Paper Vote Canada

From a comment on my previous posting

You need to recognize that municipalities such as Markham are no less concerned about the integrity of the voting process, they simply live in the real world and recognize that offering Internet voting is clearly a solution for voter apathy.

Adam Froman
President
Delvinia Interactive

Ah yes. The real world. The modern world. The practical, down-to-earth, realistic, Common Sense Revolution world. Paper is obsolete, so old-fashioned, like the Geneva Convention and other inconveniences.

Bullshit.

You want the real world?
The real world is run, to a very large extent, by corporations.
Corporations exist, their sole purpose is, BY LAW, to make money.
To make money, as constrained by the legal framework.
Corporations also must, under our system, continue to grow.
To grow endlessly.

There are only two ways for corporations to grow
1) By finding more ways to charge people more money for things
2) By changing the legal framework itself, to remove constraints on them making more money

A corporation is providing Internet voting in Markham not out of the goodness of its heart, not out of a passion for citizen involvement, but to make more money.

Delvinia is promoting the wonders of that Internet voting system because it was paid to.

Tobacco companies and their paid apologists promoted smoking, even when the evidence against them was damning and incontrovertable, because more smoking made them more money.

Carbon dioxide emitters and their paid apologists promote unrestricted carbon emissions, even when the climate change evidence against them is damning and incontrovertable, because emitting more carbon makes them more money.

Corporations hate, by their very nature, by their DNA, any activity that does not transfer money from the public to corporations. If they could charge us for thinking and breathing, they would.

Internet voting is not about getting more VOTERS it's about getting more MONEY from the government to voting technology CORPORATIONS.

Corporations that, as I have already noted, may have an interest in the outcome of the voting. Let's imagine that one party said they would eliminate the legal fiction of corporations as a person if elected, and the other would increase the rights of corporations and lower corporate taxes.

Now tell me, are you going to trust the corporate designed and run voting system to decide the outcome of that election?

But you don't even need to go to that extent.
Paying people to SAY stuff is much cheaper than paying people to DO stuff well.

How do I maximize profits at my corporation?
Make the cheapest, most quickly and half-assedly programmed system possible.
Don't pay to test it.
Don't pay security experts to evaluate it.
Don't bother with secure design at all.

Computer security COSTS MONEY.
Good computer security costs A LOT of money.
Corporations HATE SPENDING MONEY.

Instead, just pay some people to go out and say "hey, look at this wonderful system, it's improving your quality of life. It's yet another modern convenience, like the washing machine and refrigerator. It's all about serving you, the customer."

Who are you going to trust on electronic voting?
Paid corporate advocates?

Or neutral observers, with no financial incentive, who are trained security experts.

I am a trained computer security expert.
I make zero dollars from anyone for opposing electronic voting.
In fact, it costs me greatly in my own time to oppose it.

The reason I oppose it is that history teaches us that the integrity of our voting systems is always at risk. We have a good, cheap, transparent voting system.
To destroy that would be folly.

Everything in life is not a financial transaction, with a service provider and a client. Voting is not electronic banking, it's not paying your taxes, it's not selecting the latest reality show contestants online, it's not online gambling.

Voting translates voter INTENT into voter CONSENSUS through TRUST.
It's a civic duty. It's a free interaction between citizens and the society as a whole.

Internet voting undermines that trust.
There is no way to do secure, anonymous, independent Internet voting.
It. Is. Impossible.

To compromise a paper election, I must either compromise the ballots, the local counting, or the total tally. People understand security in the physical world extremely well. Any citizen (for that matter, any child) can understand the current paper-based voting system, and could explain to you clearly the small number of ways in which it could be compromised, and how to mitigate against those risks.

To compromise an Internet election, the easiest thing is for me to compromise the voter. This may be in charming ways, like a bottle of hard liquor in exchange for your voting code. Or in less charming ways, like holding a gun to your head and watching you vote the way I want.

I can also attack:
- the home computer
- the home computer software
- the computer network
- the corporate voting software
- the corporate vote counting software

Most citizens have not the faintest idea of the security risks involved, nor do they have the skills to rationally assess the risks. Many citizens, in fact, do not even own a computer, and instead of being empowered by Internet voting, are instead further marginalized.

Wow, that's a boon for democracy, that is.

I have written thousands of words in this blog about the folly that is Internet voting. I may, on my own free time, go back and find some of those links, for those of you too afflicted with apathy to bother to do a search.

If someone who is an actual neutral computer security expert would like to debate this issue, I would be more than happy to do so.

PS When carrying your paid advocacy over to Wikipedia, at least respect the Wikipedia rules and syntax. Thanks.

The ubiquitous Michael Geist had a good article last month, Time To Cast A Vote Against E-Voting

Democracy depends upon a fair, accurate, and transparent electoral process with outcomes that can be independently verified. Conventional voting accomplishes many of these goals - private polling stations enable citizens to cast their votes anonymously, election day scrutineers offer independent oversight, and paper-based ballots provide a verifiable outcome that can be re-counted if necessary.

While technology may someday allow us to replicate these essential features online, many of them are currently absent from Internet voting, which is subject to any number of possible disruptions, including denial of service attacks that shut down the election process, hacks into the election system, or the insertion of computer viruses that tamper with election results.

Electronic voting machines are similarly prone to error. Last year the City of Montreal implemented an electronic voting system that was later characterized as a "debacle" with delays, equipment malfunctions, and erroneous results. The City acknowledged that some of the electronic voting machines were "lemons" - voting too quickly caused the machines to breakdown, while 45,000 ballots were counted twice (an error corrected before the results were announced).

Both Internet and electronic voting are also unable to guarantee independent verification. Unlike paper, electronic votes are subject to manipulation, placing enormous power in the hands of the electronic voting machine companies who must ensure tamper-free results.

For general information about this event see Wikipedia - Ontario municipal elections, 2006.

I voted today in Ottawa, I believe the counting system is a Diebold Accuvote OS.

As I saw my ballot slide silently into the machine with its prominent "Accu Vote" logo, I thought about how these machines silently kill the humanity of the voting process.

Plus which, you get this flimsy paper "voting shield", which they still have to open up in case your ballot is upside down (in which case, they see who you voted for), or backwards (apparently the genius counting machine can't handle backwards ballots).
The whole thing makes you feel like voting is a slipshod yet automated process, neither of which should be the impression left with citizens.

I encourage you to vote today, if applicable.
If you don't like voting on these machines, the first step is to contact your city councilor and mayor, and make them aware of your displeasure, and also of the costs associated with voting machines.

I am also happy to re-print any experiences (positive or negative) you have had with voting machines today. Just send me an email and include a line to the effect of "you have my permission to reprint this report in your blog".

On a side note, I saw with dismay that TD Bank's exciting new ATM's are made by... Diebold. Oh great, now they're handling my money too.

The recent voting machine controversies/disasters in the US (and Quebec) have, finally, woken Canadians up to the potential problems from the use of electronic vote counting machines.

The response from government and thought leaders is, as far as I can tell "don't worry, can't happen here, completely different, hey, look, is that a pony?"

a computer is a computer is a computer
Go take a computer science course and learn about Mr. Turing, if you don't understand that. Any computer can be hacked. You can change the software, you can alter the firmware, you can compromise the hardware. Plus which, you can't tell through external inspection whether a machine has been altered. Which means you need a perfect chain of custody for the machine, 24x7x365.

Now of course, auditing every single machine down to the assembly code level, and securing them in an e-voting machine Fort Knox for the thousands of days when they're NOT being used, just to ensure that they work for about 12 hours on one day, would be enormously, prohibitively expensive. This would also be the actual cost of voting machines.

But that would interfere with the bulls--t about voting machines being modern and efficient and cost-saving. So no one actually does it. At best, some machines are sort of checked by someone, and we sort of trust the people who are handling them on election day, and then they go to some warehouse somewhere and we forget about them.

With that in mind, read the incorrectly cheerful Ottawa Citizen editorial comment City of Ottawa Technology gets my vote, November 6, 2006, page A14 (not available online)

David Reevely, The Ottawa Citizen

Sometimes the old ways are the best, and that's never been truer about anything than it is about voting.

Tick a paper ballot, drop it in a box, wait for it to be counted. Simple. It's worked for as long as we've had democracies. Efforts to update it have largely been failures.

Correct.

Under its old name [Global Election Systems, now part of Diebold], the company made the machines that Ottawa uses to count ballots in municipal elections. Ottawa's elections manager Shane Kennedy, who has overseen civic elections since 1994, is on his third using a tabulator called the Accu-Vote OS.

