Evoting in India, Maryland

Anonymous Coward writes "EVMs are back in the news again. The BBC is reporting on the use of over a million Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) in India for Parliamentary elections in April. With a billion people and an electorate of 668 million, it is by far the largest democratic election exercise in the world. A picture of an EVM is provided." And Kierthos writes "An article on Yahoo! News mentions that Maryland's voting terminals will be wrapped in tamper proof tape, which 'just protects that malicious code physically', according to computer scientist Avi Rubin. Also mentioned are California's ongoing system of e-voting, as well as a point on whether Diebold should be banned in California after using uncertified software in last October's election."

the Netherlands

[ward.deb]

In the Netherland we already do it for years.. What's so new about this?

Tell your US Representatives about it

[beforewisdom]

This site has email and other contact information for many US Representatives.

http://www.congress.com/ [congress.com]

Then find out how they voted...

[wmspringer]

Going a few links into that site, we find a list of how each person voted on roll call votes at http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2004/index.asp [house.gov]

(ironically enough, the list is as tallied by the electronic voting machine)

I'm guessing not long

[miu]

"We are working on a model for European countries and also for the US," Mr Simha told the BBC News Online.

I wonder how long it will take this to become politicized as "those Indians are stealing our jobs, now they are trying to teach us how to run a democracy".

Re:Its time to embrace this tech

[startled]

What I think is odd is that it takes so long for people to arrive at the obvious solutions: optical scan, or electronic voting with a printed record that the voter can review before leaving.

California has gradually come around to that way of thinking, over the protests of everyone responsible for buying an expensive, fraud-inviting, paperless e-voting machine. So now, barring anything unexpected, in 2006 they'll be great.

I guess that's the point of bureacracy-- slow down anything-- but it's still frustrating to see the long, slow process and the numerous small missteps.

Re:Technical specifications for Indian EVM

[shamir_k]

For me, it would be more like 26 hours by flight, since I am currently in Washington DC. Thats not counting the 2-3 hour long queues outside most polling stations in Bangalore.

But considering the security these Deibold machines seem to have, maybe I can vote in DC in November! :-D

Interested in setting up a panel in NYC (July)

[Sam Nitzberg]

I am interested in setting up a panel in NYC (New York, New York, USA) somewhere between July 9 and July 11.

Some topics that color my view of e-voting systems briefly follow :

My concern is that any system be appropriately thought out, formally and precisely defined, using rigidly designed systems (not necessarily off-the-shelf), made to precisely and verifiably conduct voting tansactions, without being able to disclose, leak, or bleed any information that is not supposed to escape the system.

The Johns Hopkins study is an excellent reference and resource on the issues that have to be addressed.

I am personally interested in setting up a panel in New York in Mid-July (not much - just about an hour to an hour and-a-half), but at an interesting venue. I am not offering funding, but there could be some visibility.

I would welcome hearing from anyone who is doing interesting work in this area - in the US or overseas, that would be interested in participating on such a panel, to include related topics on technology-and-democracy.

Thank you,

Sam Nitzberg
[e-mail]
http://www.iamsam.com

physical insecurity of voting terminals

[rakerman]

In Physical security of electronic voting terminals [ncl.ac.uk] Tobin Fricke says "A cart of Diebold electronic voting machines was delivered today to the common room of this Berkeley, CA boarding house, which will be a polling place on Tuesday's primary election. The machines are on a cart which is wrapped in plastic wrap (the same as the stuff we use in the kitchen). A few cable locks (bicycle locks, it seems) provide the appearance of physical security, but they aren't threaded through each machine."

See my site on the issue in Canada, including international reports: Paper Vote Canada [papervotecanada.ca].

Re:hmm

[Imperator]

While I agree with you that some election results are really too close to be considered statistically significant, the solution for presidential elections is actually quite simple. Get rid of the winner-takes-all system that all states (but Maine) use for choosing their electors. If Gore and Bush had just split Florida's electors 50-50, the whole debacle could have been avoided. Or better yet, get rid of the whole Electoral College system entirely and use a nationwide popular vote. The more voters you have, the less likely the election will be decided by a few thousand confused elderly voters in Florida. It would also mean that those of us who don't live in "swing states" stop getting ignored by presidential campaigns.

Re:hmm

[Behrooz]

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0527-03.ht m

http://www.guardian.co.uk/US_election_race/Story /0 ,2763,501882,00.html

The official responsible for overseeing voting records and other similar issues is the Florida Secretary of State. At the time of most of the voter roll purges before the 2000 election, the Secretary was Katharine Harris, who also happened to end up as the head of the Bush campaign in Florida. Hint: Not a democrat.

