Demo of Free Software Voter-Verifiable Voting 238
Lulu of the Lotus-Ea writes "The Open Voting Consortium (OVC) is holding a demonstration of its Free Software voting system in Santa Clara, California on April 1, 2004 (yeah, I know the date, but it's not a joke). An announcement on the OVC homepage has further details. The Sourceforge hosted EVM2003 project of the OVC has produced touchscreen and vision-impared interface voting systems that produce visually inspectable (or machine-aided audio verification) paper ballots. As well, OVC will demonstrate systems for reconcilliation and reporting of precint results, and provide handouts and a presentation explaining the virtues of a publicly inspectible system with a tamper-proof paper trail."
Cool, the citizenry strikes back (Score:5, Insightful)
go OVC! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:go OVC! (Score:2, Funny)
OpenSource: "But we can fix it now!"
ElectionsPerson: "You can fix the results?!?! SECURITY!!!!"
Security/Police: "Who are you working for?"
OpenSource: "Ummm the people..."
Re:go OVC! (Score:2)
Re:go OVC! (Score:3, Informative)
But Diebold has installed "fixes" without waiting for the code to be certified by the election officials (whatever that means).
Calling the code changes "fixes" is, of course, accepting Diebold's assertions of what the change was, without being able to verify it. Believe it if you will, though.
Re:go OVC! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:go OVC! (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree OVC has multiple benefits over proprietary systems. However, the cynic in me says that it won't be used because the people the decide what to use will be in the pockets of Diebold. While kickbacks will be the real reason, you will hear them say things like "Well OVC has no proven track record, how can we trust them."
I wish this wasn't the case, but I'm sad to say democracy doesn't work against bribes and kickbacks.
What, no backdoors? (Score:5, Funny)
This has everything that Diebold Lacks (Score:5, Insightful)
Diebold: I quote: fraud-prone, blackbox, proprietary, expensive, idiosyncratic, unreliable
OVC: I quote:technically sound, accurate, secure, inexpensive, uniform and open voting system
That really sums it up.
If you don't believe me try a demo of the Diebold voting system [mithuro.com]
DIEBOLD: Boldling rigging where no man's rigged before
(Well... Let's not talk about the presidential election 2004)
Re:This has everything that Diebold Lacks (Score:5, Interesting)
sorry, but Even though most of the citizens of the USA (me being one of them) prize honest and fair elections, there is no way in hell that Diebold or any State will allow this to be used in elections.
The fact that it eliminates any chance of ballot stuffing or other hokey pokey that the Powers that be rely on has doomed it to death.
Yes I know, there are NO reported cases of ballot stuffing here int he states to back up my claims, but many MANY citizens feel the same as I do... we are all looking at the fiasco that is lforida and how it looked that the Bush Brothers made sure there was a win there that really hit home with many americans...
I would absolutely love a 100$ open system with verifications and audit trails voting system...
It's just a sad reality that the USA needs to be called the United Corperations of America...
Re:This has everything that Diebold Lacks (Score:3, Insightful)
Your logic is flawed when it comes to claiming ballots have been stuffed. Yes, I'm sure it's been done, but then to use that accusation against Bush is kind of tough. First, creative ballot counting is not the same as ballot stuffing and neither is having to deal with contr
Re:This has everything that Diebold Lacks (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, maybe it would have prevented a fiasco, since after the first count, all that would have been said is "Tough shit."
Besides, the physical ballot flaws are only part of the story. You left out the part about all the people who had been mistakenly listed as felons.
Personally, I think that felons should be allowed to vote anyway.
1) There are only two peo
Re:This has everything that Diebold Lacks (Score:3, Funny)
One thing that struck me as odd about the United Corporations of America is that they're all competing against each other and trying to screw each other over to maximize shareholder value, which makes them hardly United
Re:This has everything that Diebold Lacks (Score:5, Insightful)
Once or twice, a local party official, it's true, has cheated-- and they're looked down upon and attacked, especially by the ones they 'help'. Did the United Corporations of whatever-you're-saying choose President Clinton? And President Carter? And President Reagan? Did Paul Wellstone and Phil Gramm both answer to these secret masters? The disputed system in Florida, for example, was designed by a Democrat-- one who fully supported VP Gore.
