Maryland Testing E-Voting System That Lets People Verify Their Votes Counted

from the experimenting-away dept

For many years, David Chaum has been pushing for a voting system that he claims will be a lot more reliable. Basically, after you vote, you get a coded number, and then after the election, you can go to an election website, punch in your code and make sure that your vote counted, and was for whom you meant to vote. On top of this, there's a system for auditors to check to make sure that votes were counted accurately, with information released publicly so people can "audit" the election without being able to connect voters to their votes. This system tends to generate a lot of controversy (though some of it appears to be from people who just don't like David Chaum, rather than because they really have a problem with his system). However, the system hasn't been really tested in an actual US election... until now. The municipal elections in Takoma Park, Maryland used the system, despite the state recently signing a big deal with Diebold. It's not clear how the overall election went yet -- or how many people actually checked their votes online (approximately 30% in an exit poll said they copied down the code). However, it's good to see that some gov'ts are not just accepting what the big e-voting firms give them, and are willing to explore more sophisticated voting systems that aren't based on pure faith in the e-voting company to get the system right.

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How Not To Connect With Fans: Let Them Vote And Then Ignore The Vote

from the nice-going-kiss dept

Someone who prefers to remain anonymous sends in this example of how the band KISS tried and failed (miserably) in its attempt to "connect with fans." Apparently the band held an online contest to get fans to vote for where KISS would perform -- calling it the "You Demand It Tour." Well, people voted, and the second largest vote getter was Manchester, New Hampshire. So what happened? The band ignored the vote and booked a show in Boston instead. In response, some local radio folks are starting a petition to try to get the band to actually live up to its promise to go where fans demanded:

Three months ago - when KISS launched their "You Demand It Tour", Buzz Lumpa's jumped all over it in an effort to bring KISS back to the Verizon Wireless Arena. The deal was that the band would rout their tour to the cities that wanted them most - and that meant the cities that cast the most votes. Manchester NH did just that - beating out EVERY major U.S. city! We cast more votes than New York City, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and yes- Boston. Over 240 cities were vying for the band - and Manchester NH placed 2nd in the U.S.! And yet, when KISS announced their tour itinerary, Manchester NH was NOT on it. The band chose to play Boston instead. KISS lied to you.

Of course, given Gene Simmons' comments on new business models and the experiments of bands like Radiohead to better connect with fans (Simmons claimed it was killing the recording industry) perhaps this is no surprise.

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Technology Again Causes American Idol Controversy, Fingers Pointed At AT&T

from the newsworthy dept

Apparently the outcome of the latest season of American Idol caused some controversy when the contestant generally regarded as the underdog of the two finalists was crowned the winner, provoking an angry backlash from his rival's fans. Now, they're pointing the finger at AT&T, alleging it helped skew the vote. This isn't the first time telecommunications have caught this sort of flak, as it's been a regular occurrence during the show's run that people have faced jammed phone lines when they've tried to vote. But this time, it's a little different. Apparently AT&T reps were at a couple of viewing parties organized by fans of the winning contestant, Kris Allen, and brought along a bunch of phones with them -- since, of course, only people on AT&T's wireless network can vote for the show's winner via text message. Then, the reps supposedly showed people at the parties how to "power text", or send in several votes at once. It seems unlikely that the votes spawned from the two parties were enough to tip the balance in Allen's favor, but the appearance of impropriety on the part of one of the show's major sponsors may be a bit more damaging.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Chinese Gov't Computer Problems May Force Chinese Citizens To Change Names

from the funny-how-that-works dept

I have to admit that I was among those who thought it was in incredibly poor taste and somewhat offensive when a Texas lawmaker recently suggested that Asian Americans with complex names should be required to change their names to reduce confusions and problems with matching up names to voting rolls. However, now it appears that the same thing is happening in China itself. According to the NY Times, the Chinese government is forcing people to change their names in an effort to modernize its own ID database. Apparently, the computer system being used can't handle some of the rarer Chinese characters, even though such characters are popular among some families as a way to give their children a distinct identity. It still seems in poor taste and somewhat offensive, but still somewhat fascinating to compare the two stories.

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Kentucky Election Officials Arrested For Changing Votes On E-Voting Machines

from the security... dept

While there have been plenty of conspiracy theories over the years concerning e-voting machines, none have been particularly compelling. The evidence looked like plenty of incompetence, with buggy machines that had huge security flaws that could be exploited -- but we hadn't heard of any cases of anyone actually being caught tampering with or trying to tamper with votes. That isn't to say it didn't happen. It's possible that it happened and the perpetrators weren't caught -- but it's a big leap from it "could" happen, to it "did" happen. So, most of our coverage here has been very much on the bugs and the flaws, rather than any of the conspiracy theories that floated around.

However, it appears that a group of Kentucky election officials, the circuit court judge and the county clerk, were arrested for changing votes in various elections between 2002 and 2006 on e-voting machines. The details suggest that there were two parts to the vote changing. First, there was traditional vote buying -- where they paid people to vote in a certain way. However, the second involved actually changing voters' votes on ES&S e-voting machines.

