E-voting Trials and Tribulations

Alex Susor writes "This article is about the new digital touch screen voting system in Georgia, the first state in the nation to adopt this method of voting statewide. Demonstration machines were set up at the recent primaries to teach voters about the new system (to be in place for the November general election) and had some big problems." Compare and contrast to systems in Florida and Germany.

hanging chads?

[Marco_polo]

how long before this system is challenged by someone who lost the election?

I'm skeptical that these..

[Anonymous Coward]

..machines will work, considering that the movie theaters can't keep those movie ticket kiosks working.

Start the M$ bashing...

[Anonymous Coward]

Chris Riggall, a spokesman for the secretary of state's office, attributed the problems to errors by poll workers, a glitch in the Windows operating system that runs the machines and problems with electronic cards that replace paper ballots and ballot boxes.

WHY, oh WHY, did they choose Windows? Probably some M$ money...

good paper == better.

[gl4ss]

you should really first develop a paper system that nobody challanges to not work properly, it's not that hard. power shortage and s*** is bound to happen somewhere even with ups. + the (illusion) of real privacy goes straight out of the window.

it's not the machines fault

[bobm]

this was an interesting quote: In Fulton, poll workers also reported the machines mysteriously switching from demonstration mode to election mode, Champion said. But state election officials and the company that makes the machines, Diebold Election Systems of Ohio, said that's virtually impossible and instead suggest untrained workers were to blame.

Re:hanging chads?

[unicron]

Exactly. It goes without saying that remote voting of any kind will NEVER exist, and even this system is way too easy a target for cries of foul from the losing parties. Anything from sabatouge, hacking, or even something as benign as a short-circuit of the system could happen, and the losing candidate will bring up all 3 if given half a chance, rest assured.

It just leaves the door wide open on challenging a vote, whether you believe someone lost fairly or unfairly due to the machine. I consider myself a reasonable person, and I would challenge it if I lost in a second.

We're just seeing the problems now

[eWalker]

The nice thing about digital voting is that you know that there's a problem with your vote (a frozen computer screen, etc.) before you walk away from the booth. With the current system, how are you know if your chad is punched all the way? ;) Coding errors can be debugged. It's great to be able to _see_ the problem.

"He who votes has no power. He who counts votes...

[vkg]

has power."
- Joeseph Stalin

With a computer voting system, there profile of risk for election fraud changes so radically that the folks used to policing these systems will never know what hit them.

We've already had one US election stolen by outright electoral fraud (I'll let y'all verify that Gore won from your own preferred, trustworthy news source).

This just opens up the door for more trouble ahead.

Computerized voting restricts access to voters

[atrowe]

While computerized voting certainly sounds good to most Slashdoters, we have to realize that the majority of the populace is not as technically oriented is the average Slashdoter. Many older citizens and citizens without any computer training and experience will likely become confused by the new computerized voting devices.

I don't mean to sound like a Luddite, but I'm not sure technology is the best solution in a situation like this. Technology is great for many uses, but for a task as simple as voting, it is much easier and more practical to simply use existing methods which have been proven by their use in the past hundreds if not thousands of years. Voters who are not computer savvy will likely become confused by the unnecessary complication of the new voting machines and many are likely to cast their ballots in error, possibly voting for a candidate they had no intention of supporting. Clearly, in a situation such as this, current paper voting mechanisims are much more accurate and reliable. Furthermore, if voting is to be computerized, we're leaving ourselves vulnerable to all sorts of hacking and digital manipulation of the ballots which otherwise would not exist. It's been said many times here before that no computer system is 100% secure, and I, for one, do not want to trust my country's elections to the likes of Microsoft of Red Hat. Paper elections are much harder, if not impossible, to tamper with.

the true voting tech is the method, not machines

[js7a]

I don't care whether they use paper, plastic, or some newfangled electronic gizmos. :)

What really matters is that they use Instant Runoff Voting; please see:

The Center for Voting and Democracy [fairvote.org]

the Instantrunoff mailing list [4irv.net]

and the California Instant Runoff Voting Coalition [calirv.org] for an example of a good local activism site.

