All Fifty States May Face Voting Machine Lawsuit

according to an announcement made by activist Bernie Ellis at the premier of David Earnhardt's film "Uncounted [The Movie]" all fifty states could be receiving subpoenas in the National Clean Election lawsuit. The documentary film, like the lawsuit, takes a look at the issue of voting machine failure and the need for a solid paper trail. "The lawsuit is aimed at prohibiting the use of all types of vote counting machines, and requiring hand-counting of all primary and general election ballots in full view of the public. The lawsuit has raised significant constitutional questions challenging the generally accepted practices of state election officials of relying on "black box" voting machines to record and count the votes at each polling station, and allow tallying of votes by election officials outside the view of the general public."

hmmmmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

I imagine this guy will be found in his Colorado cabin dead of a heart attack.

I wonder...

[FataL187]

Will this stop another president that the american public didn't vote for from taking office? I highly doubt it, but it's a nice thought. What we need to do is eliminate the electoral college and just go with the popular vote. Imagine a country where the voice of the people actually counted for something.

-FataL

Re:Why not have voting machines that print ballots

[ByOhTek]

Sorry, I didn't make it clear - that's why it prints out the readable hard copies; those are used for the tally, not some internal copy on the system.

Very Nice for a change

[Wellington Grey]

In the question and answer period following the screening, an Iraq veteran said he had pledged to protect his country "from all enemies foreign and domestic" and viewed the issues of voting machines as a domestic threat to voters across the country.

It's very nice to hear of a soldier truly understanding the role of patriotism and protection in America these days. Well done, Sir.

-Grey [silverclipboard.com]

Re:There's no rush

[bhima]

There is a lot to be said about this.

I wonder what not allowing exit polling to be published for 72 hours (or so) would do for fair elections.

Illinois should counter sue then

[sm62704]

Unless Sangamon is the only sane county (well, we know every politician in Cook county is crooked; see our present Governor linving in Chicago despite the Illinois Constitutional mandate that he live in Springfield, and the previous governor living in PRISON [google.com]) in Illinois, this lawsuit has no merit here.

The last two elections I voted on a touch screen, and was presented with a paper audit trail that I presented to the election judge, who put it in a ballot box.

Not every state has Diebold crap.

And it wouldn't matter if the machine used Access as a database (or even Excel [slashdot.org]. Since there's a paper trail you can always retabulate the results, by hand if need be.

-mcgrew

Re:No EVoting can be "trusted"

[Chandon Seldon]

We can. We, computers savvy people who understand computers and who can test, probe and verify the mechanisms behind the machines. Joe Average cannot.

Can we? I'm about six months short of my bachelors degree in CS, and I couldn't examine a computer voting machine and determine that it was trustworthy in any reasonable amount of time. With a properly marked paper ballot, anyone can tell you what it says and any attempt to change it requires at least couple of seconds alone with it. With a flash memory card, who knows? A person can't say *anything* about what's stored on it without putting it in a reader, and any reader device can trivially and tracelessly change the data in milliseconds.

So not only is your point absolutely correct - it's understated. We absolutely do need a system where "everyone can read" the ballots, and any sort of electronic ballot system is a system where *no-one* can read them. Obviously Joe Average can't, but even the engineers who built the thing can't read the ballots directly.

Re:Right idea, wrong request

[bigg_nate]

Any electronic voting that doesn't suck is no better than pen and paper.

I used to think this as well, but then I saw a talk by a Ben Adida, a cryptographic voting researcher. It turns out there are electronic and hybrid voting systems that allow every step of the process to be independently audited. Individual voters can log into a website and ensure that their vote was recorded correctly (and yes, this is done in such a way that nobody can prove to another party which way they voted). Anyone can get a list of the people who actually voted, so they can check that nobody voted twice and that every voter was valid. Each of the candidates can independently and programatically verify that the tallying was done correctly (again, without exposing any one specific ballot). This is far superior to traditional paper ballots, and there's no technical reason we can't have it today.

