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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.
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.
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.
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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?
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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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?