Electronic Voting Machines

[Kelemvor]

I keep seeing stories about the Diebold Electronic Voting machine things and how bad they are. how often they get hacked, etc. Why is it so hard to make an e-voting machine that's not hackable?

First off, the only thing that needs to be in the booth with the person voting is a touchscreen monitor. No PC, No Keyboard, No anything that would allow you to hack something.

The voting software itself could be written in anything such as Flash or Java or whatever you prefer. It shouldn't matter because it's just what you see.

On the back end, the Machines should all obviously be connected to some central server at that particular voting location that would tally the results in some big database. Then the info from each polling location needs to be gotten to whatever central office there is but they do that now so it shouldn't be too hard.

Why is this so hard to implement? It seems it should be pretty simple and pretty straight forward to me. Obviously I'm missing something pretty big since it seems to be nearly impossible to actually implement this properly.

 

[Aikouka]

I don't mean to push this as a mean question... but do you have programming experience not to mention network security experience?

 

[Zolty]

Originally posted by: Aikouka
I don't mean to push this as a mean question... but do you have programming experience not to mention network security experience?

What do you think......

Originally posted by: Kelemvor

The voting software itself could be written in anything such as Flash or Java or whatever you prefer. It shouldn't matter because it's just what you see.

 

[nakedfrog]

Originally posted by: Kelemvor
Why is this so hard to implement? It seems it should be pretty simple and pretty straight forward to me. Obviously I'm missing something pretty big since it seems to be nearly impossible to actually implement this properly.

The problem is in no way a technological one.

 

[jdini76]

wow! I didn't realize it was so simple! You are a genious!

 

[torpid]

There are a lot of reasons why it is hard to implement a good system, but the biggest obstacle is simply the way government policy works. Until a national program with proper funding is implemented, there will always be craptastic solutions by random vendors who are likely incompetent but happened to bid the lowest.

The voting system in this country is unbelievably primitive and corrupt. The fact that we could even have a "butterfly ballot" or "hanging chads" in 2000 was a sad state of affairs. I read recently in Fortune that the medical industry is considered to be the most famously slow adopter of IT. Apparently they never looked at voting practices.

 

[smack Down]

There are a lot of reasons why it is hard to implement a good system, but the biggest obstacle is simply the way government policy works. Until a national program with proper funding is implemented, there will always be craptastic solutions by random vendors who are likely incompetent but happened to bid the lowest.

The idea of electronic voting is fundamentally flawed. For voting to be secure it is needs to be observable and recountable. Electronic voting fails both.

 

[kevnich2]

OP, obviously you have never really done anything as far as networking or anything security related. Secondly, the main problem, as mentioned before, is IMO more of government policy. Anything government related takes almost an act of congress to actually get off the ground and going. Since I'm trying not going to get into anything political, I'll leave it at that.

 

[Queasy]

Originally posted by: torpid
There are a lot of reasons why it is hard to implement a good system, but the biggest obstacle is simply the way government policy works. Until a national program with proper funding is implemented, there will always be craptastic solutions by random vendors who are likely incompetent but happened to bid the lowest.

The voting system in this country is unbelievably primitive and corrupt. The fact that we could even have a "butterfly ballot" or "hanging chads" in 2000 was a sad state of affairs. I read recently in Fortune that the medical industry is considered to be the most famously slow adopter of IT. Apparently they never looked at voting practices.

That's because each state/voting district is responsible for voting. There is no national standard.

Electronic voting would be fine as long as it produced a paper trail. A print out for everyone to look over and confirm that their votes were recorded correctly and for recount purposes.

I prefer the optical scan ballots myself though.

 

[LS20]

Originally posted by: torpid
There are a lot of reasons why it is hard to implement a good system, but the biggest obstacle is simply the way government policy works. Until a national program with proper funding is implemented, there will always be craptastic solutions by random vendors who are likely incompetent but happened to bid the lowest.

agreed. gov is basically just a big business. with more power.

