[LINK] E-voting fears run high as election day looms

Richard Chirgwin rchirgwin at ozemail.com.au
Wed Oct 29 16:35:54 AEDT 2008


I guess my strong expression of views in the past make my present
statements suspect anyhow, but ...

I can't comment on either the US or the Finland case at the bottom from
direct experience, but it seems to me that e-voting needs too many
different components to be "right".

1) All of the normal electoral mechanisms still need to exist -
intangibles such as trust in the system, participation not just in the
vote but in electoral activities, as well as the security of polling
places, privacy of the individual's vote, willingness to vote, a belief
that you are  the rest.

2) The machine itself must be secure and open to scrutiny. How you
resolve those two is a nice trick ...

3) The software must be secure and open to scrutiny (why the US doesn't
grasp the desirability of scrutiny is beyond me).

4) The network must not be the Internet, which to my mind rather
undermines cost arguments.

5) And then there's the interface. It has to be (a) comprehensible to
any user; (b) failsafe; (c) users must be able to "navigate backwards"
to correct errors, but in a way that doesn't compromise the vote; and a
host of other things. The interface is vital, but my experience is that
the best you can expect from the average interface designer is "not
completely awful", and we need something lots better than that.

Ahh well, schadenfraude is unworthy of me (and I suspect my spelling is
unworthy of the word!), but it's nice to have my beliefs validated by
the experience of others...

RC

Bernard Robertson-Dunn wrote:
> E-voting fears run high as election day looms
> 'Flipped' votes reported in three states
> By Dan Goodin in San Francisco
> 28th October 2008 23:36 GMT
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/28/evoting_fears/
>
> With just a week to go before the US presidential election, academics, 
> politicians, and voters are voicing increased distrust of the electronic 
> voting machines that will be used to cast ballots.
>
> In early balloting in West Virginia, Texas, and Tennessee, voters using 
> e-voting machines made by Nebraska-based Election Systems & Software 
> (ES&S) have reported the "flipping" of their vote from the presidential 
> candidate they selected to the candidate's rival. In some cases, voters 
> said their choice had been changed from Democrat Barack Obama to 
> Republican John McCain while others reported just the opposite.
>
> The reports prompted the Brennan Center for Justice and a group called 
> Verified Voting on Tuesday to write voting officials in 16 states where 
> the ES&S iVotronic machine is used to be on the lookout for problems.
>
> "There is a real chance that voters using iVotronic machines in your 
> state will experience 'vote flopping' similar to that experienced by 
> voters in West Virginia," the letter warned. It went on to urge poll 
> workers to recalibrate machines when in doubt, and when possible to 
> confirm voters' candidate choices with a verified paper trail.
>
> The vote flipping warning comes on the heels of a 158-page report (PDF) 
> computer scientists from Princeton University released two weeks ago 
> warning of serious deficiencies in another commonly used e-voting 
> machine. The Sequoia AVC Advantage 9.00H touch-screen voting machine, 
> made by California-based Sequoia Voting Systems, is "easily hacked" in 
> about seven minutes by replacing a single read-only memory chip or 
> swapping out a separate processor chip.
>
> The findings have prompted one candidate for the mayor of Bayonne, New 
> Jersey, to ask the state's secretary of state to oversee the town's 
> municipal election.
>
> The study was ordered by a New Jersey judge who is presiding over a 
> lawsuit challenging the use of e-voting machines in that state. 
> Plaintiffs in the case argue the machines don't meet election law 
> requirements for accuracy. State officials counter that they do.
>
> ES&S has strongly refuted (PDF) the report, saying the researchers, 
> among other things, improperly removed security seals and hardware 
> before conducting their tests.
>
> Even far from the nation's heartland, there were still more reports of 
> botched e-voting. Finland's Ministry of Justice said Tuesday that about 
> 2 percent of votes cast in an election held Sunday could not be counted 
> because voters hadn't followed instructions. The machines, developed by 
> IT services group TietoEnator, required voters to press a button marked 
> OK twice before removing a smart card from the machine terminal. Voters 
> who failed to do so were unable to cast their ballots.
>
> Tuija Brax, the country's justice minister, expressed surprise at the 
> snafu, telling NewsRoom Finland the machines had been "tested, tested 
> and tested again." ®
>
>   




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