German Court Bans E-Voting As Currently Employed

Kleiba writes "The highest German Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht, Federal Constitutional Court) ruled that electronic voting machines like Nedap ESD1 and ESD2 are not permissible in Germany. Der Spiegel, a well-known German newspaper, is featuring article on today's decision (in German; Babelfish translation here) which was the result of a lawsuit by physicist Ulrich Wiesner and his father Joachim Wiesner, a professor emeritus of political science. The main argument against the voting machines in the eyes of the Court is that they conflict with the principle of transparency. 2009 is a major election year for Germany, with parliamentary elections in the fall." Reader Dr. Hok writes "Voting machines are not illegal per se, but with these machines it wasn't possible to verify the results after the votes were cast. The verification procedure by the German authorities was flawed, too: only specimens were tested, not the machines actually used in the elections, and the detailed results (including the source code) were not made public. The results of the election remain legally valid, though."

Comments

Wheres the tag

[oodaloop]

suddenoutbreakofcommonsense ?

about time, really

[dunkelfalke]

while those nedap voting machines were easy to use (i voted using them four times), they were so insecure (you would need three guys and one minute of time to hack them as this youtube video shows) that they were already banned in their home country a year ago.

what's the difference?

[Caue]

We've been using voting machines in Brazil for quite some time now, always with satisfatory results

that makes me wonder: how hard is it to hack a piece of paper and a pen? if you have the means and a set objective, you can "hack" anything. And you don't even need a computer to do so.

Re:what's the difference?

[johannesg]

We've been using voting machines in Brazil for quite some time now, always with satisfatory results

that makes me wonder: how hard is it to hack a piece of paper and a pen? if you have the means and a set objective, you can "hack" anything. And you don't even need a computer to do so.

The difference is numbers. A single programmer in the right place can hack an entire election, untraceable for anybody else. To perform a similar hack in a pen and paper system you would need thousands, if not tens of thousands of people. The chances of none of them talking are slim, thus there is a much better chance of people finding out about the fraud.

Re:what's the difference?

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference is numbers.

Exactly. And there is no way to check the results. You have to trust the people running the voting system.

With paper and pen votes there are people from different political parties in the voting commitee, so they can keep an eye on their fellow commitee members, so that they can't invalidate a paper vote or stuff additional votes into the box.

With an electronic voting system computer professionals can be delegated by different parties, but it is much harder to keep a tab on what the other is doing than with simple paper/pen systems.

Re:what's the difference?

[Jane_Dozey]

And to add to that they also have to all be able to verify that the machines do exactly what they say they do internally and that there's no nefarious code, that once the data has left the machine it is verified as being correct and remains so.
Then there's the issue of the machine being left unguarded, who knows if someone tampered with it if it was? At least with paper ballots, if they're unaccounted for one moment and then they show up they can be checked quickly or heck, destroyed if there's any suspicion.

Re:what's the difference?

[swillden]

We've been using voting machines in Brazil for quite some time now, always with satisfactory results

How do you know the results are correct, and to what degree? This is a VERY serious question.

If politician A beats politician B by 10%, with the win fairly evenly distributed across many precincts and recounts of the paper ballots confirm the numbers, then you have a pretty strong reason to believe the outcome is correct, because alteration of that many votes in that many precincts would be intractable, as long as reasonable care is taken in the transportation and counting, and as long as all phases of the process are open to observation by the representatives of the political parties.

People can see pieces of paper, and watch how they're handled, sorted, counted, etc.

People cannot see digital bits represented as minute current flows, so bits are fundamentally less transparent.

Re:what's the difference?

[swillden]

To be honest though, I'd normally trust the results of a computer collecting tallies over people counting them by hand.

Which is more trustworthy is an interesting question.

On the one hand, computers are more systematic. They don't make random errors and they don't have political biases, per se. However, programming errors or deliberately-introduced bias mean that their speed allows them to miscount lots of votes really fast.

Humans make more actual mistakes, and may be prone to shading the results, but their counting is done in the open and at a pace where other humans with different biases can double-check their results. In fact, recounts are typically done by groups of people, with multiple individuals from competing parties examining each ballot, announcing their results audibly and similar checks on the tallies.

Given that sort of a counting structure, I think there's no question but that humans are maximally accurate. No machine will match them. It's also very expensive and inefficient.

