8 ms·

L.A. County gets state approval of new open-source vote-counting system

137 points by klondike_ 8y ago

kodablah 8y ago
Article light on details, to save me the searching, can anyone link to the source code?
- stonesixone 8y ago
  As far as I know, it’s not actually open source, but they may or may not make it open source at some point in the future. It has been frustrating because the media has been portraying it to be open source when there has never been such a commitment.
- ourmandave 8y ago
  Fork me on GitHub.ru!
  - dang 8y ago
    Please don't do this here.
- Rebelgecko 8y ago
  If I'm reading the contract correctly[1], the source won't be available until 2020. There's also some limitations put on the licensing that are IMO stretching (or maybe abusing) the definition of open source. [1] http://file.lacounty.gov/SDSInter/bos/supdocs/123460.pdf http://file.lacounty.gov/SDSInter/bos/supdocs/123460.pdf
  - stonesixone 8y ago
    They reserve the right to make it open source in that contract, but they may or may not do so.
    - Rebelgecko 8y ago
      LA County has the right, and elsewhere they've said that they will (although of course plans change, with some caveats about device firmware and using it for your own elections
furgooswft13 8y ago
I hope open source does not become a feel good buzzword for vote tallying security efforts. Nothing precludes open source based voting firmware from being modified before deployment on the machines (and perhaps with less effort as the source code is easily studied). Without end-to-end documentation of the entire build process for the final image, and secure hashing of the binary, open source means nothing. And even then... > The ballot-counting equipment is part of a broader redesign of Los Angeles County’s voting system, which will include new equipment while relying on a traditional paper ballot Article is light on details, and it's difficult to tell exactly what this sentence means, but if it means the new software will produce paper ballots that can be verified and observed by humans, that's a good thing at least.
- duxup 8y ago
  In Minnesota we have a hybrid system where you fill out a paper ballot. The then you feed it through a scanner that indicates that it counted your vote, counts it, and it rolls into a locked box. The machine and ballots are tied together right there. I really like the system as if all else fails you can get a paper trail and I belive even ID machines.
  - voidlogic 8y ago
    The machines seem to work well too. I don't know why everyone doesn't do it like we do.
    - duxup 8y ago
      Yeah, and I really like a ballot that I touched, I marked up and so forth.
    - orev 8y ago
      Because the people in power are terrified that just maybe there actually is some funny business going on and they are benefiting from it (by having been elected), and if they fix the system they will lose the next time around. It’s probably an irrational fear in many ways, but there’s always that little bit of them wondering. Also, they could have granted long term contracts to existing suppliers, don’t have a budget to replace existing machines, don’t want to make the person who bought them look bad, or even possibly don’t want to say the old machines are bad because it calls into question the integrity of past elections.
haney 8y ago
The ballot-counting equipment is part of a broader redesign of Los Angeles County’s voting system, which will include new equipment while relying on a traditional paper ballot. So they’re paper ballots but the machine to count them is open source?
- sprokolopolis 8y ago
  It seems the larger plan will be to have tablet kiosks where you can either select your choices, or scan a QR code from your phone (with your pre-selected choices) and then your ballot selections are printed to the paper ballot. They have been asking for suggested areas for "Voting Centers" recently where LA County citizens can vote at the location of their choosing. Many people here have long commutes from traffic or public transport. For this reason (and maybe others) the County wants to make it so people can vote at any of the available "vote centers", rather than one assigned polling location by their home. You can watch the video that they were sending around here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fC_-8Nl-O3U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fC_-8Nl-O3U
  - ollien 8y ago
    This just sounds like a really expensive pencil if all it does it print it out on paper.
    - jfoutz 8y ago
      It can be a super helpful assistive tech. Also you can make selections before hand, and still secure the actual ballots. Tracking all printed, spoiled and cast ballots can be helpful. Also, you get to examine the actual ballot before casting your vote, even if you don’t fill it out with a pencil.
    - jacobolus 8y ago
