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E-Voting Reform In an Out Year?
An anonymous reader writes "Most of us know the many problems with electronic voting systems. They are closed source and hackable, some have a default candidate checked, and many are unauditable (doing a recount is equivalent to hitting a browser's refresh button). But these issues only come to our attention around election time. Now is the time to think about open source voting, end-to-end auditable voting systems and open source governance. Not in November of 2012, when it will, once again, be far, far too late to do anything about it." It'll be interesting to see what e-voting oddities start cropping up in the current election cycle; Republican straw polls have already started, and the primaries kick off this winter.
The problem is that the list of people with the power to do something about it is almost identical to the list of people who benefit from it being corrupt and unauditable.
I'm only partly through two of the links, but I just thought of something. What if BitCoins were used for elections? Wouldn't it guarantee that sending my coins to cast my vote would be guaranteed?
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
See, that's the thing. There are people who think nothing of spending $100 million to crock an election so they can make $1 Billion by pushing $1 Trillion and a few thousand lives down a shithole.
And they have millions and millions of $10K millionaires voting for them.
A little fraud at the ballot terminal is nothing compared with the psychological sea-change needed to fix that.
You can't have people leaving with proof about how they voted, lest they'd be coerced by thugs waiting around the corner for proof that they voted as agreed upon, or else.
This is how CT does it. You bubble in the form, feed it to the machine, and if there's a close race, they pull out all of the paper ballots and recount manually.
Additionally, the state picks a few towns and a few offices at random, and has people from other towns come in and hand count the results to make sure no BS has occurred.
Needless to say, we don't get many claims of election fraud in this state.
I helped with both forms of recount, one where some guy lost by 10 votes, and one random audit. On the recount, the difference between the hand and machine counts was a single vote (which is actually amazing considering how many X'ed the bubble, checked it, or otherwise failed to read the directions). On the audit, the difference was 3 votes. Both left a margin of error of 0.1%, which is pretty damn close to perfect. Multiple recounts may be needed if someone wins by 0.1%, but that's pretty damn rare. (The guy who lost by 10 votes lost by 10/1300ish).
It's really not that hard to keep elections honest, the people just need to demand it, everywhere.
Any voting machine which is closed source is equal to allowing a magician to count the votes.
First of all there must be a papertrail for any electronic voting machine. While the counting process can be automated, the voting machine should only exist to make voting easier, such as push a button to select a candidate. This should generate a receipt with a unique number representing the digital signature of the person voting. This would make counting easier and would also allow one to vote via the internet where they select a candidate, print out their receipt, and mail it in.
In the US it varies by state; each state makes its own laws regarding voting machines based on HAVA 2002. NC has a pretty strong law. Getting software changes approved is a long and complicated process. NC could not get an open source requirement passed in '05. But the compromise that resulted required vendors to supply their source code to a limited set. This was enough to run off the evil Diebold machines; they sued, lost and backed out of the bidding process; as did Sequoia, which was still in business at the time. We ended up with one vendor; ES&S. Their M-100 ballot scanner is a decent machine. With reasonable access control measures in place it is a secure voting device. The big problem I see with ES&S is their tabulation software; frankly it is terrible. I could change vote totals at will. The required audit would catch those changes but on election night I could send them up to the next level. Current Federal and state law make updating the software illegal. I worry about the two counties I worked in as PrintElect tech support connecting their vote tabulator machines to the internet for OS updates. They run winxp. By law they are not supposed to ever be connected to the internet but small counties with small IT budgets who knows. I agree problems should be addressed prior to election year but I doubt it will happen. Every state will vote with what they have in place now would be my bet. The M-100 runs qnx. -d
We know that government agencies would pay, bribe, or trick developers into sneaking a backdoor in.
Really? You know that for a fact? What evidence do you have, or are you just spouting your mouth off?
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Open source is really irrelevant. You can never prove that the voting machine is running an un-altered binary produced from that code on unaltered hardware and with unalterable memory. It's not bad, but it doesn't guarantee anything, so if that's what you think is keeping voting from being equal to a magician counting the votes, then that's a false sense of security you're feeling.
The way you make voting secure is to take the part where you have to trust the machine's memory, with no way for the voter to confirm that its contents are correct -- the magician, essentially -- out of the picture.
Instead, the machine should simply be an enabler for printing a correct ballot. That paper ballot must be the only ballot that matters. That ballot can be machine readable, but it must also be human readable, and it must be the same markings that both human and machines read to determine who the ballot is for.
In this regime, it doesn't matter if the source is open or closed. It doesn't matter if the voting machine is compromised. Because now the "magic" is out in the open, so if the machine tries to pull any tricks, the voter has the ability to actually see that their vote was recorded incorrectly, and not put that ballot in the ballot box.
The enemies of Democracy are
I prefer the type where you enter your vote on a touchscreen and get a printout that is duplicated and dropped in a lockbox by the machine itself.
