
L.A. County gets state approval of new open-source vote-counting system - klondike_
http://www.latimes.com/politics/essential/la-pol-ca-essential-politics-may-2018-los-angeles-gets-the-state-s-approval-1534946283-htmlstory.html
======
furgooswft13
I hope open source does not become a feel good buzzword for vote tallying
security efforts. Nothing precludes open source based voting firmware from
being modified before deployment on the machines (and perhaps with less effort
as the source code is easily studied). Without end-to-end documentation of the
entire build process for the final image, and secure hashing of the binary,
open source means nothing. And even then...

> The ballot-counting equipment is part of a broader redesign of Los Angeles
> County’s voting system, which will include new equipment while relying on a
> traditional paper ballot

Article is light on details, and it's difficult to tell exactly what this
sentence means, but if it means the new software will produce paper ballots
that can be verified and observed by humans, that's a good thing at least.

~~~
duxup
In Minnesota we have a hybrid system where you fill out a paper ballot. The
then you feed it through a scanner that indicates that it counted your vote,
counts it, and it rolls into a locked box.

The machine and ballots are tied together right there. I really like the
system as if all else fails you can get a paper trail and I belive even ID
machines.

~~~
voidlogic
The machines seem to work well too. I don't know why everyone doesn't do it
like we do.

~~~
orev
Because the people in power are terrified that just _maybe_ there actually is
some funny business going on and they are benefiting from it (by having been
elected), and if they fix the system they will lose the next time around. It’s
probably an irrational fear in many ways, but there’s always that little bit
of them wondering.

Also, they could have granted long term contracts to existing suppliers, don’t
have a budget to replace existing machines, don’t want to make the person who
bought them look bad, or even possibly don’t want to say the old machines are
bad because it calls into question the integrity of past elections.

------
nonbel
Is this the same thing that Smartmatic company was hired for?

[https://abc7.com/politics/new-voting-system-approved-by-
la-c...](https://abc7.com/politics/new-voting-system-approved-by-la-county-
board-of-supervisors/3595736/)

That seems to be the case:

> _" Separately, Logan signed a contract on June 13 with Smartmatic USA,
> making it the VSAP prime contractor and systems integrator. Smartmatic USA
> will help Logan's office in managing the manufacture and implemention of
> components scheduled for introduction in the March 2020 California
> presidential primary election."_ [https://www.techwire.net/news/la-county-
> oks-open-source-elec...](https://www.techwire.net/news/la-county-oks-open-
> source-election-system.html)

Why are all these "voting machine" companies so shady?

> _" The Venezuelan-owned Smartmatic Corporation is a riddle both in ownership
> and operation, complicated by the fact that its machines have overseen
> several landslide (and contested) victories by President Hugo Chavez and his
> supporters. The electronic voting company went from a small technology
> startup to a market player in just a few years, catapulted by its
> participation in the August 2004 recall referendum. Smartmatic has claimed
> to be of U.S. origin, but its true owners -- probably elite Venezuelans of
> several political strains -- remain hidden behind a web of holding companies
> in the Netherlands and Barbados. The Smartmatic machines used in Venezuela
> are widely suspected of, though never proven conclusively to be, susceptible
> to fraud. The company is thought to be backing out of Venezuelan electoral
> events, focusing now on other parts of world, including the United States
> via its subsidiary, Sequoia."_
> [https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/06CARACAS2063_a.html](https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/06CARACAS2063_a.html)

~~~
vuln
Smartmatic is a CIA operation.

------
haney

      The ballot-counting     
      equipment is part of a 
      broader redesign of Los 
      Angeles County’s voting 
      system, which will include 
      new equipment while relying 
      on a traditional paper ballot. 
    

