Public Clearinghouse Proposed For Evoting Failures

Hugh Pickens writes "Alice Lipowicz writes in Federal Computer Week that Lawrence Norden, senior counsel to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, has reviewed hundreds of reports of problems with electronic voting systems during the last eight years. He is recommending a new regulatory system with a national database, accessible by election officials and others, that identifies voting system malfunctions reported by vendors or election officials and new legislation that requires vendors report evoting failures to the clearinghouse. 'We need a new and better regulatory structure to ensure that voting system defects are caught early, officials in affected jurisdictions are notified immediately, and action is taken to make certain that they will be corrected for all such systems, wherever they are used in the United States,' writes Norden. Adding that election officials rely on vendors to keep them aware of potential problems with voting machines, which is often done voluntarily and that voting system failures in one jurisdiction tend to be repeated in other areas, resulting in reduced public confidence and lost votes."

Comments

How is a Diebold machine like a Pakistani citizen?

[symbolset]

They don't get to vote in America, and we shouldn't let them count the votes either.

Look, I'm an IT guy. I completely get the labor savings, the fallibility of humans, the difference in cost. We ought to be willing to pay the cost for humans to count our votes - if it costs more, maybe we'll let less stupid stuff on the ballot, or vote less than every few months. I get that when people want to cheat, a way can often be found - though most vote-counting setups have multiple interested parties to limit the cheating. I get that the average American voter is mindless cattle whose vote can be bought with sufficient advertising. But still, I'd rather that people tried to get their cheating past other suspicious-minded people than that machines introduced the opportunity to rig elections wholesale in advance and without a trace.

In the mean time until the machines are granted the right to vote, they've got no business counting the vote.

As for the rest of it, well I believe it's been described as the worst system for managing society - except for all the others that have been tried. It's mostly working.

eVoting is a scam

[rsborg]

Aside from the pure things that can go wrong aspect, there is the fact that requiring independent counting of votes at the local level increases participation in our democracy.

Of course the ruling class (wealthy and political dynasties) wants to sabotage that exactly because it benefits them directly.

Personally, I believe we should have a national holiday for big vote days so we can celebrate the most important function of a citizen in a democracy.

Or the US could just use a paper and pencil

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems a paper and pencil work just fine for Canada, and would be a lot cheaper than electronic voting, a clearninghouse, committees to oversee this crap, etc.

The companies making voting machines sure did cash in on the failure of the Florida paper/punch ballot.

Re:Or the US could just use a paper and pencil

[Shakrai]

I'm a poll worker in New York State and familiar with our system. To address a two of the points in that article:

Some polling sites did not receive the optical scanners needed to read paper ballots by 6 a.m., when voting was supposed to begin.

This is a logistical problem, not an indictment of the new voting technology. Any technology (including pen and paper) is rendered moot if the people in charge of it can't get it deployed on time.

At other polling places, the scanners failed to operate properly when they were switched on, forcing voters to wait while election workers struggled to get the devices going.

The poll workers were not properly trained. We have emergency (pen and paper) ballots on hand for this contingency. If they couldn't get their machines running for whatever reason they should have started issuing these ballots as soon as the polls opened. There is no excuse for requiring a voter to wait. This is a human capital problem and one that can only be addressed by recruiting better people to serve as poll workers. Have you considered volunteering to be one?

Why even bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

Evoting is a solution in search of a problem. There's no compelling reason not to use paper ballots.

Re:Why even bother?

[cappp]

Cost. That's most likely the driving force. It's hard to find accurate numbers on a federal level but I stumbled across, what I think is, small town coverage of a local special election which included some data:

The Senate election cost Lewis County approximately $22,000

State regulations require each precinct to have at least four workers on election day. Workers in Lewis County receive $115 for their work, including mileage and training costs, according to Lewis County Clerk Glenda Himes. That salary varies from county to county. The state mandates a minimum pay of a $60 salary for election workers. In addition to the four required workers per precinct, two additional people work in Lewis County's Tollesboro precinct because it is the largest precinct in the county, according to Himes. That adds up to approximately $6,670 just to pay workers the day of the election in Lewis County. Carter County is required to have 92 workers for its 23 precincts but also hires a few extras. Each worker receives $25 for attending the mandatory training session as well as $125 for working election day, totaling $150 per worker. That's a minimum cost of $13,800 for the county.

