New Hampshire set to pilot voting machines that use software everyone can see(therecord.media)
therecord.media
New Hampshire set to pilot voting machines that use software everyone can see
https://therecord.media/new-hampshire-set-to-pilot-voting-machines-that-use-software-everyone-can-see/
239 comments
The machines in use, from VotingWorks, are precinct tabulators. This means that the voter fills out a paper ballot and the machine scans and retains it, allowing for recount either manually or by alternate machines later on---exactly as you describe. Precinct tabulation was developed to reduce election costs and speed up counting by avoiding the need to transport ballots to a central location and stack and feed them to begin tabulation---they are fed by the voter and tabulated on-site. Almost all precinct tabulators, including those from VotingWorks, are offline and tabulate results to multiple storage media that are physically transported to a totalizing system (typically with paper tape printout as an audit and backup measure, in addition to the availability of the original ballots). This allows election administrators to begin posting a substantial portion of returns within an hour or so of polls closing, rather than the many hours historically required to feed ballots to central tabulators. This is particularly important since polling has found that many voters now distrust results that are delayed in posting and tend to view multiple-day vote tabulation as an indication of fraud, which has added to the motivation of election administrators to have most returns available the night after the election rather than in the following days... a logistical challenge that is difficult to meet without precinct tabulation, given the very limited budget most election administrators have to hire temporary staff.
Unfortunately many people now conflate "voting machine" with direct-recording electronic or DRE machines. While DRE machines became common for a short period after the Helping America Vote Act imposed accessibility requirements that were difficult to meet with paper ballots, most voting machine vendors now offer "ballot marking machines" (sometimes integrated into the precinct tabulator) that allow individuals with special needs to mark a paper ballot using methods like voice feedback. The marked paper ballot can be verified by the voter or another individual before tabulation. Ballot marking machines have mostly eliminated the original motivation for DRE voting and the popularity of DRE voting across the United States has decreased since the shortly-post-HAVA period (2004 election cycle, basically), with many states prohibiting DRE entirely or DRE without voter verified paper audit trail (VVPAT), an arrangement in which all machines essentially function as ballot markers and produce a paper ballot with the voter's selections for the voter to inspect.
DRE with VVPAT can be attractive because it integrates the "ballot on demand" system into the voting machine, simplifying the three-step process typical of precinct tabulation where the voter obtains a ballot from a ballot-on-demand workstation, marks it, and then inserts it into a tabulator. Ballot-on-demand is functionally required by most modern election administrators because it facilitates "voter convenience" models where voters can appear at any precinct (usually within their county), not just at the single precinct in which they reside. The reason for this is simply that, considering the multiple taxing jurisdictions in most parts of the US, a single county election can have hundreds of distinct "ballot styles." Preprinting every ballot style for every precinct is impractical and encourages fraud due to the number of valid ballots "lying around." Ballot-on-demand tends to have a very positive impact on election integrity in this way: the ballot does not physically exist until it is issued by the BOD system which is typically integrated into the pollbook system such that a ballot cannot be issued without marking a voter as voted in the pollbook. DRE with VVPAT is mostly equivalent to precinct tabulation with BOD, but many prefer precinct tabulation with BOD because the majority of voters (those not using assistive technology) mark their ballots manually which decreases the risk of mismarking by a ballot marker.
It's important that American voters understand that non-auditable voting machines are no longer common in the US and are found only in some states, and the portion of votes counted by methods without paper audit trail is decreasing year over year as states replace aging DRE equipment.
Unfortunately, the larger problem with US election administration is not DRE machines but funding. State election administrators usually operate on extremely restrictive budgets. States originally purchased DRE machines mostly because they were the cheapest option that met HAVA requirements, which essentially required many states to wholesale replace their voting equipment on short notice. Most states that use DRE equipment today use it because they cannot afford to replace it. There is very little, even zero, real support for DRE machines other than for the simple reason that states cannot afford to purchase anything else... and this is no longer as true today due to more affordable ballot marking machines, and vanishingly few election administrators are choosing DRE when they have funding available to replace voting systems.
A larger concern in voting security is likely registration and pollbook systems, which are often poorly audited and from small software vendors, once again largely due to the small budgets available to pay for them. In the cases that voting irregularities have been found in the US, they are virtually all a result of defects or limitations of the pollbook system and unrelated to the actual vote tabulation. This encompasses situations like individuals voting multiple times---one voter, one vote is a responsibility of the pollbook system and not the tabulator, which is unaware of the voter's identity as a precaution to protect secrecy of the ballot, constitutionally required for federal and many state and local elections.
Unfortunately many people now conflate "voting machine" with direct-recording electronic or DRE machines. While DRE machines became common for a short period after the Helping America Vote Act imposed accessibility requirements that were difficult to meet with paper ballots, most voting machine vendors now offer "ballot marking machines" (sometimes integrated into the precinct tabulator) that allow individuals with special needs to mark a paper ballot using methods like voice feedback. The marked paper ballot can be verified by the voter or another individual before tabulation. Ballot marking machines have mostly eliminated the original motivation for DRE voting and the popularity of DRE voting across the United States has decreased since the shortly-post-HAVA period (2004 election cycle, basically), with many states prohibiting DRE entirely or DRE without voter verified paper audit trail (VVPAT), an arrangement in which all machines essentially function as ballot markers and produce a paper ballot with the voter's selections for the voter to inspect.
DRE with VVPAT can be attractive because it integrates the "ballot on demand" system into the voting machine, simplifying the three-step process typical of precinct tabulation where the voter obtains a ballot from a ballot-on-demand workstation, marks it, and then inserts it into a tabulator. Ballot-on-demand is functionally required by most modern election administrators because it facilitates "voter convenience" models where voters can appear at any precinct (usually within their county), not just at the single precinct in which they reside. The reason for this is simply that, considering the multiple taxing jurisdictions in most parts of the US, a single county election can have hundreds of distinct "ballot styles." Preprinting every ballot style for every precinct is impractical and encourages fraud due to the number of valid ballots "lying around." Ballot-on-demand tends to have a very positive impact on election integrity in this way: the ballot does not physically exist until it is issued by the BOD system which is typically integrated into the pollbook system such that a ballot cannot be issued without marking a voter as voted in the pollbook. DRE with VVPAT is mostly equivalent to precinct tabulation with BOD, but many prefer precinct tabulation with BOD because the majority of voters (those not using assistive technology) mark their ballots manually which decreases the risk of mismarking by a ballot marker.
It's important that American voters understand that non-auditable voting machines are no longer common in the US and are found only in some states, and the portion of votes counted by methods without paper audit trail is decreasing year over year as states replace aging DRE equipment.
Unfortunately, the larger problem with US election administration is not DRE machines but funding. State election administrators usually operate on extremely restrictive budgets. States originally purchased DRE machines mostly because they were the cheapest option that met HAVA requirements, which essentially required many states to wholesale replace their voting equipment on short notice. Most states that use DRE equipment today use it because they cannot afford to replace it. There is very little, even zero, real support for DRE machines other than for the simple reason that states cannot afford to purchase anything else... and this is no longer as true today due to more affordable ballot marking machines, and vanishingly few election administrators are choosing DRE when they have funding available to replace voting systems.
A larger concern in voting security is likely registration and pollbook systems, which are often poorly audited and from small software vendors, once again largely due to the small budgets available to pay for them. In the cases that voting irregularities have been found in the US, they are virtually all a result of defects or limitations of the pollbook system and unrelated to the actual vote tabulation. This encompasses situations like individuals voting multiple times---one voter, one vote is a responsibility of the pollbook system and not the tabulator, which is unaware of the voter's identity as a precaution to protect secrecy of the ballot, constitutionally required for federal and many state and local elections.
So you're for this voting system then? Your messages reads like you're against the system mentioned in the submission, but it seems like the system is actually doing it via paper, just like how you want it?
The trial described in the article:
> On November 8, VotingWorks machines will be used in a real election in real time. New Hampshire is the second state to use the open-source machines after Mississippi first did so in 2019. Some 3,000 voters will run their paper ballots through the new machines, and then, to ensure nothing went awry, those same votes will be hand counted in a public session in Concord, N.H.
It seems to involve paper ballots, as far as I can understand it.
And this is how the authors of the voting system describes it themselves: https://www.voting.works/voting-system
The trial described in the article:
> On November 8, VotingWorks machines will be used in a real election in real time. New Hampshire is the second state to use the open-source machines after Mississippi first did so in 2019. Some 3,000 voters will run their paper ballots through the new machines, and then, to ensure nothing went awry, those same votes will be hand counted in a public session in Concord, N.H.
It seems to involve paper ballots, as far as I can understand it.
And this is how the authors of the voting system describes it themselves: https://www.voting.works/voting-system
I'm not sure I like VMDs. They can lead to slippery slopes.
IE: Only Fred used the VMD... Or how does the counter interpret the VMD? Are people vigilant about checking their ballots?
Pen, paper -> Into Box -> Counting, KISS. I can deal with a scantron. Not much more is needed here. I'd rather we work on chain of custody and figuring out who has voted etc, that are harder to solve. Though honestly, the fraud rates are so low, on double voting, I suspect made up voters, and ballot box stuffing are bigger concerns.
IE: Only Fred used the VMD... Or how does the counter interpret the VMD? Are people vigilant about checking their ballots?
Pen, paper -> Into Box -> Counting, KISS. I can deal with a scantron. Not much more is needed here. I'd rather we work on chain of custody and figuring out who has voted etc, that are harder to solve. Though honestly, the fraud rates are so low, on double voting, I suspect made up voters, and ballot box stuffing are bigger concerns.
You originally wrote:
> Been filling out paper ballots for years. I don't want to vote on a machine. A machine can count my vote. But there should be a paper that goes in the ballot box, so it can be recounted using multiple methods.
And that's what happens here. People vote on paper, they put their paper ballots in a box, a machine counts them, and they are also separately counted by hand, in public.
I'm not sure what you're talking about with 'VMDs', an abbreviation that nobody else in this thread has used, and which doesn't appear in the link from the GP post.
Are you for the system being used in New Hampshire, or not?
> Been filling out paper ballots for years. I don't want to vote on a machine. A machine can count my vote. But there should be a paper that goes in the ballot box, so it can be recounted using multiple methods.
And that's what happens here. People vote on paper, they put their paper ballots in a box, a machine counts them, and they are also separately counted by hand, in public.
I'm not sure what you're talking about with 'VMDs', an abbreviation that nobody else in this thread has used, and which doesn't appear in the link from the GP post.
Are you for the system being used in New Hampshire, or not?
This is what I like about the machine I vote on in Texas. You vote on the machine then it prints the ballot for you. You walk your ballot to a scanner and feed it in where it tells you it successfully read your ballot.
Something like this sounds like the best solution. I want a paper ballot I can inspect before it gets fed into the counting machine (and which is kept after scanning for recounts, should the need arise). If that ballot is marked by machine to avoid "hanging chads", all the better.
It would take a lot to convince me of that. I haven't voted at a precinct in decades. I vote in my living room, then drop the ballot in my mailbox. Plenty of time to do some research, consider my options, banter with my wife about the issues, etc. A few days later I go to the county website to make sure they received my ballot.
The only thing I'd like to see is a relaxation of this idea that ballots need perfect secrecy as the most important goal, because that runs directly at odds with accountability. I'd like my ballot to come with a UUID that I could put into the public web site and verify my votes were recorded correctly. All those UUIDs and corresponding votes should be public, so everyone can do their own math. It would make coercion easier, but I don't see that as the most important issue.
The only thing I'd like to see is a relaxation of this idea that ballots need perfect secrecy as the most important goal, because that runs directly at odds with accountability. I'd like my ballot to come with a UUID that I could put into the public web site and verify my votes were recorded correctly. All those UUIDs and corresponding votes should be public, so everyone can do their own math. It would make coercion easier, but I don't see that as the most important issue.
The UUID thing is an attractive thought but it also would act as an incentive to sell ones vote. Secret ballots protect from coercion and vote selling, as you can't verify someone voted how you paid them to. With validation you could see people literally buying votes. Just something to think about. I totally agree it would be nice to have a post vote validation. Maybe you get a UUID but have to submit that in person with an ID check to view the results? That would seem to meet the intended goal and minimize the hazards but with a cost to convenience.
> With validation you could see people literally buying votes.
