back to article Microsoft to bravely defend US democracy for a slack handful of voters in Fulton, Wisconsin

Microsoft is in Fulton, Wisconsin, today to try its ElectionGuard electronic vote system in the primary election for the US state's Supreme Court candidates. Tom Burt, Microsoft corporate veep for Customer Security and Trust, unleashed the news overnight, hopefully giving locals time to roll out the bunting before Microsoft …

  1. Aladdin Sane

    Vote Cthulhu

    Why choose the lesser evil?

    1. NoneSuch Silver badge
      Joke

      Put Microsoft in Charge of Voting?

      What can possiblie go wrong?

      Results will be divided into Red States and Blue States of Death.

      (Joke icon, because this is a frikking joke.)

      1. Aladdin Sane

        Re: Put Microsoft in Charge of Voting?

        So the choice is evisceration or asphyxiation?

  2. Antron Argaiv Silver badge
    Big Brother

    Paper ballots and markers

    If you're too inept (or disabled) to handle the basic skills of marking in the circle next to the name your chosen politico, take someone with you to help you.

    In return, you get individually marked legal documents, hand verifiable and machine countable.

    Why spend shedloads of cash on electronic machines whose only advantage seems to be their ability to be "misprogrammed"?

    Yes, I know why.

    The only other demonstrable property of these pieces of electronic junk is their ability to degrade between elections. You're pretty much guaranteed a number of DOA units when you pull them out of the storage locker once a year.

    There oughtta be a law..."KISS"

    1. MiguelC Silver badge

      Re: KISS

      they probably misread it as "keep it simply stupid"

    2. Brangdon

      Re: Paper ballots and markers

      From what I, a non-American, have gathered, Americans have found that paper ballots don't scale well to the large number of elected officials they have. In the UK we are typically only voting for one candidate. So we can first separate the papers into a pile for each candidate and then count how many papers in each pile. Both processes able to be done in parallel, so as long as you have counting clerks in proportion to the number of voters, it take constant time.

      In the US they vote for scores of positions at the same time. They put all those votes on the same piece of paper. That makes counting the votes hard. They can't make piles of votes without first tearing the voting paper into strips - one strip per position being voted for. They find that impractical. So counting the votes by hand can take months.

      1. Claptrap314 Silver badge

        Re: Paper ballots and markers

        You could just ask an American, you know.

        It is not unusual for a single election here to have 20 or more races, plus another half dozen or so "issues" usually tax increases that require a vote, or amendments to (state) constitutions or local charters.

        And no, it could be done by hand in a day or two at most. There would be time to do it twice. But... it is a lot of work. Using scantrons is perfectly viable. Ballots are damaged at the rate of less than 1 in a million, so any amount of cross-checking is not a problem.

        It's when they move away from hand-filling in the ovals that things get ugly.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Holmes

          Re: Paper ballots and markers

          Being a Yank and a Virginian, those across the pond don't seem to recognize the volume of lines on a typical ballot. And the fact that poll workers are unpaid volunteers. My jurisdiction uses paper ballots counted by scanning. Having the poll workers hand tabulate them would be a nightmare. Especially since elections at the local level can be and have been decided by a single vote (or even ended in a tie).

          1. JohnFen

            Re: Paper ballots and markers

            > Especially since elections at the local level can be and have been decided by a single vote (or even ended in a tie).

            And you know what happens when an election is that close? They hand-count the ballots to double-check the results.

          2. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Paper ballots and markers

            And the fact that poll workers are unpaid volunteers

            Given the record breaking debt that's stacked up behind the current economic "success" (which is thus in reality the equivalent of living it large on bank loans and credit card debt) I reckon that terms will eventually apply to practically everyone there :(.

          3. Sherrie Ludwig

            Re: Paper ballots and markers

            Being a Yank and a Virginian, those across the pond don't seem to recognize the volume of lines on a typical ballot. And the fact that poll workers are unpaid volunteers.

