Electronic Ballots In The Brazilian Presidential Election 298
jorlando writes "On Sunday (06-Oct) Brazil will again use electronic ballots for its Presidential Elections. Since a lot of /. readers from time to time talk about the pros and cons of this type of technology, it's a chance to see how it perform well (at least in Brazil...). Representatives from NGOs, ONU and foreign Governments were invited as observers and to see a working electronic votation system in a huge scale, since there are more than 115 million of voters in Brazil ... usually the results of the election are given 4 hours after the closing of the ballots (17:00 Brasilia -3GMT), with a small margin of error, since only 98% of the votes are computed in 4 hours ... some ballots are in places (mostly in far-away rural areas and in the Amazon region) that need to be taken to larger cities to be connected to the vote-download system ... ballots are made by Procomp, the comunication sytem is a VPN-like made by Embratel. The election can be accompanied by the main Brazilian notice sites (http://www.uol.com.br , http://www.estado.com.br, http://www.globo.com and others), mostly only Portuguese, so use the fish!"
Use A Pencil! (Score:3, Insightful)
We all have seen that "chads" are fussy things, prone to hanging. And we're hip to the fact that bits are very evanescent things.
Reaching for democracy is a worthwhile pursuit, worth some pencils, some paper, and a little time.
Re:Use A Pencil! (Score:2, Insightful)
(As I was explaining to my family last christmas), with modern technology, it should take, oh, maybe an hour for the election to be finalized after is complete.
You're correct, you get a paper voting ballot, and a pencil. You go in, make your marks, and then put the ballot into an optical scanner in front of the election volunteers. The scanner decides what it thinks you penciled in, and displays it on a monitor that you, but not other people, can see. You then press a button, "yes", or "no" to indicate that the scanner recorded things properly. If you press "no", the scanner spits your ballot back out to you and you get another one until you figure out how to fill in circles properly.
At various times during the day (say, every two hours), the storage devices in the machines are replaced so that the counts can be verified and uploaded during the day. Once everybody's done, you have an electronic count with all the paper needed to back it up if you need to do hand counts.
Of course, that wouldn't make some company selling a propriatary system that you must sign a non-disclosure agreemnt to buy, any money,
Re:Interesting thing...... (Score:4, Insightful)
Democracy and Freedom are not the same thing. Democracy is one group ruling everyone. Democracies can make rules that abridge free speech, take property without compensating the owner, declare a national religion, make it criminal to put unapproved substances into your body, and MAKE you vote.
Freedom means freedom from other people -- even if they are in the majority. The Bill of Rights is anti-democratic in a sense, for example. There are certain things that shouldn't be put to a simple majority vote.
Another way to look at it is in terms of collectivism versus individualism -- society versus the individual. More than just being different things, democracy and freedom are sometimes opposites. Thats hard to see when you're on the majority side making the rules for everyone. Its easy to see when you're in the minority being made to submit.
American Democracy (Score:1, Insightful)
the world hates us because we have so much. it isn't because we're greedy. no. we have freedom. freedom to do whatever you want, take risks, go where you want, try anything, be anything. and we have laws that protect even the smallest minorities.
if arrested, what other country in the world would you want to be in. yeah, thoguht so.
where else you gonna see the most visible representative of a nation to the world(secretary of state), be a member of 10% of the population. huh?
what other country has freely admitted its wrongs, and expended more energy and money rectify said wrongs? well i'm waiting...
had algore won, you'd all be happy? did you check the party affiliation of berman and hollings lately? hmmm...
And what other country has given even one life, let alone thousands and thousands, to free people from other countries, to bring them democracy. American blood saved the world. A little thanks might be nice. Not that we're holding our breath...
America is the model for the world. Brazil is attempting to become a democratic society. Let's hope they do. I wonder who their model for democracy is?
sig
Re:Use A Pencil! (Score:3, Insightful)
The main advantage of paper ballots is that everyone can see the whole process, and knows what's going on. No broken machines or dodgy software -- or even allegations of dodgy software, which would be just as harmful to confidence in the democratic process.
But our government is talking about electronic voting, and even voting over the internet. They seem to think it will increase participation. It won't! The reason people don't vote is because they don't want politicians running the country, not because the voting method is old-fashioned. Instead, more people voting from home will just increase the possibility of pressurised voting.
