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US Paperless Voting Bill Advances
Posted by
kdawson
on Sat Jul 28, 2007 07:22 PM
from the will-of-the-people dept.
from the will-of-the-people dept.
A couple of weeks back we discussed the effort to require voting paper trails in US federal elections. Now WhiteBoxVoter writes: "Democrats and Republicans in the US House of Representatives agreed today on a compromise that will push through a bill banning paperless voting machines and requiring a voter-verified paper record for every vote in the country, after government sanctioned hackers showed how they could break into all three of the top voting systems used in California." The NYTimes reported on Thursday that even if it passes the House, voting-machine reform that would take effect before the 2008 elections may die in the Senate.
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A Flawed US Election Reform Bill 188 comments
H.R.811 sounds great: It's stated purpose is "to require a voter-verified permanent paper ballot." Unfortunately, it sounds like the details have some devils, as usual. From the Bev Harris article Is a flawed bill better than no bill?: "[T]he Holt Bill provides for a paper trail (toilet paper roll-style records affixed to DRE voting machines) in 2008, requires more durable ballots in 2010, and requires a complex set of audits. It also cements and further empowers a concentration of power over elections under the White House, gives explicit federal sanction to trade secrets in vote counting, mandates an expensive 'text conversion' device that does not yet exist which is not fully funded, and removes 'safe harbor' for states in a way that opens them up to unlimited, expensive, and destabilizing litigation." Update: 07/11 16:23 GMT by KD : Derek Slater writes "EFF's e-voting expert Matt Zimmerman recently published this article separating the myths about HR 811 from the facts, and countering many of the misleading and outright false claims being made about it."
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One more chance... (Score:2, Insightful)
Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because, for some reason, politicians (not only in the USA) seem to be opposed to verifiable, reliable voting methods.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Because, for some reason, politicians (not only in the USA) seem to be opposed to verifiable, reliable voting methods.
Well, yeah, because if they allow the technology to mature, then no longer will one candidate be able to waste tax payer money by suing for another vote count. One click of the mouse and voila, there is your recount. Want another? *click*
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Voting technology is centuries old and is already constrained by game theory to be as mature as it can get- if all players play optimally in a struggle for power within a democracy, they will necessarily have to assume that all other players share the wish to gain an unfair advantage by perverting the election process. Absent any compelling reason for a change voting technology cannot be "improved" upon without eroding confidence in the integrity of elections and shrouding them in suspicion. And no electronic system will ever be able to dispel mutual suspicion as effectively as paper.
When we run out of trees and can't print ballots anymore, perhaps the appearance of a conflict of interest will go away. Until then, the appearance means it is a conflict of interest- without a very good reason for screwing with them, it is simply not safe to assume that the true motive behind any effort to "improve" elections isn't theft. This makes the way we vote now unimprovable unless it becomes well understood by everyone involved that we need to improve it for a good reason. No such reason currently exists.
Bubbleheads on cable TV have sold many of us on the idea that democracy is in crisis somehow if they can't announce a winner within hours of election night- which is totally absurd. Recounts are quite cheap, we have months to get it right, and if we rush, the losing side has a legitimate, reasonable complaint that the election might have been unfairly decided. To put it delicately.
then no longer will one candidate be able to waste tax payer money by suing for another vote count.
As a taxpayer I am quite willing to pay for a vote count. An undisturbed recount in 2000 for example could have saved me a lot of money.
One click of the mouse and voila, there is your recount. Want another? *click*
That makes a lot of sense- optimize for speed when the demand is for accuracy. I weed guys like you out in interviews.
Parent
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Thank you! This need on the news providers' part, to "call" the election before that night's Late Show, has somehow infiltrated our mass culture to the point that plenty of folks accepted the dominant Republican talking point for the 200 recount: "But it'll take tiiiiiime! And mooooney!"
For chrissakes, people, the election is held over two months before the inauguration. We've got time. Perhaps the news providers are just concerned that our country's population of historical amnesiacs will forget there was an election by the time a fair hand count could be completed, but that's hardly a reason to fuck up peoples' expectations of their democracy.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Wow, didn't even catch that typo with two previews.
I would like to point out that, yes, I am aware that emperor Caracalla was unelected, had already served a couple years by 200, and certainly garnered no support from any factions that might refer to themselves as "republican."
Re:Why? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm divided on two levels.
The first level is whether to respond to you earnestly or snarkily, as it seems that while you are somewhat flamebaiting, the ideas you are expressing are not exactly uncommon amongst the Slashdot crowd. Would it do to point out merely that many (probably most) of the monsters in humanity's history (and their many apologists) were earnest students of politics, history, art, sociology, science, and world history? Or does it bear mentioning that education and intelligence of a superior caliber is nearly universally consummate with superior arrogance and ambition? Or the further obvious fact that studying those things does not free a person from the grip of a desire to self-aggrandize or seek to support their own interests at the public expense?
