Open Source Electronic Voting Progress Limited

An anonymous reader points us to a story about how the problems with electronic voting mostly stem from one source: the lack of mandated standardization. The LinuxInsider article goes on to suggest that once the issue of a universal voting platform is solved, the way is paved for open-source software to address concerns over accuracy and transparency. Though the article states that "no open source program for voting machines yet exists," it should be noted that such software was successfully tested earlier this month. Quoting: "People debate the merits of e-voting for a variety of reasons, including suspicion of new technologies and a general distrust of politics, according to Jamie McKown, Wiggins professor of government and polity at the College of the Atlantic. 'Reports on e-voting security often de-contextualize the history of voter fraud in this country, as if boxes were somehow assumed to be better. You constantly hear calls for paper trails, and open and free inspection of voting machine source code. But it's a very thorny issue and one that has a lot of facets,' McKown told LinuxInsider."

Comments

Wrong thinking

[vertinox]

FTA:

People debate the merits of e-voting for a variety of reasons, including suspicion of new technologies and a general distrust of politics

I don't think its as much as a suspicion of new technologies as much as the objections of those familiar with it. Even those who works with computers at a basic level understand that its far easier to drag and drop a thousand doc files into a trash can on the desktop than it is to shred a thousand physical copies.

That is my biggest argument for paper ballots is not fear of new technology, but rather a safe guard of making it harder to destroy evidence of tampering. If you wanted to cheat and election, it is far easier to type an SQL command in a console than it is to dispose of or forge thousands of physical ballots without anyone noticing.

In a perfect world, electronic voting would be the obvious choice, but given human nature and politics there should be as many safeguards as possible against possible corruption.

Re:Wrong thinking

[Anonymous Coward]

This biggest problem w/electronic voting isn't the potential for fraud (though that's terrifyingly high), it's the perception of fraud. Given the polarized political climate today, with millions of people suspicious that the 2000 and 2004 elections were stolen, imagine the reaction to a close election "decided" by a completely-unaditable electronic process. Even if the process is nominally "auditable", with most current machines the audit trail can be forged as easily as the original votes.

Regardless of whether or not fraud occurred, huge numbers of people would believe that it possibly/probably did. The whole "he's not my president" meme would grow exponentially. I could easily forsee mass demonstrations (tens of millions of people), massive civil unrest, etc. And keep in mind that the potential for this outcome is completely independent of whether or not fraud actually occurred!

Not only is there no way to prove fraud, there's no way to prove a lack of fraud. That's what scares me.

Re:No open source voting?

[weak*]

while(1) {
if(lever==REPUBLICAN) republican = republican+2;
if(lever==DEMOCRATIC) democratic++;
assert(republican > democratic);
cout << "Republicans: " << republican << " " << "Godless, pussy liberals: " << democratic << end;
}
There, fixed that for you... oops... I may be in violation of my Diebold employee nondisclosure agreement

Nope

[zogger]

Sorry, no computers need be involved at all, open source or closed source or some hybrid. You shouldn't need to be a programmer to verify the count as a volunteer at the end of the day. Any scheme that uses even "open source" software that is "justified" by saying "you can look at the code yourself" is still flawed as most people are not able to read code and understand it, and you still have no idea what happens during and after the election, you would have to stop and analyze the code every single step of the ballot trail. Skip a step = opportunity for compromise with a follow up coverup to hide the tracks. That's two big fat flaws in the idea, and either one is enough to rule out using computerized voting. And if you say "well, this scheme a,b,c uses a paper trail so it is mo bettah!!", so what's the point again then? Just *use the paper trail* as the primary way to vote for the election in the first place, skip the thousand buck computers and rube goldberg nonsense in the first place, including those stupid punch cards with "chads", they aren't needed either. If it takes "too long to count", here's an idea, a full 24 hour voting period, and it can even be a mandated federal holiday for that matter, so no one needs to miss work to go vote, no matter what shift they work or any other excuse.

I love computers, like most folks here have owned them for years and owned quite a few of them, but for elections, I like a plain ballot box and normal paper ballots.

"Open source" with elections is, I am sure, being pushed by well meaning folks, but if falls exactly under the "if your main tool use is a hammer, everything looks like a nail to you" syndrome. It just ain't needed, tons of other projects out there could use the dev help instead.

