Quebec Bans Electronic Voting 222
gfilion writes "The Chief Electoral Officer of Québec tabled an evaluation report that makes a troubling diagnosis of the problems that occurred during the municipal elections of November 6, 2005, in some of the 162 Québec municipalities that used electronic voting. He says: "Not only did the systems fail, but the corrective measure proposed were insufficient, poorly adapted and often came too late." There was a moratorium on electronic voting prior to the November 6 election, it will be extented for future elections."
evoting == enotrequired (Score:2)
Honestly folk, count the f'int ballots by hand, stop throwing them out, etc.
We purport to have this great democracy yet we do all in our power to screw up the vote...
tom
Any chance of fraud chargers? Breach of contract? (Score:3, Interesting)
So far I've read dozens of reports over the past 5-6 years about failed, hacked, and broken electronic voting machines.
How many failures does it take before those providing the crap equipment are sued and forced to FIX the results of their incompetent designs and testing?
Re:Any chance of fraud chargers? Breach of contrac (Score:2)
Don't worry, it's not that bad. Actually there was only one report about abused and broken electronic voting machines. The rest were slashdot dupes.
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Re:Any chance of fraud chargers? Breach of contrac (Score:2)
Average people, like you and me, need to demand change from our representatives.
How many slashdot posts have you made about electronic voting machines? How many letters have you written to your representatives?
Re:Any chance of fraud chargers? Breach of contrac (Score:4, Insightful)
The results ARE fixed. Oh. You meant fix the machines, not the elections. Nevermind.
Wow (Score:5, Funny)
This is why "mark sense" ballots are a good idea. (Score:4, Informative)
Since mark sense paper ballots (filled out in pen to make sure the mark is clearly seen on the ballot) can be both machine-read and hand counted, this mostly avoids the Florida 2000 fiasco of difficulties reaching punched card ballots, complaints that electronic voting machines can be biased towards one candidate, and the numerous problems of the old mechanical voting machines.
Re:This is why "mark sense" ballots are a good ide (Score:3, Informative)
The problems with electronic voting systems--namely no paper trail--is the reason why many municipalities are switching to mark sense voting ballots.
So that's what it's called.. we used exactly that in the last municipal election for my riding in St-Laurent Quebec.
Re:This is why "mark sense" ballots are a good ide (Score:5, Informative)
It seems that many people are assuming that Quebec used the same Diebold electronic voting machines, when they were clearly not. This press release is outlining the problems of an electronic means of counting paper ballots, which are 100% verifiable if the counting machine fails.
Here's how the voting process went: After voting on a ballot that looked similar to previous elections, the ballot was inserted into a black cardboard holder, which was then fed into a rather simple looking machine. I was astonished when I later found out that these boxes were actually counting the votes as they went in. (And yes, I do live, eat, drink Pepsi and vote in Quebec)
If we have problems counting regular-looking paper ballots, how are we supposed to trust our votes to a machine?
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They should come to the UK... (Score:3, Funny)
Electronic voting problems in US & Canada (Score:4, Insightful)
A big democracy like India successfully used electronic voting in the last election.
Indian voting systems using basic $200 machine while US machines are $3000 systems loaded with millions of lines of code.
380 million Indians cast their votes on more than 1 million machines and the election, the largest electronic voting in the world.
The lesson here is to simply the system. Don't make the system overtly complicated. The more complicated the system, the more bugs it will have and more difficult solutions to the problems.
Re:Electronic voting problems in US & Canada (Score:3, Insightful)
Just for the sake of argument let me play the devil's advocate:
How can you be sure? How about the possibility that the checks and balances to catch election fraud failed in India, so you _think_ the system worked flawlessly, whereas here in North America those deficiencies are revealed?
I agree with you in that the simpler the system, the
Re:Electronic voting problems in US & Canada (Score:2)
They can fix the e-voting procedure... (Score:2)
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Any *software* based solution untrustworthy. (Score:4, Informative)
Software can be patched to do whatever I want it to do-- including counting votes one way and then erasing itself after if a certain pattern of votes are entered .
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Anything with a CPU is a software based solution. The software may be permanently burned into silicon, but it's still software. Swap chips. Swap bits on a storage device. Same thing. One's just a little easier.
