Paper Vote Canada

The three companies that certify the nation's voting technologies operate in secrecy, and refuse to discuss flaws in the ATM-like machines to be used by nearly one in three voters in November.

Despite concerns over whether the so-called touchscreen machines can be trusted, the testing companies won't say publicly if they have encountered shoddy workmanship.

They say they are committed to secrecy in their contracts with the voting machines' makers -- even though tax money ultimately buys or leases the machines.

"I find it grotesque that an organization charged with such a heavy responsibility feels no obligation to explain to anyone what it is doing," Michael Shamos, a Carnegie Mellon computer scientist and electronic voting expert, told lawmakers in Washington, D.C.

The system for "testing and certifying voting equipment in this country is not only broken, but is virtually nonexistent," Shamos added.

Although up to 50 million Americans are expected to vote on touchscreen machines on Nov. 2, federal regulators have virtually no oversight over testing of the technology. The certification process, in part because the voting machine companies pay for it, is described as obsolete by those charged with overseeing it.

The testing firms -- CIBER and Wyle Laboratories in Huntsville and SysTest Labs in Denver -- are also inadequately equipped, some critics contend.

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"Four years after the last presidential election, very little has been done to assure the public of the accuracy and integrity of our voting systems," Rep. Mark Udall, D-Colo., told members of a House subcommittee in June at the same hearing at which Shamos testified.

"If there are any problems, we will spend years rebuilding the public's confidence in our voting systems," Udall said. "We need to squarely face the fact that there have been serious problems with voting equipment deployed across the country in the past two years."

In Huntsville, the window blinds were closed when a reporter visited the office suite where CIBER Inc. employees test voting machine software. A woman who unlocked the door said no one inside could answer questions about testing.

Shawn Southworth, a voting equipment tester at the laboratory, said in a telephone interview that he wouldn't publicly discuss the company's work. He referred questions to a spokeswoman at CIBER headquarters in Greenwood Village, Colo., who never returned telephone messages.

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Also in a sprawl of high-tech businesses that feed off Redstone Arsenal and NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville is the division of Wyle Laboratories Inc. that tests U.S. elections hardware, including touchscreens made by market leaders Diebold Inc., Sequoia Voting Systems Inc. and Election Systems & Software Inc.

Wyle spokesman Dan Reeder refused to provide details on how the El Segundo, Calif.-based company, which has been vetting hardware for the space industry since 1949 in Huntsville, tests the voting equipment.

"Our work on election machines is off-limits," Reeder said. "We just don't discuss it." He did allow, though, that the testing includes "environmental simulation...shake, rattle and roll."

Carolyn Goggins, a spokeswoman for SysTest Labs, the only other federally approved election software and hardware tester, refused to discuss the company's work.

...

critics led by Stanford University computer science professor David Dill say it's an outrage that the world's most powerful democracy doesn't already have an election system so transparent its citizens know it can be trusted.

"Suppose you had a situation where ballots were handed to a private company that counted them behind a closed door and burned the results," said Dill, founder of VerifiedVoting.org.

"Nobody but an idiot would accept a system like that. We've got something that is almost as bad with electronic voting."

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 11:31 am (0) comments /

In this months CACM ... some Yale students show that altering only a single vote per machine would have changed the electoral college outcome of the 2000 election.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 10:13 am (0) comments /

Voters in Greater Victoria may get their election results very quickly after the polls close on Saturday night.

Most municipalities in the region are using electronic voting machines, in an effort to avoid recounts and spoiled ballots.

Quebec City's director of elections, Pierre F. Côté, says organizers were overwhelmed by record turnouts at advance polls. He says there will be an adequate number of polling stations for voters on Sunday's election day.

Côté says delays will be avoided by having elections personnel explain the workings of the electronic voting machines to people as they wait. And emergency equipment will be available in case of technical breakdowns anywhere in the system.

Voting at the NDP leadership convention in Toronto was disrupted Saturday by what organizers called a malicious attempt to shut down the computer system.

Party members were frustrated during voting on the first ballot, as thousands across the country tried to log on and cast ballots using the Internet.

Earl Hurd of election.com said he believes someone used a "denial of service" program to disrupt the voting – paralysing the central computer by bombarding it with a stream of data.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 7:49 pm (0) comments /

In next month's [2002] local elections, several councils will be testing how electronic voting works in practice. James Rogers looks at some of the complexities of opting out of the traditional polling booth.

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Security is the major stumbling block in the way of widescale e-voting. Ian Keys director of think-tank, the New Local Government Network, explained, "Voters have to have confidence in the system that is used to measure their vote."

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E-voting may be a good idea in principle but there are a number of technical hurdles to be overcome before it can be used in general elections. In this way, the Government faces a difficult task. On the one hand it is encountering growing public demand for e-voting but there is still reticence about the use of technology.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 7:43 pm (0) comments /

As a computer professional, I have one word for anyone who'd like to use any sort of electronic balloting system--at least one that can't be easily audited by hand: Don't do it. Why? Because computers can never be totally trusted, especially for something as seemingly simple (yet critical) as holding an election.

While I'd like to think that someday we'll make computers secure enough for this sacred task, I wouldn't bet our freedom on it.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 7:40 pm (0) comments /

the U.S. is no stranger to disputes over voting. In a country, where the outcome of a Presidential election hung for weeks on the fate of a partially detached chad … here's a lot of pressure in to make voting a whole lot easier. Two years after the Florida debacle of 2000, the Bush administration passed the Help America Vote Act. It sets out new guidelines for how elections should be conducted. And it gives money to any district that wants to update things such as .. ..say, punch card machines that don't fully pop out the chad.

Many electoral officials have opted for hi-tech solutions. Electronic voting is spreading across the country. 55 thousand machines were used during the democratic primary on the so called Super-Tuesday. E-voting involves either digital card readers or touch screens that guide the voter through the process.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 7:03 pm (0) comments /

e-voting creates the largest and most unique set of challenges to information security today—greater than the security challenges of e-commerce or electronic tax filing systems. When the ITAA points a finger at the open-source movement, it is only in a futile attempt to deflect criticism of the inherent security flaws of e-voting systems.

Paper voting is not without its problems, as the presidential election in 2000 made clear. What traditional voting systems offer, however, are audit trails. Although far from perfect, paper audit trails are the best we have. While fraudulent repeat voting has long been a problem, the most fraudulent votes a single person could place in a single day might be 20. Move that election online, and there's theoretically no limit to the number of hacked votes that could be placed.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 4:49 pm (0) comments /

A year ago, in their debut in Fairfax County, Va., electronic voting systems succeeded in uniting local Republicans and Democrats—in dismay. Problems with the systems in the local Fairfax elections threw the results in at least one race into doubt.

What concerns many election experts and voters alike is that history will repeat itself in the 2004 election. But on a national scale.

