Tag: Voting
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Testifying at E-Voting Hearing
I’m testifying about the Holt e-voting bill this morning, at a hearing of the U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on House Administrion, Subcommittee on Elections. I haven’t found a webcast URL, but you can read my written testimony.
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Protect E-Voting — Support H.R. 811
After a long fight, we have reached the point where a major e-voting reform bill has a chance to become U.S. law. I’m referring to HR 811, sponsored by my Congressman, Rush Holt, and co-sponsored by many others. After reading the bill carefully, and discussing with students and colleagues the arguments of its supporters and…
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How Computers Can Make Voting More Secure
By now there is overwhelming evidence that today’s paperless computer-based voting technologies have such serious security and reliability problems that we should not be using them. Computers can’t do the job by themselves; but what role should they play in voting? It’s tempting to eliminate computers entirely, returning to old-fashioned paper voting, but I think…
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Sarasota: Could a Bug Have Lost Votes?
At this point, we still don’t know what caused the high undervote rate in Sarasota’s Congressional election. [Background: 1, 2.] There are two theories. The State-commissioned study released last week argues that for the theory that a badly designed ballot caused many voters to not see that race and therefore not cast a vote. Today…
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Sarasota Voting Machines Insecure
The technical team commissioned by the State of Florida to study the technology used in the ill-fated Sarasota election has released its report. (Background: on the Sarasota election problems; on the study.) One revelation from the study is that the iVotronic touch-screen voting machines are terribly insecure. The machines are apparently susceptible to viruses, and…
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Sarasota: Limited Investigations
As I wrote last week, malfunctioning voting machines are one of the two plausible theories that could explain the mysterious undervotes in Sarasota’s congressional race. To get a better idea of whether malfunctions could be the culprit, we would have to investigate – to inspect the machines and their software for any relevant errors in…
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Why So Many Undervotes in Sarasota?
The big e-voting story from November’s election was in Sarasota, Florida, where a congressional race was decided by about 400 votes, with 18,412 undervotes. That’s 18,412 voters who cast votes in other races but not, according to the official results, in that congressional race. Among voters who used the ES&S iVotronic machines – that is,…
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Diebold Shows How to Make Your Own Voting Machine Key
By now it should be clear that Diebold’s AccuVote-TS electronic voting machines have lousy security. Our study last fall showed that malicious software running on the machines can invisibly alter votes, and that this software can be installed in under a minute by inserting a new memory card into the side of the machine. The…
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Soft Coercion and the Secret Ballot
Today I want to continue our discussion of the secret ballot. (Previous posts: 1, 2.) One purpose of the secret ballot is to prevent coercion: if ballots are strongly secret, then the voter cannot produce evidence of how he voted, allowing him to lie safely to the would-be coercer about how he voted. Talk about…
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Voting, Secrecy, and Phonecams
Yesterday I wrote about the recent erosion of the secret ballot. One cause is the change in voting technology, especially voting by mail. But even if we don’t change our voting technology at all, changes in other technologies are still eroding the secret ballot. Phonecams are a good example. You probably carry into the voting…