Technology will not solve this problem - hardware, software, or otherwise.
wow, awesome. ! (Score:2)
As a Montreal resident, not only is this possibly the first time I've seen Quebec in a Slashdot headline, but it's announcing something I agree with, too! Hurray!
Electronic voting: higher cost, slower results (Score:3, Insightful)
It's nice election officials in Quebec did what seems like a pretty successful review; I'll be happy to approve optical scan voting when these problems are addressed. Until then, it's good at least some jurisdictions in North America realise a lack of paper ballots can prevent recounts.
Manual counting == Open Source (Score:2, Informative)
As far as I can see manual counting of paper ballots should sit very comfortably with anyone who advocates open source projects - they seem to have the same advantages:
One mediocre programmer could do this right (Score:2)
But as many people have already noted, this problem is not technical,
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You don't have to, it's already been done [sourceforge.net].
How voting in Québec works. (Score:5, Informative)
The Directeur Général des Élections [electionsquebec.qc.ca] (DGE) is in charge of all elections/referendum within Québec.
In Canada, federal elections are handled by Elections Canada [elections.ca]. Rules are virtually the same (exceptions listed below).
Registration. Everyone is automagically registered. If you file an income tax report, you are registered UNLESS you specifically ask so (a part of the tax form asks for it).
When the election comes, the DGE sends out notices to everyone on the list. If there are mistakes, or you are not listed, you can ask to be properly registered at the local election office (usually, one by riding).
The part-time election personnel is chosed riding by riding. The incumbent hands out the "important" jobs (poll center supervisor, revision official, scrutineers) while the "less important" jobs (security, assistant revisor, poll clerk) are left to the other candidates.
Training for the poll workers lasts about 3 hours, and happens a week before the election. It explains what are the general procedures. We are also given a book that explains special cases, which we have to read (but are not tested). The scrutineer is given the ballot box which contains the paperwork. We are to meet 2-3 days (usually in the scrutineer's home) before the election to check that the contents are okay; we are to report discrepancies so they can be fixed in time.
We are given a list of all the people entitled to vote (about 400 per box), with those who voted in advance and those who moved-out or otherwise no longer voting there crossed-out.
On election day, at each poll you have the scrutineer, the poll clerk, and as many representatives as there are candidates. The representatives are there to watch that everything is done properly; they can question some aspect of the procedure, like question the identity of voters and question the admissibility of a ballot when counted (but in all respect, the scrutineer has the last word). And representatives can be expelled at will if they don't behave.
Showing ID is not compulsory. But in Québec, anyone can demand a voter identify himself; however, in Canada, election officers are specifically prohibited by law from asking for ID. What is interesting is that many people spontaneously show their ID when they come to vote, and we have to tell them they don't need to (this shows how people accept to show their ID in order to vote).
The situation is different in Québec because federalist parties were caught red-handed rigging elections, so when the law was put in front of parliament, they could not very well vote against it, given the huge amount of egg on their face...
When the voting begins, the ballot boxes are sealed after everyone present agrees that they are empty. The representatives can sign the seals, and note down the serial numbers.
The ballots are printed on stapled booklets, from which the ballots are detached. Each ballot has the list of candidates (or options for referenda), a space for the scrutineer to put his initials and two identical serial numbers.
The serial numbers are on different tear-off stubs; the first remains in the booklet, the second is kept on the ballot when it is handled to the voter.
Before handling the ballot to the voter (AND ONLY AT THAT TIME!!!!), the scrutineer marks the back of the ballot with his initials, with the stub with the serial number in plain view.
The voter votes, and either tears-off the serial number stub in plain view of everyone, and shows the scrutineer's initials (this is to insure that this is the same ballot that was handed earlier - in order to avoid "telegrams"), or the scrutineer does it for him without unfolding the ballot. THE STUB WITH SERIAL NUMBER IS TO BE KEPT!!!
The voter then puts the ballot in the box, a
and if tampering is detected. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:How voting in Québec works. (Score:2)
Simple: any tampered box is rejected.
