So it begins: Florida bans touch-screen e-voting machines

If you didn't see this one coming, we'll just assume the glaring sun had you blinded, as the Sunshine State has apparently had quite enough of the e-voting woes within its borders. Florida Governor Charlie Crist signed into law a bill "requiring that all voting districts in the state replace most touchscreen electronic voting machines with optical scan machines." From day one, the state has been plagued with one mishap after another, and while some touch-screen systems will be maintained for "handicapped voters that require its features to vote unaided," the vast majority of the Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) machines will be nixed in favor of a less hackable flavor. Flinging one last blow of frustration at the e-voting curse, Crist went so far as to suggest that ditching them would allow Floridians to "leave the polling place knowing that their vote had been counted and recorded and can be verified." Of course, we're sure the tax-paying citizens of the state are entirely more focused on the $27.8 million he approved to buy all new optical scan equipment.

[bag0rice @ May 23rd 2007 9:01AM]

After seeing what Mika can do I would ban them too.

[yorrik @ May 23rd 2007 10:13AM]

haha, very nice ;) I wonder how many ppl know what you are talking about ;)

[Rob @ May 23rd 2007 9:19AM]

I for one welcome our new hanging chad overlords

[John B @ May 23rd 2007 10:27AM]

@Rob:

"I for one welcome our new hanging chad overlords"

Keep the unoriginal, inane Slashdot clichés over at Slashdot. Don't contaminate Engadget. It's one of the few remaining tech sites that haven't been totally taken over with "Let's make everything an anti-Bush thread when possible" (Digg) or "A cliché here, a cliché there, a f@#$ing cliché everywhere" (Slashdot).

[Rob @ May 23rd 2007 10:46AM]

@john

I dont read digg or slashdot... nor do I care about what you think


x0x0x

[Dave @ May 23rd 2007 9:24AM]

Good for them. I believe the hanging chad controversy was artificially generated to promote the use of electronic voting machines. Can I prove it? Nope.

[Fred @ May 23rd 2007 9:31AM]

Wrong finger, in the picture.

[EatingPie @ May 23rd 2007 9:32AM]

People have died to give you the right to vote, it's that important! If you yank your card out of the voting machine and DON'T check it, you are taking this right far too lightly. The chad doesn't come off far enough to register your vote? Tough. It's your fault for not verifying the card when you yanked out out of the machine.

Voting is both a right and a responsibility. It's too bad that we in America often don't consider the weight of this responsibility, and just take it for granted.

-Pie

[Kamokazi @ May 23rd 2007 10:10AM]

"Florida bans touch-screen e-voting machines"

I don't think there's anything wrong with touch-screen voting machines. They should have passed a bill so the healine would read this instead:

"Florida bans Diebold e-voting machines"

[Luke @ May 23rd 2007 10:17AM]

Yeah, bag0rice is right - clearly these folks have been watching Heroes. Sadly, the first thought through my head after seeing that part was, "People are going to get all up in arms about these machines because mutants can manipulate them." Then I realized what I said was ridiculous, slapped myself in the face, and went to bed.

[Michael Calderin @ May 23rd 2007 10:20AM]

It's not simply Diebold equipment that's being replaced. Here in Miami-Dade County, we use ES&S DREs, which will also be phased out.

No, we're not ditching these in favor of hanging chads. The optical scan systems being considers are a fill-in-the-bubble type of ballot many students use when taking tests. At the polling places, there should be a preliminary scanner so voters can test the integrity of their ballot before officially turning them in.

There are a lot of controversial provisions in this new law; elimination of the DREs is one of the more widely accepted aspects.

[everrette powell @ May 23rd 2007 10:33AM]

i live in florida and the man is right, everytime we have an election they also do polling right after and the results never add up to be the same, either people forget who they vote for and say something wrong in the polls or those machines are messed up

[John B @ May 23rd 2007 10:54AM]

Nor do I care that you don't care. Imagine that.

[Rob @ May 23rd 2007 10:57AM]

i feel like we're in a Leslie Nielsen movie... this is fun... I've got another 6 hours to kill until I can go home so let's continue, shall we?

[John B @ May 23rd 2007 10:59AM]

@Rob: I'd prefer the Monty Python argument clinic, but we've wasted enough bandwidth as it is.

[Ange @ May 23rd 2007 10:49AM]

I am a dirty fucking spammer: [e-mail]

[John B @ May 23rd 2007 10:58AM]

@Ange:

I would have to disagree. I fear a totally uninformed voter who votes "because he should" far more than I do an apathetic, informed voter who doesn't bother to vote. Someone who votes "because he should" but has no clue about the candidates or the issues that those candidates represent is doing nothing more than "eeny, meeny, miney, moe!".

[Brian @ May 23rd 2007 11:10AM]

I live in Orange County, Florida. We use an optical scan ballot AND, in recent elections, we have been afforded the option to also use the electronic voting machines. Glad to see the electronic voting machines go. I'm all in favor of keeping the optical scan system we use in this county and here is why:

1. The ballots are made of a very thick paper so they survive manual recounts.
2. We use permanent markers to cast our vote by making a mark to complete an arrow pointing to the candidate we choose... no hanging/pregnant/whatever chads here.
3. The scanner is fixed to a lock box. The ballot is scanned and recorded as it enters the lock box.