For Fairfax, 10 out of the 1,000 touch-screen DRE (direct recording electronic) voting machines failed on election day in 2003, and were then repaired and returned to the polls—all without security checks.

During the election, votes disappeared before the eyes of the citizens casting them because of a random software bug. Interviewed by the Washington Post newspaper, Republican Virginia state senator Keb Cuccinelli said, "We've just done an electronic Florida."

Now, with advance electronic voting already taking place in Florida, there are fears that Florida will also repeat its 2000 election fiasco, only this time electronically. And there's plenty of reason for voters in other states to be concerned as well.

While hundreds of elections over the last year that depended on DRE voting machines have gone off without a hitch, there has been no test of the magnitude of next week's presidential election for e-voting. With voter turnout expected to be high, and partisans on both sides looking for any advantage possible in "battleground" states, the possibility of widespread trouble is real.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 4:42 pm (0) comments /

More than 50 million Americans had been expected to vote this year on Direct Recording Electronic voting machines, or DRE's, as they're called.

With this system, the voter touches a box on a computer screen next to the name of the candidate selected. The vote is recorded on the computer's memory. After the Florida debacle, Congress authorized $3.9 billion for new electronic machines and ordered the states using old technology to upgrade. But once they were in service, 10 states, including California , reported problems.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 1:32 pm (0) comments /

this year about 30 percent of voters will face newer, electronic systems. Yet the sleek touchscreens are far from glitch-free. Last January, Ellyn Bogdanoff pulled out a narrow victory in a runoff race for a Florida state Senate seat: 12 votes. State law required an automatic recount. There was just one problem. The touchscreen machines used in the election left no paper trail—all the votes were tallied digitally—making an examination of the actual votes impossible. Doing a recount was a meaningless exercise, akin to adding identical numbers into a calculator twice; you'd get the same answer each time. Election officials did notice something strange. Out of nearly 11,000 votes cast, there were 137 left blank, far more than the margin of victory. The losing candidate, Oliver Parker, wanted to know why. He and Bogdanoff were the only ones on the ballot. Why would anyone who cared enough to go all the way to a polling place for a little-known runoff walk away without casting a vote? Had the machines malfunctioned and failed to record the vote? Without any way to answer the question, Bogdanoff was certified the winner.

That was a state Senate seat. Picture the chaos next month if Bush vs. Kerry comes down to a few hundred votes in Florida, or parts of Ohio—both states that use touchscreen machines without paper backups—and there's no way to put the results under the microscope. No surprise that lawsuits are stacking up in Florida. Ohio has already decided to outfit all machines with paper—by 2006. "We jumped out of the soup and into the fire," says David Jefferson, a tech adviser to California, which has had its own share of problems with e-machines. "We were, in a way, too quick to rush to computerize." Jefferson, who jokes he's such a tech geek he'd "buy an Internet toaster" if there were such a thing, says he'd take punch cards, with all their problems, over the uncheckable electronic machines. Nevada is the only state that currently has paper backups on all its machines. Voters can read the paper ballot through a glass window. When they hit the screen to approve it, the paper drops into a sealed box.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 1:22 pm (0) comments /

Electronic voting machines were supposed to have provided a seamless voting process this time, but they have only fed concerns about snafus on Election Day. The touch-screen machines, which will be used by about 30% of voters, have been shown to be vulnerable to tampering, to break down and to lose votes or record none at all. Worse, in every state where they are used except Nevada, the machines produce no paper trail of votes. And e-voting machines can't do recounts. On a second go-round, they simply repeat the outcome they offered the first time.

Diebold, the leading manufacturer of e-voting machines, suffered the indignity of having its home state of Ohio disqualify its machines because of suspect technology. A December 2003 report by Compuware Corp., a widely respected software and computer-services firm, found at least four security weaknesses in Diebold's AccuVote-TS. Most distressing: anyone who lays his hands on a voting supervisor's card could access the system and tamper with results. A 2003 Johns Hopkins University study found that hackers could devise their own smart cards and vote multiple times or alter voting results. A Diebold spokesman insists that the company has addressed the problems of AccuVote-TS, but neither Ohio nor California is buying it. California decertified 14,000 Diebold machines earlier this year.

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"The reason people trust elections is that they can see what's going on," says David Dill, a computer-science professor at Stanford University and founder of the Verified Voting Foundation. "With electronic voting, the handling of the ballots, putting ballots in the ballot box and counting of votes—all of that is hidden inside computers where nobody can see what's happening. [That] leaves you really at the mercy of the machine."

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 1:07 pm (0) comments /

at stake: the reputation of Diebold, the largest maker of electronic voting machines. After the infamous punch-card-ballot problems of the 2000 election, the company dove into the voting-machine business, hoping to cash in on a nationwide push to adopt more reliable voting systems.

But Diebold, a leading maker of ATMs, has been plagued by a flurry of problems: claims of security flaws and technical glitches in its machines and an embarrassing political gaffe.

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Diebold got into the voting business almost by accident. In 1999, it bought a Brazilian company for its ATM business; that company also made voting machines that were used in Brazilian elections. After hanging chads and recounts confounded the 2000 election, Diebold answered a nationwide call to replace punch-card and lever machines.

"We investigated the market and saw a number of smaller companies that would not be able to accommodate the large influx of orders," Radke says.

The company's hopes were buoyed when Congress set aside $3.8 billion for states to upgrade voting machines. In 2002, Diebold bought Canada-based Global Election Systems. Big orders from Maryland and Georgia followed.

But in 2003, computer experts were able to find the secret software for Diebold's voting systems on the Internet and started picking apart its potential weaknesses.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 9:01 am (0) comments /

Le contrôle des élections par les citoyens est un droit fondamental qui ne doit pas être remis en cause par une automatisation électronique du processus de vote. Les machines à voter électroniques (à ne pas confondre avec le vote par internet interdit en France) seront imposées aux brestois et aux brestoises pour les prochaines échéances électorales de mars prochain, ceci sans débat préalable. Un tel système ne permettra plus aux citoyens de surveiller le scrutin. Quant à un contrôle a posteriori, il deviendra totalement impossible.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 10:44 pm (0) comments /

Le ministère de l'intérieur, de la sécurité intérieure et des libertés locales devrait donner prochainement son agrément à la ville de Brest pour l'utilisation d'une machine à voter lors des élections cantonales et régionales des 21 et 28 mars prochains. Ces machines à voter vont remplacer les urnes traditionnelles des 84 bureaux de vote de la ville. La nouvelle procédure se déroule concrètement de la façon suivante : l'électeur se présente au président du bureau muni d'une pièce d'identité et de sa carte d'électeur, l'assesseur vérifie son inscription sur la liste d'émargement, le président procède à l'ouverture de la machine à voter, dotée d'un isoloir intégré. L'électeur valide son vote à partir d'un boîtier de commande. Lorsque le président du bureau déclare le traditionnel "a voté", l'électeur peut alors aller signer la liste d'émargement et récupérer ses documents justificatifs.