I think this is an area where you don't need a technological solution, just a legal one.
Vote selling/buying just needs to be as illegal as blackmail, fraud, etc. Fines and jail terms. (As I assume it already is?)
The thing is, it's going to be incredibly easy to catch, because if you're attempting to pay a group of people (employees, villagers, whatever) to sway their vote, there's always going to be at least one person who doesn't want to and inform the law. (Or else you don't need to be paying in the first place.) Hell, set up punitive damages so a whisteblower is guaranteed 50x whatever price they were being offered for their vote.
I think this is an area where you don't need a technological solution, just a legal one.
Vote selling/buying just needs to be as illegal as blackmail, fraud, etc. Fines and jail terms. (As I assume it already is?)
The thing is, it's going to be incredibly easy to catch, because if you're attempting to pay a group of people (employees, villagers, whatever) to sway their vote, there's always going to be at least one person who doesn't want to and inform the law. (Or else you don't need to be paying in the first place.) Hell, set up punitive damages so a whisteblower is guaranteed 50x whatever price they were being offered for their vote.
Personally, I don't understand why buying votes in this way is bad. I should be able to sell my vote if I want. Rich people can skew elections either way, at least this way ordinary people might get a cut of the corruption.
It is bad because it takes a problem and makes it much worse.
With fancy cryptography (e.g. zero-knowledge proofs), you can allow the public to verify that the tally is correct while keeping votes secret. It's called end-to-end verifiable voting, and this is a good introduction: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/end-end...
The idea is that people post their votes publicly, but encrypted, and there's a procedure (based on zero-knowledge proofs) that allows to check that an encrypted vote is correctly accounted for in the tally without decrypting said vote. If sufficiently many voters post their encrypted votes (and if it's not too predictable who will do so), a wrong tally will be detected with high probability.
The idea is that people post their votes publicly, but encrypted, and there's a procedure (based on zero-knowledge proofs) that allows to check that an encrypted vote is correctly accounted for in the tally without decrypting said vote. If sufficiently many voters post their encrypted votes (and if it's not too predictable who will do so), a wrong tally will be detected with high probability.
It's not much of an incentive if you just publish all the UUIDs on a public website and who they voted for. If my employer says 'let me see your UUID and if you voted for Bob Jones you get an extra day off!' I can just find a UUID that voted for Bob Jones and give my employer that and they won't be any the wiser, regardless of who I voted for in reality. Recording results is no big deal as long as they aren't provably my results.
I don't know how to make it work with in person ID verification. They could just give you a faked UUID. I'd put it on the ballots when they're generated, so it was just as untraceable as the ballot itself.
My assumptions are that 1) individual votes have almost no value on their own, so coercion or vote selling should be limited by low appeal, and 2) we still have a justice system, if someone forces you to vote a certain way, report it. Buying any significant number of votes would be exceedingly difficult to keep secret. Especially given how little compensation could be offered for them.
My assumptions are that 1) individual votes have almost no value on their own, so coercion or vote selling should be limited by low appeal, and 2) we still have a justice system, if someone forces you to vote a certain way, report it. Buying any significant number of votes would be exceedingly difficult to keep secret. Especially given how little compensation could be offered for them.
> we still have a justice system, if someone forces you to vote a certain way, report it.
While it's true that law enforcement has a role to play here, if you're being paid, you probably aren't going to report on yourself.
> individual votes have almost no value on their own
That's probably true in a national election, but it might not be true in e.g. a mayoral race.
While it's true that law enforcement has a role to play here, if you're being paid, you probably aren't going to report on yourself.
> individual votes have almost no value on their own
That's probably true in a national election, but it might not be true in e.g. a mayoral race.
An anecdote I share, recognizing the risk of downvoting: I've been an anarchist for years, and so do not normally cast votes.
I have offered to sell my vote to anyone in my area (a swing area of New Hampshire) who wants another vote for their side in any election at any level. I've never even set a price.
Not one person has ever offered a cent for it.
I mention this just by way of making the point that small-scale vote buying, which would be the hardest kind to detect, isn't happening.
Theoretically at least, detecting and preventing vote-buying at a scale significant enough to change the outcome of an election should be much easier.
Would-be buyers have to get word out to enough people for it to matter, but if most people assume this is unethical (or even just undesirable), it shouldn't be hard to get nearly everyone else to be willing to rat out the buyers.
I don't think the problem is nearly as hard to solve as you're thinking it is.
The odds of your vote swinging an election at any level are lower than the risk of being struck by lightning twice. Nobody wants to buy one vote. They need to buy hundreds or thousands before it will matter, and that makes them easier to catch.
I have offered to sell my vote to anyone in my area (a swing area of New Hampshire) who wants another vote for their side in any election at any level. I've never even set a price.
Not one person has ever offered a cent for it.
I mention this just by way of making the point that small-scale vote buying, which would be the hardest kind to detect, isn't happening.
Theoretically at least, detecting and preventing vote-buying at a scale significant enough to change the outcome of an election should be much easier.
Would-be buyers have to get word out to enough people for it to matter, but if most people assume this is unethical (or even just undesirable), it shouldn't be hard to get nearly everyone else to be willing to rat out the buyers.
I don't think the problem is nearly as hard to solve as you're thinking it is.
The odds of your vote swinging an election at any level are lower than the risk of being struck by lightning twice. Nobody wants to buy one vote. They need to buy hundreds or thousands before it will matter, and that makes them easier to catch.
Maybe I'm missing your point entirely, but that's one of the useful aspects of voter secrecy. Given that your vote is secret, your self-reported vote is worth approximately nothing. You could easily sell your vote to two or more parties, with none of them the wiser.
So your result is the expected one. But the outcome would not be the same with most types of harebrained "let's just vote with our phones" that people come up with regularly.
This is also why it is in most countries illegal to take photos or film around the voter booth.
So your result is the expected one. But the outcome would not be the same with most types of harebrained "let's just vote with our phones" that people come up with regularly.
This is also why it is in most countries illegal to take photos or film around the voter booth.
Ah. Right. Relevant context: In 2016, a federal appeals court ruled that a 2014 New Hampshire law banning photo booth selfies and punishing them with fines up to $1,000 was unconstitutional.[0]
A photo of me with my completed ballot, in the voting booth, has always been part of the offer, since that was the same year I finally quit bothering to cast my own ballot.
[0] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/federal-appeals-court-r...
A photo of me with my completed ballot, in the voting booth, has always been part of the offer, since that was the same year I finally quit bothering to cast my own ballot.
[0] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/federal-appeals-court-r...
That's ... highly unusual, from a democratic standpoint.
But I believe major point is still the same. Nobody knows if that's the actual posted ballot. You could easily take several and only cast one.
It is my personal belief that votes absolutely carry a market value, they're just very hard to monetize. (Which is usually regarded to be a virtue.)
But I believe major point is still the same. Nobody knows if that's the actual posted ballot. You could easily take several and only cast one.
It is my personal belief that votes absolutely carry a market value, they're just very hard to monetize. (Which is usually regarded to be a virtue.)
You know, you're right about the ID verification - I didn't really think that through. You don't want your ID encoded with the ballot in a way that they can be associated.
Currently we only have sale of majority votes contingent on wins: If you vote for me, I will give you X. Enabling vote sales will enable sale of minority votes and not contingent on wins. This is better for people with minority opinions and allows them to correctly line up their desires with monetary reward.
If you hate abortion, but like $100 more than you hate abortion, then why shouldn't we just give you $100?
Of course, there is the knock-on effect of wanting inequality so you can control people and keep the vote price low, that's true. But that's just a question of the vote economics. I'm sure we can work something out.
If you hate abortion, but like $100 more than you hate abortion, then why shouldn't we just give you $100?
Of course, there is the knock-on effect of wanting inequality so you can control people and keep the vote price low, that's true. But that's just a question of the vote economics. I'm sure we can work something out.
> If you hate abortion, but like $100 more than you hate abortion, then why shouldn't we just give you $100?
Because it gives the person with more money more voting power (even moreso than they already have).
Because it gives the person with more money more voting power (even moreso than they already have).
Well, that is always the case given that no candidate who raises 100 M+ loses to a candidate who raises less than 100 M, irrespective of per-donation size. Once we have a market, everyone can participate in this rather than just the big donors. It's a democratization of the voting market!
Vote-by-mail ballots are fed through a computer tabulation system once received. In some states, especially those that are entirely vote-by-mail like OR and WA, large centralized tabulators are used that read multiple ballots per second from a stack feeder. In most states though it's very common for mail-in ballots to be fed through the same precinct tabulators as in-person votes, just at the election administrator's office instead of in a precinct location. This "mail-in precinct" approach has the advantage of keeping the process very consistent across voting methods, although it tends to require more staff since precinct tabulators are not built to quickly feed large numbers of ballots.
Remember that hand-counting of ballots has been unusual in the US for quite some time. Some states process their mail-in ballots through large central tabulators even though they have only a small portion of mail-in votes, simply because they still have the central tabulators from before they switched to precinct tabulation, back when they used to drive the ballot boxes from every precinct and have staff re-stack the ballots and feed them to a tabulator after close.
Ballot secrecy is unlikely to change. It was widely adopted in the US as a direct result of the fact that non-secret ballots facilitated purchased and forced votes, since the payer could verify that the voter cast the ballot they were supposed to. This is not a theoretical problem but one that was widespread in the 19th century.
Something like you describe is already in available in many states, though, at the pollbook level rather than the tabulation level: in many states you can obtain a record online of whether or not you were issued a ballot and, if you were issued the ballot by mail, whether or not it was received back. The ballot is 'severed' from this record system (usually by physical means like dual-envelopes or even passing through a slot in a wall) before tabulation so that your voting choices cannot be proven after the fact to facilitate bribery or intimidation.
Remember that hand-counting of ballots has been unusual in the US for quite some time. Some states process their mail-in ballots through large central tabulators even though they have only a small portion of mail-in votes, simply because they still have the central tabulators from before they switched to precinct tabulation, back when they used to drive the ballot boxes from every precinct and have staff re-stack the ballots and feed them to a tabulator after close.
Ballot secrecy is unlikely to change. It was widely adopted in the US as a direct result of the fact that non-secret ballots facilitated purchased and forced votes, since the payer could verify that the voter cast the ballot they were supposed to. This is not a theoretical problem but one that was widespread in the 19th century.
Something like you describe is already in available in many states, though, at the pollbook level rather than the tabulation level: in many states you can obtain a record online of whether or not you were issued a ballot and, if you were issued the ballot by mail, whether or not it was received back. The ballot is 'severed' from this record system (usually by physical means like dual-envelopes or even passing through a slot in a wall) before tabulation so that your voting choices cannot be proven after the fact to facilitate bribery or intimidation.
I have a love/hate relationship with mail-in voting.
It's super convenient. You don't have to be at the polling place at a certain time in bad weather. Just fill out the form in the comfort of your home and drop it in the mailbox.
I hate it though because it really does make fraud and mismanagement easier:
- People are sent ballots for people who no longer live in the house, or are dead
- The post office fails to actually send you your ballot, as in this case: https://www.wmar2news.com/matterformallory/mail-in-ballots-f...
- This article details several more ways to commit fraud via mail-in voting/absentee ballots - and cites fraud cases from both Republicans and Democrats: https://insidesources.com/mail-in-ballots-make-voter-fraud-e...
It's super convenient. You don't have to be at the polling place at a certain time in bad weather. Just fill out the form in the comfort of your home and drop it in the mailbox.
I hate it though because it really does make fraud and mismanagement easier:
- People are sent ballots for people who no longer live in the house, or are dead
- The post office fails to actually send you your ballot, as in this case: https://www.wmar2news.com/matterformallory/mail-in-ballots-f...
- This article details several more ways to commit fraud via mail-in voting/absentee ballots - and cites fraud cases from both Republicans and Democrats: https://insidesources.com/mail-in-ballots-make-voter-fraud-e...
If you would have a ID you can later imput and check what you voted, you can be pressured by your boss/spouse/parent/etc. to reveal your vote and then be punished if you voted wrong. If voting is truly anonymous, you can just lie about your choices.
True, I recognize this is the trade-off. You cannot have perfect secrecy and perfect accountability both. Lately it seems like we're suffering a crisis in confidence, so maybe we could relax the perfect secrecy a bit to regain that trust.
