Ohio's Alternative to Diebold Machines May Be Equally Bad

phorest writes "One would have thought the choice of Ohio lawmakers to move away from Diebold touch-screen voting terminals would be welcomed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Instead, the group is warning the elections board that their alternative might be illegal under state laws. 'The main dispute is whether a central optical scan of ballots at the board's headquarters downtown would result in votes not being counted on ballots that are incorrectly filled out. The ACLU believes the intent of election law is to ensure voters can be notified immediately of a voting error and be able to make a second-chance vote.'"

Comments

You'd think ...

[BrianRoach]

That voting just simply couldn't be this complicated. ::shaking head::

- Roach

Re:You'd think ...

[gfxguy]

No matter what method is selected, someone will whine about it.

Re:You'd think ...

[gfxguy]

Which method is that? Every method had people complaining about it, from fill-in-the-dot optical scan cards (like this one) to butterfly ballots (like Florida) to machines that were supposed to fix the butterfly "dimpled but not fully popped out" problem (like the voting booths where you flip the switches and pull the big handle down to punch your ballot). They were all "rigged" or subject to interpretation or something.

The only other alternative is the "check this box" kind, which requires human counting (again subject to rigging) and takes ages to count. Now, I can wait a day - even a week, for my election results, but with a large turnout it would take even longer than that, and then there'd be less time to certify and recount if there was a problem.

Again, people complain every single election; maybe you don't remember it, maybe sometimes it's worse than others. There's nothing new here, it's happened since the dawn of... uh... electing... things.

Re:You'd think ...

[palegray.net]

Voting as a concept never has been complicated. However, you have to consider the fact that a huge portion of the American voting public cannot name:

1. The Vice President

2. The Speaker of the House

3. Their own state governor.

4. Any member of Congress.

When this is your voting public, how do you expect them to (a) understand, or (b) work up the gumption to care about voting issues? To most people, something's not an issue if they don't see it on headline news at 6.

Re:You'd think ...

[Sique]

The Florida voting system hat those lever machines that try to cut holes into the ballot to count them later with an electromechanical reader, a system created and first used for public census, invented by Hermann Hollerith and base for IBMs rise to power.

One problem was that hundreds and thousands of those ballots hat the cut off paper still dangling on it, or that some were only slightly cut, but at several places (as if the voter had a second thought and pulled another lever, but none of them consequently enough).

The main arguments against paper-and-pencil-voting seem to be:

1) The ballots can't be counted fast enough for the Late News to report the results.
2) People with disabilities such as blind people need help to vote and can't check the results themselves.

Argument 1) doesn't hold in my humble opinion. I would rather like to have correct results than early reported ones. Being able to watch the count was in my own country (the former East Germany) the base for all later convictions of Voting Fraud for the leading figures of the former communist government. Also some other frauds (like the one during the voting for the town council of Dachau near Munich) were detected because people were able to compare their own counting results from the public count with the ones later reported by the Voting Commission.

Argument 2) raises a valid point, because Braille printed ballots are much larger than normal prints, and some german towns have already ballots printed on half a square meter of paper. Printing them additionally with Braille further would increase them. On the other hand it was allowed anyway to just cut out that part of the ballot with the votes one had casted and throw everything else in a shredder. So this is still possible.

Re:You'd think ...

[vertinox]

Now, I can wait a day - even a week, for my election results,

So if they can't count the votes in a week, its OK to have someone in power who stole the election? And to top it off, how about someone who puts lives in harms way because they are the commander in chief?

Seriously, I'd be fine waiting for a month or two and maybe even longer to determine who is correctly elected president of the United States.

Secondly, if it was done by hand you have to remember only 50,000,000 people voted in 2004 for the presidential election. If you were to hand count the votes by an official. If an official was responsible for counting 1000 votes then you would only need 50,000 people nation wide helping out.

Which means you'd only need 1,000 officials per state which is a drop in the bucket.

Of course it wouldn't work exactly like that... California, NY, and Texas would need a great deal of vote counters and RI and Alaska would not, but vote counting by hand would not be that difficult if you distributed it correctly. You wouldn't need a month, but at the most 2 weeks and I think the wait is worth it.

The problem is that most Americans are impatient, but don't realize the election affects them for the next four years.

Simple = Better

[Goalie_Ca]

In canada we have a piece of paper with a check box for each candidate. They manually count it and results are known by the end of the evening. Recounts are done by the next day. Not expensive, not confusing, it leaves a paper trail, and it is as physically secure as any computer box could ever get.

Re:Simple = Better

[flyingfsck]

It scales perfectly with population count. India is the world's largest democracy and they still use mostly paper ballots.

Re:Simple = Better

[fm6]

Any process scales if you don't care about the quality of the result. Vote rigging is rampant in India, and all that hand-counting is often blamed.

There's also the slight difference in the cost of labor in India versus the U.S.

Re:Simple = Better

[SydShamino]

I really don't mean to flame, but every single voting issue thread attracts at least one post from someone explaining how Canada votes, and how simple it is, and how the U.S. could just do it the same way. Most of the time this post gets modded up insightful.

