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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."
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.
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. This guy obviously needs as much help as he can get........
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.
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.
"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."
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.
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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.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
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.
Free Manning, jail Obama.