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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