A few questions and thoughts for eveyone as the election comes closer:
bq. “If one set out to design systems to prevent checks and balances, it would be hard to outdo current paperless e-voting machines. Electronic voting in its current form is equivalent to handing over the counting of votes to private groups who count the ballots behind closed doors — and then destroy them before anyone else can do a recount.”
— David Dill, Verified Voting
bq. “What about all those who are being encouraged to vote an absentee/mail ballot? They place their faith in the U.S. Postal Service, which handles their mail ballot by computerized processes. If they are delivered to the Elections Department, for decades, those ballots have been tabulated through computers (not networked). Yet, that voter has no idea whether his/her ballot has been counted in every contest because of the anonymity of the voter and secrecy of the ballot.”
— Mischelle Townsend, Riverside County registrar of voters
bq. “I am not against technology. I drive a car, get on airplanes and ride elevators. However, if the code in any of these was as bad as Diebold’s software, I wouldn’t.”
— Avi Rubin, computer science professor
bq. “One of my company’s customers makes electronic slot machines, and hires us as one part of the independent verification process. The manufacturer, the casinos, and the state regulators all take the verification of software for these machines very seriously — much more seriously than most election officials seem to take the verification of DRE software.”
— Jim Horning, reader
bq. “The question begs asking: how did all of these experts find such serious flaws that passed the scrutiny of the testers who approved the systems? As it turns out, it’s not entirely the fault of the testers. The standards by which they are asked to rate and judge voting systems are highly flawed themselves and are severely outdated.”
— Kim Zetter, Wired News
bq. “At this point in time in the election cycle, there is no constructive value in perpetuating the debate. Election officials are conducting the election with the tools that they have. To continue discrediting these tools serves only to actively undermine the legitimacy of the election before a vote has been counted. To deride and malign election officials who are working tirelessly with the tools they have to conduct a transparent, fair and accurate election to the best of their ability in November serves no positive goal. It is a fair question to ask the motive of those who do either.”
— Scott Konopasek, San Bernardino County registrar of voters
From Good Morning Silicon Valley, via Politech.
Here are two scary posts detailing bad security protocols on vintage-2002 Diebold machines as discovered by Dan Wallach of Rice University. This comes from Edward Felton’s Freedom to Tinker:
[Diebold’s machines use a smartcard to control voter access.] “…[but] the smartcard doesn’t actually do anything surprising in this protocol. Anybody can make a smartcard that sends the three messages “Okay; Yes; Okay” and use it to cast an extra vote. (Do-it-yourself smartcard kits cost less than $50.)
Indeed, anybody can make a smartcard that sends the three-message sequence “Okay; Yes; Okay” over and over, and can thereby vote as many times as desired, at least until a poll worker asks why the voter is spending so long in the booth.” —Bad Protocol, posted October 13
“The Diebold system allows a polling place administrator to use a smartcard to control a voting machine, performing operations such as closing the polls for the day. The administrator gets a special administrator smartcard… Like yesterday’s protocol, this one fails because malicious users can make their own [that would satisfy it].
This system was apparently used in the Georgia 2002 election. Has Diebold fixed this problem, or the one I described yesterday? We don’t know.” —Another Broken Diebold Protocol, posted October 14
The computer community has been ranting about this kind of stuff for at least four years, but nobody else has been paying attention. Read both of the linked posts. You’ll be even more upset.
Burt Lawr …’ain’t it the truth, ain’t it the
truth.
As a great man once said, trust, but verify. I do not understand the GOP resistance to mandating receipts and paper trails and the like for e-voting. Other than the general principle that if it drives the Democrats crazy, it must be a good thing.
Roublen, your principle is 100% sound, especially for voting… but as the San Bernadino quote shows, this resistance is not just a partisan issue (“Washington Sate, and now San Bernadino”:http://www.co.san-bernardino.ca.us/pressreleases/docs/363RegistrarPressRelease.doc.htm is not a Republican profile).
After 2000, some people believe any e-solution is an improvement. Others have sunk public funds into the machines, and aren’t about to admit the mistake easily. Some, like Mr. Konopasek, are building careers on this and certainly aren’t about to admit flaws because if they do, bye-bye career.
Welcome to public-choice economics in action. This isn’t a partisan issue so much as it is a bureaucracy/human nature issue. What’s needed is steady pressure and criticism that spans the board and addresses the problem, not a foolish partisan whine that distracts from a real and serius issue.
San Bernadino County is one of the most conservative parts of the state. I don’t know the politics of their professional registrar (it’s clear his professional talents are severely limited), but I would be very, very surprised if his bosses were predominantly Democrats. George Bush won over Al Gore, 48.8% to 47.3%. In California as a whole, Bush trailed by 12 points.
What I don’t understand is why there is such a push for electronic voting. Being Australian, the old paper and pencil system has served us well in every election, including the one just past. As for complexity, Australia’s preferential voting system and in the Senate the “tablecloth” ballot are easily managed. In something as important as voting, the simplest system is the best.
One follow-up. I do not believe the Riverside registrar is correct: I believe that at least in Alameda County (here) the registrar’s office tracks whether an absentee ballot has been returned. One could, then, at least verify that the ballot had been delivered to the registrar, although not what happened afterwards.
I was talking specifically about Congressman Rush Holt’s VOTER CONFIDENCE AND INCREASED ACCESSIBLITY ACT OF 2003, a simple common sense piece of legislation, inexplicably opposed by Republican congressional leadership. It’s not foolish partisan whining. It’s intelligent partisan whining;). Obviously, this should be a bipartisan issue. But while it may be being opposed by hack on both sides, the only ones who are pushing hard to solve the problem are Democrats.
Simon, when I lived temporarily in Israel people there asked me the same question.
