Glenn Reynolds Is Right: It's Time For Paper Ballots
As hackers get increasingly sophisticated -- or just increasingly able to worm their way into our high tech improvements -- sometimes the best solution is unsophisticated, throwback protections.
Along these lines, Glenn Reynolds has a piece in USA Today in favor of paper ballots:
So what should we do? Well, we could try to boost our cybersecurity, but given that the NSA, the FBI and the CIA are leaking important secrets on a daily basis, maybe we're not up to that job. So, once again, let me suggest that we return to something that, by its very nature, can't be hacked by a guy in St. Petersburg: Paper ballots.In some ways, paper and ink is a super technology. When you cast a vote on a voting machine, all that's recorded is who you voted for. But a paper ballot captures lots of other information: Ink color, handwriting, etc. If you have access to a voting machine that's connected to the Internet, you can change all the votes at once. To change a bunch of paper ballots takes physical access, and unless you're very careful the changed ballots will show evidence of tampering. Paper ballots aren't fraud-proof, of course, as a century of Chicago politics demonstrates, but they're beyond the reach of some guy sitting at a computer in a basement halfway around the world. And there are well-known steps to make Chicago-style fraud harder.
Perhaps it's time to mandate paper ballots, and to also legally require other steps to ensure election integrity. Vote-counting systems should be transparent, and regularly audited. Voter ID should be strictly enforced, as it is in all advanced democracies to ensure that only eligible voters vote.
The notion that requiring identification to vote is some horrible thing is ridiculous. The burden should be on the person to get identification -- with help for those few who have issues that make this difficult for them.
From that link above at NRO, I think the UK's policy makes complete sense:
Last month, Theresa May's government responded to the problem. It announced that "endemic corruption" meant that voters in certain areas will now have to show photo identification. The government may even require people to prove their UK citizenship before granting them the right to vote. It also issued a nationwide ban on political workers handing in large numbers of completed postal ballots on election day. The maximum penalty for voter fraud will be raised from two to ten years.
Protecting voting rights is essential to fair and honest elections and a government that represents the will of the people.
Funny how its racist to require ID to vote, but not to get food stamps
lujlp at June 26, 2017 12:51 AM
There isn't much of an issue with hacking voting machines. The traditional methods of stuffing ballots and compromising the guy who counts the ballots still works with both paper and electronic voting systems.
Ben at June 26, 2017 6:05 AM
As does showing up at the last minute with boxes of ballots "found" in the trunk of a poll worker's car.
Conan the Grammarian at June 26, 2017 6:13 AM
Such physical hacking requires one to be on site. So one very talented hacker sitting in a cafe in Paris can't summon a botnet to do the heavy lifting and shift dozens of precincts with a single command.
That's a plus. Also, if the internet of things has any security, it is generally a bolted on afterthought, not part and parcel of the product.
I R A Darth Aggie at June 26, 2017 6:53 AM
This is why I think the old mechanical voting machines were the ideal solution. If there is any question about vote totals in a precinct, election officials could always go back and examine the register totals on the machines, which were pretty difficult to hack. The one problem with these was that they required a fair amount of work to maintain and to set up for a given election. But governments dealt with that in the past, so I don't know why they could not do so now.
Cousin Dave at June 26, 2017 6:54 AM
The traditional methods of stuffing ballots and compromising the guy who counts the ballots still works with both paper and electronic voting systems. ~ Ben at June 26, 2017 6:05 AM
As does showing up at the last minute with boxes of ballots "found" in the trunk of a poll worker's car.
Conan the Grammarian at June 26, 2017 6:13 AM
This is why ballots need to be numbered, and tagged to the individual voting. That way in a count/recount it becomes much easier to eliminate duplicates, fraudulent ballots, and ineligible voters.
Isab at June 26, 2017 6:57 AM
IRA,
The voting systems around here are not connected to the internet. They are on a local network. Your Paris botnet doesn't help. You still need to be on site.
The biggest issue I've seen with electronic voting systems is the poor quality in their manufacturing. Diebold originally didn't do a very good job on the systems they sold. I don't know if it has gotten better or worse. The old mechanical systems were easy to understand and everyone understood the failure mechanisms and failure rates. If electronic systems were open design with periodic vetting I would be less concerned. But paper and ink don't solve the problem. Transparency and auditing does.
Conan,
Doesn't that count as stuffing ballots?
You also have people bused from polling station to polling station and given different names to claim voting. Hence the need for voter ID. It is clear that one party thinks voter fraud helps them. I don't know if they are correct but clearly that is how they feel.
Ben at June 26, 2017 11:02 AM
Has anyone noticed how hard it is to fake a lottery ticket?
Radwaste at June 26, 2017 12:11 PM
Perhaps technically. But stuffing the ballot box usually occurs before the count. The "found" ballots are usually presented after a recount is demanded, when the side "finding" the ballots has realized that it stuff the ballot box enough the first time around.
Conan the Grammarian at June 26, 2017 2:30 PM
I have to show photo ID to buy Sudafed, but not to vote. That's nuts.
KateC at June 26, 2017 6:37 PM
It's not who votes but who counts the votes.
We have paper ballots here in Israel. It works pretty well in our hyper-politicized society - and it also helps if there are several political parties. That way each party sends someone to supervise the count. Need lotsa mutually antagonistic folks in that counting room - check-n-balances, eh?
When my mom worked in NYC politics it was easy to get people to hand out flyers during the day, but more difficult to get volunteers to supervise the recording of machine totals late at night.
I work in hi-tech and do not trust electronic voting at all. Not too difficult to develop a "sleeper" virus that remains dormant for 4 or more years, until the next big election. And there's more than enough in$entive to fund such a thing. Similar attacks have already been discovered - and there will be a lot more points of attack as the Internet of Things grows up around us.
Add in various absentee and vote-in-advance schemes and there is zero credibility.
Paper can be improved with electronics. One proposal is for a barcode or printed "receipt" system. Newspapers/websites publish results and voters can use the code to check their votes anonymously. It assures votes weren't discarded but it doesn't help against ballot stuffing by fictional voters.
Ben David at June 28, 2017 6:03 AM
To my knowledge there hasn't been much of an issue here in the US with viruses and such. We have too much variation in voting equipment to make that valuable. Instead we've seen really poor quality software. Buffer overruns, counter overflows, off by one errors are disappointingly common. And they do change elections, but due to the random outcome nature of things it is clear this is just poor quality and not intentional skewing. (Unless the cheaters are incompetent. Which I won't rule out.) Far more common is what Conan mentioned. An election official suddenly 'finds' a box of 'votes' they just forgot about in their trunk after the third recount.
Ben at June 28, 2017 10:41 AM
I have to show photo ID to buy Sudafed, but not to vote. That's nuts.
KateC at June 26, 2017 6:37 PM
Agreed.
I look forward to the day when my friends' kids can just make Sudafed at home on their 3D printers.
Michelle at June 28, 2017 11:00 PM
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