Yeah, mail-in paper ballots work too. I was speaking more in the "we must have in-person" mind-set - I assuming convincing the election skeptics to use good machines is an easier task than convincing them on mail.
The difference between in-person vote and mail vote is chain of custody. Basically, when voting by mail you can never prove that your vote has not been tampered with in transit. With in-person vote there usually are procedures in place to ensure that no one messes with the ballot box.
The best solution is mail in ballots like WA/OR. Assuming there is some level of trust left within the members of the society.
The challenge here is that too many people will assume it did it right and not verify. That creates an attack vector. That creates another thing for people to yell fraud about. With paper, there can be no bait and switch, you physically have to press pencil to paper.
As far as the "people don't color the circles correctly", the counter machine can kick that back and say "unclear scan, please verify all circles are colored correctly" and not count that ballot.
As far as the "people don't color the circles correctly", the counter machine can kick that back and say "unclear scan, please verify all circles are colored correctly" and not count that ballot.
I don't understand why that's better than just doing a scantron style bubble form with a pen. That's what we do in Minnesota. Introducing computers to the actual voting (not counting) process seems like needless complexity. Software quality and UI design in 2022 is absolutely abysmal. Keep It Simple, <polite S-word>.
Because not everyone is familiar with the proper way to fill out a scantron, and some mess it up. "Hanging chad" type issues happen on scantrons -- people put an X or a checkmark through a bubble, people make a mistake and then "cross out" a bubble, mark too many options, etc.
A voting machine that marks a paper ballot for you is the best of both worlds -- it is a paper ballot, but it marks it consistently, and allows the user to affirmatively confirm their choices were recorded correctly.
A voting machine that marks a paper ballot for you is the best of both worlds -- it is a paper ballot, but it marks it consistently, and allows the user to affirmatively confirm their choices were recorded correctly.
We solved this issue by having one ballot for each party. In the voting booth you pick your party of choice ballot, fold it and put it in the box.
In my local elections, we vote all at one time for numerous federal, state, county, and city elections, and some of those may have a dozen candidates, and some may permit multiple votes. And sometimes we have referendums on top of that.
Were we to do that, we’d need a damn library full of paper in each booth, and someone to count how many slips of paper you’re dropping into each box. Doesn’t sound like it would work well for us.
Were we to do that, we’d need a damn library full of paper in each booth, and someone to count how many slips of paper you’re dropping into each box. Doesn’t sound like it would work well for us.
I suggest that your terminology is wrong.
Voting is not the process of marking the ballot. Voting is the act of casting a ballot (marked, unmarked, vandalized, etc.) into a secure pile of ballots therefore making it anonymous.
In terms of voting security the digital scanning and counting is much more problematic than electronically marking of choices on paper.
Voting is not the process of marking the ballot. Voting is the act of casting a ballot (marked, unmarked, vandalized, etc.) into a secure pile of ballots therefore making it anonymous.
In terms of voting security the digital scanning and counting is much more problematic than electronically marking of choices on paper.
The advantage is mostly that if you're blind or can't hold a pen, the computer can help you with that. These folks otherwise need a trusted human to help them -- which mostly works, but not everyone has a trusted human.
If they are blind or disabled, someone likely brought them physically to the voting precinct or they can do a mail-in ballot.
I just voted on the same type of system in Wisconsin. It’s nice to have the paper trail. When I voted in Minnesota, I made my selections by filling in bubbles and then feeding the paper into a machine. Either way there’s a physical piece of paper with my selection on it.
How do you verify the scanner software is telling you the truth though? Also what exactly is the point of doing this?
You take the stack of ballots and run them through a different scanner, and/or look at them with eyeballs.
So what’s the point in having them?
They’re physical, tangible, plainly understood by all, and auditable.
While I agree with you that the ballot should be physical, electronic counting defeats the purpose of transparency. Counting should also be manual in the presence of representatives of each candidate. Marking of ballots and voter eligibility checking do not present any issues if done electronically.
Maybe one way to address the issues of electronic counting would be to have parallel counts by each candidate (and their reps) using their own hardware and software with a manual count in case the electronic counts of every candidate do not match. But this means each candidate has to bring their own counting infrastructure which is prohibitive.
Maybe one way to address the issues of electronic counting would be to have parallel counts by each candidate (and their reps) using their own hardware and software with a manual count in case the electronic counts of every candidate do not match. But this means each candidate has to bring their own counting infrastructure which is prohibitive.
Another nice method to reduce risk from electronic counting is called the "Benaloh Challenge" (after Josh Benaloh, the inventor). The idea is that there are two steps to putting the paper ballot into the machine: first, the machine precommits to an encryption of its count (e.g. by printing some paper with evidence on it), and then the voter decides whether to spoil the ballot or actually cast it. If the voter spoils the ballot, then they get a new paper ballot to vote on, but they can retain the commitment. Voters may spoil any number of ballots. Decryptions of spoiled ballots along with enough information to check the machine's work are provided to the voter, either immediately or at the end of the day. This means that a cheating machine cannot cheat very much, though the whole thing also really relies on a verifiable privacy-preserving audit trail for the actual count (e.g. with homomorphic encryption). It at least means that nobody need trust the actual computers.
> parallel counts by each candidate
I have often imagined having say two scanners in physical sequence (so passing through a ballet is a single operation), and having more than one (competing) recorder for the output of each scanner head.
This would require some standardization of form factors and interfaces, but with small enough electronics units and scanners, in principle parallel data paths could be included in a single intentional "infrastructure".
I have often imagined having say two scanners in physical sequence (so passing through a ballet is a single operation), and having more than one (competing) recorder for the output of each scanner head.
This would require some standardization of form factors and interfaces, but with small enough electronics units and scanners, in principle parallel data paths could be included in a single intentional "infrastructure".
Yes. Paper ballots in please.
Everyone thinks about counting. "We need fast counting, we need accurate counting" they say.
We also need to think about understanding and trust. Think of your neighbor, think of 'Florida man', do you expect them to understand a voting machine? Do you expect them to trust a voting machine? I'm a computer programmer and am hesitant to claim I understand voting machines. I do understand paper though, and I do trust the nice people I went to church with when I see them running the polls.
Everyone thinks about counting. "We need fast counting, we need accurate counting" they say.
We also need to think about understanding and trust. Think of your neighbor, think of 'Florida man', do you expect them to understand a voting machine? Do you expect them to trust a voting machine? I'm a computer programmer and am hesitant to claim I understand voting machines. I do understand paper though, and I do trust the nice people I went to church with when I see them running the polls.
I want to see examples of ballots that changed votes during recounts. I'm curious about what went wrong with the initial scan (I have ideas, of course) but seeing the actual problems would be nice.
The vast majority of voting machines in the US creates a paper trail. Usually, you vote and the system prints out a receipt showing your vote which is then kept in the case of later hand audits.
The title is misleading. New Hampshire uses paper ballots and ballot counting machines. Hand-counting is used in some cases such as recounts. They are trialing new ballot counting machines, not electronic voting machines.
+1! But this is still a net positive. Multiple forms of validation and open sourcing the software running on these machines are both components of a "defense in depth" strategy.
How does giving the vote aggregators a piece of paper assure to you that the outcome reflects that paper?
Even of that leads to hanging chads potentially costing a presidency again?
Sorry - so how do I ensure that the code running is the code I expect it to at the moment I vote? I "can simply hire a computer expert to examine it and see, in real time"? That doesn't seem feasible while I'm sitting in the voting booth.
I see they are using manual vote counting this time around to check, but how is that any guarantee the software will be the same in 2 years time when it happens all over again? Knowing there is software in some git repo somewhere that I can audit doesn't make me trust the machine in front of me any more.
I see they are using manual vote counting this time around to check, but how is that any guarantee the software will be the same in 2 years time when it happens all over again? Knowing there is software in some git repo somewhere that I can audit doesn't make me trust the machine in front of me any more.
The audit strategy for precinct tabulators such as these is not to audit the machines but the actual ballots, which are retained. Upon suspicion (usually this requires a court order, details vary a lot by state) the original ballots, which are retained after the machines tabulate them, can be hand-counted or more practically recounted by independent machines.
Every conceivable election method is vulnerable to some type of fraud, and hand-counting leads to relatively very high unintentional error rates. Post-election audit sampling is a typical practice in many states and should be in all.
Every conceivable election method is vulnerable to some type of fraud, and hand-counting leads to relatively very high unintentional error rates. Post-election audit sampling is a typical practice in many states and should be in all.
True, the average voter is not inclined to hire a computer expert to do an analysis, but if there is widespread suspicion, they will at least have the ability to vent their collective outrage into an actual audit of the code. This transparency can provide some assurance.
> audit of the code
The OP is talking about the inability to audit the code actually running at the time of voting. You can audit the code in the repo all you like but if the hardware of the voting machine is compromised, or the code you audit is modified or replaced sometime before execution, or there is other malicious code running on the machine interfering with the voting then your audit is useless.
The OP is talking about the inability to audit the code actually running at the time of voting. You can audit the code in the repo all you like but if the hardware of the voting machine is compromised, or the code you audit is modified or replaced sometime before execution, or there is other malicious code running on the machine interfering with the voting then your audit is useless.
Require (by law) that the actual machines be available for potential inspection for X weeks/months after each election. If there is suspicion of fraud/issues, inspection happens on the machines that have been stored since the election. Since the machines are offline the entire time (by design it seems), manipulation doesn't seem that easy, granted the machines are stored in a secure location in the meantime.
The problem is that "audits" of those machines is itself a threat model.
The auditing needs to be controlled such that a malicious auditor doesn't compromise the machine.
State couldn't prove that the machines audited by a private group in Arizona weren't compromised so they had to replace them [0] to a tune of $2.8M.
[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/arizona-audit-maricopa-count...
The auditing needs to be controlled such that a malicious auditor doesn't compromise the machine.
State couldn't prove that the machines audited by a private group in Arizona weren't compromised so they had to replace them [0] to a tune of $2.8M.
[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/arizona-audit-maricopa-count...
> manipulation doesn't seem that easy
I wasn’t suggesting manipulation was easy. But for a sufficiently motivated and resourced actor with direct or indirect physical access to the machine all bets are off.
I wasn’t suggesting manipulation was easy. But for a sufficiently motivated and resourced actor with direct or indirect physical access to the machine all bets are off.
Volkswagen cheated on emissions tests by creating software that did the expected results only during an audit. Doing the same for voting software would be much easier.
There's no way for a computer to completely prove it has the right software for a job.
There's no way for a computer to completely prove it has the right software for a job.
Can it though? If the audit is called for after the election how do we determine the code that the auditor is inspecting is what was run on election day?
It's still a black box on election day - it's just got detailed instructions written on it claiming that's what is inside.
It's still a black box on election day - it's just got detailed instructions written on it claiming that's what is inside.
1. Send the results to multiple independent organisations
2. Print out for each voter a list of codes they can use to show that they voted for each candidate, show on screen the code they need to memorise/highlight for their actual vote
3. Later they voters can put that code into any of the organisations' websites to check their result was recorded correctly, which also means each org can check that they have the same results the voters think they made
Isn't this de-anonymizing the process a bit - I know your name won't be printed directly on it, but now the organization you went to can determine who you are and who you voted for.
They don't need to know who you are, just that random number 44925923 voted for X
yeah open source software isn’t a fix for this it’s a ruse, the last built and deployed binary can in theory contain anything, why are we using computers for this??
Can someone enlighten me why we need a full multipurpose computer that can run custom software just to increment one of two numbers? What's the secret sauce that means we can't run the whole election off of a cluster of 4000-series CMOS's on a breadboard mounted in a plexiglass case in the public somewhere?
Not just one of two numbers. Ballots contain multiple referenda, and races for multiple positions, each of which can have anywhere between 1 and tens of candidates.
You need to display all of that information, take a user's input, store it in an auditable format. Oh, and people like "small government" so making custom hardware is completely out of the question. Using a "multipurpose" computer is the economical choice.
But there's another aspect to this: if you can swap out the hardware and keep the software the same, it makes the whole thing more transparent. A jumble of 4000-series CMOS on a breadboard could hide any number of bugs/backdoors. And, perception of trust is important, nobody wants to vote on your science fair project. Also, you'd need to produce thousands of these machines to run an election. Really easy to procure thousands of commodity multipurpose machines... but you're talking about mass-manufacturing your science fair project. Hell no.
