Senators: No need for paper e-voting trails, 'electronic' ones are OK
Computer scientists have pressed for e-voting paper trails for years, in peer reports and in testimony on Capitol Hill. Now it looks like Congress is poised to ignore this idea: forthcoming legislation will say that a backup "electronic" record is OK too.
Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Bob Bennett (R-Utah), who lead a Senate committee charged with overseeing election law, said they plan to introduce a bill in the next few weeks that would require voters casting ballots on touch-screen or so-called "direct recording electronic" machines to have the ability to verify their selections through "an independent paper, electronic, audio, video, or pictorial record." That's according to a press release that came out Thursday--a copy of the bill's text is not yet available because it's still being drafted, a Feinstein aide said.
Groups like the Association for Computing Machinery have long advocated for use of "hybrid" systems containing both electronic and paper components, which are designed to enable independent audits and provide a backup record in the event of buggy or hacked voting machine software. Princeton University computer science professor Edward Felten, an ACM advisory committee member who studies e-voting security, said Friday that he couldn't comment on the new bill without seeing more details.
The bill's approach seems to indicate that the senators feel some sympathy toward arguments that paper trails aren't the only option for independently verifying a voter's pick and that other innovative alternatives could emerge down the line. Michael Shamos, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University and consultant to the Pennsylvania government, is one such skeptic who has argued that paper ballots are susceptible to problems and rigging of their own.
The decision may also be a nod to state and local election officials who have complained about the costs associated with outfitting their machines with paper trails.
The new voting machine requirements would take effect on January 1, 2012, unless a state requested a waiver, which, if granted, would give it until the beginning of 2014.
That new deadline represents yet another delay in getting new federal electronic voting machine rules off the ground. Last year, Feinstein introduced a bill that would have required states to scrap paperless voting machines by this year's presidential election, but at a hearing last summer, she said she'd decided 2010 would be a safer bet, giving voting reform advocates and election officials more time to reach a compromise.
In addition to the new voting machine obligations, the bill would require states to do public audits of their election results. It would also establish certain security requirements for the voting machines and their software and would set up a research grant program designed to encourage development and testing of new technologies for verifying votes.
Feinstein said in a statement that the bill is necessary because "we now have a patchwork of voting systems throughout the country, including five states that use electronic voting systems but have no independent records to help ensure the accuracy and reliability of the vote, and eleven others in which large sections of their states use electronic systems that have no such independent records."
Meanwhile, 30 states already have legislation on their books requiring use of paper ballots in some fashion, according to Verified Voting, a group that advocates for use of paper trails. But other state officials have balked at the potential costs of upgrading their systems, particularly since some subscribe to the belief that providing paper trails isn't a panacea to ballot-tampering, anyway.
If ANYONE has a difference, then the machines are suspect until it is determined why that happened.
If ANYONE has a difference, then the machines are suspect until it is determined why that happened.
First, the voter himself / herself needs to see and verify the vote. The voters need to have confidence that their vote has been correctly recorded.
Second, the results need to be human-auditable by ANY reasonably intelligent, honest, person. How is Jimmy Carter going supposed to verify an electronic copy? And auditor can easily confirm that the electronic-vote-count matches the electronic-audit-back-up, but there is no way for the auditor to confirm that these match the original vote.
Even with a paper-trail there is widespread distrust. Lots of people think George Bush ?stole? the 2000 election. Can you imagine the distrust if there was no paper trail?
I've voted on one of these machines with a paper-tape back-up. After you vote, your vote is printed on a continuous paper-tape so that you can see and confirm the print-out before you "finalize" your vote. When you are finished, the paper-tape scrolls-ahead, hiding your vote from the next voter.
It's not a "panacea", and it's not fool-proof, but it's a good system.
Of course, you can't see the actual electronic vote... I don't even know where it's stored... They gave me a "card" to insert into the machine, which I thought was storing the vote at first. But, they semed to be re-cycling these... I guess the vote was going onto a hard drive or onto nonvolatile memory.
1. the only available independent voter verifiable record is currently paper ballots and that any other system would be much more expensive and administratively burdensome, and
2. this is the first time a bi-partisan bill in the Senate has required post-election auditing to check the accuracy of machine vote counts, and
3. this is the first time any US congressional bill has called for any security of ballots and election records.
I'm sure this bill has its flaws but it is a huge step forward for most states because there are not any states currently in the US which employ all the measures required by the bill.
The only way we're going to ever get rid of hackable, inaccurate voting systems is to begin doing routine procedures that detect their errors. Right now we cannot even detect any errors in most states - we're just trusting the secretly counted machine results.
Let's support this bill but ask for some improvements to it - like an earlier implementation date.
I am grateful that an audit will be required. If audits are to be of value in increasing the likelihood that the candidate chosen by the voters actually takes office they the audit must be a random surprise audit of a mathematically determined number of precincts. Election results should not be certified until the audit is completed.
Teresa Blakely
"Why don't they just use something like what is used for SAT tests where you fill in dots with a no. 2 pencil? I think they would be better off with that. That way you could tabulate the data with a machine, but, still see it on paper and count it by hand if necessary."
This is what we do in my precinct and I can't fathom why it's not the standard way of doing elections. Neat, clean, verifiable and trustworthy. I'm convinced the reason we're trying to get away from something so elegant and functional is it makes it harder for corrupt politicians from rigging elections, pure and simple.
We should not be avoiding electronic voting systems in favor of paper-based systems. An electronic system, properly designed, tested and distributed, can provide a paper trail and can be delivered nationally for far less than one-third the three billion dollars that has been allocated by the Help America Vote program. The paper trail is a by-product that looks just like a cash register receipt that lists everything the voter has selected. The original is dropped into a ballot box, while a copy may kept by the voter.
