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Politics Government Technology

NYT Says Paperless Voting A Serious Problem 417

Posted by Zonk from the no-see-ums dept.
joshdick writes "In an editorial today, the NYTimes comes out strongly in favor of a paper trail for all elections, supporting a recent lobbying effort by Common Cause and the Electronic Frontier Foundation to pass H.R. 550. 'Electronic voting has been rolled out nationwide without necessary safeguards. The machines' computers can be programmed to steal votes from one candidate and give them to another. There are also many ways hackers can break in to tamper with the count. Polls show that many Americans do not trust electronic voting in its current form; such doubts are a serious problem in a democracy.'"
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NYT Says Paperless Voting A Serious Problem More

NYT Says Paperless Voting A Serious Problem

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  • the paper trail...... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by professorhojo ( 686761 ) * on Friday June 10, 2005 @04:54PM (#12784005)
    What I find interesting is that Diebold makes probably MOST of the ATMs that people use on a regular basis, so they actually do know how to make secure and reliable machines on secure networks (at least secure and reliable enough for banks) with the most intense paper trail systems known to man and beast.

    The question, then, why did they suddenly begin making machines that had absolutely NO paper trail? This makes no sense at all to me. It would have been NO problem for them to include such a facility in their voting machines. And in fact it may well have cost them more to take it out.

    So - were they given specifications to remove the usual papertrail devices? If so, from whom were those instructions issued? Maybe someone can help me out with a tinfoil hat theory involving some vast ___-wing conspiracy?

    Oh - and I believe Bev Harris is the official 'go to' girl on this topic: http://blackboxvoting.org/ [blackboxvoting.org]

    • Another way of thinking about it (Score:5, Insightful)

      by tacokill ( 531275 ) on Friday June 10, 2005 @04:58PM (#12784060)
      Part of the issue is privacy. If you can take the paper trail and use it to say "you" voted for candidate X, then you have violated privacy for that person.

      I'm not saying that outweighs the fraud issue, rather, I am saying I can see their point.

      Anonymity - for voting - is VERY highly valued here in the USA. People don't like it when other's know who they voted for.

      • Re:Another way of thinking about it (Score:5, Insightful)

        by wfberg ( 24378 ) on Friday June 10, 2005 @05:04PM (#12784148)
        Part of the issue is privacy. If you can take the paper trail and use it to say "you" voted for candidate X, then you have violated privacy for that person.

        Part of me says "wait a minute, disassociating a physical ballot from a voter, isn't that a problem that has been solved a few thousand years ago, when the first secret ballots were cast in ancient Greece? Or was that Babylonia?".. But that part of me is just silly, I guess.

        • Solved 2000 years ago (Score:3, Interesting)

          by tacokill ( 531275 )
          You are correct...it was solved. And the solution was to NOT have a paper trail and just trust the secret vote. There were NO mechanisms in place to determine whether there was ballot stuffing, fraud, or anything else we are talking about here.

          It's hard to make things secret if you have to count them and audit them. Anonymity and audit trail just don't go very well together.
        • In Ancient Athens (IIRC), people voted by putting colored pottery shards in a big pot (e.g. white shard for yes, red for no, or something like that). Then they'd count the shards and whichever side had the most shards won.

          Not only was the ballot not secret (everyone could watch you while you put your shard in), there was rampant corruption like vote buying ("If you vote for me, I'll give you some money") and probably threats ("If you don't vote for me, I'll send some hired goons after your family").

          At som

      • Re:Another way of thinking about it (Score:4, Insightful)

        by porcupine8 ( 816071 ) on Friday June 10, 2005 @05:04PM (#12784149) Journal
        The paper trail doesn't have to identify the voter any more than current paper ballots identify voters. It just needs to be a record of each vote for each candidate that is independent of the computer used for voting.
        • Look, I've got about 20 replies to my post all saying the same thing. The paper doesn't have to point to the voter. It just has to point to the vote.

          I agree and am aware of that fact.

          Now, your job is to go sell that subtlety to the American public. Good luck! Perception IS reality here in the states.

          • Re:Agreed (Score:3, Insightful)

            by hawk ( 1151 )
            I'll be a bit more explict.

            There should be a pile of paper, from which it should be possible to determine that there were 37 votes for Jones and 31 votes for Smith. The sum (68) should be less than or equal to the number of voters, which in turn should be less than or equal to the number of registered voters in the precinct. (there were problems with the latter two in a couple of recent elections, but I'm deliberately leaving the names out to avoid the partisan issues).

            When Jones wins, but had 37 vote
      • I've often thought about the privacy vs the accuracy debate and I'm increasingly becoming convinced that privacy in voting can no longer work in such a technologically advance country, and that the reasoning behind privacy in voting is becoming increasingly irrelevant.

        It only takes a 5% voter fraud to completely change the political landscape. Probably less if targetted in the right locations. I would happily declare my vote publicly to ensure that it is counted correctly if need be. I'm sure I'm not al
      • Voting history is public. There's no secret about who voted for who.

        • No, you are wrong. Your vote is not in the public record. Nobody (not even the gov't) can force you to tell them who you voted for.

          All voting disclosure is voluntary here in the USA.


          Perhaps you are thinking of the "voting record" for congress critters? That is public.

      • Re:Another way of thinking about it (Score:4, Interesting)

        by wfberg ( 24378 ) on Friday June 10, 2005 @05:17PM (#12784278)
        Anonymity - for voting - is VERY highly valued here in the USA. People don't like it when other's know who they voted for.


