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French Voting Machines a "Catastrophe"
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Apr 24, 2007 01:18 AM
from the nous-ne-nous-tenons-pas-dans-les-lignes dept.
from the nous-ne-nous-tenons-pas-dans-les-lignes dept.
eldavojohn writes "The electronic voting machine has soured another election. Some French voters have reportedly turned away in disgust after facing up to two hours in lines to use the machines. Further, the article reports, 'Researchers at Paul Verlaine University in Metz said that trials on two of the three machines used in France showed that four people out of every seven aged over 65 could not get their votes recorded.' This article concentrates primarily on usability and efficiency, but surprisingly mentions little (aside from user trust issues) about the security embodied in the machines or whether it was satisfactory. I think all three aspects are important to anyone aiming to produce voting machines. The manufacturer of these particular machines is France Élection."
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More Info (Score:5, Funny)
France Élection = NEDAP distributor in France (Score:5, Informative)
Those NEDAP computer are the same in use and contested in the Nederlands http://www.wijvertrouwenstemcomputersniet.nl/Engli sh [wijvertrou...ersniet.nl]We Don't Trust Voting Computer.
Those are are the same computer aquired and never used due to public pressure by the Irish (see http://evoting.cs.may.ie/ [cs.may.ie]Irish Citizens for Trustworthy Evoting).
Parent
Of course it's bad! (Score:3, Funny)
1. French (insert object name here) a Catastrophe!
2. French (insert object name here) a Fiasco!
3. French (insert object name here) a Miserable Failure!
4. French (insert object name here) Surrendered!
Why is it.... (Score:3, Funny)
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That said there have been major fights leading up to the election about the electronic voting machines with multiple law suits from some parties while other political parties are saying they are great and bringing out scientists
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[why is it] that what should be the a simple implementation in modern technology is an unmitigated train wreck?
Three reasons:
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
OK let's start with your three suggested advantages.
If the large ballots are good enough now, they're good enough for the future. Has anyone actually researched the number of people for whom this is an issue? I seriously doubt it's a significant enogugh factor to merit spending the money and taking chances with such a core process. (Where's the change control for democracy?!) There are plenty of other ways of dealing with the problem, i
So all the parties that polled badly (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So all the parties that polled badly (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-823448,
It's not the parties who polled badly which complain, it's the electors. I am a Sarkosy elector (polled nice, thanks), and I can tell you I'm not happy with the queuing.
I'll just translate the last phrase from the article:
A 20 h 45, les derniers électeurs du bureau 5 font encore la queue derrière la grille. Les derniers ne verront pas le soleil se coucher.
At 8 45 PM [poll supposedly closed at 8], the last voters from poll place 5 are still queuing behind the closed doors. The last ones will not see the sun set.
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Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
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Re:So all the parties that polled badly (Score:4, Insightful)
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Of course, part of that was due to the clearly rigged nature of the voting machine shortages (Democratic neighborhoods in Ohio, etc.), rather than just the fact of (unconscionably) long waits.
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But this trend seem
Possible non-technical explanation for queues? (Score:5, Interesting)
Thats the problem with elections... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Possible non-technical explanation for queues? (Score:5, Informative)
Our polling station still uses paper ballots, so the time it took depended on the turnout & not on any machines. As we let everyone vote who was in line at 8 PM, we had to wait until 10 PM to start counting. While waiting, I asked the president of the polling station what the average time was. His answer: 90 minutes on average.
A +2 hour wait was not exceptional.
The major time consumer when waiting is, as always, the verification of the voting rolls which is done by reading a long listing of registered voters. It can take them up to a minute to find your name when you forgot your voters registration card.
As there is no paper trail & the code is not open sourced I wouldn't want to use the machines they used in the areas around Paris where they used electronic voting machines. However, the wait had nothing to do with their use or non-use.
Parent
if it's hard to use (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously, developers of security-related software often neglect usability, either making their systems insecure because people just disable or work around security, or making their systems unusable by many people.
Security? (Score:2)
No to voting machines. (Score:5, Insightful)
Democracy works when free elections can be held and its results checked by any common citizen.
I don't know in the US, but in Europe, any participant in the elections has the right to a representative in all the pooling stations. Any common person can count the votes and confirm its results. When voting machines exist there's no real way for this kind of direct check.
First, because even if the code is open source, only programmers can check it. This is unfair to any other kind of citizen.
Second, popular participation. The mobilization of thousands of people in election days, counting the votes is a blessing and a grant of democracy. I've been a representative in several elections and I tell you, people enjoy being there helping and feel proud of it.