How to do this right

[Animats]

It's really not that hard to do this right.

• Voting machines should have to meet the Nevada Gaming Commission Standards for Gaming Devices. Nevada has tough tamper-resistance standards (Immune to static shocks, 27KV sparks, 600V on the power input, and rapid turn on/off; must resist forced illegal entry, locked covers over circuit boards and program media), logging standards (counters that cannot be reset, non-erasable logs of program changes), and auditing standards ("Provide, as a minimum, a two-stage mechanism for validating all program components on demand via a communication port and protocol approved by the chairman.") There's no question those standards can be met; hundreds of thousands of slot machines are running right now in compliance with them. Those standards have been developed during decades of struggles against organized crime, employee theft, tax fraud, and attacks on slot machines, so they have serious real-world credibility.
• Use a minimal, published operating system, like Minix. Linux is too big to audit and changes too much.
• Use a paper trail within the machine, one that generates a printed copy of the voter's selections behind a window, along with a bar code representing the voter's choices. For recounts, run the paper log through a bar code scanner for a quick check, and if necessary, manually check votes against bar codes.
• Install two printers, and switch between them randomly, so that the paper trail doesn't provide enough information to tell who voted for whom. Use a printer that doesn't need ink or ribbon and makes a permanent record, like the old "silver printers" used in adding machines. Don't use a thermal printer; the print isn't permanent.

This really isn't that hard.

Maybe somethings aren't better...

[ducomputergeek]

Electronically...

Maybe paper and pencil might be the best tools for the job?

Anyone ever stop to consider that. I know it's blasphemous to say new technology isn't the solution to every problem at the High Citadel of Cowboy Neal, so burn me at the Karma steak...

Electronic voting IS the problem

[ajs318]

Electronic voting IS the problem.

You can't trust what you don't understand, so any voting system needs to be Universally Comprehensible. An electronic system based on Open Source principles -- where the blueprints for the hardware and the listings of the software are available for all to examine -- is still really only comprehensible to a minority of the population. It doesn't satisfy the goal. (In the worst case, you could conceal a deliberate design defect by a combination of hardware and software techniques: anybody examining the hardware and not the software, or vice versa, will miss it.)

Just forget the whole thing as a failed experiment, and go back to pencil and paper and manual counting. Everybody knows what all the possible failure modes are, and how to minimise their effects.

open source isn't the solution

[dannannan]

Even if the machines are based on open source software, how do you know what has actually been deployed on the machine you use to cast your vote? Someone has to set up those machines. Any public code review or testing, no matter how thorough, is completely nullified if that isn't the software that ends up on the machine on election day.

Why do geeky people (myself included) like to wipe a new machine before they use it? Why do corporate IT departments have policies about wiping new hardware, or machines that have been infected with a virus? Simply because when you are using a general purpose computer, it is complex enough that no human can have any confidence in what it is doing unless they had control over the entire installation process.

D

Re:The powers that be don't want the E- Vote to wo

[Sique]

The truth is those that benefits from the current systems do not want electronic voting to work. You caught me here. I profiteer from paper ballot voting. And I am convinced that for an elementary reason electronic voting will never work.

The whole idea behind electronic voting is to speed up the counting process to have the results early. And that's exactly the reason why I don't want any electronic voting. With paper ballots I (that's me personally. Not a rhetoric "I", but just me, the person registered as "Sique" on Slashdot) can make sure that at least in my voting district there is no tampering with the votes. I can watch the whole process, registering of the voters, printing the ballots, distributing the ballots, sealing of the voting boxes, checking the identity of the single voter, handing the ballots to the voters, putting of the ballots in the box, breaking the seal, counting and charting the results, then resealing the boxes and sending them to the central election office, and recounting them for the final results.

I don't need any special abilities. I don't need to understand code, I don't need to understand hardware, I don't need to know about chip card formats or sending protocols. But I can verify that my vote gets counted exactly as I cast it. Every speed up of the process means I lose the ability to watch what happens to my personal vote, or I have to give up the anonymity of my vote.

Where I come from this ability to be able to watch an election was the reason we caught the election board of a complete country rigging the election, and we had enough proof to put them in prison. I don't see how we would ever managed it without being able to watch the whole voting process.