E-Voting Done Right - In Australia

tehanu writes "After all the furor over e-voting in America, Wired News has an article about e-voting done right in Australia. An important factor is that all of the software is open-source. The company responsible actually seems to have given consideration to the integrity of the democratic process, too - from the lead engineer: 'Why on earth should (voters) have to trust me -- someone with a vested interest in the project's success? A voter-verified audit trail is the only way to 'prove' the system's integrity to the vast majority of electors, who after all, own the democracy.' They also have scathing words for Diebold: 'The only possible motive I can see for disabling some of the security mechanisms and features in their system is to be able to rig elections. It is, at best, bad programming; at worst, the system has been designed to rig an election.' In general they are 'gob-smacked' by the whole situation with electronic voting machines in the US right now."

Open source?

Don't kid yourself: open source is nice, but it doesn't guarantee a fault-proof or secure voting system (suppose somebody installs wrong or malicious software on one of the machines?). The only way to do that is to provide voting receipts which can be counted independently, by hand -- and that does not exclude closed-source solutions.

Re:Open source?

meaning what? If the punch card machines had provided a human-readable printout that the voter could read, and realize that he/she accidentally voted for Pat Buchanan rather than Al Gore, there would have been no issue.

Re:Open source?

Florida's debacle was not about hanging chads. It was about what went on behind the scenes [gregpalast.com][PDF!!] before anyone got to the voting booths.

Re:Open source?

Sure it doesn't guarantee a fault-proof or secure voting system, anyone can install wrong or malicious software on machines, even a closed system one. The point here is that we eliminated or reduced the possibility of having holes in the software intended to be in the machine. Hey, it's better to have hundreds and thousands of people to look at it, then to have a handful of stressed out employee with vested interest in the company to examine the code.

In another note, voting receipts is nice, no question about that.

Re:Open source?

We all need to send copies of the internal Diebold memos to all of the mainstream news sources and our congressmen. If we just push for this, and educate our officials and the populace, this blight will be removed. All we need to do is, as a community, get off our asses and fight.

I'm not one for playing the mindless patriotism card, but I really do feel that (for the Americans out there) it is our duty to do something about this.

Correct

I'm not one for playing the mindless patriotism card, but I really do feel that (for the Americans out there) it is our duty to do something about this.

Mindless patriots support the government, while real patriots support the people, and challenge the government to do what's right for everyone. The implementation Diebold has come up with is not good for any of us, and is not right.

Not just americans...

I would love to be able to say that America can sort out it's own voting troubles, but that is not a realistic analysis of current world politics.

In australia (and the rest of the world) we are extremely sensitive to the american political decisions, especially those relating to foreign trade and policy.

The concept of a closed source system, developed by people who openly pledge to "deliver votes to the president" (you don't need references, it's all over the /. front page), can covertly apply patches and allegedly have back-doors, seems pure insanity to me.

Just my AU$0.02...

Q.

Re:Open source?

The point here is that we eliminated or reduced the possibility of having holes in the software intended to be in the machine.

Only if the binary that runs on the machine is compiled from the same copy of the source that you've analyzed just before you cast your vote. Oh, and you'll need to analyze the source code for the compiler that the voting machine's binaries is compiled on, to make sure that hasn't been compromised. And then you'll need to check the source of the program used to view the source code of the other programs...

Re:Open source?

[quote]
Don't kid yourself: open source is nice, but it doesn't guarantee a fault-proof or secure voting system (suppose somebody installs wrong or malicious software on one of the machines?).
[/quote]

True, but with an open system, anyone can see what is going on. If the process is completely open, there is a greater likelyhood that any funny-business will be seen and dealt with before it is too late (*ahem* Florida).

Re:Open source?

This can only be done if the receipt the voter takes home can't be used to determine who they voted for -- otherwise vote-selling and related fraud is enabled.

Now, if the receipt the voter takes home contains a *signature* of the data on receipt they dropped in the box (such that it can't be used to determine who they voted for but can be used to determine that their vote hasn't been tampered with), that's a different story.

Personally, though, I think that's overkill -- putting a chain-signed receipt into a lockbox is Good Enough For Me.

(chaining digital signatures, fyi, is a way to make it very hard to modify just one -- because the next receipt also happens to contain a signature of the previous one).

Re:Open source?

If someone is going to rig an election by tampering with electronic voting machines, they're also more than capable of forging the paper trail.

I'm sorry, that's not insightful - it's total bollocks. Of course it's possible to tamper with paper ballots, but to do so on a large scale (e.g. large enough to affect statewide or national elections) would inevitably attract attention because one would need to gain access to, and modify or destroy, literally tons of paper.

Electronic voting systems may be tampered with without any heavy lifting, by few people, and the only access problem is electronic, not physical - do you trust that the home or office PC of the supervisor of elections in your county is secure? Having done computer work for municipal governments in the past, I certainly do not.

-Isaac

Re:Open source?

I agree with you but I'm curious, why would a public voting system be based on closed-source software? Is it to obscure the code to prevent fraud? We know for a fact that security through obscurity doesn't work. Is it to protect the copyright of the software author? No, that's what copyright law is for. So, that leaves only as a means to hide the underlying process. Not exactly something desirable for public elections. I believe there's a place for closed source solutions and a place for open source solutions. A building security system is a place for closed source solutions since few have a vested interest in the underlying mechanisms. On the other hand, a voting both is a place for open source solutions since we all have a vested interest in the underlying mechansim.

e-voting is not secure

E-voting is not secure because there is really no way to truly check someone's identity. HOWEVER!!!!!!!!, there are tools like openssl and gpg to give people certificates or keys that can prove they are who say they are when they are online to vote. I like to vote while knocking the bottom out of my toilet withmy wireless laptop. I believe keys and/or certs are the best way to go. Take it from me, I have been in the security part of the IT world for 6.5 years now.

Re:e-voting is not secure

... I dont think anyone thinks its a good idea that people can vote from anywhere other than a standard voting center, like schools and fire stations like you do now....

Australian voting system

Isn't that what the US has been using for years anyway?

Re:Australian voting system

The Austrailian ballot is where candidates (for all elections) are listed entirely on one ballot and you get to choose which candidate you want regardless of party.

