[lil'babykitten]

Channel 4 (UK) had an investigative report today detailing some serious flaws in the electronic voting machines to be used in the 2004 elections. But, as usual they fail to put a link up on their site regarding their lead story...

However, the good ol' BBC also have the story so I'll link to that.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3489877.stm

Two leading American experts on computer voting have warned that the forthcoming US presidential election could be more chaotic than the last.

They told a Seattle conference that the new systems may be less reliable than those used four years ago.

.....

But Professor David Dill from Stanford University told the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science the switch may actually make things worse.

"The problem with electronic voting is your votes disappear into the electronic machine and there is no independent way to check that those results are valid," said Professor Dill.

"I know that I am not going to have a lot of confidence in the vote totals reported by those machines unless there is some independent polling or whatever that is consistent with that."

In recent years there has been a spate of disputes over local election results across the US involving voting machines.

There are many different models, and some provide the voter with no record of how he or she has voted - no evidence that the machine recorded the vote correctly.

An opinion from someone who saw the C4 report (posted on another forum I visit):

The CEO of the company that provides the electronic voting machines (that American's will vote on in the November Presidential election) donated $100,000 to the George W Bush campaign, stating he 'will do anything to see George Bush re-elected'.

These machines have all sorts of problems with security and no way of checking if your vote has actually registered and it is apparently very easy to hack into tallies and change them to whatever you want them to say.

I think this is something to be concerned about. What's going to happen to your votes?!

Discuss!

[itai195]

Um, is it even possible for an individual to donate $100,000?

[daimoni]

Originally posted by lil'babykitten:
I think this is something to be concerned about. What's going to happen to your votes?!

Discuss!

Well, this is kinda old news to me because I've heard Prof. Dill talk about this for years now. And technically, he's right. The only sure way to collect votes it to teach everyone welding, and have them burn in their votes and signature into a huge plate of sheet metal. A plate so big, it would be impossible to lose or steal.

But it's just not very practical.

Alameda County (in the East Bay Area of California) installed electronic voting machines in time for the last election I was able to participate in. And I have to tell you, the UI could be improved, but other than that... it was a good experience. Far better than those stupid holes one had to punch with confusing pointers that we used before. Yes, if we have to use paper.. why not have a dead simple checkbox and pencil system?

I would like to see an electronic voting machine to be able to print out a paper summary and confirmation on the spot. Like an ATM. One copy for your review, one copy for the backup ballot box... and of course, the electronic version for the EVM.

[lil'babykitten]

Originally posted by daimoni:
The only sure way to collect votes it to teach everyone welding, and have them burn in their votes and signature into a huge plate of sheet metal. A plate so big, it would be impossible to lose or steal.

lol

Originally posted by daimoni:
I would like to see an electronic voting machine to be able to print out a paper summary and confirmation on the spot. Like an ATM. One copy for your review, one copy for the backup ballot box... and of course, the electronic version for the EVM.

Sounds about right. But it doesn't look like that is going to happen!

[dreilly1]

There are people in the U.S. making this an issue, I remember seeing a New York Times op-ed about it last month.

I don't buy the "delivering the election to Bush" conspiracy theory: it takes a lot more than one CEO to really pull a scam like this off, and just being a Republican shouldn't be cause for suspicion.

Diebold, a company that makes a lot of the ATM's in the U.S., decided to get into the electronic voting game after the 2000 election, when they saw lots of money about to go into reforming the process. Now, ATM machines have a paper trail a mile wide behind them. Really, when was the last time an ATM malfunctioned on you? It never forgets your last withdrawl.

But, for some reason, these electronic voting machines don't have any way to independant verify the voting results. If the machine screws up and miscounts, there's no way to find out. Worse yet, if someone manages to find a flaw in the software to change votes, there's absolutely no way to track them. Some people consider this lack of a paper trail to be exhibit A in the conspiracy -- Diebold obviously knows how to do it, they make ATM's!

Here in NY, we have those lever-based voting machines. They do have some sort of audit mechanism, although I'm not familiar with it. Why can't you put a touch-screen voting mechanism on top of one of these, and use the same audit mechanism to tally votes? Some sort of physical mechanism (like, say, a punch tape that can be run through a counting machine that keeps independant count of votes) would be impervious to software bugs.

[vmarks]

Because a touch-vote is not mechanically linked to the vote the same way a lever is - and even the lever systems used to be subject to vote fraud.

A touch screen can be made to render any vote some one else likes-- want proof? miscalibrate a palm pilot.

Rebecca Mercuri is the first person anyone should consult when talking about implementing electronic voting systems.

http://mainline.brynmawr.edu/~rmercu...hecklists.html

These questions all have to be answered satisfactorily for a voting system to be worth using. Most e-vote companies skimp on some of the most important questions on that list.