            In Illinois, the poll workers are paid for their day (and a bit, they come in a day before to check the supplies and equipment are all on hand). It isn't much, works out to barely above minimum wage if all goes well, but if there is a snag in opening or closing the polls, they may be required to work until it is resolved, which can add a couple of hours to the day. I have been an Illinois "judge of election", as they are called here, and it is a post usually filled by retirees for the social entertainment and the few extra dollars. It is a very long and tiring day, and you have a great deal of responsibility. To do it as a volunteer is devotion past reason.

            1. Claptrap314 Silver badge

              Re: Paper ballots and markers

              It was common practice in Texas to sign the check over to your party as a donation.

              I think I managed to do an election in 14 1/2hs once. Usually, it took about 15. If you believe in the republican form of government, it is time well spent.

              But, uggh, DO NOT be a poll watcher. THAT is a truly miserable experience.

      2. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

        Re: Paper ballots and markers

        What doesn't scale well is reprinting paper ballots before an election, if they need to be changed because of some last-minute change in the candidate line-up, or court action, or screw-up, etc. That happens often enough to be a problem.

        Another issue with pre-printed paper ballots is polling places running out of them when turnout is greater than expected; that's happened too. And pre-printed ballots are much easier to spoil (voter marks the wrong choice by mistake and has to request another ballot), exacerbating shortages and increasing voting latency.

        While human-readable, machine-readable mark-sense ballots have proven to be the best mechanism to date, pre-printing and marking by pen is not an ideal implementation.

        Voting machines that let the user enter choices, confirm them, and then print a marked paper ballot offer several advantages. Besides addressing the issues above, they can provide ballots in multiple languages; they can provide zoom features for people with poor vision; they can provide audio for blind voters (though in the last case voters will need further assistance to confirm their printed ballot, should they wish to do so).

        Of course they have their own failure modes, and it would be prudent to have some pre-printed unmarked ballots on hand at each polling place just in case, with more stored centrally so they can be delivered if necessary. But it's possible to make these machines pretty robust, and having them produce human-readable mark-sense ballots as a step in the counting process (and not just as a voter receipt) eliminates many of the security issues with the voting terminals themselves, as well as providing the necessary audit trail.

        Rolling this out in a single small election is the right approach. Unlike Voatz and Shadow, Microsoft is doing this correctly. It's kind of surprising.

        1. Claptrap314 Silver badge

          Re: Paper ballots and markers

          How many elections have you worked?

          First, there are no last-minute changes. The election code provides for the situation wherein someone dies/is disqualified at the last minute. It's not ideal, but a last-minute change is also very much NOT ideal. Neither is pushing off the election. The finalization of the ballot is typically a month before voting begins, and that is not just about printing the ballots. It is about creating a stable environment for the voter on election day as well.

          Second, while running out of ballots has occurred, it is exceedingly rare. I don't think I ever had more than half of my ballots used. Furthermore, ballots are rarely one per precinct. Our training was that if we appeared to be in danger of running out, we would call that fact in, and additional ballots would be delivered. In some cases, they were taken from a neighboring precinct that did not need them. In the worst case, we would start handing out blank pieces of paper with the ballot and instruct the voters to vote on the blank paper and return the ballot for the next voter.

          This has worked for centuries, and will continue to work so long as the primary goal is the accuracy of the result. But, if you want to really screw things up, use a computer.

          While the ballot-under-glass model sounds acceptable, the more I've seen & thought about it, the less I can accept it. These systems are fundamentally insecurable against insider attacks, and election fraud has always been about insiders abusing their power.

          Just say no.

  3. Chris G

    Anonymity?

    How do these systems guarantee your right to a secret ballot as opposed to a piece of paper with a cross thrown into a box?

    1. John Robson Silver badge

      Re: Anonymity?

      Given that most places note the ballot number given to each voter...

      You could argue that the system isn't really secret anyway.

      1. Claptrap314 Silver badge

        Re: Anonymity?

        Never in Texas. I worked thirty elections there.

        Even in Washington state, with their outrageous vote by mail system, I'm pretty certain that the ballot-voter link is broken before the counts are done.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Anonymity?

      AFAIK in the UK the ballot is not entirely secret...

      (Much like how this post is not entirely anonymous...)

      1. MiguelC Silver badge

        Re: Anonymity?

        I vote in elections of two different countries (not the same elections, mind) and neither has any identification on the ballots that could tie them to the voters. Why would that ever be needed in a true democracy? Oh...

