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Diebold Admits ATMs Are More Robust Than Voting Machines
An anonymous reader points out a story in the Huffington Post about the status of funding for election voting systems. It contains an interesting section in which Chris Riggall, a spokesman for Premier (formerly Diebold) acknowledged that less money is spent making an electronic voting machine than on a typical ATM. The ironically named Riggall also notes that security could indeed be improved, but at a higher price than most election administrators would care to pay. Also quoted in the article is Ed Felten, who has recently found some inconsistencies in New Jersey voting machines. From the Post:
"'An ATM is significantly a more expensive device than a voting terminal...' said Riggall. 'Were you to develop something that was as robust as an ATM, both in terms of the physical engineering of it and all aspects, clearly that would be something that the average jurisdiction cannot afford.' Perhaps cost has something to do with the fact that a couple of years ago, every single Diebold AccuVote TS could be opened with a standard key also used for some cabinets and mini-bars and available for purchase over the Internet."
I don't think they need to be as physically secure, there's always a voting official in the room in plain sight and several other people working there. It doesn't need to be built like an ATM that will be randomly placed in dark alleys.
I hate to play devil's advocate, but an ATM is an extremely complicated mechanical device. It doesn't shock me in the slightest that they're more expensive to produce than an electronic voting booth.
Of course, their voting products do suck, although I don't think that cost has terribly much to do with it.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
But the voting officials cannot enter the booth, so any attacker could do something to the machine without it being noticed until after the elections.
Polotics and money, what a great parallel.
So the banks are more impportant than the ballots here. But it's what one would expect in a plutocracy.
Tne bankers and stockbrokers know what's important in America, and it isn't your vote. What's important ios the campaign "contribution" bribery to both major party candidates.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
'Cause election jurisdictions can afford to buy entire systems they have to throw away once they're discovered to be inadequate.
The problem isn't that an average person can understand what they're voting for, it's that you have to be clear to a really dumb person, because they can vote too. If your machine is too complicated for half the people you don't have a fair election.
It's science -- bad science -- of two types:
1. Bad application of technology, including massive security holes.
2. Bad management science, leading to sloppy security and confused product design. I disagree.
Engineering is all about making compromises - the old adage "good, fast, cheap, pick two" holds true today just as much as it always did, even if the three options in the list change occasionally.
In this case, I'd argue that the three options are "Simple, reliable, cheap, pick two".
Simple - any fool can use it, it's really not complicated.
Reliable - Verifiably correct, very hard to mess around with without it being immediately obvious.
Cheap - Pretty self-explanatory.
A voting machine that prints off a paper ballot which the voter deposits in a lockbox still seems the best option to achieve this.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...