Why do we need e-voting exactly? (Score:2)
Essentially, we need to rethink th
people who have various challenges (Score:2)
My solution? Have an electronic voting machine that can print out a completed ballot that looks exactly like all the other ballots that were filled out by hand. Of course, if I were to use such a machine, I would like a close friend
Not only about stealing votes (Score:3)
While the manipulation problem can be fixed by generating a voter-verifyable paper trail (NOT an easy problem, but doable), this still leaves us with the harder problem of secrecy (or potential lack thereof).
A voter who enters his decision into an electronic black box can never be sure that his vote is not secretly recorded and used against him later. The problem here is not only that this actually happens, the rumour that it MIGHT happen is already enough to make a free election impossible.
A better solution: staggered elections (Score:4, Insightful)
We try to saturate all of our voting into one day, and for what? Why not have 4 election days a year, instead of one. The national elections will still be in November. State elections in February. City and County elections in May. Local referendums, bonds, and other non-candidate-oriented votes in August.
All dates above are arbitrary (so is the first Tuesday in November.) We're not stupid, we can keep up with 4 days. And then we can use paper ballots, because counting is exponentially easier. Why are we so hard on ourselves for one week in November?
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Must be nice... (Score:2)
Where is a link to the ban or moratorium? (Score:2)
Re:Those who give E-voting a bad name... (Score:5, Informative)
They have only taken the stance 'not for now'. Given the current state of voting machines this the right answer, IMHO. Once voting machines actually solve the current problems of paper voting, without adding new issues, I am sure Quebec will reconsider. Given the disasters we have seen in other places, I would rather have a slow system than one that can go wrong in so many ways (at this point in time).
I agree. (Score:2)
Given the disasters we have seen in other places, I would rather have a slow system than one that can go wrong in so many ways (at this point in time).
I definitely agree. I find it highly ironic that even with all the things that do work on computers, something as seemingly simple as voting has some many damn errors in it. I agree that there must be a flawless, well dispersed implementation of E-voting, proven to work correctly AND with paper trails before it even touches a voting booth. None of this ship
look at the profit in SPAM..... (Score:2, Interesting)
In ye olden days you needed
Potential for coercion. (Score:3, Insightful)
What you suggest has been suggested here many times before, and the response is the same - it lends itself to vote buying and coercion.
Scenerio #1: Candidate A offers $10/vote. Go to campaign office after the election, give some intern at a computer your document showing your Voter ID, he punches it in, shows you voted for t
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Here's what you are missing. America is a "mommy mommy" country. Here, we have laws that don't deal with the problem, they deal with any behavior that some loony thinks might, under some circumstance, possibly, lead to the problem. So it doesn't matter that vote buying is illegal; if th
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Unfortunately, this is not a good idea: it invites voter buying. Register your voter ID with your local corrupt politician, and you'll get $10 if the website shows you have voted for him/her/it.
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Unless the voter ID was given to you when you voted - say by being displayed on screen. If you don't provide any way to prove who they voted for, then vote-buying is still too risky. You could store the vote in a database as a counterpart number, which is the voter number encrypted with the voter's public key. To check the vote, they decrypt the entire list of counterparts (for their area I suppose, since downloading a country's worth of votes is going to use an enormous amount of bandwidth) with their priv
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You could store the vote in a database as a counterpart number, which is the voter number encrypted with the voter's public key.
Why would the average American have a public key?
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I know one of those votes is mine because my ID DY007 is in there and the party against it is the party I voted for. But I don't know anyone else's ID, or who any of them voted for. As far as I know, all the Labour votes could be fake. A
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Next you'll tell me that dead people who voted for Mayor Richard J. Daley in Chicago from the 50's to the 70's really were valid voters...
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Electronic voting, in and of itself, doesn't do anything to prevent any of those problems. It does, however, introduce additional problems of its own. Not the least of which is that whilst any school leaver can understand the whole process of writing a set of numbers against a list of names, putti
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Then again, there isn't much of a pressing need nor want for electronic voting in most Canadian elections. Our electoral system is set up in such a manner that most elections can be performed easily with a list of options on a simple paper ballot. My understanding is that the Americans want electronic voting machines due to the complexity of American elections, with party affiliations, multiple offices, and so on being voted for simultaneously. For now, paper voting, at least for simple electoral systems
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E-voting does have one advantage in that it can give enough rope for idiots to hang themselves:
"You have selected Bat Puchanon, the Independent candidate for President. Are you sure"
[yes]
"Are you really sure
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Bank machines must be 100% accurate
Bank machines must provide audit capabilities
Bank machines must provide paper trail
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Here's a simple voting machine abstract:
The voter enters the polling station, and provides ID to an attendant. They are checked off the list on the attendants computer, which sets up the polling computer to expect a new voter.
