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7000 e-Voting Machines Now Deemed Worthless By Irish Government
First time accepted submitter lampsie writes "Despite spending at least 51 million euro over the last decade buying and storing 7000 e-voting machines from Dutch firm Nedap, the Irish Finance minister has announced that they are now 'worthless'. The machines were originally trialled in 2002 on three regional elections, but a nationwide rollout in 2004 was put on hold after a confidential report expressed serious concern over the security of the voting machines. According to the report, the integrity of the ballot could not be guaranteed with the equipment and controls used. Several years on, and tens of millions later, it looks like the pen and paper ballot will remain for now."
It's fascinating how old and inexpensive technology, like the pen and paper, can end up being the superior technology due to reasons of practicality and security. It's another reminder to step back and realize that newer, technical versions of things aren't automatically better. There may be secure and reliable e-Voting machines someday, but certainly not with this iteration of the technology.
I had to laugh at the picture caption in the article claiming they hoped there'd be a market for these machines in Irish-themed pubs.
You have a verifiable paper print out for every person who votes. They validate it is correct info and it goes into a box for storage. The voting machines give a quick result, but you still have people verify the votes in the next couple days to make sure paper matches electronic voting.
I voted "protest e-vote" in the 2008 presidential elections. This problem if not tackled in the US, will tackle us.
God spoke to me
Who scored a yacht out of this deal?
Yes, you set up a polling station, have all the parties send in trusted locals to watch, count the pencil on paper votes at the end of the day, send in the count that night.
The staff are let go, hired for the next election.
If its too close, a law to recount. All computers at a local level do is let people who stole postal votes in the past try some new digital hacks on very expensive machines.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I've been an Elections Inspector in New York State since 2004. You are seriously underestimating the logistical difficulties in counting the votes by hand. My precinct has more than 800 registered voters in it. In the last two Presidential elections we've seen 65%+ turnout. The last two Gubernatorial elections both exceeded 50%. The polls are open from 6am to 9pm; we are mandated by law to be there 45 minutes before and after these times. There is no way that we can physically count hundreds of votes in 45 minutes. It would take several hours; now multiply this by our collective $41/hr salary ($11 for the chairman, $10 for each of the other three) and multiply that by the tens of thousands of election districts across New York State. Where is that money going to come from?
The current optical scanning technology is a fair balance. Paper ballots are retained for seven years after an election and are available for inspection by any interested party. The canvassing and certification process is watched by election officials from all major political parties, representatives of the candidates and the media. Elections officials count the votes by hand from randomly selected precincts the very the machine count. All the machines do is speed up the tabulation process.
You'll brook no argument from me on the downfalls of direct electronic record machines where no paper backup is available. Arguing that the election should be run on pen and paper is equally insane though. I can't think of any compelling reason to do so; it opens the door for arguments back and forth on "voter intent" (whereas the machine rejects ballots for ambiguous marks and gives the voter another chance), turns the process of canvassing the votes into a logistical headache and would cost a lot more money.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Exactly those machines (and others) were outlawed a few years ago by the dutch government, after years of protesting from the http://wijvertrouwenstemcomputersniet.nl/ action group (translated: 'we don't trust voting machines'). In this action group were a couple of notable hackers and ICT experts - people with some authority when it comes to ICT, who argued that such a black box can not be trusted by the voter in any case.
Options like printing voting tickets - to get both of best worlds (fast counting and verifyable counting) were considered, but quickly dismissed as there was no ready available hardware.
So - luckily - we are now back to voting with paper and pencil. Not everyone is happy with that (because it's slightly more inconvenient - a rubbish statement if you ask me for something you'd do on average once every two years, and especially when you compare it to all other paperwork bureaucracy forces us too). Among the groups against are the more uneducated people (sorry for that statement), and an incidental parlementarian.
I'm glad to see brittain saw the flaws of electronic voting too. I can only hope other countries that still use electronic voting will see it too. If i'm not mistaken, USA has got it's scandals too when it comes to voting machines.
And in practice, voting on paper works out just fine. May take a day longer for the final count, but the newspapers won't complain because now they can bring the news again, instead of the television.
If only they hadn't network the voting machines the cylons wouldn't have won all the elections and outlawed humans!
What the Irish deem to be a tremendous flaw equals profit potential just an ocean away! Security in voting? That's overrated. You could make a mint on these things in the US. One man's trash is another man's treasure! The same deadbeat candidates from one of two overly polarized parties keep winning anyways. Get those questionable voting machines on the next steamer to New York today!
and as for "voter intent"... anything that is not a clear mark in one box only is a spoiled paper... we don't have many of those here as our voters aren't stupid...
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I agree that legacy technology should not be forgotten, because newer is not always better. But I have to believe that the voting machines would be secure and reliable if they had been designed correctly, and that there are a number of human beings on the planet capable of getting it done today.
I don't see how paper tech is any more secure than these voting machines. I've read the reports on failed machines such as Diebold's and they always assume someone has physical access to the machine, access to nearby computer equipment, access to specific knowledge regarding how the machines are engineered, and a lot of private time. How is this any less secure than storing all the votes on easily misplaced and manipulated paper ballots? Would banks keep buying ATMs from Diebold if they lost money from them frequently? When exactly will security be "good enough?" Where does the battle end? As any good security researcher knows, it doesn't. At some point you have to accept that there will be risk but it is small enough to be within the margin of error in a typical election. Remember the 2000 election? It wasn't just "stuck chads," tens of thousands of votes in key districts were "lost" entirely. This kind of thing happens all the time.
I'm not a security expert by any stretch of the imagination but I could probably make a "good enough" ballot machine with about $1500 and a couple hours time. Secure it physically as much as possible, set up two-factor authentication with a SmartCard and password (or even 3-factor with biometrics if you want to get silly), set syslogd to silently log things remotely, and have the machine dump the votes to a central machine now and then over a VPN. Set up an analytics system which monitors the transactions in real time and reports irregularities to a central authority which can freeze the voting machines if necessary. This is an extremely basic setup but I honestly do not see how it's any less secure than paper ballots.
I can only imagine that it's every company's wet dream to land a gigantic and permanent government contract for voting machines. When there's that much money involved, you can bet there are people working hard on the problem. I would suppose that banks and credit agencies would probably describe my humble setup above as "overkill" for most scenarios, and while they are certainly behind the times security-wise, I'm sure they've done risk analysis to determine that investment in more security measures would not result in a significant amount of money being regained from fraud.
That's what you have to do - calculate your risk and ask if it's worth it. Now obviously that's what the Irish government and various US state agencies claim to have done, but did they calculate that risk against risk associated with paper ballots? Do election officials and politicians want to admit or draw attention to the large amount of fraud that goes on in every election, every year? How much money does Nedap or Diebold donate to the politicians who reject their designs? Not enough, obviously.
From the money saved by not buying e-voting machines? I doubt purchase and 'support' would cost less than a few hours of your time, evened out over a number of years/elections.
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The only surprise about this is that a public official is admitting it.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
"the Irish Finance minister has announced that they are now 'worthless'. ... after a confidential report expressed serious concern over the security of the voting machines. ... the integrity of the ballot could not be guaranteed"
Come on, Ireland, where's your sense of tenacity? On this side of the pond we have shown over and over again that voting machines are insecure -- we even had a CEO of one of the voting machine companies promise to deliver his home state of Ohio to to GWB, then had a precinct in Ohio that was using his machines report more votes in favor of GWB than the number of people in the precinct -- and we are still using them.
You can't let a little thing like "failing to provide an accurate and trustworthy tally of votes" keep you from insisting that voting machines provide an accurate and trustworthy tally of votes. There are corporate profits and lobbying money to consider. Are you going to ignore the will of the lobbyists who represent the voting machine companies just because they stand directly opposed to the best interests of the nation? You would not last a second in American politics.
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That's fucking hilarious! I've literally never heard anyone reference that Yakov Smirnoff joke from going on 30 years ago. You're the first. Great job!
There may be secure and reliable e-Voting machines someday,
If some were capable enough to create such system, it stands to reason that some would also be capable of breaking such a system.
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Optical scanning technology != "e-voting machine"; it's a paper ballot that's simply tabulated by a machine. It's no different than the bubble tests that you took in school. If you doubt the results of the machine you are free to volunteer your time to manually count each and every ballot. As I said, they are available for inspection by any interested party.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Our laws require voting technology that is accessible to the handicapped. The machines that we use here have headphones for the blind, foot pedals for paraplegics and a sip/puff device for quadriplegics. If you know a way to enable such people to independently vote without technology the New York State Board of Elections would be interested in hearing it.
And no, this still isn't "e-voting". The ballot marking portion of the machine is exactly that; it prints a paper ballot that matches the selections made by the voter via the handicapped interface. They or a trusted third party can verify this ballot before depositing it into the scanning side of the machine. We can verify it for them as Elections Inspectors provided that one from each party assists the voter (no ballot is ever handled without one Inspector from each party present). Other voters manually mark their ballots with a pen and then deposit it into the scanner. Every piece of paper from the ballots themselves to the poll books and even the notepads the Inspectors use is retained for seven years.
