Internet Ballot for Municipal Election

[Peachy]

Today is Municipal Election day across the province of Ontario (Don't forget to vote Prelude, Owyn, and all you other Ontarians! ) This news story from the London Free Press suggests that Glengarry-Prescott County in eastern Ontario will be the first jurisdication to offer Internet voting. I heard this on CBC Radio this morning on the news but didn't think much about it at the time. It will be interesting to see how secure this form of voting will be from tampering.

[ross549]

Looks interesting. I think we could do it here south of the border as well, provided our leadership would let it happen. :)It would work great for those of us in the military too.

[nlinecomputers]

This is too easy to tamper with IMO. I don't vote now and we have paper ballots because I don't trust the system we have now. Yes I know that it is convenient but with that convenience we loose security via obscurity.You guys should resist this. Making it hard to vote is a benefit not an obstacle. It makes for a more fair and secure vote. Some sacrifices need to be made to keep freedom and convenience is one of them.

[Prelude76]

    "DELAND, Fla., Nov. 11 - Something very strange happened on election night to Deborah Tannenbaum, a Democratic Party official in Volusia County. At 10 p.m., she called the county elections department and learned that Al Gore was leading George W. Bush 83,000 votes to 62,000. But when she checked the county's Web site for an update half an hour later, she found a startling development: Gore's count had dropped by 16,000 votes, while an obscure Socialist candidate had picked up 10,000--all because of a single precinct with only 600 voters."    - Washington Post Sunday , November 12, 2000 ; Page A22

i dont trust any form of electronic voting, be it black box voting like in the States, or Internet voting as it's implied here. too easy to be tampered with, it its current form, IMO.but i dont believe in our current so-called Democracy either. We basically get drilled with ads and billboards by liars and thiefs, and in the end, all we accomplish put another 4-year dictator in power that will break all promises and pass laws for coporations that paid for his ads in the first place. And at every government vote for laws, everyone either votes for what their party wants, or they're labels 'traitors' and are ostracized from the party. The computer game "Call to Power 2" had the best 'idea' for a government: you progress from one form of government to another through the game, and after democracy, you transform into a 'Corporate Republic' which is exactly where i feel we're at these days, but after that, you can become a 'Virtual Democracy' where you only elect a leader to represent you formally, but the power remains with the people as they vote thru secure internet on every major issue that comes up.ok, its just a game, but it'd pretty D*** nice if we had such power in the future. Go to war with country "insert name here"? Ratify Kyoto protocol? Give politicians a 40% raise? all those would be so much better to be voted on by the general public instead of politicians themselves.

[Freddy]

For the past 4 years, the election boards have somehow deemed that my wife and I should be in separate electoral districts. So each year I fill out a paper ballot (we have electro/mechanical boxes) and each year I fill out a manual voting ballot. Its a bit disappointing to think my vote doesn't count much since most elections are decided (statistically) before the ballots are opened.So I place little faith in the ability of local electoral boards to handle the transition to internet voting.

[Guest LilBambi]

They are starting to think about it here, but not the safe way:Verify the Vote: Tell Congress to Fight for Secure Elections!

[nlinecomputers]

All the security in the world does nothing if the vote counting is done in secret or the methods used are too complex for the general population to understand. I have an understanding of computers but I'm only a very basic programer. I would not be able to prove that a voting machine program is secure. I would have to trust someone else to confirm it. Well, who watches the watchers?What the **** is wrong with a paper ballot??? Why do we NEED this shell game!Personally I think that the EFF.ORG links doesn't ask enough. All voting machines should be baned. All counting machines should be banned. Paper ballots only. It should be required that ballots be counted at the poll before they are packed up and sent to the court house. I no longer vote because of the sham that our election system has become. (What is the point? My vote is never really counted. It is discarded or altered.)

[Peachy]

I actually think we should go back to making important decisions with hand vote counts in local assemblies, but democracy will never happen when there's so much money to be made by siphoning tax dollars into the hands of unelected backroom political advisors. That's how our political system generally works up here.

[ibe98765]

All the security in the world does nothing if the vote counting is done in secret or the methods used are too complex for the general population to understand.  I have an understanding of computers but I'm only a very basic programer.  I would not be able to prove that a voting machine program is secure.  I would have to trust someone else to confirm it.  Well, who watches the watchers?

