Voting Machines Banned by Dutch Minister 155
5heep writes "Dutch Government Renewal Minister Atzo Nicolai has banned the use of one type of computer voting machine in national elections next month. The turnabout came after a group called We Don't Trust Voting Computers protested the vulnerability of electronic voting to fraud or manipulation. The reason for this ban is the radio signals emitted by the machines which can be used to peek at a voters' choice from several dozen meters away."
Hey Slashdot (Score:3, Insightful)
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Dutch voting computers remain in use (Score:2)
A few minor improvements have been made, but the basic problem remains: voting computers are a black box, and it's impossible for normal voters to check if they work properly, if their vote is being counted, if somebody has messed with it (and it is easy to mess wi
Better late than never, I guess... (Score:5, Informative)
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There have been roughly two types of voting machines in use in the Netherlands: one produced by Nedap and one produced by Sdu. The latter is the one that is banned a few days ago, because they could be spyed on from a distance. Curiously enough, the platform "we don't trust voting machines" proved that voting machines can be spyed on a few weeks ago, but they proved that with the Nedap machine.
The platform never had a chance to test this problem with the Sdu, since they only had acces
Give me something I can Count! (Score:5, Informative)
Computer Ballots don't leave the average Joe with any sense that they can be verified.
Too much potential for problems with Electronic voting from a voter perception perspective.
I like putting my little X on the ballot.
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It ain't so hard:
- Enter voting office
- Receive a "voting paper"
- Enter voting booth
- Insert voting paper into machine
- Push the button for the candidate you want. (Machine's critical components are covered in faraday cage, to stop any readable transmissions)
- Vote is printed on paper
- Check the print and fold the paper along the prefolded line, so text is no longer visible
- Publicaly put it in the urn (where they just fall in a disorder
Re:Give me something I can Count! (Score:5, Insightful)
But, in fact, there is no reason to reduce cost in this process. Cost shouldn't matter here, since secret, equal, free elections are a crucial process within democratic systems. Besides that, the pen and paper method is the most simple method you have, everybody understands it. In fact it's so simple, everyone can audit the whole process. Contrary to that, audits of computer-based systems can only be done by a few experts (and a complete audit goes from a security audit of the software down to as far as checking the hardware for possible modifications).
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The proponents of an electronic voting system don't disagree about the importance of secret, equal, free elections. The part that causes the disagreement is whether this can be achieved with electronic machines, which would also allow cost savings, faster counting and other possibilities, like allowing people to change their vote, translation into many, many languages at every polling station, et
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Not that having a modicum of privacy isn't important, but the priority is lower than ensuring that vote coun
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Machine? Where I live we use a pencil.
Count your blessings: you live in America! (Score:1, Flamebait)
And it's not like the Dutch know what a proper voting machine looks like. As Taco himself said, these Dutch diebolds have less space than a Nomad and no wireless: lame
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Paper receipts are worthless, as well as redundant, as they will only be used in a re-count, which will only be instigated due to a grounded contention which won't arise except when the rigged vote is particularly clumsy.
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Not only the average Joe, they don't leave any Joe with a sense they can be verified becouse they can't!
>Too much potential for problems with Electronic voting from a voter perception perspective.
It's not just preception.
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Mind you, I'd prefer such ballots to be marked with a pen or a permanent-ink marker stamp, since this eliminates mostly the issue of pencil-filled ballots with either not-dark enough marks and/or erased marks, which can open the door to serious voter fraud.
OVC and populex do this (Score:2)
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I totally agree with this poster and cannot imagine why he was modded as redundant. I feel the slight as if it were my own post.
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WTF? (Score:1)
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Unfortunately, there is only one party which has a non-standard character in it's full name (an 'è'), so when the noise frequency changes, you know the voter chose that particular party.
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The machine that's been banned is the SDU NewVote, which uses a Windows computer and a touchscreen. According to the report, the AIVD could view the entire contents of the screen.
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In the US, the common code name for shielding computer equipment is known as TEMPEST. Some Googling will find you lots of information on the problem.
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And once again (Score:2)
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Nah. It's just that the Dutch actually value their democracy.
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Security concerns regarding one particular type of voting machine were raised. They were proved to be valid. It is possible to determine, at a distance of tens of metres, what is on the display of machine. Through this, one can tell who is being voted for at any particular time. The ballot is no longer secret.
