In a perfect world
Contrary to many opinions, there are legitimate reasons for using an electronic voting system. They provide much greater flexibility in creating ballots in the languages needed for the community. They also provide better support for blind or disabled voters. Last, and certainly least, the quick tabulation can satisfy America's need for immediate gratification.
Of course, the problems in such systems as currently implemented are manifold and obvious, even to those without need of tin-foil head gear. Closed-source software is easily manipulated, both by political operatives and unscrupulous vendors. Using the same system to create check logs as is used to count the votes means that a single failure will invalidate both the votes and the logs. And most telling, the lack of a physical ballot precludes the opportunity for manual recount. We have to trust the machines.
There is a solution, although the current political climate makes it unlikely to see production. Use a machine to produce on-screen ballots in whatever languages required. After reviewing his or her selections, the voter presses a "Vote" button, which prints a human- and machine-readable paper ballot. The voter takes this ballot to the desk, and drops it into the locked ballot box as their official vote for purposes of counts and certification.
This system satisfies the needs of a diverse society with a short attention span, allows for quick optical scanning of identically printed ballots, and still provides paper ballots of record should a manual, non-electronic recount be desired. It would pointless to hack this system, as the human-readable ballots would tip off the voter to any impropriety. But sadly, this system is completely illegal in Florida.
Florida, like many other states, provides its citizens with an illusion of participation in democracy, while covering the entire process in a thick layer of partisan trickery. An exhaustive detailing of the various laws and policies which govern the voting process would, well, exhaust me; suffice it to say that the Secretary of State gets to set the rules governing elections largely as she sees fit, and that Secretary of State is a political appointment. Change for the better, if it comes at all, will be slow in coming, and only after the concerted efforts of non-partisan voting rights and election reform groups.
But in election season, I like to dream of a perfect world.
5 Comments:
A paper back up to a machine tabulated vote is the perfect scenario. Until then do what I do, if it's allowed in your district: early vote, but don't use the touchscreen. Instead ask for an absentee ballot to be printed and handed to you. You can do it here in Orange County Florida. Good luck, and may your vote be counted.
I hope it works differently in Orange COunty than in Miami-Dade. I have a long post tomorrow about voting, and one thing we've found is that in most cases your best chance of having your vote counted is to use the electronic system. Absentee ballots are subject to challenge for any reason at all, by anyone who shows up at the review.
"only the paper ballot provides verification for people like me who do not trust the current regime."
that's from alan in the previous thread.
"the lack of a physical ballot precludes the opportunity for manual recount."
from this post.
And I think you guys are just crazy. The whole reason for a recount is that there is a strong possibility that the original count was WRONG. In fact, paper ballots are known to be wrong about 3% of the time. Would we do our banking, or ANYTHING ELSE, online if it was wrong 3% of the time? OF course not.
When you're throwing around the idea of vote tampering, you have to consider the point of the tampering. Right now, the actual macines are most succeptible to tampering, which, so, how do you picture this paper the machine is printing looking? Is it a human-readable receipt? Some sort ot series of machine-readable bar codes? It sounds like a nightmare, both from the perspective of getting an accurate tally, and from the perspective of BUYING all those printers!
Look, designing an electronic system in such a way that tampering with it is practically impossible may be hard, but don't tell me it's impossible - banks and credit cards seem to have figured out how to do it. Except for in the movies, people pretty fucking rarely steal millions of dollars from online accounts, right?
At the end of the day, the vote count is a person reading a number off a computer screen. THAT's regardless of how the vote was taken, and fraud at that point is equally likely however the vote was taken. The question is what process allows the least opportunity for outside tampering.
When you consider all the crap that goes on at voting stations, the vulnerabilities of the voting machines, the idiocies of people holding up paper ballots and trying to distinguish between a pregnant chad and a hanging chad, the possibilities of the lockboxes of paper ballot-receipts being stolen or mishandled, and compare ALL THAT to the apparently near-perfect operations of the worldwide electronic money system, I think it's pretty clear that voting by https:// is the safest way to go.
I understand that the software needs to be done right, but it's much easier to get THAT right then it is to get all the links in the paper chain right.
The difference is that I know it's in my bank's best interest to keep my transactions safe and reliable- they have competitors, and consumer protection laws aren't enforced BY banks. But when the president of Diebold promises at a political rally to deliver Ohio's electoral votes to George W. Bush, I suddenly don't trust Diebold's voting machines all that much. Who's going to prosecute them? The Bush Justice Department?
Alesh's argument lies in a comparison to the obvious success of online banking systems and payment systems, but banking and fraud is not only criminal, it's routinely prosecuted. We defend our right for fair banking more rigorously than we defend our voting rights. Fraud and banking are not tolerated. Yet politics and fraud is a is eternal. Voting is as political process as banking is not. I agree in principal that online voting is ideal, but as MKH's blog heading indicates we are not in a "perfect world." Banking is far closer to perfect than politics will ever hope to be. No one will ever defend their right to an honest vote count as vigorously as they will a mistake on their bank statement. I submit paper absentee ballots as an my choice for voting because I know how to do it correctly, and am confident my vote is counted. This is what Susan Pynchon of the Florida Fair Elections Coalition recommended. I saw her speak and was chilled by the descriptions of vote tampering and voter supression she described in Florida. Actually to say chilled is an understatement. I left with that dark feeling that there was no hope for the world and that there is little I could do to help. And this is not hyperbole or rhetoric. Something is very wrong with not just elections but with the way the DNA, the regenerative powers, of our democracy is being mutated and unraveled.
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