>Might as well just go with the simpler Approval voting... It's simpler, and >more effective in my experience.
I partially agree. The most effective strategy under Range voting is to always vote max or min score for each candidate that you think is a real contender to win. Any other vote could be considered a partial abstention. If the voting instructions are poor or minimal many voters will accidentally partially abstain which will understandably make them angry. But if the instructions are well written then I do not think that this will happen to a significant degree.
I like Approval voting but I see allowing partial abstentions as being a small improvement. I don't like the idea of encouraging frequent accidental partial abstentions so my support for Range Voting is very sensitive to the context and voting instructions.
>Might as well just go with the simpler Approval voting... It's simpler, and
>more effective in my experience.
I partially agree. The most effective strategy under Range voting is to
always vote max or min score for each candidate that you think is a real
contender to win. Any other vote could be considered a partial abstention.
If the voting instructions are poor or minimal many voters will accidentally
partially abstain which will understandably make them angry. But if the instructions
are well written then I do not think that this will happen to a significant degree.
I like Approval voting but I see allowing partial abstentions as being a small improvement. I don't like the idea of encouraging frequent accidental partial abstentions so my support for Range Voting is very sensitive to the context and voting instructions.
Some more of my thoughts on this:
http://allaboutvoting.com/2008/01/07/our-voting-system-is-a-loser/
See also the Range Voting advocacy site's comparison of Range vs. Approval and make up your own mind:
http://www.rangevoting.org/rangeVapp.html
I agree. I see little of value here. Part of that may be due to the lack of details in the article and the useless trust destroying statement "the Swiss government is not sharing a lot of information on certain details for security reasons."
Counts are encrypted as they are passed from one place to another. Note that that those counts should be public information anyways, so the intent of the quantum crypto is to preserve the message - not to keep it secret.
Those counts could have been adequately protected using many other commonly used crypto techniques like SSL.
Such a tiny part of the chain from casting the ballot to reporting the election results is protected that this is just not very interesting.
>This is a prime example of why a purely electronic record of >the vote is a Bad Idea. If paper ballots had been printed, >reviewed by the voter before being deposited in a secure ballot >box, and retained for a recount, there would be no issue. Well, yes. But if they were not retained and were instead lost? We would have the same situation as Alameda is currently having.
(Now is a recount/audit from the voting machines used by Alameda even meaningful? I don't think so and I doubt that you do either.)
>If you had read the article, you would know that the problem was not the machines. >The city did perform a dump of the data before they returned the machines to >Diebold; that was the responsibility of the people in california. Diebold >was clearing the machines and when told to stop they did, however only 20 >of the 400+ machines had not been cleared. I did not see mentions of these details in the articles. Link?
I do agree with the point that the core issue here was that the county did not successfully retain evidence that it had an obligation to retain. Such a thing could have happened even with a hand-counted paper ballot.
Separately there is, of course, the issue of whether the use of an unverifiable voting machine like those provided by Diebold can have a meaningful audit.
In terms of meaningful audits I see it as end-to-end verifiable systems like punchscan
BETTER THEN hand marked paper ballot with optical scan and recounts against samples of the paper ballots
BETTER THEN hand counted paper ballots
BETTER THEN voting machines with voter-verified paper trails
BETTER THEN voting machines...and everything below hand counted paper ballots is below my threshold for suitability.
The news is good in California, but serious reforms are needed nationwide, including a voter-verified paper trail and mandatory random audits. Contact your representative today and voice your support for H.R. 811, the Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2007.
EFF supports HR811 and considers it to be an improvement over our current system. Some other prominent folks support it such as Avi Rubin.
Me? I'm still neutral on HR811. I have not taken the time to thoroughly research it and I find that the advice of those I trust is split on the matter.
I also have concerns that it will too sharply limit promising end-to-end verifiable systems such as Punchscan.
I don't consider end-to-end verifiable technologies to be ready for widespread deployment, but I do think:
that they should be discussed and seriously considered
that additional funding for basic research of E2E verifiable technologies should be supported
that limited deployment of E2E verifiable systems should be allowed and encouraged
laws that frustrate any of the above are misguided
>[From the article]In her ruling Tuesday, Smith said county officials had failed to
>retrieve backup data from electronic voting machines, logs of activity on the
>machines and other records as she had specifically ordered.
