IP: Re: Unisys, Microsoft, Dell to Create New Voting System

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

> On Fri, Jan 12, 2001 at 06:50:01AM -0500, Dave Farber wrote:
> > > Reuters
> > > Jan 11 2001 12:52PM
> > > NEW YORK (Reuters) - Three of the world's top computer companies
> > > have teamed up to vaporize the paper chad by developing an
> > > electronic voting system that would overcome the kind of ballot
> > > confusion that wracked the U.S. presidential election.
> > > Blue Bell, Pa.-based Unisys Corp. said on Thursday it will bring
> > > together hardware from No. 2 PC maker Dell Computer Corp. and
> > > software from Microsoft Corp. in the new voting system.
>
> For IP.
>
>
> I think an interesting alternative to this would be to take advantage
> of the huge resource of used, slow computers out there.
>
> The open source movement would be called upon to make an open source
> voting machine system.  The source code, widely available, would be
> highly scrutinized for fairness and elmination of protential fraud.
>
> This software would then be placed on certified hard disks (which may have
> to be bought new) and placed into any suitable PC.   It would assume nothing
> more than a low-memoried, slow pentium with VGA.
>
> The public would then be asked to donate old PCs, and they would get a
> tax deduction for it.  I think there would be a flood of donations.
> A quick check to assure the donated parts are standard, and you would
> be able to get all the voting machines at close to zero cost (mostly just
> the $50 new hard drive, since allowing a donated hard drive provides a
> slight risk of fraud by very clever people who recode the firmware on the
> drive.)
>
> People would get a thrill out of donating their old PC to help an electoral
> system in crisis.
>
> The machines would not be internet connected.  They would just have a
> screen and printer.  They would conduct the voter through their ballot
> and then both record the ballot and print out a paper ballot which is
> both human and machine readable -- with the machine reading what the human
> reads, not some bar code or other non human readable info.   When the
> person confirms their paper ballot is correct, they end the process and
> take the paper ballot to a ballot box.
>
> At close of voting, the machines immediately report a tally of the votes
> to the returning officers.   However, randomly, or in case of a recount,
> the paper ballots are counted by hand or with a scanner, as they are the
> true record.
>
> An alternative scheme would be to get donated scanners on a 2nd machine.
> On the 2nd machine, the voter would take their ballot and insert it into
> the sheetfed scanner.  The machine would display their vote as read off
> the paper ballot, and they would confirm it is correct, then place the
> paper ballot in the ballot box.   The machine with scanner would retain
> the tally, and could rescan the ballots at any time.  Again, the machine
> would do some form of OCR on a ballot designed to make it reliable, it
> would not rely on anything a human can't easily read.
>
> In this system, voters could, in theory, prepare their ballots ahead of
> time running the software on their own machines, and just bring them in
> and present them to the scanner machine, confirm them and put them in the
> box.   If the scanner did not confirm what they want, they could go to
> a machine at the polling station and re-vote.
>
> Such machines would provide a quick accurate count, with confirmation to
> each voter that their vote is recorded as they wish.
>
> They would also allow more "complex" votes, in particular, they would
> allow the use of the "australian" or "preference" ballot, where you get
> to list the candidates you like, in order, rather than just picking one,
> and a mini-runoff is done, eliminating the bottom candidate and transferring
> the votes of those who had that candidate as first choice to their next
> choice.   Such ballots, used in Australia, Ireland and many private
> elections in the USA, totally avoide the "nader effect" seen this year,
> as Nader voters could vote "Nader, Gore"  if they wanted, and once Nader
> was eliminated, their votes would switch to Gore.



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