You need to display all of that information, take a user's input, store it in an auditable format. Oh, and people like "small government" so making custom hardware is completely out of the question. Using a "multipurpose" computer is the economical choice.
But there's another aspect to this: if you can swap out the hardware and keep the software the same, it makes the whole thing more transparent. A jumble of 4000-series CMOS on a breadboard could hide any number of bugs/backdoors. And, perception of trust is important, nobody wants to vote on your science fair project. Also, you'd need to produce thousands of these machines to run an election. Really easy to procure thousands of commodity multipurpose machines... but you're talking about mass-manufacturing your science fair project. Hell no.
There's a lot to be said for the value of commodity hardware: you almost certainly can't prove that purpose-built hardware has or hasn't been tampered with by the manufacturer. With commodity hardware, the risk that the manufacturer anticipated your use case (voting machines) and implanted a backdoor that can affect their functions is extremely small.
And some positions allow you to vote for "up to" some number of candidates.
Town selectman is a typical example.
Excellent point, I've never seen that. The whole structure of election has a lot of variation from place to place, which is a major stumbling block for people who want simple, universal technological solutions.
And I forgot write-ins! You don't even have a fixed set of candidates in a given election!
And I forgot write-ins! You don't even have a fixed set of candidates in a given election!
> You need to display all of that information, take a user's input, store it in an auditable format.
These are machines that read paper ballots and compute totals. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33469882
These are machines that read paper ballots and compute totals. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33469882
I've always wondered why there isn't overlap between voting machines and slot machines. Surely most of these problems have already been solved by the Nevada Gaming Commission
The problems do look the same. Why don't they share a common enforcement agency? Because they deal with two types of entities (government vs corporation) that operate machines with vastly different use cases with vastly different threat models. A casino's threat model for its slot machine supply chain is completely different than the threat model for voting machine integrity.
Boiling the problem down to the integrity of the hardware and software throws out the nuance of how and why exploitation might occur (and who is doing the exploiting), which has huge implications for how you make regulations and do enforcement.
Boiling the problem down to the integrity of the hardware and software throws out the nuance of how and why exploitation might occur (and who is doing the exploiting), which has huge implications for how you make regulations and do enforcement.
There are multiple reasons. First, the tabulator typically needs to determine the "style" (layout) of the ballot from one of possibly hundreds of options (due to multiple government and taxation jurisdictions). Second, a typical ballot in most US jurisdictions has a dozen or more questions on it, and cumulatively across all ballot styles there are often over a hundred questions.
Third, though, and perhaps most significantly, "traditional" optical mark reading (OMR) systems using LED or laser sources and diodes were inflexible as to ballot layout and more problematically not very reliable across varying marks (remember the grade-school requirement for #2 pencils due to OMR scoring of exams), a particularly big issue since voters are often not experienced with OMR systems and so do not mark their ballot "correctly." To address this, almost all modern ballot tabulators use a CCD mechanism to take an image of the full ballot and then interpret it via machine vision (this is not a case of machine learning, the algorithms used are actually very simple). This yields much more reliable interpretation of ballots with fewer ballots rejected to hand-counting, but requires more complex software.
It's important to understand that most US election administrators avoid hand-counting in large part because of its inaccuracy. In many US jurisdictions hand-count ballots are counted by two individuals to improve reliability, but the error rate remains higher than machine tabulation. When it is 1AM after a day that started at 5AM and you are on the hundredth ballot you've hand-tabulated since you got off the precinct floor it becomes extremely difficult to tabulate with the virtually zero error rate that US voters expect. This is not a hypothetical scenario but one that's pretty typical of US election working conditions due to the slim budget and expectation of rapid posting of returns.
Third, though, and perhaps most significantly, "traditional" optical mark reading (OMR) systems using LED or laser sources and diodes were inflexible as to ballot layout and more problematically not very reliable across varying marks (remember the grade-school requirement for #2 pencils due to OMR scoring of exams), a particularly big issue since voters are often not experienced with OMR systems and so do not mark their ballot "correctly." To address this, almost all modern ballot tabulators use a CCD mechanism to take an image of the full ballot and then interpret it via machine vision (this is not a case of machine learning, the algorithms used are actually very simple). This yields much more reliable interpretation of ballots with fewer ballots rejected to hand-counting, but requires more complex software.
It's important to understand that most US election administrators avoid hand-counting in large part because of its inaccuracy. In many US jurisdictions hand-count ballots are counted by two individuals to improve reliability, but the error rate remains higher than machine tabulation. When it is 1AM after a day that started at 5AM and you are on the hundredth ballot you've hand-tabulated since you got off the precinct floor it becomes extremely difficult to tabulate with the virtually zero error rate that US voters expect. This is not a hypothetical scenario but one that's pretty typical of US election working conditions due to the slim budget and expectation of rapid posting of returns.
You probably want a record of votes with times and not just a simple counter.
That's not impossible for a simple electromechanical calculator either. An attachment similar to those paper drums seismographs use would suffice while still being simple enough to be trustworthy; a video recording of the counter along with maybe an array of debug LEDs would suffice too now that I think about it.
I'll come off as glib. but... why? So third parties can make a funny youtube infographic timeseries?
You could print a receipt that contains the voter's selection. The voter would then verify the selection and deposit the receipt into a receptacle. The voting machine results could then by audited by comparing the receipts to the voting machine's history.
I should clarify my question "why" is specifically about conflating votes with timestamps. I have more general concerns about voting machines, but those have been raised elsewhere in the comments many times by other commenters.
The timestamp of each vote in the machine could be useful during the audit. Imagine you found a discrepancy, you'd then want to determine when the discrepancy started.
If you're able to determine some subset of voters from the attached timestamp information, then you're equally able to use that data to harass people who didn't vote for the candidate you want.
What if the voter doesn't deposit the receipt?
So you can demonstrate that votes correspond to people voting. Not on an individual basis, but just to make sure that if you have 100 votes on a machine (or 1000 votes across 10 machines at a location, they happened when there were 100 (or 1000) people at that voting location. It prevents adding votes before or after the fact, like putting a thumb on a scale.
You'd have to hide the results of the vote if you're collating them with timestamp, otherwise you could pretty easily figure out Bob who showed up early voted for the square.
And I'm unsure how adding timestamp helps with the problem you're trying to solve, don't you just need Sum(machine vote count at location X) == voters visiting location X. (Also this hueristic is kinda leaky since how do you account for voters protesting with intentional spoilers?)
And I'm unsure how adding timestamp helps with the problem you're trying to solve, don't you just need Sum(machine vote count at location X) == voters visiting location X. (Also this hueristic is kinda leaky since how do you account for voters protesting with intentional spoilers?)
If you let the government get away with just simple counts they don't have to work as hard to fake an election. A time series can be compared with exit polling for example to highlight irregular patterns.
I can assure you that a corrupt nation-state level actor is at least as good at statistics as any analyst you know, if that's the threat model.
A motivated person could kick open your front door and tickle you, that doesn't mean a deadbolt isn't useful as part of home security plan.
Defence in depth.
A very least now they have to bring a math nerd into the conversation, increasing the footprint of the operation.
Defence in depth.
A very least now they have to bring a math nerd into the conversation, increasing the footprint of the operation.
I remember hearing about a study on very simple electronic voting machines. These machines had a bunch of buttons representing the candidates. And in the study, they were able to make a decent guess of who voted what by looking at the rf emissions from the machine from a distance.
I could imagine a whole computer being there could make the rf emissions less predictable. I can definitely think of some ways of making a simple machine like that more resistant against an attack like that. Idk if the study looked into that, I can't find the study anywhere.
I could imagine a whole computer being there could make the rf emissions less predictable. I can definitely think of some ways of making a simple machine like that more resistant against an attack like that. Idk if the study looked into that, I can't find the study anywhere.
Run a low power spark gap transmitter nearby to prevent snooping lol
Timing attacks and similar methods of vote snooping is definitely a big issue I've been thinking about for a very simple calculator like this. At first you'd think you could mitigate that with some sort of analog capacitor timer buffer thing somewhere in the chain but then you screw up a lot of predictablity needed to trust such a device...
[deleted]
> just to increment one of two numbers
Oversimplification isn't helpful.
Oversimplification isn't helpful.
It is worth noting that Windham New Hampshire had a case of actual vote miscounting in the 2020 election- though not the presidential election- and the miscounts did not change the results. The Democrat who lost the race is the one who requested the recount (and the recount favored the Republican candidates who won).
See https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-new-hampshire-voting...
https://www.concordmonitor.com/voting-machines-nh-new-hampsh...
The news of this has of course been buried under all of the false claims of voter fraud from the 2020 presidential election.
So it is not surprising that New Hampshire would be looking at a new approach to voting machine technology.
See https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-new-hampshire-voting...
https://www.concordmonitor.com/voting-machines-nh-new-hampsh...
The news of this has of course been buried under all of the false claims of voter fraud from the 2020 presidential election.
So it is not surprising that New Hampshire would be looking at a new approach to voting machine technology.
Right, the interest in having auditable and secure elections is not simply a right/left issue and does not mean one's an "election denier" or an "insurrectionist". It just stands to reason that basic controls for governance should be a key attribute of how elections are run, and no, the feds shouldn't be paying for this, imo.
In my home state, a Republican candidate (albeit disowned) was indicted for ballot harvesting, particularly for hiring a consultant from CA to run around through a particular east Asian community collecting ballots. If a system works, every politician will exploit it.
* ID's should be required (like they are for everything else, including travel, bank accounts, bars, etc);
* voter rolls should be scrubbed;
* election results should be auditable;
In my home state, a Republican candidate (albeit disowned) was indicted for ballot harvesting, particularly for hiring a consultant from CA to run around through a particular east Asian community collecting ballots. If a system works, every politician will exploit it.
* ID's should be required (like they are for everything else, including travel, bank accounts, bars, etc);
* voter rolls should be scrubbed;
* election results should be auditable;
Wow, those error rates are actually much higher than I'd have expected. I wonder if the cause is something like a difference in how humans vs machines deem ballots invalid?
You can change a lot of votes by altering the rules as to what is considered a valid vote. Read into the details of the 2000 election and you'll see just how much of a leg up George W Bush got from party control of the vote counting. There are plenty of scenarios where he would have lost if the rules were decided differently during the counting process. Had the decisions been made neutrally Bush would have lost in Florida.
The audit found that the ballots had been folded "incorrectly" (Is there a right way to fold the ballots?) and if the crease went through the mark for a candidate, it would count the crease as a mark. This meant if the voter had marked another candidate, it would think it was double voted and not count it, and if they had not marked a candidate, it would count it as a vote.
I am not sure having the source code of the machines be open source would help, but maybe make it easier to audit and detect that the crease would lead to a miscounted ballot.
I am not sure having the source code of the machines be open source would help, but maybe make it easier to audit and detect that the crease would lead to a miscounted ballot.
> Some 3,000 voters will run their paper ballots through the new machines, and then, to ensure nothing went awry, those same votes will be hand counted in a public session in Concord, N.H. Anyone who cares to will be able to see if the new machines recorded the votes correctly
If hand counting paper ballots instills confidence, then at some low level of public confidence in elections, it makes sense to do so routinely, rather than just a demonstration. Vilifying doubters doesn't seem to be very effective. For many of those there is no level of proof that could dent their opinion, so little is lost by simply attacking them. But there are many others that are convincible by sufficient openness.
Sure, turning it back into a manual process has its own issues, particularly with efficiency. But with an election efficiency is a minor consideration compared to confidence.
If hand counting paper ballots instills confidence, then at some low level of public confidence in elections, it makes sense to do so routinely, rather than just a demonstration. Vilifying doubters doesn't seem to be very effective. For many of those there is no level of proof that could dent their opinion, so little is lost by simply attacking them. But there are many others that are convincible by sufficient openness.
Sure, turning it back into a manual process has its own issues, particularly with efficiency. But with an election efficiency is a minor consideration compared to confidence.
There have traditionally been ways to mess with a hand count.
One example I recall is vote counters wedging a piece of pencil lead under a fingernail. If they see a ballot they don't like, swipe the lead across it and toss the ballot in the "spoiled" pile.
Sure, this requires a little bit of blind eye from the county clerk (or whoever), but if the election goes the right way, it's worth it.