>
>Instead, the county ignored the request and returned the devices to their
>manufacturer, Diebold Election Systems, after the measure's advocates had
>sued the county seeking access to the data, the judge said.
>
>"Why the county did so is anybody's guess," the judge wrote. "But the
>result is absolutely certain: The information on those machines is lost
>completely."
The county screwed up and destroyed evidence it had an obligation to preserve.
(Note: This sort of thing could have happened with any audit material.
For example, they could have lost paper ballots that they were supposed
to retain for recounts.)
In particular, the country destroyed evidence after a judge specifically
ordered that this material be preserved.
What is the consequence to the county for this? Is this not criminally negligent?
>Your boss can always force you to take a picture of your traditional >voting process to prove what you have voted for. Traditional voting >is not more secure than internet voting.
You have a point. Taking it further, you can covertly videotape your whole voting session. (On the other hand, of course, you can fake a photo or video of a voting session.)
So technology has reached a point where maintaining a secret ballot is becoming difficult.
But it still meaningful to talk about whether systems maintain a secret ballot since:
There are differences in degree. Voting at a polling place is a controlled environment where suspicious activity would be more noticeable. There is a big difference between a boss watching each employee vote from his office and the boss making each employee videotape their voting session when they go to a polling place.
There are differences in whether the voter consents to have their vote visible to others. A vote who takes a photograph of their ballot is taking an active role in collecting evidence for the vote buying or coercion. A voter who votes in the presence of their boss (or just from a computer at their workplace) is taking a much more passive action.
Given Zarhan's reply, I suspect that voters can vote in multiple ways including over mobile phones. So you would have to argue that having the option of voting over the phone means that other methods are made less accessible which creates a cost barrier to the less well off. I don't really buy that.
Ah, excellent. In my "copious free time" I'll be sure to read that over.
This may somewhat defuse my concern about the lack of a secret ballot.
I can still imagine problems like being coerced to prove how you vote shortly before the deadline.
And, of course, voter id problems like your boss demanding that you give him access to use the system so that he directly votes for you and locks you out.
A major problem with both mVoting and voting over the internet is that the 'secret ballot' is sacrificed. It becomes very easy for this create problems like the US had in the 1800s.
For example, your boss can tell you to vote while he is watching. If you don't vote the way that he wants he will fire you.
For this reason I am against internet voting and mVoting.
>Well done! I agree that they are switching to a better system.
>Computer voting sounds good but the reality is very different. >No system should be trusted without a full, audited paper trail which allows recounts. I agree. But even paper systems (or paper and eVoting hybrids) can be hacked if shenanigans happen when the votes are being counted.
"It's not the people who vote that count. It's the people who count the votes."
-Joseph Stalin (allegedly)
The good news is that there is active research and some light deployment of voting systems that ensure end-to-end verifiability without compromising the secret ballot. Voters can be confident that their vote was counted-as-cast and not dumped in the garbage dump.
Some end-to-end verifiable systems involve voting machines. Some do not. A common theme is that voters take home some sort of 'receipt' with which they can verify that vote was counted as cast but where the receipt does not reveal how they voted.
I do not think end-to-end verifiable voting systems are yet ready for wide deployment. I do think:
that they should be discussed and seriously considered
that additional funding for basic research of E2E verifiable technologies should be supported
that limited deployment of E2E verifiable systems should be allowed and encouraged
laws that frustrate any of the above are misguided
I agree that online voting has serious issues. Among these is the essential loss of the 'secret' ballot which means that vote buying and coercion can become big issues in the US again as they were in the 1800s.
>With a paper system, you're reduced to rigging the results one >vote at a time. With electronic voting, you could change thousands >of votes at once. There is some truth here. eVoting can enable 'wholesale' fraud where only 'retail' fraud was available with a paper system.
But fraud is very possible with paper ballots and there has been a long history of election fraud in the US. Consider that the careers of 6 out of 11 post-WWII US presidents were heavily influenced by election fraud.
It is possible to have election systems that have a high level of election integrity and still have a secret ballot. Systems that do that are called end to end verifiable. One such system is PunchScan.
Some end-to-end verifiable systems involve voting machines. Some do not. A common theme is that voters take home some sort of 'receipt' with which they can verify that vote was counted as cast but where the receipt does not reveal how they voted.