"We've used the same equipment all that time and it's been entirely successful," Kennedy says.

The machine looks a little like a fax: you slide your ballot in and it gets scanned and counted and spat out again. When the polls close, results are available in minutes, not the hours it used to take to count several hundred thousand pieces of paper. For the candidates, one way or the other, the drinking can begin immediately.

Although they're from the same manufacturer, Ottawa's machines bear none of the weaknesses the American critics point out.

"The hacking relates to touch-screen technology, primarily," Kennedy says in defence of Ottawa's machines. "It's a totally different animal."

None of the weaknesses? NONE OF THE WEAKNESSES? Wrong.
Did I mention that any system running computer code can be hacked?
Maybe not as easily as the crappy Windows touch-screens, but it's still possible.

Quebec's director-general of elections, Marcel Blanchet, examined Diebold's ES 2000, an updated version of the machines Ottawa uses, when he reviewed the province's municipal elections last year. Those elections saw an unprecedented deployment of e-voting machines across Quebec, and an unprecedented number of problems with them.

Things weren't bad enough to nullify any elections, Blanchet concluded, but he still advised that Quebec's cities stop using e-voting machines at least until the province sets standards of accuracy and security.

This is almost certainly overkill, especially for the simple tabulating machines. They need electricity and memory chips and they can jam, which ballot boxes don't, but other than that they're just fancy counting machines -- they don't replace the ballot itself, as touch-screen machines do.

Oh I see, they're just "simple tabulating machines". Sure, they have memory chips, but they're just "fancy counting machines".

FANCY COUNTING MACHINES?
What the f--k do you think a computer is?

If they're so simple, why not have humans count the votes? Why do we need simple technology to replace humans? But wait, they're fancy? If they're so complicated, aren't they vulnerable?

Machines have gears and levers and you have to be a mechanical engineer to compromise them, if you can alter their behavior at all. COMPUTERS have code. Any code can be changed.

In Ottawa's elections, the machines sit on tables out in the open, guarded by clerks and scrutineers. Before the machines could be hacked all the overseers would have to go bad together, and if that happened, the technology would be the least of our problems.

Another criticism of Diebold's touch-screen machines is that they don't make a paper trail. The only record that a voter has been in the booth is in the ephemeral form of electrons on a microchip: if somebody did crack open a machine and go to work on it, there'd be no other record to check the machine's results against. In Ottawa, Kennedy's returning officers at each poll keep the ballots in traditional boxes. If every tabulator failed, each ballot could still be counted by hand.

So, they machines are out in the open... during election day. And the other THOUSANDS OF DAYS they are unused? Where are they exactly? Are there clerks and scrutineers and overseers watching them, 24x7x365?

If every tabulator failed?
And how, exactly, are we going to know if the tabulator failed?
Will there be a flashing red light indicating "tabulator now failing to count ballots correctly"?

No. In fact, these "simple machines" betray no evidence of their internal workings.

Their only, ONLY saving merit is that IF YOU CHALLENGED THE COUNT, you could count the paper.

But if counting the paper is the last word in confidence, then

JUST USE PAPER AND HAND COUNT

But wait, there's more
CFRA - City Defends Voting System - November 8, 2006

The City of Ottawa insists the electronic voting system for Monday's Municipal Election is safe.

Ottawa's Elections Office has issued a memo to all councillors and candidates after a recent documentary into the electronic tabulation system used in the United States.

The HBO documentary raises the possibility that an election system could be accessed with intent to alter the outcome of the vote tabulation.

The City Clerk says Ottawa's preparations for the municipal election by electronic vote have met the standards imposed by an independent third party auditor in the past and those standards are in place for this year's election.

The clerk adds security standards put in place by the municipal election administration make it impossible to hack into the system to access memory cards.

1. What standards? What auditor? Who decided the auditor was qualified and trustworthy? For this election? What about previous ones?
2. "impossible to hack"? hahah ahahahahahahaaha

I challenge the City of Ottawa to invite teams of actual computer security experts, using actual computer security standards, to openly do a threat-risk assessment on the voting system. I can guarantee it is not "impossible to hack".

Plus which, an auditor is a lot of extra expense, then re-assuring citizens reduces confidence in the elections, gee, this is a lot of hassle and money.

You know what would be cheaper and easier?

JUST USE HAND-COUNTED PAPER

I will be writing to both the Ottawa Citizen, CFRA and to my city councilor (before and after the election).

The electronic voting perspective on recounts seems to be
1) they will be easy
2) (perhaps) they happen rarely

But what's important recounts is not how quickly they happen (in fact, "speed" is an odd thing to make paramount in vote counting). What is important is how confident the people are in the result.

Anyone can understand a paper ballot recount, and the routes for challenge are quite limited. This is important, because elections ultimately transfer power from many people, to one. There are over 400 House seats in the US, and about 300 million citizens. That's a huge transfer of power, from hundreds of millions, to hundreds.

The routes of challenge for electronic vote counts are almost limitless.
You could challenge:
1) the manufacturer
2) the programmers
3) the software
4) individual machines
5) the people managing the machines on voting day
6) voters - potential hacking by individual voters
7) chain of custody on the machines or the memory cards

And probably more I haven't though of.
And even worse, many of those challenges are almost impossible to resolve.

This is bad, because close elections requiring recounts actually happen ALL THE TIME.

Gosh, if only this could have been predicted.
Oh wait, everyone who understands e-voting did predict this.

After warnings that electronic voting could cause trouble in Tuesday's U.S. elections, there are signs of "what now appears to be a growing debacle," the CBC's Henry Champ reports from Washington.

By mid-afternoon, officials in at least three jurisdictions — Denver, Colo., Muncie, Ind., and Davidson County, Tenn. — were asking federal judges for extended voting hours because, they said, voting machines in their areas have not functioned and they cannot handle the numbers of voters at the polls without more time.

Seventy-five precincts in Indiana — considered a bellwether state — failed to open on schedule because machines malfunctioned. In Cleveland, where there were problems with new machines in September's party primaries, things seemed no better.

"Again the same problem," Champ said. "Machines and machine supervisors unable to get the operations underway. Voters piling up in the doorways."

CBC News - Electronic voting shapes up as election debacle - November 7, 2006

DailyKos has a story Vote by mail is the answer.

Umm.
Here's my opinion.

* Internet voting - so many things wrong with this I can't even begin.
* Electronic touchscreen - the absolute worst in-person voting. You have no idea what was recorded for your vote, and neither does anyone else.
* Scanned paper ballot - this is the least-worst electronic option, only because in the event of complaint, the paper could be counted. It still suffers from the other electronic flaws - malicious or accidental error could alter the vote counts. Also if the ballots are stacked one-by-one as they're scanned, you could in theory figure out who voted for whom.

* Vote by mail and Internet voting actually share common flaws:
1) No more secret ballot. Anyone can watch you vote. If they like, they can threaten you until you vote how they want.
2) Weak authentication. Someone got a voting code or ballot and voted. Maybe it was you. Maybe it wasn't.
3) Less connection with the vote gathering, chain-of-custody and counting process. Your votes go somewhere, and are counted by someone. Are they organized? Supervised? You don't get to see, unless you specifically make the effort, and probably you don't get to watch the chain-of-custody, only the final count. Any time chain-of-custody is interrupted, there is potential for fraud - in fact, that's how they tried to steal the paper-ballot, hand-counted Presidential election on Battlestar Galactica.

* Vote using paper secret ballot in public, with hand-count afterwards.
The public secret ballot is actually a remarkably well-tuned voting system.
I can't think of any that is better. No one knows how you vote. Chain of custody is usually right in front of your eyes. Anyone can see the votes counted. A child can understand how the system works.

I have written lots more on this topic previously in this blog.

Yet it seems to work when our mighty technology fails.

Programming errors and inexperience dealing with electronic voting machines frustrated poll workers in hundreds of precincts early Tuesday, delaying voters in Indiana, Ohio and Florida and leaving some with little choice but to use paper ballots instead.

In Cleveland, voters rolled their eyes as election workers fumbled with new touchscreen machines that they couldn't get to start properly until about 10 minutes after polls opened.

"We got five machines -- one of them's got to work," said Willette Scullank, a troubleshooter from the Cuyahoga County, Ohio, elections board.

In Indiana's Marion County, about 175 of 914 precincts turned to paper ballots because poll workers didn't know how to run the machines, said Marion County Clerk Doris Ann Sadler. She said it could take most of the day to fix all of the machine-related issues.

CNN - AP - Polling places turn to paper ballots after glitches - November 7, 2006

These places spent thousands of dollars on electronic voting machines, only to end up voting on paper anyway. You know what would be dramatically easier and cheaper?