Part of democracy is living with the fact that your views aren't always going to win or be popular. You may call that half of America stupid or wrong or manipulated or whatever you want, but under a democracy, a majority wins. It's a fact of life that close elections happen. If 2000 had gone the other way, no doubt I'd be writing this to someone else.
Conspiracy theories like this do little other than encourage higher levels of acrimony and lower levels of voter turnout. If you want an excuse not to participate (by volunteering, voting in the primaries, or voting in the general election) then just say:
- "I don't want to be responsible for the people I elect."
- or "I'd rather not participate in democracy because I don't like what everyone else votes for."
- or "I'm not confident enough in my beliefs to admit that my opponents are as earnest and well-intentioned as I am.
- or, quite simply, "I'm lazy."
</rant>Re:This has everything that Diebold Lacks (Score:2, Interesting)
If you believe that there's NO WAY that a candidate with inside ties can affect their outcome in close races, then you just keep thinking that, and just keep thinking that politicians would maybe be corrupt in other ways, yet draw the line at fixing votes because of their steadfast patriotism.
And how does your statement "The disputed system in Florida, for example, was designed by a Democrat-- one who fully supported VP Gore."
Re: (Score:2)
Then you must not have been in California. (Score:5, Insightful)
Then you must not have worked in California. Or had anything to do with the US Congress' dabbling in voting rules.
Absentee ballots without excuses and perpetual absentee ballots. (Several thousand at one address, too, and I'm not talking about a nursing home or general delivery at a post office.)
Motor-voter. (A recipie for fraud, even when NOT combined with perpetual absentee ballots.)
Illegal alien voters. (And: rules against checking ID at polling places, helpful people teaching migrant workers and child-only welfare families (i.e. mommy's not a citizen) how to register and vote, "get out the vote" vans taking people from precinct to precinct - where the riders ALL go in at each precinct).
Floating ballot box tops as a hazard to navigation.
I could go on.
Yes, most of the poll workers are honest and hard-working. But it doesn't take many bad apples to spoil the barrel, since one fraudster can generate thousands of votes - and swing a close elections with millions of voters.
Once or twice, a local party official, it's true, has cheated-- and they're looked down upon and attacked, especially by the ones they 'help'.
Because they cheated? Or because they got caught, making the candiate and party look bad?
Votes only one side of the story (Score:5, Interesting)
So we have the capacity, through Diebold and others, for massive vote fraud. And only one secretive company doing exit polling to verify things. Scary combination.
Butterfly Ballot half-truth (Score:3, Informative)
No. As custodian of the Terry LePore Fan Page [google.com], I must correct this misstatement.
Ms Lepore was technically a Democrat by virtue of checking that box on her voter registration form. Her reason for doing so was entirely non-ideological: Palm Beach County is overwhelmingly Democratic, so the best way to win elected office there is to be the Democratic nominee. Prior to her first campaign for Elections
Web demo online (Score:4, Informative)
We've just linked in an online demo of the voting system as it will operate in a polling station. You can go to the Open Voting Consortium [openvoting.org] web site, and click on 'web demo'. Or go straight to the ballot [pair.com] if you're impatient.
Please keep in mind that we're not proposing voting through web browsers, or across the internet, because of the numerous security issues. This web demo is intended to let you see what you'd see on our demo on April 1 in California, for people who can't be there.
What you'll see is a ballot formatted for a large screen (1280x1024). You fill it out, then click 'print ballot'. What would happen in a polling station is that the ballot is printed out. In the online version, you can get the ballot as a PDF, Postscript, or JPEG image.
In the stand-alone polling station you will be able to take your paper ballot to a validation station that will read your vote back to you, so that you know that the paper ballot accurately represents your vote.
You then take your ballot to the tabulation station, where a poll worker will scan the ballot and store it in a locked box, where the paper ballots are available for recounts, audits, etc.
Re:Web demo online (Score:3, Informative)
1) The layout is designed to be viewed on a 17" LCD touchscreen. Making the ballot about 30% larger really does help with readability.
2) The real application has a tighter UI (it's Python/WxPython). The web demo is an approximation of the ballot in HTML sufficient to allow you to enter a vote and see the printed ballot (identical to the printed ballot from the real system). But HTML just doesn't give you the precise layout control that you have in a desktop application.
