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."
Possible non-technical explanation for queues? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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?
Re:Correction: Manufacturer is ES&S (Score:1, Interesting)
You known, this one who believe criminality and suicide is a
genetic problem. Someone in Deutschland, just before 1936 shared the same stinky ideas.
PPDL
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.
Re:bad UI (Score:2, Interesting)
What makes you think paper ballots are more secure than computers? It's not computers that steal your votes, it's people. And the same people can steal or miscount them when using the paper version.
I worked in a vote counting team when there was a voting on whether Poland should join EU and have seen people who wanted to count vote as invalid just because someone wrote "EU SUCKS" on the ballot paper even though there was a mark in the next to "No" field and there was no mark next to "Yes" field. The directives for counting votes were clear about that - the vote is invalid only if there are no marks in the fields, there are marks in both fields, the paper sheet is physically damaged or the seal was not entirely visible. There were 7 people counting besides me and they all wanted to count the vote as invalid, I had to show them the exact quote from the manual.
With paper ballots you give the exact same power to a small portion of population - the counting team. It's all up to them. It's always up to the people.
Re:Possible non-technical explanation for queues? (Score:1, Interesting)
Compulsory voting, so basically everyone does with a 10% informal vote the norm. So I'm having trouble accepting what parent says about 2 hour waits. They're trying to justify electronic voting here too although I've no idea why, it might just be that the Chief Minister of the Australian Capital Territory is a bit weird - although he was pretty cool when I was his coffee waitress that time, and he did save that drowning guy.
Bah! Give me politics New Zealand style where dredlocked MPs show up to parliament on their skateboards and they sent out a transvestite MP to meet the Queen.
Re:Since when... (Score:1, Interesting)
ROFL!!!!! In Orwell's 1984 you ought to be a servant in charge of rewriting history. Because if there is one thing that was decided for a long time (since summer 2002 actually) by the Bush administration, this was the Iraq war. Even the British had memos about this: http://www.juancole.com/2005/05/secret-british-me
So carry on your delusional propaganda. You needed a scapegoat for fuelling your blind war-mongering (the French), why not using the same scapegoat for explaining the post-war disaster.
Re:bad UI (Score:3, Interesting)
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 only need collusion between two or three people in a private company manufacturing the machines in order to hijack votes in a whole country. I can agree to have a minimal trust in the government body organizing the elections, they are overwatched by people from a lot of different organizations, but I can't trust an IT company that does not publish any informations about their machines and that has been consistently been lying about some technical informations. Citizens should be able to certify by themselves the validity of the elections. Otherwise, it won't stay a democratic state very long.
Keep it simple, stupid (Score:3, Interesting)