The voter goes into a privacy booth where the computer is waiting for them, with their name on the screen: Are you Bobby J? Yes/No to ensure the right person has arrived.
they vot
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If voters are allowed to handle the printouts they can be substitutet with blanks to cast doubt over the results.
Verification of the computer count requires a full recount and since the proccess is non-transparent it shouldn't take much to require one. Bar code recounting by computer poses the same transparency problems as initial the computer counting. As I see it the system basicly reduces to a hand count with a delay and all delays between the voting and the definitive count introduce the risk of ballo
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The attendant can ensure that it's a ballot (they don't need to see the votes for this - something on the back etc) before it gets inserted into the box is a simple way to deal with this. If the only paper going into the box is a ballot it's not any different then paper voting.
It requires a full recount per machine only. And "recounts"
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Counting paper ballots, even by hand, is a fully parallizable task. One million people could count one million ballots in one second. There is no need for hand counting to be slow.
As a Doctor of Computer Science, I certainly don't trust computer voting.
Re:Those who give E-voting a bad name... (Score:5, Insightful)
I see your point.. I agree with Quebec on this one (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I see your point.. I agree with Quebec on this (Score:2)
Won't someone think of the TREES!
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Yes, the trees that were chopped up and mixed with resin to form paper ballots are now chopped up and incinerated to boil water to make electricity to power the voting machines. Let's think of the trees...
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Besides which, they keep shutting down paper mills in Quebec, putting people out of work. They could use a little support.
Re:I see your point.. I agree with Quebec on this (Score:4, Insightful)
The good thing about paper voting (apart from the fact that it works and is well tried and tested) is that the general public (who after all have to put trust in the system) can understand how it works and have some idea about the safeguards that prevent tampering. They also understand that there are things like independent observers ensuring the process goes as it should.
Compare that with electronic voting where almost every voter has no idea how the system works, no idea how any independent observers would be able to verify that the system works, and no idea how to determine whether or not they can trust any part of the process.
Re:I see your point.. I agree with Quebec on this (Score:2)
Won't somebody think of the dancers?
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Although I'd like to vote early and avoid the lines in November, I am cynical eno
Re:Those who give E-voting a bad name... (Score:4, Insightful)
An election is not only about counting the votes, but the process being accountable and verifiable by every voter.
Vote of support? (Score:2)
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In that case, welcome our taxation-in-binary-format overlords!
(otherwise let's just stick to democracy
That was the joke (Score:2)
But it was just a joke. Like communism, philospher kings (or even tech-kings) can only work in theory. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
In a sense, however, our democratic republic has similarites to the philopher kings of Socrates/Plato. In theory the populace elects those best suited to govern. Of course, in theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they're not.
Yes, this is insightful (Score:2)
In UK elections I have tried never to vote for a candidate I have never met in person, and I
Re:Those who give E-voting a bad name... (Score:4, Insightful)
I just wanted to repeat that.
IMHO, that's the most important aspect of the electronic voting "debate." Paper-ballot elections can be hacked, and most certainly have been in the past; the fact that electronic systems can be hacked does not make them unique. (Although one could argue that, by the nature of a networked system, a single "hack" of an electronic system would have far more reaching impact than a localized ballot-stuffing effort).
The difference is whether it's possible to go back and, to the best of your/our collective ability, verify that the tabulation was correct and the votes legitimate. There is *no* way to do that with electronic voting, especially as advocated by Diebold & Co. Not only can you not tell if the votes are legit, but the very system used for tabulation and accounting is proprietary.
All told, this does *not* make for a safe, secure, reliable, accountable system that can be verified.
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Instant paper trail.
Yup (Score:2)
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Advantages of electronic voting over paper voting:
1) Faster to get the results.
