RSSE-voting under scrutiny as US election enters the home stretch
By Angela Gunn | Published October 21, 2008, 6:09 PM
As polling places report record numbers of early and absentee votes cast, Fortify has released a report pinpointing where trouble with e-voting could most easily arise in 2008.
Reports from around the nation indicate that turnout for the 2008 elections is on track to set participation records. But after a series of mishaps, meltdowns, and curious coincidences in recent years, voters may not trust the gear with which they're voting.
That's troubling to researchers at San Mateo-based Fortify Software, who have put together a report detailing the immediate implications of the American patchwork of hand-counted paper ballots, optical-scan machines, DREs, vote-by-mail, ancient lever machines, and even punchcards, the chad-ridden bane of the 2000 presidential race.
Yes, punchcard voting is still out there, according to Fortify's Joy Forsythe. "There are still nine counties in Iowa Idaho using those," she notes, and of the six voting methods Fortify reviewed, punchcards rank dead last on the list of preferred voting techniques. That ranking's based on their serious problems with both accuracy and verifiability (both by anxious voters hoping they marked their ballots as intended and by anyone seeking to prove that the final tally is accurate).
Lever machines placed fifth on Fortify's list -- they're accurate, sure, but the vote is unverifiable. (That satisfying ker-thump when you pull the lever only tells you that a vote has been recorded, not that it's the one the voter intended.) A few lever units are still in play, mainly in New York, where years of conflict over the implementation of 2002's Help America Vote Act have delayed adoption of newer voting machines.
Of course, the newer machines are famously troubled, and bringing up the #4 spot on the list are direct-recording electronic machines -- the controversial touch-screen DREs, which rely on screen taps and proprietary hardware and software to function.
DREs have been at the epicenter of e-voting controversy for years, as researchers hack them with ease and voters report disturbing problems in the booth. Those problems have been angrily denied by manufacturers such as Election Systems & Software, Sequoia Voting Systems and Premier Election Solutions (formerly a division of Diebold); still, Fortify found that the number of voters who'll confront DREs at the polling place has dwindled for the 2008 election.
So what works? The voting method that best combines accuracy, verifiability, incoercibility (that is, making it impossible for a voter to display the contents of his or her ballot to anyone, making it impossible for anyone else to demand that it be revealed), and privacy is...hand-counted paper ballots. (Very Norman Rockwell!) Behind that are paper ballots that are optically scanned, the accuracy of which is comparable to that of hand-counting and which scales well for widespread use.
Rounding out the top three is absentee balloting, which usually relies on optical-scan technology but is also prey to glitches with delivery -- and, because it's done outside a polling station, has few privacy or incoercibility protections.
And yet none of these methods is perfect; there is, in fact, probably no perfect voting method, according to Jacob West, who co-authored the study with Forsythe and Brian Chess. Forsythe notes, though, that voting methods based on open source, as Brazil is using, would inspire more confidence as the code underwent scrutiny by anyone who cared to see how the machines were operating. "Many of the [e-voting] problems we've seen in America could have been spotted in open source," adds West.
On the horizon, there's promising research into systems that would print a receipt that couldn't be used to show a coercing party one's ballot, but could be used by the voter to check that the vote was correctly tabulated. Cryptography is a factor in a voting technique that would involve a randomly generated, two-sheet ballot; that effort, Punchscan, is being headed by electronic-cash pioneer David Chaum.
Overall there's progress, as the nation recovers from the good intentions of HAVA ("We threw a bunch of federal funding at a problem we didn't understand," comments West) and as companies conclude that problems can't simply be ignored or ascribed to some sort of Luddite fringe movement. West notes that election officials and e-voting manufacturers alike could learn from advances made in other kinds of software, as well as from tech-industry advances such as the PCI DSS credit-card security standard and the Microsoft-led Trustworthy Computing Security Development Lifecycle (SDL).
Forsythe adds that since many election officials (and poll workers) aren't familiar with technology, education is necessary as well -- and that Fortify's interest in making the software secure and otherwise ensuring that the underlying technology is right for the task dovetails with the guidance needs to keep the e-voting conversation moving after November 4. "The failure point [in e-voting]," adds West, "shouldn't be the software."
The full Fortify report is available online (PDF available here).
Does it matter?
The Obama-Messiah will win. Acorn has assured that the electorate will be pro-Obama by a large margin.
His prophet, Biden, has already prophesied the coming firestorm of international aggression, to test the new man-God, and called for the faith of His subjects during the trial as their choices may not at first "seem right". (The Biden Prohpecy)
This story was told centuries ago, folks. It ends with the Great Zombie riding in on the clouds and casting them into a lake of spilled petrol, followed by free mutton for everyone (else).
