BS: Touch-Screen Voting -- Important Link

Subject: BS: Touch-Screen Voting -- Important Link
From: Don Firth
Date: 09 Jan 04 - 02:59 PM

I just listened to a program this morning (on my local NPR station, but the program was locally produced) discussing touch-screen paperless voting.

The woman who spoke in favor of requiring an auditable, verifiable, re-countable paper-trail (I can't recall who she was, but she was a computer expert of some kind) had example after example of screw-ups that have already occurred with touch-screen voting. One of the woollier ones was a town where the number of votes cast not only exceeded the number of registered voters in that town, it exceeded the total population of the town! When it's actually being fairly reliable (but only precariously so), most touch-screen voting systems are absolutely duck-soup for someone with a little computer skill to diddle.

BUT—the best argument against paperless touch-screen voting was the guy who spoke in favor of it. He accused anyone who opposed touch-screen voting of being a "Luddite" and wanting to go back to the horse and buggy, further claiming that insisting on an auditable, re-countable paper-trail betrayed an unpatriotic lack of confidence in the election officials. He interrupted the woman several times, made insulting remarks, and ignored the moderator's attempts to maintain a reasonably decorous debate.

Add to this the comment of the Diebold executive who said that he considered it his God-ordained duty to see that Bush was re-elected in 2004. . . .

The woman mention H.R.2239 and S.1980 and urged people to voice their concerns to their Congressional Representatives and Senators. Information HERE

Don Firth

P.S.: The woman noted that the "hanging chad" problem in Florida never would have happened if the chad trays had ever been cleaned out. Lousy maintenance on the part of the election workers.

Subject: RE: BS: Touch-Screen Voting -- Important Link
From: Amos
Date: 09 Jan 04 - 03:31 PM

See also this page at Wired concerning the flaws in the systems currently under consideration.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Touch-Screen Voting -- Important Link
From: Peace
Date: 09 Jan 04 - 06:00 PM

There's a money-saving idea in the making here. Collect fingerprints at that same time. It will also allow the government to track who voted for whom. I think I'd be a bit worried if I was American. Then, when it has been made clear after the spending of hundreds of millions of dollars that the damned system don't work worth a adrn, Canada will buy it and try it out, just in case. Jaysus. What a farce!

Subject: RE: BS: Touch-Screen Voting -- Important Link
From: Ebbie
Date: 10 Jan 04 - 05:08 PM

I don't understand why electronic voting wouldn't automatically produce a paper trail or at least a printable record of a a whole day's voting. If at each voting precinct, each machine was set up to participate as a database or even a document, each entry would produce a time-specific vote. Why wouldn't that be done?

brucie's supposition as to whether finger prints were then utilized in every manner of intrusive ways is worrisome. Any system is only as good as the people in power at any given time and subject to abuse at any time, even years into the future.

Subject: RE: BS: Touch-Screen Voting -- Important Link
From: Amos
Date: 10 Jan 04 - 06:33 PM

No reason it couldn't Ebbie -- but the only truly reliable path is to ensure a secure set of paper votes is kept by each machine so that in the event of a conflict some evidence can be reached for that has not been electronically tampered with. If you wait til the end of the day for the votes to be printed you have hours of possible hacks.

The ideal system would (a) capture the vote electronically and get the voter to confirm it was his intended vote (b)make an internal hard copy in case recount was needed and offer a hard copy to the voter (c)keep the electronic tally in some way that was as bulletproof as possible (d) do all of this with as sturdy a guarantee as possible of privacy, i.e. not linking the identity of the vote to the voter once he leaves the voting booth.

Not a simple equation but not undoable, either. The reason Diebold and Co is in trouble over their products is because they ignored best practices that have been in place in large software system development groups for years -- just ignored them for the sake of speed and ROI. From what I have seen their requirements management, configuration management, test planning, white-box and black-box testing and version control are all very slipshod and not disciplined at all. There's no sign they held a formal design review before going to code or traced their requirements to their test procedures in any way in what I have seen.

If this impression is correct they're not true engineers, just bright-eyed little hackers, and should not be trifling with democratic process.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Touch-Screen Voting -- Important Link
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 10 Jan 04 - 06:58 PM

Most of the problems that arise do so when people rush things, or feel that it is so important to get a result out in a hurry that making sure it is accurate takes a back seat. They blame the media, but the media aren't the people in charge of these things.

That especially seems to be a major problem over in the USA, with the ridiculous spectacle of November 2000 being the most dramatic example of what can go wrong.

I mean, you have absurd stuff like declarations of the poll in one half of the country before people in the other half have even finished voting. And these are on the basis of votes being counted before all the postal votes have even come in. What's the hurry?

Things like that get in the way of having a fair vote. And that gets made worse when it is clear that the people running things are more interested in getting a fast result, and in getting the one that suits their politics, than in ensuring that the vote is fair.

It seems pretty certain that electronic voting in this kind of system and this kind of climate is just going to be used in the same way, and make things even worse. They'll be declaring provisional results within minutes of the polls opening, and skewing the results. "What's the point in voting - we've lost"; "What's the point in voting, we've won."

And the stupid thing is that the neophiliacs in charge in this country are set on copying what they see happening across the Atlantic. Copying the bad things that is, not the good ones.

And on top of that, there's the potential for corrupting the entire vote system. Much easier than stuffing ballot boxes or voting the dead. It's tailor made for a totalitarian system.

Subject: RE: BS: Touch-Screen Voting -- Important Link
From: Gareth
Date: 10 Jan 04 - 07:09 PM

Kevin - I will agree that coruption of the Vote is potentially easier with electronic systems. But any system, be at paper or "bits of crocker" is reliant upon the iontegrity of the supervisors.

