8 ms·

I hate being outright dismissive but it sounds like an expensive html/pdf form with a printer attached. I do agree that the paper trail is a great thing. I'm n

I hate being outright dismissive but it sounds like an expensive html/pdf form with a printer attached. I do agree that the paper trail is a great thing. I'm not fundamentally against electronic voting, but I haven't heard of a system that can really compete with the simplicity and verifiability of the immutablility you get from paper ballots inside ballot boxes being watched over by interested parties on all sides.

nathan_long 8y ago
> I hate being outright dismissive but it sounds like an expensive html/pdf form with a printer attached. I don't think that's dismissive at all. That's what it is, and it sounds good to me. Basically the computer is a scribe with perfect handwriting that fills out the paper ballot for the voter while the voter watches. Absolutely any voter is qualified to assert whether the ballot contains the votes they intended to cast. From there, you could have the voter carry the ballot and drop it in a box that's being observed by any number of interested parties, providing old-fashioned accountability. Counting by scanner is an optional time saver, with hand counts as the alternative / double-check.
- snuxoll 8y ago
  Don't forget that electronic voting machines can have accessibility features that paper ballots lack - having a glorified form printer is actually a sound design that lets us gain these benefits without the negatives.
  - liquidify 8y ago
    There is no reason an electronic count can't be kept along with the paper ballots.
    - jfnixon 8y ago
      How does that help? The paper ballots still need to be counted as they are the authoritative source of the final tally. An electronic tally does nothing useful and adds complexity.
      - Freak_NL 8y ago
        Speed. One of the reasons some politicians want electronic voting is to have the tentative results in as fast as possible, so they can sod off to their respective celebration/mourning shindigs and call it a night. That the actual, lawful count follows in the course of hours or even days is, to them, then acceptable. Having these machines do a preliminary tally gives you a more accurate forecast of the votes cast than exit polls.
        snuxoll 8y ago
        Optical scan machines solve that issue quite nicely and more robustly, especially when a ballot needs to be spoiled due to error (it can be physically destoryed before tally instead of needing to support deletion or modification of records in the voting machine).
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 8y ago
  This is missing two completely unnecessary failure modes that pen and paper don't have: 1. You cannot know whether the device leaks your vote, i.e., whether your vote is secret. Mind you that in addition to an attack inside the device, this can also happen via simple electromagnetic side channels inherent in the device--as has been demonstrated quite a while ago for Nedap voting computers by the dutch campaign against voting computers, where you could distinguish selected candicates by tuning an AM radio to the right frequency. 2. When the device malfunctions, whether due to a defect or sabotage, and only particular candidates can not be selected, that creates a side channel where the voter is effectively forced to unveil who they want to vote for. Neither of those failure modes exist with paper ballots.
  - dragontamer 8y ago
    > Neither of those failure modes exist with paper ballots. Paper ballots stop secret cameras in the ballot room? I mean, they really don't. It depends on your threat-model. A lot of things will come down to trust. > 2. When the device malfunctions, whether due to a defect or sabotage, and only particular candidates can not be selected, that creates a side channel where the voter is effectively forced to unveil who they want to vote for. See Butterfly ballots. Paper ballots in USA (Florida specifically) which basically had this flaw. It was confusing to know which circles and lines were going to the correct candidate you wished to vote for. Asking for help on the ballot would leak information on who you wanted to vote for. A poorly done paper-ballot has its own set of issues.
    - beat 8y ago
      And the solution to the flaws of butterfly ballots was the proliferation of insecure, dangerous touchscreen machines. Screw that. Give me a well-designed paper ballot.
    - usrusr 8y ago
      > Paper ballots stop secret cameras in the ballot room? And neither do touchscreens. Paper is better if it's not done comically wrong. And even the worst paper ballots have a much smaller attack surface for plain old analog rumors than the best possible electronic system. The most powerful way to undermine a democracy is not flipping some votes to one candidate in perfect secrecy, it's making all candidates/camps believe that the other did. This could destroy a democracy even without a single vote having actually been tampered with. Electronic voting, only understood by experts, is perfect soil for such rumors and no amount of open sourcing can change that. The many human counters involved in a hierarchical paper vote counting scheme are not just an unfortunate inefficiency left over from a time when machines could not count yet, they also serve as witnesses, not only for keeping their peers in check but also for dampening any unfounded rumors that might come up. They increase trust even when they are not actively speaking up against rumors, just by being there, in numbers, as passive dampening elements like the moderator rods in a fission plant.
