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The prototype that Bederson designed, which has a touch-screen interface that makes it easy for users to zoom in and out to view the full ballot or a specific race, held its own in the comparison--a fact that Bederson takes as a sign that commercial machines need to be better designed. "This is a strong indication that the other systems need improvement," he says, noting that the prototype, which he had not studied very extensively before testing it with the other machines, had the lowest error rate for the simple task. Bederson says that the purpose of the prototype was to give the researchers two ways of studying the usability problem: by building a system from scratch, and by testing existing systems.
In spite of the usability problems, Bederson says, voters often seemed to like the touch-screen systems. He believes that the problems can and should be fixed, and that, if systems are tested and evaluated more thoroughly before being deployed, it should be possible to get the benefits of touch screens without the security and usability pitfalls.
Ted Selker, an associate professor at MIT Media Lab, who is currently working on a voting project conducted at MIT and the California Institute of Technology, says that electronic machines can be useful because they provide voters with better feedback during the process. For example, completion meters can help voters see when they have missed a section of the ballot. However, Selker also notes many problems with electronic machines' security and usability, including ballot design. Anything that makes the process more complicated can gain or lose votes accidentally, he says. Also, adding a paper trail is only helpful if poll workers know how to handle the paper properly, he says, pointing out that the paper produced must be protected and kept from tampering in its own right. Selker says that he thinks the voting process could be improved, no matter what system is used, if administrators focus on providing poll workers with training to help people use the machines, and to correctly handle sensitive information, such as a paper trail.
Whether electronic voting machines are under scrutiny for usability or security, many experts say that their design flaws call for reevaluation of the devices. Tadayoshi Kohno, an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Washington, who has studied the security of several electronic systems, says, "My feeling of the electronic-voting community is that we started walking down a dark alley, and we know that it's very dangerous. We know that at the end of the valley is a safe place. As a philosophical question, I have to ask, should we continue going down this dark alley, or should we step back and figure out some other way we want to go to safety?"
Novel voting technology will be used in a local government election.
The 2008 presidential election could be shaken by flawed electronic voting technology.
The first principle is that ballots should be readable and writable by both people and machines. Voting machines that create ballots for people are acceptable, so long as the the result is readable by the voter. Making ballots directly writable by people (e.g. with a pen or stamp) ensures that voting does not stop in the event of machine failures (including power failures). The second principle is that these ballots must be tallied securely. The ballots should be read immediately at the polling place by a machine by a first manufacturer (and not the machine that printed the ballot, if any), and the result transmitted to the central tally site. Any error reading the ballot at this stage would allow the voter to recast her ballot (this would catch both voter mistakes and ballot readability issues). The ballot should then be physically transported to a secure repository and read by a machine by a second manufacturer. This tally should be compared to the first. The agreement of these tallies would certify the election. No modification of the tallying machines would be allowed after the ballot choices are specified. The third principle is that all equipment used in the process would have to be completely transparent (circuit diagrams and software listings publicly posted), and the testing and certification of the machines involved should be both performed and funded independently from the manufacturers of the machines.
All of these seem obvious, and yet I know of no place that even comes close.
Guys, you are all going down the wrong road here.
You are all worried about the technology.
Putting pictures of the inner working of the machines up on the wall is not going to make the 70 year old man feel more confident about using the new machine.
Look, all of the elections that have been stolen were done the old fashion way. People who were responsible for making sure the elections were fair, were bought off.
You all think that mechanical machines are safer. Not so, in the respect someone has to take the punched tickets and take them somewhere. That is where it usually goes wrong.
In Florida, with all the old people, they have been getting "confused" on how to use the machines for a long time.
"Hanging Chad" anyone?
How Does This Compare With Paper?
A critical question which seems to have been overlooked is how does the accuracy of the electronic machines compare to the accuracy of traditional paper ballots. I wouldn't expect either to be 100%.
Guest (carback1)
Re: How Does This Compare With Paper?
Due to the possibilities, electronic voting *can* be more accurate that paper, but right now it is unclear that this is the case.
The article does not indicate how systems stacked up against an optical scan ballot.
The menus on these machines may be confusing for some people, hence the 7-15% error rates, which are unacceptable.
The solution could be simple: make a website on which the voting software is simulated, so people can check it out days before the voting. Once they get in front of the real machine, everything is familiar.
I have a hard time seeing the 70 year old woman "practicing on the internet".
It is hard to do that when you do not own a computer…..
Sorry, but I just think the problem is not with the technology, but the idiots who are approving the screens.
The companies that make these things are just doing what is approved of.
Let’s not forget it was democrats who approved of the voting design on the mechanical machines that got all the old democrats voting for Pat Buchanan.....
