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Election technology |
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Electronic voting (also known as e-voting) is a term
encompassing several different types of
voting,
embracing both electronic means of casting a vote and electronic means
of counting votes.
Electronic voting technology can include
punched cards,
optical scan voting systems and specialized voting kiosks (including
self-contained
direct-recording electronic voting systems, or DRE). It can also
involve transmission of
ballots
and votes via telephones, private
computer networks, or the
Internet.
In general, two main types of e-Voting can be identified:[1][2]
- e-voting which is physically supervised by representatives of
governmental or independent electoral authorities (e.g. electronic
voting machines located at polling stations);
- remote e-Voting where voting is performed within the voter's
sole influence, and is not physically supervised by representatives
of governmental authorities (e.g. voting from one's personal
computer, mobile phone, television via the internet (also called
i-voting)).
Electronic voting technology can speed the counting of ballots and
can provide improved
accessibility for disabled voters. However, there has been
contention, especially in the
United States, that electronic voting, especially DRE voting, could
facilitate
electoral fraud.
Overview
Electronic voting systems for electorates have been in use since the
1960s[3]
when
punched card systems debuted. Their first widespread use was in the
USA where 7 counties switched to this method for the 1964 presidential
election.[4]
The newer
optical scan voting systems allow a computer to count a voter's mark
on a ballot.
DRE voting machines which collect and tabulate votes in a single
machine, are used by all voters in all elections in
Brazil
and India,
and also on a large scale in
Venezuela and the
United States. They have been used on a large scale in the
Netherlands but have been decommissioned after public concerns.
Internet voting systems have gained popularity and have been used for
government elections and referendums in the
United Kingdom,
Estonia
and
Switzerland as well as municipal elections in
Canada
and party primary elections in the United States and
France.[5]
There are also hybrid systems that include an electronic ballot
marking device (usually a touch screen system similar to a DRE) or other
assistive technology to print a
voter verified paper audit trail, then use a separate machine for
electronic tabulation.
Paper-based electronic voting system
Sometimes called a "document
ballot voting system", paper-based voting systems originated as a
system where votes are cast and
counted by hand, using paper ballots. With the advent of
electronic tabulation came systems where paper cards or sheets could
be marked by hand, but counted electronically. These systems included
punched card voting,
marksense and later
digital pen voting systems.
Most recently, these systems can include an Electronic Ballot Marker
(EBM), that allow voters to make their selections using an
electronic input device, usually a
touch screen system similar to a DRE. Systems including a ballot
marking device can incorporate different forms of
assistive technology.
Direct-recording electronic (DRE) voting system
A direct-recording electronic (DRE)
voting machine records votes by means of a
ballot
display provided with mechanical or electro-optical components that can
be activated by the voter (typically buttons or a
touchscreen); that processes data with computer software; and that
records voting data and ballot images in
memory components. After the election it produces a tabulation of
the voting data stored in a removable memory component and as printed
copy. The system may also provide a means for transmitting individual
ballots or vote totals to a central location for consolidating and
reporting results from precincts at the central location. These systems
use a precinct count method that tabulates ballots at the polling place.
They typically tabulate ballots as they are cast and print the results
after the close of polling.[6]
In 1996, after tests conducted on more than 50 municipalities, the
Brazilian Electoral Justice has launched their "voting machine". Since
2000, all Brazilian voters are able to use the electronic ballot boxes
to choose their candidates. In 2010 presidential election, which had
more than 135 million voters, the result was defined 75 minutes after
the end of voting. The electronic ballot box is made up of two
micro-terminals (one located in the voting cabin and the other with the
voting board representative) which are connected by a 5-meter cable.
Externally, the micro-terminals have only a numerical keyboard, which
does not accept any command executed by the simultaneous pressure of
more than one key. In case of power failure, the internal battery
provides the energy or it can be connected to an automotive battery. The
Brazilian electronic ballot box serves today as a model for other
countries.[7]
In 2002, in the United States, the
Help America Vote Act mandated that one handicapped accessible
voting system be provided per polling place, which most jurisdictions
have chosen to satisfy with the use of DRE voting machines, some
switching entirely over to DRE. In 2004, 28.9% of the registered voters
in the United States used some type of direct recording electronic
voting system,[8]
up from 7.7% in 1996.[9]
In 2004,
India had adopted Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) for its elections
to the Parliament with 380 million voters had cast their ballots using
more than a million voting machines.[citation
needed] The Indian EVMs are designed and developed
by two Government Owned Defense Equipment Manufacturing Units,
Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) and
Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL). Both systems are
identical, and are developed to the specifications of Election
Commission of India. The System is a set of two devices running on 6V
batteries. One device, the Voting Unit is used by the Voter, and another
device called the Control Unit is operated by the Electoral Officer.
