Forum:A Proposal for an Electronic Voting System
From Campaigns Wikia
Technology should first be applied to the aspects of traditional voting that have proved problematic.
One area is in the balloting process, in which the voters record their wishes on paper or cardboard ballots. Ballots are sometimes completed incorrectly and are sometimes tossed entirely due to various problems.
A computer, perhaps a PC, could present the options to the voter, allow the voter to specify his or her choices and then record those choices on the ballot. All of the various rules could be enforced in the software. A ballot would not be released to the voter until it qualified to be counted.
At voting time, a unique ballot code could be generated using the voter's name, his or her social security number and a password selected by the voter. This would be encoded into the ballot and into a receipt for the voter.
Once a ballot is released to the voter, along with a receipt bearing the unique ballot code, the voter should be able to take the paper ballot over to a completely different machine, perhaps even manufactured by a different company, and confirm what was encoded on the ballot. This is an unnecessary step, really, but would build confidence in the system.
Then the ballot could be given to the poll workers as is ordinarily the case or it could be placed by the voter into a machine that would transmit it to the central office. The paper ballot would be retained in case there is a need to recount the ballots.
Sampling could be done with these retained ballots to confirm the accuracy of the electronic transmission of each ballot.
Another area where technology might be useful is in allowing voters to verify that their ballots where counted.
At any time, the voter should be able to check over the Internet that the ballot was counted using the unique ballot code. How the voter voted would not be visible, only whether the voter's selections was counted.
In addition, the voter should be able to go to the central office and view an electronic representation of the ballot by presenting the unique ballot code and identification. The name of the user, his or her social security number and the same password selected by the voter on election day can be used to validate that individual is authorized to see the ballot. The voter would have to remember the password in order to see his ballot again later.
Other than the date, no data should be stored with the ballot at the central office. A system at the office could use the voter information and the date to regenerate the code. If it matches the code recorded for the ballot, the voter would be allowed to view the ballot.
These mechanisms for confirming that one's vote was counted and for being able to view one's vote should go a long way towards increasing confidence in the system, while still protecting voter privacy.
It would be useful if there were one publicly funded open source project for software AND hardware for such a system. Hopefully commodity PCs, card readers and encoders will suffice. This would keep things transparent and avoid duplication of efforts. Open source is working in the private sector; with some adaptation, it can work in the public sector as well.
[edit] Problems with Electronic Voting
The major problem pointed out by people like Bruce Schneier with electronic voting systems is that implementing a voting system at all is a hard problem. According to Schneier, a voting system should be accurate, anonymous, scalable, and fast. It's easy to see how an electronic voting system can have the last two, but the first two have turned out to be pretty hard in practice.
In order to both be accurate and be perceived to be accurate, a voting system should be transparent in how it operates and auditable; someone should be able to check the results by completely independent means. Many electronic voting systems in use today give the user no printed or otherwise separate record of their votes; they must simply trust that what they see on the screen is what's actually recorded on their card and transmitted to the vote counting place. In most cases all that can be done to recount votes is to run the exact same counting program a second time with the same data.
Security is also a major problem. Several systems in use today have turned out to be fairly easy to tamper with. This issue is componded by the further risk of computer hacking if the ballods results are then transfered online as results can be intercepted in midstream. Add that to the fact that people simply don't trust blatantly pro-Republican companies like Diebold to produce a trustworthy system, and you end up with an electoral system that people simply don't perceive as legitimate.
It is possible to implement an electronic voting system that has all the properties required of voting systems, but it is not an easy task and the governments and companies tasked with deploying these systems simply don't seem to have the incentives to implement these properties.
[edit] Solution to Electronic Voting
Step 1 (Security/Storage/Accuracy): Central, singular database system to record and count input data. Physical access allowed only to federal authorities (US Marines/Secret Service guarding system as they guard the President) to prevent tampering.
Step 2 (Access/Accuracy): Web-based application for entering votes, encrypted, and login required, uniquely identifying the voter (Voter ID/SSN/etc) Before vote is submitted, review form displays to user their selections so they may verify them before submission. After submission, user can print out their selections. Web-based system allows for any user to vote from the privacy of their own home, or from any local library where non-computer users will be allowed priority access to vote on voting day.
Step 3 (Accuracy/Verification): At any time, any user may log in to system and verify their entries against their printed copy.