Nécessitant moins de personnel, la machine à voter a pour avantage, explique le ministère de l'intérieur, d'être plus économique pour les collectivités. Le dépouillement des bulletins de vote est par ailleurs automatique ; les résultats du scrutin sont obtenus sans délai, dès la fin du vote.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 10:33 pm (0) comments /

Les communes peuvent désormais utiliser des machines à voter à l'occasion des scrutins.

Le Gouvernement, au vu de l'intérêt de tels outils, a en effet décidé de permettre l'utilisation de machines à voter par les communes en en agréant les modèles adaptés aux exigences électorales, conformément à l'article L. 57-1 du code électoral selon lequel "Des machines à voter peuvent être utilisées dans les bureaux de vote des communes de plus de 3 500 habitants figurant sur une liste fixée par décret en Conseil d'Etat. Les machines à voter doivent être d'un modèle agréé par arrêté du ministre de l'intérieur."

Un décret du 18 mars 2004, modifié le 27 mai 2004, (rubrique "pour plus d'informations") a ainsi fixé une liste de communes autorisées à utiliser des machines à voter.

Les modèles de machines sont agréés sur la base de la vérification de leur conformité au "Règlement technique fixant les conditions d'agrément des machines à voter" approuvé par l'arrêté du 17 novembre 2003 (à télécharger). Les modèles agréés sont la version "2.07" de la machine à voter de la société NEDAP, le modèle "iVotronic" de la société RDI-Consortium Univote et le modèle "Point & Vote" de la société Indra Sistemas SA (rubrique "pour plus d'informations"). L'achat ou la location des machines sera remboursé par une subvention forfaitaire de 800 euros par machine.

L'instruction permanente du 26 mai 2004 précise les dispositions spécifiques à mettre en oeuvre en cas d'utilisation de machines à voter (rubrique "téléchargement").

Les machines à voter doivent :
– dématérialiser le bulletin de vote (plus de support papier) ;

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 10:24 pm (0) comments /

notamment de machines électroniques à écran tactile, comme le raconte USpolitics.

Le 2 novembre prochain, un tiers de l'électorat américain (50 millions de personnes environ) se dirigera effectivement vers ces urnes électroniques, tandis que dans plus de la moitié des Etats, 32 millions d'électeurs devront se contenter de la vieille carte perforée, voire de systèmes plus archaïques encore, comme en Louisiane et en Pennsylvanie, où sévit toujours une machine à levier (l'électeur actionne un bras mécanique correspondant à son choix, et son vote est instantanément comptabilisé). Au total, 15 circonscriptions de Floride organisent le vote avec des écrans tactiles, tandis que les 52 autres installeront des scanners qui liront électroniquement les bulletins de vote.

Mais, vote à l'ancienne ou vote dernier cri, le bug se répète. Lundi, plusieurs bureaux de vote en Floride ont commencé à expérimenter les nouvelles machines, l'Etat ayant décidé, comme d'autres, de les ouvrir en avance afin d'éviter des engorgements le 2 novembre. Dès la première journée, des incidents –bulletins non conformes, panne d'ordinateur– ont été enregistrés.

Et ce n'est pas nouveau. Plus d'une fois, ces machines de vote à écran tactile ont montré des signes de défaillance lors d'élections régionales dans d'autres Etats. Soit elles tombaient subitement en panne, soit elles livraient des résultats douteux

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 10:19 pm (0) comments /

Lors des élections présidentielles du 2 novembre prochain, plus de 50 millions d’électeurs américains vont voter en appuyant sur un écran électronique. Ce système de vote, qui avait failli compromettre l’élection de 2000, pourrait causer de nouveaux problèmes cette année, dans plusieurs États

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 9:46 pm (0) comments /

"The design of the [electronic voting] machines is not up to the standards of say, gambling machines," says Stanford University computer scientist David Dill. "The certification processes are not up to the certification processes that exist for software in airplanes, or something like that. The companies that inspect the voting machines at the federal level are private entities, supervised by private organizations. It's very much NOT an open process."

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 7:50 pm (0) comments /

Computer experts are questioning the security of the all-electronic voting machines being used in this year's presidential election, but the problems posed by this new approach to recording the vote run much deeper than vote tampering or lost data.

The secret ballot and the partisan nature of elections place a huge burden on electronic security--a burden the field is probably not ready to shoulder, says Barbara Simmons, a computer-security expert at Stanford University.

"In my view, voting is a national-security issue, and I have to say that I fear that what we are going to see with this upcoming election is a huge amount of chaos and a lot of questioning of results," she said. Simmons was addressing computer-security and privacy issues at an American Institute of Physics forum on the future of information technology this week.

The popular criticism of electronic touch-screen voting has centered on inadequate protection against hacking. Many experts believe it would be relatively easy for someone to electronically break into the machines and tamper with vote counts. But even without malicious intent, electronic voting machines pose serious problems for electronic data security.

Simmons participated in a government study of voting-machine security issues before the current system was mandated. The project was eventually canceled because the conclusions by the panel of computer scientists were so negative. "What the government eventually adopted was even worse," Simmons added.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 11:59 am (0) comments /

Verified Voting .org has just gone live with a number of tools for all you data-hungry election nerds out there. Amongst the goods: an election guide for geeks, a voter's guide to electronic voting, the Verifier database of county-by-county election information and the Election Incident Reporting System (EIRS) which will be used on E-day by attorneys and observers in the field to collect data about election incidents called into the Election Protection Coalition's hotline

Myth: It just costs too much money to print paper ballots. E-voting will save money.

Fact: The purchase price of e-voting machines is three times as much as precinct-based optical scan. It will take at least 15 years of ballot printing costs to make up the difference. Also, the operational costs of e-voting machines are often underestimated. Some jurisdictions have found that they needed more poll workers to conduct an election with e-voting machines (e.g., San Diego needed twice as many!). There are increased costs for equipment maintenance and storage. Testing is more expensive, and so on.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 10:45 pm (0) comments /

When the Maryland State Board of Elections ordered more than 5,000 voting machines from Diebold Election Systems in 2002, the touch-screen computers came with assurances that they met federal voting standards.

Election officials quickly discovered that those assurances meant little. The machines had indeed been certified by a third-party testing lab, but the federal voting system standards to which the touch-screen computers were held hailed from 1990 and did not address many of the problems in the latest voting technology.

The issues in the certification system were further highlighted when Diebold's source code for a similar system leaked out, allowing security researchers to analyze the software. The verdict: The code had serious flaws.

For Maryland, the revelations resulted in an arduous six-month process that involved implementing 23 recommendations by security researchers. The issues also confirmed serious problems with federal standards that are intended to ensure the reliability of voting machines.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 10:17 pm (0) comments /

On Monday, the city's chief election officer re-verified the unofficial election results and found that there were no discrepancies between the results as generated by the vote tabulating units and the results entered into the city's system for any of the races. Robyn Anderson, chief election officer, also determined that the city will not undertake a recount unless so ordered through a judicial recount process.

