Building a Better Voting Machine

[Rosco T.]

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/evote/0,71957-0.html

Building a Better Voting Machine

By Kim Zetter| Also by this reporter
02:00 AM Oct, 18, 2006

It's been six years since the Florida presidential fiasco launched a flurry of spending around the country to replace antiquated punch-card and lever voting machines with expensive new electronic touch-screen machines. Yet new controversies over the security of e-voting machines continue to crop up, making it clear that the new machines are just as problematic as the ones they replaced.

Why can't the voting machine companies get it right?

With election season upon us, Wired News spoke with two of the top computer scientists in the field, UC Berkeley's David Wagner and Princeton's Ed Felten, and came up with a wish list of features we would include in a voting machine, if we were asked to create one.

These recommendations can't guarantee clean results on their own. Voting machines, no matter how secure, are no remedy for poor election procedures and ill-conceived election laws. So our system would include thorough auditing and verification capabilities and require faithful adherence to good election practices, as wells as topnotch usability and security features.

Here, then, is our nomination for the best voting machine for 2008. Use the comments tool below to tell us how your perfect voting machine would look.

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[Ian David]

1. Why not just modify ATM mahines to record votes?

1) Most people know how to use an ATM.
2) The same compaines that make the ATM machines make the voting machines.
3) Shouldn't our vote be at least as secure as our money?
4) ATM machines can print receipts and handle slips of paper.

[Rosco T.]

2. Read the article...

.. that's part of what's wrong. The current machines were 'modified' from something else and have a lot of useless code in them that can be used to hid unpleasent things.

[achtung_circus]

3. I know a man who works for a major bank

in systems audit and as a Sarbanes Oxley specialist.. He was part of the team that introduced ATM machines to Canada for a different bank. He speaks about this.

He says that governments are not demanding clients. He could, he says, define and require from manufacturers a perfectly capable voting system.

He doesn't believe it will happen anytime soon. The problem, he tells me, is buy-in by users.

That the system was not designed, maufactured, tested, audited and verified before being used means that there will not be acceptance until all the problems have been fixed and the current crop of voters have either forgotten or been replaced.