1 / 13

Digital Democracy: A look at Voting Machines

Digital Democracy: A look at Voting Machines. Presented by Justin Dugger April 2003. Overview. Technologies Law Social Issues. Australian Ballot. Anonymous Vote Discourages Coersion Difficult Accountablility Problems Undervote (okay) Overvote (invalid) Fraud Repeat Voting

maryrlopez
Download Presentation

Digital Democracy: A look at Voting Machines

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Digital Democracy:A look at Voting Machines Presented by Justin Dugger April 2003

  2. Overview • Technologies • Law • Social Issues

  3. Australian Ballot • Anonymous Vote • Discourages Coersion • Difficult Accountablility • Problems • Undervote (okay) • Overvote (invalid) • Fraud • Repeat Voting • Chain Voting

  4. Mechanical Levers • Lever operates privacy screen • Several levers to declare votes • Mechanical odometer that tabulate pulls • Tampered to not register votes • Mechanical failures: 99 more frequent than 98 or 100 • 20.7% of registered voters in the United States in the 1996 election used levers

  5. Punch Cards • Faster than hand count • Paper jams, dimpled chads, hanging chads

  6. Optical Mark-Sense Scan • “Scantron” style ballot • Human Readable • Faster vs hand counting • Uses simple computer vision techniques • Threshold of filled pixels on bounding rectangle?

  7. Direct Recording Electronic • Records vote onto hard drive or database • No technological need for physical ballot • Example: ADV EDGE from Sequoia • Holds 500 votes max • Assistance for multilingual and disabled voters • “Proprietary firmware on closed system prevents hacker access” • “Ballots can be printed to accommodate hand recounts”

  8. The Internet?!? • Vote online with a web browser • Web server subject to “flash crowds” • Brings up concerns as absentee ballots: • Influence • Vote Selling • “A secure Internet voting system is theoretically possible, but it would be the first secure networked application ever created in the history of computers. “ -Bruce Schneier

  9. Current Voting Framework • Election laws are state legislated • Generally proceeds: • Voter Registration • Election Day • Count • Certification of Vote • Machines often approved by Secretary of State for county use, who relies on ITAs.

  10. Help America Vote Act of 2002 • Funded mandate to replace voting machines in federal elections • Eliminates Lever and punch cards • Sets some general guidelines for machines • Establishes state wide voter databases • Requires NIST to organize and develop guidelines for security, privacy, usability, and remote access

  11. A Petition Against DRE • DRE machines eliminate voter audit trails • Endorsed by several computing celebrities: • Bruce Schneier • Ronald Rivest, Charles Leiserson, Ed Felton • Most of the Stanford CS faculty • Public Policy Committee of ACM • http://verify.stanford.edu/evote.html

  12. Other Issues • Open Source? Not likely. • Social Engineering • Diebold FTP was found with public access • No Background Checks • Felons not allowed to vote in most states • Monopoly? ES&S sold half US machines • Buggy? VoteHere QA engineer fired, filing wrongful termination lawsuit

  13. References • Douglas Jones, “A Brief Illustrated History of Voting.” Course notes for “Voting and Elections “ class. Accessed on April 20thwww.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/voting/picture/ • Lever Voting, FEC. Accessed on April 20th from www.fec.gov/pages/lever.htm • David Dill, Resolution on Electronic Voting verify.stanford.edu/evote.html • David Dill, Personal Communication • Ronnie Dugger, “Annals of Democracy Counting Votes.” November 7th, 1988. The New Yorker Available online at www.csl.sri.com/users/neumann/dugger.html • Current Recommended Standards: www.fec.gov/pages/vssfinal/vss.html • HAVA : www.electionline.org/site/dav/pdf/eripbrief32003.pdf • Senator Hagel Controversy: thehill.com/news/012903/hagel.aspx • Vendors: • www.sequoiavote.com • www.essvote.com • www.diebold.com • www.votehere.com • ITAs • www.wylelabs.com/ • www.ciber.com/ • www.systest.com/ita/index.html

More Related