FCC cancels white space meeting to focus on digital TV transition
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vote posts
Brutal honesty here: on election day this past November, the entire Engadget staff (well, those of us with US passports) collectively agreed that casting our vote via SMS or some other incredibly simple method would be infinitely more awesome than trudging out in the streets and waiting in hour-long lines. Clearly, some higher-ups in Estonia are on board with that concept, as its Parliament has approved a law that will likely make it the first nation on Planet Earth to give citizens the right to vote by phone in something that matters (American Idol notwithstanding). 'Course, those who choose to take advantage must first obtain a free authorization chip for their handset, which sort of kills the whole "not having to leave your house" aspect of all this. Ah well, at least we're moving in the right direction.
For years, Diebold has embarrassed itself by claiming that obvious faults were actually not faults at all, and during the past decade or so, it mastered the act of pointing the finger. Now that it has ironically renamed itself Premier Election Solutions, it's finally coming clean. According to spokesman Chris Riggall, a "critical programming error that can cause votes to be dropped while being electronically transferred from memory cards to a central tallying point" has been part of the software for ten years. The flaw is on both optical scan and touchscreen machines, and while Mr. Riggall asserts that the logic error probably didn't ruin any elections (speaking of logic error...), the outfit's president has confessed to being "distressed" about the ordeal. More like "distressed" about the increasingly bleak future of his company.
Just as the world's landfills could soon see an influx of unwanted televisions, many American warehouses are packed with e-voting machines that once held promise for a better way to vote. Instead, they turned into a multi-year fiasco, with hackers figuring out how to do everything save for their income taxes on 'em and states reverting back to less vulnerable methods. Now, many states are scrambling for ways to recoup costs, even for outlets that will take them in for recycling. Oddly, Ohio cannot ditch the systems it purchased until a couple of related lawsuits get dealt with. The result? Buckeyes will probably still be using e-voting machines come November.
In a terrifically unsurprising blow to electronic voting fans everywhere, Colorado's Secretary of State has declared the machines unreliable -- and apparently in need of a software patch. While not as harsh as some rulings on the systems, Secretary Mike Coffman decertified three out of four machines which had been tested. Why the bad grade? Apparently the machines failed on accuracy and security, two sort-of-crucial components to dependable voting solutions, and two components which have been lacking in many systems. Coffman believes Colorado's findings could have a larger impact, stating, "What we have found is that the federal certification process is inadequate." Clearly another blow for the Diebolds (er, we mean Premier Election Solutions) of the world, but hopefully a sign that we can expect tough love for suspect voting machines.
In what's being hailed as "one of the first public uses of quantum cryptography," Genevian voters who take part in the upcoming national elections can rest assured that their votes will remain a secret. Reportedly, the "city-state will use quantum technology to encrypt election results as they are sent to the capital on October 21st." A computer, provided by id Quantique, will be set up in Geneva to "fire photons down a fiber-optic link to a receiver 62-miles away," which should be sufficient to keep any potential eavesdroppers at bay. 'Course, where there's a will, there's typically a way.
Right on cue, the Electoral Commission has published findings from a number of UK e-voting trials, and just as expected, they went about as awry as they possibly could. Within the 24-page document resides a comedy of errors that would certainly put any other system on an eternal blacklist, but the blind faith in e-voting continues to allow events such as these to complicate democratic procedures. For starters, it was noted that the "use of electronic counting significantly increased the total cost of delivering these elections compared with a manual count," and furthermore, the scanning of ballot papers "took a lot longer than expected due to the need to scan certain batches more than once." Needless to say, the amount of mishaps involved are far too numerous to cover in this space, but hopefully the UK will take our interestingly administered warning to heart now that it has experienced similar turmoil. [Warning: PDF read link]
The fact that some individuals still have any level of faith left in Diebold is quite baffling, but in case you were looking for just one more episode to dash your hopes of a hack-proof voting machine, open wide. As fate would have it, a fresh study in Florida has found that even optical scan voting systems "can be hacked into," which is causing quite a bit of concern considering that touchscreen alternatives aren't exactly an option in the Sunshine State. Reportedly, the document noted that "official memory cards in the optical scan machines could easily be exchanged with ones altering the vote count," and it was also stated that Diebold must "deal with the flaws" by August 17th. Yeah, we're sure it's all over that.
In case the Brits were still wondering if we Americans finally had our act together in regard to e-voting, this should add yet another nail in the coffin. Among the bevy of states that saw all sorts of turmoil when voters turned to electronic machines to cast their support was Florida, and while a recent motion doesn't speak of that specific incident, it does highlight a good bit of potential negligence. Apparently, a note was "uncovered" last September (but was withheld until just last week) which documented a "possible problem" with Election Systems & Software's iVotronic touchscreen machine, but wasn't used to scrutinize the finicky system before loosed to the voting public. The eventually malfunctioning software was linked to a "dispute over the 13th Congressional District race in November," which supposedly caused a high rate of "undervoting," and allowed Vern Buchanan to take the questionable gold by a mere 400 votes. Regardless, it's a little late for a recount, don't you think? [Warning: PDF read link]
If there's anything we can appreciate, it's the irony of the United States trying to tell other nations how to run their e-voting setups, you know, considering that America can't even hire competent companies to run quality assurance tests on its own machines. Nevertheless, the US Government Audit Office (GAO) has warned in a recent document document entitled "All Levels of Government Are Needed to Address Electronic Voting System Challenges" that e-voting setups could cause some problems when it came to issues of integrity. Specifically, Randolph Hite, director of IT architecture and systems at the GAO, stated that "no voting technology, however well designed, can be a magic bullet that will solve all election problems," and even went so far as to suggest that e-voting technology "merits the combined and focused attention of federal, state, and local authorities responsible for election administration." Still, friendly advice typically sinks in better if the presenter tends to practice what they preach, so we'd suggest the Brits do everything they can to just, um, not do what we've done. [Warning: PDF read link]
Just days after the US government decided to bar Ciber from testing anymore e-voting terminals due to its perpetual negligence, it now seems that a pair of Colorado-based outfits are next in line to take over those duties. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has recently recommended that iBeta Quality Assurance and SysTest Labs "be granted final clearance to test the systems" after a "comprehensive technical evaluation of the laboratories' processes based on the international standard ISO/IEC 17025, which covers general requirements for the competence of testing and calibration laboratories." Now it seems the final hammer resides in the hands of the US Election Assistance Commission, which is "a federal agency that has sole authority to grant full accreditation to the labs." SysTest Labs isn't new to this e-voting QA game, as the firm was already granted "interim" accreditation and is now awaiting the official seal to keep up the (presumably) good work. Notably, the EAC stated that they would be focusing their efforts now on "non-technical issues such as conflict of interest policies, organizational structure, and record-keeping protocols," but we're not so confident all the hardware checks are as robust as they should be just yet. Nevertheless, we shouldn't count on hearing anything final for quite some time, as this apparently lengthy "review process" somehow takes between 9 and 18 months to complete, so in the meantime we'll just see how many more Americans ditch the whole "voting" idea due to issues like voting in triplicate, getting distracted by board games, or simply obliterating their machine in frustration. [Warning: PDF read link]