There's no conspiracy at play with optical scanning technology. I decided to become an Elections Inspector specifically so I could observe the process from the inside. Having done it for seven years I'm satisfied that our elections are fair and honest. I can't speak for the other States in the Union but I sleep quite well at night knowing that my vote was popularly counted here in New York.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Of the top of my head, I guess the major reason is that with paper ballots there is no attack vector for manipulating the whole system at once. To rig an election, you'd have to bribe a sufficient number of vote counters which isn't easily done without anyone noticing (and the number is quite big for a national wide election, that's why it works so well). When you introduce voting machines, if you discover a hole in the e-voting system you can manipulate the whole system without anyone knowing. Then you introduce a paper trail but (surprise!) you're back to counting ballots by hand anyway. You could of course only count a small subset of all paper ballots but then you make bribing the right people easier. A basic requirement on e-voting machines would, of course, be that they are completely open sourced (both hardware and software) and looked over by the best minds we have. Since that is probably never going to happen, e-voting shouldn't happen either.
There is no way that we can physically count hundreds of votes in 45 minutes.
Meh, my parents worked in the last election, and processed more voters than you did. (Admittedly they had a school gym, and probably 8 booths going, each with 3 staff and 2 ballot boxes divided up alphabetically... (last name Aa to Be voting booth 1 ballot box 1, Bf to Ca booth 1 box 2)... (Ca-De booth 2 box one...
The station EASILY processed some 5000 voters.
each booth counted their own votes, and it didn't take all that long either. 5000 votes, 16 ballot boxes is only 300 or so votes per box. Took about half an hour to count them. Each box got counted twice, and they were out in about an hour and half.
Not a big deal.
You had 4 people doing 800, you say... that scales pretty much right in line with their 25 people doing 5000.
Now, you mention $41/hr to run the election, with say its a 12hrs day... around $500 bucks.
And the voting machine doesn't eliminate everyone... instead of 4 of you, there still needs to be at least to of you...to instruct votes and ensure the machine doesn't break or get tampered with etc... so you only eliminate half the labor cost.
The voting machine is going to have to be less than $250 per unit. And it can't break down or your fucked. And it has to sit in a warehouse for a year or so... so your pretty much gauranteed to need a bunch of technicians check each unit before each election... so there goes the rest of your savings.
Seriously... paper processes get it down to around $2 per vote to count after materials and labour and training. You aren't going to get a machine anywhere near that anytime soon.
I think the Finance Minister greatly underestimated the resale value in the US. But we'll take them for free.
He who said 1,000,000 monkeys on 1,000,000 typewriters would eventually type the great novel, never saw an AOL chat room
Theoretically electronic voting machines should be a lot more efficient than pen and paper is. That being said, it's not generally properly implemented and typically you don't end up having any reason to trust the machines.
Diebold for instance patched machines in Georgia during the 2002 gubernatorial race in Democratic leaning precincts. I don't believe that it's ever been properly answered as to why those patches were being made and why they were only patching machines in those precincts, but it does lead to more grave questions about the whole situation. http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Documents_reveal_Georgia_was_warned_of_0730.html
With a paper ticket system you can still have the benefits of electronic voting, with verification and the voter should be able to leave the booth with a receipt that can be used to validate results later on if need be.
more at 10
Around here we went a step beyond that and built our facilities so that the public can watch from all sides the process and verify that the count is being done correctly. Of course they do use an optical system which is probably similar or the same as the one that you're using.
Ultimately, we had to go that direction of pretty much complete transparency as the GOP isn't going to accept the results that reflect the will of the people without being forced to. They're still yammering on about voter fraud when the only evidence that was ever uncovered specifically was that their gubernatorial candidate had received fraudulent votes which then had to be deducted from his total. That was in pretty much the most conservative friendly court in the state.
That's not particularly democratic of you. The point is that everybody of age is able to vote unless they aren't a citizen or have lost their right to vote.
What about people who change their mind or misread the ballot and have to change it? Under your view those people would lose their vote in many cases.
I might be mistaken, but I don't believe that evoting machines are typically connected to the internet. At least that's my understanding and the reason why patches are applied directly to the machines rather than across the internet.
The bigger issue is where the manufacturer miscodes the machine or installs patches on some machines in places that are more likely to vote one way or the other. Really, they ought to spit out 3 receipts, one to a roll like they do with security logs sometimes, and two for the voter, one of which would go in a secured bin and the other would be retained for personal record keeping.
If you put a scan code at the bottom which reflects the data on the ticket it should be quite efficient to count as well.
That is the way it was done in my area last election and I have to say it was a pleasant experience. Nice easy to read touchscreen that when you chose printed your choice on a nice easy to read ballot, when you were done they took the electronic votes to give the media for early election results and counted the paper ballots with a scanner. the nicest part to me is there was NO disenfranchisement of voters, not at all. While I was in line (which took less than 10 minutes) there were two ahead of me that were in the wrong place. Rather than make them try to find the correct place the officials simply whipped out their cell and had them switched over to that precinct for that election. Took less than 3 minutes to get both straightened out and back in line, just had the whole things smooth as a Swiss watch. Before with the ballots you punched yourself there was ALWAYS hangups and screwups and it was about as pleasant as a trip to the DMV (and just about as long) but now its all in and out, just as pretty as you please.
So I don't even see why there is any debate anymore. With that system you still get a paper ballots which they hand you to check and since its printed by machine no "voter intent" crap, it was plain as day and quite easily read. I'd say that was about as perfect a compromise as i can think of with the security of paper and the ease of electronic.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Since the 1950s the area of PA I grew up in used electric voting machines (i.e. electric tally machines) that were in fact infallible barring a mechanical breakdown. Nobody could tamper with it, it kept a tally using mechanical reels and could tally into the 10s of thousands from what I understand of it. Each unit would print out a simple list tallying who won in what race by column and number (it was up to the person to put in the appropriate slip for name and position, all were printed at a central place and placed into the machine by verified workers with multiple oversights). The machines were accurate, simple, and they only needed to be plugged in to produce a light, close the shade, and run the reels themselves. Hand ballots are confusing and illogical in that people must either write on them or punch through them. Electronic voting can be tampered with and is utterly insecure by comparison to the other two options. Yet nobody ever contemplates a mechanical solution because that is far too old-fashioned it seems.
I'm sure it is possible to game a mechanical counting machine given enough time and effort but if Florida had had these machines installed the election would have been decided almost immediately and require next to no time to recount. The sorry reality is though that Diebold and their compatriots got paid huge sums to build somewhat secure devices that are too easily tooled with and nothing is going to change that because they have the lobbying power to keep going. To be fair though, I doubt fraud in 99% of cases. I'm more worried for general bugs and failures that cause these machines to malfunction.
Pen and paper ballots. Thanks for keeping them!
This will keep the pace at the analogue level and minimize cheating.
I could think of the benefits a decision like this would have on the stock market!
More people employed, slower decisions, worldwide, annual reports, sub-minute transactions not allowed. No electronic gadgets, like the computer machine allowed, cardigans and hot tea. Hmmm...
Can you image what the Anonymous, the fat brats from North Korea, nepotists in Florida, communists in Belorussia, and any other decisive part of the world could do with an electronic version, even smoother.
Pen and paper ballots or any other variant thereof. At least there are something tangible there.
+1 conspiracy theory
+1 for making a random voting is a threat comment..
I can only hope you meant it in satire... :S
I would suggest the following requirements before anyone designs an electronic voting system:
1. Must allow for anonymous fair voting et.c. (standard stuff from your country's constitution)
2. Should be robust against attacks from individuals.
3. Any attack should preferably leave a trace somewhere.
4. Should a local attack occur, the results should not affect the general results.
5. Voting mechanisms (not necessarily the mathematics, but the actual counting process) must be verifiable by non domain expert. It should be possible to train up an observer in 30 minutes.
6. Voting results should be stored and be possible to be verified and recounted for some time.
It turns out that number 2 and 5 is practically impossible to do with an electronic voting machine, number 6 is also very difficult but could possibly be solved with cryptography, but not without breaking number 1 (anonymous votes). And seriously, what is the point of building an electronic system that can most likely be manipulated without anyone noticing? What is so bad in having to wait a few hours extra for the results, is democracy not worth one hour of waiting?
I suppose that the only argument would be that you can carry out public votes more often, but do people really want to move away from democracy in the direction of ochlocracy?
What may be interesting if you want to speed up the counting process is to make the ballots machine readable, still on paper though.
"Civis Europaeus sum!"
Normally the solution to that is: "If you make a mistake please ask for a new ballot paper"
The invalid ballots are removed and accounted for and you are given a new one.
http://i161.photobucket.com/albums/t206/DynOmni/CanadianBallot.jpg
That's the canadian ballot. Very simple. It is counted by hand. Takes a few hours. You can't stuff the ballot box and it is verifiable. No "do overs".
Maybe because we don't vote on useless propositions, that we don't need 100 page ballots. And if there are other elections at same time, there are multiple ballots that are put in multiple ballot boxes. It's rather quite simple.
There may be secure and reliable e-Voting machines someday,
If some were capable enough to create such system, it stands to reason that some would also be capable of breaking such a system.
I would've modded you, but there's no option "-1 nonsense"
I don't have a sig.
Not exactly. Newer technology can be better if it's done right, but can be worse if it's done half-assed. In the case of voting machines, the idea is quite sound, but every implementation we've seen so far has been anywhere from half-assed to totally horrible.
How many different selections were on your voting forms? Here in AZ, a typical election has dozens and dozens of different people and propositions to vote on; not only the big national candidates for Pres and Congress, but state and local candidates, and several dozen judges. Then there's usually a dozen propositions too.
I really don't think you'd hand-count 5000 votes here in 30 minutes in an accurate way.
If elections would make any difference, it would be forbidden.
aaaaaaa
>> It should not be hard or costly.
