Tuesday, September 23, 2003

Fixing Electronic Voting. Interesting article on Slashdot about Electronic Voting...read through the links, especially this one.   It strikes me as incredible that the "technical" people writing these emails are engaged in such Mickey Mouse chatter, and so interested in just cranking out something, anything that will work.  I just don't see how electronic voting is really all that hard to engage in...as long as you have your priorities straight. There are two primary things we want to accomplish with EVotes -- first, we want to make the voting process easier to engage in.  Second, we want to make the counting process more efficient (less costly).  We would also like to reduce the error rate, to the extent that we are able. A touch screen voting interface, big and clear and nice, is exactly what we need to help walk people through the process.  We can't, though, rely on the software in these machines.  One read through the memos above should convince you as to why -- these people just have no idea what they're doing.  Basic?  Access databases?  Windows?  My god.  What this says to me is that we simply cannot get away from paper.  So what we want is a system that makes paper easier to use, leaves a paper trail for auditing and verification purposes, and provides ample opportunity for error checking by the voter and by election officials. We use the touch screen to answer questions.  At the end of the voting session, the system prints a "vote" and electronically tabulates the results.  The voter verifies that his printed vote matches what's on the tabulation screen.  The voter then folds his paper vote and deposits it with election officials in a good old fashioned ballot box. We can then use the electronic tabulation to check quickly on the results -- this is quite efficient.  We will also engage in a substantial amount of verification, by counting the paper votes by hand and verifying this against totals learned electronically.  The paper always wins, in this system.  We do not necessarily need to count all of the paper votes -- we can use random sampling. It seems like a win in both directions, for me.  Risks include unacceptable printout quality (printer wear), and insufficient random verification. 11:14:50 AM