Re:not without failure (Score:1, Insightful)
About the security of the system: yes, it's breakable. In order to avoid that, there are several different checks: first of all, party members may examine all of the source code. There's a "compilation party", where the final binaries are generated, and the party members then check the MD5 hash from the final executable. At any time, party members may ask to verify any of the electronic machine's disks and compare the hash.
Additionally, some machines, randomly selected, can print the votes cast directly from the keyboard, in order to double-check the results. The machines that get this extra mechanism are randomly selected. Also, this morning, a randomly-selected number of already-installed machines was removed from the place where they were already installed, and with the presence of all party members, votes were randomly cast and the expected result compared. No need to say the votes are encrypted while transmited, etc, and there's a physical double-check anyway to avoid man-in-the-middle attacks.
Unfortunately a system where there's a key for every candidate is not possible - in this election we will vote for President, State Governor, two Senators, and two Deputies, one for the National Assembly and another for the State Assembly. There are thousands of candidates for deputy. The numerical system is well established, and it's actually not much harder than picking your long-distance carrier. I know my party number is 13, so I know I will vote for the candidates of this party if I cast the votes as "13 OK 13 OK 13 OK...".
There were surveys that indicated the electronic system is actually better for the illiterate. They are used to using automatic teller machines, and the numeric system helps - everyone knows how to count money, and the machine displays a picture of the candidate you are voting for. A little-known rule says, however, that if you take more than 4 minutes to cast your vote, you will be given the chance to vote on paper.
The electronic system is not perfect, however. While it has Braille engraved on the keys, it doesn't give feedback to blind voters. Some of the machines in this election DO have headphones, but they are experimental. There are also doubts on the general security of the system, but this is being worked on with the best security check: human inspectors and random or appointed-by-parties checks.
Sorry for my poor English. I am actually an American-turned-Brazilian at an early age :)
Rebecca Mercuri (Score:3, Insightful)
The bar is set pretty high, so unless each question can be answered, electronic voting is a poor solution.
Not news.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Due to the high illiteracy rate in the Northeast, campaigners would hand out a R$5 bill, with a card containing a candidates picture, and the numbers required to vote for that candidate (no names, text, or anything else). The most frequent complaint of fraud was that they did this during the morning of the election (not allowed), not that they were essentially paying for votes!
The other problems that occured were that some areas didn't have access to electricity, that some voting machines got stolen and were never turned in, that some (idle)threats were made against those that voted a certain way. It appeared, though, that the electronics worked pretty well, at least none of them "blue-screened".
Personally, I'm opposed to the idea of electronic voting, because there is no hard-copy to use as "proof of vote".
The system works (inside view) (Score:3, Insightful)
I can tell you all, brazilians and everyone, else that the system is very good. Aside from some failing hardware which accounts for up to 3% of total computer ballots, we have a very highly reliable system.
The most vulnerable part of the system is still the voters. In some places people really trade votes for shoes, money, promises, glasses, food. It's a shame. Our politicians diguised their ruling through ignorance on a "democratic" talk of opening the system for everyone, including completely uneducated people. They are the most influenciable ones cause they also are the poorest. The politicians knows it and keeps them uneducated so they can't escape this vicious cycle. This is our most shameful problem.
But with all this problems we still have one of the most efficient voting systems. Counting starts almost immediately after the end of voting. No one cam manipulate the votes. There is a high degree of cryptography applied in the system. No single party or group knows the algorithm and the keys at the same time. Only a handful of people know the keys, to be precise.
Perhaps the best assurance of the reliability of the results are that the TSE needs to have a perfectly clean and fast system. This happens cause the work this court does, aside from preparing the elections, could be done by other courts. Judgement of election problems could easily be done by normal justice channels. But the very good levels of satisfaction with the work done by TSE (and all lower level election courts) makes them immune to the constant attacks on its existence. Make a bad move and say goobye to all that power and visibility that a position there can get.
After this somewhat extensive reply I would like to say that people from other countries cannot imagine the real dimensions of our elections: 115 million voters, 6 president candidates, thousands of candidates for other positions (we are voting for 6 positions in total). It's like 5 or 6 elections in one. And we do not want to have the really shameful example of the USA where two president candidates admited frauding the elections. Our system make it impossible here. And for those that do not trust anything, we are introducing a printed paper copy of the voting, obviously not revealing the voter. Anytime you can go there and verify if the printed votes represent exactly what the computer ballot system says. And the voter look at the printed copy, can confirm it's what it was inputed and, if all ok, just press Confirm and the printed vote is kept at the ballot automatically, with the electronic one computed. For the paranoid, the software used, including the sources, was seen by computer experts hired by the political parties. Let's say that all the precautions were taken in account.