JUST USE PAPER

This cautionary documentary exposes the vulnerability of computers - which count approximately 80% of America's votes in county, state and federal elections - suggesting that if our votes aren't safe, then our democracy isn't safe either. Premieres Thursday, November 2 [2006] at 9pm.

http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/hackingdemocracy/

indirectly via Slashdot Diebold Demands That HBO Cancel Documentary /.

In one week, more than 80 million Americans will go to the polls, and a record number of them--90%--will either cast their vote on a computer or have it tabulated that way. When that many people collide with that many high-tech devices, there are going to be problems. Some will be machine malfunctions. Some could come from sabotage by poll workers or voters themselves. But in a venture this large, trouble is most likely to come from just plain human error, a fact often overlooked in an environment as charged and conspiratorial as America is in today. Four years after Congress passed a law requiring every state to vote by a method more reliable than the punch-card system that paralyzed Florida and the nation in 2000, the 2006 election is shaping up into a contest not just between Democrats and Republicans but also between people who believe in technology and those who fear machines cannot be trusted to count votes in a closely divided democracy.

Can This Machine Be Trusted? - Time - October 29, 2006

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands Voters in Amsterdam and 34 other Dutch cities may be using paper and pencil instead of computerized voting machines in national elections next month.

The government on Monday banned the use of one common type of computer voting machine, fearing that secret ballots may not be kept secret. It ordered a review of all electronic machines after the Nov. 22 election.

Government Renewal Minister Atzo Nicolai said the move was necessary after an investigation found the machines made by Sdu NV emitted radio signals that a technology-savvy spy could use to peek at a voters' choices from a distance of up to several dozen meters (yards).

"What can be detected is the image on the screen that's visible to the voter, by which his voting could be monitored," Nicolai said in a letter to parliament.

"In short, the machines made by the company Sdu can now be tapped, and there are no technical measures that can be taken before the upcoming elections that would prevent this tapping and guarantee the secrecy of the ballot."

He said he had revoked the permits for all the machines, about 10 percent of all voting machines used in the country.

A sample of the other machines used in next month's vote will be tested before the results are certified to ensure against fraud, Nicolai said.

The turnabout came after a group called "We Don't Trust Voting Computers" protested the vulnerability of electronic voting to fraud or manipulation.

Dutch government scraps plans to use voting computers in 35 cities including Amsterdam - IHT - AP - October 30, 2006

via Slashdot Voting Machines Banned by Dutch Minister /.

Daytona Beach -- Early voting was delayed in Volusia County for about an hour and 15 minutes Saturday morning after a transformer blew and knocked out power to the City Island Library in Daytona Beach.

Elections Supervisor Ann McFall said the polling place was closed after the electricity went out about 9:55 a.m. The power didn't come back until about 1:30 p.m. but residents were allowed to vote after about 11 a.m. Elections officials opened windows to let in light and checked voter registrations by calling the elections office in DeLand using cellular telephones. The site remained open later, as well.

Officials discovered another problem Saturday night -- the ballot count was off by 20 votes.

McFall said votes cast during the power outage were stored in one compartment of the vote-collection box, where they were supposed to be held until they could be fed into the electronic-vote counter. Twenty ballots likely spilled into another compartment, where counted votes are kept.

She said she plans to recount those ballots Nov. 5, when she also will recount ballots cast on Thursday at the DeLand elections office because the vote count there was off by one.

Now imagine a power outage say, in the middle of US voting day.
With thousands of people waiting to vote on exciting modern touch-screen electronic machines. None of which, I can pretty much guarantee, have power backup.
Plus which, I'm guessing the machines handle a sudden power outage with all the grace of most computer systems - damaged files, corrupted databases, errors on memory cards.

Power outage delays voting - Orlando Sentinel - October 29, 2006

as midterm [US] elections approach this November [2006], electronic voting machines are making things worse instead of better. Studies have demonstrated that hackers can easily rig the technology to fix an election - and across the country this year, faulty equipment and lax security have repeatedly undermined election primaries.

from Will The Next Election Be Hacked? by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in the October 04, 2006 issue of Rolling Stone (issue #1010).

On October 24, 2006 the Chief Electoral Officer of Quebec released a report (in French only) "Report on the Evaluation of New Methods of Voting". In a press release, three root causes of problems with electronic voting machines in the 2005 municipal elections were identified:

* an imprecise legislative and administrative framework
* absence of technical specifications, norms and standards
* poor management of voting systems (especially lack of security measures)

He has recommended that the current moratorium on the use of these systems be maintained, and leaves it up to the provincial legislature to decide whether or not to use electronic voting in future.

(Above information copied from my additions to Wikipedia - Electronic voting in Canada.)

This was reported in the Canadian press starting on the 24th, see e.g.

RDI (French) - Des scrutins à jamais entachés - October 24, 2006 (includes links to videos)

CBC (English) - Electronic voting blamed for Quebec municipal election 'disaster' - October 25, 2006

In a new report on problems with Quebec's 2005 municipal election, chief electoral officer Marcel Blanchet targets the electronic voting system used to collect and count the votes.

The election was an expensive disaster marked by errors, which produced inaccurate numbers and unreliable results, the report said. And the new electronic system is to blame, it adds.

The full report (French only) is Élections municipales de novembre 2005 - Rapport d’évaluation des nouveaux mécanismes de votation (PDF, 3.2 MB). There are also Appendices (PDF: 3.4 MB / 120 pages).

There are more links at DGEQ News - Report on the Evaluation of New Methods of Voting.

Previously:
November 27, 2005 Montreal's electronic vote: what went wrong
November 13, 2005 articles about the Quebec election / articles concernant l'élection au Québec
November 13, 2005 Electronic counting fails Quebec

Lou Dobbs has been doing a great job of reporting on the dangers of electronic voting. Unfortunately it's difficult to find most of the reports on CNN.com, but as luck would have it, the transcript of his one-hour special "Democracy at Risk" is available.

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0610/29/ldt.03.html

He and his team covered all the major angles, exposing the many risks.

I was interested to hear that Montana insists on either hand-counted paper ballots (the best option) or optically-scanned paper ballots (the second best option).

In a deeply misguided move, Peterborough Ontario will be providing Internet voting in the 2006 municipal election.

I quote:

Internet Voting = No long line-ups, no traffic, no bad weather days!

Hmm, my slogan would go more like:

Internet Voting = no proof that people have voted, no ballots you can recount, plus I can stand with a gun to your head as you vote!

Oh also, I can potentially easily tell who voted for whom even if I'm not watching you, thanks to the convenient online voter database that is needed.

http://www.peterboroughvotes.ca/

They will be using Dominion Voting Systems.

via Electronic voting in Canada

After the 2000 US presidential election and its scads of hanging chads, election officials across the country began casting about for solutions. One proposal included getting rid of those pesky paper ballots altogether and going with electronic voting machines. It sounds good in theory, but as a friend of mine once said, "do that and we'll find out who hackers want to be president."

A group of computer science professors are joining the forces critical of electronic voting machines as they are currently deployed. Eugene H. Spafford, a computer science professor at Purdue University and chairman of the U.S. Public Policy Committee of the Association for Computing Machinery has expressed his concerns over the security of electronic voting machines used in the US. "As experts in computing, we have grave reservations about the safeguards in place with many of the computerized voting technologies being used," said Spafford in a letter to Rep. Vernon Ehlers (R-MI), chairman of the Committee on House Administration.

Ars Technica - Computer scientists weigh in on e-voting - July 20, 2006

http://www.usenix.org/events/evt06/
August 1, 2006, Vancouver, B.C., Canada

EVT seeks to bring together researchers from a variety of disciplines, ranging from computer science and human factors experts through political scientists, legal experts, election administrators, and voting equipment vendors. The workshop will include short paper presentations as well as vibrant panel discussions with substantial time devoted to questions and answers. Attendance at the workshop will be open to the public, although speakers and presentations will be by invitation only.

CFP deadline April 3, 2006

EVT '06 will be co-located with the 15th USENIX Security Symposium (Security '06), July 31–August 4, 2006.

I mentioned in previous postings about the Quebec 2005 municipal electronic voting problems that Bell was also a supplier (although, AFAIK, not implicated in the issues that were reported). (For more info on that situation, see previous postings list of voting machines used in Quebec municipal elections 2005 and Montreal's electronic vote: what went wrong.)

