Feds to Recommend Paper Trail for Electronic Votes 205
flanksteak writes "The National Institute of Standards and Technology is going to recommend the decertification of all electronic voting machines that don't create paper records. Although it sounds like this recommendation may have been in the works for a while, the recent issues in Sarasota, FL (18,000 missing votes) have brought the issue a higher profile. The most interesting comment in the story comes near the end, in which the author cites a study that said paper trails from electronic voting machines aren't all they're cracked up to be."
Best solution I've seen (Score:5, Informative)
This article came out in forbes a while back and the author has the best solution I've seen for verifying votes on electronic voting machines. He proposes having a touchscreen computer to make all of your ballot selections and when you are done and hit vote it prints out a piece of paper with your sslections. You then can verify your votes were recorded correctly before putting your ballot in a box so that it can be run through an optical scanner at the end of the day to count the votes.
Nobody's decertifying anything (Score:3, Informative)
That will make me feel better (Score:5, Informative)
Beat me to it-Mod Parent UP!!! (Score:2, Informative)
They are undervotes.The citizen cast a ballot-successfully- but did not vote in the Congressional election.
Happens all the time for lots of different reasons. Republican voters had a good reason here not to vote for Katherine Harris and the Democrat was out of the question.There may have been some confusion with the ballot layout but where were the complaints about not finding the candidates on the ballot before the vote was cast?
There is an unmentioned paralell to Florida2000.Just because your turnout campaign brought your voters to the polls in greater numbers doen't mean they were voting for your candidate.
As a scrupulously impartial observer there does seem to be more post election whine from the winners this time
Re:Best solution I've seen (Score:2, Informative)
Methinks that you meant "For all intents and purposes". Take this as a gentle reminder that you should make sure that you actually know what you are typing, otherwise you look like a retard. You're welcome.
Make this a priority for next year (Score:4, Informative)
Democracy for America, the follow-up to Howard Dean's Dean for America organization, is running a "Put paper ballets on the agenda" [democracyforamerica.com] drive right now. They want people to tell Nancy Pelosi, as the future Speaker of the House, to make this a priority for next year's Congress.
So if you care about this issue, make sure she hears about it!
For what it's worth, I filed testimony in the EFF lawsuit, OPG v. Diebold, where Diebold was suing kids who (like me!) posted to the Web copies of some Diebold memos [berkeley.edu] in which you can read about Florida precicints with negative 16,000 votes for Al Gore and Diebold "upgrading" the software to uncertified (read: "illegal") versions in California.
Re:That will make me feel better (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Best solution I've seen (Score:3, Informative)
This exists and is sold by a major voting machine manufacturer. [essvote.com] They sell it more for the purpose of helping disabled voters vote in jurisdictions that use scantron-like ballots. But nothing stops you from having all voters use the machine. (I can't recall if any jurisdiction has adopted it that way however.)
Re:Paper records (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Best solution I've seen (Score:5, Informative)
There are problems with any voting system. Here's the basic rundown:
1) Mechanical lever, paperless: a machine in which the voter sees the whole ballot, sets switches to indicate their vote, and pulls a master lever to cast the vote, which mechanically adjusts a counter mechanism that is recorded by hand after voting has closed. Problem: the gears can jam. This has happened before, and officials can generally identify jammed machines by an anomolous number of 9s -- the machine fails to advance beyond 9 in a given column because that requires the turning of two counting wheels rather than one, Trust me it's happened, and this is why mechanical levers countinue to be used in only a very few jurisdictions.
2) Punch card, paper: the voter indicates their choice by putting the ballot into a machine which makes a physical hole in the ballot that can then be read and counted by machine. Problems: There is no chance to correct a mistaken vote except by spoiling the ballot. An incomplete puch can lead to incorrect tabulation (hanging chads). Perforations that were not voted can still fall out before tabulation, meaning an overvote and an invalid ballot. Florida 2000. This is why virtually no jurisdictions still use punch cards.
3) Optical scan, paper: the voter indicates their choice by marking a paper ballot -- generally by making a mark in a given area of the ballot. Problems: Voters fail to follow directions and make marks other than where they're supposed to (eg circling names rather than checking boxes). Optical scanners identify stray marks as votes (or overvotes), or fail to identify votes. Folded or damaged ballots (particularly in the case of absentee ballots) cannot be read by machine. Optical scan ballots are still very popular, and probably the best solution now being used.
4) DRE - direct recording electronic, paperless or optionally with a voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT): A voter makes their selection through a touchscreen, keypad, or audio interface and the vote is recorded digitally onto a removable storage unit -- generally a PCMCIA card. Some units feature a simultaneous paper record to present the voter with a hard copy representing their vote. Problems: No transparency between the casting and counting process. No software independence -- the tabulation of votes is dependent on the same software that records the votes. No independent auditability -- there is no way of verifying that the voting and/or tabulation software has not been compromised. No physical record of the vote when there is no VVPAT, and no dependable physical record when there is a VVPAT.
Paper trails are the most failure-prone parts of the machine and offer no effective protection of the process -- printers can fail, paper loaded incorrectly, ink runs out, paper jams, paper runs out, etc, etc, etc. If it can happen it will, especially in a machine whose hardware is little tested and whose software is engineered on short notice (due to election law that often changes dangerously close to elections), and a machine designed to be used only a couple times per year.
5) All-mail: this is a system that is being pioneered by Washington State -- all voters vote by absentee ballot delivered through the mail. Eliminates the need for polling places, poll workers, etc. Problem: Opens the door widely to massive vote fraud.