It may bewilder some people that before the 1920's when you went to vote, a member of the Republican or Democratic party stood outside your polling in place and handed you a "Republican" or "Democratic" ballot. Said ballot would have only the party nominations for President, Senator, House Representatives, State Governor, State Senator, etc. As a result you "voted the party line."

The Austrailian ballot was introduced between the 1920s and 1940s in the US (different municipalities adopted it at different times). It changed US politics because now people could vote for a Democratic President but a Republican Senator. One major result is that since WWII there have been very few times when the party of the president coincided with the majority party of Congress. In fact the Bush administration which has had a Republican Congress for most of the three years it has been in office is an exception not a norm.

Enginnering ethics...

Now that's what I call engineering ethics, letting people know the truth about what you're doing. Fine, maybe a computer should at least keep the software code to themselves (patent it so no one else could use it, I do believe in some intellectual property rights), but Diebold should have at least let us see the code so we can tell them how holey it is.

Mod This Up; I Won't Get Karma (Boo Hoo)

Aussies Do It Right: E-Voting By Kim Zetter
Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/ebiz/0,1272,61045,00.htm l

02:00 AM Nov. 03, 2003 PT

While critics in the United States grow more concerned each day about the insecurity of electronic voting machines, Australians designed a system two years ago that addressed and eased most of those concerns: They chose to make the software running their system completely open to public scrutiny.

Although a private Australian company designed the system, it was based on specifications set by independent election officials, who posted the code on the Internet for all to see and evaluate. What's more, it was accomplished from concept to product in six months. It went through a trial run in a state election in 2001.

Critics say the development process is a model for how electronic voting machines should be made in the United States.

Called eVACS, or Electronic Voting and Counting System, the system was created by a company called Software Improvements to run on Linux, an open-source operating system available on the Internet.

Election officials in the Australian Capital Territory, one of eight states and territories in the country, turned to electronic voting for the same reason the United States did -- a close election in 1998 exposed errors in the state's hand-counting system. Two candidates were separated by only three or four votes, said Phillip Green, electoral commissioner for the territory. After recounting, officials discovered that out of 80,000 ballots, they had made about 100 mistakes. They decided to investigate other voting methods.

In 1999, the Australian Capital Territory Electoral Commission put out a public call for e-vote proposals to see if an electronic option was viable. Over 15 proposals came in, but only one offered an open-source solution. Two companies proposed the plan in partnership after extensive consultation with academics at Australian National University. But one of the companies later dropped out of the project, leaving Software Improvements to build the system.

Green said that going the open-source route was an obvious choice.

"We'd been watching what had happened in America (in 2000), and we were wary of using propriety software that no one was allowed to see," he said. "We were very keen for the whole process to be transparent so that everyone -- particularly the political parties and the candidates, but also the world at large -- could be satisfied that the software was actually doing what it was meant to be doing."

It took another year for changes in Australian law to allow electronic voting to go forward. Then in April 2001, Software Improvements contracted to build the system for the state's October election.

Software Improvement's Matt Quinn, the lead engineer on the product, said the commission called all the shots.

"They, as the customer, dictated requirements including security and functionality, (and they) were involved at every step of the development process, from requirements to testing," Quinn said. "They proofed every document we produced."

The commission posted drafts as well as the finished software code on the Internet for the public to review.

The reaction was very positive.

"The fact that the source code had been published really deflected criticism," Quinn said.

A few people wrote in to report bugs, including an academic at the Australian National University who found the most serious problem.

"It wasn't a functional or a security issue but was a mistake nonetheless, and one that we were glad to have flagged for us," said Quinn.

In addition to the public review, the commission hired an independent verification and validation company to audit the code, "specifically to prevent us, as a developer, from having any election-subverting code in there," Quinn said.

"We were concerned that it wouldn't be secure enough," said Green, the electoral commissioner. The audit

I'm not sure why the Diebold source isn't availabl

Isn't the voting system run by the state? Shouldn't the source code be available by the Freedom of Information Act or something?

Re:I'm not sure why the Diebold source isn't avail

The answer to your question is no. The technical legal reasoning for this is below. The practical reasoning for this follows. There is only one federal election: President(*). That election only occurs every 4 years. Creating a federal agency and bureaucracy just for that is pretty ridiculous. Because local elections happen several times per year (at least in my district, school elections are held in April, and general elections in November), the local election boards are much better equipped to run the presidential election.

*(Legal Reason) Because of the way the electoral college operates, the presidential election is technically a state level election. When you vote for president, you are actually voting for your state's electoral college members, who will then vote for their party's choice for president when the electoral college vote formally takes place in January. The constitution mandates that states shall select electoral college members in ways that the respective state legislatures shall establish. Obviously, for all states, this method is popular vote. In most states, the winner of the popular vote takes all the electoral votes, but there are a few states where the electoral votes are proportional to the popular vote (Maine and I think one other that I just cant recall right now). Anyway, because of that clause in the constitution (Amendment.. 12? or 16?), the states are essentially responsible for the presidential election.

Sign the HR2239 petition.

This petition is the only way to guaruntee that your vote will be counted--it mandates that machine give the voter a human-readable receipt which the voter drops into a lock box in case. In the case of a recount, the paper receipts are counted. It also mandates a manual recount in .5% of districts to verify the accuracy of the machines. The petititions are linked to at the bottom of the VerifiedVoting [verifiedvoting.org] site.

oss software?

Where's the OSS software? Can't find it on the company website.

Re:oss software?

Don't panic. It isn't on the company's website, it's on the ACT Electoral commission's website - the tar.gz is here [act.gov.au], linked from this page [act.gov.au].

My goodness!

"If a voting system precludes any notion of a meaningful recount, is cloaked in secrecy and controlled by individuals with conflicts of interest, why would anyone buy it?," Quinn said. "At the very least give citizens the right to choose whether they want to use paper ballots ... thus allowing each elector to be personally satisfied as to the integrity of the process in which they are participating."

That just makes... sense.

Re:My goodness!

Except you will have some voters who will think that:
- they could vote twice, once with each method
- that one was just a practice vote and the other was one that counted
- are confused that there are two voting methods and don't know what to do, so don't vote at all
- paper discriminates against tree huggers and caters to the logging community
- electronic voting discriminates against technology luddites and caters to the techno-savvy

In other words. . .