Change it to where the voter drops the one-and-only printout into the lockbox themselves, after verifying that it is correct. Then we're in agreement.
First, because otherwise how does the voter know the printout put in the box is the same as the one they're holding? If we trusted the machine to do that correctly, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
Second, because any idea which sacrifices the secret ballot is a horrible idea.
The enemies of Democracy are
Scan-trons are faster and less expensive... One scantron can process 40 voters faster than one e-voting booth with a touchscreen.. AZ has both.
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The ID laws are happening in Republican controlled states. If you spend the time to read the justifications for these laws and the politics of those pushing for them it is clear that the reason for them is voter suppression.
For example the Texas ID law exempts registered gun owners and senior citizens from the ID requirement. Hmmmm I wonder how these folks tend to vote?
In the segregation era in the South, there were often poll taxes (nominal fees intended to keep poor whites and all blacks from voting) and literacy tests (white voters might be asked to read the King James Version of John 3:16, black voters to explain the meaning of the Fourth Amendment). For reasons I do not fully understand, the idea that you should have to show identification to vote has become part of this parcel - perhaps because people think that having to have an ID is a poll tax, perhaps because they think that a disproportionate number of black voters will have white poll workers declare "this picture looks nothing like you".
I think that having to show ID is a pretty good idea, even if it's not really a major source of fraud. Most vote fraud occurs with absentee ballots, but the lack of voter ID presents a real credibility problem to the public. Unfortunately, absentee ballots can't be banned, because any attempt to do so will result in a litany of stories about deployed soldiers who can't vote because they can't meet any of the normal standards for verification. As a compromise, we might elect to use indelible ink (as is used in India and Iraq) to mark one finger of all voters. This does not prevent voting out of your district but does prevent voting multiple times.
If you are required to show ID when you vote then the only valid ID should be a voter card they issue you free of charge when you register to vote.
The reason that Republicans want you to show ID when you vote is to suppress the voting of people who are more likely to vote for Democrats. The level of voter fraud, that is people who are not eligible to vote voting, is so minuscule in this country it's not an issue. In Ohio in 2004 they looked for that and only found 4 out of millions of votes. Yes it could effect an election that comes down to 1 or 2 votes but how often does that happen?
Here in Oregon where all elections are vote-by-mail our "ID" is our signature on the outer envelope of the ballot. The inner envelope is generic and once they verify your signature against the digitized signature they got from your registration they separate the two envelopes. We have very few election problems in this state.
Showing ID to vote is silly, showing ID to register to vote so that your appear on the electoral rolls is the only sensible requirement. Quite simply when your name is checked off the electoral rolls it becomes readily apparent when a person's name is checked off twice, which results in an immediate investigation, with serious penalties.
As such in a manual voting system, even wide spread fraud will still number in just the thousands. To actually steal an election you need to corrupt the counting process not the voting process.
Once you go electronic, you only need to hack the voting system at a single point to affect the whole election ie be able to corrupt millions of votes at one point.
Manual is the only thing that makes sense, it makes corrupting the system very difficult as it requires a very wide spread effort and is always exposed. Simply shift elections to Saturdays so more people will be available from all political parties and candidates to monitor, the placing of votes, the counting of votes at the location where those votes were placed and then the transfer of votes to a secure location for recount if required.
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Even the idea of having an electronic voting machine is scary. Even a mechanical one. Of course, everything has to be done manually, and watching how the voting and counting process is being done should be granted by constitutional rights (like in France, for example). Not only this: the method to do the manual counting should be written in the stone, because even manually, there are ways to cheat.
The ID's required are picture ID's. Most often that is either a drivers license or a passport. Many poor people and people who live in cities with decent public transportation have neither. That is definitely a Democratic leaning demographic.
As people get older they may give up renewing their drivers licenses so they're expired or as in one example I heard about in Indiana a bunch of nuns living in a convent who had been voting for decades were not allowed to vote after Indiana's ID law was passed because they didn't have any picture ID. Those two demographics may lean a bit Republican but it's hard to say.
If anyone ever documented illegal immigrants actually voting in any numbers I'd pay more attention to that meme. If I were illegal I'd want to avoid anything that might call attention to myself. I've heard about more voter fraud from Republican voters than I have from Democratic voters.
If you are going to require voters to have picture ID then you need to provide it free of charge in a way that is not a burden on them to get (like having to take time off from work, etc.). Otherwise it's essentially a poll tax.
E-voting is like global thermonuclear war. Call me old fashioned, but I like the idea of marking a paper ballot with a pen, and putting it a box.
Here in Taiwan, ballots are counted at the precinct level. The counting is done in public, with representatives of the major parties present. The whole process takes a couple of hours.
The whole idea of "machine voting" is stupid. It's worse than a waste of money, it invites all kinds of suspicion and dispute. There has to be a paper trail. No exceptions.
Using a machine-countable ballot may save time, and that's ok. But at least it leaves a record that can be double-checked by hand.
