[Balug-Talk] S.F. supervisors' panel backs Sequoia voting machines

[Asheesh Laroia]

On Thu, 6 Dec 2007, Robert B. Livingston wrote:

> Any thoughts from anyone?

The article says:

> Board of Supervisors committee took the city a step closer to buying new 
> voting machines that do not conform to the standard of complete openness 
> that many activists view as the keystone of their movement.

It continues:

The bill...

> includes safeguards meant to mollify the advocates, like an independent 
> review of the software used to tally votes.

That is a total joke - what happens when, as has happened *every single 
time* voting software has been reviewed, it is found to be insecure?

> Is it true that there is no source of open source software for voting?

Software is hard.  The smart thing to do is not to *rely* on the software 
to work.

I don't know the details of this contract - are they "direct recording 
electronic" machines, like those with a documented history of 
unrecoverable failures at least since 2000 in Florida 
<http://www-tech.mit.edu/V123/N56/56die.56n.html>, or are they simply 
machines used to do things that, if the machines fail, humans can step in 
and do themselves?

The latter approach is reasonable, and the former approach is not.  If 
machines fail, then there should be a way to do what's important without 
them; and the failures should be detectable.  Machines that directly 
record votes without a way to detect errors in that recording are a 
terrible idea.

There is hope!  States can buy machines that print their votes to 
machine-readable and human-readable paper ballots; then they can buy 
machines to read the ballots faster.  Vote observers can count the 
(anonymous) ballots sitting in the ballot box themselves; note that 
independent counting is impossible with DRE machines because votes, when 
cast, either hit the machine or don't.  If the DRE machine ignores your 
vote, no one can ever detect that.

Those non-DRE machines (yes, together) are cheaper than Direct Recording 
Electronic machines, and they're safer.  I hope that the SF contract with 
Sequoia is for such machines, and if it is, I hope that third party 
companies will develop compatible hardware that is powered by open source 
software for the next SF contract renewal.

-- Asheesh.

--
   Honk if you are against noise pollution!