Information Technology and Voting 128
ChelleChelle writes, "In an interview in ACM Queue, Douglas W. Jones and Peter G. Neumann attempt to answer the question: Does technology help or hinder election integrity?" From the article: "Work in this area is as politically loaded as work on evolution or stem cells. Merely claiming that research into election integrity is needed is seen by many politicians as challenging the legitimacy of their elections... One of the problems in public discussions of voting-system integrity is that the different participants tend to point to different threats. Election-system vendors and election officials generally focus on effective defense against outside attackers, usually characterized as hackers. Meanwhile, many public interest groups have focused on the possibility of election officials corrupting the results."
Motives (Score:4, Insightful)
Absolutely untrue. What could be more hacker-proof than a paper ballot system?
No, what election officials evidently want is speed and ease-of-use. Hopefully they also want accuracy and precision, but the evidence suggests that many don't value those as highly.
What election-system vendors want is money. They make promises regarding speed, ease-of-use, accuracy, and precision to get that money. They may have excellent intentions, too, but its the profit that motivates them.
"Meanwhile, many public interest groups have focused on the possibility of election officials corrupting the results."
That's always been a problem. It's just that now, the inner workings of many election systems are no longer observable. That makes it very difficult to verify the integrity of the election process.
Lack of speed - disenfranchised voters (Score:5, Insightful)
process, leading to long lines, with waits in the hours.
Many people can't wait that long and have to go to work.
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The question is, are you most likely to find that "busy polling place" in poorer arears that are more likely to vote for democrats, essentially disenfranchising the voters who are least likely to be able to show up late for work because they're voting? That's what happened hear in Chicago in 2004. There were a number of overcrowded polling places on the poorer south si
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Well, I live in a place that's fairly affluent, or at least becoming fairly affluent -- we have a Panera Bread, an Applebees, etc, though a few years ago it was farm country - - but our polling place, like all in my home state of Michigan, is in a local public school building.
W
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Provisions are made for people who have religious beliefs preventing them voting on a Saturday.
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View from northern Colorado (Score:2)
Perception (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember in politics truth is putty.
How dare they be insulted, is what I ask? (Score:2)
And with RovoCalls and voter list purging and obvious conflicts of interest all over the place, who really can be blamed for wanting some level of assurance that the procedures and structure of election administration i
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“Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything.” — Joseph Stalin
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Well, as far as malicious electronic hacking goes, you are correct, and I'm not gonna disagree with the spirit of your statement. However, a dedicated individual can still do a lot of damage to paper ballots. Its not as easy as twiddling a few bits, but it can be done. A few dedicated individuals working together can cause even more havok. Also, given that the voting machines are not networked, this means that one person hacking one machine
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This statement is unsubstantiated, and should be retracted.
Every system which is capable of being reprogrammed is 'networked'. The network may be sneakernet, but it is networked none the less.
Many electronic voting machines do have modems or other network cards for reporting or maintenance purposes. Those which do not generally receive updates and programming through smart cards, which are as capable of bearing malicious content as any other data t
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See SQL.
KFG
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Rewind to the turn of the last century, and the invention of the mechanical vote tabulating machines. You know, the machines with the big levers that closed the curtain behind you? You selected your candidate by pushing a little lever down, and then registered your votes by pulling the big lever the other way. The machine went "CHUNK", registered your vote, reset all the little levers, and opened the curtain so you could leave. What was one of t
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Plus, the ballots arrive before the election
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The only thing that I don't like about it is cuts a week from the time I have to evaluate the candidates because the ballot needs to be posted sufficiently early to arrive at a central location by election day. It's not a show stopper but it's a bit hard sometimes to arrange things so that I can make an informed choice by the week before election day.
I've spoken with a host of people who've expressed th
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Vote by mail does have a really big impact on turnout levels. It also speeds up final counts quite a bit, because the county elections offices can start counting a huge pile of early returns first thing in the morning instead of waiting for precinct deliveries. (In my county, about 44% of ballots were at the elections office by Monday at noon.)
VBM comes with its own problems, of course. It makes easier various sorts of retail fraud such as false registrations, voter intimidat
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In most parts of the world the only public information about voters is their name and address. The majority of people are not members of any political party and it's perfectly possible for someone to be a member of more than one party. The only information political parties on how people are likely to vote are their own membership lists and "canvas retur
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I'd hardly call paper ballots "hacker-proof", maybe "computer-hacker-proof" but paper ballots can be hacked any number of ways (ballot stuffing, spoiling, ballots going missing, simply being miscounted etc.). Voter fraud existed even way back when paper ballots were the only option.
That being said I like the optical-scanner/paper ballot system they use in my state. It provides a nice balance, presumably impartial machines do
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The problem you have is that you want an election system where only the voter knows how they voted (to avoid intimidation et cetera) but also the counting is verifiably accurate. Unfortunately these aren't compat
bogus (Score:1)
Warning: That question makes the assumption that "election integrity" actually even exists at all in the first place.
Lost opportunity (Score:1)
In the end... (Score:4, Insightful)
1) Sincere trust in the vote-counting process
2) Sufficient respect for the system to not make gratuitous accusations
To the degree that people rightly, wrongly or dishonestly don't buy into the system, there's no technology that can prevent that.