It is impossible.
You cannot make shure the SW is not tampered on the actual machine
aaaaaaa
I have been in many election in france with even *bigger* number of voters. And we had all vote counted in 30-40 minutes. Why ? Because they simply knew participation and numbers, and then simply asked for volunteer to stay longer and help the democratic process. Then they gave ~70-80 stapple of paper vote to a table of 4 volunteer. 2 to count, to to observe, then reverse. There were about 8 table at last election, then those who finish counting earlier get another staples. That is also why big circumscription also do get to vote in big meeting room or similar big room. It is not to give voter privacy, but because once the vote is finished by whatever hour/time they will put a lot of table for the volunteer to count. I have participated in a lot of such a count. It works well and is quick. By the way once they have enough volunteer additional persons are welcome to stay and look as long as they do not disturb the counter..
I have to wonder how it comes you could not come up with such a solution to ask for unpaid volunteer among voters, and would rather rely on a few persons counting.
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That's an overly simplified view of the issue. The question comes down to what we expect of the technology. Is it practical to hand count millions of pieces of paper when computers exist to sum everything ? No. It's also quite error prone. Security is also a big question. With every election there are many human elements each of which can be compromised. Did Russia used e-voting in their last laughable election? No. The election was still plagued with fraud.
Our problem is that we won't accept a e-voting roll out that only matches what we have now. What we EXPECT is that e-voting will fix all the problems and provide a system that's 100% safe and secure.
It's the same argument with self driving cars. We won't accept a self driving vehicle system that reduces our accident rate even by half. The first death at the hands of a computer will result in a technological witch hunt, as will the first failed election.
I think paper is safer than e-voting machines, because they can be independently checked by representatives from different parties as they're counted. With electronic voting systems - at least the current ones - you have to give full trust to a single person in each locale (the expert who handles the machine).
Would banks keep buying ATMs from Diebold if they lost money from them frequently?
They do lose money from them frequently. Every now and then there's a newspaper article about how fraudsters skim money from the machines, for example, by placing a false front on them that traps the customers' money. And we only hear about the losses that directly affect customers - the banks keep quiet about the losses that only affects them internally, so as to not lose their customers' confidence.
I'm not a security expert by any stretch of the imagination but I could probably make a "good enough" ballot machine with about $1500 and a couple hours time. Secure it physically as much as possible, set up two-factor authentication with a SmartCard and password (or even 3-factor with biometrics if you want to get silly), set syslogd to silently log things remotely, and have the machine dump the votes to a central machine now and then over a VPN. Set up an analytics system which monitors the transactions in real time and reports irregularities to a central authority which can freeze the voting machines if necessary. This is an extremely basic setup but I honestly do not see how it's any less secure than paper ballots.
It sounds prohibitively expensive, though, when you consider the cost of handing out smartcards to all the millions of registered voters, and then handling millions of forgotten password requests a few days before the election.
It might work in a future where everyone is already using a multi-purpose smartcard.
That's only relevant if you screw up your own ballot. If the monkeys at the booth smudge your marks or if the voting device malfunctions behind the scenes, you won't know you need to ask for a new ballot. If we didn't consider voter intent it would be awfully easy to selectively mishandle ballots when determining which ones should be discarded for not having clear marks.
There is no way that we can physically count hundreds of votes in 45 minutes. It would take several hours
Are Americans really unable to count without a computer?
I've been a poll clerk in several elections in Australia. All by hand. 95% of votes are clear, and take no more than 5 seconds to decide which stack they go on. 12 per minute. One person could count all 800 in just over an hour. The ambiguous votes might be argued over with the scrutineers from the various parties, but unless the count is finely balanced, these are decided quickly.
Having the voter retain a copy of their ballot just makes vote buying easier and more practical. "Prove you voted my way before I pay you off."
What if we do all that, and the best electronic system we can make is less secure than paper, or much more expensive?
The number of holes in the Diebold technology was simply incredible. There were ways to compromise the machines themselves, ways to compromise the software that counted the votes, etc.
There was no way to run a recount. A recount consisted of saying "Yup, I added the numbers again and they're the same". There's no trail of ballots after the election to check. The machines just keep a count and when the election is over, they're wiped.
Add to that the other issues of technology obsolescence and the machines needing to be stored for long periods of time between uses. Add in the difficulties of handing out machines to voting personnel who get an hour's worth of training.
E-Voting is a solution looking for a problem. The paper ballots with optical scanning is as much technology as you need.
I watched the counting of a plebiscite (simply yes/no) just last month. Simple pen and paper, just one question.
The 65 votes cast in that plebiscite were counted in less than 10 minutes, plus 5 extra for the paperwork ("put the yes votes in this envelope, the no votes in another, seal them, put both of them plus irregular votes in a third..." etc)
Procedure for counting is easy: you rotate the ballot box(es), to mix them, mix them a few times after opening, let all officials stand around a large table, open the envelopes the ballots are in, let all officials simultanuously sort the ballots in seven stacks (one for each vote, one for irregulars, one for "not-sure-if-irregular". Afterwards have someone look through the stacks to see if errors were made (quickly possible), count each stack, look after the "not-sure" ones, sum the results and compare to the number of voters who entered that day.
All in all 600 votes should be tallied in far less than an hour.
Take a phone, give the numbers to the city level, who adds the numbers, phones to the county level etc.
That's the way all federal elections are done in germany (where there are even *gasp* two seperate votes on the same ballot - one for a representative, one for a party), and the official results are usually done way before midnight. Including all the stuff like overhang seats etc pp.
Btw: what are you talking about salary? ;-) Election officials (the ones sitting at the room handing out ballots, checking voter registration etc) are done by "volunteers" (officially it's a duty like sitting in a jury, but usually set by people unable to say no :D) getting a small compensation for their time (plus a small buffet, if the city is generous).
Oh, and every citizen has the right to stand there and watch the election officials, including during counting. But it's quite rare that anyone does, since nobody has found a reason to mistrust.
It doesn't have to be stupidity; a pen smudge that crosses into another column or row is an "ambiguous marking".
On a form designed for optical scanning machines it might be. But a hand counted paper ballot traditionally uses a cross to mark the chosen option. And the centre of a cross is accurate to something less than the width of a pencil line.
Paper ballots are a clear transparent verifiable system, I have seen no system that replicates that
The nearest is where you let a machine print your ballot with your choice (so no spoilt papers and easy to count) but then the papers are then counted ....
As soon as a machine counts the papers then accusations of fraud creep in ...and cannot be proved wrong easily so transparency is lost
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
The polls are open from 6am to 9pm; we are mandated by law to be there 45 minutes before and after these times. There is no way that we can physically count hundreds of votes in 45 minutes. It would take several hours; now multiply this by our collective $41/hr salary ($11 for the chairman, $10 for each of the other three) and multiply that by the tens of thousands of election districts across New York State. Where is that money going to come from?
That's a, probably unintentional, straw man. No one is arguing that you should organise an election in the way you are proposing. Much of the world uses hand counted paper ballots, so clearly it's perfectly workable.
In Britain for example the ballots are not counted at the polling station, but taken to a central count, with a different team to do the counting from those that manned the polls.
Sure there's an extra salary cost on that one day every few years. But there's also a cost in the millions that get wasted on electronic voting systems. Paper ballots and pencils are cheap.
For sure it's more difficult for the USA, because they chose a complicated voting system, where the electorate are asked many questions. But this story was about Ireland, not the USA.
You say that like complete transparency is a bad thing. Why?
RUGBYRUGBYRUGBY
Smudges are only a problem for optical scanners. Hand counted ballots typically use a system of marking with a cross. The centre of a cross is pretty accurate and unambiguous, even if smudged.
I agree that legacy technology should not be forgotten, because newer is not always better. But I have to believe that the voting machines would be secure and reliable if they had been designed correctly, and that there are a number of human beings on the planet capable of getting it done today.
In a sense that's a fairly simple experimental question. One of those people should build a machine and then, when they are sure it is "secure" they should hand it over for analysis. This won't 100% prove what you say is true, but it will go a long way and it will definitely make the statement falsifiable.
The problem is, that every single person who has claimed to be one of those people so far has built a machine which turned out not to be secure. This isn't proof that a secure machine is impossible, but it's a definite suggestion that it might be and more importantly that we shouldn't put too much effort into buying those machines until the state of the art has advanced considerably. Instead, we should be putting lots of effort into validating computer security generally and making illegal products (n.b. specifically products: things sold for money; as opposed to code given for development reasons) which fail to implement proper security. Once we get more experience with security generally then, in a generation or two, it might be a good idea to come back to the idea of voting machines.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
If you doubt the results of the machine you are free to volunteer your time to manually count each and every ballot.
Are you? What's the process by which that happens? Who is allowed to handle those papers? Under what circumstances?
I've been an Elections Inspector in New York State since 2004. You are seriously underestimating the logistical difficulties in counting the votes by hand.
You bet - we've had an Electronic Scrutineering (Vote Counting) system in use for almost a decade in Canberra and Tasmania (Australia). It's fast and accurate, cheap, and a hell of a lot harder (virtually impossible) to cheat
Previously votes were counted by volunteers - it was common practise to dispute unclear numbering, and even "fudge" votes with a quick pencil - very common to invalidate votes for other candidates.
I'm no fan of electronic voting though - that's putting all the eggs in one basket, and I've yet to see a system proposed that was likely to prevent manipulation of the results.
And that's the reason why American views on this story are not very valid. Ireland, like most of the world, have ballots with a single choice. The USA is unusual in having such complicated elections.