3) The layo
Re:THIS GUY IS A TROLL (Score:2, Offtopic)
Ok, this post was not a pure troll post as such, but who would rate it +5 ? It's a summary post, and not a particularly good one. I think this is a whole ring of mithuro spammers who mod each other up. They seem to be about to break through the moderation system.
Mods please keep an eye
The only way........ (Score:5, Insightful)
I had been thinking that there would need to be an open standard and rock solid set of validation tools to test potential software.
OSS voting soltions is not an option that sprung to mind, but it's neat.
Open SOurce Paper Elections (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think i could ever trust voting if a computer is involved to count "virtual" votes
this is just way too easy to abuse by a rogue government either now or in the future.
creating an OSS voting software actually reinforces the argument for digital voting.
Re:Open SOurce Paper Elections (Score:2, Informative)
How about the 1860 US elections? The first to be counted by machine.
Aprils fool ? (Score:3, Funny)
Lawmakers (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Lawmakers (Score:3, Insightful)
Does other more established and related lobby groups know this, who can possibly help with PR? How about EFF?
Re:Lawmakers (Score:2)
Yes! The idea is to get research funding (from HAVA) in as many states as possible. The funding will be used to apply the scientific method to the voting process; something that has never been done before. The grand scheme includes creating a F/OSS voting software suit and logical, unified, standardized voting processes that are publicly verifiable throughout.
If you are interested in helping (or seeing what this is all about), please join
First step (Score:3, Interesting)
More OSS for developing countries (Score:3, Funny)
About Damn Time (Score:5, Insightful)
Thanks to all those that helped with this.
Re:About Damn Time (Score:2)
You make it sound like this thing just popped up out of nowhere overnight.
It probably was the first thing to pop into some peoples minds when they saw what was happening. It takes a long time, even with OSS, to make a project like this. People have been working on this since
Re:About Damn Time (Score:4, Interesting)
To quote from the web site's "about us" page:
The Open Voting Consortium has broad national and international participation. In addition, the following are our Directors so far.
Alan Dechert, President and CEO
Alan Dechert has been a software test engineer and application developer for the past 15 years. In 2001, with Dr. Henry Brady of UC Berkeley, he co-authored a voting modernization proposal for California. This proposal was designed as an in-depth study of the voting system, including development of reference open source voting software. In 2003, along with Dr. Douglas W. Jones (Univ of Iowa) and Dr. Arthur Keller (UC Santa Cruz), he founded the Open Voting Consortium (OVC). He currently serves as President and CEO of the OVC.
Arthur Keller, Vice President and COO/CFO
Arthur Keller is a computer science professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Dr. Keller has taught computer science at Brooklyn College (CUNY), University of Texas (Austin), Helsinki University, University Blas Pascal (Cordoba, Argentina), as well as Stanford University. He is an expert in database systems and computer security. He is a successful entrepreneur having been involved with a number of startups. He also has experience with national media: For example, he was recently on the Lehrer News Hour talking about wireless security issues. Professor Keller serves as the OVC's Vice President, Chief of Operations and Chief Financial Officer.
Doug Jones, Vice President and CTO
Douglas W. Jones has been a Professor of computer science at the University of Iowa since 1980. He has gained considerable expertise in the area of voting technology having served on the Iowa Board of Examiners for Voting Machines and Electronic Voting Systems since 1994. He chaired the board from Fall 1999 to early 2003. This board, appointed by the Secretary of State, must examine and approve all voting machines before they can be offered for sale to county governments. His expertise in this area has put him in great demand since the election mess in 2000 - frequently quoted in the national media. Professor Jones serves as Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for the Open Voting Consortium.
Amit Sahai
Amit Sahai is Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Princeton University. He has a broad range of interests throughout theoretical computer science -- strongly interested in fundamental problems relating to security, as well as those relating to complexity theory, algorithms, learning theory, and the theory of error-correcting codes. Dr. Sahai has served on program committees for conferences in Europe as well as North America involving computer security issues. He is leading the security assessment group for the Open Voting Consortium.
