Paper Vote Canada

HAD it not been for the almost accidental discovery of an anomalous piece of software, Venezuela's parliamentary election might have passed off on December 4th in relative normality. True, fewer than 30% of the electorate might have voted, and there would have been the usual cries of fraud. The opposition has grown hoarse over the past couple of years alleging malpractice by the electoral council (CNE), which is supposed to be independent but is dominated by supporters of Hugo Chávez, Venezuela's leftist president. Nevertheless, all but the radical fringe and the no-hopers were planning to take part, albeit under protest.

Less than a week before the poll, six parties, representing nearly half the opposition candidates, pulled out. ...

The pull-out was prompted by a routine audit of electronic voting machines, watched by international observers. An opposition technician discovered a file that allowed the voting machine to store the sequence of votes cast. Polling stations were also to have electronic finger-print machines, so each vote could, in theory at least, be matched to an individual. That the ballot might not be secret matters in a country in which the government has used voting data to deny jobs and government services to opposition supporters.

The CNE suspended the audit. The opposition parties held an urgent meeting with observers from the Organisation of American States (OAS). According to a diplomatic source, the head of the OAS delegation told José Vicente Rangel, Venezuela's vice-president, that the opposition would pull out unless the finger-print machines were withdrawn. On November 28th, Jorge Rodríguez, the CNE's president, said this would happen.

But the message from the opposition's activists was overwhelming: their voters would not turn out for an election organised by the current electoral authority. So the opposition leaders called for the election's postponement.

Economist - Venezuela's legislative election: Technical hitch, political stand-off - Dec 1st 2005

Now let's think about those paper ballot scanner vs. ballot boxes.
I had to use a scanner in my last municipal election.
In a ballot box, your vote gets all jumbled around.
But in a paper ballot scanner, all is nice and tidy, one paper ballot stacked on top of another. That means if I keep track of the order in which everyone hands over their ballot for scanning... I KNOW WHO EVERY SINGLE PERSON VOTED FOR.

On behalf of voter rights advocate Joyce McCloy, the EFF has filed a complaint against several government agencies in North Carolina, requesting that the Superior Court nullify the certification of proprietary electronic voting systems that failed to meet the state's selection critera.

North Carolina established strict new voting machine requirements after system failure led to the loss of 4,000 votes in an election last year. The Public Confidence in Elections bill requires that all voting machine manufacturers disclose their proprietary source code for review by government technology experts. When Diebold was given an exemption last month, the EFF took the matter to court, where Diebold lost. The government of North Carolina proceeded to certify Diebold anyway, despite revocation of the exemption. Certification of technology that fails to meet the legal requirements established by the Public Confidence in Elections bill is essentially illegal, and the EFF wants the government to be held accountable for their disregard of a critical law.

Arstechnica - North Carolina faces lawsuit over voting machine certification - 2005-12-09

techmocr@tie.org Un blogue sur la démocratie à l'ère électronique.