Democracy is the power of the people not the machines.
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It is unfair that only the mathematicians can check the counting.
It is unfair that only the literate can read the ballot.
Perhaps programming should be taught in public schools.
Oh wait.
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Re:No to voting machines. (Score:4, Informative)
The old system was simple and foolproof when it came to counting etc. Take an envelope, one vote bulletin from each candidate, go in the voting booth, put the bulletin you want in the envelope, then you just held in above the slot while the guy pulls the lever and let it fall in.
The box was locked and made of transparent plastic.
Then to count the votes, they enlisted volunteers (people at your local voting facility often nagged you to come help after the poll, so it wasn't exclusive in any way shape or form) to count the votes.
Unlike the old american system with punch cards, counting the votes was easy and straightforward, and performed by humans.
Double checking the counts by recounting the piles of the various bulletins was also easy.
Given all that, I fail to see why they felt the need to move to electronic vote, which is much harder to get right, and can never get as transparent.
Anyone can understand how counting papers work and how the design of the old system was secure, whereas with an electronic system, you have to be a computer scientist with some knowledge of computer and network security to have a chance to know if it's secure.
And even then, you can't assess if the actual system is deployed in a secure way just by looking at the physical installation.
Parent
What are the benefits of these machines? (Score:4, Interesting)
What is the TCO of these things anyway? These machines are used maybe once a year. Will they still work in ten years down the line? Lots of motherboards don't due to failing CMOS batteries for example. It seems to me that given the rapid pace of changes in the field of computing and networking, it would be very difficult to maintain such a system over decades. Do voting machines use modems? What if everybody uses VoIP and cell phones in ten years?
They're not even faster! (Score:3, Insightful)
In other words... (Score:4, Funny)
In other words, they threw up their hands and surrendered.
[Their place in line, of course.]
Quelle surprise!
Good ole way works fine thanks (Score:4, Insightful)
My cousin, in another part of the country, had to vote on a machine. He protested to the head of the polling station, who laughed it off (after all, what does he know about machines, he's just an average electrical engineer), cause, you see, it's been validated by the ministry of interior.
Who's the minister of interior? Oh, that's right, that fascist hugging, Microsoft cocksucking, software patent supporting son of a motherfucking female dog (my apologies to our canine friends). [grioo.com]
Paper ballots (Score:4, Funny)
France-élections is not the manufacturer (Score:3, Informative)
Anyways, I voted on such a machine, and saw how old people had trouble using it. It is also the first time I had to wait to vote (15 minutes instead of less than one), because their was only one machine and many people had to be told how to use it.
Two of the main parties called for their removal; I hope this is going to happen.
it's really very simple (Score:5, Insightful)
check marks on a piece of paper, that can then be scanned optically, is no more complicated than voting should ever get. it's not a prolem that needs to be solved more efficiently. the more important consideration when it comes to democracy is legitimacy, trust. and if you can't feel it taste it touch it, if it's a voting machine contraption, or an electronic doodad, trust goes down
and for good reason: all voting mechanisms are prone to tampering. even with paper ballots, boxes of them can get lost, they can be scanned improperly, etc. but the point is, the more complicated the process, the more attack vectors you present. KISS: keep it simple stupid. a valuable concept in programming, a valuable concept when considering the voting process
the problem with people, especially on slashdot, is technophilia: we are always trying, almost fetishistically, to mechanize processes, even if they don't need to be. in most cases, this fetishism is harmless. but when faith in democracy is on the line, our technophilia needs to take a hike
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It's even easier than that. You have paper ballots, each bearing a single name. You choose one, put it in the provided envelope and then drop it in the (transparent) ballot box. Counting is done manually, with ballots being opened by one person, read aloud by another and checked by a third. Two independent tallies are simultaneously made, each with one person counting and one monitoring.
Is it that difficult to build a voting machine ? (Score:3, Interesting)
Probably no election in the Western world can compare with the muscle power, booth capturing and other illegitimate means used in India. A number of people are illiterate and yet there have been no concerns raised about the machine's usability.
It has been used in difficult inhospitable terrain, using batteries where electricity is not available. Perhaps the mindset needs to change to accept this new mechanism of voting.
The problem is also a legal one (Score:3, Insightful)
If you want, you as an individual can stay in the voting room to be sure that the correct procedure is followed, and then can look at the counting and check if everything went normally.
To do so, the needed skill are literacy and some basi
French dictionary (Score:5, Funny)
Here in France, a "Catastrophe" is something which is mildly irritating, like a crack in the pavement. So for example,
"Sacré bleu, c'est pas possible! Merde alors, c'est le fin de la civilisation! Il nous faut encore un révolution. Quelle catastrophe."
translates into UK English as
"Oh!"