Smudges are only a problem for optical scanners. Hand counted ballots typically use a system of marking with a cross. The centre of a cross is pretty accurate and unambiguous, even if smudged.
Are you talking about Ireland or elsewhere. Many civilised countries use numbers. Weird huh?
I would suggest the following requirements
There's some things which you are missing:
7) Must be fully understood by and explained to all of the people responsible for running the election, including all of it's basic security implications.
8) those people must have the full capability to monitor and verify all of it's functions whilst at the same time not being able to actually see who has voted for what.
Elections are mostly run by retired people and, to some extent the unemployed, who are responsible for defending against, identifying and mitigating fraud. There is no way to guarantee that these people have CS degrees. At the same time, if a novel attack happens in their particular area, they are likely to be the only people who have the ability to intervene at the right moment.
Imagine, for example, an attack where someone makes it seem like a particular machine has been overvoted on. A person comes along and manages to advance the voting tab by several hundred votes. In a physical situation it is reasonably obvious what to do: lock the ballot box away; when opening it preserve the order of the ballots; attempt to look for fingerprints etc. In an electronic situation there is a high risk that the people will do the wrong thing (e.g. reset the machine or take it out of the count). Until the less computer skilled members of the community can be trusted to do computer forensics; at the very least evidence preservation; voting machines are always going to have serious risks to contend with.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
Multiple ballots are put in mult, iple bal... you lost me.
I've kept all the alt.risk from 5-2000 to date. This is from Risks Digest 24.36
Date: Fri, 21 Jul 2006 22:20:30 +0200
From: removed
Subject: Voting machines in Ireland and The Netherlands
According to EDRIGRAM, the on-line newsletter of "European Digital Rights",
number 4.14:
On 4 July 2006, the Irish Commission on Electronic Voting released its
second report on the secrecy and accuracy of the e-voting system purchased
by the Irish Government.
The summary remarks at the beginning of the 200 page report say: "The
Commission concludes that it can recommend the voting and counting equipment
of the chosen system for use at elections in Ireland, subject to further
work it has also recommended, but that it is unable to recommend the
election management software for such use."
The "further work" includes, among others:
1) add a voter verified audit trail;
2) replace the election management software (which prepares election
data, reads votes from "ballot modules", and calculates results) with a
version that is developed to mission critical standards;
3) modify the embedded software within the voting machines to bring it
up to mission critical standard;
4) make certain modifications to the machines themselves;
5) test all components to mission critical standard;
6) modify the specification for the PC that is to be used for vote management;
7) test the system as a whole (including end-to-end testing) to mission
critical standard;
8) rectify the security vulnerabilities identified in the way data is
transferred within the system.
This is quite a mouthful. In particular, the "mission critical standards"
may be quite difficult to achieve as a retrofit. The article speculates
that the responsible minister, who declares his intention to continue the
project, "may not realize the extent of the changes required". [Or is it a
polite way of saying "No thank you"? -EK]
Full article at http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number4.14/evotingireland
The article includes several links, including a link to the full report.
As far as I can make out from various sources, the voting machines in
question are essentially the same as the Nedap machines used in The
Netherlands for years. Little public criticism of these machines appears in
the general press.
But they do, indeed, have problems: According to the "Bits of Freedom"
newsletter:
In a local election, one candidate got 1, 3, 7, and 181 votes, respectively,
in the 4 polling stations where he was a candidate. The candidate not only
was en election official in the high-vote station, he operated the machine!
Peter Knoppers, according to the article an expert on voting machines, is
quoted saying that manipulation of the machine by a voting official is "a
piece of cake". For example, if a key is turned at the exact moment of the
vote being acknowledged by the voter, the vote will not be counted. The
missed votes can then be added manually at a later time, for any candidate
of your choice.
Full story (in Dutch) at
http://www.bof.nl/nieuwsbrief/nieuwsbrief_2006_14.html
This article also has several links, all in Dutch.
I don't know about Irish elections but in Finland, the ballot is a folded piece of white cardboard with a large, friendly circle inside. That circle has a single number penciled in. Real quick to sort and count.
American ballots are of course the opposite extreme: literally dozens of multiple-choice questions on a legal-size, multiply folded sheet of cardboard, where your counting is distracted by the lengthy questions.
The American system is so democratic that it renders itself anti-democratic. It takes hours to do the necessary online research to make half-sane decisions on 10% of the questions on the ballot. "Do you agree that never-heard-of-before will be nominated District Jugdge blah blah." "Pick three of the following to be on the park district board." "Should the state borrow 4.37 billion dollars, of which 3.78 billion will go to road maintenance, 582 million will go to hospital emergency services and 8 million to the governor's children's college fund?" And: "By the way: who should be President of the United States of America?"
I've been an Elections Inspector in New York State since 2004. You are seriously underestimating the logistical difficulties in counting the votes by hand. My precinct has more than 800 registered voters in it. In the last two Presidential elections we've seen 65%+ turnout. The last two Gubernatorial elections both exceeded 50%. The polls are open from 6am to 9pm; we are mandated by law to be there 45 minutes before and after these times. There is no way that we can physically count hundreds of votes in 45 minutes
I think that most of that is irrelevant to Ireland. As I understand it, in US elections there are usually many posts up for grabs; as I understand it, in Ireland there are usually only one or two, so the count is much simpler. Secondly, as I understand it there's no silly 45-minute count rule. Certainly in the UK we take as long as it takes, which can be days.
You're worried about the cost? $41/h for a constituency of 800? That's about 5 cents an hour per constituent. Suppose it takes 10 hours; that's 50 cents per constituent. How often do you hold elections? Every 4 years? That's about a quarter of a cent per constituent per week. It's sad that you don't think democracy is worth that. In Europe we do.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
As has been pointed out elsewhere in the thread, Americans generally vote for more than one race at the same election. It's not a matter of figuring out which stack to put the ballot in, but of tabulating the responses from each of 10-20 choices. Apparently we're somewhat unique in that.
A single choice? You only have one elected office in the entire country? Or do you make people come back day after day to elect all the other positions?
The software activates itself an hour before the elections begin, and it must be closed at most a couple of hours after the election ends, or the booth is invalidated. It stores only two information: if an registered elector voted, and the vote itself, but no link is made between information. Data itself is encrypted and only the Superior Electoral Court President Judge has the key, which is he/she hands off to the Regional Judges only after all booths are recovered to the regional courts.
The whole thing is very straightforward, but the process has many control points and locks, so it would require an army of fraudsters for the elections to be cheated.
"There is always an easy solution to every human problem -- neat, plausible, and wrong."
H. L. Mencken
Going by your numbers: more than 800 registered voters, let's say 900. 65%+ turnout, let's say 70%. That's 630 votes.
Most of the time goes into sorting, let's say 30 minutes. That's 21 per minute. Divided by four people, that's 5.25 per person per minute, or about 11 seconds per vote.
Counting goes a lot faster, you can easily count 2 per second. So one person can count all the votes in about 5 minutes. Four people can count different stacks simultaneously, so in that 5 minutes you'd have the votes counted, checked, double checked and triple checked. And then still have 10 minutes for coffee.
I'd say, if it takes you hours, you're doing it wrong :)
Did Russia used e-voting in their last laughable election? No. The election was still plagued with fraud.
With a hand counted paper ballot system, everybody is capable of understanding how the entire system works, and how it might be cheated. With electronic voting systems, that's not true.
With hand counted paper ballots its reasonably obvious to observers to what extent they are straight or fraudulent. With evoting it's not. The world has a good idea to what extent the Russian election was fraudulent. With electronic voting no one would ever be able to tell the difference between a straight Russian election and a fraudulent one.
Same argument applies to every other country. e.g. To this day, there's no common agreement about the extent to which the 2004 US elections were fraudulent in areas that used Diebold voting machines.
It's the same argument with self driving cars. We won't accept a self driving vehicle system that reduces our accident rate even by half. The first death at the hands of a computer will result in a technological witch hunt, as will the first failed election.
Of course they'll be accepted. We've had self-driving trains and planes for years. But that's a completely different issue from electronic voting.
Speaking of spoiling ballots, the e-voting machines wouldn't let me. For the Nice referendum they just gave me a yes/no option.
How are you supported to register your distaste at the options. In my case I wanted to vote yes, however when I arrived at the polling station the local TD (MP) had parked a minibus emblazoned with "Vote Yes", completely disregarding the moratorium on campaigning within 24 hours of polling. The Guard chatting to him didn't give a shit either. I decided to spoil my ballot, then found I couldn't, so voted no instead.
I believe the Irish system is similar to the English, Canadian, Australian, etc. system. In a federal election, a member of parliament is elected. The leader of the party with the most representatives is the prime minister. The leader of the party with the second-most is the leader of the opposition. Dog catchers are not elected, local elections are held separately, and if a national referendum is to be carried out, then that is a separate event too. Which other elected offices were you thinking about?
What is there that prevents a rouge developer at the voting box company from adding some obfuscated code that skews the results on a national level (say, miscounting every 100 votes for party X as being for party Y)? In a paper based system, miscounts will happen, but they will be local and attacking the whole system requires a large scale conspiracy that is very difficult to hide.
"Civis Europaeus sum!"
Yes, but other places manage situations such as high population and compulsory voting by planning ahead and allocating enough resources and not stupidly holding the election on a weekday. When it gets down to it, a lot of volunteers make pencil and paper ballots both a swift operation and one open to a lot of scrutiny. 800 people? Is that supposed to be some sort of big deal? In the last election I voted in there may have been as many as half of that number in line in front of me but with a lot of volunteers checking names and handing out ballot papers I was in and out of the place in less than fifteen minutes.
