Categories
voting

More on Sir Alistair Graham’s call to halt May 2007 pilots

It's very heartening indeed to see the wide coverage Sir Alistair Graham's call to halt the May 2007 e-voting and e-counting pilots has received.

Perhaps his key sentence in the entire speech was:

“It is a matter of serious concern that we are experimenting with insecure methods of voting when the current registration and absent voting procedures are so insecure.”

In other words, the current system has flaws (which I absolutely agree with and have said many times) and the new methods being piloted are insecure. Hence we should not double or triple the number of insecure channels of voting we are running, let us fix the current system and stick with it.

The ever-sharp folks over at Headstar have posted an excellent E-Government Bulletin report on Sir Alistair's statement, which thankfully I can now link to directly as they have started blogging their content. They quote a senior government official close to the Cabinet Office:

“Would we support e-voting on a larger scale, up to a region-wide level? Yes we would, if we thought they [election officials] could do it properly.”

This is very interesting indeed. It shows that before the pilots have been run there is, by default, a positive stance about e-voting within government. Furthermore the quote hints that perhaps the push for e-voting is coming from somewhere more central in government than just the Department for Constitutional Affairs. Interesting…

UPDATE via Ideal Government:
The Times: Ministers ignore e-voting fraud warning
The Times brings together Sir Alistair Graham's call to halt the May pilots along with the Electoral Commission's letter to Lord Falconer about the pilot applications into one. There are more hard-hitting quotes from Sir Alistair and while it is reported that DCA had requested changes to the problematic pilot applications, what the changes were hasn't been detailed.

Categories
voting

Microsoft-only Estonian Internet Voting: Troubling Reports (updated)

It’s proving difficult to get first-hand information on the Estonian elections that closed yesterday. As previously reported, Estonia has raced to become the first country to hold a parliamentary election with a legally binding Internet voting channel.

 

Wired News have filed the most detailed report on Estonian Internet voting. There are some interesting quotes such as a member of Estonia’s National Electoral Commission saying that their goal is to boost participation whilst simultaneously admitting that nobody has proved that e-voting actually can achieve this.

 

A troubling quote:

 

“You trust your money with the internet, and you won’t trust your vote? I don’t think so,” said Tarvi Martens, project manager for the country’s e-voting project.

 

 

Surely Mr Martens should, of all people, know that e-voting is a fundamentally different problem to e-commerce; very troubling – it’s either ignorance or a he’s being deliberately misleading.

 

As reported by Wired News the system requires a card reader which much be purchased or received as part of certain banking services. Voting can only be done through Internet Explorer which means that voters must be running Microsoft Windows. This is extraordinary – you can only vote online if running a particular browser and operating system, how democratic is that?

 

Indeed, according to a BBC News report and FOCUS Information Agency report, only about 3% of eligible voters used e-voting with overall turnout being roughly 30%. EuroNews, in a brief report, contrasts Estonia’s Internet voting with socio-economic problems in the country, indeed is Internet voting the best way to spend tax-payers’ money?

 

Deutsche Welle has a report on the Estonian elections from a German perspective noting that OSCE “views the on-line development, with skepticism, with many officials doubting the level of protection and security of information.”

 

In reply to quotes that are generally positive about e-voting, Deutsche Welle have a zinger from the German Ministry of Internal Affairs:

 

“I-Voting, for judicial and technical reasons, does not do justice to the special requirements of political elections in Germany at the moment,” says Annette Ziesig of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

 

 

Precisely, in fact Internet voting and e-voting in general does not and cannot meet the special requirements of political elections for any country that wants to meet international standards for free and fair elections as set out in the UN and Council of Europe declarations on human rights.

 

UPDATE: Margus has posted a comment pointing to pages on the Estonian e-voting website which indicate that voting is possible from Windows, Linux and MacOS. It looks like Wired News mis-reported the situation, my reading of the Estonian site is that you can only use Internet Explorer on Windows but Firefox on other platforms is ok.