Both units are connected by a 5 meter cable. The Voting unit has a Blue
Button for every candidate, the unit can hold 16 candidates, but up to 4
units can be chained, to accommodate 64 candidates. The Control Units
has Three buttons on the surface, namely, one button to release a single
vote, one button to see the total number of vote cast till now, and one
button to close the election process. The result button is hidden and
sealed, It cannot be pressed unless the Close button is already pressed.
Public network DRE voting system
A public network DRE voting system is an election system that uses
electronic ballots and transmits vote data from the polling place to
another location over a public network. Vote data may be transmitted as
individual ballots as they are cast, periodically as batches of ballots
throughout the election day, or as one batch at the close of voting.
This includes Internet voting as well as telephone voting.
Public network DRE voting system can utilize either precinct count or
central count method. The central count method tabulates ballots from
multiple precincts at a central location.
Internet voting can use remote locations (voting from any Internet
capable computer) or can use traditional polling locations with voting
booths consisting of Internet connected voting systems.
Corporations and organizations routinely use Internet voting to elect
officers and Board members and for other proxy elections. Internet
voting systems have been used privately in many modern nations and
publicly in the
United States, the
UK,
Switzerland and
Estonia.
In
Switzerland, where it is already an established part of local
referendums, voters get their passwords to access the ballot through the
postal service. Most voters in
Estonia
can cast their vote in local and parliamentary elections, if they want
to, via the Internet, as most of those on the electoral roll have access
to an e-voting system, the largest run by any
European Union country. It has been made possible because most
Estonians carry a national identity card equipped with a
computer-readable microchip and it is these cards which they use to get
access to the online ballot. All a voter needs is a computer, an
electronic card reader, their ID card and its PIN, and they can vote
from anywhere in the world. Estonian e-votes can only be cast during the
days of
advance voting. On election day itself people have to go to polling
stations and fill in a paper ballot.
Analysis of electronic voting
ISG TopVoter, a machine designed specifically to be used by
voters with disabilities.
Electronic voting systems may offer advantages compared to other
voting techniques. An electronic voting system can be involved in any
one of a number of steps in the setup, distributing, voting, collecting,
and counting of ballots, and thus may or may not introduce advantages
into any of these steps. Potential disadvantages exist as well including
the potential for flaws or weakness in any electronic component.
Charles Stewart of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology estimates that 1 million more
ballots were counted in the 2004 USA presidential election than in 2000
because electronic voting machines detected votes that paper-based
machines would have missed.[10]
In May 2004 the U.S.
Government Accountability Office released a report titled
"Electronic Voting Offers Opportunities and Presents Challenges",[11]
analyzing both the benefits and concerns created by electronic voting. A
second report was released in September 2005 detailing some of the
concerns with electronic voting, and ongoing improvements, titled
"Federal Efforts to Improve Security and Reliability of Electronic
Voting Systems Are Under Way, but Key Activities Need to Be Completed".[12]
It has been demonstrated that as voting systems become more complex
and include software,
different methods of election fraud become possible. Others also
challenge the use of electronic voting from a theoretical point of view,
arguing that humans are not equipped for verifying operations occurring
within an electronic machine and that because people cannot verify these
operations, the operations cannot be trusted. Furthermore, some
computing experts have argued for the broader notion that people cannot
trust any programming they did not author.[13]
Critics of electronic voting, including security analyst
Bruce Schneier, note that "computer security experts are unanimous
on what to do (some voting experts disagree, but it is the computer
security experts who need to be listened to; the problems here are with
the computer, not with the fact that the computer is being used in a
voting application)...DRE machines must have a voter-verifiable paper
audit trails... Software used on DRE machines must be open to public
scrutiny"[14]
to ensure the accuracy of the voting system. Verifiable ballots are
necessary because computers can and do malfunction, and because voting
machines can be compromised.