I know that the problem does not lie with you but with increasingly and needlessly complicated systems. However you are expressing a view that is surprisingly ignorant of how elections are successfully run in other places.
Once again - 800 people? There's 92,222 people on the roll in the small electorate I'm in, voting was compulsory (close to 100% turnout) it was done using pencil and paper and the results were fairly clear within about five hours of the ballot closing. If you don't turn up you get fined $50 but nobody can tell if you've put a blank ballot in the box and if they could that's still your right. With thirteen polling stations that's an average of more than 7000 voters at each - and once again that's not a big electorate in a fairly small city. Why is it so difficult with 800 people? For large tasks you should have a large amount of resources instead of pissing about with dangerous toys like the Diebold election rigging machines that made the world snigger or the Florida joke of an election which made the world laugh loudly back in 2000.
Once again, I know you're just the guy who thinks he's doing what's best - but Christ have they done a serious con job on you. Can't you see it's just a deep wave of bullshit designed to sell stuff and most likely make it easier to rig elections? Poke your head above the bullshit and look around at how the job is done in other parts of the world - even by US agencies running impartial elections on behalf of developing countries.
That's not entirely true everywhere. In some elections you could just about use the Australian Senate ballot paper as a tablecloth.
Humans/Voters can be manipulated as well. They can try to fix it by choosing which regional districts they want to vote, I have heard and seen voting booths in certain districts closed down from "voters fighting", only to hear that the incumbent paid a groups of thugs to start the fights, of course he would have lost the vote in those districts. Never understood the chad method or why you would use something that sloppy, other then the obvious.. You can try to make it fair and balanced but there always seems to be someway to manipulate it in someones favor.
Irish elections are decided by a transferable vote in multiseat constituencies; the counts are quite difficult, most take a whole day and recounts in individual constituencies can take days and, on a few occasions, weeks. One perhaps surprising thing is that we like the delay; one reason the insecurity of the electronic system was take seriously was that were was a general lack of enthusiasm for speeding the count. Irish votes are first sorted and then counted, in public; a species of political activist, called tally men, watch the sorting and make estimates of the outcomes, these are discussed on the radio, on twitter, around kitchen tables, in pubs and the gradual unfolding of the count, with its estimates and predictions, with the anticipation of coalition talks and general horse trading, forms a sort of political theater and moment of political engagement which is part and parcel of our system of government. I think we did not want to loose that and there was some dismay at the swiftness with which the results were announced in the three trial constituencies. That removed any real will to make the count more efficient, coupled to the problem with security, that halted deployment.
I can't speak for ireland but in the UK we elect
MPs every 4-5 years (it's up to parliment when to call an election with a limit of 5 years between elections)
Councillers every year (normally one third of the council is replaced each time)
MEPs every 5 years
Some places also have an elected mayor and there are also occasional refferendums (either local or national)
Sometimes more than one thing is decided at the same time but when it is there are seperate ballot papers for each. IIRC there are seperate ballot boxes too.
Propositions are completely alien to us as is the idea of electing judges and minor government posts.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Yes in Australia we have branch stacking http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2006/s1688866.htm transcript of Janine Cohen's report "The Right Stuff"
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I'll tell you how it works in a country where its successfully automated. The main benefits are speed and fairness.
With manual voting, sometimes the minor parties don't have enough people to witness counting in all places, so the big parties can do what they want with those votes...
Anyway the machines are not connected to a network. Only at the end of the day, they connect to a server (using isolated secure links) to send results; should this fail, a memory card is physically sent.
The machines also do something stupidly simple which, for some reason, others fail to do: Print the vote in paper, the voter verifies and then stores that paper in a box for public auditing. Is that simple, really. At the end of the day, the machine prints its results which are compared to the votes stored in the box, that's it.
If you think this is a waste of time, you must remember the machines have already sent their results before the auditing begins. Only if there is a major discrepancy will the votes of that specific machine be later put on hold for revision.
Pen and paper is horribly prone to abuse; you just can't imagine. Someone sees a vote they don't like, they hide/eat/destroy the paper, etc... Or they make the box with the votes "disappear" before counting (the machine would have already sent the votes before a manual audit).
If you want to laugh, the machines used are just Olivetti lottery machines (x86) with custom software; and they work just fine. With them, we can have preliminary (but official) results in hours, rather than days or weeks. And there is plenty of replacements, what with worldwide lottery business and all, no custom (expensive) hardware is needed.
Also there is no mess with people writing improperly in paper or ink their fingers, etc. They go to the ballot cabin, push a button, get a printed paper with their vote, they see if it is the same, fold it, and deposit the paper in a box before leaving. Quite fast and clean.
Oh yes, all machines are sent with a car battery and inverter, should the power fail somewhere, there is enough power for 6+ hours (enough time to bring more batteries if needed).
How to detect if someone already voted? There is a separate machine (laptop/netbook) in its own network with a fingerprint scanner where people is checked first.
It is that simple, with current technology, it works, and has been verified by countless international organizations in dozens of elections already in the past decade, that system has 7 failsafe mechanisms IIRC. Why can't you guys do this properly, beats me...
Perhaps your big parties want to keep things exactly as they are, so the minor parties never have a chance...
Artix
Your Linux, your init.
If a provincial election was being held simultaneously as a federal election, or one of the two was occurring simultaneously with a referendum or some other reason for citizens to go to vote, each election/etc. would be on a separate ballot and would be placed into a separate ballot. Red ballot is the election vote, blue ballot is the referendum on such and such an issue, take both in the booth, make your choices on both, and then deposit each in its appropriate box.
GP was not quite as clear as he could be.
This is based on a number of "how it is done now" assumptions that are particular to your history and way of doing things.
In the UK, we don't have any insistence on when the count is done by. Some towns have a tradition of hurrying to get their count in first, in perhaps 90 minutes. But the last constituencies, with scattered islands where the ballot boxes are helicoptered in and the helicopters prefer to fly in daylight, the count may not be complete till next afternoon.
And counts are not on a per-precinct basis. they are at least on a per constituency basis, with sealed ballot boxes sent to a central count. In a large city with several constituencies, they may all be counted in one central counting room. The counters are usually town civil servants on overtime for the night - or loaned for the day if the count is not overnight
And we have 200 years experience in sorting out badly marked ballots. While it causes a few delays, it doesn't cause ream problems.
It doesn't have to be the way you do it now.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
What is hard is preserving anonymity while providing a means for detecting foul play whatever the source (including the equipment manufacturer) and doing it all in a way normal people can understand and trust.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Yes the sample Australian Senate ballot paper pic is a bit small :)
http://www.aec.gov.au/voting/How_to_vote/Voting_Senate.htm
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
You don't need the parties to send in trusted locals.
Why not have everyone watch who is interested? It works fine here around.
Just sell them to the United States! They'll happily buy compromised voting machines..
Is it practical to hand count millions of pieces of paper when computers exist to sum everything ? No. It's also quite error prone.
Errors arent a meaningful issue. If counts are within a margin of error, then recounting will be demanded. The issue is always tampering.. where the count doesnt resemble any statistical reality.
"His name was James Damore."
65%? That is disgustingly low.
Voting should be mandatory IMO, even if you just tick 'no vote'
We (Ireland) use the Proportion Representation system, which means for election of officials you enter your order of preference. There are multiple counts where either someone exceeding the required quota (rare) has their excess redistributed or the person with the lowest number of votes (starting with 1st preference) at the end of the count is eliminated and their ballots are redistributed based on the second preference listed. This continuous until the threshold for all the seats (1 for a presentational election, 2 or more per constituency for any government elections) has been reached, or the remaining candidates match the number of seats available.
In summary you don't mark the candidate you want elected with an X, you put a number beside each candidates name in order of preference (1 to x) that you would wish to see them elected.
Only for a Referendum is there a simple yes/no option.
I grew up taking important tests on a scantron sheet. If it's good enough for the SATs, it should be good enough for voting.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
And they put them all on the same ballot. Why?
Why not have a ballot for each election?
And if you are not registered for all elections happening in this voting office, you don't get all ballots, only those you are registered for.
Problem solved.
I'm not sure about your country, but in mine voting is supposed to be anonymous. Suppose someone counts after every n votes. As n approaches 1, anonymity decreases, until it disappears completely for n=1. Why sacrifice (some) anonymity to save 45 minutes? The savings of counting early seem rather negligible to me.
I believe in Ireland they have the Single Transferable Vote, a system where the voter marks candidates in order of preference. So a cross is replaced by 1, 2, 3 etc. This means that a ballot paper is potentially revisited many times, as candidates are eliminated and lower preferences are counted. Such a system ought to be better with electronic voting, except for the security problems.
"Propositions" are indeed alien and in Europe it's what we pay our politicians to do. Sure, they should put major questions to referenda - like do we join the EU, do we allow part of the Kingdom to become independent - but anything else is part of their job description. If not, why don't we do away with politicians and put every single issue out to the public via some kind of X Factor mass participation programme?
> Voting should be mandatory IMO, even if you just tick 'no vote'
Why? How exactly is just ticking the 'no vote' superior to not voting at all? Not voting doesn't have to mean "I'm too apathetic to vote", it can also mean "I don't approve of any of the candidates" or similar stuff.
