[LINK] Fwd: [PRIVACY] Compared to What: Voting Technologies

[Jan Whitaker]

We haven't talked about e-voting in awhile. Given the upcoming US 
midterm elections, it's no surprise it has come up again.
Jan
[D.C. I think means District of Columbia, that is Washington, D.C.]

> From Danielle Citron at Concurring Opinions - 
> <http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2010/10/compared-to-what-voting-technologies.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ConcurringOpinions+%28Concurring+Opinions%29>http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2010/10/compared-to-what-voting-technologies.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ConcurringOpinions+%28Concurring+Opinions%29 
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>Compared to What: Voting Technologies
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>Earlier this month, the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics 
><http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/09/us/politics/09vote.html?_r=2>released 
>the source code for a pilot system designed to facilitate overseas 
>and military voting online.  It took just 36 hours for computer 
>scientist and Freedom to Tinker blogger 
><http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/user/jhalderm>J. Alex Halderman 
>and his students at the University of Michigan to hack into the 
>system.  They pierced the veil of the secret ballot by uncovering 
>the names and 16-digit passwords of all 937 voters invited to use 
>the system on November 2.  Halderman's team changed votes that had 
>been cast and altered the code so that the University of Michigan 
>fight song played whenever a new ballot was successfully cast.  Most 
>troubling, Halderman 
><http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/jhalderm/hacking-dc-internet-voting-pilot>saw 
>signs that computer users in Iran and China tried to crack the 
>network infrastructure's master password, which his team obtained 
>from an equipment manual.  Professor Halderman 
><http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/09/us/politics/09vote.html?_r=2>explained 
>that a "real attack might be completely invisible and could go 
>undetected for much longer."
>
>As the Washington Post editorial page notes, the "motivation for 
>online voting is laudable."  Overseas military ballots routinely 
>fail to be counted due to distance and spotty mail 
>service.  Nonetheless, experts agree that Internet voting isn't the 
>answer.  After the D.C. pilot source code's release, Halderman, 
>along with 
><http://www.sri.com/news/podcasts/podcast_Epstein.html>computer 
>scientist Jeremy Epstein of the policy group 
><http://www.sri.com/about/>SRI 
>International,<http://vimeo.com/15691179> testified before the D.C. 
>Elections Board.  The take-away from the hearings: Internet voting 
>seems the riskiest of all voting options and 
><http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/08/AR2010100806300_2.html?sid=ST2010100806594>ought 
>to be scrapped.  As 
>Epstein<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/09/us/politics/09vote.html?_r=1> 
>told the New York Times, "The next set of people who test it will 
>find a whole new set of problems."
>
>So if Internet voting isn't the answer, what do experts recommend in 
>light of serious security and privacy problems raised by touch 
>screen electronic voting machines?  Interestingly, many have called 
>for a return to the paper ballot.  But as 
><http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/faculty/bios.php?ID=23>Professor Ned Foley 
>noted at this Friday's Privacy, Democracy & Elections conference 
>sponsored by the William and Mary Bill of Rights Journal, paper is 
>the least trustworthy option: election officials and poll workers 
>have difficulty counting accurately and paper ballots bring a long 
>history of tampering and corruption.  After the conference, 
><http://www.csl.sri.com/people/epstein/>Jeremy Epstein shared with 
>me his recommendations for future voting systems.  Epstein urged 
>states and localities to replace touch-screen e-voting systems with 
>optical scan machines.  Optical scan machines count paper ballots, 
>providing greater counting accuracy than humans while providing 
>software independence.  Epstein explained that unlike touch screen 
>machines that typically offer no independent means to audit election 
>results (and those that have paper print outs attached have run into 
>serious printing problems), optical scan machines  inherently 
>provide a paper trail that can be audited.  Epstein noted that risk 
>limiting audits reveal an approximately 98% accuracy rate by 
>auditing 500 ballots in  a single-ballot auditing scheme.  Now, 
>election officials tend to favor touch screen machines, because they 
>prevent human error in marking ballots and conveniently preclude the 
>possibility of recounts based on a review of voter intent.  No 
>matter, Epstein sees optical scan machinery as the best available option.
>


Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
jwhit at janwhitaker.com
blog: http://janwhitaker.com/jansblog/
business: http://www.janwhitaker.com

Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or 
sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth.
~Madeline L'Engle, writer

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