dragontamer 8y ago
> I hate being outright dismissive but it sounds like an expensive html/pdf form with a printer attached. And I like it. The simpler the design, the better. Sometimes it takes a billion dollars and a couple of smart researchers to invent the "obvious" solution to a problem. We've got butterfly ballots, confusing electronics-only machines, and a variety of bad standards as the basis of our current voting infrastructure. Telling everybody to use a damn PDF + printer would be a gross improvement.
- on_and_off 8y ago
  or just use paper ballots like other countries do ..
  - dragontamer 8y ago
    The Butterfly ballots WERE paper ballots. Give America an idea, and SOMEONE in America will royally screw it up. Its a big country filled with lots of smart people, but also filled with lots of dumb people. DARPA is working to come up with the standard that the whole country should follow. That's good and useful research. Even if it comes out to be the obvious solution (a paper ballot off of a damn printer), there's benefit to one of the major research institutions of this country telling the rest of the country how things should be done.
    - misingnoglic 8y ago
      Give America an idea, and SOMEONE will find a way to exploit it
      - MrQuincle 8y ago
        In this case perhaps paper where you don't see anything, but that will trip up the scanner. You only need to have votes declared invalid. Of course, preferably just a random subset of them. You can choose for districts you don't like and distribute that paper there.
    - 8y ago
beat 8y ago
The part I don't like is the printer. They're woefully unreliable devices. Having been an election judge, handling a bunch of flaky tech in polling places is the last thing the poll workers need. They have a lot to do already. In MN, we use paper ballots with Scantron readers for excellent results. I'm not sure what problem this new system is supposed to solve that the Scantron model doesn't.
- jfoutz 8y ago
  My grandma has shaky hands. She can’t really fill out a scantron. I have no problem with people filling out their own ballots. The pristine filled out and verified by the voter ballot seems harder to spoil than a hand filled out ballot. My preference is for plenty of machines available to fill out paper ballots, but give voters the option of filling out by hand.
Spooky23 8y ago
Paper ballots are pretty trivial to cheat too, you’re dependent on the honesty of party officials and poll watchers.
- adestefan 8y ago
  It’s also easy to design paper ballots that are really hard to use.
  - Spooky23 8y ago
    Absolutely. If you live in a place like I do, we’re a one party place where primary elections are the real elections, and you don’t have the competitive pressures that are inherent to a multi-party contest. We also had a huge upsurge in “write in” votes, as the paper forms are difficult to interpret.
- jfnixon 8y ago
  That’s why anyone should be permitted to watch the process from start to finish. Heck, videotape the collection box from the moment it is shown to be empty and sealed till the ballots are retrieve. Videotape the counting process. Do all this in the public square, televised and streamed.
  - ajurna 8y ago
    This happens in Ireland. results are all hand counted with representatives from all parties and public access to watch the counting. After a vote we get to watch the news go from counting station to station to announce the results. There are usually a few recounts etc but it rarely takes longer than a day or two and tbh which is more important done right or fast?
flukus 8y ago
> I hate being outright dismissive but it sounds like an expensive html/pdf form with a printer attached. I don't think you're being dismissive enough, it's an expensive pencil and paper.
specialist 8y ago
Poll based opscans are (should be) configured to reject spoiled (or unreadable) ballots. So ballot marking technologies have marginal utility. Expensive fix for a non-problem. For complying with HAVA mandated accessibility, the Automark is slightly less bad than the others. The only solution which actually fulfilled all the requirements and was preferred by the disabled community is a non-electronic protective ballot sleeve called the Vote-PAD. Alas, it hasn't been available for quite some time. Being cost effective, meaning less pork, it didn't have any champions. Fortunately, a new ballot marker, twenty years too late, doesn't help with the increasingly fashionable postal balloting, so there's no danger this latest noble effort will have any benefit.
tmaly 8y ago
seems like it would be easier to print out thousands of ballots to stuff. If you have to fill something out by hand, it makes it hard to do this.
wgoodall01 8y ago
I'd say that the massive investment is necessary because of how uncomplicated this particular system is. Without a large, sprawling, and well-funded project backing it, a simple (and probably far more reliable) solution can lack credibility when compared to more complicated alternatives.

