Schneier on Security

Matt from CT • August 3, 2007 10:04 PM

IANL…but the way I would interpret 19222 above:

1) The CA SoS can simply declare the machine unacceptable / obsolete / etc and give the Counties 6 months to replace them.

If the primary is less then 6 months away, the Counties could still use the machines.

2) “Good Cause” is for emergency situations — such as when 2 days before the election they find out there’s been a systemic hack actually taken place on the machines, and she orders the Counties to use paper ballots.

==============================

The paper based human counting
system has many faults, but it’s good
enough. It has the huge advantage of
being cheap

Counting ballots by hand is not cheap, and moreover requires having the available, trustworthy labor to do it.

The larger the ballot, the longer it takes. A simple budget referendum that’s “yes / no” would be hard pressed to count more then 1,200 or so ballots / hour, and that requires at least 5 people — a person who reads the ballot, a person who confirms the person reading, a person who tallies, a person who confirms the tally is accurately recorded, and a supervisor/judge (although he could have multiple groups he’s counting).

Now I figured it was 1,200 ballots/hour for a single question yes/no referendum.

Now let’s take a more typical election with a dozen positons being voted on, most of which have 2 and some of which may have 4, 5, or 6 candidates on the ballot.

You’re probably talking more like 180 ballots/hour for a full count (don’t forget, most “recounts” are only conducted for a single position, they’re not counting by hand every position).

Your labor costs, direct and indirect, are at least $50/hour for that 5 person crew — so you’re talking $3.60/ballot to count them.

Mechanical voting machine elections run about $3,000. I don’t think you’d see much of a drop in that cost with other automated systems, like optical scanned paper ballots.

With 2,500 votes cast in my town the November, 2006 elections. That’s under $1 per vote.

Move to a hand counted system, you’re talking adding around $9,000 to the cost of the election, or over $4/ballot cast.

Perhaps more importantly, it saves something like 70 man hours of time to count them. Either you need to double up on the number of poll workers to record them “live time” or you’re looking at a day or two later before you have a final count.

My town, like most, has difficulty recruiting poll workers. Now you’re asking to recruit twice as many, or have them work for 2 or 3 days instead.

It makes it a perfect place to apply technology to save time and money.

You just need the technology to be reliable and verifiable — like optical scanner systems.

Matt from CT • August 6, 2007 2:03 PM

I don’t think anyone posted…per an NPR news clip I heard over the weekend, the California Secretary of State has decertified the machines and they WILL NOT be used for the Primary.

@Nebu:

At the very, absolute least, actually
auditing the results from the vote tally
is essential: An opscan system by itself
is not sufficient.

Absolutely. An audit only requires a small fraction of the counting a manual count requires, and it can take several forms.

@Bernd:

I find it very irritating that people here
are actually discussing the security of
voting machines, though the whole
idea should be critized.

You could drop the whole security word.

In the end, we’re talking about Accuracy. In most elections, it doesn’t matter since the margin of victory is greater then the margin of error.

My state has long had procedures in place when elections are so close to require an automatic recount, and when there is a wider margin of victory but still close enough the losing candidate has the right to demand a recount.

Mechanical machines can be shown to be accurate by a mechanic. He can show all the sprockets and levers.

Media that is marked primary by the voter (like optical scan ballots or punch cards) can be trusted to accurately reflect their intent.

The problem with voting machines which the primary means is electronic to mark the ballot is verifying the accuracy — you must expect knowing our society most voters will not take the time to verify the paper “receipt.” Once an audit discrepancy is detected, which do you trust to be accurate? The machine that recorded the vote directly, or the same machine that produced the receipt that doesn’t match the vote?

@Anonymous

Selective malfunctions were used to
skew results by invalidating ballots from
demographically biased precincts

Most of these allegations of poor procedures are strongly associated with areas of a heritage of corrupt Democratic machine politics. In an area controlled, traditionally, by Democrats it really didn’t affect the outcome of Citywide / Statewide / National power. What it did affect was internal Party politics of one Democrat against another.

These local pockets of corrupt political culture has become more obvious due to recent closeness of major races, and that the corruption has spread to Republicans — specifically, Republicans in areas that formerly had Democratic machines designed to suppress the black vote. The corruption spread when the white fled the Democratic party in the south.

It’s nothing new — just remember the famous slogan of Democratic Chicago Mayor Richard Daley — “Vote Early and Vote Often!” and such practices of the dead voting and people voting in multiple precints were endemic in certain Democrat machine controlled urban cities through out the nation and rural areas of the South for all of the 20th century.