About half the time, someone responds, explaining how U.S. elections are more complicated than those in Canada, because U.S. elections usually feature a dozen or more separate items to vote on; in addition to national elections (up to three at a time), there can be a dozen state, county, and municipal elections, plus votes on city propositions, bond packages, and constitutional amendments (almost every year in Texas). It's simply not possible to count all of this quickly and accurately by hand in one day.

To this post, someone from Canada usually responds, asking why we have to vote on all that stuff, and wondering why we don't let our elected officials decide some of that for us.

To which someone else responds, pointing out that our system of government doesn't work the same as Canada's; once we elect someone we are pretty much stuck with them for two, four, or six years, so if our officials start doing things we don't like, we don't have the opportunity to call new elections and replace them. We also only have two viable political parties, so it's less likely that we agree with our elected representatives on every issue. Thus, we like to have a chance to directly vote on more items than most other countries. Also, to increase the likelihood of high voter turnout, we combine elections to minimize the number of election days. In Texas, I believe there can only be three election days a year: the March primaries (if needed), and the May and November general elections.

------

So, in summary, this concept and its responses have been beaten to death. If you feel the same way I do, do as I will and start modding all "Canada votes like this, why doesn't the U.S., too?" redundant.

Re:Simple = Better

[can56]

"once we elect someone we are pretty much stuck with them for two, four, or six years, so if our officials start doing things we don't like, we don't have the opportunity to call new elections and replace them."

Do you believe that Canadians have the opportunity to boot elected officials we don't like at any time??

Narf

Oh Please....

[idiotnot]

If that's the standard, then every method used is probably illegal. How can a voter verify he pulled the correct level? Handwritten ballots can't be relied upon, either.

Optical scans have historically been regarded as the best, and practically everyone who went to school since 1960 has filled out a scantron sheet.

The ACLU is a bit off base here, IMO.

Off topic....the "Related Links" this time were interesting.

Compare prices on YRO Products

What, exactly is a YRO product?

Could someone tell me why we need it at all?

[Opportunist]

Paper - pen - checkbox - count

What the hell is wrong with that system? It's in effect in nearly every other country. What is so terribly different in the US that this system won't work as flawlessly as it works everywhere else? Pardon the blunt question, but is it too hard to find enough people intelligent enough to effing count slips of paper?

What the hell is the deal about it all? We're wasting billions of dollars every year on worthless junk, flying our politicians around to pointless debates and toilet seats to boot. I don't think spending a few bucks to get good ol' paper elections done, which are tried, proven and simply and plainly working, is going to break the budget's back!

Re:Could someone tell me why we need it at all?

[Frosty Piss]

Paper - pen - checkbox - count

What the hell is wrong with that system?

Paper ballots are soooo... last century.

And among a significant percentage of the US population, especially those in charge of huge piles of public money, everything is always "better" when done with technology. And did I mention the huge pile of money these people have to spend? Everybody likes new toys!

No. Electronic. Voting. Ever.

[circletimessquare]

it is a seriously dumb idea. increases attack vectors, makes something that is inherently transparent opaque

paper

pencil

optical scanner

end of fucking problem

really

i expect this wisdom to enter the brain of bureaucrats everywhere sometime around 2050

hopefully we won't be a theocracy or fascism by then, hastened along by malignant voting schemes

Re:No. Electronic. Voting. Ever.

[fm6]

paper

pencil

optical scanner

end of fucking problem

Sigh. Everyone points to paper ballots as a guarantee that votes will be properly counted. May I point out that rigged elections predate electronic voting by many centuries?

Ok, so your hybrid system allows you to double check. But when do you double check? If we can't trust the electronic system (and if we did, what's the point in having a dead tree backup?) then you end up with the loser demanding a hand count every time. So you might as well do it by hand to begin with. Except that's too expensive.

It doesn't even matter what process you use to count ballots. What matters is that the process occur out in the open. It's as easy to do that with electronic voting as with paper ballots. Easier even, because it's easier to track the workflow. Harder to repeat the 1960 voting in Chicago, where the ballot boxes took a suspicious amount of time in transit.

Re:No. Electronic. Voting. Ever.

[Daniel Dvorkin]

I don't think anyone claims that using paper ballots is a sure-fire guarantee that fraud won't take place. But electronic voting machines make fraud easier, and it's absurd to pretend otherwise. With paper ballots, you have to have a much larger number of people in on the scheme to change a large number of votes and cover your tracks afterward.

Re:No. Electronic. Voting. Ever.

[fm6]

With paper ballots, you have to have a much larger number of people in on the scheme to change a large number of votes and cover your tracks afterward.

Only because you have a lot of people monitoring the process. Give me 5 minutes alone with a ballot box, and I promise you a surprising shift in votes for that precinct. But there are a ton of people who are busy making sure I don't get that 5 minutes.

By the same token, you can design an electronic voting system so that every step is an open book. And I promise you that a zillion geeks and computer scientist will have nothing better to do than spend hours picking nits with your system. This is a level of double-checking no paper system can claim.