It didn't involve any hacking or direct security flaws -- but the elections officials made use of the confusing user interface and process of the e-voting machines to trick voters into leaving before their votes had been cast. That's because there's a "vote" button, that some people (silly them!) assumed meant they actually voted. Nope. It turns out that just gets you to a page to review your vote and then confirm it. However, these elections officials told people that once they hit vote they had voted -- and were then able to go in and change the actual votes.

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Optical Scan Voting Shown To Be Very Accurate In Minnesota Election

from the vote-here dept

We've had so many different stories about problems with e-voting machines and optical scan ballot counting machines, that it's at least worth acknowledging when those machines appear to have actually done their job reasonably well (though, not perfectly). Andrew Appel notes that the hand recount done in Minnesota for the Senatorial election there gave us a chance to look at how well some optical scan machines did, and he suggests they did extremely well, with a net accuracy at 99.99% and a gross accuracy of 99.91%. Of course... both of those numbers mean that the number of ballots incorrectly recorded could have swung the election in one way or another, given the minuscule margin between the two candidates.

Either way, the fact that the machines can be somewhat accurate is hardly up for debate. The issue is about whether or not we know they are accurate, and have mechanisms to easily go back and verify that they're accurate and secure. And, it's on those two issues that e-voting companies are way behind in fulfilling.

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The Real All-Star Action's In The Voting

from the game-on dept

Pro sports' all-star games tend to be pretty tepid affairs, but more and more fans are taking the voting for the games seriously -- perhaps a little too seriously. Once upon a time, I remember that you had to actually go to a major-league baseball game to be able to vote for the all-star team, and ballot-stuffing meant grabbing as many paper ballots as you could find and punching out the baseball-shaped chads for your favorite players. But with leagues expanding voting online and to mobile phones, electronic ballot-stuffing is getting much easier, and becoming much more commonplace. The latest incident involves the Montreal Canadiens hockey team, which is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. Fans decided a fitting way to celebrate would be to have an all-Canadiens starting lineup at the all-star game, so they put their automated-voting scripts to work.

This irked Pittsburgh Penguins fans, as it would keep the league's two leading scorers -- both Penguins, natch -- off the ice for the start of the game. So the Penguins encouraged their fans to vote via text message, which lets fans vote for all of a team's players at once, to great effect: the two players in question now rank 1 and 2 in voting. The NHL has already tossed out a large number of votes placed by the automated scripts, and beefed up its protections against them. While the leagues are obviously looking to expand the pool of all-star voters, particularly to international fans, they need to take great care to protect the integrity of the voting process. Even though most fans would probably agree that, in the grand scheme of things, the all-star games are good for little more than a laugh, their apathy is easily turned to outrage when they feel like their favorite team or player's been shortchanged. Also, anything that further undermines the games' value in fans' eyes could hamper their value to the leagues as money-spinners, a lesson worth learning for any company that does online voting. One possible solution: have Diebold run the all-star voting, since it seems like they might lose plenty of votes anyway.

Carlo Longino is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Oh Look: Even More Lost Votes By Diebold/Premier

from the counting-votes-is-soooo-hard dept

Following last week's revelation of votes lost in California thanks to Premier (better known as Diebold) and its voting equipment, The Register points us to even more votes lost by Premier/Diebold machines in Ohio. Again, it was only because of a special, rare, spot check, which isn't commonly done with these machines, that the lost votes were noticed. And, as usual, Diebold... er... Premier downplayed the discovery:

"We have not seen this particular condition anywhere else in Ohio or anywhere else in the country."

Is it really that difficult for the company to admit that it screwed up? For quite some time now, pretty much every investigation and every more detailed look at any kind of e-voting equipment have turned up similar failures. For the company to brush it off because it hasn't seen "this particular condition" anywhere else is ridiculous. It does make you wonder, though, why anyone would ever buy such equipment and use it in an actual election.

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How Come There Aren't More Technologists On The Board Setting Voting Tech Standards?

from the questions,-questions,-questions dept

Ed Felten raises a rather important question concerning the lack of knowledgeable computer scientists or other voting technology experts on the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) Board of Advisors. As Felten notes, the EAC is in charge of setting voting technology standards, and four slots (out of 39) on the board are specifically allocated for "members representing professionals in the field of science and technology." Already, only 4 out of 39 seats seems rather low, considering how important the technology choices are -- but it's even worse when the people filling those slots aren't actually technologists. Yes, Felten points out that three of the four slots are held by folks who are:

accomplished people who have something to offer on the board. But as far as I can tell they are not "professionals in the field of science and technology," so their appropriate positions on the board would be somewhere in the other thirty-five seats.

So, basically, as it stands, the group in charge of setting voting tech standards appears to have only one technologist on board, and that person, Barbara Simons, was only recently appointed.

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