Fortunately, she's no longer the Secretary of State for Florida.

Unfortunately, that came about as a side effect of her election to the US House of Representatives in the 13th Congressional District of Florida.

Re:Not even close to how it is in Brazil...

[pangian]

Electronic voting in Brazil is the perfect example of why its important to have users (in this case citizens) involved in the development of a new technology that is supposedly designed to "make their lives easier/better."

The same machines that are used and trusted in Brasil were used in Angola in 1992. However, in Angola (then political party and later rebel group) UNITA claimed that the machines spewed out fraudulent results, resulting in a bloody civil war that only recently ended.

Re:hmm

[bill_beeman]

Unfortunately, the sources cited by Behrooz fail to back his assertions....

The first site is purporting to be repeating a newspaper story (long after the election) complaining that Florida's attempts to minimize illegal voting by convicted felons was overbroad.

The second cite (to the Guardian, only slightly more reliable a source than the National Inquirer)is a bad URL.

Note that the original assertions in this thread were not relfected in news at the time, and not supported by any of the multiple media studies of the Florida election outcome.

Perhaps it's tinfoil hat time.....

Re:the Netherlands

[InfiniteWisdom]

Because parties have symbols.

Maryland verified voting website

[plsuh]

The Campaign for Verified Voting in Maryland has a website at www.truevotemd.org [truevotemd.org]. If you're a Maryland voter or just want to show your support, go there and sign up. If you're going to vote on Tuesday in Maryland's primary, we're organizing a protest to demand paper ballots.

The problem in Maryland is that the officials at the State Board of Elections are in Diebold's pocket. Realize that San Diego and other California counties are getting voter-verified paper trail equipment from Diebold for free, despite paying only 60% as much for the machines as Maryland. Maryland also bought a much larger order. However, since the SBE officials won't go to bat Diebold is trying to charge big bucks for the VVPT. Diebold is also spending heavily in lobbying and contributing to the Maryland Delegates and State Senators who could pass legislation that would force a VVPT.

Some other good sites if you're interested in this topic:

www.verifiedvoting.org [verifiedvoting.org]
www.blackboxvoting.org [blackboxvoting.org]

--Paul

Re:hmm

[radicalskeptic]

It's not a bad url. perhaps you didn't remove the space? Try this [guardian.co.uk].

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

The second cite (to the Guardian, only slightly more reliable a source than the National Inquirer)is a bad URL.

Remove the space that slashdot places in long text-strings, you dolt. BTW, the Guardian is a well-regarded newspaper, with real essay-style journalism--you get more content and analysis from a single Guardian issue than a week's worth of USA Today.

The linked article is actually quite short, and summarizes a Washington Post article on the report of the US Civil Rights commission investigation of Florida voting disenfanchisement. Given that the event occurred 3 years ago, the poster had to use a news source that keeps their articles up for years.

Re:Arguments Against E-Voting Other Than Security

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't vote from their personal computers, they go to special terminals, just like in a paper election.

unit judge say what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in maryland and i'm a unit judge for the election, unless the tape is something they've added in the last week it's not a state wide thing

EVM In India

[venkats]

India has been using the EVMs for about 7 years now. only that this time around, the number of machines deployed is going to be significantly higher than in previous years...
also, since the elections are held in multiple phases across the country, the machines get re-used.

Re:Maryland verified voting website

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, what I've heard is that the state board of elections wants to dump Diebold. Also, Diebold is working hard to get the administrator of the SBE fired. The SBE realizes that this Diebold stuff is crap, but they are stuck with it for the primary.

Both Diebold and the Md SBE are pointing fingers trying to make the other look bad at this point.

Not Exactly.

[Irvu]

The 2000 Election was also the first presidential election in which Diebold machines were used. Florida's Velousa (sp?) County. When the initial results came in they were devastating -16,022 (yes that's a negative number) votes were cast for Al Gore. This massive deficit caused Gore to appear diasterously behind Bush in the polls. It was at this point in the night that Gore gave his first resignation speech.

Later on the "official" counts were reset and a (more belivable) set of (nonnegative) numbers came in from the county in question. Gore then retracted his resignation. However that resignation came back to haunt him during the court case because Kathrine Harris used it to argue that he had already qut the reace and wasn't entitled to a recount.

Notreably, the recounts took place in other counties as Velousa county's machines did not produce paper records and could not be verified.

See Bev Harris's Site Blackboxvoting.org [blackboxvoting.org] for details. See here [blackboxvoting.org] for data on Volusia county. See here [scoop.co.nz] for internal Diebold memos discussing the -16,022 problem, and see here for more general info on the 2000 election.