Electronic ballots
Electronic voting systems may use electronic ballots to store
votes in
computer memory. Systems which use them exclusively are called DRE
voting systems. When electronic ballots are used there is no risk of
exhausting the supply of ballots. Additionally, these electronic ballots
remove the need for printing of paper ballots, a significant cost.[15]
When administering elections in which ballots are offered in multiple
languages (in some areas of the United States, public elections are
required by the
National Voting Rights Act of 1965), electronic ballots can be
programmed to provide ballots in multiple languages for a single
machine. The advantage with respect to ballots in different languages
appears to be unique to electronic voting. For example,
King County, Washington's demographics require them under U.S.
federal election law to provide ballot access in
Chinese. With any type of paper ballot, the county has to decide how
many Chinese-language ballots to print, how many to make available at
each polling place, etc. Any strategy that can assure that
Chinese-language ballots will be available at all polling places is
certain, at the very least, to result in a significant number of wasted
ballots.[citation
needed] (The situation with lever machines would be
even worse than with paper: the only apparent way to reliably meet the
need would be to set up a Chinese-language lever machine at each polling
place, few of which would be used at all.)
Critics argue the need for extra ballots in any language can be
mitigated by providing a process to print ballots at voting locations.
They argue further, the cost of software validation, compiler trust
validation, installation validation, delivery validation and validation
of other steps related to electronic voting is complex and expensive,
thus electronic ballots are not guaranteed to be less costly than
printed ballots.
Accessibility
A Hart eSlate DRE voting machine with jelly buttons for
people with manual dexterity disabilities.
Electronic voting machines can be made fully accessible for persons
with disabilities. Punched card and optical scan machines are not fully
accessible for the blind or visually impaired, and lever machines can be
difficult for voters with limited mobility and strength.[16]
Electronic machines can use headphones,
sip and puff, foot pedals, joy sticks and other
adaptive technology to provide the necessary
accessibility.
Organizations such as the
Verified Voting Foundation have criticized the accessibility of
electronic voting machines[17]
and advocate alternatives. Some disabled voters (including the visually
impaired) could use a
tactile ballot, a ballot system using physical markers to indicate
where a mark should be made, to vote a secret paper ballot. These
ballots can be designed identically to those used by other voters.[18]
However, other disabled voters (including voters with dexterity
disabilities) could be unable to use these ballots.
Cryptographic verification
The concept of election verifiability through cryptographic solutions
has emerged in the academic literature to introduce transparency and
trust in electronic voting systems.[19][20]
It allows voters and election observers to verify that votes have been
recorded, tallied and declared correctly, in a manner independent from
the hardware and software running the election. Three aspects of
verifiability are considered:[21]
individual, universal, and eligibility. Individual verifiability allows
a voter to check that her own vote is included in the election outcome,
universal verifiability allows voters or election observers to check
that the election outcome corresponds to the votes cast, and eligibility
verifiability allows voters and observers to check that each vote in the
election outcome was cast by a uniquely registered voter.
Voter intent
Electronic voting machines are able to provide immediate feedback to
the voter detecting such possible problems as
undervoting and
overvoting which may result in a
spoiled ballot. This immediate feedback can be helpful in
successfully determining
voter intent.
Transparency
It has been alleged by groups such as the UK-based
Open Rights Group[22][23]
that a lack of testing, inadequate audit procedures, and insufficient
attention given to system or process design with electronic voting
leaves "elections open to error and
fraud".
In 2009, the
Federal Constitutional Court of Germany found that when using voting
machines the "verification of the result must be possible by the citizen
reliably and without any specialist knowledge of the subject." The
DRE Nedap-computers used till then did not fulfill that requirement.
The decision did not ban electronic voting as such, but requires all
essential steps in elections to be subject to public examinability.[24][25]
Audit
trails and auditing
A fundamental challenge with any
voting machine is assuring the votes were recorded as cast and
tabulated as recorded.
Non-document ballot voting systems can have a greater burden of
proof. This is often solved with an independently auditable system,
sometimes called an Independent Verification, that can also be used in
recounts or audits. These systems can include the ability for voters to
verify how their votes were cast or further to verify how their votes
were tabulated.