This would be like how public encryption algorithms are proven. The source code is made public, researchers try to find holes, improvements are made, etc. Black box machines should not be used for voting. Software and the mechanics of such machines must be made public and tested frequently by a trusted authority. There is nothing secure about paper ballots or manual voting machines. Many politicians have often manipulated ballot counts for the gain of themselves or those they supported (for instance, the Daly machine in Chicago where thousands of dead people rose from the grave to vote for John Kennedy in the 1960 election).If there were one area crying out for standardization, it would be the mechanics and process of counting votes.

[havnblast]

I agree no voting measure is ever secure - history has proven this. I would really like to see voting come available online some how. I think we would get more people voting and I think it is sad that people do not vote. I belong to this country and I am proud of it and I will vote as I always have. I than at least have the right to complain about something if it passes or not. What would this country be like if nobody voted? I would hate to see that day.

[Cluttermagnet]

Electronic voting is an obvious way to even further abuse elections. I am totally against e-voting, but I am forced to vote on just such machines since the 2002 elections. Prior to that, we had the punch card voting method, which I was quite comfortable with. I believe a vast majority of the voters did fine with that method. Much was done in a cynical and manipulative way, in response to problems more perceived than real in the 2000 FL election. Yes, they made it worse. Quite a lot worse. E-voting is totally non- transparent, and is an obvious way to allow massive voter fraud. Only the generation of paper for each vote can even hope prevent that. Even if there were more _apparent_ openness with e-voting, there would still be plenty of ways to subvert it. For something this important, paper generation in elections is absolutely essential. Anything short of that is totally lacking in credibility- and integrity.The only answer is to protest, loud though civily, and unremittingly. Fail to do that, and the b------s have won. BTW, I think they have won already. It is sad to see my peers have become disillusioned and have broken completely from participating. I maintain that elections still serve an important function of trying to minimize the damage by selecting the least damaging candidates. The lesser of two evils, in other words. We would be in far better shape today if only enough cynics had overcome their disgust and voted anyway. And if the naive and the idealistic had overcome their anger, choked back their disgust, and voted for the better of the viable candidates instead of throwing away their vote. Our apathy got us where we are today.I checked LilBambi's link, and was pleased to see several congressmen in my area are sponsors of that bill, including my own. But the bill probably is useless because it is not trying to prohibit e-voting, only trying to make it more transparent. Any 'pact with the devil' such as this is doomed to failure IMO.

[ibe98765]

Sorry guys, I think this brouhaha and fear about e-voting is akin to those who think irradiated foods are the devil's work or something like that. In other words, it's a non sequitur. The stark reality is that e-voting is here to stay and will likely be mandated across the country by Congress in the future. The only question that needs addressing is how do we ensure that e-voting is as secure and trustworthy as possible? Whatever happens, I seriously doubt that e-voting can be any more manipulated or worse than paper/manual machine voting and manual vote counting. We don't need another election where the results hinge on whether a chad is hanging or not or whether a pencil mark is dark enough.Personally, I'd prefer to vote electronically. Having to go to a place of voting is so "last century". And I vote in every election. I believe that doing so is my duty and my right as a citizen.

[nlinecomputers]

This would be like how public encryption algorithms are proven. The source code is made public, researchers try to find holes, improvements are made, etc. Black box machines should not be used for voting. Software and the mechanics of such machines must be made public and tested frequently by a trusted authority.

The only problem with that is how do you get a "trusted authority". E-voting makes the issues too complex for the average person to follow. This is the intent.

There is nothing secure about paper ballots or manual voting machines. Many politicians have often manipulated ballot counts for the gain of themselves or those they supported (for instance, the Daly machine in Chicago where thousands of dead people rose from the grave to vote for John Kennedy in the 1960 election).

