Difference between revisions of "Talk:Lecture 3"

Revision as of 15:35, 13 October 2004

It just so happened that I read the article from the Nation against e-voting (or at least e-voting in its present form) before I read the more reasoned papers against it.

Wow! Had the Nation bothered putting the facts about what was wrong with the system up front and cut out all the partisan Democrat stuff, they would've convinced me there was a problem. It's too bad they have an ax to grind with the Republicans - going off on on rants about evil corporations, Florida 2000, some wild speculation (with no proof of course) about how Max Cleland got cheated out of the US Senate election, etc... They've got their leftwing base even more riled up than it already is without adding that much insight.

Maybe Republicans are uniformly boneheads on this issue. Maybe they're not. Still, it would've been better had the Nation first convinced me that evoting systems as they are today are boneheaded. They made what I consider a feeble effort at this (at least compared to the balanced critiques) in the middle of their article (after bashing Bush&Co) and failed.

I'm not liberal bashing here either. Had a right-wing demagogue like Ann Coulter written against evoting, it would go something like: crooked 19th Dem party boss cheated in elections and Bill Clinton is a scumbag. Therefore, ALL Dems are scumbags and evoting is the latest liberal ploy to cheat elections. (OK, in the spirit of Ann I'm stretching a bit, but you get my drift.)

I'm pretty conservative, though I'm no Republican partisan. I'm wondering if other students were turned off - at least at an intellectual level - at how the Nation organized and presented their argument. In particular I wonder how it breaks down across idealogical affiliations. So maybe I'm just more partisan than I think :(. Or maybe you scum bag party boss liberals are the ones who are partisan :).

[John Spaith]

I completely agree. I think bringing partisanship into the discussion is dangerous on both sides. It appeals to peoples emotions and doesn't provide a logical argument. Just FUD.

[Jack Richins]

Pre-class poll: would you trust a paperless e-voting system?

TedZ: I'm curious about this. So before the class on Thursday, please chime in on "would you trust a paperless, non-verifiable, non-recountable e-voting system" as described in the reading material. I think everyone in the class has a pretty good computer science background, so this should be interesting. For the record: I wouldn't trust one as far as I could throw it (the machine itself). I guess that's what you get for being a Republican computer programmer. As a follow on question: given your knowledge and a bit of time, do you think that you could program a voting machine to undetectably alter vote counts?

John Naegle: I think I could trust an e-voting system - but not in their current forms. The foundations of our society and government rely on the voting process and the current systems have not proven themselves to be as good or better than the paper-based systems currently in use. Rushing to e-voting systems to combat corruption, human falicy, or social inequality isn't the answer. The move to e-voting needs to be calculated and done with a great deal of oversight.

Kiran: Well, in the US, with just two main parties ( the Greens and Libertarians don't really count,do they? ;-)) I would be very wary of using an e-voting system. The potential for fraud and skewed elections is enormous. That said, Florida 2000 didn't exactly put paper-voting in a kind light,either. Back home in India, for the national elections held this May, electronic voting machines were used almost throughout the country...while the results of the election WERE surprising, that was because of the way people voted and not any manipulation by the victors. I mean, in an election where there are 20+ parties with pre-poll alliances dictating where each party contests ( and post-poll alliances being significantly different from the pre-poll ones ;-) : for example, the Communists were staunch opponents of free economy before the elections but now, as they are supporting the party in power, they have turned pro-reform) , e-voting leading to possible fraud doesn't really make much of a dent in a single party/alliance's chances. In such cases, therefore, (especially as a repoll is ordered wherever there is sufficient doubt) , I would have no qualms about using an electronic voting system.

David Dorwin:
I would not trust such a system because there are too many things that could go wrong, either intentional or accidentally. Some people will do anything to help their candidate, so I wouldn’t put it past some of them to change votes – either as part of a large conspiracy or just a single developer. It’s also possible that a mischievous developer could alter votes to stir up trouble or just see if he or she could get away with it. From the unintentional aspect, it’s unlikely that any significant piece of software with a limited budget is bug-free. The types of problems that could occur are endless.

I think the issues described during the last lecture about how congressman and staffers dole out money also applies here. Politicians heard loud and clear that the public wanted change, so they gave it to them. E-voting sounds good, so they decided to go with it. The politicians either didn’t have time or don’t care enough to look at the problems. Given the fact that there viable options for improving the verifiability of these machines, it’s appalling that they aren’t being instituted.

Regarding the follow on question, I think I could program a voting system that could undetectably alter vote counts, especially if I knew how the verification tests were to be executed. Whether I could alter them in my candidates’ favor is a different question and would depend on what information about the candidates is available to the software and how it is abstracted or encrypted. One way to go undetected would be to create an easter egg that could go undetected during verification and be enabled at the polling place.

All the same fraud and mistakes could be made in any computer-scanned ballot as well, but at least there would be a paper ballot to recount if there was any question.

Jack Richins:
Short answer, yes I would trust these electronic voting systems, but with strong reservations.

Before reading the papers, I would have agreed that we shouldn't trust electronic voting. But one of the papers mentioned how it boils down to trusting the machines to handle the casting, counting, and tallying of the votes without means of auditing. And it made me realize how much we already trust computers - our banks are sending money around electronically with only electronic means of auditing. We make deposits in ATMs with only a paper receipt, but basically we are trusting the bank and the receipt is only as good as the trust we place in the bank and its machine. Or transfering money between accounts using the phone or an internet web page with just a simple password and https. Should it suprise us that most citizens don't blink an eye when our elections are run electronically?

That said, there are definitely some differences between electronic banking and elections. For one, the matter of secrecy. There is no problem with us getting a receipt of our deposit and using that to verify things occurred correctly. This isn't possible in voting if we want to maintain a secret ballot.

But I would say we are closer to having trustworthy electronic voting (at least to the degree of the paper systems we're replacing) than I thought we were. And after understanding more of the issues, it surprises me less that election officials are so willing to trust these machines - they may not understand them, but they don't understand how banks do it and they trust bank systems. The real suprise to me was how bad all of the systems analyzed were and yet the elections basically works. My take away is we need more academic papers to point to so we can educate election officials on the issues and they have a chance of making a more educated decision. And perhaps work on resolving problems with electronic systems rather than trying to convince election officials to go back to paper or optical scanners. Perhaps convince some PhD student to develop a open and secure voting system as a research project:)?

e-voting Roundtable discussion

I found this via ars technica:

With the election only weeks away, John Paczkowski of Good Morning Silicon Valley fame has invited Ars readers to join in a roundtable discussion over e-voting issues. John has assembled a panel of e-voting experts, election officials, reporters and voting rights advocates for the roundtable. While readers will not be able to directly be able to participate in the discussion, they are encouraged to submit questions and opinions that will be reviewed for approval by the editor. The roundtable kicked off on Monday and will run until midday Friday. We have reported extensively on problems and concerns surrounding electronic voting and this is a chance for readers to pick the minds of the experts and join in on the discussion.

It should be interesting to watch this discussion.