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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
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.
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...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
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.
This sig is intentionally left blank
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.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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visit randi.org
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.
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.
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'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.
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.
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
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?
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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"
To be fair, some Europeans are very referendum-happy.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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