"We took the tape from the voting machines - each voting machine has a results tape - and we compared that with the information inputted at city hall. That is something we would do regardless," she said. "The results were exactly the same. I have decided not to undertake a recount."

Sparkes, however, has the ability to apply to the court for a judicial recount. She must do so between the time that the official results are declared (Nov. 20) and nine days after the close of general voting (Nov. 25).

As of The Record's deadline on Tuesday, Sparkes had not decided whether she would seek a judicial recount.

"I am waiting to hear from my lawyer. They have gone over the numbers ... they have remained the same," she said. "I do have some time. I am going to have to think long and hard."

According to Sparkes, a judicial recount would entail putting all of the ballots through the computerized vote counting machines once again. It would not involve reviewing the voters' list to determine if people cast more than one ballot or all voters were qualified to vote.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 6:54 pm (0) comments /

Date: February 7, 1996
File: 330/130-3

TO: Standing Committee on Planning and Environment

FROM: City Clerk

SUBJECT: Automated Voting Equipment Upgrade

RECOMMENDATION

A. THAT Council approve the upgrade of the Optech III-P
automated voting system for use in the 1996 General Local
Elections.

B. THAT the City Clerk and General Manager of Corporate
Services report back to Council to seek final approval of
the proposed vendor, acquisition costs and financing of the
recommended upgrade.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 6:50 pm (0) comments /

Electronic and internet voting has become increasingly widespread in recent years, but which countries are the leaders of the movement and who lags behind? Is the digital divide likely to present a permanent challenge to electronic democracy? What are the experiences with regard to online voting, and what are the arguments for and against? Electronic Voting and Democracy examines these issues and the contexts in which they are played out, such as problems of legitimacy and the practical considerations that have driven some countries toward electronic voting faster than others.

PART II: COUNTRY STUDIES
Electronic Voting in the United States: At the Leading Edge or Lagging Behind?; F.I.Solop
Electronic Voting in Switzerland; H.Geser
Electronic Voting in Estonia; W.Drechsler & Ü.Madise
Electronic Voting in Austria: Current State of Public Internet Elections; A.Prosser, R.Krimmer & R.Kofler
Electronic Voting in Finland: The Internet and its Political Applications; M.Setälä & K.Grönlund
Electronic Voting in Germany: Political Elections Online - Utopia or the Future?; P.Karger
Electronic Democracy in Sweden: Hare or Tortoise?; J.Olsson & J.Åström
Electronic Voting in the United Kingdom: Lessons and Limitations from the UK Experience; L.Pratchett & M.Wingfield

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 6:33 pm (0) comments /

It is agonizing to me that even after four years of the Florida fiasco, we are still arguing over how to best count every vote and to count it in a manner that is transparent- only, the argument over the notorious hanging chads seems to have transcended itself into an argument about touch screens and paper trails.

While the world’s most powerful democracy is still remains indecisive about the merits of using electronic voting machines, this summer, India, the world’s largest democracy, took a giant leap forward towards making itself the world’s largest e- democracy. It undertook an unprecedented electronic voting endeavor that enabled 370 million of its citizens (out of 675 million eligible) to vote by electronic voting machines in its federal and state elections.

...

The Indian Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) is a two-piece unit, designed and developed indigenously by two government owned defense equipment-manufacturing companies. Each machine has a keyboard called the balloting unit, on which voters simply push the button adjacent to the name and symbol of the candidate of their choice and the votes are recorded on a chip in the control unit operated by the Electoral Officer. A five-meter cable connects both units. This machine is no more than a modified adding machine, with a microprocessor chip.

It has a simple circuit and a few lines of assembly code. It is far less complicated than the electronic voting machines used here in the US, which resemble an ATM, running on Microsoft software, having thousands of lines of code, encryptions, voice-guidance system etc. In testimony before the U.S. Election Assistance Commission on May 6 2004, Avi Rubin, a professor at the Johns Hopkins University Information Security Institute said, “The trusted computing base is approximately 50,000 lines of computer code sitting on top of tens of millions of lines of [operating system] code. It is impossible to secure such a large trusted computing base," However, the issue of paramount importance to experts here in the U.S, is the issue of network security.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 6:14 pm (0) comments /

A New Jersey superior court on Tuesday denied a last-minute effort to block the use of electronic voting machines in next week's presidential election.

The case could have affected how five million residents cast ballots.

However, while the Mercer County court turned down a request for a temporary restraining order banning the use of the machines, it refused to completely dismiss the suit.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 6:10 pm (0) comments /

A federal judge dismissed today a lawsuit that a Florida congressman had filed in a last-ditch effort to require paper trails on electronic voting machines in 15 Florida counties.

Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.) cast the ruling as a partial victory because Judge James Cohn endorsed the idea of a paper trail to allow manual recounts. However, Cohn ruled that the federal court cannot mandate that the state implement such a system.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 6:09 pm (0) comments /

A Londonderry-based company hopes plans developed at a recent seminar will help it cement its place as a leader in the UK's electronic voting arena.

Opt2vote also hopes to see successes achieved in England being repeated in Northern Ireland.

...

"GB led the way in terms of the pilots," said Mr Brown. "In 2003 there were 17 pilots in England and we delivered three of them."

This year, the company was involved in the largest scale postal elections ever undertaken in Britain.

"We delivered to 54 of the 127 local authorities for postal pilots in four European regions. In terms of electors we delivered to more than five and a half million electors, and that's exciting," continued Mr Brown.

A framework agreement drawn up by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister lists Opt2vote as an approved supplier of electronic voting systems across multiple channels including the internet, digital television and mobile text messaging (SMS).

Opt2vote delivered three electoral modernisation pilots in local authority elections in 2003.

Two of these elections were the first in the world to allow voters to use an interactive digital television platform (Sky) to cast their official votes.

In the same year Opt2vote also completed an electronic counting project in Scotland, where its software was used to count traditional ballot papers.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 6:02 pm (0) comments /

60 Minutes Wednesday correspondent Scott Pelley reports there is a concern that the new paperless voting systems could be vulnerable to software bugs. One expert also tells Pelley that if the software is not properly protected from tampering, it could make e-voting an "electoral weapon of mass destruction." Pelley's report will be broadcast on 60 Minutes Wednesday , Oct. 27, at 8 p.m. ET/PT.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 5:41 pm (0) comments /

Two years after Congress passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) to phase out older voting systems, there is little consistency in the adoption of the law and its provisions. While some states moved quickly to enact HAVA, officials elsewhere are waiting for more guidance to verify which new voting systems meet federal standards.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 5:36 pm (0) comments /

In an effort to increase the integrity of next week's presidential election, five voting machine makers agreed for the first time to submit their software programs to the National Software Reference Library [NSRL] for safekeeping, federal officials said on Tuesday.