One example I recall is vote counters wedging a piece of pencil lead under a fingernail. If they see a ballot they don't like, swipe the lead across it and toss the ballot in the "spoiled" pile.
Sure, this requires a little bit of blind eye from the county clerk (or whoever), but if the election goes the right way, it's worth it.
Some problems with this, besides the problems that other posters have already mentioned.
* One vote counter can't make much of a difference by themselves, so you need a conspiracy of vote counters. But conspiracies are difficult to bring about and keep secret in the real world. This is especially so if you have to pay the individuals involved – which seems likely, given that vote counting is boring, thankless volunteer work.
* Everyone involved in the conspiracy risks going to jail, but hardly anyone benefits on a personal level. Why would anyone risk it?
* The extremely large number of spoiled ballots would be suspicious. Especially as they'd probably look rather unlike ordinary spoiled ballots.
* Observers would notice that some counters (those involved in the conspiracy) were processing many more spoiled ballots than others.
I'm reminded of Number 2 pointing out do Dr. Evil that he could quadruple his profits if he shifted his resources away from evil empire building and towards Starbucks. The money and resources spent on rigging the count could be spent more efficiently on 100% legal means of increasing vote count, such as canvasing (= knocking on supporters' doors and encouraging them to go vote).
* One vote counter can't make much of a difference by themselves, so you need a conspiracy of vote counters. But conspiracies are difficult to bring about and keep secret in the real world. This is especially so if you have to pay the individuals involved – which seems likely, given that vote counting is boring, thankless volunteer work.
* Everyone involved in the conspiracy risks going to jail, but hardly anyone benefits on a personal level. Why would anyone risk it?
* The extremely large number of spoiled ballots would be suspicious. Especially as they'd probably look rather unlike ordinary spoiled ballots.
* Observers would notice that some counters (those involved in the conspiracy) were processing many more spoiled ballots than others.
I'm reminded of Number 2 pointing out do Dr. Evil that he could quadruple his profits if he shifted his resources away from evil empire building and towards Starbucks. The money and resources spent on rigging the count could be spent more efficiently on 100% legal means of increasing vote count, such as canvasing (= knocking on supporters' doors and encouraging them to go vote).
> But conspiracies are difficult to bring about and keep secret in the real world.
Counter example: broken ciphers in WW2 mostly kept secret until the mid 1970s.
Look the only reason hand counting is even coming up is belief in a particular set of conspiracies, mostly by members of a particular political party.
Counter example: broken ciphers in WW2 mostly kept secret until the mid 1970s.
Look the only reason hand counting is even coming up is belief in a particular set of conspiracies, mostly by members of a particular political party.
>Counter example: broken ciphers in WW2 mostly kept secret until the mid 1970s.
How's this a counterexample? We know about about lots of conspiracies from the 1970s that weren't known at the time, but we're not finding out about any conspiracies to rig UK election counts – because there weren't any that succeeded to a meaningful extent. Your example shows that even top secret government conspiracies tend to come to light eventually.
How's this a counterexample? We know about about lots of conspiracies from the 1970s that weren't known at the time, but we're not finding out about any conspiracies to rig UK election counts – because there weren't any that succeeded to a meaningful extent. Your example shows that even top secret government conspiracies tend to come to light eventually.
In the UK party candidates and guests are watching the count so would pick that up. It's very rare that the losing candidate plus all spoiled votes makes a difference in any case, and significant numbers of double voting would raise very interesting questions. They simply don't happen.
I do believe audits and observers would catch that pretty quick.
Not when the observers are banned from the room because social distancing.
In the UK we go to a voting place. We get given a piece of paper. We walk to a little booth, we mark an X next to who we want, we put that piece of paper in a black box. Your name is crossed off on a piece of paper to say you've voted.
That black box gathers a few hundred votes over the course of the day. There are multiple people in the room with that black box throughout the day.
At the end of the day the number of people who have voted and the number of pieces of paper that have been used, are both counted to ensure they are the same.
The box is then sealed (with tamper tape) and transported to a central hall, usually in a car, but sometimes by ferry or helicopter depending on weather and location. Obviously this takes longer for rural areas than for urban areas.
When it arrives, it is unsealed in front of many witnesses, and the ballots emptied. They are counted (how many pieces of paper), and this number matches the above paperwork.
The ballots are then put into a pile in the middle of the room where all the candidates and their teams can see, and are counted by a team of however many (say a team of 20 for a district of 60k votes - tend to be local council workers being paid overtime). From the counts I've seen, 300-600 an hour is a reasonable speed. Those are bundled into bundles of 100 and put into piles on display.
Any ambiguous marking that the person counting or the people watching think is amigious is set aside (the famous "WANK/WANK/NOT WANK" case [0]), and the candidates and their agents get to see and agree on the paper.
Urban counts of districts with c. 70,000 voters tend to get the first ballot boxes about 10-15 minutes after polling closes and start counting. Some have large numbers counting in an aim to get the count done first (in an hour or so), others take longer, but the majority of districts are verified, counted, and recounted after about 6 hours. Some places have to wait for the aforementioned ferry etc so don't report to maybe 12 hours after.
I don't understand why you need machines to vote or machines to count. Breaking the system above by a few votes is probably possible with a small team of conspirators, but breaking it beyond that doesn't scale.
[0] https://www.joe.co.uk/politics/voter-writes-wnk-all-over-bal...
That black box gathers a few hundred votes over the course of the day. There are multiple people in the room with that black box throughout the day.
At the end of the day the number of people who have voted and the number of pieces of paper that have been used, are both counted to ensure they are the same.
The box is then sealed (with tamper tape) and transported to a central hall, usually in a car, but sometimes by ferry or helicopter depending on weather and location. Obviously this takes longer for rural areas than for urban areas.
When it arrives, it is unsealed in front of many witnesses, and the ballots emptied. They are counted (how many pieces of paper), and this number matches the above paperwork.
The ballots are then put into a pile in the middle of the room where all the candidates and their teams can see, and are counted by a team of however many (say a team of 20 for a district of 60k votes - tend to be local council workers being paid overtime). From the counts I've seen, 300-600 an hour is a reasonable speed. Those are bundled into bundles of 100 and put into piles on display.
Any ambiguous marking that the person counting or the people watching think is amigious is set aside (the famous "WANK/WANK/NOT WANK" case [0]), and the candidates and their agents get to see and agree on the paper.
Urban counts of districts with c. 70,000 voters tend to get the first ballot boxes about 10-15 minutes after polling closes and start counting. Some have large numbers counting in an aim to get the count done first (in an hour or so), others take longer, but the majority of districts are verified, counted, and recounted after about 6 hours. Some places have to wait for the aforementioned ferry etc so don't report to maybe 12 hours after.
I don't understand why you need machines to vote or machines to count. Breaking the system above by a few votes is probably possible with a small team of conspirators, but breaking it beyond that doesn't scale.
[0] https://www.joe.co.uk/politics/voter-writes-wnk-all-over-bal...
Yes, exactly. Canada still does manually counting federally. It works. Ironically, it doesn't stop the complaint about bad voting machines, but that's because people get their news from the states. There are no voting machines, no way for software to fudge the numbers just enough for someone's decided candidate to win.
Is it more of an effort than trusting a machine is working correctly? Yes, absolutely, but this is the literal fundamental foundation of democracy we are talking about - let's put in a bit of effort.
Is it more of an effort than trusting a machine is working correctly? Yes, absolutely, but this is the literal fundamental foundation of democracy we are talking about - let's put in a bit of effort.
On the other hand, Brazil have been electronic voting exclusively since ~2000 with no evidence of fraud/mistakes since then, AFAIK.
If it seems to be possible in a country like Brazil, why not in Canada/UK/USA?
If it seems to be possible in a country like Brazil, why not in Canada/UK/USA?
AFAYK seems to be a big downside, AFAIK the Brazilian elections were quite "hot" ?
P.S.: Sure enough, here's an example of a "contester" :
https://www.newsweek.com/mike-lindell-hints-brazil-election-...
AFAIK not a Brazilian citizen, but this gives an example of democracy-sapping claims that are avoided with manual vote counts.
P.S.: Sure enough, here's an example of a "contester" :
https://www.newsweek.com/mike-lindell-hints-brazil-election-...
AFAIK not a Brazilian citizen, but this gives an example of democracy-sapping claims that are avoided with manual vote counts.
The important thing with elections isn't necessarily some abstract idea that the process itself is perfectly fair, but that people accept that it is. The process must be well known in advanced and every step auditable by all sides in real time.
It is important that the losing party can not blame the process, in order for the result to be accepted by both sides.
Brazil is as we speak a very clear example on the risks of not heeding this advice.
It is important that the losing party can not blame the process, in order for the result to be accepted by both sides.
Brazil is as we speak a very clear example on the risks of not heeding this advice.
Fair enough, but is Brazil a target that would be valuable to destabilize by electronic tampering in its elections?
> I don't understand why you need machines to vote or machines to count.
The voting machines isn't for you, it for the politicians. Denmark have system pretty much identical to what you described. We normal have a result for parliamentary voting within five to six hours of the polling station closing. After three or four hours we normally have enough votes counted to call the election, on a party basis.
The issue is the individual candidates, the well known politicians are interviewed a few hours into an election night, when their seats are secured. The lesser known politicians may have to wait for a day, or two, in order to have their seat confirmed. So they get no airtime, no interviews, because the media don't care when the personal votes are finally counted and confirmed. The voting machine are for those low ranking politicians ego.
As for the US, who don't have a parliament and only two, or three, candidates in each election... I have no idea. Because they f-ed up their election system and closed to many polling stations, resulting in ballot counting taking to long?
The voting machines isn't for you, it for the politicians. Denmark have system pretty much identical to what you described. We normal have a result for parliamentary voting within five to six hours of the polling station closing. After three or four hours we normally have enough votes counted to call the election, on a party basis.
The issue is the individual candidates, the well known politicians are interviewed a few hours into an election night, when their seats are secured. The lesser known politicians may have to wait for a day, or two, in order to have their seat confirmed. So they get no airtime, no interviews, because the media don't care when the personal votes are finally counted and confirmed. The voting machine are for those low ranking politicians ego.
As for the US, who don't have a parliament and only two, or three, candidates in each election... I have no idea. Because they f-ed up their election system and closed to many polling stations, resulting in ballot counting taking to long?
I'm not sure how closing the stations makes any difference. The number of votes to count id directly proportional to the population, and if a democracy can't afford 5 cents per vote once every few years then maybe it shouldn't be a democracy
> I don't understand why you need machines to vote or machines to count. Breaking the system above by a few votes is probably possible with a small team of conspirators, but breaking it beyond that doesn't scale.
Exactly. Replacing a system that is guaranteed to work with an another system that is guaranteed to not work is foolish.
Exactly. Replacing a system that is guaranteed to work with an another system that is guaranteed to not work is foolish.
Why is one guaranteed to work VS the other one not? Seems a bit simplistic.
There are electronic voting systems that have been running without issues for decades, why couldn't the US accomplish the same?
There are electronic voting systems that have been running without issues for decades, why couldn't the US accomplish the same?
My thoughts exactly. When I was still living in Germany, the system worked pretty much the same. (No clue whether they changed anything since then?)
However this sane and simple system would probably not work in eg Australia? Their voting system is too complicated.
However this sane and simple system would probably not work in eg Australia? Their voting system is too complicated.
Germany hasn't changed anything. And there are also seriously complex ballots on the local level, so that isn't a limit.
> Your name is crossed off on a piece of paper to say you've voted.
In the US, this is racist.
> where all the candidates and their teams can see
In the US, this is insurrectionist.
In the US, this is racist.
> where all the candidates and their teams can see
In the US, this is insurrectionist.
Man, people are really negative about this, but it's a great idea.
In the old days, paper ballots would also 'go missing' from districts known to be favorable to the other side (aka be chucked out of trucks on a bridge over a river). The best option seems to be open source voting machines + paper audit. This way you get immediate counts and then an audit trail, so would-be manipulators have to mess with BOTH at the same time which is significantly harder.
Think you know a better way HN? Let's hear it.
In the old days, paper ballots would also 'go missing' from districts known to be favorable to the other side (aka be chucked out of trucks on a bridge over a river). The best option seems to be open source voting machines + paper audit. This way you get immediate counts and then an audit trail, so would-be manipulators have to mess with BOTH at the same time which is significantly harder.
