Posted by Dan Ewert : 7/28/2004 10:35:00 AM (Archive Link)
All Your Vote Are Belong to Us

Florida still can’t figure out how to run an election without controversy, according to this story. The solution to me seems rather simple. Touchscreen computers are the way to go. They’re quick, easy, provide fast results and there’s no question about voter intent. This is good because the idea of people sitting around looking at a ballot and trying to decide what they think the voter wanted, when it isn’t already perfectly obvious, is dangerous. If the voter didn’t make their intent clear when voting, it’s shouldn’t be up to random folks to decide their intent for them. So, that’s the upside of the computers, that intent is clear. The downside is what happened in Florida when computer crashes lost election records. The other issue is that you will never be able to eliminate the actual risk of hacking nor the electorate’s fear that hacking is affecting results. This is why there must be a paper trail. Upon voting for all the races, the screen should give a standard ballot overview of all the choices the voter made and then ask them to confirm and submit. Then the printer-equipped station should print out a paper copy of the ballot that can be reviewed by the voter and turned in to poll workers. This printout should be able to be optically scanned. That way, if there’s any question about the election results, either in general or because of concerns related to the computers, then the paper ballots can be tallied and compared to the computer numbers. You could also make it so that the computers don’t tally at all, but are merely used to print the ballots and it is those that are counted. At any rate, these are the only ways you can expect to use computer voting and still preserve the electorate’s faith in the election process. Using computers alone will only cause the public to lose faith in the process and that is not a good thing for democracy.