In California, it’s not uncommon to have ten to twenty contested elections (president, congress, state governor, state treasurer, mayor, city council, county council, transportation network board, community college board, etc.) and then another twenty-plus ballot referenda at both state and local level. That’s at one election. While I was OK with the punchcard ballot, the idea of tabulating forty races on a pencil-marked ballot by hand is insane.
In Israel, you voted for one party or slate. I wasn’t a citizen, but I believe you were given a sheaf of paper, each page with one party, and you dropped one in the box. (There must have been some safeguard against dropping in multiple pages, but I don’t know what.) That’s it. Australia? You tell me.
Roublen,
Went to his site. The bill looks like a good bill, and it has “Republican co-sponsors”:http://holt.house.gov/issues2.cfm?id=7225 – another link on the site notes that “the bill has 140 bipartisan cosponsors.”:http://www.holt.house.gov/issues2.cfm?id=8703 Nowehere on the site does it mention partisan obstructionism.
Then you go to THOMAS, and it looks like “the bill is doing the usual thing”:http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d108:HR02239:@@@L&summ2=m& and moving along slowly, but is kind of interrupted (as one might expect) once elections loom. You can’t pass something like this with an election looming, because lots of places need time to comply. If I had to make a prediction, I’d say this is a likely bill to pass in 2005.
So your comments were intelligent – but they are also a partisan whine, and it sure looks like they were an unnecessary one.
Well, the issue is more complicated than I thought (2 Congressional Democrats are opposed to it for some ridiculous reason), and I assumed that if legislation introduced in May 2003 has not been passed by then, its because of opposition of Delay and his crowd. But in general, after the bitterly disappointing (for us) 2000 election, most of us partisan Democrats were prepared to move on and accept it as the luck of the draw, provided we rolled up our sleeves and spent whatever it took and made sure it never happened again. Now, there’s been 4 years, and there is no certainty that it won’t happen again. Why? And who is to be held accountable?
Andrew: in Australia usually it is just two ballots. I agree there can be a plethora of things to vote for at any one time: the biggest I recall in Australia was there being 4 referunda questions at the same time as a Federal election, which meant three ballots. That certainly isn’t the same number as it can be in the US. Nevertheless does having punchcards or electronic voting make all of that voting any easier than paper or pencil still? I think not? If it’s the mass of paper you’re worried about, why not look at the number of elections held on a single day or look at having seperate polling booths within one station.
Regardless of the number of votes to be made at any one time, I still think paper and pencil wins based on the simplicity test. I’d rather the count took longer but was based on a reliable, verifiable and time-tested system.
In Baltimore County, Maryland, we have now, insanely, moved from optically-scanned paper ballots in 2000/2002 to Diebold leave-no-trace touchscreens in 2004. This is an excellent solution to the problem we never had–those pesky chads.
Why, and why is this the nationwide trend?
Greed and incompetence (the usual suspects) surely have a large role to play.
This is such a huge move in the wrong direction that I have to give some credence to the conspiracists of Left and Right–that there are malign forces that are happy to open the System to corruption, as long as it is being done for the benefit of Their ‘Good Guys.’
Anything else? One prospect I haven’t seen discussed is an innocent but misguided emphasis on rapid reporting of results as a crucially important virtue of a balloting system. Yah, optical systems can be fast, but nothing is going to beat an all-electronic system connected by modem.
Makes sense that Fast Reporting would be a priority for a media that is both obsessed by horse races, and benefits from them in greater viewership and readership, hence higher ad revenue, and importance, too. But in our roles as Citizens, what’s the rush? Why should we care, particularly, if the results are posted a minute, an hour, or a day after the polls close?
This may be a case of coming up with the Wrong Solution after asking the Wrong Question.
In 2001 I was a member of the design team of an award-winning design for an electronic voting machine (not touchscreen, BTW). And I’ve served for 18 years as an election judge. How could anyone think that any system that was non-verifiable and non-auditable was even minimally acceptable? Every voting system must have a paper trail. Period.
In Baltimore County, Maryland, we have now, insanely, moved from optically-scanned paper ballots in 2000/2002 to Diebold leave-no-trace touchscreens in 2004.
God, that is insane. Optical scan rulez, Diebold droolz. Must have something to do with campaign donations, key Congressional districts, etc.
I don’t have a problem with the idea of electronic voting machines. I believe if done correctly, it can be an incredible boon, in terms of accuracy, time-saving, etc.
But that “done right” is the key.
The one thing that sticks in my mind, from articles I have read about this is:
Diebold is not primarily a vote machine vendor. It primarily is an ATM vendor, and automated register vendor.
From what I remember of what I read, EVERY OTHER SINGLE PRODUCT it makes – ATM’s etc – has a paper trail.
Banks would not have it any other way. There is no way banks would not allow a way to authenticate transactions (and this is simply another type of transaction).
But – somehow – Diebold brings out a new product line – electronic voting machines – and, contrary to EVERY OTHER PRODUCT LINE, contrary to every recommendation by those who build automated systems, contrary to every expert in the field –
Theire new product line does NOT have a paper trail, or way to authenticate?
I don’t think you have to be a conspiracy theorist to call B.S. on this. I don’t believe it is POSSIBLE for Diebold – who does have years of competent experience in putting these machines together – not to know there needs to be a way to authenticate.
The only possible explanation, is that this was a “malicious” exclusion.
This comment was done from memory from what I’ve read, although I believe it is fairly accurate – but if my memory is faulty, please provide links, I’m happy to be corrected.
Actually, JC, I suspect it’s a price point. Electronic voting machines are quite price sensitive. But it’s a foolish and ill-considered price point. I’m rather surprised that the touch screen issue hasn’t drawn more attention. It’s pretty easy to jigger touchscreens so that they do pretty much anything you want them to.