I couldn't find a Bell link at the time, but I finally ran across one. Quite a splash they have across their page. Starts with a teaser



that leads to a full page of info. I particularly liked their list of e-voting benefits

Electronic compilation of results

The electronic compilation devices used by Bell Business Solutions ensure efficiency, thoroughness and integrity throughout the voting process, whether for a municipal or school board election, referendum or any other consultation.

Simplified functions

* Simple and quick voting process
* Objective counting of ballots (with no human involvement)
* Major reduction of electoral staff
* Fewer duties for electoral staff
* Fast disclosure of results

Let's see, so in summary: it's fast and there are fewer people. Ah. Efficiency! How we worship you! Our voting must now be PRODUCTIVE! Maybe we should eliminate humans from the voting process altogether, and let the machines objectively decide our fate.

Objective with no human involvement?
Um, so the machines programmed themselves did they?

What you mean is, some computer code written by humans you don't know, in the United States, not reviewed by any humans in Canada, will decide the results of the election according to their programmed whims, with no humans to verify the results.

Ah, progress!

They used the Accu-Vote ES, which is a mark-sense reader

Accu-Vote ES electronic ballot box

The Accu-Vote ES system uses an optical reader to record votes on a memory card as ballots are being cast. It considerably simplifies the electoral process for everyone involved and guarantees that the final results will remain secret until the polls close.

In Québec, since 1995, more than 120 cities and municipalities have successfully used vote counting devices. More than 4 million ballots have been recorded by voters during these elections.

The Accu-Vote is made by everyone's favorite reliable, trust-worthy electronic voting machine company: Diebold. Here's a look at their Accu-Vote OS scanner.

Unknowns:
- are there any Canadian standards these machines were tested against?
- were these machines tested against any US standards?
- does anyone test these machines at all?
- are these machines Bell owns, or do they lease them from the US?
- who guards these machines when they're not in use?

Bell: Elections made simple

Err, simpler than humans marking an X on paper and then humans counting it?

Who said elections were complicated?
How about elections maintained completely trustworthy and accurate?

I leave you to contemplate the shiny map of electronic vote-counting progress

Workshop on Electronic Voting and e-Government in the UK
27 February, 2006 09:00 AM - 28 February, 2006 05:30 PM
e-Science Institute, 15, South College Street, Edinburgh

Mass-scale systems intended to deliver e-Government in a democratic context pose a range of under-explored design problems. In particular, we are far from having identified a core set of requirements for such systems. The need for confidentiality, privacy, transparency, accountability and user control are all critical to the success of such systems yet we are still far from determining how to implement such requirements and how the design of such systems will affect user behaviour. In this workshop we aim to address these very broad issues in general together with a more focused examination of e-voting as an exemplar of e-government systems.

Turnout in Jan 2006 Federal election was 64.9% according to current results on http://enr.elections.ca/National_e.aspx

According to http://www.elections.ca/scripts/OVR2004/23/table4.html the turnout has been:

2006 64.9%
2004 60.9%
2000 61.2%
1997 67.0%
1993 69.6%

My idea of office voting wouldn't work due to people being from many different ridings, too complicated.

I say:
1. Make it a holiday
2. Make it mandatory to vote

A Canadian federal election has been called for Monday January 23, 2006.

More information at Elections Canada.

For background info on this 39th general election, see the Wikipedia entry Canadian federal election, 2006.

Canadians, GO VOTE.

I was interviewed by PC World Canada for a piece on electronic voting.

E-voting: Death of the ballot or ticking time bomb?

I don't think I gave a great interview, I should have written some talking points, I was kind of all over the map with needlessly complex or vague explanations.
I think the article accurately reflects what I said.

I do completely disagree with a statement by Joe Church, president of CanVote.

When asked about these issues, Church points out that their systems have been thoroughly tested and that mock elections, held by municipal officials prior to the actual election, have proven to be 100 percent reliable. Aside from these, Church also points out that the convenience and increased voter turnout overcome the security concerns that some people may have.

Um, yeah, I can make my voting machine 100 percent reliable in a mock election too.
The pseudocode looks like this:


if (mockelection) then
  produce correct results
else
  produce desired false results


Elections aren't supposed to be convenient. We're not election consumers. Elections are a CIVIC DUTY as CITIZENS. Making getting to the polls easier is fine - have advance polls, polls in people's workplaces, that's all good.

If you want increased voter turnout then
1. try to figure out why voter turnout is low, then fix that
2. if that doesn't work, make voting mandatory

I don't at all like this "young people vote in Canadian Idol, why not make the election like that?"

Um, because the election is not supposed to be some easy, meaningless act of consumer entertainment.

Whatever happened to the evoting experts blog?

It was announced with great fanfare, and then managed postings at a rapidly declining rate:

Sunday December 12, 2004
Tuesday December 14, 2004
Wednesday December 15, 2004

Monday January 31, 2005


Tuesday March 08, 2005

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.

Library Boy: History of the Right to Vote in Canada

Diebold Threatens to Pull Out of North Carolina

A North Carolina judge ruled that Diebold may not be protected from criminal prosecution if it fails to disclose the code behind its voting machines as required by law. In response, Diebold has threatened to pull out of North Carolina.

from Slashdot 29 November 2005 /.

Voting glitches from the 7 Nov 2005 Election (message from 15 Nov 2005) from Risks Digest Volume 24 Number 10.

It is a strange world we live in where 39-year-old Belinda is supposed to be an expert in the whims of "youth".

Here are her hip ideas on votation

“To have to go to a polling station, it’s just not in sync with our fast-paced connected life,” she said.

Online voting would likely entice a lot more young people to exercise their democratic right, Stronach said.

“It’s something we need to explore. With the technology that’s available today there’s no reason we can’t do it.”

There are so many reasons you SHOULDN'T do it.

Dose - Belinda working on youth vote - November 28, 2005

You know what would entice young people?
Candy!
Let's offer them candy for voting.

Fast-paced connected life?
Ya god forbid we should take an hour or so every several years to say, sustain our entire democracy.

recul-democratique.org has put together a great list of the machines used in Quebec for the 2005 municipal elections.

Delays, equipment breakdowns and erroneous results marred the IT systems used to handle the recent municipal election of Montreal and several cities in Quebec.

The voting box IT infrastructure was supplied by PG Elections, an affiliate of PG Mensys, which has helped to run several elections since 1999. PG Elections deployed some 1,400 electronic ballot boxes and voting terminals in 604 sites, providing an electronic voting system in a majority of municipalities in the province of Québec (a number of others cities also voted electronically using systems deployed by another service provider). Some of the machines failed to count properly and a mayoral contender in Montréal called for a legal recount in several districts after noting a number of problems in the voting process.

A voting terminal is a completely electronic device that registers votes using a touchscreen display, but the systems that failed during these municipal elections across the province were electronic ballot boxes used to scan paper ballots, which are then digitized and compiled. Some 900 of those voting terminals were deployed, of which 450 were rented from an American supplier. Thomas Gagnon, president of PG Elections, refused to name the partner who supplied the electronic voting systems.

“Everything worked well in the testing, but when we deployed them in the field, there were a series of important problems: if someone voted too quickly, they broke down, but if you voted slowly enough they worked well,” said. “We had what you could call lemons.”

Poor Internet connections also induced delays in the transmission of the electoral results to the political parties and to the media, who had to resort to more manual methods by telephones. “That was a major irritant,” Gagnon admitted.

Gagnon said about 45,000 ballots were counted twice, but that they were corrected before the end results were announced.

PG Elections attributed the catastrophe to an excess of optimism and for providing a team of only 300 technicians to handle all of Quebec.

Emphasis mine. "An excess of optimism"? How about a shortage of caution.
from IT Business / Computing Canada - Montreal's electronic voting debacle: What went wrong - November 22, 2005

Translated (by IT Business) from the original French on their sister site
Direction Informatique - Histoire d'une catastrophe informatique - November 11, 2005

11/11/2005 - Au-delà de la compétence de la firme impliquée, PG Elections, les ratés informatiques des dernières élections municipales au Québec ont fourni la preuve que la loi de Murphy existe

Il y a peu de chances que Thomas Gagnon, président et chef de la direction de PG Mensys Systèmes d’Information, garde un bon souvenir du 6 novembre 2005, journée d’élections municipales généralisée pour la première fois à l’ensemble des villes du Québec, ou presque. Une journée qui devait selon toute probabilité se dérouler sans accrocs, du moins d’un point de vue informatique, l’infrastructure de vote électronique fournie par PG Elections, une filiale de PG Mensys, ayant été testée et utilisée à plusieurs reprises depuis 1999.

Oh baloney. Murphy's Law? "selon toute probabilité se dérouler sans accrocs"?