 

[MrPickins]

Originally posted by: smack Down

There are a lot of reasons why it is hard to implement a good system, but the biggest obstacle is simply the way government policy works. Until a national program with proper funding is implemented, there will always be craptastic solutions by random vendors who are likely incompetent but happened to bid the lowest.

The idea of electronic voting is fundamentally flawed. For voting to be secure it is needs to be observable and recountable. Electronic voting fails both.

OMG, For once I agree with Smackdown on something!

 

[SSSnail]

To have solutions, you have to understand the problems. The problems here are not with the voting system, by any means.

 

[dyna]

Originally posted by: kevnich2
OP, obviously you have never really done anything as far as networking or anything security related. Secondly, the main problem, as mentioned before, is IMO more of government policy. Anything government related takes almost an act of congress to actually get off the ground and going. Since I'm trying not going to get into anything political, I'll leave it at that.

Despite whether or not the OP as had networking experience or not. We have enough technology and expertise to build a good electronic system. The current process is flawed and can be easily manipulated and tracking down people that manipulate the system in a electronic world will be much easier than a paper system. We just need the proper check and balances.

 

[tfinch2]

IM IN UR ELECTION STEALING UR VOTEZ

 

[Queasy]

Originally posted by: SSSnail
To have solutions, you have to understand the problems. The problems here are not with the voting system, by any means.

The real problem with the current voting system isn't the voting but the registration to vote. Too much fraudulent activity, too many dead people voting, etc etc.

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: Kelemvor
I keep seeing stories about the Diebold Electronic Voting machine things and how bad they are. how often they get hacked, etc. Why is it so hard to make an e-voting machine that's not hackable?

First off, the only thing that needs to be in the booth with the person voting is a touchscreen monitor. No PC, No Keyboard, No anything that would allow you to hack something.

The voting software itself could be written in anything such as Flash or Java or whatever you prefer. It shouldn't matter because it's just what you see.

On the back end, the Machines should all obviously be connected to some central server at that particular voting location that would tally the results in some big database. Then the info from each polling location needs to be gotten to whatever central office there is but they do that now so it shouldn't be too hard.

Why is this so hard to implement? It seems it should be pretty simple and pretty straight forward to me. Obviously I'm missing something pretty big since it seems to be nearly impossible to actually implement this properly.

It's easy to handle the situation where everything (and everyone) behaves like you assume it will.

 

[ValValline]

Security in any voting system (paper, show of hands, electronic, etc) comes down to one thing. People. You can't have a hacked vote, if honest people are running the polls and the tabulation. For the vast majority of counties across the US, honest hard working people are manning the polls and making sure the elections are legit no matter what system is being used. You only hear about the problems in the news, because bad news sells.

And for those who don't bother to keep up on the subject.. Most if not all Diebold touchscreen systems have been retrofitted with printers that produce a hard copy of the voters ballot. The voter sees this when they vote and can verify that the record is correct.

Finally for anyone wondering why we moved to electronic voting in the first place, one of the major driving forces was the handicapped. Only touchscreen systems (with audio modules attached) allow the blind to vote without assistance. After 2000, counties across the US were forced to go electronic when punchcard systems were banned, because only electronic systems satisfied the requirement for handicap accessible equipment.

 

[SoftwareEng]

Originally posted by: Zolty

Originally posted by: Aikouka
I don't mean to push this as a mean question... but do you have programming experience not to mention network security experience?

What do you think......

Originally posted by: Kelemvor

The voting software itself could be written in anything such as Flash or Java or whatever you prefer. It shouldn't matter because it's just what you see.

HAHAHAHAHA Anything is hackable. And if they claim it's not, it's even MORE hackable

 

[smack Down]

Security in any voting system (paper, show of hands, electronic, etc) comes down to one thing. People. You can't have a hacked vote, if honest people are running the polls and the tabulation. For the vast majority of counties across the US, honest hard working people are manning the polls and making sure the elections are legit no matter what system is being used. You only hear about the problems in the news, because bad news sells.