Think you know a better way HN? Let's hear it.
>In the old days, paper ballots would also 'go missing' from districts known to be favorable to the other side (aka be chucked out of trucks on a bridge over a river).
The problem with electronic voting, however, is that it takes roughly the same effort to change one vote than it takes to change millions
The problem with electronic voting, however, is that it takes roughly the same effort to change one vote than it takes to change millions
There are other ways to achieve an audit trail with paper ballots. Like cameras. Electronic voting is opaque by nature compared to a bunch of people in a room actually counting paper ballots.
Brazilian here, we've been using voting machines for quite some time now. We are currently facing nation wide protests at least partly due to suspicion of election fraud. People aren't accepting the election's results.
Questioning the legitimacy of the voting machines has also become illegal ("fake news").
Questioning the legitimacy of the voting machines has also become illegal ("fake news").
(Because of unfounded claims of fraud, according to the losing candidate).
It's a shame. There are many ways that the voting machines could be improved but that will be much harder now that the far right has monopolized the discourse on auditable paper trails in their self-serving attempts to overturn valid election results.
Your argument makes no sense to me. You think there's many ways the system can be improved. In other words, you think it's fallible. At the same time, you think any results produced by such a system are legitimate and should be accepted at face value. Why shouldn't "the far right" question results that are questionable?
If you really do believe the election was stolen, then I have a bridge to sell ya.
Where did I say I believed it? I said many people in my country believe it, and that it's okay to question such things. Nobody should have to accept a questionable election.
Remember, such questioning is being literally censored and supreme court judges are publicly saying the results are "unquestionable" and anyone who spreads suspicion will be treated as anti-democratic criminals. If you really believe censorship and judiciary dictatorship is okay I really don't know what to say anymore.
Remember, such questioning is being literally censored and supreme court judges are publicly saying the results are "unquestionable" and anyone who spreads suspicion will be treated as anti-democratic criminals. If you really believe censorship and judiciary dictatorship is okay I really don't know what to say anymore.
That's kind of what I was saying. The far right pulled all the oxygen out of the room with their clown show. Any changes to the system will have to wait a couple of years until everyone has forgotten about it.
Yes, that's why we have poll watches / volunteers from both sides.
Voting machines should not exist. Even if they are just printers.
Computerized vote counting is a ridicolously bad idea on every imaginable level. Especially if there is any amount of centralization. Computerized ballot printing "just" makes it very easy to deanonymize people.
Here where I live your name is crossed of a list after you have shown your ID card. Then you get a piece of paper which is thrown into a box. Given the incentives, anything less rigorous seems quite ridicolous.
Computerized vote counting is a ridicolously bad idea on every imaginable level. Especially if there is any amount of centralization. Computerized ballot printing "just" makes it very easy to deanonymize people.
Here where I live your name is crossed of a list after you have shown your ID card. Then you get a piece of paper which is thrown into a box. Given the incentives, anything less rigorous seems quite ridicolous.
Given the incentives, why does that make you trust humans more?
Because corrupting one hunan likely has negible effects.
Corrupting one machine is equivalent to being able to corrupt all similar machines.
Voting machines have attack vectors which can not work on humans.
Voting machines have attack vectors which can not work on humans.
Unless I can take home the voting machine & verify that the software running on the machine is in fact the claimed software this doesn't mean anything. You could just as easily publish one set of software and have the machine run something completely different.
Personally I think the software is largely irrelevant.
As long as the machine prints a paper receipt that I can verify is correct before it is stored, the code that creates the receipt doesn't really matter.
As long as the machine prints a paper receipt that I can verify is correct before it is stored, the code that creates the receipt doesn't really matter.
Will you be satisfied with that slip of paper if your vote was never included in the official count because the software was bad?
There will always be minor issues that can be amplified even in non-technical solutions (see also: the 'hanging chad' fiasco of the 2000 US election)
Giving voters the ability to inspect their ballots and the criteria by which they are considered valid at least gives the voter the control over making sure things are correct.
Giving voters the ability to inspect their ballots and the criteria by which they are considered valid at least gives the voter the control over making sure things are correct.
That's my struggle with this as well - what are you going to do, show me a checksum on the monitor to somehow "prove" that the software is the same?
Given that they could just as easily fake the checksum, they might as well use a 1-bit checksum. The security of a 1-bit checksum is just as good as a 256-bit checksum in that scenario.
Yeah, that's why I wrote it "prove" - it's not proving anything. There's absolutely no way they can prove that the code in that box is the same as on the repo, not to mention all the other upstream issues - it has to send that count somewhere to be aggregated, and now we're even further removed from all the possible points of "failure".
They can automate the installation of the current code onto the machine, which is in turn also open source.
They are going to have 24 hour cameras pointed to the machines after the installation, including during shipment right? If not somebody could change the software. Even with cameras somebody could manipulate it probably.
When I voted in this year's election in the US, I used a computer which printed my ballot after I filled it out digitally. That ballot was then scanned by another computer and put in a ballot box for any potential future recounts. That seems like the ideal way to do it to me - I eliminate the risk that my ballot isn't counted due to my admittedly poor scantron filling skills but I still get a paper ballot in a box that a human can count if need be.
I'm glad to see New Hampshire still has paper ballots doing this. Pure electronic voting (IMHO) should be banned. Either you should fill out a ballot that a computer can verify or use a touchscreen that produces a paper (filled-in) ballot.
As for open source, I don't think it matters. I mean, even if the software is open soruce, how do you know what the machine is running? Are you going to build it yourself and verify hashes? Can you?
Don't get me wrong: open source for something like this is a good idea. Experts should be able to verify this. It just won't stop claims of election fraud because those largely aren't based on a lack of transparency but rather political expeidency.
As for open source, I don't think it matters. I mean, even if the software is open soruce, how do you know what the machine is running? Are you going to build it yourself and verify hashes? Can you?
Don't get me wrong: open source for something like this is a good idea. Experts should be able to verify this. It just won't stop claims of election fraud because those largely aren't based on a lack of transparency but rather political expeidency.
A lot of skepticism and negativity here, with a focus on "open source means something to me, not the layman" as well as mentions of is that really helpful, is it auditable, etc. Valid concerns, but I guess my reaction is hopeful because hey there's at least one group of people who are trying to build something that is more transparent.
Maybe it's not perfect, but (at least to me) seems like a step in a good direction. Also for what it's worth the company making the tech has a product for auditing as well. Idk guess I'm feeling more optimistic this morning.
Maybe it's not perfect, but (at least to me) seems like a step in a good direction. Also for what it's worth the company making the tech has a product for auditing as well. Idk guess I'm feeling more optimistic this morning.
> Maybe it's not perfect, but (at least to me) seems like a step in a good direction.
Is it? Provided you have a working democratic state with checks and auditing, what is the problem that voting machines solve?
The level of guarantees that you have with a paper vote is hard to surpass and the inconvenience of paper vote is not that big considering how often voting occurs (even in the extreme case of Swiss style referendums).
Is it? Provided you have a working democratic state with checks and auditing, what is the problem that voting machines solve?
The level of guarantees that you have with a paper vote is hard to surpass and the inconvenience of paper vote is not that big considering how often voting occurs (even in the extreme case of Swiss style referendums).
>Provided you have a working democratic state with checks and auditing, what is the problem that voting machines solve?
It solves the problem of waiting days or weeks for a result. It solves the problem of multiple languages on a ballot. It solves the problem of visually-impaired voters accessing the voting machine, it solves the problem of incorrectly filled out voting sheets (hanging-chat).
Hell, that's just off the top of my head, and I'm sure others can contribute more.
It solves the problem of waiting days or weeks for a result. It solves the problem of multiple languages on a ballot. It solves the problem of visually-impaired voters accessing the voting machine, it solves the problem of incorrectly filled out voting sheets (hanging-chat).
Hell, that's just off the top of my head, and I'm sure others can contribute more.
Is a paper-vote a reference to literally marking a piece of paper, or a human counting said piece of paper? Sorry if that's a dumb question, just want to make sure I follow. It seems like this tech works with marking a piece of paper that is then read by a machine. I suppose if the paper is kept, perhaps it's nice from the point of view of the election-handling-folks to automate the counting process, but be able to audit the paper ballots?
Voting machines are always a bad idea. There are issues of trust and security that can never be solved. So trying to open-wash this dangerous way of voting is at best just as bad as closed machines and at worst an angle to make people think its a safe and good idea.
But it is a solved problem. You can use machines to mark paper ballots, and to quickly tabulate them. This is the best of all worlds: the results are auditable, the user can confirm their ballot was recorded properly, and the election officials can quickly count the ballots.
Why are they always a bad idea in your view? I'd imagine that they're quite nice from the point of view of those who run elections and actually have to count them. I'd love to hear your thoughts!
Consider: the number of available volunteers to count votes scales directly with the number of voters in a given electorate.
Yes and no. There is never a situation where electronic voting with no paper back up that must be stored and catalogued for a prescribed time via law is a good idea.
But a system that uses electronics to tabulate votes that can be verified via paper ballots that are stored long-term, securely? Why not?
Edit: Maybe I didn't describe this well. The person makes the vote on paper. The paper is counted by a machine (like the article is saying). The paper is stored securely and catalogued for later reference and audit. What is the problem there?
But a system that uses electronics to tabulate votes that can be verified via paper ballots that are stored long-term, securely? Why not?
Edit: Maybe I didn't describe this well. The person makes the vote on paper. The paper is counted by a machine (like the article is saying). The paper is stored securely and catalogued for later reference and audit. What is the problem there?
> But a system that uses electronics to tabulate votes that can be verified via paper ballots that are stored long-term, securely? Why not?
If the paper ballots as backup are manually created by the voter then while it’s still possible it’s much harder to fake the votes en masse but there’s more scope for human error (what if they vote in two different ways). If the paper backup is automatically generated then can they check it? If not then there’s little improvement over purely digital voting. If yes, do they actually check it? Many won’t bother and maybe there’s an exploit there. Then there’s the fact that this system would require regular auditing, and lawsuits and close contests will force a certain number of audits every election. No one can reliably predict which districts will require audits so presumably they’ll need to hire sufficient people to do a manual recount anyway which eliminates the labor cost advantage.
If by using electronic voting we are opening up new potential exploits, even with paper backups, and not really gaining much of an advantage why would we go to the expense and bother of implementing electronic voting?
If the paper ballots as backup are manually created by the voter then while it’s still possible it’s much harder to fake the votes en masse but there’s more scope for human error (what if they vote in two different ways). If the paper backup is automatically generated then can they check it? If not then there’s little improvement over purely digital voting. If yes, do they actually check it? Many won’t bother and maybe there’s an exploit there. Then there’s the fact that this system would require regular auditing, and lawsuits and close contests will force a certain number of audits every election. No one can reliably predict which districts will require audits so presumably they’ll need to hire sufficient people to do a manual recount anyway which eliminates the labor cost advantage.
If by using electronic voting we are opening up new potential exploits, even with paper backups, and not really gaining much of an advantage why would we go to the expense and bother of implementing electronic voting?
Sorry, when I say backups, I mean paper voted created by the voter's own hand as the original vote, counted by machine, and held securely as a way to verify the vote if any of the candidates call the election into question.
There is no system in which electronically cast and electronically created backups are a good idea.
There is no system in which electronically cast and electronically created backups are a good idea.
> Maybe it's not perfect, but (at least to me) seems like a step in a good direction.
It just add bigger SPOF. Compromise a single voting machine and you control hundred thousands of votes. Compromise one vote counter and you control thousands at most
There are literally no problems to solve in modern functioning democracies when it comes to votes, it's just some technocrat mentality that requires everything to be automated so it's faster/more efficient, etc.
So yeah you can make these things faster at the expense of basically everything else, including trust
It just add bigger SPOF. Compromise a single voting machine and you control hundred thousands of votes. Compromise one vote counter and you control thousands at most
There are literally no problems to solve in modern functioning democracies when it comes to votes, it's just some technocrat mentality that requires everything to be automated so it's faster/more efficient, etc.
So yeah you can make these things faster at the expense of basically everything else, including trust
Interesting okay. Is a combo of paper and automated counting not ideal then? To my mind automatic counting is probably great for the speed you mentioned, and I'm sure those who have to perform the counting/run the election like it, but then keeping paper to hand-count as a backup or to verify seems sensible too. Or is the very possibility of a compromise too bad to entertain?