Mechanical voting machines or ballots that need mechanical counting machines (such as punch ballots or scantron cards) again are designed to make the process to hard to follow. Impossible for Joe six pack to watch over. That is the intent. A paper ballot system is only good if the ballots are counted AT THE POLL. Which, in the U.S., almost never happens. They are locked up and hauled off, often by public officers who are on the ballot(or who answer directly to people on the ballot) Once they have left public sight it is impossible to prove that the ballot box is the same one that left the polling place. Ballot switching, box stuffing, and other means of tampering with the vote have occurred in the past because we have made it so easy to do so for so many years. The only good system is one where the ballots are counted at the poll in view of the public and published on site. This makes it harder to fix elections because of the public viewing and the amount of people involved. Taking all ballots to a central location to be counted allows for the system to be rigged that much easier. An e-vote system is the ultimate consolidation of vote counting. That is too much power to be put into far too few hands.

If there were one area crying out for standardization, it would be the mechanics and process of counting votes.

I agree but embracing an electronic method just because it seems cool isn't the answer. There is nothing wrong with a paper ballot system, if run properly. The problem is that in the US we have often not done that.

[Prelude76]

since some of you feel ok with e-voting, and others dont and feel that government could manipulate it, please read the following article. it's a bit on the 'conspiracy theory' side, but an interesting read regardless:http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0310/S00211.htmsome of the points that stand out in that article (concerning a magical -16,000 vote count in the Florida Presidential election):

In her book Bev Harris explains the issue of whether the card was a chance fault or a deliberate example of tampering"    "A memory card is like floppy disk. If you have worked with computers for any length of time you will know that a disk can go bad. When it does, which of the following is most likely? In an Excel spreadsheet that you saved on a "bad disk," might it read a column of numbers correct the first time: "1005, 2109, 3000, 450…" but the second time, replace the numbers like this: "1005, 2109, -16022, 450…" Or is it more likely that the "bad disk" will…fail to read the file at all, crash your computer, give you an error message, or make weird humming and whirring noises."    source: page 239, Chapter 11, "Black Box Voting in the 21st Century"However officially, as we learned earlier, the explanation given publicly - and accepted without demur by the media - for the strange events in Volusia county is that there was simply a "faulty memory card". The "faulty memory card" explanation is also included in a CBS News Network investigation into the Election 2000 debacle.

[littlebone]

Well, first I'd like to place my vote here: I don't want to see online voting.

    "A memory card is like floppy disk. If you have worked with computers for any length of time you will know that a disk can go bad. When it does, which of the following is most likely? In an Excel spreadsheet that you saved on a "bad disk," might it read a column of numbers correct the first time: "1005, 2109, 3000, 450…" but the second time, replace the numbers like this: "1005, 2109, -16022, 450…" Or is it more likely that the "bad disk" will…fail to read the file at all, crash your computer, give you an error message, or make weird humming and whirring noises."

Stratus used to make a fault tolerant transaction server that worked thus:Four CPUs would work on data. Each calculation (not sure what this represented) was checked against the others. If any CPU got a different result, it would be taken off-line and a service person would be called. If during this outtage, another CPU got a different answer before the offline CPU was repaired, then the whole system would be shut down, under the supposition that any differering results from this point forward would be impossible to arbitrate.I imagine a similar technique could be/has been applied to other parts (memory, drives, CPU, comm) of a transactional system such as voting. However, I stick with my first sentence above: No online voting. It is not that paper ballots are more secure or honest. It's just the Luddite in me that likes the paper trail.

[Cluttermagnet]

The only problem with that is how do you get a "trusted authority".  E-voting makes the issues too complex for the average person to follow.  This is the intent.

There is nothing secure about paper ballots or manual voting machines. Many politicians have often manipulated ballot counts for the gain of themselves or those they supported (for instance, the Daly machine in Chicago where thousands of dead people rose from the grave to vote for John Kennedy in the 1960 election).

Mechanical voting machines or ballots that need mechanical counting machines (such as punch ballots or scantron cards) again are designed to make the process to hard to follow. Impossible for Joe six pack to watch over. That is the intent. A paper ballot system is only good if the ballots are counted AT THE POLL. Which, in the U.S., almost never happens. They are locked up and hauled off, often by public officers who are on the ballot(or who answer directly to people on the ballot) Once they have left public sight it is impossible to prove that the ballot box is the same one that left the polling place. Ballot switching, box stuffing, and other means of tampering with the vote have occurred in the past because we have made it so easy to do so for so many years. The only good system is one where the ballots are counted at the poll in view of the public and published on site. This makes it harder to fix elections because of the public viewing and the amount of people involved. Taking all ballots to a central location to be counted allows for the system to be rigged that much easier. An e-vote system is the ultimate consolidation of vote counting. That is too much power to be put into far too few hands.