 

Comments from the previous version of this blog:

actually linux and mac are supported.
also firefox for windows

http://www.valimised.ee/index_eng.html
17:55:47 GMT 04-03-2007 margus

Thank you!

I was surprised that the Estonians would make an Internet Explorer only system – thank you for that link. I will update my blog post right now.
20:31:21 GMT 04-03-2007 Jason Kitcat

more clarification

see this post here by someone in the know:

http://www.jaanuskase.com/en/2007/03/error_in_wiredcom_article_abou.html
22:36:24 GMT 04-03-2007 rayc

Having actually voted electronically these elections, i find the US-originating critique somewhat annoying.

First of all, every last US critic states they are not familiar with the local system. And they are the experts?
Then there is much talk about the elections not being fair and free.

Which elections are? There have been cases worldwide where people have been told to use their camera phones to take a snapshot of their ballots, etc. If a group wishes to apply pressure to voters such a way is found regardless of the election type.

In the same manner booth voting, mail voting and e-voting all feature some risk of vote tampering. Whether it is by means of accessing voter computers, stealing absentee ballots, buying local votecounting officials or tampering with mailed ballots, it is all possible.

So the critics dislike e-voting because it is as unsafe as the regular one? So let’s dump e-banking as well and pray that the bank branch employee doesn’t forge your signature?
11:56:19 GMT 05-03-2007 Fred

Waving the flag

Fred

Thanks for your comment (and thanks to Ray for the link about Estonia).

I am based in the UK and I am a dual British/Canadian citizen, this and many other background details are in the ‘about’ section of this site.

So I’m not a US critic but you’re right, I don’t have on-the-ground knowledge of the Estonian system, hence the first sentence of my blog post saying how difficult it was to get information. Nevertheless I get asked about the Estonian system and governments will use the Estonian experience as justification for their own experiments so I feel it is worthwhile commenting on my blog.

No election is perfect and to my knowledge I have never said so. When criticising e-voting I acknowledge the limitations of our existing paper-based systems and accept that they have room for improvement. While all methods of voting has some risk, the scale of undetectable fraud or error possible with e-voting is far greater than possible with any other method.

One million postal votes could not be stolen undetectably, logistically it’s too hard to move that much paper yet with e-voting those kinds of numbers are logistically entirely plausible. Note that banking is a very different problem to e-voting as it isn’t anonymous.

My criticism of e-voting is that it is much, much more unsafe than regular secret Australian paper ballots. E-voting is also more expensive, complicated, prone to error and less accountable and auditable to citizens.
22:43:50 GMT 05-03-2007 Jason Kitcat

Categories
voting

Links: 28-02-2007

  • Dutch e-voting software provider holds elections to ransom asking for anti e-voting campaigner to be arrested
    Freedom of Information releases in The Netherlands have revealed bizarre demands and letters from Jan Groenendaal whose company writes the software that runs the software used for all Dutch Nedap machine based elections. Groenendaal also tries to force the Dutch government to buy his company and spouts of against the Irish Independent Commission on Electronic Voting. Very worrying behaviour by a key supplier.

  • House of Commons debate on the Electoral System – 26/2/07
    As part of a Westminster opposition day when the Conservatives could set the agenda, the electoral system came under fierce debate. Many excellent points made by Oliver Heald (Con), Simon Hughes (LD), David Wilshire (Con) and George Galloway (Respect) which leave the ministers on their back feet. Apart from a few outrageous remarks it's a good read!

  • New York Times: Lower voter turnout in States that require ID
    This story is more than the headline would lead you to believe. Minorities such as Blacks and Hispanics are much less likely to vote in an ID required state than other groups. (via Ian Brown)

Categories
voting

Sir Alistair Graham calls for e-voting pilots to be halted

Today, at the Association of Electoral Administrators conference in Brighton, Sir Alistair Graham, chair of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, has publicly called for the 2007 electoral pilots in the UK to be halted. The Committee recently published their eleventh report which called for major reform of the Electoral Commission and our electoral system, particularly with regard to preventing fraud.

