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New Bill Could Finally Get Rid of Paperless Voting Machines (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A bipartisan group of six senators has introduced legislation that would take a huge step toward securing elections in the United States. Called the Secure Elections Act, the bill aims to eliminate insecure paperless voting machines from American elections while promoting routine audits that would dramatically reduce the danger of interference from foreign governments. "With the 2018 elections just around the corner, Russia will be back to interfere again," said co-sponsor Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.). So a group of senators led by James Lankford (R-Okla.) wants to shore up the security of American voting systems ahead of the 2018 and 2020 elections. And the senators have focused on two major changes that have broad support from voting security experts.
The first objective is to get rid of paperless electronic voting machines. Computer scientists have been warning for more than a decade that these machines are vulnerable to hacking and can't be meaningfully audited. States have begun moving away from paperless systems, but budget constraints have forced some to continue relying on insecure paperless equipment. The Secure Elections Act would give states grants specifically earmarked for replacing these systems with more secure systems that use voter-verified paper ballots. The legislation's second big idea is to encourage states to perform routine post-election audits based on modern statistical techniques. Many states today only conduct recounts in the event of very close election outcomes. And these recounts involve counting a fixed percentage of ballots. That often leads to either counting way too many ballots (wasting taxpayer money) or too few (failing to fully verify the election outcome). The Lankford bill would encourage states to adopt more statistically sophisticated procedures to count as many ballots as needed to verify an election result was correct -- and no more.
The first objective is to get rid of paperless electronic voting machines. Computer scientists have been warning for more than a decade that these machines are vulnerable to hacking and can't be meaningfully audited. States have begun moving away from paperless systems, but budget constraints have forced some to continue relying on insecure paperless equipment. The Secure Elections Act would give states grants specifically earmarked for replacing these systems with more secure systems that use voter-verified paper ballots. The legislation's second big idea is to encourage states to perform routine post-election audits based on modern statistical techniques. Many states today only conduct recounts in the event of very close election outcomes. And these recounts involve counting a fixed percentage of ballots. That often leads to either counting way too many ballots (wasting taxpayer money) or too few (failing to fully verify the election outcome). The Lankford bill would encourage states to adopt more statistically sophisticated procedures to count as many ballots as needed to verify an election result was correct -- and no more.
Ballot images should exist, too.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I feel the electronic voting machines should have a few questions on the constitution and civics and only after you answer them correctly should you be shown the screen which allows you to vote. Too many people who have no idea of what democracy means vote hence making the whole exercise a farce where the one with the most TV time (and by extension the most corporate lobbies) wins because most people dont know what they are voting for.
The questions can be pulled from a rotating questionbank so no 2 people get the same 5 questions and if some party is willing to educate their voters on the right answers to all 5000 questions well now you have an informed voter.
**Life is too short to be serious**
There is a very simple way to do this. Have an electronic voting machine with a paper printout. Voter votes, prints out his ballot and puts it into the ballot box. When counting the electronic count is used but with 10% of the paper votes counted by hand to verify the counts are good. If the counts dont match up statistically or the election is close the backup paper ballots get counted by hand. You get speed and you get accuracy. You have a national level organization standardize the machine format to be used by all local authorities. Heck in India there is a National Election Commission whose only job is to conduct elections. They are pretty multipartisan as their terms overlap across elections and every party which comes to power gets to put its appointees on the commission but that would never work in US as the US distrusts federal solutions.
**Life is too short to be serious**
Also remove every "(R)" and "(D)" from the ballot. Let's not make it quite so easy for people to vote along party lines.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Do I need an ID to purchase a gun?