California Sec. of State Wants Open Source E-Voting Systems 112
Lucas123 writes "California's Secretary of State, Debra Bowen, was among a group of e-voting experts at MIT yesterday who said the nation's electronic voting systems are still not secure and many run on faulty software. Among the suggestions offered to fix the problem: use open source software, stop delivering e-voting machines to polling places weeks in advance of an election, and keep a paper trail for auditing purposes. Bowen also believes that a ubiquitous Internet voting system could not work without the use of a national ID card system."
Nice step forward (Score:5, Insightful)
Next step would be firing the so-called "technology experts" in the popular media, who apparently lack the the tech saavy to google for what "open-source" means.
Coverage of the G1 launch was a beautiful example of their ignorance. Many times I heard the fakers pontificate about the "security concerns" in using open-source software, while not even knowing meaning of the term.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
A solution looking for a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Just stick to paper. It works.
Re:Another trick: reduce the time pressure issue (Score:4, Insightful)
Bad idea, for many reasons:
The possibility for buying votes and coercing the voter is also why Internet voting must not be allowed to take place unless and until we can open a connection between our mind and the Internet. The voting booth is there to ensure privacy. Please do not take that privacy away in the name of security. I think Ben Franklin had something to say about that trade-off.
Re:Now for the BIG decision (Score:1, Insightful)
It should run as minimal as possible
Personally, I would take one step further. Electronic voting machines should be based on either a microcontroller or FPGA. The source code for whichever one would be available for public review. It would be carefully written and validated to ensure that the ports to which the user (voter, election worker, etc) has access cannot be used to reprogram it. It would be enclosed in a truly tamper-resistant, tamper-evident box. Of course, it still needs to have a voter-verified hard copy.
I think too often we are tempted to take the easy path and use an all software solution when a solution that involves hardware makes more sense.
Electronically *ASSISTED* voting is good (Score:3, Insightful)
Voting machines could print barcoded papers which can be counted electronically. This would allow fast vote counting without all the problems of the punch cards. Random samples of the paper could be counted manually as a security check.
Whatever happens there must be a paper trail. These are important decisions and any system without bits of paper should be a no-starter.
Re:E-Voting Machine made Easy & Secure (Score:3, Insightful)
Ramms+ein is right: Open source will not solve the problem of computerized voting, which transforms the ballot from a physical object that can be read by any poll worker, into an electromagnetic blip that cannot be verified except through extremely indirect and convoluted means using teams of hard-to-find experts.
As you may know, the 'normal' transactions we perform on computers every week are coming under increasingly successful attack. And that is WITH the benefit of the transactions carrying the identities of the people involved.
Anonymous transactions like the vote are far more vulnerable to error and tampering and are unsuitable for computerization except for peripheral functions like printing.
No amount of OSS review will help in an environment of high stakes subterfuge, especially when the remaining non-OSS layers of the systems are endlessly complex by comparison with paper ballots. Just ONE inappropriate logic gate or bit out of billions in those little machines can throw an election.
Re:Electronic trail as well as paper trail (Score:5, Insightful)
No.
The moment you give the voter the ability to check their vote afterwards you give their abusive husband a way to check they voted correctly. Or the employer that wants you to vote for his buddy. Or the local mob...
Bad plan.
Re:Another trick: reduce the time pressure issue (Score:3, Insightful)
What about public libraries? Libraries generally charge around ten cents to print a page, which isn't very much. Even so, I'm sure that libraries would be willing to make printing out ballots free-of-charge.
Re:A serious question (Score:2, Insightful)
After the election day ends, the machine announces a sort of temporary result. Then, a representative of the justice system, and representatives of all parties, and a member of the public (with a role similar to jury duty) all verify that the number of votes correspond to the number of people registered to have voted in that place. If there is a difference between the electronic and the paper-trail result, the latter overrides the former. The representatives can also count as invalid all envelopes that contain an irregular number of printouts, or one that has any identify marks (such as writing, scratching, tears or whatever)
Paper trail BAD; paper ballot GOOD (Score:2, Insightful)
Paper trails are bad. What we need are PAPER BALLOTS. The machine can help by helping voters fill out the damn form correctly and printing the ballot in COMPLETELY human readable form. Then an OCR can read it AFTER the voter has had a chance to make sure they are casting the votes they intended. The ballot helper MUST be completely independant of the OCR and the voter is the only link between the two.
No receipt, no tracking, no paper trail. Just a paper ballot. And of course we keep the ballots just as we normally would.
I'm surprised I have to explain this.