You know how you succeed with stuff? You PLAN. You MANAGE THE RISKS.

Or, apparently if you're PG Elections, you think "Hey, what could possibly go wrong? To the Vote Machine!"

And then you say "sorry we screwed up your elections, hey, guess what, turns out we didn't know what we were doing, we were optimistic without reason!"

You know what machines do?
They break.
They fail.
They malfunction.
They're misprogrammed.
The network goes down.
They overheat.
etc. etc. etc.

You know what a paper ballot does?
Err, it just sits there, working fine.
Other than setting it on fire, it's pretty hard for a paper ballot to malfunction.

Which one is better suited to a task that must work perfectly in a single, specific day?

And I don't want to rag on PG specifically.
Voting using machines is very hard to do well, even if you're not "optimistic".
It's a fundamentally flawed concept.

Voting happens rarely, the entire complex system has to work perfectly for millions of people in numerous locations... this is not a set of requirements that computer technology and business planning processes are well-suited to solve.

Businesses are suited to making lots of money by doing frequently repeatable transactional things as "efficiently" (e.g. as cheaply and poorly as they can get away with). That is not a great model to apply to elections.

And even if you had teams of computer scientists working very hard, it wouldn't work well.

The fact that the actual voting machines, systems and processes are generally hacked together with the minimal possible investment of time, thought, risk assessment and computer security expertise just makes things all the worse.

Paper is simple.
Electronic voting systems are complex.
This complexity leads to the idea: let's outsource all this complexity to a private company.

In the Quebec municipal elections, this was apparently PG Elections and a few other players. Did any of them actually MAKE any machines? I suspect not. I suspect all the machines are from our friends in the US, where the elections work so well.
(You can judge the listed PG Elections technology solutions for yourself.)

So... err... who the heck is PG Elections? It's a "division" of PGMensys.
"PG Systèmes d'Information inc. lance une nouvelle filiale, PG Elections inc. " (19 avril 2001)

Quebec city, February 23, 2005 - For twenty-five years, PG Mensys Information Systems has been developing innovative management systems aiming to serve municipalities all over Quebec. Constantly growing, PG Mensys Information Systems always goes forward, and still, remains close to its clients and in tune with their needs.

Mr. Thomas Gagnon, the President and CEO of PG Mensys Information Systems has just been honoured with the Microsoft Gold Certified Partner certification.

...

The PG Mensys Information Systems sales have reached $13 M in 2004, a 37% rise copared to 2003. The sales turnover, for the current year, was anticipated at $18 M, and that is a 39% rise compared to 2004 and almost 100% rise compared to 2003.

Let us recall that the year 2004 began with PG Information Systems acquiring Mensys, and therefore giving more competitiveness to PG Mensys Information Systems, for the medium and large city markets.

...

Elections

Another division of PG Mensys Information Systems, PG Elections, has been chosen by the Montreal and Longueuil transition committees to establish an electronic voting mechanism device for the upcoming 2005 general elections, for the nineteen municipalities being reconstituted. The mandate includes the preparation of electoral lists, computerized management of votes and electronic compilation of results. Let us recall that PG Elections detained more than 80% of the market share in 2004.

Oh good, it appears to be some tiny (relatively speaking) technology consulting company. That's where you want to go when every vote counts.

Here's what's in Archive.org
http://web.archive.org/web/20040924110036/http://pgmensys.com/

Apparently they have forgotten to put anything at the root of their server.
You have to do e.g.
http://www.pgmensys.com/pages/PgMensys/Entreprise/Engagement.aspx?Lang=EN-CA
http://www.pgsystem.com/pages/PgMensys/Entreprise/Engagement.aspx?Lang=EN-CA

There is also a site
http://www.pgelections.com/
which is also
http://www.quattra.qc.ca/
I found a blog which says Quattra Design Inc. Quattra Design est le propriétaire du site web de PG Elections.

This blog, Hors des lieux communs has been doing some good work digging into who the heck these people are, check the info in the Démocratie category.
Let's look into Qui sont les actionnaires de PG Elections ?

PG Elections

PG Elections est la compagnie qui a fournie l'urne électronique ainsi que les listes électorales.

PG Elections appartient à PG MENSYS SYSTÈMES D'INFORMATION INC. qui appartient à Thomas gagnon (actionnaire majoritaire), Fonds d'investissement Desjardins du Bas-St-Laurent (deuxième actionnaire) et Mario Brisson (troisième actionnaire). Thomas Gagnon est administrateur-président-secrétaire.

On apprend également que PG Election a déjà porté 3 autres noms:
1-Programmation Gagnon inc. (1985-2000)
2-PG systèmes d'information inc. (2000-2004)
3-PG MENSYS SYSTÈMES D'INFORMATION INC. (en vigueur)

Un scoop : Le PG de PG Elections voudrait donc dire Programmation Gagnon!

Quattra Design Inc.

Quattra Design est le propriétaire du site web de PG Elections, site web sur lequel les hyperliens internes menaient parfois (voir le premier billet de cette série).

Quatra Design Inc. appartient à PG Elections et Thomas Gagnon est administrateur-président-secrétaire.

PQM Inc.

PQM inc. est la compagnie qui détient le site web sur lequel les résultats du vote était présenté: http://www.resultatduvote.qc.ca/

PQM veut dire Production Québec Multimédia et est la propriété de Jacques Landry, mais est à la même adresse que les 3 autres compagnies, c'est-à-dire au 217, LÉONIDAS à Rimouski.

Thomas Gagnon

J'en conclue que toutes les compagnies que j'ai identifiées jusqu'à présent comme acteurs, sauf probablement PQM, appartiennent en majorité à 1 seul homme: Thomas Gagnon.

That's right. Thomas Gagnon all the way through.

Let's see, make a bunch of websites and companies, and on the web, a small enterprise can seem big...

Après avoir débuté sa carrière en 1973 comme programmeur chez STS à Montréal, M. Gagnon a fondé en 1980 Programmation Gagnon, devenue aujourd'hui PG Mensys Systèmes d'Information. Cette entreprise se consacre à la conception et à l'intégration de solutions de gestion pour les secteurs municipal et forestier. Il en est aujourd'hui le président et le responsable du développement des affaires.

M. Gagnon dirige les activités reliées au développement des affaires et à l'expansion de l'entreprise : établissement d'alliances stratégiques, acquisitions et développement des marchés nationaux et internationaux.

M. Gagnon s'est vu nommer « Personnalité du mois d'août 2004 en TI au Québec » par la FIQ.

En plus d'avoir obtenu plusieurs prix dans le Bas-St-Laurent, dont le titre d'entreprise de l'année en 1991 et en 2000, PG Mensys s'est également illustrée sur la scène provinciale en étant lauréate d'un OCTAS en 2002 (affaires électroniques - intranets d'entreprises). Sur la scène canadienne, il s'est mérité la même année un prix CIPA (Canadian Information Productivity Awards) dans la catégorie «Petite entreprise».

Thomas Gagnon : nouveau membre du CRIM

Here's some good info with a great quote, English translation by me, if you don't like mixed English and French, get over it

Not less than 4 of 5 million Quebeckers called to vote in the November 6 [2005] municipal elections will be able to make their selection using an electronic method / technology, une technologie principalement dévelopée ... par la division PG Élections.

If they actually developed anything themselves rather than just repackaging stuff from the States, I will be very surprised.

PG Elections dominates this market with nearly two thirds of the 179 municipalities using electronic voting, the biggest being Montreal and Quebec City. Two other firms, Bell Business Solutions and TM Technologies also have some clients.

...

« Je crois que Québec [City] sera la première grande ville en Amérique du Nord à procéder par un vote électronique, sans utilisation de papier » affirme Thomas Gagnon

from L'interface technologique du vote démocratique au Québec

Yes, you read that right, he's was PROUD that Quebec City would be using electronic voting machines with no paper records.

The article also says that PG Mensys has 140 employees.

Anyway, I don't have time to track down all the details, I'm no investigative reporter.

Here's a last tidbit to ponder.

We are pleased to announce the creation of PG Elections North America, a subsidiary of PG Mensys Information Systems.
PG Elections NA is entirely dedicated to outsourcing election services throughout North America, and is represented by Mr. Jonathon Hollins, Vice President, International Elections Services.

PG Elections North America, a subsidiary of PG Mensys Information Systems (same news as New subsidiary: PG Elections North America 2005-07-28)

Jonathon Hollins... the former head of the Canadian branch of US elections giant ES&S.

Any relation to John Hollins, the Chief Election Officer of Ontario (Elections Ontario), one may legitimately wonder.

