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United States Government Politics

Smooth Paper-Backed e-Voting In Nevada 28

Posted by timothy from the march-of-progress dept.
LVRyan writes "The AP via Yahoo is reporting on Nevada's new touchscreen voting machines that also leave a full paper trail. They were used in Tuesday's primaries with few problems. I had a chance to use the machine myself, and was happy with the clear verification the paper trail provides for the voter and in the case of a recount. No hanging chads here!"
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Smooth Paper-Backed e-Voting In Nevada More

Smooth Paper-Backed e-Voting In Nevada

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  • makes a lot of sense, actually (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dfenstrate ( 202098 ) * <dfenstrate&gmail,com> on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @11:15AM (#10189264)
    Because of gambling. Nevada's got so many video gaming machines/slot machines that they're rather adept at investigating and regulating such machinery as a state.

    Or so I'd imagine.

    Basically, the knowledge required to run & regulate the gambling industries electronics honestly would be useful for voting machines.

    Paper trail verifiable instantly by the voter? I'm all for it!
    • The strange things is that the biggest slot machine manufacturer (IGT) isn't involved in the design of the system. That's acomforting as a Nevada resident because of the pull IGT has.

      It's good to know my vote will be handled correctly.

      • Re:makes a lot of sense, actually (Score:5, Informative)

        by Portigui ( 651730 ) on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @01:42PM (#10191762)

        The strange things is that the biggest slot machine manufacturer (IGT) isn't involved in the design of the system. That's acomforting as a Nevada resident because of the pull IGT has.

        I am an engineer at IGT and I can tell you that there was never a chance of IGT being involved with any part of the voting process.

        For instance, I can not play the games that I make (of course that is to alleviate the appearance of impropriety in case I win the big one). I would imagine that same logic would apply in the voting world. The voting machines used in Nevada were made by Sequoia [sequoiavote.com] out of Riverside County, California. My guess would be that they might not allow a Nevada company to develop the machines as they could not prevent me from voting and thus using the machines I developed.

        In addition, the gaming industry is the most heavily regulated industry in the nation. The regulators dictate exactly what type of industries IGT can be involved with. We can not even develop internet gaming solutions even though it is gaming because of regulations. If we are not allowed to expand into select gaming markets, you can be assured that we can not be allowed to expand into a process that shapes the future of our state/nation.

        On a lighter note, if we could develop the machines, what do you think the odds would be that Kerry would ever see the inside of the White House with the exception of the general tour?
        • Very good points. I sometimes forget just how regulated the industry can be, even through I know an engineer there.

          You say Nevada might not allow a Nevada company to make its voting machines, but is there such a law on the books in any state? It's ridiculous that slot machines are more regulated than voting machines, though I find some comfort that voting machines can be done correctly.

    • I've wondered about this for awhile. Why don't the companies that make gambling machines make voting machines. From a technology stand point they are very similar and these companies already have the know how. From what I've seen of people, the average person cares a lot more about a slot machine screwing up then a presidential election getting screwed up. So why not hold elections to the higher standard of gambling? (Wow, that sounds funny!)

  • Not bad (Score:2, Interesting)

    by CrazyJim1 ( 809850 )
    I can't see anything wrong with this system if a person can verify their own vote was cast for the candidate they wanted. Emachines always have the potential of fraud if someone who programs it biases towards a candidate. Not to say there isn't anything else wrong with the system. www.geocities.com/James_Sager_PA

    • That's why Hannah Pingree (Maine state rep) ROCKS (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Mark_in_Brazil ( 537925 ) on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @11:56AM (#10190047)
      I can't see anything wrong with this system if a person can verify their own vote was cast for the candidate they wanted.
      Right on.
      That's why I'm a fan of Hannah Pingree, a Representative in the Maine State Legislature, and the sponsor of LD1759 [state.me.us], "An Act To Ensure the Accurate Counting of Votes," now the law in Maine. The Act prohibits networking the voting machines, and requires that they print a paper ballot that the voter inspects and places in a ballot box. It originally required the machines' software to be open source, but that part got lost in the negotiations with the Maine state Attorney General. Still, it's a pretty nice piece of legislation.

      --Mark
  • I'd be most comfortable knowing that the machine doesn't actually count the vote - it produces a ballot which is clearly marked, easy to read and is, in turn, fed into a ballot box. This makes voting easy, the immediate user audit of the ballot easy, and a trusted recount of those clearly marked, paper ballots easy.

    On the other hand, that's a good point - Nevada probably has the expertise ready at hand.

    • Two definitions (Score:4, Insightful)

      by roystgnr ( 4015 ) <roy&stogners,org> on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @11:58AM (#10190088) Homepage
      My definition would be roughly: "Any candidate can request a recount of the paper trail from any voting machines", which (assuming the candidates weren't forced to pay for the recount cost unless they requested a large fraction of machines to be recounted and didn't find any major discrepancies) would make it extremely hard to cheat the system.