        I probably should have pointed this out in my earlier post. But no, it's not taken seriously. I know of no other country that requires citizens to register with their State's Government in order to vote in parties' internal affairs - primaries.


        In other countries, when you're registered to a political party, that means the political party concerned has your records and knows your affiliation, not the Government.


        That's not to say elections shouldn't be secret, they should, but a large amount of people don't care.

        • Re:Another way of thinking about it (Score:4, Insightful)

          by tacokill ( 531275 ) on Friday June 10, 2005 @05:19PM (#12784298)
          Registering with a party != my individual vote

          You are only required to register for primary elections. By registering, you tell the gov't "I am going to vote in the primaries". You DO NOT tell them who you voted for.

          It's apples and orange.
          • You are only required to register for primary elections. By registering, you tell the gov't "I am going to vote in the primaries". You DO NOT tell them who you voted for.


            Yes, because in no country in the history of the world ever has any one been persecuted by government for party affilition...


            I'll put your name down as "doesn't give a rat's ass about secret ballots" then.

      • Nice troll. NICE troll. Someone mod it down for blatant stupidity.

        Hint: the voter receipt goes into the ballot box for comparison against the electronic totals.

        • first, it wasn't a troll

          Second....and what happens if you have a discrepancy? Then what?

          The fear I was explaining is that people don't want a system that can re-engineer their vote. In other words, if there is ANY way a vote can be tied to a voter, then ppl will not accept that. So, with your system, you have a count - that doesn't match. Now what the f*ck do you do? You can't match it back to each voter so what the hell do you do with that information? Throw out that whole precinct? Throw ou
          • Well, I usually tend to think of unreasoned imflamatory posts as trolls. Especially when they display such wilfull ignorance as you've been demonstrating.

            So let's see here... We've got a discrepancy... One dataset (which is a set of bits inside a computer stored on the medium of your choice which a voter cannot examine) says that candidate A won.

            The other dataset (which is printed on a piece of paper a voter can read before potting it into the ballot box) says that candidate B won.

            Uhm.. I'm just gue

          • Re:Another way of thinking about it (Score:4, Interesting)

            by Phisbut ( 761268 ) on Friday June 10, 2005 @05:49PM (#12784628)
            In other words, if there is ANY way a vote can be tied to a voter, then ppl will not accept that. So, with your system, you have a count - that doesn't match. Now what the f*ck do you do?

            Basically... if the electronic voting machine spits out a piece of paper, and the voter puts the piece of paper in a box, and people count those pieces of paper to compare the count with the electronic result... what is the point of having an electronic voting system at all?

            I just never understood why the US insisted on electronic voting... We do it with plain pen & paper up here in Canada, and nobody screams "FRAUD" every election...

      • Part of the issue is privacy. If you can take the paper trail and use it to say "you" voted for candidate X, then you have violated privacy for that person.

        Go by any ATM and look in the trash bin nearby... You'll see hundreds of tossed receipts that say things like:
        06/10/2005 05:18:30PM
        Card# ending in: 1462
        Transaction: withdrawl...

        Etc. - and though there is a traceable record of "someone did a withdrawl in this amount at this time", you don't know who - just the last four digits of their card. That'

        • perfect example.

          Anything with a timestamp can be reverse engineered to see who was at that terminal at that time. That's exactly how they catch ATM crooks.

          If it can be done on ATM's, then it can be done on voting machines. And my contention is that the general public will not accept that. They don't even want the POSSIBILITY of someone reverse engineering their vote.
          • Anything with a timestamp can be reverse engineered to see who was at that terminal at that time. That's exactly how they catch ATM crooks.

            ... because of the camera. There's no reverse engineering necessary. They look at the fraud, they look at the timestamp, they rewind the video to that point. Done.

            If it can be done on ATM's, then it can be done on voting machines. And my contention is that the general public will not accept that. They don't even want the POSSIBILITY of someone reverse engineering th

      • The PAPER is the VOTE. (Score:5, Informative)

        by khasim ( 1285 ) <brandioch.conner@gmail.com> on Friday June 10, 2005 @05:21PM (#12784329)
        The voter does NOT take the paper with him.

        The paper is so the voter can verify who the machine says he voted for.

        Then the paper vote is dropped in a sealed box.

        If there is any question about anything, the paper ballots in the box are compared to the electronic record of the machine.

        The voter does NOT take the paper with him.

        • Re:The PAPER is the VOTE. (Score:4, Informative)

          by whitis ( 310873 ) on Friday June 10, 2005 @08:26PM (#12785867) Homepage

          The voter does NOT take the paper with him.

          Actually, letting the voter take a copy of the paper with them, and verify it later, is an ESSENTIAL safegaurd against fraud at all stages of the process. When you have verified your identity, you should be given a token with a unique serial number chosen randomly from a drum of such tokens. This token is used to activate the voting machine and the serial number is recorded on all 4 paper copies of the vote:

          • Receipt printer 1, roll copy. Official tally.
          • Receipt printer 1, tear off copy. Voter copy. Voter uses this copy to check their vote online after election or, if they prefer not to be caught with it on their person, they toss it in the trash or give it to an election watchdog who will check for them.
          • Receipt printer 2, roll copy. Backup copy. Additional safegaurd against printing problems.
          • Receipt printer 2, tear off copy. Voter drops this copy in the box maintained by the watchdog organisation of their choice when the leave the polling area. Watchdog organization checks votes against those distributed online.
          • Electronic copies. These can be broadcast over a one way RS-232 or ethernet connection to any organization making an electronic copy in batches of 100 (to protect privacy by hiding the time).