Here [adida.net]'s a paper that gives some more information. I believe Dr. Adida mentioned that this particular system has a few problems that would prevent it from being used in practice, but it still gives a pretty good example of how a cryptographic voting system could work.

Re:Another idea

[PhilipPeake]

There is something to be said for this idea.

Jimmy Carter, who has participated in the monitoring of many elections in all sorts of countries is on record as saying that if he had to monitor US elections, he would have to declare them as unfair and open to abuse.

There are jokes made about dead people voting. Unfortunately, its true. As are the votes of the same person multiple times and the votes of people ineligible to vote.

Until those problems are fixed, how the votes are counted it really irrelevant, and a distraction from the real issue.

Oklahoma (of all places) has it right

[Solkar]

Oklahoma has been using the same electronic voting machines for about 20 years. When you vote, you get a paper ballot (or more than one, depending on the election). You use a sharpie to draw a line that completes an arrow pointing to your choice. You yourself take it to the scanner and slip it in (face down, face up, doesn't matter, and ballots are coded on the side so the machine can orient itself and tell what ballot it's looking at). The ballot then goes into a storage box beneath the scanner.

When polls close, the machines each print out a tape listing the various vote totals, the numbers of rejected ballots, etc. The ballot storage boxes beneath the scanners are removed and sealed, then stored in case a recount is necessary.

These machines offer a fast vote tally, and a paper trail if there's a problem.

Plus, Oklahoma has a centralized voting administration, so the machines are used statewide, and they're used for local elections as well. So it's completely uniform from county to county.

Re:I just don't get why there's such foot-dragging

[or-switch]

Where I vote, in Silicon Valley, our electronic voting machines have a paper printer on them under glass. When you are done voting it prints up your votes and srolls them in front of the glass so you can see that it accurately recorded what you voted. It also then prints a 2D barcode, which I suppose is for easy scanning, though of course there's no way to tell if the barcode matches the votes. As a voter I found that satisfying. . .until. . .

I saw Hacking America. They tried to get copies of the official paper tapes from several elections and met a lot of problems and frustration getting it. In one case everything they requested under a FOIA request was found to be thrown in the garbage and they retrieved it all.

The problem I noticed watching this is the low brain power being exhibited by a lot of election officials and the like. Handling this stuff, electronic or not, is seriously complex work to keep track of that much material in that many places/warehouses and it's not being managed by people, at least in some areas, and likely the areas most in conflict, who have the skills to really deal wtih this. I don't know the solution, but think having smarter people at all levels of this process is required. Oh yeah, and counting software that can't be fooled by modifying a text file that is open to any user of the PC it's on. Come on, don't layer it on Windows, write your own damned voting OS to make it a touch harder to crack.

A printed ballot could have a barcode

[Joce640k]

A printed ballot could have a barcode and be read by machine.

This give you automatic vote counting AND a full paper trail.

To keep the system in check, randomly chosen cards could be hand verified after the election to make sure the barcodes are correctly printed.

Maybe I should go out and patent this, just in case common sense breaks out somewhere.

Re:Why not have voting machines that print ballots

[miro f]

why does everything have to be so complicated? In Australia we get the candidate names on a piece of paper with big boxes next to each name. We simply write numbers 1-whatever indicating our preferences. If you're too stupid to work that out each party also hands out "how to vote" cards. The votes are counted by hand at the end of the election.

Since you don't have a preferential system in USA it should be even easier, all you need to do is tick a box. Even the voters of Florida should be able to handle that one.

Re:A printed ballot could have a barcode

[mOdQuArK!]

Why introduce that possibility that the barcode might be different than what the user
verified? All counting should be done by using the same symbols that the voter used
to verify their own vote. There are a number of computer-printable fonts that are
highly human readable, but are still very easy for an OCR process to process accurately.