        1. Blane Bramble

          Re: Anonymity?

          "Why would that ever be needed in a true democracy? Oh..."

          If the vote is completely anonymous, you cannot verify or audit it, making it vulnerable to fixing.

          1. baud

            Re: Anonymity?

            I don't how it is where you live, but here you can volunteer to work at the polling station and help count the votes. You won't be able to audit your own vote, but can still check that no tampering is done on the ballot box or the ballots.

    3. Pascal Monett Silver badge

      Re: Anonymity?

      It's not that difficult.

      1) You go into the voting booth where no one is supposed to see what you're doing

      2) you insert the ballot of your choice into an envelope and close it

      3) you bring your ballot to the box where you insert it and your vote is counted

      4) nobody looks at your envelope before it is time to count who won - by then your envelope is one of many and, therefor, anonymous

      1. Daedalus

        Re: Anonymity?

        100% naive. In the UK, each ballot paper issued at the voting station was numbered. You showed up with the voting card that they sent you, claimed your ballot and voted. The number of the voting card and the ballot were recorded.

        So if you voted for the now-defunct party that had its own newspaper, albeit a few pages only, those ballots could be set aside, the numbers recorded, and the voting register examined to find out the number on your card, tracing back to YOU. Back in the day when said party was considered the agent of a foreign power, voting that way could, at the very least, put you on a watch list, and possibly affect your career prospects.

        Here in the US you show up with a record of your address and vote in the district(s) that include that address. In NY your ballot is a large card with lots of options. Only the menu at the Cheesecake Factory has more. It also has a number, which was recorded in the register when you got it. So here you're in about the same boat as you would be in the UK, except for the variation across the country and the general lack of real organization in the so-called "system".

        1. Paul Kinsler

          Re: tracing back to YOU

          Once the card is in a giant pile of largely unsorted pile of other cards, the tracing is hard. You know what Joe's number is, but finding his card is slow and time consuming. On the other hand, you can easily pull a card out of the pile, but then matching it up with a name is likewise hard.

          It's not impossible. But then if someone is prepared to spend that much time and effort on you, which way you might (or might not) have voted is likely merely a fig-leaf for one of the many problems they will shortly be - or already are - visiting on you.

          1. John Robson Silver badge

            Re: tracing back to YOU

            That’s true unless you a) use computers or b) are just interested in people who voted for the “wrong” party

          2. Daedalus

            Re: tracing back to YOU

            Your voter number in the UK was in a registry. The ballots for the candidate in question would be in a few (generally smallish) piles together. Matching ballots to the voter rolls would be relatively easy even in the pen and ink days, especially when there were standing instructions to forward ballots for red-flagged candidates to Special Branch.

        2. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

          Re: Anonymity?

          In all the elections I've voted in, in several states, the ballot number is on a tab which is removed from the ballot before it's fed (by the voter) into the tabulator. The ballot numbers can confirm that some ballot was submitted by a given voter, but not which ballot.

          Obviously it's possible to conceal another copy of the ballot number on the main portion of the ballot, but then there are plenty of ways to break anonymity if you assume evil acts prior to the election rather than after it.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Anonymity?

        It works well for us French, but the US vote much more often and on many more topics than we do. It's already difficult in France to find volunteers to count votes, it would not work there.

        1. MiguelC Silver badge

          Re: Anonymity?

          I can confirm that, after voting in the last two elections I was asked by an official if I was willing to join the counting force at the end of the day...

        2. Daedalus

          Re: Anonymity?

          "C'est le tabac qui compte"

    4. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

      Re: Anonymity?

      How do these systems guarantee your right to a secret ballot as opposed to a piece of paper with a cross thrown into a box?

      These systems are "a piece of paper ... thrown into a box". They just replace the pre-printed ballot and pen with a printer terminal at the point of use.

      Voter confirms eligibility and enters the voting room, where a number of terminals are provided. When one is free, voter uses it to produce a mark-sense human-readable paper ballot with the appropriate choices selected. That goes into the tabulator with everyone else's ballots. Anonymity is preserved.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I can see it now, submit your vote by onenote from your surface pro tablet using your surface active stylus.

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