The stored software will serve as a comparison tool for election officials should they need to determine whether anyone tampered with programs installed on voting equipment.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 5:27 pm (0) comments /

And then the computer scientists showed up: Peter Neumann, principal computer scientist at R&D firm SRI; Barbara Simons, past president of the Association for Computing Machinery; and Stanford computer science professor David Dill. They had been fidgeting in the front of the room through three hours of what Dill would later call "garbage." Finally, they stood up and, one by one, made their case.

Voting, they explained, is too important to leave up to computers - at least, these types of computers. They're vulnerable to malfunction and mischief that could go undetected. Where they'd already been adopted, the devices - known in the industry as DREs, short for direct recording electronic - had experienced glitches that could have called into question entire elections. And they keep no paper record, no backup. "We said, 'Slow down. You've got a problem,'" recalls Neumann.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 5:19 pm (0) comments /

If you think the country is divided and rancorous about the presidential contest, try polling a few experts about the accuracy and security of electronic voting.

"Clark County has used electronic voting since 1996, and it's been very successful," says Larry Lomax, registrar of voters in the Nevada county that includes Las Vegas. "We've never lost results, ever in Clark County."

But there are plenty of concerns to go around.

"With the paper-based system you can see the ballots being marked, you can see them going into a ballot box, if you have good laws you can go watch them count the ballots, and with electronic voting all of that stuff is hidden inside the machines," says David Dill, a computer scientist at Stanford University.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 11:24 pm (0) comments /

"This year we increased our number of advance voting days from three to five, with the earliest being October 2 and the last one today, October 15. The feedback we received both from the additional days and the use of the electronic voting machines (iVotronics) has been very positive," said Kelly Kloss, Returning Officer, The City of Red Deer.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 5:00 pm (0) comments /

When residents come to vote in the October 18th Municipal Election they will be casting their vote using new electronic voting equipment.

...

“Using electronic voting equipment improves the efficiency of the voting process and allows for earlier release of unofficial results,” says Nemeth. The City has used electronic voting equipment very successfully for the past four civic elections. For the 2004 election City Council approved leasing of new electronic voting equipment.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 4:55 pm (0) comments /

In Florida, voter registrations are being thrown out on pointless technicalities. Missouri is telling soldiers to send nonsecret ballots by e-mail through a Pentagon contractor with a troubling past. Nationwide, eligible voters are being removed from the rolls by flawed felon purges. And nearly a third of this year's votes will be cast on highly questionable electronic voting machines. No wonder a large percentage of Americans doubt that their votes will count. The election system is crying out for reform.

...

One of the greatest sources of voter cynicism this year is electronic voting. There has been a steady stream of reports of manufacturers taking sides in the elections in which they are also counting votes, of machines malfunctioning during elections and of computer scientists showing how easy it would be for these machines to produce false vote totals, accidentally or intentionally. There is a desperate need for strong federal standards, including a requirement for a voter-verifiable paper record, so voters can be sure that the vote recorded by the machine is the one they cast. States like California, Ohio, Illinois and Nevada have been in the lead in mandating voter-verified paper trails. Congress should make it a national requirement.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 7:36 am (0) comments /

With the US presidential election less than two weeks away, the battle over electronic voting is raging stronger than ever. Opponents of the technology have resorted to a series of lawsuits in a last-ditch attempt to stop the use of the machines.

The debate centres on the use of electronic voting equipment, ATM-like machines that register votes digitally after people make their selections on a touch-screen. Nearly 30% of voters will place their ballot using these 'e-voting' machines when choosing the next US president.

Many watchdog groups are warning that tests conducted on e-voting hardware and software are insufficient, and that faulty machines could cause votes to be missed or registered incorrectly. It's not yet clear how serious these problems will be; early voting in a dozen or so states so far has thrown up only minor glitches.

...

"Voters using electronic machines without a paper trail will simply have to trust the good word of the vendors and local election officials that the electronic numbers recorded in the machine memories accurately reflect the intent of the electorate," says Matt Zimmerman, an attorney with the San Francisco-based Electronic Freedom Foundation, which studies civil liberties issues related to technology.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 2:28 pm (0) comments /

DDJ: As someone who has been an election judge for various cities and counties since the 1980s, it seems to me that you don't have to have much insecurity to have a potential for cheating, not only in electronic voting, but in any kind of voting system.

AR: The fundamental problem with electronic voting systems is that the machine does whatever it was programmed to do. If the machine was programmed to count the votes that people put in, and there are no bugs in the program (which is very unlikely for a very large system) then it just might do that. But if I were building the machine, I could make it so that anyone I wanted to win would win. I could do it in such a way that there is no way anyone would know that I did it. You could do it in a way that it would just make it somewhat more likely that the candidate you wanted to win would win.

...

DDJ: We've had several elections here in Colorado with electronic voting machines and the results seem quite plausible.

AR: That's one comment I hear that irks me: "They seem to working well." If you are concerned about functionality, sure, but if you're concerned about security... If the threat model is that some attacker is taking some small percentage of the vote and shifting the result, you cannot observe them and say that they are working well. You just don't know.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 2:16 pm (0) comments /

Many elections officials, party activists and media executives believe the final outcome of the Nov. 2 presidential election may not be known that night, or even the next morning. In fact, the public may not have a clear and declared winner for days because of possible glitches in voting and counting, and subsequent legal challenges.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 6:35 am (0) comments /

As voters across Ontario were preparing to head to the polls today to elect their municipal leaders, a technological first was quietly taking place in the easternmost reaches of the province. About 100,000 voters the counties of Prescott-Russell and Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry were registered to cast their ballots online.

Under a new system developed by CanVote Inc., an eastern Ontario startup company, registered voters in 11 area municipalities had the option of voting via the Internet or telephone.

"I believe we're the first to do a real full Internet election in North America," said Joe Church, president of CanVote Inc.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 8:19 am (0) comments /

E-voting and electric citizenship is fast and convenient. (If controversial - my own web poll suggested people did not like the idea.)

...

e-democracy should enable citizens to fully participate in the democratic process through the Internet and other digital means. Examples of e-democracy include online voting, conducting online town halls, and mobilizing groups

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 8:17 am (0) comments /

The once-overlooked election industry has become the focus of intense scrutiny in recent years with the passage of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) and the promise of nearly $4 billion in funds from Washington to purchase new voting machines, software and databases.

In the past two years, as concerns over the security and reliability of direct-recording electronic (DRE) voting machines have increased, so too has the public wariness over the political activity of companies that design, manufacture and maintain them.

Electionline.org’s latest election reform briefing, The Business of Elections (PDF), provides the first nonpartisan and non-advocacy look at the political campaign contributions and lobbying activities of the largest producers of e-voting machines, including Diebold, Inc., Election Systems & Software, Sequoia Voting Sytems and Hart InterCivic.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 8:08 am (0) comments /

Edward Bitet fought in World War II, built affordable housing for veterans and taught sixth grade. When the Long Island native retired to Florida, he fulfilled another civic duty by becoming a poll worker. But Bitet, 77, isn't volunteering this year he says he doesn't trust Palm Beach County's electronic voting machines. He walked out of a county demonstration of touch-screen terminals convinced that software bugs could wreak havoc on Nov. 2.

