what's wrong with ballot paper?

After a couple of centuries in which we have been voting with ballot-papers and absolutely transparent counting procedures, nowadays we are starting to use the electronic vote. The debacle of the USA 2000 Presidential Election is presented to the public opinion as a reason to lead to electronic vote, but

• We should not change the way we vote only because we had problems once in a couple of centuries.
• Things went wrong in USA 2000 only because of the unnecessary technology (do you remember the machines that badly punched votes?).

Did all the past elections have problems? Do you really suspect Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, JF Kennedy, Johnson, Ford, Carter, Reagan, G Bush and Clinton, have all been elected thanks to errors or fraud?

To date (2008) the great majority of democracies of the world elect their Parliaments and Governments using hand counted ballot papers without any serious problem (small, very localized doubts are always solved recounting ballot-papers).
Only Brazil, India and USA use electronic voting for nation-wide political elections.

A very good example of paper elections which to date (2008) never had any problem are the italian paper electoral procedures

On March 14th 2004, Spain has elected its new Parliament using the traditional ballot-papers system. Ballot boxes were beautiful transparent plastic boxes, not invisible and unverifiable memories of computers! Soon after the closing of the election, the first projections showed who the winner was and the morning after the final results were available. Those results, being manually counted and checked (and verifiable again), were not only official, but even without a shadow of a doubt.

who is interested in counterfeiting elections?

For elections, the principal asset is governmental power. That power is transferred by the results of counting voted secret ballots. Hence, integrity of the voted ballot is critical through the entire process from capturing the voter's intent, casting it into the ballot box, counting it to produce the election results, and finally retaining it to resolve disputes.

Given that the primary asset of an election is governmental power, it must be assumed that attackers are highly motivated, well financed, sophisticated, and could be outsiders as well as insiders with full knowledge of the election system. These attackers could be political operatives, voters, vendor personnel, polling place workers, election administrators, foreign countries, international terrorist organizations, or just pranksters.

Sitting governments must guarantee the accuracy of electoral results and the secrecy of votes. Unfortunately the social groups & the economical powers which are the base of any government have the obvious interest in falsifying electoral results and violating the secrecy of votes to mantain the power. They could also succeed thanks to the complete control they have over the electoral process. For that reason it is absolutely necessary that electoral procedures guarantee also against hidden attacks coming from the inside of the sitting administrations.

It is assumed that the most virulent attacker is extremely motivated, sophisticated and well financed, thus it is assumed that insiders are not trusted since the attacker could compromise them as well. In fact attacks could also be mounted from the incumbent government.

The principal vulnerabilities to the voted secret ballot are

1. undetected compromise of election integrity
2. compromise of ballot secrecy
3. denial of voting service.

An undetected compromise of election integrity is the most horrific vulnerability because it results in an unwarranted change of political power. In contrast, a detectable compromise reduces to a denial-of-service attack against the system. For example, the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks occurred on Election Day in New York. Because many voters were denied the mechanism of voting, the election was disqualified and postponed. However, the principal asset (i.e., governmental power) was not erroneously transferred and, thereby, not compromised.

Electronic elections can easily be couterfeit by:

1. Those who are in charge of the election, that is those who physically have the "keys" of the computers. Such persons could do anything to the data and the programs in these computers. Probably the expiring Cabinet or a big national or international Company debtor to the expiring Cabinet for allocation of contracts.
2. Large organizations. As computers must of course be networked to one another and to the polling stations , it's possible to enter via the net and alter the memorized data and programs.. Kids of 14 entered computers of the Pentagon and also altered data kept in other extremely protected sites. How can we deceive ourselves thinking that political, criminal, terrorist, or economic organizations vill not do the same, having adequate financial means? Criminal organizations are designing, producing and selling decoders for video satellite signals that have been cripted with technologies quite similar to those used for the transmission of the election data. What would prevent them from knowing who voted whom, or from counterfeiting the results in order to elect their own representatives in the democratic institution?
3. International spy intelligence. International spy intelligence (e.g. Echelon) have the know-how and the power to read and to alter any piece of information going through any network all over the world. Are you sure they will not be activated in order to counterfeit the polical balance of other Countries?

Of course small criminal groups will not able to modify or detect votes, nevertheless they would go on threatening, frightning and promissing before the election, just like they do now. But they would heavely interfere if people could vote in places not under the control of the public, like houses.

who wants us to use electronic vote?

Who is really interested in our Countries to spend Billion dollars on e-vote? Hardware and Software vendors lobbies, of course! They are infact the greatest supporters of e-vote!

As an example of what happened in US here it follows an excertp from the February 20,2004 issue of Executive Intelligence Review. Article by Art Ticknor. For non US citizen: Help America Vote Act (HAVA) is a Federal law encouraging, and even subsidizing, the use of electronic voting systems by the states.

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Who duped Congress into supporting HAVA? Although a lot of the public-relations window-dressing was pitched in terms of enabling disabled persons to vote (a rather dubious claim), the heavy lifting was done by a consortium of defense contractors and voting-machine companies, which same group has now launched a public relations campaign touting computer voting.

