Comments on: Open-source electronic voting

A group is advocating the use of open-source software and a unique tablet PC and printer as a solution to concerns surrounding voting integrity.

[lmasanti]

There are a couple of "country" where "county" should be.

[robvme]

I think it wise to plug all of the security issues inherent in the Linux Kernel and how those holes are addressed before we commit to a voting system that has any kind of integrity. Linux is not ready for primetime in this area.

[Dalkorian]

Thanks, I needed a good laugh.

[brianm88]

You say that as if Windows was?
If so then we need to pull the plug on ALL electronic voting until such holes are addressed.

You surely can't be implying that Windows 98 or XP is -secure- enough!

I would argue that the linux / open source world can come up with better more secure system and *trustable* system than any proprietary based solution.

[Dalkorian]

Why does this need to be so complicated? In my precinct, we're handed a paper ballot and a blue felt pen, we mark our choices and feed the ballot into a scanner. The scanner records and tallies the votes, plus it has the paper ballots in case a physical recount is needed. Simple and effective, plus more trustworthy than this "touch the screen, get a barcode you can't verify, feed it into another machine" nonsense.

[c|net Reader]

I was thinking similar WRT the bar code. How does the voter know that the bar code represents that voter's intentions? Audits can compare arbitrary ballots against the bar code, but how many can be wrong before the entire election is declared void? If any are allowed to be wrong, then some number of votes can be biased without halting the election.

[TheDutchMen]

I like the idea of a computer generated ballot. Do have two concerns. 1) How do I know the bar code is a true representation of my vote. I feel the bar code could lead to fraud. I would be too easy to record a different vote in the bar code then the way I voted. 2) One issue against this idea. In the past test have been done to check if the voter verifies the paper trail against their vote. And the voter has not picked up intentional errors (fraud, the paper trail different from their vote.) How will you over come that problem?

[cjbf]

Dalkorian is absolutely correct. This system is more complicated, which means more expensive, and unneccessarily so. When the expected requirement for paper proof becomes law, I'll bet our commissioners throw good money after bad & buy some sort of attached printer that 1) will NOT have the printout in the same format as the ballot (which would make checking your vote against what's on the screen easier & faster and 2) will NOT be printed in large enough type for easy reading in whatever light is available. They will NOT cut their losses & admit that they spent the HAVA money unwisely in the first place.

[c|net Reader]

One idea proposed before is to have the machine print a form that is easily scanned and avoids the problems of human marked forms (marks too big, too small, too faint, too shaky, etc.). Scanning has its own problems, of course. How do you know the scanner accurately reflected your vote? Scanners can be hacked, too. Audits come into play, of course, but there's always something. You could require scanning multiple times on separate scanners and, say, entering a code from each into a tallying machine (manually or electronically), where the code is a hash of the vote state and a key unique to the scanner. That would confirm that multiple scanners read the vote the same way, but then the tallying machine becomes the single point of failure.

As has been suggested before, a means by which the voter can confirm that his vote was tallied accurately is likely the best course. That is, when looking at the tallied voting results, if the voter can search for a vote with a particular code number printed on the voter's receipt, then the voter can confirm that his intended votes were tallied correctly.

[albizzia]

Having worked as a polling place official, I agree that this proposal is too complicated and prone to errors. There will be too many people bypassing the scanning step and just dropping the unscanned uncounted ballot in the box. That is why the local paper ballot and scanning system has the ballot scanner on the ballot box itself, the ballot is scanned to deposit it in the box. While cardboard security sleeves are available for the voters to use, few bother to use them. Voters are much more concerned about their vote being counted accurately than about their vote being secret.

Printing the completed ballot with a machine is good as it reduces errors and could reduce paper use, though it does cost more than preprinted paper ballots filled out by hand. But no complicated obscure bar code is needed, just a good easy to read OCR font.

[sfpearce]

Here is a two-minute video about the recent successful open source voting machine display at the Linux conference:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4E2eTg_LQ4E