Electronic Voting

[NorthoftheLee]

1 would you prefer electronic voting
2 would you prefer manual voting
3 dont care either way (maybe other options could be added).

1. would you prefer electronic voting with no ticker trail
2. would you prefer a verified and completely tested electronic voting system with the ability for a ticker trail
3. would you prefer manual voting
4. dont care either way

[dahamsta]

That is a real poll. I'm the Foot.ie Minister for Environment and Local Government and I'm responsible for implementing polling across the Foot.ie website. I contracted this poll out to a third-party and they implemented it for me here on Foot.ie. I trust this third-party implicitly and I'm convinced that the poll was conducted fairly and impartially.

The system was fully tested by another third-party, who examined 1/3 of the source code and hardware that is now deprecated and will no longer be used. Furthermore, they will be asked to test the system again shortly, even though the system that will be used in the next poll will be completely different.

However, if you feel that the poll is incorrect in some way, please let me know and I'll be happy to do another recount.

It's Easier For Everyone!

(It's certainly easier for me!)

adam

[the 12 th man]

wait for it,wait for it!!!!:D

[pete]

People who campaign for the right to spoil a vot e are the same people who choose voter 'Don't Know' on polls. Nobody ever said elections were about voting for the person who represents you - its all about voting for the best person from the options presented. I might not like candidates A, B, C & D but maybe I would prefer candidate B instead of any of the others...

:rolleyes:

Sure if people don't like the electronic voting they can always vote against the govt as a protest ;)

[Macy]

Despite Cullen being the most pig ignorant dick in Government (can't believe he left the PD's tbh) and his opinions on donations, I don't necessarily think he's corrupt. However, having the Director of Elections implementing a new voting system is ridiculous...

btw I'm sure Soc will stick up for you too...

[SÓC]

Originally posted by Macy
Despite Cullen being the most pig ignorant dick in Government (can't believe he left the PD's tbh) and his opinions on donations, I don't necessarily think he's corrupt. However, having the Director of Elections implementing a new voting system is ridiculous...

btw I'm sure Soc will stick up for you too...

Maybe they'll put a 'I hate FF and Cork, I should have the right to spoil my vote' button on it just for you Macy.

Macy you should know how these things work.

Minister says he wants electronic voting. Civil Servants do all the planning, preparations etc. Minister comes back a few months later to smile with the pretty girls.

You boys give the impression that the minisiter sits there with the source code late at night laughing like Side Show Bob. Him being Director for Elections for FF is a private matter. Would it matter if he was gay and introducing sexual equality legislation?

The system works on the basis that the people elect the TDs who they believe will repersent their view in the programmes for Government. There has to be an element of trust in politics of else you'd just have anarachy.

Re: Software. Is there any way of safely testing software so?

[dahamsta]

Originally posted by SÓCcfc
Minister says he wants electronic voting. Civil Servants do all the planning, preparations etc. Minister comes back a few months later to smile with the pretty girls.It works both ways though:

Minister says he wants electronic voting because he knows it can be manipulated, and manipulation cannot be proven because there is no independent audit trail.

I'm not suggesting that this is the case, simply that it's not simply the case of "the Minister says he wants electronic voting". The fact alone that a €90m project has been pushed through so quickly raises all sorts of questions.

You boys give the impression that the minisiter sits there with the source code late at night laughing like Side Show Bob.

Cullen wouldn't know source code if it came up and bit him on the arse, and no-one is suggesting anything of the sort. People are simply trying to demonstrate potential conflicts of interest. The issue here is the security of the system as a whole, which has not been proven. Sure there are worries that someone (and not just Fianna Fáil either, Nedap/Powervote is in an even more favourable position, as is Tony O'Reilly and his ilk) may try to manipulate elections, but the possibility of error is just as powerful.

Him being Director for Elections for FF is a private matter. Would it matter if he was gay and introducing sexual equality legislation?

If the legislation gave a massive tax break to homosexuals, even for very good reason, then yes it would. A conflict of interest is a conflict of interest, no matter how righteous the situation, and not being able to see that is blinkered. The conflict should be judged primarily on potential, and the potential here is enormous. He should have stood down as FF DE when he became the Minister.

The system works on the basis that the people elect the TDs who they believe will repersent their view in the programmes for Government. There has to be an element of trust in politics of else you'd just have anarachy.

Of course there has to be an element of trust, however dozens and dozens of technologists have come out against this. Not respecting their opinion is much akin to Liam Murphy's (???) comments about City fans a year or two ago, that they haven't a clue about football. Everyone came out in righteous indignation when that happened -- this is the same thing. Moreover, the only technologists that have come out for the system, the people that tested it, didn't actually test it fully.

