Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Finnish E-Voting System Loses 2% of Votes

Posted by Soulskill on from the in-america-we-call-that-the-margin-of-error dept.

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."

24 of 366 comments (clear)

  1. Usability Glitch? by lecithin · · Score: 4, Interesting

    "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.
    1. Re:Usability Glitch? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Actually ministry of justice itself described 2% failure rate as "very high" compared to ordinary paper ballot. In Finland an ordinary failure rate for paper ballots cast would afaik be around 0,5% and that includes Donald Duck and offensive drawings, which are not available to evoters.

      One of the pro-evoting arguments was that we get significantly _lower_ failure rates compared to paper ballots. Apparently that was not the case...

    2. Re:Usability Glitch? by Adrian+Lopez · · Score: 5, Funny

      Some voters did not press "ok" for the second time.

      Press OK to Finnish?

      --
      "In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
    3. Re:Usability Glitch? by Adrian+Lopez · · Score: 5, Funny

      Damn. I meant to post that as an Anonymous Coward.

      --
      "In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
    4. Re:Usability Glitch? by Volante3192 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I keep hearing this argument about evoting, that it has a lower failure rate.

      Can someone please find an actual study that confirms this? Or are they just hoping if something's repeated often enough it's taken as fact?

    5. Re:Usability Glitch? by DMNT · · Score: 5, Informative

      Actually ministry of justice itself described 2% failure rate as "very high" compared to ordinary paper ballot. In Finland an ordinary failure rate for paper ballots cast would afaik be around 0,5% and that includes Donald Duck and offensive drawings, which are not available to evoters.

      As an election vote counter I can assure that out of the approximately 7000 votes that went thru my hands during the counting, only 9 or 10 were that ambiguous that it couldn't be reliably placed to one single candidate. Those ambiguous votes go to the board of election officials that will ultimately decide whether it's a valid vote (and who has the voter voted for) or not. Other invalid votes were maybe 5 times as common. Most of the time it's a question of whether the number is "1 or 7?" and other common problems are "6 or 0?" and "5 or 6?"

      The Finnish counting system was developed during times of great distress and has stood the test of time. It was good right after the civil war and therefore it's good for peaceful times too:
      The votes are first grouped by candidate, then counted twice by separate persons and invalid or ambiguous votes taken aside. If the numbers differ, they're counted again by two separate persons. Then the count is recorded on two separate forms held by secretaries and those forms are cross-validated against each other.

      After this, the votes are given to second counting group selected at random (obviously different from the first group) and counted again, with a possibility to take aside votes they found invalid that were accepted previously but not vice versa. If this verification count differs at all from the first count, the number of votes for candidate will be verified by counting again the number of votes for that particular candidate and if the first count seems to have been erroneous it'll be counted for the third time by a third group. Finally the invalid votes will be considered and decided whether it is an acceptable vote or not by higher election officials. Each party attending the elections have a right to set observators to the counting procedures but at times like these I saw none personally.

      This whole procedure makes it really hard to cheat in the vote counting unless you're using e-voting where officials just download the XML, turn it into a PDF and print it. Then they tell us that this is the result. I'd love to link to the news video where they did that but unfortunately I'm unable to find it right now.

      --
      ?SYNTAX ERROR
    6. Re:Usability Glitch? by grumbel · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This isn't a glitch nor a problem with the machines.

      Yeah, the good old "blame the user" solution, its after all just democracy that is at stake...

      Why is it even possible for the user to eject the card before stuff is done? Any half decent ATM doesn't allow that, it holds the card inside until everything is finished. Why doesn't the voting machine do the same? Seems to me to be a pretty clear case of a badly designed system.

    7. Re:Usability Glitch? by sumdumass · · Score: 5, Funny

      It's probably one of those things that works in theory and blows up in operation. I guess you can say it looked good on paper.

    8. Re:Usability Glitch? by moderators_are_w*nke · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If only it was. I really don't get e-voting. Why do people insist on using these highly complex, extremely expensive systems when the simple approach (write an X in a box on a piece of paper) works well and has done for hundreds of years, in the UK anyway.

      --
      "XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, use more." - Anonymous Coward
    9. Re:Usability Glitch? by fastest+fascist · · Score: 5, Interesting

      A commenter on an article dealing with the issue at hs.fi says there were problems with the machines that may have caused this issue:
      http://www.hs.fi/keskustelu/Brax%3A+Vaalitulosta+ei+voi+perua+hukka%E4%E4nien+takia/thread.jspa?threadID=148607&tstart=0&sourceStart=40&start=60
      username Jones is the commenter, it's in Finnish, so here's a summary:

      Commenter says she is a young female with university degree from Kauniainen who tried electronic voting with poor results. The voting machine had responsiveness issues: first the machine refused to register input of the candidate number, and after numerous presses and waiting the machine responded. The commenter then pressed the "ok" button, nothing happened. She pressed it again, harder, and pressed more times, until after several minutes of trying the buttonpress was registered. Then a screen popped up with the name of the candidate and the user was prompted again to press OK to accept the vote. Same problem with the OK button again, but she managed to get it to register after a long time of trying and waiting for the machine to respond.

      If this is accurate, it's not unreasonable to think people may have thought the machine isn't even supposed to show the candidate number chosen on-screen after choosing, or that either of the OK presses aren't actually supposed to result in any response from the machine. 2% failures with these kinds of problems doesn't sound so strange.