Here's some of what it says on BBV for PG Elections NA

Here is a poorly translated list of key contacts at the parent company PGMensys:
PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL: Thomas Gagnon
HEAD OF THE DIRECTION: Thomas Gagnon
GENERAL President-director: Thomas Gagnon
FINANCES: Daniel Desaulniers
MARKETING: Sylvain Gauthier
SALES: Sylvain Gauthier
DEVELOPMENT OF THE BUSINESSES: Thomas Gagnon
PUBLIC RELATIONS: Thomas Gagnon
DATA PROCESSING DEPARTMENT: Jean-Guy Renaud
HUMAN RESOURCES: Mario Brisson
RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT: Jean-Guy Renaud

One also wonders what is happening with the Ontario pilot application plan for "alternative voting technologies" (i.e. electronic voting).

And on a final note it seems appropriate to close with
VOTATION ÉLECTRONIQUE: PG ELECTIONS FAIT LE BILAN

Québec, le 7 novembre 2005 - À la suite de la votation électronique qui a eu lieu hier dans plusieurs municipalités du Québec, dont Québec et Montréal, et bien que l'ensemble du système soit présentement sous analyse, PG Elections tient à apporter les précisions suivantes sur ce qui sest passé.

* Quelque cinq réseaux informatiques ont cessé de fonctionner mais ont été rétablis dans de courts délais;
* Tous les votes ont été reçus et compilés même si des terminaux de votation ont cessé de fonctionner à Québec;
* Certaines urnes électroniques se sont avérées défectueuses;
* Les problèmes informatiques ont causé des retards dans la transmission des résultats électoraux aux partis politiques et aux médias;
* Le personnel des élections étant temporaire et moins habitué il semble y avoir eu certains problèmes au niveau du soutien technique et dans l'utilisation des terminaux dans les bureaux de vote.

Pierre Bourque, who was defeated in his bid to become mayor of Montreal again, wants a judge to cancel last Sunday's municipal vote and order a new election.

Bourque had initially called for a complete recount of the election won by incumbent Mayor Gérald Tremblay. But he now says there were too many problems with the voting process.

CBC - Bourque wants new Montreal civic election - November 11, 2005

See my posting of a Montreal Gazette article for more recent info.

La firme PG Élections était responsable des systèmes électroniques de votation de 83 municipalités québécoises, dont Montréal et Québec, dimanche dernier. Toutefois, la gestion du vote a tourné au fiasco: serveurs surchargés, résultats instables, retards dans le processus.

Mercredi, la firme est sortie de son mutisme et a avoué qu'elle avait sous-estimé l'ampleur de la tâche. Le PDG Thomas Gagnon a précisé que sa compagnie était mal préparée et qu'aucun « scénario catastrophe » n'avait été mis sur pied.

Radio Canada - PG Élections fait son mea culpa - 9 novembre 2005

Emphasis in above quote mine.

The thing with an election is you don't get to do a trial run. Everything must work perfectly, under full load, on the day of the election.

Electronic voting machines that jammed in several municipal elections in the province last week and spewed out contradictory results have robbed Quebecers of their confidence in the voting system, former mayoral candidate Pierre Bourque says.

That's why he's banding together with other failed candidates from Quebec City and Trois Rivieres to mount a constitutional challenge against electronic voting in the hopes of having new elections ordered in the three cities, Bourque said at a press conference at his Vision Montreal party headquarters.

"Anyone has the right to have a vote," Bourque said, joined by candidates from the other cities. "And this was not the case."

The candidates will also write to Quebec's chief electoral officer to demand an investigation.

This week, a judge ordered a manual recount for 15 of Montreal's 105 council positions. The recounts are to begin Tuesday.

Hugo Lepine, who lost a bid for a council seat in Quebec City, said candidates in his municipality who want recounts are stymied because the city used an entirely electronic voting system. There are no paper ballots to recount, Lepine said. (Montreal had paper ballots fed into a vote-counting machine.)

Bourque and his Quebec City and Trois Rivieres counterparts say their constitutional challenge would be based on the principle that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and Quebec's charter of rights provide every citizen a vote. That right is eroded when election results are riddled with errors because of failed equipment, Bourque said.

from Montreal Gazette - Machines let us down - November 17, 2005

An entirely predictable fiasco. The machines didn't let us down, they behaved as expected. Emphasis in above quoted text is mine.
Remember as I have said before: elections are not about counting votes efficiently, they are about building consensus that the will of the voters was fairly represented. When you have many people (thousands, millions) who willingly consent to be governed by a tiny number of people (a few hundred) then they must have confidence in the system that selects those who will govern.

Many have been criticising Nigeria as a funny nations where policies are adopted without the knowledge of the populace; Many alarming questions have been raised on why Electronic voting, popularly known as E-voting should really be adopted in the 2007 elections in a country where almost 60% of the population are illiterate.

Personally, the introduction of E-voting system in the country will amount to introduction of unacceptable risk of error and manipulation. Electronic voting entails several means of determining people's collective intent electronically, but in the dearth. Nigeria's electoral body which wants to embark on electronic voting should sit back and recall the fact that Nigeria's major problem lies mostly in unstable electricity supply which is a sinqua non for e-voting. We cannot dream of climbing higher by remaining where and what we are in Nigeria.

from AllAfrica.com - E-Voting: a Risk for 2007 Election November 21, 2005

INDEPENDENT National Electoral Commission (INEC) said yesterday that it would test run the controversial Electronic Voting System (EVS) in the planned revalidation of voters register next January.

Chairman of the commission Prof. Maurice Iwu, announced the new date for the revalidation of voters registrar at meeting with the Resident Electoral Commissioners (REC).

The INEC chairman who slammed critics of the EVS, however denied importation of "any specific equipment for any of the components of EVs for the 2007 general election.

Although he admitted that the commission "had studied many types of instrument for each aspect of the EVs, the chairman insisted that the Commission was yet to select any of the components.

from AllAfrica.com - INEC to Test Run E-Voting Jan - November 23, 2005

All three articles are by Claude Côté.

Le Soleil 31 octobre 2005 Les élections municipales du 6 novembre (1)

Le 6 novembre prochain, plusieurs centaines de milliers d'électeurs de Québec et de plusieurs dizaines de municipalités québécoises expérimenteront, la plupart pour la première fois, des machines à voter électroniques. Nul doute que plusieurs électeurs se réjouiront que leur système de votation fasse un saut dans l'ère moderne. Mais s'ils pensent que ces machines sont aussi sûres et fiables qu'on veut bien leur laisser croire, ils auront de mauvaises surprises.

Il ne faut pas confondre les machines à voter électroniques à boutons-poussoirs ou à écran tactile avec les machines à lecteur optique qui seront utilisées à Montréal, comme elles le furent d'ailleurs en 2001. Les Montréalais marqueront alors leur choix avec un crayon feutre sur une feuille de papier qu'ils introduiront dans une machine et qui sera ensuite lue par le lecteur optique de celle-ci.

En cas de recomptage, les bulletins en papier pourront être comptés pour vérifier si les machines n'ont pas fait d'erreurs et pour examiner les véritables intentions des électeurs.

Le Soleil 1 novembre 2005 LES ÉLECTIONS MUNICIPALES DU 6 NOVEMBRE (2)

La Loi sur les référendums et les élections dans les municipalités du Québec prévoit que, conformément à une entente entre la ministre des Affaires municipales et le Directeur général des élections du Québec, une municipalité peut faire l'essai, lors d'un scrutin, de nouveaux mécanismes de votation. Les municipalités qui utiliseront des machines à voter électroniques le 6 novembre prochain, dont la Ville de Québec, ont toutes conclu une telle entente qui a pour effet de remplacer plusieurs articles de la loi.

D'entrée de jeu, notons que peu de mécanismes de sécurité ont été mis en place pour répondre aux préoccupations soulevées hier. Les paragraphes 173,1 à 173,3 ordonnent au président d'élection d'effectuer des tests sur les machines en présence des candidats ou de leurs représentants au plus tard le cinquième jour précédant le vote, de prendre des mesures de sécurité adéquates et de s'assurer qu'aucune communication électronique ne puisse être établie pour perturber l'intégrité du système.

