[SGVLUG] Vote stealing

[Zack, James]

I rather liked the portable printer idea someone had.  They make
lightweight inexpensive printers that could connect up and allow the
repair happen quickly.  Also, a vote would not be considered concluded
until a voter visually checked the printed ballot and then clicked the
"OK" button or something.

What about the concept of these machines running on Windows XP Embed?  I
would think a custom written OS would be far more secure than using
anything out there currently, particularly Windows and it's myriad of
hacks available.  These machines are single purpose machines, they do
vote collecting and nothing else.  Does it really need the other stuff
you get with windows (or even Linux)?  How much work would it really be
to develop something totally custom (given the budgets these guys get to
work with).  It almost begs another question... Have we become to
reliant on the obscuring layers OSes provide us to make programming life
easier?  (is my old school assembly language side showing too much
here?)
 

-----Original Message-----
From: sgvlug-bounces at sgvlug.net [mailto:sgvlug-bounces at sgvlug.net] On
Behalf Of Emerson, Tom
Sent: Tuesday, September 19, 2006 11:27 AM
To: SGVLUG Discussion List.
Subject: RE: [SGVLUG] Vote stealing

> -----Original Message----- Of Don Gibbs
> >  > -----Original Message-----
> >>  [mailto:sgvlug-bounces at sgvlug.net] On Behalf Of Zack, James
> >>
> >>  I am all for technology, but it needs to be done right.  
> So  if you
> >> were going to build the perfect, fairest, most secure  voting 
> >> machine, what would you include?
> >>
> >>  My list includes paper receipts for each voter to
> visually  confirm
> >> on paper their votes cast

[and somewhere in there I wrote...]

> >While this sounds nice, does it actually do any good?
> >
> >   -- more than likely, the "paper receipt" will be 
> thermally printed, 
> >which will degrade in ordinary sunlight, placed in a wallet (body 
> >heat), or just "time"; by the time a recount arrives, you're 
> "ballot" 
> >will be as unreadable as a butterfly-ballot from Florida...
> >
> 
> Of course, no one would ever be allowed to walk away from a voting 
> station with real proof of how her/his vote went.  If this were 
> allowed, a voter could prove to someone else how they voted, and this 
> would allow them to sell a vote or, worse yet, to be forced to vote a 
> certain way under threat of retaliation.  So anonymous physical 
> records of individual votes must be kept exclusively by the poll 
> workers to run an audit.

Doh!  Wasn't thinking along those lines, but you're right -- yes, it
would have to be printed and presented to the voter for verification,
then sealed as backup to the electronic count.  There would be some
"operational" problems associated with this (as someone else pointed
out, they may not be able to read the printout for a variety of reasons,
might not understand what is presented on the verification printout, or
simply press the wrong key to accept/reject the verification.) but it
would be far harder to rig the count.

Of course, should a machine be compromised, noone would know UNLESS a
recount was requested/required, and then it could still come in within
the "margin for error", and if it does, which way do you think people
will believe? The machine or fallable humans counting by hand?
(presuming, of course, it was close enough to begin with that the result
changes depending on which source you believe)

Personally, I'd say that any "recount" situation would invalidate the
entire set of results for a given location -- the mechanics of counting
by hand almost completely guarantees the totals won't match, and in that
case, you cannot believe EITHER source as "accurate"  (kind of like
carrying [or relying on] an odd number of clocks on a boat...)

You see, I'd consider it "odd" if a recount matched the machine count
exactly for anything over a few hundred votes. ;)  [of course, depending
on the readability and irrefutability of the "printed" version of the
votes cast, not to mention that one ballot might stick to another and
not get counted, or get dropped on the floor and re-counted, etc.]