The Information Technology Association of America (ITAA), a lobbying firm for technology firms, set up the "Election Systems Task Force" (composed of defense contractors and procurement agencies) to push the legislation through Congress. The major companies involved in the task force were: Northrup Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Accenture, and EDS.

During a conference call meeting on Aug. 22, 2002, it was stated that the Task Force's top agenda item was simply: "How do we get Congress to fund a move to electronic voting?" The discussion was about the importance of getting the HAVA legislation enacted as a means of creating more business opportunities for the companies involved [Bev Harris, Black Box Voting: Ballot Tampering in the 21st Century (Renton, Wa.: Talion Publishing, 2004)].

On Sept. 6, 2002, ITAA demanded that House and Senate conferees resolve their differences over their respective versions, and pass HAVA. Just over a month later, they did. HAVA was signed into law by President Bush on Oct. 12, 2002.

More recently, amid Congressional moves to amend HAVA, ITAA escalated and established a group (made up of electronic voting machine companies) to "raise the profile" of electronic voting, and peddle its "benefits" to the American public. Members of the Election Technology Council (ETC), formed on Dec. 9, 2003, are Advanced Voting Systems, Diebold Election Systems, Election Systems & Software, Hart InterCivic, Sequoia Voting Systems, and Unilect.

ITAA says the ETC builds on the work of its Voting Reform Task Group, the which lobbies for HAVA funding.
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which problems electronic vote has?

Electronic vote has many problems, some of which are technological and thus soluble (at least theoretically), but the worst problem of e-vote is intrinsic in the electoral scheme it implements and thus it is not soluble by ANY technological way. The reasons why are in the THE PROBLEM.
Here are e-vote's problems seen by another point of view.

why are vvpat useless?

VVPAT stands for "Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail". VVPATs are better described here.
I say VVPAT are useless because:

1. you don't know if the vote shown to you is the same as the recorded one.
   It is easy for a program to show you your real vote and record a different one as you can see in this nice demo of a program acting this way.
2. you don't know if recorded votes are properly tallied up to produce the final results.
   Why properly recording votes doesn't implies rigth results

why is it DANGEROUS to pair electronic vote and ballot-papers?

Pairing paper voting with electronic voting tends towards giving us confidence in the latter. If software & hardware vendors succeed in not having (or masking) problems, in a few years time public opinion will be convinced that e-vote gives the same results as paper elections and thus we'll accept to vote without any alleged useless paper verification. At that point we'll be in a mess since technology never stops and thus there always will be new software releases, new hardware architectures, new network technologies, new hacking technologies... Furthermore we will possibly have to trust new shareholders, new management and new employees of companies manufacturing e-vote hardware & software.
We will have to passively accept any electoral results coming from such much changed situations because in the lack of old-fashioned ballot-papers we'll have no way to do any "visible" verification.

what for e-vote?

E-vote supporters (governments and hardware & software vendors) evidently want e-vote because:

• it is very expensive US alone is going to spend 5 BILLIONs dollar with the law "Help America vote act" (HAVA)
  As a matter of fact the greatest supporter of e-vote are hardware and software vendors
  
  
• its results can be transparently altered and/or vote anonymity broken

Public opinion has been given the illusion that electronic would be the best way of making the elections more trustworthy, more economical and faster.

• With regard to trustworthiness, we have seen that, by definition, this doesn´t exist and only an act of faith can lead us to accept the results. On the contrary, using apropriate "manual" voting and counting procedures, as those used in Italy, it is impossible to falsify the final rusults.
  
  
• Regarding the reduction of costs, this all remains to be seen. Electronic voting requires huge investment in computer networks and programs. In this respect, a study conducted by the Swiss government (see:    -     -   ) estimates the cost of electronic voting, for accounting purposes, needs to be amortized in not less than 20 years.
  
  
• Only the third motive for the electronic vote remains, speed; but is it worth the effort to sacrifice democracy in the way we intend today, just to have the results immediately at the closure of the polling stations rather than 8-10 hours later?

why you must not vote through Internet from home?

First of all because the problems concerned with the security of the net are increasing considerably. While at a polling station there is a visual and physical "identification", via Internet there can only be an electronic "identification" and it's therefore possible that someone else simulates to be you and votes in your stead. Moreover in areas with a large presence of a strong criminal underworld, (where there is none?) , it'possible that somebody comes to your house and makes you vote as he likes, by the use of threats. Without having to enter your house somebody could be content of a visual recorded evidence of your vote ( who hasn't a video-recorder nowadays? ). The presence of criminal underworld in the social structure is a further reason, and not the least one, why to go along with the paper system over which a larger democratic control is possible.

what can international observers verify?

