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Finnish E-Voting System Loses 2% of Votes
kaip writes "Finland piloted a fully electronic voting system in municipal elections last weekend. Due to a usability glitch, 232 votes, or about 2% of all electronic votes were lost. The results of the election may have been affected, because the seats in municipal assemblies are often decided by margins of a few votes. Unfortunately, nobody knows for sure, because the Ministry of Justice didn't see any need to implement a voter-verified paper record.
The ministry was, of course, duly warned about a fully electronic voting system, but the critique was debunked as 'science fiction.'
There is now discussion about re-arranging the affected elections. Thanks go to the voting system providers, Scytl and TietoEnator, for the experience."
"It seems that the system required the voter to insert a smart card to identify the voter, type in their selected candidate number, then press "ok", check the candidate details on the screen, and then press "ok" again. Some voters did not press "ok" for the second time, but instead removed their smart card from the voting terminal prematurely, causing their ballots not to be cast."
No. This isn't a glitch nor a problem with the machines. 98% of the voters got it right. That means that the directions were pretty clear.
This sounds like a nice feature to keep stupid people from voting.
It could be worse, it could be Monday.
http://www.arkko.com/evotingfailure
For information, I am a citizen of one of the three small places where the system was tested. I have already sent out an appeal of the decision to the voting board; if necessary, I will also appeal to the administrative court. Lets see how this plays out. I think we have a good chance of overturning the election results.
I'm living in one of those three experimental places and when I went to vote they offered me electrical version. I told 'em to frack off and give me true democratic way to vote because electronic one is very bad and unreliable. How do I know that communists ain't gonna change my vote?
Anyway, I made a nice scene there and few people turned away from voting electronic. I felt good .. a true savior of democratic society.
The summary has more data than the article. This was a pilot in three (smallish) municipalities, involving the 2% of the voters.
Of the e-votes cast in these three municipalities, 2% were not accounted for. So both statements are correct.
Municipality / Number of votes given / number of lost votes / lowest number of votes for elected person
Vihti: 7087 / 122 / 77
Kauniainen: 2982 / 61 / 49
Karkkila: 2165 / 49 / 35
The original Ministry of Justice announcement (in Finnish) states: "A total of 12234 electronic votes vere cast in the electronic voting pilot of the 2008 municipal elections. - -"
232 is about 2% of 12234 and therefore the summary is correct.
According to the same announcement the total number of votes in the three municipalities in which the voting system was piloted was 21073 (Karkkila 4251, Kauniainen 4843, Vihti 11979), i.e., 8839 of all voters cast a paper ballot. (The voters could choose between the traditional paper ballot and trying the new electronic system.)
Call me an old software biz cynic but when I see the phrase "didn't see any need to implement a voter-verified paper record" I read that as "given complete assurance by the sales team that the system was 100% accurate". Never attribute to malice that which is just as easily explained by incompetence. Never attribute to incompetence that is is more readily explained by a bunch of lying sales weasels.
Writing a number to a piece of paper has worked here in Finland for over hundred
years now so I really don't see the need for e-voting. Also the e-voting system
has been implemented by one of the crappiest IT-companies ever, TietoEnator, whose
main areas of expertise are: missing deadlines, underestimating budgets and designing
the worst and unusable UIs for the simplest of applications.
I guess that's what you get when you get a system made as cheaply as possible.
If they really wanted a good system, they should have looked up who makes those ATM machines for banks.
Or at the very least, those automate ticket vendors at the movie theater. Even those have a goddamn paper trail. What the hell, do those just cost TOO much to deploy?
We've always been at war with Eastasia, you know?
All the people who talk about e-voting want a paper record. But that has its own problems, the main one being the same problem as any voting system:
How do you know if your vote is registered correctly or not?
With a secret ballot, there is no transparency. The only thing you can verify is that approximately the same number of people that went into the machine cast a vote. And at least in the US, there's no requirement that you actually cast a vote when you're in the booth, as far as I can tell. I've never tried to walk out without voting, but I expect there's no way they can force you to vote.
Are the tallies wrong? How can you tell, except by interrogating every voter...which wouldn't work, because voters may lie or change their vote when asked what/whom they voted for.
In fact, how many paper ballots are invalidated because the voter voted for multiple candidates or otherwise invalidated their ballot? 2% may be low compared to real paper ballots.
e-voting doesn't make fraud any more or less difficult. It just makes things less transparent, and probably makes fraud easier.
Instead of having to print and fill out tens of thousands of ballots, register lots of dead people, or stuff ballot boxes, all of which have severe logistical problems and can be traced with a bunch of work, all you need to do perform e-fraud voting is compromise a couple of computers up in the food chain. There is no reliable auditability for e-voting unless you remove the secret ballot requirement...and even then, it's all plastic anyway. Logs (and audit logs) are a lot easier to fake than tens or hundreds of thousands of paper ballots. The latter requires coordination among large numbers of people; e-voting fraud just requires a couple of focused and motivated geeks. Bits are bits, baby, and our jobs is to make sure the bits are in the right order.
i'd trust paper ballots over any kind of e-voting any day. It's not hard to design a ballot that doesn't allow hanging chads. It's probably impossible to design a computer system that can't be compromised by someone with enough motivation.