Peter Maggs
Besides being a law professor (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and a member of the District of Columbia Bar with expertise in intellectual property law, Peter Maggs is a pioneer in computer interfaces for vision-impaired users. In the early 80s, he worked on speech interfaces for PCs and Apple Computers. He also oversaw the development of text to Braille software. He is helping the OVC to navigate the potential intellectual property minefields related to our open voting system development and deployment.
And the web site's "history" page:
History
The Open Voting Consortium (OVC) began with Alan Dechert's November 2000 idea for correcting the voting system. It has grown from a proposal to develop a pilot project in one county in California to a proposa for an in-depth nationwide study. Beyond that, the OVC
pffft ... Opensource voting (Score:3, Funny)
if ($vote eq "GWB"){
&flush($vote);
}
else{
$othertotal++;
}
UK systems (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem (as i understand it) in the states come from the hanging chads etc that resulted in baby bush been in the whitehouse. Computer voting is been touted as *the* solution, but i would think that no matter how good this software was, putting a cross in a big box (like the UK and Europe) then having someone count the crosses is still the best solution.
Re:UK systems (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem arises once we move away from putting a cross in a big box. In Scottish elections for the European Parliament it's PR, so you're looking at numbering 1 to 8 next to your favoured candidate, next favoured candidate, etc. It's obviously a great deal harder - and longer - to count ballots once you move away from First Past The Post.
Re:UK systems (Score:4, Insightful)
Give me a simple 2-ply card - and an electronic punching / counting machine. I insert my card and pick the guy from the screen. The card gets punched through.
I place one of the ply in the box in front of the adjudicator, and I TAKE ONE AWAY.
Then at any point in the next few months I can go into any booth and insert my card to see if my vote matches the hole that was punched. You dont insert the punched whole - just the other end of the card.
I can check my vote was registered correctly directly myself. And those smug do-gooder vote counting bastards dont get to stay up all night counting my votes feeling all vital to the democratic system. Which is a good thing.
Re:UK systems (Score:2, Insightful)
But if your system works without anyone else being able to see what I voted for (i.e. demand that I prove I voted for their guy, or they kill my wife...), then ok.
Re:UK systems (Score:3, Interesting)
True, a bit more difficult to control is when the voter wants to be able to prove who they voted for.
Would a jaded population be driven to vote if they got paid $5?
Re:UK systems (Score:2)
The problem with receipts are that they are not a legally binding vote. For a DRE voting machine (think Diebold, Sequoyah, etc), the vote is what gets recorded electronically. The receipts don't even get looked at unless the race is close enough to force a recount. So if you want to cheat, you just cheat in a big way: >= 10% margins. Note that the individual voters could still 'verify' that the receipt printed matches the vote displayed on the screen. What actually get recorded electronically could still
Re:UK systems (Score:2)
I forgot to mention:
The fact that the paper is the ballot prevents vote buying/extortion. If you take the ballot home, you didn't vote. If you spoil a ballot, you must turn it in as such in order for the printer to be reset to allow you to print a 'good' ballot.
So in either case, if you take a ballot home as 'proof', you didn't vote.
Re:UK systems (Score:2)
Really? I love all that. On (UK) election night I get a load of snacks and drinks in, and settle down for 10 hours of exit poll analysis, swingometers, graphs, victories, losses, surprises... I find it tremendously entertaining.
There is a bit of excitement as ministers that you hate get the boot - but overall Id prefer a quicker count.
Ah, I sense that maybe, like me, you cracke
Re:UK systems (Score:2, Informative)
It's also interesting to note that UK voting is NOT anonymous. It is "secret" yes - which means that no-one actually watches you put down your x, but it is not anonymous. Each ballot has a serial number that is matched to your individual voting number. This is supposed to b
The ideal voting system (Score:2)
What's the point? (Score:3, Insightful)
Just 'cause you can automate something doesn't always mean you should.
Re:What's the point? (Score:2)
Re:What's the point? (Score:2, Insightful)
It just seems a hell of a lot of effort for no point.
Re:What's the point? (Score:2, Interesting)
Two points spring to mind:
(A man can dream, can't he?)
Re:What's the point? (Score:3, Interesting)
Good Luck (Score:5, Insightful)
Whilst right thinking intelligent people (everyone reading this of course), realise the benefits of such an approach to voting, the people who choose voting systems (i.e. Politicians) will ask one question:
"Who is accountable?"