I do not think end-to-end verifiable voting systems are yet ready for wide deployment. I do think:
that they should be discussed and seriously considered
that additional funding for basic research of E2E verifiable technologies should be supported
that limited deployment of E2E verifiable systems should be allowed and encouraged
laws that frustrate any of the above are misguided
It is possible to have a secret ballot and still have election integrity. Systems that do that are called end to end verifiable. One such system is PunchScan.
Some end-to-end verifiable systems involve voting machines. Some do not. A common theme is that voters take home some sort of 'receipt' with which they can verify that vote was counted as cast but where the receipt does not reveal how they voted.
I do not think end-to-end verifiable voting systems are yet ready for wide deployment. I do think:
that they should be discussed and seriously considered
that additional funding for basic research of E2E verifiable technologies should be supported
that limited deployment of E2E verifiable systems should be allowed and encouraged
laws that frustrate any of the above are misguided
I agree with the basic premise of the report that the debate about electronic voting needs to be broader and include other verification technologies than voter-verified paper audit trails. I am in basic agreement with the policy recommendations of the paper but I feel that these recommendations need some caveats.
I disagree with much of the setup of the report. The susceptibility to fraud of electronic voting machines is downplayed too much as is the ability of voter-verified paper audit trails to mitigate that. The tone of the report when talking about organizations promoting voter verified audit trails or promoting distrust of eVoting is absolutely poisonous and Mr. Castro should be ashamed.
The recommendations
The report makes three recommendations:
Congress and the states should allow the use of fully electronic ballots, not restrict electronic voting systems to those that create paper ballots. I do not fully agree. For such a recommendation to be acceptable it must be coupled with the system having an acceptable verifiable audit trail. It is my fear that this report will be used to justify continued use of electronic voting systems without any sort of verifiability.
Congress and the states should require that future voting machines have verifiable audit trails, not require machines with verifiable paper audit trails. I agree. I am concerned that this recommendation does not limit the continued use of non verifiable systems that are currently in use. I am also concerned about the details of what is considered an acceptable verifiable audit trail.
Congress should provide funding for the US Election Assistance Commission to issue grants for developing secure cryptographic voting protocols and for pilot testing new voting technology. I agree with the principle of this recommendation. Ideally funding is for open academic research of voting technology. I am unsure if the EAC is the correct vehicle for providing this funding.
More than anything, however, the move may well be a harbinger of a coming declaration of bankruptcy for Diebold/Premier, as we see it. With the unit now spun off from the blue chip Diebold parent, declaring bankruptcy or dissolving the company altogether might be less trouble for investors and the main company as a whole, as their extraordinary legal and financial liabilities continue to mount...
Slashdot Mirror
(reposted comment with correct formatting)
>Might as well just go with the simpler Approval voting... It's simpler, and
>more effective in my experience.
I partially agree. The most effective strategy under Range voting is to
always vote max or min score for each candidate that you think is a real
contender to win. Any other vote could be considered a partial abstention.
If the voting instructions are poor or minimal many voters will accidentally
partially abstain which will understandably make them angry. But if the instructions
are well written then I do not think that this will happen to a significant degree.
I like Approval voting but I see allowing partial abstentions as being a small improvement. I don't like the idea of encouraging frequent accidental partial abstentions so my support for Range Voting is very sensitive to the context and voting instructions.
Some more of my thoughts on this:
http://allaboutvoting.com/2008/01/07/our-voting-system-is-a-loser/
See also the Range Voting advocacy site's comparison of Range vs. Approval and make up your own mind:
http://www.rangevoting.org/rangeVapp.html
>Might as well just go with the simpler Approval voting... It's simpler, and >more effective in my experience. I partially agree. The most effective strategy under Range voting is to always vote max or min score for each candidate that you think is a real contender to win. Any other vote could be considered a partial abstention. If the voting instructions are poor or minimal many voters will accidentally partially abstain which will understandably make them angry. But if the instructions are well written then I do not think that this will happen to a significant degree. I like Approval voting but I see allowing partial abstentions as being a small improvement. I don't like the idea of encouraging frequent accidental partial abstentions so my support for Range Voting is very sensitive to the context and voting instructions. Some more of my thoughts on this: http://allaboutvoting.com/2008/01/07/our-voting-system-is-a-loser/ See also the Range Voting advocacy site's comparison of Range vs. Approval and make up your own mind: http://www.rangevoting.org/rangeVapp.html
I agree. I see little of value here. Part of that may be due to the lack of details in the article and the useless trust destroying statement "the Swiss government is not sharing a lot of information on certain details for security reasons."
