Slashdot Log In
Dutch Voting Machines De-Certified
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Fri May 16, 2008 02:01 PM
from the going-the-wrong-way dept.
from the going-the-wrong-way dept.
Peer writes "The Dutch government has officially decided that it will no longer use voting machines (Babel Fish Translation) for elections. So it's pencil and paper from now on. Activists have been campaigning against the use of voting machines for some time."
Related Stories
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Begs the question (Score:5, Interesting)
Some pedant has probably corrected 'begs' already. (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Some pedant has probably corrected 'begs' alrea (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:Some pedant has probably corrected 'begs' alrea (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's not kid ourselves here; paper voting isn't perfect either.
Paper is easier to commit fraud with, but voting machines allow for much larger scale of fraud if they are hacked.
When we find a way to guarentee a limit to this scale, voting machines will become more reliable than paper.
Parent
Re:Some pedant has probably corrected 'begs' alrea (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Some of it is our own fault (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Some of it is our own fault (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Some of it is our own fault (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Some of it is our own fault (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Some pedant has probably corrected 'begs' alrea (Score:4, Insightful)
And what happens when the difference between two candidates is only 0.05% after the votes are counted, and the loser demands a recount? Suddenly that difference between 99.9% and 99.99% accuracy matters very much.
In the U.S., the entire fuss over electronic voting machines began because the 2000 presidential election hinged on determining a majority that was within the error margin of spoiled ballots. The problem is that paper voting will always produce spoiled ballots. It doesn't matter how simple you make the process (e.g. "Just put in an X in one of these two boxes"), a certain percentage of the electorate (e.g. the mentally ill, the illiterate, the very elderly, the mentally handicapped) will screw it up.
So in typical fashion, U.S. politicians went overboard and tried to "fix" the spoiled ballot problem with electronic voting machines. The problem with that method is that you'll never get people to have 100% trust in computerized voting. Someone, somewhere, will always make accusations of vote fixing, even if you create a paper trail. So now the pendulum is swinging back to paper ballots.
I'm just hoping I won't see another presidential election so close in my lifetime, because no matter what voting technique you use, the loser will cry foul in a very close race. Fortunately it only seems to happen every 40 years or so (Kennedy's election being the previous example), which provides enough time for the fuss to die down.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Count them where they are cast (Score:5, Insightful)
When we find a way to guarentee a limit to this scale, voting machines will become more reliable than paper.
Mark the paper with a pencil, put it in a box. All day long, party representatives are welcome to keep their eye on the boxes. At the end of the day, election officials do the counting, in the same place where to votes were cast so there is no possibility of switching in transit. The party representatives are there looking over their shoulder and doing their own count. If there is a dispute, there's an awful lot of witnesses.
Because the number of voters per precinct will be relatively low, the undisputed result will be known in a couple of hours at the most and because there were party representatives at every precinct, they know what the national total should add up to, so no chance for any shenanigans by the central authority there either.
This is how the Canadians do it, by the way. Nobody ever disputes an election in Canada.
No machine will ever beat that. The more sophisticated your encryption and tamper proofing, the more sophisticated the fraud - it's an arms race you can't win.
Parent
Re:Some pedant has probably corrected 'begs' alrea (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Machine-ASSISTED voting is cool (Score:5, Insightful)
Marking ballots.
Counting ballots.
But there must be ballots. These ballots must be human-readable at all stages between the marking of the ballot and the canvassing of the election. A human must confirm the ballot is what he intends to vote before actually casting it.
A machine that reads/speaks or writes/marks a paper ballot is invaluable to help the mobility or visually impaired and the illiterate and it can reduce costs in multi-precinct polling places or in polling places that use more than one language.
A separate vote-tally machine can greatly speed up the vote count.
However, you must have a human-readable piece of paper, plastic, or something else we call a ballot in case the vote need to be recounted by hand, and this ballot must be examinable by the voter before he makes his vote official.
Likewise, the ballots must be stored in a location that is protected from tampering until after the election results are final.
Parent
Re:Machine-ASSISTED voting is cool (Score:4, Interesting)
having them vote may be democratic, but having the uninformed vote is not good for democracy, and its really hard to be sure you're informed if you can't check sources (ie, read).
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
(And most of the illiterate don't vote anyway, so your concern isn't really a big deal; the tools used to help the visually impaired are largely similar to the ones used to help the illiterate.)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Frankly, the only reason I can think of someone wanting the illiterate to vote is if they are planning on tricking them into voting as part of their hoard.
Just because someone can't read or write, or has little formal education, doesn't mean they're stupid. Intelligence, education and skills are not the same thing (although related).
A comment like yours sounds like a landowner telling one of his slaves: now go do this, because I know what's best for you!
In many cases you may be right, but who are you to say? If 99% of a nation is made up of monkeys, then democracy means the monkeys will run the country. If you don't like that, trying to keep them from
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm just saying, how do you know you're being told the truth if you can't read? The document at hand may be false, and reading wouldn't necessarily help then, but you could look at others to see if they support the claim.
If a "helper" is there telling you which box to check for which candidate, how
Re: (Score:2)
You have a point, but just because you can't read doesn't mean you are stupid or uninformed, especially in the case of those who are visually impaired.
You bring up a good point though, although the problems are deeper than the uninformed or uneducated voting.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Machine-ASSISTED voting is cool (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Machine-ASSISTED voting is cool (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Self-inflicted problems (Score:4, Interesting)
Your problem, not ours, and entirely self-inflicted. The size of U.S. ballots is the problem. How the votes are tallied is beside the point.
