Researchers And Registrars Debate E-Voting

Paper Trail writes "There's a fascinating discussion going on right now over at SiliconValley.com. A group of computer scientists, journalists, voting activists, and county registrars are discussing the e-voting mess in an online forum that runs all this week. The panel is a who's who of e-voting: Avi Rubin, David Dill, David Jefferson, and registrars from San Bernadino and Riverside, CA. They've even got Scott Ritchie from the Open Vote Foundation. The question they're hoping to answer: "What's your assessment of the risks related to the use of electronic voting machines -- in the areas of verifiable voting, errors, recounts and manipulation -- not in the computer lab, but in a real-world setting? And how do those risks compare with current voting systems and other low-tech options?""

Don't see what the fuss is about

[raitchison]

Even if the worst FUD claims of the anti electronic voting crowd are true electronic voting is no more vulnerable to tampering than paper ballot voting. Where ballots can (and are) lost (or "lost") and there are dozens of opportunities for workers to mess with or change things.

I've voted touchscreen twice and it was great, I got to vote in advance of election day (when it was convenient for me). Though there was a LOT of pressing "next page" for the CA Recall election to sort through the >100 candidates. :)

Like any new system it will no doubt have it's own issues that will need to be worked out. That's the price for progress.

What I'm waiting for is the opportunity to vote online.

Re:said it before -- I'll say it again

[Martin Blank]

I can give you some reasons. They're not necessarily good reasons, but they are reasons used.

1. Virtual elimination of mechanical breakdown. This can be an issue with some of the older equipment. It doesn't address the electronic systems breaking down or crashing, though.

2. Rapid collection of stats. This has less to do with anything useful and more to do with people getting impatient. In most cases, the results are pretty obvious within hours of the polls closing. In other cases, we get a little tension for a few days as things come down to the wire. (In still other cases, we get a lot of political infighting for the next four years.)

3. Standardization of interfaces. I've only seen one e-voting system, so I'm not entirely sure how possible this is, but it seems to me at least theoretically possible that the presented screen can be relatively standardized across a state, at least in terms of basic layout (since county- and city-specific issues will be different, of course).

Personally, I miss the lever system that I used for about ten years. The 'ka-chunk' feeling of the ballot being marked seemed to give a tactile and auditory sensation to the emotional satisfaction of having expressed my opinion.

Re:said it before -- I'll say it again

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, they can fail to rollover from 999 to 1,000 (or similar counts) because the machine requires additional leverage to turn all of the counter wheels (just like an old analog odometer), and if the parts are worn, there might not be enough force.

So it's easy for votes to be lost due to mechanical error.

Re:Recounts?

[abb3w]

they had to get on with things before January Something-Or-Other for when the Electoral College met and voted for the President.

Or, alternately, fail to certify the vote count, and not send ANY electors. Which would have caused a far bigger stink.

Re:Don't see what the fuss is about

[greechneb]

I think what we have here in our county is a nice system. It's similar to a scantron test. you color in your choices, and when you are done, it is fed in. If there is a problem, it spits it back out. At the end of the day, it prints out a total. The judges count the number of ballots to make sure it matches the number of ballots entered. If nothing is out of line, it only takes 30 minutes or so for them to balance at the end of the day, and then take the results in. It cut down the balancing time by nearly half. If there is a recount, the paper ballots still exist. Don't know who makes the machines though... probably diebold.

Re:said it before -- I'll say it again

[Shakrai]

So it's easy for votes to be lost due to mechanical error.

I could say the same thing about a touchscreen system that suffered a hard drive or non-violate memory failure. Even if you use top of the line name brand components (think Diebold is doing that?) think about a large enterprise network -- how many hard drives will fail when you start taking about thousands of systems? Now expand that scale to tens of thousands of voting machines and you start to see the problem.

Any election system we use (electronic or mechanical) needs to be inspected and tested prior to the election. To blindly suggest that these machines will suffer a breakdown without pointing out measures taken to prevent this scenario is just spreading FUD.

Anyone else hear about. . .

[smooth wombat]

the new electronic voting system developed by David Chaum? No? If you're reading /. no wonder! Stories of ontopic interest are rarely posted.

Here's the link [business2.com] to the Business 2.0 article talking about his new system which he claims is "the first electronic mechanism that ensures both integrity and privacy."

Make Election Day a Holiday!

[justanyone]

Many other nations make Election day a holiday. We should have election day as a Work & School holiday.It would solve problems:

• with too-few people voting since there's far more time to do it and less hassle;
• evening news coverage couldn't influence the election since most people would have voted by then;
• It would reinforce the idea that democracy requires attention and is important;
• people attempting to vote at the wrong precinct would have time to get to the right one;
• More professionals could volunteer to work at polling stations, which would speed vote counting and allow for disabled people to be assisted by people of both parties;
• We would get another vacation day;
• A better-educated cross section of college students and "slacker-class" (Jon Stewart's term) would vote since the ones too drunk from "no-class-tommorrow" syndrome would have too big a hangover to vote, while the nerdier non-drinkers would vote more reliably.
  • These comprise a very valuable argument:
  • Make Election Day a Work/School Holiday !