NY Times Endorses Open-Source Election Software 297
jdauerbach writes "On its editorial page today, the New York Times called for election system reform, saying among other things that 'Congress should impose much more rigorous safeguards, including a requirement that all computer code be made public. It should require that all electronic machines produce a voter-verified paper trail.'"
Some thoughts (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/375954 [securityfocus.com]
I don't know if the paper record is "voter verified", or what mechanism it uses, but there is apparently a paper record nonetheless.
Notwithstanding Diebold's CEO's extremely inappropriate campaign comments, I really do think they're trying to put out the best electronic voting systems they can, but are suffering from the same problems that any large, proprietary system suffers from when it languishes in the comfort of large government-guaranteed long-term contracts: namely, inattention to the details that need to be addressed, that sometimes get lost in not seeing the forest for the trees.
Perhaps opening the source to these critical systems and having it overseen by an independent election agency would be an idea worth considering...
Yes... but (Score:5, Interesting)
I think Badnarik's solution is the best. Get rid of the official ballots and let everyone bring their own ballot with them so that they can vote for whoever they want, not whoever the ruling government wants to let them choose from. And naysays... believe it or not, but that system is probably less prone to corruption than what we have today.
Can Congress do this? (Score:2, Interesting)
On the other hand, maybe they could claim they are implicitly granted this power under the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment? Any other ideas?
Re:Yes... but (Score:1, Interesting)
power to the people (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Can Congress do this? (Score:4, Interesting)
Nevada is ranked the best voter system (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder if it has anything to do with Firefox (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Some thoughts (Score:1, Interesting)
Diebold of course will always assert that their system has been verified. By who? If they are so certain and without worry, why then is it a big deal to open it up for all to see?
segmond
Re:Computer Code Be Made Public... (Score:4, Interesting)
That's not making it public either - making it public means open to public scrutiny, which is to say anyone can look at it. You can do this without making it Open Source, which is to say, you have no rights to actually USE the code for anything, only to look at it.
Personally I think the solution is for the federal government to contract a GPL or BSD-licensed FOSS voting package which will run on ordinary PCs, under some FOSS operating system (it can be FreeDOS for all I care, as long as it's free, Free, and Open) and use that. It would be cheaper and ultimately more secure due to peer review than the diebold solution ever could be.
Re:Some thoughts (Score:3, Interesting)
Can't you make the same argument about Microsoft and Windows? You can certainly make arguments that Windows is critical to business in the United States; not as critical as something as fundamental as voting, but the only thing that will cause code to be opened is a mandate requiring it to be so; otherwise, "if they are so certain and without worry, why then is it a big deal to open it up for all to see" is just as weak an argument as "if you have nothing to hide, then why not submit to a search?"
Also, making an electronic voting system isn't as simple as everyone here on slashdot thinks it is. It's not just counting. I mean of course, yes, at the core, it's simply counting votes. But there are nuances and complexities that make this a gargantuan task, and to make something like this *reliable* is even more daunting. (And it seems they're not succeeding there, either, if the failures are any indication.)
It's just that your post seemed to imply or insinuate that Diebold was purposely obfuscating code for possibly nefarious reasons. Diebold is a company of 13,000 people. Heck, they could also "make" their ATMs skim cash if they wanted to. And ATMs are a critical part of our lives, too. You could probably look at some of the code and declare "it doesn't need to be that complex". Maybe, maybe not. Says who? You?
I do agree that the code should be opened, but no company should be forced to open its code. Conversely, what should happen is that such systems should REQUIRE open code, such that any companies who want to compete for the project would have to follow such guidelines. Remember, too, that part of the chastising that the system has gotten even with paper systems is the ridiculous amount of complexity and diversity of systems: one, unified, similar, simple system in every jurisdiction should be what's required. For this reason, it's often easiest, and sometimes even the best, to go with a single contractor.
But the code itself can, and should, still be subject to a rigorous level of scrutiny.
paper trails considered harmful (Score:5, Interesting)
The first kind is acceptable, and I believe the open voting consortium [openvotingconsortium.org] has this idea correct: the machine should print out a barcode, that can then be verified by another scanning machine. This barcode must then be submitted into the ballot box.
The second kind is flawed for two reasons. First, there is no way to verify that what the computer printed is actually what's recorded on the bar code, or what has been submitted electronically. Second, and more importantly, it provides an easy way for proving whom you voted for. I could tell all of my employees to bring in their receipts, and those who vote for candidate A will receive benefits. Yes, this is illegal, but we shouldn't make it any easier.
what's a sig?
