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Florida to Scrap Touch Screen Voting?
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Fri Feb 02, 2007 12:42 AM
from the dangling-chads dept.
from the dangling-chads dept.
AlHunt writes "Florida Governor Charlie Crist is calling on the Florida Legislature to spend $30M to replace the troublesome touch screen voting machines with an optical scan system that allows a voter to mark an oval next to a candidate's name before slipping a ballot into an electronic reader."
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Politics: Florida Literally Scraps Touch-Screen Voting 177 comments
Kaseijin writes "Florida Governor Charlie Crist is getting his wish. The New York Times reports the state will replace touch-screen voting machines with optical-scan models by July 1, 2008 — the most aggressive timetable of any jurisdiciton rethinking this approach to voting. The touch-screen machines most likely will be sold to other jurisdictions or stripped for parts."
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Why voting is like obscenity (Score:3)
I now feel confident to predict... (Score:2)
Will they ask ES&S for a refund? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Will they ask ES&S for a refund? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Will they ask ES&S for a refund? (Score:4, Insightful)
You say this as if it were uncommon for a government contract.
+1 Sad.
Parent
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Printing out the totals at the end isn't really good enough. How do you re-count a total? You don't. I want to see it marked who I voted-for, on the piece of paper, and I want all of those pieces of paper retained for several months after the election so that they can be re-counted by optical scanners and by hand, if necessary.
Re:Will they ask ES&S for a refund? (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyway, it's about time we got rid of the fiction of "one person, one vote". Just put the candidates on eBay and let people bid on them. Give every voter a certain amount of toy money to select the candidates they want. They can either put $10 on every candidate they like, or put it all on the presidential candidate, or split it any way they want. When the auctions close, the highest bid candidate in each race wins. This makes the most sense in a capitalist, market-driven society like the US.
Parent
Re:Will they ask ES&S for a refund? (Score:5, Insightful)
The short answer is that without the machine producing a physical token (usually in the form of a printed receipt) representing your vote, you don't know. More importantly, you can't know. Any screen you can see assuring you that the machine is perfect can be faked. Promises that the code is perfect are based on inspections and testing, not mathematical proofs. Even if they were, how would you know that they weren't being faked? A bad guy could always replace the program with one of his own that paints a copy of the official "Seal of Assurance" screen.
There are some difficult-for-the-common-man-to-understand signature schemes that could offer more confidence that the program is honestly the one that is supposed to be present, but none of those are in place; even if they were, they can only provide assurance that the program is the one that was signed. They do not offer proof that the code actually works properly.
As I said, physical tokens are the only way to ensure the machines are working accurately. After the election, you count tokens and compare them to the accumulators. But if you have to go as far as producing and counting tokens, why not simply vote by token instead? It's worked for thousands of years, it's as cheap as a pencil and paper, and everybody capable of voting can understand it. You can even count the tokens by machine if you're in a hurry, as long as you can count them manually to prove the machines are honest.
There's a reason Americans vote in November but the politicians don't take office until January. It's to give time to count the votes and certify the elections. Nothing in our laws requires the T.V. news to inform us of the election results within 15 minutes of the polls closing. That's a fabrication that sprung up recently, and has nothing to do with democracy.
Parent
Yeah sure.. can't break that. (Score:3, Informative)
Hmm.. here's a thought - why don't we give out slips of paper with the names of the candidates on them, then you CIRCLE your candidate.. and then (get this) PEOPLE count up the ballots. Woah.. and SOOO much more expensive right?
-GiH
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With card readers, at least when democrats win, we won't have to recount.
Re:Yeah sure.. can't break that. (Score:5, Informative)
A certain number of polling stations in each area randomly have their machines opened and their electronic count matched against a manual count. If they are off by one, the entire district is manually counted.
All in all, this is the best voting system I have ever seen. Quietly implemented, without a fuss. Designed by people who are more interested in an accurate, quick, efficient system than they are interested in partisan politics or winning contracts for their favourite corporation.
I love living here.
Parent
Re:Yeah sure.. can't break that. (Score:5, Informative)
Eliminating the election official's handling of a marked ballot reduces the opportunity they have to mess with it. No sleight of hand tricks are even remotely possible.
Parent
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Nor necessary. Who do you think handles the scanners?
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That's your problem right there. You Canadians don't have enough clueless gadflys hanging all over the process. Here, take some of ours, PLEASE!
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Everyone in the country should have filled out a scantron sheet by now. The technology is widespread and decades old. Filling in a little dot next to the one person you want to vote for is as simple as it gets.
Circling isn't (as) machine countable and since the boundaries for marking your vote aren't pre-defined there is room for interpretation after the fact. We don't want room for interpr
I'm with GodinHell (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm willing to wait for election results. Isn't that a worthwhile price for democracy?
Parent
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Mere observability isn't enough. You can add LEDs that light up to show processes working, but it still misses the point that what is "observable" is only an indirect representation. Manual counting has the advantage of being Universally Comprehensible. Any school leaver with passing grades can understand how it works. Not to mention that it's scalable, parallelisable and verifiable.