The company responsible (namely Software Improvements) is clearly pushing to pick up a contract for machine development in the U.S., and saying All The Right Things (tm) to get it.

Don't blame them really, Diebold left themselves wide open - should be easy pickins.

---

Obstacles to US adoption of SI system

Aside from the double-meaning of my title (e.g. SI = metric system, something the US is also adverse to adopting), I see a couple obstacles facing the Aussie company if they want to break into the US market.

1) Imagine the outcry from Americans when they learn they're contracting a foreign company to handle their voting system. Oddly enough they won't have cared that Diebold's being all secretive and evasive about their own flaws while SI is open and honest and better suited to uphold the fair democratic system the US claims to cherish. To them I'd say ditch the NIH (not invented here) syndrome--if it works better than what you have, either make a competing product that's truly better or shut up about it.

2) Diebold will use MS' tactics, calling SI's system "un-American". Again, double meaning, but this time I mean because it's open source.

3) Watch Diebold play points 1 and 2 to the hilt, calling on its political ties to ensure SI never gets a foothold in the US. In so doing they pull a two-fer, by simultaneously kicking out a leg from under the democratic underpinnings of the US, as well as another leg from the "capitalist" system the US also claims to be, e.g. where companies compete based on the merits of the product and marketing, without political interference.

Incidentally, the Australian system requires you by law to vote. Maybe that's something the US ought to consider importing too. Argue if you want about being free to NOT vote, but voting is a duty, not just a right, and you should be compelled to do it. Just like you are to report to training if you get drafted, or filing a tax return--you're not free to refuse either of those without legal consequences, right?

What's sad about my writing this is that I have no influence in US politics, being a Canadian, but I seem to have more interest in your politics than the majority of voting Americans, who don't even bother to go to the polls.

In the US the voters no longer own the democracy..

so his comments don't apply here. An electronic system in the US that statisfies the owners of the democracy in the US needs to staisfy the Republican party and its big money supporters. The Diebold system is perfect for this and hence is the choice in the US. Why bother how people vote when you can control how the votes are counted? So long as the difference between the opinion polls and exit polls and the official "results" aren't too large you can get away with stealing elections for as long as you want.

It's so true it's not even a troll

You'll get modded as a troll for that, maybe, but it's a shade of one step from the truth. Diebold's CEO being a big Republican donor who's sworn to "deliver" Ohio's electoral votes for Bush next year, that isn't the message I'm reading in the Mpls. Star Tribune. Here it reads like "Techies are concerned about sloppiness in voting systems" instead. That's just the first step in this story.

Election Systems and Software, the other major electronic voting company, is also, coincidentally, run by a big Repub' contributor. Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska has a stake in that company. Can you imagine that? A sitting senator with financial interests in a company responsible for counting votes? Unbelievable.

Sort of makes me think about how incredibly brazen Halliburton's role is in Iraq now. These people don't even attempt to maintain the illusion of impartiality. So, see, you're right -- this Australian company's ideas about the proper way to ensure confidence, they just don't apply. As long as our Repubs can fly under the radar, they don't care whether it's right or not.

Oz...

Not to make an over-generalization, but Australia usually does things the right way. I have always been amazed at the level of well-runnedness of Oz.

We would always do better to at least pay attention to what they're doing over there, the benefits would easily pay back careful study.

Simple solution for e-voting

We have an incredibly secure infrastructure already in place that could easily handle e-voting. We can already buy stamps from ATM machines... I find it hard to believe that someone could write an app to be deployed on all the systems to handle an election. And as far as the constiuents that don't have an exsiting ATM card, I'm going to guess that its going to be a lot easier and cheaper to just issue them ATM-voter cards then to create/install e-voting needs for those without computers.

Re:Simple solution for e-voting

This could greatly improve efficiency of vote buying. The money for the vote could be transfered directly into your account.

real democracy

a robust, fully secure, fully anonymous, standardized (across states, counties, whateveer your contry might have) would be a great step towards a true democracy instead of a, oh damnit my mind went blank and lost the word... a democracy that uses such machinations as an electoral college, as the U.S. uses. I would assume that the electoral college is in place simply because it would have been too hard to count millions of votes by hand. computers can count and sort easily. get rid of the middleman who may or may not (though historically does as the votes say) elect the correct person.

Re:real democracy

Think of the implications of a true democracy.

Think of the masses voting on each and every topic.

How much does your average citizen know about foreign policy? Health care? Criminal and civil law?

A true democracy would be the worst form of government I could think of, unless you happen to have the exact same opinions as >50% of the population, you're fucked.

Realize that around 70% of Americans are christian. Now, lets vote on whether or not to allow that mosque or synagogue (sp) to open its doors on the corner, or whether gays should be allowed to parade, etc..

Preferential voting system

Foreign readers might also be interested in checking out the Australian preferential voting system. This is, in my opinion, a much fairer system than the "first past the post" system of the UK or US. In the preferential system, votes for minority candidates are never wasted as the vote cannot be split. This would be especially valid for a presidential system as in the US. For more details, check out: http://www.australianpolitics.com/voting/systems/p referential.shtml

Re:Preferential voting system

Also known as Instant Runoff Voting (IRV). This method has serious problems [electionmethods.org] when examined according to technical fairness criteria.

The issue is that IRV works OK until a third party becomes viable - then, all bets are off. The article mentioned above quotes the following as an advantage:

It promotes a strong two-party system, ensuring stability in the parliamentary process.

Is this an advantage? I think not. The more common system, plurality or "first-past-the-post", which to be fair is even worse than IRV, does the same thing by artificially encouraging people to vote for front-runners. I would argue that any such artificial bias towards any party is a bad thing, and that the vote should reflect the true preferences of the voters as accurately as possible. IRV is an illusory fad in this regard.

Approval Voting and the Condorcet Method are much better. Condorcet is technically the best available method, but approval is (for the US anyway) also a good choice because it offers good technical compliance and ease of practical implementation.

open source doesn't make right

isn't it like saying the techniques to print money should be open source and available to the public because we want to know if our money is printed right? Whether it is open source or not is irrelevant. Obviously the government should have access to the source from the vendor (just like the government owns the designs to all the military aircraft it gives boeing or lockheed to build). Good software is software engineered properly. Whether it is open or not is irrelevant

And here in Canada...