6) Colored Stones Cast into an Urn, paperless: A very effective system used in ancient republics wherein voters would indicate their choices by placing stones of different colors into given vessels to indicate their vote. No question of hanging chads, hacked machines, misunderstood ballots, etc. Problems: Not machine readable, somewhat impractical for large precincts and long ballots, expensive and difficult to transport and verify stone counts. Very, very few governments or municipalities have used this me
Re:As a matter of accounting.... (Score:3, Informative)
ATMs are not as mission critical as voting machines are.
No one ever needs to use an ATM. They can always use another, or they can just go into the bank, but the voting machine needs to work right, from 6am to whenever polls close, be maintained by less than tech-savvy individuals, resist tampering that is arguably much more complex than a bank machine faces (the worst a machine can do is release its financial contents...which is actually a rather limited outcome, and even then, it's easy to prevent a machine from handing out $500 at a time, plus it gets to videotape the miscreant who did it.)
With the VVPAT requirement, they need to remember exactly how a voter voted without giving away the identity of the voter (which is arguably impossible.)
While in Ohio a lot of things we do are supposed to be overseen by two pollworkers (a "democrat" and a "republican"--many are just independents pretending to be one or the other) but none of us have the key to open the VVPAT box and change the tape. I watched the guy come and change the tape and then handed me the tape, which I thought was funny...because thought the VVPAT is the official voter results by Ohio law--I wasn't ever told what to do with it when it was removed from the machine.
the Draft NIST recommendations are pretty good!! (Score:4, Informative)
It appears that at least one federal agency has not turned to the dark side. The draft NIST white paper recommends a voter verifiable paper audit trail that is also the ballot of record, AND robust auditing. I was very pleased to read it. I hope the final document isn't watered down, and I hope this or something similar is implemented in time for the 2008 election.
The premise of the whitepaper is that no software dependent system for counting votes (like a touchscreen with no paper ballot) can be fully vetted, and that they should never be used without a software independent record for use in mandatory statistically robust audits.
In other election reform news... There is an organization that has been a key mover in the election reform movement called electionarchive.org. They did a lot of very interesting statistical analysis of the 2004 elections and found some startling results. They have made a very solid list of 15 legislative recommendations. They can be found here:
http://electionarchive.org/ucvInfo/US/EI-FederalL
here is a list of the electionarchive.org recommendations
1.Manual Audits
2.Voter Service Reports
3.Auditable Voting Systems
4.Fund Manual Audits and Voter Service Reports
5.Teeth (enforcement)
6.Public Election Records
7.Election Monitoring Website
8.Submission of Reports
9.Public Disclosure of Voting System Software
10.Prohibit Certain Network Connections
11.Qualifications for Technical Guidelines Development Committee
12.Public Right to Observe
13.Vote Count Audit and Recount Committee
14.Repository for Voting System Disclosure
15.Prohibit Practices that Disenfranchise Voters
Re:That will make me feel better (Score:2, Informative)
It's worse than that, I think.
It looks to me (and others) like the Republicans attempted to steal the entire 2006 congressional election (more precisely, enough to maintain a Republican majority in both the House and Senate) and failed only because voter opinion became even more favorable to the Democrats at the last minute. See http://electiondefensealliance.org/landslide_denie d_exit_polls_vs_vote_count_2006 [electionde...liance.org] for details.
And lest you think the pre-cooked exit polls were "inaccurate" this time around, the details of how they did the exit polling are important. In particular, they also asked how the voter voted in the 2004 presidential election, which allows them to independently determine whether "adjusting" the exit polls to correspond with the official count is realistic.
Re:Best solution I've seen (Score:5, Informative)
Because, with a computer-generated card, the result should be more or less binary -- either Bob voted for a candidate or he didn't.
With a card filled in by a voter, there can be some debate about how complete a mark must be before it counts. Witness the hanging chad hell in Florida.
(OTOH, with computer generated cards, since they are computer generated, it should be trivial to print out fake ballots and stuff the box. But the fake ballots will lack different and unique finger prints.) :/
Re:Best solution I've seen (Score:2, Informative)
You mean Oregon, right?
In my opinion, and yes IAAEP (I am an Election Professional)...
Then I'll assume that's just a brain fart and you really do know the difference between the Pacific Northwest states.
Re:Paper voting! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:RA storage vs WORM type storage (Score:2, Informative)
The paper trails worked (Score:1, Informative)
85% of the VVPAT Ballots and VVPAT Summaries reconciled after the primary manual count, where
approximately 15% required a secondary count
1.4% of the VVPAT cartridges exhibited missing ballots.
16.9 % of VVPAT tapes showed a discrepancy of 1 - 5 votes between the tally of ballots and the results
report; 2.1 % showed a discrepancy of over 25 votes.
During the manual recount, team members discovered 40 VVPAT tapes (9.66%) that were either
destroyed, blank, illegible, missing, taped together or otherwise compromised.
Identifying information on the VVPAT tape such as precinct information and machine identification was
inconsistent, as were the summary reports printed at the end of the day. 2.8% of the VVPATs were
missing machine ID numbers; 5.4% did not identify the precinct, increasing the difficulty of a meaningful
audit and raising questions about the integrity of the vote count.
VVAPTs showed evidence of booth workers using trial and error to print reports and start up or close
down the machines; workers apparently attempted to overcome printer problems by shutting down
machines, removing and replacing cards, and restarting machines.
72% of the labels identifying cannisters containing the VVPAT tapes were missing information. 46% of
the canister labels were blank.
Booth workers frequently failed to sign the tapes. Such failures in chain of custody also increase the
risk of a legal challenge.
The ink can be washed off (Score:3, Informative)