In the last Federal election I was the first person to vote in my area (on my way to work), so I was the one who looked in the ballot box, certified to the Returning Officer that it was empty, and taped it shut. How much more democracy do you want?
In our last provincial election we also had a referendum on adopting a single-transferrable vote system for our elections. I voted yes, but not enough people did, and the referendum failed. We would have stuck with paper ballots (a paper trail is non-negotiable, IMHO), but most versions of STV require computers to tabulate the results in a timely manner.
...laura, proudly Canadian
Parent
Never, never I say! (Score:2)
One cannot, in all conscience, trust them to "Do the right thing"
Heh (Score:2)
My long baited line failed to hook you t'would seem.
Re: (Score:2)
Also, begging the question [begthequestion.info] does not mean what you think it means.
Re: (Score:2)
Might sound like a contradiction, but online votes might be even safer in the long run. It's not like paper votes ar
Machines Voting (Score:4, Funny)
-Bender
Intolerant (Score:4, Funny)
Okay for a survey... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Or if you are a Florida voter that can't seem to find the hole. But then hanging chads can cause all kinds of problems there too.
A better translation (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.minbzk.nl%2Factueel%2F112441%2Fnieuw&hl=en&ie=UTF8&sl=nl&tl=en [google.com]
I figured it out (Score:5, Insightful)
We need to reinvent punchcards.
Make the ballot display on a computer screen and let the user select the options he wants. When you are done, I punches a human readable card with the results.
Those results are placed into another box by hand after the voter looks over the results. You do the precount from the computer booth, then you feed the cards into a card punch reading machine for the official vote.
recount all you want. you will also have a paper trail. problem solved.
Computer-generated ballots (Score:2)
are the way to go, just you say. The resulting ballots are then readable by both humans and machines, while the voting machine remains stateless.
This gives you the advantages of the machine (UI, automated counting of the ballots), without sacrificing privacy (since the voting machine doesn't keep track of vote totals) and security (as long as the voter checks the generated ballot, no tampering with the voting machine will help; as long as machine-generated counts are hand-checked at random precints, tamp
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Uh-oh, looks like VoteNet has become self-aware.
First off, I hope it can parse sentences well
Second, I hope it takes some grammar lessons.
Finally, note to self: Voting machines are self-aware and capable of fisticuffs. Do not kick the machine for recording the wrong vote next election day... if it wants to record a vote for $CANDIDATE, I'll damn
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
(No, not the African Chads, you racist. But you can eliminate people named Chad if you like.)
Re: (Score:2)
Too little added value (Score:3, Insightful)
The Dutch government sees too little added value in using voting machines, and claims that developing new voting machines will be expensive, and won't solve the problem of the possibility of eavesdropping.
Ironic (Score:3, Informative)
Next week a law proposal will be accepted that forces telcos and ISPs to keep records of all communications by all of their subscribers, not just those for which some tap warrant has been issued, and store them for 18 months or maybe more.
And of course we already are the number-1 country for taps on telephony and internet traffic.
The next proposal, to require everyone using an internet cafe or buying a mobile phone to present an ID (and presumably all those sessions and phones to be registered with that ID) was brought forward this week.
All this for the sake of easing the finding of criminals. It seems strange that it is not required to register each citizens vote as well, as that could provide as much of a clue as what sites he is visiting.
Illiterate (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sorry, but if you can't figure out how to vote, then maybe, just maybe you don't really need to vote.
Once upon a time people had to care about who they were voting for, enough to learn how to participate in the process. If you don't care enough to learn, why should we tailor a system that caters to your illiteracy?
If that is what people want, why not put pictures on the ballots like all the other illiterate countries do?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
While I generally agree with your sentiment, I don't know how to put it into practice. I personally think not only should people be able to read to vote in the US, they should demonstrate a knowledge of the way the US government is supposed to work. This includes things like the fact that the president has no constitutional authority for half (perhaps even all) the things they promise to do if elected.
The problem is I can't think of a good way to enforce it. In the past there have been literacy tests for
Probably a very stupid question but.. (Score:5, Insightful)
If the only way an electronic count will be trusted is by a paper audit trail, then presumably those paper printouts will still have to be counted by hand to verify that they get a result acceptably close to the result the computer gives. In which case, what have we gained in using computers to do the count?
If a manual count of the computer-printouts is not carried out, then how does a printed copy give me the voter any reassurance at all? It would reassure me that I'd not accidentally voted for the wrong person, but could not prove to me that my vote has been counted.
I can understand the argument that if the source code to the program is open then I could inspect it, but most voters are unlikely to have the expertise to do that.
Links in article... (Score:3, Informative)
I myself prefer to read English unless Dutch is the original language.
Re:What's so hard about traceable electonic voting (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
In this age of spyware, viruses, trojan horses and the like, anything is possible, especially when political power is involved. Plus, the way e-voting works is beyond the understanding of most people, so there is no confidence in the process.
Truth of the matter is, it's just WAY TOO EASY to tamper with the voting results and there is NO AUDIT TRAIL unless paper is
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
As much as I love technology, I stand firmily against it's use in voting UNLESS there is a strong, physical, foolproof audit trail to back it up, such as paper ballots, that can be hand-counted (and should ALWAYS be h