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For reasons I do not fully understand, the idea that you should have to show identification to vote has become part of this parcel - perhaps because people think that having to have an ID is a poll tax, perhaps because they think that a disproportionate number of black voters will have white poll workers declare "this picture looks nothing like you".
Showing ID requires ID. When the state will give you an ID card for free, then it will no longer be a poll tax. Until then, it is a de facto poll tax, even if that poll tax is $20 every 4 years or some other small number.
I think that having to show ID is a pretty good idea, even if it's not really a major source of fraud.
Why would it be a good idea if it adds an additional burden and doesn't really address fraud? I've never heard of anyone ever going to vote and finding that someone else has already voted in their place. At best, it's about dead people voting, and that's probably why the ID thing is so important to the Republicans, because I keep hearing that the only reason Democrats win in Chicago is that dead people vote there. It seems our politics is so hung up on the past that it never looks forward.
There are millions of American citizens without IDs. Most of them poor, and thus presumed Democrat. That's why the Democratic Party is against requiring IDs and Republicans for it. Neither cares one whit about voter fraud, they just want to make it easier for their supporters to vote and harder for their opposition.
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How is that doublethink? You have a right to vote. You don't have a right to do any of the other things. Also, you're the only person to use the term "unfair"; that never even entered into it. The term is poll tax, and only showing ID to vote is a poll tax.
I kind of think it does make sense to need ID for voting, but then you should get free ID.
10 seconds to Google: "how many states issue free voter ID"... favorite result so far: http://www.johnlocke.org/newsletters/research/2011-02-18-m0lcanosi54bel605me4poau57-regulation-update.html (oh the irony, I reference Locke and Google gives me a johnlocke.org result).
Here's another example, from New York this time: http://www.vote411.org/bystateresult.php?state=NY
ID Needed for Voting
If you are a new voter who is registering by mail, you will be required to show identification when you go to vote for the first time. If you are already registered at the board of elections or a state agency, you should not have to show identification at the polls. It is advisable for all new voters to bring identification when voting for the first time. Acceptable IDs to to vote are:
So, if you work - your paycheck stub is OK. If you work for cash - your bank statement. If you don't work - government check. If you don't work and are in public housing - housing ID card. If you have a landline phone - your bill. If you don't have a landline phone - cell phone bill with matching address. And so on, and so on. Please, PLEASE show me ONE person who can have any semblance of normal function in society and yet somehow avoid having ANY form of ID.
If someone doesn't have ANY form of ID (how the HELL do they live? How do they drive / buy cigarettes / alcohol / drugs? How do they avoid being arrested if stopped by a cop? How do they receive welfare or own a home? Who the HELL in today's society doesn't have ANY ID?), and they're too damn lazy to even call up the state and ask for a voter ID card, do we really need to hold their hand all the way to the voting booth? Or can we acknowledge that sacrificing the rights of hundreds of thousands of legitimate voters (whose vote would be canceled by someone else's fraudulent one) for the sake of a tiny percentage of lazy/arrogant jackasses who can't function on the most basic level, is a terrible idea?
Or do we instead cling to the "screw the rights of millions, protect the rights of the few" doctrine and allow rampant vote fraud to take place?
Poll taxes, fair or otherwise, are illegal. All the rest of those are taxed already (except firearms I think the only one on the list that doesn't necessarily have a tax on it). But that's irrelevant to IDs for voting. For those, you are requiring someone to pay money to vote. It's illegal. If you want to require ID, then provide ID for free and make it accessible (not through the DMV with poor open hours and requiring hours of lines and paperwork)
Learn to love Alaska
Ok, so if any old id will be accepted like AARP cards, why aren't student photo id's being accepted under these laws? Could it be that these here student folks tend to vote liberal? Huh?
And that deal about Acorn? And voter fraud. Complete strawman. Voter fraud in the US is a non-problem. During the last election there were 95 cases of voter fraud brought in the entire United States. Out of an electorate of a hundred of millions.
It is quite obviously voter suppression. All you have to do is look at what IDs are accepted and what are not.
I seriously doubt that there are millions of American citizens of voting age who do not have IDs.
You are right, I should have said "tens of millions". It always amazes me the number of people who argue from a platform of ignorance, usually flaunting it like you did when the first link from the first search I did gave a documented number: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=number+of+americans+without+proof+of+ids&l=1> (PDF warning).
The greater value is that it improves public confidence in the system.
I guess I'm broken. I'd rather address real problems than perceived ones.
Learn to love Alaska
You ignorantly questioned "millions." I gave something supporting my statement. You responded with what appears to be "I was wrong and I don't like being wrong, so I'll perform an ad hominem attack and then change the subject."
Millions don't have ID. Millions without ID don't have the paperwork handy that would get them an ID. The number of people who illegally vote is insignificant to the numbers who will have a severe impediment to voting with picture ID required. But that's what the Republicans want.
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