[EM] Why We Shouldn't Count Votes with Machines

[Kathy Dopp]

On Tue, Aug 12, 2008 at 11:28 PM, rob brown <rob at karmatics.com> wrote:

>> How?  Do we want an infinite loop of a voter running paper through a
>> cheap printer trying to obtain an accurate ballot record and the
>> machine refusing to print one while it switches a vote wrongly?  Or do
>> we want the voter to be able to cancel the ballot and let the poll
>> workers know that he needs a paper ballot instead that he can mark
>> himself?
>
> I'm fine with the latter.  Actually that seems like a reasonable thing to
> do.

I agree, but that is not happening on all of todays' voting systems.
Election officials seem to be hopelessly slow to grasp the problem or
the solution.

>
>>
>>  If so, why not let the voters vote on a paper ballot to
>> begin with?
>>
>> Any ideas?
>
> Cost?

Wrong answer.  Paper ballot optical scan systems are so much more
economical than e-ballot systems that if you purchase all-new optical
scan systems, the on-going cost savings totally pay for the initial
purchase within four years and then begin saving taxpayers lots of
monies.  See http://electionmathematics.org and click on Voting
Systems for links to cost comparison studies.

>
> But honestly, the big problem I have with paper ballots filled out by hand
> is that they make the transition to a ranked system a lot harder, both in
> terms of difficulty filling in the ballot and difficulty counting them.  As

That is a good argument against using any ranked ballot systems then
since the integrity of e-ballot systems cannot be adequately ensured,
given the secret ballot and the difficulty of implementing systems to
detect and correct errors with a secret ballot.

>> No. Obviously it is trivially easy for any programmer of a voting machine
>> to:
>
> You'll note that I said it is essential that the source code be open for
> viewing by all.  Not so trivially easy in that case.  Not at all.

Making the source code for the voting programs open source does not
make all the myriad of other programs, drivers, OS, etc on the voting
system open source - that could be used to rig the vote.  Also of
course election officials do not have the resources to verify software
and it would take years to set up systems to verify the software on
voting systems *and* require trusted technicians to do so.

While I support using open source programs for other reasons, it is
*not* the answer to ensuring the accuracy of vote counts.

You might want to read this article on the topic, that I wrote with
help from dozens of technologists and some voting system experts:
http://electionmathematics.org/em-voting-systems/VotingSystemSoftwareDisclosure.pdf

and read this recent article:
http://nandigramunited.blogspot.com/2008/08/soumitra-and-sitanshu-particularly.html

>
> But to do this, an awful lot of people are going to see the error,

Well, perhaps 5% of voters would *see* the error (because no fraudster
is stupid enough to switch *all* target votes available), but most
might think they made a mistake on the first try.

The ones who complain, in our experience over the last couple of
election cycles, will be soundly ignored.

> especially if you simply leave it on screen when you print the paper copy.

Huh?  Try doing that yourself. I do not know if the summary *screen*
version of the ballot appears at the same time as you get a chance to
check the paper version of the ballot. I don't think that is
necessarily an option you would have.

> And they are going to talk about it.  And the next year, people will be a
> lot more likely to notice.

If you followed the voting news nationwide like I do, you would know
that people have been talking about it a lot since the November 2004
presidential election, in particular there was lots of vote switching
reported in Ohio.  Congress even certified the election of a
Representative from Florida that everyone knows was not elected by the
people there, simply because the machine results had dropped over
14,000 votes from the candidate that everyone knows probably really
won the election, and lots of people complained about the screen
switching their votes, but it does not matter. The wrong person will
still be elected no matter how many people complain about vote
switching.

>
> Still, with an open source system, I have no clue how a programmer is going
> to do this at all.

Anyone could easily switch out any open source or not program that is
compiled into machine language during some routine maintenance and no
one would know the difference.  Do you really think that election
administrators are going to have the funds and that VVV's are going to
cooperate to put together a list of all compilers, switches, hardware
and firmware versions for every piece of software on their machines so
that the versions can be checked after the elections?  In Utah, the
VVV shipped us atleast three different versions of the voting system
software alone, and who knows how many unique versions of hardware,
firmware, drivers, and hardware.  If you believe that these VVs are
standardized, you are quite mistaken.

And which technicians  and programmers do you want the public to
*trust* to ensure that all the software on the VV is doing what it
should?

>
> Most likely though, no one is able to hide such devious stuff in code
> visible to security researchers.

Yes. Of course with all of today's VV's you can simply take 30 secs to
1 min to use any of the easily accessible back doors to simply change
the vote counts on the central tabulators, without even installing any
malicious software on them at all.

This is why audits of voter created paper ballots are the only
reliable method to check vote count accuracy IF the paper ballots are
secured and reconciled.

>
>>
>> Recall that I said that the programmer would only be able to switch up
>> to 90% of the target votes without any audit able to detect it.
>
> Only if every single voter got a wrong ballot printed.  You really think
> this would go unnoticed?   Your scenario is absurd, at least on the scale
> you talk about.

OK. You don't believe the research.  Any particular reason you are so
certain that more than 30% of voters bother to check their paper
ballot record?  Any particular reason you think that all the research
that shows that deliberately introduced errors in the ballots during
tests are only discovered by 30% of those who *try* to find the
errors?

I.e. I think you had better come up with some facts to show why you
believe that all the research is wrong that shows that fewer than 10%
of voters are accurately proofing their machine printed ballot
records, not just say you don't believe the research which sounds very
plausible to me and no one has claimed is wrong up until yourself now.
 Not even the VVV's or the DRE supporters have attacked this research
to my knowledge.

>
>> The voter would either think that he must have made a mistake on the
>> first try, or complain about his vote being switched.
>
> Yes, and a lot of people complaining would draw more attention to it, and
> more people would start checking.  If it happened on a large scale, the
> problem would be tracked down,  and the programmer would be put away for a
> long time.

And *how* pray tell, would that programmer be *tracked down*?  Magic? Voodoo?

Current voting systems provide no method to track down who did anything on them.

I suppose that you are right that vote switching does bring attention
to these problems because FL, NM, MD, TN, and CA have already decided
to begin scrapping DRE e-ballot voting machines and go back to paper
ballots - again going back to paper ballots IS the solution.

So what are YOU suggesting be done if many voters notice that their
votes have been switched by DREs during an election? REDO THE ELECTION
and hope it doesn't happen again during the second election since no
manual audit can recover the accurate vote counts?

I'm sorry but I  don't have any time to continue this today. Maybe tomorrow.

Cheers,

Kathy