French Voting Machines a "Catastrophe" 259
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."
So all the parties that polled badly (Score:5, Insightful)
In Soviet Russia... (Score:1, Insightful)
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.
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)
Re:No to voting machines. (Score:2, Insightful)
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]
Re:So all the parties that polled badly (Score:2, Insightful)
They're not even faster! (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Re:So all the parties that polled badly (Score:4, Insightful)
Any electronic voting procedure (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I don't see the problem... (Score:1, Insightful)
- Have you ever had any problem with touchscreen in public places (ATM, ticketing machines)?
I'm thinking lag, unresponsiveness, and so on. If you're 65 and you don't have much contact with technology, no wonder it becomes difficult to use.
- If you go the way of removing the right to vote to seniors, where do draw the line? Only people still working deserves the right to vote?
- Also, do you realize that most of the people ruling your country are elder people?
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 basic knowledge in counting.
Schools are obligatory up until some ge in most European juridiction per law.
Thus, the needed skills to supervise the voting procedure are supposed to be acquired by anyone of age above 4 to 7 y.o.
The machines used in Inda, although everything has been done to make them tamper proof, can't be controlled by anyone that has successfully gone through basic school.
Because of this, they would fail the requirement of being available to public scrutiny even if they run OSS on open hardware, because only a samll portion of the public would be able to understand them.
The solution would be :
- either wait a couple of decades until computer are so pervasive that any 7 y.o. can learn to understand them...
- or we find some "magical" procedure that can be understood and controlled by anyone who went through basic school education.
On the other hand, the situation in India seems different, not only according to the article, several region have too much illiterate (which would unable them to check the votes), it even looks like that some information *has to be hidden* by law : according to the article there have been controversies because the politician could obtain regional statistics based on the results of individual EVM.
(Which is something normal in most of Europe because the counting happens in the voting places [in order to be controllable by the voters] and the results are transmitted to the central counting, along with the ballot for archival purpose, in case a recount is ordered)
Strangely enough, in Switzerland here in the middle of Europe, it is possible to vote by mail (thus putting your identifying voter card and the envelope with your vote inside the *same* package, and then trust a *third party* organisation [the *national* mail service] to transmit the package to the central counting place, where you *trust* the people to check your identity and put the vote-envelope in the urn without peeking what you vote) and nobody has any problem with the level of trust that this procedures has, *BUT* everyone is picky about the security of electronic voting.
Re:So all the parties that polled badly (Score:3, Insightful)
But this trend seems to be democrat areas being under suplied in with the sediment of democrat voters being disenfranchised by the republicans. I don't see the republicans being responsible for all of them and quite frankly, the democrats are behind the majority of them. I'm having to wonder if foul play isn't behind this but not in the way commonly being suggested.
It almost seems as if the democrats are doing this on purpose to make excuses for not doing well in the elections and at the same time firing up the base to get out and vote. I think there is more to this then the republicans screwed the democrats. and this is especially clear when the democrats were in charge of some of the areas they are complaining about. What do your think?
Re:French dictionary (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Conflict of interest (Score:1, Insightful)
Computers can be reliable, they are used routinely for tasks where safety is important (like nuclear power plants or banking transactions). However there are no conflict of interest: the guys who run a nuclear plant have a clear interest in not blowing it, the banks who run a online banking site have a clear interest in making it secure and trying to protect their customers from third-party attacks, phising, etc.
Furthermore in France the citizens don't have access to the specs of the voting machines (safety by secrecy...) which is outrageous.
The paper ballot is the only process that citizens can trust, because it is simple, the citizens themselves count the votes and they control every single step of the procedure.
Last but not least, those machines are exceedingly expensive and a waste of taxpayer's money.
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?
Re:bad UI (Score:3, Insightful)
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 difficult.
I'm not too terribly concerned about the occasional voter who needs help. I am worried about a voting system so unsecure that somebody with minimal knowledge of microsoft access can jigger the system.
*The universe keeps making better idiots, after all.
Re:Why is it.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Take a look at the history of UK government IT procurement for far more proof than you ever needed that the benefits of "computerisation" are a mirage that disappears in a mass of requirement changes, scope creep, poorly understood specs, broken code, inadequate project management and above all, thousands and thousands of people whose mortgage payments depend on them not mentioning that the Emperor is naked.
I ask this on every eVoting story that appears on Slashdot, I never get an answer. Why on earth would you WANT to replace a bit of paper and a pencil, with a computer? If you think the latter must obviously be better than the former in some way... you're either an idiot, or you haven't thought about the problem properly, or you have a vested interest.
Re:Why is it.... (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, if it IS a real problem: change your system so that you don't have dozens of candidates. There's no need for it. In the US they elect lots of civil servants (judges, school boards and the like); that's potty, to me, but if they really insist on it, run them as separate races. (After all, during the main elections you only get to hear about national issues anyway.) Or give our multiple ballot papers to each elector.
Next!
Next!
I don't know about Belgium, but here in the UK polling stations close at 10pm on the evening of the ballot; exit polls are out in the next half hour, and are usually fairly accurate (though our weird non-proportional system can keep things unexpectedly interesting, thus making the once-every-four-years ritual of election night parties actually FUN and INTERESTING! :) Generally the outcome is clear by 2am, and the second-placed party has conceded defeat by 3am or 4am at the latest. A few especially large consistuencies don't finish their count until the following day (I believe the Scottish Western Isles constituency is the geographically largest, and consists of LOTS of islands scattered over a large distance - check the map.) There are only three or four such constituencies and they never affect the final outcome.
Incidentally, you may be thinking "aha, but if/when you get a proper proportional system (first preference, second preference, third pref and so on) that this will slow things down.)
Now consider the advantages of this system that are lost with eVoting:
"Catastrophe?" (Score:3, Insightful)