Because it's not a company developing this system, (who after all, always act in an appropriate, legal, and fully accountable manner :-|), politicians will believe that such 'communist' philosophies are not to be trusted. "Surely if it's an open system, it can be exploited by ne'er do wells?".
I'd liken it to companies who always buy MS - "because, hey, MS is a reputable company. They're accountable for their software". It's a mentality which goes along the lines of "Companies are better than a gang of hippies, doing it because they want to make the world a better place man."
Same old same old - whilst this will undoubtedly be technically better than anything Diebold can come up with, politcal motives will bury this initiative I fear.
Re:Good Luck (Score:3, Insightful)
But anyway, at the bottom of the PDF file you will find that they are an organized corporation, so this system does have a corporation that is accountable
Re:Good Luck (Score:2)
How about the company that sells the e-voting systems? A voting system isn't just open-source software - you need hardware and training as well, and such things don't come free as in beer. I see absolutely no reason why some company couldn't make money selling open-source, verifiable e-voting systems.
Excellent news (Score:4, Funny)
But then, I'm reminded of Terry Pratchett's Discworld continent XXXX: They put politicians in prisons immediately they win elections, because it saves time later.
Re:Excellent news (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Excellent news (Score:3, Interesting)
Pratchett quote here (Score:2)
Rincewind: "Why?"
Neilette: "It saves time."
--Terry Pratchett, The Last Continent
Link here. [digiserve.com]
Today, digital votations in Spain (Score:5, Informative)
They will use a system called Demotek that is made by four basque companys (Ibermatica, Ikusi, Hunolt and Euskaltel), and uses a really curious way for voting, half analogic, half digital. The voter uses a normal paper for voting, but the ballot paper has a bar code that is read when it is inserted in the ballot box.
The results are available in the moment that the ballot boxes are closed. But, they are not official until the ballot papers are counted.
- It's a easy way because there are no skills necesary (it's not necesary to know using a computer). My grandmother can use it.
-It's a safe way, because there are always the ballot papers for testing if the system was ok and no one has cheat the results.
- It's a fast way for knowing the results. No more Florida like recounting needed.
Sorry for my awfull english
Marcus Ramius
Re:Today, digital votations in Spain (Score:2)
Barcodes should NEVER be used on ballots because they aren't human-readable. If I push the button to vote for Joe, but the barcode printed on my reciept shows a vote for Jane how am I going
Re:Today, digital votations in Spain (Score:2)
Any machine-readable parts to a ballot must ALSO be human-readable
You could also print both human and machine-readable portions on the ballot, and then randomly verify (by hand) that the two sections agree. The verification should be instituted as a normal part of the tallying process and should check enough ballots to provide a statistical confidence level that bounds the error to within half of the margin of victory of the closest race.
OCR-able fonts would seem to be simpler, but barcode scanners ar
Re:Today, digital votations in Spain (Score:2)
The trouble there is that you're using the system that is suspect to verify itself and also that election fraud is not a random, stat
Re:Today, digital votations in Spain (Score:2)
In the OVC system, there's no physical connection between the ballot generation stations and the ballot validation stations, and both systems are open source, so anyone who doesn't trust the system can (1) read the source code, and (2) set up their own system to test.
Scanning OCR text has a couple of problems:
- The poll worker doing the scanning can read all of the votes, which means that they know who voted for whom. This
Re:Today, digital votations in Spain (Score:2)
You wouldn't necessarily have to use OCR text, but some of the problems you mention aren't as big as you think.
Much ado about very little (Score:4, Informative)
The system is simple, robust, secure and verifiable. Each voter gets a smart card (magstripe card in the older days) when they present their papers; they take this smart card into the voting booth and insert it, much like using an ATM (and everyone knows how to do this). The voting machines use a touch screen like an ATM (in the older days, using a light pen), and let you select your candidate/party. The vote is registered to the card, which is then ejected, and inserted into a ballot box that counts the vote as the card is entered.
The ballot boxes are locked, so tampering with the cards is impossible. The card readers in the box cannot write to the cards. The voting booths are stupid, with no memory or network connections.