Now apply those kinds of figures on a larger scale - perhaps to NY or even on the federal level. Being able to cut the staff requirements in half by using computers is a tempting goal for cash-strapped areas. Throw in an obsession with the appearance of relevence, a need to differentiate the current administration from those previous, the desire to appear at the front of the technological wave, a lack of transparency from the involved companies, budgetary pressure, and some genuine well-meaners and you have your reason right there.

In Canada the cost of their 2004 election included

Election delivery activities, including fees to election workers and poll officials, printing lists of electors, and renting offices of returning officers and polling sites:$108 million

. Then you've got the expensive of printing the ballots, packaging, delivery, counting...it adds up.

Re:Why even bother?

[DavidTC]

And how the fuck does buying computers, which have to be replaced every decade or so, and require more training and more people, save any money?

All that stuff you listed has to be done anyway. You still need polling sites, you still need election workers, you still need all that.

And then you need computers and servers. The county you mentioned has 23 precincts, so pretending that each voting machine was $1000 (Which is absurdly low), they'd cost more than then the entire rest of the election if each precinct only bought one.

Which is not how it works. Each precinct, I know from experience, has at least two. I vote in a totally empty precinct in Georgia and mine has two. And they cost closer to $3000. Which is $144,000.

Pretending they had no other costs themselves (Which is idiotic, at minimum you have more training, and the cost of programming the machines), and removed all other costs of the election. (We'll do it outside, in the open air, with no staff.), they'd pay off in 6.5 elections, which is right about the time they'd break and need replacing.

In reality, you can save, at most, half the current cost of running an election...you still need locations, you still need roughly the same amount of staff, you still have to figure out the ballots. So it takes 13 years or so to pay off, and even that's somewhat idealized.

No place has ever saved any money by electronic voting.

i voted in the new york primaries

[circletimessquare]

with the fill in the oval, scan it system. it worked ok. at least it has a paper trail, and that's all you can ask for

it is superior in that respect to the mechanical voting machines they replaced: mechanical black box has less attack vectors that electronic black box, yes, but mechanical black box has more attack vectors than paper trail. yes, you can cheat in any voting system, but a massive conspiracy of ballot stuffers, drivers losing boxes of ballots, etc.: this can be replaced with a much smaller group of well-placed corrupt bureaucrats to manipulate mechanical voting, and with electronic, one well-placed hacker and a few milliseconds can alter the vote in ways that even statistical analysis can't reveal the manipulations

the lesson being: if your voting system is a black box: votes in, elected representative sausage out, people won't trust the vote. they need something tangible, something they can trust and understand, in their hands, which only a paper ballot is. the most advanced technophilic society 100 years form now should still be using paper, for the sake of legitimacy of the government in the eyes of its people

it's just too easy to hack a machine, and once you place doubt in the legitimacy of your elected officials, democracy itself is in trouble. we have enough angry idiots running around the usa today in the form of the tea party mumbling about "secret muslims." all we need is even the slightest perception of election machine untrustability, and the social unrest will be considerable. the reality or lack thereof of genuine hacking events isn't even the issue: PERCEPTION is the issue. enough people don't have faith in their government as it is, don't give them more reason to spin their paranoid schizophrenic fantasies and rabble rousing hysteria. because they will do it. and idiots will believe it

distrust

[circletimessquare]

there is trusting too much in this world: a sort of gullibility to someone because you look too much at certain shallow easily manipulated signifiers of what a trustworthy person should be (like: wear a suit)

then there is genuine trust or genuine distrust coming from someone with a competent intelligence: a wise wariness, an awareness of what you lack in knowledge of a person, an emphasis on looking at what they say and what they have done in the past: sound judgment leading to an appropriate trust level

then there is this sort of pathological distrust, the mirror image of gullibility. where even those who are good people are cast in doubt, due to blanket statements about things you don't know, prejudice, mindless negativity, and a dim perceptive ability. all of which are on display in your comment above

there are people in this world who trust too easily, and there are people who trust too hard. both of which being character failures due to psychological imbalance and/ or intelligence defect. you are such a person

Re:threat

[Sir_Lewk]

Didn't Brazil manage to pull off an election with 128 million votes, and zero miscounts?

No. They had an election and the people in charge of it claim there were no miscounts. The distinction is important.