nathan_long 8y ago

> I hate being outright dismissive but it sounds like an expensive html/pdf form with a printer attached. I don't think that's dismissive at all. That's what it is, and it sounds good to me. Basically the computer is a scribe with perfect handwriting that fills out the paper ballot for the voter while the voter watches. Absolutely any voter is qualified to assert whether the ballot contains the votes they intended to cast. From there, you could have the voter carry the ballot and drop it in a box that's being observed by any number of interested parties, providing old-fashioned accountability. Counting by scanner is an optional time saver, with hand counts as the alternative / double-check.

snuxoll 8y ago
Don't forget that electronic voting machines can have accessibility features that paper ballots lack - having a glorified form printer is actually a sound design that lets us gain these benefits without the negatives.
- liquidify 8y ago
  There is no reason an electronic count can't be kept along with the paper ballots.
  - jfnixon 8y ago
    How does that help? The paper ballots still need to be counted as they are the authoritative source of the final tally. An electronic tally does nothing useful and adds complexity.
    - Freak_NL 8y ago
      Speed. One of the reasons some politicians want electronic voting is to have the tentative results in as fast as possible, so they can sod off to their respective celebration/mourning shindigs and call it a night. That the actual, lawful count follows in the course of hours or even days is, to them, then acceptable. Having these machines do a preliminary tally gives you a more accurate forecast of the votes cast than exit polls.
      - snuxoll 8y ago
        Optical scan machines solve that issue quite nicely and more robustly, especially when a ballot needs to be spoiled due to error (it can be physically destoryed before tally instead of needing to support deletion or modification of records in the voting machine).
zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 8y ago
This is missing two completely unnecessary failure modes that pen and paper don't have: 1. You cannot know whether the device leaks your vote, i.e., whether your vote is secret. Mind you that in addition to an attack inside the device, this can also happen via simple electromagnetic side channels inherent in the device--as has been demonstrated quite a while ago for Nedap voting computers by the dutch campaign against voting computers, where you could distinguish selected candicates by tuning an AM radio to the right frequency. 2. When the device malfunctions, whether due to a defect or sabotage, and only particular candidates can not be selected, that creates a side channel where the voter is effectively forced to unveil who they want to vote for. Neither of those failure modes exist with paper ballots.
- dragontamer 8y ago
  > Neither of those failure modes exist with paper ballots. Paper ballots stop secret cameras in the ballot room? I mean, they really don't. It depends on your threat-model. A lot of things will come down to trust. > 2. When the device malfunctions, whether due to a defect or sabotage, and only particular candidates can not be selected, that creates a side channel where the voter is effectively forced to unveil who they want to vote for. See Butterfly ballots. Paper ballots in USA (Florida specifically) which basically had this flaw. It was confusing to know which circles and lines were going to the correct candidate you wished to vote for. Asking for help on the ballot would leak information on who you wanted to vote for. A poorly done paper-ballot has its own set of issues.
  - beat 8y ago
    And the solution to the flaws of butterfly ballots was the proliferation of insecure, dangerous touchscreen machines. Screw that. Give me a well-designed paper ballot.
  - usrusr 8y ago
    > Paper ballots stop secret cameras in the ballot room? And neither do touchscreens. Paper is better if it's not done comically wrong. And even the worst paper ballots have a much smaller attack surface for plain old analog rumors than the best possible electronic system. The most powerful way to undermine a democracy is not flipping some votes to one candidate in perfect secrecy, it's making all candidates/camps believe that the other did. This could destroy a democracy even without a single vote having actually been tampered with. Electronic voting, only understood by experts, is perfect soil for such rumors and no amount of open sourcing can change that. The many human counters involved in a hierarchical paper vote counting scheme are not just an unfortunate inefficiency left over from a time when machines could not count yet, they also serve as witnesses, not only for keeping their peers in check but also for dampening any unfounded rumors that might come up. They increase trust even when they are not actively speaking up against rumors, just by being there, in numbers, as passive dampening elements like the moderator rods in a fission plant.

