California Sec. of State Wants Open Source E-Voting Systems

Lucas123 writes "California's Secretary of State, Debra Bowen, was among a group of e-voting experts at MIT yesterday who said the nation's electronic voting systems are still not secure and many run on faulty software. Among the suggestions offered to fix the problem: use open source software, stop delivering e-voting machines to polling places weeks in advance of an election, and keep a paper trail for auditing purposes. Bowen also believes that a ubiquitous Internet voting system could not work without the use of a national ID card system."

Comments

Simple Solution.

[bigtallmofo]

No need to open source anything or make any other changes... Just slap a sticker with one of those disclaimers on each of the current voting machines that reads "This is not a scientific poll and is completely inaccurate."

Problem solved.

Re:Simple Solution.

[Manulani]

Why would you use a high level operating system in a voting machine.... the code should be written in assembler.... with a printed record which is readable by humans and machines.

Now for the BIG decision

[Vinegar Joe]

KDE or Gnome? But since it's California, it'll probably be Enlightenment.

Re:Now for the BIG decision

[oodaloop]

Finally, the year of the Linux voting machine has arrived!

Another trick: reduce the time pressure issue

[compumike]

Lots of the problems described occur because a voter must actually punch a bunch of buttons in just a few minutes -- matching a (hopefully predetermined) set of things they wanted to vote for. It seems like there's lots of room for error because of the time crunch that everyone feels in this situation.

What if you could actually do the ballot on your computer at home, carefully making sure that the buttons you push are what you intended, and then bring a printout with something like a barcode or other digital encoding of your selections? (This wouldn't have to be tied to your name -- that can still happen in the booth.) Then you bring that barcode to the booth, and it scans it after you walk in, and that "preloads" your selections. Then, you're just down to a verify step, under less pressure.

Seems to even open a new market for various parties to distribute the barcodes of their respective positions... :-/ don't want to make things *that* easy.

Just a thought...

--
Learn electronics! Microcontroller kits for the digital generation.

Re:Another trick: reduce the time pressure issue

[mfh]

If swift-boat politics were actually fueled by problem solving -- you would be on to something here! Sadly, it's about disaster capitalism... and therefore it's better when the voting machines have wide open security holes. But nice try!

Re:Another trick: reduce the time pressure issue

[arth1]

What if you could actually do the ballot on your computer at home, carefully making sure that the buttons you push are what you intended, and then bring a printout with something like a barcode or other digital encoding of your selections? (This wouldn't have to be tied to your name -- that can still happen in the booth.) Then you bring that barcode to the booth, and it scans it after you walk in, and that "preloads" your selections. Then, you're just down to a verify step, under less pressure.

Bad idea, for many reasons:

1. Not everyone has access to computers.
2. It opens for coercion fraud and buying of votes. The coercer (whether it's a husband or someone who bought your vote) makes sure that you have only one printout, and that you don't spend long enough in the voting booth to fill out another.
3. Dimpled chads will be replaced with blotting ink cartridges. Expect the printer manufacturers to get sued if a vote allegedly registers incorrectly.

The possibility for buying votes and coercing the voter is also why Internet voting must not be allowed to take place unless and until we can open a connection between our mind and the Internet. The voting booth is there to ensure privacy. Please do not take that privacy away in the name of security. I think Ben Franklin had something to say about that trade-off.

Re:Another trick: reduce the time pressure issue

[MiKM]

What about public libraries? Libraries generally charge around ten cents to print a page, which isn't very much. Even so, I'm sure that libraries would be willing to make printing out ballots free-of-charge.

Nice step forward

[daemonburrito]

Next step would be firing the so-called "technology experts" in the popular media, who apparently lack the the tech saavy to google for what "open-source" means.

Coverage of the G1 launch was a beautiful example of their ignorance. Many times I heard the fakers pontificate about the "security concerns" in using open-source software, while not even knowing meaning of the term.

Re:Nice step forward

[eltaco]

http://xkcd.com/463/

GoogleSat Raise-Your-Hand Voting . . .

[PolygamousRanchKid]

No, don't follow them. Electronic Voting is an inherently flawed idea, let's just stick to pen&paper voting.

... everyone just go outside when the GoogleSat satellite goes over your region on election day.

Raise your hand: right hand, McCain; left hand, Obama

Google 's brilliant programmers have a flawless (albeit, beta) system that can correctly tally the votes.

Probably.

Re:GoogleSat Raise-Your-Hand Voting . . .

[Amazing Quantum Man]

I vote third party, you insensitive clod!!!!

Re:GoogleSat Raise-Your-Hand Voting . . .

[jcwayne]

That's you choice, but you may be charged with indecent exposure.

