Ohio report recommends scrapping electronic voting

Like California and Florida before it, habitual swing state Ohio has just issued a report slamming its three providers of electronic voting equipment -- including, of course, renamed Diebold -- and recommending that the 50 counties which use them scrap the machines in favor of a paper-trail-leaving optical scanning method. The report, commissioned by Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, details the ways in which white hat hackers were able to infiltrate the systems, easily picking locks, using portable devices to manipulate vote counts, and even introducing "malignant software" into boards of election servers. Brunner's plan calls for the entire state's voting infrastructure to be overhauled by next year's presidential elections, a move likely to be lauded by touchscreen voting's many critics, but coming "about eight years too late, jerks -- thanks a lot," according to usually-even-tempered former candidate Al Gore.

[RM @ Dec 17th 2007 9:39AM]

Bring back the chad! RM - Broward County, FL

[required @ Dec 17th 2007 11:54AM]

Al Gore won the popular vote. He was the candidate most Americans voted for. Some might even say he was president elect whereas "W" president select.

Just saying.

[kjb434 @ Dec 17th 2007 12:16PM]

^^^
I guess you don't no the concept of the American electoral system. The US citizen does not vote for president. There isn't any national elections. You vote for the person you want in your state. Then your state represents you through delegates. The national popular vote is something that is tallied by the news media and nowhere else. There are no official records of how many votes a presidents gets nationally. Only state by state.

Gore is not the first person to win the popular vote and lose the presidency. Nixon beat JFK by popular vote, but Didn't become president. Same thing happened to either Grover Cleveland or Garfield.

[Rocketboy @ Dec 17th 2007 12:53PM]

2 out of 3 methods of recounting say that Gore lost Florida. If you're too stupid to be able to use a punch card, your vote should be thrown out.

[John @ Dec 17th 2007 3:44PM]

Actually JFK beat Nixon in the popular vote... about 100k out of 70 million votes, whereas Gore won the 2000 popular vote by something like 500k out of over 100 million cast.

[Benson @ Dec 17th 2007 7:18PM]

Not to pile on, but while historical examples are nice, it's important to understand the reason for the electoral college system.
Clearly, in a federal government, the states of the federation have a strong stake in government, and in the US system at least, are considered equals. So they should have equal representation.
But, OTOH, in a constitution ordained and established by "the People of the United States", the people clearly have a stake, and should have equal representation.

In congress, we handled it with a bicameral legislature. In one house, representatives of the people are apportioned by the population of the states. In the other house, senators represent their states. As originally planned, they would represent the people of those states only indirectly. Populism has had its influence, so now all senators are elected by popular vote in their state, and in practice represent the people of that state. But the weighting (per state, not per million people) still gives states equal influence in the Senate.

Now you can't well have 2 presidents, one chosen by the state, and one by the people. So in the electoral college, representation from each state is the sum of the states senators (2), and the state's representatives (dependent on population). The whole point was to _avoid_ a direct popular vote, because that undermines states' interests.

[Erick @ Jan 23rd 2008 6:09PM]

@required

Majority vote gives the people want they want, not what they need.

-Padme (Star Wars - yea, so that was a nerdy reference)

Further more, the Electoral college spreads the process of selecting a leader evenly across all states, large or small.

If we let the l.a., boston, new york, houston and chicago to elect a president, then we would look alot like France and a lot less like America thank you very much.

I like being an American with a leader selected by the whole country thank you.

[Flashpoint @ Dec 17th 2007 9:41AM]

I've seen those exposes done by gadget magazines where hackers can hack an electronic vallot counter in less than 5 minutes with a rigged SD Card and a screwdriver so I'm already convinced electronic voting is probably in its infancy.

The way I see it, every single vote should be linked to your social security number - or perhaps a voters ID number which points back to a living, breathing person. This way, fraudulent votes might be easier to sniff out by Federal reporting agency.

I have to wonder why it is that submitting a FAFSA online is treated with more scrutiny than a vote.

[pickleproper @ Dec 17th 2007 6:16PM]

"I have to wonder why it is that submitting a FAFSA online is treated with more scrutiny than a vote."

Because it is considered (right or wrong, I'm not arguing either way) intimidating and an invasion of privacy to be able to tie a specific vote to a specific person.

[Andir3.0 @ Dec 17th 2007 10:29AM]

Votes are supposed anonymous. I think the idea behind this is so that someone cannot look up your voting history and use it against you. Your vote is yours alone. Polling machines are required to keep the vote and the person that voted in separate "baskets". Even punch cards abide by this rule. You are checked off for voting on a sheet and the punch card has no markings (besides DNA) to denote that it is your card. You can see that I voted, but not who I voted for.