Re:Can Congress do this? (Score:3, Interesting)
However, it would appear they have some sort of authority over federal elections-- senators, house reps, president. The 2002 Help America Vote Act [fec.gov] placed a range of rules and restrictions on how a state may conduct its federal elections. None of these took direct effect, and all of these took the form of requiring the states to each independently pass some sort of legislation implementing the rules HAVA dictates. In many states this local legislation applies only to elections for federal offices, saying for example that you may cast a provisional ballot for president but not governor. This appears to satisfy HAVA.
I do not know on exactly what constitutional basis HAVA exists.
a good thing (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Paper Trails Should be Mandatory (Score:2, Interesting)
Logistics, perhaps. As everybody knows, they're very busy these days, and, from their point of view, setting personnel aside to handle physical ballots is just extraneous bullsh*t. But, being a government entity, incompetence could also be a factor.
a possible danger: shared source (Score:2, Interesting)
One-Time IDs (Score:5, Interesting)
Lemme explain. They would be plastic cards, about the size of a credit card, with a random ID and password on them in print - long enough not to be memorized by passer-bys, but short enough to make it humanly possible to type later on. Also on the card is a magnetic strip - think something like a credit card. Now, when you show up at a voting center, they hand you one out of a pile - it's in a sealed envelope, so they haven't a clue as to which one they hand you. You go in the voting booth, slide your card through the machine, and vote. A paper trail is produced with your barcode and adjacent votes - but not anything that could be used to ID you later on - and you slide your card again. It registers your votes on the card, and you leave.
Now, the votes are tallied, and the results are given. However, the election isn't over yet. An open database is publically produced, with barcode/vote combinations, and the voters then mail their cards to be tallied and compared to the database. If the paper trail doesn't match up with the card count, something has gone wrong, and all votes without cards, cards without votes, are cast out.
I know this still has some flaws, but I'm curious as to what the Slashdot community thinks. One thing I was worried about is that in checking on your barcode, you may become ID'd in that manner - although compared to other methods, I think the chance of something like that, for example, through an encrypted channel online, is a lot less likely. Comments?
Re:sometimes low tech is best (Score:5, Interesting)
So instead of just saying me too, let me add my perspective as an American who now lives in Germany. The way they run elections here was a real revelation to me. After a lifetime in a culture that is fascinated with high-tech solutions, and where high-tech is uncritically assumed to be better, I was amazed to see that a simple solution was clearly superior.
Voters are handed a piece of paper with the names of the candidates. They take it behind a privacy barrier and mark an 'X' in circles next to their candidates' names. Then they fold up the paper, seal it in an envelope, and drop the envelope through a slit in a box. Then at 6 PM, the envelopes are dumped out of the box and the votes are counted and re-counted by hand. Anyone who wants to can witness the counting.
With this system, a fiasco such as Florida in 2000 (or in a number of states in 2004, as I predict) simply cannot happen. The are far fewer possibilities for error, and the credibility of the result is much greater.
The problem in the US is cultural. The very idea that a low-tech solution could be better simply doesn't cross our minds. For some things in life, we really are better off with more computers and machinery, but for elections, we should just dump them all on the trash heap, all they do is compound mistakes.
Re:a possible danger: shared source (Score:2, Interesting)
NIST should get involved... (Score:5, Interesting)
I think that if we as a community put enough pressure on NIST, they'll do it. And since NIST is a non-partisan body, there's no good reason for congress to not support a design that is sponsored by NIST.
Such a process would promote both openness of participation and review of designs. The winning design could then be standardized and vendors could simply implement them to spec.
Re:One more thing... (Score:5, Interesting)
While I certainly understand your concerns I would disagree with your assertion that the government MUST OWN the code. The government has the highest vested interest in controlling the results of voting, even more so than the simple and predictable profit motive of Diebold. I do not trust "the government" to be a good custodian of the source code contolling voting. I trust the people of the United States and noone else. Open Source comes the closest to granting all rights to "the people" and is thus the best method of ensuring a valid vote.
All of our rights as Americans flow from the ability to control who leads us. The importance of a clean vote that everyone believes in cannot be overstated. This is far too important to be entrusted to Diebold or the government- don't trust either.
Here's what's going to happen (Score:4, Interesting)
However, we won't be hearing "The voting system is confusing and insecure. We need to change it!". We'll be hearing the Democrats say "The Republicans screwed with the results and stole the election!". The Repubicans will be making the same allegations about the Democrats. And both sides will be so busy pointing fingers and slinging mud, the process itself will be completely ignored and will remain as broken as ever.