      Their definition appears to be "Nevada's system ... requires county registrars to randomly select a small percentage of machines -- from 1 percent to 3 percent of a county's total -- and compare printed records with the vote totals taken from computers' memory cartridges after polls close." That's just as good, as long as that "random selection" is made either by a provably tamperproof random number generator (hard to do right) or by each the candidates submitting random numbers to be XORed (easy to do right).

  • Slashdot (Score:2, Insightful)

    by AdamBLang ( 674002 )
    Why isn't this on the front page of Slashdot instead of that Michael Moore article?
  • an optical scanner system. You get a paper ballot handed to you, take a pen or dark pencil, and darken in an oval. These ovals are far apart I would be difficult to accidently spoil your ballot.

    You take your ballot and put it into an optical scanner that tabulates your ballot then and there. Any recount has a paper ballot clearly marked with your intent. Every election they randomly choose some precincts to count by hand to audit the machines. Its a good system.

    Why couldn't we have something like tha
    • There is still the issue of the machine failing to properly tabulate votes due to technical glitches. While someone could later look at the paper ballot and determine the intent of the voter, there is (as far as I know) no way with these systems for the voter to ensure that the machine correctly read their vote off the form while they are still at the polling place.

      There is also an issue with stupid people not following directions (e.g., not filling in the circle completely, not erasing completely, markin
      • You have that same issue with any voting system. Ultimately you vote, you put your ballot into a system that is a black box to you, and results come out the other end.

        Only by auditing the voting machines can you tell they're working correctly. If you have no paper trail there can be no audit. If the paper trail was created by the machine you are auditing it would be a real suprise for an audit to ever turn up anything.

        As for stupid people not filling out their ballots correctly - its an on-going proble
  • as I simply do not trust a fully electronic voting system; data is just too mallable.

    Personally, I would like to see a system where both electronic and printed ballot votes are counted. It could then be used to verify that no manipulation or error is occurring.

  • I've also used this system (Score:3, Informative)

    by hiproductionsdotcom ( 811735 ) on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @12:25PM (#10190556)
    I'm a resident of Nevada and have also used this voting program. I believe it will be the wave of the future. You can actually read the paper 'ballot' as it prints out your results and can double check them against your own choices. The ballot is behind protective glass and when you press "submit ballot" the vote is added electronically and the paper ballot is sucked into a steel ballot box like Augustus through the chocolate tube in Willy Wonka! I definitely recommend this system!
  • If it wasn't for those of us in the IAP pushing Sec. of State Dean Heller for this paper trail, it wouldn't have existed. Thanks to people like Janine Hansen, we've managed to make that trail to keep the elections more honest. Of course, Dean later came on the record trying to claim credit for it... but what can you expect from a guy who has managed to upset every county clerk in the state with his ineptitude? With all the mess here from ballot questions, we'll be lucky to be able to vote in November.
  • "If we can't ever read it, we'll use the paper trail as the backup," said Nye County deputy clerk Laura Zubia, who helped recover the data shortly after midnight. "That's the whole point of the paper trail, isn't it?"

  • They should have had the primary last week - then they could have tested the machines in Black Rock City (NV's sixth largest at 35,000).

    Of course the write-in ballots would have been particularly entertaining.

  • From the article:

    Officials in Nye County couldn't read the data on one computer but weren't overly worried. If they couldn't tease the results out of the machine -- which held an unknown number of votes -- they could count paper ballots by hand instead.

    Computers should never be used to tabulate voting results in the first place. If the computer's reported results don't trip someone's suspicion, they can still be wholly wrong and hand victory to an unelected candidate (particularly in close races). Co

    • Three hours after the close of the polls here in Vegas, we still had single-digit reporting of precincts. It wasn't until this morning (presumably while I slept) that the county clerk had 100% reporting. It makes me wonder if they made the machines out of pocket calculators. Even a 286 could tally that stuff faster.

  • Producing a paper-based VVAT is half the problem. The next step is, what data source is considered authoritative in the event of a recount or a detected problem? In other words, what happens when the paper trail disagrees with the electronic record?

    Logically, the paper trail is the authoritative record. But this needs to be explicitly specified as such, otherwise vote administrators may choose to take the easy way out and perform an "electronic recount" -- in other words, simply recomputing the exis

  • try the awesome flash demo (Score:4, Interesting)

    by js7a ( 579872 ) <james AT bovik DOT org> on Wednesday September 08, 2004 @06:08PM (#10195242) Homepage Journal
    Check out the 2-D barcode at the end of the paper trail. [state.nv.us]

    Fianlly, someone did the right thing. Viva Las Vegas!

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