The second level is my ambivalence regarding the underlying point. I'd sure like to believe that smart and well-educated people make overall better decisions in the public sphere. Certainly it is true that stupid and ignorant people make spectacularly bad decisions in that same sphere. On the other hand, the democratic model outright assumes that people, smart or stupid, will vote their interests and not their beliefs (and one might add that interests and beliefs ought to match in equivalent proportion to intelligence); if people don't do that then many of the underlying assumptions that validate elections and public politics are vacated. It is in the general domain of smart people to assume that being smart is superior in all conditions, much in the same vein that rich people assume that being wealthy is a superior condition to all others. And equally fallacious, for pretty much the same reasons.
Personally I find your brand of cynicism offensive, and for my part have met enough educated people to pray that academically inclined folk never ever wield disproportionate power to their numbers. They are the ones who are ruled by ideology to the exclusion of reality, and with overweening senses of self-adulation seek to save the 'dirty masses' from their ignorance and conditions. I am not impressed. Surely there are other ways of viewing the world that are equally destructive, and those I would also never wish to possess power wielded in excess of the numbers of people who possess them; this is why democracy is the worst system except all the others, and the one I'd rather try to get to work rather than spew pointless invective upon it.
Interestingly, with occasional recent counter-examples I will admit, stupid people tend to choose people smarter than themselves to represent them.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You left out "intellectual snobs".
Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
Just because you have shallow economics skills doesn't mean that the people currently at the bottom don't understand the fundamental problem.
Minimum Wage Hikers like to pull out the "rising tide raises all boats" phrase that is also used by supply-siders to justify lowering taxation. But the problem is that a minimum wage increase isn't a rising tide. It's a boat-lift on a large number of small boats, which in a fixed volume of water means the tide itself actually lowers.
The supply-siders are also a bit shallow in their understanding, though. It's not the taxes, per se, that constrict the wealth generating power of the economy, but inefficient central spending. Inflation is just another kind of tax.
Parent
Very wierd that the richest country in (Score:4, Interesting)
We need to learn from the successful all-electronic voting system from the world's largest democracy India [slashdot.org].
I hate to see some many trees being cut down in the name of democracy to create those paper ballots.
Re:Very wierd that the richest country in (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Like A Paper Trail Means Anything (Score:4, Interesting)
Why should you having a piece of paper saying you voted some way mean anything? Last election the exit polls indicated a result significantly different than what was declared official.
Re:Like A Paper Trail Means Anything (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Why must we go with e-voting? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
That is the big problem with paper ballots - they can be incorrectly filled out.
I'm for a hybrid approach - GUI for ballot validation, secure voter-verified paper audit trail for counting...
Probably offtopic, but (Score:5, Interesting)
I find it odd that our country spends the GDP of some small countries in campaign spending, and yet there is one small change that I think would revolutionize the way people vote: make Voting Day a holiday. Yes, just like the 4th of July, all companies close, school is out at all levels (elementary, middle/high school, and college.) Make kids realize that this is something important. I think anybody would be hard pressed to argue that celebrating the 4th of July is more important historically or iconically than voting.
Re:Probably offtopic, but (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not saying that making it a holiday would hurt, I just don't think it would actually get too many more people to vote.
Parent
Open Source Voting System ? (Score:4, Interesting)
Basic demands for any electronic voting system is that it is open, safe and that the results are verifiable. That means that the voting set-up/definitions as well as the machine output and logs must be in plain text (signed to prevent/detect tampering of course) and be made publicly available for all to verify. Not to forget the paper trail.
Ultimately, any voter should be able to plug in a USB drive, and get a complete dump/snapshot of the voting machines software - source and binaries, logs and it's latest hardware certificates.
No difference between Democrats and Republicans? (Score:5, Insightful)
So I ask those who say this: Would this legislation have come to be in the House under the Republicans? (Answer: it didn't) Yes, it was a bipartisan compromise, but we all know that the compromise wouldn't be possible with the Republicans in charge.
Re:Won't someone please... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
NO RECEIPT goes with the voter. This would create a market for buying/selling/coercing votes. "Bring me a vote for X and I'll pay $5!" or "Bring me a vote for X or else your house may spontaneously catch fire."
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Oh you're one of those eh? "The Democrats do it too!"... so it's fine when the Republicans do it!
By the way, did you notice this story? [slashdot.org]. This is all about the brand new Secretary of State in California, Debra Bowen, giving the DRE manufacturers hell. There was no hope of getting these problems looked at under her Republican predecessor, Bruce McPherson... he loved DREs for some strange reason...