Counts are encrypted as they are passed from one place to another. Note that that those counts should be public information anyways, so the intent of the quantum crypto is to preserve the message - not to keep it secret.
Those counts could have been adequately protected using many other commonly used crypto techniques like SSL.
Such a tiny part of the chain from casting the ballot to reporting the election results is protected that this is just not very interesting.
>"better than" is correct, "better then" is what you used, and it's wrong.
Agreed.
Now, how do I make my grammar mistakes blink?
By "BETTER THAN", I mean "is better than". When I first wrote the post I used '>' but it looked too much like I was quoting text.
I think that I used the correct grammar: http://www.grammartips.homestead.com/than.html
>This is a prime example of why a purely electronic record of
>the vote is a Bad Idea. If paper ballots had been printed,
>reviewed by the voter before being deposited in a secure ballot
>box, and retained for a recount, there would be no issue.
Well, yes. But if they were not retained and were instead lost?
We would have the same situation as Alameda is currently having.
(Now is a recount/audit from the voting machines used by Alameda even meaningful?
I don't think so and I doubt that you do either.)
>If you had read the article, you would know that the problem was not the machines.
...and everything below hand counted paper ballots is below my threshold for suitability.
>The city did perform a dump of the data before they returned the machines to
>Diebold; that was the responsibility of the people in california. Diebold
>was clearing the machines and when told to stop they did, however only 20
>of the 400+ machines had not been cleared.
I did not see mentions of these details in the articles. Link?
I do agree with the point that the core issue here was that the county did not
successfully retain evidence that it had an obligation to retain. Such a thing
could have happened even with a hand-counted paper ballot.
Separately there is, of course, the issue of whether the use of an unverifiable
voting machine like those provided by Diebold can have a meaningful audit.
In terms of meaningful audits I see it as
end-to-end verifiable systems like punchscan
BETTER THEN hand marked paper ballot with optical scan and recounts against samples of the paper ballots
BETTER THEN hand counted paper ballots
BETTER THEN voting machines with voter-verified paper trails
BETTER THEN voting machines
EFF supports HR811 and considers it to be an improvement over our current system.
Some other prominent folks support it such as Avi Rubin.
Me? I'm still neutral on HR811. I have not taken the time to thoroughly research it and I find that the advice of those I trust is split on the matter.
I also have concerns that it will too sharply limit promising end-to-end verifiable systems such as Punchscan.
I don't consider end-to-end verifiable technologies to be ready for widespread deployment, but I do think:
>[From the article]In her ruling Tuesday, Smith said county officials had failed to >retrieve backup data from electronic voting machines, logs of activity on the >machines and other records as she had specifically ordered. > >Instead, the county ignored the request and returned the devices to their >manufacturer, Diebold Election Systems, after the measure's advocates had >sued the county seeking access to the data, the judge said. > >"Why the county did so is anybody's guess," the judge wrote. "But the >result is absolutely certain: The information on those machines is lost >completely." The county screwed up and destroyed evidence it had an obligation to preserve. (Note: This sort of thing could have happened with any audit material. For example, they could have lost paper ballots that they were supposed to retain for recounts.) In particular, the country destroyed evidence after a judge specifically ordered that this material be preserved. What is the consequence to the county for this? Is this not criminally negligent?
>voting process to prove what you have voted for. Traditional voting
>is not more secure than internet voting.
You have a point. Taking it further, you can covertly videotape your whole voting session.
(On the other hand, of course, you can fake a photo or video of a voting session.)
So technology has reached a point where maintaining a secret ballot is becoming difficult.
But it still meaningful to talk about whether systems maintain a secret ballot since:
Given Zarhan's reply, I suspect that voters can vote in multiple ways including over mobile phones. So you would have to argue that having the option of voting over the phone means that other methods are made less accessible which creates a cost barrier to the less well off. I don't really buy that.
Other problems could exist in how voters figure out how to login to vote. Risks like: Phishing, digging through peoples mail, etc...