Speed of counting is not a problem. Most countries in the world finish counting their election votes by the end of the second day after the election, with pure paper voting. The great thing about elections is that election officials can very easily scale with the number of votes, so there is no reason why you'd need automation here.
If there is a CPU between you and your recorded vote you live in a "hackerocracy": you are ruled by the best hackers.
The only reason to have electronic voting machines is to subvert the voting process.
The only reason to have electronic voting machines is to subvert the voting process.
"Open source" voting machines is essentially like baby-proofing a machine-gun. All of the problems that electronic voting poses to true democracy are 100% still there, but it looks safer - which may, unfortunately, make it more attractive.
I'm putting open source in quotes, since only software can be open source, a voting machine is a piece of hardware that you do not own, so you have no idea what it software it is running.
I'm putting open source in quotes, since only software can be open source, a voting machine is a piece of hardware that you do not own, so you have no idea what it software it is running.
I wrote some skeptical remarks.
But yes: this is definitely progress compared to closed source machines.
But yes: this is definitely progress compared to closed source machines.
Yes the negativity is stark and dangerous given the other conditions this year.
We need a voter verified paper trail, based on an open standard, that can be read by different tabulator machines running different software, and still be hand counted just in case.
That's basically just pen and paper but with automated counting machines.
Computer assistance can prevent over-votes and warn of under-votes. It also resolves any "voter intent" questions (i.e. hanging chads). It can also format the printed ballot to increase the speed at which a machine can read them.
That's exactly what this system, and the majority of electronic voting systems used in the US for the last decade, provides.
You can see the source code on github https://github.com/votingworks/vxsuite
Looks to be TypeScript running on node. They have an embedded kiosk browser.
Looks to be TypeScript running on node. They have an embedded kiosk browser.
Thank you, I was skimming the article for a link to the source code but was having trouble finding it.
I don't get why we don't just print receipts with anonymous hashes at polling stations, publish all counted votes with those hashes, and allow people to independently verify that their vote was counted. This would be so easy to implement. It's truly depressing that it hasn't.
You'll still have people saying there were extra votes or that the votes weren't counted correctly. It'd have almost no effect on complaints about election integrity, just like... every other indication they're barking up the wrong tree hasn't had an effect.
There was a voting machine posted here a while back that was literally transparent, as in you would literally be able to see the computer marking off the paper ballot through a transparent box. Is this the same thing, or is this something different? I don't think "computer experts say it's okay" is going to help build trust when people are distrusting of authority in the first place, so I hope it's the transparent one.
The article says:
> “There’s a strong desire to see how ballot counting machines are actually counting the ballots,” New Hampshire’s Secretary of State, David Scanlan, told Click Here in an interview. “And open-source software really is the only way that you can do that effectively.”
In any case, I don't think voting machines are a good idea.
I know that you can use enough cryptography and enough open sourcing to make them secure, but what might convince me wouldn't convince the 'village idiot'.
Paper voting and traditional election observers work in a nice 'analog' way. It's tangible, and even a 'village idiot' can understand how it works.
Most voting systems aren't complicated enough to need a computer to evaluate them.
(And those that are should arguable be changed.)
> “There’s a strong desire to see how ballot counting machines are actually counting the ballots,” New Hampshire’s Secretary of State, David Scanlan, told Click Here in an interview. “And open-source software really is the only way that you can do that effectively.”
In any case, I don't think voting machines are a good idea.
I know that you can use enough cryptography and enough open sourcing to make them secure, but what might convince me wouldn't convince the 'village idiot'.
Paper voting and traditional election observers work in a nice 'analog' way. It's tangible, and even a 'village idiot' can understand how it works.
Most voting systems aren't complicated enough to need a computer to evaluate them.
(And those that are should arguable be changed.)
IMO secure isn't enough. You also need to make it auditable. As far as I can see, it's pretty much impossible to do this satisfactorily with a digital solution. It also seems entirely unnecessary. Manual counting systems work well, and allow people to feel like they are participating in the democratic process (because they are).
Ballot boxes that scan ballots are auditable because they keep the paper ballots.
In my state, election workers have to ensure that the number of ballots is the same as the number recorded by the ballot box on election night - although we don’t recount who voted for who. The ballots are preserved.
In my state, election workers have to ensure that the number of ballots is the same as the number recorded by the ballot box on election night - although we don’t recount who voted for who. The ballots are preserved.
Most states use paper ballots that are then run through electronic tallying machines. This process is completely auditable. This is how people lying about the 2020 election were able to do all of their sham audits in Arizona and Wisconsin.
> This process is completely auditable
Presumably the auditing process would involve tallying the votes manually... in case why bother with the electronic process? Unless you only run the audit if there's a complaint. Which I guess works. But personally for something as important as elections I would much more comfortable with a system where the transparent, hard-to-corrupt process is used by default.
Presumably the auditing process would involve tallying the votes manually... in case why bother with the electronic process? Unless you only run the audit if there's a complaint. Which I guess works. But personally for something as important as elections I would much more comfortable with a system where the transparent, hard-to-corrupt process is used by default.
You are missing the part that somebody could add additional ballots which is a claim that is being made. Supposedly there was a water leak and then people brought in some extra ballots.
Electronic ballot-tallying machines are necessary to running accurate and speedy elections. As we saw in the Arizona fiasco with the "Cyber Ninjas," hand-counting ballots takes weeks, if not months. Additionally, hand-counting has an error margin of 1-2%. In a era where many races are within a point or two, hand-counting ballots will lead to the wrong person winning office.
We also have tons of checks in place to make sure the machines work. There are calibration runs where known stacks of votes are sent through the machines and confirmed at the end. The vote totals on the machines are checked against the number of people who voted. Post-election, election officials randomly choose machines, open them up in front of the public at preannounced times, and confirm that the ballots that have been locked inside the machine match the tally the machine produced.
We also have tons of checks in place to make sure the machines work. There are calibration runs where known stacks of votes are sent through the machines and confirmed at the end. The vote totals on the machines are checked against the number of people who voted. Post-election, election officials randomly choose machines, open them up in front of the public at preannounced times, and confirm that the ballots that have been locked inside the machine match the tally the machine produced.
I disagree. While I do agree that hand counting paper ballots is extremely time consuming and error prone, it's not the only alternative to an electronic voting machine. The other alternative is a mechanical voting machine. No electronics and no software involved. I grew up in south Louisiana and this is the kind of voting machine that was used when my parents went to vote. The downside is that the machines were big and heavy. The voter steps inside the curtains and pulls a big lever that closes the curtains behind them and makes the machine ready for voting. The voter physically moves a lever for each choice. When they're done voting, they pull the big lever in opposite direction and it tallies their votes, returns the levers to their original positions, and opens the curtains. I don't know the exact procedure of reporting the polling station results, but I'm sure it required multiple individuals (and maybe even a supervisor) to read off the results from each voting machine. Even if you have a polling station with say 20 voting machines, that's just 20 additions per voting choice that must be summed. This is much easier and faster than hand counting paper ballots. Additionally, I think it would be nearly impossible to alter the voting machines in an attempt to steal votes. I would like to see this everywhere. Voting integrity and quick results.
What I had in mind when thinking about mechanical voting machines would have been punched cards and 19th century style machines for sorting and counting.
In the UK all ballots are hand counted, and the counting is done within a day.
I would expect that the amount of time it takes to tally a paper election is related to how many people you have counting.
I would expect that the amount of time it takes to tally a paper election is related to how many people you have counting.
How many races are on your ballot? Next Tuesday, I'll have 11 races to vote for, plus 4 ballot referendums. That's probably a median election ballot in the US.
In the UK? Typically just one race: you vote to elect your local MP.
You might also vote for someone to represent you in the devolved Welsh/Scottish/Northern Irish governments if you live in those countries, but that's only 15% of the population and those elections aren't necessarily on the same day as the general election.
You might also vote for someone to represent you in the devolved Welsh/Scottish/Northern Irish governments if you live in those countries, but that's only 15% of the population and those elections aren't necessarily on the same day as the general election.
In the UK you usually have 1-3, fewer since we left the EU.
However, the number of ballots is relatively immaterial for two reasons:
Spend: In the UK, price of counting ballots is far lower than price of paying poll booth staff. It costs approximately £0.10 per person (note, not per ballot) in the UK to count ballots in a nationwide election (as opposed to about £0.35 on keeping polling booths open). It’s likely that if the number of ballots went up by a factor of 10, further efficiencies would be found, but simple ‘ballots counted per hour’ metrics imply that the marginal cost should be relatively affordable.
Difficulty: While running a fair and free election is undeniably challenging, it naively would appear to be much less work than E.g. the USPS does each day to deliver the daily 300M pieces of mail.
Spend: In the UK, price of counting ballots is far lower than price of paying poll booth staff. It costs approximately £0.10 per person (note, not per ballot) in the UK to count ballots in a nationwide election (as opposed to about £0.35 on keeping polling booths open). It’s likely that if the number of ballots went up by a factor of 10, further efficiencies would be found, but simple ‘ballots counted per hour’ metrics imply that the marginal cost should be relatively affordable.
Difficulty: While running a fair and free election is undeniably challenging, it naively would appear to be much less work than E.g. the USPS does each day to deliver the daily 300M pieces of mail.
While the USPS is a government department, it is allowed to charge its users and does so.
The people running elections don't charge voters for voting.
So I'm not sure it's useful to compare the two?
(That the Americans feel like they need government mail when the supposedly more socialist Europeans mostly managed to privatise their former monopolists probably tells us.. something?)
The people running elections don't charge voters for voting.
So I'm not sure it's useful to compare the two?
(That the Americans feel like they need government mail when the supposedly more socialist Europeans mostly managed to privatise their former monopolists probably tells us.. something?)
Same in Germany.
> The vote totals on the machines are checked against the number of people who voted.
Isn't that just checking that "x == x" in software if everything is done by machine?
Isn't that just checking that "x == x" in software if everything is done by machine?
Nope. The people running the election sign every voter in uaing a system independent of the voting machine (often paper). At the end of the day, they know that 216 people voted at that precinct. If the counting machine doesn't say 216 votes on it, something is awry and must be investigated.
Couldn't the person just signing me in record my vote on paper & then add it to a tally?
1. That's not a secret ballot.
2. The typical US ballot has a dozen or so different votes that need to be done.
2. The typical US ballot has a dozen or so different votes that need to be done.
I’m curious, do you distinguish between ballot counting machines (what the NH SoS is talking about) and voting machines (your term)?
I understand “voting machine” to be any mechanism that acts as a substitute for a paper ballot, or that acts as an intermediary between you and a paper ballot. And I would agree that the former are a terrible idea and the latter probably don’t provide much net benefit.
But ballot counting machines are a different matter. Here’s the thing: there’s no voting process without a ballot counting machine. It’s just a matter of whether that machine will be a carbon-based one subject to bias, fatigue, boredom and hunger, or an electronic one that excels at stupid-simple repetitive tasks and is subject to none of those things.
I understand “voting machine” to be any mechanism that acts as a substitute for a paper ballot, or that acts as an intermediary between you and a paper ballot. And I would agree that the former are a terrible idea and the latter probably don’t provide much net benefit.
But ballot counting machines are a different matter. Here’s the thing: there’s no voting process without a ballot counting machine. It’s just a matter of whether that machine will be a carbon-based one subject to bias, fatigue, boredom and hunger, or an electronic one that excels at stupid-simple repetitive tasks and is subject to none of those things.
There's a third option: a mechanical ballot counter.
I know that human beings are fallible. That's why I wrote:
> I know that you can use enough cryptography and enough open sourcing to make [electronic machines] secure, but what might convince me wouldn't convince the 'village idiot'.
People are used to the failure modes of other humans. And they trust other humans in a way they don't trust machines.
This is similar to how juries still put a lot of stock in eye witnesses.
I know that human beings are fallible. That's why I wrote:
> I know that you can use enough cryptography and enough open sourcing to make [electronic machines] secure, but what might convince me wouldn't convince the 'village idiot'.
People are used to the failure modes of other humans. And they trust other humans in a way they don't trust machines.
This is similar to how juries still put a lot of stock in eye witnesses.