So what's the big deal in the US?
Re:Much ado about very little (Score:2)
Re:Much ado about very little (Score:2)
It resembles the paper version of a voting document, just everything is written in a way that can be easily read by a machine.
Also, there is exactly one card available for each registered voter.
Dave
Re:Much ado about very little (Score:2)
I'm not nitpicking, just wondering about solutions to most of the shortcomings perceived in evoting... :)
Re:Much ado about very little (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem with using computers to do a recount is they can be "influenced" as much as electronic voting machines. Because of that, running a recount is pointless, as the same corrupt code is run again, producing the same corrupt output. Or, the same corrupt cards are read again, producing the same corrupt output...
Re:Much ado about very little (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Much ado about very little (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Much ado about very little (Score:4, Informative)
Holy crap! That system is not simple, robust, secure or verifiable!
There's about a million fundamental problems with that idea. Here are some of them.
Here's the way electronic voting SHOULD work:
Unlike your system, the above system allows voters to verify that their individual votes are being registered correctly (at least on paper) and allows for a double-check of the electronic count by counting up all the voter-verifyable paper ballots.
Re:Much ado about very little (Score:2)
Re:Much ado about very little
Re:Much ado about very little (Score:3, Informative)
by theLOUDroom (556455) on Wednesday March 24, @09:41AM (#8655762)
The system is simple, robust, secure and verifiable. Each voter gets a smart card (magstripe card in the older days) when they present their papers; they take this smart card into the voting booth and insert it, much like using an ATM (and everyone knows how to do this). The voting machines use a touch screen like an ATM (in the older days, using a light pen), a
Hmmm (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Hmmm (Score:2, Funny)
They're terrorists!
Okay, I fail to see why they don't just do. . . . (Score:4, Insightful)
Step 1: Walk into the booth, and identify yourself (Probably in the form of some number that the voting place keeps track of.)
Step 2: Select candidates in a nice, easy-to-read format.
Step 3: Print out a filled-in ballot.
Step 4: Ask you to verify correct votes.
Step 5: If you say yes, place the ballot into the slot underneath the printer. This slot wouldn't open until you have verified your votes. (clearly labeled in nice, bright letters again). If not, go back to step 2.
Step 6: When the issue of verification comes up, there's a paper trail that every voter is supposed to have looked at. If they didn't, well, that's their business. Looks like their vote didn't count.
Re:Okay, I fail to see why they don't just do. . . (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Okay, I fail to see why they don't just do. . . (Score:2)
Re:Okay, I fail to see why they don't just do. . . (Score:2)
The paper printouts should be kept behind a window. This guarantees that (if the system is functioning properly) the paper and electronic ballots match.
just thinking out loud... (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't get me wrong; I think open-source e-voting is better than proprietary e-voting. But I would still rather have paper ballots and wait a couple of days for the results. The problems in Florida in 2000 are chump change compared to the potential fraud possible with e-voting.
Re:just thinking out loud... (Score:4, Insightful)
same as netrek.. your "updated" software is not blessed by the main server and therefore not votes on that machine will count.
using blessed executables will solve this problems as well as most other anti-cheat systems used with gaming..
Your 2010 voting booth now with punkbuster(tm) enabled!
Re:just thinking out loud... (Score:3, Interesting)
Really, if you really
Re:just thinking out loud... (Score:2)
What about a hybrid system? One example might be one that gives the person with the most votes in any district a seat, and then allocates additional floating seats to the largest vote getters in each party to make the total number of representitives closer to the will
Re:just thinking out loud... (Score:2)
Re:just thinking out loud... (Score:2)
A physical handling procedure will be in effect too, of course. No switching certified CDs with novel ones. But in principle, someone challenging the procedure can run an MD5 on the live-CD (EVMix) on an independ
Excellent! (and I knew it wouldn't be so tough) (Score:2)
WHY? (Score:4, Insightful)
Any sort of voting machine, chads, or plastic doohickies just add to complexity. The old fashioned pen and paper method works fine.
If it ain't broke, dont fix.
Re:WHY? (Score:2)
here is the ideal system (Score:3, Insightful)
Or failing that, this way
First, you select the votes on a touch screen or similar.