More about the Emergency Assistance for Secure Elections Act
Rep. Holt's office notes that another important aspect of the proposed legislation is to provide funding for audits.
-- Erica Naone
Take a hint from the world's largest democracy
Why doesn't the U.S. govt. take a hint from India? We've been using EVMs (Electronic Voting Machines) for over ten years now. They are simple, cheap, durable and fool-proof. The EVMs do not have any complicated (and expensive) touch-screens.
They just have a number of buttons on the side which correspond to individual candidates. The voter gets to vote by pressing one of these buttons.
The fact that these EVMs have been successfully used in a country where the computer literacy is next to nothing is proof of their simplicity and durability.
The U.S. government should think simple.
Re: Take a hint from the world's largest democracy
And are these simple machines hacker/tamper proof? Probably not.
Re: Take a hint from the world's largest democracy
On what basis do you say that?
There are several fail-safe mechanisms. The microchip is imported from Japan and is sealed at the time of import. Any attempt to tamper with it will damage the chip rendering unusable.
The machine can only record only 5 votes a minute. This stops proxy voting and repetitive voting. The machine is provided with a control unit monitored at all times by an election officer. He/She decides when to allow a person to vote.
For further details please visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_voting_machines
Please note the cost of the machine. Rs 5000. Hardly 130 odd USD. This was the price in 1990. It has reduced significantly over the years.
The fact that the machine has been in use for over 17 years without any tampering incident is proof enough of its reliability.
Re: Take a hint from the world's largest democracy
P.S. Simple does not mean Stupid. I presume you're familiar with the saying KISS. (Keep It Simple Stupid) Well, this is a perfect example.
If voters get a receipt (paper or electronic) that shows how they voted, then votes can -- and will -- be sold.
People too out of it to vote properly should not be allowed to vote at all. Put some random obvious questions on the ballot, and if they are answered incorrectly, toss out the vote on the grounds of mental incompetence.
Examples:
Question: 2+2=?
Choices: a)4 b)379 c) dog
Question: What animal is smaller than a mouse?
Choices: a) oak tree b) 37 c) ant
Stop using X to indicate a vote
Why do they use X instead of a check mark? The electronic machines often have color screens, and sometimes the X is red. Huh?!? A red X to indicate that you are CHOOSING something? That is a stupid design. When you make a choice, the box should get a green check mark, and the choice should be underlined, changed to bold, and have the font size increased. Notwithstanding my previous comments about mentally incompetent voters, the design should make the choice obvious.
A RANDOM error, occurring only 10% of the time, in a voting population of several million, would have a miniscule chance of affecting the election outcome, even in a close election.
If the error is NONRANDOM, it might reflect poor design, or possibly even purposely confusing design, or it may simply reflect higher than average voter incompetence among a subset of voters.
Manufacturing in the United States is in trouble. That's bad news not just for the country's economy but for the future of innovation.
This document is part of the “How-To Guide for Most Common Measurements” centralized resource portal. This tutorial provides a detailed guide for measurement and device considerations to take temperature measurements using thermocouples. Get an introduction to thermocouples, which are inexpensive sensing devices widely used with PC-based data acquisition systems. Also review some specific thermocouple examples and learn how thermocouples work and ways to integrate them into a data acquisition measurement system.
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1 Comment
Can electornic voting ever be transparent?
The issues of trust in electronic voting is not just an issue of accuracy or usability. The main point is that the inner workings of the system will never be accessible to most of the population. This is a strong argument against ever using electronic voting.
http://jeannicod.ccsd.cnrs.fr/docs/00/22/19/85/PDF/0711TrustSecrecyReliabilityVotingSystems.pdf
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Guest (Jamescj1)
Re: Can electornic voting ever be transparent?
If electronic voting technology is ever to be TRUSTED, it must be made verifiably secure from “Insider” manipulation. Historically this has been the threat to elections; not individuals who make errors casting their ballots, Internet hackers or individuals falsifying their identity.
If electronic voting technology is to be used, paper ballots marked by the voter using either a ballot marking device or directly by the voter followed by mandatory audits are essential. Also essential and basic common sense is a comprehensive Independent Validation and Verification program for all hardware, firmware and software.
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Guest (carback1)
E-Voting Can Be More Secure
If done right, e-voting can be more secure than any system ever used before. Take a look at some of the emerging systems like Punchscan, Scantegrity, and Prêt à Voter. The key improvement of these systems is that the security is based on the protocol that they follow, and all the inputs and outputs to these systems are public, so anyone can check them to make sure they are legitimate. They also go one step further, giving assurance to each individual voter that his or her vote was actually counted, and this is something no other systems have achieved to date.
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