P.S. You can create your own web-based IRV web surveys with DemoChoice.org [demochoice.org] (also includes free downloadable php scripts for your own site.)

Re:Why do we need to go to polls at all?

[gatekeep]

That'd work real fine until someone;

A - Hacks the voting server
B - DDOSs the voting server
C - Man-in-the-middle attacks the voting server
D - ???? There have to be a ton more security problems with this.

Identity verification would be a bit of a problem too. No way short of mailing out the information short of a courier who verifies identity of the person he hands it to to ensure that someone doesn't simply steal usernames/passwords from all their neighbors mailboxes. At an actual polling place, they can at least compare your photo ID to your voter registration card, etc..

Windows was NOT the problem.

[Steveftoth]

Though they blame the mistake on the Windows OS for crashing, it's stupid to believe them. Basically whomever decided to push this out there didn't test their product enough. Everyone who has used computers for any length of time realize that a closed system like this should have zero problems if properly tested no matter what the underlying software is, be it windows, linux, HP-UX, or mac.

What does this really mean? That the voting system should go back for yet more testing. QAing software is probably the most boring part of the job, but it's also the more important. If we are to even pretend that we live in a fair society then any voting system should work and work fairly. Be it paper or computer based.

Is America ready for a computer based system? I think a computer based system should be able to replace a paper based system. I think that possiably we should also use paper in addition to the computer system, meaning that they should actually print a reciept of your vote so that in the case of a recount, they have physical proof that you voted for (Gore and not Bush?) the person you said that you did.

Re:it's not the machines fault

[SimplyCosmic]

As a techinal support person at a company populated by large numbers of non-technically orientated employees, such a situation wouldn't surprise me at all.

That's the very reason we do every bit we can to lock the computers down as much as possible.

Re:This is how it works....

[symbolic]

First and foremost, we have to remember that this is a government venture. What that means is that you have to lower your expections by about 60 IQ points. I theorize that it might go something like this:

Step 1: Acquire, pay for, and install thousands of new, electronic voting machines. Ignore the obvious, like the inability to audit the manner in which votes are tallied and reported by the software.

Step 2: Experience initial problems during a "demo day" held at some point before the election. Disregard the notion that this may very well be the beginning of a very bumby road.

Step 3: Use the newly-acquired machines during the next election, experience more problems, and be sued by a public interest group questioning the results, and demanding a detailed audit.

Step 4: Be dissed by the company that manufactured the machines, who claims that disclosing the process by which votes are tallied and reported would result in disclosure of proprietary trade secrets.

Step 5: Be backed into a corner. Wonder why no one took this issue seriously during the initial planning.

Step 6: Scrap all 19,000 voting machines, kissing the $millions they cost, goodbye. Replace them with machines from a company with a more open disclosure policy.

Step 7: Lather, Rinse....but hopefully, avoid repeating the same sordid tale over again.

The UK perspective...

[Lardmonster]

Two points which may be UK-specific..:

1. We have a large network of vendors for the National Lottery... there was talk a while back about using this system for e-voting. It's secure, handles large numbers of transactions, uses proven technology, and each machine is capable of scanning hundreds of lottery tickets per hour. Most people in the UK knows how to fill in a lottery ticket...

2. It's extremely easy to get multiple votes in the UK. My girlfriend received two voting cards for the 1995 General election, and could easily do so again... so any electronic version surely must be better than the current mess.

Re:hanging chads?

[Fig, formerly A.C.]

Ya, and the punchcards used in the past work so well that they have never been challenged. Right. :)

What I like about this idea is that it could finally allow the US to move in the direction of being a democracy instead of a republic. On the other hand, people are dumb in large groups and I know everyone would vote for a "gimmee" without considering the consequences (sure, let's ALL get $5000 tax rebates this year)...

I do find it odd that they are using a Windows OS though. Maybe they wanted an excuse for a recount? [/sarcasm]

Honestly, I don't see an electronic format as being a bad thing. In the future, we might actually get to vote on more issues and take more direct control of our government: wouldn't that be a plus?