"We lost an election four years ago because they fooled around with the paper ballots and couldn't recount them," said Bitet, a Democrat. "Now we're moving to a system without paper, and they won't even have the ballots to recount. I can't be a part of this."

With polls showing nearly equal numbers of Florida voters for President Bush and Sen. John Kerry, the election's outcome may again hinge on a Florida recount.

And the more that Floridians learn about how voting machines work, the more they question whether the 15 counties with paperless voting systems can accurately count and recount votes.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 8:05 am (0) comments /

On November 2, hundreds of thousands of Americans will step into electronic voting booths, many of them for the first time. They'll likely be confronted with a touch screen that steps them through the local and national candidates, as well as the local propositions that are usually stuffed onto the ballot.

This is not, as we all know, just any election year. We're choosing our next president—the incumbent or a new one. As a result, the performance of these electronic voting systems will be watched with keen eyes and worried minds. Will they be accurate? Are they secure? Can you have such a thing as a virtual hanging chad? My gut tells me that these systems will work flawlessly next month, but the concern is well founded.

An exhaustive 2003 report from the Johns Hopkins University (Analysis of an Electronic Voting System, July 23, 2003 [avirubin.com/vote.pdf]) outlines more than half a dozen key ways in which the security, accuracy, and overall functionality of an electronic voting system—a Diebold AccuVote-TS, to be precise—could be compromised.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 8:00 am (0) comments /

Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters Jesse Durazo is not taking any chances with this year's presidential election.

After weathering months of criticism of the county's new touch-screen voting system, Durazo in July installed 24-hour surveillance cameras in the warehouse where the voting machines are stored and are being tested this week.

``Voters deserve to know we have done our best to maintain security,'' Durazo said.

Durazo also tightened an internal badge system that limits access to the warehouse. And expensive bar-coded tamper tape will protect the machines during the days leading up to the Nov. 2 election, an upgrade from the primary election, when flimsy plastic tags were used.

The steps taken by Durazo and his staff have won praise from critics of electronic voting, like David Dill, a professor of computer science at Stanford University, whose warnings about the reliability and security of touch-screen voting helped galvanize a national movement of voters demanding modifications to the machines.

``They are bending over backwards to be responsive,'' Dill said.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 7:23 am (0) comments /

Among the most-important changes called for in the group’s report is to assure a ’’paper trail’’ for touch-screen voting which is being introduced in a number of states across the country.

"Transparency at the polls is critical and cannot be readily established without voter verification," the group said, adding that, where touch-screen voting is used, an independent agency and a parallel monitoring process should be adopted to achieve "optimum transparency."

...

The group also called for the enfranchisement of former felons who have served their time in prison and strongly criticized laws of the kind that disenfranchised tens of thousands of Floridians in the 2000 election and still exist in Florida, Virginia, Nebraska, Mississippi, Kentucky, Iowa, Arizona, and Alabama.

"This practice falls outside of international or even U.S. norms and is an unreasonable restriction that creates subcategories of citizenship," the group said.

In Florida, the group expressed special concern about possible challenges by election monitors, the lack of independent review of electronic voting machines that created so much havoc in 2004, and the continued felony-related disenfranchisement of minority voters.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 7:17 am (0) comments /

A federal judge said Wednesday he would rule as quickly as possible on U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler's attempt to force the state to create a paper trail for any needed recounts with touch-screen voting machines.

After hearing three days of testimony with regular reminders of the flawed 2000 presidential vote, U.S. District Judge James Cohn said the "case is of great public importance" and promised a written order, which would be subject to quick appeal by the losing side.

The state issued a new rule Friday for manual recounts in extremely tight elections to replace one thrown out by a state judge. But Wexler maintains recounts aren't possible with the paperless machines because there is nothing to review by hand. Their end product is a form showing votes and instances where no votes were recorded.

The judge said the question of whether manual recounts are possible with touch-screen machines is one "the court has to grapple with."

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 7:14 am (0) comments /

Two weeks before the presidential election, an event billed as a forum on electronic voting drew a handful of people to UC Riverside on Tuesday night.

Organizers urged voters to beware of electronic voting, saying the system is unreliable and that voters should vote by paper.

The Riverside chapter of Democracy for America, a group inspired by failed Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean, and the California College Democrats at UCR, co-sponsored the event in a university lecture hall.

Three people, including two UCR students and one lecturer, made up the audience. Sponsors attributed the low turnout to the rain.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 7:11 am (0) comments /

Minister's Award for Innovation ...

Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry County Library (large library
category) - for providing unique access to electronic and
telephone voting to six townships during the 2003 municipal
elections - one of the first libraries in North America to use
online voting.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 7:06 am (0) comments /

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AP) -- The space station's newest astronaut will cast his ballot in the presidential election from 225 miles (360 kilometers) up, with NASA's help.

Leroy Chiao said Monday that the space agency has worked hard with local and federal authorities to make it possible for him to vote from the orbiting complex, his home until spring.

He plans to cast his ballot via a secure e-mail connection, much the same way that astronaut David Wolf used a new computer software developed by NASA to cast his ballot from the Russian space station Mir in a 1997 vote on 14 amendments to the state constitution.

U.S. astronauts, most of whom live around Houston, won the right to vote from space under a Texas bill signed into law by then-Gov. George W. Bush.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 7:05 am (0) comments /

This November, as many as 50 million Americans could vote for president using some form of electronic touch-screen system, the vast majority of which have been designed by McKinney, Texas-based Diebold Election Systems. That has some IT and security researchers holding their breath because of the faulty track record of Diebold's technology and a government-endorsed testing and certification process that they say is deeply flawed.

Those critics say that direct recording electronic (DRE) voting systems remain vulnerable to manipulation and malfunction, particularly in states that have ignored some recommendations of independent researchers, like Maryland has.

State election officials, on the other hand, say they are confident that appropriate safeguards are in place to ensure the security and accuracy of the 2004 vote.

Among the most pressing issues cited by critics are a lack of technical standards governing DRE software development, the failure of the government to impose transparency on the software testing and certification process, and the lack of technical security knowledge throughout the many state and local jurisdictions that oversee elections where DREs will be used.

...

Mystery Tests

One of the most critical aspects of the voting system development process is the testing and certification of hardware and software to ensure that they meet voluntary federal voting standards for security and reliability. Three vendors act as so-called independent testing authorities (ITA). However, IT experts are highly critical of the testing process because of its secrecy.

"Election officials are buying a software package, and there's not a lot of transparency," says Rudisin. "With voting software, you pretty much buy a pig in a poke."

