Secrecy of Voting Machines Ballots At Risk

JimBobJoe writes "On Monday, Cnet published the findings I made as an Ohio poll worker regarding a major oversight in my state's election's system: Using a combination of public records, plus the voting machine paper trails, you can figure out how people voted. Though most agree that voting machine paper trails are a necessity, they can cause privacy problems which aren't easily mitigated. 'It's an especially pointed concern in Ohio, a traditional swing state in presidential elections that awarded George Bush a narrow victory over John Kerry three years ago. Ohio law permits anyone to walk into a county election office and obtain two crucial documents: a list of voters in the order they voted, and a time-stamped list of the actual votes. "We simply take the two pieces of paper together, merge them, and then we have which voter voted and in which way," said James Moyer, a longtime privacy activist and poll worker who lives in Columbus, Ohio.'"

Re:Why are these records even KEPT AT ALL in Ohio?

[sumdumass]

If they destroyed all that info, when a republican beats a democrat, all you will hear is how voter fraud and all happened. This shows there wasn't any and all that jazz. BTW, it has been this way in Ohio for a while now.

It is a no win situation and the answer is probably going to be not to change anything.

Re:In the UK, polls aren't really secret either

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Your voters card has a unique I.D on it. The ballot paper has a unique I.D on it. The two are in no way correlated. When you show your voters card to the people at the voting station, they will check your name against their list and cross you off. Then they will tear out a ballot paper (Or two, or three, if you have multiple elections) and hand them too you. At no point do they record which ballot paper(s) they gave to you, and at no point do they record any additional information on the ballot paper.

I don't think so.

[argStyopa]

At least in MN, you're not registered in the order you vote - you're registered in the order you ARRIVE. Then you stand in line, and take the next available booth.

Then, you stand at the booth, mull over your unknown, least-hated, or no-competition candidates. It's actually quite rare that people walk away from the voting booths in the exact same order that they went into them.

So yeah, you can use the timestamps + registration to determine who voted how....+/- maybe a half dozen voters, which makes a great deal of difference.

Now, if the voting station turnout is slow when you voted? Then yeah, you are probably identifiable. But this isn't nearly the story it's made out to be, and would be less of a story if more people voted.

Re:Why do you need a list in the order they voted?

[ThosLives]

This was my thought as well; I suppose it depends on how the system determines "order in which you vote". I've never personally used anything but a paper ballot that is read by a scanner (yay for "backwards" states), but the way it works everywhere I've been is:

1. You come in, they simply highlight your name in the Big Book of Names and give you a ballot. I don't even think they write down the ballot number next to your name in the book.
2. You go fill out the ballot and stick it in the machine.

That's it. No timestamps, nothing.

Re:How long

[Anonymous Coward]

Zimbabwe [usip.org].

This is an Ohio Problem

[DeanFox]

The privacy issue he's discussing could possibly be limited only to Ohio. I've voted in Ohio and they're checking ID and manually writing down on a sheet of paper who votes in the order they walk in the door. The machine spits out vote results in the same order. Duh.

This "problem" has nothing to do with a "machine paper trail". It's not even related. I hope this argument isn't used to stall the progress we're making in fixing the vote system.

In Georgia where I'm at now a list of voters, in the order they vote, doesn't exist. In my county they check your ID then line through your name on a print-out. Who voted in what order cannot be determined. A machine paper trail wouldn't change that.

This is an Ohio problem not a voting machine paper trail problem.

-[d]-

Re:Why do you need a list in the order they voted?

[Ulven]

It doesn't matter if it stores the timestamp, as the time that he voted is unknown.

You know that John Doe voted, and you know that someone voted for candiate X at 12:30 - but there is no way to tie the two together.

Unless, of course, he was the only person to vote!

Ummm...PunchScan, anyone?

[Arathon]

We just ran a story here a few weeks ago about PunchScan, whose method solves that problem, and more. If you recall, they won a contest for the best Open Source Voting Systems Competition.

Links: Recent headline about winning the competition [slashdot.org] PunchScan's website [punchscan.org] original mention on /. [slashdot.org]

Re:How long

[sumdumass]

Look up "boss tweed", and the "political bosses" or "political machines". You will find more examples then I want to cite.

They owned everything and controlled the elections by virtue of negetive actions when they weren't elected.

Quick fix, no problem.

[Medievalist]

There are good reasons to have timestamps for actual votes cast made public.

But I'm not aware of any reason that the list of people who voted has to be delivered to the public in voting order.

So, sort the damn list alphabetically before handing it out. There are already going to be security measures around pulling the data, just add a simple sort to those procedures. In fact, I bet the staff who do this just "click on a button" so you can script it in without even changing any existing procedure or depending on humans to care about their jobs. Done, next problem please.

I hereby transfer all my rights to this business process to the public domain!