A discussion draft argued by researchers at the
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) states,
"Simply put, the DRE architecture’s inability to provide for independent
audits of its electronic records makes it a poor choice for an
environment in which detecting errors and fraud is important."[26]
The report does not represent the official position of NIST, and
misinterpretations of the report has led NIST to explain that "Some
statements in the report have been misinterpreted. The draft report
includes statements from election officials, voting system vendors,
computer scientists and other experts in the field about what is
potentially possible in terms of attacks on DREs. However, these
statements are not report conclusions."[27]
A Diebold Election Systems, Inc. model AccuVote-TSx DRE
voting machine with VVPAT attachment.
Various technologies can be used to assure voters that their vote was
cast correctly, detect possible fraud or malfunction, and to provide a
means to audit the original machine. Some systems include technologies
such as cryptography (visual or mathematical), paper (kept by the voter
or only verified), audio verification, and dual recording or witness
systems (other than with paper).
Dr.
Rebecca Mercuri, the creator of the
Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) concept (as described in
her Ph.D. dissertation in October 2000 on the basic voter verifiable
ballot system), proposes to answer the auditability question by having
the voting machine print a paper ballot or other paper facsimile that
can be visually verified by the voter before being entered into a secure
location. Subsequently, this is sometimes referred to as the "Mercuri
method." To be truly voter-verified, the record itself must
be verified by the voter and able to be done without assistance, such as
visually or audibly. If the voter must use a bar-code scanner or other
electronic device to verify, then the record is not truly
voter-verifiable, since it is actually the electronic device that is
verifying the record for the voter. VVPAT is the form of Independent
Verification most commonly found in
elections in the United States.
End-to-end auditable voting systems can provide the voter with a
receipt that can be taken home. This receipt does not allow voters to
prove to others how they voted, but it does allow them to verify that
their vote is included in the tally, all votes were cast by valid
voters, and the results are tabulated correctly. End-to-end (E2E)
systems include
Punchscan,
ThreeBallot and
Prêt à Voter.
Scantegrity is an add-on that extends current optical scan voting
systems with an E2E layer. The city of
Takoma Park, Maryland used
Scantegrity II for its November, 2009 election.[28][29]
Systems that allow the voter to prove how they voted are never used
in U.S. public elections, and are outlawed by most state constitutions.
The primary concerns with this solution are
voter intimidation and
vote selling.
An audit system can be used in measured random recounts to detect
possible malfunction or fraud. With the VVPAT method, the paper ballot
is often treated as the official ballot of record. In this scenario, the
ballot is primary and the electronic records are used only for an
initial count. In any subsequent recounts or challenges, the paper, not
the electronic ballot, would be used for tabulation. Whenever a paper
record serves as the legal ballot, that system will be subject to the
same benefits and concerns as any paper ballot system.
To successfully audit any voting machine, a strict
chain of custody is required.
The solution was first demonstrated (New York City, March 2001) and
used (Sacramento, California 2002) by AVANTE International Technology,
Inc.. In 2004 Nevada was the first state to successfully implement a DRE
voting system that printed an electronic record. The $9.3 million voting
system provided by
Sequoia Voting Systems included more than 2,600
AVC EDGE touchscreen DREs equipped with the
VeriVote VVPAT component.
[30]
The new systems, implemented under the direction of then Secretary of
State
Dean Heller replaced largely punched card voting systems and were
chosen after feedback was solicited from the community through town hall
meetings and input solicited from the
Nevada Gaming Control Board.[31]
Hardware
Inadequately secured hardware can be subject to a
physical tampering. Some critics, such as the group "Wij vertrouwen
stemcomputers niet" ("We do not trust voting machines"), charge that,
for instance, foreign hardware could be inserted into the machine, or
between the user and the central mechanism of the machine itself, using
a
man in the middle attack technique, and thus even sealing DRE
machines may not be sufficient protection.[32]
This claim is countered by the position that review and testing
procedures can detect fraudulent code or hardware, if such things are
present, and that a thorough, verifiable
chain of custody would prevent the insertion of such hardware or
software.[citation
needed]
Security seals are commonly employed in an attempt to detect
tampering, but testing by
Argonne National Laboratory and others demonstrates that existing
seals can usually be quickly defeated by a trained person using low-tech
methods.[33]
Software
Security experts, such as
Bruce Schneier, have demanded that voting machine
source code should be publicly available for inspection.[34]
Others have also suggested publishing voting machine software under a
free software license as is done in
Australia.[35]
Testing and
certification
One method to any error with voting machines is
parallel testing, which are conducted on the Election Day with
randomly picked machines. The
ACM published a study showing that, to change the outcome of the
2000 U.S. Presidential election, only 2 votes in each precinct would
have needed to been changed.[36]
Other
Criticisms can be mitigated by review and testing procedures to
detect fraudulent code or hardware, if such things are present, and
thorough a verifiable
chain of custody to prevent the insertion of such hardware or
software.