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Tell me about it. I work for Thales in Australia. Words which are close enough to the English meaning get used enough to create all kinds of confusion. Normally is a good one. In English this refers to something which happens every morning, or every time I start my car, etc. In French it means something which should happen, regardless of if it did or not.
Why use voting machines at all? (Score:3, Insightful)
As the original article and many others show, there are lots of disadvantages though.
But there is one big advantage to the traditional paper and pencil voting that nearly never is mentioned:
Everyone can immediately understand how it works. Everyone is directly and without additional knowledge able to understand the procedure, to control it or take part in its control, and to immediately understand any tinkering or irregularities that could happen. This is not at all the case with ANY electronic system. Nearly nobody of the voters will understand the ways how the system could fail, could be manipulated etc.
I think that the traditional system where many many helpers are needed to make elections work is an actual plus: all these people are witnesses of and active contributors to the democratic process, and they are actively supporting it (at least in my country, those "election helpers" are all working on a voluntary basis).
If you replace these people by a black box, you take away an important democractic element.
Again I ask: what for?
Keep it simple, stupid (Score:3, Interesting)
"Catastrophe?" (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:bad UI (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Image:IVotronic_img_3
It looks like total crap, no wonder that people have difficulties by using it. Why in Bill's name did they start a new design for that kind of machines, ffs. we have had ATM's around for years, just stick to it, they work and people know how they work.
Parent
Re:bad UI (Score:5, Insightful)
First surprise : 30% of the people I talked to signed the petition, based on their worries about the trust one can have in the system. In these 30%, there are two categories : people with a technical background who already knew the fundamental issues and also old people, who, contrary to popular belief, weren't afraid at all of a new machine but really had a problem with trust.
I have seen a lot of this shocking belief : "If it was not secure, computer people would tell us so". So I did, but most people are ready to hand over control to a small portion of the population. I also had a discussion with an official from the mayor's office telling me that these machines were totally secure because they were not computers but totally electronic machines (which is either nonsense or plain lie)
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Re:bad UI (Score:5, Informative)
Here, too, the manufacturer said it was not a computer. An investigative group said "give us one, we will convert it to a chess-playing computer". Impossible, said the manufacturer, but denied them a demo machine. Then, they borrowed one from a municipality, and converted into a chess-playing computer. This, of course, lowered some jaws.
Furthermore, they wrote new firmware for it that manipulated the election results, and showed various different techniques for making sure this was not easily detected.
The device widely used in the Netherlands has no precautions at all against manipulation of the firmware by unauthorized parties. The operating lock is a standard C&K lock for which almost all keys are the same. I remembered having such a lock in the junkbox and indeed, its key number is the same as on the voting machines.
But the flaw most easily exploited turned out to be around vote secrecy. The electronics are so badly shielded that someone with a radio receiver within a few tens of meters can detect what vote is being made.
After the usual initial denial, it has been taken up somewhat seriously by authorities. Operational procedures for guarding the firmware have been added (like sealing of the access lid to the electronics).
Furthermore, a certain range of one type of machine and the entire series of another brand were declared unfit for use, because the emission problem could not be controlled by the manufacturer.
http://www.wijvertrouwenstemcomputersniet.nl/Engl
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To a certain extent that has always been a problem. Creating an anonymous voting system that can handle every disability from blindness, deafness, dsylexia, just plain unable to read, down to outright stupidity* without help from somebody else is very diff
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A lot of people asked me that when I proposed them to sign my petition. They told me that fraud was very old and couldn't be prevented entirely. I agree. In fact most of the frauds possible with a paper ballot are still possible with electronic machines. But now, there is another possibility to fraud : you onl
No Wonder They're Confused! (Score:2, Funny)
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Seriously! I mean it is like they put the instructions in some foreign language or something
Cordially Yours,
American
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lol, so, you just go around making Beowulf cluster jokes about anything you can? Man, you're the craziest frenchman I've ever seen, I know it, I'm french too ;-).
And the USA don't suck as much as France, are you crazy? (based on my previous comment about your mental health I guess we can consider it a rhetorical question)
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Refusing to join an armed conflict is not the same as predicting its future problems.
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Yeah. And criminals shouldn't be allowed to make decisions either, after all they aren't part of society, even 20 years after they've been released. They forfeit the right, and clearly have nothing intelligent to contribute anyways.
And for that matter, people who don't pay more than 5,000 per year in income tax shouldn't have a vote either; the people paying for government should be the ones who decide how