The problem here isn't private equity control of the industry...it's state & local governments choosing to actually use these things. PE can call a lemonade stand a voting machine, that's what it means to live in a free country, but that doesn't mean we have to use the damn thing. It's a joke. It's not like we don't know how to design reasonably secure electronic voting mechanisms[1]...these companies just don't bother. There is no reason anyone should ever be using these things.
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that. My point is that these companies ought to be able to sell 'voting machines' that suck, and we ought to be free to not buy them. They should not be free to make false claims about them.
absolutely agree on all three points. unfortunately it's well known that governments often go with the lowest bid for a plethora of goods and services, and it's all to easy to lowball a bid to push machines that suck.
In California at least there were ballot iniatives that mean the CA government must go with the lowest bid, even if it is from a company that has consistently run far over budget.
Honestly I feel the solution to this is: lowest bid, but the company cannot charge more than their bid and needs to have completion/bankruptcy insurance. That way companies that routinely under bid will go bankrupt/have the bankruptcy insurance bills increase until it becomes unprofitable to underbid.
> It's not like we don't know how to design reasonably secure electronic voting mechanisms[1]
It’s exactly like that. No one knows how to solve this problem. The link you added are merely class notes and assume away fundamental technical problems, without even getting into practical issues.
But I will also add that the methods described in my original link are perfectly viable from a technical perspective, just slightly impractical from a UX perspective.
If I sent an open letter to Congress and the Senate asking to be made dictator and they said yes, the blame would fall on a spot a little broader than my shadow.
While lobbying can be bad, it can also be good. It comes down to the judgement of those holding office.
For example, if I were running for a relatively high office that took a lot of funds to compete, I'd openly take funds from any legal source. And that might make me more inclined to meet with those organizations over given issues. However, it would be up to me to decide what is best for my constituents in my votes/actions over specific things.
We talk all day about corruption of the money/companies, but way too little voting out all the congress-critters that should not return. More people need to start voting against incumbents regardless of party to stir the pot and get some new blood into things.
"For example, if I were running for a relatively high office that took a lot of funds to compete, I'd openly take funds from any legal source. And that might make me more inclined to meet with those organizations over given issues. However, it would be up to me to decide what is best for my constituents in my votes/actions over specific things."
It's a feature, not a bug...applied empirically to the modern electoral mechanism.
Is there a solid argument for not having more regulation on these organizations? We have so much regulation on slot machines and casinos for example because we know that a lot of money passes through there and there's high potential for money laundering. Why not have strong regulations around voting systems too? We know that if voting systems are compromised the impact could be devastating to the entire country - far more critical to America's security and continuity than regulation in many other industries.
I just don't get the opposition to that. It seems like it's in everyone's best interest (those that are honest and are looking for a fair foundation to build from that is).
The voting machine certification gauntlet is text book regulatory capture. Meaning the vendors themselves fund and run the testing labs (last time I checked).
Further, since appropriations are (mostly) done locally, the "surface area" is quite big. Like the parable of the boy plugging the dyke with his fingers.
For example, I was able to block the purchase and use of gear that added the voter's id to their ballot. In my jurisdiction alone. There are roughly 2,000 counties in the USA. So to protect everyone's secret ballot, that fight would have to recur many, many times.
Alas, saving democracy doesn't pay very well, nor does it scale.
I honestly think that a lot of people in the US think it's more important that their party wins than having fair elections. So I don't expect a big push coming from the people who are responsible for these purchases.
when the "other side" leverages something controversial, it's a crime. when "our side" leverages something controversial, it's playing to win. the hypocrisy in US politics is strong at every level.
At the risk of sounding like a preacher (as a nonreligious person) I think a lack of moral guidance in modern life is a factor. What might've been controversial in the past, the idea that morality is an individual weakness rather than a communal strength, seems to be projected through all sorts of media.
I'm not sure why you see that as irrational? If I had a genie that made sure whoever I voted for won I wouldn't really hesitate to use it. It would be silly of me to refuse.
The party in power is expected to lie cheat and steal to maintain their position and the opposition parties are supposed to keep them in check. Adversarial systems seem to work pretty well since the incentives align -- way better than I would expect an honor system to work at least.
The party in power is not expected to lie, cheat, and steal to maintain their position. You're claiming that as if that is the righteous goal of any party. I would argue that's exactly what the founding fathers didn't want. There's a trust but verify attitude in the Constitution which is why there are checks and balances. Also, in America there is only 1 party that continually seems to be doing all of those things and ramping it up massively as of late. The opposition party, when in power, has generally not had to do any of those things because it usually does things that the people of the country want so they don't need to do those dirty things to stay in power.
Also, claiming that if you had a genie that could make your candidates win it would be silly to refuse is kind of not great. I think for a lot of people that it would be downright disturbing to use that and they would instead realize that if their candidate lost then that is the will of the people and that's democracy and what we all supposedly should want. Trying to make it anything but is basically cheating, which you are admitting if you had the opportunity you would gladly do. I'm not sure I would claim that as happily as you have.
You're almost arguing that corruption is the norm and that it really can be great if it works in your favor. This is a pretty disgusting argument.
