I've been following the news in Iran, as I'm sure all of you have. And this may surprise you, but I've been reticent to take a stand on whether or not their election was corrupt. How can you tell if an election is flawed from the outside? If their system is like ours, it relies on the secret ballot, which theoretically protects individual voters from being punished for exercising their right. If you vote for the loser, there is no list that publishes that data so you can be jailed by the dude that won. When you approach the ballot box there are no guards to "help" you fill in the forms correctly: it's just you and the ballot. And that's why I am so fascinated watching all the unrest and the conjecturing about whether or not Ahmadinejad or others altered the totals when the Iranian ballots were counted: there is really no way to know. Unless you have a system that checks the results and somehow verifies votes with the person who cast them, it would be impossible to know after the results are in.
Unfortunately, this is the same situation we're in in the United States. I'm not denigrating the secret ballot, but if you are going to have such a feature in a voting system, the chain of custody for the ballots becomes the most important check on malfeasance. And there are huge, documented problems with our chain of custody. I'm not talking about Acorn registering Superman and the Dallas Cowboys to vote... I'm talking about the 2000 and 2004 elections, which many people were very concerned about here. We just weren't concerned enough to riot, the way the Iranians are doing. If you google for stories about stolen elections though, there's a lot to be worried about.
That is why I wanted to pass on this note from my friend, Alan Dechert. If you cannot check the results with any certainty, then the system must be transparent enough for us to keep track of the ballots after they're cast. He's invented such a system and it was tested last year at LinuxWorld.
And it works. The difference between the Open Voting Consortium's system and the systems we usually use for electronic voting, is that we're all entitled to see how that system works. The typical electronic voting machine will let you cast your vote, and then it sends your choices off into the ether somewhere. Often you will get an opportunity to check the ballot on the screen and make changes, but how do you know that what you selected is what is getting sent?
The short answer is, you can't. That ballot only exists digitally. There isn't a record of it that you could ever expect to find. Like grains of sand, these things just accumulate somewhere to be counted, and who knows if any of them reflect your choices? You're not even entitled to see the code that runs on the machine to see if it adds or removes data.
The OVC's machine in contrast, isn't a machine at all. It's just code on a disk. You're free to look through it line by line, and if you pop it into a computer, your computer becomes a voting machine. All it can do is present you with a ballot for you to fill out. Once you've made your choices, it prints out a hard copy, so you can verify that your vote says exactly what you wanted. And then, you place it in the box. There is absolutely no trust required for using that machine. You can watch it in action here:
And did I mention its price tag is a fraction of the machines we use now? How many times have you waited to vote because there weren't enough ballots or machines for your precinct? How much easier would it be to print your ballots as you need them, instead of ordering expensive, preprinted ballots? Imagine how much more easily you could add new nominees and propositions.
This is why I'm passing along this note from my friend, Mr. Dechert. He's been working on this system for years. He can't do this alone. This is our country, and our responsibility. This morning, he asked me for help. So now, I'm asking you. The Iranian election should be a wake up call for all of us who wondered if Bush really won those elections in 2000 and 2004. We don't have to be trusting when we can be smart.
UPDATE!
I realized I neglected to include contact information for Representative Holt. You can reach his D.C. office at 202-225-5801
And if that is busy, you may want to try his district office: 609-750-9365
Or his tollfree number: 1-87-RUSH-HOLT
Dear Friends of Open Voting:
I need your help today. As you may recall, US Representative Rush Holt has introduced several badly flawed voting reform bills in the past few years. We have opposed them for a variety of reasons.
Last week, Holt introduced his new one: The Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2009 (HR 2894)
http://holt.house.gov/voting.shtml
In general, the bill is not as bad as the previous. Some provisions are good. Ban DREs, ban wireless, provide some funding for voting software that would be publicly available. However, overall, the bill is still bad. The deep flaw with this bill, generally speaking, remains the same: it would put the federal government too much into running the voting system. Holt is trying to do too much and making a mess of it.
Parts of it are outrageously bad. The main offending part for me is where they say the machine for individuals with disabilities must allow the voter to "independently verify and cast the permanent paper ballot without requiring the voter to manually handle the paper ballot;" No machine has this capability currently, and such a machine would be many times more expensive than necessary. Potential solutions would solve one almost non-existent problem and create several others -- besides the expense.
It's the same mentality that led to adding the expensive printing mechanism to the DRE voting machines. Vendors didn't mind doing it as long as the government was paying for it. Guess what? Government paid for it. No wait, YOU paid for it. Now those machines are getting junked. So, tax-payers underwrote stupid voting architecture. Diebold et al got paid to develop it and sell it. Now the stupid machines go in the trash and Diebold keeps the money.
If we can't get this changed, the bill must be killed. Other parts of the bill should just be removed rather than fixed. We might support it if chunks of it were simply removed.