Does it make sense why your vote isn't tied to your Social Security number?

[rv @ Dec 17th 2007 11:32AM]

Perhaps, but what if the SS wasn't associated with a vote, but was simply a key to get to vote. Like, "Unlock booth with your ss number" and some other form of conformation. Then, you would vote, and your number would be changed from a not voted status to a voted status in a database, and you wouldn't be able to vote again, while that db wouldn't store who you voted for. Something like that.

[Evan @ Dec 17th 2007 1:10PM]

Voting is anonymous, but not completely anonymous.

Both parties have computer systems that can lookup voter preference, voting history, voting party, street address, etc. The only thing it cannot see is the actual name of the candidate voted for.

[Paul @ Dec 17th 2007 9:51AM]

I live in Ohio and have long considered my state to be run by complete idiots.

When I read this report I was utterly shocked that they were actually recommending that someone take some sort of action sometime in the future.

At least I live in Cincinnati where such radical recommendations are not even needed because we are using optical scan.

As Mark Twain is reported to have said, "When the end of the world comes, I want to be in Cincinnati because it's always twenty years behind the times."

[Andir3.0 @ Dec 17th 2007 10:33AM]

I live in Ohio and I'm confused by what you are saying.

They are a bunch of idiots for protecting the votes against fraud in a system that has several accounts of vulnerabilities? They are a bunch of idiots for looking into the future? Or they are a bunch of idiots for not staying 20 years behind the rest of the world? I'm trying to figure your statements out.

[Alex @ Dec 17th 2007 10:38AM]

I'm pretty sure he meant that he was shocked that they were doing something smart.

[Paul @ Dec 17th 2007 10:46AM]

What I was saying is that while I am pleasantly surprised that someone in our state government has actually seen the dangers of the current voting systems, I do not have faith in that same government to enact any of the changes they recommend.

Instead we will probably see them talk about it until the election rolls around then act all surprised when something goes horribly wrong. Then they will find some scapegoat to blame it on. Then about 3 months after the election it will be forgotten about until the next election.

Come on, this is the same government who's entire backup plan for their tax refund records was to have a intern take the unencrypted backup tapes home with him, then 6 months after that I finally get a letter in the mail saying that my name and information was all on the tapes.

[Paul @ Dec 17th 2007 10:47AM]

Bah, goofed up my last post, forgot to mention that they were shocked that the backup tapes were stolen from the intern who left them in his car.

[Irfan @ Dec 17th 2007 1:06PM]

wait... so how is ken blackwell supposed to win now?!

[Evan @ Dec 17th 2007 1:16PM]

Paul,

You might want to think about what you just said. Anything involving "long considered my state to be run by idiots."

You do realize that there was an election just a year ago where every single statewide leader was replaced. This didn't come out of left field, it was one of Brunner's campaign promises to investigate voting machine errors that were widespread in 2000 and 2004 that forced people to wait in line for hours at some polling stations- i.e. Kenyon College.

[Kyle @ Mar 6th 2008 9:26PM]

You should READ the EVEREST reports before relying on them. It's amazing to me that everyone simply accepts that the DRE's are suspect simply because some researcher says they are "possibly" open to attack. Well, anything is "possible." But our friend SOS Jenny Brunner likes to point out what is "possible" as if that proves her point that Ohio should spend $80 million to convert to optical scan.

A couple of things - first, optical scans are subject to "possibles" too. It's in EVEREST, though ignored by Jenny and the conspiracy theorists out there (Don't look out your window.. there's a black helicopter.) Second, optical scans don't always work - http://www.wbns.com/live/content/onnnews/stories/2008/02/29/ballots.html?sid=102. Central Count optical scans can't account for undervote, overvote (DRE's do).

But, hey, if we are talking about "possible" - - Well, it's possible that poll workers will leave the paper ballots in the trunk of their car (Actually, it's happened). It's possible that a voter won't mark the paper ballot correctly, and it won't be counted. (Ooops, that's true too)....How about this, It's possible that a foriegn operative will toss a lighted torch in a paper ballot box lighting all the ballots on fire. (Possible, and JUST as likely as some of the unadulterated BS in EVEREST. In fact, the foriegn operative is listed as one of the possibles).

Let's get real. There is no perfect system. Gore didn't win. Bush didn't "steal the election."

[dataminer49er @ Dec 17th 2007 9:58AM]

What a way to flush about 100 million down the toilet.