About 0.5% of votes are ignored in the traditional voting system.
Which brings me to a giant WTF: why introduce an electronic system, when good nordic organization will provide poll results the same day anyway?
I've been wondering the exact same thing. The other argument used was that by introducing an electronic voting system, young people would be more willing to vote. That sound like a really shitty plan, because even if they did, this would not be the case the next time because then the whole electronic voting thing would be old news. And, in any case, if people are so very little interested in the society that they don't vote if it's traditional pen-and-paper, some gimmick e-voting parade surely will not make that big a difference.
Something fishy sure is going on here, I'm tellin' ya. Maybe the system providers are FOAF of the politicians so keenly pushing this fscked-up system? Or.. they are merely nazi puppets of the near future nazi rulers we'll have?
Ministry of justice itself described 2% as being "very high" figure compared to that of (afaik around 0,5% or so for) paper ballots.
In finland we get a pencil and a ballot (a piece of cardboard, about the size of big postcard) where we write the number of candidate. If there are several elections conducted at once (which is pretty rare), we get several ballots.
And yes, people old or clueless enough can screw that up too, but the screw-up-rate for evotes was expected to be way _lower_ than for paper ballots.
More about voting here:
http://www.vaalit.fi/17098.htm
What? Like Diebold?
Why are only special people privileged to counting? Can they not be bought?
There are no special people. Counting the votes has to be done in public, you can go there and watch.
Life is just nature's way of keeping meat fresh.
Since for some reason the cliche' in American media is that the USA are the oldest functioning democracy on the world, you may actually learn something today: Finland is. Finland introduced universal suffrage and the right to run for office for women in 1906. The USA as a whole can be counted as a democracy since 1964, when the blacks in the South states were finally allowed to vote and run for office and poll taxes were abolished (though most states had universal suffrage and right to run, but there is no such thing as a democracy for the few).
Sad to see that a nation with such a history is going down the drain of electronic voting...
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
If there was a visible feedback that a vote had or hadn't been placed (say a printed paper record) then the voter could immediately see that they hadn't pressed a final OK button and correct the issue.
As it is it appears there was no feedback or indication that there was a final step needed after selecting the correct candidate.
The UK and US voting systems deliberately throw away at least 50% of votes.
Deleted
You want George Bush to win the election in Finland?
If you need to write instructions for a process as simple as voting, you've frakked up the design of the system. Why were users able to remove their card before a vote was registered?
I finally found the video: http://www.hs.fi/videot/1135240559892?kategoria=Uutiset&sivu=1
?SYNTAX ERROR
"Electronic systems: good enough to control the movement of trillions of dollars in the international monetary system, perfect as a way to make sure the bombs that we drop in the third world 'won't miss' their targets, but absolutely unable to display a form on the screen and get user input in an election - go back to paper!"
Enough of the paper-trail fetish already. As with almost every other potential failure case, a paper record of votes in this case would have accomplished absolutely nothing.
One group told the Finnish government that they would be able to count votes by harnessing the movement of subatomic particles to display ephemeral text and shapes, to automatically sense human touch, to follow a pre-programmed decision script written in advance and placed into microscopic internal storage, and to protect their results by encoding them mathematically.
Another group explained some of the reasons why this might not all work perfectly.
And it wasn't until the second group chimed in that some wiseass said "hey, that sounds like science fiction!" ...
Well, I feel a little better about my own government now. That's kinda nice, I guess.
I tried to post before, but it seems that Slashdot discarded the post.
Let me relate an instance of voter fraud from the 2004 election.
The problem with all these new-fangled voting ideas is that voter fraud becomes much easier to do, because like any advanced system it has more points of failure that can be exploited.
In many close elections you see the scene of lawyers and party members from all sides lining up and counting votes, the cameras are looking at the tables, the talking heads on TV are explaining how each vote is counted by three groups of people, how every vote cast is critical, hanging chads, blah blah blah, etc.
This is the misdirection. As any student of basic sleight-of-hand knows, the part that receives the most attention is not the part where the trick is taking place. The point where "anyone" can go count the votes is the part where no fraud is taking place, because it already has taken place.
You can change the outcome of an election by:
Creating more votes for yourself is a classic tactic, both legal and illegal. This is usually done with "voter drives" and bussing people to locations, raising registered voters, etc. Illegally this is done by bussing vans of bums or party supporters and paying them to vote at multiple locations, dead people voting, people in jail voting, etc. This is the primary reason some people are opposed to the idea of having voter identification laws passed, because it hampers this ability to create fictional voters.
Destroying other people's votes is difficult, because votes are much more carefully reviewed at this point. Altering the number of votes in the box, or destroying the entire pool of votes is a harder thing to achieve depending on the security measures.
Invalidating other's votes is useful because if their vote disappears or is invalidated, it makes your votes that much stronger. The vote still "exists", but doesn't count for the opponent. A version of this was seen recently where some electronic Obama votes were printing ballots for McCain. Other mechanisms are making it hard to tell which candidates the vote went for.