Besides, what do you want to do to those who don't show up for your mandatory elections? Fine them? Throw them in jail?
I'm also at a loss as to why it's such a difficult problem to solve. People have their registration form -> enter voting station building, show form which is stamped or somethnig so it can't be used again & get an anonymous RFID card or something. That card allows them to vote once by putting it in a machine and pressing a couple of buttons. If you screw up the voting, reset and do it again as the RFID card would be valid for an hour or so.
If you still manage to screw up after an hour then you're really too stupid to be involved in the political process - except maybe as a politician.
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
It's not possible to not be registered for all the elections at a particular polling station, so that's no issue.
Handing out a booklet of ballots is certainly a possibility, but carries with it its own problems. Who is responsible for sorting them? If it's the voter, how do you account for ballots placed in the wrong box (keeping in mind, we're talking a dozen of the things per voter)? If it's the election judges, it doesn't save you any time when they go to tabulate them.
Really, the optical scanning machines are an excellent solution right now, especially since most of the population was trained on filling in bubbles properly all through primary school.
You vote for a Member of Parliament about once every 5 years. The leader of the party that gets an overall majority of votes becomes Prime Minister. If there's no overall majority then parties may have to form a coalition government.
You vote for a councillor for the local government about once every 4 or 6 years.
On the occasions where that falls in the same year as a general election, they do both elections at the same time with two separate ballot papers.
Actually I was referring to the UK. In Ireland they do use numbers. Depends on the voting system. UK is First Past the Post, Ireland is Single Transferable Vote.
In the UK, this is handled by making all the ballot papers different colors. The voter writes their cross on each ballot, then folds the ballot in half (so that the election officials can't see the vote) and puts it in the relevant box. The election officials check, by looking at the color of the paper, that the voter's putting the paper in the right box, and corrects them if they aren't. If a paper goes in the wrong box anyway, it can probably be moved to the right one during the count, because the papers are counted by hand. (Whoever was counting the paper would notice it was the wrong color and put it in a separate pile for incorrect ballots, which are checked by the candidates.)
(1)DOCOMEFROM!2~.2'~#1WHILE:1<-"'?.1$.2'~'"':1/.1$.2'~#0"$#65535'"$"'"'&.1$.2'~'#0$#65535'"$#0'~#32767$#1"
I've been an Elections Inspector in New York State since 2004. You are seriously underestimating the logistical difficulties in counting the votes by hand. My precinct has more than 800 registered voters in it. In the last two Presidential elections we've seen 65%+ turnout. The last two Gubernatorial elections both exceeded 50%. The polls are open from 6am to 9pm; we are mandated by law to be there 45 minutes before and after these times. There is no way that we can physically count hundreds of votes in 45 minutes. It would take several hours; now multiply this by our collective $41/hr salary ($11 for the chairman, $10 for each of the other three) and multiply that by the tens of thousands of election districts across New York State. Where is that money going to come from?
Wow.
So you guys would be in deep shit if a meaningful percentage of voters turned out!
Its probably a good thing that you have such a pitiful turnout of voters or your electoral system would likely collapse under the strain!!
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
I'm guessing the person you're referring to is from the UK. Over here, the boxes on ballot papers are HUGE, and the pencils used are sharpened regularly. Marking outside the box should indeed be seen as an indication of incompetence. I mean, they're not picking whether they want an apple or orange in their lunch box; They're picking who they want to run the country.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
In relation to your point about postal votes, they don't exist for the general public here in Ireland. If you're not in your voting district on the day, you don't get to vote. The only postal votes that occur are for people who are deployed overseas by the government, namely Irish military on peacekeeping, Garda members who are deployed as advisors and protection of state officials who may be abroad on the day or diplomatic staff (e.g. embassy staff).
However its not that difficult to commit voting fraud in Ireland. I'm registered in one district here (Dublin South East) but I've just moved apartment. The registration process for the electroral register here has a form for transfering your vote to a new district. But its awkward because you have to go to a Garda (police) station and have a Garda sign it verifying you are who you say you are, but to register as a new voter before an election (as part of a registration drive the government has before an election) you only have to fill out the form and send it in the post, no need for garda verification. Personally I can't wait for my vote to be transferred over so I get my RFA2 form ASAP to transfer it from on district to the next, but a regular citizen will probably wait for the next registration drive. Then on the day of the election, they could go from one constituency to the next and vote without being challenged as long as they provide ID.
But being honest, our governments have been a joke with regards electronic systems, between the E-Voting system and the Payroll system for our Health Sector electronic payroll system our politicians are going to fear bringing any electronic system for anything leaving us in the dark ages...
There is no -1 disagree
Yeah, you're right I forgot about their STV. And as you say, it's only potentially that they are revisited many times. I wonder what the average number of times a ballot paper is considered is?
I think it's still worthwhile to do it manually for the same reason that it's possible for anyone to understand and inspect the process. Saving time isn't worth the loss of transparency and security.
So, how many elections do you hold every year? In America, even if we only voted for one person at every level of government that would be no less than three elections (one for federal, one for state and one for local, or to put it in terms for Ireland, one for EU, one for country, one for local). Or don't you get to vote for who is the mayor of your town/city?
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
To be fair, some Europeans are very referendum-happy.
I suppose these tools can also be used to write an IOU to the Irish Government and the people by the firm responsible for crap machines.
Actually yes, I forgot to mention the European Parliament elections, so yes there's 3 officials we vote for. European, National and Local Council.
Only London directly elects it's Major. For the rest, councillors elect their major. It's only a ceremonial post anyway, apart from London.
But the terms vary between 4-6 years, and sometimes they coincide and are done on same day, so the visits to the polling station probably average once every 2 years, I'd guess. If you wanted to vote in every election.
See http://wijvertrouwenstemcomputersniet.nl/blog/ for the Dutch story on voring machines. Yes, we were earlier to abondon the computers. We vote with a pencil.
"Or don't you get to vote for who is the mayor of your town/city?"
Yes, he does, he's just trolling. Ireland doesn't use a single option system for general elections, it uses STV where you rank candidates in order, you certainly don't just tick one box. Here in the UK we elect our parliamentary representative, we elect our European parliament representatives, and depending on where you live you will elect some combination of your Mayor, your local councillors, your parish council, and probably some other things I've forgotten.
In the UK there's been some frustration at our electoral system for some time, though when we finally had a referendum on it though the population through it out, for a number of reasons, from Murdoch abusing his meida influence, to a shit choice of only one new less than perfect system, but one argument used by those wanting to hold onto the status quo where they can hold power in the face of the majority of people not wanting them in power at all (because that's what FPTP largely caters to) was that a system like AV, where you rank candidates in order, was too confusing.
So you'll have to excuse my fellow countryman, for making the implication that it's far too confusing to do anything other than put a tick in a box, for him it probably is, unfortunately there's too many people in our country that really are actually this stupid.
Why? How exactly is just ticking the 'no vote' superior to not voting at all?
Because some people want to register their disapproval, and spoiling your ballot can be distinguished from staying at home. Compare the following two hypothetical election results.
Result 1:
Candidate A: 400 votes
Candidate B: 600 votes
Candidate C: 1800 votes
Spoilt ballots: none
Turnout: 56%
Result 2:
Candidate A: 400 votes
Candidate B: 600 votes
Candidate C: 1800 votes
Spoilt ballots: 2000
Turnout: 96% (including spoilt ballots)
In the first example, Candidate C can legitimately claim a strong mandate from the electorate. In the second example, candidate C would still be elected, but I would argue that they cannot claim a strong mandate.
I don't support mandatory voting, but I think that registering an abstention has some value above not voting at all.
The amazing thing is it ever got as far as it did. Politicians of all people should be able to grasp the importance of fair and transparent elections. If a machine can be tampered with in an undetectable way then there is a huge incentive for people to do it. If a store can print out a slip of paper when I buy a chocolate bar then there is absolutely no excuse that a voting machine cannot do likewise.
Of course they'll be accepted. We've had self-driving trains and planes for years. But that's a completely different issue from electronic voting.
Yep and see the immense outrage whenever a crash is caused by nothing other than software? Companies get sued, people get dragged in front of congressional hearings, and people completely forget that despite we have had an automatic system kill a few people that a lot of people have been saved by its presence.
We expect a LOT out of new technology. That's fundamentally the issue. Knowing a system has failures and being able identify those failures are two different things. But spend a lot of money and invest in new technologies then the existence of those same failures isn't good enough.
The Russians are a bad example. Really they weren't even trying to hide the election fraud anymore, yet there's fraud that happens in many countries which is only obvious due to a massive difference between the exit polling and the election outcome.
My point is paper counting is not a superior system, but we do need a superior system to replace it, and not one which maintains the status quo while providing fancy touchscreens.
With manual voting, sometimes the minor parties don't have enough people to witness counting in all places, so the big parties can do what they want with those votes...
And how do the electronic voting machines prevent the big parties from doing what they want with those votes?
With paper votes, yes people can destroy/change the votes, but it's a lot harder to do on a massive scale. They need to work for each vote and each ballot box they stuff/swap. Whereas a million electronic votes can be tampered with in less than a second.
Fact is if you are in a country where paper-pencil voting is being rigged on a massive scale, electronic voting isn't going to be better at all. Think Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi elections: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/2331951.stm
Who thinks electronic voting systems in that case wouldn't show the same sort of results?
You mention lack of witnesses. Fact is the more voters you have, the more counters you can have and the more observers you can have. If your system/rules prevent that, that's not a problem with paper-pencil voting. If a party can't even find enough "friendly" observers for the ballot stations in that area how the heck do they even expect to win that constituency even if the voting is fair? Should they even win that area? Think about it.