      People marking paper ballots manage to screw up the marking in every conceivable way, and when those are recounted in a close race, whoever is doing the counting can exercise some discretion in edge cases. Presumably a machine could guarantee that the ballot was filled out correctly and not spoiled. For example, in a 2017 election for a seat of the Virginia House which would have switched party control, an election recount came up one vote in favor of the Democrat, but then GOP officials declared that a (clearly spoiled under any reasonable interpretation of the official rules for counting) ballot should count for the GOP candidate, making the vote a tie. Another GOP official then decided the contest in the GOP candidate’s favor by drawing his name from a hat. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_House_of_Delegates_election,_2017#Recounts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_House_of_Delegates_el...
Someone1234 8y ago
Open Source voting is a great start. Transparent voting is better. Random auditing is a complete solution.
EGreg 8y ago
What we should have instead is a cryptographically secure voting system where no one can prove how they voted but can verify that their vote was counted properly. The trick is just to have people scan a QR code when they register, to make sure it’s one vote one person.
- cbsmith 8y ago
  Part of knowing your vote was counted properly means knowing what votes were recorded for you.
- maccam94 8y ago
  Votes have to be deniable to prevent coerced or paid votes.
- ch4s3 8y ago
  Deniable voting is as others have mentioned, the whole point. Also paper ballots are dead simple (though expensive) to audit.
- thatfrenchguy 8y ago
  It’s called paper ballots and you going to the vote booth
- tzs 8y ago
  I wonder if you are being downvoted because you said "cryptographically" and people think you are suggesting something with a blockchain? Anyway, such a system as you want has been designed, and is inexpensive and works well with existing systems, and makes it easy for third parties to audit the results: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scantegrity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scantegrity
  - lwansbrough 8y ago
    How can the system prove that my vote counted correctly if I can’t personally verify who my vote was counted for? This system obviously requires centralized trust (which I’m not against in practice) — but is there any provably secure way to make such a system decentralized? (Yes, blockchain..)
rixrax 8y ago
I hope that as part of the design, it will also [optionally] enforce some form of voter identification (passport, drivers license, passport card, or even a credit card with a chip or apple pay for all I care). I suspect above might be unpopular idea. Especially since obvious downside is that if poorly implemented (or exploited) it could allow establishing who voted what and in any case allow establishing who did and didn't vote. And no, I don't think voter fraud is widespread, or has had any impact of consequence to overall results. But in this age and day, I think we should have a system where a registered voter is first identified by the system before presenting them with the ballot. This way, assuming systems were interlinked, one could vote anywhere in the country, and be given the right ballot for where you live. And then the obvious next step would be allowing voting via browser. One vote for one registered ID. If system thinks your ID has already voted, have an escalation mechanism to re-cast the vote and investigate.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- gruez 8y ago
  >[optionally] enforce what's that supposed to mean? it's either mandatory or it isn't. also, all of the options you listed are disproportionately less used by the poor, so it doesn't really address the main issues with mandatory voter id >And then the obvious next step would be allowing voting via browser. electronic voting brings up a bunch of other issues. how do you prevent vote selling? how do you secure a (poorly secured) personal computer from being hacked?
  - rixrax 8y ago
    >>>[optionally] enforce >what's that supposed to mean? I was just thinking that some might want to use this software without identification enforcement, or do it some other way (manually via voter list,...). I think it would not be unreasonable to say that in order to vote, you need to furnish some form of approved identification. That some people don't have a valid government issued Id is in my mind absolutely a problem and we should find a way to make sure people do have some Id regardless of their background. >>...allowing voting via browser. >and how does this prevent vote selling? I don't know. But it appears other countries[0] have managed to make this work. I don't see how it could not work here too. [0] https://e-estonia.com/solutions/e-governance/i-voting/ https://e-estonia.com/solutions/e-governance/i-voting/