Gareth

Subject: RE: BS: Touch-Screen Voting -- Important Link
From: Amos
Date: 10 Jan 04 - 07:19 PM

Electronic systems, unfortunately, depend on the integrity of the supervisors AND the integrity of the programmers. Both groups historically are prone to yielding to different sorts of pressures for different reasons.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Touch-Screen Voting -- Important Link
From: Bev and Jerry
Date: 10 Jan 04 - 08:39 PM

In our county, we mark paper ballots with low-tech felt tipped pens. Then, after we've checked the ballot to be sure it's what we intended, we feed it into a magic scanning machine which reads the ballot and keeps the paper. When the polls close, the magic machine transmits the results over phone lines to the county seat and we know the results in about fifteen minutes. The paper ballots are transported to the county seat as well so they can be counted by hand if anyone wants to do that.

This system is simple, low cost, and difficult to tamper with.

Why doesn't everyone use it?


Bev and Jerry

Subject: RE: BS: Touch-Screen Voting -- Important Link
From: Amos
Date: 10 Jan 04 - 09:06 PM

B&J:

Too smart for their own good, i reckon!! :>)

A

Subject: RE: BS: Touch-Screen Voting -- Important Link
From: Peace
Date: 10 Jan 04 - 09:30 PM

It's called progress: We have so much of that.

Subject: RE: BS: Touch-Screen Voting -- Important Link
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 10 Jan 04 - 09:43 PM

"But any system, be at paper or "bits of crocker" is reliant upon the integrity of the supervisors."

Backed up by having systems in place which make it harder for them to get away with cheating. My instinct is that, the more clumsy and primitive the technology involved, the harder it is to cheat without it being spotted without too much difficulty.

Subject: RE: BS: Touch-Screen Voting -- Important Link
From: Ebbie
Date: 10 Jan 04 - 10:00 PM

Bev and Jerry, that's the same system we have in Alaska. About four years ago we upgraded to the Opti-Scan machines. We used to have the punch lever system; I don't know if there were problems with it, but it had gotten old and parts were not available, they said. I was working at the State Division of Elections when we switched over to the new system. I won the pool on which community would report in first! It took 11 minutes after the polls closed.

Subject: RE: BS: Touch-Screen Voting -- Important Link
From: DougR
Date: 11 Jan 04 - 04:59 PM

The punchcard system used in Florida shouldn't be a problem for anyone who possess primary reading skills.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Touch-Screen Voting -- Important Link
From: Ebbie
Date: 11 Jan 04 - 05:11 PM

DougR, you may not have noticed that that's what I said, but that is what Alaska had. When the parts are good and sharp, it works fine. When they are worn, they do not, and the parts are no longer available.

Subject: RE: BS: Touch-Screen Voting -- Important Link
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 11 Jan 04 - 06:26 PM

I would have thought democratically inclined people from all parts of the politcal spectrum ought to agree that it is not a good idea to introduce new and suspect systems of voting

Subject: RE: BS: Touch-Screen Voting -- Important Link
From: Amos
Date: 11 Jan 04 - 06:31 PM

DougR:

Depends on who's been disenfranchised, doesn't it?

A

Subject: RE: BS: Touch-Screen Voting -- Important Link
From: kendall
Date: 11 Jan 04 - 10:21 PM

Seems funny to me that the junk machines are all in black districts.

Subject: RE: BS: Touch-Screen Voting -- Important Link
From: DougR
Date: 11 Jan 04 - 11:47 PM

Amos: disinfranchised? And that would be who?

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Touch-Screen Voting -- Important Link
From: Amos
Date: 11 Jan 04 - 11:56 PM

There was a significant minority who were deprived of their franchise improperly during the 2000 election in the state of Florida, in case you have forgottten. Clearly you were not among them, living in Arizona andbeing a different color. This was an "error" committed by the Harris woman and her subcontractors. Remember? Don't be disingenuous all over again! Deja disingenue!

A

Subject: RE: BS: Touch-Screen Voting -- Important Link
From: GUEST,Clint Keller
Date: 12 Jan 04 - 01:36 AM

"I will agree that coruption of the Vote is potentially easier with electronic systems. But any system, be at paper or "bits of crocker" is reliant upon the iontegrity of the supervisors." -- Gareth

It seems to me that it would be wise to make corruption as difficult as possible. Why would you want a system that is easier to corrupt? Explain.

clint

Subject: RE: BS: Touch-Screen Voting -- Important Link
From: kendall
Date: 12 Jan 04 - 01:16 PM

"Those who vote decide nothing. Those who COUNT the votes decide everything." (Joe Stalin)

Subject: RE: BS: Touch-Screen Voting -- Important Link
From: LadyJean
Date: 13 Jan 04 - 12:37 AM

I was minority clerk at Ward 14 District 8 of The County of Allegheny for years. I grew to hate those big old steel voting machines. I did a real number on my back trying to move one once. BUT! The old machines left a paper trail with a vengeance. There were copies and more copies of the voting record. I've still got mine. I think I could throw them out, but I don't dare.
The other thing I hated were the *&^%$#@#@$^%&*><><&^%$#@!@#$%^&!!!! funny write in votes.
Oh how I loathed those merry pranksters who wrote in Lance Ito, Howard Stern, O.J. Simpson, JLo. We could, safely, ignore the votes for cartoon characters. But not the jokers who wrote in real people, blissfully unaware that they had added an extra hour to a very long day.
Now, consider, some clever undergraduate hacks into the touch screen voting system, and fixes it so that Space Ghost is elected mayor of Cleveland.
What do the good people of the city do? They can't have a cartoon character as mayor.
A paper trail would be a useful thing, even if it would make more work for minority clerks everywhere.