Even though in theory there can be tamper-proof verifiable electronic voting (I've seen at least one described plausibly on youtube), the fact is paper and pencil is very easy for the average person to understand.
So when they are standing there and looking at the transparent ballot boxes that have not been moved from the room, and see the votes being counted one by one, it is easier for them to understand what is happening and convince them that it is being done _reasonably_ fairly.
AFAIK most of those "rigged" elections do not have the ballot boxes staying put and opened up and counted on site for people to observe. That's why the people get upset and riot - when the counting is done behind closed doors, they know it's no longer fair.
And that leads us to the one important requirement that most electronic voting systems are inferior at meeting: the counting doesn't just have to be fair/correct, it has to be _seen_ as fair/correct.
If the elections are seen as fair, it is far easier to convince the losers that they have lost fair and square (at least reasonably enough). That way you have fewer riots on the streets.
When the losers see that most of the votes are against them, one by one as they are being counted, displayed and announced (that's what they do here[1]), they will know deep down that they lost.
[1] Where I live I think the bulk of the tampering is done with postal votes, and more remote areas - where you're not sure what is actually going on (whether there's even voting). But the conventional electronic voting systems won't help with this either.
Totally agree. I don't understand what the hurry in the US is - especially in Presidential elections where the winner doesn't take office for another 2 months. Surely a few hours' delay is worth the assurance of integrity?
So, there isn't only one choice after all.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Yep and see the immense outrage whenever a crash is caused by nothing other than software? Companies get sued, people get dragged in front of congressional hearings, and people completely forget that despite we have had an automatic system kill a few people that a lot of people have been saved by its presence.
And yet despite congress and writs, we still have self driving trains and planes. But it probably makes sense not to launch in the land of the law suite. I imagine the first commercial self-driving cars will be launched in Germany. BMW is keen on the technology, and they already have prototypes on public roads mixing with normal traffic.
I think Germans have more respect for technology, and are a little less hysterical in their politics and litigation. Or perhaps it'll be the Japanese do it first. But one way or another, it will happen in one country or another. And when accident stats go down in that country, it'll be allowed in other countries too.
I said "ballots with a single choice". A ballot is a piece of paper. In the UK, on occasions when 2 elections fall on the same day, voters are issues with 2 ballots, with one choice on each.
Depending on your constituency, because if you elect a parish council, or a mayor, then these are often on the same ballot slip as your city/town councillors.
No, it's not even possible in theory and people need to stop pretending it is. The only way to know that a computer cannot be tampered with is to know every line of code and every circuit pathway It is, of course, impossible to see circuit pathways inside a processor.
So it is literally (not just practically, literally) impossible for someone to walk up to a computer and be assured that it will do what is stated to do, all the time, unless they're Dr. Manhattan or something.
Of course, the practical impossibility limit is even sooner, as they won't even let random people inspect all the code on the machine in use, or even hook the hard drive up to their own machine to verify the code.
need a procedure with votes being printed on paper to make it verifyable without having to understand the internal workings of the voting machine
Half the problem with electronic voting are utter tools who run around insisting that if we do it 'right', and by 'right' they mean 'Without counting the votes electronically', it's fine...and the fucking public hears 'electronic voting can be done right'.
STOP SAYING SHIT LIKE THAT. THAT IS NOT ELECTRONIC VOTING. ELECTRONIC VOTING IS WHEN VOTES ARE STORED AND TABULATED IN A COMPUTER.
No one has any goddamn problem with any sort of ballot-assistance, be it computers or human beings or fucking trained monkeys. But every time people group that into the same category as 'We've going to let proprietary computer system count the votes', all you've done is provided cover to those treasonous asshats who've taken the ability to verify the vote away from everyone.
Car analogy: That's like saying in a hypothetical future 'Sure, we've spent billions on self-driving cars, and they keep crashing and killing everyone, but that's because we keep building the wrong sort of self-driving cars...we need to build the kind where people operate them, and computers just provide directions and stuff.'. Hey, lunatic, those aren't self-driving cars.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I would've modded you, but there's no option "-1 nonsense"
Hows is that nonsense?
I am a programmer myself, and the notion that I could implement security measures, and not at least have some idea how to circumvent them, seems silly to me. And if I know how to circumvent those measures, I would assume that other programmers would be able to figure it out as well.
The reality is that security is an arms race. New techniques will be created on both sides for as long as technology advances.
Fanboy Status: Apache Flex, C#, Eclipse, KDE, Pirate Party, Ron Paul, Slackware, Windows 7
Everyone deserves mathematical assurances that his vote is counted and confidential. There's lots of systems out there, but one has already been successfully deployed. It's called Scantegrity II by Ron Rivest of MIT. It's already been tested in an election in Takoma Park. If you are using optical scan machines the marginal cost to add Scantegrity was only a few hundred bucks per voting machine.
King County, the most populous county in Washington State with 1.1 million voters, has moved to all mail-in ballots. The ballots are mark-sense where you fill in the ovals. They are machine counted, and have the paper copy as a backup. Residents "sign" a form enclosed with the ballot, in order to provide for verifying signatures. They have been doing this for several years now, and the results seem to be good with fewer ballot recounts and "human error" issues. King County now even provides TRACKING of your mail-in ballot: http://info.kingcounty.gov/elections/mailballottracking.aspx. Here is more information, including that you can mail the ballot with a first class stamp, or drop in a "ballot drop box": http://www.kingcounty.gov/elections/voting/mailballots.aspx.
We actually don't elect judges here (in Arizona), IIRC. Instead, what we vote on is whether to keep them. This is only state-level and lower judges too, not Federal, and this only happens in some states. I never heard of such a thing before moving west to Arizona; I don't think it's commonly done in the eastern states. Also, I don't think I've ever heard of a judge not being re-elected, since so few people actually keep track of judges and whether they're any good (they usually only find out the hard way if they have to appear in his court). I make a practice of not making a selection for any judge I don't know anything about (which is usually all of them, unless my wife tells me that one is a real bastard; she used to work in the legal field here), but there's probably a bunch of people who just vote "Yes" for them all. It seems like a basically useless gesture to make us think we have a say in government when we really don't.
The propositions, OTOH, are actually a pretty cool thing because it gives the people direct power to make law. In theory, it shouldn't be necessary since, after all, isn't that why we elect representatives? In practice, however, we frequently find that the people make decisions that are directly contrary to what the elected leaders want. Medical marijuana is a prime example of this; the politicians are all against it, but it was recently voted for here in Arizona, showing a giant disconnect between the politicians and what the people really want. This shows me that our republic isn't working, probably largely because of our stupid plurality voting system and the two corrupt parties that run everything. The propositions help counterbalance that, but of course only at the state level. We should have propositions at the Federal level, since it's pretty obvious that no one is happy with what's going on Washington these days.
The idea of letting your elected representatives take care of these issues instead of having the people decide them sounds good in theory, but doesn't work worth a damn in practice, at least not here in the USA. Haven't you noticed Americans bitching all the time about how corrupt our government is, how it only serves corporations, how there's no candidates that they want to bother voting for, etc.? Maybe things are different where you live, especially if you have a better voting system than our stupid plurality system that forces us into having only two corrupt parties that differ only in name and which corporations they're beholden to.
You don't vote for people like the local school board, the regional government, etc.? One of the ways people get into politics here is to start locally, at the school boards, then move up to local government, state legislatures, etc., and then move up to the national government.
Yep, at least here in AZ our elections are exactly the same as your municipal elections with a scantron sheet. Basically there's a big arrow next to each choice with the middle of the arrow missing; you use a sharpie market to fill in the arrow of your choice. The votes are tallied by machine but the paper kept in case of a recount. It seems to work fairly well, as we never had the drama seen in Florida with the "hanging chads" or Ohio with the e-voting machines that Diebold promised to win the election for Bush with (hmm....).
I am liking the sound of these other voting systems and governmental systems I'm reading about in these other comments though. Ireland's "westminster" system sounds cumbersome, but effective in actually figuring out who the people really want, since you vote by preference instead of only choosing between two people as in our idiotic plurality system.
The Irish system is actually Single Transferable Vote for all National (Parliament and Senate, no less than every 5 years), Local and European elections (both every 5 years), meaning you number the candidates in order of preference from 1, 2, 3... and so on until however many you wish to vote for, with a number of candidates elected in each voting constituency (that number depending on the size of the electorate in that constituency.
For Presidential Elections (every 7 years), Single Transferable Vote - Instant Run-off is used (number candidates in order of preference, but only one candidate will be elected), and Referenda are simple yes/no questions.
Counts can take quite a while as the candidates with the lowest votes per count are eliminated and their votes distributed to their second preferences. Here's an from my constituency in the 2011 National elections which demonstrates how it works, and the tally lasted about 14 hours. http://www.rte.ie/news/election2011/results/dublin-north-central.html
Precisely whom is it that I'm going to ask for a new ballot? This is a vote by mail state and I don't even know where I would go to get a new ballot.
I've been following UK politics long enough to know that incompetence is pretty much the best way of qualifying to vote. They manage to make even our nutty American politicians look somewhat less nutty.
