NYU Study: America's Voting Machines Are Rapidly Aging Out

Presto Vivace passes on a link to a report at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU's law school which says that many of the vote-counting machines set to be used in the 2016 U.S. general election will be past their prime by the time of the election, if not long before. From the report: Technology has changed dramatically in the last decade, but America's voting machines are rapidly aging out. In 2016, for example, 43 states will use electronic voting machines that are at least 10 years old, perilously close to the end of most systems' expected lifespan. Old voting equipment increases the risk of failures and crashes — which can lead to long lines and lost votes on Election Day — and problems only get worse the longer we wait.

Comments

Mobile banking?

[technophebe]

I truly don't understand why we're not *all* voting online by now. If I can spend or transfer every single penny I have in my bank accounts online, in an instant (and I can), then why can't I cast my vote online using the same security mechanisms?

Re:Mobile banking?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand why you think we can have an anonymous online vote. Online banking is 100% about de-anonymizing the person doing the transaction. Show me a formally demonstrated system for an auditable, anonymous vote and then let's entertain the notion.

Re:Mobile banking?

[bobbied]

If it's somehow racist to suggest folks show up at the polls with a photo ID and given the partisan arguments that follow such statements, It's pretty clear to me why "online" voting is not likely to happen any time soon.

Can you imagine the rancor that would ensue over how to register people to vote online? How that disenfranchised voters who didn't have or couldn't afford an internet connection or where unable to follow even the simplest of instructions about how to vote? Lord help us trying to sort all that out where the various parties would be vying to protect some real or imaginary edge in how voters where registered and how they cast their votes. It's bad enough trying to deal with the gerrymandering and voter ID laws now, I cannot imagine how much fun it would be to do all this online too...

Re:Mobile banking?

[Anonymous Coward]

Going alone into a physical voting booth provides a better protection against selling your vote to someone else, as you still can secretly vote the person that you actually want to. With online voting the other guy might want to look over your shoulder to confirm that the sold vote goes to the person chosen by him.

Re:Mobile banking?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here are some differences between ballot counting and banking transactions:

1. Votes are supposed to be anonymous so voters can not normally confirm their transactions are posted accurately. There are various complex schemes to provide voter verification but none of them IMHO are especially simple or transparent. Banking transactions are traceable and verifiable.
2. Voters are not supposed to provide proof of how they voted presumably as a deterrence to voter buying.
3. Votes are not transferable among individuals. Mail ballots typically require signatures which is while forgeable are a long accepted legal authentication method. Banking transactions typically use transferable passwords.
4. Erroneous or fraudulent banking transactions can be reversed or corrected relatively easily with the costs born by the banks as business overhead. Major irregularities in elections are typically settled by court cases where the outcome may bear little relationship to the actual votes.

Re:Mobile banking?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's racist is the intentions of those who demand the photo ID, as their own admissions show that they know that the possession of such ID is unbalanced, and they refuse to address the problem as evidenced by their refusal to make the provision of that ID a state mandate.

That's all they have to do. Make it a burden on the state, and they can satisfy everyone. But no, we get pretend measures like alleged "free" ID that the citizen still needs to document, and they may even need to travel far outside of their area to get one.

But hey, feel free to put the ID measure online, I won't mind being able to send the state a request for ID and an agent show up and find out what it will take to satisfy them.

Home delivery is fine.

Re:Mobile banking?

[FranTaylor]

If it's somehow racist to suggest folks show up at the polls with a photo ID

if you look at the statistics for who has a photo ID and who doesn't have a photo ID, it SURE IS racist to suggest using its absence as a filter to remove voters.

Re: Mobile banking?

[Holi]

Sure it is, I am given a blank ballot, there is no identifier on it that links back to me, I mark it with a marker and send it through the scanner. My vote is counted, I have been marked as voted in the polls, but no one can tell which ballot is mine. Sounds pretty anonymous to me.

Re:Mobile banking?

[Coren22]

You need an ID to get a job, cash a check, buy beer and ciggs, use a credit card, drive, etc. You need an ID for life nowadays, and passing a voter ID law that includes free IDs for all who can prove who they are (a requirement to register to vote!) is somehow racist?

Grow up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Mobile banking?

[JaredOfEuropa]

Auditable, anonymous, and transparent to / understandable by to a layman. A paper ballot system has the advnatgae that pretty much everyone can understand how it works, what the conditions for a fair vote are, and if those conditions are met at least in their local area. It is very hard to do any large-scale rigging in a properly conducted ballot, and people understand why it is so. You may be able to implement electronic voting that offers audits as well as anonymity, mathematically proven, and well-secured, but only a few people in this world will have the knowledge to actually verify the system, and it may be impossible for them to do so nationwide, before and on the day of voting. It's important that people know they can trust the outcome.

Aging Out

[doconnor]

In Canada our voting systems have a design lifespan of one day, because they are made out of paper and cardboard. Still a lot more secure and reliable then the US system.

risk of failures and crashes

[fustakrakich]

And let's not forget fraud...The black boxes are not trustworthy. I find it hard to believe that some of these crackpots are actually winning the vote. We need to go back to paper. It's easier to verify and very low maintenance.

Re:risk of failures and crashes

[afidel]

Or do what Ohio did after the 2004 election disaster, go to scantron style ballots. Everyone has used them, they can easily be retallied by industry standard equipment or by hand and the error rate is low. As far as reliability, schools with almost zero budget manage to keep them working through much higher workloads then a few elections a year so the equipment is obviously robust enough and the likelyhood that it will become outdated is zero.

Re:Here's one suggestion.

[rickb928]

Let's not try to automate voting beyond OCR scanners until we can secure it. We can't now. No. We cannot.

Thanks.

pen and paper

[NostalgiaForInfinity]

I think we should go back to pen-and-paper voting, with ballot boxes and manual counting. No practical purpose is served by introducing technology into the process of voting.

Re:'Past their prime' or 'Upgrading for no reason'

[NostalgiaForInfinity]

Voting really hasn't changed in thousands of years, so I'm not really sure why the voting machines can be 'past their prime'.

Actually, voting has changed. It used to be done by tokens placed into urns or people raising their hands in a town square. Then by marks made on paper.

Only fairly recently has it started being done by "machine" (punch cards, levers, or digital computers), and it's unclear why a "machine" is needed: it's expensive, difficult to audit, and easy to manipulate.

Scantron sheets

[acoustix]

My voting precincts use scantron sheets for all elections. Simple, anonymous, secure. I mark my ballot, walk to the scantron machine and enter my ballot. If there's a problem with my ballot there's an error message. If the sheet is destroyed by the scanner I can fill out another sheet.

Why is this so hard for everyone else? I don't want online voting. It complicates a very easy task.