Information Technology and Voting

ChelleChelle writes, "In an interview in ACM Queue, Douglas W. Jones and Peter G. Neumann attempt to answer the question: Does technology help or hinder election integrity?" From the article: "Work in this area is as politically loaded as work on evolution or stem cells. Merely claiming that research into election integrity is needed is seen by many politicians as challenging the legitimacy of their elections... One of the problems in public discussions of voting-system integrity is that the different participants tend to point to different threats. Election-system vendors and election officials generally focus on effective defense against outside attackers, usually characterized as hackers. Meanwhile, many public interest groups have focused on the possibility of election officials corrupting the results."

Motives

[peacefinder (469349)]

"Election-system vendors and election officials generally focus on effective defense against outside attackers, usually characterized as hackers."

Absolutely untrue. What could be more hacker-proof than a paper ballot system?

No, what election officials evidently want is speed and ease-of-use. Hopefully they also want accuracy and precision, but the evidence suggests that many don't value those as highly.

What election-system vendors want is money. They make promises regarding speed, ease-of-use, accuracy, and precision to get that money. They may have excellent intentions, too, but its the profit that motivates them.

"Meanwhile, many public interest groups have focused on the possibility of election officials corrupting the results."

That's always been a problem. It's just that now, the inner workings of many election systems are no longer observable. That makes it very difficult to verify the integrity of the election process.

Lack of speed - disenfranchised voters

[SpaceLifeForm (228190)]

The DRE machines are actually slowing down the voting
process, leading to long lines, with waits in the hours.

Many people can't wait that long and have to go to work.

Re:

[TommydCat (791543)]

Most states have laws requiring employers to give adequate leave for their employees to vote. Perhaps I should find a busy polling place and use it as an excuse to take the day off, though I promise to send in my absentee ballot ;)

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[omeomi (675045)]

Perhaps I should find a busy polling place and use it as an excuse to take the day off, though I promise to send in my absentee ballot ;)

The question is, are you most likely to find that "busy polling place" in poorer arears that are more likely to vote for democrats, essentially disenfranchising the voters who are least likely to be able to show up late for work because they're voting? That's what happened hear in Chicago in 2004. There were a number of overcrowded polling places on the poorer south si

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[morgan_greywolf (835522)]

My polling place is at a very nice country club. I've never had to wait in a line of any sort, and we don't use those Diebold touchscreen voting contraptions. We fill in little ovals. It's been that way since I moved here 4 years ago.

Well, I live in a place that's fairly affluent, or at least becoming fairly affluent -- we have a Panera Bread, an Applebees, etc, though a few years ago it was farm country - - but our polling place, like all in my home state of Michigan, is in a local public school building.

W

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[Tuirn (717203)]

while it's true that in many place, employers are require to give adequate leave for employees to vote. Most employees are payed hourly and won't received any money for standing around in line all day. The poor and even the middle class can't afford to do this living pay check to pay check. Today should be a national payed holiday.

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[tdelaney (458893)]

Australia makes it simple. All voting is done on a Saturday. The vast majority of people do not work on a Saturday.

Provisions are made for people who have religious beliefs preventing them voting on a Saturday.

Perception

[EmbeddedJanitor (597831)]

What they want is perceived hacker-proofness. Joe Sixpack can easily think of ways in which a paper ballot could go wrong (stuffing, losing papers, miscounts), but cannot think of easy ways to hack an electronic system. Therefore to Joe Sixpack, the electronic systemm seems more secure.

Remember in politics truth is putty.

How dare they be insulted, is what I ask?

[skids (119237)]

How can they take offense to the people wanting transparency in elections? It is by the consent of the people that government is deemed legitimate, at least here. If the people demand to know elections are fair before giving that consent it is their prerogative -- some would even say, duty.

And with RovoCalls and voter list purging and obvious conflicts of interest all over the place, who really can be blamed for wanting some level of assurance that the procedures and structure of election administration i

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[Citizen of Earth (569446)]

It's just that now, the inner workings of many election systems are no longer observable. That makes it very difficult to verify the integrity of the election process.

“Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything.” — Joseph Stalin

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[DragonWriter (970822)]

While Stalin's statement is often a good approximation of the short-run results, its important to remember that regardless of political system, the mass of the people are always in charge, and decide everything based on whether or not they decide to accept the people that claim authority, whether based on supposed divine authority, votes (honest or forged), some strain of political theory, or whatever other basis. As Stalin's successors in the Communist Party eventually discovered.

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[Apocalypse111 (597674)]

What could be more hacker-proof than a paper ballot system?

Well, as far as malicious electronic hacking goes, you are correct, and I'm not gonna disagree with the spirit of your statement. However, a dedicated individual can still do a lot of damage to paper ballots. Its not as easy as twiddling a few bits, but it can be done. A few dedicated individuals working together can cause even more havok. Also, given that the voting machines are not networked, this means that one person hacking one machine

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[peacefinder (469349)]

Ars Technica [arstechnica.com] detailed a plausible transmission path for a viral hack on a single machine to spread to the precinct, county, or even state level.

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[krlynch (158571)]

What could be more hacker-proof than a paper ballot system?

Rewind to the turn of the last century, and the invention of the mechanical vote tabulating machines. You know, the machines with the big levers that closed the curtain behind you? You selected your candidate by pushing a little lever down, and then registered your votes by pulling the big lever the other way. The machine went "CHUNK", registered your vote, reset all the little levers, and opened the curtain so you could leave. What was one of t

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[overunderunderdone (521462)]

Absolutely untrue. What could be more hacker-proof than a paper ballot system?

I'd hardly call paper ballots "hacker-proof", maybe "computer-hacker-proof" but paper ballots can be hacked any number of ways (ballot stuffing, spoiling, ballots going missing, simply being miscounted etc.). Voter fraud existed even way back when paper ballots were the only option.

That being said I like the optical-scanner/paper ballot system they use in my state. It provides a nice balance, presumably impartial machines do

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[peacefinder (469349)]

As it happens, I live in Oregon.

Vote by mail does have a really big impact on turnout levels. It also speeds up final counts quite a bit, because the county elections offices can start counting a huge pile of early returns first thing in the morning instead of waiting for precinct deliveries. (In my county, about 44% of ballots were at the elections office by Monday at noon.)

VBM comes with its own problems, of course. It makes easier various sorts of retail fraud such as false registrations, voter intimidat

In the end...

[Otter (3800)]

The bottom line is that regardless of technology, there's an absolute need for:

1) Sincere trust in the vote-counting process

2) Sufficient respect for the system to not make gratuitous accusations

To the degree that people rightly, wrongly or dishonestly don't buy into the system, there's no technology that can prevent that.

That said, that security researcher who is allways linked here, who argues for pencil and paper even though the blurbs always make him out to be a fellow source code-fetishist, is spot-on.

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[Salvance (1014001)]

Your first two points are spot on. However, I have to disagree when you say:

To the degree that people rightly, wrongly or dishonestly don't buy into the system, there's no technology that can prevent that.

People trust technology when there is sufficient evidence that the technology is trustworthy, reliable, and sufficiently tested. When technology experts say "this is rock solid", people trust that. Up until now, there has been far more skepticism and, at best, guarded optimism surrounding the new vot

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[Otter (3800)]

People trust technology when there is sufficient evidence that the technology is trustworthy, reliable, and sufficiently tested. When technology experts say "this is rock solid", people trust that.

See, I just don't believe that. The appeal of conspiracy theories or cheap-ass cynicism is a lot stronger for some people than the facts. It's a social issue, not technical.

On the other hand (and maybe this is your point), you do want to have technology that rational, fair people do fully trust. Plus you want it

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[Ash Vince (602485)]

Eliminate paranoids and cynics?

I have better idea, lets eliminate gullible morons instead.

Oh wait, were talking about America so we would have to get rid of the whole goddamn country.

Can't beat paper votes and scrutineers.

[ribuck (943217)]

Technology hinders election integrity. How can you beat the integrity of a paper vote system, where the ballots are removed from sealed ballot boxes and counted immediately at the close of polling, with scrutineers from each party watching? There's very little scope for mischief.

