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Ohio's Alternative to Diebold Machines May Be Equally Bad
Posted by
Zonk
on Sat Dec 29, 2007 08:18 PM
from the stand-and-be-counted dept.
from the stand-and-be-counted dept.
phorest writes "One would have thought the choice of Ohio lawmakers to move away from Diebold touch-screen voting terminals would be welcomed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Instead, the group is warning the elections board that their alternative might be illegal under state laws. 'The main dispute is whether a central optical scan of ballots at the board's headquarters downtown would result in votes not being counted on ballots that are incorrectly filled out. The ACLU believes the intent of election law is to ensure voters can be notified immediately of a voting error and be able to make a second-chance vote.'"
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News: Maryland Scraps Diebold Voting System 209 comments
beadfulthings writes "After eight years and some $65 million, the state of Maryland is taking its first steps to return to an accountable, paper-ballot based voting system. Governor Martin O'Malley has announced an initial outlay of $6.5 million towards the $20 million cost of an optical system which will scan and tally the votes while the paper ballots are retained as a backup. The new (or old) system is expected to be in place by 2010 — or four years before the state finishes paying off the bill for the touch-screen system."
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You'd think ... (Score:4, Insightful)
- Roach
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Re:You'd think ... (Score:4, Insightful)
The only other alternative is the "check this box" kind, which requires human counting (again subject to rigging) and takes ages to count. Now, I can wait a day - even a week, for my election results, but with a large turnout it would take even longer than that, and then there'd be less time to certify and recount if there was a problem.
Again, people complain every single election; maybe you don't remember it, maybe sometimes it's worse than others. There's nothing new here, it's happened since the dawn of... uh... electing... things.
Parent
Re:You'd think ... (Score:4, Insightful)
So if they can't count the votes in a week, its OK to have someone in power who stole the election? And to top it off, how about someone who puts lives in harms way because they are the commander in chief?
Seriously, I'd be fine waiting for a month or two and maybe even longer to determine who is correctly elected president of the United States.
Secondly, if it was done by hand you have to remember only 50,000,000 people voted in 2004 for the presidential election. If you were to hand count the votes by an official. If an official was responsible for counting 1000 votes then you would only need 50,000 people nation wide helping out.
Which means you'd only need 1,000 officials per state which is a drop in the bucket.
Of course it wouldn't work exactly like that... California, NY, and Texas would need a great deal of vote counters and RI and Alaska would not, but vote counting by hand would not be that difficult if you distributed it correctly. You wouldn't need a month, but at the most 2 weeks and I think the wait is worth it.
The problem is that most Americans are impatient, but don't realize the election affects them for the next four years.
Parent
Re:You'd think ... (Score:4, Insightful)
One problem was that hundreds and thousands of those ballots hat the cut off paper still dangling on it, or that some were only slightly cut, but at several places (as if the voter had a second thought and pulled another lever, but none of them consequently enough).
The main arguments against paper-and-pencil-voting seem to be:
1) The ballots can't be counted fast enough for the Late News to report the results.
2) People with disabilities such as blind people need help to vote and can't check the results themselves.
Argument 1) doesn't hold in my humble opinion. I would rather like to have correct results than early reported ones. Being able to watch the count was in my own country (the former East Germany) the base for all later convictions of Voting Fraud for the leading figures of the former communist government. Also some other frauds (like the one during the voting for the town council of Dachau near Munich) were detected because people were able to compare their own counting results from the public count with the ones later reported by the Voting Commission.
Argument 2) raises a valid point, because Braille printed ballots are much larger than normal prints, and some german towns have already ballots printed on half a square meter of paper. Printing them additionally with Braille further would increase them. On the other hand it was allowed anyway to just cut out that part of the ballot with the votes one had casted and throw everything else in a shredder. So this is still possible.
Parent
One thng you need: software freedom (Score:5, Informative)
It's not that difficult. But people in positions of political power are disincentivized from doing the right thing. This includes talking to technical people who advocate for free software voting machines [counterpunch.org] so that we can end up with machines that produce voter-verifiable paper ballots which are stored for manual counting and are built on a free software system so that the county/state can get programmers they can trust when things don't work correctly. Having a choice of proprietors is just picking your monopolist and then hoping they'll do what you want when the contract is signed.
Instead of spending millions on a new proprietary system that will not adequately address local needs issues (and thus cause great embarrassment for the clerks who chose them), they could spend money (even with other states and counties) developing voting machines they can maintain and inspect as much as they like. Counties and states can purchase the required black box testing themselves, they don't need ES&S, Diebold, etc. to do this for them.
In this particular case, the ACLU's fear—voters not being immediately notified that their ballots are invalid—can be dealt with by a computer which scans (but doesn't count) their paper voter-verified ballot. Not only can most voters have an opportunity to read their paper ballot, they could plug in a pair of headphones into the computer and have the computer read them their ballot back and then determine if that comports with their intended vote. Then after this proofing (human and/or computer) each voter has a reasonable expectation that their ballot is valid and accurately reflects their intention.