Ciber Inc. in Greenwood Village, Colo., and SysTest Labs LLC in Denver act as the two software ITAs. Wyle Laboratories Inc. in El Segundo, Calif., is the hardware ITA. All of them refuse to provide details on how they test the voting equipment or on their findings.

"The ITAs that test these machines are hired by the vendors, so they are not independent and not neutral," says [Avi] Rubin

5. Orange County, 2004: Hart InterCivic Inc. DREs trip circuit breaker and shut down when batteries die; voters are turned away from the polls.

6. Orange County, 2004: Hart access-code confusion causes 7,000 voters to receive the wrong ballots.

7. San Diego County, 2004: Diebold DREs lose votes; control modules fail to start up properly.

8. Bernalillo County, 2002: Insufficient memory results in failure to count 12,000 of 48,000 votes.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 6:51 am (0) comments /

After weeks of testing, San Bernardino County's top election official declared its voting machines trustworthy after a final exam in which his office cast hundreds of test ballots.

"We nailed 100 percent, just the way we're supposed to," said Scott Konopasek, the county's Registrar of Voters.

State law requires counties to conduct a public "logic and accuracy" test of their voting systems. On Friday, before an audience of news cameras, the public and local officials, Konopasek and his team tested both the electronic touch-screen and the paper absentee-voting systems and also assessed how the two worked together.

They used a test deck of ballots with predetermined votes on them and checked that the results matched the input, he said. They also allowed observers to cast unscripted votes from unscripted precincts on unscripted machines "to verify those unscripted votes are being reported and verified correctly," Konopasek said.

Three members of the county's grand jury certified the results, he said.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 6:49 am (0) comments /

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. A pre-election test of electronic voting machines in Florida has been postponed after heat caused the crash of a server that tabulates the data.
Critics were quick to say the episode underscores the need for touch-screens to be backed up with paper records. The glitch happened in Palm Beach County, home of the infamous hanging and pregnant chads from the 2000 election dispute.

Nearly one in three U-S voters will use touch-screen voting machines to cast their ballots Election Day.

A former senior testing engineer says heat is a serious problem for touch-screens, especially in locales like Florida and Louisiana.

Tuesday's public dry run had to be postponed until Friday because a computer server that tabulates data from the touch-screen machines crashed, said county elections supervisor Theresa LePore. Such "logic and accuracy" tests are required by law.

She said she suspected Hurricane Jeanne, which struck in September, may have zapped electricity and air conditioning to the room where the server was stored, causing temperatures to soar to 90 degrees or more and possibly causing the crash. The storm wiped out power to nearly 1.3 million homes and businesses throughout Florida.

The incident raised questions in the minds of computer hardware and software engineers about the reliability of other computers on which Floridians will depend for an accurate vote count on Nov. 2 — especially touch-screen machines.

An Achilles' heel of electronic voting equipment, just like any machines whose circuits get hot with colliding electrons, is its inability to tolerate extreme conditions, many experts say.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 6:32 am (0) comments /

For the 2002 election, Election Systems & Software Model 100 machines were leased from the City of Toronto.
The firmware in the machines has been tested in the US to meet the US Federal Elections Commission's standards.
ES&S programmed the software for this specific election.
I asked about the possibility of the count getting reset to zero partway through the day, and was told that very few people knew how to zero the machines. The Presiding Election Officials were told to call Election Headquarters if they had any problems. There was a technician there would could deal with such problems (I wasn't told whether the technician was somebody from ES&S).
I asked about power outages and was told that the data is stored on a smart card so no information can be lost. There is a way to separate uncounted ballots cast while the power is out, which can then be fed through the machine once power has been restored.
This election happened to be very close, so there was a judicial recount which showed the machines to be very accurate.

From my own memory of the election, the ballot reminded me of the answer sheet for a multiple-choice test to be marked by a computer. We had to fill in the appropriate ovals with a pencil. The completed ballot was fed into the machine, which incremented a counter on its face. I did see it reject a ballot where the wrong number of ovals had been filled in. The completed ballots were stored inside the machine ... and were available for a hand recount.

In February, city council approved a staff recommendation to proceed to a Request For Proposals to purchase electronic vote counting equipment. Staff continued to look at alternatives and have now determined that leasing the machines is a viable option.

"I am glad to see this happen. We have had concerns about technology change," said Coun. Bob Osterman about purchasing electronic equipment. "This is good."

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 6:29 am (0) comments /

Marking the Ballot

You will take the ballot into the voting booth, remove the ballot from the secrecy sleeve and mark the ballot beside the name of the candidates you wish to vote for.

...

After the Ballot is Marked

You will return the marked ballot, inside the secrecy sleeve, to the Ballot Box Clerk . The Ballot Box Clerk will insert the ballot into the voting machine without looking at it. It is very important that each person's vote remains secret.

If you choose too many candidates, the ballot will be returned by the voting machine and you will be given the option of either completing a new ballot or having the existing ballot accepted by the machine. Where votes have been cast for too many candidates, votes will not be counted. All other votes on the ballot will be accepted.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 1:14 pm (0) comments /

The Sun-Sentinel is reporting on computer glitches already affecting the election in - you guessed it - Florida. Of the 14 early voting sites that opened in Broward County on Monday morning, 9 were reporting problems.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 10:25 am (0) comments /

A group of computer scientists, journalists, voting activists, and county registrars are discussing the e-voting mess in an online forum that runs all this week. The panel is a who's who of e-voting: Avi Rubin, David Dill, David Jefferson, and registrars from San Bernadino and Riverside, CA. They've even got Scott Ritchie from the Open Vote Foundation.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 7:46 pm (0) comments /

A coalition of concerned residents is urging voters to boycott using the state's new electronic voting machines and to stick to the standard paper ballot option when they go to the ballot booth for the general election.

Members of Safe Vote Hawai'i, which describes itself as "a coalition of Hawai'i's leading technology professionals, community activists and official election observers," said they have concerns about the integrity of the electronic machines because they do not produce an immediate "paper copy" for each vote cast.

"We feel that paper audit trails are mandatory for a safe e-voting election and we don't have any way of getting that for this election," said Jason Forrester, spokesman for the group and a senior systems analyst for SAVVIS, formerly Digital Island.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 8:50 pm (0) comments /

computer scientists focused on thoroughly evaluating the technical aspects of e-voting machines. This task will be left to more than 1,400 techies participating in a domestic monitoring project of the Election Protection coalition, organized by almost 60 U.S. groups.

The coalition will disperse 25,000 monitors to voting sites in 17 states around the country. One of the coalition's projects is TechWatch, run by the Verified Voting Foundation. TechWatch has recruited technology professionals to observe the operation of voting technology during tests before the election and on Election Day itself.

