[EM] CORRECTING Black box voting repost re how HAVA imploded

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

At 11:46 PM 2/1/2007, Brian Olson wrote:
>Rivest pointed out in his discussion of 3-ballot that posting actual 
>images of ballots is bad because it allows for covert channels of 
>information which destroy secrecy.

Then secrecy is already destroyed, except that it is only violated 
with regard to election observers.

>  Some thug can instruct you to make such and such mark astray on 
> your ballot, then look for it to make sure you voted the way he 
> told you to (or paid you to).

That's interesting. It is defeated by using equipment that prints 
filled-out ballots (which could be any PC with a printer). The voter 
hands in the ballot after verifying that it is correct. Ballots with 
extraneous marks can then be discarded. This would also eliminate the 
substantial level of voting ambiguity which exists with hand-marked ballots.

Another option, for hand-filled ballots, would be that any ballot 
with marks would be pulled and a same-marked ballot substituted, 
filled out under observation. If the observers are corrupt, then this 
problem already exists.

>The primary good cause used as justification for HAVA, the Help 
>Americans Vote Act, is to allow disabled (blind, quadruplegic, etc) 
>people to vote with only the help of the machine. I think the 
>tradeoffs and costs of that good cause as its being implemented are 
>winding up being really bad. Perhaps the evil lead the good down the 
>road to hell by paving it with good intentions.

If there is only the machine, then we have the problem of verifying 
that the machines are fair. However, a computer that could do the job 
could be constructed for, seriously, a few dollars each. There are 
existing devices which are voice-recognition, for example. They would 
validate the vote by repeating it to the voter, through headphones, 
then they would print the ballot. (They would only be used for blind 
voters who could speak and hear). Similar machines could be Braille. 
This is a more difficult problem, but it is one which is routinely 
solved for other reasons.)

However, we are standing on our head to avoid a problem that is a 
non-problem. Many jurisdictions (all?) allow a disabled voter to take 
someone into the booth to help them vote. With proper rules, 
influencing the outcome of an election by coercing the voters in this 
way, would be quite difficult. And vote coercion should be a felony, anyway.

Absentee ballots?

If the machines are cheap, which should be possible, the software is 
public-source, which *is* possible, then it's possible for there to 
be lots of these machines. And serious voting bias could then be 
detected, statistically.