I was part of the appointed group that recommended a set of voting machines for Champaign County, Illinois' elected County Board. Due to some not-completely-honest measures about only hearing from "approved" vendors, and a bunch of poor choices, I was pushed into picking the least-worst which happened to be a set of ES&S machines (one scanned and/or produced a paper voter-verifiable ballot, the other counted that paper ballot and physically retained it in a locked cabinet). Champaign County ended up with ES&S machines, only one of which had been approved for use by the state (in the state's bound-to-be-bullshit testing regime). The hurdles to overcome aren't ridiculously difficult. It will be hard to get some people to understand that it's beneficial to have local control over the voting machine so the machines can be reprogrammed to meet local needs (including changing the software to accommodate non-first-past-the-post voting, and generally fixing bugs or adding enhancements a county decides they want after the voting hardware contract is signed).
One thing that would really help (nothing like the power of a good example) is a free software voting machine that works just like the ES&S paper ballot scanning machines. These machines have a remarkably simple interface, good and adjustable voice, clear display, and headphone jacks. But these machines run on proprietary software which ES&S isn't willing to relicense (despite being their customer). So you're stuck with them for "support" and that means hoping they'll share your county's idea of what your voting system should do.
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Re:Persistent need to leave holes (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
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Why do we even need "code"? My aunt works at the town hall of a small town of about 600 people, when election time comes around they fill out a piece of paper and it goes into a wooden box. When the voting is over, an official counts the ballots by hand. I'm pretty sure we've been voting since before we had computers, but I did go to public schools I could be wrong... why not check out what we did 30-50 years ago and.. well, do that?
I suspect most people reading what you wrote will say to themselves 'How quaint, only 600 people' and then move on, but they may lose the point that maybe the government shouldn't be trying to scale the polling places to handle more than a relatively small number of people at the precinct level. If States simply capped the size of a polling place to handle a few thousand registered voters, then a lot of these problems go away and you just need to worry about finding volunteers to staff the polling places
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Has anyone here actually ever voted? (Score:3, Interesting)
There are very simple manual fixes to the system, but that largely ignores the other problems with the American voting system, namely the lack of run-off features which encourage voting for a likable candidate rather than a perceived front-runner.
What I rather like as a fix however is a system like the British have used for a long time where the party in the majority elects a representative to le
Simple = Better (Score:2, Insightful)
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They use the optical scan ballots where I used to vote (I just moved last month), and they're very easy to use, and very accurate.
Re:Simple = Better (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
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There's also the slight difference in the cost of labor in India versus the U.S.
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Re:Simple = Better (Score:4, Funny)
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Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
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Corrupting election based upon manual systems requires a huge amount of effort and in countries
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lawsuits (Score:3, Funny)
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http://vote.nist.gov/ballots/il_chicago_20041102_01.pdf [nist.gov]
One ballot = 90 contests.
Re:Simple = Better (Score:5, Insightful)
About half the time, someone responds, explaining how U.S. elections are more complicated than those in Canada, because U.S. elections usually feature a dozen or more separate items to vote on; in addition to national elections (up to three at a time), there can be a dozen state, county, and municipal elections, plus votes on city propositions, bond packages, and constitutional amendments (almost every year in Texas). It's simply not possible to count all of this quickly and accurately by hand in one day.
To this post, someone from Canada usually responds, asking why we have to vote on all that stuff, and wondering why we don't let our elected officials decide some of that for us.
To which someone else responds, pointing out that our system of government doesn't work the same as Canada's; once we elect someone we are pretty much stuck with them for two, four, or six years, so if our officials start doing things we don't like, we don't have the opportunity to call new elections and replace them. We also only have two viable political parties, so it's less likely that we agree with our elected representatives on every issue. Thus, we like to have a chance to directly vote on more items than most other countries. Also, to increase the likelihood of high voter turnout, we combine elections to minimize the number of election days. In Texas, I believe there can only be three election days a year: the March primaries (if needed), and the May and November general elections.
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So, in summary, this concept and its responses have been beaten to death. If you feel the same way I do, do as I will and start modding all "Canada votes like this, why doesn't the U.S., too?" redundant.
Parent
Oh Please.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Optical scans have historically been regarded as the best, and practically everyone who went to school since 1960 has filled out a scantron sheet.
The ACLU is a bit off base here, IMO.
Off topic....the "Related Links" this time were interesting.
Compare prices on YRO Products
What, exactly is a YRO product?
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If optical scanners aren't reliable, then maybe my old test scores really were higher. :)
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Could someone tell me why we need it at all? (Score:3, Insightful)
What the hell is wrong with that system? It's in effect in nearly every other country. What is so terribly different in the US that this system won't work as flawlessly as it works everywhere else? Pardon the blunt question, but is it too hard to find enough people intelligent enough to effing count slips of paper?
What the hell is the deal about it all? We're wasting billions of dollars every year on worthless junk, flying our politicians around to pointless debates and toilet seats to boot. I don't think spending a few bucks to get good ol' paper elections done, which are tried, proven and simply and plainly working, is going to break the budget's back!
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Here in WA we are about to move to completely absentee voting sometime in the next year or so. The system that we use is similar to a scantron. We fill in the generously sized square with a sharpy, and the ballot is then mailed into the elections office where it is scanned and stored until at least the time when the election is certified.