This is a major development – it’s the first time an establishment voice has called for the halt of e-voting pilots. The speech couldn’t be better, Sir Alistair makes every point I would have wanted to, he even notes that the government has been extremely misleading in their use of some figures from Northern Ireland. I’m so pleased!

Sir Alistair and the minister Bridget Prentice MP were on BBC Radio 4’s World at One, Prentice absolutely refused to accept anything Sir Alistair had to say.

Some choice quotes from the text online, delivery may have been different, but really read the whole thing as it’s all SO GOOD:

“Electoral fraud is not a trivial matter. It is an affront to the democratic principle of one-person one vote. Left unchecked it will eventually undermine trust and confidence in the democratic process and by implication the electorate’s consent to the outcome of elections.

…

“I should like to put this question to you. How does DCA or the Electoral Commission know about the extent of electoral fraud when neither of them have kept any statistics nor have undertaken any research on the issue? Is it that, in their obsession with increasing participation at all costs, they have turned a blind eye to the risks of electoral fraud and its consequences on the integrity of our democratic system?

…

“The current systems to combat electoral abuse in Great Britain are unsatisfactory already, so to proceed with these pilot schemes, appears ill-timed and betrays confusion over priorities. Unfortunately it appears to come down to the obsession with modernisation as a means of increasing participation at elections.

…

“In any event the primary responsibility for increasing participation at elections rests squarely with the political parties. Deep-seated voter disengagement will not be solved by tinkering with the mechanics of the electoral system.

…

“So in relation to the elections this May I am calling for the pilots to be put on hold. It is a matter of serious concern that we are experimenting with insecure methods of voting when the current registration and absent voting procedures are so insecure. In relation to the checking of absent votes in May there should be a guarantee of 100% checking.

…

“As the integrity of the electoral system in Great Britain is being damaged through increased incidents and perception of electoral fraud why are we not replicating the measures used successfully in Northern Ireland in Great Britain too?”

Full text of the speech (thanks Glyn)

UPDATE:

Links to news coverage…

BBC News Polling experiments ‘high risk’

Yorkshire Post Why ringing the electoral changes failed to dent voter apathy

thisislondon.co.uk Dump e-voting to stop fraud, Labour warned

24dash.com ‘Modern’ voting offers opportunities for fraud

Categories
voting

Electoral Commission letter to Lord Falconer

It is to the Electoral Commission's great credit that they have published a letter they wrote to Lord Falconer, the minister in charge of the Department for Constitutional Affairs. The letter details the Commission's response to the applications made by local authorities to run electoral pilots in May 2007. It makes for very interesting reading, here are some highlights:

  • The Commission feels that many applications lacked detail and that short timescales also prevented the Commission from assessing the applications in detail.

  • Due to insufficient detail, probably due the procurement timetable preventing authorities knowing which suppliers they could use, the Commission could not support any of the e-counting pilot proposals – yet six were approved by DCA.

  • Several of the e-voting pilot applications 'demonstrate insufficient understanding of the important security issues relating to electronic voting'.

  • Three applications, from Rushmoor, Sheffield and Swindon, showed 'effective project management and risk analysis'. These three have done e-voting before, the commission felt that the other four applications did 'not provide enough evidence to give us the confidence that the potentially significant risks involved in the schemes would be managed appropriately.' So the commission couldn't support the applications as proposed. Nevertheless Shrewsbury & Atcham and South Bucks were both approved by DCA to run e-voting pilots in addition to the three the Commission had supported.

Finally:

It was also of considerable concern to us that a large number of the applications were not able to demonstrate broad cross-party support for the proposed schemes. It will be absolutely essential to clarify the true level of local support before approving any of these applications, to ensure that risks to the successful delivery of the schemes are minimised. In particular, we are concerned that the administrative aspects of the election process should not become an issue of dispute in the election itself.

I know of at least one council that does not have cross-party support for e-voting which nevertheless was approved to run a pilot.