dragontamer 8y ago

> I hate being outright dismissive but it sounds like an expensive html/pdf form with a printer attached. And I like it. The simpler the design, the better. Sometimes it takes a billion dollars and a couple of smart researchers to invent the "obvious" solution to a problem. We've got butterfly ballots, confusing electronics-only machines, and a variety of bad standards as the basis of our current voting infrastructure. Telling everybody to use a damn PDF + printer would be a gross improvement.

on_and_off 8y ago
or just use paper ballots like other countries do ..
- dragontamer 8y ago
  The Butterfly ballots WERE paper ballots. Give America an idea, and SOMEONE in America will royally screw it up. Its a big country filled with lots of smart people, but also filled with lots of dumb people. DARPA is working to come up with the standard that the whole country should follow. That's good and useful research. Even if it comes out to be the obvious solution (a paper ballot off of a damn printer), there's benefit to one of the major research institutions of this country telling the rest of the country how things should be done.
  - misingnoglic 8y ago
    Give America an idea, and SOMEONE will find a way to exploit it
    - MrQuincle 8y ago
      In this case perhaps paper where you don't see anything, but that will trip up the scanner. You only need to have votes declared invalid. Of course, preferably just a random subset of them. You can choose for districts you don't like and distribute that paper there.
  - 8y ago

beat 8y ago

The part I don't like is the printer. They're woefully unreliable devices. Having been an election judge, handling a bunch of flaky tech in polling places is the last thing the poll workers need. They have a lot to do already. In MN, we use paper ballots with Scantron readers for excellent results. I'm not sure what problem this new system is supposed to solve that the Scantron model doesn't.

jfoutz 8y ago
My grandma has shaky hands. She can’t really fill out a scantron. I have no problem with people filling out their own ballots. The pristine filled out and verified by the voter ballot seems harder to spoil than a hand filled out ballot. My preference is for plenty of machines available to fill out paper ballots, but give voters the option of filling out by hand.

Spooky23 8y ago

Paper ballots are pretty trivial to cheat too, you’re dependent on the honesty of party officials and poll watchers.

adestefan 8y ago
It’s also easy to design paper ballots that are really hard to use.
- Spooky23 8y ago
  Absolutely. If you live in a place like I do, we’re a one party place where primary elections are the real elections, and you don’t have the competitive pressures that are inherent to a multi-party contest. We also had a huge upsurge in “write in” votes, as the paper forms are difficult to interpret.
jfnixon 8y ago
That’s why anyone should be permitted to watch the process from start to finish. Heck, videotape the collection box from the moment it is shown to be empty and sealed till the ballots are retrieve. Videotape the counting process. Do all this in the public square, televised and streamed.
- ajurna 8y ago
  This happens in Ireland. results are all hand counted with representatives from all parties and public access to watch the counting. After a vote we get to watch the news go from counting station to station to announce the results. There are usually a few recounts etc but it rarely takes longer than a day or two and tbh which is more important done right or fast?

flukus 8y ago

> I hate being outright dismissive but it sounds like an expensive html/pdf form with a printer attached. I don't think you're being dismissive enough, it's an expensive pencil and paper.

specialist 8y ago

Poll based opscans are (should be) configured to reject spoiled (or unreadable) ballots. So ballot marking technologies have marginal utility. Expensive fix for a non-problem. For complying with HAVA mandated accessibility, the Automark is slightly less bad than the others. The only solution which actually fulfilled all the requirements and was preferred by the disabled community is a non-electronic protective ballot sleeve called the Vote-PAD. Alas, it hasn't been available for quite some time. Being cost effective, meaning less pork, it didn't have any champions. Fortunately, a new ballot marker, twenty years too late, doesn't help with the increasingly fashionable postal balloting, so there's no danger this latest noble effort will have any benefit.

tmaly 8y ago

seems like it would be easier to print out thousands of ballots to stuff. If you have to fill something out by hand, it makes it hard to do this.

wgoodall01 8y ago

I'd say that the massive investment is necessary because of how uncomplicated this particular system is. Without a large, sprawling, and well-funded project backing it, a simple (and probably far more reliable) solution can lack credibility when compared to more complicated alternatives.