Re:GoogleSat Raise-Your-Hand Voting . . .

[GaryOlson]

The camera resolution is not high enough to discern items that small. Your vote has been disqualified.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

A solution looking for a problem

[schnikies79]

Just stick to paper. It works.

Electronically *ASSISTED* voting is good

[Joce640k]

Voting machines could print barcoded papers which can be counted electronically. This would allow fast vote counting without all the problems of the punch cards. Random samples of the paper could be counted manually as a security check.

Whatever happens there must be a paper trail. These are important decisions and any system without bits of paper should be a no-starter.

Re:Electronically *ASSISTED* voting is good

[Joce640k]

How hard can it be to vote electronically?

A machine can show voters a screen with photos/names/square boxes on it. At the side of the screen are physical buttons which correspond to the choices. When you press a button it goes beep and starts to flash. A flashing red 'X' also appears in the square box on screen. Your aim was off? Press a different button and the 'X' will go there.

Next to the screen there's a printer which really really looks like a printer instead of something designed by Apple. On the front of it there's a large button labeled "print".

Next to the printer there's a slot with a big arrow on it saying "vote here".

In the mat in front of the machine there's a sensor which detects voters and which speaks clearly-worded instructions to them when they stand on it. If you don't touch the screen in twenty seconds the message will repeat.

When you press the print button the voice tells you not to fold the card, to just check it and place it in the slot when you're happy. If you're not happy, place the card in the shredder instead and start over (both voting slot and shredder will read the barcode to verify you put the right piece of paper in them).

In case of trouble there's a "practice" machine outside with helpful assistant. The candidates on the practice machine will be stupid cartoon dogs called "Spot" and "Rover" just to make it obvious that it's not the real thing.

If you can screw that up you'll probably screw up a pencil/paper system anyway.

E-Voting Machine made Easy & Secure

[FlyingGuy]

This is not that hard, and it sure isn't rocket science.

Strip down a distro to the kernel then ad the following:

• Driver for a touch screen display
• Driver for audio output to drive headphones for the visually impaired
• Driver for a brail input device as well
• Driver for an thumb drive to boot from
• Driver for a tape style printer (not thermal)

Please a driver for something I missed....

The device has only enough ROM to POST and is hard coded to boot from the thumb drive which contains the OS & drivers and voting software with a modified USB connector that is a different shape then standard. This is a mild security feature.

An additional thumb drive will hold the data, again with a different shape so that the two cannot be confused, and both are encrypted using a two key scheme of some sort, suggestions?

Insert the drive one, power up the machine, it will then POST itself and ask for the data key and will go no farther until it validates the Data Drive. Voting commences and when voting is complete, the machine is shut down, drives are pulled and returned to the registrar for counting.

Re:E-Voting Machine made Easy & Secure

[RAMMS EIN]

You have some good ideas, but I feel obliged to point out that your solution does not obviously ensure that

1. Your vote gets counted correctly
2. Your vote is not traceable back to you
3. You cannot vote more than once

I still have more faith in casting votes on paper and counting them by hand than I have in your solution. Actually recording your vote on the paper ballot can be done by machine, of course, as long as you get to inspect the ballot to check that the machine did what you wanted it to.

Re:E-Voting Machine made Easy & Secure

[Burz]

Ramms+ein is right: Open source will not solve the problem of computerized voting, which transforms the ballot from a physical object that can be read by any poll worker, into an electromagnetic blip that cannot be verified except through extremely indirect and convoluted means using teams of hard-to-find experts.

As you may know, the 'normal' transactions we perform on computers every week are coming under increasingly successful attack. And that is WITH the benefit of the transactions carrying the identities of the people involved.

Anonymous transactions like the vote are far more vulnerable to error and tampering and are unsuitable for computerization except for peripheral functions like printing.

No amount of OSS review will help in an environment of high stakes subterfuge, especially when the remaining non-OSS layers of the systems are endlessly complex by comparison with paper ballots. Just ONE inappropriate logic gate or bit out of billions in those little machines can throw an election.

Re:E-Voting Machine made Easy & Secure

[tucuxi]

I've got a better one. Don't trust the machine, trust the paper ballot - and let people bring in their own ballot-checking machines.

So, yes - build your linux-powered machine (no need for special USB connectors; just make sure there's good physical security). Don't use any electronic recording mechanism - just print a piece of paper with the vote on it. Optically and humanly readable.

And let there be as many machines as possible, from several providers (or even bring-your-own) that can read, display and issue paper ballots. So if the dems don't trust the republican's machine, just have them bring their own and recount the votes. All machines must conform to stringent standards regarding printed ballots and interface.