In most elections that I have witnessed in Canada, either municipal, provincial, or federal, there is ALWAYS a paper trail. I mark my ballot with a big fat X in the appropriate spot on a voting card.

Then the magic begins: the cards are each fed, as collected, into a vote counting machine. The ballots are held in the case a recount (automated or manual), and the results are known just as soon as it takes to communicate the results from each of the machines at each polling station.

We usually have the final, _official_ results within an hour or two of the poll closing time, and you can always go back to the paper ballot to verify the count. And who the heck has a hard time with a piece of paper and a pencil?

No hanging or dimpled chads here, and this to me seems the best of both worlds - technology aiding the speed of vote-counting (isn't that what this is all about, anyway?), but with the safeguards (and transparency) of a manual voting system.

Open Source

Nobody says open source is better because it's open source. It has to be open source because is MUST be open source by principle.

Get that in your damn head. Every citizen (who cares) should have the right to get a deep insight into how his vote is eletronically processed. If you're not allowed to know how your vote is processed you have no democrazy.

Paper reciept?

I'm not so sure I like computer machines at all. People have been saying, well, if we have a paper reciept printed that can be counted by hand, then its ok, however... what happens when the computer, through some type of rigging software, also prints out a reciept that presents the faulty votes... I guarantee people probably wouldnt catch it... and therefore it does nothing to solve the problem
I prefer optical scanning machines... the voting is still done by hand and can be counted by hand

Trouble is ...

... the fact that you can read "the" source code doesn't guarantee that's the version of the software -- or even the software itself -- actually being run on the machine. Is there some audit procedure for the compile/link/install process?

if peeps had problems with the manual ballets...

I'm getting memories of the Florida Elections and these same sort of inept people trying to figure out an E-Ballet. brrrr ...Pokin at their computer screen with a hole punch /imf not we-todd-ed

You call that an electronic voting machine...

THIS is an eletronic voting machine

The Voterix

(Outside of a school gymnasium, November 2004)

Agent: "Pollster, you had specific orders to
wait until we got here to begin this procedure."

(looks around)

Agent: "Where are your men now?"

Pollster: "I just sent them up there a minute ago... they were gonna make a little side trip and then vote for Dean. They should be bringing down Bush now."

(Agent looks at school)

Agent: "No Sergeant, the Diebold machines have already voted for Bush."

Lead Engineer

"A quote from the lead engineer: Why on earth should (voters) have to trust me ...

Come to think of it, in the Diebold hoohah, I have never seen any quotes from any of the Diebold people who actually worked on the system. I'd expect to see some -- if no more than expressions of hurt feelings because people don't trust them.

Hmm. Want to bet it's because the programmers are overseas? My bet is on Russia ...

Why, oh why, is there software at all?

I don't know if the problem is really that the software needs to be open source, or simply the fact that there is software at all.

I mean, think about it. What do you really want the system to do?

State: Waiting for User
State: Present User with Options
State: Ask User to Confirm
State: Record User Choice

Four states. That's all you've got. Four states. Why, precisely, are they using cheap hardware for something that a pair of dual flip-flops could handle?

Honestly - think about this. The only reason there are "security concerns" at all is because they were too cheap to design a dedicated system, no software, just pure logic, that can be run on a logic checking system looking for races, possible vulnerabilities, etc.

Paper trail? Well, paper's not exactly THAT good (it does burn, and as Florida proved, it's not always verifiably correct). What about a write-once, read-many device? Like, I don't know, a CD-R, with packet-based writing?

Embedded systems are becoming so much more popular over discretes because hardware is cheap, and bad software is cheaper. But in a case like this, I don't understand it. An idiot could design dedicated hardware voting terminals, which don't even have the possibility of tampering. It's just incompetence.

(P.S.: Sounds like a decent business plan, doesn't it? "Tamper-proof Voting Terminals" - "No more software crashes, no more unreliable messes - works the same way, every time, guaranteed.")

Yes, I know things are a bit more complicated than I'm pointing out here. But it is still correct: E-Voting doesn't HAVE to be fundamentally flawed. It just is when they use cheap hardware. C'mon. Haven't they seen the i-Opener BBSes? Hardware based on the "limit possibilities by creative software" is screaming to be hacked.

an interesting side note...

aside from the actual discussion of the voting systems themselves, Quinn makes an interesting comment at the end of the article in regard to everyone in the world having a say in the US presidential elections.

In a way, he's right, US policy does impact the rest of the planet, and I wonder if this is a step towards a unified global government.

can we really picture the koreans, french and germans as rebels fighting against the empire? :)

it will certainly have far reaching ramifications, including taxation... we already pay enough for our local politicians travelling too much and claiming it as work related.

Scary thought

If we really wanted fully functional and highly secure voting setups via computer here in the US, the government would require it to be written entirely in Ada.

Open Source is not the solution...

Richard Stallman say Free software is not the solution [wiki.ael.be] to democratic election.

Adding a printer (Printing paper audit trail) might be the best option for the US that is stuck with voting machine.
The best solution of all is PAPER and PEN.
If you want speed in the result, then SCANNING the paper is the best option.
Using computer to generate paper is not the cheapest way to make a PAPER BALLOT and any device between me and my vote is a risk to the secrecy of my vote.
In french and dutch for Belgian that want to have fair election... PourEVA [poureva.be]

Why not pencil and paper?

Could someone explain to me why you can't just write an X on a bit of paper with a pencil, put it in a sealed box, and count up the totals at the end like we do here in the UK?

I just don't see why you need to use any more technology. What is the point?

What's the point?

Until the voting public understands psychology thoroughly and how it can be used to divide and conquer the voting public I see no reason to ever vote again.

We are not making any progress here. Even if we have a completely fair and non-corrupt voting system we'll still have a completely unfair media system backed by lots of people with money and power.

Ever heard of psychological operations? The US government wrote the book on the subject. Think about it.

Who tells you what the issues are? Have you ever voted for anyone not from the 2 main political parties? Have you ever wondered why?