    10. Re:Usability Glitch? by TapeCutter · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "If this is true, then a 2% failure rate would be extremely low in comparison to traditional paper ballot systems."

      Cite please.

      "Which is not to say that the result of an unaudited electronic voting system is actually trustworthy."

      If the voter (usually via thier representative) can't determine that the election procedure is trustworthy then by default it isn't.

      PS: To the OP and others who keep making the suggestion that "stupid people shoudn't be allowed to vote" - I submit that they are petitioning to disenfanchise themselves but are too stupid to realise it.

      --
      And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
    11. Re:Usability Glitch? by RollingThunder · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Quite simply, because they want instant results when the polls close.

    12. Re:Usability Glitch? by karstux · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Does it really matter if you have them instantly - as opposed to the next morning? And sacrifice trust in the validity of the election for such a small convenience?

      If you have a truly verifiable e-Voting system with a paper trail, the final, binding results aren't faster either - because a few districts will still have to be counted manually to verify the machine count.

      It's insanity. There is no advantage to electronic voting. It's expensive, complicated and prone to failure and manipulation on so many levels, it's obscene. It undermines democracy.

      --
      Don't whistle while you're pissing.
    13. Re:Usability Glitch? by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The card should have been locked into the machine until the voter said 'OK' or cleared the screen, and locked it in with an alert and a deactivation warning if the person left the booth without doing either. Anyone can get confused about simple directions for an entirely new system. How many of us have tried to walk away from an ATM with our card still in it because we were distracted?

    14. Re:Usability Glitch? by mrSnowman · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Any computer interface should be intuitive to whatever group of people will be using it. Whether it is a computer literate techie or an elderly grandparent that has never touched a computer before.

      Especially the elderly in this case. They are the group of people who pay the most attention to politics and have the least experience with computers. If it's not intuitive to the largest group of people that will be using it it's a bad interface.

      Won't somebody think of the elderly? :(

    15. Re:Usability Glitch? by Idaho · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      Holy shit. You have to use a smartcard to vote? Can it be tracked to a specific voter? Or rather, are any mechanisms implemented to make sure it can't be? If not, this is an even bigger WTF than losing a couple of votes.

      --
      Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
    16. Re:Usability Glitch? by tbannist · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That's a great idea. You realize, of course, that people would immediately start adding additional questions and turning away people who don't give the right answer. Two personal favorites are "Who are you going to vote for?" and "What color is your skin?"

      The problem with any type of merit based system, is that the "merit" will quickly become subjective to the advantage of the people who get to decide what the "merit" is.

      In other words, that's a simple recipe for corruption.

      --
      Fanatically anti-fanatical
  2. the stats by japa · · Score: 5, Informative
    There were 3 pilot municipalities; Vihti, Kauniainen and Karkkila.

    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

  3. Re:More information here by kevinatilusa · · Score: 4, Informative

    From the summary, it seems that they're defining "lost" as just "the voter intended to cast a vote for the office, but none registered", and include those caused by user error (the voter pulling out the voting card before confirming their vote, or failing to confirm their vote altogether).

    In that sense, the problem seems not to be electronic voting so much as just a poor set of instructions. Poorly designed ballots in other places can lead to a similar level of "lost" votes -- for example in the U.S. state of North Carolina, about 2.5%-3% of ballots in presidential races fail to register a vote for President, compared to 1.1% in other states. The primary culprit? A poorly designed ballots where voters THINK they're casting a straight-ticket vote for every office, but in reality are casting one for every office except President.

  4. "Didn't see any need" ? by DrStrangeLug · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  5. Paper ballots by Aggrajag · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  6. Re:voting machines sales that go to the lowest bid by MorderVonAllem · · Score: 4, Funny

    If they really wanted a good system, they should have looked up who makes those ATM machines for banks.

    What? Like Diebold?

  7. Re:More information here by canthusus · · Score: 4, Interesting

    the problem seems not to be electronic voting so much as just a poor set of instructions.

    Check out "usability" - eg Donald Norman. If you need to rely on detailed instructions, then you've got a usability issue.

    Truth is, we don't know the intentions of those who withdrew their card early. But they were told that they had to press "Cancel" to cancel their vote. As they didn't "follow the instructions" for either voting or not voting, I'd say there's a usability problem.

    (and yes, I know people don't always follow instructions on simple paper ballots)

  8. Re:Paper is no panacea by grumbel · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How do you know if your vote is registered correctly or not?

    You stand there and watch while they do the counting. The whole point of pen&paper is that the voter themselves can verify that the voting process happens correctly, everything that isn't pen&paper adds a layer of intransparency that makes it much harder or impossible for the voter to verify the voting process is going as advertised.

    e-voting doesn't make fraud any more or less difficult. It just makes things less transparent, and probably makes fraud easier.

    E-Voting doesn't only make fraud easier, it makes large scale fraud possible in the first place. With paper you will have a really though time manipulating more then a single ballot box, with E-Voting on the other side you can do large scale fraud pretty easily when you sit at the right spot.

    The good thing about pen&paper is that it works even when you can't trust the government, it of course doesn't stop fraud in that case, but it makes it much easier to detect.