It's irrational because they should understand both from both civics education an intuitively that the success of the system depends on good faith participation. If we don't respect the process or the outcomes, act like adversaries to our own country, it ends up a steaming pile.
Why do I care about 'the system'? It's just a means to make a decision. Holding the process as the highest ideal ignores the consequences. If a wrong decision gets made but we followed the process are we really saying we're somehow better off than if we made the right one?
An adversarial system can only work if there are neutral referees in between that make sure certain rules are followed. In this case it would be election officials. If they are partisan themselves then the system is just corrupt.
I was going to say members of each party but I realized that there are many non-political party interests that need to be represented as well for ideal fairness. Largely what I'm getting at is that adversarial systems fail when somebody doesn't have an adversary.
So in general it's not enough for them to be bipartisan, they need to be a group that collectively opossss every action someone takes. When all the dust settles the only things people will actually be able to do are the things permitted by the rules.
"...process accepted by all interested parties exists and is carried out."
We're talking about the belligerents working the system for partisan advantage. Everyone accepting the process and results is the (practical) definition of fair.
What are you talking about? Mathematical fairness of various voting systems? Totally different discussion.
The only buyers for voting machines are governments, and they can use whatever purchase criteria they want. Thus, the market is effectively completely regulated in every aspect.
The difficulty is that building a secure voting machine is a problem similar to building secure, spam-free email. No matter what trade off you make, you will trigger violently angry responses from some group.
Just because there's only 1 type of buyer doesn't mean the industry is regulated at all. It just means capitalism is at work. I'm not sure how you can conflate the two. The government is massive so you can't just say because the same entity as a whole is the one purchasing the machines that they're essentially also regulating it.
To be even more clear there are almost no regulations in this space other than what the companies themselves say they regulate/control/test. That's not regulation, but government simply buying from the only options that are out there who currently poorly regulate things themselves.
You're basically saying that building a perfect voting machine is impossible so they're all faulty so we should be okay with faulty ones. You seem to be an engineer from your twitter, which is somewhat shocking for me. In engineering (mechanical, electrical, software) if you said to your boss "hey, we can't make this thing perfect so we shouldn't even bother because someone will complain about it" I'd imagine your boss would fire you and find someone that wasn't so black and white who would actually try to implement something and then make it better.
Also, your comparison to spam-free email doesn't actually help your case at all. If you went to google years ago before they created gmail and said 'I heard you were going to try and make a secure and spam-free email system, but that in doing so you'll make tradeoffs and some people will be angry with it' I imagine they'd laugh you out of the room. Moreso today if you said that to them since they have built that system and generally most people like it.
Out of curiosity, where are the 'violently angry responses from some group' happening? All I see are people fighting regulation and the use of better systems and people who are dismayed by that and are trying to make things right.
Why is it that Bloomberg has run an article so light on the details of the financial ownership of these companies by private equity firms (something they should be quite expert in), and instead mostly consisting of old news stories about how close some past elections have been (not their area of expertise and barely relevant if the idea is that the entire voting system can be wholesale rigged)?
My guess is that it's because if you dig into the details, there is little actual control being exercised by those PE firms, making this a non story.
I'm not even sure there's a good answer. It's not just federal and state elections. There is a lot of complexity that isn't considered. Localized districts (water, fire, school, parks, etc) have weird and overlapping boundaries compared to other districts. Add in some gerrymandering and it gets horrific to write software against.
While I'm genuinely concerned over security considerations, not to mention equipment. It's hard to coordinate even the paper/scantron style ballots. What bugs me more about the visual/touch computers is the time that those stations take relative to cost... a few cardboard privacy booths and scantron is much better, but we're spending billions on systems that are demonstrably worse.
And anything over the internet is a non-starter now. In the end, I really hope that more states/districts realize how bad the cost/benefit of the computer voting stations are. Not even considering the coordination, lack of paper trail, before considering the relative consolidation and closed-source nature of the system.
Disclosure: I work for a company that does ballot printing and other election services, but not voting machines specifically.
Maybe everyone should vote by mail, which currently is done by paper ballot.
The current voting machines have problems, and I'd rather use paper ballots today, but let's not make the mistake of thinking that paper ballots are the ideal long-term solution. Remember "hanging chads" and voter confusion caused by the ballot layout in Florida back in 2000?
Don’t use punching machines. Use separate ballots per candidate. The voter selects the ballot for her candidate, folds it and drops it in the ballot box. Simple and secure.
So for locations that have say 50+ positions, with multiple party candidates up for election, you want to print off 100+ ballots and have the voters select and mail out 50 of them separately?
Right now to reduce fraud, many mail in juristicions will have an envelope with a voter and specific ballot type (local districts include different water, power, school, fire, police, etc which may be different from someone on the other side of your street). And the ballot only has the ballot type/combination... the outside is scanned to match the inside, and the inside ballot is then separated/randomized to prevent tracking coordination.
Do you understand how much crap would have to be coordinated between envelopes and ballots to support such a system? We aren't just voting for a single office, in some places it's over 50 offices, with hundreds of candidates.