No Great Surprise Here

Australians invented the secret ballot - which was referred to originally as "the australian ballot". Australian electoral processes have complete preferential voting - or automatic runoff. Upper house ballots are generally on a multi-member electorate - for the Australian Senate, 12 senators are elected from each state at large, this way you get more than just the two major parties, and they generally hold the balance of power.

E-Voting is simply a bad idea

The important thing in democracy is not the voting, it's the counting.

Any technology introduced to improve the act of voting cannot make the act of counting less transparent or democracy suffers.

It is apparent that Diebold's systems (not to mention Diebold's paranoia for secrecy) render the act of counting less accountable and less transparent. Ergo, democracy suffers.

If used in a close election - where exit polling and other secondary measurements are unable to confirm the results of the counting - the wrong person might actually get elected President of the United States of America.

With no sense of responsibility to the coutry at large, this illegitimate President might launch a series of Napoleonic wars to to compensate for his own feelings of inadequacy.

I digress into fantasy... the little blue ones I washed down with all those adult beverages must be kicking in.

Still a big security hole

The problems with all of these "touch screen" systems, wether based on open of closed source, is that there is no way to guarantee that what the voter chooses is what is voted electronically and that the same vote is recoded electronically and on the paper trail.

The basis of the voting system (IMO) need to be the voter making a direct mark on some tangible and independently verifiable object. Touch screen systems fail at this, the voter touches the screen which electronically stores the vote. There is no way to verify that the vote recorded is that which was cast. It would be quite possible for a hacker to cause the machine to register one vote electronically and one vote manually.

Such a touch-screen and paper trail system seem to demand an automatic "re-count", you count the automatic system tally, then you must also count the paper trail receipts. What's going to happen when the two are not the same to within 1%? Will the electronic tally be deemed faulty, or will the paper handling system be deemed faulty?

With the single point voting systems this is not an issue. The "punch card" and "fill in the box" ballots both achieve the direct manipulation and independently verifiable tests. There have been some problems with them, but this should be taken care of with voter education, and voters actually caring about the process before the elections. You can't solve human stupidity with technology, you can only hide the symptoms.

I live in Mesa, Arizona where we use the "blacken this area" type ballot. It's easy to understand and easy to do. There's no easy way to alter my ballot without it being obvious it was tampered with. The ballot leaves my hand directly in to the electronic voting thingie. If ever there were a recount, the paper ballot if authoritative since that is what I voted.
Of course, we have our own problems here: the main one is that they don't check I.Ds at the votinc center. All you need to tell them is your name and your address. So all you need to vote multiple times is a phone book and a way to get to several voting centers.

Screw E-Voting, instead...

Someone explain to me why we need to spend billions on E-Voting when we can just improve the ballot devices (ie: cards /w hanging chads)?

Throw out the cards and replace them with laser printers. Use touch-screens to vote for your candidate by name and photograph. When the ballot is printed, the voter's selections are encoded via several methods on the sheet, say 3(barcode, numeric ID and possibly those 2d bar codes that UPS uses to track packages). With 3 corresponding 64-bit records of one's vote on the ballot the hanging chad problem virtually disappears, plus no prying eyes would be able to easily decipher what you selected on your way out of the booth. Fold up the page and drop it in the big gray box. Easy as pie.

Why wouldn't this work?

/. Heresy

This isn't a troll but some of you may think I'm being intentionally inflamatory. All I can tell you is I think what I'm about to write is true.

I think using computers to count vote is a mis-application of technology. My reasons are:

1. Security. None of the operating systems and hardware in use are designed from the ground up to be secure. The reason is that security and ease-of-use are at loggerheads - get more of one you lose some of the other. One of the key features of every OS I've worked on is the ability to install a daemon somewhere in the message queue so you can remap devices to other purposes. For example, keyboard drivers are easily changed to morph a 'p' into a long sequence of instructions. No matter how well you try to detect a daemon/hook/wedge or whatever you want to call it, if the developer is intent on inserting his code and there are provisions for mapping into user space (I've yet to run on an OS that that couldn't be done) the code can be inserted. That means that open source, closed source, audited source, tested source are all susceptible to modification by a malacious bit of code. It just requires access. Touch screen/punch card/optical scan - it doesn't matter - if you're relying on a computer to do the tally and you can't guarantee that no one has inserted a daemon, you don't have a secure vote.

2. Little gained. A lot of "improvements" to what's out there right now discuss the idea of a voter-inspectable audit trail. Voter uses a computer to vote and the computer produces a paper ballot that the user can inspect to make sure the computer isn't cheating. There are two things wrong here. First if a computer is going to tally the paper ballot, you're back to point 1. You've just moved the location of the fraud. If the computer is going to tally and the paper is just a backup, then in most cases, a fraud will go undetected. If the fraud is small enough to be within the bounds of statistical uncertainty but large enough to sway the vote, you're not going to catch it unless you hand count the entire population of ballots. Secondly, you're in essence using a machine to mark a piece of paper which a human can just as easily do - you haven't gained anything by introducing the voting machine into the mix.

I think the Canadians who just use a paper and pencil and cross-checked human counters to tally the vote have it right. The whole system is very simple. You mark your ballot, put it in a box. When the poll closes, at least 3 pairs of eyes look at it, one person is the election official, the other two are from opposing parties. When all 3 agree what the vote is, it's tallied as such. They can cross check tallies as they go so you're not running into a transcription problem down the road. The precinct reports its tallies to a higher level up the tree and the results are published so that the three (or more) counters can check the tally was accurately registered at the next level. Anyone who wants to can check the process from start to finish. Open, transparent, accurate and simple. Contrast that to encrypted keys, password maintenance, static discharge induced miscounts, lack of audit trails and the rest of the mess that characterizes the spectrum of American voting techniques and you have to ask - why the hell do we bother using machines to do this when we can do a better job by hand?

There are lots of times that tech is part of a solution. Then there are times, like vote counting, where it is part of the problem. It may be retro and old fashioned but I think it's time we just used paper and pen again. It worked all the way up to the sixties and the country managed then. If our parents and grandparents could manage it, shouldn't we be able to hand count as well?

Two years ago

Hi all

I used the system in question and was surprised by fact that they really tried hard to understand the issues.

