Elections

Elections in Peru were held yesterday, and just like in Ecuador they were preceded by weeks of parades in the streets and cars driving around blaring music at incomprehensibly distorted levels out of megaphones. I can't say I'm sorry the noisy shows are over.

I read a little about the results of the US elections, but didn't see the electronic voting machine problems being mentioned. When it's possible to vote multiple times on some machines by using post-it notes, or by holding down a yellow button on the back of other machines, the situation is serious. That's just the tip of the iceberg, as electronic voting machines are susceptible to problems at every stage of their use - from set up, to people casting multiple votes, to results being indetectably modified by viruses, to being unable to verify if votes were correctly recorded. Despite being happy with the election results, I think the lack of attention given to this issue is a shame.

This article summarises the results of two independent studies commissioned by the board of elections after e-voting machines used in Ohio earlier this year caused problems. The same machines that were used in many places in the mid-terms. The results are fairly devestating.

This article talks about some of the gathering evidence of voting problems in the mid-term elections. The author ends by stating:

On election day, a major piece of the mystery of "how did we let things get this bad?" became very clear to me. People that used the touchscreen voting machines, including my wife, who'd read my report and was duly skeptical of the DREs, raved about the experience. The touchscreen machines make fantastic demo units that really sell you on the idea of e-voting. So it's no wonder that states and counties across the country went gaga over these machines and just opened up their wallets when a vendor rep showed them a product demo.

[...]

DREs are awfully pleasant to use, in spite of the fact that they're not worth much as actual voting machines. Ultimately, the story of the triumph of the touchscreen DRE is really a story of the triumph of style over substance [...].

The most basic requirement for a voting machine is that it should be able to accurately record votes. The ones currently in widespread use can't do that. What does an election mean when the voting machines can't record votes accurately?