          The serial number of the token/vote is NOT recorded during the registration checking process. Neither is the time. Once they have the tokens, voters are allowed to go to any voting machine in any order and are allowed to wait until there are other voters present to protect against time stamps.

          There is a locking clear cover over the roll receipt that allows a person to see the roll copies as well as the tear off copies. The voter checks that all 4 copies match their vote before leaving the booth. Once they tell the voting machine this is the case, the machine does a form feed which hides the vote from view.

          Votes are not merely counted, they are listed. All unused tokens are also listed on a separate list. Thus, for each candidate in the presidential race, there is a list of millions of serial numbers. These are checked by any individual or organization that wishes to do so for:

          No serial numbers that don't fall in the range of numbers actually allocated to some precinct and actually used

          No serial numbers that also appear on the unused token list or are duplicated on another candidates list

          The number of serial numbers matches the official total.

          The number of serial numbers for each precinct match the official counts for that precinct.

          No serial numbers on the void list appear on any candidates list.

          The total number of serial numbers appearing in any candidates list from a given preceinct exactly matches the number of people who voted in that precinct. (It is not allowed to leave a vote blank, you must either vote for a specific candidate or "no preference" in each race before the machine will accept and print your vote).

          Keeping the receipts on rolls is not as anonymous as dropping separated receipts in a box, so safegaurds are suggested above to avoid time/order based privacy attacks. But using rolls protects against voter error in not putting the main copy of the ballot in a box (which leads to discrepencies), it protects against individual ballots being discarded if the person handling the ballots doesn't like the votes cast, and it allows for easier automatic counting using a roll fed scanner. Indeed, recounts can be done while the election is still proceeding. As each roll is taken out of the voting machines, it can be fed through a device with two reels and a large gap in between and a feed roller. Each monitoring organization (including watchdog groups and each political party) can put a scanner head connected t

          • You forgot about another set of problems: vote-buying & extortion. You don't want people to be able to sell their votes, or be threatened to vote a certain way. If they get proof they voted a certain way, then those become easy.

            You want a paper trail, but you want that RETAINED at the voting both; NO copy should go to a voter.

            Condorcet methods have their advantages, but they're somewhat vulnerable to strategic voting, and almost no one understands them. If you want a different system, use approva

      • Part of the issue is privacy. If you can take the paper trail and use it to say "you" voted for candidate X, then you have violated privacy for that person.

        That could be part of it, but the obvious reason is that it's just more efficient. You don't have to use paper, ship paper to all polling places, store this paper until it's all over and then destroy it (safely). It's stupid. One of the major ideas of the electronic voting is that it eliminates all of that paper and reduces the cost of both materia

    • Re:the paper trail...... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Tweak232 ( 880912 ) on Friday June 10, 2005 @04:59PM (#12784080)
      Diebold was also a major bush campaign contributer...
    • Simple answer: They were not asked to. They build the machines according to specifications from the customer. THe customer didn't say he wanted a paper trail. The customer also accepted delivery of said machines without a paper trail.

      Blame the customer, not the vendor who simply built what they were asked to.

    • Re:the paper trail...... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by lostwanderer147 ( 829316 ) on Friday June 10, 2005 @05:01PM (#12784104) Journal
      I'd love to be able to pass all of this off as just a bunch of FUD, because that's what it seems like on the surface. The problem is that if you go deeper, something is actually there. /. search is down, so I can't find the articles quickly, but in the wake of the last election, there were numerous stories about problems without a lack of paper trail, including one man who claimed to have been commissioned to, and did, build a prototype of a machine that would say on the screen that a vote for one candidate had been registered, but then tally a vote for a different one. IARC, the software behind it would calculate what percentage of votes it would change based on real-time voting data. The problem with a paper trail from an electronic machine is that the same thing could happen, and the machine would print out a reciept verifying the message on the screen, but still mark the vote the other way.

      However you look at it, and however many problems there are with machines, having no paper trail makes these problems infinitely worse. So the question is, FUD or not?

      • I remember that story. (Incidentally, /. search has been down for a while, anyone know why?) The guy had no proof from what I recall, just his say so. Additionaly, just because it can be built, does not mean it could be implemented. County election supervisors test and verify the machines to make sure they are working properly ahead of time. That should catch any "corruption" as you mention in the program. Also, I highly doubt any commissioner is going to let the manufacturers come out with a "patch"

        • Re:the paper trail...... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by mOdQuArK! ( 87332 ) on Friday June 10, 2005 @05:43PM (#12784554)
          County election supervisors test and verify the machines to make sure they are working properly ahead of time.

          A lot of election supervisors didn't, or allowed the company's techs to test & give the A-OK, or just followed the testing procedure that the company told them to do (i.e., didn't do full-spectrum blackbox testing). None of which is conducive to confidence in the systems.

          Also, I highly doubt any commissioner is going to let the manufacturers come out with a "patch" 2 months before an election.