Because of this, that particular type of voting machine can no longer be used in elections. Other electronic voting machines will be tested for the same problem before they are allowed
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What's the big deal adding a paper trail? (Score:2, Interesting)
It would not add substantially to the cost, and the small rolls of paper that resulted would be perfect in cases where a recount was demanded or required
Re:What's the big deal adding a paper trail? (Score:4, Insightful)
Any electronic voting machine should print a ballot that you stuff in a box. Electronic tabulation of votes could be used for preliminary results, but the printed ballot that the voter can read and verify should be the final word.
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By the way, can somebody please gag Karl Rove? Thx.
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And even then: what's to stop the machine from printing extra ballots when it detects that no one is watching?
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o Al Gore
George Bush
and then after the voter has verified their ballot, have the printer change it to:
o Al Gore
o George Bush
with the circle next to George Bush filled in.
There are probably countless other ways to change the ballots if you can't observe the whole process (including printing additional fake ballots or replacing all the ballots in the printer bin). It's unnecessarily complicated while the ballot box has worked for
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The first problem is with giving a receipt. One of important reasons for keeping votes secret, is that vote-buying is made very difficult, since the buyer can never check that you actually voted as you say. Any kind of receipt that you take with you voids this, and vote-buying is a common problem with elections, especially in poorer countries.
Second problem: how do you know that the barcode is really random? A hacker could hack the code of the machine and give you a barcode that i
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Paper Jams? (Score:1)
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Re:Using a Point of Sale Device (Score:1)
- Each of those point of sale terminals has a printer (for paper records).
- Each has been thoroughly analysed to minimize the likelihood of hacking.
- At least here in Canada, many of the communications are encrypted.
- Due to widespread use, we have much empirical data on how hard / easy each machine is to hack.
- Some have even been developed to min
Van Eck Freaking (Score:2)
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Paper vs. Computers (Score:1)
In the case of an election, hackers can't hack paper ballots or fiddle with code. Stick with what works in this case.
If you go exposing something this important to an electronic medium, realistically, you risk catastrophy.
Is this flaw only present in E-voting? (Score:2)
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OTOH, a small camera+radio transmitter correctly placed in the booth is just fine for that job and any TLA can have them by dozen.
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WHY? (Score:2, Insightful)
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Conclusion: illiteracy is absolutely not an excuse for not having correct voting procedures.
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In Australia, every three years we have federal elections which have two ballots: One for the House of Representatives, and one for the Senate. We also have state elections every three to four years, which are also usually two ballots (one for the upper house, one for the lower house), and every four-ish years we have local government elections, which are usually one ballot.
Once every now an
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Nothing (Score:1)
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taking action works (Score:1)
The guy who started the group is a hacker, who started the best ISP in the Netherlands, XS4ALL. they have a very good record when it comes to consumer privacy and helping the internet evolve. He's a nerd, like most of us, but he can convince other people. We can do more if we try harder.
playing chess on a voting-machine (Score:2, Funny)
Which they did.
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Reasonable decision (Score:1)
This decision isn't about fraud (Score:2)
says the government minister. They're talking about van Eck eavesdropping. Think about the cost-benefit ratio for an attacker. The Dutch must take ballot secrecy really seriously.
Tempest equipment is economically out of the question, maybe this is a niche for an e-ink display.
Better idea... (Score:1)
Internet democracy (Score:1)
How to do that securely?
Well, first of all internet has the potential to bring a *HUGE* change, it could be much much more, a Direct Democracy where everybody could participate on every issue all the time and from every where.
When, Where, What. A revolution.
Of course there is one consequence: votes could be bought. Is it a problem? Can it be fought? To be decided by each group.
Here, I'm working on such an internet democracy too
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When I can read the Source (Score:2)
There is no legitimate reason not to allow the owners of voting machines to read every last bit of the code loaded onto any computer used to register or tally votes.
Otherwise, paper ballots, hand counted.
What I don't understand. (Score:2)
However, what I don't understand is why is it such a big deal that voters can't keep a receipt of how they voted. Or that votes have to be so secret. Yes it'll be good if they are secret or at least most of them.
So what if it means the voter can sell his/her vote?
Also, if someone could coerce 1 voter to vote a particular way (the proof being the receipt) AND get away with it, if you are pragmatic it is
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I'm just wondering why people make a bigger fuss about something (not perfectly anonymous systems) that only affects a few votes (unless the country is already screwed up) and don't make a big fuss over something (crappy electronic voting systems) that can affect magnitudes more votes without a trace.
Seems like one of those magician tricks where the magician distracts the audience.