[theotherstevejobs @ Dec 17th 2007 10:01AM]

In California, the ACLU, on behest of the Democratic party, sued to GET everyone electronic voting and attempted to stop an election until EVERYONE got electronic voting. The claim was that rich areas of california had touchscreens, and the poor places like south central LA did not and they claimed that error rates for non-touchscreen systems were higher and that the poor people would be disenfranchised unless they got touchscreens too - and they wanted the whole thing put on hold until South Central got touchscreens.

http://www.bepress.com/forum/vol1/iss4/art6/

http://www.centerdigitalgov.com/international/story.php?docid=72485

I'm so sick of hearing about Gore supporters being upset by touchscreens - it was the California Dems that pushed hard for everyone to use them, and now, since its more convenient to bitch 180 degrees from their previous arguments than to fess up to the fact that it was the Dems that should be blamed for all of this stupid-ass touchscreen voting - It was Al Gore's Party that SUED TO GIVE IT TO EVERYONE.

[Justin @ Dec 17th 2007 10:43AM]

I don't give even half a shit who thought it was a good idea in 2003. It doesn't change the fact that we need to change things so that at the very least we have a verifiable paper trail. I don't think those early efforts envisioned something like this at all.

[Flashpoint @ Dec 17th 2007 10:19AM]

IF ONLY AL GORE HAD WON THAT ELECTION.

Perhaps then, America's middle class wouldn't be sinking quickly into poverty.

Perhaps America WOULD NOT HAVE GONE TO IRAQ and instead stayed in Afghanistan to destroy the taliban and keep Afghanistan from becoming the world's greatest Heroine dealer.

Perhaps Gas (and Milk) wouldn't be $3.15 a gallon.

Perhaps numerous corporations wouldn't have gotten filthy rich as American soldiers got torn apart oversees.

Perhaps America wouldn't be so idealogicaly divided and hostile - Thank you Karl Rove.

[rodan32 @ Dec 17th 2007 10:35AM]

Flashpoint, too easy. I'll just address one thing - gas prices, and that can be done with one word: Kyoto.

[Evan @ Dec 17th 2007 1:22PM]

This has nothing to do with Gore in Ohio.

@rodan32 What would the Kyoto Protocol do to lower gas prices? Just curious, I don't think I fully understand what you mean by your response.

[pickleproper @ Dec 17th 2007 10:13AM]

"about eight years too late" ??

Most of these systems were put into place because of that election. They certaintly weren't the problem and it hasn't been proved or even suggested that they were hacked during an election.

Where I live in Ohio everytime I've voted in the last 5 years there is a new electronic voting machine. It will be pleasure to go back to optical scan, but I'd really like to see the comback of the chad.

Theoretically it is possible that my mailman can open and read my tax returns quite easily, but nobody's suggesting that I quit sending in the checks! This is basically an expensive mistake by the state of Ohio, but then again they're quite good at that.

[John P @ Dec 17th 2007 10:10AM]

I think that electronic voting would be fine if the companies would update their hardware against hackers, but I imagine they are too lazy to actually do that. My sister's boyfriend actually had to hack one of these for a freshman computer science lab, so that just goes to show you don't have to be all that experienced to get in.

[Eva @ Dec 19th 2007 12:47AM]

As a Canadian who has been part of a number of elections (and one referendum) in Canada we were/are able to perform a paper election and have ALL the ballots counted withint 4-6 hours of the last poll closing. (It was even touted in Life magazine year end a few years ago).

As for electronic voting, India seems to have a GREAT system that is portable enough to take in the farms even.

As well IF a paper result was printed out both for the voter AND a copy which was then put into a sealed voting box there would be a sure way of follow up when necessary as the vote would be checked by the voter before they left the voting station.

Lastly, the comments about identify confuse me, the process requires either a passport, or a driver's license.

[pickleproper @ Dec 17th 2007 11:39AM]

Some states/counties in the US require no proof of identity at all. Again, this has historically been considered a method of intimidating voters.

[Andir3.0 @ Dec 17th 2007 10:40AM]

As I stated above, voting (in America at least) is anonymous. When you go vote, your ID is needed to verify that you are voting, but who you voted for does not go on the card. With electronic voting, the machine has to be secure from attack or you can consider all the votes on that machine null. On top of that, the machine cannot print off a sheet saying, "Andir3.0 voted for Bob Marley in the 2004 election" because it defies the voting laws.

[Eva @ Dec 17th 2007 11:34AM]

Oh! I am sorry I did not make myself clear above.