Categories
voting

Research shows voters want security and privacy over convenience

Opinion research done by BMRB for the Electoral Commission concerning attitudes surrounding the 2006 electoral pilots makes for interesting reading. The top reason for people possibly choosing not to vote in a pre-election survey: ‘disillusionment with politics, parties or the party system’. Post-election research showed that:

Although, practical reasons for non-voting were given in some instances, such as being out of town, working late or being ill on polling day, they were usually said to work in tandem with other barriers, such as political disillusionment, and were not usually seen as sufficient to act as a barrier on their own. Furthermore, practical barriers were not thought to have a prolonged impact on voting behaviour, that is, they did not result in persistent non-voting over a number of elections.

Three key barriers to voting were highlighted as:

  • Lack of political understanding and knowledge;
  • Disillusionment and scepticism of contemporary politics
  • Party stronghold (thinking the result is a a dead cert).

So again Electoral Commission research shows that overall, while people do cite practical difficulties as part of the reason why they don’t vote, there are deeper reasons that stop people from voting and so technical quick-fixes like e-voting are not going to make a significant difference to e-voting.

It’s interesting to look back to section 9.3 of a 2002 BMRB report for the Department for Transport, Local Government & Regions on e-voting where turnout was discussed:

The implementation of electronic voting was felt to have a limited influence in connection with increasing turnout. In a small number of cases non-voters felt that the idea that electronic voting would increase turnout was insulting.

‘Surely, they’ve only got to look at themselves to say “hey, maybe it’s me”. They don’t think it’s them. They just think it’s because we’re too lazy to go and vote.’

Government sponsored reports, let alone others from people like myself, have been saying for years that e-voting won’t boost turnout significantly. They knew it in 2002, in 2006 and now.

The 2006 report also has an interesting chart that shows the priorities of public opinion (as sampled) for the voting process. Top priority was voting being secret (29%) and second was their vote being safe from fraud or abuse (26%). Then came choice of voting methods followed by convenience at 16% each then ease of voting (10%). So the top two priorities outweigh the next three by a 13% margin. From 2003 to 2006 the proportion of people who would prefer to vote from a polling station has risen 54.5% from 33% (2003) to 51% (2006). Furthermore 97% of voters in May 2006 rated polling station voting as easy to do, 97% rated polling station voting as convenient and 96% rated polling station privacy as good. It doesn’t sound like people are clamoring for methods of voting that replace the polling station at the risk of election integrity.

Indeed 43% of respondents to a pre-election 2006 survey felt that postal voting was unsafe. After the local elections 24% felt that electoral fraud had been a very or fairly big problem. 51% said fraud hadn’t been a problem and 21% didn’t know. This is extraordinary – a quarter of respondents felt that electoral fraud had been a major problem, that’s a huge chunk of people with little faith in the accuracy of our electoral system.

There’s no doubt about it, the public want vote secrecy and security ahead of convenience. Yet the 2007 pilots appear to reverse those priorities risking the secrecy and security for a bit more convenience – why and for who?

The full 2006 BMRB report

A summary of the 2006 report

The full 2002 BMRB report

Categories
voting

Estonia takes the Internet voting national election medal

The other competitors have fallen by the wayside leaving Estonia to take the medal when they cross the finishing line with their March 4th elections. These elections will be the world’s first national parliamentary elections conducted with an Internet voting channel. Their rush to implement this technology is driven by a desire to create positive press around the technological advancement of Estonia to attract inward investment. I can see no other reason expressed in the reports to justify this rapid introduction.

 

My previous analysis of the Estonian system showed that it wasn’t too bad and they’d been admirably open compared to other countries implementing e-voting. Nevertheless there are weaknesses in the system which could be manipulated by insiders and voters can’t be sure their votes are stored and counted as intended.

 

The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) will be sending a mission to observe the Estonian elections but do “…not intend to carry out a systematic or comprehensive observation of the voting, counting and tabulation on election day.” Of course observing a computer in a server room isn’t go to do much good anyway. I wonder what the Estonian candidates think?

 

CNET News.com report
Monsters & Critics report

 

Categories
voting

Links: 12-02-2007

  • Simon Hoggart on e-voting
    Simon's Saturday column includes 2 paragraphs on Rebecca Mercuri's visit to London last week.