So we have the efficiency of an electronic system for counting the votes AND we have reasonably durable ballots that can be manually recounted multiple times if needed. I haven't seen a better system.

[Jeff Lewis @ May 23rd 2007 11:44AM]

For the record, Diebold (like most of the e-voting companies) primarily sells optical scan systems. In fact, they started out as an optical scan company and only got into the touch screen biz because there was a demand for it. Most e-voting systems out there are optical scan.

I also find it hilarious that Americans are so wound up about touch screens (which are a tiiiiiny fraction of all the electronic voting systems out there - and guess what - optical scan systems are just as much electronic as touch screens - and just as hackable) when they don't realise how much corruption and 'hacking' goes on behind the scenes that has nothing to do with voting machines.

In Ohio 2004, they did it by simply not delivering enough paper ballots to key ridings.

As for recounts, you make the assumption that the state will DO a recount. In Florida 2000, Harris was trying her level best to avoid any recounts, and when she did allow it, she allowed all sorts of bizarre recounting practices.

Then there's the actual vote system. Have you guys ever taken the time to learn how your system works? For an non-American, it's one of the most surreal things I've ever seen. You have things like straight party balloting. That's where at the top you have to choose your party... and then you have to vote ONLY for that party. If you vote for anyone else - your entire ballot is nullified.

You stick everything from President to dogcatcher on the same ballot making it pages long. There's no consistency from state to state or even county to county - different systems, different ballots (layout, decisions), different rules - so errors in one county won't be the same as errors in another county - and yet people talk as if the results of every county are exactly the same.

And this is all in a country where barely 1/2 of the elegible population ever shows up to vote in the first place. Not to mention, you remove the right to vote from a lot of people.

Florida 2000 was rigged NOT by e-voting or dangling chad - it was rigged because the state of Florida illegally barred an estimated 50,000 people from voting as part of their process to prevent people who moved to Florida with a felony on their record from voting. They used highly suspect lists and then applied them to people based on 'close match' names. Not surprisingly, they focussed on black Americans and people who are more likely to vote Democrat.

You talk about how 'every vote is sacred', and yet you have an error prone electoral system which denies and discards votes all over the place. Then you obsess about touch screens - which are a tiny fraction of all the systems out there - and expend all your energy on something that's essentially irrelevent, while missing the big picture and the real problem - the actual electoral system in the US.

I really wish you guys would stop listening to people like Felton and Lazarus and actually LEARN something and go out and find out how it really works.

There have been tons of reports and analysis written by security analysis companies that say that same thing: yes, these systems, on their own, are insecure, but when you put them into a real world situation with even moderate physical security, and with proper procedures that are verified, they're essentially safe.

Finally - you guys will be surprised to find out that many of the complaints you've been hearing have long been addressed. Much of the 'analysis' of security you read comes from systems that are as much as 7 years old. In the upcoming California recertification, for example, they're not recertifying the current systems from ESS, DESI, Sequoia and the others - they're recertifying the systems they already have - which they've already certified.

That means that none of the upgrades, improvements or security patches will be applied.

You should be asking yourself WHY California is even bothering to do this. They already know the outcome of the analysis because they've already done it. It's nothing more than a PR gimmick done at the expense of California taxpayers. And given that the next election is next year, and that it takes up to a year to get full FEC certification for any new election system - guess what?

They'll still be using the same systems next year anyway.

[Rick Lyon @ May 23rd 2007 11:49AM]

I don't care for any local e-voting machines. There is no paper trail. At least when there's a paper trail you can find the 14,000 democratic votes thrown into the trash bins out back, no such evidence with a hard drive that's been erased or files that have been deleted.

I don't understand why we can't log into a 3rd party web site, and vote using our socials security numbers? After the last 2 scams, I mean elections, I don't trust many polling locations or their voting systems. Either online in my home with a direct connection and printable confirmation page, or give me a damn marker.

[Jeff Lewis @ May 23rd 2007 11:49AM]

Oh.. one more thing - hand recounts are notoriously inaccurate. Up here, where the ballots are very simple, we get about a 1.5% error on manual recount.

That's about the same or more error than most electronic recounts where there's a physical paper ballot.

And in some cases, your state or county's ballot is so complex that the interpretation of the vote is non-trivial (there are party and vote tally rules many of you probably don't know going into the voting booth) and so gets incorrectly tallied on a manual recount.

[Luiz Eduardo @ May 23rd 2007 1:56PM]

For christ's sake, if Crist spent U$27.8 million on the distribution of free condons, there would be a lot less people with AIDS.

[paul34 @ May 23rd 2007 2:44PM]

This thread isn't for Crist-bashing. Maybe you might not agree with everything he does; but he's one of more level-headed politicians out there - and that means a LOT in a state like Florida. The last thing we want is to turn into a state with mostly ridiculous laws and oppressive enforcement.

[David @ May 23rd 2007 2:56PM]

Jeff Lewis: You bring up some valid points, however it has been proven that Bush won the election in Florida fair and square. If anything, the 2006 elections were rigged in Democrats favor with all of those e-voting machines. I find it hard to believe that Americans really wanted 60s hippie baby boomer pseudo-communists running the Congress, but that is what they got.

[adam @ May 23rd 2007 5:18PM]

Hmm... contributing to the propaganda i see.

Vote libertarian. We are the only level-headed people out there.