Florida tests out print-on-demand paper ballots

Well, we're about to enter a major election year, so why not roll out some brand-spanking-new voting technology to test on residents of the most notoriously voting-inept state in the whole union? At least, that must have been what Florida legislators were thinking when 27 counties decided to implement a new print-on-demand ballot system to create the optical scan ballots right as voters need them.

While the optical scan system is quite tried-and-true, the new machines will create ballots customized for a voter's particular party (useful in primaries where, in FL you're only allowed to vote for the party you're registered in). This is supposed to further decrease confusion and ballot clutter, which is good. Of course, as anybody who's ever worked on a big kiosk project knows, putting printers out in the real world = all sorts of problems including paper jams, misfeeds and the like. What happens to a paper ballot that has been slightly mis-printed when you run it through the optical scanner? What happens when a machine jams up? Will all polling stations have backup equipment? Will pollworker training be better than it was for e-voting initiatives in 2000 and 2004 (God I hope so)?

Aside from simplifying each voter's ballot, the major reason for implementing the print on demand system is actually cost reduction, according to this article in the St Petersberg Times. Apparently the heavy paper stock that the optical ballots require is rather expensive, so reducing waste ballots by only printing the exact number and type required will allow counties using the system to be more efficient (one legislator expected that they would have saved $45,000 and 600 staff hours had the system been in place for the 2006 elections).

Admittedly, anything that doesn't rely on Windows-based touch screen computers and lacking any kind of verifiable paper trail is going to be a big improvement over the 2004 Florida systems. Still, introducing complexity in a state where people couldn't tell the difference between "Left Side" and "Right Side" in 2000 isn't necessarily a good idea.

We'll get our first peek at the new tech in late January when Florida holds its presidential primaries.

Tags: e-voting, self-service, kiosks

New York says e-voting software must be escrowed

In a blow to Microsoft and all electronic voting systems based on their Windows platform, the New York State Assembly recently upheld a bid that will require all voting software -- including the operating system upon which it runs -- be placed in a secured escrow so that it may be examined by experts in the event of a questionable outcome. While makers of the voting software itself (notable Diebold) were vocal about having the clause weakened or removed, Microsoft was even more argumentative, as the source code to the Windows OS is one of its most closely guarded secrets. As Bo Lipari, executive director of New Yorkers for Verified Voting, noted in this ComputerWorld article,

"concerned citizens created a groundswell of support in the legislature to ensure the law remained untouched...

"We won for a change," he said on Friday. He estimated that about 3,000 constituent calls had been placed with the legislature about the issue. "There was a huge outpouring of support and the legislature noticed this. It was a forceful way to remind them to re-affirm their commitment to these strong laws."

New York State Assemblywoman Barbara Lifton, a Democrat from the 125th Assembly District, echoed that sentiment. "The voting machine vendors have known for two years what our laws said," Lifton said Thursday. "Now they're saying that those parts of their systems using Microsoft software have to be proprietary? It's just wrong. We're holding firm on our current state law which calls for open source code.

"This is one extremely clear-cut example (to me, at least) of where opening up the source code is absolutely vital. While we can all hem and haw about the relative security and technological merits of opened versus proprietary source code, when it comes to the politics and the law, which both seem to attract trouble and corruption, the right to review every last subroutine and function of a voting machine is something that I'd like to see more states with electronic voting initiatives require.

Given incredibly short and poor history of electronic voting technologies in the US, my gut feeling right now is that relying on the vendors of these products to be open and honest (and knowledgeable about their products) is just asking for trouble.

Tags: electronic voting, voting kiosks, e-voting

Florida to ditch electronic voting kiosks

Just three months after Florida Governor Charlie Crist suggested that maybe these newfangled e-voting kiosks weren't such a great idea, 15 counties, including the voting-challenged Broward and Miami-Dade, will get rid of their marginally useful electronic voting machines instead of widely tested optical voting machines that are used by most of the rest of the state, as noted by this article in the New York Times. The move will not only silence critics (like myself) who thought that the kiosks were error prone and easy to sabotage, but will also introduce a much-needed paper trail while making the overall voting process much more simple. The article notes:

The move is the nation’s biggest repudiation of touch-screen voting, which was embraced after the 2000 recount as a way to restore confidence that every vote would count. But the reliability of touch-screen machines has increasingly come under scrutiny, as has the difficulty of doing recounts without a paper trail.

“This legislation will preserve the integrity of Florida’s elections and protect every Floridian’s right to have his or her vote counted,” Gov. Charlie Crist said in a statement. “Florida voters will be able to have more confidence in the voting process and the reliability of Florida’s elections.”

With optical scanning, voters mark paper ballots that are counted by scanning machines, leaving a paper trail that remains available for recounts.

The 15 counties that will move to the optical scanning, which is in place in the state’s other 52 counties, account for about 51 percent of the state’s 10.4 million registered voters. They include Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Hillsborough Counties.