  • A conversation with Douglas W. Jones and Peter G. Neumann
    Two of the most prominent and experienced academic voices on voting technology discuss the issues for ACM Queue.

  • Do Politics Centre
    An interesting new site from The Electoral Commision which provides tools and case studies to help local authorities encourage democratic participation. Great idea with a lovely clean design.

  • Election Pilots May 2007
    The Electoral Commission have now put online their own page about this year's e-voting pilots.

Categories
e-democ / e-gov

e-democracy is not direct democracy

The e-petition against road use charging in the UK has been in the news as it breaks the 1 million signature mark.

Coverage from The Times is particularly misleading:

An experiment in internet democracy, in which people were invited to place petitions on the No 10 website and vote for them by e-mail, has embarrassed ministers.

Internet democracy means nothing to me. I wonder whether it's fair to call the Number 10 e-petitions system an experiment as all it does is bring online an existing tradition of handing in petitions to the Prime Minister. Claiming that the petitions are voted for by email subtly misrepresents the site making it sound more Fame Academy and less like clipboards in the high-street type petitions. The MySociety team responsible say it better on the e-petitions FAQ:

One of the most popular proposals has been the creation of a 'sign against' mechanism, which would allow users to disagree with petitions. After much discussion, we have decided not to add this function.

The rationale is this: “e-petitions” is designed essentially as a modern equivalent of the traditional petitions presented at the door of No.10. It enables people to put their views to the Prime Minister. It is not intended to be a form of quasi-referendum or unrepresentative opinion poll (professional polls use special techniques to ensure balanced samples). With a “vote against” function, that is what it would effectively become.

Tracking vehicles to charge them is a pretty hare-brained idea unlikely to be implemented successfully by government. It also strikes me as pointless as road use is already charged for through fuel tax. Without delivering green, affordable, reliable transport alternatives first pricing people off the road seem pointless.

Whatever the merits of the petition's case, 1 million signatures do not miraculously have the power to swing policy. They merely record that 1.6% of our population disagree with how the policy was portrayed by those promoting the petition. Of course this is more than most petitions ever receive, yet still it's a tiny proportion of our peoples.

Naturally the government needs to weigh up the political implications of the mobilisation of feeling those signatures represent. The e-democracy tools enabled people to sign up to the petition quickly and easily. It would have been much harder to achieve so many signatures offline. In fact, rightly or wrongly, I would wager that the government would see more weight in 1 million signatures collected traditionally than online.

Part of the problem lies in expectations. I saw an email promoting the petition which claimed that the government would be legally forced to drop the policy if 750,000 signatures were received. The petitions are not legally binding in any way at all – the government isn't even obliged to respond to them. But if citizens build up hopes and expectations beyond reality then they are setting themselves up for disappointment and possibly will become less likely to participate in the future.

I would hate a great system like the e-petitions site end up unintentionally switching people off democratic participation. Campaigning organisations need to be responsible about the expectations and hope they express when asking for help. We can't count on that though, so the e-petitions site needs to be clearer that e-democracy isn't direct democracy.

Categories
voting

Links: 9-02-2007

  • Getting out the vote
    Wendy Grossman's column for this week covers some e-voting action in the US and our very own ORG/FIPR e-voting events from this past week.

  • Would you trust me to vote for you?
    David Chisnall writes about how e-voting shifts trust to the few with technical skills, and even then it's an uncertain thing.

  • Florida to Shift Voting System With Paper Trail
    Confirmation that Florida's new Republic Governor… yes Republican, is getting rid of the state's touchscreen systems. This isn't a party political issue, all parties and all viewpoints are affected by election processes open to fraud and error. (via John Pugh)

  • Voting 2.0: Will your e-vote count?
    If you ignore the hyperbole of the opening paragraphs this is a very well researched article on the US e-voting 'situation'. The article covers a lot of ground and reminded me of how damning the 2005 General Accounting Office report had been. (via ORG)