How is “mechanical ballot counter” a third, distinct option from “ballot counting machine”? Are you saying that if it had no electronics and operated solely by a human turning a crank on a bunch of gears, springs and levers, people would see it as more reliable and trustworthy?
> Are you saying that if it had no electronics and operated solely by a human turning a crank on a bunch of gears, springs and levers, people would see it as more reliable and trustworthy?
Potentially, yes. Especially if you used off-the-shelf machines that IBM built in 1920.
In any case, that's just a distraction. Just use humans.
Potentially, yes. Especially if you used off-the-shelf machines that IBM built in 1920.
In any case, that's just a distraction. Just use humans.
I live in New Hampshire, and though I've never voted on a computer where I'm touching a screen, I still feed my paper ballot into a scantron machine that seems to do all the counting. I’ve voted in maybe 20 elections (between local, state, and federal) in my lifetime, and it's always been done this way around here. Maybe we all forget that that's a computer, too.
All that said, I live in a town of less than 3,000 people. I don't know that the solutions that work for us here would work everywhere.
All that said, I live in a town of less than 3,000 people. I don't know that the solutions that work for us here would work everywhere.
Ranked choice voting systems (e.g. single transferable vote) have a lot of "game theory" advantages over e.g. first-past-the-post, but are hard to implement with manual counting.
Edit: I suppose that doesn't mean voting machines are required though, just that the results on each ballot paper need to be inputted to a computer to determine the outcome. A lot of data inputting required, but still auditable.
Edit: I suppose that doesn't mean voting machines are required though, just that the results on each ballot paper need to be inputted to a computer to determine the outcome. A lot of data inputting required, but still auditable.
First-past-the-post is pretty horrible. Alas, experience from Australia shows that single transferable vote isn't any better in practice, either. It's more complicated with no benefit in practice. (See https://rangevoting.org/rangeVirv.html for more details on Australia.)
If traditional voting is required, I have higher hopes for approval voting or the slightly more complicated range voting. These are quite easy to evaluate completely by hand. Especially the former.
If you are happy to go a bit off the beaten track, using sortition amongst volunteers might be a good way to fill up a parliament. (Or any other body big enough for the law of large numbers to kick in.)
As a slightly more complicated system, I would have every voter indicate their favourite candidate on a ballot sheet, and then draw enough votes at random to fill up parliament.
(Use your favourite mechanism to handle the same candidate being voted for multiple times in your sample. Perhaps give them more weight, or re-draw, or have people write down an ordered list of preferred candidates, and admit the highest ranked one who isn't already in parliament, etc.)
Random sampling is surprisingly powerful. It also completely bypasses Arrow's impossibility theorem.
If traditional voting is required, I have higher hopes for approval voting or the slightly more complicated range voting. These are quite easy to evaluate completely by hand. Especially the former.
If you are happy to go a bit off the beaten track, using sortition amongst volunteers might be a good way to fill up a parliament. (Or any other body big enough for the law of large numbers to kick in.)
As a slightly more complicated system, I would have every voter indicate their favourite candidate on a ballot sheet, and then draw enough votes at random to fill up parliament.
(Use your favourite mechanism to handle the same candidate being voted for multiple times in your sample. Perhaps give them more weight, or re-draw, or have people write down an ordered list of preferred candidates, and admit the highest ranked one who isn't already in parliament, etc.)
Random sampling is surprisingly powerful. It also completely bypasses Arrow's impossibility theorem.
Does it ?! Wow, that is tempting...
Yes, but there's literally no way to prove that a random number that you "generated" is actually random. The best idea would be to write people's names on balls, put them in a clear funnel thing, and blow them around or something like that on live TV, but for sortition, I'm not sure how that would scale. In the movie Contagion they did that for each day of the year someone could be born on, and that's how they distributed the vaccines. Not sure how that would scale to millions of balls and how you would audit that each person's name is on one ball and only one ball.
Yes, building a purely mechanical trustworthy source of randomness is hard.
However, you can look at how the lottery does it, perhaps?
For example, they don't write the players names on the balls. They use more indirection. (And lots of other cleverness.)
Also keep in mind that I suggest to use this mechanism for something like filling up a parliament. The German Bundestag has about 600 members. The UK has 650 MPs in their House of Commons.
I posit that getting into parliament is perhaps comparable to winning the lottery, ie something people might trust lottery equipment and procedures to handle.
Becoming the president of the US is a bigger deal than winning the lottery, so we can't naively expect lottery equipment and procedures to be above suspicion.
However, you can look at how the lottery does it, perhaps?
For example, they don't write the players names on the balls. They use more indirection. (And lots of other cleverness.)
Also keep in mind that I suggest to use this mechanism for something like filling up a parliament. The German Bundestag has about 600 members. The UK has 650 MPs in their House of Commons.
I posit that getting into parliament is perhaps comparable to winning the lottery, ie something people might trust lottery equipment and procedures to handle.
Becoming the president of the US is a bigger deal than winning the lottery, so we can't naively expect lottery equipment and procedures to be above suspicion.
Well, Arrow's theorem only applies to deterministic procedures.
Voting machines should only ever be used to automate counting of votes. They should never mark the voting sheet. Having the physical paper lets us easily recount or reverify. If it was marked erroneously, all is lost.
No, the paper should be marked by a machine, and displayed to the user for confirmation. If you let the user mark the paper, you get 'hanging chad' problems.
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The fact that at some point over the last 6 years, a huge bipartisan majority of people expressed doubts about the security of our elections (One party in 2016, another in 2020) and yet very little real change has been accomplished is pretty telling. Fact is, if you are in power, there's very little motivation to mess with or risk a change to the system that got you into power.
"that everyone can see" makes me want to see completely analogue tabulators that tally the vote using only mechanical means, inside glass cases that are being recorded and streamed.
Less seriously, add random dry ice steam, fire, and whirling gears for best effect.
Less seriously, add random dry ice steam, fire, and whirling gears for best effect.
“Software everyone can see“ sounds like window dressing.. You would have to understand how the software works. Open source voting software is a great idea, but the vast majority of people are not gonna have any clue.
Is this really transparency?
Is this really transparency?
It's a small step in the right direction.
> You would have to understand how the software works.
No you don't. You have the opportunity to trust someone who understands how the software works, which you wouldn't have if the people you trust weren't allowed to inspect the software.
With this kind of logic, you could never trust an election where you didn't physically count all of the votes yourself. Since that doesn't make sense (not scalable when elections get beyond about 20-30 people), we allow voters to send people they trust to observe and participate in the vote count. This is like that.
No you don't. You have the opportunity to trust someone who understands how the software works, which you wouldn't have if the people you trust weren't allowed to inspect the software.
With this kind of logic, you could never trust an election where you didn't physically count all of the votes yourself. Since that doesn't make sense (not scalable when elections get beyond about 20-30 people), we allow voters to send people they trust to observe and participate in the vote count. This is like that.
This appears to be the code repo- https://github.com/votingworks/vxsuite-complete-system
But it does not have a license file or any license headers... meaning it may not be under an Open Source license at all?
Some of their code- the audit program, looks like it is AGPLv3... which seems like an odd choice of license for this sort of system. Still happy to see more work on Open Source voting systems.
But it does not have a license file or any license headers... meaning it may not be under an Open Source license at all?
Some of their code- the audit program, looks like it is AGPLv3... which seems like an odd choice of license for this sort of system. Still happy to see more work on Open Source voting systems.
"the Python and Linux programming languages are all open-source"
Open Source is not sufficient for voting machines, and frankly I don't think software should be involved at all. How do we know the source code was compiled without a tool chain attack? How can we verify that the software running even is the source code involved? How can we verify there isn't some kind of IME like kernel running somewhere that does something nefarious? How we do know it wasn't tampered with?
Even if you remove networking from a machine the whole system is so fragile and there are very high stakes at play.
Even if you remove networking from a machine the whole system is so fragile and there are very high stakes at play.
The same way you verify that manually counted votes haven't been miscounted, discarded or altered. You allow witnesses.
Independent examiners will be permitted to verify the source code is actually used as-built, that it has a signature attached and that every machine that is built has the signature checked.
Sure, it's not perfect but neither is manual counting (plenty of countries are proving that right now). The question is, I guess, does a software-based system provide notable advantages over manual counting other than cost and speed of a result?
Independent examiners will be permitted to verify the source code is actually used as-built, that it has a signature attached and that every machine that is built has the signature checked.
Sure, it's not perfect but neither is manual counting (plenty of countries are proving that right now). The question is, I guess, does a software-based system provide notable advantages over manual counting other than cost and speed of a result?
Are you going to have experts examine the hardware of 1 million+ voting machines in the United States? And are all of those witnesses going to be infallible and trusted by the public?
A witness can ensure that envelops go in a box, and then they get them out from it. Box are verifiable.
But how could a witness verify a software and a voting machine?
But how could a witness verify a software and a voting machine?
Twenty years ago, we could count on results the same night of the election, and in our town/city election night was always a party night - everybody involved in the campaigns would gather in a convention center where the local news orgs would live broadcast, the surrounding bars would be packed, and usually by 10-11pm, winners would be known.
Somehow, twenty years in the future, we don't know results until weeks after the election, and auditability/transparency sucks.
Somehow, twenty years in the future, we don't know results until weeks after the election, and auditability/transparency sucks.
Wait, you mean that there is currently non-inspectable software in a path that could allow that software to switch around votes? How could that possibly work?
That's been the case since the dawn of voting machines.
> the Python and Linux programming languages are all open-source.
Yikes
Yikes
No matter how transparent the voting software and machines are, nothing can fix election between candidates who all hatch from the same incubator.
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None of this matters unless only secret balloting is allowed. Mail in balloting is not secret. Only in-person balloting is secret.
When a person has a mail in ballot, they could be coerced or paid for their vote in an undetectable way. It might not even be the person who is authorized to vote, but someone else entirely - again completely undetectable.
History has shown time and again that people are motivated to cheat at elections, so all ballots need to be cast in a controlled space that prevents these shenanigans.
This is why the vast majority of OECD countries disallow or tightly limit mail in balloting.
When a person has a mail in ballot, they could be coerced or paid for their vote in an undetectable way. It might not even be the person who is authorized to vote, but someone else entirely - again completely undetectable.
History has shown time and again that people are motivated to cheat at elections, so all ballots need to be cast in a controlled space that prevents these shenanigans.
This is why the vast majority of OECD countries disallow or tightly limit mail in balloting.
I always like the mix of the scanning ballots in Minnesota that are paper / filled out by hand, scanned and go into a box tied to a machine for easy auditing.
I'm having a tough time finding the link to the source code in the article. Am I missing it?
Voting doesn't need to be fixed. It must be banned! Voting is an act of faith. Faith in who manages the electoral process.
We need a private laws system, where you hire the governance you want, no more majority oppression or state subordination.
> there’s a paper record to prove it.
Well at least NH seems to be doing it right. But if I use that machine, do I get to see the paper record. What I mean, is it printed for me to look at and placed into a sealed ballot box ? If not, then I am glad I do not live in NH.
Well at least NH seems to be doing it right. But if I use that machine, do I get to see the paper record. What I mean, is it printed for me to look at and placed into a sealed ballot box ? If not, then I am glad I do not live in NH.
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Voter id voter id voter id, that’s it.
It is ridiculous that we are still debating on that , which shows how messed up we are now.
It is ridiculous that we are still debating on that , which shows how messed up we are now.
What do you mean? As someone not in the US, I don't know what you mean if you just write "voter id" three time.
In some places in the US they don't check your ID before you vote. When I voted this year and last they did not check for any ID whatsoever, and the only information they wanted could be looked up in a phone book or previous voter record (but I did flash a US passport last year just in case, so they know I'm probably not an illegal, this year they probably know who I am, new clerk last year). Without checking IDs it's easier to vote twice (under a false name all but one time, or some bluffing/sneakiness to avoid giving a name, otherwise you would probably get caught). The main thing people appear to be concerned about is people voting where they are not supposed to be, such as US non-citizens on visas/green cards, tourists, and illegals. Another problem would be voting in the wrong state's elections, or the wrong county/schoolboard's.
Been filling out paper ballots for years. I don't want to vote on a machine. A machine can count my vote. But there should be a paper that goes in the ballot box, so it can be recounted using multiple methods. Different machines, humans, dogs, cats... whatever. There are real physical artifacts.