.FLYINGHEAD VOTING SECURITY
.TITLE Privacy, not machines, was the big voting issue last week
.AUTHOR David Gewirtz
.SUMMARY Last week, I discussed my personal dismay at the privacy violations I saw at my voting place. I asked readers to tell us about their experiences, and we got a number of fascinating comments from here in America and as far away as Australia. Read on to the end, because Bernard Bolch’s comment about mandatory voting in Australia is fascinating.
Last week, prior to when the results were known from America’s mid-term elections, I reported on my personal voting experience here in Florida. As I reported last week, this was my first voting experience in Florida and my first without the traditional, private voting booth.
Here at Computing Unplugged, we went into the election silly season with all our investigative attention at full alert. After all, leading up to the elections, we’d seen report after report about the technological problems of the new voting machines. As a technology magazine, our interest was in understanding the issues behind the new voting machines, whether they were really flawed, and what might be done to correct the situation.
.CALLOUT Nothing is more credible than a computer failure.
From what we’d read and the experts we talked with, we fully expected the weeks following the election to be a firestorm of protest over the failings of the machines. After all, nothing is more credible than a computer failure, and the voting machines were nothing more than repackaged computers.
But, like Y2K, there was a lot of fuss prior to the event, but no real muss afterwards. In fact, we did a Google blog search and found 5,644 mentions of "voting machines" in the week before Election Day and only 3,061 mentions after Election Day. Clearly the firestorm didn’t happen.
.TEASER For our detailed post-election tech analysis, reader comments, and David’s campaign reform strategy, tap here.
This doesn’t mean the voting machines are perfect. They’re computers, so they’re likely flawed and likely have security problems and issues of concern. Thankfully, there was no post-election voting machine disaster. That said, the technology behind voting machines definitely falls in within the security and technology areas we cover, and we’ll be exploring them in-depth between now and the next major election in 2008.
Also, last week, I discussed my personal dismay at the privacy violations I saw at my voting place. I asked readers to tell us about their experiences, and we got a number of fascinating comments from here in America and as far away as Australia. Read on to the end, because Bernard Bolch’s comment about mandatory voting in Australia is fascinating — and I have some policy suggestions that’ll make you want to elect me as your next great leader.
.H1 Voting machines very hard to use and confusing
Robert Cameron told us:
.QUOTE Thank you for the editorial on the voting machines in Florida. I participated in early voting used a new computerized machine in Colorado. I do not know what company made the machine. The brief comment I have is: yes, privacy is a big issue with the machines. Having worked with computers for over 30 years, I had difficulty operating it. They were very hard to use and confusing.
.QUOTE The second comment is that it took me twice as long to cast my ballot with the computer than it did to fill out my sample ballot by hand prior to arriving at my polling place. In addition, the computerized machines in Colorado do not allow write-in votes.
.QUOTE If the machines elsewhere in the US are as hard to use as the ones in Colorado, the government has spent a lot of money to complicate voting and limit individual choices to only those they have programmed into the computer.
.CALLOUT A far greater flaw for a country that so publicly promotes itself as a global paragon of democracy…
.H1 Cast absentee ballots if you want privacy
Ramona Boston wrote in:
.QUOTE I don’t have a voting issue per se although I have worked the polls and can attest to the privacy issues. I can suggest an immediate alternative, though, until our system is fixed, and that’s to vote an absentee ballot.
.H1 Be careful what you ask for
John Toohil reports:
.QUOTE At my polling place here in Durham, NC, where we have paper ballots which feed into scanning machines, I saw no "committees" voting at the close, partitioned stand-up booths without curtains (as you show in your article).
.QUOTE However, there was a group of four or five people sitting at a table where I was voting — all "booths" were occupied, so we were allowed to sit at a long table, across from or next to each other, to vote, if we preferred not to wait: these people were loudly explaining how they were voting, giving voting advice to one another, etc.
.QUOTE And, of course, I was asked to vote for a certain judge as I approached the building; so, because I was miffed at this practice (even though it is legal a certain distance away from the polling entrance), I voted against that person.
.H1 It’s safer in Canada
Cash Belden (love that name!) chimes in from Canada:
.QUOTE I hope you passed this message along to higher powers than Computing Unplugged, like say CNN. Although I have dual American/Canadian citizenship, I’m glad I moved to Canada. It’s much safer here anyway, and we still have private voting and kids aren’t allowed in voting polls.
.QUOTE We have little cubicles where you can go and mark your ballot. You then fold it up and push it into a box (with clerical assistance). Some jurisdictions are using mail-in voting in non-return-address envelopes. Good luck with your monitoring project.
I’m often pretty careful who I accept as a higher power, but as a news geek, I think I’m pretty comfortable accepting CNN as our higher power. I’ve certainly spent enough time wonking to the dulcet tones of James Earl Jones.