No, because there is no way of telling whether the particular e-Voting machine you're using is secure or a Diebold. You can't secure a computer against its owner, so when that owner has literally the whole world to win, you can't trust it.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Why would a country with a population of 4.6 million need 7,000 voting machines? Even if all of that number were eligible to vote (which they are not, but I haven't been able to find the actual number anywhere) that would mean one machine for every 657 voters. This was clearly a scam from the outset and I'm guessing some Fianna Fail gangsters got some nice 'incentives' from the machine manufacturers. Business as usual, sadly.
http://www.acetonestudio.com
You need to see an American ballot to understand the problem, apparently. You are operating in an environment where you vote for one, maybe two people. In the US:
1 for US president
1 for US Senator (in 2/3 of even presidential cycles - 6y terms)
1 for US Representative
1 for state govenor
1 for state senate (usually)
1 for state reprepresenative
(in my state, you also vote for secretary of state, attorney general, lt. general, etc - 6 positions other than govenor, iirc)
possibly some judges (depends on state, and voting process can differ)
certainly some local officials (mayor, county boards, special districts)
some state ballot initiatives (not all states)
some local initiatives (not all locales)
It would not be unusual to be voting on 20 or more items in a presidential election. I think 2008 ran to 29 items in my area.
Additionally, in the fire station where I vote, there are people that have different sets of local officials, so you get a different ballot depending on exactly where you live so you can vote for your set of officials (and local propositions).
In this context, i don't think different colored slips of paper is going to work, and counting by hand is going to be a serious pain in the ass. We aren't JUST voting for president.
For non-Americans and pre-voting Americans, look up a sample ballot for somewhere in the US and peruse it before suggesting simplistic fixes. Machine + paper trail seems to be the way to go.
California famously threw out some anti-death penalty judges in an election a few years back. California is also famous for having initiatives and counter-initiatives on the same ballot by two groups opposed to each other, and once in a while both will pass. Makes a mess for the courts to sort out.
California is also famous for having initiatives and counter-initiatives on the same ballot by two groups opposed to each other, and once in a while both will pass. Makes a mess for the courts to sort out.
Yep, I guess that's one of the perils of having propositions; voters sometimes do really stupid stuff like that. But then, for people who are against propositions and think we should allow politicians to decide all these things, if you can't trust the voters not to do something stupid with propositions like this, then why would you trust the voters to elect a decent politician to deal with these issues, and not make a stupid decision there too?
In America, even if we only voted for one person at every level of government that would be no less than three elections (one for federal, one for state and one for local
But you don't elect every year. Do you really need a bunch of dedicated hardware for an event that only happens 3 times in 4 years or so?
And do you REALLY think the local, state, and federal governments are going to agree and cooperate enough to use the SAME voting machines at each level? They probably won't even agree on a vender, never mind a model, never mind actually using the same physical units.
And how long will the voting machines last before they need to be replaced? Will you likely get more than 2 elections out of one?
Actually in the U.S., elections (for all levels) are regulated by the individual states. Additionally, all of the offices (local, state and federal) are on one ballot. I am not sure why you are making this argument with me, I oppose e-voting because I think that whether or not it is honest and fair is opaque to the average voter.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
The biggest difference is that Ireland uses proportional representation by means of a single transferable vote, so you number your candidates in order of preference; there are multiple seats per constituency, and a quota based on population. All the 1st prefs are tallied, and if one candidate gets over the quota, s/he is elected. Remaining [unused] votes are then redistributed among remaining candidates according to their 2nd pref: lather, rinse, repeat until all seats are filled. There is no question of voter intent: if a paper is spoiled, incorrectly filled in, or not clearly readable, it's invalid. The Returning Officer might be called over by a counter to adjudicate on a borderline case.
Doing the whole thing by hand is well-organised, tried, and tested. It costs a lot less than the government wasted on machines that were inadequate for the purpose, running proprietary, closed-source code that could not be tested or proved. It certainly would be possible to replace the system with a computerised one, but the politicians who made the mistakes were simply too stupid to understand that a problem existed, even when told by the entire country's IT community (except the even stupider "IT advisers" who were supposed to advise the politicians). But this is a small country. The law is the same throughout, unlike the 50 separate US states, so we don't have a dozen pieces of local legislation to ride in along with every national vote. I can well see that persisting with a pencil-and-paper solution in such a disparate environment would not have the same attraction.
Mod parent up.
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that would be really nice
Atari rules... ermm... ruled.
After the US 2000 Bush-Gore election, the US Republicans convinced a lot of governments to buy new fancy electronic voting machines, including Ireland. The US models included a "Default to Republican" feature, which worked just fine when they tested it over here. The problem is that it means something different over in Ireland....
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I don't know about Ireland, but most European and Commonwealth ballots are much simpler than US ones - you're voting for a member of parliament, and maybe a provincial and city council member, and polling places don't need to be very large. Shakrai's New York State example had about 500 ballots cast in his polling place, which would be like sorting ten decks of playing cards if there's just one candidate. Split the work among a couple of people, and you're done in 15 minutes, trivial to audit, and you've typically got at least one poll worker from each of the 3-10 parties running. If there are three levels of government on the ballot, it still doesn't take long.
And yes, New York's ballots are a lot more complicated, and here in California we've typically got 5-10 ballot questions or bond referenda in addition to the candidates. I prefer optical scanners to most of the technologies out there, but the old-fashioned lever machines were usually pretty reliable.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Actually I was referring to the UK. In Ireland they do use numbers. Depends on the voting system. UK is First Past the Post, Ireland is Single Transferable Vote.
With the benefit of hindsight your username should have answered the question for me.
We (Netherlands) use form with all the candidates, you mark the box for the person you want to vote for. Easy, and hard to do wrong. Writing down numbers is asking for unclearly written votes.
Interesting. So most votes is the winner?.
Writing down number has it's problems - which the column method doesn't suffer from. I think you'll find that the plural (and approval) systems have similar problems (tick none, tick both, cross not tick, etc) though they're easy for the base unit to understand than preferential.
I like the Debian condorcet method, but I doubt the Australian public would.
Which would be funny, except that in the Republic of Ireland, being a republican (in the pro-unification sense) is not at all controversial, and probably the default position of the general populace (or at least among those who care).
I know this is is off-topic, but I think one of the main reasons (perhaps the reason) the UK rejected AV is because the No campaign successfully cast it as a Nick Clegg popularity contest after his party's series of policy U-turns.
I think I've binned it now, but I did have a campaign leaflet which said something equivalent to "If you vote Yes to AV then Nick Clegg will get to decide the outcome of every future General Election" (what, even after he's dead?)
I also don't know why Labour campaigned against AV when arguably they would have stood to gain from it.
Nice, that's a lot further than we've come here in Sweden.
Electronically filled out optically scanned human readable ballots are the obvious answer to the problems electronic voting was supposed to solve while preventing the kinds of abuses and vote theft that are happening with the current system.
The world you experience is only a close approximation of reality.
rather than focusing on casting of the vote electronically it is possible to use electronic counting. This is exactly same as how we mark mcq papers. I think that remains as a good idea rather than making all the process electronic.
I am confused. I have never been an "Elections Inspector" whatever that is. But I have worked several times as a scrutineer (watching the voting etc from within the polling station.) We easily watched counting of hundreds of ballots in 45 minutes.
Oh wait, I am in Canada and the ballots in provincial and federal elections only have the 4 to 6 names of the candidates for that riding. We don't lump in judges, dog catchers etc on a single giant ballot.
So again with the caveat that are ballots may have a superior design, counting hundreds of ballots by hand can easily be done in 45 minutes. Sit down and separate a shuffled deck of cards into four suits. How long did that take? About 2 minutes? Times 16 for 800 votes, 32 minutes. With the ballots we use here sorting ballots is not much harder then sorted cards into suits. They are not colour coded but its just a single straight line of check boxes which is just as easy.
So perhaps instead of eVoting Machines you need to redesign your elections for less complicated ballots.
Although I do agree that counting machines are different then voting machines and should be able to be incorporated into the process.
In my province we had a referendum to change to a form of proportional representation called STV. The group against this change represented it as requiring "electronic voting" which was a willful and dirty misrepresentation. While electronic tabulation of counting would have helped a great deal, that is not the same as electronic voting.
Yes, that was a large part of it certainly. The Yes campaign was really weak in failing to highlight the outright lies of the No campaign and use them against them too. The Yes campaign struck me as a kind of amateur campaign you'd expect for student council elections at some uni, whilst the No campaign was a full blown dirty tricks political campaign with the backing of the likes of Murdoch, the Daily Mail, and the who's who of the UK's most corrupt politicians (Margarett Beckett etc.).
Compulsory voting? That's a terrible idea, it encourages people that aren't informed, and wouldn't go if they didn't have to, to vote. Voting isn't a good thing. Informed voting is. I read a post on /. that I think is a great idea, party affiliation shouldn't be indicated on the ballot.
It's a very good idea because it encourages those who want to be elected to inform people. It can also reduce the effects of electoral manipulation and corruption down to the level of unimportant noise. It takes a large conspiracy to throw an election with 92,000 voting in a region. With 800 that may or may not even turn up not so much.
I also think the US party registered voter thing is outdated and somewhat insane but that's from the perspective of a place where everyone over 18 is registered to vote by a fiercely impartial body. You can't even pull the Florida trick of taking people off the list because they might be felons.
The problem with that slip of paper is that it then exposes your identity and how you voted. Making e-voting secure shouldn't be that hard. Making it secure while retaining anonymoity is a whole 'nother story.
I've never done it, but I understand that here in Canada you can hand your ballet back and say that you refuse to vote. This is counted. Spoiling your ballet results in it being tossed and not counted at all.