If there were one area crying out for standardization, it would be the mechanics and process of counting votes.

I agree but embracing an electronic method just because it seems cool isn't the answer. There is nothing wrong with a paper ballot system, if run properly. The problem is that in the US we have often not done that.

I strongly agree with your reasoning, Nathan. Paper ballot systems have been abused for years. I suspect it was not extremely widespread, however, because it is possible to get tripped up and exposed. In my jurisdiction, there were recurrent rumors that a lot of dead people voted in certain precincts in a nearby city. Probably true.The potential for abuse in an electronic system is very high indeed. Especially because cynical laws have already been passed keeping the source code 'proprietary' so even neutral experts cannot verify the honesty of the results. Any and all poll workers have become vestigial virtually overnight. They are now totally useless in monitoring the fairness of elections. They are no longer physically capable of doing a recount at the precinct. Even more outlandish, once you follow the money, you learn that there are folks serving in the congress today who openly had investment in some of these e-vote companies and have an obvious appearance of having rigged their own improbable, come from behind elections. But what scares me the most is the knowledge that if the bad guys have a lock on the process and can freely substitute, the cheating becomes _very_ hard to detect, as they can fudge it in near real time and only to the small extent needed to tip the results in key close elections. In other words, it is surprisingly easy, if you have control, to choose very carefully and sparingly where you game the system to tilt the election overall your way. It should be, by all rights, virtually indectable. All evidence to date points towards the conclusion that one political party has a virtual lock on the process, with absolutely nobody looking over their shoulders. Look for a continuing trend with underdog candidates pulling from behind in the polls to win big on election day. 2004 is going to be a slaughter of unprecedented proportions- of the peoples' right to have a fair election that reflects the will of the electorate. It won't be as awkwardly, visibly evil as 2000 was, but it will be as devastatingly effective in hijacking the elections.

[nlinecomputers]

Even if the e-voting machines were open source and the code checked by people I trust as procters I still wouldn't trust them. So what if the machines have been ceriified by the trusted firm of Douwe, Cheetham and Howe. How do I know that the program running TODAY on the machine is the same code as the publicly approved open source code? If crooked Sheriff deputies can swap ballot boxes can they not swap programs? Cluttermagnet has thought of the same thing as I have. What if the machines only miscount slightly? What if say only 1 in 20 votes are miscast? What good is a paper ballot receipt if they are never counted because the machine count is trusted? And if it isn't trusted and we hand count all the paper receipts then why bother with the expensive ballot machines in the first place(other then to give Diebold a nice government contract....)

[Prelude76]

(other then to give Diebold a nice government contract....)

besides, the president of Diebold is a registered Republican and attends many Republican fund raisers.hmmmm... i'm sure its just a coincidence that Diebold gets contracts for many of the voting machines, and strange 'irregularities' in the prez election favored Bush.

[nlinecomputers]

Spare me your Bush bashing. While Bush was stuffing ballot boxes the Gore camp was doing all it could to toss out absentee ballots of servicemen oversees(very likely to have voted for Bush). Our system is so corupt that they ALL play this game. Bush was just more successfull this time. O'l Dean who I think is going to end up being the Dems man on the ballot in '04 has just opened his big fat wallet up so expect all the dirty tricks to come from his side this time. This is looking to be the set up for one of the biggest, bloodist, and most crooked election ever on BOTH sides.

[littlebone]

From an article on computer balloting in the NY Times 11/11/03 (note that NYT requires a free registration to read their articles):