Wish we had that... (Score:5, Interesting)
The voting machines here for the presidential referendum produced a paper trail.Suddenly when there was a doubt of the transparenncy of the whole process (because the voting machines were black boxes, noone knew what the code on them did) the government refused to count the papers from each machine.
Instead, they performed an "audit" where a member of the national electoral council on TV announced that a certain number of boxes would be chosen at random...by another computer running who knows what code on it and after the program was done "generating" the number of the boxes to be audited he proceeded to open a Word document with the numbers on it.
Of course, when the audit was done nothing was found amiss.
Transparent indeed...
Source code is not enough to garantee democracy.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Feel free to send me an email if you ever want to say something on this topic that I could use while talking to a Free Software fanatic that believes having the source code is enough to guarantee democracy or to publish on our web site.
After a talk with Richard Stallman about the use of Free Software for Electronic Election, I emailed him. RMS sent me the following:
Free software is not enough to ensure that elections are carried out properly.
The software used in and for government should always be free software; the government should always have the freedom to run it, study its source code, change it to suit government needs, and distribute copies to others either unchanged or modified. That way, software owners will not have power over the government's computers. But that is not enough to ensure that computerized elections are fair and honest.
It is easy for a programmer to change a program so that it tells the user "You voted for Mr Smith" but actually record a vote for Mr Brown. Unfortunately, free software does not prevent this. There is no known way to prevent this.
With free voting software, a government election committee can study the source code. If the program has been published, anyone can study the source code. But there is no way to be sure that the program actually running when you cast your vote is the same program that you and the election committee studied. Someone could have installed a fiddled version an hour before the election and replaced it with the authorized version an hour after it ended.
To assure honest elections, we need physical ballots that can be used for a recount.
Re:One-Time IDs (Score:3, Interesting)
Secret paper ballots work fine. Granted, if they are poorly implemented problems will occur but that is no different from any other solution. We know what paper solutions work and don't work. So what is the point of changing to a new system?
We don't NEED quicker results. We need the CORRECT results that are BELIEVED to be accurate by the public. Your solution adds technology where none is needed. The result will be more problems.
Absolutely (Score:0, Interesting)
Sort of like in the old days, in the old country, where the town leaders dispatched transportation to pick up my grandmother because after counting who showed up at the polls, and after counting votes (while the polls were still open), they figured out who the two individuals were who hadn't voted yet, knew they would vote correctly (especially after the two votes would be tallied so they knew exactly how they voted), and knew that it was a close enough regional election that every last vote had to be cast and counted.
Similar to the NorthEast old lever machines, where they sign you in, give you a 3x5 card with your name on it, which you use to hand to the poll watcher at the machine so you could vote, and they placed them neatly, face down, in chronological order so that they could match the card chronology to the vote chronology (punch card chronology inside machines, relative worked at election board, counting votes during elections and basically reading newspaper all other times).
Paper ballots. Keep the union member history. Keep the employee history for corporations who have a lot to win or lose in an election (make a contest of it! candy bars or flex time for vote receipts!). Throw in some sneak, peek, no notice searches, book reading tracking/databases, free access to medical info for "research", gps phone tracking, rfid in shoes, pretty soon they'll be able to tell what brand tampon I use to plug holes in my rowboat!
Re:Are we sure... (Score:5, Interesting)
It is then far easier to enslave people without them noticing when you've got people who won't even sit down to have a logical debate or admit they're wrong when prooven so. It's even more entertaining and saddening when those making the point feel the need to insult the other side; stupidity is limitless, and thus, the insulting of stupidity can be made on just about any basis, no matter what level of intellectual developement is required to make that accusation. If you've got a population of people who make accusations of this kind, heh, you've got sheeple.
You're right, but it's completely worthless. (Score:3, Interesting)
Why would that be "contrary to popular belief"?
I don't care whether Diebold has someone else looking at the code or not.
I care what the code does and how secure the system is.
Without public review, there is no way to determine EITHER of those. You're just relying upon someone else's honesty and integrity (in an election no less).
As others have pointed out, it's useless for the individual voter to verify his/her vote.
Ummm, how BLATANT does the warning have to be before you would choose not to use their service?
Great. Really. And I suppose that having a retarded 10 year old as police chief is okay as long as he's trying to do the best he can.
"the best
What the fuck? They're building a system to record votes. How complicated can it be?
PAPER has worked for CENTURIES. They can't match the capabily of PAPER? They are either incompetent or have an agenda.
"worth considering"? People here have been harping on it for months!
