California to Require Paper Voter Receipt 348
DDumitru writes "Wired reports
that California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley will require all electronic
voting systems be equipped with a voter-verifiable paper receipt. This receipt
will not be retained by the voter, but deposited at the polls and may be used
to audit electronic election results.
All new voting system installed after July 1, 2005 must include the new printers.
Existing systems, including the systems already installed in four counties must
be retrofitted by July 2006.
It looks like the public outcry about Diebold and other voting equipment manufacturers
has been heard, at least in a very major market for these machines in the US.
It should be very difficult for other states to not follow suit."
I wonder (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh, wait.
The printer was delayed until AFTER the next major election.
Re:Democracy works? (Score:2, Interesting)
um...useless? (Score:4, Interesting)
(1) The receipt includes a voter ID and the results of their vote. This totally violates the anonymity of the voting process but does allow for counting.
(2) If the receipts include no voter ID but just some form of transaction ID, then why print them off at all? Just run some report at any point during the voting process to see the tally? Why not? If the voting system is compromised, then there is no way to ensure the paper votes with the transaction id, generated from the compromised system can be trusted either.
As I see it, this solution does not add value without removing rights.
Re:2005? 2006? (Score:1, Interesting)
At what point (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.google.com/search?q=define:republic&
The US is a republic. Eire is a republic. The soviet union was a bunch of republics. China is a republic.
Re:Hey... (Score:3, Interesting)
One nice advantage of electronic voting is it has the potential to be very easy/quick to set up an election; there are very many other positives. This decision addresses the one giant negative associated with the process.
Re:Democracy works? (Score:2, Interesting)
No, you're very wrong. If that was the case, Gore would have moved his entire campaign to Florida, campaigned for Nader in every other state in a deal to keep him from being added to the ballot in Florida, and would have won the election easily.
Also, states are allowed to split their electoral votes. Some states themselves forbid their electors from voting for anyone but the candidate with a plurality of the popular vote, but even in those states (I believe about half of them) that allow the electors to vote for whomever they want, they don't.
A better system, and one that would actually preserve the intent of the Electoral College, would just be to just have the electors themselves run for election and let the voters choose electors whom they trust to make the best decision. Right now, the parties pick a group of electors for each state that they trust to elect their guy, and if they win a plurality in the state they get to have their electors in the College.
Re:no you miss the point (Score:2, Interesting)
1) a receipt would be something you keep. they are talking audit trails.
2) who is to say the paper matches the computer? ONLY recounts would show anything going on. If candidate X loses by 10% do they ask for a recount?
3) How many "bugs" will produce incorrect printouts that will go unverified? (at least enough to win another 10+%)
4) Transaction ID system can be compromised.
5) A voter ID system is harder to compromise, but is illegal in that you are not anon.
6) A complex hack would involve dumping printouts you don't like; which is EZ since its automated!
7) A more compex hack would result in 2 printouts.
8) A paper trail will not effect the next 1 or 2 elections. So they can come up with other tricks.
9) verification could make butterfly ballots look like child's play. (BTW, nobody mentions how EZ that is to hack, and how it was done in miami..)
9.5) Why not print off a report later? who could tell the difference???....
10) The point behind breaking areas up, is that you can remove corrupted area's results. It also is supposed to make it more difficult to cheat. Machines negate this, esp. when there is only 1-2 kinds of them used.
The motivation to WASTE our money on something so cheaply and securly done, is either foolishness or something else...
Re:It's too late (Score:3, Interesting)
But now that you mention it... If the machines are opensource, aren't the people loading the code into the machines ALSO the ones who've been loading uncertified code into the machines? How do the voters know that the source code they've seen is what's in the machine?
You misunderstand the system Also modest proposal (Score:3, Interesting)
You misunderstand the "receipt".
They don't keep it. They put it in the ballot box for potential recounts. It IS the official ballot - the count in the machines is just a convenience.
- - - - -
The point about vote selling, however, is significant.
One thing I'd have liked to do, a few elections back, was to get a raw record of the ballot-reader output from the individual precincts with electronically-tabulated ballots (punched cards, OCR marked cards, etc.)
Putting the raw record up on the internet would allow:
- anyone to write their own software to check the counting software.
- individuals (or neighborhood groups) to check that a ballot marked THEIR way (or the correct number of ballots marked their way) was included in the count.
- Statistical analysis to hunt for signs of election tampering (i.e. runs of identical ballots, precincts with counts wildly divergent from polling expectations, systematic spoiling of ballots otherwise voted for one party or candidate, etc.)
Unfortunately this might fall under the bans on exposure of individual ballots that were passed to hinder vote-buying schemes.