper ballot. Put that through a high speed scanner. Done. All those that could not be read must be read by people.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Different kinds of ballots? For, like, different votes? Or do the merkins use different ballots in the one vote? How can that possibly make any sense?
The one thing that this system does address on some level is actually printing ballots that you know are needed, and enough to cover your needs. You say that you know how many to print ahead of time because you know how many people are entitled to vote. Do you really? 1. Registered voter records are incorrect when the ballots are published and shot count an area of the appropriate number of ballots. 2. Someone makes a mistake filling out a ballot and need a replacement. 3. Someone accidentally goes to the wrong precinct. One plus to Print on Demand is that you can cover for the scenarios in a much more systematic way. The other thing that this could allow for in the future is allowing people to vote at more convenient polling places for them. One of the fundamental systemic problems of the current voting system is that it requires you to show up at a specific polling place, which may not be the most logical place for you to vote depending upon your job, current residence, etc. In no way is this a perfect solution, but it does open up some possibilities that aren't present in the current system.
So you're talking about a replay attack, where someone reuses a challenge (blank ballot) to stuff a box with multiple responses (filled-in ballots). Here, we thwart replay attacks with a session token.
Each polling place has a pair of public and private keys, such as RSA or ECC. Each ballot is printed with a barcode containing a session token. The token includes a code representing the polling place, a ballot serial number, and possibly some other information, along with an encrypted hash of this information. The counter looks for ballots whose decrypted hash does not match the hash of the cleartext and tosses those out as spoiled. Then it looks for ballots with duplicate serial numbers and chooses one randomly from each set.
Then redesign the ballot in a way that mistakes are not possible.
Although as long as people keep re-installing the same software even though it keeps craching and being a hazard for others, I am not sure if having thise same people in charge of more importand matters is a good idea in the first place.
If it were, why would we not be able to elect our CEO?
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Speaking as a Floridian, I think folks are missing the obvious point here: this is Florida, and we'll certainly screw it up.
They can't do a validated paper trail for electronic voting because of paper jams...but they can print the entire ballot? I have a sneaking suspicion that voting means nothing.
I've heard the arguments against mail in ballots such as loss of anonymity, and possibilities of coercion, but they don't strike me as big as a problem as some of the disasters we've had in the US recently in Florida and Ohio. I live in California and am on permanent absentee ballot status. In Oregon, everyone is in that boat. If you search for oregon mail vote, you will find positive articles as well as this FAQ: http://www.co.multnomah.or.us/dbcs/elections/election_information/voting_in_oregon.shtml where they say:
Can someone find out how I've voted?
No. All ballots are separated from the return envelope before the ballots are inspected. This process ensures confidentiality.
I realize this isn't good enough for some and it wouldn't be good enough for me in many other countries but as much as I distrust my government in other ways, I'm willing to trust them enough to always vote my true preference here (hell, I don't mind admitting who I voted for on the internet either, so I guess I don't really count).
I can't imagine what it is like to have a spouse coerce your vote. I suppose it would be possible if someone was that pathological, they could demand compliance at the voting booth and scare the other person into thinking they couldn't lie and get away with it either. It would be interesting to see the numbers of this happening and compare that to the numbers of disenfranchised voters in Ohio waiting for hours in the rain.
My choice in the US is for a common format mail in ballot for all the states. (It is also for a heck of a lot of other election reform, some of which could be taken from the UK - like having shorter election schedules - I'm ready for this one to be over now.)
Dara
Why on earth do you need specialized voting forms tailored to the individual voter? Surely that removes the anonymity from voting, or at least significantly reduces it?
.au we get a green piece of paper that we number *in pencil* from 1 to n (where n is the number of candidates .. see Preferential Voting on wikipedia) for electing our lower house representative in our local ward and a *massive* white piece of paper that lists all the upper house candidates for our state.
If there are more than one type of vote on election day, and each person may be entitled for some strange reason to vote in different elections to the person next to them, have each vote on a different piece of paper.
Here in
I figure the same works for Florida right? You vote for the president directly, so you get a piece of paper for that. And then you vote for your local senator, so you get a piece of paper for that.
What on earth am I missing that makes voting methods in the USA such a controversial issue?
There are a few points that should be made here that many people are missing. This on demand system will be used in early voting (before the official election date) where a voter can show up at any voting location in a county to vote. This is a problem since each precint needs a different ballot, for the congressional districts which vary by district. So they needed a way to give a person a ballot for their precinct, without having to have perhaps dozens of different ballots at the early voting locations. On the main election day, ballots will be preprinted, since everyone in a precinct uses the same ballot. As far as concerns about anonymity, it should be only necessary to type in the precinct number into the computer connected to the printer, not any of the voters identifiying information.
Paper ballots will be a definite improvement and certainly the move back to paper ballots should be appreciated. There needs to be a paper trail to verify that votes are being properly counted. Since one cannot see inside of a computer to verify that their vote was recorded onto the disk, it is essential to have a user verifiable paper ballot. Computer voting machines make rigging elections just too easy.
In Virginia, your vote is easily tracked:
--you enter the polling place in a carefully maintained line
--one by one,your give your name and verify your address,
--you are then assigned a sequential "voter number",
--a poll worker then escorts each voter to the next available e-voting machine, and uses a key to log on,
--vote tracing is a no brainer: just sort the vote data by time of log on, and compare to the sequence number of each voter
like, duh, you techie guys are sooo smarrrt!
With ballots printed especially for each voter, vote tracking would be even easier:
--voter enters polling place, one-by-one
--voter verifies name and address etc.
--voter is given a specially printed ballot, which secretly identifies each voter!
each voter would think his or her ballot "looks like" a generic ballot of his or her type,
haha, when in fact each voter is being tricked that his or her vote is not being tracked.
Each ballot would have embedded identifiers which uniquely identifies that ballot and links it to each specific voter
for example border lines could be printed in varying line width,
or a bar code could be written one-dot wide along a border line,
paranoid Blackwater Republicans have a valid need to know who their enemies are!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WMG34cv0zM
the hacked software prints out what the voter voted, but counts something different...
smart move, to include a security feature, that has been broken months ago...
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
Let's just make every Starbucks an official voting station. It would make a great incentive to actually vote if I could just attach my vote to my wireless Starbucks order. If my drink gets higher priority than the guy who ordered his drink via PDA without an attached vote, I don't care about my voting anonymity.
I'll take a venti hazelnut mocha frappuccino blended coffee, no whipped cream, and a vote for political asshat #2. Thanks!
Two groups of citizens who may not know English at all:
* Citizens by birth who emigrated before they started school and who did not speak English at home, but who returned to the United States later.
* Citizens who claim citizenship because they had two American parents, but who were born and raised abroad.
Several other groups of citizens who may not know English well:
* Citizens who know enough English to pass a written citizenship test but who do not have a strong grasp of the language.
* Born citizens who were educated, for whatever reason, in a language other than English, or who were never formally educated.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
what are the approximate savings due to this??? listen_to_slashdot