We need a federal law that outright bans voting machines for all federal elections that Congress has control over (it'll get rid of them entirely in practice, because no-one will want to waste time and money by maintaining parallel systems).
That will solve all the immediate issues. Think of it as the equivalent of taking down a compromised server.
Then, companies that make those things can go back to the drawing table, actually think about what they're making this time, and try to convince us all that they did it right. It'll take a lot of convincing, and that's exactly how it should be. For starters, I'd want to hear about the exact problem being solved.
What would it take to make this happen? It feels like something that would carry more weight if the initial push came from the IT industry. People will listen better to something like, "I'm a software engineer with 20 years of experience, and in my educated opinion, electronic voting should be banned."
Machines are useful for accessibility. Rather than a total ban on voting machines, I'd rather see a ban on machines that don't produce a paper ballot that can be manually counted, and no results should be considered official until the physical ballots are hand-counted. (Electronic counts are fine to satisfy the desire for instant results.)
That wouldn't necessarily fix this particular issue (machines with bad UI selecting the wrong candidates), but at least it's easy for a voter to determine if something went wrong if the paper ballot is marked incorrectly.
Cynically: "more expensive" is used as a proxy measure for "better" by Americans. Same mistake as healthcare, "Our system must be the best in the civilised world - we spend far more than anybody else".
Pencil and paper are boring and cheap. If your job is just to ensure the state buys enough pencils how do you justify an extra $25 000 next year? When voters insist they want to elect the deputy car wash attendants (another American trait - "democracy is good, therefore electing people is good, so the more elected officers the better") you just add another page to the printed ballot. No opportunity to innovate with auto-filling 600 separate elections from one party line decision.
There isn’t that much money to be gained. I work for a Danish muniplacity and we do digital voter registration, but I don’t think we’ll ever do digital voting because it’s unsafe.
Our system is a little different, here every citizen is mailed a “ticket” they can exchange for the voting ballot in the weeks leading up to the election. If yours is lost in the mail, no worry, we can print you a new one, and you can’t really use someone else’s because it has your name on it and we check.
In every ticket there is a barcode that we scan, to speed handing the out ballots up, this also counts the amount of voters, and that’s the digital part of the election. It’s also the most burdensome, so this is where digitisation saves us time.
The voting is done on paper and counted in hand, and checked with the amounts who have passed through the digital system, if it’s off by more than 1-3 votes there is a recount until it fits.
The counting takes a few hours at each location, but it’s done by the same people who’ve worked the voting place all day to ensure the safety of democracy, so it’s not really that expensive or inefficient.
And that’s not accounting for the cost of voting machines. The digital part of our elections is the most expensive part of the process, because digital systems are expensive.
We use them because they add convenience for the citizens since they eliminate queues, but it would actually be much cheaper to do the whole process on paper.
I’m not sure why America ever installed digital voting machines, but I can’t see any reason to do so. Especially not some that don’t leave a paper trail.
> I’m not sure why America ever installed digital voting machines
Because companies that make them lobbied state governments to use them. Usually by pitching various fraudulent claims, like "it's cheaper" and "it's safer" - but, of course, what really talks is money:
Keep in mind that here in US, even when it comes to the federal elections, the states are the ones that run them, and they have a lot of leeway in doing so. Thus you see a very wide spectrum, all the way from the craziness described in this article, to states like mine where all ballots are paper and election is handled by mail. Similar with voter registration and identifying voters.
It doesn't have to be that way - Congress has the constitutional authority to regulate: "The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.". But they don't really use this power much; two prominent examples are the federal law that mandates single-member districts (which is bad, because it prevents states from experimenting with other electoral systems), and the law to establish a single voting day (which is Tuesday, because said law dates 170 years back, when primary consideration was to accommodate people travelling to polling places from remote locations by foot or by horse). Given the importance of federal politics these days, I think it's long overdue for much more stringent regulations to set a baseline that guarantees free and fair elections.
I think you are right about the number of elections. I see American commericals for electing sheriffs, school board trustees etc etc. These people should be promoted based upon performance, experience and skill, not a popularity contest.
Are machines really the only way to solve the accessibility issue? There are many countries out there - including developed countries - that use paper ballots exclusively. Why not adopt their practices wrt accessibility?
Make it a federal crime for voting machines to be inaccurate and allow civil lawsuits about same. Budget a mandatory spend to investigate a randomly selected number of precincts after each election.
A main problem with voting machines is that they are a form of outsourcing of a government function which is critical to our society and our form of government. If we are to have machines, those producing them must be held accountable.
There's even an existing mechanism for this. Just like with buildings and bridges and the like, any voting machine could have a publicly registered design formally signed and sealed by a licensed Professional Engineer who is willing to accept criminal liability for any faults in the design.
All states should do what Oregon does (with optional paper ballet on election day). Opt everyone in when you get an id, none of this register to vote nonsense. Send everyone a ballet in the mail and do mail in or drop off ballots.
I really don't get why it's so hard for more people to get behind, other than the whole, trying to prevent certain groups from voting.
That will solve all the immediate issues. Think of it as the equivalent of taking down a compromised server.
Then, companies that make those things can go back to the drawing table, actually think about what they're making this time, and try to convince us all that they did it right. It'll take a lot of convincing, and that's exactly how it should be. For starters, I'd want to hear about the exact problem being solved.
What would it take to make this happen? It feels like something that would carry more weight if the initial push came from the IT industry. People will listen better to something like, "I'm a software engineer with 20 years of experience, and in my educated opinion, electronic voting should be banned."