Why bother bringing technology into the voting system? Polls are infrequent, so there's no real cost benefit to automation. It's not like voting is being done every day and needs to be automated.

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[UbuntuDupe (970646)]

I agree, and think this is one instance of a more general mentality of "more advanced technology = better" -- a mentality people should dump ASAP. It's the attitude that makes software bloat right as computational power increases (Microsoft, I'm looking in your general direction). It's the attitude that says people should shift movie formats every 6-7 years (Sony, I'm looking in your general direction).

It's not Luddism if you want a new technology to actually be an improvement before you switch to using i

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[DarkBlackFox (643814)]

Where I voted this morning, we had paper ballots that were fed into an optical scan machine (by Diebold). The ballot was handed to me after I checked in, and each polling station had a hidden desktop with a felt-tip pen. All I had to do was fill in the circles corresponding to whatever candidate I wished to cast my vote for (much like a standardized test). When I was done filling in the circles, I took it over to the big machine, where a poll worker watched me insert it, and made sure the machine process

Re:Can't beat paper votes and scrutineers.

[Fahrenheit 450 (765492)]

The only way to really screw up a system like that is in the optical recognition software, which I'd hope is tested by poll workers before the polls actually open. And even then, with the paper ballots being retained inside, it's easy enough to do a manual recount.

Many counters have counting registers that can be set to start at any offset you like. Start one candidate at +X votes and the other at -Y and so long as X and Y are in the statistical noise you've done your part to help rig an election without giving anyone reason to call for a recount.

Now, given a properly designed electronic system with voter verifiability, any joe can head out to someone he trusts (his computer, the Library, the League of Women Voters, the local Republicrat party office, all of the above) and have them verify that his vote was registered correctly and added into the final count correctly, and you can catch cheating at a very fine level (of course we'd still need to define policy for how to launch an investigation, but evidence gathering can be done by anyone). You can't get that with paper.

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[Chandon Seldon (43083)]

Optical scan vote counting is potentially a good idea, but it leaves a loophole compared to hand counting the ballots.

Consider the following situation from the 2004 election:

In one of the counties in Ohio, computer counted ballots were used. When a presidential candidate challenged the results and suggested a recount, the county election officials first recounted a random 3% of the county votes as required by Ohio state law. When that 3% showed no discrepancies with the computer vote totals, the recount w

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[svallarian (43156)]

Check out the video, they presorted a 3% sample to where there would not be a discrepancy. Sometimes I think this is more incompetence than conspiracy.

Perceptions are Critical

[Maclir (33773)]

The most important part of any electoral system is that the general public must have confidence that the system is transparent and fair. That is, that everyone who votes has their vote recorded exactly as they cast it, and that there are built in checks and balances that make sure any attempt to defraud or corrupt the system are caught before the process is altered.

If people have no faith in the validity of the process - then the legitimacy of the results are shrouded in doubt - and then the basis of the democratic system starts to fall apart.

So by using technology the way the US is - no method to independently verify counts, no unalterable audit trail, lack of confidence in the integrity of the system - has not just hampered the process, but is severely damaging it

I can't speak for everyone

[deinol (210478)]

But my experience here in Orange County, CA with electronic voting was quite good. The click wheel interface looked the same as I remembered last election, and the device was easy to use. At the end of selection, it has you verify your votes on the screen in a final summary page. It then prints your votes on a sheet of paper and has you verify it again. Thusit has: ease of use, electronic counting, and paper trail for verification. I can't complain.

So while there may be a ton of voting systems that are flawed, it seems there are some excellent vendors out there. Now if only we could get more precincts to use the good systems.

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[darkonc (47285)]

That was pretty much the point of the article -- A properly designed system with a voter-verified paper trail has the redundancy and internal checks and balances needed to endure voter confidence -- Unfortunately, a very large number of voting systems do not have the kinds of proper design processes that you encountered.

Things like smart cards are nothing more than bling-bling. There's no way for the average voter (or even the average voting official) to recognize if one of those things has been compro

Technology will lead us into a grand new age...