It works well over all.
The problem though is that it is virtually impossible to know that a give
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And among a significant percentage of the US population, especially those in charge of huge piles of public money, everything is always "better" when done with technology. And did I mention the huge pile of money these people have to spend? Everybody likes new toys!
No. Electronic. Voting. Ever. (Score:4, Insightful)
paper
pencil
optical scanner
end of fucking problem
really
i expect this wisdom to enter the brain of bureaucrats everywhere sometime around 2050
hopefully we won't be a theocracy or fascism by then, hastened along by malignant voting schemes
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Sigh. Everyone points to paper ballots as a guarantee that votes will be properly counted. May I point out that rigged elections predate electronic voting by many centuries?
Ok, so your hybrid system allows you to double check. But when do you double check? If we can't trust the electronic system (and if we did, what's the point in having a dead tree backup?) then you end up with the loser demanding a hand count every time. So you might as well do i
Re:No. Electronic. Voting. Ever. (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:No. Electronic. Voting. Ever. (Score:4, Insightful)
By the same token, you can design an electronic voting system so that every step is an open book. And I promise you that a zillion geeks and computer scientist will have nothing better to do than spend hours picking nits with your system. This is a level of double-checking no paper system can claim.
Any system is trustworthy to the degree that it is transparent.
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Re:No. Electronic. Voting. Ever. (Score:4, Insightful)
The most reasonable assumption is that at some point, no matter what voting system you use, someone will compromise it at some point, so the best thing to do is design the system so that the least damage will result. Paper ballots fit this requirement much better than electronic systems do.
Parent
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You sir are an Optimist.
Let's do *one* thing right. (Score:2)
For God's sake, let us as Americans, do just one thing right before the year is out. This year has been dogged by negative news from A to Z. I certainly need a break.
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I got laid last week. Does that (ahem) count?
Get the facts (Score:2)
Second, the one thing that electronic voting equipment does really well is informing the voter of "stupid" errors. If you have voted for more than one candidate in one race it can complain at the voter and force him/her to fix the error immediately. If you fill out a paper ballot and vote for two candidates in the same race the error won't get discover
10 years ago called they want their tech back (Score:2, Informative)
You filled in an optical-scan ballot and put it in the machine.
If the machine detected an over-vote or a spoiled ballot it spit it out. This was a clue to check your ballot for errors.
If you insisted on voting that way anyways there was a manual override.
It didn't care about undervotes, it rightly counted those as abstentions.
At the end of the day, the election judge turned a key and it spit out an unofficial tota
To help explain why the issue is complicated: (Score:2)
Keep these points in mind:
Okay, I know this is America, but ... (Score:2)
Okay, either this is a rather new thing the lawmakers came up with for No-I-Give-Up-Tell-Me reasons, or it's a poorly crafted law with unintended consequences, or the ACLU is reading a lot into the legislation that simply doesn't exist. One thing I know, however, is a vote is a vote, in any nation on Earth. Second chances are strictly disallowed.
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Voting error usually means that there was some problem, technical or otherwise, that prevented the voter from communicating the vote to the tabulator. This can be as sinister as intentionally losing ballots that vote for an opposing party. It can also be as benign as the voter accidentally checking one box, erasing it, and checking another box, an
Ultimately, here's the problem ... (Score:2)
My letter to the ACLU (Score:3, Interesting)
===
The Associated Press reports today that the ACLU is pressing Cuyahoga County, Ohio, not to go through with a planned switch from electronic voting machines to optical-scan paper ballots. This is a terrible position to take, and it is honestly enough to make me question whether or not I should renew my membership for the year.
While I appreciate the ACLU's hard work for voting rights in many areas, the simple fact is that electronic voting machines may be the single most pressing problem our electoral system faces. They are by their very nature unaccountable and amenable to large-scale election fraud. Any move to abandon these machines (which are manufactured and operated almost exclusively by private companies with right-wing ties) should be applauded, not suppressed. This is an issue of particular note in Ohio, given that electronic voting machine fraud in that state in 2004 may well have been responsible for the outcome of that year's Presidential race, with its terrible consequences for our nation.
I sincerely hope that the ACLU will reverse its position on this case and take a strong stand in favor of paper ballots. Silence on this issue is a barely acceptable position for America's leading civil rights organization; supporting the wrong side in this battle is not acceptable at all, to me and I suspect to many other people who have supported the ACLU for years. If the ACLU persists in opposing the planned Cuyahoga County move, I will regretfully conclude that I can no longer support this great organization.
What the fuck is wrong with you people? (Score:3, Interesting)
Count the fucking ballots by fucking hand in the fucking polling station in the fucking presence of the fucking candidates.
There is no machinery, therefore no systemic failure modes that are not universally comprehensible. By definition, none of the candidates trust each other; so they'll all be watching extra-hard in case anyone else makes a mistake. There are more than one person there, so disputes can be resolved easily: if a majority cannot agree that a ballot is correctly filled, it is rejected. No ballots can get lost because they stayed in the polling station the whole time. The process can be parallelised in each polling station, so the final result is available as soon as the slowest count is completed.
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