Identify yourself with either a driver's license to an envigilator who then crosses you off a pre-gathered list. If you are not on the list then provide a passport AND a driver's license to prove you are eligible to vote and where you are eligible to vote.

Next get directed to the voting booths with instructions to make your choices on the screen(s), take the two copies of the print outs with your choices which do not have ANY identification of yourself, just your choices, drop one printed copy into a sealed ballot box (you have to do it, the envigilator may not touch the ballot) and take the other slip of paper with your verified choices with you. Now, you could eliminate the extra slip of paper if you wanted and just have one copy with a verbal verification by the envigilator that the voter had indeed verified the printed slip represented what the voter had voted (this would indicate any potential tampering as well as provide an unquivocal hard copy for recounting if necessary....no chads). As well, the envigilator would mark beside the voter's name that the voter confirmed they had verified the printed results with their electronic entries.

Either way, you now have an electronic system with a backup hard copy system.

[Benson @ Dec 17th 2007 7:42PM]

Nice system, but it opens up a problem. If you have a receipt showing who you voted for, then expect much higher turnout. Why? Because a lot of unscrupulous individuals and organizations will pay people for their votes. Maybe the people who now vote, getting nothing out of it, won't be swayed by the offer of cash for proving they voted a certain way. But many people who don't care in the first place will go vote, if they're offered twenty bucks. Right now, political operatives bus people to polling places and everything, but they can't pay you to vote for their candidate, because YOU can't prove who you voted for.
And, if a machine prints off two copies, one for you, and one for the box, what stops them from being different? _Only_ the inconvenience of having them both handled by the voter, which brings about its own troubles. Perhaps a better way would be a single slip, to eliminate vote buying, and keeping that slip in the machine, under glass. It prints the slip, the voter verifies it, and then it is fed into the ballot box.

But really, I don't see any point with touchscreens. In our state, we have paper ballots designed for optical scanning. You fill the appropriate ovals, then take the ballot over to the recording machine. Put it in, the machine tries to read it. If the machine can't read it, it is ejected back out. It's then discarded, and you get to fill out a new ballot. So, unless you, with a pen, fill in the wrong oval, and can't figure that out looking at the ballot, your vote is gauranteed recorded correctly. If you marked two ovals, or marked between ovals, it will reject it, instead of possibly tallying it wrong.
And the ballots, accumulated in the bottom of the scanning machine, give a paper trail for recounts.

[Chris Schaffer @ Dec 17th 2007 10:18AM]

Great piece of news!

I quoted a large portion of your article on a short opinion given at:
http://www.sustainabledemocracy.org/2007/electronic-voting-on-the-way-out/

Hopefully more states will quickly follow suit. The paper trail needs to come back!

[Spencer Wallman @ Dec 17th 2007 10:19AM]

I don't understand how the banking system can make ATM's virtually unhackable and easy to use, yet we have such an issue trying to make a simple voting machine hack-proof.

[CaptCaveman @ Dec 17th 2007 11:02AM]

Because people are a lot more vocal about loosing their money then they are about loosing their vote...

[Joe @ Dec 17th 2007 10:33AM]

We use electronic voting in Utah. It has a paper trail, is very easy to use and has no apparent problems. (Though, I still don't think it wasn't worth the expense.)

[bix @ Dec 17th 2007 11:10AM]

But, that's the problem, Joe. Things looked ok here in Ohio. But when you take a look at the report, it becomes disturbingly clear that when these systems are used, there is nothing keeping anyone with the slightest determination from affecting the outcome of elections. I'm a huge geek and a proponent of all things gadget related, but these machines just aren't ready for prime time. Everything from 2 year out of date virus software to no firewalls to no encryption to easily overcome physical locks. Give the technical report a read.

[Joe @ Dec 17th 2007 4:17PM]

I don't disagree there are problems in many jurisdictions. I'm just relating that the State of Utah, at least, has avoided many of these problems.

When I lived in Arizona, one district used the bubble sheet/scanning method. I really liked it and long advocated it's more wide spread use.

Having said that, Diebold, et al, should be collectively waterboarded. I'm just one of thousands of developers across this country that could have designed better and more secure hardware and software without trying that hard. To be blunt, this level of incompetence takes real effort.

(Of course, we should not fool ourselves into thinking there could ever be a incorruptible voting system. I'm actually impressed at how well the voting in most first world countries works.)

[Condaman74 @ Dec 17th 2007 10:43AM]

Every time I hear about Electronic voting I can't help but think of "Man of the Year".