[Channard (693317)]

.. of internet voting! Cut to four years later.... 'So, remind me again, how did we end up with a bunch of clones of Hank the Angry Drunk Dwarf running congress?'

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[Pompatus (642396)]

People have written in Micky Mouse for congress for years, with no success. I believe internet voting is a great idea. You could print a receipt if a paper trail were that important. Personally, I'm not going to vote because it's too much of a hassle. I don't worry about people "stealing" my vote online either. Anytime people complain that I don't vote, I make an offer to them. If they give me $5 and get an absentee ballot for me to fill out, and provide money for postage, I'll vote however they want.

Vote With Your Feet

[Doc Ruby (173196)]

I got a music funny video [youtube.com] in my email today that's entirely dependent on info technology, and which is all about voting.

Robot (R-NE)

[Doc Ruby (173196)]

Like even more fraudulent Republican robocalls [blogspot.com] harassing voters, this time in Nebraska?

I had the good ole fashioned pen and bubbles!

[Lester67 (218549)]

I walked in prepared to wrestle with uncalibrated Diebold machines, and was greeted with the cardboard sheet and pen. It rocked. If you can't figure that one out, you aren't smart enough to cast an informed vote anyway.

Whose IT?

[Doc Ruby (173196)]

When the tech is used directly by the people to communicate with each other, like live blogging from the voting in Ohio [progressohio.org], it puts power in people's hands, which can outweigh all the tech power used against the people.

IT in voting systems reduces trust

[jesterzog (189797)]

Election-system vendors and election officials generally focus on effective defense against outside attackers, usually characterized as hackers. Meanwhile, many public interest groups have focused on the possibility of election officials corrupting the results.

Personally I think the second part of this paragraph is the most important. One of the huge problems with any use of information technology as a fundamental part of an election process is trust. Above anything else, an election system should be trusted by as much of the population as is possible, and to be fully trustworthy, the election process has to be fully visible and understood by as many people as possible.

It's quite easy for most people to understand a manual election. It's as simple as voters making a mark on a paper ballot, putting it in a secure box, and then having the votes counted afterwards. Any concerned groups from nearly any cross-section of society can examine the process, provide observers, and make sure it's being done properly.

Wrapping up the selection, verification and counting process inside computers reduces the amount of people who can understand what's happening by orders of magnitude. It doesn't really matter if the voting system is open source, well designed and administered, or whatever. It's always going to exclude the majority of the population from being able to fully understand how it works, and to trust that it's working properly.

It's quite possible that IT systems can help with elections, and they already are in some places, but I don't personally think they should be used at the expense of a manual process, and I don't think they should be depended on for anything other than an early indication of the result. Voting machines, when used, should always provide voter-verified paper trails that are always deposited in a secure box in a voter-verified way using a fully visible and voter-controlled process. Manual recounts should be mandatory if there's any reasonable doubt of the outcome by anyone.

The Man Behind the Curtain

[Doc Ruby (173196)]

The tech is, as usual, neutral. It's the technocrats [buzzflash.com], the people controlling the machine, who determine whether it helps or hurts us.

What's wrong with a challenge?

[darkonc (47285)]

The whole point of a democratic system with free speech is that challenges to a solution (either proposed or implemented) are a good thing. If the system survives a well formed (or even an ill-formed) challenge, that only makes it stronger. The 'survival' may require modifications to address the issues raised -- which is also a good thing.

The presumption that challenging the leadership (including the proprietary of that leadership) is somehow a bad thing is a holdover from the days of kings and dictators

Vote By Mail

[Doc Ruby (173196)]

Vote By Mail is the answer [buzzflash.com]. To broken/crooked voting machines in polling places, at least. Then we've got to make sure the machines that count the votes aren't broken/crooked. But there's so much fewer of them, not operating in realtime, that it becomes a manageable IT problem rather than an IT nightmare.

We should probably replace the counting machines with humans, picked from random volunteers and OK'd (and monitored) by each party on the counted ballots, recorded on videotape. One step at a time.

Correction: Vote By Mail

[Doc Ruby (173196)]

Actually, previewing before posting is the answer - to broken posts.

Vote by Mail [dailykos.com] is the answer to the question of how to vote.

