Open Source Electronic Voting Progress Limited

An anonymous reader points us to a story about how the problems with electronic voting mostly stem from one source: the lack of mandated standardization. The LinuxInsider article goes on to suggest that once the issue of a universal voting platform is solved, the way is paved for open-source software to address concerns over accuracy and transparency. Though the article states that "no open source program for voting machines yet exists," it should be noted that such software was successfully tested earlier this month. Quoting: "People debate the merits of e-voting for a variety of reasons, including suspicion of new technologies and a general distrust of politics, according to Jamie McKown, Wiggins professor of government and polity at the College of the Atlantic. 'Reports on e-voting security often de-contextualize the history of voter fraud in this country, as if boxes were somehow assumed to be better. You constantly hear calls for paper trails, and open and free inspection of voting machine source code. But it's a very thorny issue and one that has a lot of facets,' McKown told LinuxInsider."

Nope

[zogger]

Sorry, no computers need be involved at all, open source or closed source or some hybrid. You shouldn't need to be a programmer to verify the count as a volunteer at the end of the day. Any scheme that uses even "open source" software that is "justified" by saying "you can look at the code yourself" is still flawed as most people are not able to read code and understand it, and you still have no idea what happens during and after the election, you would have to stop and analyze the code every single step of the ballot trail. Skip a step = opportunity for compromise with a follow up coverup to hide the tracks. That's two big fat flaws in the idea, and either one is enough to rule out using computerized voting. And if you say "well, this scheme a,b,c uses a paper trail so it is mo bettah!!", so what's the point again then? Just *use the paper trail* as the primary way to vote for the election in the first place, skip the thousand buck computers and rube goldberg nonsense in the first place, including those stupid punch cards with "chads", they aren't needed either. If it takes "too long to count", here's an idea, a full 24 hour voting period, and it can even be a mandated federal holiday for that matter, so no one needs to miss work to go vote, no matter what shift they work or any other excuse.

I love computers, like most folks here have owned them for years and owned quite a few of them, but for elections, I like a plain ballot box and normal paper ballots.

"Open source" with elections is, I am sure, being pushed by well meaning folks, but if falls exactly under the "if your main tool use is a hammer, everything looks like a nail to you" syndrome. It just ain't needed, tons of other projects out there could use the dev help instead.

How to do this right

[Animats]

It's really not that hard to do this right.

• Voting machines should have to meet the Nevada Gaming Commission Standards for Gaming Devices [nv.gov]. Nevada has tough tamper-resistance standards (Immune to static shocks, 27KV sparks, 600V on the power input, and rapid turn on/off; must resist forced illegal entry, locked covers over circuit boards and program media), logging standards (counters that cannot be reset, non-erasable logs of program changes), and auditing standards ("Provide, as a minimum, a two-stage mechanism for validating all program components on demand via a communication port and protocol approved by the chairman.") There's no question those standards can be met; hundreds of thousands of slot machines are running right now in compliance with them. Those standards have been developed during decades of struggles against organized crime, employee theft, tax fraud, and attacks on slot machines, so they have serious real-world credibility.
• Use a minimal, published operating system, like Minix. Linux is too big to audit and changes too much.
• Use a paper trail within the machine, one that generates a printed copy of the voter's selections behind a window, along with a bar code representing the voter's choices. For recounts, run the paper log through a bar code scanner for a quick check, and if necessary, manually check votes against bar codes.
• Install two printers, and switch between them randomly, so that the paper trail doesn't provide enough information to tell who voted for whom. Use a printer that doesn't need ink or ribbon and makes a permanent record, like the old "silver printers" used in adding machines. Don't use a thermal printer; the print isn't permanent.

This really isn't that hard.

Electronic voting IS the problem

[ajs318]

Electronic voting IS the problem.

You can't trust what you don't understand, so any voting system needs to be Universally Comprehensible. An electronic system based on Open Source principles -- where the blueprints for the hardware and the listings of the software are available for all to examine -- is still really only comprehensible to a minority of the population. It doesn't satisfy the goal. (In the worst case, you could conceal a deliberate design defect by a combination of hardware and software techniques: anybody examining the hardware and not the software, or vice versa, will miss it.)

Just forget the whole thing as a failed experiment, and go back to pencil and paper and manual counting. Everybody knows what all the possible failure modes are, and how to minimise their effects.

Re:Standard is already set

[Teancum]

The United States got by for over 200 years without electronic voting. We should not switch to electronic voting simply because there is no functional problem with older methods of counting and there are no compelling benefits to justify switching. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

I don't know how you can legitimately say such a thing. There clearly are some very compelling problems that come from the current voting process that the electronic voting methods are trying to address. Or more to the point, consider the current problem domain:

• Number of contests - Be able to provide an efficient method of allowing for up to hundreds of different contests that take place on multiple levels of governance. For the USA, this means federal, state, county, municipal, and other levels of government jurisdiction. Each office must be treated as a separate contest (in most cases) and allow voters to cast their ballots independently from one race to the next.
• Universal suffrage - Open up the voting process to allow everybody that can be considered a citizen to be able to cast their vote, without coersion, intimidation, or other methods of manipulating voters that would prevent them from being able to cast an honest ballot that genuinely represents their opinion at the voting booth
• Privacy - Going back to the universal sufferage, all votes cast must be kept confidential and ultimately untraceable in terms of being able to tie the votes cast by a specific citizen to a particular candidate.
• Restriction to Citizens - In spite of seeking universal suffrage, elections should be restricted to actual citizens and not non-citizen residents. Citizenship actually means something, including the right to vote.
• Elimination of Fraud - Each person who casts a vote ought to be able to cast a vote, but they are entitled to only vote once. Any means that allows a person to vote more than once ought to be considered fraud, as well as voting when you are not eligible. Tracking when a voter casts a ballot (to ensure they vote only once) and elimination of voter records due to loss of citizenship, death, or commission of a felony (constitutionally permitted means of removing eligibility to vote) are a part of any voting system.
• Voting Accuracy - Methods of tracking ballots cast as well as counting the votes for each canidate must be as accurate as reasonably possible. 100% accuracy is the ultimate goal based on legitimate ballots cast and reported results.
• Speedy Results - While not the most important goal and arguably the least important of all of the requirements I'm listing, results from the election must be reported in a timely fashion in order to provide overall confidence in the results. Voting methods that delay election results are considered less desirable and raise questions in regards to fraud.

I don't know what you have been taught in your history classes, but voting methods to reach these goals have changed considerably in the past 200 years. I mention this requirement domain as it is what seems to be current goals sought after by most election clerks and policy makers in the USA... not that I'm necessarily mentioning any specific law here.

Off the top of my head I can name over a dozen different voting methods that have been used and discontinued over the years. Some form of electronic voting is certainly new, but it isn't even the first mechanical voting system used. What newer voting methods (including electronic voting ideas) provide is a chance to get closer to a "perfect" voting system... even if that isn't necessarily possible.

Back when voting was done by landed gentry in a public meeting where every voter would "announce" their votes verbally, I'm not so sure that they would even understand the current set of voting problems facing the USA today. But that isn't the method used any more, even though it was the voting method over 200 years ago. Surprisingly it is still done in some cases in the USA in some special but limited circumstances, but isn't the situation for a typical general election.