The plan, part of a bill that moves the state’s presidential primary to Jan. 29, was announced by Governor Crist in February. The Florida Senate voted for it last week, and the House of Representatives approved it unanimously on Thursday.

Honestly, people down here had a hard time punching a hole in a piece of paper, and the government's solution was to make them use a computer. I never understood how they came to that conclusion in the first place, but I'm certainly glad that they've decided to revert to a much more straightforward and highly-tested methodology.

e-voting, voting kiosks, electronic voting machines, florida

French parties call voting machines a 'catastrophe'

Zut alors! Looks like the US isn't the only country having a trouble with its electronic voting equipment, as after spending several years out of the spotlight of the e-voting misadventure, three unlikely allies in the French political party system (namely the Socialists, the Communists and the Greens) united to call the kiosks a "catastrophe." These quotes from PhysOrg (an unlikely source I'll admit, but it's more of a tech issue than a political one I suppose), say it all:

Amid big queues in general to vote, people using the electronic machines were forced to wait up to two hours to cast ballots... Daniel Guerin, a member of the Paris regional council, made an official complaint to the Constitutionl Council because of "disfunctioning" machines in his constituency in Villeneuve-le-Roi, in the Paris suburbs.

The elderly had particular problems with the machines. Many said they did not believe the computerised system would keep their vote secret.

"I have come here twice and twice I have had to walk away without voting. It takes too long," said Pierre Bascoulergue, a pensioner in Issy-les-Moulineaux, near Paris. "I just don't trust these machines."

The Issy town hall said the long queues were because of the huge turnout in the election.

In the champagne capital of Reims in eastern France a breakdown delayed the start of computer voting. The complicated machines further held up voting in the city during the day.

"It is total chaos, we don't understand anything," said 70-year-old Suzanne Antoine.

"You put your card in and it says 'continue'. Then nothing lights up. I managed to finish but I prefer the way it was before."

Researchers at Paul Verlaine University in Metz said that trials on two of the three machines used in France showed that four people out of every seven aged over 65 could not get their votes recorded.

Researcher Gabriel Michel, a psychologist, said the machines posed "enormous problems".

The computer has several buttons that allow electors to choose the candidate they want to back. There is also an "abstention" button for protest votes.

While the machines have caused a bit of an uproar during their first outing in a French presidential election, they were only used for about 1.5 million of France's 44.5 voters, so things clearly could have been much worse. Oh well, at least they weren't using Diebold machines...

Tags: electronic voting, e-voting, self-service, kiosks

FL Governor Crist wants to ditch touch-screen voting kiosks

I'm no fan of Florida's electronic voting machines, as I've noted numerous times in the past. Aside from numerous security concerns and the lack of any kind of paper trail, the screen layout can be confusing and the touchscreens are frequently unresponsive.

Apparently, I'm not the only one that feels this way, as new Florida governor Charlie Crist has decided that the machines aren't all they were originally billed to be (which, for the record, was a cure-all for the voting stupidity that overtook my state in the 2000 presidential elections), and wants to get rid of them in favor of optical paper reading ballot machines used by many other states, according to this article in the St. Petersburg Times.. Crist is expected to ask the state Legislature for over $30-million to replace the touch screen systems in 15 of the most highly-populated counties (including the now-infamous Palm Beach, Miami-Dade, and my own home county, Broward) with an optical system that allows a voter to physically mark an circle next to the selected candidate’s name (thus leaving a physical record), and then slip the ballot into an electronic reader, providing instant feedback and verification.

I'm sure this saga isn't over yet, but at least there's hope in sight now, and the government is working to replace its previous mistake (which was really just a knee-jerk reaction to another previous mistake).

Tags: e-voting, voting kiosks, electronic voting machines, florida

US Government bars Ciber, Inc. from testing e-voting kiosks

Like many, I'm still a bit suspicious of electronic voting machines, and in particular those which don't require (or allow) the generation of a verifiable paper trail (e.g. a receipt). To help ensure that the voting kiosks are secure, reliable and tamperproof, the federal government contracts with a number of 3rd party companies whose job it is to verify that the machine works as advertised, and that they meet the different security rules and requirements. However, as the New York Times notes, one of these contractors, Ciber, Inc. has just been barred from certifying these devices after officials found that it was not, "following its quality-control procedures and could not document that it was conducting all the required tests." The article notes,

Ciber, the largest tester of the nation’s voting machine software, says it is fixing its problems and expects to gain certification soon.

Experts say the deficiencies of the laboratory suggest that crucial features like the vote-counting software and security against hacking may not have been thoroughly tested on many machines now in use.

“What’s scary is that we’ve been using systems in elections that Ciber had certified, and this calls into question those systems that they tested,” said Aviel D. Rubin, a computer science professor at Johns Hopkins.

I'd agree that's pretty scary. The rest of the article can be found here.

Tags: voting kiosks, e-voting, self-service