We've all been aware of the movement to more secure and convenient electronic voting systems, but this article suggests that we may not be ready, yet.

http://news.com.com/2100-1009_3-5054088.html?tag=cd_mh

Good Luck
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As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

But the current mechaninal systems are *proven* (as opposed to *possibly*) fallible.  In Chicago, where I'm from, scores of dead people vote in every election, and the saying is 'vote early and vote often'.  

But just the mention of Windows with anything requiring *real* security is a big red flag.  We need to eventually go all-electrinic (or with a hybrid, as the article suggested), but not necessarily with the Windows CE system talked about in the article.
-jsteph

The whole idea of basing an election system's digital infrastructure on any closed-source general-purpose operating system sounds like madness or laziness to me.

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TANSTAAFL!!

It's not my intent to push this into any kind of political direction, but this bothers me:

http://www.house.gov/wexler/press_releases/June_28_01.htm

What concerns me here is how much easier it might be to discard ballots collected electronically, with no evidence available for any sort of dispute or recounting efforts.

That sort of thing is more important to me than any platform-religion issues.

So, how should we go about reforming elections?

What kinds of security do you suggest at the precinct level, and what steps do we take to see that votes are not tampered with?

We've had a limited form of electronic elections here for over 10 years now and it works quite well.

Mo more ballots to fill out, you push a button on a machine in the booth indicating the person you vote for and the result is stored in a database.
At the end of the day a report of totals is mailed or faxed to a central computer where results from all polling stations are collected.
National results are thus available in less than an hour rather than sometimes taking days to complete the counting.

I agree we should stay away from politics, but I do think we discuss how technology can be used to help insure a more inclusive and fair vote gathering and tallying system.

I agree completely agree with sleipnir214.  The system should be completely open source.  That is unquestionably the most secure appropach.  Everyone can see exactly what the system is doing, which breeds confidence in and removes apprehension from the system.  Secondly, with thousands and thousands of eyes pouring over the code, it's unlikely that any security hole will stay open very long.

<Humorous connection between posts>
jsteph - "In Chicago, where I'm from, scores of dead people vote in every election, and the saying is 'vote early and vote often'.
And quoting from the article referenced by dilettante - "In fact, more votes were thrown out in Illinois than in Florida."

For those who are not familiar with US Georgraphy.  Chicago is the largest city in Illinois.

Good Luck
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As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

Actually, ours (South Carolina) works the same way as jwenting's.  For those of you who debate these things, do you think it should be a national standard?

*** by "it", I mean whatever system we eventually come up with... *not* "the one that jwenting and I currently use".

I don't think discussing whether or not it should be national standard to be within the scope of this forum.  This is an international forum and that is largely a single national political issue.

Let's focus our attention of how to apply technology to election systems to make them easy, fair, and convenient for all.

Good Luck
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As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

dilletante:
Your comment about the ease of discarding votes is an interesting one.

I'm a resident of Louisiana, where we use mechanical voting machines.  How does the electronic device make for any less of a paper trail than those?

If the software is designed to use an appropriate internal database, you can have cross-referencing of data.  For example, instead of just having counters for Candidate A, Candidate B, etc, have those as well as an anonymous record of each voter's actual vote.  Couple that with a voter sign-in sheet and an inability of pollsters to open the machines, and I think you will at least make it harder to digitally tamper with the device.

The real requirement, though, is a professional software review of the software used to run the device.  Both the application itself and any operating system on which it runs.

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TANSTAAFL!!

Purely electronic systems will always be open to massive voting results manipulation with no ability to perform any kind of meaningful recount to verify the results. As computer professionals we all know that there's no such thing as truly secure information.

Here's a system that I've been recommending for years (as, I'm sure, have others): Voting is done electronically, via a touchscreen or similar system. Once the person is done voting s/he pushes a button that prints out a sheet containing his/her votes that is both human and machine readable. This piece of paper allows the human who voted to see that the votes entered into the machine are the same as the votes on the paper. The paper is then inserted into a tallying machine where it is electronically "read" and the vote is sent into a centralized area (either immediately or later). The physical piece of paper is stored. If ever the final tallies come into question a true recount can be performed.

All of the advantages of electronic voting (except that you have to be there physically) and none of the serious potential pitfalls. There really are some advantages to protons and neutrons -- eliminating or changing physical ballots is much, much more difficult than flipping some electrons.

I don't see how that method is anything more than paper voting with a different kind of chad.

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TANSTAAFL!!

Get better people to vote for and I walk to the polling place and vote.  Otherwise all the fancy electronic voting methodolgy is a waste of time and money.

sleipnir214,

My understanding was that many older mechanical voting machines recorded on a form of paper tape.  The paper tape rolls (fanfolds, what have you) left a physical record of the voting done at that machine.  I couldn't say whether these were punched tapes (chad or chadless) or a chimp with a pencil was housed within each machine.

I think I read that the machine's serial number was recorded on the tape's start and end as well as part of the process of opening/closing the polls.

Anybody have 1st hand experience with one of these beasts?

The ones Louisiana uses contains sets of mechanical counters.  There are no paper tapes or anything similar made.

There is a set of steps to setting up a machine:  paperwork that tracks various public officials' testaments that the wheels were zeroed out, etc.

The only paper voting record made is that when I go to vote, I have to produce picture ID and a voter registration card.  Once my credentials have been verified, I sign the voter registrar's book and enter the machine.

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TANSTAAFL!!

sleipnir214 said:

I don't see how that method is anything more than paper voting with a different kind of chad.

Perhaps you're unaware of the advantages of electonic voting. In this system (and all electronic voting) you can, among other things, ensure that the voter:

• Selects the correct number of candidates for each position (no double-voting for President, for example),
• Will be able to clearly see the result of their vote (no butterfly ballot issues, for example) as the machine can very clearly display something like "Your choice for President: Bob Smith", and
• Easily fix his/her electronic ballot if s/he made a mistake by pushing the wrong button.

There's nothing even remotely resembling a chad problem.

All that could be accomplished through a well-designed user interface.  And none of it is specific to electronic voting -- the mechanical voting machines used by Louisian have been accomplishing all that for at least 30 years.

The use of paper also adds possible problems with printers, possible problems with reader devices, and introduction of foreign paper into the system, just to name a few.

In short, whole new species of of hanging chads.

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TANSTAAFL!!

In the final analysis, it probably won't matter how good, how secure, nor how robust the technology is.  Since it will be used by the masses, they will find a way to screw it up, mis-use it, abuse it, be confused by it, be scared of it, and then blame it when their favorite canidate doesn't win.

Good Luck
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As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

Dead people voting, vote early vote often. These aren't related to EVMs (Electronic Voting Machines) alone.

Lets take a real case study:

-> Multiple states,
-> Central election commission,
-> Single national standard (for the equipment),
-> Single agency which manufactures the machines under control (like a mint - say),
-> Pre announced procedures and extensive advertising by the election commission to (a) populate the EVMs with the local candidate's list (b) how to vote (with a check by the supervisor that avoids double voting), (c) what constitutes a valid vote, (d) computerised data transfer to a central counting pool, (e) Announce results quickly, (f) don't allow mobs to come near the counting (or recounting) centers ...
-> Strict supervision and control of the distribution of these EVMs.

It's happening in India. It's gained acceptance and even in disputed border areas, its being credited with assisiting in transparency.

Yup, it's happening in an Asian country. (India).
End