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Dan Harkless
Page created: February 5, 2008 [Site Map] |
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I just got back from voting. This was my first time voting at a local polling place since Orange County started using electronic voting systems a couple of years ago. Being a computer security professional, and knowing as I do about the horrible security record of the Diebold voting systems used in many precincts, I decided to look up some info on the Hart InterCivic eSlate systems that O.C. uses.
I learned that the eSlate seems to be one of the more secure systems out there — certainly nothing like the Diebold crap. Hart even brought in computer security company @stake to do a security review and to institute a Secure Development Lifecycle, as you can read in @stake / Symantec's report (formerly on Hart's site; now only on archive.org; I have unfortunately only had time to read the executive summary so far).
However, looking around in the Electronic Freedom Foundation's E-Voting section, I found their report on the eSlate, and it included a number of disturbing facts. The worst was that in 2006 in Texas, bugs in the eSlate systems caused 100,000 bogus votes to be added to final tallies. Another serious concern is that while the machines have the ability to print out paper voting receipts in some implementations (including Orange County's, after our eSlate systems were retrofitted with printers in 2006), they apparently do not have federally certified paper audit trail capability. The EFF report also mentioned a number of other serious issues with the eSlate systems, and VotersUnite.org (an e-voting watchdog site) lists even more.
Though my research did not cause me to be especially worried that my eSlate vote might be maliciously tampered with (as has been easy to do on many other electronic voting systems), software bugs and design / usability issues causing huge inaccuracies and outages are not a whole lot better. Therefore I decided to send a message by voting with a paper ballot. I expected this to be something a decent number of voters would be doing — my sample ballot stated in bold italics that whether to use the eSlate or a paper ballot was completely at the discretion of the voter, and to just notify the poll worker as to one's preference.
At my polling location, however, when I stated that my preference was for a paper ballot, the worker (whose first language, to be fair, was not English) seemed to have no idea what I was talking about. After several repetitions and explanations he directed me to another guy (a native English speaker), who looked a little consternated, but started digging around for the paper ballots. The paper ballot pack was still in its plastic wrap and the different party ballots had to be searched through and detached and it was almost 10 minutes (bringing us to the poll closing time — in fairness, the guy had to answer a couple of other workers' questions while he was at it) until I had my paper ballot in hand and was able to head to the sole paper voting booth (there were around 8 eSlate booths) to do my voting.
When I was through, I asked the guy if I had been the only person at this polling place to request a paper ballot all day. He replied, "Yep, you're the only one." He then added with a touch of smugness, "Most people prefer the electronic systems because their vote gets counted immediately." I doubt this intangible benefit is the primary reason most people use them — I'm sure the majority use them merely because they're the default option (and I'm sure there are a number of other more common reasons before we get to the "counted immediately" thing, including "new and electronic equals better", more electronic voting booths being available, etc.).
If the electronic vs. paper voting stats at my polling location are anywhere close to the average, I would have to imagine paper ballots will not be with us much longer (excepting absentee ballots... for now). I only wish we had standardized on a publically verifiable, open-source-based, reliable voting system before getting to this point.
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Dan Harkless
Page created: February 5, 2008 [Site Map] |
Validated HTML 5 +
CSS Last modified: September 11, 2025 |