E-voting silliness

In America people are determined to fix the voting shenanigans that gave the world the term "hanging chads". Apparently they've been using these mechanical devices to punch holes in a card.

It seems the solution is really complex electronic machines (gee, I wonder if tech-industry lobbyists had anything to do with that decision?). The problem, of course, is that really complex electronic voting machines have lots of potential ways they can disenfranchise people and screw up election results. There have already been cases of suspect results in isolated pockets, suggesting tampering (in which a population that had historically voted for one party, suddenly defied all the latest polling data and voted overwhelmingly for the other party).

Wired News has an article about ways to secure the e-voting machines and make the results verifiable. They include securing the machine's memory card, auditable paper records, and recording hash keys of the software that runs on the machine (to ensure that it's exactly the same software that was approved for the election). Here's the bit that made me laugh:

Combine the best features of touch-screen and optical-scan machines in a single device. Touch-screens are easy to use and are flexible enough to accommodate disabled voters and multiple languages. Optical-scan devices provide reliable paper trails.

We recommend a third alternative that combines the best attributes of both -- a ballot marking machine, such as one made by Election Systems and Software.

These devices let voters make their choices on a touch-screen. But instead of directly recording the votes digitally onto a memory card, the machine prints the votes onto a full-size paper ballot. Voters or election officials then place the completed ballots onto an optical-scan reader (.pdf), where the votes are recorded digitally.

So. This complex, heavily vetted and secured e-voting machine will.... produce a marked ballot paper? Can I suggest another option?:


I have voted in both Canada and Britain, and used this simple voting device to mark a paper ballot. It's relatively tamper-resistant and produces an auditable paper record. When I'm finished, my ballot goes in a box. When the polls close, representatives of each party/candidate get together and count all the paper ballots, and phone in the results. Within hours (or, at most, a day or two) we know the results.

Maybe the US could consider using such a system? It probably worked for them many many years ago, but then they didn't have tech-industry lobbyists to contend with.