Paper Vote Canada

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.