Each candidate's representative at the count counts "their" ones from the pile. Then they pass their papers t
Well, that worked so well BEFORE (Score:4, Interesting)
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Are you saying that the machines in questions actually makes such a paper trail?
The article says the opposite (Given the last sentence in the quote below, I assume that "card" means some kind of electronic data card):
"In a touch screen system, a voter receives a card and inserts it into an ATM-like machine and touches the screen to record choices. The card is sent to the supervisor of elections, where the choices are do
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No. I'm saying that if you don't like your (paper-trail-less) touch-screen machines, totally abandoning them for a fill-in-the-circle-and-scan system seems less useful than bolting on some print-out-paper-trail hardware on your existing fleet of touch screen platforms. And I think it matters because, as I noted, the touch screen systems help get you around the problems of parallax, or much of the confusion that landed Pat Buc
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The voting paper trail and the tallying method are the same with bubble sheets. The touch screens are an unnecessary complexity.
Any unnecessary complexity invites defects and abuse.
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I definitely agree with your point, but the fact is that ANY voting system will have potential areas of failure. However, the lower-tech the system is, the less likely that the error will be due to the technology (still leaves the possibility of voter error - that's unavoidable). The fill-in-the-bubble followed by an i
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What they hell is wrong with touch screen machines with a spit-out paper trail? Yeesh.
People had problems with the touch screens reacting in strange ways and sometimes not accepting votes for certain candidates, etc.
With an OCR system, even if the computer melts down, you can go ahead with the vote, and (as long as the paper ballot is designed properly), you have clear knowledge of what a voter wanted to mark.... At that point, the computer simply becomes a method of providing a quick vote result, rather than a possible bottleneck in the system.
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What's right with them?
If the journal printer is hidden from public view, then there's no way to be sure that the printed vote matches your actual vote. If there is an observation window between the print head and the take-up spool, so you can see your vote before it winds up into the bowels of the machine, that's still not much better, and you don't know for sure your vote hasn't been changed. (Maybe if the take-up spool wa
Why not best of both worlds? (Score:5, Insightful)
You could punch them out with a punching machine or with a single-hole punch, it didn't matter.
Do the same with ballots:
Let people fill in an optical scan ballot by hand OR give them a touch screen that will mark the ballot for them.
You get all the advantages of the touch-screen, including multiple languages, different ballots in the same polling place, accessibility for the blind and disabled, and more and you keep the advantages of optical-scan ballots, including a voter-verified paper ballot and a way to vote if the electricity goes out.
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Do they do anything like this in any of the states? I don't know what they use here as I've never voted (for my own reasons).
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This technology does indeed exist [essvote.com] and is required in counties where optical scan ballot is used in order to comply with the disability requirements of HAVA.
Hypothetically, of course, such a system could be used where everyone marks their ballot on such a device. I have not heard of a county that does it that way though.
Electronic voting for a better democracy (Score:5, Insightful)
Consider this. You only get one vote every few years, which is then supposed to show your support for every decision your elected representative makes. It would be much better if you could vote on all the major issues, such as major bills, decisions to start wars, etc. With a physical based voting system though, it would be all but impossible to do this as the amount of effort to collect votes is enormous - hence we have political representatives we vote for who act as proxies for our wishes, and hopefully make decisions that the majority of the people would wish for. As we all know, this is often not the case. (eg. Copyright extention)
Now that nearly everyone has a computer (in developed countries) or has easy access to one via internet cafe's, libraries, etc. then imagine what it would be like if you could directly vote (via te internet) on bills such as say, the patriot act or extending copyright, instead of having to depend on some guy to make that vote for you? Apart from anything else, it would take a lot of the current power away from special interest lobby groups (read:big business), as they would have to convince a large slice of the population on how to vote, instead of a small group of senators etc. You would still need a body of lawmakers to put forward bills and propositions, but the general public would have much greater control over the acceptance or rejection of those bills.
The challenge of course would be:
1) ensuring everyone only got one vote, (say, through the use of a hardware keygen or something) and
2) your votes remain anonymous. I don't personally believe this is as valuable as being able to vote on every bill, and would happily sacrifice a little theoretical anonymity for a more direct democracy.
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Re:Electronic voting for a better democracy (Score:5, Interesting)
. I am sure you feel qualified to vote on a handful of issues that are close to your heart, but what about the other 99.9% of thing going on?
Do you really hold your fellow countrymn in such low regard?
I agree that no-one is likely to have the right answers for all issues, but isn't that already the case with existing legislators? How often have we heard about bills being barely read before they are voted on, or questioned the knowledge of lawmakers on issues we hold dear - like so many technology oriented pieces of legislation (say, for spam laws)? Even the lawmakers aer not infallible, and I don't think that the public would do that much worse on voting on these issues themselves. Sure, there may be some poor decisions made, but they would be OUR poor decisions, not those thrust upon us by a small group who may have been unduly influenced by lobbyists etc. After a year or so of finding out that actually you can't have free schooling AND no tax, I think pople would start taking a lot more interest in the process, and start making more appropriate decisions.