You have: "Pick a candida
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It's not ALL voting computers, just one type, which makes up about 10% of their machines (according to TFA). And that's just for the next election, which comes in 3 weeks. You can't redesign a machine & get it certified & redeployed in that kind of time frame, so banning it makes sense.
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vulnerable (Score:2)
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It will not be hard to add a "receipt" function to a voting machine, but again, I don't think the additional value would really make the election less vulnerable.
But then again, I could be wrong.
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Think about it. Your examples revolve around money or human life. The manufacturers of those machines __must__ get them right, or there is immediate finantial fallout.
Those examples do not produce hidde
The average voter? (Score:2)
The average voter?
Would anyone know if votes were tampered with in software?
Paper and pencil, please! I will count the votes myself if no one else wants to.
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First, they are banning one type of machine, not electronic voting.
And it's different because voting fraud can potentially have worse consequences than those, and one of the fraudsters could be the guy that organizes the event, the governing party, with all the power available.
Plus, voting machines are everyday proved insecure. Of cou
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Even more so in this special case. I was told by well-informed sources that these machines are actually Windows-XP-based and have GPRS connection. Rumors say that the Dutch secret service had security-audited this type of machine, and seems to have found some potential security holes, which seems to be the unofficial reason for the ban.
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There is no "fix" for voting machines... (Score:3, Interesting)
One solution often presented is the XBOX-type of security - encrypted links between hardware, redundancy etc etc - but as *we* know this type of security is breakable. You only have to do this once to break the security of all voting machines.
Apart from this, some people mention the use of a paper trail. This trail itself has to be counted fully then, irrespectful of the
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Voting machines can be constructed in any way possible, but never completely exclude the fact that you can commit fraud with them.
What about the Indian voting machines [wikipedia.org]?
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If you make the paper trail ballots machine-countable as well, even recounting shouldn't be too hard. Manual recounting would
Paper trail works for me (Score:2)
Now afterwards, you have a group of people (with mixed or no political affiliation) count the paper votes. It might take longer, but in a few days you've got your initial electronic vote, and what is hopefully a consistent paper vote to back it up. If there's a big difference between the two, it's time to do some serious investigating as to why.
Re:In a related story ... (Score:5, Insightful)
This last point is a little fuzzy, because I'm sure electronic voting machines are better than poorly-designed punch-card ballots, and maybe some other flawed mechanisms. But the best system available right now is optical-scan paper ballots that can easily be hand-audited and hand-recounted. They are easy to use, require only a very circumscribed use of technology, and can easily be verified by people if there are any problems or a very close result.
Sure -- I don't think anyone is saying we should never use computers for voting. Fix the problems, and then use them for voting. Advocates of electronic voting seem to be saying we should do it the other way around, which is insane.
The current round of voting machines are insultingly under-engineered, considering the problems I listed above. There are many types of threats to the integrity of voting machines, and Diebold et. al. aren't interested in addressing them. They're more interested in shutting down debate and research about them, in fact, which is very worrying to me.
-Esme
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Okay, I'm saying it: We should never use computers for voting.
Computers don't really bring much to the table that's positive, but they do bring a lot of potential problems. I would consider it if and only if it were the case that the computer did nothing beyond print out a piece of paper with your choices clearly designated that you could then drop in a box. At least that wou
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Then the envelopes are opened in presence of guys from both parties and the papers are counted.
We do like this in France, we are 60 millions and we have OFFICIAL election results at around midnight when the polls are closing at 20.00, of course in the meantime you have the exit polls estimates but the offici
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Not to be Luddite or anything, but as far as I can tell, it's pretty much perfect for voting. Understandable, machine-count for speed, and verifiable.
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"What next? Seriously, why is voting any different from these other very important uses of computers? Doesn't it make more sense to fix the problem rather than ban the machines?"
There's a very good reason why it's different: because in a secret ballot recorded by computer there is no way to verify the integrity of the data. In all of the examples you list above (electronic trading, ATMs), it is possible to compare the data in the computer with the data you expect to be in the computer.
For example, i
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The automated financial transactions (like your "automated ATM machine teller machine") are auditable.
The life & safety equipment is subject to extensive testing.
Unfortunately, the voting machines are not subject to the same scrutiny.
Have you considered that threatening to ban voting machines might just be one way to "fix the problem"?
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If a group published a method whereby terrorists could take over the flight computer remotely there would be an outcry and you would expect the FAA to act. I'm glad the Dutch government is taking seriously the exposure of a risk to their democratic process.
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If voting machines were tested as rigorously as avionics I don't think there would be as much of a problem.
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