Vote By Mail is not the answer

[zenyu (248067)]

Vote By Mail as practiced in Oregon is open to vote buying and voter intimidation.

I personally think the federal government should step in and remove all the canditates voted in (and overturn all the laws passed) since Vote By Mail was initiated in Oregon, under it's powers to ensure a democratic form of government in each state of the union.

Unlike absentee ballots Vote By Mail ballots are not invalidated by a vote on election day but are in leu of a real vote and so it does not have the same protection aga

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[Doc Ruby (173196)]

On the other hand, Vote by Mail lets people "oversee" the person filling out the ballot before it goes in the inner "secret" envelope. Husbands, mothers, priests, union bosses, vote buyers.

Going to a public polling place, where poll workers can make sure each person votes privately, helps ensure people vote their own way. Sure, their "significant others" can still try to beat them into voting "the right way", but only the voter truly knows what vote they cast when cast alone, but in public.

Once we can fix t

I'm Sure...

[Greyfox (87712)]

That a company that actually knew its ass-end from its elbows could put together a trustworthy voting system that could actually allow votes to be placed over the Internet and verified later by the person who placed them and no one else. If Google took a stab at writing a voting system, for example, I'm sure it'd be awesome and a lot less succeptable to fraud than even the paper ballot system is. I'm really surprised that they haven't done this yet just to prove what a technologically awesome company they a

Tech I trust

[Malakusen (961638)]

I trust technology to let me send emails around the workcenter, I trust it to let me play games on my home system, and I trust it to let me write up form and documents and such, related to work. However, I have had more then enough problems with all of those, with corrupted documents, computer troubles related to gaming, problems with the email servers, and so forth, that I do not trust a computer implicitly to save my life or run an election. Computers are great tools, but they are not perfect tools. I frakking love technology, but that doesn't mean I implicitly support it. I also work with technology enough to realize that it is possible to get a computer to do whatever you want it to, if you know what you're doing. That means I've got little to no trust in the reliability of electronic voting machines and vote counting machines, and nobody else should either.

It depends ...

[constantnormal (512494)]

... on whether or not the technology being employed is beyond the capability of the majority of the voters to understand.

Zero automation voting using paper ballots is fraught with possibilities for error, mostly due to the normal and expected error rates from human counting (and ANY automated system also has a certain error rate that is a function of its design), but including all of the fraudulent errors that interested parties on all sides are wont to insert into the machinery.

The problem with computerize

High Treason

[Angry_Admin (685125)]

The only way politicians would STOP treating the US as their own private empire and start listening to the people (whom they work for) is if the Justice (ha!) Department investigated ALL instances of voter fraud and charged ALL involved parties with TREASON. Of course all of the charges wouldn't stick, but I'm sure it would make most people sing!.
Find the ring leaders and, regardless if it includes the President of the US, publicly execute them for High Treason. They've shamlessly destroyed what this cou

Re:

[Watson Ladd (955755)]

Unfortunately, treason is a very narrow crime in the US. You have to give aid to an enemy of the United States. So it wouldn't stick.

Doug Jones website:

[sakusha (441986)]

I have posted links to Doug Jones' website on numerous occasions here on Slashdot and this seems like another good time to post them. His reports on the history and theory of voting are excellent.

In particular, I recommend his essay on Paper Ballots. [uiowa.edu]
A Brief Illustrated History of Voting [uiowa.edu] is another excellent essay.
There are dozens of technical essays on voting systems on Jones' main Voting and Elections site. [uiowa.edu]

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[From A Far Away Land (930780)]

That would be a pretty funny poll actually. They could subtitle it by saying "votes counted by Diebold - when your vote absolutely has to be on time."

So many people have used Windows, that we don't really trust computers to be 100% reliable. However, most people don't understand how easy it is for a computer to be manipulated, and since they trust the people pushing computerized voting upon them, they don't realize the danger their democracy is in.

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[zippthorne (748122)]

They put it in the sleeve to preserve your anonymity. The fact that you voted and what you voted for are recorded in separate places to ensure that the only repercussion of your vote is the possibility of your candidate/issue winning.