People often claim that the physical voting booth system in use in the
U.S. is fraught with the ability to commit fraud, but in fact, it is a
rather secure system. Allow me to briefly explain why.
(One caveat: I'm basing all of this on my experience with the system
in New York State, where I've acted as a poll watcher. Your Mileage
May Vary).
The most important feature is that the system is NOT supervised by
potentially corrupt public officials, although it is managed by
them. Supervision comes from poll watchers. All candidates running for
election may designate representatives (i.e. the poll watchers) who
have the right to inspect the set-up of the voting machines, the
conduct of the election, the closing of the polls, the counting of the
votes, etc. (In practice, the political parties select these people,
but never mind that -- it is a detail.) Poll watchers have the right
to essentially observe the entire process, from start to finish, and
because of the adversarial nature of their task, it is very unlikely
that anyone can game the system if every candidate's team picks good
poll watchers.
The mechanical voting booths used in New York State are also pretty
useful for this process -- in particular, they are made of extremely
obvious components and are very hard to rig. They use no technology
that would not be comprehensible to an engineer in the early 19th
century. They're old, solid, and reliable. The machines themselves are
examined before the start of the election by the contending parties
and are sealed after the election (literally -- wax seals and
everything) so that they can later be re-examined if necessary for
signs of tampering.
Since the poll watchers have the right to observe the reading of the
votes off the machines, it is especially hard to play games with the
final count. Poll watchers can (and do) call in their counts to their
headquarters so that the contending parties can conduct an independent
count of the voting separate from that of the official count.
Because of all of this, it is difficult to impossible to get away with
fraud in conducting the voting or counting itself. Fraud that does
appear is typically conducted by multiple voting in different polling
places, the registration of dead people, etc. However, there are
significant checks in the system against this, too.
All voters are, after all, registered, and sign next to their name in
a book of the registered voters before voting (supervised, of course,
by poll watchers). Attempting to vote more than once in a single
polling place is nearly impossible. It is possible that someone may
fraudulently vote as another, but one of the reasons poll watchers are
typically selected to be local people familiar with the people living
in the electoral district (which is typically very small) is to try to
prevent that. In any case, the same person is unlikely to be able to
return multiple times to a single polling place without raising
suspicion.
The registration records are public information before the election,
and who voted is public after. It is easily possible for a private
investigation to reveal that dead or unqualified people were
registered to vote, or that someone who appears to have voted claims
never to have gone to the polling place.
The system is far from perfect, but in general, the low technology,
adversarial approach taken seems to work quite well. This should not
be a surprise. The system developed over two and a quarter centuries
of experience with attempts at fraud by experts at conducting such
frauds. Every time a major fraud was uncovered, the system was tuned
to reduce the probability of a future fraud succeeding.
Electronic voting schemes make me extremely nervous. They smack of the
"this is new and therefore better" fallacy. In general, they lack all
of the checks and balances the system I just outlined possess. The
fact that third world countries have been among the first to automate
their central vote counting operations -- largely to make fraud easier
by virtue of the fact that a computer can be made to lie with little
difficulty -- should tell us something about why it is that we should
be nervous about these systems.
There are no obvious advantages to automation in this system, or to
"internet voting". The main "advantage" touted is that voter turnout,
which is at record lows in the United States, might rise. This is a
highly suspect motivation.
Sure, a few more people might vote -- but it is insanely easy to vote
already. My polling place is less than a five minute walk from my
apartment -- even closer than the store where I buy my food. It
generally takes only a minute or two after arriving to cast one's
vote. In spite of this, very few people in my neighborhood bother to
vote. I've poll watched an election with turnout of less than 20% of
registered voters. In many third world countries facing important
elections, turnout is far higher in spite of substantial time, effort
and hardship involved in getting to polling places.
In general, the reason for low turnout in the U.S. has nothing to do
with inconvenience. It is far more convenient to vote here than almost
anywhere else I've heard of. The reason is that people are unmotivated
to vote, often because of horribly bad candidates with
indistinguishable positions. If people aren't motivated to vote, they
won't bother to regardless of the impediments, and making elections
electronic will not fix that.
--
Perry E. Metzger [EMAIL PROTECTED]
--
"Ask not what your country can force other people to do for you..."
