Electronic Voting Machines

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Electronic Voting Machines

• James Thompson

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Voting in General

• Keystone to any democratic govt
• Three required characteristics
• Security
• Anonymity
• Speed

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Early Voting

• Methods included lots, lever based voting
  systems, ballot boxes, etc
• Forging is possible, human error
• Time-costly and people intensive to evaluate and
  tally

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Current Voting Practices

• Increased movement to electronic voting machines
  since the 2000 Presidental election
• Two main types
• Direct-recording electronic voting machines, or
  DREs
• Touch-screen, votes recorded digitally
• Optical Scan voting machines
• Uses optical scanner to read paper ballot

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Current Voting cont.

• Locally, the City of Roanoke uses DRE machines by
  Election Systems Software or ESS and have
  since the Presidental election of 2004.  
• Current bill in the House of Representatives to
  make optical scanning the national standard

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Thesis

• With existing technology, we can make changes to
  DRE voting machines to make them more reliable,
  secure, and trustworthy.
• Therefore, there is no need to use optical scan
  vote tallying.

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DRE Voting Machines

• Benefits
• Near instant reports of results
• Do not use paper ballots
• "Paper ballots are notoriously susceptible to
  fraud," said Don Norris, public policy professor
  at the University of Maryland. "It takes far less
  skill to stuff a ballot box" than to manipulate
  the computer software in the electronic voting
  machines.

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DREs cont.

• Drawbacks
• Unfamiliar
• Not trusted by some
• Impractical to do recounts if data is not
  persistent
• Rumors of shady programming
• Most machine code is not made public, and only
  checked by the manufacturers themselves

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Examples of DRE Drawbacks/Failures

• 100 error occurred in the 1998 Orange County,
  California school bond referendum, due to a
  programmers error in reversing the yes and
  no results in the software.
• 2000 general election, a machine was given 300
  ballots in Allamakee County, Iowa, yet reported 4
  million votes.

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HOWEVER

• Keep in mind, voting failure and issues are not
  restricted to just electronic voting prodecures

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An Example of Recent Voting Fraud Not Involving
DREs

• According to The Wall Street Journal, in the
  Oregon 2000 election unidentified people
  carrying cardboard boxes popped up all over
  Portland, attempting to collect (absentee)
  ballots. One group set up a box at a busy midtown
  intersection. Outside the Multnomah County
  election office, a quartet of three women and a
  man posted themselves in the middle of the
  last-minute rush of voters. The county elections
  director says she was incredulous when she spied
  people gathering ballots. Nobody knows what
  happened to the ballots after that.

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Optical Scanning Drawbacks

• Slower tallying
• Often has to be verified by hand when the
  scanning hardware does not read properly
• Human error
• Subject to electoral fraud and ballot stuffing
  like traditional paper ballots

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Keeping This in Mind

• It becomes clear that security of the vote
  itself, and not speed, is the primary concern.
• How can we do this with DRE Voting Machines?

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Arguments Against DREs

• Recounts made impractical, as stated before
• Vote records not always verifiable by
  voter(depends on manufacturer and machine)

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Local Arguments Against

• In the 2000 election, results from Botetourt
  County were delayed due to every machine calling
  in at once.

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Addressing Arguments Made

• By taking into account the main arguments against
  DREs, we can design a method to minimize these
  drawbacks, and still keep the benefits
• One such solution is outlined by Dr. Rebecca
  Mercuri in her paper A Better Ballot Box

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The Mercuri Method

• Modifies current machines to generate a paper
  trail
• System records vote electronically
• Prints paper ballot, which is then displayed
  behind a glass panel (to prevent tampering)
• Voter reviews paper record of vote
• If correct, vote drops into ballot box for
  possible auditing
• If incorrect, voter may call an election official
  to void it, and re-vote
• Paper ballot is definitive proof of vote

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Benefits of the Mercuri Method

• Vote security while maintaining speed
• Verification
• Self-auditing without loss of anonymity
• At least as secure as optical scanning
• Physical paper-trail present as record of vote

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Closing Summation of Argument for DRE Usage

• Mercuri Method is one example of a way current
  DRE machines can be made more secure
• Locally, the Registrar of Roanoke, Beryl Brooks,
  stated her preference for DRE machines, citing
  her dislike for the alternative, optical scanning
• It was always the optical scan that kept me and
  my staff inthe office until the next day having
  to count the ones that wouldn't read through by
  hand.

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In Conclusion

• With safeguards like the Mercuri method in place,
  it becomes clear that we can maintain the speed
  of the intial count and ease of use of DREs,
  while still maintaining the security and audit
  capabilites of an optical scan system, without
  encountering the drawbacks.
• Therefore, a DRE machine with verifiable paper
  trail is clearly a better choice than an optical
  scan.

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Some sources I found useful

• http//www.avirubin.com/vote.pdf
• Analysis of an Electronic Voting System
• http//www.blackboxvoting.org/
• Black Box Voting
• http//www.verifiedvoting.org/article.php?id5018
  s1q2
• Frequently Asked Questions about DRE Voting
  Systems
• http//www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2004/08/647
  00
• Poll Voters Want Paper Trail