Benefits can include reduced tabulation times and an increase of
participation (voter
turnout), particularly through the use of Internet voting.
Those in opposition suggest alternate
vote counting systems, citing
Switzerland (as well as many other countries), which uses paper
ballots exclusively, suggesting that electronic voting is not the only
means to get a rapid count of votes. A country of a little over 7
million people, Switzerland publishes a definitive ballot count in about
six hours. In villages, the ballots are even counted manually.
Critics also note that it becomes difficult or impossible to verify
the identity of a voter remotely, and that the introduction of public
networks become more vulnerable and complex.
It is not yet clear whether the
total cost of ownership with electronic voting is lower than other
systems.
Astronauts in
orbit
Texas law has allowed American astronauts who cannot vote in person
and are unable to vote via absentee ballot, such as those aboard the
International Space Station and
Mir space
station, to cast their ballots in
federal elections electronically from orbit since 1997. Ballots are
sent via secure email to the
Johnson Spaceflight Center and then passed on the astronauts' home
counties in Texas.[37][38]
Electronic
voting examples
Polling place electronic voting or Internet voting examples have
taken place in Australia,[39]
Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Estonia, the European Union, France, Germany,
India, Ireland,[citation
needed] Italy, the Netherlands (Rijnland
Internet Election System), Norway, Peru, Romania, Switzerland, the
United Kingdom, Venezuela, and the Philippines.
Documented
problems
- Fairfax County, Virginia, November 4, 2003. Some voters
complained that they would cast their vote for a particular
candidate and the indicator of that vote would go off shortly after.[41]
- The
Premier Election Solutions (formerly Diebold Election Systems)
TSx voting system disenfranchised many voters in Alameda and San
Diego Counties during the March 2, 2004 California presidential
primary due to non-functional voter card encoders.[42]
On April 30 California's secretary of state Kevin Shelley
decertified all touch-screen machines and recommended criminal
prosecution of Diebold Election Systems.[43]
The California Attorney-General decided against criminal
prosecution, but subsequently joined a lawsuit against Diebold for
fraudulent claims made to election officials. Diebold settled that
lawsuit by paying $2.6 million.[44]
On February 17, 2006 the California Secretary of State
Bruce McPherson then recertified Diebold Election Systems
DRE and Optical Scan Voting System.[45]
- Omesh Saigal, an IIT alumnus and IAS officer blew the top of the
Election Commissioner Navin Chawla in front of the whole nation when
he successfully demonstrated that the 2009 elections in India when
Congress Party of India came back to power might be rigged. This
forced the election commission to review the current EVMs and
brought bad reputation for Mr. Navin Chawla.[47]
- Problems in the
United States general elections, 2006:
- During
early voting in Miami, Hollywood and Fort Lauderdale,
Florida in October 2006 three votes intended to be recorded for
Democratic candidates were displaying as cast for Republican.
Election officials attributed it to calibration errors in the
touch screen of the voting system.[52]
- In Pennsylvania, a computer programming error forced some to
cast paper ballots. In Indiana, 175 precincts also resorted to
paper. Counties in those states also extended poll hours to make
up for delays.[53]
- Cuyahoga County, Ohio: The Diebold computer server froze and
stopped counting votes then the printers jammed so paper copies
could not be retrieved for many votes and there was no way to be
sure of the accuracy of the votes when the votes were being
counted.[54]
- Waldenburg, Arkansas: The touch screen computer tallied zero
votes for one mayoral candidate who confirmed that he certainly
voted for himself and therefore there would be a minimum of one
vote, this is a case of disappearing votes on touchscreen
machines.[53]
- Sarasota, Florida: There was an 18,000 person "undervote" in
a congressional election.[53]
The subsequent
investigation found that the undervote was not caused by
software error. Poor ballot design was widely acknowledged as
the cause of the undervote.