          There were documented cases of company techies patching the machines ON THE DAY of elections, and in some cases not telling the election officials (admitting only after they were caught). Even if they were doing only "normal" bug fixes, it _still_ doesn't give much confidence in the system. You can find lots of news articles about these cases, although the story didn't seem to gain much traction in the press (i.e., not enough people got pissed off about it).

          You seem to be either really naive or disingenuous about the possibility of voter fraud. When the results of a election can cost the public hundreds billions of dollars of taxpayer money & a steady erosion of civil liberties, don't you think it's worth making our voting process as robust as possible?

    • Re:the paper trail...... (Score:5, Funny)

      by neil.pearce ( 53830 ) on Friday June 10, 2005 @05:04PM (#12784145) Homepage
      Ha. I also used to think that ATMs would be super secure, well-designed, expertly-coded and superbly-tested beasts.

      Then, I got off a train (circa 2000) at Stratford, East London to view a pair of HSBC cashpoint machines, clearly running some WindowsNT embedded (they'd crashed back to "the desktop") showing a modal dialog "WE HAVE FUCKED THE BANK!" (No joke)
    • Wasn't it Diebolds CEO that said he would do anything to make sure George W. Bush would win Ohio. He was talking about sponsoring his campaign, but still. That sort of thing is just too weird for me to understand, that kind of conflict of interests would surely lead to thourough investigations? But democrazy is built on the premise that the people should be able to verify the process. But people are tool azy, who actually goes out to see the counting of the votes? So who'd notice that with e-voting there's

      • Re:the paper trail...... (Score:4, Informative)

        by TripMaster Monkey ( 862126 ) * on Friday June 10, 2005 @05:13PM (#12784248)


        Wasn't it Diebolds CEO that said he would do anything to make sure George W. Bush would win Ohio.

        Yes, and here's the link. [commondreams.org]

    • Banking is not reliable. It's just traceable and correctable. Over the last ten years I have lost numerous paychecks (electronic deposit) and had several physical deposits that ended up in someone else's account. I've also had a machine steal my atm card, and give access to my account to the next person who came along. That person withdrew $200 from my account.
      Fortunately, it's very easy for an individual to track their funds, file a claim with the bank, and get matters resolved. My bank even sent me a p
    • Look, the reason for electronic voting must be cost. Cut down the lugging of boxes, hiring of halls etc. I can't otherwise think of a single reason that pen and paper isn't better...

      Actually, no, I've changed my mind, the machines'll cost a fortune. I can't believe it's cost either.

      I'm stumped. Why is electronic voting better than a pen and a cross on a bit of paper?

    • Re:the paper trail...... (Score:4, Informative)

      by swillden ( 191260 ) * <shawn-ds@willden.org> on Friday June 10, 2005 @05:15PM (#12784269) Journal

      why did they suddenly begin making machines that had absolutely NO paper trail?

      The initial reason was that they didn't make the machines. Diebold got into the voting machine business by buying Global Election Systems in January of 2002. So, throughout 2002 when they began their marketing effort, they were actually selling software and hardware that they didn't design.

      So the answer to your question is... they didn't want to invest in re-engineering.

      That may not have been the only reason, of course, and it always seemed to me that they protested too much. When customers began to demand a paper trail, why did they hold out so long? But there may not have been any ill intent. Per Hanlon's Razor, I prefer to presume incompetence rather than malice.

      In any case, they now offer machines with a voter-verifiable paper trail. At least, that's what my state has supposedly decided to purchase from them. The news reports made a big deal about the paper trail.

  • What the U.S. can learn from India (Score:5, Interesting)

    by guyfromindia ( 812078 ) on Friday June 10, 2005 @04:56PM (#12784044) Homepage
    Reproduced from http://slate.msn.com/id/2107388 [msn.com] ------------ Remember the Cold War tale of Soviet and American scientists racing to solve the problem of writing in zero gravity? NASA spent a decade and millions of dollars developing the high-tech Astronaut Pen. The Soviets solved the problem another way: They used a pencil. The story turns out to be (mostly) urban legend, but the lesson holds true. Sometimes less is more. That seems to be the case as the world's largest democracy, India, and the world's most powerful, the United States, scramble to solve another technological puzzle: How to count votes accurately and transparently. While we in the United States agonize over touch screens and paper trails, India managed to quietly hold an all-electronic vote. In May, 380 million Indians cast their votes on more than 1 million machines. It was the world's largest experiment in electronic voting to date and, while far from perfect, is widely considered a success. How can an impoverished nation like India, where cows roam the streets of the capital and most people's idea of high-tech is a flush toilet, succeed where we have not? Continue Article For decades, Indians cast their votes by marking a paper ballot with a rubber stamp.* It took days to count the votes and months to sort out the allegations of fraud. Fifteen years ago the Indian government commissioned two companies to design a simple electronic voting machine--one that was inexpensive, easy to use (even for the illiterate), and tamper-resistant. The result is a machine that looks like a cross between a computer keyboard and a Casio music synthesizer. (See a picture of one here.) In fact, it's not much of a computer at all, more like a souped-up adding machine. A column of buttons runs down one side. Next to each button is the name and symbol of a candidate or party. These are written on slips of paper that can be rearranged. That means unscrupulous politicians couldn't rig the machines at the factory, since they wouldn't know which button would be assigned to which candidate. Also, the software is embedded--or hard-wired--onto a microprocessor that cannot be reprogrammed. If someone tries to pry open the machine, it automatically shuts down. After much testing, India adopted the machines for nationwide use this year. Voters show a paper ID card and then cast their ballot by pushing one of the buttons. A light glows red and a beep is emitted, indicating that a vote has been registered. Should trouble arise (and in India it often does), an election official can push an override button that shuts down the system. Indian elections are prone to "booth capturing." That's when thugs take over an entire polling station, tying up election officials while they stuff the ballot boxes with vote after vote for their favorite candidate. The electronic machines don't solve this problem entirely, but they help slow down the bandits. The machines are programmed to record only one vote every five seconds. Unlike the machines used in the United States, the Indian machines are not networked. Each one has to be physically carried to a central counting center. This takes more time, of course, but reduces the opportunities for mischief. Someone who wanted to throw the election would have to fiddle with thousands of machines, one at a time. Tampering with each machine is what some computer scientists call "retail fraud." "Wholesale fraud" is when someone rigs the software from the outset or meddles with hundreds of machines at a central tabulation center. Both types of fraud are troublesome, of course, but to different degrees. The Indian machines are vulnerable to retail fraud but, because of the basic design, are much less subject to wholesale fraud. American machines, by contrast, may be vulnerable to wholesale fraud. Our machines are far more complicated and expensive--$3,000 versus $200 for an Indian machine. The U.S. voting machines are loaded with Windows operating systems, encryption, touch screens, backup servers, voice-gui