How this relates to the 2004 voter fraud is how the ballots were being counted in Omaha. The count was being made for overseas/absentee ballots. Those votes were being counted as they were faxed in from some collection point.
Votes, to be counted, have to be validated before they can be counted. A vote is invalid for a variety of reasons one of which is if the person chose more than one candidate for president. A VERY large number of votes were invalid from this pool of faxed in votes.
Now this wasn't a scientific experiment, this is just what was observed. It was noticed that when a ballot appeared to be left leaning for the different things be voted on (all the other usual things one votes for, judges, the legislature, amendments, etc.) both Kerry and Bush were voted for. When the ballot was right leaning, only Bush was voted for.
This was escalated as an interesting grouping of ballot issues to supervisors, however if anything was done I don't know.
To summate, no Bush type voter had any problem filling in their ballot, however Kerry type voters seemed to overwhelmingly vote for both Bush and Kerry, therefore invalidating their ballot.
Now I'm of the opinion that Democrats are politically immature in many of this political beliefs and naive in many things. I do not think, however, that they are incapable of voting nor vote with this level of failure.
Assuming those in charge were correct, that these votes were coming from a legitimate source (rather than a man-in-the-middle fake-fax type thing), I'm of the opinion that as the ballots were being faxed, they were having a mark added to Bush for any ballot that was cast for Kerry, because as they hadn't been counted yet, then the votes hadn't been declared valid/invalid. The number of votes sent was the same as the number of votes received, therefore no voter fraud had taken place, but ballot fraud had taken place.
Perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps there was just a huge chunk of invalid votes all sent at once.
I'm a satanic clam.
As a poll worker, I hate the electronic machine we have. Don't get me wrong though, I love all the the features and benefits you pointed out.
Our machines display nice, easy to read forms on the screen that are easy for a user to select and even change their mind (it even includes an audio interface for the blind). It records the vote on a pcmcia memory card locked inside and also on a paper tape hidden inside. Totaling the counts is pretty quick just as you describe.
So why do I hate these machines? I hate them because a voter that understands what is going on here has exactly zero confidence that what they selected and was displayed on the screen is what was recorded on that pcmcia memory card and the hidden paper tape. The voter can't verify that the official version of their ballot was actually recorded as they intended because they can't see the bits on that card and can't see what was printed on that hidden paper tape. If votes get recorded incorrectly it doesn't even matter if it was due to hacking (before durring or after the polling) or a bug in the software. And since nothing you are left with after the fact was verified by the voters there is no way to detect a problem. No way to do a meaningful recount.
So, how would I change it. First, I doubt any system can be perfect but the design flaw above is inexcusable. I'd keep that nice touch screen interface for all the reasons posted above. I'd eliminate the pcmcia memory card and maybe the hidden paper tape (optional). I'd add a regular printer. When the voter completes an electronic ballot it gets printed as a paper ballot all filled in as the voter wanted. The voter picks that up, looks at it and verifies that it does in fact represent their choices. Then the voter takes the paper ballot over to and inserts it into the optical scanner with a clear cover so they can see their ballot being scanned. The scanner then drops the ballot into a locked ballot box. The scanner electronically counts the votes. Humans double check by hand counting a small percentage of ballot boxes and verifying the count made at the scanner was correct. If problems are apparent with the electronic count a full recount can be done the old fashioned way with the voter verified paper ballots.
E-voting? No, I don't think so.
Electronic registration and verification? Yes, that has value. Historically one of the great problems with the ballot process has been excluding persons who do not have the right to vote. Such as people who are dead or imaginary or have already voted. Or in my area, people who work and shop in my state but live in a different state and would like me to pay more taxes to improve the roads and bridges they use for free.
Here's what might work, which would save the state a little money and also increase the reliability of the voting process:
Use ATM devices that read a voter registration card and a PIN, and then print a ballot that is customized to the issues appropriate to this voter (bond issue for school district A, but nothing for any other school districts, etc). The voter's "account" is adjusted to show that he has "withdrawn" his ballot and cannot vote again in this election. Included on the ballot is a machine readable serial number and timestamp of the machine that issued it. The SN/TS are printed to a paper tape that the voter can inspect through a window, and verify that his blank ballot is on record. The SN/TS are also recorded in a digital file.
This preserves a solid audit trail for a fully manual recount, if it becomes necessary. A fraudulent ballot would not have a corresponding entry on the paper tape.
We know how to preserve the integrity of ballot boxes during collection and transport to counting stations. Nothing new here: just the use of appropriate technology that reached maturity decades ago.
Optical readers would tally votes electronically. Fraudulent ballots would be identified through the failure of the SN/TS to verify against the digital files; these would be passed directly to forensics as the first stage in a criminal investigation. Valid ballots that could not be reliably read by the scanners (defaced, or write-in candidate, etc) would be kicked out for hand processing, done with well established techniques to assure reliability.
This system would decrease wait times at the polls, deliver preliminary results within hours, preserve voter anonymity, yet assure a healthy voting process. A great advantage of it is that the voter would be able to use any polling place that met his concerns about personal safety (that is sometimes an issue in the USA), or is simply convenient for him.