Then, it prints out a small reciept showing in human-readable (and also machine-readable perhaps by a barcode or OCR) your vote.
Then it can be read by the machines to provide a count. But, if there is a dispute, hand-counting it is dead easy.
Because its a physical bit of paper in a physical tamper-proof box, its not possible to tamper with the vote. Plus, its easy to see that you the voter made the selection you thought you were making. And to see that your vote is definatly being counted.
And, it has the advantage of being fast to count (of course, the counting machine could be fixed but thats why its printed in human-readable form also, to allow recounts to manually recount with no doubt as to who each voter voted for)
the machines for doing this woulnt need to be particularly good. In fact, the hardware found in some supermarket Cash Registers (the kind with the screen not the kind with the little LED display) is probobly sufficient.
Basicly, all you need is a touch screen (or a regular screen and some buttons/a keypad), a reciept printer to print the actual votes and some chips to control it.
You could easily do control logic on a simple embedded system. And, its possible to make an embedded system very resistant to code modification. (just ask any arcade emulation guru about e.g. the Sega System 16)
Plus, because its printing a physical ballot paper, if the code doesnt print the correct stuff, someone will notice that what is printed on the paper doesnt match with who they wanted to vote for.
Of course, my idea will never happen since it might mean that the voters actually have some (GASP!) control over who gets elected (and of course those men in their suits with their black briefcases full of green bits of paper with past presidents on them wont like that since those bits of paper wont have as much affect on what laws get passed)
Re:here is the ideal system (Score:3, Insightful)
But, paper ballots are also out-of-sight for most of their lifespan, apart from the counting...
Re:here is the ideal system (Score:2)
i.e., it prints out all the names with the boxes filled as appropriate.
That way, you can verify your vote.
Plus its possible to use some form of OCR/scan identification to identify which "box" was marked by the printer. Therefore, the human readable bit and the machine readable bit are one and the same.
If there are questions (over the integrity of the vote-counting machine for example), ju
I love the idea of computer based voting (Score:2)
What can I say but "bravo?" (Score:2)
The clear presentation of a working alternative should make a real difference in the political dialog surrounding the issue.
Paper receipts are bad (Score:2)
In a system where the voter gets a receipt, voters can now cash in their votes for money. Say hello to an election where "courting" the homeless and insane is more important than putting ads on TV.
It would, perhaps, increase voter turnout.
This can be solv
What about non opening boxes (Score:2)
Then for counting or recounting the box could be connected to a system at could read the tapes through a window (or they could be read by a person). But the box would never be unsealed.
(Of course if a tape was broken or something like that there would have to be some kind of pro
The Difference Between Votes and Money (Score:2, Interesting)
Our money is thrown around the globe every day in bit form and few of us have ever been the victim of fraud. There is fundamentally no difference between your vote as a tally in a database and your money as a tally in the datbase.
In fact I once worked on a project which had a direct pipe to the Fed's ACH [nacha.org] system. I could have easily dropped a transfer from your account to mine and it would have gone through wihtout ANY authorization on your part. Why
Any thought given to Instant Runoff Voting? (Score:2, Interesting)
It helps to avoid the problem of the third party spoiler.
e.g. you have 3 candidates say: bush, kerry, nader.
bush gets 45% of the vote
kerry
Hardware, not software (Score:3, Insightful)
Diebold's software is almost completely irrelevant. They're the guys who make safes, ATMs, and other high-physical-security objects. The fact that the software makes the machines unreliable...well, what state/county/city ever actually looked inside the mechanical voting machine to see if it worked properly? The machines were supposed to be physically tamper-reistant.
There's also the "blame" issue. Companies have some sort of identity that cn be held responsible. (The fact that corporate structure generally hides the actions of individuals is...a nice benefit, especially if you're in the business of rigging elections. But I digress.)
So the only way for this to work is to become the enemy. Build a physical infrastructure (a hell of a lot more expensive than banging out some software) and find a progressive city willing to use it instead of Diebold. Pick up a track record, and perhaps you can compete. Then, perhaps, the conspiracy theorists will have something to point to when the state of Florida chooses Diebold at twice the price.
right (Score:2)
That's what someone pulling a joke would say!
CVBS
1 down (Score:2)
Only if... (Score:2)