  • e-voting machines are horseshit (Score:5, Insightful)

    by slashmaan ( 885634 ) on Friday June 10, 2005 @04:57PM (#12784048)
    That's the plain and simple of it. No one has ever been able to demonstrate that they'll save money during an election, nor that they're anywhere close to being secure. Diebold's machines are black-box proprietary and it's essentially impossible to determine if someone (say, a bought-and-paid-for Diebold exec) has tampered with the results.

    I used to work with county and city elections. No machines were used, just a supervisory staff of elections officials and a horde of volunteers. All voting locations would count each box of ballots twice, each time by a different person, and if the tallies weren't exact they'd go through the whole process again for that ballot box. This would continue until two separate individuals got the same count for the box.

    Afterwards, all of the paper ballots would be boxed and stored in a secure location in case it became necessary to do a recount. And again, all recounts were done by box, twice, and any discrepancies meant starting over from scratch for that box.

    This wasn't a terribly expensive way of doing things. The primary cost was in printing and mailing the ballots (for mail-ins). The elections sites themselves were run by volunteers, and the supervisory staff was already paid for. Fraud was rather difficult to pull off on the part of the volunteers and the entire process was 'open source'. Individual citizen groups could demand to have a representative sit in on the recounts, as could any political party that was running a candidate.

    Why, exactly, are we dumping a system like this for Diebold machines? It makes no sense at all unless someone is specifically looking for a way to fuck up the elections in their favor, or in favor of whomever happens to be paying them off.

    And don't tell me that this system can't be scaled; that's bullshit. The system I'm speaking of here was used on the city, county, and state level. If it can be done by one state, it can be scaled for any state, and it's the STATES who run the elections, not the federal government.

    1034-6728

    • Re:e-voting machines are horseshit (Score:5, Insightful)

      by penguin121 ( 804920 ) on Friday June 10, 2005 @05:09PM (#12784199)
      yes, paper system has worked great for a long time, but you know what the problem is? its that people have no patience and want instant results. The very checks that make the paper system reliable and secure are the reason people want to replace it since they take time. I mean god forbid if we don't have the election results in full before everyone goes to bed for the night...

  • Hmmmmm (Score:5, Funny)

    by Timesprout ( 579035 ) on Friday June 10, 2005 @04:57PM (#12784057)
    A paper comes out in favour of a paper trail. I think I see a vested interest.

  • Cynical View (Score:3, Funny)

    by BearJ ( 783382 ) on Friday June 10, 2005 @04:58PM (#12784066)
    The cynic in me sees this as kind of funny. It's up to the elected officials to change this right? The very officials elected by these machine...
  • On election day, the discussion most commonly heard in the office wasn't about the candidates, the issues, or the country. The chatter was all focussed on one thing--the lines at the voting booths. People complained about waiting a full hour to get their voices heard while the others shared their similar stories. Inevitably, these conversations all led down the same road; the country needs to institute electronic voting via the Internet. The brilliant people in these conversations all agreed, correctly I m
    • so what's the argument against doing both? instead of internet OR booths..internet AND booths
    • "the lines at the voting booths. People complained about waiting a full hour to get their voices heard while the others shared their similar stories."

      Queues? Why would there be queues? Voting is a massively parallel process, one person's vote does not depend on the state of anyone elses vote. Increase the parallelism, more polling stations, more voting booths, no queues. Problem solved.

  • Broken Link (Score:5, Informative)

    by TripMaster Monkey ( 862126 ) * on Friday June 10, 2005 @04:58PM (#12784070)


    The link to H.R. 550 is broken in the summary, but it can be seen here. [loc.gov]

  • I know that being a computer geek, I'm supposed to in favor or computers doing everything, but I'm more than a little uneasy about this paperless voting thing.

    I'm sure there are many, many advantages, but if I don't trust it, how can we expect the people who can't even figure out how to set up their email to trust it.

    I would like to see a real 'go-slow' approach on this one.
  • .. NYTimes comes out against paperless newspapers, suggesting they can be used by terrorists to organize attacks. They suggest homeland secuirty shut down these organizations.

