Ohio's Alternative to Diebold Machines May Be Equally Bad 174
phorest writes "One would have thought the choice of Ohio lawmakers to move away from Diebold touch-screen voting terminals would be welcomed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Instead, the group is warning the elections board that their alternative might be illegal under state laws. 'The main dispute is whether a central optical scan of ballots at the board's headquarters downtown would result in votes not being counted on ballots that are incorrectly filled out. The ACLU believes the intent of election law is to ensure voters can be notified immediately of a voting error and be able to make a second-chance vote.'"
10 years ago called they want their tech back (Score:2, Informative)
You filled in an optical-scan ballot and put it in the machine.
If the machine detected an over-vote or a spoiled ballot it spit it out. This was a clue to check your ballot for errors.
If you insisted on voting that way anyways there was a manual override.
It didn't care about undervotes, it rightly counted those as abstentions.
At the end of the day, the election judge turned a key and it spit out an unofficial total for that precinct.
All the ballots and machines went to a local or county counting location where the ballots were officially removed from the machines and officially counted.
It was easy to compare the official and unofficial counts to spot for irregularities.
Very simple very easy very quick very accurate. The only thing missing was machine-assisted voting for those who couldn't read or mark an optical ballot.
Re:Okay, I know this is America, but ... (Score:3, Informative)
Voting error usually means that there was some problem, technical or otherwise, that prevented the voter from communicating the vote to the tabulator. This can be as sinister as intentionally losing ballots that vote for an opposing party. It can also be as benign as the voter accidentally checking one box, erasing it, and checking another box, and the OCR machine has trouble reading it. Basically, the ACLU wants the ballots scanned in such a way as a mechanical problem that causes the ballot not to be read to lead to the ballot being destroyed, and the voter given a new one. Or, in other words, scanned on the way out of th polling place.
Lastly, there are many forms of voting that allow people to change their votes as the voting is ongoing. However, these are iterative contests, such as run-offs. The only reason not to allow someone to change their vote at any time over election day is the possibility (110%) of fraud and abuse of the system.
Re:Oh Please.... (Score:3, Informative)
One thng you need: software freedom (Score:5, Informative)
It's not that difficult. But people in positions of political power are disincentivized from doing the right thing. This includes talking to technical people who advocate for free software voting machines [counterpunch.org] so that we can end up with machines that produce voter-verifiable paper ballots which are stored for manual counting and are built on a free software system so that the county/state can get programmers they can trust when things don't work correctly. Having a choice of proprietors is just picking your monopolist and then hoping they'll do what you want when the contract is signed.
Instead of spending millions on a new proprietary system that will not adequately address local needs issues (and thus cause great embarrassment for the clerks who chose them), they could spend money (even with other states and counties) developing voting machines they can maintain and inspect as much as they like. Counties and states can purchase the required black box testing themselves, they don't need ES&S, Diebold, etc. to do this for them.
In this particular case, the ACLU's fear—voters not being immediately notified that their ballots are invalid—can be dealt with by a computer which scans (but doesn't count) their paper voter-verified ballot. Not only can most voters have an opportunity to read their paper ballot, they could plug in a pair of headphones into the computer and have the computer read them their ballot back and then determine if that comports with their intended vote. Then after this proofing (human and/or computer) each voter has a reasonable expectation that their ballot is valid and accurately reflects their intention.
I was part of the appointed group that recommended a set of voting machines for Champaign County, Illinois' elected County Board. Due to some not-completely-honest measures about only hearing from "approved" vendors, and a bunch of poor choices, I was pushed into picking the least-worst which happened to be a set of ES&S machines (one scanned and/or produced a paper voter-verifiable ballot, the other counted that paper ballot and physically retained it in a locked cabinet). Champaign County ended up with ES&S machines, only one of which had been approved for use by the state (in the state's bound-to-be-bullshit testing regime). The hurdles to overcome aren't ridiculously difficult. It will be hard to get some people to understand that it's beneficial to have local control over the voting machine so the machines can be reprogrammed to meet local needs (including changing the software to accommodate non-first-past-the-post voting, and generally fixing bugs or adding enhancements a county decides they want after the voting hardware contract is signed).
One thing that would really help (nothing like the power of a good example) is a free software voting machine that works just like the ES&S paper ballot scanning machines. These machines have a remarkably simple interface, good and adjustable voice, clear display, and headphone jacks. But these machines run on proprietary software which ES&S isn't willing to relicense (despite being their customer). So you're stuck with them for "support" and that means hoping they'll share your county's idea of what your voting system should do.
Concur (Score:2, Informative)
I was in the same position: Asked to come in as a technical consultant to look over the proposals for the electronic voting system to be used.
Again, it was "least deficient" when I made my final recommendation. ES&S at least tried to look like they were supplying a system that following the boilerplate RFP (Request for Proposals, a govt term meaning "I want a system to do this; waddaya got?"). One item that particularly stood out was the following:
Now, this is a geeky point of contention, but to me, it said that Diebold's marketing folks were just throwing in crap to make it sound like they were fulfilling the requirement. I recommended that Diebold should not be used because of their marketing double-speak.
(To finish up, I was told by the Election Board that they were already bound to a solution if they wanted funding: "If we don't buy the system the state wants, we won't get the funds to do the upgrade at all, and we will not be in compliance." Being that this was on Kenneth Blackwell's watch as Secretary of State, I wasn't surprised, only mildly disappointed.)
But, bad purchase aside, Scioto County, OH now uses optical scanners at each of the polling places. The voter gets immediate feedback on problems, and this point of contention never came up. (*chuckle* Not even going to touch all the other problems...)
As an Ohioan, my first question would be "What the fsck is going on up in Cleveland?!?" But, as a voter in these times, I am, again, only mildly disappointed.
Re:Bullshit (Score:2, Informative)
Australia has complex ballots as well - potentially far more complex than yours. We do use manually-counted paper ballots. We deal with it by breaking them up into separate ballot papers, which are counted separately, and indeed into separate elections as well. So we have separate federal, state, and occasionally even local elections, along with separate referendums where required.
A federal election has two separate ballot papers. One for electing the local member of parliament, and one for the senate.
In the case of the MP ballot, all voters are required to cast a vote for each candidate, in order of preference. That means that this ballot contains a list of around ten candidates, numbered starting from 1 for the first choice. This is the simplest of the two.
Here is what it looks like [aec.gov.au]
The senate ballot contains a list of everyone running for a senate seat. There are two options - vote for a single party and use their choices for the rest of the senate seats, or number each runner in order of preference.
Here is that one looks like. [aec.gov.au] Bear in mind that the real one is much larger, and has many more options than that sample.
Every citizen is required to vote. Voter turnout is therefore somewhere higher than 99%. Since everyone must vote, we have a system designed to make every vote count. In the case of the MPs, your vote eventually ends up going to one of the two major parties anyway - as each candidate is eliminated, their votes are reallocated according to voter preference. In the case of the senate, the guy with the most votes gets a seat, and their votes are reallocated among the remaining candidates according to voter preferences, and this repeats until all candidates are eliminated.
This is all done manually.
Re:You'd think ... (Score:2, Informative)
In Ohio, they don't want to have to have those checking machines at the voting place, just at the HQ. The ACLU is all "wahwahwah, morons must be given a second chance," but honestly, it's just lip flapping, IMHO. Honestly, if you can't fill out a scantron form, you don't deserve to have your vote counted.