[TriLUG] OT: OpenVote

Rick DeNatale rick.denatale at gmail.com
Wed Jan 4 20:56:48 EST 2006


On 1/4/06, Tanner Lovelace <clubjuggler at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/4/06, sholton at mindspring.com <sholton at mindspring.com> wrote:

> > What if the
> > machine correctly records each vote until the curtain is opened,
> > then prints up a few for Candidate A while no one is looking...
>
> This would actually be much easier in the Diebold system than
> the one I was envisioning, but there are several methods to guard
> against this too.  The first is that you keep a count of the number
> of voters that actually vote and compare the totals to that.  If the
> totals are over the count, you've got a problem.  You could even
> keep a count at the little desk where they check off your name
> when you come in.  This wouldn't involve a computer at all and
> so wouldn't be hackable that way. (And if you have multiple people
> keep count, etc... it would guard against one person skewing the
> numbers too).

Actually, the Leon county hack/test showed that it's unnecessary to
add unbalanced vote, even in an optical scan system in which the
original voter documents are retained, the total vote count was
unchanged, only the results changed.

The real problem is that, because we and the election boards value
swift vote counting so highly, trust is placed in the electronic vote
counts and independent counting of either the original voting forms
(if they exist) or paper audit trail records RARELY takes place.
Recounts normally are done first using the same methods as the
original count, and only in rare cases, manually.  In the case of a
DRE system, too much of the, potentially compromised, componentry is
also involved in recounts.

The fix to this lies not in technology, but in election law reform.

> Secondly, you could have the voter take the printed ballot and
> physically place it in a different box, just like you do now with
> current optical scan machines.  Heck, even if you do place it
> in an optical scan machine, that would be fine.  Have the machine
> doing the votes print out the ballot in a machine readable font
> and have the scan machine read it from there.  That would
> save the cost of printing up ballots beforehand.

But the costs of the hardware and programming would likely more than compensate.


--
Rick DeNatale

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