Re: Software. Is there any way of safely testing software so?

Yes. But it takes more than a second of review per line of source code, you need to see /all/ of the source code, and you can't change the source code half way through. Moreover, you'd express concerns if the software was going to be run on a deprecated operating system, and you'll be a little bit worried if the data was going into a Microsoft Access database with only a password for security. All that's before we even get to the hardware...

I see a lot of people defending this, but I have yet to come across a valid argument in favour of the system technologically. People can yak about spolied votes and time-saving all they want, but when the security of the system is in doubt by people that truly /understand/ systems, it's time to sit back and take stock.

By the way, here's another one for you: Cullen and his cronies have been saying that there will be "significant savings in staff costs at counting stage", which is absolutely true. However when taken as a whole, the extra person required to operate the machines will result in an extra 2000 man-days being required to run an election.

adam

[yur man]

i trust the tek people before the advocates of the new system. and as we all know, computer crashes are often unrecoverable. that wud freak me out if my vote was lost

i wud prefer a bit of paper to punch a whole in and have them electronically read it. it wud be a good balance between the old and new ways. but also have a better system than in florida for spoiled votes

what wud be wrong with the machine givin a signal that it read the vote ok. if not then the person cud get a new votin paper

[John83]

Up to 18 counties asked to add safeguards
Wednesday, February 18, 2004 Posted: 1629 GMT (12:29 AM HKT)

SACRAMENTO, California (AP) -- Two weeks before California's presidential primary, a group alleging widespread security holes in electronic voting machines has asked a judge to make counties install new safeguards.

linkey (http://edition.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/02/18/elec04.voting.machines.ap/index.html)

[Peadar]

Originally posted by John83
Two weeks before California's presidential primary, a group alleging widespread security holes in electronic voting machines

Their machines are online and therefore it's possible to dial into them. The machines in Ireland are stand-alone.
It is possible to have a receipt printer attached which could facilitate the paper trail that most people agree is necessary.

[Peadar]

Originally posted by Peadar
It is possible to have a receipt printer attached which could facilitate the paper trail .

The Minister seems to be against this...

"The Department of the Environment has ruled out the possibility of the Government altering its electronic voting plans to provide a paper record of every vote cast."

Full story BreakingNews.ie (http://breakingnews.ie/2004/02/24/story135660.html)

[EireBadBoy]

Does this link help at all??

Black Box Voting (http://www.blackboxvoting.org/presskit.html)

[Éanna]

Originally posted by Macy
My biggest problem is that there is no secret way of spoiling your paper. Add a "None of the Above" option then I'll generally be happy.
Yeah thats my main concern with it alright. Suppose just bring in a jug of water and pour it in the machine- that should spoil the ****in thing :)

[max power]

just don't vote...thats a nice easy way...or as a newspaper cartoon said at the weekend , vote with your feet and kick the sh*t out of the voting machine

[Shed End John]

Read in the Ireland on Sunday that Microsoft (makers of the system) reckon it won't hold up under the volume of votes to be cast. On the other hand, it will end the week long counts/recounts, which can only be a good thing.

[max power]

if a cash register can process 100,000 plus in sales in a day why can't one of these machines do their job correctly ????

its not bloody rocket science, its a record of what button i pressed ????

[Shed End John]

Originally posted by max power
if a cash register can process 100,000 plus in sales in a day why can't one of these machines do their job correctly ????


Ah, but that's €100k in sales, not 100k seperate transactions. Apparently, Microsoft reckon that their database package wasn't meant to be used in such fashion.

[max power]

what package is used in france/germany to process 60/70 million votes and has anyone been to germany to overlook their system in action ???

every polling station knows the maxium number of people that will be voting there, then should we not not know the maxium number of people that will be using the machine ???

[dahamsta]

It's not entirely clear which posts you're replying to max power. Or are you just ranting in general? You'll need to be more specific about the thread if you want people to address your comments.

adam

[John83]

Originally posted by dahamsta
It's not entirely clear which posts you're replying to max power. Or are you just ranting in general? You'll need to be more specific about the thread if you want people to address your comments.
He's on my ignore list, so it doesn't matter how specific he is to the point. :)

[max power]

if i'm on johns ignore list how ddi he reply to a post i did in another thread, is that sheep, pig no no its bullsh*t i smell..

adam i was just wondering from what i heard on the news about germany/france doing in relation to e voting, i was not replying to any post in general.....


on the machine thing i was stating that each polling station has a list of voters and know the maxium amount of voters that will turn up, therefore it should be known the maxium number of votes a machine will have to process ??? not near 3,000,000....a couple of thousand i'd say ?????