BUT the controversy surrounding Diebold goes beyond its chief executive's political activities. In July, professors at Johns Hopkins University and Rice University analyzed the software code for the company's touch-screen voting machines and concluded that there was "no evidence of rigorous software engineering discipline" and that "cryptography, when used at all, is used incorrectly."Making matters worse, the software code for the machines was discovered in January by a Seattle-area writer on a publicly accessible Internet site. That the code was unprotected constitutes a significant security lapse by Diebold, said Aviel D. Rubin, an associate professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins, co-author of the study of the code.Mr. Swidarski said the code on the Internet site was outdated and was not now in use in machines.About 15,000 internal Diebold e-mail messages also found their way to the Internet. Some referred to software patches installed on Diebold machines days before elections. Others indicated that the Microsoft Access database used in Diebold's tabulation servers was not protected by passwords. Diebold, which says passwords are now installed on machines, is threatening legal action against anyone who posts the files or links to them, contending that the e-mail is copyrighted.A recent report for the state of Maryland by SAIC, an engineering and research firm, has added to concerns about the security of Diebold's systems. It recommended 17 steps that Maryland election officials could take to ensure better security when using Diebold's machines.The company seized upon this as evidence that its systems, if used properly, were secure. But the report's overall assessment was not particularly upbeat. "The system, as implemented in policy, procedure and technology, is at high risk of compromise," SAIC wrote.

[Cluttermagnet]

From an article on computer balloting in the NY Times 11/11/03 (note that NYT requires a free registration to read their articles):BUT the controversy surrounding Diebold goes beyond its chief executive's political activities.  (snip)A recent report for the state of Maryland by SAIC, an engineering and research firm, has added to concerns about the security of Diebold's systems. It recommended 17 steps that Maryland election officials could take to ensure better security when using Diebold's machines.The company seized upon this as evidence that its systems, if used properly, were secure. But the report's overall assessment was not particularly upbeat. "The system, as implemented in policy, procedure and technology, is at high risk of compromise," SAIC wrote.

"If you push something hard enough, it will fall over." - Fudd's Law"It goes in, it must come out." - <almost an expletive, deleted>'s deviant to Fudd's Law

"Thank you very much! You'll be getting a handsome simulfax copy of your own words in the mail soon, and my reply."(Thanks Firesign Theatre, "I Think We're All Bozos On This Bus") Ahhh, another bozo reveals himself. "Welcome to the future, we're glad you made it!" Boy, elections are sure strange, here in the future. My vote goes in, but it doesn't have to come out! This is in clear violation of Tezlagel's deviant to Fudd's First Law of Opposition. I'm going to have to talk to Doctor ahhhh, Doctor ahhh- Doctor Memory about this, if I could just remember where I put the darned fax number...

[littlebone]

Perhaps in this topic this would be a more relevant Firesign Theater quote:

. . . Son, your shenanigans could cost me this election! . . .

From "Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers"

[Prelude76]

nline, didnt mean to do come off as a Bush whacker. you're so right about Dems being just as bad as Republicans. that's what makes all this government vs little people struggle that much more depressing. i think you've said it the best, that republicans just won the cheater's race. they're all crooked, and if dems could find a way to tweak Diebold, they would do it in a heartbeat as well. just like all those that bash Bush for being a warmongerer. i'd bet to a 90% certainty that if Al Gore won, Gore would be in Iraq as well, just as Clinton got into Kosovo and bombed that pharmaceutical factory in Sudan.there should be a 100% non-partisan group that monitors elections. maybe bring in a totally non-biased team to oversee it all.wait. reality check. theres no such thing as 100% non-partisan. even supreme court judges have their sway.

[ibe98765]

Aussies Do It Right: E-Voting  By Kim Zetter 02:00 AM Nov. 03, 2003 PTWhile critics in the United States grow more concerned each day about the insecurity of electronic voting machines, Australians designed a system two years ago that addressed and eased most of those concerns: They chose to make the software running their system completely open to public scrutiny. Although a private Australian company designed the system, it was based on specifications set by independent election officials, who posted the code on the Internet for all to see and evaluate. What's more, it was accomplished from concept to product in six months. It went through a trial run in a state election in 2001. Critics say the development process is a model for how electronic voting machines should be made in the United States. Called eVACS, or Electronic Voting and Counting System, the system was created by a company called Software Improvements to run on Linux, an open-source operating system available on the Internet. Election officials in the Australian Capital Territory, one of eight states and territories in the country, turned to electronic voting for the same reason the United States did -- a close election in 1998 exposed errors in the state's hand-counting system. Two candidates were separated by only three or four votes, said Phillip Green, electoral commissioner for the territory. After recounting, officials discovered that out of 80,000 ballots, they had made about 100 mistakes. They decided to investigate other voting methods. Full story