I work in IT security was impressed with the approach they system to system security. Physical intervention was required at a number of points in the collating process. Ie Systems were not connected to any network during the polling process. Batched uploads of voting data occurred. Not rocket science just automating where it made sense.

Audit Trail

I am not a programmer but it seems to be if I where intent on rigging an election I could print the voters choice on an audit trail and "behind the scenes" count it towards the voter of my choice. If you don't TRUST the company making the software any security measure put in place will be questioned. The real question is it better than what we use today. I am still waiting for someone to figure out a way to keep dead people or illegal immigrants from voting. People have been dying for a long time and we still haven't got that one fixed.

Repeats?

Interestingly enough, it was also Australia that came up with the secret ballot in the late 19th century. At the time, American political machines (Read political circle-jerks) printed their own ballots on distinctly colored paper. No need to explain the kind of corruption this caused. After the secret ballot was introduced, counties with 100 registered voters no longer returned 250 votes :)

So now they've repeated their earlier sucess... What will be next, perfecting telepathic voting systems?

Stability of Election Result

One of the reasons that there has been so much recent interest in the US in electronic voting systems is that the overall election result is so sensitive to (even relatively small) errors in the vote counting process. Realistically, there are two solutions to the problem: reducing the error rate, and making the overall voting outcome less sensitive to vote counting errors.
Indeed, an unstable voting system (such as first-past-the-post in the US/UK elections) where a change of one vote can trigger a drastic change of result is fundamentally undemocratic - it gives some individual voters (e.g. in Florida) much more influence on the final result that others.
If you are trying to measure any quantity reliably, you want your metric to be as insensitive to errors in you input data as possible, and a proportional electoral system is one way out of that problem. Not all the blame belongs with the vote counting technology.

you USAians

live in a banana republic. get over it.

what is the problem in e-voting?

Well, I've been reading for quite some time now about all this mess about e-voting and have to ask someone: what is the problem? E-voting has been employed for some years now in Brazil and nobody disliked it. Well, you still can't vote by the net, but who is perfect? Brazil's way for avoiding disapproval is quite simple really: in every machine there is a small printer that prints paper votes directly into an urn. So, if someone thinks there is fraud, you can ask to recount the votes. If power fails for too long for the no-breaks to resist, you still have the paper voting for backup. It's really a matter of keeping it simple.

Re:Holy fook!

Not quite. This was a company spokesperson taking advantage of Diebold's failure.I wonder if some people here would be okay with eating babies, as long as open source is mentioned as its benefit

This company is trying to position itself to sell its own wares to the U.S. I hope they succeed too.

Re:Question

That would be because there's not much to be pro about in america these days.

Re:Question

When was the last time slashdot posted a pro-American article? Seems like all they do is bash it at every opportunity, along with Microsoft, the RIAA, MPAA, etc.

OK, so name a few things that Americans have been doing that they should be proud of.

Re:Question

A true patriot is one who never misses an opportunity to find fault with his country.

Re:One Down, One To Go

I dislike IRV as much as you do, but at the moment you can't blame Australia - no country is doing any better than IRV for their national elections.

Good methods (like Condorcet) should start in small organizations and work their way up, so that people are already familiar with how good preferential voting works.

Debian, for example, has already worked out lots of kinks and unfairness in their voting system by switching to Condorcet. Some "rules of order" books now advocate using Condorcet when possible. Encouraging this is what will get good preferential voting accepted, not pointing an angry finger at the government that's using a slightly better method than everyone else but still isn't good enough.

Re:Question

How is posting an article pointing out that our elections might be rigged anti-American? Surely they wouldn't point out the flaw in order to perpetuate it.

Re:Media trying to hide the Media's attempt to rig

Gore won the popular vote. He is not our president.

Just stating two facts, if you want to glean from that that I am calling our president a thief, well, that's you. That isn't what I said at all.

Re:Media trying to hide the Media's attempt to rig

Yeah, just wait till the network miniseries on Reagan comes out soon. They'll try to make him look as shady as W.J."that depends on what the definition of 'is' is" Clinton.

Re:Media trying to hide the Media's attempt to rig

In 2000 the broadcast media claimed that Gore had won Florida nearly an hour before the polls closed in the panhandle area (in the Central, rather than Eastern, time zone.) Such a call can be expected to result in a lot of panhandle voters to have stayed home rather than vote.

Since the pahnandle area (unlike the urban areas of the peninsula) is heavily Republican, this no doubt selectively reduced Bush's vote count by a significant factor.

I'm unable to follow your logic..

If the media reported one candidate as the winner, wouldn't it do the exact opposite of what you're claiming?

Think about it: If you're going to vote, and you hear that your candidate is going to win, are you more or less likely to vote, or just say "I don't need to."?

Conversely, if you're going to vote, and you hear that your candidate is going to lose, you'll be more encouraged to vote, in an attempt to change the outcome.

So, if the media were truly attempting to swing the vote, they would have decalared Bush the winner, so that all of the republicans would have stayed home, and all the democrats would have been spurred to vote.

Re:Question

When was the last time slashdot posted a pro-American article?

When was the last time America posted a pro-Slashdot article? Answer that question, and you will know the true meaning of life, as well as the number of licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop.

Re:Media trying to hide the Media's attempt to rig

In 2000 the broadcast media claimed that Gore had won Florida nearly an hour before the polls closed in the panhandle area (in the Central, rather than Eastern, time zone.)

And shortly thereafter, they reversed this and called the state for Bush -- which suggests that the effect was not nearly so large as you seem to believe.

But despite the media's cheers (and slips like a major anchor referring to Gore as "Our candidate"), [...]

It always mystifies me how so many people can believe that the same mainstream media that spent most of the election making up lies that Gore had supposedly told and mocking Gore for his every change in campaign strategy somehow had this overwhelming pro-Gore bias.

And despite days of squirming - trying to exclude military absentee votes in violation of Federal law, [...]

Um, I'm confused; how is it bad or "squirming" to exclude ballots postmarked after the election that had been modified by Republican handlers (since, as you rightly pointed out, counting them would have violated Federal election law)?

[...] counting every dimple on a ballot, etc., [...]

Yeah, who did those recounters think they were, following existing Florida election law by applying the "clear intent of the voter" standard mandated therein? I mean, the nerve!