Ah, excellent. In my "copious free time" I'll be sure to read that over. This may somewhat defuse my concern about the lack of a secret ballot. I can still imagine problems like being coerced to prove how you vote shortly before the deadline. And, of course, voter id problems like your boss demanding that you give him access to use the system so that he directly votes for you and locks you out.
A major problem with both mVoting and voting over the internet is that the 'secret ballot' is sacrificed. It becomes very easy for this create problems like the US had in the 1800s.
For example, your boss can tell you to vote while he is watching. If you don't vote
the way that he wants he will fire you.
For this reason I am against internet voting and mVoting.
I agree that they are switching to a better system.
>Computer voting sounds good but the reality is very different.
>No system should be trusted without a full, audited paper trail which allows recounts.
I agree. But even paper systems (or paper and eVoting hybrids) can be hacked if
shenanigans happen when the votes are being counted.
Election fraud has a long history in the US.
"It's not the people who vote that count. It's the people who count the votes."
-Joseph Stalin (allegedly)
The good news is that there is active research and some light deployment of voting systems that ensure end-to-end verifiability without compromising the secret ballot. Voters can be confident that their vote was counted-as-cast and not dumped in the garbage dump.
Systems that do that are called end to end verifiable. One such system is PunchScan.
Some end-to-end verifiable systems involve voting machines. Some do not. A common theme is that voters take home some sort of 'receipt' with which they can verify that vote was counted as cast but where the receipt does not reveal how they voted.
I do not think end-to-end verifiable voting systems are yet ready for wide deployment. I do think:
I agree that online voting has serious issues. Among these is the essential loss of the 'secret' ballot which means that vote buying and coercion can become big issues in the US again as they were in the 1800s.
-AllAboutVoting
http://allaboutvoting.com/
>vote at a time. With electronic voting, you could change thousands
>of votes at once.
There is some truth here. eVoting can enable 'wholesale' fraud where only 'retail' fraud was available with a paper system.
But fraud is very possible with paper ballots and there has been a long history of election fraud in the US. Consider that the careers of 6 out of 11 post-WWII US presidents were heavily influenced by election fraud.
It is possible to have election systems that have a high level of election integrity and still have a secret ballot. Systems that do that are called end to end verifiable. One such system is PunchScan.
Some end-to-end verifiable systems involve voting machines. Some do not. A common theme is that voters take home some sort of 'receipt' with which they can verify that vote was counted as cast but where the receipt does not reveal how they voted.
I do not think end-to-end verifiable voting systems are yet ready for wide deployment. I do think:
Some end-to-end verifiable systems involve voting machines. Some do not. A common theme is that voters take home some sort of 'receipt' with which they can verify that vote was counted as cast but where the receipt does not reveal how they voted.
I do not think end-to-end verifiable voting systems are yet ready for wide deployment. I do think:
Here is a summary and here is a point-by-point dissection.
I agree with the basic premise of the report that the debate about electronic voting needs to be broader and include other verification technologies than voter-verified paper audit trails. I am in basic agreement with the policy recommendations of the paper but I feel that these recommendations need some caveats.
I disagree with much of the setup of the report. The susceptibility to fraud of electronic voting machines is downplayed too much as is the ability of voter-verified paper audit trails to mitigate that. The tone of the report when talking about organizations promoting voter verified audit trails or promoting distrust of eVoting is absolutely poisonous and Mr. Castro should be ashamed.
The recommendations
The report makes three recommendations:
I do not fully agree. For such a recommendation to be acceptable it must be coupled with the system having an acceptable verifiable audit trail. It is my fear that this report will be used to justify continued use of electronic voting systems without any sort of verifiability.
I agree. I am concerned that this recommendation does not limit the continued use of non verifiable systems that are currently in use. I am also concerned about the details of what is considered an acceptable verifiable audit trail.
I agree with the principle of this recommendation. Ideally funding is for open academic research of voting technology. I am unsure if the EAC is the correct vehicle for providing this funding.
Coverage by the Brad Blog: Mentions by:
- Media articles linked to by the Daily Voting News
- Why Tuesday
Personally, I find the revealations about Sequoia voting systems incompetence and/or fraud in the 2000 election in the recently aired report by Dan Rather to be more interesting news.