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Why do we need electronic voting?
For a while, after the 2000 election mess, I remember being convinced that we needed electronic voting machines. Then I remember being dismayed by the apparent lack of quality and security found in many new and existing designs. Now that it’s almost time for the next big election, I can’t seem to remember why I thought we needed electronic voting in the first place.
The problems in Florida were mostly caused by poor ballot design and questionable adherence to procedure. Do electronic voting machines fix either of those problems? Can’t we just have less awkward paper ballots and better training for voting officials?
Total public transparency is absolutely crucial to election security, so any electronic machine that relies on obfuscation and secrecy for “security” should be automatically disqualified. If I can’t know the exact path of every single electron or scrap of paper through the voting process, how am I supposed to have any confidence in the results? Sure, there are plenty of ways to design a computerized voting system that doesn’t keep any secrets (although you wouldn’t know it by looking at the current crop) and real cryptographers have come up with some monstrously cool concepts for e-voting receipts and authentication, but is it really worth it? If the machine is going to wind up printing out a paper trail anyway, why not start with the paper in the first place. A good “old-fashioned” optical scan system with penciled in bubbles seems to be good enough in just about every category that’s important for voting. Hire someone with a design and layout sense to put the ballots together and invest a third of your new-machine budget on training the staff, and you’ve probably got a pretty good system for 2004.
I’m a big fan of unnecessary technology in every other aspect of life, so this realization comes as something of a shock to me; but I really can’t remember why I ever thought the country should invest in computerized voting gizmos. Somebody please remind me before my geek self-image suffers irreparable harm.
[Thanks to Freedom to Tinker for keeping this fresh in my mind.]
April 22, 2004 | Permalink
Comments
Personally, I think that electronic voting machines have the potential to provide much better interface design than paper ballots ever could.
Also, at the very least, electronic voting is much more efficient than traditional punch card ballots. Of course, scantron voting is also more efficient and less error-prone than punch card ballots.
Posted by: allan | Apr 23, 2004 12:09:11 AM
I think the main motivator in many areas is accessibility (for disabilities, languages) without requiring a "helper" to accompany the assisted in casting their vote.
In theory, every polling place could have extra paper ballots in 50 languages as well as braille, extra-large-print, etc. But this sort of "internationalization" is sorta what computers are good for.
Even if the device just produced a paper print-out which was your real ballot, that would be an improvement for some people. The issue of electronic vs. mechanical input devices is orthogonal to how the votes are officially tallied.
Posted by: dave | Apr 23, 2004 12:24:54 PM
Accessibility and efficiency are nice goals for the voting process to strive for, but they can’t trump the primary requirements of accuracy and trust. At least for the time being, large print and foreign language ballots could be available by mail and at selected polling places. Specialty ballots do not even have to be processed on-site; they could be handled at a centralized facility along with the absentee vote.
A machine that lets a user input the vote and then prints out a paper ballot is a bit sketchy. If the paper ballot is the ultimate record of a vote, the voters will have to examine the ballots after they come out of the machine. If there’s no easy way for a voter to examine the paper ballot, there’s no reason to trust that the machine “recorded” your actual vote. Even if the “printed” ballot can be examined, that’s just an extra step and potential source of error. Making a direct, physical mark with your own hand on a piece of paper is a very efficient UI for 99% of the voting public.
I’m not opposed to computerized (or, in reality, more computerized) voting machines. I just think that we should be very slow and methodical in introducing them, and should only do so for accessibility, efficiency and user experience reasons. Most of the marketing materials for new computerized voting machines focus on security, reliability and “the total eliminating of human error.” I don’t think the current technology lives up to any of those claims particularly well, and the current mad rush to implement new voting machines raises many questions. Well, one question, really: Why?
Posted by: Phil Libin | Apr 26, 2004 4:19:34 PM
We should get less technical, the 2000 system was Too complicated for some. I propose a Mask representing each candidate and voters recieve a marble upon arrival and proper identification, then they drop the marble into the mouth of the mask of their candidate. Nothing to write, so the illiterate can vote. Nothing to count, just use a scale under each mask.
Posted by: Chad Dangling | May 2, 2004 5:55:25 PM
