Paper Vote Canada

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 /