So they’re paper ballots but the machine to count them is open source?

~~~
sprokolopolis
It seems the larger plan will be to have tablet kiosks where you can either
select your choices, or scan a QR code from your phone (with your pre-selected
choices) and then your ballot selections are printed to the paper ballot.

They have been asking for suggested areas for "Voting Centers" recently where
LA County citizens can vote at the location of their choosing. Many people
here have long commutes from traffic or public transport. For this reason (and
maybe others) the County wants to make it so people can vote at any of the
available "vote centers", rather than one assigned polling location by their
home.

You can watch the video that they were sending around here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fC_-8Nl-O3U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fC_-8Nl-O3U)

~~~
ollien
This just sounds like a really expensive pencil if all it does it print it out
on paper.

~~~
jacobolus
People marking paper ballots manage to screw up the marking in every
conceivable way, and when those are recounted in a close race, whoever is
doing the counting can exercise some discretion in edge cases. Presumably a
machine could guarantee that the ballot was filled out correctly and not
spoiled.

For example, in a 2017 election for a seat of the Virginia House which would
have switched party control, an election recount came up one vote in favor of
the Democrat, but then GOP officials declared that a (clearly spoiled under
any reasonable interpretation of the official rules for counting) ballot
should count for the GOP candidate, making the vote a tie. Another GOP
official then decided the contest in the GOP candidate’s favor by drawing his
name from a hat.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_House_of_Delegates_el...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_House_of_Delegates_election,_2017#Recounts)

~~~
labster
I've been a poll worker. This is true. Once a race has two columns of
candidates the voter errors spike, no matter how well designed the ballot is.

I wish election results came with a margin of error calculation, because too
many people assume that a vote result is 100% accurate. Especially to justify
the result of a winner-take-all election.

------
motohagiography
Electronic voting conflates authenticity with legitimacy. Same problem in
digital identity.

To me it seemed actually stupid to believe that the only thing preventing
algorithms from yielding the sympathetic magic required for a peaceful
transfer of sovereign power, was their lack of complexity. Arguably, without
the ritual element, democracy reduces to a lottery with a biased mechanism,
and for it to work, it must necessarily be more than that.

It's a larger philosophical question, to be sure, but it's like comparing a
Turing test to an Indifference curve. The first is to determine whether
something can convince people it is another person, the second is to predict
the point at which you will cease to care enough to choose something else.
These are analogous in that, like an AI, we can design an e-voting system that
can act convincingly as though it facilitates democracy, but mainly it is just
an acceptable substitute for people who no longer care whether the democracy
they are dealing with is real or not.

In the case of voting, it's not just a thought experiment, or a product dev
question, as by real, I mean sufficiently legitimate for people not to reject
the results and cause civil disturbances.

It might sound a bit extreme, but we should really be asking when we institute
electronic voting (or counting) whether we are willing to accept a simulation
of the ritual we use to grant sovereign powers to people.

------
matt_s
Voting is an area where we don't need automation or fast results. Typically a
newly elected person doesn't take office for days or months after an election,
right?

Paper ballots cannot be hacked at scale.

Properly designed paper ballots and a national design and education rolled out
about them would propel us forwards as a nation.

~~~
rurban
The first argument does not hold for traditional paper ballots. Paper ballots
are all already counted for the critical evening news at 8pm, and are all seen
by multiple eyes.

------
mdrzn
LA Times not available in the EU: can we stop posting links to it?

[https://www.techwire.net/news/la-county-oks-open-source-
elec...](https://www.techwire.net/news/la-county-oks-open-source-election-
system.html)

------
secabeen
Looks pretty good. I think it's too bad that the filled out ballot just goes
into the place where the unfilled ballot is printed. Makes it feel like it
could be over-printed or something. Taking the filled out ballot over to a box
is not that much of an inconvenience. If they're worried about observation
during that transfer, put the box by the voting system, but more obviously
separate.

------
Someone1234
Open Source voting is a great start. Transparent voting is better. Random
auditing is a complete solution.

------
EGreg
What we should have instead is a cryptographically secure voting system where
no one can prove how they voted but can verify that their vote was counted
properly.

The trick is just to have people scan a QR code when they register, to make
sure it’s one vote one person.