Ces dispositions ne vont pas assez loin et ne sont pas assez précises. D'une part, le président d'élection, à moins d'être informaticien, n'aura pas les compétences nécessaires pour vérifier si le système a été altéré d'une façon ou d'une autre. D'autre part, l'entente ne fait aucune mention du type de scellé qui sera apposé sur les machines une fois qu'elles auront été testées et ne prévoit pas de mesures de sécurité pour les protéger dans l'endroit où on les entreposera jusqu'au jour du scrutin (soit pour une période minimale de cinq jours). Il n'est pas impossible d'imaginer qu'une personne, un employé de l'édifice par exemple, pourrait s'y introduire, modifier le logiciel des machines (pour qu'un vote pour le candidat X se transforme en un vote pour le candidat Y, par exemple) et remettre de nouveaux scellés sans que personne ne s'en rende compte.

L'article 223 de l'entente est également problématique. Il mentionne que, lorsque l'électeur quitte la salle de votation avant d'avoir terminé de voter, le scrutateur en chef ou son adjoint doit peser sur le bouton "Je ne veux pas voter pour..." avant de désactiver sa carte. Or, ni l'un ni l'autre ne peut être considéré comme impartial puisque plusieurs d'entre eux sont recommandés par les partis politiques au président des élections. Et pourtant, dans ce cas-ci, l'un ou l'autre aura le loisir de voter à l'insu de tous.

Le Soleil 10 novembre 2005 Des élections... "made in USA"

Nous venons d'apprendre que la firme à qui l'on a confié le déroulement du vote électronique du 6 novembre a loué ses terminaux à écran tactile d'une firme américaine, MicroVote, de l'Indiana. Nous avons donc confié nos élections municipales aux Américains !

Les responsables des élections étaient-ils au courant de cela et ont-ils approuvé cette sous-traitance ? Savaient-ils que le sous-traitant faisait lui-même de la sous-traitance ? Que les réponses à ces questions soient négatives ou positives, ils ont, semble-t-il, failli à leur devoir. En effet, une simple recherche dans Internet leur aurait appris, entre autres, que son président, James M. Ries Jr, a fait la déclaration suivante à propos des machines de sa compagnie : "Il n'y a vraiment aucune façon de prouver à un électeur que son vote a été enregistré exactement comme il l'entendait. Il doit avoir une foi aveugle dans l'intégrité des responsables locaux de l'élection"(1). En d'autres termes, on ne pourra jamais dire avec certitude que les résultats qui ont été certifiés à Québec reflètent exactement la volonté de l'électorat.

De plus, les responsables des élections à Québec se sont-ils demandés s'ils pouvaient vraiment se fier à ces machines ? Aux États-Unis, la responsabilité de la vérification des machines de votation revient à des laboratoires que l'on nomme Independent Testing Authorities (ITA). Notons tout d'abord que ces laboratoires n'ont rien d'indépendant puisqu'ils sont entièrement financés par les manufacturiers eux-mêmes. Ils ne font pas non plus un travail exhaustif. Selon Bill Carson, de Carson Manufacturing, la compagnie qui fabrique les machines de MicroVote - eh oui, le sous-sous-traitant ! - "si l'on veut que les machines fonctionnent convenablement, les ITA devraient, pour qu'elles soient testées minutieusement et qu'on puisse prévoir toutes les éventualités, dépenser 10 fois le temps et l'argent qu'il en a fallu pour les concevoir. Et au moment où les tests sont effectués, ces derniers sont déjà désuets parce que la technologie change trop rapidement."(2)

Il semble donc qu'aucun organisme crédible et indépendant n'ait vérifié les machines électroniques à écran tactile de dimanche dernier, que ce soit aux États-Unis ou au Québec.

nine polling stations in Quebec City stayed open 30 minutes longer, because of a computer problem.

At the beginning of the day, ballots were being fed into the system too quickly, and the computers crashed, city officials say. The glitches caused a backlog in the voting process, and officials decided to leave the polls open longer as a result.

In Lévis, Que., one polling station will stay open until 8:50, because a power failure at the polling station during the day.

CBC November 6, 2005 Voting extended in several polling stations

via Electronic voting machine troubles

Workshop on Electronic Voting and e-Government in the UK
27 February 2006 09:00 AM - 28 February, 06 05:30 PM
e-Science Institute, 15, South College Street, Edinburgh

Mass-scale systems intended to deliver e-Government in a democratic context pose a range of under-explored design problems. In particular, we are far from having identified a core set of requirements for such systems. The need for confidentiality, privacy, transparency, accountability and user control are all critical to the success of such systems yet we are still far from determining how to implement such requirements and how the design of such systems will affect user behaviour. In this workshop we aim to address these very broad issues in general together with a more focused examination of e-voting as an exemplar of e-government systems. This exemplar provides a sharp characterisation of many of the issues and design tradeoffs we encounter in many e-Government systems. Despite support for trial and adoption of new voting technologies by the government, which sees electronic voting as a means of increasing turnout, we have not seen wide-scale adoption of the technology. E-voting requirements cover topics as varied as privacy/anonymity, authentication, verifiability, flexibility (with respect to different electoral systems) and usability. In addition, there is a need to specify the requirements for a trusted electronic voting system for UK elections. The diversity of issues suggest deployment of e-voting requires an interdisciplinary approach.

I was contacted by Pierre Muller, webmaster of the recul-democratique.org site.

Nous sommes des citoyens réunis par notre inquiétude face à l’arrivée des machines à voter dans nos villes respectives.

Nous ne sommes en rien opposés à la technologie, nous nous interrogeons seulement sur son bon usage. Certains d’entre nous sont informaticiens.

Le vote électronique est en voie de se généraliser en France, dans un grand silence. Nous n’entendons parler que de modernisation inéluctable, de problèmes d’organisation et d’économies, sans la moindre réflexion de fond.

/

We are French citizens, many of which computer scientists. We are preoccupied with the recent infatuation about electronic voting. It is taking place without any large scale debate. We are told it is all about inevitable modernization, organization, and saving money. No background discussion.

They have a small section on Canada.

Government plans to introduce e-voting for next year's local council
elections have been dropped. According to the government spokesman
(Elections Minister Harriet Harman), "the time is not right". The
government has not ruled out further attempts to introduce e-voting. Oliver
Heald MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs, has
described the whole process as a shambles, citing the security concerns with
e-voting.

from Risks Digest

Additional info:
BBC News Web and text vote trials dropped
The Register UK.gov ditches 'Big Brother'-style e-voting

RSS feed changed to FeedBurner, added my linkblog in the sidebar on the right.
Most of my new info will be in the linkblog generally speaking, as I have less time and energy to blog every story.

Wired News - Machine Politics

An Introduction to E-Voting July 7, 2005

E-Vote Guidelines Need Work July 7, 2005

The guidelines, published in late June, call for vendors to follow better programming practices and make some suggestions for addressing problems with vote integrity.

Computer security experts say the guidelines are a step in the right direction, but fall short of making voting systems secure. They also don't require systems to produce a voter-verified paper audit trail, which would allow voters to confirm their vote.

You can comment on the guidelines: EAC - Voluntary Voting System Guidelines.

The Voluntary Voting System Guidelines were developed under the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA) Section 202 mandate that the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) update the 2002 Voting System Standards to address increasingly complex voting system technology. They were designed for state and local election officials to help ensure that new voting systems function accurately and reliably.

The Guidelines are provided for a 90 day public comment period which officially began June 29, 2005 upon notice in the Federal Register. All comments must be received by EAC on or before 5:00 p.m. EDT on September 30, 2005.

The Houston Chronicle Clear up misinformation about electronic voting: E-votes are reliable in ways paper ballots could never be June 29, 2005

Wow, this article is some spectacular bulls--t.
The authors are Sonia Arrison and Vince Vasquez from the "Pacific Research Institute", which appears to be a charming US right-wing "think tank". So wise are they that they have produced an entire 25-page report on electronic voting Upgrading America's Ballot Box: The Rise of E-Voting">Upgrading America's Ballot Box: The Rise of E-Voting (PDF).

The report starts like this

Electronic voting has, unfortunately, moved from the realm of science and statistics to conspiracy theory by overheated partisans. Sonia Arrison and Vince Vasquez puncture the myths of the conspiracists in their paper. Even leading Democrats such as Joe Andrew, Bill Clinton’s handpicked chairman of the Democratic National Committee, have pointed out that while problems remain that demand vigilance, electronic voting aids the poor, the elderly, minorities, and is more accurate. Last year, Mr. Andrew lamented that “When it comes to electronic voting, most liberals are just plain old-fashioned nuts.”

This is my favorite quote from the body of the report With the click of a button, many Election Day errors have been innovated out of existence.

I would paraphase the report as follows With the click of keyboard keys, many electronic voting issues have been written out of existence.

The argument made is that it is easier to hack paper than electronic.
Oh, and concerns about the security of the machines can be addressed with "a simple code review".