    NYTimes vigorously denies that their recommendation has nothing to do with lagging print sales, and the fact that everyone cicumvents their "registration" screen.
  • Electronic Voting can be used to create an unambiguous paper ballot. Beyond that, I don't want it right now.

    In the mysterious future you could do a combination of unambiguous paper and digital as long as Joe Voter has a means to simply look at his/her vote and be sure that it went down as advertised.

  • What's wrong with making a checkmark? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by CyricZ ( 887944 ) on Friday June 10, 2005 @05:01PM (#12784113)
    What exactly is wrong with making a checkmark in a circle beside the name of a candidate one wishes to vote for, and then counting such votes manually? It's a system that works very well in countries like Ireland, Scotland, Great Britain, Canada, France, Switzerland, most of Germany, Sweden, Finland, Hungary, Austria, Spain, most of Norway, Italy, and Greece, to name a few.

  • Not quite right (Score:2, Informative)

    by EyesofWolf ( 879816 )
    "such doubts are a serious problem in a democracy."
    Don't we live in a republic?

  • Just an Excuse? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by kingofalaska ( 885947 )
    "Polls show that many Americans do not trust electronic voting in its current form; such doubts are a serious problem in a democracy."

    A more serious problem in a 'democracy', or a 'republic', is the apathy. I read that something like 50% or less of people registered to vote actually register, and that many of those that ARE registered don't vote. (I also read the election results, even for 'small', local elections). In essence, those that don't vote are giving power to the minority, to special interests, a

  • I would think it'd be easier to follow a digital trail then a paper trail. Are paper ballots less vulnerable to tampering with or more vulnerable?

    Voting records are public so why so secret at the ballot box? An open electronic system would be much more secure then paper ballot.

    IMO
  • If an electronic voting booth is insecure, then the entire system is insecure. Printing ballots from an electronic voting booth is no guarantor of a secure election. What stops someone from rigging the machine to subtly misprint ballots (so they are misread or rejected in the counting stage), or prevents someone from stealing the machine and printing extra ballots?

    Moreover, all counting is done electronically. Why is the software in the electronic voting booth any less secure than the current software

  • Local results. (Score:2, Interesting)

    by vonstauf ( 827404 )
    Being a native of Utah *shh, I know, I know* we seemed to have gotten it somehwat right [sltrib.com] with a papertrail. Diebold actually made a machine specifically for Utah because we demanded it, which goes to show if you get a concerned and well informed public involved, good things can happen.
  • Voter fraud.

    Complaints about paperless voting ignore that the input to the voting process is fataly flawed.

    What is needed is for the voter to show some ID when they show up to vote. The system now is rife with fraud, dead voters, voting dogs, cats, hamsters, illegal aliens, etc. etc.

    Absentee Ballots are another giant loophole. Fix the voting input process. Then we can worry that the "input" was recorded correctly.

  • And the optical scan machines aren't much better (Score:5, Interesting)

    by grimwell ( 141031 ) on Friday June 10, 2005 @05:18PM (#12784290)

    Our friends at BlackBoxVoting.org have uncovered some serious flaws with Diebold's optical scan machines, too.

    "This is really the most important thing," Harris said. "Yes we can hack the poll tapes [and the central tabulator]. But what we've learned is there is a 'built-in' [on the individual machines] that provides the mechanism to hack any election on the poll tapes in the Diebold Optical Scan System."

    "It is something that should be looked at in a congressional Investigation," Harris said.

    "It's probably not an accident," Harris said, "because you can look back through the source code to see that [Diebold] went through some programming contortions to keep this thing there. It had to have been expensive for them, frankly."

    "When we saw the way they designed it [the 'built-in']," Harris explained, "Harri [Hursti, computer expert] said, 'We have the Holy Grail.' The elections people are very concerned."

    Hursti is said to have confirmed that the built-in hacking program 'lived' in the memory card of the "ballot box" on individual election machines, according to Harris. "What this means is that the program operates on the votes. You can change what's on there; it's just a disk," Harris said.

    "So when the optical scan machine asks it to count the votes, instead of using its own program to count the vote, it asks the ballot box how it should count, and that is what's so bizarre," Harris explained.

    Full article is available at: Online Journal.org [onlinejournal.com]

  • Polls show that many Americans do not trust electronic voting in its current form; such doubts are a serious problem in a democracy.

    Hmmm, methinks a lack of such doubts would be a far more serious threat in a democracy.
  • Here in Venezuela we had an electronic voting process recently, and the technology only added to the distrust.
    In this case seeing is believing and the machines actually hide the physical vote. If you add the problems with the electors lists, as it happened in Florida and also in Venezuela, you end undermining the faith of the people in democracy and sowing the missrespect for the elected.
    It was not clear here in Venezuela if the transmission of the data happened before or after the clossing of the process,

  • No more recounts ever (Score:3, Insightful)

    by DanTheLewis ( 742271 ) on Friday June 10, 2005 @05:22PM (#12784334) Homepage Journal
    The tinfoiled, myself among them, will point out that even if there is a paper trail, it may never be seen if an election is not close enough. In a lot of places, manual recounts are triggered by elections being too close; if elections are decided by electronic tabulation first, we will never see a paper ballot.

    That is a pile of crap. No matter how much trouble we have to go to, we should always manually count ballots in elections.