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
motohagiography 8y ago
Electronic voting conflates authenticity with legitimacy. Same problem in digital identity. To me it seemed actually stupid to believe that the only thing preventing algorithms from yielding the sympathetic magic required for a peaceful transfer of sovereign power, was their lack of complexity. Arguably, without the ritual element, democracy reduces to a lottery with a biased mechanism, and for it to work, it must necessarily be more than that. It's a larger philosophical question, to be sure, but it's like comparing a Turing test to an Indifference curve. The first is to determine whether something can convince people it is another person, the second is to predict the point at which you will cease to care enough to choose something else. These are analogous in that, like an AI, we can design an e-voting system that can act convincingly as though it facilitates democracy, but mainly it is just an acceptable substitute for people who no longer care whether the democracy they are dealing with is real or not. In the case of voting, it's not just a thought experiment, or a product dev question, as by real, I mean sufficiently legitimate for people not to reject the results and cause civil disturbances. It might sound a bit extreme, but we should really be asking when we institute electronic voting (or counting) whether we are willing to accept a simulation of the ritual we use to grant sovereign powers to people.
secabeen 8y ago
Looks pretty good. I think it's too bad that the filled out ballot just goes into the place where the unfilled ballot is printed. Makes it feel like it could be over-printed or something. Taking the filled out ballot over to a box is not that much of an inconvenience. If they're worried about observation during that transfer, put the box by the voting system, but more obviously separate.
eludwig 8y ago
Relevant: http://vsap.lavote.net/ http://vsap.lavote.net/
nonbel 8y ago
Is this the same thing that Smartmatic company was hired for? https://abc7.com/politics/new-voting-system-approved-by-la-county-board-of-supervisors/3595736/ https://abc7.com/politics/new-voting-system-approved-by-la-c... That seems to be the case: >"Separately, Logan signed a contract on June 13 with Smartmatic USA, making it the VSAP prime contractor and systems integrator. Smartmatic USA will help Logan's office in managing the manufacture and implemention of components scheduled for introduction in the March 2020 California presidential primary election." https://www.techwire.net/news/la-county-oks-open-source-election-system.html https://www.techwire.net/news/la-county-oks-open-source-elec... Why are all these "voting machine" companies so shady? >"The Venezuelan-owned Smartmatic Corporation is a riddle both in ownership and operation, complicated by the fact that its machines have overseen several landslide (and contested) victories by President Hugo Chavez and his supporters. The electronic voting company went from a small technology startup to a market player in just a few years, catapulted by its participation in the August 2004 recall referendum. Smartmatic has claimed to be of U.S. origin, but its true owners -- probably elite Venezuelans of several political strains -- remain hidden behind a web of holding companies in the Netherlands and Barbados. The Smartmatic machines used in Venezuela are widely suspected of, though never proven conclusively to be, susceptible to fraud. The company is thought to be backing out of Venezuelan electoral events, focusing now on other parts of world, including the United States via its subsidiary, Sequoia." https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/06CARACAS2063_a.html https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/06CARACAS2063_a.html
- vuln 8y ago
  Smartmatic is a CIA operation.
Dowwie 8y ago
It's open source, so that means you can see for yourself why the votes were counted correctly! How do you safely pass votes from the machine to the counter?
Snd_ 8y ago
Article unreadable in the EU. Thanks GDPR :(
matt_s 8y ago
Voting is an area where we don't need automation or fast results. Typically a newly elected person doesn't take office for days or months after an election, right? Paper ballots cannot be hacked at scale. Properly designed paper ballots and a national design and education rolled out about them would propel us forwards as a nation.
- rurban 8y ago
  The first argument does not hold for traditional paper ballots. Paper ballots are all already counted for the critical evening news at 8pm, and are all seen by multiple eyes.
mdrzn 8y ago
LA Times not available in the EU: can we stop posting links to it? https://www.techwire.net/news/la-county-oks-open-source-election-system.html https://www.techwire.net/news/la-county-oks-open-source-elec...