If a politician tosses out a bill and says 'vote for it and you will get more money' while ignoring the costs, do you really think that enough people will vote against it?
I think that this is not as likely as you would think - for the same reason that we don't automatically vote for a politician that promises say, huge tax cuts or free money for everyone - there are enough voters who know that such promises are unfulfillable or unsustainable, so we don't vote that way.
The founding fathers didn't have everything right to start with - after all, they didnt think women were fit to vote at all (along with the rest of the world) , yet in the intervening time we have decided that mabey women can vote sensibly after all. One of the main resons you need so many intervening steps though, is the imposibility of collecting and counting votes by hand - you HAVE to have proxies when you don't have a means of hearing the voice of the people more often. This should no longer be the obstacle it was though, in this age of communications.
At the very least, even if we can't vote on every bill we should be able to directly show our support/non-support for a bill - electronic lobbying for the masses, if you will.
Parent
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Read your history books again. The US became a republic for a reason. Pure democracy degenerates into rule by rabble and oppression of minorities, unless the subset of voters is relatively small (See Athens).
Anonymous voting helps prevent coercion and vote buying. Imagine losing your job because you voted
Yes! Electronic voting! (Score:2)
1) ensuring everyone only got one vote, (say, through the use of a hardware keygen or something)
Ahh yes, because digital electronic security is something the human race is capable of.
Listen: Any time you introduce leverage into a voting system (like digital electronic vote counting, for example), that exact same leverage can be used to game the system.
Let the vote be counted by human hands. I'm willing to wait for it. Who's with me?
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I agree that it would be a drastic improvement if I got to vote on every major issue. It's letting everyone else vote where I think we might run into trouble.
The only thing worse than George Bush running the country is a country full of people just like George Bush trying to run the country by committee.
ACLU has sued for this kind of behavior before.... (Score:3, Informative)
i was there when they did this, and MAN... they were insistent that paper ballots go into the dustbin of history because of their error rates and their propensity to "confuse minority voters". Their words, not mine.
So, i guess that the governor of Florida should get his lawyers ready for this... taking their state back into the dark ages...
Re:ACLU has sued for this kind of behavior before. (Score:5, Interesting)
Paperless voting was a huge mistake, but touchscreen voting itself wasn't a bad idea. There's no need to get rid of the things from this very expensive experiment that we apparently conducted that worked, just the parts that didn't.
Parent
People don't win elections, hackers win elections (Score:2)
Good! It's a simple, traceable system. (Score:4, Informative)
The tallying is instantaneous, the technology is proven (scantron tests in every school in the country) and the paper trail is there.
If they ever want voting in Florida to cease being a national joke this is the way to do it.
If you want to keep the voting process simple... (Score:2)
Re:If you want to keep the voting process simple.. (Score:2)
"The Swedish option" - straight paper ballots (Score:3, Informative)
Ballots are picked up by the voter outside of the voting booth (there is a table available with all flavors) or brought in yourself. (Parties usually mail out their ballots prior to the election). Also, major parties will have their people outside, handing out ballots. Alternatively, you can just vote write-in by spelling out the party name on a blank ballot. (This results in "The Donald Duck Party", etc. garnering a few votes every year...
One envelope per election (regional, local, national, referendums, etc.)
Pros: Very simple, very unambigous (no "hanging chads" possible), straight paper trail, etc. Electronic tampering virtually impossible. Voter identity is assured.
Cons: Electoral secrecy compromised to some degree(although not fatally) if ballots stored out in the open. Sabotage against ballot storage is possible, and happens (I.e. snagging the ballots of "the enemy"). Voter ID requirements will garner cries of "voter suppression" from the usual suspects, not as TV-friendly (counting the votes takes some time).
Why voting machines at all? (Score:3, Informative)
I can assure that voting (at least on our site) was fair, since at the table were basically 7 people, and no two people there trusted each other:)
With all that, we managed to count all 1000 ballots for our site within 2-3 hours, and all the ballots were counted at least three times. Such system, in country of 4 million people enables us to get 90% of the sites processed by midnight of the voting day. Further, all the ballots are kept for one year, available for anyone's request for recount. I don't believe it's much different in any European country.
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honest thought, also safer against fraud and interpretation
mistakes. If you think paper records are less falsifiable just
put a paper-roll printer inside each voting machine, print on
it and let the voter see, through a small glass windoes, what
is printed for his vote in the serially numbered paper roll.
But there are other ways if you think enough.
One thing I wonder is whether cheaper voting transactions
could not change the way voters participate in
Re:God your nation's hilarious... (Score:5, Funny)
What has Switzerland got to do with Florida?
KFG
Parent
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KFG
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Certainly we should strive to eliminate voting fraud and moving away from paperless touchscreen voting is a step in the right direction.
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4. Death by ooga-booga.