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.

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

[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.

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.

A solution looking for a problem

[schnikies79]

Just stick to paper. It works.

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.

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:GoogleSat Raise-Your-Hand Voting . . .

[jcwayne]

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

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.

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

[GaryOlson]

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