Any system is trustworthy to the degree that it is transparent.

Re:No. Electronic. Voting. Ever.

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Five minutes alone with a ballot box, and you can change the count for that ballot box; it may be enough to change the results for the precinct (or it may not) but it probably won't be enough to throw a statewide election. Five minutes (or much less) of entering commands to an electronic voting system, and you damn sure can change the results of a statewide election, and furthermore, you can do it in a way that leaves no physical evidence. The "every step is an open book" and the "zillion geeks and computer scientist [who] have nothing better to do than spend hours picking nits with your system" idea is a red herring, since electronic voting systems aren't designed that way and probably never will be. They're all proprietary, with the inner workings protected as a trade secret, and given the insane state of US IP law and corporate/governmental mutual backscratching, that's not going to change.

The most reasonable assumption is that at some point, no matter what voting system you use, someone will compromise it at some point, so the best thing to do is design the system so that the least damage will result. Paper ballots fit this requirement much better than electronic systems do.

Re:No. Electronic. Voting. Ever.

[laron]

>Give me 5 minutes alone with a ballot box, and I promise you a surprising shift in votes for that precinct.

And why on earth should you ever be alone with the ballot box? Not to mention that the box should be locked and sealed anyway.

After the last voter has voted and the polling station closes, you dump the ballots on a large table and start counting. Everyone is allowed to stay and watch: party representatives, concerned citizens, international observers...
You can even add a surveillance camera or three.

Persistent need to leave holes

[Anonymous Coward]

The US elections managers seem to have a chronic and persistent need to leave loopholes in whatever systems that they use that enable easy fraud.

Why?

Re:Persistent need to leave holes

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

Why do we even need "code"? My aunt works at the town hall of a small town of about 600 people, when election time comes around they fill out a piece of paper and it goes into a wooden box. When the voting is over, an official counts the ballots by hand. I'm pretty sure we've been voting since before we had computers, but I did go to public schools I could be wrong... why not check out what we did 30-50 years ago and.. well, do that?

Re:Persistent need to leave holes

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

It works for more than 600 people, and I'm sure there's no county in the US that has 600 million people in it.

Re:Persistent need to leave holes

[bigpat]

Why do we even need "code"? My aunt works at the town hall of a small town of about 600 people, when election time comes around they fill out a piece of paper and it goes into a wooden box. When the voting is over, an official counts the ballots by hand. I'm pretty sure we've been voting since before we had computers, but I did go to public schools I could be wrong... why not check out what we did 30-50 years ago and.. well, do that? I suspect most people reading what you wrote will say to themselves 'How quaint, only 600 people' and then move on, but they may lose the point that maybe the government shouldn't be trying to scale the polling places to handle more than a relatively small number of people at the precinct level. If States simply capped the size of a polling place to handle a few thousand registered voters, then a lot of these problems go away and you just need to worry about finding volunteers to staff the polling places (which could be made an obligation like jury service). How many more elections do we have to see where large population centers are effectively disenfranchised by hours long waits at polling places which try to "serve" tens of thousands of voters on election day. My polling place serves under 4000 registered voters (with much fewer that actually vote) with optical scan paper ballots. With a realistically manageable number of people there are never serious waits to vote and people are in and out in a few minutes.

Cap the number of registered voters allowed per precinct per election worker and per actual polling station and eliminate the inequalities and bullshit. Eliminate the publicly paid for partisan primaries if you want to save money.

Seems like a simple management principle to me, don't manufacture efficiencies of scale at the expense of the quality of what you are trying to do. In other words, treat people like people and not like just another cog in the wheel.

Bullshit

[Senjutsu]

And Ohio, alone, has a third of Canada's population. In large precincts, this is becoming impractical, if not impossible. I'm sure it'd work in smaller cities in the US, too. Not to put too fine a point on it, but this is complete and utter bullshit. Ohio has fewer total voters than Ontario, but paper ballots work in Ontario. Ohio's largest city by metropolitan population, Cleveland, has a population of 2,114,155, doesn't hold a candle to the metropolitan population of Toronto, 5,555,912, and yet paper ballots work in Toronto. Paper ballots work. They work in small populations, and they work in big populations. This "abloo abloo abloo the US alone is too big for paper ballots" meme needs to die. It's utter bullshit.

Define democracy.

[palegray.net]

"Democracy is a system of government whereby the people get no better than they deserve."

Yes, democracy is the best system of government available. Still, the question isn't one of "is the general population aware of voting issues", it's "does the general population actually care about voting issues"... That question leads to some pretty depressing answers.

Fraud proof?

[nem75]

"It's not the votes that count. It's who counts the votes."

Old Stalin was not the first and not the last to know this. It doesn't matter what kind of elaborate systems you think up to make elections fraud proof - in the end there will always be successful efforts to change the results, no matter what you do.

So you might as well stay with the pen & paper method. At least there the evidence of fraud is a bit harder to get rid of then opposed to changing some numbers in a machine.