e-democracy
Latest
Feds reverse course, approve somewhat better e-voting regulations
We had thought that the whole e-voting thing was wrapped up at the federal level, but apparently everyone (including us) spoke too soon, again. The Technical Guidelines Development Committee apparently has met once more, and now unanimously says that it will start drafting regulations mandating that the "next generation" of voting machines be "software independent." In other words, one that can't be hacked via software. However, old machines that don't meet the new standard will not have to be upgraded or replaced, for whatever reason. "The Technical Guidelines Development Committee (TGDC) has considered current threats to voting systems and, at this time, finds that security concerns do not warrant replacing deployed voting systems," the resolution said. The committee's new resolution, however, did include language that recommends "usability and accessibility requirements to ensure that all voters can verify the independent voting record," which means we may see some paper trail after all. We're still not sure how well such a confused resolution will hold up once it gets out of committee, but we never understood how DC worked anyway. [Via Techdirt]
Feds eschew e-voting paper trail for the status quo
Remember that recommendation that we expected to see come out of the National Institute of Standards and Technology pretty soon -- you know, the one that would de-certify all those fundamentally flawed direct record electronic voting machines? Well, we apparently spoke too soon, as The Washington Post now reports that the recommendation didn't even make it out of committee. The Technical Guidelines Development Committee, a section within NIST that advises the US Election Assistance Committee, failed to reach the 8 votes necessary to pass the decertification measure. Seriously. Why didn't this blindingly obvious recommendation pass? Well, it's not entirely clear, but committee member Brit Williams, a computer scientist who certified Georgia's electronic voting system (we all know how well that went), said "You are talking about basically a re-installation of the entire voting system hardware." Um, dude, last we checked, if something's broke, you gotta fix it. Seriously, when was the last time you heard about a computer scientist that went out of his or her way to avoid fixing a system they installed? Don't answer that.[Via Techdirt]
NIST to recommend decertifying direct record electronic voting
We weren't sure that our government would ever actually, you know, listen to the people that it apparently serves -- at least so far as electronic voting goes. That may soon change, given that internetnews.com is reporting that the National Institute of Standards and Technology will recommend "the 2007 version of the Voluntary Voting Systems Guidelines (VVSG) decertify direct record electronic (DRE) machines." (Those would be the non-"software independent" boxes whose votes cannot be audited and certified, yet which are used in 30% of jurisdictions.) Why the sudden change of heart? Well, apparently all of the attention that's been put on the lack of a paper trail or some kind of verified voting system has actually made a difference -- huh, fancy that. Of course, predictably, there remains a naysayer in the midst, an election expert named Roy Saltman, who told internetnews.com: "If you insist on paper you're tying elections to an old technology." Um, Mr. Saltman, that may be true, but until we can get our new tech to work as well as our old tech, then the new tech is sorta useless, isn't it?[Via Techdirt]
Sequoia voting gear allows for ballot stuffing, calls it a "feature"
There's an old adage in election-year politics: "Vote early, and vote often." While that second part is usually meant as a little humorous jab, Sequoia Voting Systems apparently wasn't in on the joke. See, in California and other states, some polling places have these e-voting devices (made by Sequoia) known as AVC Edge voting machines, and each machine comes with a yellow button located on the back of each device. The button is designed as a manual backup, which activists claim allows people to vote as many times as they like. Fear not, though: Sequoia will resubmit the system for certification (after the election), and doesn't really consider this button to be a flaw at all. As Michelle Shafer, vice president of communications for Sequoia, told internetnews.com: "It's a deliberate back-up feature to prevent the Edge from having a single point of failure -- an inoperable card activator -- at a polling location and preventing voters from casting their ballots." Plus, Shafer continued, even if someone did push the button, the machine issues a loud beep when it's pressed -- obviously a completely foolproof system. The California Secretary of State's office has already issued instructions to poll workers to listen for the fateful beeping, so voters can rest assured that no one will try this hack. Goodness knows what will happen if a bunch of voters come in with pagers that all go off simultaneously, though. [Via TechDirt]
Florida Diebold machines help you pick the right candidate
Apparently Diebold's problems aren't limited to Maryland, Georgia or Alaska -- what a shocker. Down in the Sunshine State, during a week of early voting before next week's nationwide midterm election, certain Diebold machines have been registering some votes for Democrats as selections for the Republican candidate. For instance, Gary Rudolf, a voter at a polling site near Ft. Lauderdale, tried to vote for gubernatorial candidate Jim Davis (D); however, when the Diebold machine gave him the final review screen, it showed his vote was about to be cast for Charlie Crist (R). The problem took three tries to get resolved with the help of a local poll worker. Mary Cooney, a Broward County Supervisor of Elections spokeswoman, informed The Miami Herald that it's "not uncommon for screens on heavily used machines to slip out of sync, making votes register incorrectly. Poll workers are trained to recalibrate them on the spot -- essentially, to realign the video screen with the electronics inside. The 15-step process is outlined in the poll-workers manual." Huh? How exactly does a computer -- one that is being used heavily for one day a year, and not a $100 PDA -- "slip out of sync" ? Further, no one in Broward County is even sure how large of a problem this is "because there's no process for poll workers to quickly report minor issues, and no central database of machine problems." Is it any wonder that major candidates are urging voters to vote the analog old-fashioned way?[Via digg]
Diebold secretly "fixed" glitches in 2005, yet problems persist
Diebold's had so many problems recently that we're not even entirely sure which problem this latest "solution" was supposed to fix -- nor if it actually ended up causing even more headaches. It came out earlier this week that Diebold acknowledged quietly "fixing" 4,700 voting machines across four Maryland counties in 2005: Allegany, Dorchester, Montgomery and Prince George's. The problem was that sometimes the voting machines lock up, or as The Washington Post puts it "The screen freezes do not cause votes to be lost, officials said, but they confuse voters and election judges who sometimes wonder whether votes cast on a frozen machine will be counted." The newspaper continues, saying: "Critics said it raises concerns about whether the state and company officials have kept the public adequately informed about problems with a system that cost taxpayers $106 million." Um, yeah. If you're say, a state government and you've just spent over $100 million to buy voting equipment that allegedly improves our previous archaic system of paper voting, you might want to make damn sure that it actually does the job, and that you know what's going on at every step of the way. Now, this new problem/solution apparently is unrelated to that other vexatious problem involving unpredictable reboots. So, despite Diebold's assurances that all problems have been taken care of, the Post adds: "Even so, the two leading candidates for governor -- Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) and Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley (D) -- have called on voters to use absentee ballots in the election, citing uncertainties about the reliability of Maryland's system." That's just great.[Via The Associated Press]