~~~
tzs
I wonder if you are being downvoted because you said "cryptographically" and
people think you are suggesting something with a blockchain?

Anyway, such a system as you want has been designed, and is inexpensive and
works well with existing systems, and makes it easy for third parties to audit
the results:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scantegrity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scantegrity)

~~~
lwansbrough
How can the system prove that my vote counted correctly if I can’t personally
verify who my vote was counted for?

This system obviously requires centralized trust (which I’m not against in
practice) — but is there any provably secure way to make such a system
decentralized? (Yes, blockchain..)

~~~
tzs
> How can the system prove that my vote counted correctly if I can’t
> personally verify who my vote was counted for?

In the Scantegrity sysem you can personally verify who your vote was counted
for.

------
kodablah
Article light on details, to save me the searching, can anyone link to the
source code?

~~~
Rebelgecko
If I'm reading the contract correctly[1], the source won't be available until
2020. There's also some limitations put on the licensing that are IMO
stretching (or maybe abusing) the definition of open source.

[1]
[http://file.lacounty.gov/SDSInter/bos/supdocs/123460.pdf](http://file.lacounty.gov/SDSInter/bos/supdocs/123460.pdf)

~~~
stonesixone
They reserve the right to make it open source in that contract, but they may
or may not do so.

~~~
Rebelgecko
LA County has the right, and elsewhere they've said that they will (although
of course plans change, with some caveats about device firmware and using it
for your own elections

------
Dowwie
It's open source, so that means you can see for yourself why the votes were
counted correctly!

How do you safely pass votes from the machine to the counter?

------
eludwig
Relevant: [http://vsap.lavote.net/](http://vsap.lavote.net/)

------
rixrax
I hope that as part of the design, it will also [optionally] enforce some form
of voter identification (passport, drivers license, passport card, or even a
credit card with a chip or apple pay for all I care).

I suspect above might be unpopular idea. Especially since obvious downside is
that if poorly implemented (or exploited) it could allow establishing who
voted what and in any case allow establishing who did and didn't vote. And no,
I don't think voter fraud is widespread, or has had any impact of consequence
to overall results. But in this age and day, I think we should have a system
where a registered voter is first identified by the system before presenting
them with the ballot. This way, assuming systems were interlinked, one could
vote anywhere in the country, and be given the right ballot for where you
live.

And then the obvious next step would be allowing voting via browser. One vote
for one registered ID. If system thinks your ID has already voted, have an
escalation mechanism to re-cast the vote and investigate.

~~~
fake-name
The problem with enforcing voter ID laws is that it's a solution to a non-
existent problem.

If you want to increase the bar for people to vote, you _HAVE_ to demonstrate
that the current system is problematic.

There have been multiple attempts to find ANY significant voter fraud that
would have been at all affected by forcing voter-ID requirements. They have
universally found nothing.

As such, there's no _real_ reason to support voter-ID laws, aside from
deliberately trying to disenfranchise low-income voters.

~~~
remarkEon
>As such, there's no real reason to support voter-ID laws, aside from
deliberately trying to disenfranchise low-income voters.

This is a common point, but I think it assumes too much about low-income
voters. You need an ID to access essentially all of the government services
that low-income folks would need. I'm really skeptical that mandating voter ID
would have any real effect on these groups (understand that we _do_ sound a
bit Elitist talking about what's good for the proles ... I like to err on the
side of them being competent enough to use their ID to both get access to
welfare programs and, also, vote).

~~~
chc
There are more people who lack ID for one reason or another (e.g. over 600,000
registered voters in Texas lacked the necessary types of ID to vote under its
voter-ID law in 2014) than there are fraudulent voters, so if you're going to
address one problem or the other, I think the one that actually happens is the
better direction to err.

~~~
specialist
My proposed solution is somewhat more simple:

Universal, automatic voter registration moots this entire sideshow.

Just like every other mature democracy.