Now I shall enlighten you all by explaining THE SOLUTION:

Voting should be done on computerized machines that print human and machine-readable ballots. Counting should be done by:

1. Incrementing counts in the voting machines;
2. Automated machine counting of ballots; and
3. Manual recounts of ballots.

All ballots are counted by method (1), every time. This is the nominal result of the election.

A statistically-valid sample of voting machines should have their ballots pulled and method (2) applied.

A statistically-valid sample of the ballots are pulled and counted with methods (2) and (3).

Any discrepancies among the three counts should motivate expansion of the sampling, ultimately to first a full machine recount of the ballots and if necessary a full hand recount.

The definition of "statistically-valid sample" must take into account the margin of win of the closest race. Enough recounting must be done to assure that the election tallies have a margin of error that is small enough to assure sufficient confidence that the closest race is decided correctly. Since the recounting is easy, I'd probably ask for a 99% confidence interval.

Also, after the required sample size is determined, the random selection must be implemented properly, using transparent random number sources such as dice or lottery ball machines. Representatives of the parties should oversee the sampling and recounting, and the parties should agree on precise sampling techniques before the election.

There you have it. The Answer.

Next I shall tackle World Hunger by ensuring a statistically-sufficient average distribution of food.

Re:Hard copy

[beleriand]

This only makes sense if it is verified immediately by the majority of the voters. If it's just an internal hard copy, a manipulated machine can just "punch out" the same wrong vote that is stored, while fooling the voter on the display.

Now what's the point of complicated and expensive machines which would present a printout to voters, ask for confirmation, etc?

Pen&Paper voting is much cheaper, and very secure.

Mod parent up!

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up. This guy obviously needs as much help as he can get........

Wrong metaphor

[mlwmohawk]

Electronic voting machines are a mistake. While we say that they should be as easy and secure as ATMs, and they should be, but what most people don't see is that ATMs are not easy.

A large segment of the voting population, in the U.S.A. anyway, does not use ATMs because they are hard to use and confusing. ATMs are an "opt in" technology. Banks still have tellers and branches.

yes, over time as the population gets accustomed to technology, electronic voting may make sense. Maybe in a generation or two. Right now, it excludes the elderly or Luddite population. My brother in-law is 40, and he doesn't use ATMs and doesn't own a computer!!

Sure we can argue that maybe they shouldn't vote, but that is a different conversation.

Re:Yup

[pimpimpim]

The judgment indeed leaves for wiggleroom. They did not ban e-voting per se, instead they required the collecting and the counting of the voting to be transparent to the population, in accordance to the constitution. Interesting question is, how e-voting can have transparent counting, open source code for the machine comes to mind.

Babelfish translation...

[Timosch]

As usual, the Babelfish translation of the Spiegel article is horrible, so I just quickly translated it to Englisch myself.

"Federal Constitutional Court stops usage of voting computers
Until further notice, German voters will vote with pen and paper: The Constitutional court has declared the voting machines used e.g. in the last Federal election illegal. The current technology had defects and was hard to control[, the court said].
Karlsruhe. - The approx. 1800 devices with which around 2 mio. voters have voted in the Bundestag election of 2005 contradict the principle of public election [The Principle that votes are counted in public., note of translator], it said in the verdict delivered on Tuesday.
However, as there were no hints of errors, the election itself remains valid, the court in Karlsruhe decided. It can hence be expected that the elections this year will be carried out with paper and a pen.
With the decision on Tuesday, two complains were mostly successful. The appeal complained about several flaws in the machines which, according to the plaintiffs, violate secret voting and democratic control over the couting.
The Vice president of the Federal Constitutional Court, Andreas VoÃYkuhle, stressed that e-voting isn't completely banned now. However, the currently used machines had flaws. "The tenor of the decision could lead to the conclusion that the court was hostile towards technology and misconceived the challenges and possibilities of the digital age.", VoÃYkuhle said. But this was not true. The use of voting machines would indeed be possible. "Nor has the court banned possibilities of internet voting."
Approx. 2 mio. voters haven't voted with a pen and a ballot in the 2005 election, but instead with a voting machine.
The electronic voting devices were used in 39 of the 299 voting districts all over the country, precisely in the states of Brandenburg, Hesse, Nordrhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Pfalz and Saxony-Anhalt.
The Nedap voting machines common in Germany were used for the first time during the 1999 EP election and recently in a municipal election in Brandenburg in September 2008. The decision of the Federal Constitutional Court was aimed at the computers Nedap ESD1 and ESD2.
The plaintiffs were the physician Ulrich Wiesner and his father Joachim Wiesner, a retired policital scientist. In the name of the plaintiffs, Prof. Wolfgang LÃwer from Bonn critizised in the hearing in October that the voters would have to have "blind faith" towards the electronic ballots. "We are concerned about a vacuum of control after the act of voting." This endangered the principle of a public election. In a traditional ballot election, the citizens can be present during the counting of the ballots. Justice Rudolf Mellinghoff, who was the primary responsible judge in the case, then [in October] asked about the possibility to make the computer election more traceable through a printed ballot.
Experts say that modifications of the software could generally be discovered afterwards, but hardware modifications - i.e. on the actual device - were hard to discover, JÃrn Müller-Quade from the European Institute for System Security said. Such manipulations were demonstrated by the Chaos Computer Club.
Voting machines have been used in several countries for years. Especially in the USA, they are very common despite known flaws in elections. Especially punchcards are wide spread over there and played a major role in the problems of the Presidential election of 2000 in Florida."