That said, that security researcher who is allways linked here, who argues for pencil and paper even though the blurbs always make him out to be a fellow source code-fetishist, is spot-on.
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People trust technology when there is sufficient evidence that the technology is trustworthy, reliable, and sufficiently tested. When technology experts say "this is rock solid", people trust that. Up until now, there has been far more skepticism and, at best, guarded optimism surrounding the new vot
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See, I just don't believe that. The appeal of conspiracy theories or cheap-ass cynicism is a lot stronger for some people than the facts. It's a social issue, not technical.
On the other hand (and maybe this is your point), you do want to have technology that rational, fair people do fully trust. Plus you want it
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If your voting experience is like the one reported by CBS News [cbs4.com], or if you are an offic
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I have better idea, lets eliminate gullible morons instead.
Oh wait, were talking about America so we would have to get rid of the whole goddamn country.
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Can't beat paper votes and scrutineers. (Score:4, Insightful)
Why bother bringing technology into the voting system? Polls are infrequent, so there's no real cost benefit to automation. It's not like voting is being done every day and needs to be automated.
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It's not Luddism if you want a new technology to actually be an improvement before you switch to using i
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Re:Can't beat paper votes and scrutineers. (Score:4, Insightful)
Many counters have counting registers that can be set to start at any offset you like. Start one candidate at +X votes and the other at -Y and so long as X and Y are in the statistical noise you've done your part to help rig an election without giving anyone reason to call for a recount.
Now, given a properly designed electronic system with voter verifiability, any joe can head out to someone he trusts (his computer, the Library, the League of Women Voters, the local Republicrat party office, all of the above) and have them verify that his vote was registered correctly and added into the final count correctly, and you can catch cheating at a very fine level (of course we'd still need to define policy for how to launch an investigation, but evidence gathering can be done by anyone). You can't get that with paper.
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Which is why any system with electronic counters must feature full-manual-count audit of randomly selected precincts, preferably by persons not responsible to the people immediately responsible for running the election and d
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(hint: not possible unless you introduce a 'trusted body' who is allowed to know who everyone voted for)
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Several electronic voting systems have been proposed that allow for verification while maintaining both ballot secrecy and receipt-freeness (see work by Chaum, Neff, and Naor & Moran for some examples). There has also been good work done on ensuring the hardware is free or side-channel attacks that might be used to do thi
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Optical scan vote counting is potentially a good idea, but it leaves a loophole compared to hand counting the ballots.
Consider the following situation from the 2004 election:
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There are a LOT of other ways for a mechanical voting system to work without having to rely on an electronic machine. In California, we use something called "InkaVote" which is basically an ink-tipped prod that you use to mark your votes. The ballot slip slides firmly into the voting machine, and you flip the pages over and put a mark next to e
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People frequently try to amend or legislate away the right to vote, though usually only around the edges, with proposals notionally designed to "reduce fraud" that have little connection to any provable substantial fraud, but big connections to making it harder for people to be able to vote honestly.
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It depends what the technology is. "Voting machines" remove transparancy from the process. Whereas having video cameras view the ballot box increases transparancy. Another userful technological addition would be to have ballot box
Right tool for the job (Score:1)
While the concept of a truly programmable tool is an amazing and powerful thing, we have to remember that some tools are just not right for some jobs.
It has always seemed to me that Godel implies that 1) computers aren't great for security/intelligence work, and 2) computers
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Cyberspace (Score:1)
For the copying music industry, communities and various other businesses have already presented v
Perceptions are Critical (Score:3, Interesting)
If people have no faith in the validity of the process - then the legitimacy of the results are shrouded in doubt - and then the basis of the democratic system starts to fall apart.
So by using technology the way the US is - no method to independently verify counts, no unalterable audit trail, lack of confidence in the integrity of the system - has not just hampered the process, but is severely damaging it
I can't speak for everyone (Score:3, Interesting)
So while there may be a ton of voting systems that are flawed, it seems there are some excellent vendors out there. Now if only we could get more precincts to use the good systems.
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Things like smart cards are nothing more than bling-bling. There's no way for the average voter (or even the average voting official) to recognize if one of those things has been compro
Technology will lead us into a grand new age... (Score:2)
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Vote With Your Feet (Score:2)
Robot (R-NE) (Score:3, Interesting)
I had the good ole fashioned pen and bubbles! (Score:2)
Whose IT? (Score:2)
IT in voting systems reduces trust (Score:4, Interesting)
Personally I think the second part of this paragraph is the most important. One of the huge problems with any use of information technology as a fundamental part of an election process is trust. Above anything else, an election system should be trusted by as much of the population as is possible, and to be fully trustworthy, the election process has to be fully visible and understood by as many people as possible.
It's quite easy for most people to understand a manual election. It's as simple as voters making a mark on a paper ballot, putting it in a secure box, and then having the votes counted afterwards. Any concerned groups from nearly any cross-section of society can examine the process, provide observers, and make sure it's being done properly.