I have a hard time trusting that my cable bill will get to Comcast on time via the USPS. I've seen unopened UPS and FedEx envelopes left in the street, out in the rain. Voting by mail gives me personally no more faith that my vote will be counted correctly than does a digital voting machine. Voting in person and on paper gives me some level of comfort, but I'm always cynically curious what happens after I leave my polling place.
Voting by mail is fraught with huge problems. Zero proof the person filling it out and mailing it are actually the person they should be. Campaigns often block walk, “helping” people complete their ballots, for example. Also ballots get sent to dead people quite frequently. Voting by mail should only be done for those overseas and hand delivered to a consulate where ID can be verified.
A single person at a polling location committing fraud affects one vote, but a few people committing mail in fraud can affect hundreds or thousands of votes. “Helping” people vote, while not illegal, is definitely ripe for abuse. “Want to keep your social security checks? Here, sign this ballot.”
In person voting with your thumb dipped in dye just like they do in developing countries along with photo ID, along with auditable paper ballots is a sure-fire way to eliminate fraud. Those that oppose this generally are the ones who benefit the most from the current system.
The counter argument is that it is much harder to intercept the mail en-masse than it is to interfere with elections in person.
Every year there are stories of polling places having "technical difficulties" or being "moved at the last minute" in certain neighborhoods. Roads get closed down, signs directing people where to go to vote are not put up, and 4+ hour lines out the door become common place in areas where those in power want to suppress votes.
In contrast, with vote by mail people don't have to take a day off of work, they don't have to wait out in the cold for hours, and they don't have to risk not being able to vote at all if their local polling place decided that all the machines are "no longer working".
Make elections a federal thing, put the FEC in charge of tracking down and providing photo ID (free of course) to every last citizen, and put them in charge as well of maintaining a sufficient number of polling places conveniently located, well staffed, and open enough days/hours to accommodate everyone. Then I'm totally on board. As it is, the issue of requiring photo ID is just used by people who know that it will disproportionately disadvantage people who don't vote like them. Conveniently they also support fewer polling places, located in hard to reach places, open for as few hours as possible. And then they make photo ID more expensive and inconvenient to get as well.
democracy dies because people couldn't be bothered with the "mundane technical details".
its like this is a flaw of intelligent civilization that Carl Sagan didn't think about. it's not global nuclear warfare, it's not climate change, it's not some mad virus...
it's that the species becomes disinterested in performing maintenance because maintenance tasks don't produce a dopamine rush. the civilization becomes too incompetent to perform even the most basic upkeep on the structures they set in place - whether physical like roads and bridges, or social-political, like election systems.
nobody becomes famous or wealthy for performing upkeep.
I don't see why we can't use open source voting software, low cost PCs and old fashioned punchcard machines.
The problems in 2000 were all about data not be correctly recorded. That was solved a long time ago. There never was a need to start transmitting the data electronically.
Now we can use electronic gathering of the data AND automatic counting of the physical ballots to help prevent fraud. But replacing physical ballots with electronic vote collection wasn't really needed.
scan-tron ballots are generally the best option imho. You can scale quite a bit at a polling station as well as not tying up one costly machine per person in queue. Coordination of ballots for localized districts is still one of the more difficult issues for both print and electronic voting though.
I can't help but think, if private equity already controls the industry, that there is ample room for a startup or non profit or even a government owned business to disrupt the industry. Create real secure optical scan voting machines based on the best practices that have been come up with, and with independent audits and sell them with a contract where the machines are updated with security fixes for a fixed period.
Sell the machines a bit like razors, The machines themselves are relatively cheap, but come with a required subscription to the security fixes for the lifetime of the machine.
The optical scan systems are relatively secure already, and have a built in paper trail to back them up. The bigger issue tends to surround the visual/touch voting computers, that often don't have a proper paper trail, let alone other vulnerabilities.
The most difficult issues is the shear number of ballot combinations in most cities is staggering with different districts by type. You may have the same water district as your neighbor across the street, but different fire and school districts. It's complicated to say the least. Even for optical scan options.
disclaimer: I work for an election services company, but not with any voting hardware. The company is mostly in printing/coordination of ballots themselves. It's a complex issue to say the least.
Los Angeles County is one of the few jurisdictions with the resources and heft to move the needle on their own.
They're making their own OSS tabulators. I've been out of the election integrity game for a while, so I'm not immediately familiar with the scope of their effort.
Any one wanting to reform USA's election administration stack should start in LA. Help their effort. Lobby to import their gear to their own jurisdiction. Study their effort, roadmap.
No, Los Angeles County's new tabulator isn't open source. Look what happened when someone tried to request the source code for their "open source" system (as LA County's press release called it). LA County replied that it's "exempt from disclosure" for a whole host of reasons (2 pages worth):
Uhg now PE is the new boogieman? If these voting machine firms were public companies, or family owned, or a subsidiary of a conglomerate, would that somehow be better?
A family-owned voting machine company’s main incentive is to sell voting machines. A PE firm might be able to hedge themselves into vast upsides from particular election outcomes — much larger amounts of money than the sale of voting machines — and then affect the outcome.
[1] https://crypto.stanford.edu/pbc/notes/crypto/voting.html