Institutions of western democracies up to now have guaranteed the required checks over every aspect of elections. The verification of electoral procedures and results is a matter that has concerned only countries of recent democratization. Several international organizations verify electoral procedures and results in risky countries. Among them are the following organizations: OSCE, European Commission and UN. Their observers verify the whole electoral mechanism:

• that nobody is excluded from the right to vote
• that electors are really given the possibility to vote
• that there are no improper pressures on electors
• that electoral procedures are properly executed ad every level
• that results are properly counted

Humans can verify ballot papers' electoral procedures and such verification automatically implies the certification of the electoral result. Unfortunately, it's impossible any human certification of electronic electoral procedures, thus no human verification of e-voting procedure implies any certification of the electoral results.

Thus if a country ruled by a dictator, or a country of a recent democracy, would use e-vote could any international organization check the electoral process and certify its results? Surely not! For that reason dictators should spend a bit of the money they steal from their people in implementing electronic electoral systems rather than saving it in their private bank accounts

We also should really worry because for the same reasons even our e-elections are unverifiable! Of course we can still ingenuously rely on the honesty of our establishment, but we should not forget that democracy ends when electoral results are not verifiable

Some countries using e-vote are asking international organizations to check the (electronic) electoral process and certify its results (e.g. USA 2004). Why? I asked such a question to some of the observing organizations. Unfortunately I had only a reply, but from it we can deduce that: countries ask to undergo the control of international observers to induce public opinion to think electronic results will be certified by a third part authority, while they obviously will not!

can't we use any electronics in elections?

We can use some electronics, but not too much!
If hardware & software vendors want us to use electronics in elections, then we must know that the "amount" of electronics we can safely use is very small. Only a couple of offline devices are allowable for election to be democratic and verifiable.

can e-vote help terrorism?

Nowadays we face terrorism as one of the most dangerous attack to our Democracies. Since in Democracy the political power is given to politicians by means of elections, a good goal for terrorists could be the alteration of electoral processes. If they could delegitimate the ruling power, they would have a great victory against democracies!
Ballot paper elections are very robust and have no single point of failure: there is NOT a single place which abnormal functioning could lead to the impossibility to declare the winner. Paper elections can be held despite of black outs and interruptions of computer networks. Infact paper elections have properly worked also when electricity and computer did not even exist!
On the contrary, electronic elections are based on computer networks and computer centers which are very good targets for terrorists. A terrorist attack to the network infrastucture, to power distribution lines, or to a computer center could lead to the impossibility to know who is the winner of the election. It would deny governments any democratic legitimation, seriously harming any Democracy

how can we setup a trustable election?

If I were in charge of the organization of an election I WOULD:

1. use the old traditional paper ballots
2. automatically enrol into electoral lists ANY citizen having the rigth to vote
   Such lists whould be managed by local authorities: moving citizens would be automatically deleted from the list of the place they leave and enrolled into the list of their new place of residence. People would have their rigth to vote without doing anything: this whould bring more people to vote.
3. facilitate the act of voting
   • in case many elections were held together each election would have its own ballot paper printed on a differently colored paper. Electors would be less confused because they could prepare at home the way they want to vote: vote X on the green ballot paper and vote Y on the yellow one.
   • print ballot paper would be as simple as possible
     The shape, the colors and the quantity of printed text have a great impact on the readability of the ballot paper: see at the end of the page a couple of examples! Properly designed ballot papere can greatly improve the possibility people (especially disabled) have to vote according to their true will. For istance Braille text can be "punched" under the printed text.
4. facilitate the access to voting
   • special facilitation would be arranged for people in special situation like hill people not able to leave their home or the ospital, prisoners (if they are allowed by law to vote), forces ...
   • the day of the election would be national holiday to help working people to go to vote
   • reduced transportation fares qould be available for people going to their place of residence to vote
5. use transparent plastic boxes to keep voted ballot papers
   the public whould be able to see them all the time
6. scrutinize all the ballot papers into the open
7. choose scrutineers at random among electors
   and allow candidates's representatives to be part of the scrutiny.
8. allow people to record results at each polling station
   so that parties can tally them up and compare their results with the official results.
9. keep the voted ballot papers for several years
   until the last recount (if any) will be done

If I were in charge of the organization of an election I WOULD NOT:

1. outsource any of the electoral procedures to private companies
   Too many people (and lobbies, and parties, and criminal and terroristic organization, and counties...) are interested in making fraud and altering electoral results!
2. care how long it takes to have the final result.
   Despite of all the pressure media put on electoral organization to have results in a hurry, I would take as long as necessary: better later with certain results than sooner with uncertainty!
   Democracy is not a joke or a commercial to be broadcasted within certain time limits.

this is an absentee ballot: please note that many electios are on the same ballot paper making a great confusion for the elector. Please note the missing arrows pointing to BUSH-CHENEY is a real error (not a joke) occurred on many ballot papers.

 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. You are free to copy, distribute, display and perform the work and to make derivative works under the following conditions: 1) You must give credit to the original author (Emanuele Lombardi) and cite the url http://www.electronic-vote.org ; 2) you may not use this work for commercial purposes; 3) If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under a licence identical to this one.