Wrapping up the selection, verification and counting process inside computers reduces the amount of people who can understand what's happening by orders of magnitude. It doesn't really matter if the voting system is open source, well designed and administered, or whatever. It's always going to exclude the majority of the population from being able to fully understand how it works, and to trust that it's working properly.
It's quite possible that IT systems can help with elections, and they already are in some places, but I don't personally think they should be used at the expense of a manual process, and I don't think they should be depended on for anything other than an early indication of the result. Voting machines, when used, should always provide voter-verified paper trails that are always deposited in a secure box in a voter-verified way using a fully visible and voter-controlled process. Manual recounts should be mandatory if there's any reasonable doubt of the outcome by anyone.
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The Man Behind the Curtain (Score:2)
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The problem most states have is that they do not have a large pre-existing and non-partisan based bureaucracy in place with a tech background, that possesses an understanding of the potential pitfalls with electronic voting machines, along with vast experience in enforcement. These States should look for help from one that has a long history of dealing with honest and transparent auditing from electronic devices.
In Nevada, Dean Heller, the Scretary of State, decided to tap the knowledge of the Nevada Gami
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In 2008 they'll all be replaced with digital devices, as per the HAVA law Bush's Republican Congress pushed on America. Faith no more.
I'm looking at voting by mail until those digital devices ar
Threats/Security (Score:1)
Re:Threats/Security--also, (Score:1)
What's wrong with a challenge? (Score:2)
The presumption that challenging the leadership (including the proprietary of that leadership) is somehow a bad thing is a holdover from the days of kings and dictators
Vote By Mail (Score:3, Insightful)
We should probably replace the counting machines with humans, picked from random volunteers and OK'd (and monitored) by each party on the counted ballots, recorded on videotape. One step at a time.
Correction: Vote By Mail (Score:2)
Vote by Mail [dailykos.com] is the answer to the question of how to vote.
Vote By Mail is not the answer (Score:2)
I personally think the federal government should step in and remove all the canditates voted in (and overturn all the laws passed) since Vote By Mail was initiated in Oregon, under it's powers to ensure a democratic form of government in each state of the union.
Unlike absentee ballots Vote By Mail ballots are not invalidated by a vote on election day but are in leu of a real vote and so it does not have the same protection aga
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The federal government has no power to ensure a democratic form of government in each state.
It has an obligation to ensure a republican form of government in each state.
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Going to a public polling place, where poll workers can make sure each person votes privately, helps ensure people vote their own way. Sure, their "significant others" can still try to beat them into voting "the right way", but only the voter truly knows what vote they cast when cast alone, but in public.
Once we can fix t
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Well, its a way of eliminating some problems of vote-by-machine, though of course it necessarily means your ballot being handled by a numebr of relatively unaccountable people between you and the elections office, without even the show effort into security that goes on with paper ballots cast at polling stations.
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The intimidation seems fixable only with traditional voting in public, alone in a supervised booth. To overcome the inconvenience, the booth should issue receipts good for a day off (with two weeks notice) any time until the next election, as a federal holiday. Now, if those days off were tradeable, we
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It's still not going to remove the statistical e
I'm Sure... (Score:2)
Tech I trust (Score:3, Insightful)
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The solution is modelled on the Internet (Score:1)
It depends ... (Score:2)
Zero automation voting using paper ballots is fraught with possibilities for error, mostly due to the normal and expected error rates from human counting (and ANY automated system also has a certain error rate that is a function of its design), but including all of the fraudulent errors that interested parties on all sides are wont to insert into the machinery.
The problem with computerize
Denver is having trouble (Score:1)
High Treason (Score:2)
Find the ring leaders and, regardless if it includes the President of the US, publicly execute them for High Treason. They've shamlessly destroyed what this cou
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treason#United_State
I'm all for legislation making electoral fraud severely punishable.
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incompatible (Score:2)
The two are simply incompatible.
Next?
Doug Jones website: (Score:3, Informative)
In particular, I recommend his essay on Paper Ballots. [uiowa.edu]
A Brief Illustrated History of Voting [uiowa.edu] is another excellent essay.
There are dozens of technical essays on voting systems on Jones' main Voting and Elections site. [uiowa.edu]
Paper Ballots and Hand Counting (Score:2)
Can't Verify Hand Counting Either (Score:2)
As other have said, it has the benefit of simplicity and trust, but it is not necessarily more accurate.
I think it is more profitable to analysis t
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When I speak about game theoreical framework, I have in mind an analysis that include the entire election appartus: method of selection of election officials, registration, etc. Vote counting is just one component.
I do object to the idea that we can achieve a perfect count, i.e. a god's eye view of what happened. In contrast, it's only possible to develop a system that is trusted by
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It's still got a hole, because there's got to be a last vote. A buyer/intimidator could just make you send an "override" out at the last minute, preventing the voter from overriding.
Secret voting in public is still the surest way, though it's got its own problem
So why do politicions not like it? (Score:2)
Tell them that, if they are innocent, they have nothing to hide.
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So many people have used Windows, that we don't really trust computers to be 100% reliable. However, most people don't understand how easy it is for a computer to be manipulated, and since they trust the people pushing computerized voting upon them, they don't realize the danger their democracy is in.
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