proud

[Tom]

For one, I'm proud to live here.

The higher courts in Germany are very often quite smart and experienced at cutting through the bullshit and finding (and then ruling on) the actual matter. There are actually several such "highest courts", since only certain matters can go to the BVG, and in most areas of the law the specialist top-court is just that. In the words of one judge of the BAG (the highest court for labor law): "Above us, there's only god".

This is another fine piece. If you can read german, I strongly recommend reading the full reasoning once its out.

Re:Yup

[he-sk]

Add in an expert commission to review the machines ...

Fail. The ruling specifically says that evoting has to be transparent to the average citizen that is no computer expert. Good look coming up with a scheme that fulfills this requirement.

Re:Hard copy

[DrVomact]

I disagree. Electronic voting, properly implemented would have clear and significant advantages over traditional paper or punchcard ballots. Electronic voting could be both faster and more accurate than the older methods.

It should be obvious that electronic results can be tabulated much more quickly than hand counted ballots. If you're talking about punch cards processed by machine readers, then a purely electronic process would still be faster. There's no need to handle any sort of physical media—you just transfer the vote count electronically to a CPU, and add it up.

As far as accuracy in reflecting the true intent of the voters, an electronic process could also be significantly superior. Each voting machine would have an exact digital record of every vote cast. There would be none of the problems associated with analog ballots—like the famous "hanging chads" of Florida, or poorly marked paper ballots that give false results when processed by OCR. A properly designed voting machine would be capable of detecting user error (like voting for opposing candidates for the same office, or not voting for anyone at all), and notify the voter immediately.

So what do I mean by "properly implemented"? Well, pretty much everyone here will agree that closed, proprietary hardware and software are absolutely not a good idea for voting machines. The design and code must be public, so that the public (or the more technically sophisticated members thereof) can examine them for flaws. There must also be public discussion of the procedures used to safeguard the integrity of the machines and their data. Given such openness, there's no reason why a reliable electronic voting system can't be built and used with confidence.

My strongest objection to electronic voting as it's now implemented is that it leaves no audit trail. Once the electronic votes are tabulated, there's no way to check that the votes were, indeed, counted honestly. I think there's a pretty simple solution to this: print out a copy of the voter's ballot, and allow him to review it when he leaves the voting booth. If the voter agrees that the printout is legible and reflects how he actually voted, the paper goes into a box.

But doesn't that obviate the whole point of electronic voting; aren't we ultimately back to counting paper ballots? Not at all! First, the paper exists only as an audit trail. The votes are counted electronically. Only if a candidate demands a recount are the boxes of paper ballots ever opened and counted.

More importantly, though, the paper printouts provide a way to verify that the system is working correctly on a continual basis. To prove that the electronic system is honest, it's not necessary to count every single ballot to see if the electronic and paper totals are equal. If you have a paper trail, then you can do a statistical analysis of only a small sample of the voting results from randomly chosen districts and machines to verify that the vote was honest. This can—and should—be done continually on a random basis to detect any corruption of the process.