[...] the Democrats STILL weren't able to get the numbers to come out in favor of Gore - either before the Supreme Court finally smacked them down and made them adhere to their own laws, [...]

You mean, of course, smacked them down for adhering to their own laws. The Florida Supreme Court had enforced existing election law, following precedents dating back a hundred years. The SCotUS admitted that the state court hadn't changed the election laws; their complaint was that the existing laws somehow didn't provide "equal protection" for Bush, and that the court therefore should have changed them to correct that (except, of course, that if they had changed them, the SCotUS would have dutifully smacked them down for that -- neat scam, this). The "Florida court changed the election laws" canard was invented afterward as a Republican talking point.

[...] or after months of after-the-election recounting.

Um, actually, what the recounts found was that in a full statewide recount (which, recall, is what the Florida Supreme Court had ordered), Gore did win Florida, and thus the nation. You, and most of our readers, can be forgiven for not knowing this, since the media spun their coverage as hard as they could trying to avoid admitting it, focusing instead on other partial-count scenarios in which Bush won.

Yet the media, and certain Democratic politicians, STILL bury these facts on back pages.

Well, it's always a pleasure to greet visitors from Bizarro World. Bear in mind that here in the real world, all the headlines read "Bush Won Recount", and what got buried on the back page was the fact (noted above) that Gore had won the recount that mattered.

And even today they attempt to spin the Media/Democrat axis' failed attempt to steal the election into a successful theft by the Republicans.

Well, again, by contrast, the non-Bizarro mainstream media has been doing everything they could to prop up W's legitimacy and has bent over backwards to portray him as a True Statesman(TM). Gore, when he's even mentioned at all, is generally portrayed as some has-been kook who's drifted too far to the left to be taken seriously any more, and the 2000 election is portrayed as yesterday's news that only the so-called "angry Left" still cares about.

One thing I have consistently observed: Whenever someone in the public

Mod parent down

Any chance of you commenting on the thousands of so-called 'felons' who were purged from the electoral rolls at the behest of Katherine Harris (Bush's campaign manager and person in charge of the Florida vote - the ultimate conflict of interest) and Jeb Bush?

Re:Media trying to hide the Media's attempt to rig

Uhhhh... I'm guessing you get your news from a "fair and unbiased" [foxnews.com] source like Roger Ailes, Media Director for George HW Bush's campaigns and creator and producer of Rush Limbaugh's TV show.
There are some FACTS that get in the way of your straight-from-the-GOP arguments. I figure it's probably a lost cause to try to convince you, but here they are...
(First, for the record, I am neither a Democrat nor a Republican, and am horrified at the increasing narrowness of the American political "spectrum" after having lived for 3 years in a thriving Democracy (Brazil), where there are more parties than anyone can name, and virtually all points of view are represented, with no one or two or even three parties able to dominate)
That said, on to the uncomfortable facts...
Yes, there was some serious rigging in the 2000 Florida election, but it looks like most of it was done by the Republicans. Besides the funny business [gregpalast.com] that went on before the election (ordered by Jeb Bush) to remove tens of thousands of Democratic voters from the lists of registered Florida voters, and besides the numerous African-American (likely Democratic) Florida voters who were denied their right to vote [cnn.com], there is the matter of the leaked Diebold memos [why-war.com], which show that there was some election night hanky-panky [scoop.co.nz] with the 2000 Florida presidential vote totals (made possible by Diebold, a company whose top man has declared that it is his mission to deliver Ohio's electoral votes [thenews-messenger.com] to George W Bush). Best of all, Diebold does not deny that these things happened; it is trying to use the DMCA to shut down any site hosting copies of the incriminating memos, alleging that these company memos are copyrighted material. IANAL, but that looks to me like a direct admission of ownership and verification of the authenticity of those shocking memos. If I had a site hosting those memos and I were to get a Cease and Desist from Diebold [cscott.net], I'd simply tell them "no way" and hope hope hope to get the chance to discuss the contents of those memos in front of a judge.
Bad as all this is, as they say on infomercials, "that's not all!" Recounts were stopped because the Supreme Court, loaded 6-3 with Republicans, including one major political activist (Scalia) and his apprentice (Thomas) basically said that if the recounts weren't stopped, George W Bush might not be President [presidentmoron.com]. Worse, they basically recognized the ridiculousness of their own arguments and said that this case could never be used as a precedent for a future case. Funny that... (in a distinctly non-humorous way, of course)

I'm guessing Ann Coulter didn't mention these things. I wouldn't be surprised if the presenters at Fox News forgot to mention them either...
Don't even get me started about the fact that exit polls unanimously showed Gore winning Florida... or on the recent election in Georgia, where every poll (exit polls, third-party pre-election polls, Democratic AND Republican internal tracking polls) showed the Democrat winning handily, but the Republican ended up winning with relative ease. Small but possibly important detail: an unverified patch [slashdot.org] was applied to the Diebold (that name again!) voting machines after they'd been certified by Georgia election officials.

What? Brit Hume didn't mention that? Color me shocked!

As for your comments about people engaged in shady activity loudly bla

Re:Big Deal !

Let me guess, you're a big cricket fan. Am I right?

Re:One Down, One To Go

You know, that site gets on my nerves. They have all sorts of arguments about why the system they like is so much better than any other, and how everything would be so wonderful if only the world used it . . .

The problem is, no matter how much they might trash instant runoff and it's variants, out here in the real world it actually works quite well. It's simple enough that everyone can understand it, and since everyone understands it they know what their votes mean. Concordet might be a wonderful system, but would you like to explain how it works to every voter in the country?

I really don't think any real-world voting system will be significantly better than instant runoff, regardless of the theoretical pros and cons. And I /really/ wish people would stop posting that link whenever it gets mentioned . . .

himi

Real data on this...

After the 2000 election several liberal-leaning news organizations went to Floriduh and recounted every vote. They used the most liberal methods they could, counting anything that even remotely looked like a vote for Gore. Guess what? In every recount they did Bush still won.

You can keep telling yourself over and over that Gore won in Floriduh, but you're only kidding yourself. Don't let little things like the facts get in your way.