    • This is why election boards usually consist of members of both major parties. And why exit polling is often done, to provide a statisitical match. And why if there appears to be a descrepancy that the ballots, the paper trail remain as a public record to be examined by the press. (as happened in Florida).

  • Why is the voting process so difficult? (Score:5, Informative)

    by FunFactor100 ( 848822 ) on Friday June 10, 2005 @05:23PM (#12784348) Homepage
    I'm in Canada and have voted every opportunity I've had....I don't get why voting seems to be so difficult in other so called democracies. What's the deal with punching holes in ballots, using machines, etc, etc.... The way we do it here is a person hands you a piece of paper with the candidates names on it, they cross your name off a list, you mark an X beside the one you want, and you drop it in a box. Later on someone counts up the votes. I've never even had to wait in line to vote once...then again I go in the middle of the day while everyone's at work...but even when busy the lines are no longer than a 5 minute wait.

  • What kind of paper trail... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by barfy ( 256323 ) on Friday June 10, 2005 @05:27PM (#12784392)
    A voting paper trail should have Four attributes.

    First, votes are counted by counting the votes ON the paper, not in the machines that create the paper.

    Secondly, you should have both machine readable and HUMAN readable votes on the same paper.

    Third, Paper ballots should have an edge mark for each vote.

    Four, Paper ballots should be of consistent weight, and size, and sturdy enough to stand recounting.

    During recounts, only the human readable marks should be counted. (IE character scanners should be used).

    Ballots should be sortable during recounts, in a fashion so that humans can rapidly verify the sorts by riffling stacks of ballots and eyeballing edge marks, and weighing ballots. (This will provide rapid verification that the machines are counting incorrectly).
    1. Let them install their hackable voting systems
    2. Find a candidate who promises he'll scrap electronic voting
    3. Hack voting system and elect your candidate
    4. He scraps electronic voting
    5. For an encore, in return for you getting him elected, he passes some sort of tax law that benefits you so that you can...
    6. PROFIT!

  • Photos of election rigging (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Dr_Ish ( 639005 ) on Friday June 10, 2005 @05:31PM (#12784437) Homepage
    During the whole election process in November I was able to study the tabulating machine software. What I found scared the hell out of me. I have put up an account, along with photos of a real election databased being rigged. It is available at [ull.edu] http://www.ucs.ull.edu/~isb9112/election/ [ull.edu] I for one was not surprised that the exit polls didn't match the recorded values. Any steps which can be taken to reduce the possibility of such cheating should be applauded.

  • Vote By Mail...! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by __aaclcg7560 ( 824291 ) on Friday June 10, 2005 @05:32PM (#12784440)
    One thing is that is being done in California in certain counties is having elections with mail-in ballots. Seems like the turnout is a lot higher since it's easier for someone to vote and then drop their ballot in the mail. It's not high tech and it doesn't have sex appeal, but it's a lot less expensive than having paperless electronic machines and poll watchers in obscure neighborhood locations.

    • Re:Vote By Mail...! (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Stonehand ( 71085 )
      There would seem to be a risk of error and fraud, however.

      How do you ensure that the person whose name is on the envelope is actually the one who sent the ballot? If ballots allegedly from the same person, arrive... what happens?

      Furthermore, how do you ensure that the ballot actually makes it through the postal system? Would it be possible for some partisan postal workers to have slightly higher loss rates from areas dominated by parties they disagree with?

  • My Description of Voting Security.... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by SeventyBang ( 858415 ) on Friday June 10, 2005 @05:45PM (#12784575)

    ...to friends & family who have asked my opinion has been, "It's like sending someone into a room with a blackboard where the votes are being tallied like tic-marks (||||) on a chalkboard for each candidate and you mark your vote, then exit when you are done. The reason nothing illicit has happened is because they've chosen not to do it; or if it has, it's because no one has brought it to light - mostly because they haven't detected it, because the security is just that poor and likely couldn't be detected.

    The question is how much of an effort it would take to effect a change in something other than local election (because fewer votes would need to be fixed) or in the case of the previous Presidential elections, what keystones[1] would need to be adjusted. It's easy to say 2000's lynchpin was Ohio and in 1996, Florida, but some of that may have to do with when things were counted and in what order, rather than where. If you dredge up the red|blue map which appears on t-shirts, mousepads, and coffee cups, it would be interesting to find one which identified those areas where the differences were within a given margin, identifying them as a potential target. Depending upon the political climate, those may or may not be consist places to attack.

    In terms of people not trusting the practice, can you blame them? So many things are untrustworthy, and as you can tell from some of my quotes|observations over time:

    --"Bad coders can write bad code faster than good coders can fix bad code."
    --"You don't have to be good, just good enough. (unfortunately, that's not good enough)
    --"95% of the people in the business really don't belong. They are largely at a level less than a hobbyist; practically at a level of trial and error when an unfamiliar error stops them. But they like to do it and presume because they like it and can make things "sort of" work for other people, they are good...and likely, smart - a big ego stroke! Were architects, engineers, or physicians as sloppy as those 95%, there would be some serious problems in today's society."

    Seriously: if you were to take all of the Slashdot society who write code for a living and gather them in a big room, then instruct them with this:

    "All of you who are good coders, go to this side (the left). All of you who are bad coders, go to this side (the right)."
    Which side do you think they would go to?
    Do you think they would all go to the left?
    Which side would you go to? Why?
    Are you being honest with yourself?
    If they all, or even most, go to the left, how do you explain all of the problems in the tech industry? The computer errors we hear about in the news?
    ________________

    [1]]This is how some of the publishers used to tinker with the best-seller list. They discovered the key junctures where a quick count was used as data to extrapolate into the final rankings. It hasn't been that many years ago (less than fifteen years ago). Publishers just routed their books through those nodes and their books floated higher than they should have.