The Verified Voting Foundation has also developed a web-based software application that will allow coalition volunteers to respond to voting incidents in real time. The coalition runs a hot line that voters can call to report problems. When they do, hot-line operators enter the details into the Election Incident Reporting System. The system maps the problems and sends an alert to a monitoring team leader in the area, who can then dispatch a mobile response team of volunteer lawyers, techies or others to observe how the problem is handled.

The groups tested the system during the Florida primary election, when 296 hot-line calls were entered into the system, of which 18 were voting machine problems.

Another group, Votewatch, will collect statistical data on the election. Among other things, Votewatch will compare the vote tallies posted in polling places at the end of the day with cumulative unofficial counts for an entire area reported later that night. If the numbers differ, it would indicate that the counting software at individual polling places failed to count some votes. Volunteers would make note of the technology that was used at those polling places to gather statistics on the accuracy of systems.

The Election Protection coalition also includes groups that will monitor issues besides voting technology, including voter intimidation and disenfranchisement.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 6:49 pm (0) comments /

Kwesi Addae, a fifty-three-year-old former political-science professor from Ghana and the founder of Pollwatch Africa, has monitored elections in half a dozen shenanigan-prone countries, including Togo, Nigeria, and Guinea-Bissau.

...

Addae, as one of twenty foreign election observers brought here this month by the left-leaning human-rights group Global Exchange, is inspecting the creaky mechanics of American democracy at close hand. He signed up for the two-week mission, he said, “out of fascination.”

In Africa, Addae had seen phantom polling stations, ruling-party rent-a-mobs, ballots bought with beer. But nothing in his experience had prepared him for the iVotronic touch-screen voting system. The iVotronic is the latest in electoral technology, a light, flat-screen computer that will be used this November in parts of Florida, among other places. ...

The observers crowded around. “You’re quite fortunate to be able to touch and feel the same thing that those voters will be using on Election Day,” a salesman from Election Systems & Software, the machine’s manufacturer, said. ...

“Let’s vote,” Addae said. ... Addae was next. He bellied up to the machine and poked at the screen. Nothing happened. Someone handed him a small cartridge—a “personalized electronic ballot,” or P.E.B. Addae examined the cartridge quizzically, then fumbled as he tried to insert it into the machine. “Put it back in for just a second,” an observer named David MacDonald, a former member of Canada’s parliament, said. “Now remove it.”

A ballot appeared on the screen. For the purposes of this demonstration, the election was a local one, and the candidates for mayor were all actors; for city council, hockey players; and for school board, musicians. For some reason, they were also all Canadians. “O.K.,” Addae said, peering over his glasses. “I want Michael J. Fox.” Passing over Neve Campbell, John Candy, and Dan Aykroyd, he touched Fox’s name, and a little green check mark appeared. Addae ran his finger down the list of candidates in other races: Gordie Howe, Ken Dryden, Bryan Adams, Shania Twain, Gordon Lightfoot. “I want Bobby Orr. I want Neil Young,” he said. When he was done, Addae punched a flashing red button marked “ vote .” The machine beeped twice, and a message appeared on the screen: “Your ballot has been cast. Thank you for voting.”

Addae shook his head. “It’s not very easy,” he said. Back home, Ghanaians still vote the old-fashioned way, by writing an “X” on a paper ballot and dropping it into a box. “Thereafter, they are counted one by one, and the figures are written down and announced,” he said.

...

After he was finished with the computer demonstration, he ambled across the room, where some observers were voting with paper ballots. He grabbed a ballot and filled in the bubbles next to his choices. The salesman collected twelve ballots and loaded them into a optical scanner. Whoosh —the ballots shot through. But there was a problem. The machine rejected five of the ballots, including Addae’s. The observers had used a pen instead of a No. 2 pencil. This election observer was ready to deliver his verdict: “I am not impressed at all!”

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 6:25 am (0) comments /

This November, Eileen Rivera Ley, 41, will vote by herself for the first time. Blind voters in Maryland and several other states will use electronic voting machines equipped with technology that allows the disabled to vote independently.

It used to get crowded whenever Rivera Ley voted. Blind, Rivera Ley had to rely on someone else to read the ballot aloud, then vote for her. That meant as many as four people -- Rivera Ley, the person who pulled the levers and election judges from both major parties as witnesses -- huddled in the voting booth.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 6:31 pm (0) comments /

Imagine your bank teller accepting a deposit and then saying, "Oh, you don't need a receipt. It's all in the computer." On Nov. 2, that's essentially what millions of citizens will be told when they cast ballots on new electronic voting machines. Forty-two states are poised to use this latest technology, but with only 28 days left until the presidential election, some states are still debating whether to provide a paper confirmation of each voter's choices.

Potential problems with electronic voting — and very real mishaps — have gained more public attention in recent months, and manufacturers and election officials have tried to play down concerns. But some state officials have also chosen to build in more safeguards to ensure that the electronic vote data, if corrupted either accidentally or maliciously, have a backup. That means one thing: a paper record.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 4:45 pm (0) comments /

this year, the City of Edmonton has rented 21 audio-electronic voting machines, which will allow citizens who can't see well to cast their ballots without help. And everyone else who votes in advance will do so electronically, too -- traditional paper ballots will be available only on election day, Oct. 18.

...

Electronic voting machines have been severely criticized in the U.S., where they were used for the first time in 2002. In July 2003, professors at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore released a scathing report that said the machines were open to tampering and made meaningful recounts impossible because they leave no paper trail.

But operations manager Steve Thompson, who led the project, is confident the electronic voting terminals the city is renting will perform without a hitch. He points out that the machines are independent of one another and store voting records in three separate places, including on a removable pack that can be taken from a broken machine and read in another.

"We don't believe that the failure of a single or even two or three machines would in any way jeopardize the ability to count the votes that had been cast on that machine," Thompson said.

...

There are no plans, however, to make electronic voting the norm. He estimates the cost of mainstream electronic voting would be about $1.25 million, a price tag he thinks council and taxpayers will find prohibitive.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 6:25 am (0) comments /

Can high-tech voting machines prevent a repeat of America's 2000 electoral fiasco—or will they make things worse?

IT IS not often that the dry subject of voting technology makes the headlines. It famously happened in America's presidential election in 2000, when the previously obscure differences between hanging, pregnant and dimpled “chads”—the small flakes of paper punched out of cards by mechanical voting machines—suddenly became a national crisis.

...

Touch-screen machines have problems of their own, as another Florida election vividly illustrated last January. In a local election held on January 6th in parts of Broward and Palm Beach counties, 10,844 votes were cast, and Ellyn Bogdanoff won by 12 votes. Under Florida state law, a result this close triggers a manual recount. But no recount was possible, because there was nothing to count: the voting machines' only paper output is the final tally.

The lack of a paper trail has made new touch-screen voting machines hugely controversial. As Robert Wexler, a Democratic congressman, likes to point out, “a reprint is not a recount”. Critics also complain that there is no way to tell if the machines are faulty, insecure or rigged.

[permanent link] posted by rakerman : 5:22 pm (0) comments /