Electronic Voting

Worztron

Surely electronic voting will be brought in eventually. It is inevitable. Paper voting is way out dated and cumbersome to count. If they used a computer program (preferably running on a GNU/Linux OS) that used on the fly GPG encryption then there should be no security problem.

gerard65

Have you forgotten we already wasted over €50m on this junk? We're a small country, it dosn't take that long to count the results. A complete unnessary expensive indulgance imo.

Worztron

gerard65 wrote: »

Have you forgotten we already wasted over €50m on this junk? We're a small country, it dosn't take that long to count the results. A complete unnessary expensive indulgance imo.

No I have not forgotten that. I am talking about doing it properly.

Worztron

Have any countries fully or partially implemented electronic voting?

ressem

Brazil has 430,000 voting machines. Running linux as it happens, but that is no assurance of security.

Don't mean to offend but statements like

If they used a computer program (preferably running on a GNU/Linux OS) that used on the fly GPG encryption then there should be no security problem.

is rubbish, and the sort of thing that salespeople/ politicians use to justify buying without proper investigation or verification measures, by more experienced people than us or them.

Case in point: one of the highlighted faults with the NEDAP machines was that with physical access, one could swap out the EEPROM on the motherboard.

I would like to to see whether the cost of secure storage for machines exceeds the cost of the manual count.
Other than that what's the issue with the manual count, that the day long coverage tires out the politicians so much that they are unable to carry out great political reforms afterwards?

Worztron

Preventing physical access tampering is a given. There should be no problem with safe guarding the machines if done properly by using vaults. I still think that the whole paper count setup is archaic.

Einhard

The paper count is more fun! What is it with people thse days and speed? Just because something can be done faster, doesn't mean it can be done better. My 18 year old sister, who's by no means a political nerd, was fairly enthralled yesterday for a while as she watched the counts on RTE. It's entertaining, it's instructive, and watching the votes come and in and being tallied is a far greater lesson in civics than any classroom cirriculum will ever provide.

Black Swan

Worztron wrote: »

Surely electronic voting will be brought in eventually. It is inevitable. Paper voting is way out dated and cumbersome to count.

Agree.

Worztron wrote: »

If they used a computer program (preferably running on a GNU/Linux OS) that used on the fly GPG encryption then there should be no security problem.

Anything programmed can be cracked. Safeguards would have to be evaluated and upgraded continuously until just days before any general election. See paper on electronic voting security.

Link: http://www.cs.ucsb.edu/~seclab/projects/voting/

mickstupp

Maybe this is a stupid suggestion, I don't know anything about it after all, but could there not be a system where we could have the option to log in to a secure site to vote with our PPS number? If the site could be made secure enough, even for that one day, there'd only be one vote per person, where you're registered is where your vote counts, and citizens abroad could have a say too. I've no idea what kind of problems would be involved though...

Worztron

How about having normal paper votes fed automatically into a machine. That way there is still a paper trail with the speed and efficiency of e-voting and nothing changes for the voter.

mikemac

mickstupp wrote: »

Maybe this is a stupid suggestion, I don't know anything about it after all, but could there not be a system where we could have the option to log in to a secure site to vote with our PPS number? If the site could be made secure enough, even for that one day, there'd only be one vote per person, where you're registered is where your vote counts, and citizens abroad could have a say too. I've no idea what kind of problems would be involved though...

One issue is intimidation or at least pressure. Someone in your family might be standing over you and watching you as you log in and vote.
That doesn't happen in the local parish hall or school

Einhard wrote: »

The paper count is more fun! What is it with people thse days and speed? Just because something can be done faster, doesn't mean it can be done better. My 18 year old sister, who's by no means a political nerd, was fairly enthralled yesterday for a while as she watched the counts on RTE. It's entertaining, it's instructive, and watching the votes come and in and being tallied is a far greater lesson in civics than any classroom cirriculum will ever provide.

+1
Leave it as it is, we don't need progress for progress sake.
Following the election was interesting and it gets people involved.

If you can wait five years for an election you can wait a few days for the result

nesf

feelingstressed wrote: »

One issue is intimidation or at least pressure. Someone in your family might be standing over you and watching you as you log in and vote.
That doesn't happen in the local parish hall or school

Further than that, say a bunch of adult kids live at home still and don't want to bother voting. Their parents could just open the letters with their passwords or whatever and vote on their behalf come election day. There'd be no way to tell this kind of vote from a genuine one.

fenris

There seems to be a correlation between a lack of technical knowledge and confidence in e-voting.

The main proponents of e-voting should be the techies pushing for advancement and modernisation as they do in almost every other area of life, this time the techies are almost up in arms and getting very excited about what a bad idea e-voting is.

Maybe when the people who understand the technology but are not involved in selling it or benefiting from its flaws, tell you that something is a bad idea it may be time to listen?

ardmacha

Worztron wrote: »

How about having normal paper votes fed automatically into a machine. That way there is still a paper trail with the speed and efficiency of e-voting and nothing changes for the voter.

Worztron is spot on. Optical character recognition (OCR) could be used to process ballot papers. There might be a few it couldn't parse and these could be passed to a manual check. Most counts could proceed on this basis and if there was only 2 votes separating candidates then a manual check or count could take place, so everyone would have confidence in the process.

hatrickpatrick

Einhard wrote: »

The paper count is more fun! What is it with people thse days and speed? Just because something can be done faster, doesn't mean it can be done better. My 18 year old sister, who's by no means a political nerd, was fairly enthralled yesterday for a while as she watched the counts on RTE. It's entertaining, it's instructive, and watching the votes come and in and being tallied is a far greater lesson in civics than any classroom cirriculum will ever provide.

This. Sean Barrett himself said so as he was elected at the Dun Laoghaire count. The building excitement and anticipation of being at the count centre - no way could you replace that with a machine.

There's also a psychological issue. There was a trial run of e voting here were the candidates were lined up on TV and bluntly told to their faces with no anticipation or warning that they had lost their seats. From all accounts it was nasty to watch and everyone regarded it as utterly unfair on the candidates involved who didn't get any time to predict or compose themselves to concede.

goose2005

Worztron wrote: »

How about having normal paper votes fed automatically into a machine. That way there is still a paper trail with the speed and efficiency of e-voting and nothing changes for the voter.

That miht actually work, just as with multiple-choice exams. Would certainly save a lot of money.

deanh

mickstupp wrote: »

Maybe this is a stupid suggestion, I don't know anything about it after all, but could there not be a system where we could have the option to log in to a secure site to vote with our PPS number? If the site could be made secure enough, even for that one day, there'd only be one vote per person, where you're registered is where your vote counts, and citizens abroad could have a say too. I've no idea what kind of problems would be involved though...

But then there would be a record of how we voted. That would remove the 'secret ballot' tenent of democracy. Really, the system doesn't need to be changed.

Worztron

ardmacha wrote: »

Optical character recognition (OCR) could be used to process ballot papers.

Exactly.

Run_to_da_hills

If Fianna Fail had succeeded in installing an electronic voting system in this country you could guarantee that they would still be in power again.

The system had already been cracked in the Netherlands, nice try and a total waste of good taxpayers money.

sfakiaman

The present system may be slow but has the advantage of having a large number of vote counters and a large number of observers from all parties. Even if electronic voting were run honestly very few people would have faith in the result. Even without fiddling the results there is so much information to be gleaned from the vote that the party in power would feel compelled to crack the system, and they would be paying the programmers would they not!