SEC. 102. ACCESSIBILITY AND BALLOT VERIFICATION FOR INDIVIDUALS WITH DISABILITIES:
(II) allows the voter to privately and
independently verify and cast the permanent
paper ballot without requiring the
voter to manually handle the paper ballot;
I need your help contacting Congress in opposition to this bill.
I also need your financial support so OVC can continue to develop and demonstrate sensible open source voting technology, and defeat crappy legislation like this.
PLEASE DONATE NOW
----------------------------------
The PayPal button on our web site http://openvoting.org is probably the quickest and easiest. This is the address for PayPal: donation@openvotingconsortium.org
If by check, please send to:
Open Voting Consortium
4941 Forest Creek Way
Granite Bay, CA 95746
Thank you again for helping OVC to continue progressing toward the establishment of OPEN VOTING.
Alan Dechert
President, Open Voting Consortium
http://openvoting.org
alan@openvoting.org
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Comments
I forgot to add Holt's contact info, but it's there now (202-225-5801). We all have our technical difficulties!
i'm not certain how well our system works, i only know that we don't tend to react the same way the iranians did to suspicions of corruption. and i agree that many of us lack the knowledge to manipulate or check open source systems. my parents are both engineers but i'm not. my husband was an engineer but his skills are out of date: it's like forgetting a language you've learned. it would be a lot of work to stay current.
but one reason i get so excited thinking about the open source system, is because of the way it encourages us to take ownership of the tools for democracy. our first amendment democratized the right to speak and write and our system thrives on mass participation: where there is little participation, inequality seems to persist.
i think of the code like an invitation to create better systems for the people, instead of trusting our politicians to make the tools that catapult them into power. when they misuse the power, that trust becomes harder to maintain because we have no access to improve the system. we may still be disappointed in the leaders, but at least we'll know how we chose them.
i guess what i'm saying is, i'd rather have loopholes than black holes. as an example, look at the large hadron collider. last year, when they started winding it up, hackers cracked its security system so the screen opened with some cute message. and that's all they did (to my knowledge). it's like they ran an experiment on that security system, and told us how crappy it was.
but heck, to the untrained eye, that is really scary, because we don't know what else they might have screwed up.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/09/hackers-infiltr/
hacking could be a feature, instead of a bug. but there is a lot of catching up to do before we get there. i think of this like the next step in increasing human literacy. there is sorcery here, but only if you're not one of the initiated.
First, one of the largest problems that we have in the US with regards to voting is an electorate that is woefully ignorant of the process involved with regards to elections. In EVERY state there are what are called "Public Accuracy Tests" which are publicized weeks before the election and yet the odds of actually GETTING the public to get up off their collective arses to PARTICIPATE in them are higher than the odds of winning the lottery. WHY? We have to PROVE that the equipment is accurate and then lock it down with the public looking on and yet the same public that bitches about irregularities can't be bothered when it comes to ensuring that the equipment is accurate to start with. That is the SAME pubic that ALLOWS the crap that has made Cook County Illinois famous (and infamous) for illegal voting. IF the public would do THEIR part I GUARANTEE that 99% of the irregularities that happen in EVERY election cycle would STOP. The public isn't willing to do their part though mainly because they don't KNOW what "their part" actually IS.
Did you KNOW that as an average voter you CAN be a "poll watcher" and a "poll challenger"? Matter of fact, IF you see something or someone in the polling place that appears to be "irregular" to you you CAN challenge both the inspectors AND your fellow voters. DO IT! PLEASE DO IT! GOOD election inspectors will have NO problem explaining, educating and doing EVERYTHING in their power to make SURE that both the process and the people involved are legitimate.
Second, wireless voting tabulators are ALREADY illegal. There's no NEED to change the law with regards to them. The law is already THERE however, the cost of the machines (roughly 5K per machine) makes replacing them rather cost prohibitive for precincts with low population densities. In states where you have townships in addition to cities the likelihood of having a lower population density is much higher than it is in states where you only have counties and cities because each township is a separate precinct and people vote NOT at the county seat but at the seat of the township governmental unit. On the other hand... removing the wireless from tabulators that are still wireless and replacing it with the already mandated dial up modem costs a whopping $250.00 and takes about 6 weeks. Unfortunately, the FEC will NOT let precincts simply replace the wireless modems in the tabulators with dial up modems if there's nothing physically wrong with the wireless modem. (Get me a screwdriver... I can fix that problem... )
Third, it was NOT Diebold which developed what are called Voter Assist Terminals (VATs), it was ES&S, which was originally American Information Systems and after it merged with Business Records Corp the name was changed to ES&S. VATs were and are HORRENDOUS things for several reasons, not the least of which is the fact that they are a pain in the ass AND that in any given election there are usually roughly 1/3 of them that are "out of order" for various reasons that typically have NOTHING to do with the voters and everything to do with the machines themselves. Oh and looking at the receipt for the VAT from ES&S I can tell you that the "boat anchor" in question cost $7500.oo (paid for by a grant from the feds) straight out of the box, came with NO instructions, NO classes to teach election inspectors how to USE the blooming thing and next to no "customer support" when there is a problem. It WEIGHS 80+ pounds, takes two people to lift safely and Goddess forbid that you drop the damn thing because it's good for exactly nothing other than being used to anchor a boat IF you drop it. In other words... it's an EXPENSIVE piece of excrement and election inspectors LOATHE the damn thing for good reason.
your complaints are entirely valid: we are often very lazy participants in our democracy, when we participate at all.
and i would love to hear how holt's office reacted to your call! you're much more experienced than i am and your criticism is very constructive. they need to hear it.