With electronic voting machines, in the best of all possible circumstances (open source code) only a very small portion of the population is able to truly understand and verify it, and an even tinier portion of people are able to verify that the code that's available to the public is actually the code that is running on the machines when voters use them. The people who are in the position to verify that either A) have absolutely no idea how to do so, or B) are the people who would have installed the incorrect software in the first place.

If you make the machines output a physical copy of the vote which the voter then verifies then the situation is improved, but with a purely electronic voting system the entire thing is FUBAR.

Re:Just make everyone make a key when they registe

[migla]

Being able to vote from home would open up the possibility for unscrupulous types with access to violence to force you to vote their way.

too much "money" involved...

[advocate_one]

so it ain't gonna happen... the lobbyists will ensure it dies before ever getting debated...

Precedent in Medical Devices

[necro81]

It seems to me that the organizers of such a system could look for precedent in the medical device industry. There is a central repository for medical device problems, the MAUDE database, that keeps track of adverse events, and is searchable by anyone. Any respectable medical device manufacturer will consult that database to make sure that their new wiz-bang product isn't susceptible to the same failings as existing products, and you can bet the FDA will do the same before approving a new device. Practitioners and users can search the database to see if there are issues with a particular device (or class of devices).

It doesn't mean that problems with medical devices don't still exist, but at least there is mandated uniform reporting.

Another key issue here is that the FDA is empowered to take devices off the market if enough serious problems come up. As far as I know, there is nothing like that in voting systems (but damn well should be).

Re:threat

[ImNotAtWork]

No it doesn't Electronic Voting with out a paper trail does. In my district we have electronic voting machines that spit out a paper ballet you then verify your vote and then walk over to the ballot box and place your paper trail ballet box. If it fails you contact one of the people that assist and start the process of finding out what is wrong.

Re:How is a Diebold machine like a Pakistani citiz

[arth1]

As for the rest of it, well I believe it's been described as the worst system for managing society - except for all the others that have been tried. It's mostly working.

I believe Winston Churchill said that with regards to democracy. Here in the US, we have a limited representative republic, not democracy.

A few key differences:
(a) No direct representation, but voting for an electorate who in turn votes for who goes to office.
(b) A dictator with the power to veto the will of the people.
(c) A third of the government (the supreme court) isn't elected, but appointed. And sits for life too.
(d) Disenfranchisement is allowed and common. Not only felons lose their right to vote, but in many cases unconvicted suspects and vagabonds are prevented from voting.
(e) Only pre-planned voting is allowed. You have to register to vote.
(f) No de-facto freedom of who to vote for. You're generally barred from voting in more than one primary election, and the two-party system doesn't give a lot of real choice.

It would be nice if we tried democracy here in the US. One man, one vote, without any "unless" clauses and hoops designed to keep the powers that be in power.

Essay

[samsonaod]

Ok this will never happen, but..... we shouldn't have a "Multiple Guess" ballot. People should be educated and informed enough before they walk in the door. Upon entering each voter should be handed a ballot (a blank piece of paper) where they need to list the candidate they want elected and for what position they want them elected. They also need to list 3 reasons they want them elected. "Ballots" should be water marked to ensure that voters aren't just using the a given parties cheat sheet. A cheat sheet can be brought in, but must be hand copied. If you're illiterate too bad. If you have a doctors note indicating a disability where it's not possible to write dictation should be available. ahh well

Re:How is a Diebold machine like a Pakistani citiz

[mcgrew]

We ought to be willing to pay the cost for humans to count our votes - if it costs more, maybe we'll let less stupid stuff on the ballot, or vote less than every few months.

It depends on the system. By your reckoning we should do away with computers in business and government altogether, and go back to filing paper in cabinets.

Here in Illinois we may have the world's most corrupt politicians. Our last Governor was convicted of a felony and the jury deadlocked on 12 other felony counts that will be retried next year while he appeals the conviction. The Governor before him is in Federal prison right now for bribery. In Chicago they have a saying; "vote early, vote often." In Illinois we're so patriotic that being dead doesn't keep us away from the polls.

Despite (or maybe because of) this, our voting machines spit out a paper trail, which is put in an old fashioned ballot box. If there are any questions, the votes can be retabulated by hand. So here at least, it would be as hard to rig elections wholesale and incredibly hard to do it without a trace; as hard or harder than pre-computer times.

Like any IT endeavor, procedures are more important than hardware and software. I agree with you about most states, who have no paper for humans to count. IMO that's just plain stupid.