Oh, you say you didn't hear about the recounts? Of course not; all you listen to and read is biased toward your point of view. It was not widely reported unless you listen to talk radio or watch Fox News. But, you'd never do that, would you?

OK.. I'll start by saying that maybe it is you who need to broaden your horizons a bit and get your news from sources other than Fox News (whose Chairman and CEO was the media director for the George HW Bush campaign in 1988 and the creator and executive producer of Rush Limbaugh's TV show) and heavily Republican-leaning talk radio. You yourself state that johnkerry.com isn't exactly un-biased (sic). Do you think Rush Limbaugh and Fox News are? I am not a Democrat, so that's not why I'm saying this. I'm saying it because the very facts you sarcastically say we shouldn't let get in our way don't support your position.

Take a peek at this. It's a presentation of the results of the recount. It starts by repeating that Bush won the official certified result by 537 votes (Bush 2,912,790; Gore 2,912,253). It then shows what would have happened in 5 different possible recount scenarios.
First, if Gore's request for recounts of four specific counties had been granted, he would have still lost, though by a smaller margin-- 225 votes (Bush 2,913,351; Gore 2,913,126).
The second scenario presented is if the Supreme Court had not stopped the partial recounts already underway in Florida. Again, Gore loses, by a margin very slightly smaller than the certified result-- 493 votes (Bush 2,916,559; Gore 2,916,066).
So far, two "Bush wins" results, both coming from what Democrats were seeking (Gore's request for a recount of 4 specific counties, plus completion of the partial recounts already in progress). Looks like Bush would win in any conceivable scenario, right? Let's continue.
First, they could have used "the most liberal methods they could, counting anything that even remotely looked like a vote for Gore" (as you put it), but they didn't. They did do one recount using a similar but fair standard, accepting any dimpled punch card or any mark on an optical scan ballot that indicated a candidate choice, whether it was Gore or Bush. The result? Gore won (so much for "In every recount they did Bush still won), by a very narrow margin of 107 votes (Gore 2,924,695; Bush 2,924,588). But if that were the only Gore victory, your argument, while wrong on some details, would still have a foundation of truth. Let's continue.
Given that very loose standard, one could fairly ask for a recount with a very rigid standard. For example, one could ask for a recount where only fully-punched ballot cards and correctly marked optical scan ballots are accepted, again, independent of the candidate chosen. Who'd win that one? Bush? Nope. I'll give you one more guess...

'Dja get it right? Let's check. Here's the result of the recount using that very rigid standard: Gore by 115 (Gore 2,915,245; Bush 2,915,130).
Hmmm... looks like your "recounting anything that even remotely looked like a vote for Gore" has been debunked by those inconvenient facts you mentioned, as has "In every recount they did Bush still won."
There is one more reasonable standard that could be applied to a recount: one could simply let each county's own standard apply to disputed ballots from that county. Recounting under those conditions yielded President Gore too, by a margin of 171 votes (Gore 2,917,847; Bush 2,918,676).
It's ironic that Gor

Real data on this... (with link- ignore previous)

After the 2000 election several liberal-leaning news organizations went to Floriduh and recounted every vote. They used the most liberal methods they could, counting anything that even remotely looked like a vote for Gore. Guess what? In every recount they did Bush still won.

You can keep telling yourself over and over that Gore won in Floriduh, but you're only kidding yourself. Don't let little things like the facts get in your way.

Oh, you say you didn't hear about the recounts? Of course not; all you listen to and read is biased toward your point of view. It was not widely reported unless you listen to talk radio or watch Fox News. But, you'd never do that, would you?

OK.. I'll start by saying that maybe it is you who need to broaden your horizons a bit and get your news from sources other than Fox News (whose Chairman and CEO was the media director for the George HW Bush campaign in 1988 and the creator and executive producer of Rush Limbaugh's TV show) and heavily Republican-leaning talk radio. You yourself state that johnkerry.com isn't exactly un-biased (sic). Do you think Rush Limbaugh and Fox News are? I am not a Democrat, so that's not why I'm saying this. I'm saying it because the very facts you sarcastically say we shouldn't let get in our way don't support your position.

Take a peek at this [bushwatch.com]. It's a presentation of the results of the recount. It starts by repeating that Bush won the official certified result by 537 votes (Bush 2,912,790; Gore 2,912,253). It then shows what would have happened in 5 different possible recount scenarios.
First, if Gore's request for recounts of four specific counties had been granted, he would have still lost, though by a smaller margin-- 225 votes (Bush 2,913,351; Gore 2,913,126).
The second scenario presented is if the Supreme Court had not stopped the partial recounts already underway in Florida. Again, Gore loses, by a margin very slightly smaller than the certified result-- 493 votes (Bush 2,916,559; Gore 2,916,066).
So far, two "Bush wins" results, both coming from what Democrats were seeking (Gore's request for a recount of 4 specific counties, plus completion of the partial recounts already in progress). Looks like Bush would win in any conceivable scenario, right? Let's continue.
First, they could have used "the most liberal methods they could, counting anything that even remotely looked like a vote for Gore" (as you put it), but they didn't. They did do one recount using a similar but fair standard, accepting any dimpled punch card or any mark on an optical scan ballot that indicated a candidate choice, whether it was Gore or Bush. The result? Gore won (so much for "In every recount they did Bush still won), by a very narrow margin of 107 votes (Gore 2,924,695; Bush 2,924,588). But if that were the only Gore victory, your argument, while wrong on some details, would still have a foundation of truth. Let's continue.
Given that very loose standard, one could fairly ask for a recount with a very rigid standard. For example, one could ask for a recount where only fully-punched ballot cards and correctly marked optical scan ballots are accepted, again, independent of the candidate chosen. Who'd win that one? Bush? Nope. I'll give you one more guess...

'Dja get it right? Let's check. Here's the result of the recount using that very rigid standard: Gore by 115 (Gore 2,915,245; Bush 2,915,130).
Hmmm... looks like your "recounting anything that even remotely looked like a vote for Gore" has been debunked by those inconvenient facts you mentioned, as has "In every recount they did Bush still won."
There is one more reasonable standard that could be applied to a recount: one could simply let each county's own standard apply to disputed ballots from that county. Recounting under those conditions yielded President Gore too, by a margin of 171 votes (Gore 2