And for those who don't bother to keep up on the subject.. Most if not all Diebold touchscreen systems have been retrofitted with printers that produce a hard copy of the voters ballot. The voter sees this when they vote and can verify that the record is correct.

paper, show of hands, electronic, For all but electronic I don't have to trust the people. I can go look for myself and see how many votes where casts.

A paper trail inside the voting both is as worthless as the count in the machine. Unless an observer can see who is casting a vote but not the vote then it is worthless. For all I know after I vote for X and see the paper the diebold machine then spits out two votes for Y.

 

[teddyv]

The Constitution mandates that individual States conduct elections. While HAVA has come a long way in getting states to adopt uniform standards and actual conduct of elections, it is still up to individual states to run the elections (within Constitutional muster of course.)

And the biggest form of corruption in elections is the fact that anyone can register to vote by filling out a card and signing it confirming that what they have written is true. In 2004 I personally observed busses going from precinct to precinct and offloading the same folks to go in and vote different names at different precincts. I personally observed folks that had been registered at the same address for decades forced to vote a provisional ballot because some idiot with a phone book re-registered them to vote at a different address in order to make another $5 (per registration) from some 527 long on cash and short on sense.

The greatest advances that could be made in providing fair representation for all would be for States to be "strongly encouraged" to adopt a national voter-registration data center to eliminate multiple-jurisdiction registrations, to adopt strong and uniform standards for registering to vote (including showing proof of citizenship and a government-isseued ID) with a 2-year or so implementation time so that the disenfranchisement folks who argue that the poor/minorities/legal immigrants/etc. are somehow genetically unable to properly apply for a social security number or get a copy of their birth certificate won't scream that it is unfair and to give everyone time to get their birth certificate and an ID, and finally, to change the silly interpretation of the Constitution, the interpretation that bases the representation in Congress on "people" - including foreign tourists, illegal aliens, etc. to representation based on US Citizens.

As for better electronic voting machines, I agree with the original poster to some degree. There already are excellent machines out there that not only provide the easy electronic interface (plus options for increased font for vision-impaired, multple language choices, etc.) but the *critical* paper back up (both recording and voter receipt.) The problem is there has really been nothing encouraging (ie forcing) statewide Secretaries of State to meet and adopt standards for such machines.

Until then there will still be all manner of election fraud like idiots pushing pencil-tips into the votamatic stylus holes so people using punch cards will not notice their selection wasn't recorded (every political operative worth his salt carries at least 5 dremel moto-tools for Board of Elections workers to use should they forget theirs back at the BoE when called out to repair and recertify a machine...)

 

[Kelemvor]

Well, some people missed the point of this post.

Yes I have a programming background, Have been working with computers for 10+ years, etc. I'm not talking about the backend programming of these machines.

What I'm getting at is that i see all these reports of people hacking the voting machines and stuff like that. That's why my question is, why is this even possible. If the only thing in the booth was a touchscreen monitor, how is it possible for someone to hack the machine. It seems like that part would be a very easy solution but it's never mentioned in any articles.

And sure you can print out a summary receipt for each user and things like that, but I'm just asking regarding the hackability of a voting machine that just isn't put in the booth with the user.

 

[SarcasticDwarf]

Originally posted by: torpid
There are a lot of reasons why it is hard to implement a good system, but the biggest obstacle is simply the way government policy works. Until a national program with proper funding is implemented, there will always be craptastic solutions by random vendors who are likely incompetent but happened to bid the lowest.

The voting system in this country is unbelievably primitive and corrupt. The fact that we could even have a "butterfly ballot" or "hanging chads" in 2000 was a sad state of affairs. I read recently in Fortune that the medical industry is considered to be the most famously slow adopter of IT. Apparently they never looked at voting practices.

Actually, solid electronic voting machines have existed for well over a decade. The older ones use a simple push-button system. The votes are tallied onto a computer cartridge as well as a paper receipt. They are damn near unhackable (the only interface is in the locked cabinet and is sealed. If there are any problems with the machine, there are paper records of who voted on each machine (but not what they voted), so they can easily be called back.