Re:How is a Diebold machine like a Pakistani citiz

[fyngyrz]

but academia has fairly solid proposals for machines that DO leave traces and that DO let voters verify votes.

Even so, I'm with the First Poster. He's got it exactly right. We can let machines do the counting if and when the machines are smart enough to vote and to care about those votes, presuming we're still engaged in pretending to stick to our constitutionally based, vague semblance of a democratic republic. Until then, machines that control vote counting are potentially proxies for corporations. No more, no less. And that is extraordinarily dangerous.

In the meantime, the system is absolutely corrupt from the top down, and introducing new mechanisms that may or may not allow wholesale election buying are a bad idea, because what is here now -- that is, people doing the counting -- is extremely difficult to corrupt all at once. It's probably the only thing in the entire process that works half-decently on a reliable basis. And yes, we can wait a few hours or even day for results if we have to. There's no actual need for a McDonalds/FedEx mentality about the vote. It isn't like the elected must start work on the very next day.

What we need (since I'm on my soapbox) is to stop regarding corporations as "persons", and forbid them from coming anywhere near a lawmaker or a political party or an election with money, opinion, gifts, or offers of employment before, during or after their elected term. Under penalty of having the executives hung. Corporations are not people. At best, they are sociopaths. Dangerous, without any concern for actual humans, and with goals that have no natural connection with the best interests of humans except at the executive levels. As demonstrated by such things as nine million dollar salaries. And higher.

The original idea of the constitution was, here we make the federal government, which we strip of most powers, not in ignorance that it will make things difficult for the government, but because it will make things difficult for them.

First, we should get back to that, and stop accepting the government's complaint that is "has to do something despite the constitution, because it needs to (if it really needs to, there is article five, ready and waiting... we will decide, not them, if it's really required.)

Second, we should apply the same general idea to corporations. These entities, when medium sized or larger, by their very nature, can collect more power in a day than most citizens will in their entire lifetime under the current setup. That's a really, really bad thing. Putting them in control of the voting process -- that's a REALLY really really bad thing. And that's what voting machines do. So lets not go there.

Re:How is a Diebold machine like a Pakistani citiz

[fruviad]

I used to be a deputy director at a board of elections in Ohio. The county used Diebold machines.

These systems are drastically more expensive than the older method of voting; there is absolutely no cost savings, whatsoever. It is not uncommon for poll workers to break the systems because of their ignorance or carelessness in working with the hardware. A broken Diebold voting system is VERY expensive to correct. The old systems? Cheap as dirt and easy to replace.

The likelihood of a major problem is far greater with the Diebold systems than with the older stuff. Trying to get octagenarian poll workers to successfully use hardware that they've used only a few times ever, and with little training 6 weeks prior to the election? Yah...good luck with that.

And uniformity across counties using the hardware? Hah! In the county where I worked, one single individual wrote software to "assist" in tallying the votes. I have no idea what the software did because he refused to document the software, and he refused to comment his code EVER. After he left the office he CONTINUED TO UPDATE THE SOFTWARE. I tried to figure out what it was doing by staring at the code, but that's tough when the code changes every day and the author refuses to explain even the broad outlines of how it works.

I could go on and on...but you get the idea.

Re:How is a Diebold machine like a Pakistani citiz

[mcgrew]

I'd like to see a true representative democracy. The Senate and House votes a bill up and the President signs it, but it doesn't become law without referendum. Laws would be voted on annually by the people, and would take a 2/3rds majority to pass. Laws against activities like murder, rape, robbery, etc. would have no trouble passing, while they'd have a harder time passing laws against things like smoking pot and playing poker at home with your friends.

As to "(b) a dictator with the power to veto the will of the people," that's not accurate. The veto can be overridden.
For (c) A third of the government (the supreme court) isn't elected, but appointed." But they have no power to pass laws, only to judge the legality of those laws. Many if not most local judges, where the majority of suspects are tried, are elected.

The "two party system" is a myth (call it a conspiracy if you like) perpetrated by the corporate media and the Democrats and Republicans they own. There were six candidates for President on my ballot in the last election, and all were on the ballot in enough states to have a mathematical chance of winning, had anyone heard of them. The corporate media won't cover them and perpetrates the lie that a vote for a "third party candidate" is a wasted vote.

"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."