137 points by klondike_ 8y ago

kodablah 8y ago

Article light on details, to save me the searching, can anyone link to the source code?

stonesixone 8y ago
As far as I know, it’s not actually open source, but they may or may not make it open source at some point in the future. It has been frustrating because the media has been portraying it to be open source when there has never been such a commitment.
ourmandave 8y ago
Fork me on GitHub.ru!
- dang 8y ago
  Please don't do this here.
Rebelgecko 8y ago
If I'm reading the contract correctly[1], the source won't be available until 2020. There's also some limitations put on the licensing that are IMO stretching (or maybe abusing) the definition of open source. [1] http://file.lacounty.gov/SDSInter/bos/supdocs/123460.pdf http://file.lacounty.gov/SDSInter/bos/supdocs/123460.pdf
- stonesixone 8y ago
  They reserve the right to make it open source in that contract, but they may or may not do so.
  - Rebelgecko 8y ago
    LA County has the right, and elsewhere they've said that they will (although of course plans change, with some caveats about device firmware and using it for your own elections

furgooswft13 8y ago

I hope open source does not become a feel good buzzword for vote tallying security efforts. Nothing precludes open source based voting firmware from being modified before deployment on the machines (and perhaps with less effort as the source code is easily studied). Without end-to-end documentation of the entire build process for the final image, and secure hashing of the binary, open source means nothing. And even then... > The ballot-counting equipment is part of a broader redesign of Los Angeles County’s voting system, which will include new equipment while relying on a traditional paper ballot Article is light on details, and it's difficult to tell exactly what this sentence means, but if it means the new software will produce paper ballots that can be verified and observed by humans, that's a good thing at least.

duxup 8y ago
In Minnesota we have a hybrid system where you fill out a paper ballot. The then you feed it through a scanner that indicates that it counted your vote, counts it, and it rolls into a locked box. The machine and ballots are tied together right there. I really like the system as if all else fails you can get a paper trail and I belive even ID machines.
- voidlogic 8y ago
  The machines seem to work well too. I don't know why everyone doesn't do it like we do.
  - duxup 8y ago
    Yeah, and I really like a ballot that I touched, I marked up and so forth.
  - orev 8y ago
    Because the people in power are terrified that just maybe there actually is some funny business going on and they are benefiting from it (by having been elected), and if they fix the system they will lose the next time around. It’s probably an irrational fear in many ways, but there’s always that little bit of them wondering. Also, they could have granted long term contracts to existing suppliers, don’t have a budget to replace existing machines, don’t want to make the person who bought them look bad, or even possibly don’t want to say the old machines are bad because it calls into question the integrity of past elections.

haney 8y ago

The ballot-counting equipment is part of a broader redesign of Los Angeles County’s voting system, which will include new equipment while relying on a traditional paper ballot. So they’re paper ballots but the machine to count them is open source?

sprokolopolis 8y ago
It seems the larger plan will be to have tablet kiosks where you can either select your choices, or scan a QR code from your phone (with your pre-selected choices) and then your ballot selections are printed to the paper ballot. They have been asking for suggested areas for "Voting Centers" recently where LA County citizens can vote at the location of their choosing. Many people here have long commutes from traffic or public transport. For this reason (and maybe others) the County wants to make it so people can vote at any of the available "vote centers", rather than one assigned polling location by their home. You can watch the video that they were sending around here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fC_-8Nl-O3U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fC_-8Nl-O3U
- ollien 8y ago
  This just sounds like a really expensive pencil if all it does it print it out on paper.
  - jfoutz 8y ago
    It can be a super helpful assistive tech. Also you can make selections before hand, and still secure the actual ballots. Tracking all printed, spoiled and cast ballots can be helpful. Also, you get to examine the actual ballot before casting your vote, even if you don’t fill it out with a pencil.
  - jacobolus 8y ago
    People marking paper ballots manage to screw up the marking in every conceivable way, and when those are recounted in a close race, whoever is doing the counting can exercise some discretion in edge cases. Presumably a machine could guarantee that the ballot was filled out correctly and not spoiled. For example, in a 2017 election for a seat of the Virginia House which would have switched party control, an election recount came up one vote in favor of the Democrat, but then GOP officials declared that a (clearly spoiled under any reasonable interpretation of the official rules for counting) ballot should count for the GOP candidate, making the vote a tie. Another GOP official then decided the contest in the GOP candidate’s favor by drawing his name from a hat. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_House_of_Delegates_election,_2017#Recounts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_House_of_Delegates_el...