Yeppers. Exciting times. May the Pasta be with you all. ;)
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|Despite the hype and the raised expectations of those ewho think they will magically obtain something for nothing (but then, that is simply the typical Democrat), Obama will simply be a return to the same old pre-Clinton Democratic policies.
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|Why pre-clinton? How was Clinton not "the same old democratic policies"?
(Other than the fact he wasn't really a party-line guy...he was more of a mob-rule guy. Whatever the polls told him to do...he did)
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|I just wanted to make a correction, as I misspoke during the interview. Idaho is the remaining state using punch card voting. Iowa uses optical scan machines.
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|Thank you, Joy. We've made the change above.
-SF3
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|Ya know...the idea is a good one and some day, it will be the way of things.
That being said, there will always be some loser with more time on his/her hands than brains to come along and fudge up the works and make something that really need not be complex a total mess.
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|Yeah. like those smarter than you who are able to effectively game the machines - thus requiring a verifiable backup means of confirmation.
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|I've always liked the idea of a cash register
as a voting machine.
I think it is impossible to test any voting
machine as thoroughly as modern cash registers
have been.
And I've even seen cash registers that keep
two paper trail-one given to the customer, one
kept inside the machine.
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|The machines already exist and are in place in many places.
They are as simple as completing the line between two endpoints (instead of filling is a circle or box), and the completed paper ballot is scanned as you exit the polling place.
Results are tallied in real time and you have the paper confirmation in place.
This is an OLD topic that has already been worked to death. What is humorous is to listen to so many who haven't a clue regarding the security problems again lament the fact that it is not in place as it is election time.
If you want a quick overview (or a much more detailed one for that matter) read Bruce Schneier's website.
Yawn...
Funny, we don't hear the same concerns by all those who favor passing out driver's licences to illegal aliens as a driver's license is more than sufficnet to qualitfy one to vote.
So...just who filters the illegals out? hmmmm?
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|It's just that the David Chaum reference is the
first time I've seen any sign of anyone thinking
that votes being kept track of is really just
the same thing as existing cash registers do,
and do with the safeguards bankers use to
protect their money. :|
And yeah, in all the coverage of voter fraud
I've seen too many "[450,000 voter records show
discrepancies!!]" headlines and one reference
to how a board of elections had one case of
attempted fraudulent voting.
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|*blink* And the Chaum reference was a "sign" of this in what sense? I'm genuinely confused; Chaum's calling card, so to speak, is e-cash, but he's most notable as a cryptographer. One can do both, and Chaum's track record on e-voting -- Scantegrity to name but one project -- is as least as distinguished, though less familiar to many.
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|>*blink* And the Chaum reference was a "sign"
"Mnemonic" is as incorrect a word as "sign," but I'll go with it for now.
Since long before electronic voting I've been aware of a cash register that
gives a ticket for the kitchen, a receipt for the customer, and also updates
the database of what was supposed to be used to make the items sold or etc.
so that a very trusting manager would never have to count beef hearts or
close a store for a few days to check inventory.
Since a little while before electronic voting I've been aware of cash regi-
sters that have little pictures of food items on the touchpad. (Good luck
getting coffee icecream instead of chocklit at that shop!)
To me it seems that it would be much cheaper and much more reliable to put
a new overlay on a touchpad--A sticker that shows candidate names and faces.
This would result in the voter having a printout of who they'd voted for,
the database of votes being updated, and the election board having a roll
of paper that has all the votes printed on it.
If the voter can see well enough to do so person can compare the two paper
trails, and if is a discrepancy file a complaint or the more probable of complain loudly.
Yes, security conscious me can see that what Evil Person should do is only
mess with the database but I'm also aware of people.
But back to Chaum.
Colour me desperate, but that was the closest I've seen to an excuse to say
the above.
SDT
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|What is ridiculous has been the rush and the inane demand for purely electronic voting!
Who cares what the experts say, we need to listen to politicians and citizen advocates who haven't a clue regarding the inherent problems.
The irony is that there needn't be anything complex about electronic machines that tally a an integral back up in the form of a paper ballot.
Well, except for those who simply persist in thinking that "It is ridiculous that we can't get electronic voting right" without having a clue as to the fundamental limitations of such a system - as have been all too conclusively demonstrated.
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|It is ridiculous that we can't get electronic voting right.
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|But you can't
and never will
because it is flawed at the roots.
Voting is based on TRUST and that is the foundation of democracy (and what keeps political violence at bay in such system).
And you can't trust a machine or anything you do not comprehend.
We spend centuries polishing the hand-made ballot voting system to get it's process right (transparent urns, elective lists, signatures, opposite party accessors, etc) but it's basis was never flawed.
Electronic voting basis is.
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|Thanks, Mecanoroid -- though one might accurately say that the better systems are based on DIStrust!
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