Again, they have existed for OVER A DECADE.

 

[ElFenix]

iirc, most of the complaints about the diebold machines were about obsolete, several generations old equipment that isn't in use. of course, the newsies never mention that when talking about how your election is going to be stolen by tfinch2.



and yes, ballot box stuffing has a long and respected history in the US. as long as we've got secret ballots we're going to have problems ensuring that every vote that is cast is counted properly (think of someone going to the polling place, telling the election official and two partisan officials their vote, watching them tally it, and if anything isn't proper either the voter, the official, or one of the observers will point it out). of course, not having a secret ballot has a lot of problems of its own.


and teddyv has a good point: how can you have one man, one vote when you're counting people wholly ineligible for voting and apportioning based on that count?

Originally posted by: SarcasticDwarf

Actually, solid electronic voting machines have existed for well over a decade. The older ones use a simple push-button system. The votes are tallied onto a computer cartridge as well as a paper receipt. They are damn near unhackable (the only interface is in the locked cabinet and is sealed. If there are any problems with the machine, there are paper records of who voted on each machine (but not what they voted), so they can easily be called back.

Again, they have existed for OVER A DECADE.

what about cracking the case and replacing the cartridge? would anyone be suspicious? and how about if the people didn't like the outcome of the election because they'd been told their state was non-competitive (but actually turned out that way, and not to their liking) and so they change their vote on a recall?

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: teddyv
The Constitution mandates that individual States conduct elections. While HAVA has come a long way in getting states to adopt uniform standards and actual conduct of elections, it is still up to individual states to run the elections (within Constitutional muster of course.)

And the biggest form of corruption in elections is the fact that anyone can register to vote by filling out a card and signing it confirming that what they have written is true. In 2004 I personally observed busses going from precinct to precinct and offloading the same folks to go in and vote different names at different precincts. I personally observed folks that had been registered at the same address for decades forced to vote a provisional ballot because some idiot with a phone book re-registered them to vote at a different address in order to make another $5 (per registration) from some 527 long on cash and short on sense.

You drive around following buses on election day? I'm inclined to not believe you, and I'll tell you why. If you were going to follow buses from polling place to polling place on election day to catch people voting multiple times, you would have brought a video camera.

 

[torpid]

Originally posted by: SarcasticDwarf

Originally posted by: torpid
There are a lot of reasons why it is hard to implement a good system, but the biggest obstacle is simply the way government policy works. Until a national program with proper funding is implemented, there will always be craptastic solutions by random vendors who are likely incompetent but happened to bid the lowest.

The voting system in this country is unbelievably primitive and corrupt. The fact that we could even have a "butterfly ballot" or "hanging chads" in 2000 was a sad state of affairs. I read recently in Fortune that the medical industry is considered to be the most famously slow adopter of IT. Apparently they never looked at voting practices.

Actually, solid electronic voting machines have existed for well over a decade. The older ones use a simple push-button system. The votes are tallied onto a computer cartridge as well as a paper receipt. They are damn near unhackable (the only interface is in the locked cabinet and is sealed. If there are any problems with the machine, there are paper records of who voted on each machine (but not what they voted), so they can easily be called back.

Again, they have existed for OVER A DECADE.

So you are agreeing with me or what? I can't quite figure it. Like I said, the issue is a policy one. Because there is no national standard or requirement, each district can do whatever stupid system they want. In my district, the people ask you what your name and address is, but they have a printout that you can easily see while standing in front of them, including whether a giant check mark is there or not. And, the "line" to vote goes right past actual voting booths with no curtains so it would be easy for me to just look and see what people are voting for.

I find it hilarious that people worry about proof that their vote counted with electronic systems. What proof do you have with paper systems? I put the ballot into a doohickey that beeps... so what? Is that supposed to be proof? I don't have any sort of receipt or way to go online or call someone to verify that my specific ballot was counted.