Voting, Three Months Later

When we published a report on voting back in October, our conclusion included the line:

Just as important, we must not forget about election systems until October 2012.

So, what has happened since then?

Well, November wasn't a huge disaster, which is good. It'll be awhile before people start putting out reports that can really tell us how things went but we have a result that no one can really dispute (at least in the presidential election - I'm just going to ignore Minnesota for now).

But since November, we've seen some interesting stuff. Everyone's favorite whipping boy, the-company-formerly-known-as-Diebold (Premier Election Solutions), has been in the news. The state of Maryland is suing the company for the $8.5 million they spent fixing security problems with the $65 million of touch-screen machines they bought in 2001. Meanwhile, controversy is brewing in California over tabulation software Diebold knew would randomly delete ballots.

I'm going to be an optimist for a moment and explain how these articles actually point to some positive steps:

• Maryland admits there are problems and has worked toward fixing them based on independent expert advice. One disturbing thing we found when we looked into the electronic voting security was that election officials tend to trust the voting manufacturers over security experts. I'm fully aware that this change of heart in Maryland is the result of a lot of bad publicity and lawsuits directed toward the state, but it's progress.
• Maryland is making Diebold pay for it's mistakes. This is the only way we will see these companies produce better products - by making it expensive and impractical to do otherwise.

In California:

• They figured out the ballots were missing because Humboldt County has implemented a public auditing program. All of the ballots included in the tally are scanned and posted online to allow anyone to do their own count. During this process, they discovered they had more scanned ballots then the system reported. This sounds like a pretty good rebuttal to those who keep insisting there is no need for a physical verification mechanism. It also sounds like a great program, I'd love to see this done more widely.

Of course, these articles also point to underlying screw-ups, but I'm going to focus on the possibility that these steps will lead to more steps and we'll be in a different place in October 2012.

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