Um, I have years of experience and training in computer science.
Code review is dauntingly difficult for any non-trivial program.

I like this too manual counts are prone to human error. Ah yes, much better to have electronic non-recounts, free from meddlesome human intervention.

Here is some distilled BS from the Houston Chronicle article.

While it is true that no system is tamper-proof, it is also true that it takes significant expertise and plotting to hack a machine, ironically making the system more secure than traditional paper ballots.

Historically, paper ballots were overly manhandled, being placed into boxes, moved around and passed through the hands of low-level poll workers to precinct supervisors and county officials. Fraud was less detectable, and more prevalent, because prescored ballots could be easily corrupted or votes altered with a simple punch through a hole, or mark of a pen. With DRE, features such as remote vote storage and a visual verification screen of voter selections are innovating these problems out of existence. America's voting system could become even healthier if other new procedures are adopted at the same time.

E-voting opponents demand a verified paper-trail backup to make sure votes are counted properly. But paper trails are meaningless if manual counts and voter verification are still prone to fraud and human error. And verified paper trails for DRE's have proven to be expensive, potentially bankrupting cash-strapped counties and eroding the efficiency of voting management. The back-up issue is serious, but there are less-Luddite solutions, such as electronic or audio verification.

The real key to making sure that the electronic back-ups are secure will be in reviewing the code that runs the machines, a simple procedure that counties should make part of the normal election-preparing process. And all indications are that the public approves of such a move. Indeed, despite the newness of the use DRE technology, public approval for electronic voting remains strong.

I'm still around but mostly posting to my work blog.

You can track my bookmarks related to electronic voting and other Paper Vote Canada topics at

http://linkroll.com/?action=links&user=papervotecanada

The First Minister was dazzled by dancing robots and shown the latest developments in electronic voting as he visited Scotland's oldest university.

Mr McConnell opened the Gateway and John Cole buildings, two state-of-the-art facilities at St Andrews University. About A£10 million has been invested in the buildings, which house the university's schools of management and computer science.

Staff and students from the computer science department showed the First Minister how the latest hi-tech electronic voting software could be used in future elections.

I think dancing robots should be mandatory for all grand events.

icScotland - McConnell tries out e-voting system

Indeed, I'll take dancing robots any day over daft Internet voting schemes.

[30 April 2003]

On the eve of the elections, a computer scientist in St Andrews is researching the possibilities of voting over the internet in the future.

Tim Storer, a Computer Science PhD student at the University of St Andrews is working with Microsoft under their studentship scheme to investigate Remote Electronic Voting over the internet. The system he is investigating could see the possibility of voters being able to vote from home or anywhere in the World via email or text messaging.

Tim began the £50,000, three year project with Microsoft last September, and will go to Washington this Saturday for a three week internship to inspect voting machines currently used there. The e-voting project is a combination of Tim’s main interests of politics (especially electoral history and statistics) and computer science.

from The Future of Voting?

T. Storer and I. Duncan, "Practical remote electronic elections for the uk," in Privacy, Security and Trust 2004 Proceedings of the Second Annual Conference on Privacy, Security and Trust (S. Marsh, ed.), (Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada), pp. 41-45, National Research Council Canada, University of New Brunswick, October 2004. Best Student Paper.
[.pdf]

from the Digital Privacy, Security and Trust Group at the University of St. Andrews

www.getyourvoteon.ca
they are counting down to the May 17, 2005 provincial election in BC

Young people in British Columbia can now use their mobile phones to make their voices heard on key voter issues, thanks to a new mobile network developed by the University of British Columbia’s Mobile MUSE Project.

from Government of Canada Helps Youth “Get Their Vote On” With Groundbreaking New Technology

This is fine by me as long as they don't get some addled idea that we should vote using text messaging.

If you want to engage young people with flashy electronic gizmos that's fine, just remember that for the actual voting it must be on paper and counted by hand.

Here's what the CBC reported

Political organizers in British Columbia are hoping to use cellphone text messaging to get young people interested in politics.

The non-partisan group "Get Your Vote On" plans to blitz the cellphones of its young members with polls and alerts in anticipation of the May 17 provincial election.

The program is based on the idea that young people need to be engaged on their own terms, said group spokesperson Olive Dempsey. She thinks the future of democracy may rest with the cellphone.

"Democracy does not begin and end with a ballot box," said Dempsey.

"Democracy is about building democratic habits and it is about engagement and that is what we are going to be doing."

from B.C. group texting to raise voter awareness

George Washington University Experimental Networked Systems Lab E-Voting Resources wiki.

a couple weeks ago, the chairman of the E.A.C. [Electoral Advisory Committee] announced the introduction of electronic voting of which fingerprinting of voters is a feature.

from Proposed electoral reforms

I think the above is not correct, from what I have read.
Initially at least, it is a fingerprint system that gives you a ballot.

The E.A.C. is part of the Electoral Office of Jamaica.

ORDERS FOR the procurement of 40 machines capable of triggering a ballot by matching fingerprints are likely to be placed with the two overseas-based companies shortlisted for the purpose within the next two weeks.

The machines should arrive in the island in time to be used in local government elections due by September, following a pilot test to determine their effectiveness.

The cost of the equipment has not been disclosed although the chairman of the Electoral Advisory Committee (EAC), Professor Errol Miller, told The Gleaner some time ago a budget had been set aside for the purpose.

He told The Gleaner on Monday that the technical committee set up in April to determine the specifications to which United States-based Cogent Systems Ltd, and French company SAGEM, would build the equipment had completed its work.

...

Mr. Brieffs [senior vice president at Cogent] confirmed Jamaica would be the first country to use the equipment in an actual election, but said he anticipated no major problems.

According to him, "it does not matter what the system is being used for. Whether for immigration purposes or for border control, the concept remains the same." He said the software designed for Jamaica was "user friendly and designed to keep the election flow."

...

With the cost likely to run into millions of dollars, the EAC is already exploring other uses to which the equipment can be put when not being used in elections. Areas being examined are law enforcement and the education and social security systems.

from Jamaica Gleaner Ballot machines on order

The House of Representatives on Tuesday (March 1 [2005]) amended three Bills paving the way for the electronic voter identification system to be introduced to the island's electoral process.

...

The system, which depends on finger print identification, will issue a ballot paper once the fingerprint has been applied and is found to be the appropriate fingerprint for the elector, who has presented it. Voting will then take place in the normal way.

The Bill also makes allowances for the presiding officer to revert to the original system in situations where the mechanism malfunctions and in such a case, the individual will be required to prove his identification by other means.

from House Clears Way for Use of Electronic Voter System

A senior Australian election official will attend a conference this week on electronic voting to be organized by the National Election Commission, Korea's top election watchdog.

The Australian Capital Territory Legislative Assembly, ..., will share its experience at the "E-voting and Electronic Democracy: Present and the Future" conference in Seoul, March 17-18 [2005]

from The Korea Herald Australia to share e-voting skill.

Note: The ACT is the only Australian jurisdiction to use electronic voting for parliamentary elections.

An experimental online vote for the parliamentary elections will take place on March 20 in 50 different Bulgarian towns.

An initiative committee will start a campaign for popularizing the e-vote among the people aged 16 to 25 across the country, the initiators announced Monday in Veliko Tarnovo.

The March 20 e-vote will begin 7.00 a.m. to end 7.00 p.m. and more than 1,000 young people are expected to cast their vote. The experimental vote will be organized although there is no e-vote law adopted in Bulgaria.

It was earlier announced that building Bulgaria's online-voting system will cost at least BGN 4 M.

Bulgaria's MPs have introduced a bill for e-voting in general and presidential elections, as well as in the election of Bulgarian members for the EU Parliament. According to the bill, those who want to take part in the vote online would have to file applications three weeks earlier. A few days later, they would receive user name and password in a registered letter.

Lawmakers hope that introducing the e-vote can boost polls turnout.

from Bulgaria Launches Experimental E-Vote March 20 [2005]

If you want to increase voter turnout, make it mandatory to vote.
Don't undermine your democracy, while incidentally spending money that could be better used elsewhere.

Comfidex Corporation of New York, New York will introduce a secure, Web-
based e-voting system that provides paper-based audit trails for
recounts while preserving the anonymity of both the vote and the voter.
VoteFiler is implemented using commodity PCs, and is designed to
transparently coexist with traditional voting systems so that it may be
adopted at a pace acceptable to the voting public.

from ... e-Voting ... Among New Technologies at FOSE 2005, April 5-7 in Washington, DC

secure, Web-based, using commodity PCs?

Um, that's unpossible.