- Instances of faulty technology and security issues surrounding
these machines were documented on August 1, 2001 in the Brennan
Center at New York University Law School. NY University Law School
released a report with more than 60 examples of e-voting machine
failures in 26 states in 2004 and 2006. Examples included Spanish
language ballots that were cast by voters but not counted in
Sacramento in 2004.[citation
needed]
- In
Finland, the
Supreme Administrative Court declared invalid the results of a
pilot electronic vote in three
municipalities, and ordered a rerun of the municipal elections.
The system had an usability problem where the messages were
ambiguous on whether the vote had been cast. In a total of 232 cases
(2% of votes), voters had logged in, selected their vote but not
confirmed it, and left the booth; the votes were not recorded.[55]
Following the failure of the pilot election, the Finnish government
has abandoned plans to introduce electronic voting to the country.
- 2008 United States Elections:
- Virginia, Tennessee, and Texas: Touch screen voting machines
flipped votes in early voting trials.[56]
- Humboldt County, California: A security flaw erased 197
votes from the computer database.[57]
California top to bottom review
In May 2007,
California Secretary of State
Debra Bowen commissioned a "Top to Bottom review" of all electronic
voting systems in the state. She engaged computer security experts led
by the
University of California to perform security evaluations of voting
system source code as well as "red teams" running "worst case" Election
Day scenarios attempting to identify vulnerabilities to tampering or
error. The Top to Bottom review also included a comprehensive review of
manufacturer documentation as well as a review of accessibility features
and alternative language requirements.
The end results of the tests was released in the four detailed
Secretary of State August 3, 2007 resolutions (for Diebold Election
Systems, Hart InterCivic, Sequoia Voting Systems and Elections Systems
and Software, Inc.) and updated October 25, 2007 revised resolutions for
Diebold and Sequoia voting systems.[58]
The security experts found significant security flaws in all of the
manufacturers' voting systems, flaws that could allow a single
non-expert to compromise an entire election.
On August 3, 2007 Bowen decertified machines that were tested in her
top to bottom view including the ES&S
InkaVote machine, which was not included in the review because the
company submitted it past the deadline for testing. The report issued
July 27, 2007 was conducted by the expert "red team" attempting to
detect the levels of technological vulnerability. Another report on
August 2, 2007 was conducted by a source code review team to detect
flaws in voting system source code. Both reports found that three of the
tested systems fell far short of the minimum requirements specified in
the 2005 Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (VVSG). Some of the systems
tested were conditionally recertified with new stringed security
requirements imposed.[59]
The companies in question have until the February 2008 California
Presidential Primaries to fix their security issues and insure that
election results can be closely audited.
The
Premier Election Solutions (formerly
Diebold Election Systems) AccuVote-TSx voting system was studied by
a group of
Princeton University computer scientists in 2006. Their results
showed that the AccuVote-TSx was insecure and could be "installed with
vote-stealing software in under a minute." The scientists also said that
machines can transmit computer viruses from one to another "during
normal pre- and post-election activity."[60]
2000 presidential election in Florida
Punched cards received considerable notoriety in 2000 when their
uneven use in
Votomatic style systems in
Florida
was alleged to have affected the outcome of the
U.S. presidential election. Invented by Joseph P. Harris, Votomatic
was manufactured for a time under license by IBM. William Rouverol, who
built the prototype and wrote patents, stated that after the patents
expired in 1982, lower quality machines had appeared on the market. The
machines used in Florida had five times as many errors as a true
Votomatic, he said.[61]
Punched-card-based voting systems, the Votomatic system in
particular, use special cards where each possible hole is pre-scored,
allowing perforations to be made by the voter pressing a stylus through
a guide in the
voting machine. A problem with this system is the incomplete punch;
this can lead to a smaller hole than expected, or to a mere slit in the
card, or to a mere dimple in the card, or to a
hanging chad. This technical problem was claimed by the
Democratic Party to have influenced the
2000 U.S. presidential election in the state of
Florida;
critics claimed that punched card voting machines were primarily used in
Democratic areas and that hundreds of ballots were not read properly or
were disqualified due to incomplete punches, which allegedly tipped the
vote in favor of
George W. Bush over
Al Gore.
Other punched card voting systems use a metal hole-punch mechanism
that does not suffer nearly as much from this fault, although most
states have eliminated punched card voting systems of all types after
the 2000 Florida experience.