.H1 Australians are fined if they don’t vote
The most interesting comments, though, came from Bernard Bolch in Australia. Bernard tells us:
.QUOTE An interesting article, and valid concerns in most cases.
.QUOTE Here in Australia, party hacks can — and do — buttonhole you all the way to the door of the ballot booth, but the hall itself is scrupulously devoid of anything that could be considered partisan (such as your article’s yellow ribbon signage).
.QUOTE We use collapsible cardboard voting booths which don’t afford much more privacy than yours appear to, but I don’t think too many people are concerned about it. Names are checked off against separate sections of the electorate’s registers that are usually distributed across multiple tables by very visible alphabetic groupings, so the registers are never passed back and forth.
.QUOTE Like you (I think), we don’t ask to see any voter identification (enrollment as a voter is compulsory and universal here at the age of 18), but we rely on a verbal affirmation from everyone being handed a voting slip that they haven’t voted anywhere else on that day.
.QUOTE Your system appears to have two massive flaws, however — the possibility of an electoral official eyeballing ballots as they’re cast simply wouldn’t arise here, because ballot papers are NEVER printed on both sides, and are always folded up before being deposited in a ballot box (and are certainly NEVER scanned in the process of being handed in).
.QUOTE And secondly — harder to fix, and a far greater flaw for a country that so publicly promotes itself as a global paragon of democracy — voting here is never OPTIONAL.
I asked Bernard about his comment about the optionality of voting, but first let me address something else he said. In the various areas I’ve lived in, it was essential to present some form of "valid" identification to be allowed to vote. Bernard, we’d never allow someone just to show up and, on the honor system, say he or she never voted. As a society, Americans just don’t have that much self-control.
What I was most curious about, though, was the statement that Australians were required to vote. He told me Australians are required by law to vote, and they’ll be fined if they don’t.
.H1 The Official David Gewirtz Election Reform Campaign Platform
I’m very intrigued about the idea of mandatory voting with fines. Now, obviously there are all those issues about poor people who can’t take time off from their jobs and those too busy to vote, but if Australia can figure this out, so can we.
In fact, I see this as an incredible opportunity.
According to ABC News, only about 40% of Americans vote in the mid-term elections. Given we’ve got something like 300 million people, about 180 million people don’t vote. According to the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), the 2006 elections will cost $2.6 billion. Now, to be fair, I don’t know crap about CRP’s politics or whether they have some vested interest in projecting that number, but it rings pretty true to me. It’s about 27% more than the mid-terms in 2002.
Let’s do some math, shall we?
Let’s just say it does really cost an insane $2.6 billion for an election. And let’s say that 180 million people don’t vote. And let’s further say we fine each non-voter $14.44 for not showing up at their polling place on Election Day. By the mystical magic of math, it turns out that $14.44 times 180 million adds up to $2.6 billion. Ha!
Follow along. When I’m elected President (or Dictator — either is fine with me), you’ll want to let everyone know you were one of the first to see my glorious wisdom. Here’s my plan…
As everyone knows, perhaps the single the biggest problem in American politics is the special interests and the whole fund-raising election cycle. If candidates didn’t have to spend all their time raising funds, they would be able to get more real work done. And if they didn’t so desperately need the money, they wouldn’t trade their souls to the interest group with the biggest checkbook.
So, the first part of the reforms I suggest is to require every qualified American to vote and to fine each non-voter a meager $14.44.
The second part of the reforms I’d suggest would be to completely eliminate campaign contributions, period. Instead, candidates would get their funding from a shared pool.
That pool, you guessed it, would come from the fines collected from non-voters.
Yes, I know. The non-voter fine fund wouldn’t really add up to $2.6 billion because there are loads of kids and other people not qualified to vote. I don’t care. Candidates don’t need that much money, anyway. And it’d still add up to billions for a shared election fund.
Pretty cool, huh? But it gets better. Think about this. What happens if more and more people respond to the fines and actual show up and vote. Wouldn’t the funding for elections go down as more people go to the polls?
Yep. Can you imagine it? As more and more people become aware of the issues and go to the polls, less pure TV advertising money would need to be spent — and even less corruption would be possible in the system.
Citizens would need to get more and more of their information from reasonably legitimate sources, candidates might still retain a shred of dignity and a truly participative democracy would govern the nation.
If elected, I will serve lead. As long as I don’t have to leave Florida in the winter.
.BEGIN_SIDEBAR
.H1 Product availability and resources
To read "Is voting security in Florida still a problem?", visit http://www.computingunplugged.com/issues/issue200611/00001880001.html.
For more information on ABC’s voting estimates, visit http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=2629866.
For more information on the Center for Responsive Politics, visit http://www.opensecrets.org/pressreleases/2006/PreElection.10.25.asp.
.END_SIDEBAR
.BIO