Section 101 and Section 102 are ALREADY the law with regards to elections. NOTHING in those 2 sections is an "improvement" over what we already have.
Section 247 is ALREADY the law. Again, there is NO improvement offered with his legislation.
The changes to section 103 are COMPLETELY redundant as they are ALL covered in other sections of the current election law.
Those are the 4 sections that he is wanting to change and the REALITY is that those changes will do NO "good" because they are ALREADY the law of the land with regards to elections.
As I said earlier, IF people actually WERE informed and educated with regards to elections 99% of the irregularities would disappear purely and simply because people would "catch" them AS THEY HAPPEN.
I WILL be letting EVERY legislator that signed onto this wasteful (of time, energy and resources) legislation know that they are being wasteful with this legislation AND what they CAN do with regards to elections IF they TRULY want to IMPROVE them.
I wasn't even AWARE of public accuracy tests. I knew that they had to be tested and certified prior to the election, but I didn't know it was a public event (although I wouldn't have expected the public to have been locked out either). But I didn't have any idea that anybody WANTED the public specifically to participate and look on. I don't think I've ever seen that addressed, announced, or talked about in any news media-- ever-- in my life.
Maybe you need a better PR team ? :)
You're probably talking about the same government who, in their infinite wisdom, prohibits to the largest degree possible, "free" and "open source" software, in favor of heavy, incredibly expensive, and buggy software-- and I'm *not* talking about voting machines.
In fact it should come as a surprise to nobody (and yet it will) that the very same company that was convicted as a monopoly by the US Justice Department *and* the European Union, not to mention other convictions in State, Local, and other foreign realms-- has all but locked-up the market on Operating System software, Office Productivity Software, Office Server software, Office Server Support software, Email and Meta-Directory Server Software, Provisioning Software, Network and Operations Monitoring Software, and the list is long and growing longer by the minute.
Despite there being any number of reasonable and good alternatives that are lower cost or even FREE-- and WITH support available if desired-- and you get the SOURCE CODE if you want it. How much more free, open, transparent, and FIXABLE could you possibly want?
This afore-unmentioned company that's already uber-rich is quietly getting uber-richer off the backs of the people and the public is blissfully unaware of the lock-in that's taking place.
Not to mention the potential for mischief-- even accidental.
In the past the government has been "protected" by its many layers and varieties of equipment from different vendors with different OS's and software stacks. And yes that meant the need for people skilled in the various platforms and technologies to keep it going. But there has always been a decent layer of protection from complete external penetration simply due to the complexities and idiosyncrasies of the systems.
But now that everything is homogenized across the board all it takes is one "script-kiddy" with a bag full of tricks (that he doesn't even understand) to zip right through and drill down into pretty much anything that's interesting.
Or it doesn't even have to be malicious. The way this big unnamed entity FORCES patches and updates down everybody's throat ENSURES that a bad patch or a bad update can take DOWN nearly the entire system. Which would probably result in more downtime and loss of productivity than any hacker-- and what would the response from the vendor be?
(Hint, its happened before)
Ooops, our bad.
i think we can create the kind of goonies culture that could wrest control of our government away from the corporations and other moneyed interests. we've got a very narrow window before they really grasp ways to control the internet and limit the ways we can use it to assemble and reach out to each other. the chinese internet has been like a petri dish for authoritarian experiments, and we need to pay attention to stuff like that.
http://rconversation.blogs.com/
anyhow, thanks for commenting! this is a complicated issue, and i'm always curious about how it's perceived.
BAD election officials on the other hand I have my own rant about and it includes a nearly overwhelming desire to choke them until they are purple.
The problem with Public Accuracy Tests and advertising them is two-fold. Newspapers routinely bury the announcement of the darn things in the "legal notices" section of the paper, which darn few people read to start with and those who do read them aren't likely to show up at the test.
It is sort of like public meetings.... every month the synopsis of public meetings in your area are put in the local paper. Nobody reads them BUT the law says that they must be put in the paper AND that your local officials MUST keep a copy of the record from the newspaper on file with the clerk/secretary.
One of these days I will have to write an "inside your local government" article because there are all kinds of things that people simply do NOT know that they should. Of course with my penchant for being verbose it's likely to be a mite longer than a single article but what the heck.