Someone1234 8y ago

Open Source voting is a great start. Transparent voting is better. Random auditing is a complete solution.

EGreg 8y ago

What we should have instead is a cryptographically secure voting system where no one can prove how they voted but can verify that their vote was counted properly. The trick is just to have people scan a QR code when they register, to make sure it’s one vote one person.

cbsmith 8y ago
Part of knowing your vote was counted properly means knowing what votes were recorded for you.
maccam94 8y ago
Votes have to be deniable to prevent coerced or paid votes.
ch4s3 8y ago
Deniable voting is as others have mentioned, the whole point. Also paper ballots are dead simple (though expensive) to audit.
thatfrenchguy 8y ago
It’s called paper ballots and you going to the vote booth
tzs 8y ago
I wonder if you are being downvoted because you said "cryptographically" and people think you are suggesting something with a blockchain? Anyway, such a system as you want has been designed, and is inexpensive and works well with existing systems, and makes it easy for third parties to audit the results: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scantegrity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scantegrity
- lwansbrough 8y ago
  How can the system prove that my vote counted correctly if I can’t personally verify who my vote was counted for? This system obviously requires centralized trust (which I’m not against in practice) — but is there any provably secure way to make such a system decentralized? (Yes, blockchain..)

rixrax 8y ago

I hope that as part of the design, it will also [optionally] enforce some form of voter identification (passport, drivers license, passport card, or even a credit card with a chip or apple pay for all I care). I suspect above might be unpopular idea. Especially since obvious downside is that if poorly implemented (or exploited) it could allow establishing who voted what and in any case allow establishing who did and didn't vote. And no, I don't think voter fraud is widespread, or has had any impact of consequence to overall results. But in this age and day, I think we should have a system where a registered voter is first identified by the system before presenting them with the ballot. This way, assuming systems were interlinked, one could vote anywhere in the country, and be given the right ballot for where you live. And then the obvious next step would be allowing voting via browser. One vote for one registered ID. If system thinks your ID has already voted, have an escalation mechanism to re-cast the vote and investigate.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
gruez 8y ago
>[optionally] enforce what's that supposed to mean? it's either mandatory or it isn't. also, all of the options you listed are disproportionately less used by the poor, so it doesn't really address the main issues with mandatory voter id >And then the obvious next step would be allowing voting via browser. electronic voting brings up a bunch of other issues. how do you prevent vote selling? how do you secure a (poorly secured) personal computer from being hacked?
- rixrax 8y ago
  >>>[optionally] enforce >what's that supposed to mean? I was just thinking that some might want to use this software without identification enforcement, or do it some other way (manually via voter list,...). I think it would not be unreasonable to say that in order to vote, you need to furnish some form of approved identification. That some people don't have a valid government issued Id is in my mind absolutely a problem and we should find a way to make sure people do have some Id regardless of their background. >>...allowing voting via browser. >and how does this prevent vote selling? I don't know. But it appears other countries[0] have managed to make this work. I don't see how it could not work here too. [0] https://e-estonia.com/solutions/e-governance/i-voting/ https://e-estonia.com/solutions/e-governance/i-voting/