  • Here's how I would design it... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 10, 2005 @05:46PM (#12784590)
    Here's how I would design it...

    Develop a government spec for a common machine printable paper ballot that is readable by both humans (english) and machines (with a printed 2D barcode). Define the exact specification for the 2D barcode in excruciating detail.

    Now go out and competitively bid 2 systems: the voting machine, and the counting machine. The systems must be purchased from separate companies that operate at arms reach from each other.

    The voting machine is responsible for generating the paper ballot in the defined format. The voter gets to look at the paper ballot and verify the human readable part before they put the paper in the ballot box. If they made a mistake, they can get an election official to destroy the ballot and re-enable the machine to do it again.

    The counting machine is responsible for tabulating those ballots using the 2D barcodes.

    If the election outcome doesn't match the exit polls, you do a manual recount using the human readable results on the ballots. It's printed, so there are no hanging chads or questions about what the voter intended. If after the recount, the counts don't closely match what the automatic machine read, you can determine if it was the voting machine that generated the ballots wrong (some 2D codes didn't match the human readable votes) or the reader didn't read the 2D codes correctly. Either way you can falsifiably prove who screwed up. You need a simple hand-held reader from a 3rd party to verify the accuracy of the 2D codes, or a government built one.

    That's how I would do it, but I'm a lowly Canadian - we use a pencil and paper, and it works great. :)

  • Necessary But Not Sufficient (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Friday June 10, 2005 @07:37PM (#12785594) Homepage Journal
    Paper ballots are necessary, because we have generations of techniques, technology, and sensibilities for finding evidence of fraud in their post-election condition. But, of course, we also have generations of ways to defraud voters with them as props.

    For example, Washington and Florida states [bbvforums.org] each have recent laws to prevent paper ballot recounts from interfering with a successful fraud. And remember that "hanging chads", and Florida's destruction of confidence in presidential ballots, are made of paper. Our Florida lab also produced 2004 "optical scan" results often reversing Democratic county registration rates in favor of Bush, while (hardcopyless) touchscreens tracked with registration and exit poll numbers.

    Paper is a link in a chain. Paper ballots might not be the weak link, but they have their own weaknesses, some as old as fire.

  • Not a democracy anyways... (Score:3, Informative)

    by x00101010x ( 631764 ) on Friday June 10, 2005 @08:14PM (#12785808) Homepage
    such doubts are a serious problem in a democracy.
    Well, we don't live in a democracy, we live in a republic. Votes from different districts are not equal. The votes are simply polls used to determine which way a district will be counted, and not all votes are used in that anyways (even if they were all taken accurately).

    So all this is really pointless, how about fighting for a proper democracy, then worry about counting votes when votes actually count. One person, one vote, how about that first?

  • Bill dead in comittee (Score:5, Informative)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Friday June 10, 2005 @08:43PM (#12785945) Homepage
    Almost all the cosponsors are Democrats, and the bill went to the House Committee on Administration, where there has been no action.

    Read Preserving Democracy - What Went Wrong in Ohio [house.gov]. " "We have found numerous, serious election irregularities . . . which resulted in a significant disenfranchisement of voters. . . . "In many cases these irregularities were caused by intentional misconduct and illegal behavior, much of it involving Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, the co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio."

    Think about that for a moment. The person in charge of vote counting in Ohio was also running the Bush campaign.

  • If you are in need of an electronic device that can count accurately, and provide solid record keeping, why not follow the example of the State light years ahead of the rest in experience, Nevada.

    If it can count the coins in and out, it can count your votes. In the 2004 election, Nevada tried a new electronic voting machine, and refused the Diebold version, because it had no means to keep a paper trail.

    LAS VEGAS, Nevada (CNN) -- Whether it's a casual tourist putting a few dollars in a slot machine, or a high-roller risking tens of thousands at the poker table, most Las Vegas gamblers have one thing in common: They believe they can win.

    Dean Heller, Nevada's secretary of state, wants to instill that same degree of confidence in the state's electronic voting machines. So he asked the state experts who test slot machines for fairness and reliability to weigh in on the voting variety.

    "Gambling is a billion-dollar industry, they can't afford to make a mistake, they can't afford to have these machines manipulated," he says. "So I said, 'I know this isn't within your responsibility, but could you determine, in your best estimation, which are the most secure machines available today to use electronically?'"

    It was an unusual request but an interesting challenge for the engineers who spend their time testing, dismantling, and figuring out how a cheater might compromise any of the thousands of loud, dizzying, dazzling slot machines licensed in the state.

    Marsha Walton, Nevada improves odds with e-vote: Slot machine experts consulted on voting technology [cnn.com], CNN, October 29, 2004

    It was a breeze, a touch screen machine that had a glass panel on the left-side. When the touch-screen vote selection was completed, the voter looked over at the panel, and a print-out of the vote on a continuos paper tape spool was viewed.

    If the voter was satisfied, a button finalised the vote, and the paper tape advanced into a lock box.

    Quick, efficient and a permanent record of each vote. The election went off smooth.

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