Further, we?ll never have ?equal protection under the law? in our voting systems until we have a standard system of hardware and firmware used at all locations across the country. I know that voting systems have always been the prerogative of the states and counties, but I still believe that a case can be made that an appropriate system can be provided to the states and counties by the Federal Government that would provide uniformity while still leaving the states and counties with enough control to feel that it is beneficial to all.
The system is based on the use of touch screens for voting with hardware and firmware, i.e., operating system software that is ?burned? into the system, so that it cannot be tampered with. The idea is that the Federal Government would provide this part of the system, at no cost to the states. The hardware and firmware would be tested by independent laboratories before the equipment is sent to the states.
The state and local governments would load slates of candidates, propositions, or other ballot measures, into the voting units, to meet their requirements.
The basis is the use of a low cost, hand-held voting device, about the size of a Gideon Bible, which is the same size and configuration as was delivered 30 years ago for use by the military. The unit is battery powered and not connected to the computer system when the voter is inputting his or her votes. To simplify this description, let?s assume we are at the point where a candidate list for a particular office appears on the screen. The voter selects the candidate of choice by touching the screen at his or her name. The voter gets immediate feedback by a box appearing around the selected choice. Other possibilities might be to using reverse video, becoming much brighter than the other names, or there could even be voice feedback, with the voter using a headset. If an error has been made, the voter merely touches the correct name and the first name returns to the original condition. Only one name is allowed to be selected, eliminating over-voting. If selection of multiple candidates is allowed, e.g. three (3), the last three selected would be considered to be the decision of the voter.
When the voter is satisfied with the vote, a NEXT button is pressed and the next page of selections comes up. This process continues until all the categories have been processed or until the voter indicates that he or she has voted on every category he or she intends to and presses the REVIEW button. This causes a list of all the selections to be displayed on the screen. If a change is to be made, the voter need merely touch the selection to be corrected, makes the proper selection, presses REVIEW again, and verifies that the selections are as they were made.
The voter then presses the FINISH button, which causes the screen to go blank, and brings the unit to the registration position where there is a personal computer into which the hand-held unit is now connected and the data of the vote is transferred to the computer. It is also retained in the hand-held terminal, so that, should a recount be required, this is one of the entities that can be checked for verification of the vote. But this is not the only place the vote can be verified. The computer, which will be collecting information from all the hand-held units at this polling place will also retain the data. The cash register type strips are then printed. The voter verifies that the printout matches what the vote was and drops the original into a sealed box where the original votes can be counted, should a recount be required.
At the end of the voting, the computer causes a line printer to print a summary of all votes as well as a summary of the votes in each of the hand held voting devices. Only after this has been accomplished, is the computer connected to a network and the results are transmitted in encrypted form to the next level up where it is accumulated with other inputs from the district, and so on up the line. All computers, hand-held terminals, and the paper records are delivered to the collection points where they are held, should a recount be required. There are three levels of verification that are available, including the paper trails.
There is currently, what I consider to be a misplaced aversion to touch screen interfaces to the consumer, (voter) with the excuse that most people are not familiar with them. I admit, I am prejudiced on this subject, having been a co-designer of a hand-held touch-screen computer and communications device, several thousand of which were delivered to the Military more than 30 years ago. The touch-screen proved to be reliable and accurate in recording what was selected by the touch, using either your finger or a stylus. The argument that the public is not familiar with touch-screens is rapidly fading away. For example, if you have ever checked out of a supermarket with a credit card, you have probably used a touch screen.
In contrast, putting a mark in a bubble on a piece of paper that will be optically read, raises a whole series of problems, most of which, the touch-screen does not have.
1. The voter may not get the mark sufficiently into the bubble, or not dark enough for the machine to pick it up
2. If you make a mistake and mark the wrong bubble, it is difficult to correct, with the result that you may need to get a replacement ballot or hope that your erasure will not be picked up as a selection.
3. There is no way to guard against over-voting, i.e., where the voter selects two candidates where only one is allowed, or where too many candidates where multiple candidates may be selected.
4. The electro-mechanical mechanism that reads the ballot is more prone to error than is a pure electronic interface.
5. It has been claimed that the optical readers can be hacked into and I am not expert enough in that area of computer design to know if this easy or difficult, but my guess is that any system will have its weak points and that good design will make it difficult to tamper with the voter?s intent.
The problem of being able to hack into any of these systems is not related to how the user interfaces with the device used to record the vote. A major problem is with the way the software that controls the process is stored, tested and used. An aspect of that problem is who owns the rights to the software and who can have access to the software for test and verification. (Diebold?s retention of software ownership and not allowing others free access to it for test and verification undoubtedly contributed to the questions about the veracity of the software.)
I estimate that the entire project of designing and building all the hardware and firmware required for the entire nation, could be accomplished by the Federal Government for less than half-billion dollars if competitive bids were solicited to a detailed specification, three manufacturers were selected to share in the building of the equipment, and two independent companies were selected to do the testing.
Obviously, there?s more to the system including, absentee voting, identification of the voter, in terms of legitimacy, etc. I have some ideas concerning these elements also, but this gives you the essence of the approach. In all cases, the system makes use of readily available hardware, firmware and software.
Leon
That is the big problem for me as well. I don't understand why even the government cannot look at these codes, check them for vulnerabilities or hire someone to, and get it fixed if it has a problem.
It seems that these electronic voting companies are just saying "Trust us, we wouldn't mess with your vote!" Why don't I believe that after the Ohio mess.
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by benjaminstraight
July 23, 2008 4:02 AM PDT
- We need paper verification. Bottom line.
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