South Korea still predominantly uses punched card ballots.[citation
needed]
Recommendations for improvement
In December 2005 the US
Election Assistance Commission unanimously adopted the 2005
Voluntary Voting System Guidelines, which significantly increase
security requirements for voting systems and expand access, including
opportunities to vote privately and independently, for individuals with
disabilities. The guidelines took effect in December 2007 replacing the
2002 Voting System Standards (VSS) developed by the
Federal Election Commission.
Some groups such as the
Open Voting Consortium believe that to restore voter confidence and
to reduce the potential for fraud, all electronic voting systems must be
completely available to public scrutiny.
Also proposed is the requirement for use of open public standards and
specifications such as the
Election Markup Language (EML) standard developed by
OASIS and now under consideration by ISO (see
documents and schemas). These can provide consistent processes and
mechanisms for managing and performing elections using computer systems.
Legislation
In the summer of 2004, the Legislative Affairs Committee of the
Association of Information Technology Professionals issued a
nine-point proposal for national standards for electronic voting.[62]
In an accompanying article, the committee's chair, Charles Oriez,
described some of the problems that had arisen around the country.[63]
Legislation has been introduced in the United States Congress
regarding electronic voting, including the Nelson-Whitehouse bill. This
bill would appropriate as much as 1 billion dollars to fund states'
replacement of touch screen systems with optical scan voting system. The
legislation also addresses requiring audits of 3% of precincts in all
federal elections. It also mandates some form of paper trail audits for
all electronic voting machines by the year 2012 on any type of voting
technology.[64]
Another bill, HR.811 (The
Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2003), proposed
by Representative
Rush D. Holt, Jr., a Democrat from New Jersey, would act as an
amendment to the Help America Vote Act of 2002 and require electronic
voting machines to produce a paper audit trail for every vote.[65]
The U.S. Senate companion bill version introduced by Senator Bill Nelson
from Florida on November 1, 2007, necessitates the Director of the
National Institute of Standards and Technology to continue researching
and to provide methods of paper ballot voting for those with
disabilities, those who do not primarily speak English, and those who do
not have a high literacy rating. Also, it requires states to provide the
federal office with audit reports from the hand counting of the voter
verified paper ballots. Currently, this bill has been turned over to the
United States Senate Committee on Rules and Administration and a
vote date has not been set.[66]
During 2008, Congressman Holt, because of an increasing concern
regarding the insecurities surrounding the use of electronic voting
technology, submitted additional bills to Congress regarding the future
of electronic voting. One, called the "Emergency Assistance for Secure
Elections Act of 2008" (HR5036), states that the
General Services Administration will reimburse states for the extra
costs of providing paper ballots to citizens, and the costs needed to
hire people to count them.[67]
This bill was introduced to the House on January 17, 2008.[68]
This bill estimates that $500 million will be given to cover costs of
the reconversion to paper ballots; $100 million given to pay the voting
auditors; and $30 million given to pay the hand counters. This bill
provides the public with the choice to vote manually if they do not
trust the electronic voting machines.[67]
A voting date has not yet been determined.
Popular culture
In the 2006 film
Man of the Year starring
Robin Williams, the character played by Williams—a
Jon Stewart-like comedic host of political talk show—wins the
election for President of the United States when a software error in the
electronic voting machines produced by the fictional manufacturer
Delacroy causes votes to be tallied inaccurately.
In Runoff, a 2007 novel by
Mark Coggins, a surprising showing by the
Green Party candidate in a
San Francisco Mayoral election forces a
runoff between him and the highly favored establishment candidate—a
plot line that closely parallels the actual results of the 2003
election. When the private-eye protagonist of the book investigates at
the behest of a powerful Chinatown businesswoman, he determines that the
outcome was rigged by someone who defeated the security on the city's
newly installed e-voting system.[69]
"Hacking
Democracy" is a 2006
documentary film shown on
HBO. Filmed
over three years, it documents American citizens investigating anomalies
and irregularities with electronic voting systems that occurred during
America's 2000 and 2004 elections, especially in
Volusia County, Florida. The film investigates the flawed integrity
of electronic voting machines, particularly those made by
Diebold Election Systems and culminates in the hacking of a
Diebold
election system in
Leon County, Florida.
Electronic voting manufacturers
Academic efforts