If you cannot provide the same level of security and authentication and validation with a computerized ballot that you can get from a fucking 1 cent PAPER BALLOT then you need to either fire that firm (buh bye Diebold) or re-evaluate your rational for computerization.
As noted in TFA, slot machines are held to a higher standard than voting machines.
Yet thousands of people hammer on slot machines every day.
Re:Can Congress do this? (Score:2, Interesting)
It seems there's also a clause granting Congress oversight in the case of Presidential electors as well but I can't seem to find it.
I also believe that congress has codified what
it considers a fair election and that HAVA is a part of the that codification.
Basically what congress can do is say "follow these rules and we'll accept your results".
The issue with the president is a bit different since there is no constitutional provision that the president be popularly elected in the first place.
Multiple machines, run by different companies (Score:4, Interesting)
The kicker: pay only expenses up-front, with a bonus going only to the most accurate machine. There will be votes that are lost / spindled / folded / mutilated; sorry. Mistakes and bugs may be inevitable, but that doesn't mean that "just any system" is good enough.
timothy
* My candidate of choice
Re:Are we sure... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Are we sure... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Some thoughts (Score:2, Interesting)
Remember, we're baby boomers and are used to getting our way. Credit cards, fast food, big cars (and motorcycles).
In this case, it really is buy now, pay later.
Re:Some thoughts (Score:3, Interesting)
The point is that these machines would allow for faster tabulation of the votes (no running the ballots through a scanner) and would allow you to put a fancier front end on the optical scan ballot (apparently some voters are easily confused). The important thing is that these machines wouldn't give up the one thing that paper ballots do better than any electronic system, a human verifiable paper trail.
All things considered I would just as soon stick with the optical scan ballots. I don't find them confusing. However, there are apparently lots of folks that are really pushing for polling machine upgrades, especially after the last presidential election. The problem with any solution without a paper trail is that you can't prove that the election wasn't fixed. Can you imagine the fallout from the last Florida presidential elections if the ballots would have been destroyed after the intial count? No matter which candidate you favored you would be forced to wonder if the fix was in.
It's seems funny to me that people demand a paper receipt when they put $20 worth of gas in their car, but are happy to "trust the machine" when it comes to something as critical as electing public officials. To me that seems odd. As long as I have a paper ballot that counts as my official vote I don't care what kind of software is used to create the ballot. In most cases the paper ballots wouldn't actually get used. It's fairly rare that a count gets contested.
Re:Are we sure... (Score:3, Interesting)
Bullshiat. People label themselves when left to their own devices. They natually form an "in-group", so they can feel superior to the "out-groupers".
United Delusions of America, Inc. (Score:3, Interesting)
Current definition of "The problem:" How to change government in a democracy with open, accurate elections which allow the voter to remain anonymous.
The solution is in the history of U.S. democracy. History tells us that a small group of elite folks (Founding Fathers) decided that the electorate could not be trusted (Electoral College) and that the best overall solution was a restricted form of democracy (representative democracy.) In the years since, the attitude of our ruling class has blossomed into a degenerate, self-serving incompetence-towards-the-whole which threatens the longevity of the nation.
Ask yourself why only the two parties can play and any third party or other outside group gets lead weights hung around the necks of their efforts. Don't think it's true? Go check the election rules for your city, county and state. Two-parties-only is the end result of many very suspicious rules and requirements for other groups or parties wishing to play. The same game of Restriction-via-Rubric-Rules exists at the federal level.
Redefinition of "The Problem:" How to get an entrenched (and very rotten) ruling class to open up the process to open, accurate elections and thus move closer towards achieving a true democracy? In most of the rest of the world -- and throughout human history -- such efforts usually result in civil war.
If you think any elite group will just give it up, open your eyes and your brain at the same time and witness the current bitterness over voting methodologies: When none of the players are willing to be open and honest, then none of the players _are_ open and honest. Bluntly, the last thing either party wants is open, accurate, direct elections.
Do we have a democracy or an illusion, a national delusion that we are a democracy? Has not representative democracy failed when a small group of the very richest individuals and corporations (hey, same group of folks, imagine that) severely restrict who can participate in governance?
You fix this by not sending the same rotten bastards back to Congress time and time and time again. One term and they reek with the stench of corporate cash. In other words -- and let me make this as simple as possible -- the focus on the Presidential election is a red herring, a sleight-of-hand, a trick of the light, a cheap trick, social engineering on a colossal scale, a setup for a SUCKER PUNCH!
So what did the Harvard Republican say to the Harvard Democrat? "You're either with me or against me! *wink wink, nudge nudge*"
Cheers and ciao.