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

motohagiography 8y ago

Electronic voting conflates authenticity with legitimacy. Same problem in digital identity. To me it seemed actually stupid to believe that the only thing preventing algorithms from yielding the sympathetic magic required for a peaceful transfer of sovereign power, was their lack of complexity. Arguably, without the ritual element, democracy reduces to a lottery with a biased mechanism, and for it to work, it must necessarily be more than that. It's a larger philosophical question, to be sure, but it's like comparing a Turing test to an Indifference curve. The first is to determine whether something can convince people it is another person, the second is to predict the point at which you will cease to care enough to choose something else. These are analogous in that, like an AI, we can design an e-voting system that can act convincingly as though it facilitates democracy, but mainly it is just an acceptable substitute for people who no longer care whether the democracy they are dealing with is real or not. In the case of voting, it's not just a thought experiment, or a product dev question, as by real, I mean sufficiently legitimate for people not to reject the results and cause civil disturbances. It might sound a bit extreme, but we should really be asking when we institute electronic voting (or counting) whether we are willing to accept a simulation of the ritual we use to grant sovereign powers to people.

secabeen 8y ago

Looks pretty good. I think it's too bad that the filled out ballot just goes into the place where the unfilled ballot is printed. Makes it feel like it could be over-printed or something. Taking the filled out ballot over to a box is not that much of an inconvenience. If they're worried about observation during that transfer, put the box by the voting system, but more obviously separate.

eludwig 8y ago

Relevant: http://vsap.lavote.net/ http://vsap.lavote.net/

nonbel 8y ago

Is this the same thing that Smartmatic company was hired for? https://abc7.com/politics/new-voting-system-approved-by-la-county-board-of-supervisors/3595736/ https://abc7.com/politics/new-voting-system-approved-by-la-c... That seems to be the case: >"Separately, Logan signed a contract on June 13 with Smartmatic USA, making it the VSAP prime contractor and systems integrator. Smartmatic USA will help Logan's office in managing the manufacture and implemention of components scheduled for introduction in the March 2020 California presidential primary election." https://www.techwire.net/news/la-county-oks-open-source-election-system.html https://www.techwire.net/news/la-county-oks-open-source-elec... Why are all these "voting machine" companies so shady? >"The Venezuelan-owned Smartmatic Corporation is a riddle both in ownership and operation, complicated by the fact that its machines have overseen several landslide (and contested) victories by President Hugo Chavez and his supporters. The electronic voting company went from a small technology startup to a market player in just a few years, catapulted by its participation in the August 2004 recall referendum. Smartmatic has claimed to be of U.S. origin, but its true owners -- probably elite Venezuelans of several political strains -- remain hidden behind a web of holding companies in the Netherlands and Barbados. The Smartmatic machines used in Venezuela are widely suspected of, though never proven conclusively to be, susceptible to fraud. The company is thought to be backing out of Venezuelan electoral events, focusing now on other parts of world, including the United States via its subsidiary, Sequoia." https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/06CARACAS2063_a.html https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/06CARACAS2063_a.html

vuln 8y ago
Smartmatic is a CIA operation.

Dowwie 8y ago

It's open source, so that means you can see for yourself why the votes were counted correctly! How do you safely pass votes from the machine to the counter?

Snd_ 8y ago

Article unreadable in the EU. Thanks GDPR :(

matt_s 8y ago

Voting is an area where we don't need automation or fast results. Typically a newly elected person doesn't take office for days or months after an election, right? Paper ballots cannot be hacked at scale. Properly designed paper ballots and a national design and education rolled out about them would propel us forwards as a nation.

rurban 8y ago
The first argument does not hold for traditional paper ballots. Paper ballots are all already counted for the critical evening news at 8pm, and are all seen by multiple eyes.

mdrzn 8y ago

LA Times not available in the EU: can we stop posting links to it? https://www.techwire.net/news/la-county-oks-open-source-election-system.html https://www.techwire.net/news/la-county-oks-open-source-elec...