Ballot Transparency to Eliminate Fraudulent Counts
Voters have read and seen all sorts of assurances that the new touch-screen balloting systems are fool proof, tamper proof, and nothing to worry about. Many, including those who are familiar with the technology, are not at all reassured.
The concerns are on two levels. First, from the perspective of those not familiar with the technology, it is a device whose inner workings and inherent security they cannot possibly understand. If they can't understand it, how can they be assured that it is honest? Second, those who DO understand signal processing, software, and communications technology know that is far too easy to defraud the system in a way that would be irreversible and undetected. Either way, touch-screens are a loser.
Now, as users of ATMs, cell phones, the Internet, and other electronic media, it might at first seem a little strange that so many people have such concerns. Upon further consideration however, the key distinctions between voting and a service handling mere money become obvious:
· Customers have a choice of banking vendors. Citizens don’t have a choice of governments.
· There is a major difference between mere financial assets at risk, and a risk to individual liberty.
Governments are monopolies. One can go down the street to another bank and take the offending bank to court. An evil government can land you in prison (or worse) because they ARE the court. The stakes associated with voter fraud are far higher than with an ATM. So is the temptation to defraud the system.
Necessary and Sufficient
So, given that we are still smarting over hanging chads, what are the alternatives? Let’s begin to answer that question by looking at the requirements.
· The system has to be simple and familiar to the voter.
· There must be NO SOFTWARE involved, because it is too easy to change.
· The system must be capable of completely manual operation.
· The count must be capable of being validated by all parties involved and each count must be separate and distinct.
· There must be no possibility to count a ballot twice or "lose" counts along the way.
Electronic sensors and interlocks are permissible as long as they can be duplicated manually.
Here is my proposal for a system that meets these requirements:
At the Polling Place
1. Ballot boxes must be preprinted, serialized and tracked by a physical chain-of-custody document.
2. The box must be destroyed to be opened.
3. The box must be locked under a ballot receiving machine.
4. The ballot receiving machine at the polling place should read the box number and record it on the ballot in a fill-in-the-box pattern on the back side. Note that one could do the same manually under observation.
5. The voter completes the standard optical ballot and delivers it to the receiving machine. Note that the optical pattern is a perfect bridge between human and machine: It is readable by people for manual counting but does not require an optical character reading machine that needs cameras or software.
6. The machine prints the box number on the back of every ballot it accepts with a fill-in-the-box pattern. This too can be both read and performed manually. Then a dry film coating (basically an adhesive or heat activated tape) is applied to the ballot on the way into the sealed ballot box.
7. The coating is transparent but reveals a "watermark" when exposed to UV light. The ballot is now tamperproof.
8. The receiving machine totals the number of ballots in every box. The total is read manually and a receipt is delivered to each political party and candidate detailing the box numbers, precincts, and tally of ballots in every uniquely identified box. Thus parties know the EXACT number of ballots cast in every precinct and in every box. Every box is signed. All parties can thus run check sums at the processing centers and verify the chain-of-custody.
9. Representatives of all Parties check the box tallies before the boxes leave the polling place.
10. If they agree on its accuracy, they record the ballot tally on the box using a fill-in-the-box pattern, initial it, and put a similar dry film over the number.
At the Ballot Counting Center
1. The total of the ballots on the box is read by the counting machine. It would be very similar to the existing optical reader and might only require very minor modifications.
2. The counting machine reads the box code for precinct and ballot count or accepts that data input from a keypad read off the box by at least two witnesses with keys. The machine will not count the ballots without the UV visible watermark on the ballot over the votes AND matching precinct codes on the box and the ballot.
3. The machine halts and will not display the vote totals if the number of ballots recorded on the box and the number it counts do not match.
4. The ballots leave the counting machine get a NEW ballot box. Counted ballots are stamped again with output box number, recoated, and then deposited into the new sealed ballot box.
5. The new coating was applied in case of a recount, thus each ballot maintains a recount history.