Disadvantages
1) Independant observers cannot observe that votes are being counted correctly.
2) Voters cannot easily understand or see how the system works.
3) Voters are likely to distrust a system they cannot see functioning.
I think the disadvantages greatly outweigh the advantages.
I don't know if you have ever seem a normal (non-electronic) voting booth run properly, but it is a marvel of common sense and simplicity. I don't und
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2) Possible voting over the Internet.
This could make voting extremely convenient. Of course this opens a whole new can of worms about security, one voter, one vote, etc etc, but the point remains that e-voting also has the advantage of removing the vote from time and place concerns - things which *do* effect actual voters on voting days (witness the long lines in Ohio in '04.)
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1) Faster to get the results.
2) More accessible to people with physical disabilities or who speak another language
3) Easier to review your choices and correct a mistake before casting your ballot
4) Can prevent some invalid selections, e.g. voting both "yes" and "no" for the same item
5) No problem with hanging/pregnant chads, or partly-filled bubbles
Disadvantages
1) Independant observers cannot observe that votes are being counted correctly.
There's a way to fi
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The key is that the printed ballot is both human-readable and machine-readable at the same time, and free from problems like partially-filled bubbles (make an X with a red pen instead of completely filling it in with a black pen), hanging chads, etc. You could use punchcards instead of printing with this same concept, as long as the machines were reliable.
I don't think that is what most people me
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I have to disagree with this. I think it is more sad to throw out a tried and tested method (paper ballot) that leaves no doubt of the democratic outcome of an election and is accountable and allows recounts and reliable audits. Democracy is more important then changing in the name of technological advance. Federal elections in Canada for instance still use paper ballots and the results are still known on the same day (usually wi
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Re:Those who give E-voting a bad name... (Score:5, Insightful)
Secondly, many secretaries of state are instituting punitive costs charged to the candidate demanding a recount. It costs millions to challenge the count. A lot of campaigns find it hard to justify the cost, and may well not have the money left over.
And third, I strongly opine that even if the paper ballots clearly show that the electronic totals were altered, the news media will bury the story, if they don't simply report it as a conspiracy theory and bad methodology counting the paper. After all, Gore had the majority of the cast votes in 2000 per the media-sponsored recount done after the election, with bullet-proof counting methods and both parties staring at the process. To THIS DAY people don't even know that the recount was done, and if they do, they concentrate on the recount as per Gore's original request, where he barely lost, rather than the state-wide recount done by the Tribune-led media project, which showed he barely won -- if all the votes that clearly showed a choice were counted.
Fourthly, a HELL of a lot of "spoiled ballots" are being tossed these last six years, far more proportionally that were found before. I don't think people magically started messing up their ballots. There is a heavy finger on the scale, one that favors Republicans. Since they are spoiled, so-called, we don't count them again. Toss out enough "spoiled" ballots from poorer (black/college) Democratically leaning areas, and they have plausible deniability as to why the e-count doesn't match the paper count. And yes, since the computer would be printing the ballots, this should be a silly argument, BUT THEY WILL MAKE IT ANYWAY, and the assembled dopes of the media will swallow it, as they have all the other garbage in every major election since 2000 (statistics don't work anymore? Only Democrats lie to exit pollsters, only in close races? COME ON!).
Guaranteed, two weeks from now: Republicans will hold on to both houses. By slim margins. No paper trails. And all these polls showing that Democrats will win by landslides? Dismissed as conspiracy theories. Just statistics.
Sometimes statistics is the truth and smarmy little me say are lies.
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Yes, because as anyone with any knowledge of US history knows - these sorts of behaviors and alleged behaviors have only been attributed to Republicans.
Here's a penny for ya. Buy a clue.
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At all.
He didn't say that poor / black / college people don't vote correctly, he said that they tend to vote Democrat (backed up by stats) and mysteriously, their ballots tend to be thrown away as "spoiled" far more than other demographics. In other words, it is not HIM that says they can't vote correctly, it is whomever is taking out the "spoiled" ballots, many of which aren't.