[Student Driver @ Dec 17th 2007 10:42AM]

A better way to look at it might be that it's a Government (State, Federal, whatever) owned operating system. As such, it should meet some sort of security standard (we use DISA STIG, which we laugh at first). These systems are obviously simple in security, and nobody has been trained in the hardening of their locations and since we are dealing with people (that we inherently distrust, hence all the paperwork/papertrail) there needs to be a process fully understanding the devices and how to deal with them.

It will get here, and I have no question about that. We may even use that handy-dandy little mag stripe on the driver's license to validate who we are (maybe upon entrance to the facility, rather than at the machine itself), and then move on from there.

[Alex @ Dec 17th 2007 10:45AM]

I don't think it's necessary for everything we do to be updated with technology just for the sake of being updated with technology.

If something this sensitive in the private sector was going electronic, it would have to be proven out and well tested before it was put into use.

I work in the pharmaceutical industry and everything is still documented on paper. Right now we are in a hybrid paper/electronic system and eventually we will be fully electronic.

[apoc3 @ Dec 17th 2007 11:20AM]

I don't understand why this is such a hard thing to figure out. We can make ATM's work with relatively few problems, but we can't make a machine to record votes?

[Hax Or @ Dec 17th 2007 10:56AM]

All your votes are belong to us.

[Benson @ Dec 17th 2007 7:46PM]

Nitpick:
All your vote are belong to us

[Jeff Lewis @ Dec 17th 2007 11:04AM]

Apparently Americans, Al Gore included, either have very short memories or are suffering from some kind of schizophrenia-induced delusion about what happened in 2000.

Al Gore's electoral problems weren't caused by touchscreen voting systems.

They were caused by butterfly PAPER voting systems that were misread by voters, and then by punchcard ballots (also paper) which could not be recounted because the prepunched holes (aka chad) were damaged by their first reading.

Similarly, in Ohio in 2004, the main screwup was failure to deliver paper ballots to polling stations in selected (and not surprisingly, Democratic) ridings. Again, touchscreens weren't the main issue.

Oh... and since all of the evoting companies started with and still are predominately manufacturers of paper ballot systems - they all couldn't care less if touchscreens were outlawed. It's just a product. In fact, they'd like it since those counties would all have to buy a whole new set of voting systems.

It would be a win for them.

Meanwhile, things like electing a secretary of state who is a campaign fundraiser for one of the presidential candidates and works for the brother of that same candidate will keep on happening because you're all so focused on one small part of the problem that you're all missing the bigger, real problem: your utterly screwed up electoral system.

PS: No.. the Canadian system will NOT work in the US. Here's why. In Canada, the federal election is run by Elections Canada all across the country. The provinces have NO say or involvement in it. The election is just for the member of parliament in that riding. Nothing else.

Our ballot rarely has more than 10 choices and it's for one and only one thing: the member of parliament.

Because your system has the states running the federal vote (paid for BY the federal government) and because the state passes the responsibility to the county - everyone piggybacks every last frigging vote onto the federal ballot, which makes it the size of a small phone book in some counties.

And since each state has their own rules, you get surreal things like single party ballots where you have to declare which party you're voting for first, then if you vote for anyone from another party, your entire ballot is disqualified.

That little trick was used in Washington state in the last election and resulted in 20%.. let me repeat this... TWENTY PERCENT... of all ballots being disqualified. That's one person in five whose votes were discarded.

And you're all worried about touchscreens which have never been shown to have an error rate over 1.5%.

Morons.

[pickleproper @ Dec 17th 2007 12:10PM]

"Meanwhile, things like electing a secretary of state who is a campaign fundraiser for one of the presidential candidates and works for the brother of that same candidate will keep on happening because you're all so focused on one small part of the problem that you're all missing the bigger, real problem: your utterly screwed up electoral system."

As you hinted above, that ballot was designed by the "County Clerk", an elected democrat held the position at the time of that election. Had nothing to do with the Sec. of State. or Governor.

In Ohio 2004, those ballots were also designed and (supposed to be) delivered by the elected democrat county clerk who had that responsibility.

[Evan @ Dec 17th 2007 1:31PM]

Again,

This report has nothing to do with Al Gore.

[guilherme @ Dec 17th 2007 11:06AM]

sorry to hear that you guys couldn't create a hacking-proof system... here in brazil we use electronic voting since 1996, and since 2000 we've electronic voting all over country (5.569 cities, more than 100 million voters) and we haven't found any problems of hacking so far.

if you're looking for know-how, our system was 100% developed by federal government without private companies and works just fine!

[Evan @ Dec 17th 2007 1:30PM]

That is the problem here. Special interests, plain and simple, this should not be a private sector machine.