On Tue, Aug 12, 2008 at 11:28 PM, rob brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> How? Do we want an infinite loop of a voter running paper through a >> cheap printer trying to obtain an accurate ballot record and the >> machine refusing to print one while it switches a vote wrongly? Or do >> we want the voter to be able to cancel the ballot and let the poll >> workers know that he needs a paper ballot instead that he can mark >> himself? > > I'm fine with the latter. Actually that seems like a reasonable thing to > do. I agree, but that is not happening on all of todays' voting systems. Election officials seem to be hopelessly slow to grasp the problem or the solution. > >> >> If so, why not let the voters vote on a paper ballot to >> begin with? >> >> Any ideas? > > Cost? Wrong answer. Paper ballot optical scan systems are so much more economical than e-ballot systems that if you purchase all-new optical scan systems, the on-going cost savings totally pay for the initial purchase within four years and then begin saving taxpayers lots of monies. See http://electionmathematics.org and click on Voting Systems for links to cost comparison studies. > > But honestly, the big problem I have with paper ballots filled out by hand > is that they make the transition to a ranked system a lot harder, both in > terms of difficulty filling in the ballot and difficulty counting them. As That is a good argument against using any ranked ballot systems then since the integrity of e-ballot systems cannot be adequately ensured, given the secret ballot and the difficulty of implementing systems to detect and correct errors with a secret ballot. >> No. Obviously it is trivially easy for any programmer of a voting machine >> to: > > You'll note that I said it is essential that the source code be open for > viewing by all. Not so trivially easy in that case. Not at all. Making the source code for the voting programs open source does not make all the myriad of other programs, drivers, OS, etc on the voting system open source - that could be used to rig the vote. Also of course election officials do not have the resources to verify software and it would take years to set up systems to verify the software on voting systems *and* require trusted technicians to do so. While I support using open source programs for other reasons, it is *not* the answer to ensuring the accuracy of vote counts. You might want to read this article on the topic, that I wrote with help from dozens of technologists and some voting system experts: http://electionmathematics.org/em-voting-systems/VotingSystemSoftwareDisclosure.pdf and read this recent article: http://nandigramunited.blogspot.com/2008/08/soumitra-and-sitanshu-particularly.html > > But to do this, an awful lot of people are going to see the error, Well, perhaps 5% of voters would *see* the error (because no fraudster is stupid enough to switch *all* target votes available), but most might think they made a mistake on the first try. The ones who complain, in our experience over the last couple of election cycles, will be soundly ignored. > especially if you simply leave it on screen when you print the paper copy. Huh? Try doing that yourself. I do not know if the summary *screen* version of the ballot appears at the same time as you get a chance to check the paper version of the ballot. I don't think that is necessarily an option you would have. > And they are going to talk about it. And the next year, people will be a > lot more likely to notice. If you followed the voting news nationwide like I do, you would know that people have been talking about it a lot since the November 2004 presidential election, in particular there was lots of vote switching reported in Ohio. Congress even certified the election of a Representative from Florida that everyone knows was not elected by the people there, simply because the machine results had dropped over 14,000 votes from the candidate that everyone knows probably really won the election, and lots of people complained about the screen switching their votes, but it does not matter. The wrong person will still be elected no matter how many people complain about vote switching. > > Still, with an open source system, I have no clue how a programmer is going > to do this at all. Anyone could easily switch out any open source or not program that is compiled into machine language during some routine maintenance and no one would know the difference. Do you really think that election administrators are going to have the funds and that VVV's are going to cooperate to put together a list of all compilers, switches, hardware and firmware versions for every piece of software on their machines so that the versions can be checked after the elections? In Utah, the VVV shipped us atleast three different versions of the voting system software alone, and who knows how many unique versions of hardware, firmware, drivers, and hardware. If you believe that these VVs are standardized, you are quite mistaken. And which technicians and programmers do you want the public to *trust* to ensure that all the software on the VV is doing what it should? > > Most likely though, no one is able to hide such devious stuff in code > visible to security researchers. Yes. Of course with all of today's VV's you can simply take 30 secs to 1 min to use any of the easily accessible back doors to simply change the vote counts on the central tabulators, without even installing any malicious software on them at all. This is why audits of voter created paper ballots are the only reliable method to check vote count accuracy IF the paper ballots are secured and reconciled. > >> >> Recall that I said that the programmer would only be able to switch up >> to 90% of the target votes without any audit able to detect it. > > Only if every single voter got a wrong ballot printed. You really think > this would go unnoticed? Your scenario is absurd, at least on the scale > you talk about. OK. You don't believe the research. Any particular reason you are so certain that more than 30% of voters bother to check their paper ballot record? Any particular reason you think that all the research that shows that deliberately introduced errors in the ballots during tests are only discovered by 30% of those who *try* to find the errors? I.e. I think you had better come up with some facts to show why you believe that all the research is wrong that shows that fewer than 10% of voters are accurately proofing their machine printed ballot records, not just say you don't believe the research which sounds very plausible to me and no one has claimed is wrong up until yourself now. Not even the VVV's or the DRE supporters have attacked this research to my knowledge. > >> The voter would either think that he must have made a mistake on the >> first try, or complain about his vote being switched. > > Yes, and a lot of people complaining would draw more attention to it, and > more people would start checking. If it happened on a large scale, the > problem would be tracked down, and the programmer would be put away for a > long time. And *how* pray tell, would that programmer be *tracked down*? Magic? Voodoo? Current voting systems provide no method to track down who did anything on them. I suppose that you are right that vote switching does bring attention to these problems because FL, NM, MD, TN, and CA have already decided to begin scrapping DRE e-ballot voting machines and go back to paper ballots - again going back to paper ballots IS the solution. So what are YOU suggesting be done if many voters notice that their votes have been switched by DREs during an election? REDO THE ELECTION and hope it doesn't happen again during the second election since no manual audit can recover the accurate vote counts? I'm sorry but I don't have any time to continue this today. Maybe tomorrow. Cheers, Kathy ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info