For your amusement, what some Republicans *really* think of blacks. [youtube.com]
Yes, this ad really runs on radio [huffingtonpost.com]
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"Toss out enough "spoiled" ballots from poorer (black/college) Democratically leaning areas,"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoiled_ballot [wikipedia.org]
Spoiled ballots means that it was not punched/marked correctly. Perhaps he, and you, ment some deeper nefarious end to these ballots, but my tin foil hat protects me from such crazy theories as the two of you appear to share.
Elections have been unusually close lately. The country is split fairly evently on what path to take to the future. Harsh retoric and crazy the
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I am astounded at your lack of reading comprehension. You scare me. Really.
Re:The problem... (Score:5, Insightful)
Please explain how banning a voting system that so far has demonstrated countless flaws is bad for democracy? I am very happy my government took this stance. Last elections there were quite a few close races between representatives, some as close as about 50 votes. If this buggy electronic vote would tip the balance of power from a party to another, it is unfair and bad for democracy. Bug today is an exploit/abuse tommorow. Voting has to be transparent, accurate and there needs to be a paper trail.
Oh and, Quebec is one of the very rare provinces/states/territories in North America that is running serious studies about having a proportional representation modeled election and parliament. Something that could eliminate the "cartel" of a 2-3 party system we see throughout North America. Something good for every individual instead of a few partisans of selected parties. But yes, Quebec misses the notion of democracy!
I don't think the word "democracy" means what you think it means.
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And for those who don't know what Proportional Representation is. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_represen tation [wikipedia.org]
If we are ever to fix our problems in the States with politics, we'd have to move to this type of system. I basically does away with having a 2 party system and you end up with being able
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See? Complete lack of Democracy!
Re:Australia does it right (Score:5, Insightful)
But doesn't even the most open, verified system still suffer from having the "Vote for Bob" patch installed at the last minute by an official-looking guy with glasses and a clipboard? I know, this shouldn't be allowed, but it seems to happen all the flippin' time! People just don't yet understand what's required to keep a computer secure, but it's pretty easy to understand "Don't let anyone steal or tamper with these little pieces of paper!" Security has to deal with what actually happens in the real world, not in theory, and out here in the real world, computers are a mystery to most election officials in a way that pieces of paper are not. This mysteriousness can lead to bad decisions about what kind of access is allowed.
OK, the Australian system is voter-verifiable, but if you're going to need to have all the voters bring back their receipts afterwards, why not just count the paper to begin with?
If I were an American, I'd be very frightened about voting using an electronic machine, given all the horror stories [wheresthepaper.org] I've been reading. And as a Canadian, I'm quite happy with our paper ballot system, and I'll resist any attempt to replace it!
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and...
joke---->o
O
/|\
you --->|
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why isn't this used everywhere? is it so damn hard for each polling station to have people count a couple thousand ballots that they HAVE to use computers? Have to have stupid ballots where you punch holes in them causing other stupid problems etc...
Wanna fix the voting problems?
-Give out big markers
-Peice of
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One mechanism around this not to include the who was voted for on the receipts/public db, but use some anonymous value (displayed to the voter whe
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1. Voter uses electronic system to vote and verify that the selections are correct (in large print and easily identifiable so certain Floridians can't complain afterwords).
2. Vote is recorded electronicly.
3. Paper receipt is printed for the voter.
4. Bubble sheet is printed and given to the voter. This should be verified by the voter and then given to the poll workers.
5. Poll workers run bubble sheet through scanner to verify.
6. After ele
Sort of what we are moving towards. (Score:3, Interesting)
Opscan however doesn't meet HAVA requirements for disabled voters -- which has been used as a trojan horse to push e-voting (not that there doesn't need to be support for the disabled). To meet both the needs of the disabled and the need for security, a sys
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What needs to be modernized? Is it just some delusion that because we'd be voting electronically that we'll get a more modern
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i have yet to see an electronic voting system (open-source or otherwise) that is better than paper ballots.
remember, if/when electronic voting actually works like it should, this ban could easily (relatively speaking) be undone.
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If you physical access to the machine, you can hack it. Doesn't matter if you spend millions on securing it.
This is why datacenters have locks and very good security systems.
If you can get to the console, the often times you can do all sorts of things that you can't do remotley. This is the key problem with the votiing machines since they are out in the publi
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