To vote: go to the voting place, print as many ballots as you want, with any machine you want, check them with other machines if you're paranoid enough (or you want to know the print-out is really readable), and then show your ID and have the election officials deposit your ballot into the transparent box. At the end of the day, all those ballots get scanned and tallied (using more than one machine to make sure everything adds up). Voila! No need to trust just one piece of code+hardware!

This system would require good, public standards for the paper ballot and for the race format (so that machines could read it and display it) - but precious little else.

Use a bank account.

[v(*_*)vvvv]

Create an account for each item on the ballot.
Have voters register their bank accounts when registering to vote.
Only votes from registered bank accounts are accepted.
Only deposits of 1 cent are accepted.
People can vote at ATMs, online banking, or at a teller.
Check the balance at the end of the day.
Everyone has a paper trail.

*Just an example of using a solution for a solved problem for an unsolved problem.
**The system can be implemented without the banks cooperation, but why not have them cooperate - they're nationalized now anyway.

Why is it so hard?

[HairyCanary]

1. Take vote electronically.
2. Assign a randomly generated UUID.
3. Print UUID+vote on internal paper tape for backup.
4. Print UUID+vote on paper receipt for voter to keep.
5. Post UUID+vote on a public web site anyone can view.

Now, anybody can see the tally, do the math themselves, etc. And everyone who cares can look at their own UUID and see if the public tally is accurate.

Re:I still can't believe this is a problem.

[RAMMS EIN]

``Honestly, how hard is it to write voting software?''

Not incredibly hard, but that's not the issue. The issue is how easy it is to convince the right people that your voting system does what they want it to do.

I think the problem is either that's it's too easy to convince the right people that a voting system works, or that the right people aren't the people we want it to be.

National ID Card for States? I think not

[markdavis]

"Bowen also believes that a ubiquitous Internet voting system could not work without the use of a national ID card system."

For someone who seems to have a clue, she lost a lot of credibility with that statement. There is absolutely no need for a "national ID card system" to have secure and accurate voting. Voting is handled by the States, not the Federal Government.

Re:Electronic trail as well as paper trail

[Nursie]

No.

The moment you give the voter the ability to check their vote afterwards you give their abusive husband a way to check they voted correctly. Or the employer that wants you to vote for his buddy. Or the local mob...

Bad plan.

A serious question

[bill_kress]

It is supposed to be impossible for me to show someone how I voted. I can't be given a receipt or anything (it would be too easy to buy votes).

With that as a given, how does a paper trail help? If I as a voter can't be sure that my specific vote is the one on the paper, then it seems like there are still thousands of ways for someone to change it out.

The machine could print fake info first of all, so it would HAVE to be something I see and validate. Since it has to be a public record, it can't be tied to me by any kind of key though--so after it's printed it out for me to see, there is no saying that it doesn't print a second or third line for another candidate at some other time...

If the paper trail disagrees with the digital tally, do you just assume that the paper wasn't messed with or substituted?

I'm guessing people have thought about this more than I have, and I see the mention of "Paper Trail" a lot so I just thought I'd ask.

Re:A serious question

[pm_rat_poison]

Consider this: Someone votes in a booth using an electronic machine, which prints out their vote, which the voter themselves put in a sealed envelope and throw into a locked poll. The voter can verify that what he voted for is what the machine printed.
After the election day ends, the machine announces a sort of temporary result. Then, a representative of the justice system, and representatives of all parties, and a member of the public (with a role similar to jury duty) all verify that the number of votes correspond to the number of people registered to have voted in that place. If there is a difference between the electronic and the paper-trail result, the latter overrides the former. The representatives can also count as invalid all envelopes that contain an irregular number of printouts, or one that has any identify marks (such as writing, scratching, tears or whatever)

I don't understand the secrecy

[ypctx]

To provide a more accurate picture to the voting masses, just replace the voting machines with modified slot machines. You have to insert $1 coin and strike 3 Obamas in a row to actually vote for him. All other votes go to McCain. Top part of the machine could display laughing members of Congress, and what are they worth (only the millionaires).

Paper trail BAD; paper ballot GOOD

[Anonymous Coward]

Paper trails are bad. What we need are PAPER BALLOTS. The machine can help by helping voters fill out the damn form correctly and printing the ballot in COMPLETELY human readable form. Then an OCR can read it AFTER the voter has had a chance to make sure they are casting the votes they intended. The ballot helper MUST be completely independant of the OCR and the voter is the only link between the two.

No receipt, no tracking, no paper trail. Just a paper ballot. And of course we keep the ballots just as we normally would.

I'm surprised I have to explain this.