[pete]

AFAIK the only MS s/w used is the Access Database.

Access is fine for the local butchers stock keeping ot whatever but I just don't trust 15 year old dutch s/w than hasn't dumped Access & moved with the times.

[dahamsta]

if i'm on johns ignore list how ddi he reply to a post i did in another thread, is that sheep, pig no no its bullsh*t i smell..

Don't get dragged into flame wars please. If you don't want to talk to each other, don't talk to each other. Adulthood is a wonderful thing.

adam i was just wondering from what i heard on the news about germany/france doing in relation to e voting, i was not replying to any post in general.....

What were you wondering? If they're using Nedap/Powervote is it? Who cares? We're talking about the Irish system, which is substantially different to any other system because of our PR-STV voting system (the code for which was written not in Holland, but in the UK).

on the machine thing i was stating that each polling station has a list of voters and know the maxium amount of voters that will turn up, therefore it should be known the maxium number of votes a machine will have to process ??? not near 3,000,000....a couple of thousand i'd say ?????

The reason I don't get this one is that there doesn't seem to be a point. Are you trying to say extra votes will prove that the voting machines are working? (I'm not being smart, I just don't get you.)

adam

[dahamsta]

Originally posted by pete
AFAIK the only MS s/w used is the Access Database.The operating system on the machines is Windows 98.

adam

[SÓC]

Does this system differ greatly from the one used in the last election in Dublin and Meath?

Dont remember hearing any problems with that one, well at least not technicial problems. They thought that the prodecure took away the excitment and stuff but still cant remeber any big fuss about it?

[dahamsta]

It's not useless Conor. At its most basic, it's a security mechanism for democracy. If anything should be secure, it's the ballot. Without VVAT, the ballot is simply not secure.

adam

[pete]

Originally posted by dahamsta
The operating system on the machines is Windows 98.

adam

LOL, & there was me thinking having Access bad enough on its own.

If the people "organising" this e-vote thing idiotic enough to use win 98 (dear god why???) as opposed to the so much more reliable win 2000 (not all MS products sh!te) then how can anyone trsut they know what they doing....

[Schumi]

:D I was wondering when someone would do that.

[John83]

Originally posted by dahamsta
if i'm on johns ignore list how ddi he reply to a post i did in another thread, is that sheep, pig no no its bullsh*t i smell..

Don't get dragged into flame wars please. If you don't want to talk to each other, don't talk to each other. Adulthood is a wonderful thing.
Simple, I clicked on the "view post anyway" (or whatever it's actually called) button.

None intended Adam. Out of sight, out of mind.

I have to back up the Windows 98 point - wtf are they doing? Even 95 would be better. I'm going to get disenfranchised when the bloody machine crashes on polling day.:(

[johnlambe]

Originally posted by Conor74
Checking a paper trail will mean, because of the STV system, that we NEVER get an accurate number of votes as, because of the random selection of votes in the transfer process, it is unlikely that the paper system will choose exactly the same votes as the machine.


You do not necessarily have to count all the VVAT paper ballots - you only have to compare them to the electronic record, one machine at a time (except that when there are very few votes cast on some machines, the votes from a few machines should be combined, for privacy reasons).

See http://evoting.jlambe.com/recommend/vvat.html.
(Here, I suggest procedures for conducting this comparison).

Since you would only be comparing a few hundred votes at a time, it is easy to get it right, and if a mistake is made in comparing them, you check them again until either they are found to match or it is clear that they do not match - after rechecking, you only have an unexplained discrepancy if the votes were actually recorded incorrectly.

Once the paper ballots have been compared to the electronic record, anyone could use count the published electronic list of votes themselves (using free open-source software, for example).

The solution to the random selection (for transfer of surplus) problem is simple: don't use random selection.
Random selection was used only because using pure PR-STV (which involves transferring fractions of votes, instead of randomly selecting votes) is complicated to do manually.
Using random selection makes no sense in an electronic system and the government intend to use pure PR-STV in the electronic system at a later stage anyway.

[brendy_éire]

Thought this was funny enough:

http://www.1mho.com/evoting/

[John83]

Originally posted by brendy_éire
Thought this was funny enough:

http://www.1mho.com/evoting/
:D Like it.

:eek: What if it's real?







;)