For all us brazilians, good voting. For the others keep looking, we are doing a good job here.
Re:American Democracy (Score:2, Insightful)
The world doesn't hate us becasue we have so much. But many in the world envy our power. It's the nature of anyone or any organization with power--expect envy and antipathy. I have traveled abroad (Asia, Europe, Latin America) and have felt it personally--though very rarely in Latin America. I know what it's like to be acosted on a subway, or when walking down a street, simply for the fact of being an American. I've seen my friends called 'black devils,' have been personally called 'an American bastard' a 'white devil,' an 'American pig,' heard 'Yankee go home,' etc. And it was hard for me to understand until I realized how simple the answer really is--jealousy. Plain and simple.
The US is such a behemoth that it can never tread lightly. If we move in any direction, make any sound, the world recognizes it. That makes us clumsy sometimes--and always does it reveal just how powerful we are. Were I a citizen of another country, it would have to seem ghastly sometimes. "My God! Who do they think they are? You just can't do that!" But, rightly or wrongly, we can. There isn't a square inch of this earth that we can't touch, and a very small action or operation, in our eyes, is viewed as huge in the eyes of others--precisely because it would truly be a huge endevour by them to do so, even if it were possible. Say, for example, parking a couple ships in the Indian Ocean and launching some missles at bin Laden back in '99. For us, no big deal, a morning's work and then time for lunch. For most other countries, not even possible or, at least, would be a huge operation. (I was jumped in an alley for that one). But now it's my turn becasue I'm back in my beloved, imperfect, sometimes garish, sometimes crude, but always beautiful and truly miraculous nation.
Europe, not too terribly long ago, 200,000 Muslim men, women, and children were butcherd just a few hours away from Rome, Paris, and Berlin while you did *nothing*. The US--on the other side of the Atlantic--finally said "that's enough" and did something about it. Only then were you all too glad to join on our coattails and try to salvage some dignity. I have friends there right now still fixing the mess in your backyard. Arabs are safer here, in the US, than Jews are in Europe. Germany and France contributed to the building of nuclear production facilities in Iraq and then condemned Israel for blowing it up when you lost your paychecks for it. The US spent thousands of lives fixing your fucked up politics for the 2nd time in 20 years, then spent 100s of billions of dollars propping you up after WWII--including it's former enemy countries. Then, while sipping your wine in safety and leisure, you swindled GIs on the streets and, to this day, talk of how garish and uncouth we are. We maintain a nation of thousands of square kilometers, between the two largest oceans in the world, with every religion, ethnicity, and culture imaginable within it, while the EU can't agree on the color of shit and won't even consider letting Turkey--a very deserving nation--into the most basic of government alliances, much less the EU.
Middle East, why does your elite insist on going to the West for education, medicine, and science instead of building it there? Why do you say the West is condemning you to poverty when the obvious recipe for economic prosperity is a vibrant democracy? Name one rich country that isn't democratic! Why are your monarchies--a wicked and vulgar form of government--never critisized by *anyone* in the Middle East or Arabs living abroad?
Asia, with the notable exeptions of Singapore and Japan, get some transparency in your governments and financial systems. Much is being done in this vein and it's encouraging, but along side of this, please bury your hatred for one another. I live in the States, where I've seen it action, people from different Asian cultures can and do get along. Koreans can date and be friends with Thais--Japanese with Taiwnaese, Vietnamese with Indonesians. Please make it a concious effort.
Latin America, you are my brothers and I love you (much of my family is Latin American, and living there). But don't try patronizing the US on cultural grounds. You have much to be proud of, but your culture is not inherently better than ours--or anyone else's, for that matter. Yes, tractor pulls in the US don't point toward an enlightened culture, but banging drums and blaring trumpets at a tennis match doesn't either. And, if you are going to be fatalistic about your governments' fraud and inefficacy, be prepared to accept the consequences. Especially in a democracy--people generally get the governments they deserve.
Now back to my crass, uncouth, and beautiful American life. I think it's time for a cheeseburger and horse trough full of beer. I love this place.
Re:wow, great! (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, and it doesn't even require being a Kennedy, though that does seem to help.
Sometimes the results can be pretty freakish, though. Just look at the followup to Senator Al Gore Sr., VP Al Gore Jr. Scary.